book through which one holds communion with the spirit of its writer,
being ready to learn from him by direct learning, or by the learning
received through suggestion, or through the rousing of the spirit of
enquiry, or the spirit of opposition. Is not this the best kind of love,
the love by which the thought of man is used by man, the spirit of man
holds communion with the spirit of man?

All through the ages, great things have been handed down by written
words, and people of all nations have shared one another's national
heritage of written thought, and in that sharing made it larger and
greater. We are now considering the earlier story of English Catholic
literature, and it is surely well that people should know something of
what things were said and sung in the olden time; the time when all art,
all literature was fed by the great Mother of all Christian art and all
Christian literature, the Holy Catholic Church.

You will find our Catholic literature saturated with sacred lore and
knowledge of Holy Scripture. Before printing was invented people could
not multiply copies of the Sacred Books as they can now, but they knew
them probably much better than many of those who can easily now buy them
for a few pence. We have translations of various parts of the Bible in
these early times. You will remember how in St Bede's last days he
finished his translation of part of St John's Gospel. We have lovely
manuscripts, such as that of the Lindisfarne Gospels, written in fine
clear writing, which can be seen at the British Museum; and facsimiles
of parts of them can be had for a small sum. It is simply an uneducated
error to suppose that the heretical editing, as I may call it, of Holy
Scripture in the mother-tongue of English people, made by Tyndale and
Coverdale, was the first attempt to put the Bible into English. We
should have had plenty of printed copies of Holy Scripture in the