put on the other side what many feel to be their bounden duty, viz., to place before our people God's truth in as faithful a form as the nature of the work permits. If there are errors, they ought to be removed for the truth's sake. If there are inaccuracies which give false tinges to deduced doctrines, surely we seem called upon to revise them now, whatever may be done in the future, in accordance with the known and, for the most part, fixed principles of grammar and scholarship. Surely, whatever may be our anticipations of future proceedings, whatever our hopes of further discoveries, we do seem bound, for very thankfulness, to take the critical aid that has been so mysteriously extended to us, and with the Sinaitic Manuscript, and the vast accumulated knowledge of other Manuscripts that has of late been made. available, to prepare ourselves reverently to bring up our English Testament to that standard of correctness which is now clearly attainable. If this is the duty of the present, then we must be content to leave the morrow to be careful for the things of itself. We might justly have been anxious if the amount of change had seemed likely to have been greater than we have now found it likely to be. After the estimate we have formed, and the results arrived at, when taken in combination with the calls of duty to which we have just adverted, it does seem proper, whatever the future may be, cautiously and reverently to go forward, and if the third objection weighs with us, to set now an example to the future of our circumspectness, our sense of responsibility, and our guarded reverence for England's greatest treasure. The nature of our action now may exercise vast influence on the future; nay, it may not only give the tone to all changes in days yet to come, but may prevent rash and sweeping changes, which inaction, at the present time, may only too probably bring about. So let us reverently and cautiously go forward, and now, lastly, consider how and in what manner we may best pursue our onward way. The consideration of this question will form the subject of our concluding chapter. CHAPTER VII. BEST MANNER OF PROCEEDING WITH THE WORK. We may now suitably bring our considerations to a close by a few remarks on the authority under which it would seem best that a revision of the Holy Scriptures should be undertaken, and on the most hopeful mode of proceeding with the actual work. tion the In reference to the first question, the authority under Convocawhich the work should be undertaken,—we have now happily, proper authority for and we may also rightly say, providentially, no necessity for the work. any lengthened comments. The question has recently, and even subsequently to the printing of the early pages of this work, been answered for us. The Convocation of Canterbury has not only given its weighty approval to the undertaking, but has also appointed a Committee of sixteen men,' with power ! The names have been specified above: see the note on p. 197. In reference to this number of 16, it is right here to notice the wisdom and forbearance shown by the Lower House. Several of our readers may know that when a joint Commission of both Houses of Convocation is appointed, it is customary for the number appointed from the Lower House to be double that from the to add to their number, to make a beginning, and in due time to place some specimens of their work before Convocation and the Nation at large. That Committee will have met and decided on its future plan of operations before these lines will come before the eye of the reader. So the Convocation of Canterbury has taken up the great and national work. Yes, the work is marked out, and some of the future labourers are already called forth to commence it. At such a time and in such a cause, is it too much humbly to ask that the prayers of all those that love the word of God in sincerity may constantly be offered up for all those who, in these anxious times, either are now or hereafter shall be called to take part in the work, and who, in the prosecution of that work, will need all the support that such prayers are especially permitted to minister? Convocation has undertaken the work. And with this issue many at first will be, and will probably avow themselves to be, utterly dissatisfied. Such a work they will urge ought to have been committed to a Royal Commission; the highest earthly authority in this realm should have summoned together the Revisers of the future, and assigned to them their duties and their work. The National treasure should have been entrusted to men chosen out from the Nation at unwieldy), the Lower House, alike with good sense and good feeling, accepted the suggestion that the number from their body should be reduced to the same number as that from the Upper House. See the recent debates in Convocation, and the very sensible speech of Lord Alwyne Compton in The Guardian for May 18, p. 585. large, not to the members of an antiquated body, and to the precarious aid that might be extended to them by those who are without. Such thoughts are natural, and such thoughts will find public expression; but they will not be, after all, the thoughts of the sober observers of the days in which we now are living they will not be the expressions of those who best and most intelligently appreciate the mighty changes which each year that is passing is now silently bringing with it. Convocation is really the best authority under which such a work could be undertaken, and (not to mention others) for this one, simple, and homely reason—that what we want is a revised Version, and not an improved Version; and that the latter would almost certainly be the result of the labours of such a Royal Commission as would inevitably be called to the work in these present days. It would be constructed, almost certainly, on the principle of including all representative men who had any sufficient claim to scholarship,—and a very representative Version would such a body most assuredly produce. No, we may be certainly thankful that those who stand highest in the national councils have shown no disposition to encourage these ambitious and ultimately self-frustrating designs. We may almost trace the providential ordering of God in the turn that the Revision question has lately taken. We have now, at any rate, no fear of an over-corrected Version. The men now appointed, and those who will be invited to join them will all feel alike, that they are entering upon a work, in which that which will most commend them to public favour will be the least possible |