MEN, BRETHREN AND FATHERS:--

      This was the first speech ever made within our universe. It is, indeed, the most sublime and potent speech ever made. It is, however, but the expression of an intelligent omnipotent volition. It was pregnant with all the elements of a material creation. It was a beautiful portraiture of its author, prospective of all the developments of creation, providence and redemption. It was a Bible in miniature, and future glory in embryo. We, therefore, place it as the motto of an address upon the greatest question and work of our age--Shall we have the light of life as God created it?

      All was chaos before God uttered this oracle. All was order, beauty and life when he ended this discourse. Creation was but a sermon--a speech. Its exordium was light, and its peroration man. Redemption, too, was, in perspective, shown in the first utterance that broke the silence of eternity. Hence its author is called "THE WORD OF GOD"--"the light and the life of man." Hence, too, in its first enunciation we are carried back to this primordial oracle, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were created by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men." True, "this light" yet "shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." Under the same Divine imagery, at the end of the volume, he is called "The Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last." "All things were created by him, and for him; and he is before all things, [565] and by him all things subsist." The "Word became incarnate, and dwelt" amongst men, and men "beheld his glory"--the Divine image of the invisible Jehovah--"the glory as of an only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

      The volume emphatically called THE BIBLE spans the arch of time. In its commencement it rests upon an eternity to us past, and in its termination upon an eternity to us future. But God himself in Hebrew is called "The Eternities of Israel," and time is but a continued creation of the spiritual tenantry of the Eternities of Israel, commencing in the first and terminating in the last. This heaven-descended volume is, therefore, the chart of the interval that lies between the heaven that is past and the heaven that is to come. It delineates the path of life, and, in harmony with "the divinity that stirs within us," it points out an hereafter and intimates an eternity to man. How important, then, that we have it in our own language, as they had who first received it from the hand of God! As the golden cherubim that overshadowed the propitiatory, while guarding the written word of God with one eye directed to the throne of glory and with one immovably fixed on the printed tablets of the Divine constitution, so ought we to guard the sacred oracles committed to the church of Christ, and preserve them in their primeval purity and integrity.

      In full conviction and assurance of these preliminary statements, and of the eternal truth and value of the Divine oracles, and of the obligations therein contained and resting upon the church of Christ to translate them into all languages and to give them to the human race, I would very respectfully submit to your consideration and for your adoption the following resolution--

      Resolved, That it is a paramount duty of the Christian Church of the nineteenth century to give to the present age, in our own vernacular, a perspicuous, exact and faithful version of the living oracles of God, as we find them in the Hebrew and Greek originals of inspired prophets, apostles and evangelists.

      In submitting to your consideration and for your adoption this resolution, it is assumed that we have not now extant, in our own language, publicly accredited, such a version as that proposed in the resolution which I have at present the honor to submit to your most grave consideration. And is not this a generally, nay, a universally conceded fact, throughout the length and breadth of Protestant Christendom? Is there a single sect, party or denomination, known to history or to any one of us, which in its aggregate, or even in a respectable minority [566] of its most intelligent communion, is fully satisfied that it has in its possession such a translation of either the Jewish or Christian Scriptures? Nay, is there a learned rabbi, doctor or minister of any denomination that can or would, ex animo, affirm the conviction that we have such a version in public use? If any one doubt it, let him assume the task--the herculean task--of examining the popular commentaries and versions, from those of Luther, Beza, Erasmus, or that of Rheims, A. D. 1582, down to that of Dr. Boothroyd, of 1836, patronized, or occasionally used, by our religious denominations, Romanists and Protestants; and if he does not find objections to, and emendations of, each and every one of them, proposed by hundreds and by thousands, I will concede the position assumed.

      Dr. George Campbell suggests some four hundred and fifty emendations in the single testimony or gospel of the Apostle Matthew, and Dr. MacKnight nearly as many in his translation of two of Paul's Epistles--viz. that to the Romans and that to the Hebrews. And what shall we say of Drs. Whitby, Benson, Doddridge, D'Oyly and Mant, Gill, Pierce, Thomas Scott, Taylor of Norwich, Philosopher Locke, Dr. Boothroyd, Professor M. Stuart and Secretary Thompson? From all these, and others besides, we have imported from Paternoster Row, London, the Holy Bible with its twenty thousand emendations! In the United States, these, and many others not named, are found, not only in our public libraries, but in many of our private libraries. Indeed, these all stand on my own shelves, with several others not named, of equal value and importance.

      In this country we are happy to find no by-law-established version of Old Testament or New. We voluntarily use that which was introduced by King James, merely because it is in fashion, and by law of Protestant Britain appointed to be read in all the churches of its establishment. We have, indeed, been favored with one volume from the British press, called the English Hexapla, exhibiting six important versions of the New Testament Scriptures--viz. that of Wickliffe, of A. D. 1380; Tindal's of 1534; Cranmer's, (falsely so called,) of 1539; the Geneva, of 1557; the Rheims, or the English College of Rheims, 1582; and that of James, of 1611. These, with one exception, were made within seventy-seven years--the lifetime of one man.

      We have also the Polyglot Biblia Sacra, containing the Greek and Hebrew originals, with the Latin Vulgate, German, English, French, Spanish and Italian versions, under the supervision of Dr. Samuel Lee, Professor of the Hebrew Language at Cambridge, England, Doctor of Divinity, and honorary member of all the great literary societies in [567] Britain and on the Continent of Europe. This is the greatest and best offering of the press of the nineteenth century--indeed, of any century since the first of the Christian age. We are, therefore, better furnished with the aids and materials for an improved and correct version than at any former period in the history of Christianity.

      If, in the judgment of Paul, the greatest honor and advantage bestowed upon the Jews was that "to them were committed the oracles of God" is it not our greatest privilege and honor to have the oracles of God, just as he spoke them, committed to us, not only for ourselves, but for our children and our contemporaries in all the earth?

      The Jews' religion possessed no proselyting spirit or precept. "He showed his statutes unto Jacob, and his testimonies to Israel: he has not dealt so with any other nation; and as for his judgments, they have not known them."

      The Jews sent no missionaries abroad. There was no missionary spirit infused into their religion. There was no commission given to the patriarchs or the Jews, none to Judah or to Levi, "to go into all the world" and preach and teach to other nations the statutes and the judgments, the precepts and the promises, that God gave to them.

      They needed no translators, no verbal expositors, for themselves. Their dispensation was circumscribed by the flesh, and the language of Abraham had no spirit of extension in it; and therefore Levi was commissioned "to teach Jacob God's judgments; to make Israel know his laws; to place incense before God, and holocausts, or whole burnt-offerings, upon his altar." Beyond this they had no obligation or mission.

      But God has been to us much more gracious than to Israel, according to the flesh. He has given to us a better constitution of grace--a better covenant, established upon better promises. He has called us to a noble work, and given to us a large mission. He has committed to us the Christian oracles, with authority to announce them to the whole human race.

      But they have come to us in a translation, and in an imperfect translation, by no means equal, in clearness and force, to the original. He has, however, also given to us the originals; but only a few can read them, and of that few all read them after having been taught the vernacular Scriptures. They read the originals through the spectacles of their vernacular versions, and, superadded to this, through a ready-made theology, imparted to them by early education and high authority--parental or ministerial, or both. It has become part and parcel of their individuality. Few can ever divest themselves of it. It is harder, [568] far, to unlearn than to learn--to divest ourselves of old errors than to acquire new truths. Still, it is our duty, as it is our safety and our honor, to take the living oracles, and, with an unveiled face, an unblenching eye and an honest heart, to learn and study what God has spoken to us.

      To the Christian church are committed the oracles of Christ, as to the Jewish church were formerly committed the oracles of God. The original Scriptures were given in solemn charge to the Jewish people, that nothing was to be added to them or subtracted from them. They were to preserve and teach them to their children through all generations.

      A similar ordinance in the New Testament, with the most solemn sanctions, gives to the Christian church the keeping of the Christian Scriptures. If any one add to them, God will inflict upon him all the maledictions found in the holy volume. If any one subtract from them, God will take away from him all the Christian birthrights promised in them, and consign him to perdition.

      But they were committed to both people in their own native language, directly from those persons to whom God had given them in charge. Were they, then, to translate them into other languages? This question, though not propounded in the very words of the book, and, consequently, not formally answered, is, nevertheless, clearly intimated, and most satisfactorily disposed of, in the Christian Scriptures. To its consideration and disposal we are now, in the providence of God, especially called; and it is our special duty on the present occasion to investigate the subject and ascertain our duties and privileges on all the premises exhibited in the Christian records.

      On such questions and occasions as the present, it is essential to success that we entertain and cherish clear, enlarged and lofty conceptions of the whole subject and object of Divine revelation, and that we duly appreciate the-times and circumstances in the midst of which our lot has been cast.

      The Bible, in its vast and glorious amplitude and object, is the book of life--the charter of immortality to man. It is, in its manifold developments and details, most worthy of God to be both the author and the subject of it, and of man to be both its theme and its object, in the awful grandeur of his origin, relations and destiny. Every thing superlatively interesting to man, with respect to the past, the present and the future of his being and of his well-being, constitutes the all-engrossing theme and intention of the volume. It follows, therefore, that its faithful preservation and transmission from age to [569] age, and from nation to nation, is, and ought to be, the paramount duty and concern of every one who believes its Divine authenticity and realizes its transcendent value. We shall, therefore, endeavor to ascertain our immediate duty with regard to an improved translation of it in our own language and country at the present time.

      To this end, it is also essential that we appreciate and comprehend the character and the spirit of our own age, and the actual condition of the Christian profession in our own country, and, indeed, in our own language, wherever spoken, at home or abroad. It is almost as difficult to appreciate our own times--the spirit and the progress of our own age--as it is to see ourselves, either as others see us, or as we really are.

      And what is the actual condition of the present church militant? I mean of the whole Christian profession--not within the Popedom nor in the Patriarchdom, but in the European and American Protestantdom. Is it not emphatically in a politico-heretico belligerent state? There is, indeed, much said in praise of a catholic spirit, and much said against a narrow, contracted, sectarian, bigoted spirit. But, alas! how many praise the life which they never dare to lead! If all who praise truth, virtue, temperance, charity, practised those virtues, what a happy world--what a triumphant church--we should have! Too much credit, as well as too much credulity, has ruined many a man. It has, alas! too often bankrupted and ruined church and state.

      There cannot be an honest league between truth and error. A smiling face over a frowning heart is an abomination to earth and heaven. True charity "rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth." There can be no compromise between God's truth and man's error. "Let God be true," as Paul said, "though it should make every man a liar"--no matter on whom the falsehood lies. We never can heal the wounds of sectarianism but by the healing unction of heaven-descended truth. But the truth must ever be spoken in its own spirit, which is the spirit of love and of a sound mind.

      But what are the bearings of these aphorisms upon the subject of a faithful translation of the Christian Scriptures? Much, very much; as we hope the sequel may show. We desire--I mean the true church of Christ desires--to know the whole truth--the mind and will of God.

      An apostate church never did, never can, never will, desire such a version. The most apostate church on earth often prays in Latin, and glories in a Roman service. I would to God that she sinned only in Latin! But she glories in the Roman tongue, and in the Roman city, because of her Roman spirit, her Roman head and her Roman [570] hierarchy. Like the Roman Cæsar, she has her pontifex maximus, her imperator universus, and her Jupiter tonans.

      That all men who love truth, and especially Bible truth, desire to come to the light, or to have the light brought to them, is as clearly an historical as it is a philosophical fact. It is well established in the history of translations. Were I to assert dogmatically that truth and light are cognate, I would stake my reputation on the fact that every lover of truth loves light. The Saviour himself suggests to us this idea, in saying, "He that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God." Error or falsehood, and darkness, are also akin. They are of cognate pedigree. Hence said the Great Teacher, "He that does evil hates the light;" and men whose deeds are evil "come not to the light, lest their deeds should be reproved," or made manifest.

      But I have said that this is an historical fact, and amply demonstrated and sustained by a reference to the history of Bible-translations. From the era of Protestantism till now, Protestants, in the ratio of their Protestant sincerity, or true Protestantism, have been active, zealous and forward in the great work of translating the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures into the vulgar tongues.

      The Roman church has been equally distinguished for her opposition to popular versions, or to translations made in the language of the common people. So have those Protestants that have borrowed freely from Papal Rome. If Protestant Reformers have been well sustained in alleging that there is but a paper wall between certain Protestant denominations and the Papal institutions, then are we sustained in affirming that those most opposed to popular versions are more akin to the Popedom than those who advocate them. In proof of these views and facts I appeal to the history of all the versions into the English language from the Reformation down to the present time.

      I will not limit my proofs to the English language. I will challenge an investigation of the facts of history from the dark ages of Papal absolutism down to the present day. Of course, we begin with Luther and the era of Protestantism, A. D. 1534. His version, printed A. D. 1530, made directly from the Hebrew and Greek, gave rise to ten other Protestant versions--viz. the Lower Saxon, in 1533; the Pomeranian, in 1588; the Danish, in 1550; the Icelandic, in 1584; the Swedish, in 1541; the Dutch, in 1560; the Finnish, in 1644; the Livonian, in 1689, (sometimes called the Lettish version;) the Sorabic or Wendish, in 1728; and the Lithuanian, in 1735. During the period in which these eleven Protestant versions appeared, the Romanists, to quiet their [571] population, were obliged to issue three versions, not one of which was made from the original tongues. They were rather translations of the Vulgate than of the Hebrew or Greek originals. The German laity of the Roman community read them with considerable avidity, "notwithstanding the fulminations of the Papal See against them."

      From Germany and the Continent we pass over the Channel into the British Isles. A few partial versions into the Saxon language were made before the first English version, which appeared in 1290. Of course, none of these were printed.

      Wickliffe's, from the Vulgate, appeared in 1380. But in 1408 the Archbishop Arundel, in a convocation held at Oxford, decreed "that no one thereafter should translate any text of Holy Scripture into English by way of a book or tract; and that no book of this kind should be read that was composed in the time of Wickliffe or since his death." Some, however, read, and were put to death.

      The immortal Tindal about this time fled to Antwerp, in Flanders, and in 1526 printed his English version of the New Testament, from the Greek original. Sundry editions of it were, in a few years, printed and scattered over the Continent, and not a few of them found their way even into England.

      But, strange to tell, an edition of Tindal's version, under the direction and supervision of his convert, John Rogers, printed abroad, was introduced into England in 1537, and that, too, with the consent of King Henry VIII., and that of his vicegerent Cromwell, and that, too, of his archbishop Thomas Cranmer--all of whom had a short time before most violently opposed it. The history of this change is too long to tell; but it has never ceased to be a wonder to all who know it, and to be regarded as a very singular and special providence.

      Banished from his native land fourteen years before, and finally murdered, too, for his translation, yet, by royal authority, that same version is introduced into England under the auspices of the crown and the mitre of the realm!

      Next year, Grafton, who had published the first edition of Tindal's Bible imported into England, sets about another edition in Paris, and, to correct the press, takes with him Coverdale--under the protection, too, of Henry VIII. But an order from the Inquisition, dated December 17, 1538, under the auspices of the Pope and the French King Francis, seizes a portion of the edition, almost out of the press, which compelled the publisher to flee to England, where, under the protection of Henry VIII., it was completed, and issued in April, 1539. Next year (1540) another edition, under the auspices of Cranmer, was issued [572] from the English press. Thus the first English version of Tindal's Bible was wholly imported into England in 1537. A second, redeemed from the Inquisition, mostly printed in Paris and finished in London, in 1539, succeeded it. The third edition was wholly printed in England; and after this the editions of 1540 and 1541 were issued under the auspices of Cranmer himself. From that time England became the land of Bibles.

      History is philosophy teaching by example. And here we must date the true commencement of England's glory amongst the nations of the earth. She, of all the nations of Europe, thus becomes emphatically the land of Bibles and of freedom. So true it is that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, and where the Bible, in the vernacular of any people, is much read and much pondered upon, there the Spirit of the Lord exerts a, mighty influence. "Where no vision is, the people perish," and are the easy prey of aspiring demagogues and haughty pontiffs.

      From a careful review of the history of new versions, in all past time, we are compelled to the conclusion that their authors, friends and advocates have generally been the lovers of truth and of the God of truth; whereas their opponents have as uniformly been more temporizers, carnal and secular, lovers of place, of person and office more than lovers of God. I have said "generally," but was about to say "universally." In this view I am sustained by the judgment and the practice of those we now call orthodox. What are generally now called orthodox versions were, without an exception known to me, got up in despite of more popular, more worldly and more secular establishments. This is a very instructive fact. We may, indeed, concede that some vain, secular errorist or demagogue may have, from sinister motives, attempted to carry some favorite dogma by an effort at a new version of some passage or book, or even of the whole volume; but how soon have these fallen still-born from the pen or the press and vanished from the world! This, or some such concession, is essential to a general law: otherwise we might be in danger of affirming it universal, and thereby endanger the cause of truth.

      I am glad, however, to assert, with a strong emphasis, that I have the concessions of all our would-be recognized orthodox partisan contemporaries in favor of my position. They have recently become unusually eloquent in their laudations of the present approved version of King James. I wonder if they have read the whole history of that version. Some seem to think that King James himself, or his Government, or his bishops, have made it, out and out. So far from this, it [573] fought, its way, every inch, from the head and heart and conscience of Wickliffe, Tindal, Luther, Beza, Frythe, Barnes, Poyntz, and even Erasmus, &c., and scores of co-operants in contributions of learning, books, money, protection and prayer, before it attracted the smiles and approval of bishops, courtiers and princes. Printers, paper-manufacturers and bookbinders are as much entitled to our thanks for King James's version as many of those worshipful persons who are said and believed, "by the grace of God," to have given to us our English Bible. Instruments they were, willing or unwilling, meritorious or unmeritorious, in this great work. But it originated not with, and proceeded not from, them. It was individual piety, learning, zeal, enterprise, that gave to us our present English Bible. There is scarcely amongst us a living man who can tell how this sacred volume, the King James's Bible, revised and re-revised, has come down to us. The best-read living man on this subject, Christopher Anderson, of Edinburgh, in his two octavos on the English Bible, has not told, because he could not tell, the whole story. And yet his history of it is by far the best ever printed. He was conscientiously constrained to affirm the melancholy fact, "That a mighty phalanx of talent, policy and power has been firmly arrayed against the introduction of Divine truth in our native tongue." (Vol. i. p. 7.) There are now one hundred and fifty versions of the Bible extant in the living tongues of earth; and yet, strange and wonderful to relate, more copies in the English language are called for than in the languages of all other nations put together! This is the glory, the chief glory, of England. She has colonized America, Africa, Asia, New Holland, New Zealand, and the bosom of the Pacific. While I speak these words, the English Bible is being read from the rising to the setting sun. "Not one hour of the twenty-four, not one round of the minute-hand of the dial, is allowed to pass, in which, on some portion of the surface of the globe, the air is not filled with accents that are ours. Every English Christian, in this one grand fact, may rejoice that his Bible, at this moment, is the only version in existence on which the sun never sets."

      This caps the climax of English glory. Her English version is every moment being read, from the banks of the Thames to the banks of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence, and thence to the banks of the Ganges, to Sidney, Port Philip and Hobarttown. It girdles the whole earth, and is destined to be the enduring bond of its nations. How important, then, that the English Bible should be a pure, perspicuous, precise and faithful expression of every idea, of every precept, of every promise, of every institution, of the inspired originals! It is inevitable, [574] from the signs of the times, from the openings of Divine Providence--to say nothing of the prophecies fulfilled, fulfilling, and yet to be fulfilled--that the English Protestant Bible is to mould, form, and, more or less, to characterize all the new versions in all the missionary-fields on the already-tenanted earth. This is far more probable than some of the events that have actually occurred in the present, day--incomparably more probable than that an improved version of the New Testament, got up and published by your humble speaker, should in the short period of twenty-five years have passed through six editions, and be now read by even a few individuals residing in Asia, Africa, Europe and America. This is the Lord's doing, and wondrous in our eyes!

      The language of a people is not only an index of their intellectual calibre, but also an exponent of their moral and political power amongst their contemporaries. It is, indeed, the vehicle of all their attainments in those arts and sciences which have given them a standing and an influence amongst their contemporaries at home and abroad, and an elevation in the scale of civilization. Judging from this acknowledged fact, it must be admitted that, as the English people stand at the top of the ladder of modern civilization, their mind, their language and their religion must have a paramount influence upon all the nations and people of the globe. Need I ask, then, at this stand-point in the centre of this immense horizon, who can compute the influence of our best efforts to exhibit the true sense and meaning of the Hebrew and Greek oracles of God, in that pervading and continually extending language to which God, in his providence and moral government, has already vouchsafed such a preponderating influence in the world?

      But it may be asked, What can the "Bible Union" accomplish in this work? So ask our contemporary Baptist and Pedobaptist brethren. However uncongenial to their taste or to our own, I cannot but associate their attitude and port and bearing with those of the too orthodox Jews in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, which, together, give us the history of one century of their nation. In those days they had no priest, with "Urim and Thummim." We have one who has passed into the heavens, and who has the "Urim and the Thummim" in all their Divine potency. They had also with them only Zerubbabel and Joshua, as commanders-in-chief. But we have the Lord of hosts. The adversaries of Judah and Benjamin proposed to co-operate with them in rebuilding the Temple and in restoring the ancient order of things. But the paternal chiefs, along with Joshua and Zerubbabel, refused their proffered aid. The consequence was, they became the [575] enemies of Israel and their cause. So the work was abandoned for some sixteen years, till the second year of Darius, King of Persia.

      The prophets Haggai and Zachariah were then sent to encourage and aid this remnant of Israel. Darius, on searching the records of the government, gave a decree in their favor, and they went to work. Every thing then went on prosperously, and the house of the Lord was finished. But the walls and palaces of Jerusalem were still in ruins. Nehemiah obtains a commission from Artaxerxes, and, with zeal and courage, commences their erection and repair.

      But he is opposed and resisted by Sanballat, and Tobiah the Ammonite, who, in mockery, said, "How feeble this band, and how weak their efforts! Were a jackal to run against their stone walls, he would break them down." Thus were the rebuilders of Jerusalem insulted and hindered in their work.

      Nehemiah, however, and his party, went on with the work of the Lord. Their enemies, becoming still more chagrined at their success, formed new alliances, and brought to their aid Arabians and Ashdodites, and "conspired to fight against Jerusalem, and to hinder the work." But Nehemiah exhorted them "to fight for their brethren, their sons, their daughters, their wives and their homes." Thus they prayed, and wrought, and fought, and conquered.

      Ezra, meantime, got a copy of the Jewish oracles. He opened the book in the sight of all the people, and the priests and the Levites caused the people to understand the law. " So they continued to read in the book of the law distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading." Thus the Divine law and institutions were restored to Israel, and thus were their Temple and city rebuilt.

      "Now, the things," says Paul, "that happened to them, occurred to them as types, or examples, and are written for our admonition, upon whom the end of the world, or the consummation of the Jewish age, has come." Let us, then, profit from their example and success, and we will achieve all that we desire. We will cause the people to understand the law of our God, by the reading of his oracles.

      But we have more than the encouragement of example to inspire us with zeal and energy in this great work. Other men have labored in this fruitful field, to our unspeakable interest and honor. We have the Christian oracles committed to us, with an injunction to interpret, that is, to translate, them, with fidelity and perspicuity. The apostles possessed not only a commission to convert the nations, but to teach the converts to observe and practise whatsoever the Lord had commanded. To qualify them for this work, the Lord gave them a splendid [576] education. They had wisdom, knowledge and eloquence bestowed upon them. They had the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to give them a perfect revelation. They had the gift of foreign tongues, and the gift of interpreting them. The power of translating their own conceptions into the languages of their auditors was gratuitously vouchsafed, not only to the apostles, but to other members and teachers in the churches which they planted and which they nourished with the pure milk of the word. It was, on two accounts, necessary for the apostles to receive this power of knowledge and of utterance by immediate inspiration. The mission was extraordinary, and needed a seal to authenticate it. The gift of tongues itself was one of the most useful seals of apostleship.

      Time, also, was to them most precious. Their work was great. Their lives were short, and the hand of the Lord was necessarily the pledge of their mission to the nations of the world, and his inspiration of ideas, and of words to express them, was essential to their success.

      A necessity of the same kind, but not of the same degree, still exists. The revelations of the Spirit are complete, but the languages in which they were originally given have become obsolete.

      The Hebrew of Moses and of the prophets, and the Greek of the apostles, after the consummation of the revelations of God committed to them, soon began to change, and virtually died. Still, their bodies were embalmed, and the means of recognizing them were preserved and transmitted to us, by their immediate legal representatives. Indeed, the living tongues of earth, like living men, are continually changing. Dictionaries, like histories, transmit the past to the future. Hence both the necessity and the means of substituting correct words and phrases for those that have, from the attrition and waste of time, lost their original value, become uncurrent, and passed out of use. Even Shakspeare and his contemporary poets, orators and authors now require glossaries, or the substitution of modern terms for those which they have used that are now become obsolete and unintelligible. The common version of the Scriptures was made and completed six years before the death of the great English poet. It, therefore, has also acquired the rust of the Elizabethan age, although occasionally since polished by hands we know not of.

      The great science of interpretation, strange to tell, like good wine, improves from age to age. Not, indeed, the scriptural gift of interpretation; but the literary and acquired gift of exposition and elucidation is matured and perfected from the better means and better [577] learning now possessed--the product and growth of a revived and reviving literature.

      A remarkable revival of literature preceded the Protestant Reformation. That revival is now regarded by every philosophic historian and student--indeed, by every reader who thinks profoundly upon principles and their tendencies, who weighs the remote and proximate causes of things, or who fathoms their legitimate and immediate tendencies--I say the revival of literature in Italy and in Western Europe, which occurred in the fourteenth century, is now regarded by every informed mind as the harbinger, or cause, of the Protestant Reformation; and that reformation may be regarded as the pioneer and patron of Bible-translation.

      No living man can realize the midnight darkness with which the Papal See, in its appalling triumph over the Bible, human reason and conscience, had paralyzed and enfeebled the human understanding.

      In the thirteenth century, as soon as the English barons had wrested from the feeble-minded King John the Magna Charta, the Pope, who regarded England as "his garden of delight," or John's appeal annulled that charter, boasting that he received three times as much per annum, from England alone, for his throne of St. Peter, as King John received for his political throne. But, be it noted, there was not then a Bible, in any vernacular tongue within the Popedom. In the fourteenth century it was not much better. But in that century the revival of literature began. The Italians discovered, as it were, anew the ancient world. "They discovered and felt an affinity of thought, of hopes and of taste with the best of the old Latin writers, which inspired them with the highest admiration."

      "Petrarch and Boccaccio passed from this study to that of Grecian antiquity, and, at the solicitation of the latter, the Republic of Florence, in 1360, founded a chair of Grecian literature--the first in the Western Roman Empire. The highest glory was attached to Grecian literature and learning, and these two mighty pioneers attained a degree of celebrity, credit and power unequalled by any other men in the Middle Ages. They became the pontiffs and interpreters of antiquity. Italy, in the fifteenth century, became the garden of literature and the arts--the wonder and the delightful resort of the learned throughout Europe. Indeed, it became the well-spring of all the less civilized nations of the West. Dante and Petrarch, Boccaccio and Poggio Bracciolini, led the way."

      Meanwhile, the revival of literature in England was, even from this period, associated with a special leaning to the oracles of God. Upon [578] the arena now appear Aungerville, Fitzralph and Wickliffe. Grossteste was not unacquainted with Hebrew and Greek literature, and, at this early day, affirmed that "It is the will of God that the Holy Scriptures should be translated by many translators, and that there should be different translations in the church; so that what is obscurely translated by one may be more perspicuously translated by another." I concur with Anderson, from whom I have quoted these rare facts, that this was the first voice in Western Europe for a vernacular translation of the Holy Scriptures.

      The condition of the Papal dominions at this period may be fairly inferred from an address delivered by the Irish Fitzralph, the great pioneer in the advocacy of new and popular versions. When at Lyons, as Primate of Armagh, in the presence of Pope Innocent IV., he arraigned the Popish clergy, in the boldest terms, "for their ignorance, arrogance and flagitious conduct." In the course of his speech he affirmed that the Italian scholars did not so much as know the Greek alphabet!

      He also complained to the Pope that "no book, whether of divinity, law or physic, could stir, but the friars were able to buy it up; and that his secular chaplains, whom he sent to Oxford for education, wrote to him that they could not find a Bible in Oxford, nor any good and profitable book on divinity for a man to study, and that they were therefore minded to return to Ireland." This conveys us down to the times of Wickliffe.

      To illustrate the value and importance of Bible-translation, I will draw yet further upon my old and recent readings. Wickliffe died A. D. 1384, four years after he had finished his translation of the Roman Vulgate. Both the Greek and Roman Catholics had interdicted any translation into the living tongues of Europe and Asia. Indeed, the Council of Toulouse, one hundred and fifty years before Wickliffe's version appeared, had passed forty-five canons against heresy. One of these involved the first court of inquisition, and another forbade the Scriptures to the laity. The canon reads in the following words:--"We forbid the laity to possess any of the books of the Old or New Testament. We strictly forbid the having of any of these books translated." A Latin service in the church, and a Latin Bible in the hands of the priesthood, and none at all in the hands of the people, was the triumph of the prince of darkness in Roman Christendom, and the midnight of the so-called Christian world. The first star of hope was Wickliffe's version, though itself but the version of a version, and [579] not of the original. Still, its appearance inflicted an incurable wound on the Man of sin and Son of perdition.

      On the occasion of its first appearance commenced the era of discussion. Henry de Knyghton, a Leicester canon, affirmed that "a man could not find two people on the road but one of them was a disciple of Wickliffe;" and again, "The soldiers, with the dukes and earls, ware the chief adherents of this sect. They were their most strenuous promoters and the boldest combatants; their most powerful defenders and their invincible protectors."

      On another occasion he said, "This Master John Wickliffe hath translated the gospel out of Latin into English, which Christ has entrusted with the clergy and the doctors of the church, that they might minister it to the weaker sort, according to the state of the times and the wants of men. So that by this means the gospel is made vulgar, and laid more open to the laity, and even to women who can read, than it used to be to the most learned of the clergy and those of the best understanding. And what was before the chief gift of the clergy and the gift of the church is made forever common to the laity." What a comment on the value of a translation! What a portraiture of Popery!

      To this adds another contemporary prelate, "The prelates ought not to suffer that every one, at his pleasure, should read the Scriptures, translated even into Latin, because, as is plain from experience, this has always been the occasion of falling into errors and heresies. It is not, therefore, politic that any one, wheresoever and whensoever he will, should give himself to the frequent study of the Scriptures."

      During the controversy of two rival Popes, from A. D. 1380 to A. D. 1400, the controversy for and against translations in the vulgar tongues was very rife. A bill for suppressing Wickliffe's Bible was proposed to be brought into the House of Lords. On that occasion the Duke of Lancaster said that "he would maintain the having of this law--the Holy Scriptures in our own tongue--whoever they would be that should bring in the bill."

      Still, there was no persecution instituted against the friends of a popular version, or to check the Wickliffites, already spreading all over England, until the reign of the Fourth Henry, when some members of Parliament became infected with the heresy of Bible-reading in an English version, and when the Papal clergy became alarmed lest they should introduce a public reformation.

      The invention of paper, at the close of the thirteenth century or early in the fourteenth, and the invention of printing soon following the revival [580] of learning, and the increasing taste for reading an English version, gave to the subject of translation a rapidly growing importance, which never could be annihilated--indeed, scarcely suppressed--until the seeds of a broader and deeper reformation were widely scattered and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. This secretly working spirit prepared the way of Luther, who, with a lion-hearted courage and a herculean vigor, attacked the basis of the Papal institution. Since which time I need not tell the story of new versions or of Protestant triumphs. Bible-translations soon became the standing order of the day. Luther, Erasmus, Beza, Castalio, Junius and Tremellius, Schmidt, Dathe, &c. engaged in it with great spirit. From Luther's version soon sprang up ten others, in other states and languages on the Continent.

      In the British Isles we find, in a few years, Wickliffe, Tindal, Miles Coverdale, Grafton, alias Thomas Matthew, Cranmer and the Bishops at work. The spirit spread through Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and they must severally have God speak to them in their respective tongues.

      Finally, King James, borne on by the spirit of the age, is engaged in making one more acceptable to his people, and to issue it under all authority, political and ecclesiastical.

      The version was soon hailed by all the enlightened men in his dominions, and appointed to be read in churches. It was in advance of all others at that day, yet wanting in some respects. Hence the number of private versions of a part, or parts, of the volume, and some of the whole New Testament, which have since that time appeared. From the days of King James down to the demise of Professor Stuart, of Andover, in Britain and America the work of translation has ever since been going on. Even Romanists themselves have been compelled, by the spirit of Protestantdom and of the age, to give sundry versions in different tongues. In the Latin tongue we have four Romanist versions of the whole Bible--that of Paginus, that of Montanus, that of Malvenda and Cardinal Cajetan, and that of Houbigant. The Scriptures, in Europe alone, are now read in some fifty languages.

      Thomas Hartwell Horne has borne testimony, ample and striking, in favor of our common version, both from the orthodox and heterodox Protestants in Britain. Still, he has the candor to admit its defects and imperfections. After summoning his cloud of witnesses to attest its superior claims, he candidly adds these words:--"Notwithstanding these decisive testimonies to the superior excellence of our authorized version, it is readily admitted that it is not immaculate, and that a [581] complete correction of it is an object of desire to the friends of religion, were it only to silence the perpetually repeated cavils of the opposers of Divine revelation, who, studiously disregarding the various satisfactory answers which have been given to their unfounded objections, persevere in repeating them, so long as they find a few mistranslated passages in the authorized version." But he did not think, some quarter of a century ago, "that sacred criticism" (I presume he meant literary criticism) " was yet so far advanced as to furnish all the means that may be expected." If we wait till "all the means," real or imaginary, that may hereafter be expected, be actually possessed by any individual or assembly of individuals, the work will not be commenced till about the end of the millennium!

      Since Mr. Horne wrote these words, there have been issued in Europe and in America at least a hundred volumes, containing alleged errors, with their corrections. Some of these are, indeed, very minute; and, while they occasionally render the obscure more perspicuous, the defective more complete, the indefinite more precise, the ambiguous more certain, and the complicated more simple, we cannot say that any one of them is absolutely faultless in every particular. We are truly thankful that there is no version so wholly defective that an honest reader, learned or unlearned, may not understand the great scheme of salvation, and believe and obey it to the salvation of his soul.

      I have never seen any English version, Romanist or Protestant, orthodox or heterodox, however imperfect, from which a man of sense and industry might not learn the way to heaven. Nor have I ever seen a country, however bleak or sterile, in which an industrious, laborious and persevering husbandman might not dig out of it the means of living. But what does this prove? That there is little or no difference between countries--between temperate or intemperate zones?

      Who, having seen the fertile hills and valleys of the fairest portions of our much favored and beloved land, would think of locating himself in the barren heaths of Siberia, or in the sandy or slimy deserts of Libya? As little he who has a taste for the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, who desires the bread and the water of life that came down from heaven, who thirsts after the knowledge of God and of Christ, who prays for the full assurance of understanding the whole counsel of God, revealed in God's own book--I say, as little can he be satisfied with a mere glimpse of light--with a dim, imperfect or ambiguous version of God's own book of life, health and salvation to man. [582] Still, they are severally and collectively useful, and some of them contain many valuable emendations; but not any one of them meets the wants of this age, or would, in the aggregate, be a proper or satisfactory substitute for the common version, notwithstanding all its obscurities and errors.

      The labors bestowed upon the original text, in ascertaining the genuine readings of passages of doubtful interpretation, and the great advances made in the whole science of hermeneutics--the established laws of translation--since the commencement of the present century, fully justify the conclusion that we are, or may be, much better furnished for the work of interpretation than any one, however gifted by nature and by education, could have been, not merely fifty, but almost two hundred and fifty, years ago. The living critics and translators of the present day, in Europe and America, are like Saul amongst the people--head and shoulders above those of the early part of the seventeenth century.

      As for honesty, we ought not, perhaps, to say any thing. But we may presume to say, without the charge of arrogance or invidious comparison, that we are not greatly inferior to them. And if in talent and education, compared with the moderns, they were giants still, as pigmies standing upon the shoulders of giants, we ought to see farther than those upon whose shoulders we place ourselves. Biblical criticism is now much more a science than it was in A. D. 1600, so soon after the revival of literature. A far greater number of Biblical critics has succeeded than preceded the Protestant Reformation, and of a much higher order. Before that era there was not one good Greek or Hebrew critic for one hundred at the present day. The Papal Romans were merely Roman scholars, and yet inferior to the Pagan Romans. These are facts so generally known and conceded that it is not necessary to dwell upon them. The art of printing, with the increased number of theological seminaries, and the competition between Romanists and Protestants, and between the leading Protestant parties themselves, with the facilities of a more enlarged intercourse amongst learned men, could not otherwise than elevate the standard of Biblical scholarship and afford greater facilities for acquiring Biblical learning.

      Corresponding with this, the vigorous impulse given to the human mind by the rapid progress in the sciences and in the arts merely physical and intellectual, the great increase of new discoveries and general improvement in the social system, sustained by the facilities of the press, have all contributed to a higher intellectual development [583] and a more thorough scholarship than were ever attained by the Greek or Roman schisms, or by any Protestant denomination anterior to the era of the common version. Indeed, one may affirm, without the fear of successful contradiction, that during the last hundred years, on the Continent of Europe, in Great Britain, and in the United States of America, Biblical criticism, Biblical learning and Biblical translation have advanced, in every essential characteristic and accompaniment, much more, in what is usually called Christendom, than was practicable or possible anterior to that date.

      A more suitable time, therefore, has never been, since the era of the Anglo-Saxon language, since the rise of the Papal defection, than the present, for a corrected and improved version of the Jewish and Christian oracles, in the living Anglo-Saxon language of the present day.

      A concerted movement of all or any of the Protestant parties in such an undertaking we cannot expect. It is not in living experience; nor is it anywhere inscribed on the pages of ecclesiastical history, that a plurality of denominations have ever agreed to make a common version, for common use. Romanists and Protestants, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Methodists, Baptists and Pedobaptists, never have agreed, and, I presume, never will agree, to make in common a new version.

      Indeed, the first version in our language, as also the second--which is virtually the present commonly-used version--in the main, were made by individual enterprise and on individual responsibility. Their merit, and the course of events, providentially gave them whatever popularity and influence they have possessed.

      King James's version is, at most, but a correction, not, indeed, always an amended correction, of the version of Wm. Tindal. No assembly ever made a new version of the New Testament. Conventions have met and read, have approved or condemned, have amended or altered, as the case may have been, versions made by individual men. But no convention has yet made a new or original translation.

      We have already shown that those in power uniformly opposed new versions until they had already, by alleged intrinsic merit, gained an authority with the people. Those in power have always opposed innovation, for the most obvious reasons in the world. They could gain nothing earthly, in public favor, by any improvement, and might lose much by the innovations of a new version, if a correct one. And this is the reason why both Romanists and Protestants have uniformly opposed new versions.

      None but pure, enlightened, conscientious, spiritually-minded men [584] could attempt, advocate or execute an exact, faithful, perspicuous and intelligible version of God's oracles. These seldom--more probably never--have constituted a majority in any nominally Christian communion.

      Majorities, in the affairs of mammon, are worthy of all respect and confidence, because in such matters they have a single eye, a clear head and a sincere heart. But in Christ's kingdom minorities are much more likely to be, and most generally have been, most worthy of public confidence, ever since the almost unanimous spiritual court of Israel delivered up the Lord Jesus Christ to be crucified. The history of mankind is full of admonition and warning on this subject. Ever since the days of Noah, Lot and Abraham, majorities are not famous--rather they are infamous--in sacred story. Still, we flatter ourselves, and will present the flattering unction to the souls of our contemporaries, that we all are exceptions to a universal rule. But I confess, I am not without fear in this matter, when I look narrowly into the volumes of church history. One thing is certain: we have as yet no version of the Christian Scriptures made by a convention.

      "History." I repeat, "is but philosophy speaking by example." If history exemplifies any principle, it is that good men love light, and wicked men hate light, in all matters spiritual and eternal. Hence, as already shown, every valuable effort to give, in the vernacular of any people, an exact, faithful and perspicuous version of God's own book, has been confined to individual enterprise, or that which most nearly approaches it. "In the multitude of counsellors," Solomon says, "there is safety." But he did not say in the multitude of translators there is safety. In what regards meum and tuum, "mine and thine," there is much more facility, and much more safety, in counsel, than in making faithful versions of the doctrine of self-denial and of taking up the cross. Still, a company of select men--not selected by a king, a court, a metropolitan or an archbishop, but by spiritual and heavenly minded men selected out of a Christian community--may be found, capable and honest, single-minded and single-eyed, enough, to guarantee a version true to the original as they are competent to understand and express it. Learned in their own language they must be, as well as in the original tongues.

      But it has been often asked, What may be the destiny of such a version? In other words, Who will receive it, and what will be its influence? This is a question which, however dogmatically propounded, cannot be dogmatically answered. We are neither apostles nor prophets; but we can freely express our opinion, and give some reasons for it. [585] In the first place, then, much will depend upon the reputed orthodoxy and piety of those who execute the version. The Society under whose patronage and by whose instrumentality it is proposed is properly called the "Bible Union"--not the Baptist Union.

      Already it has been opposed and misrepresented as a Baptist Union for Baptist principles--a measure to carry out immersionist views of the action of baptism, by translating baptism immersion, and all its family, root and branches, by immerse, immersing, immersed, immersion! This is about all the logic and all the rhetoric that has appeared in one hundred and forty-four paragraphs written, printed and circulated against it, from "Dan even unto Beersheba," from Boston to San Francisco, from Mulberry Street, New York, to Old Jewry, London!

      Truly, immersionists have been hard pressed, although now the largest community in the Union, and annually gaining more than any other denomination in the number of its membership, fully equalling in population, wealth and resources one-fifth of the political and moral force of this great nation!

      But why have recourse to a new version for the sake of translating this family of baptizo? Have not all, or nearly all, the learned rabbis and doctors of the Pedobaptist communities affirmed not only that baptism means immersion, but also that it was so administered in the apostles' days? Ask Brenner, of the Church of Rome, what was the ancient apostolic baptism. He responds that "immersion was practised for thirteen centuries almost universally, and from the beginning till now" in the Greek Church. Ask the English Episcopal Church how long the church practised immersion as the representative of baptism; and Dr. Wall responds, For sixteen hundred years. Ask Luther what is his judgment on the premises: he answers, "I could wish that such as are to be baptized should be carefully immersed into water, according to the meaning of the word and the signification of the ordinance; as also without doubt it was instituted by Christ." Ask the great American critic, the late Professor Stuart, what is the English of "baptize;" and he affirms "that it means to dip, plunge or immerse in water, and that all lexicographers and critics of any note are agreed in this." And does not ancient history aver that both Wickliffe and Tindal were in their views immersionists? With all these venerated names--a mere cluster culled from the orthodox Pedobaptist vine--what need have Baptists themselves to form a Baptist Bible Union to inculcate their views of immersion?

      But it will be whispered that other views than these--heretical and [586] false--are cherished by the Bible Union, and that the version will be colored by these. This has been insinuated, nay, printed and published, by Baptists themselves opposed to it. And what is the proof, or the basis, of such suspicion? Have not the leading movers of this Bible-translation as now digested and exhibited by the Bible Union been always regarded as sound and orthodox on every vital doctrine of Christianity? Do not they believe in the fall of man, in the contamination and guilt of sin, which, as a leprosy, has infected every child 'horn into the world? Do not they believe and teach the equal Divine nature and glory of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, as developed in the great work of redemption in and through the death, the sacrifice, or vicarious sufferings, of the Lord Jesus Christ? Do not they believe and teach that the Father works, the Son works, and the Holy Spirit works, in the redemption, illumination, regeneration, sanctification, resurrection and glorification of man, through the grace of the Father, the sacrifice of the Son, and the recreative, renovating, regenerating influence of the Holy Guest of the Christian temple--the mystic house of God, erected for a habitation of God through the Spirit?

      Can, therefore, our heterodoxy be alleged as an objection to any version that we may make? Then there is no vital orthodoxy, no real orthodoxy, in Protestant Christendom. My own individual orthodoxy is too orthodox for the orthodox prelates of a sectarian world. I thank God, as Paul once said of himself, in his own way of boasting, I am more orthodox than any of them. I have all their orthodoxy, and a little more besides. And I know that the next generation--or, at farthest, the one after that--will acknowledge it. But, if I know what orthodoxy means, (and I presume to think and to say that I do,) there is nothing either catholic or scriptural in the Greek, Roman or Protestant church that I do not believe and teach. There is more than a sprinkling of heterodoxy in every sect in Christendom. But that heterodoxy consists not in what are called the essential doctrines of the evangelical remedial system. It consists much more in not keeping, the commandments of the Divine Redeemer, and in not scripturally observing his ordinances of worship, than in any theory of the fall of man or the necessity of sovereign and free grace or of a divinely ordained remedial system. A correct translation of the Christian Scriptures will do more to unite, harmonize and purify the Baptists, and to make them one great evangelical co-operation for God's glory and man's salvation, than any event since the Protestant Reformation. It will cause them to arise and shine in the light of God and in the beauty of [587] holiness, fair as the moon, bright as the sun and terrible as an army with triumphant banners.

      We conclude then, from all our premises--and they are both large and liberal--that any version consummated by the Bible Union can never be objected to by even the most orthodox party in Protestant Christendom because of any theoretic or practical error held or propagated by any of those who participate in its consummation. I am fully aware that the wiles of the devil will all be in requisition, ready to strangle it as soon as born. But the Lord has always taken and subdued the devil's wise men in their own craftiness, and shown that the weakness of God is stronger than man or the devil; and therefore the preaching of old, stale, quaint, spectacle-bestridden orthodoxy will be as impotent now as was Herod's decree to kill the new-born king of the Jews by the slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem.

      But, seeing that the Bible Union is not a Baptist Union, nor a heterodox Union, but a Union for a pure, chaste, exact, faithful and perspicuous version of the Christian oracles, and ultimately of the whole volume of divinely inspired truth, what is likely to be its future history, or its destiny?

      An answer to this question, though somewhat in the spirit of prophecy, is not so very difficult as at first presentation might be assumed of imagined. If the version be faithful and true to the original, (and we assume that such it will be, in the judgment of all truly enlightened men,) it must, in harmony with the history of man and the progress of the age, gain a glorious triumph over its opponents. Their batteries will be silent, because they will have been silenced by the work itself. It may be condemned and reprobated--indeed, it will be--by mere sectaries, who have taken the oath of allegiance to their present prejudices, for better or for worse, and who, in advance of its appearance, have not only thought, but said, "No good thing can come out of Nazareth," and, therefore, never will. Such was the fate and the fortune of Tindal's version. He was persecuted and driven from England. He was persecuted in Flanders. He was put to death by the orthodox of that day. His translation was inhibited in England; and yet in a few years after it was virtually the English Bible, so enacted and ordained by the ecclesiastic and political potentates of England.

      The present version was not, on its first appearance, a universal favorite. Some preferred the Bishop's Bible; others disliked both. One age burns heretics; the next makes them saints and martyrs, and erects monuments to their memory. No wise man, well read in civil or ecclesiastical history, can expect a different state of things. The [588] censure of one age, is all praise in the judgment of the next; as the praise of one generation is often the shame and the reproach of the following. Christians live for immortality, for eternity, and, therefore, to them it is a matter of little or no account how their contemporaries may think or speak of them. The only happy man is he whom the Lord approveth.

      But what will be the fortunes of such a version as we contemplate may be rationally anticipated. It will, ultimately, be received by all the immersionists. Some of the elders, some of the scribes, some of the popular doctors, some of the man-worshippers, will, no doubt, say of it, when issued, what they said of it before it appeared. This they will do to justify the false position which, in a fitful mood, they unfortunately took on the whole premises. This we expect, and we will not be disappointed. Human nature, in the absence of Divine grace, runs in these channels. Yet we say it will be ultimately received by all the immersionists, and by a portion of the non-immersionists. But, in some instances, it will be read with more interest to find out its faults than to perceive its fidelity or its general excellency. All who plead for perspicuous and faithful versions, into foreign tongues abroad, will be compelled to receive a perspicuous and faithful version in their own Anglo-Saxon at home. We who are now actors in the drama will soon die, and the prominent opponents of the work will soon die. Our prepossessions and antipathies will die with us, and our labors will fall into more impartial hands. In one lifetime, despite all opposition, it will be generally read by enlightened Christians of our language, probably in some points improved, but, in those points to which special reference is had, just as we give it. Many may denounce it whose children will only wish, "as duteous sons, their fathers had been more wise."

      But in saying so much of a new version to be made in the present day, we are likely to be misunderstood. We do not really intend or wish for a literally new version. We much prefer, in all cases, the common Anglo-Saxon style and idiom, and never will capriciously change the wording, unless when defective or unfaithful to the original, or otherwise in bad taste. I am one, and have long been one, of the admirers of the Anglo-Saxon of the common version. And although often corrected and improved in its defects by such men as Campbell, MacKnight, Doddridge, &c., neither the more sonorous and elegant Latinities of the former, nor the pure, and sometimes too complaisant, Grecisms of the latter, nor the combination of them both, with less taste and vigor, by Doddridge and other modern revisionists, win my admiration, nor command my respect and affection, so much as the pure [589] Anglo-Saxon of the fourteenth century, as it mainly appears in the revision of King James and his forty-seven translators or revisers. With Macaulay and other distinguished writers of the present day, I believe that much of the power and effect of the common Bible, and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, is owing to the fact that they are the only two good specimens of that style extant amongst us, and have, thereby, an easier, and more direct passport to the understanding, the conscience and the heart of English, Scotch, Irish and Americans than any other books in our language.

      Change, for the sake of change, in the oracles of God, in any language, is, in my judgment, bad taste and worse philosophy, and ought to be eschewed, rather than cultivated or adopted, by every one who desires the word of God to run and be glorified in our day and generation. Change without improvement is, in most cases, and most of all in Bible-translation, mere pedantry--more worthy of reprobation than of commendation, on the part of every lover of the Bible and of mankind. I love the phrases and forms of speech in which our venerable and venerated forefathers were accustomed to clothe their conceptions of God, of Christ and of the great salvation, when they turned their hearts to the praises of God, or prostrated themselves before his mercy-seat. I love, too, the forms of speech in which they expressed their conceptions of his grace and of his great salvation, when, in their ecstasies, they celebrated the wonders of his grace, and extolled his condescension to our lost and ruined world. Magniloquence is the index of a weak and visionary mind; and a too precise and formal style, in complaisance to the verbal livery of the times, savors more of pedantry than of piety, more of the flesh than of the spirit, more of the wisdom of men than of the power of God. Much learning, real substantial learning, good common sense, much piety and spirituality of mind, and a profound humility and reverence, are essential qualifications of a good translator of the oracles of God. We are, therefore, more disposed to ask, who is fit for such a work, than to hasten rashly or presumptuously upon it, as a matter of common concern or of ephemeral duration. It is a good work, a great work, a solemn work, and must be approached with great solemnity and self-examination. It is not a task to be hastily assumed and despatched with expedition. It is as solemn as death, and as awful as eternity. If God commanded his servant Moses, when he presented himself to him at Horeb, saying, "Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground;" and if the captain of the Lord's host said to Joshua, when [590] standing in his presence, "Loose thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place on which thou standest is holy," with what solemnity and reverence should we presume to touch "the ark of the covenant" of mercy, and to open its contents to our contemporaries and to posterity! Should not, then, such a work as is proposed be undertaken, prosecuted and consummated in the spirit of a piety the most sincere, and of a reverence the most profound?

      There yet remains, my Christian brethren, another consideration, to which I would specially solicit your concentrated attention. We live in a sectarian, and, consequently, in a controversial, age. Christianity, as it is called, has degenerated into a speculative science, and, therefore, into innumerable forms of opinionism. Theories instead of facts, speculations instead of faith, forms and ceremonies instead of a new life, and a profession of godliness without its vitality and power, are now and long have been the characteristics of the Christian profession. As a necessary consequence, we have been, as Paul predicted, "turned away from the truth of Christ unto fables."

      When we survey the motley theatre of Christendom, it resembles a badly-colored map of the Eastern or Western Continent. Shade mingles into shade, and color into color, until all the primary colors are lost, and one immense variegated field of vision spreads before us, full of mystery and of wonder. The natural and the artificial lines, rectilinear and curvilinear, which bound them and separate them, are the shades of each of the primary colors, so numerous and so faint that no mortal eye can separate them, or mark where one commences and another ends. And as upon these maps--

so these shades of opinion, formalities of worship and forms of organization, alienate these sects and parties from each other, as though one were Jews and the other Samaritans.

      The metaphysics of the new birth, or the speculative difference between kneeling and standing in prayer, down to the ribbons on a bonnet, or the corners of a collar, are sometimes made the badges of a holy brotherhood, more important than faith, hope or charity. A good sectary may violate, with more impunity, five of the ten commandments, than any one of the idol peculiarities of his denomination. This, too, unfortunately, has occasioned a characteristic difference in [591] the pulpit exhibitions of the age, and has given a factitious importance to theories and customs which otherwise would have occupied little or no part in public teaching or in public edification.

      In our country and in our generation, there are delivered, in the course of the year, ten sermons on the new birth for one upon the new life; as if ten times more important to be born right than to live right; and yet in the former the subject is entirely passive, and in the latter wholly active.

      In the whole New Testament we have but one paragraph on the new birth for a hundred on the new life. We have had, too, a thousand sermons in behalf of sprinkling a babe, and a thousand on immersing a believer, which all depended upon the non-translation or the mere transference of a word, with the difference between blood and faith, or flesh and spirit.

      For all these and many other such aberrations there is but one sovereign and grand specific--a pure, exact, definite and perspicuous translation of the Christian Scriptures. This is, in my humble conception, the great want of Christendom, the great want of the age, and the unanswerable argument in favor of the Bible Union.

      The very name Bible Union has a charm in the ear of every friend of truth, of every friend of God and of man. The Bible is God's own foundation for the greatest empire in creation. It is the constitution of the empire of redeemed humanity! We have had every sort of union but a union for a perfect English Bible. The Christian world, so called, may co-operate in the great work which it proposes. And that a perfect English Bible, for an English people, is needed for three great purposes, will, I presume, on a proper exposition of the premises, be very generally conceded. The first, for the union of true Christians; the second, for the conversion of the world; the third, for the perfection of the church. To illustrate what we mean in such a broad affirmation, take an example or two. 1. Let all Englishmen read immerse for baptize, and then would not the baptismal controversy cease upon the action of baptism? 2. Let them read congregation for church, and where the basis for the patriarchy, for the papacy, or for the prelacy? 3. Let them read love for charity, and where that spurious tolerance of error, as a substitute for brotherly kindness and love?

      First, we say, for the union of true Christians. The most insuperable barriers to this are the three prevailing baptisms--baptism in water, with faith; baptism with water, without faith; and baptism with the Spirit, without either faith or water. There are, therefore, three [592] meanings attached to Christian baptism. The first is, the immersion of a professed believer in water. The second is, the aspersion of water upon a person, with or without faith. The third is, the affusion or effusion of the Spirit of God upon a spirit, antecedent to, and independent of, either knowledge or faith. Thus the word baptize becomes a perfect enigma.

      Baptize is neither Hebrew nor Greek, neither Latin nor English. It is a modification of the Greek baptizo, the Roman form of which is identical with the Greek. Hence the Greek and Roman Churches practised immersion down to A. D. 1311; and the Greek Church--older than the Roman, and vast in its territory--still practises it.

      The English Church, too, practised immersion down to the reign of Henry VIII., and it was so ordained by statute of said Henry, in his Holy Manual or Guide of A. D. 1530. The statute of Henry VIII., 21st, thus speaks:--"Let the priest take the child, and, having asked the name, baptize him, by dipping him in water thrice."

      Indulgences were given, in after-reigns, to pour water upon weak babies; and very soon after all the babies became weak, and could not even stand the shock of pouring. Then John Calvin mercifully interposed, and commuted pouring for sprinkling. The priests, English and Scotch, immediately commenced a new kind of oratory, under the shield and the star of the rhetorical figures of a synecdoche, which puts a part for a whole, and of a metalepsis, which authorizes old names to be applied to new things. And so Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians and Methodists, liberal spirits all, in general have availed themselves of the tolerant indulgence of the falsely-styled "intolerant Calvin."

      The "Edinburgh Encyclopædia" is high authority in this case. Hear the article on baptism, in the words following, to wit:--

      "In this country, [Scotland,] however, sprinkling was never practised, in ordinary cases, till after the Reformation; and in England, even in the reign of Edward VI., trine immersion--dipping first the right side, secondly the left side, and lastly the face of the infant--was commonly observed. But during the persecution of Mary, many persons, most of whom were Scotchmen, fled from England to Geneva, and there greedily imbibed the opinions of that church. In 1556, a book was published at that place containing 'the form of prayers and ministration of the sacraments approved by the famous and godly learned man, John Calvin,' in which the administrator is enjoined to take water in his hand and lay it upon the child's forehead. These Scottish exiles, who had renounced the authority of the Pope, implicitly acknowledged the authority of Calvin; and, returning to their own country, with Knox at their head, in 1559, established sprinkling in Scotland. From Scotland this practice made its way into England, in the reign of Elizabeth."

      Baptism and baptize were, by the order of King James, under the [593] caption of "ecclesiastical words," enjoined upon the translators, and were transferred into his version as representing the ideas then current. Thus the action first indicated by the adopted word baptize was immerse, but now it is made to mean no specific action; and therefore it must be translated by one specific word, to represent, in our ears, the precept of Christ.

      I say, then, that, in order to the union of Christians, we must have a definite and unmistakable term, indicating one and the same conception to every mind. If, then, the Christian church ever become really and visibly one, she must have one immersion, or one baptism; and, if she become not one, where is the hope of a millennium? It is a dream!

      Now, on observing the tendency of the two great bodies of Christian professors--immersionists and non-immersionists--let me emphatically ask, What does it show? What does it teach? Is not the manifest tendency of the past and present century towards immersion? For every one that has renounced immersion and been sprinkled, are there not ten thousand that have renounced sprinkling and been immersed? I speak in bonds--probably far within the limits of truth. The immersionists in America vary not much from one million. I mean not in theory, for the theorists and the realists are more than a mere plurality to one; but I mean those actually immersed.

      Of this million of immersed persons, how many had been sprinkled in infancy! From having been a feeble, despised and persecuted band, in less than a century, in these United States, how stand they now? Has any one in this assembly ever seen one immersed professor renounce it, and receive sprinkling at the hand of a Protestant minister? I have never, to my knowledge, seen such a case. Has any one present ever seen such a case? If he have, we wish to know it.

      Now, then, is it not contrary to theory, to faith, to experience, to history, to think of a millennium--of a union of all Christians--on Pedobaptist principles? In order, then, to pray, or to preach, or to labor, for a millennium, we must have a Bible that is most explicit on this great subject. There cannot be a millennium--a united church--without acknowledging one Lord, one faith and one baptism. Hence my zeal is not for water--much or little water--for dipping, pouring or sprinkling--but for one immersion, for the sake of one Lord, one faith and one church. I wish I could, by any form of utterance, so repeat these words that I might insure them a safe and a sure passport into every good heart.

      The baptismal question, with me, is as much for the union of [594] Christians as it is for the union of our hearts to the Lord, in order to the peace that passes understanding and the joy unspeakable and full of glory. Pardon the emphasis I place on this topic. If it be not the main topic of this age, it certainly will be of the next. The Bible Union, for a new and true and faithful version of the Christian Scriptures, is, therefore, the greatest ecclesiastic event of this our day, because the most pregnant of union, peace, prosperity and triumph to the church of Christ.

      But it may be asked, Why should an English version do more to effect these, great objects than a version into any other living tongue? Because, we answer, of the people that speak this language. If not more in number, they are more powerful, than any other people. Their science and arts, their religion and their general civilization, their Protestant energy of character, their great and all-pervading commercial enterprise, and especially their missionary spirit and their missionary success, give them the vantage-ground amidst all the languages and people of earth. But, better still, the Almighty Ruler of the destinies of nations has hitherto countenanced and blessed England and America more than any other people in the world, and their English Bible is more generally read all over the earth than that of any other people or language in the world.

      Regarding the past as the best omen for the future--viewing what God has accomplished by English men, by English enterprise, by English Protestantism, by English Bibles--have we not in these premises enough to inspire us with a vigorous hope and with bright anticipations that the Bible Union, organized for giving free course to the Divine oracles faithfully and perspicuously translated into our vernacular, is, in its grand object and aim, co-operating with God, and, consequently, under his guidance and blessing, in the great work of redeeming man from ignorance, guilt and bondage?

      The second great object of a new version is the conversion of the world. Our Redeemer, in his intercessory prayer, as reported by John, the beloved apostle, has declared that the union of his friends and followers is essential to the conversion of the world. "I pray, holy Father," says he, not for the apostles only, nor for those only that now believe on me, that they may be one, as we are; but "I pray for those also who shall believe on me through their word, [or teaching,] that they all may be one that as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me, and that I have given them the glory which thou gavest me, that they may be one, even as we are one, I in thee, and thou [595] in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me." Though we had a thousand arguments to offer in the advocacy of the necessity of the union of Christians in order to the conversion of the world of unbelieving Jews and Gentiles, we would not, on such an occasion, adduce one of them in corroboration of this one. They are all as the twinklings of innumerable stars in a cloudless heaven, compared with the splendors of a meridian sun blazing in all his noonday majesty and effulgence on our world. The simple declaration of the fact that the union of Christians is necessary to the conversion of the world, by such a person, on such an occasion, is as strong as the strongest mathematical demonstration of a physical truth, subjected alike to the senses and the understanding of men.

      So long as the Lord Jesus Christ--the Founder of the Christian church or kingdom--has made its union, and spiritual communion in one God, through one Redeemer, and by one Holy Spirit, a means of the conversion of the world, it could not be made more essential to that end by any enactment, ordinance or oracle in earth or heaven. It is, therefore, now, and for forty years past has been, with me, a fixed principle, that if a hundred sects or schisms in Christ's kingdom were to send out their respective myriads of missionaries into all the nations of earth, the world, in our Saviour's sense, could not be converted, or made to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the true Messiah, the only Saviour of the world. I might show, in volumes, the evils of schisms, and so might another, and another, as conversant with these themes as any of us; but the simple utterance of this prayer, for the union of all the believers in the Divine person and mission and work of Jesus, in order to the conversion of the world, eclipses, and will eternally eclipse, them all. It is an end, a consummation, most devoutly to be wished, but which never can be gained while the Christian profession is severed and divided into innumerable parties in perpetual conflict with one another. The sword of ecclesiastic strife must be sheathed, and the halcyon flag of Zion must wave its peaceful folds on every Christian altar, from one extremity of Christendom to the other.

      Whatever, then, tends to the true interpretation or translation of the living oracles into the languages of our Christendom is an object of transcendent, nay, of paramount, importance to the answer and accomplishment of our Redeemer's prayer--to the health, peace, prosperity and ultimate triumph of our most holy faith over all the superstitions and idolatries of earth. How much, then, need I ask, depends upon such a version of the holy oracles as will give an exact and [596] perspicuous interpretation of every passage connected with each and every one of those unhappy sources of error that have occasioned, or given any countenance to, those paralyzing schisms, which have, more or less, frustrated our missionary enterprises since the establishment of the first domestic or foreign mission in Christendom?

      The third great object to be gained is the perfection of the church. "That they may be made perfect in one," is a portion of the burden of our Lord's intercessory prayer. Perfection is, therefore, the glory and felicity of man.

      The perfectibility of human nature, by human instrumentality, has long been the fascinating dream of visionary philosophers. A true philosopher, or a true Christian, never cherished such an Utopian vision. But there is a true, a real perfectibility of human character and of human nature, through the soul-redeeming mediation and holy spiritual influence of the great Philanthropist--the Hero, the Author and Perfecter of the Christian faith. And there is a transforming power, a spiritual, a divine energy, adequate to this end, in the gospel of Christ, as now dispensed by the Holy Guest of the Christian temple.

      It is first a spiritual, and finally a physical, transformation of man, in his whole physical, intellectual and moral constitution. It is, in the measure of his spiritual capacity, a perfect conformity to the perfect image of the spiritual beauty and loveliness of the Divine Father himself. This is the glorious destiny of man under a remedial economy of means and influences, expressed or suggested in the teachings of the Messiah, and fully developed in the writings of his ambassadors to the nations. Our Divine Master had this in his eye when he prayed for the perfection of Christians in and through himself.

      Now, in order to this Divine scheme of redemption and transformation of a fallen and ruined world, the whole volume of the Christian Scriptures is, in the wisdom of God, inspired and fashioned as happily, as wisely and as benevolently as light is to the eye, or harmony and melody to the ear. To have the full-orbed Sun of righteousness, mercy and life shining in all his moral and spiritual splendors upon our souls, in the light of a life divine and everlasting, is the choicest boon of heaven, and the richest treasure almighty love ever imparted to any portion of God's intellectual and spiritual universe. Ought not, then, these animating and cheering rays of Divine light to be permitted to shine into our souls, in the clear and cloudless atmosphere of a pure and transparent interpretation or translation of the Divine originals of our most precious and holy faith? And what conscience purified from guilt, what heart touched with the magnet of everlasting love, [597] and sanctified by faith, does not pant after the full fruition of the light of God's countenance, reflected upon us in the mirror of Divine revelation?

      If, then, there be an object that supremely claims our concentrated energies and our most vigorous efforts; if there be happiness, honor and glory, in our assimilation to the Divine image; if the union of all the children of God in one holy brotherhood; if the conversion of the world to the obedience of faith; if the, perfection of Christian character through faith, hope and love, through an ardent zeal and devotion, be objects of paramount value and importance--be pre-eminently desirable, ought not all the talents, and learning, and grace, which God has vouchsafed to his church of the present day, be consecrated and devoted to the consummation of this transcendent work?

      But again: none but Baptists can do this great work. I do not mean Old School or New School Baptists. Many of both are unfit for it; not merely for the want of learning, but because they are mere Baptists--no more than Baptists. The mere Jew gloried in circumcision, and the mere Baptist, in the same spirit, glories in immersion. But there are myriads of Christian Baptists, of regenerated, enlarged, ennobled Baptists, who glory in truth and in the God of truth--men of large minds, of liberal hearts, of expanded and expanding souls, zealous for truth and for the God of truth. These all are moved and moving in the direction and under the guidance of the Spirit of Truth and of a sound discriminating mind. They never were all Israel who were of Israel. Neither are they all baptized into Christ who are baptized in water. But a portion of the Jews returned from the Babylonian Captivity. None but Baptists of enlightened understandings, of large and liberal hearts, of pure conscience, and of faith unfeigned, can cordially, zealously and perseveringly participate in such a grand and sublime enterprise.

      Still, none but immersionists do discern the spirituality of the kingdom of Christ. In reason's ear, in reason's name, how can that man apprehend the spirituality of Christianity, and the spirituality of Christ's kingdom, who will, in virtue of his being flesh and blood, carry in his arms all born of his flesh to the basin, and into the church, and enroll them as baptized into Christ? Because wet with only one drop of rose-water, gravely affirm, that one drop is as good as an ocean! And true it is, that neither a drop nor an ocean can sprinkle or immerse man, woman or child, into a faith which he has not, and into a Christ which he knows not of. I could as soon believe that Louis Napoleon is a pure democrat, and the Pope a genuine [598] republican, as that a sprinkled or dipped babe has been christianized by one drop or one ocean, without the knowledge and the faith of Christ. But why argue this case further?

      Shall we not, then, brethren, not merely propose, approve and adopt the resolution offered, or some other one to the same effect, but, with one heart and soul, co-operate with our brethren everywhere like-minded in the prosecution and consummation of this great work, and, through good report or bad report, cleave to it, and prosecute it, until we shall have, in our own living tongue as now spoken, the words of eternal truth and love, circulating from East to West, from North to South, wherever our language is spoken, to the last domicile of man; and this, too, in the firm conviction and assurance that time, the most potent revolutionist, will make it a grand auxiliary in the great work of uniting, harmonizing and purifying the church of Christ, and of converting, sanctifying and saving the world? [599]

[PLA 565-599]