Reflections from the Pew 107

As it’s St Fillan’s 900th anniversary I’m looking at Rev. Rutherford’s children’s address, where he talks about the history of the church, this one is for 6th August 1967, here he is talking about the 1627 Bible, it was originally used on 6th January 1951.

Today, boys and girls you may have noticed that the Beadle carried in a new bible. It is not really new but is 324 years old and was given to us by Lord Moray and it belonged to one of his ancestors, the 4th Earl who died in 1653. It is to precious to be used every week, and some of the spelling are different so I would have a headache trying to read the lessons from it. The Kirk Session are planning to put it in a case and have it on display.

You can see it is beautifully bound in leather with an embossed crest and in a wonderful state of preservation for a bible that was printed in 1627and was in use for 25 years. Do you think boys and girls that your bible will look as well at the end of 25 years if it is read as much as this one?

You may wonder how can you tell it was read that much. If you look in the fly leaf you can see inscribed – Began to read both the Old and New Testament on the 22nd September 1627, and then again below, Began to read again both the Old and New Testament on the 24th July 1631. You can see that at first the handwriting is neat but over the years the handwriting becomes larger and more uncertain until six years before his death Began to read again both the Old and New Testament on the 23rd December 1647.

I know little about him except that he owned this book, he lived at Donibristle and was the grandson of the bonnie Earl. Maybe you could make your New Year Resolution to read your bible.

You can read more about the 1627 bible on the Reflections from the pew 97.

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