CHAPTER III.

THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES.

IT is objected, that the fallibility of the Translator renders illusory the infallibility of the original text:— it is objected, that the use made by the apostles of the entirely human version of the Septuagint renders their own Inspiration suspected:-objections are raised on account of the variations in manuscripts, imperfections in reasoning and doctrine, and inaccuracies in facts:it is objected, that the sacred writers contradict natural laws now well known:-and, finally, objections are raised on what have been termed the avowals of St. Paul. We will undertake to reply to each of these difficulties in succession; and may afterwards analyse some of those theories by which it is attempted to set aside the doctrine of a plenary inspiration.

The following is the first objection:-That if the inspiration of the Scriptures extends even to the words of the original text, of what avail is this verbal exactitude of the sacred Word, since, after all, the great majority of Christians can only use Versions more or less inaccurate?

The first remark we make upon this objection is, that it is not one. It does not contest the fact of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. To the majority of readers, we are told, the benefit of such an intervention of God would be lost, because instead of the infallible words of the original, they can never have other than the fallible words of a translation. But you are not justified in denying a fact because all its value is not at once appreciated, nor in rejecting a doctrine, for

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the sole reason that the utility of it has not been recognised. All the expressions, for instance, and all the letters of the Ten Commandments, were certainly written by the finger of God, from Aleph, which is the first, to the Caph, with which they close; but will any one venture to assert, that the credibility of this miraculous fact is weakened through the necessity under which the majority of unlearned persons find themselves, in the present day, of reading the Decalogue through the medium of a translation? No one would venture to assert this. It must therefore be remembered, that this objection does not attack the doctrine. we are defending, but only calls in question its advantages; these, it is argued, are lost to us in the work of translation-they vanish in this literary transformation. We shall proceed to show how entirely this assertion is without foundation.

The Divine Word, which the Bible reveals to us, passes through four successive forms ere it reaches us in any translation. In the first place, it was from all eternity in the mind of God; secondly, it was communicated by him to that of man; thirdly, under the operation of the Holy Ghost, and by a mysterious transference, it has passed from the mind of the prophet into the characters and symbols of an articulate language, and its words take form and meaning; then, finally, when it has undergone this first translation, as important as it is inexplicable, men have reproduced and recopied it in a new translation, from one human language into another. Of these four operations, the first three are Divine; the fourth alone is human and fallible. Are we to be told that, because this last is human, the Divinity of the other three ought to be matter of indifference to us? Let it be remarked, however, that between the third and fourth, that is, between the first transfer of the thought by the sensible signs of a human language, and the second translation of the words by other words, the difference is immense.

Between the doubts we may entertain with regard to the correctness of versions, and those by which we may be exercised as to the accuracy of the original text, (if it were not inspired even in its language,) the distance is infinite.

Such reasoning would amount to this:-What is it to me that the third operation is that of the Spirit of God, if the last is only accomplished by the mind of man? In other terms, What avails it that the primitive language is inspired, if the versions are not? But, in speaking thus, objectors forget that we are infinitely more assured of the accuracy of the translations than we could be of that of the original text, supposing all its expressions had not been given by God.

The following considerations will, however, meet this question:

The operation by which the sacred writers express in words the mind of the Holy Ghost, is itself, we have observed, a version, not of words by other words, but of Divine thoughts by sensible symbols. Now, this first translation is infinitely more undefined, more mysterious, and more exposed to error (if God's hand were not in it) than could be afterwards that by which we would render a Greek word of the original text by a vernacular equivalent. In order that a man may exactly express the mind of God, it is requisite, if his language be not dictated from on high, that he should entirely apprehend it in its full measure and in all the extent and depth of its meaning. But it is not thus with a simple version. The Divine mind being, as it were, already incarnate in the language of the sacred text, the question is no longer, when we would translate it, about giving it a form, but merely of changing its garb-to make it speak in French or English what it speaks in Greek, and modestly to replace each of its words by an equivalent term. This is an operation, comparatively far more simple in its nature, without mystery, and infinitely less subject to error than the

preceding. It even requires so little spirituality, that it might be perfectly done by an honest-minded heathen, provided he were perfectly acquainted with both languages. The version of an educated rationalist, who confined himself to the simple labour of translation, would afford us more security than that of an orthodox believer, who allowed himself to paraphrase, who attempted to complete the sense of the text, and who endeavoured to present truth more clearly in his own language than it was found in the Greek or Hebrew original. And let not this assertion excite surprise: it is justified by fact. At the present day, in Germany, is not the translation by De Wette esteemed above that of the great Luther? Is it not felt that there is more likelihood of possessing the thought of the Holy Spirit in the lines of the Professor of Basle than in those of the Reformer, because the former has adhered closely to the expressions of his text, as a scholar subject to the laws of philology, while the other has seemed to seek after something more, and has written rather as an interpreter than as a translator? The more, then, we reflect upon this first consideration, the greater must appear the difference between these two operations -I mean, the transference of the Divine thoughts into the words of human language, and the translation of these same words into the equivalent terms of another language. It need not then be said, What good can it do me that the one is Divine, if the other is human?

Translations can always be compared and confronted with the Divine text, to be corrected and recorrected by this eternal model, until they become its perfect counterpart. The inspired word never leaves us; we have not to ascend for it to the third heaven; it is still on the earth, pure as God himself originally vouchsafed it. We can, therefore, study it throughout time, for the purpose of subjecting the human work of our translations to its immutable truth. We can now, equally well, correct the versions of former days, by applying

to them more closely their infallible rule; after three hundred years we can test the work of Luther; and after fourteen hundred, that of St. Jerome. The phraseology of God continues ever the same as God himself dictated it, in Hebrew or in Greek, at the day of its revelation; and with our lexicons in hand, we can return to, and re-examine, from century to century, the infallible expression which he has deigned to give of his Divine mind, until we are assured that modern versions have received the impress of their original, and that we have obtained, for our use, the most faithful facsimile. Say no longer, then, What does it avail that one is Divine and the other human?

If some friend, returning from the East Indies, where your father, far from you, had breathed his last, were the bearer of a letter written with his own hand, or dictated by him, word after word, in the Bengalee dialect, would you feel indifferent whether this letter was entirely from him, because, being ignorant of the Bengal idiom, you could only read it through the medium of a translation? Do you not know that you might get translated versions of it multiplied, until you could have no more doubt as to the import of the original, than you would have if you were a Hindoo? Would you not admit that, after successively receiving these translations, your incertitude would go on diminishing, until it would no longer be appreciable? It is thus with regard to the Bible. If I believe that God has dictated the entire book, my incertitude as to its versions would be limited to a very narrow compass, the boundary of which would be in a continual course of restriction, in proportion as translations were multiplied.

Who does not therefore now feel to what an immeasurable distance all these considerations separate the Bible and its versions, with regard to the importance of verbal inspiration? Between the transference of the mind of God into human words, and the simple turning of these words into other words, there is a distance