Both the addresses of the subjects, eminent, religious and cultured men, and the sovereign's reply were highly informative of the mental attitude of this extraordinary people. The Bible, it appeared, was the "greatest possession of the English race." "The British Bible" was the first and greatest of British investments and upon the moral dividends derived from its possession was founded the imperial greatness of this Island Empire. That other peoples possessed the Bible and had even translated it before England was not so much as hinted at. That the Bible was Greek and Hebrew in origin was never whispered. It began and ended with the English Authorised Version. The British Bible was the Bible that counted. It was the Bible upon which the sun never sets, the Bible that had blown Indian mutineers from its muzzle in the 'fifties and was prepared to-day to have a shot at any other mutineers, Teuton or Turk, who dared to dispute its claim that the meek shall inherit the earth. The unctuous rectitude that converts the word of God into wadding for a gun is certainly a formidable opponent, as Cromwell proved. To challenge English supremacy becomes not merely a threat to peace, it is an act of sacrilege. And yet this world-wide empire broad based upon the British Bible and the English navy, and maintained by a very inflexible interpretation of the one and a very skilful handling of the other, rests upon a sunk foundation that is older than both and will surely bring both to final shipwreck.