In one edition of the Bible which was printed in 1717, the first line of Luke xx. is misprinted into “The parable of the vinegar” instead of “The parable of the vineyard.” It is evident that God left much to the learning and common-sense of the men who translated the Scriptures, and yet He has so overruled things, that, upon the whole, no serious mistake has long continued in the Book of Truth. Yet, as an instance of the need of care, we are told that Eliot, the apostle of the Indians, when translating the Scriptures required the Indian word for lattice in Judges v. 28. He crossed his fingers to represent a lattice and asked one and another what word that meant. They told him, and he put it into his Bible. But when he acquired more of the language he found that he had actually said, “The mother of Sisera looked out of a window and cried through the eel pots.” Now, as language constantly changes, there thence arises a need for a continuous revision of the translation. In our English tongue, for example, all-to once meant altogether or entirely; anon meant immediately; bravery meant finery and not courage; carriage stood for baggage or that which could be carried by the hand. As men constantly change their speech, it is evident that we must vary the translation, if it is to be the living voice of God to men. The Scriptures probably reached England with the Roman army, and they probably penetrated thence into Scotland. Of course, they were in Latin. The earliest attempt to render this Latin Bible into Saxon was that of Cædmon, a monk of Whitby, who lived about the seventh century. His work was indeed more of a paraphrase than anything else. The same may be said of what are called Alfred’s Dooms, which were a free translation of the Ten Commandments by that King. In the British Museum there is the celebrated Durham Book. It is most beautifully written, and is also ornamented by curious portraits of the evangelists and others. Among other stories that are related of this book, it is said that the monks of Lindisfarne were once flying from the Danes; their ship was upset and the Durham Book fell into the sea. But through the merits of the patron saint, the tide ebbed out much farther than usual, and the book was found three miles from the shore, lying upon the sands, but unhurt by the waves! It was thereupon placed in the inner lid of St. Cuthbert’s coffin, where it was afterwards found when, in 1104, the monks settled at Durham and built the Cathedral. This book is a Latin text, beneath which two hundred years later an interesting Anglo-Saxon translation was added. Of translations proper the earliest we know of is that of the Venerable Bede, who died in 735. He was a monk of Jarrow, on the banks of the Tyne, and there his shattered high-backed chair is still preserved.