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(The Geneva Bible: 1560)

And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold and pleasant to eat of.

(The Douai Bible: 1609)

And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

(Authorized Version: 1611)

If these are the varying achievements of the masters, what manifold dangers, then, await the 'simple creature' who attempts in our own day to re-tell even a fraction of any particular chapter of the Old Testament in his own words.

To read, too, any book worthy of the name needs all the powers of understanding and imagination and spirit of which one is capable, and even then, what is made of the reading may fall far short of what was intended in the writing. How much so, then, when that book is the Bible! Its unique history is proof of it. Even the most usual of words in the most ordinary of circumstances may have many senses. We say, 'Here I am, at home': meaning, 'in my own familiar place'; and, maybe, 'the house where I was born'. But as when striking a note softly on a piece of fine glass one may listen on to its chiming overtones, so, if we listen to the echoes of the word home in memory, they can hardly fail to remind us of the home that is the body, where the 'I, myself', has its earthly dwelling. Next, maybe, of the 'keeping in order' of that home. And last, of the home of the heart's desire, which has had almost as many names given to it as there are races of mankind.