available for such a service as these men, and others who might be named, could have rendered to the revisers. But the opportunity was lost, and because of its loss the whole English-speaking world is the poorer to-day. The years which have now passed since the Revised Version appeared have virtually settled its place in the history of the English Bible. Already there are indications that the revision may itself need to be revised, nor does there seem to be any good reason why, with our increasing knowledge of the lands and languages of the Bible, another new revision shall not come in due time. Meanwhile the lover of his Bible should be the first to acknowledge the great debt which he owes to the men who in England and America, working harmoniously together for nearly fifteen years, gave to us the most valuable commentary upon the Scriptures that has ever been published. The Revised Version may never supersede the Authorized, but it has already added immensely to our knowledge of the book to which alike the companies in the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries consecrated so much of their learning and of their lives. So much interest attaches to the Jerusalem Chamber, the room in which the work of the revisers was carried on, that the following information, for which I am indebted to H. Burke Down ing, Esq., F. R. I. B. A., will be welcome to the reader: "The Jerusalem Chamber is an apartment or council chamber adjoining the grand dining hall of the abbots' palace, now the deanery of Westminster, which after the fashion of the age in which it was built, is arranged around an irregular quadrangle that goes by the name of Cheyney Gate Manor. Stanley, in his 'Memorials of Westminster Abbey,' says of it that already 'even in the middle ages it had become historical.' In the time of Henry IV. it was still but a private apartment, the withdrawing room or guest chamber of the abbot-opening on one hand into the abbot's refectory, on the other into his yard or garden-just rebuilt by Nicholas Lillington, and deriving the name of 'Jerusalem,' probably from the tapestries or pictures of the history of Jerusalem, as the Antioch Chamber in the palace of Westminster was so called from pictures representing the siege of Antioch." |