often to give way before compromise, and rigid uniformity of rendering breaks down before common sense, as in revision of the sacred text. The old story of the scholar who sent King James's translators five reasons in favour of a certain rendering, and was answered that they had fifteen against it, not inaptly represents, in very many cases, the relation between our critics and ourselves. Strictures on our renderings have been advanced, which one sentence or one reference would have sufficed to annihilate. Purisms have been maintained and cast in our teeth, which the next verse of the text would have shewn to be impracticable: and phrases held up to ridicule, of which a word from us would have demonstrated the paramount necessity. This being so, the present Reviser has simply thrown himself into the gap, that the work might be accomplished at all events on the basis of the experience already acquired. He utterly repudiates for his Revision any aim to be adopted in any place as a substitute for the Authorized Version. It is impossible, to say nothing more, that one man's work can ever fulfil the requisites for an accepted Version of the Scriptures. If there was one lesson which the "Five Clergymen" learnt from their sessions, it was that no new rendering is safe until it has gone through many brains, and been thoroughly sifted by differing perceptions and tastes. His wish mainly is to keep open the great question of an authoritative Revision; to shew the absolute necessity of such a measure sooner or later; and to disabuse men's minds of the fallacies by which the Authorized Version is commonly defended. At the same time he is not without hope that this Revision may serve the cause of God and His Word by presenting to the English reader the sacred text in a form which, however far from perfection, yet more nearly approaches that in which the faith was once for all delivered to the saints. It may be well, by the light of experience, to forewarn the reader of some of the criticisms of this Revision which are sure to be made. It is a common practice with those who do not understand the first principles of textual criticism, if they wish to shew that a reading ought not to have been adopted, to compare it with the received reading in point of clearness, of probability, of conformity to usage, and the like. If in these respects it is inferior to the received, then, say they, the received was better, and ought to have been retained. Now in such reasoning there is not a word of truth. Whether or not a reading is to be adopted, is simply a matter of testimony.. If the most ancient authorities concur in it, then we are bound in simple obedience to receive it. Only when ancient authorities are divided can we take such considerations as the above into account ; and even then, with precisely the opposite estimate to that of our friend: giving preference, that is, to the harder, the less grammatical, the less probable reading, for this reason,—that, in transcribing, that which was difficult was more likely to be altered to that which was easy, than vice versa. If it be desired to shew that revision was not worth undertaking, a long passage is chosen from the narrative part of the Gospels, in which perhaps for twenty verses or more there may be hardly any difference between the two texts: and this is paraded as a sample of the work. If to shew that revision is mischievous in the object, some text is pitched upon in the Authorized Version, on which sound doctrine has relied for proof or confirmation: the same text is quoted from the Revision, and is found to be void of such proof or confirmation. The unhappy Reviser is at once denounced as a heretic, and his work as fostering unsound doctrine. The critic either cannot, or will not, notice that the change was here made simply as an act of honest obedience to truth of testimony, or truth of rendering. Of course it has never dawned upon him that a translator of Holy Scripture must be absolutely colourless; ready to sacrifice the choicest text, and the plainest proof of doctrine, if the words are not those of what he is constrained in his conscience to receive as God's testimony. The Reviser has only to express his wish and prayer that this work may be as soon as possible rendered useless by the more matured and multifarious labour of a Royal Commission. Such a commission he believes the various sections of the Church in this realm fully able to furnish with members : and he doubts not that its issue would be a new Authorized Version, founded upon the old, but everywhere, by its own weight of excellence, superseding it. CANTERBURY, February 12, 1869. } 4 |