ON the walls of a certain public art gallery there hangs a picture entitled "The Word." By the glow of a fire a woman is reading a large, old, leather-bound Bible. The painting is beautiful in both composition and detail, but its chief interest centers in the absorption depicted on the woman's face, toil-worn yet calm and serene, expressing a peace which the world can neither give nor take away. The artist conveys the sense that as she reads the printed page of the Word of God she finds her daily spiritual food; hence the secret of her calm serenity, which is the portion and reward of all who come to understand and love the Bible.
Historians tell us that with the translation of the Bible into English by John Wyclif, a profound change was begun in the lives of the Anglo-Saxon race. Wyclif's translation of the Bible was passed from house to house, from hand to hand; and groups of people met at night to read in English the chapters concerning the evangelists. Later came William Tyndale, with a further translation, and after him Miles Coverdale. We are told that the change brought about in the character and progress of the people through the reading of the Bible was almost startling. England became the people of a book, and that book the Bible. Through the light which the teachings of Christian Science have thrown upon the Book of books, we know that this could not have been otherwise, because every rule therein laid down for man's guidance is under a transforming law of spiritual uplift. Behind and beyond the printed word is the changeless and immortal spiritual idea. In a literary sense the Authorized Version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English tongue, but the greatest effect it produced was upon the character of the people at large. Nothing could silence the great teachings of justice and mercy, truth and love, from the sacred volume, opened at last for all.
To students of Christian Science the Wyclif translation must always have a special interest in connection with the textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. In her Message to The Mother Church for 1902, our Leader tells us on page 15 that the title "Science and Health" for the book she had been writing came to her "in the silence of night" after she had waited on God for six weeks to suggest a name; and that she "rose and recorded the hallowed suggestion." Six months later, she writes (p. 16), a friend "brought to me Wyclif's translation of the New Testament, and pointed out that identical phrase, 'Science and Health,' which is rendered in the Authorized Version 'knowledge of salvation.' This was my first inkling of Wyclif's use of that combination of words, or of their rendering."
