Cranmer, and Ridley to perish while illuminating with living torches,
and the Anabaptist to arouse the sympathies of Christendom by his
agonies. With this book in hand, Shakespeare was to write his plays;
Raleigh was to die, knight, discoverer, thinker, statesman, martyr;
Bacon to lay the foundation of modern scientific research--three stars
in the majestic constellation about Henry's daughter. With this Bible
open before them the English nation would behold the Spanish Armada
dashed to pieces upon the rocks, while Edmund Spenser mingled his
delicious notes with the tumult of that awful wreck.

This book was to produce the edict of Nantes, while John of Barneveld
would give new life to the command of William the Silent--"Level
the dikes; give Holland back to the ocean, if need be," thus making
preparation for the visit of the Mayflower pilgrims to Leyden or
Delfthaven. Their eyes resting upon its pages, Selden and Pym were to
go to prison, while Grotius dreamed of the rights of man in peace and
war, and Guido and Rubens were painting the joys of the manger or the
sorrows of Calvary. His hand resting upon this book, Oliver Cromwell
would consolidate the hopes and convictions of Puritanism into a sword
which should conquer at Nasby, Marston Moor and Dunbar, leave to the
throne of Charles I, a headless corpse, and create, if only for an
hour's prophecy, a commonwealth of unbending righteousness. With that
volume in their homes, the Swede and the Huguenot, the Scotch-Irishman
and the Quaker, the Dutchman and the freedom-loving cavalier, were to
plan pilgrimages to the West, and establish new homes in America. With
that book in the cabin of the _Mayflower_, venerated and obeyed by
sea-tossed exiles, was to be born a compact from which should spring
a constitution and a government for the life of which all these
nationalities should willingly bleed and struggle, under a conqueror
who should rise from the soil of the cavaliers, and unsheath his sword