Story

of the

Present Undertaking.

A

BOUT eight years ago a remarkable translation. of the Gospels appeared in France. It was a most excellent and unique translation from the original Greek into the most beautiful of modern French.

It was the work of Henri Lasserre. Henri Lasserre was a Roman Catholic French Priest. He was a most godly man and a most faithful Parish Priest. As such he had come to see how very few ordinary Roman Catholic Frenchmen were acquainted with the story of our Lord's life as a connected whole. He saw they knew it only in disconnected fragments without either logical or chronological order. They knew it only as they heard it read in the services of the Mass or as quoted in the sermons of preachers.

This general ignorance of the Gospel story among
his fellow countrymen led Henri Lasserre to attempt
such a translation as any ordinary Frenchman
would read with the same interest as the latest
French novel.

He made his translation. He got the necessary
imprimatur of his Archbishop, the Archbishop of
Paris. He sent his work to Rome. He received a
letter from the Pope's secretary conveying to him
the apostolic benediction of his Holiness. His work
was published. It was sold and read everywhere.
It began at once to accomplish most nobly the gen-
erous design and prayerful endeavor of its author.
But-

The Jesuits got hold of it. They found fault
with it. They sent it back to the Pope. It was im-
mediately put into the Index Expurgatorius-the
list of books forbidden to be read by all loyal
Roman Catholics.

As a loyal Roman Catholic Priest, Perre Lasserre
submitted. The good work he so nobly began
among French Roman Cotholics came to an un-
timely end.

THE PRESENT TRANSLATION IS AN ATTEMPT TO POP-
ULARISE THE READING OF THE LIFE OF JESUS THE
CHRIST HERE IN AMERICA ON THE SAME LINES AND
IN THE SAME SPIRIT AS HENRI LASSERRE.

Introduction.

DEAR READER:

Here is an attempt to put the Gospel Story of Jesus the Christ into the ordinary form of our every day American Literature. It is an attempt to take the story of Jesus the son of Mary out of the exclusive shadow of the school and of the Church and to put it in the form with which all modern readers are most familiar. It is an attempt to take it out of its 16th century clothes and to dress it up in the modern style of this present year of grace.

We have used our every effort to leave off everything peculiarly English and to put in its place what is distinctively American. For this version of the Gospel Story is addressed to Americans, not Englishmen. It is addressed to Americans of this year of grace, not to those of the 16th century. It is addressed to Americans in their every day walk and conversation, not to them as scholars and churchmen alone. It is addressed to all Americans

of whatever cast or class who do not find themselves entirely at home in reading the present versions of the Gospels. It is addressed to you, interested reader, if you are ready to welcome a rendering of the Gospel Story talking to you in your own distinctively American words and phrases,—the words in common use on the street and in the mill, the phrases ordinarily heard on the road, in the store, and at the desk.

"But alas!" no doubt many will say, "Alas! Will you indeed rob the Scriptures of their sacred character as the word of God? Will you bring them. down to the level of the ordinary novel? Will you ruthlessly despoil them of their noble and deliciously chaste English? Strip them altogether of their sacred language? How then can you expect the common people to retain their old well established love and reverence for them?"

The story of the life of Jesus the Christ needs neither love nor reverence that is not the result of its own intrinsic charm.

Before the Reformation one of the most plausible arguments against translating the Scriptures into the modern languages, was just such an argument as this. Ignorant, so called, scholars feared to put the great truths of life into such vulgar