the whole tenor of this exquisite poem made clear to the general reader. The margin will show the great care bestowed on the poem by the Revisers; and the fewness and trifling nature of the changes maintained by the American Company will also show, in a confessedly difficult Book, the somewhat remarkable amount of the agreement between the two Companies. On the Prophetical Books I do not feel qualified to speak except in very general terms; and for illustrations must refer the reader to the large list of the corrected renderings, especially of the prophecy of Isaiah, in the useful work of Dr. Chambers, who has devoted at least eleven pages to the details of the Revisers’ work on the Evangelist of the Old Covenant. The impression which the consideration of these details leaves on the mind of the reader will be, I am confident, the same as that which is I believe felt by all professed Hebrew scholars who have examined the version, viz. that it is not only faithful and thorough, but often rises to a very high level of poetic utterance. Let any one read aloud in the Revised Version the well-known passage, chap. xiv. 12-23, already nobly rendered in the Old Version, and ask himself if the seemingly slight and trivial
changes have not maintained this splendid utterance at a uniform height of sustained and eloquent vigour.
In the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel the changes are less striking and noticeable, not however from any diminished care in the work of revision, but from the tenor of the prophecies being less familiar to the general reader. Four pages of instructive illustrations are supplied by Dr. Chambers in the case of each of the two prophecies. The more noticeable changes in Daniel and Hosea are also specified by Dr. Chambers, but the remainder of the minor prophets, with perhaps the exception of Habakkuk, are passed over with but little illustrative notice. A very slight inspection however of these difficult prophecies will certainly show two things—first, that the Revisers of 1611 did their work in this portion of Holy Scripture less successfully than elsewhere; secondly, that the English and American Revisers—between whom the differences are here noticeably very few—laboured unitedly and successfully in keeping their revision of the preceding version of these prophecies fully up to the high level of the rest of their work.
II. I now pass onward to the consideration
of the renderings in the Revised Version of the New Testament.
The object and purpose of the consideration will be exactly the same, as in the foregoing pages, to show the faithful thoroughness of the Revision, but the manner of showing this will be somewhat different to the method I have adopted in the foregoing portion of this Address. I shall not now bring before you examples of the faithful and suggestive accuracy of the revision, for to do this adequately would far exceed the limits of these Addresses; and further, if done would far fall short of the instructive volume of varied and admirably arranged illustrations written only four years ago by a member of the Company [96], now, alas, no longer with us, of which I shall speak fully in my next Address.
What I shall now do will be to show that the principles on which the version of the New Testament was based have been in no degree affected by the copious literature connected with the language of the Greek Testament and its historical position which has appeared since the Revision was completed. It is only quite lately that the Revisers have been represented as being insufficiently acquainted,
in several particulars, with the Greek of the New Testament, and in a word, being twenty years behind what is now known on the subject [97]. Such charges are easily made, and may at first sight seem very plausible, as the last fifteen or twenty years have brought with them an amount of research in the language of the Greek Testament which might be thought to antiquate some results of the Revision, and to affect to some extent the long labours of those who took part in it. The whole subject then must be fairly considered, especially in such an Address as the present, in which the object is to set forth the desirableness and rightfulness of using the version in the public services of the Church.
But first a few preliminary comments must be made on the manner and principles in which the changes of rendering have been introduced into the venerable Version which was intrusted to us to be revised.
The foremost principle to be alluded to is the one to which we adhered steadily and persistently during the whole ten years of our labour—the principle of faithfulness to the original language in which it pleased