Article October 30, 1937 Issue

Signs of the Times

Topic: Courage and Character

with contributions from Willsie Martin, Harry J. Petty, J. C. DeVries, J. L. Newland

[From the Manchester Guardian, Lancashire, England]

William Tyndale . . . had to wait along before his country recognized his greatness. He was great both in himself and in the work which was the man. He was simple and direct; he was gentle and compassionate; he had a faith and a driving spirit like that of the Hebrew prophet who spoke of the "burning fire shut up in my bones;" he was of a most noble courage, triumphing over pain like Paul himself, pursuing his Hebrew studies during the long imprisonment which led up to his death, asking only "to have a candle in the evening, for it is wearisome to sit alone in the dark." He translated into English the New Testament and part of the Old, and the makers of the Authorized Version built on and in large measure adopted his translation. To him more than to any man we owe the greatest of all books written in the English tongue: to him and to his resolve, made early in his life and never betrayed, that all who would, however humble, should be able in their own persons to read the words in which Holy Writ, as he believed, addressed them. The English of Tyndale's Bible, at once simple and tender and yet flowing with magnificent sweep and power of a great river, is one of the glories of our race. When he died, though he did not know it, he had inherited "an everlasting name."

[Dr. Willsie Martin, as quoted in the Los Angeles Times, California]

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