The one slip our eloquent friend made in his sermon was in saying that the A.D. 1611 edition of the Bible (the Authorised Version) was a better version of the Bible than the Great Bible of A.D. 1539, which according to the front page is stated to be as follows:—

“The byble in English that is to say the content of all the Holy Scripture both of the old and new testament truly translated after the verity of the Hebrew and Greek texts by the diligent study of diverse excellent learned men expert in the aforesaid tongues.

“Printed by Richard Grafton and Edward Whitchurch. Cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum.

1539.”

It is true, as the preacher said, that the 1611 edition, the Authorised Version, is more the literal translation of the two, but those “diverse excellent learned men” translated according to the spirit and not the letter of the original; and our dear brother (the preacher) this morning in his address had to acknowledge that in the text he had chosen from the 27th Psalm and the last verse thereof, the pith and marrow which he rightly seized on—being the words “Wait on the Lord”—were more beautifully rendered in the great Bible from which (the Lord be thanked!) the English Prayer Book takes its Psalms, and which renders the original Hebrew not in the literal words, “Wait on the Lord,” but “Tarry thou the Lord’s leisure,” and goes on also in far better words than the Authorised Version with the rest of the verse: “Be strong and He shall comfort thine heart.”

When we remonstrated with the Rev. Hugh Black after his sermon, he again gainsaid, and increased his heinousness by telling us that the word “Comfort,” which doesn’t appear in the 1611 version, was in its ancient signification a synonym for “Fortitude”; and the delightful outcome of it is that that is really the one and only proper prayer—to ask for Fortitude or Endurance. You have no right to pray for rain for your turnips, when it will ruin somebody else’s wheat. You have no right to ask the Almighty—in fact, He can’t do it—to make two and two into five. The only prayer to pray is for Endurance, or Fortitude. The most saintly man I know, daily ended his prayers with the words of that wonderful hymn:

“Renew my will from day to day,

Blend it with thine, and take away

All that now makes it hard to say,

Thy will be done.”