PEACE AT THE LAST.

WHAT shall bring a man peace at the last,
When the voyage of life is o'er,

When his shatter'd vessel shall soon be cast
On eternity's unknown shore ?

Shall he turn to his zeal and labours of love?
To the work which he ought to have done?
Can here be a plea for acceptance above,
To the high and Holy One?

The thoughts of his heart, shall they seem aright
To the Spirit of purity?

His holiest things, can they stand in his sight
Who hateth iniquity?

His repentance, what was it ?—a moment's sigh
Where rivers of tears should be;

His lifeless prayer?-to the throne on high
But a solemn mockery.

Alas! the record of days that are past,

The tale of his life gone by,

Will bring him not peace but despair at the last,
When read with a dying eye.

Oh no! in that solemn momentous hour
He must turn to a holier page,

To the only book which shall then have power
The terrors of death to assuage.

It speaks of a way to the homes of the blest,
Of a sacrifice made for sin,

Of an open door to a fold of rest,
Where who willeth may enter in.

Message of mercy!-he then shall see
The worth of God's wondrous plan,
To ransom, for time and eternity,
The immortal soul of man.

Oh yes!—When life's last wave is ebbing fast,
When falters the parting breath,

This, this, shall bring a man peace at the last,
And gladden the bed of death.

REV. H. A. SIMCOE, (Penheale-Press, Cornwall.

THE Wood-cut placed at the head of this article is intended to call the attention of our readers to one of

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the greatest events in our national and religious history; the setting up of the English Bible in the Churches. In the year of our Lord God a thousand five hundred and thirty five, (as the old Printers would say,) the whole of the sacred Scriptures having been 'faithfully and truly translated into English' by Myles Coverdale, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, were printed and published. In the following year there was another edition of this precious volume, known under the title of Matthew's Bible.

Each of these editions, which were printed abroad, not only obtained the licence of king Henry the VIII. to be freely bought and sold; but, through the influence of Archbishop Cranmer, the king moreover issued his commands, that a copy of the Bible, thus rendered into English, should be set up in some part of every Parish Church; and that the Clergy should encourage the people to read it. This indeed was a day of rejoicing to the Archbishop, greater, he observed, than if there had been given him a thousand pounds. Nor to him only; the people who had been long eagerly thirsting for the word of life, rushed, like Israel of old in the wilderness, to the streams that gushed from the stricken rock of Horeb, and drank freely of that "living water" which had been long denied them. Whosoever then had the means bought the volume; and where the cost was too great for an individual, neighbours and fellow-apprentices would unite purses and buy in common. A man would be frequently seen (as in our engraving) at the lower end of his ParishChurch reading the blessed book aloud, while many stood around to listen and eagerly catch the sound of those great and awakening truths of which they had

been kept in darkness through the evil policy of a corrupt system.

From the freedom with which the Scriptures are now circulated amongst ourselves, and from the cheap price at which the sacred volume may now be purchased, we are apt to overlook the many disadvantages under which our forefathers laboured. Let it be observed, then, that in the early part of the Reformation there was nothing against which the Romish Church and its abettors were so strongly opposed as the reading of the Scriptures by the people at large in their native tongue. In the services of the Breviary and Missal a large portion of the sacred volume was read, but being read only in LATIN, it was to the majority a sealed book, and must have so remained still had not its seals been suddenly broken by the lion-hearted zeal of the prince of the Reformation.

Nor was it without many a struggle that this event was at last fully accomplished. As Coverdale observed, in dedicating his translation to the king,—

The word of God is the only truth that driveth away all lies, and discloseth all juggling and deceit, therefore is our Balaam of Rome so loath that the Scriptures should be known in the mother tongue.'

Notwithstanding, therefore, that the king's injunction for setting up the Bible in English in the Churches was first given in 1536, in favor of Coverdale's Bible, and again renewed in 1538, respecting there appears to

what was called Matthews' Bible,*

* Matthews was a fictitious name used instead of Tyndale, who had made himself obnoxious to king Henry by speaking against the lawfulness of his divorce. Coverdale and Rogers (the protomartyr of Queen Mary's reign) appear to have assisted in this

have been much coldness on the part of the Clergy in promoting the royal intentions. This last translation, however, being revised under the superintendance of Cranmer, and termed the Great Bible, or Cranmer's Bible, was taken under the special sanction of Henry; and in the month of May, 1540, came forth his third proclamation respecting the reading of the sacred volume in English. In this it was expressly enjoined, that the Parishioners and Curates of every Parish should provide themselves with the Bible of the largest volume before All Saints' day' next coming. At the same time the king ordered the

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translation. The difference between this and Coverdale's Bible was but slight, and Matthews' Bible appears to have been little more than a revision of Coverdale's.

With respect, however, to these translations, the reader must observe that although Coverdale's was the first printed English translation, it was no novelty to have had the Scriptures in an English dress long before. The celebrated Wicklif had translated the Scriptures from the Latin in the year 1380; and Cranmer in his prologue to the Great Bible thus refers to this fact, for the purpose of refuting the objections of the Romanists to such translations. If the matter should be tried by custom, we might also allege custom for the reading of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue; for it is not much above one hundred years ago since Scripture hath been accustomed to be read in the vulgar tongue within this realm, and many hundred years before that it was translated and read in the Saxon's tongue, which at that time was our mother tongue, whereof there remain yet divers copies found lately in old abbeys, of such antique manner of writing and speaking that few men now be able to read and understand them. And when this language waxed old and out of common usage, because folk should not lack the fruit of reading, it was again translated into the newer language, whereof yet also many copies remain and be daily found.

Our Church still retains this translation in the Psalms used in the book of Common Prayer.