. READING ALOUD.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") Sta,--The Spectator, June 14th " They [the Reformers] minced it [the Bible] up into texts and administered it to them- selves and others in convenient form." The mincing was begun long before the Reformation :— " The arrangement of chapters and verses has nothing to do with the original. It was an artificial invention of the Middle Ages. The first printed Bible with chapters appeared in 1525, and the first Bible with verses in 1551. While very convenient for reference, this arrangement often obscures the sense and needlessly interrupts the narrative. The chapters and verses have therefore- by the Revisers of 1885 been relegated to the margin."—(Dummelow's One Volume Commentary on the Bible, Ed. 1915, p. xiii.)
The arrangement of chapters and verses, and in an almost equal degree (except in the largest books) the division of the page into two columns, is a principal cause of bad reading aloud, and pesters one whether reading silently or aloud. Moreover, while it makes private Bible-reading a bore to many, yet most of these are, I believe, unaware of the real cause of tedium; namely, the fiagmentary form of the page.
Though the revisers relegated chapters and verses to the margin, some recent issues of the R.V. from the University Presses have reverted to the had old plan of the Authorized Version. It is a real hindrance to popular, intelligent Bible- reading that there is no fairly cheap edition of the A.V. in rational paragraphs, where narrative and argument are not broken inta by fidgeting blank spaces. And there will be no remedy for the evil until the present legal monopoly of issuing the A.V. is abolished.—I am, Sir, &c., RETIRED RECTOR.
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