In the days when Rome was half-Christian and half-pagan a youth of seventeen, named Hieronymus, usually shortened to Jerome, was sent to the imperial city to finish his education. On arrival he found the city full of gaiety and luxury. Jerome was at first attracted by this gay life, but the good influence of his home in good stead. A clever scholar, lingered with him and stood him he stuck to his studies under famous teachers, and on Sundays he and a friend would visit the Catacombs, where the Christians in the terrible days of persecution used to hide, and worship, and bury their dead. In this way Jerome became fired with admiration for the brave martyrs and love for their Master. Consequently he was baptized as a Christian some time before A.D. 366.

While in Rome he heard of men and women who, disgusted with riches and pleasure, had given up all, and retired to the deserts to pray and study, and Jerome was anxious to follow their example. Evidently Jerome did not get a-

long too well with them, partly because he was inclined to quarrel when he could not get his own way. So he went to Antioch, where Paul had lived years before. Here he became ill as a result of his hard life, and had a strange dream in which he imagined himself at the judgment seat of God, where he was scourged for his sins. When he awoke he vowed that he would devote his life to the study of the Bible, and leave other books alone. He therefore went off to the deserts, -and for ten years lived a life of hardship as a hermit, using little food and sleep. He took up the study of the Hebrew language, not so much from a scholar's delight in learning, but "to mortify the flesh".

In describing Jerome as one of the pillars of the Church and a man of tremendous learning, there is no getting away from the fact that he also must have possessed a marvelous streak of eccentricity. This eccentricity brought upon him the wrath of his fellow monks and hermits, whom he called "scorpions and wild beasts". Later he was compelled by them to return to Antioch. Here, much against his will, he received ordination to the priesthood, but he never seems to have acted as a cleric. He had a passion for knowledge and went on to Constantinople, a famous Christian centre of learning, where he studied the writings of Greek Christian teachers. Jerome then visited Rome again, where Pope Damasus became his patron. His great knowledge of the Scriptures in the original language made him dissatisfied with the translations used by the Church of his day. He was therefore urged by Damasus to make a better translation, and began to turn his attention to. the task. In due time he produced a Latin version of the Psalter and of the New Testament. People who were familiar with the earlier versions were shocked at the changes Jerome dared to make in the interest of truth, just as some people in our own day dislike any attempt to improve older versions of the Bible.

When Damasus died Jerome left Rome and determined to return to the life of a hermit. He set out for the Holy Land accompanied by some pupils he had befriended in Rome. They visited the holy places in Jerusalem and after a while settled at Bethlehem, where homes were built for men and women who might desire to join them in spending lives of self-denial, prayer and study.

Here in Bethlehem Jerome did not forget the appeal of Damasus that he should complete a new translation of the Scriptures. He now sought to fit himself for his task by a fresh study of the original languages of the Bible. Year after year passed, and Jerome toiled on at the work of translating the Old Testament into Latin and revising his previous translation of the New Testament, so that it should be the more perfect.

Gradually, however, Jerome's translation was finished and won its way. In A.D. 404 it was completed, and has come to be called the "Vulgate". It was an enormous tack for one man to carry through. Jerome's Latin translation of the Scriptures was so well done that for centuries it was regarded as the only worthwhile translation 'of the Bible. No other work has ever had so much an influence on the history of the Bible. For more than a thousand years it was the parent of every version of the Scriptures in Western Europe.