8. It was only reasonable to believe that the scholarship of the companies who met at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge, sound as it was, would not bear comparison with that of the nineteenth century. Much attention had been paid in the course of the intervening years to the ancient languages. The lexicons of to-day are more thorough and accurate, as well as more scientific in their arrangement, because greater attention has been given to the force of tenses, cases, articles, and prepositions. It might not have been theological bias so much as grammatical inaccuracy which wrote, Such as should be saved rather than those that were being saved (Acts 2 : 47).

9. The marginal notes in the first edition of the Authorized Version were nearly as numerous as the marginal references.1 Those which suggested alternative readings might be considered afresh, and a conclusion arrived at as to their soundness. Should They houghed an ox take the place of digged down a wall (Gen. 49 : 6); and, The north wind bringeth forth rain, of driveth away rain (Prov. 25 23), and I praise you, brethren, that you keep the traditions, of keep the ordinances (1 Cor. II : 2); and was it not full time that we read Eateth and drinketh (not “damnation") but judgment to himself? (1 Cor. II: 29.)

10. Was it not time also that passages confess1 Edgar, p. 323.

edly doubtful and probably spurious should be distinguished from those that were genuine? The touching story of the woman taken in adultery (John 8) was apparently a tradition-very likely with a basis of truth to it—which had crept into John's Gospel long after he wrote. In the account of the miracle at the pool of Bethesda (John 5) there were certainly verses whose later origin can scarcely be questioned. It was now generally although not universally believed that the last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark (Mark 16:9-20) were not written by the evangelist. The doctrine of the Trinity did not stand in any need of the questionable support to be derived from the well known passage in John's first Epistle (1 John 57), which Tyndale, Coverdale, and the Great Bible placed in brackets or distinguished by a different type, but which the Authorized Version admitted with no such suggestion as to its lack of authority.

II. In the days of King James the current geography and natural history of Bible lands were very imperfect. Little attention had been given to archæology. Egypt and Babylon were less known to the revisers than to us is the heart of Africa or the North Pole. The present century had seen Palestine explored, Jerusalem largely recovered from her ruins, Nineveh and Persepolis unearthed, the faces of the Pharaohs loosed from their cere

ments, the land which was the scene of Joseph's trials and triumphs quickened into splendor again, and the footprints of Paul traced with such accuracy and care that not even Luke or Timothy seemed more than ourselves to be companions of his travels. The researches and discoveries of the nineteenth century had made the Bible a book more real and living than ever before.

A. D. 1653.

12. Even in the days of the Commonwealth it was matter of complaint that the preachers would display their superior knowledge by differing from the Authorized Version. "The original," they would inform their congregation, "bears it better thus and thus." The consequence was that the weak stumbled and the doubting scoffed. It is needless to say that the habit of criticising the text from the pulpit had not diminished. Dull preachers, who consumed half of their own time and all of their hearers' patience by telling their congregation what the text did not mean, were scarcely more offensive than were the young divines just free from the swaddling clothes of the seminary and the cradle of the class-room, who launched out into the deep of Hebrew and Greek constructions, and floundered in textual criticism, when they might by the mercy of a little modesty have better contented themselves and made proof of their ministry by preaching the gospel. It would be well if by

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means of a scholarly revision of the Authorized Version these callow critics found their occupation gone.

For these reasons, and for others besides which need not be recounted, it was argued that a revised version of the English Bible was urgently needed. But there were strong reasons for preserving, as far as possible in any future revision, the idiom and vocabulary of the Authorized Version.

1. Made at the time when the English tongue was best fitted for its task, the Bible of King James was itself an evolution. Many of its happiest phrases were the result of repeated revision. To take only one example of this, how familiar to us is the exclamation of Jesus when he saw Nathanael coming to him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile (John 1 : 47). Tyndale rendered the words, Behold a right Israelite. The Genevan Bible gave, Indeed an Israelite. The Rhemish Version, An Israelite in very deed. The Authorized Version alone caught the true rhythm. Dr. Eadie scarcely exaggerates when he says that our version of the Bible has "the fullness of the Bishops' without its frequent literalisms, or its repeated supplements; it has the graceful vigor of the Geneva, the quiet grandeur of the Great Bible, the clearness of Tyndale's, the harmonies of Coverdale's, and the stately theological vocabulary of the Rheims."

2. No doubt in great measure because they reaped the harvests of two centuries and more of patient research, the revisers succeeded in producing a work of surprising accuracy. It is a Roman Catholic scholar who writes about it, that "Every sentence, every word, every syllable, every letter and point, seem to have been weighed with the nicest exactitude, and expressed, either in the text or margin, with the greatest precision." The substantial progress in biblical scholarship within this century, the examination or actual discovery of the oldest manuscripts of the Greek Testament, made fresh revision imperative. The varieties of readings in the New Testament, reckoned a hundred years ago at about thirty thousand, were now extended to five times that number; but the vast majority of those readings were of no practical importance. The passages in which there are divergencies affecting points of doctrine are very few in number. There is no reason to believe that the faith of Christendom would suffer materially were the labors of the revisers in the reign of James to be left intact. A distinguished member of the New Testament Company, of 1883, sums up the excellencies of the Authorized Version by saying, "It

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1 Dr. Alexander Geddes; quoted by Edgar, p. 313.

2.66 Companion to the Revised Version of the New Testament." Alex. Roberts, D. D., p. 7.