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Be not like swine to tread under foot so precious things, neither yet like dogs to tear and abuse holy things. Say not to our Saviour, with the Gergesenes: Depart out of our coasts; neither yet, with Esau, sell your birth-right for a mess of pottage. If light be come into the world, love not darkness more than light; if food, if clothing be offered, go not naked, starve not yourselves. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; but a blessed thing it is, and will bring us to everlasting blessedness in the end, when God speaketh unto us, to hearken; when He setteth His word before us, to read it; when He stretcheth out His hand and calleth, to answer: Here am I; Here are we to do Thy will, O God! The Lord work a care and conscience in us to know Him and serve Him, that we may be acknowledged of Him at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Holy Ghost, be all praise and thanksgiving! Amen."

King James' version gradually supplanted all others by its intrinsic superiority. It transferred the whole force of the original into our living tongue, and in a style which the uncultivated could comprehend, and the most cultivated admire. We may say that it has commanded the suffrages of those best. qualified to judge of its merits-omne tulit punctum.

Selden: "The English translation of the Bible is the best translation in the world, and renders the sense of the original best."

"Its style," says Bishop Lowth, " is not only excellent in itself, but has taken possession of our ear, and of our taste." Coleridge: "Our version of the Bible is to be loved and prized for this, that it has preserved a purity of meaning to many terms of natural objects, which, without it, would have. been refined away."

An unhappy apostate to Rome thus speaks of it:* "Who will not say that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the great strongholds of heresy in this country? It lives on the ear like a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words.

* Dublin Journal, 1858.

It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representation of his best moments, and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant, with one spark of religiousness about him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."

The English Bible has, during the two hundred and fifty years which have elapsed since its publication, become fastened by the strongest ties to the hearts of all who speak the English language. It has become hallowed by its having been the Bible of our ancestors for many generations, whose immortal hopes have been knit up in its words of eternal life, and who have bound up their own brief history of life and death in its very blank leaves. How many prayers have been offered over its pages! how many tears dropped upon them!

We will now give some account of the principal attempts that have been made towards a new version.

In Cromwell's time a committee was appointed to consider of some mistakes in the English translation, which yet they allowed was the best extant.

In 1759 Matthew Pilkington published a tract "On the benefit and expediency of a more correct and intelligible translation of the Bible." In 1758 Bishop Lowth, in a visitation sermon, recommended "an accurate revisal of our vulgar translation by public authority." In 1761 Archbishop Secker, in a Latin speech, advocated a new version as desired by many. In 1772 Dr. Durelle, in the preface to Critical Remarks on Job, etc., spoke of our version as mistaking the sense in an infinite number of instances, and brought many other formidable charges against it, which on examination proved to be unfounded or trivial. Bishop Lowth again, in 1778, spoke of a new translation as "a necessary work, or a revision of the present translation. The expediency of this grows every day

more and more evident. The improvements of which our version is capable in respect of the sense are great and numberless." Dr. White (1779) published a sermon under the title: "A revisal of the English translation of the Old Testament recommended." In 1784 Dr. Blayney, in his new version of Jeremiah, proposed "that a select assembly of the most learned and judicious divines, commissioned by public authority, should restore the Hebrew text as nearly as possible to its primitive purity, and prepare from it a new translation." Dr. Kennicot also pleaded the necessity of a new translation. Archbishop Newcome and Bishop Horsley may be added to the list of these writers, who argued the propriety of a new translation. About the year 1800 Mr. Bellamy, a Unitarian, undertook to give a new translation of the Old Testament, which only exposed his own utter ignorance. Not long after appeared the Unitarian "Improved version." This was designed to sustain Unitarianism by altering the text, where it was necessary. Dr. George Campbell made a new Translation of the Gospels. In the Preliminary Dissertations, which are of great value, there is one "On the regard due to the English version," in which he says: "It is, on the whole, one of the best of those composed after the Reformation. We are now in a condition to correct many of its mistakes. To effect this is the first, and ought doubtless to be the principal motive for attempting another version." Several words in the English version have altered their meaning; there has been a considerable change in our language since the time of the translators; among words which have thus changed their meaning, or are obsolete, he instances: conversation, thieves, lust, usury, worship, lewd and lewdness, pitiful, meat, cunning, honest, quick, faithless, to ensue, to entreat, to learn, instantly, hitherto, leasing, ravin, bruit, marvel, wot and wist, eschew, lack, folk, seethe, sod and sodden, score, twain, clean and sore, allto, albeit, howbeit, strait minish, an hungered, garner, trump, ensample, backslidings, shamefacedness, jeopardy, he repented himself, passion.

His own translation of the Gospels is too liberal. "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation," is translated "is ushered in with pomp."

Without speaking of other attempts, we will only mention

that of the Baptist denomination, who are now preparing a new version, to sustain their peculiar views. In order to justify themselves in this, they have represented the English version as full of faults, and made high-sounding claims to superior scholarship. One of the translators has been sent to Greece for six months to learn ancient Greek from modern. He should be sent for the same reason to the Jews to learn Hebrew from them. It is not a little singular that such an attempt should be made by a denomination not had in reputation for learning. They have rashly undertaken a task from which wiser and more learned men have shrunk. Some of the translations are not even good English. No doubt great harm has been done by their undermining the faith of the un. stable and ignorant, in our version already too little read and revered.

We freely admit that in the course of two hundred and fifty years some of the words and phrases of our version have become obsolete, and the meaning of many words has been changed. It is only surprising that there are not more cases of this kind. These could easily and gradually be changed. In addition to those remarked upon by Trench, we have observed that coasts is put for country; mischief for calamity; provoke is used in the sense of to excite to envy or emulation; offend is used in the sense of to tempt to sin, or apostatize; meat in the sense of food; by and by in the sense of immediately; prevent in the sense of anticipate; let in the sense of hinder; bewray in the sense of make known; riotous in the sense of dissolute, and riot in the sense of dissipation; ward in the sense of guard; trow in the sense of think; covenant-breakers in the sense of faithless; whisperers for slanderers, and backbiters for railers; beasts for animals; gainsaying for rebellion. There are also several old English phrases, not now used, as "Do you to wit, for inform; bid God speed for salute; set at naught for insult; cast the same in his teeth for revile.

The time has not yet come, we think, for a new translation into English. The jealousy of the different churches would effectually prevent their uniting upon a common version. Nothing is more to be deprecated than that each church should have its own Bible. It would widen the breach already too

great between them. The possession of a common version among all churches is a stronger bond of union, than any one can easily imagine. Never should we know the value of it till. it was rent asunder.

The ingenious author of the Eclipse of Faith has presented us in a dream, entitled the "Blank Bible," with some of the consequences which would result from an attempt to organize a committee from various churches to make a new version, or revision of our present translation. He dreams that in one night every Bible became a total blank, and that it was to be restored from memory after partial recoveries of the text from individuals; "a great public movement, amongst the divines of all denominations, was projected to collate the results. It was found that the several parties, who had furnished from memory the same portions of the text, had fallen into a great variety of various readings.

"Two reverend men of the Synod had a tough dispute as to whether it was twelve baskets full of the fragments of the five loaves, which the five thousand left, and seven baskets full of the seven loaves, which the four thousand had left, or vice versa; as also whether the words in John 6: 19 were about twenty or five and twenty,' or 'about thirty or five and thirty furlongs.'

"Their memory was seldom so clear as to texts, which told against them, as in relation to those which told for them. A certain Quaker had an impression that the words instituting the Eucharist, were, And Jesus said to the twelve, Do this in remembrance of me,' while he could not exactly recollect whether or not the formula of baptism was expressed in the general terms, some maintained it was. An Episcopalian thought there was a passage in which Timothy and Titus were expressly called Bishops. Several Unitarians recollected that the Greek text was against the common reading, while Trinitarians maintained the reverse was the case."

We would finally suggest that, in the mean time, the attention of those competent for the task might be directed not to a new version for common use, to supplant our present version, but to one like De Wette's German translation, for the use chiefly of the clergy, which should embody all the emendations agreed on by scholars. Such a version would be of great service to

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