1000089435

PREFACE

recording over 60 forms of characters-ideograims of China,

ancient alphabets of Syria and India, Gothic and Slavonic

letters of mid-Europe, syllabic scripts, and ·many others–

is given at the end of the book.

To this edition there has been added a new Index

recording the word for ' God ' as given in most of these

630 languages. In the preparation of this information we

have had the help of many friends, and especially of two

members of the Editorial Sub-Committee, the Rev. Dr.

A. S. Geden and

Mr.

S. H. Ray. To all of them we are

deeply grateful.

These details are but the prose of a great vision-the

vision of learned scholars poring over the Hebrew and Greek

originals : of patient, painstaking pioneers in all parts of

Christ's Church, listening to strange words, reducing them

to order, and then to writing, so that all men may receive

God's Message, each in his mother-tongue. In these speci–

mens philologists

will

find materials for the comparison of

cognate or diverse forms of speech. But to the Bible Society

they stand for over 400 millions of books distributed all

over the earth during the last 126 years. They picture

multitudes of mankind receiving their first and their

increasing knowledge of God from such printed pages.

They bear witness to the marvellous fact that no tongue,

the most crude or the most refined, has yet been discovered

into which it has been found impossible to translate that

Gospel which is the common property of the human race.

And they speak of a work which is always progressing.

Once every five or six weeks some fresh language is added

to the list. When we include those versions of Scripture

published by other agencies, there are now over 880 forms

of human speech in which some printed portion of the Bible

is represented on the shelves of the Bible House Library.

THE BIDLE

HOUSE, LONDON,

March,

1930.

KILGOUR,

Editorial Superintendent.