Biblical Revision, its duties and conditions / A sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral at the special evening service, on Sunday, March 13, 1870

by Henry Alford

The Scribes were the guardians of the law, and its readers and expounders to the people. It is related of Ezra, that he was “a ready scribe in the law of Moses which the Lord God of Israel had given: he had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.” But in exercising this guardianship the Scribes were only representing the Church of which they were members. They were a class of persons told off for especial attention to this duty, which in fact belonged to the whole community. To the Jews as a people, the Apostle tells us, were committed the oracles of God: and the Church in all times is the witness and keeper of Holy Writ, as of a sacred deposit committed to her. The character assigned in the text to the Scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, belongs, in all its particulars, to her, who both is the sum, and constitutes the ideal, of all such guardians and expounders.

With these few preliminary remarks, we may apply our Lord’s words immediately to ourselves. The Christian Church throughout the world is now the guardian of the Holy Scriptures. All that the Jews had, we have, with the inestimably precious addition of the New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ. These Scriptures all Christians regard as the revelation of God to man. Other works rise and are built up from below: this alone we receive as let down upon us from above. All art, all science, all theology, which is but a system built up by inferences from Scripture, these are of man, and constructed on earth. They may rise higher, and become truer, as one race is advanced in skill or in knowledge; but they began below, and will ever carry with them the infirmity of all that is born on earth. Whereas the sayings and the lessons of this book are not of man, nor did they take their beginnings here. They have come to us indeed through human words, and by means of human action; but they did not arise originally in the breasts of men; they came from Him who is Himself the first spring of morals and the highest fountain of truth. Between philosophy reared up from below, and the facts, and rules, and motives, which they disclose, there is always a gap which our reason cannot bridge over. God’s sovereignty, man’s free will—God’s creative agency, man’s inductions of science—God’s interference with physical order, man’s establishment of physical law—one member of each of these pairs will ever remain discontinuous from, and in the estimate of human reason irreconcileable with, the other. And because this Book is unlike all other books, because its voice comes to us from another place, and is heard in deeper and more secret chambers of our being than all other voices, because its sayings have for our humanity a searching and conserving and healing power which none other possess, therefore it is that to keep these Holy Scriptures in all their integrity as delivered down to her is the solemn trust of the Church throughout the world: a trust simple, direct, indefeasible.

Now when I say the Church throughout the world, and in all I shall say in these or like terms to-night, I am using the words in their very widest sense. I mean by the Church no less than our Article defines it to be, “the great congregation of faithful men in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments are duly administered according to Christ’s ordinance.” I mean the whole body, wherever dwelling, however ordered and denominated, who take the Scriptures for their rule of life and for their ultimate appeal. On the whole of this body rests this trust, to preserve the purity and integrity of Holy Scripture.

Now of course this duty concerns primarily the Scripture in the form in which it was given to man: the one sacred text, existing for us at this day in the very language in which it was originally written. In plain words, by way of illustration: if the universal Church were at this day commanded to lay up a copy of this deposit, as the Law was laid up in the ark of the Covenant, that one copy would consist of the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek.

But now comes in a necessity for the exercise of judgment on the part of the scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven: in other words, on the part of the Church. When we speak of these two sacred texts, we speak in fact of a store of both. These texts have been transmitted by human means. They exist for us in many forms, coincident in the main, but varying more or less from one another, principally through infirmities incident to transcription in ancient times. The great mass of these variations concerns matters of relatively small importance. In primitive Christian times believers were too intensely employed about the great interests of the Redeemer’s kingdom, to be very careful about the mere letter of the Scripture narrative. Whether in one and the same phrase our Lord went, or came, or journeyed,—whether He said, or answered, or spoke, or answered and said, was to them small matter: and thus we have these and hundreds of such as these insignificant variations in the different ancient manuscript copies of our New Testament. But there are, and in no small number, other variations affecting the sense,—modifying the facts of the history, diverting the course of argument, changing the tendency of exhortation. And it is with regard to these that the Church, trusted as she is with the Scriptures, is bound to bring things old out of her treasures: to seek back for the most ancient and best attested of the variations, and to hold that fast as the text, rejecting the others: or, if none can be found whose evidence sufficiently preponderates, to publish to all the fact that it is so. Less than this will not be a faithful discharge of the trust: cannot satisfy her feeling of reverence for God’s word.

Now before we can proceed to any application of what has already been said, we must advance further in the duty of the Church as the Guardian of Scripture. The Word of God was not given to be laid up and hidden, but to go forth and to be understood. That faith which is to save the nations, cometh by hearing, and hearing cometh by the Word of God. But the nations are not able to understand the Scriptures as they were given. And therefore it was very early recognised as a duty of each Church to provide the Scriptures for her members in their own language: to bring out of her stores not only things old,—the genuine and venerable text of the word, but also things new,—the new garment or vehicle of that sacred text, its expression in her vernacular language. And here let it never be forgotten, that though we believe Scripture to be a thing divine, a version, every version, of Scripture must of necessity be a thing human; must be liable to imperfection and error, and capable of correction and improvement. It is in fact, after all, little more than a comment or speculation upon Scripture. A few of the simplest considerations serve to shew this. Take but these. In almost every sentence where there is fervour of feeling, or precision of argument, or graphic description, we are totally unable to give in the version the living force of the original. We are obliged to enquire what is the general sense of that which is vividly represented, and to devise some English words which will as nearly as possible convey it to the mind: and thus the power and charm are lost. Again, where an original word may have two or more meanings, giving to the sentence where it occurs a corresponding variety of applications to life or doctrine; in our rendering we are obliged, because there is no corresponding word of ours alike fertile in signification, to exclude all but one of these senses. On the other hand, where the original employed some word of but one perfectly plain sense, we are often constrained to use a term in our tongue which, bearing an ambiguous meaning, weakens that sense, or even obliterates it altogether. Any one may see, from even these scanty hints, how difficult, how unsatisfactory at the best, must be the discharge of this portion of the trust: how utterly impossible it is that there should ever be a perfect or final version of the Scriptures: how the Church, the Scribe entrusted with the custody and provision of God’s word for the souls of her members, is bound to bring out of her stores ever from age to age things new, fresh and more accurate renderings of such phrases of Scripture as time and use may prove to have been inaccurately represented.

And observe, before we pass on to the account of our own situation in these respects, that this duty incumbent on the Church is to be performed quite irrespectively of any beauty or aptness of outward form which such rendering may happen to possess. An erroneous rendering of a Scripture phrase may have been so well put into words, may carry a sound so terse and epigrammatic, as to have sunk deep into the mind of a nation and to have become one of its household sayings. But who would accept the excuse of beauty or aptness in the case of anything else wrongly come by? It is strange that in this case only has any such argument been used and allowed.

Now we in this land possess a version of the Holy Scriptures which may challenge comparison for faithfulness, for simplicity, and for majesty, with any that the world has ever seen. Perhaps its chief defect is that it admits of being too highly praised. Its pure use of our native tongue, the exquisite balance and music of its sentences, the stately march of its periods, the hold on the memory taken by the very alliterations and antitheses, which were the manner of writing when it was made,—these and a hundred other charms which invest almost every verse, make us love it even to excess.

And when we intensify all these claims to our affection by the fact that it has been for centuries, and is now, the vehicle to this great English race of all that is pure and holy and lovely and of good report, the first lesson of infancy, the guide of mature life, the comforter of sickness and death, we can hardly be surprised that many, and some of the best among us, refuse to see its faults, and are unable to contemplate with any content the prospect of their being corrected. It is a spirit for which we ought to be deeply thankful, this earnest and affectionate cleaving to the English version of the Scriptures.

But good as it is, there is one thing better. And that is, the humble reverence for God’s word, rendering a man willing to make any sacrifice for the sake, if it may be, of nearer approach to His truth. And as the public mind has lately been and now is stirred regarding this matter, I think it may not be a wrong use of our time to-night, if I venture to speak to you of that part of the subject which especially belongs to the pulpit: avoiding details, and trying to remind you in our own case of the need for thinking of the duty at this time, and of our own means of performing it; taking into account, by the way, the principal objections urged against our putting it in hand.