complete edition of the Bible, by the
royal authority of King James.

On the first of May, 1607, forty-seven of the most learned men of the
British realm assembled in three parties at Oxford, Cambridge and
Westminster to make a new Bible for the guidance of mankind. Hebrew, Greek
and Latin scholars made up the great conclave; and after four years of
detailed labor the King James edition of the Bible was published to the
world, cutting loose forever from the power of Rome.

Although the "Word of God" has been revised several times since by man
there are yet a large number of sentences and verses in the Old and New
Testament that might be expurgated in the interest of decency, reason and
science.

This electric age is too rapid and wise to gulp down the obsolete doctrine
of ancient fanaticism, and the preachers of to-day are painfully alarmed at
the decreasing number of pewholders and patrons, who once listened to their
rigmarole platitudes or eloquent dissertations on the power and locution of
an unknown God.

On Christmas Eve, 1607, the "King's Players," with Shakspere and Burbage in
the respective roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, produced that great
historical play at the grand reception room of Whitehall, in the presence
of King James and the nobles of his court, surrounded by the ministers and
diplomats from all the civilized nations of the world.

I never saw a grander audience, interspersed with the most beautiful ladies
of the world, who shone in their jewels and diamonds like a field of
variegated wild flowers, besprinkled with the morning dew.

The witches in the play seemed to startle the King, and more than ever
convince him that these inhabitants of earth and air were all of a reality,
and should be destroyed wherever found, believing that they held the
destiny of man in the caldron of their incantations.

_"Come, come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;
And fill me from the crown to the toe, top full
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse;
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief; come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!
That my keen knife see not t