“There is an inscrutability of truth which sometimes increases its power, while we wait with solemn reverence for the hour when it shall be fully revealed to us; and our faith, like the setting sun, may clothe celestial mysteries with a soft and rosy-coloured light, which makes them more suitable to our present existence.”--CHEEVER. “PUT IT ON THE SHELF!”--A BLANK WORLD!--CLEVERNESS NO CREDIT--THE FARMER’S SON--NEW LIGHT FROM THE OLD CHRONICLES--THE MIDNIGHT DARKNESS AND THE MORNING STAR. “I have long adopted an expedient which I have found of singular service to me,” said Richard Cecil. “I have a shelf in my study for tried authors, and one in my mind for tried principles and characters. “When an author has stood a thorough examination and will bear to be taken as a guide, I PUT HIM ON THE SHELF! “When I have most fully made up my mind on a principle, I PUT IT ON THE SHELF! “When I have turned a character over and over on all sides, and seen it through and through in all situations, I PUT IT ON THE SHELF!” William Tyndale is a man whose character may be placed upon the shelf, for he and his life have successfully endured the test of the ages that have in turn examined him, and sometimes not with the kindest of feelings. It is difficult for us to estimate adequately the magnitude of his success, because the whole current of religious life has changed since his time, and mainly because of what he accomplished. A great writer has imagined what would occur if some morning every sentence of the Scriptures were obliterated both from the printed page and from the minds of men; he believes that _a blank Bible would mean a blank world_, and that was largely the moral condition of things into which Tyndale was born. There was no Bible, at least in circulation, and therefore there were ignorance, tyranny, hopelessness, and discord. The Reformation was not only a bringing-in of a new life beyond the grave, it also gave fresh hope and meaning to the existence on this side of death; so that commercial enterprise and national liberty are products of that period. Frith, in his amusing autobiography, tells us of a picture-dealer who said of Dickens and his writings, “He couldn’t help writing ’em. He deserves no credit for that. He a clever man! Let him go and sell a lot of pictures to a man that don’t want ’em, as I have done lots of times; that’s what I call being a clever man!” The same has practically been long felt if not expressed about William Tyndale, for it is only of late years that his supreme ability has been admitted. Yet he was undoubtedly a great man; Foxe calls him “the true servant and martyr of God, who, for his notable pains and travail, may well be called the Apostle of England.” Tyndale is rightly so called, for he, in spite of the Bishops, gave to the world a book which they did not desire, and in so doing he did more for the English Reformation than the King and Parliament combined.