MEN, BRETHREN AND FATHERS IN ISRAEL:--

      Through the kind providence of our heavenly Father, and by your Christian courtesy, I have the honor to appear before you, and to address you, on this most eventful and interesting occasion. Regarding your BIBLE UNION as one of the most important events of the age--one of the most promising signs of the times, most auspicious of future good to the church and to the world--I cannot but feel exceedingly happy in being permitted to appear before you in the defence and advocacy of that great undertaking, so dear to us all, which proposes and promises to give an improved version of the living oracles of the, living God in our vernacular as spoken at the present day.

      The Bible is the book of God. God is not only its author, but its subject. It is also the book of man. He, too, is the subject and the object of the volume. "It has God for its author; salvation for its end; and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter."¹

      It spans the arch of time, which leans upon an eternity past and an eternity to come. It came to us through the ministry of angels, prophets and apostles, and is to be transmitted by us, in all languages, to nations and generations yet unborn. It contains treasures of wisdom and knowledge beyond all the learning of earth and all the philosophy of man. It not only unveils to us the future of time, but lifts the curtain that separates the seen from the unseen, earth from heaven, time from eternity, and presents to the eye of faith and hope the [600] ineffable glories of a blissful immortality. It is to us, indeed, the book of life; the charter of "an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled and that fadeth not away." It has already measurably civilized many nations and empires. It has enlightened, moralized, sanctified and saved untold millions of our fallen and degraded race, and will continue to enlighten, sanctify and bless the world, until the last sentence of the eventful volumes of human history shall have been stereotyped forever. But alas for the unfaithful stewards, the inconsiderate and presumptuous sentinels of Zion, who, instead of guarding the ark of the covenant, set about allegorizing, mystifying and nullifying its sacred contents!

      The infidel Jew and the pagan Greek first withstood its claims, resisted its evidence and denied its authority. They alike conspired to hate, to revile and to persecute its friends. But, vanquished in debate, overcome by its advocates, many of them at length formally admitted its pretensions, abjured their errors and bowed in homage to its dictates. Still, influenced more or less by their former opinions and early associations, they mystified its doctrine, corrupted its simplicity, nullified its precepts, and encumbered it with the traditions of the world. Thus, by degrees, a vain and empty philosophy beguiled its friends, neutralized its opponents and secularized its institutions.

      In a little more than three centuries from the birth of its Founder, the doctrine of the cross was so perverted and corrupted as to ascend the throne of the Roman Cæsars, in the person of Constantine the Great. The sword of persecution was then sheathed, and, by an imperial ordinance, toleration was vouchsafed to the Christians, and their confiscated estates were restored.

      This event was, most fallaciously and unfortunately, contemplated as the triumph of the cross over the idolatries of pagan Rome; because, forsooth, the Emperor of Rome, while commanding its armies, had seen, or dreamed that he had seen, at high noon, a golden cross standing under a meridian sun, inscribed, In hoc signo vinces--"under this symbol you will triumph." Thus, as a military chieftain, he was converted to the faith, and, under the banner of a painted cross, led his armies to a final triumph.

      The paganizing of Christianity in the person and government of Constantine, and in his Council of Nice, inflicted upon the church and Christianity a wound from which they have not yet wholly recovered. This early defection, obscuring and paralyzing the understanding and corrupting the heart of the Christian profession, also greatly influenced Bible-interpretation, and, by degrees, introduced a new theological [601] nomenclature; of which sundry monuments, both Eastern and Western, afford melancholy proof. Down to the first œcumenical council, the Christian Scriptures were translated into various dialects. They were not only read, in whole or in part, in Hebrew, Greek and Syriac, but also in Latin, Coptic, Sahidic, Ethiopic, Persic and other tongues.

      The spirit of translating is as old as the celebrated day of Pentecost. When first the gospel was announced by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, it was spoken in all the languages then represented in Jerusalem. "How is it," said the immense concourse, "we do hear, every one in his own native tongue--Parthians, Medes, Persians; inhabitants of Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Proconsular Asia; Phrygians, Pamphylians, Egyptians, Cyrenians, Africans, Roman strangers, Cretes and Arabians--we hear them speaking, in our own tongues, the wonderful works of God?" Ask we any other warrant or example to inspire us with the spirit of translation or to guide and authorize our efforts in this great work?

      The inscription upon the Saviour's cross was written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin; and certainly, for reasons at least equal, if not superior, to those which called forth this inscription, the story of his resurrection, and all its consequences, should be given in tongues as numerous and as various as the languages of those to whom this glorious message of salvation is delivered. No one denying this, we need not argue its claims as a matter of doubtful disputation. Nor need we undertake to show that the missionary spirit is essentially the spirit of Christianity, and that wherever a church is planted in any country, to it should be committed the oracles of God.

      It is, however, worthy of special notice that God himself simultaneously spoke and wrote the legal and symbolic dispensation. He not only preached the law, but wrote the law, with his own hand, and gave the autograph to Moses of what he had spoken to him in the mount.

      In the same spirit of wisdom and philanthropy, the apostles spoke and wrote Christianity in sermons and epistles. And our Saviour himself made John the amanuensis or the seven epistles to the Asiatic churches.

      For accurate and long preservation of words and ideas, the pen and the parchment, the stylus and the wax, the chisel, the lead and the rock, are indispensable. Hence, neither the new nor the old dispensation was left to the chances of mere oral communication or tradition, out they were written by prophets and apostles, or by their amanuenses, and given in solemn charge to the most faithful depositories-- [602] the primitive churches--with solemn anathemas annexed, to protect them from interpolation, erasure or blemish on the part of man.

      But the languages in which the holy oracles were originally written died soon after the precious deposit had been committed to them. This death, however, became the occasion of the immortality of that precious deposit.

      Living tongues are always in a state of mutation. They change with every generation. The language of Wickliffe, of Tindal, of Cranmer, of James I., is not the language of this country or of this generation. Wickliffe's version would need now to be translated into the English of 1850. But the Greek of the New Testament, and the Hebrew of the Old, having ages since ceased to be spoken, have ceased to change; and therefore with the languages of that age are stereotyped the general literature, the philosophy, the poetry, the history, the classics of the Greeks and Romans, together with the Septuagint, and other Greek versions of the Jewish Scriptures.

      Next to the deluge, not only in time, but in its calamitous influence on the destiny of man, was the confusion of human language at the profane and insolent attempt to erect a temple to Belus, and a city to prevent the wide dispersion of Noah's progeny. The monumental name Babylon awakens in every thoughtful and sensitive heart a series of painful reflections on every remembrance of its grievous associations. But for it, as among all animals without reason and conscience, there would have been, through our whole species, but one language and one speech. It has thrown in the way of human civilization and moral progress barriers that neither can be annihilated nor overcome. It has more or less alienated man from man, making every one of a different dialect--more or less a barbarian to a great portion of his own species. Till then, the vernacular of every child was that of all mankind, and was a part and parcel of humanity itself to interest him in every one of his species as his own flesh and blood. But foreign tongues indicate a foreign origin, with which, most frequently, some ungrateful associations arise that estrange and alienate from the claims of a common brotherhood.

      But, most of all to be deplored, this Divine judgment has thrown very great obstacles in the path of the evangelical ministry. It was, indeed, as observed already, miraculously overcome by the gift of tongues, instantaneously conferred on the apostles at the time of the coronation of the Lord Messiah. They had access, at once, to many nations, whose representatives returned from Jerusalem richly laden with the word of life to their countrymen. But the necessity that was [603] overcome on the memorable Pentecost still exists, more or less, as a very formidable obstacle to the conversion of the human race to one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one communion, and must, of necessity, be overcome. And here we state our first argument in favor of translations of the Holy Scriptures into all languages spoken by man capable of receiving, in their vocabularies, the precious oracles of the living and true God.

      But I am met at the threshold with the assertion that this is a subject in which all Christendom is agreed, and that it would be but a waste of time to discuss such a question. The necessity of translating the living oracles of the living God into all the nations of earth, as the means of their conversion and salvation, I am told, is universally conceded by Jew and Gentile. But have they in any other way than theoretically conceded it?

      The Jews' religion and revelation, now called the Old Testament, was not designed for all mankind, in the same sense as the Christian revelation and religion are designed for all mankind. The Jews' religion was specially given to one nation for its own sake. It never was essentially a proselyting institution. Its genius and nature restricted it to the natural seed of Abraham. There is no precept in it commanding it to be preached or promulged to all the world. Still, the Jews' institution had in it the elements of Christianity, and, on that account, it is invaluable to all the Christian kingdom. They, too, have set us an example; for when the Jews were scattered through different countries they had their oracles translated into the language of those countries. Hence, the first translation made in Egypt by the seventy learned Jews, all natives of Egypt, assembled in Alexandria, not by command of Ptolemy Philadelphus, but during his copartnery of the throne of Egypt with his father, was designed to give to the Jews throughout the world a version in the then prevailing dialect. Thus originated the celebrated Septuagint. This, however, preceded the Christian era by only two hundred and eighty-five years.

      But the necessity of improved versions is rather our present subject; and with reference to this the Jews are worthy of our regard. They were not all satisfied with this venerable and invaluable translation, though the best ever made into the Greek tongue. It is honored and consecrated, too, by the fact that it is quoted in the New Testament, and is thus sanctioned by the holy apostles themselves--a correct exponent of their own Hebrew original. Philo the Jew, Josephus and the primitive Christians also gave it the sanction of their approval.

      Notwithstanding all this, many learned individuals, both Jews and [604] Christians, took exceptions to some parts of it, and suggested numerous corrections and emendations. Accordingly; Aquila, a Jew, who once professed Christianity, but afterwards renounced it and relapsed into Judaism, undertook and finished a new version in the fore part of the second century. His chief objection to the Septuagint was its too periphrastic character; and, avoiding this alleged defect, he became literal to a fault. It was, however, read with interest as early as the middle of the second century of our Christian era.

      Almost contemporaneous with this was the version of Theodotion, an Ebionite Christian, who supposed that a rather freer version than that of Aquila was desirable. Next to his appeared the version of Symmachus. More skilled in Hebrew, according to tradition, than Theodotion, he made many alleged improvements, but borrowed too much, and rather indiscreetly, from his predecessors.

      Besides these private versions of the Hebrew Scriptures into the Greek vernacular, no less than three anonymous Greek versions appeared before the middle of the second century; which, because of the columns they occupy in Origen's Hexapla, are called the fifth, sixth and seventh versions. Thus the Septuagint, which reigned without a rival for some three centuries till the close, we may say, of the first century of Christianity, has, in some one hundred and fifty years, no less than six Greek rival versions--all the fruit, we must suppose, of a desire for an improved version. It may be observed that the author of the sixth translation of this class, as arranged in the Hexapla of Origen, was evidently a Christian. So far, then, as the learning, judgment and piety of the authors of the six Greek versions of the old Hebrew Testament afford an example or argument, it is decidedly in favor of our effort to have an improved version, at least of the Christian Scriptures.

      We do not, indeed, regard every new version, whether undertaken by public or private authority, as an improvement. But there is little ground to doubt that these six versions, together with the Septuagint, would enable any person of the genius and learning of Origen to furnish a better than any one of them. Hence it is that Origen's Hexapla is regarded as one of the most valuable offerings of the third century to the cause of Biblical translations.

      But the necessity of original translations and of improved versions of former translations has much more to commend and enforce its claims upon public attention than the customs of the Jews or the spirit and character of their religion. Christianity, or the gospel, in its facts, precepts and promises, was divinely commanded to be promulged [605] throughout the whole world. Neither its spirit nor its design is national or secular, but catholic, and divine.

      It is a dispensation of Divine grace, adapted to the genius, character and condition of men, as they now are. It grasps in its broad philanthropy the Human race, and throws its benignant arms around all the nations of the earth. It is, therefore, the sin of the church, if there be one of Adam's sons who has never heard, in his own tongue, the wonderful works of God.

      In its hale and undegenerate days the gospel was borne on the wings of every wind, and, as far and as soon as possible, it was promulged by the living tongues of apostles, evangelists and prophets, from Jerusalem to the confines of the most barbarous nations, and on equal terms tendered to Jew and Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free.

      It was not only spoken, but written and translated into every language accessible to those to whom were committed the oracles of God. For this purpose God gave plenary inspiration to the first heralds of the cross, and therefore it was as accurately announced to the inhabitants of the Ultima Thule, in word and writing, as to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the radiating centre of the Christian church.

      But it must be written as well as spoken, because the word in the ear is evanescent, compared with that word written and pictured to the eye on parchment. The command to preach the gospel to every creature is not fulfilled when only spoken to those whom we see and who can hear. Were speaking the only way of preaching, then the deaf could never have the gospel preached to them. In that case, Paul could not, with truth, have said that "Moses was preached every Sabbath day, being read in the synagogues."

      We sometimes converse with the present as well as the absent by signs addressed to the eye. Words spoken are only for those present. Hence the necessity that an age of apostles and prophets should be an age of writing as well as of speaking a finished language. And such was the era of the Jews' religion; but still more emphatically such was the Christian era.

      The great revelations of the Bible originated in ages and countries of the highest civilization and mental advancement. Egypt was the cradle of the learning and wisdom of the world when Moses, the prophet, the lawgiver and oracle of Jehovah, was born. From Egypt radiated the light of the world under the reign of the Pharaohs. And Moses was profoundly read in all the learning of the Egyptians. He was therefore chosen to speak to his contemporaries and to write for posterity the oracles of God. [606]

      Jesus the Messiah was born in the city of David, educated neither in Egypt nor in Nazareth, but from heaven, by a plenary inhabitation of a Divine nature and a Divine spirit. He taught in Jerusalem, in the temple, and in the presence of the Rabbis, and Scribes, and Elders of Israel. Christianity was first preached, instituted and received in Jerusalem, and thence radiated through Asia, Africa and Europe. It was written in the most finished language ever spoken on earth, so far as copiousness, richness of terms, perspicuity, precision, as well as majesty and grandeur of style, enter into the constituency of language. Hence the pen, alike with the tongue, was employed in giving utterance and free circulation to the word of life from its first promulgation to the final amen of the Apocalypse.

      The Holy Spirit and the spirit of the gospel did not cease to work with the age of the apostles. Preaching and teaching, writing and translating from language to language, the word and works of God--the sayings, the doings and the sufferings of the Saviour--begun and prosecuted with untiring energy and assiduity by the original apostles and evangelists of Christ, was still continued with zealous diligence by the succeeding age. Peter was not the only man of his day who said, "I will carefully endeavor that you may be able, after my decease, to have these things always in remembrance." This was the spirit of all the family of God capable of such an instrumentality.

      In the second century, we find the whole Bible, Old Testament and New, translated into the Syriac tongue. The oldest, most literal, simple and exact version in that language is called the Peschito, or the literal, because of its great fidelity to the original text. In after-times, other versions were published in the same tongue.

      Egypt was favored at an early day with two versions--one in the Coptic, for the lower, and one in Sahidic, for the upper Egyptians. Of the Arabic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Persian, Gothic, Sclavonian and Anglo-Saxon versions we cannot now speak particularly. Suffice it to say that the philanthropy of the gospel wrought more effectually than that of the law, in giving version after version of the law and the gospel to the nations and tribes that embraced it.

      At the commencement of the Christian era, the Roman empire stretched from the Rhine and the Danube, on the north, to the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa on the south, and from the river Euphrates, on the east, to the Atlantic Ocean on the west. Over this vast extent of territory the Latin language was, more or less, spoken. Important, therefore, it was, that the living oracles should find in that tongue a passport to every province that acknowledged the supremacy [607] of Rome. Versions of the gospels and Epistles, in that tongue, early began to multiply. One had obtained a free circulation through parts of Africa; but, after considerable competition, another, of acknowledged superiority, began to triumph over all its Roman rivals, under the name of the "Itala," or "Old Italic."

      When Jerome had risen to some conspicuity, the Itala was pronounced canonical. This version, containing both Testaments, was made from the Greek. Hebrew scholars capable of correctly translating the Hebrew Bible could not then be found. The first half of the second century is generally conceded to have been the time when the Old Itala first made its appearance. During that century, it was certainly quoted by Tertullian. But, as Horne judiciously remarks, before the fourth century had closed, alterations and differences, either designed or accidental, had equalled in number the interpolations found in the Greek versions before corrected by Origen. Pope Damasus assigned the work of revision to Jerome, who conformed it much more to the Greek. But this only induced Jerome to attempt a new version of the Old Testament, from the Hebrew into Latin, for the benefit of the Western church. Still, notwithstanding the reputation of St. Jerome and the authority of Pope Damasus, the version was introduced by slow degrees, lest weak minds might stumble. But through the partiality of Gregory I. it gradually rose to ascendency, so that ever since the seventh century, under the name of the Vulgate version, it has been extensively adopted by the whole Roman church.

      The Council of Trent, convoked by Paul III., A. D. 1545, continued under Julius X. and consummated under Pius IV., A. D. 1563, after a session of eighteen years, decreed it to be authentic, and commanded that the Vulgate alone should be read wherever the Bible is commanded to be read, and used in all sermons, expositions and discussions. Thenceforth it was of equal authority with the originals: so that it was as lawful to correct the originals by the Vulgate as the Vulgate by the originals. Romanists still prefer to translate from the Vulgate rather than from the originals.

      In course of time, the Old Itala and the Vulgate became so mixed up that both fell into great confusion and were interspersed with many and great errors. Hence originated Stephens's seven critical editions of the Vulgate, extending from A. D. 1528 to A. D. 1546--a period commensurate with the sessions of the Council of Trent. The doctors of the Sorbonne condemned them, and ordered a new edition by John Hortensius, of Louvain, which was finished in 1547. Still another improved version was called for, and finished in 1586, with critical [608] notes, by Lucas Brugensis. Finally, however, it was condemned by Pope Sixtus V., who commanded a new edition, and, having himself corrected the proofs, he pronounced it, by all the authority of his chair, to be the authentic Vulgate, and, issuing a folio edition, commanded it to be adopted throughout the Roman church.

      But, notwithstanding the labors of the Pope and the seal of his infallible decree, this edition was discovered to be so exceedingly incorrect that his successor, the infallible Clement VIII., caused it to be suppressed, and published another authentic Vulgate, in folio size, in 1592, differing more than any other edition from that of Sixtus V. These facts are a full refutation, if we had nothing else to allege, of all the pretensions of Bellarmine and the See of Rome in favor of the Vulgate. Some learned men, of much leisure, have noted several hundreds of differences between these two authentic and infallible translations--many of them, too, of very serious import. Thus the two infallibles--Sixtus V. and Clement VIII., stand in direct contradiction.

      Other improved Latin versions from time to time appeared, to the number of some ten or eleven, half of them the work of Protestants and half of Romanists. Of those made by Catholics, that by Erasmus, and of those made by Protestants, that by Beza, is prominent. So far the spirit of improved versions obtained down to the era of the Protestant Reformation.

      We have not yet noted the growth and prevalence of this principle in Germany or in our mother land and language. These are matters rather too familiar to deserve much notice at present. Still, that we may further demonstrate the very general acknowledgment of the moral and Christian obligation to print and publish in writing, as well as to declare by the tongue, the oracles of God, and that in the most correct and improved style of language, we must at least notice the interest that Germany and Great Britain have taken in this work.

      As the art of printing is the fruit of German genius, we might, in the absence of history, presume that the Bible would have been amongst the first-fruits of the press, and that it would have a freer course through Germany than in any other country in Europe or the world. And such, in part, is the fact. The Bible was first printed and published in Germany, and in the vernacular of its inhabitants. In 1486, a German translation from the Vulgate was printed, the author of which is unknown.

      In 1517, Martin Luther began to publish and print scraps of the Bible, which he continued until he got through with the whole book. [609] His translation of the whole Bible, from the Hebrew and Greek originals, assisted by Melanchthon, Cruciger, and other learned professors of Hebrew and Greek, was first issued from the press in 1530, and passed through three improved editions before the close of 1545.

      From Luther's version of the Holy Scriptures no less than ten versions were derived; and it became the occasion of many others. But this justly celebrated work of the great Reformer was itself improved--or at least revised--by the Zuinglians and Calvinists, and numerous new editions of it circulated through Germany and its dependencies, down to the year 1659.

      Besides that of Luther, other versions were printed and circulated on the continent. Among these were the Zurich version, Piscator's, from that of Junius and Tremellius, with several Romanist versions.

      We pass from Germany to Britain. Authentic history we have not of the commencement of translations into the languages spoken in Great Britain. Saxon versions of parts of the holy oracles were made in that island as early as the beginning of the eighth century. Aldhelm's name is associated with a version of the Psalms as early as A. D. 706. A translation of the four Gospels, made by Egbert, appeared a few years after, and that was followed by one of the whole Bible by the Venerable Bede. Two centuries after appeared a new version of the Psalms by King Alfred. An unknown individual translated the whole Bible into English about the year 1290, copies of which are yet extant in some public libraries.

      In 1380, John Wickliffe translated the whole Bible from the Vulgate into the current English of that day; it was first printed in 1731. To William Tindal we are indebted for the first printed English Bible. It was issued from the press at Antwerp or Hamburg, A. D. 1520. His revised English Testament appeared in 1534. In 1535 Miles Coverdale gave a new English version of the whole Bible. This was the first Bible allowed by royal authority. The fictitious Mathew's Bible, issued from politic reasons under this name, was, for the most part, Tindal's version disguised. This edition, printed abroad, appeared in 1537. Cranmer's version of the New Testament, with its last corrections, appeared in 1539; the Geneva version in 1557; the Bishop's Bible in 1568; the Rheims in 1582; and the Authorized Common Version in 1611. Concerning these, with the exception of the last, we will not now speak particularly.

      The time usually allotted for a single address is not more than sufficient to name and describe the numerous and various versions through which the Holy Scriptures have passed. We have not even [610] named all the versions made in our own vernacular. We have simply made selections for a specific purpose. Those named are sufficient to show that the professed church of Christ has, in all ages, acted upon the principle that the Scriptures should be accurately translated and more or less circulated amongst at least a portion of the people. Protestants say, through all the people. Romanists have said, and still say, only through a portion of the people.

      But the precise question now before you, my Christian brethren, is not whether the Scriptures should be translated into every tongue spoken by mankind, but whether they should be translated into the current language of every age. Indeed, you take the ground that the Scriptures are not translated into any language unless the true import of the original text is perspicuously and faithfully given in the living language of the people. For this reason you justly object to the translation usually called "The Authorized Common Version." You say it is not authorized by God, because be would not authorize an erroneous version. A king, a court, a parliament, a political corporation or a secular church, authorizing any version, correct or incorrect, you regard as an assumption, on their part, of spiritual jurisdiction over the consciences of men; you regard it as a species of spiritual despotism, of ecclesiastic tyranny and usurpation.

      That a Christian community may adopt any new version, or authorize any number of its members to prepare a version which shall correctly and perspicuously set forth, in the currency of the age, the import of the original Scriptures, you cheerfully admit. But that such is not the commonly received and frequently styled "Authorized Version," you conscientiously think and affirm That this is a rational, scriptural and Christian position, in our judgment, we most religiously avow. But., before proceeding further, let us summarily and distinctly state the premises already submitted.

      I. It has been alleged that the command to "preach the gospel to every creature" implies that it must not only be spoken, but written, in the languages of all nations.

      II. That such was the judgment and understanding of the apostles and primitive evangelists of Christ, is proved from the fact that both the apostles commissioned by the Saviour, and certain evangelists not directly commissioned by him, both spoke and wrote the gospel. The gospels preserved, written by John, Mark and Luke, are imperishable monuments of this fact.

      III. That Jesus Christ commanded his communications to the churches to be written, and to be carried by messengers, called in our [611] common version angels of the churches, and to be by them delivered to the churches, is also another evidence of the same fact.

      IV. That the gospels and apostolic epistles were to be translated into the languages of the nations and people to whom they were sent, is evident from the miraculous gift of tongues conferred at the commencement of the church in Jerusalem, and continued to the end of the gospel ministry, contained in the inspired writings. We not only observe that this gift was instantly and simultaneously bestowed on all the apostles, for the purpose of translating the whole Christian revelation into all the languages of the people addressed by them, but also continued with them to the end of their lives. It was also bestowed supernaturally on Paul, born out of due time, and in a superabundant degree, so that he could speak in Gentile cities, in more tongues than any other member of those churches, though many of them also possessed this supernatural spiritual endowment in eminent measures.

      V. The necessity and importance of translations, in order to the ends of the Christian mission, is also shown in the care taken by all the writers of the New Testament to translate every foreign word and quotation introduced into their writings. For example, the word Messiah is interpreted to aliens from the commonwealth of Israel; so are the words Cephas, Siloam, Tabitha, Elymas, Talitha-cumi, Barnabas, &c.

      VI. The necessity is further shown, from the fact that in the primitive churches there were official translators immediately raised up for the emergency. "To one class," says Paul, "is given the gift of tongues; to another, the interpretation or translation of tongues."

      VII. An apostolic edict is given by Paul on the subject of interpretation. 1 Cor. xix. 27--"If any man speak in a foreign or unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at most by three (sentences at a time), and let one translate; but if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church."

      Are not these conclusive evidences that the church of Christ, in the discharge of its duties and obligations, must have interpreters of Scripture, and make translations commensurate with the wants of mankind?

      Regarding this, henceforth, as an established point, we shall advance another step toward our goal. It is, perhaps, rather a formality on our part, than a necessity imposed on us, to show that we are as much obliged, by all the reasons and authority hitherto adduced in favor of original translations, to amend, improve and correct obscure, [612] imperfect and erroneous versions of particular words and passages in existing translations, which, in the main, are true to the original, and couched in terms well adapted to the understanding of the reader, as we are to give new versions in languages and dialects into which the gospel has never been introduced.

      But this, on grave reflection, must appear to all a point already almost, if not altogether, universally conceded. Our object, in the preceding part of our discourse, (and a rather dry and irksome task it is,) in giving a summary view of the labors of the Christian ministry and the church, was to show that the necessity of amended versions, as well as of new versions, was felt and acted on in every century of the Christian church, and by the most enlightened and gifted portions of it. True, many of these amended versions were made from the original tongues, but not as the first versions from these tongues were made. These amending translators had other versions from the original, in the same language or in other languages, which they understood, and with which they compared their own version, and were, more or less, led by them on many occasions, adopting the verbiage of their predecessors. It is questionable whether we have ever had two independent and original versions in one vernacular. But this is no defect in them. It is often an advantage. For in all such cases we have two witnesses, instead of one, of the verity and appropriateness of the last version.

      We have only one step further to advance in this direction. We must affirm the conviction that we are, as Christian churches, bound, by the highest and holiest motives and obligations, to use our best endeavors to have the original Scriptures exactly and faithfully, in every particular, to the best of our knowledge and belief, translated at home and abroad, into the vernacular, be it what it may, in which we desire to present them to our fellow-men. Any thing short of this is a sinful and most condemnable negligence or indifference. It is a clear and unambiguous transgression of the supreme law of Christian morality--viz. "All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets." " Speak to them all that I command thee," is the oracle of God to his prophet. "And," says Paul, "the things thou hast heard of me in the presence of many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men that shall be able to teach others also." We must neither add to, nor subtract from, the word of Jehovah.

      But there is another attitude in which this subject must be placed before our minds. Passages of Scripture will, translated into any one [613] language in one age, cease to be a correct and intelligible translation to the people of another age, though speaking, at least in name, the same language. Our English versions demonstrate this in a very clear and satisfactory manner.

      No one unskilled in the history of our vernacular can easily appreciate the changes it has undergone during even the last three centuries. I will furnish, by way of illustration or demonstration, an example or two of these changes. We shall first give a specimen of the hundredth Psalm, found in the preface to the English Hexapla. It represents the English language five hundred years ago:--

      In 1380, Wickliffe's version, now before me, gives the Lord's Prayer--Matt. vi. 9--in the following orthography and orthoepy:--

      "Oure fadir that art in heuenes, halowid be thi name, thi kingdom come, to be thi will don in erthe as in heuene, geve to us this day oure breed, ouir other substaunce forgeue to vs oure dettis, as we forguen to oure dettouris, lede us not into temptacion; but delyuer us from yuel, amen."

      We shall now add a specimen from the Rheims translation, first given to the world in 1582--two hundred and sixty-eight years ago. It is the commission, Matthew xxviii.:--

      "Al povver is giun to me in heauen and in erthe; going therfore teach ye al nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the sonne and of the holy ghost, teaching them to obserue al things whatsoeuer I haue commanded you, and behold I am vvith you al daies."

      We need scarcely say that such a style is awkward, uncouth and unintelligible; and had the holy oracles continued in this garb till this day, our language and literature, in other departments, having progressed as they have, the reading and the study of them would have been very uninteresting and unacceptable to our contemporaries. If in no other respect faulty--if every word and sentence had been a [614] perfect exponent of the mind of the Holy Spirit--other terms and formulas of speech, or, in other words, a new and modernized version of them, would have been indispensable.

      But this is not all that may or must be urged in behalf of a, new, or, rather, an improved version. The word of God was not, a century or two since, as well understood as it is now, by the most enlightened and reformed portions of Protestant Christendom. Biblical literature, criticism and science, since the times of Wickliffe, Tindal, Luther, Calvin; Zuinglius Beza, Cranmer, Coverdale, Archbishop Parker, Edward VI. or James I., have greatly advanced. The last seventy-five years have contributed more to real Biblical learning--have given to the Christian church larger and better means of translating the original Scriptures--than had accumulated from the days of Tindal to the era of the American Revolution.

      We are, therefore, better prepared to give a correct and faithful version of the Sacred Scriptures, at this day, than at any former period since the revival of literature. We have also a more correct original from which to translate, than they had at any former period since the art of printing was invented. The Greek text of the New Testament has been subjected to the most laborious investigation; and, after the most rigid scrutiny and comparison, a much more accurate original has been obtained. With these advantages in our favor, we are better furnished than at any former period to enter upon a work of such awful and momentous magnitude and responsibility.

      But, that we may be more deeply impressed with a sense of its necessity and importance, we must give a few samples of the aberrations and mistranslations of the commonly received version. And first, we shall read the usual title-page of the Christian Scriptures: "The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

      While all the words found in this title are found in the text itself; the title itself is no part of the text or volume, but is an ecclesiastical name put upon it, as an index to its contents. It is, therefore, an index, to the mind of those who prefixed it to the volume, and much affects their claim to the possession of a clear and comprehensive knowledge of the writings it contains. I assume that no one, well instructed in the volume itself, could have given to it this title.

      The term testament or will, with us, is now, and for a long time has been, appropriated to one particular instrument, setting forth the final disposition of a person's estate. But in that case it indicates that the testator is dead, and that this is the last disposition he has made of his effects. How, then, does this apply to a volume containing not only [615] the memoirs of Jesus, but the writings of six of his apostles and two of his evangelists? Again: Is the testator dead? That he died, is true; and that he continued dead a few hours, is also true; but that he ever lives and never shall die, is most gloriously true. Again: Did Jesus, during his life, make two testaments or two wills? This is called, not a New Testament, but the New Testament, of Jesus Christ. Where learned they the contents of the Old Testament of Jesus Christ? Have we a copy of his first will? Now, if no such document ever was, is now, or shall hereafter be, why, in reason and in truth, give it such a cognomen, rather such a misnomer? There is no such will or testament on earth as the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He never made an old one, and he is not dead, but lives forever, a priest upon his throne, not according to the law of a fleshly commandment, but according to the power of an endless life.

      Nor would it relieve the title-page from the error had it been styled "The New Covenant of our Lord Jesus Christ," for that would indicate that he is the author of two covenants, which is not the fact. There is no old covenant of Jesus Christ, and, consequently, there cannot be a new covenant of Jesus Christ. It might, with both grammatical and logical propriety, be called the New Institution, or the New Covenant by Jesus Christ. But that, too, is an exceptionable use of the figure synecdoche, which puts a part for the whole, or the whole for a part. To get rid of a consecrated error is sometimes very difficult. We have chosen to designate the book "THE SACRED WRITINGS OF THE APOSTLES AND EVANGELISTS OF JESUS CHRIST." This is strictly true, and, in our judgment, enough. True, we may, after a good example found in Acts vii., briefly call the whole volume "THE LIVING ORACLES."

      It would be important, could we classify under appropriate heads the different species of subordinate errors found in the common version; but in such a discourse as the present we could not give a specimen of each. It would require much more time than we have at command. I shall, therefore, as they occur, give a few cases, that may suggest to some one of more leisure and capacity the necessity and expediency of such an effort.

      First, then, we shall name and illustrate an instance or two in the use of the Greek article, ho, hee, to. Though apparently a small matter, there are some serious errors in the use of the article. A Greek noun, with the article, is always definite; without it, always indefinite.

      In Matthew xvi. 13-18, the moral and evangelical foundation of the [616] Christian church is stated by its founder in a very formal and inspiring manner. The question was, "Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?" Peter responds, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah, or some one of the prophets." "But whom do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answering said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."

      After pronouncing a benediction on Peter, he said to him, "Thou art a stone, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it." Now, to have answered this interesting interrogatory by saying, "Thou art Christ, Son of the living God," would have given quite a different idea. It would have been merely a personal name, as Sergius Paulus, John Mark, or Simon Peter. And so has the common version made it on another and a very important occasion. I Cor. iii. 11, Paul is made to say, "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." The church, according to this version, is built upon Jesus Christ, and not upon the faith "Jesus is the Christ," as the true original reading and the common Greek text have it.² Now, there is just as much difference between Jesus Christ and Jesus the Christ, as between John Baptist and John the Baptist, Paul Apostle and Paul the apostle, George king and George the king. It may be loyalty or treason, as the case may be, to say George is the king; but neither the one for the other to call any man George King. Infidels talk fluently concerning Jesus Christ, but they will not, in the proper meaning of the terms, say, "Jesus is the Christ."

      The same law of interpretation applies to the use of the word spirit. Pneuma is simply spirit; to pneuma, the Spirit.

      Frequently "the Holy Spirit" and "the Spirit" indicate the same person. But without the article, unless some qualifying adjunct be annexed, it means simply a spirit, or the spirit of a man and not the Spirit of God.

      There is no article in the following instances:--"If any fellowship of the spirit;" "Which worship God in the spirit;" "You live in the spirit;" "Through sanctification of the spirit;" "He carried me away in the spirit;" "Immediately I was in the spirit." In all these cases, there being no article in the original, there should be no definite article in the translation.

      But in the following cases the article is found:--"The sword of the [617] Spirit;" "The fruit of the Spirit;" "Let him hear what the Spirit saith;" "Keep by the Holy Spirit which dwelleth in us." In these and many such the article indicates that it is the Spirit of God that is meant. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." This is a striking example; the Spirit here means the Holy Spirit of God; and that which is born of it is spirit, a new spirit, or a new heart, disposition, or temper.

      But there is a perspicacity of mind and a delicacy of taste essential to a precise and accurate transference of some ideas from one tongue to another, which is peculiarly necessary in the case of translating Greek nouns without an article, and for which no rules of grammar can be furnished.

      Our translators did not always display this endowment in an eminent degree. They sometimes employed an indefinite article where they should have employed none. The dullest mind can perceive a difference between man without an article and man with an article, between assuming that man cannot do this, and that a man cannot do this; between God and a god, between Spirit and a spirit.

      I will instance this in the common version:--"God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." We would render it, God is Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. For thus translating it we might even plead the example of the same translators in other cases. For example, they render two passages from the same apostle as I have done this. "God is love," and not, God is a love; God is light, and not, God is a light. And even in the example cited from John iv. 24, they translate in this manner:--"They that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth;" not in a spirit and in a truth.

      We might say as they do of God--an angel is a spirit, but not that an angel is Spirit. To say of an angel that he is Spirit is by far too august and sublime. God alone is Spirit, God alone is light, God alone is love.

      We shall next give an instance or two of the mistranslation of particles or the connectives of speech. Take, for example, the particle ote, which occurs many hundred times in the apostolic writings. The more frequent meanings of this conjunction are, because, for, that. Which of these three shall be preferred in any given passage must always be discretionary with the translator, and must therefore depend upon his judgment and taste. But the sense of some passages is very much changed or impaired by the selection of an unsuitable representative of the original. Hence we have long since decided that no translator, however extensive his learning, however well read in [618] other books, however orthodox his creed in religion, can suitably translate the New Testament, unless he have a thorough and comprehensive knowledge of the whole remedial scheme of the gospel, and the peculiar genius, spirit and character of the Christian institution. Take an example or two in the case of this particle ote:--

      Paul to the Romans, ch. viii. 20, 21:--"For the creature (more properly mankind) was made subject to frailty, (rather than vanity,) not willingly, but by him who subjected them to it, in hope (because) that mankind will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious freedom of the sons of God." How awkward to say, in hope because, instead of, in hope that!

      Another instance to the same effect is found in 1 John iii. 2. In the common version:--"We know not what we shall be; but we know that when he appeareth we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." This version indicates that our simply seeing him would transform us into his image. This is a new revelation. But how much more in harmony with the whole record to prefer that to for, and read it, We know that we shall be like him--that we shall see him as he is! There are hundreds of instances of this use of ote in the New Testament and Septuagint.

      In the gender of pronouns we have also sundry analogies. A very remarkable instance occurs in Dr. George Campbell's version of the beginning of John. In his version it reads, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made by it, and without it not a single creature was made. In it was life, and the life was the light of men."

      Now, although the laws of the language will justify the translation, "this was in the beginning," there appears no necessity to change the masculine into the neuter, especially as Dr. Campbell regards an allusion here to the eighth chapter of Proverbs, to the beautiful personification of wisdom given in that passage. The laws of rhetoric, as well as of grammar, will justify our translating it in harmony with the gender of Logos, and with the style of Solomon in the passage alluded to. I always dissent from this learned, candid and elegant translator of the four Gospels with great reluctance, and with much diffidence. Still, in this case, as the Word became incarnate and dwelt among us, and was "God manifest in the flesh," I prefer, after considerable hesitancy, to render it, "All things were made 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." Paul seems to rise above himself when the uncreated [619] glories of this most sublime personage appear before his mind. "For by him," says he, "were all things created that are in the heavens and that are on the earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him, and for him; and he is before all things, and by him all things consist; and he is the head of the body, the church, the beginning, the first-fruits from the dead, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence: for it pleased the Father that in him all fulness should dwell."

      But we must notice another species of errors, in the use of the auxiliary verbs and signs of moods and tenses in our language, when translating certain forms of the original verbs. For example, may and can, might, could, would and should, are used in our potential mood, for the present and imperfect tenses. Now, as there is nothing properly corresponding with these in the original Greek, it becomes discretionary with the translator whether he choose in one tense may or can, and in another tense might, could, would, or should; yet we know that there is a very great difference of meaning, with us, between may and must, should and could, &c.

      We have one example of this, which, though not directly in point, illustrates how much depends on the use of proper exponents of these varieties in harmony with the sense or scope of a passage. We read it in Hebrews ii. 9:--"But we see Jesus, who was made but little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man." Who can see any necessity for being crowned with glory and honor that he should taste death, or in order to his tasting death, for all? But, properly rendered, we see a great propriety in his being crowned with glory and honor after he had tasted death for all, as Professor Stuart very properly renders the passage.

      But I have wearied you and myself in thus rambling over so large a field, and shall only, on this topic, add another chapter of errors and difficulties into which most translators have occasionally fallen; and that is in the subject of punctuation. The original text itself is frequently erroneously pointed, and, of course, the translation is likely to be also at fault in this particular. As a specimen of this, and to illustrate this species of error, I will only quote one passage from the New Testament. It is found in John v. 31-47:--"If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that beareth witness of me, and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. But I receive not testimony from man; but these things I say, that ye might be [620] saved. He was a burning and a shining light; and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light. But I have greater witness than that of John; for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me. And the Father himself which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you; for whom, he hath sent, him ye believe not. Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. I receive not honor from men; but I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can you believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust; for had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" Though as read from the common version this address loses much of its beauty, propriety and force, it is one of the most clear, forcible and irresistible appeals to the understanding and conscience ever spoken.

      1st. He modestly waives his own testimony in his own case, and submits this rule of moral decorum: that, in any matter of superlative importance, no one should use or depend on his own testimony in support of his own pretensions, and that any one so acting would be unworthy of credit.

      2d. He alleges the testimony of John the Harbinger as his first argument, and enforces the regard due to it from their own respect for John, without any commendation of John to them on his part:--"You yourselves, unprompted by me, sent to John to know what he had to say of himself and the Messiah--consequently, of my claims and pretensions."

      3d. After commanding John as a brilliant and shining luminary, he modestly waives even his testimony, and urges a greater evidence--though, themselves being judges, John's testimony was the best human testimony ever submitted.

      4th. He appeals to his miracles, which they and their contemporaries had already witnessed and tested, thereby showing and conceding that any one claiming credit on supernatural pretensions ought to submit supernatural evidence. He then recognizes and establishes a great law [621] of evidence, viz.: that the proposition and the proof should be homogeneous; physical propositions, physical evidence; moral propositions, moral evidence; supernatural propositions, supernatural evidence.

      5th. He then adduces the literal oracle of God himself, that God had actually, sensibly and audibly recognized him, and at one and the same time addressed their eyes and their ears. "Did you never hear his voice," saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"? "Did you never see his form?" alluding to the symbol of the descending dove, and its perching itself on his head, in the presence of the people. But who could learn this lesson from the common translations? The common version, and almost every other, makes our Saviour speak like a simpleton. After appealing to his Father's positive oral testimony in his favor at the Jordan, in the presence of a crowd, they make him say, "You have never, at any time, heard his voice:" After appealing to the symbol of the Divine Spirit in the descending dove, they make him say, "You have never, at any time, seen his form," or any outward manifestation of him. And, further still, he is made to contradict a fact, in saying that they had not heard his declaration--that they had "not his word abiding in them;" whereas, placed interrogatively, it is, "Have you forgotten his declaration, "'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased'?"

      Their position was that they had never heard God speak of him; that they had never seen him attested by any outward mark; that they had no recollection of ever hearing any confirmation of his pretensions. To all which be, knowing their thoughts and reasonings, said, "Have you never heard his voice? Have you never seen his form? Have you forgotten what he said?"³

      The Saviour's climax in the argument is beautifully simple and sublime: 1. The testimony of John. 2. His miracles. 3. The public acknowledgment of his Father. 4. The visible descent of the Holy [622] Spirit. 5. And, finally, the Jewish Scriptures--the law and the prophets. The common version mistakes the imperative mood for the indicative. It reads, "Search the Scriptures," instead of, "Ye do search the Scriptures." "Now," adds he, "these are they that testify of me."

      He then explains their unbelief. They would not come to him; they would not place themselves under his guidance, because--1. He did not seek the honor of this world. 2. They were destitute of the love of God. 3. He came only in his Father's name, seeking his glory. 4. They believed not the writings of Moses, while professing that they did. 5. Their stubborn prejudices, growing out of their notions of a worldly Messiah, a temporal political kingdom and a national hierarchy.

      It would be tedious to enumerate the errors that have resulted from mis-punctuation, as well as from the other sources already named. Punctuation is a species of commentary, serving a purpose kindred to that of capitals, chapters, verses and paragraphs. Much depends upon all these, as respects our proper understanding and translating these ancient and venerable documents. We have in the above example selected a strong case, and expatiated upon it at length, to show how much depends on the proper use of points in giving significance to words.

      Another class of errors in the common version, of still more serious importance, in cases of words having different significations, is the selection of inapposite and inadequate terms to express the meaning of the spirit, and the design of the original writer. In illustration of this, we will select the word paracleetos, so frequently occurring in our Lord's valedictory address to his apostles, reported by John, chapters xiv., xv., xvi. In the common version it is represented by the word Comforter in this discourse, and in another place by the term advocate. By Dr. George Campbell it is here translated monitor, and, by some other translators, instructor, guide, &c.

      Now, of all these terms, advocate is the most comprehensive and generic. An advocate may guide, instruct, admonish, comfort, console, &c., but a comforter does not generally assume the character of an advocate, &c. But we have more to commend its preference in this context than its generic import. The work assigned to him by our Saviour decides his claims as paramount. He promises that when the Holy Spirit comes to act under Christ's own mission, he will reprove, convince and teach the world. He will show its sin, Christ's righteousness and God's judgment. He will guide his apostles into all the truth. He will bring all things that he had taught them to their remembrance. He will glorify the Messiah in all his personal and official relations. There is, indeed, an inelegance, an impropriety, in the sentence as [623] rendered in King James's version:--"He will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment." It might be asked, how could he reprove the world of righteousness? That he might reprove the world because of its unrighteousness is evident. That he might convict the world of its sin and unrighteousness, and convince it of Christ's righteousness and of the ultimate judgment, we all can conceive.

      I dwell on this passage with the more emphasis, because the office of the Holy Spirit is the most essential doctrine of the whole evangelical dispensation. The mission of the Lord Jesus by his Father, and the mission of the Holy Spirit by the Son, after his glorification in the heavens, are the two most grand and sublime missions in the annals of time or in the ages of eternity. Jesus Christ came into the world to reveal the character of his Father. The Holy Spirit came to the church to glorify Christ and to sanctify his people. Jesus came to magnify Jehovah's empire, to sustain his law and government, and to make them honorable to the universe--to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to obtain an eternal redemption for us. But the Spirit came to be the Holy Guest of the house that Jesus built for a habitation of God through the Spirit. He is another advocate for God, another demonstration of his infinite, eternal and immutable love.

      The memorable Pentecost after Christ's ascension and coronation as Lord of all fully attests the truth and reveals the import of the special advocacy of the Holy Spirit. He opened the new reign with brilliant displays of his glory, gave great eloquence to his apostles, and confirmed his pretensions and their mission by a power that brought three thousand Jews to do homage at his feet.

      We have dwelt upon this error, not so much because of its mere verbal inaccuracy and incompetency to indicate the mind of the Spirit, but because a most solemn and sublime fact is involved in it, which, when developed and established, trenches far into the territories of a cold Unitarian rationalism, and also invades the wide dominions of a frenzied enthusiasm.

      If any one, however, should question its philological propriety, I will refer him to the fact that the whole family of paracleetos is translated, by even King James's authority, in keeping with these views. Thus, the verb parakaleoo is rendered to call for, to invite, to exhort, to admonish, to persuade, to implore, to beseech, to console. And its verbal parakleesis is also rendered a calling for, an invitation, a teaching; and parakleetos (1 John i. 2) is rendered an advocate. But no one term fully and adequately expresses all that is comprehended in the mission and work of the Holy Spirit in the remedial dispensation. It not [624] only imparted all spiritual gifts to the apostles, prophets and Jewish evangelists of Christ, but in becoming the Holy Guest of the church he animates, purifies and comforts it with all his illuminating, renovating and sanctifying efficacy.

      But there are other sources of error, growing out of the fearful apostasy which has spread its sable wings and its leaden sceptre over a slumbering world. The progress in Bible-translating, in Biblical criticism, in liberal principles, in the free discussion of all questions concerning state and church polity, has, more or less, broken the spell of human authority, roused the long-latent energies of the human mind, and begotten and cherished a spirit of inquiry before which truth and virtue alone can stand erect, with a portly mien, an unblenching eye and an unfaltering tongue. Errors long consecrated in hallowed fanes, backed by monarchical and papal authority, lauded by lordly bishops, canonized by hoary rabbis in solemn conclaves, and confirmed by the decrees of ecumenical councils, are being disrobed of all their factitious ornaments and exposed in their naked deformity to the wondering gaze of a long insulted and degraded people. The inquiry of the people is beginning to be, What is truth? not, Who says so? What say the oracles of God? not, What council has so decided? We must be judged every man for himself. We shall, therefore, judge for ourselves.

      The Christian mind, since the era of Protestantism, has been advancing with a slow but steady pace, an onward and an upward progress. Its noble and splendid victories in physical science, in useful and ornamental arts, in free government and in social institutions, have increased its courage, animated its hopes and emboldened its efforts to find its proper eminence. It has not yet fixed its own destiny, limited its own aspirations, nor stipulated its subordination to any human arbitrament.

      In the department of religion and divine obligation it has tried every form of ecclesiastical polity, every human constitution and variety of partisan and schismatic theology, and every scheme of propagating its own peculiar tenets. Nor has it yet found a safe and sure haven in which to anchor, in hope of coming safely to land. It will not surrender nor capitulate on any terms dishonorable to its own dignity, nor compromise its convictions for the sake of popular applause.

      The questions of the present day are more grave and momentous, in their bearings on church and state, than any questions propounded and discussed in former times. Even the very text of the Holy Bible has been submitted to a more severe ordeal and test than at any former [625] time. And that the holy oracles of salvation shall go forth in their primitive purity into all lands and languages is now firmly decided by the purest, most enlightened, most generous and noble-hearted men in the world. Hence the inquiry for the old paths--the ancient landmarks of truth and error.

      You, my Christian brethren, assembled here on the present occasion in one of the noblest causes that ever engaged the human faculties or fired with pure devotion the human heart, have in your horizon the illustrious aim of giving to the world abroad a pure and faithful translation of the living oracles. You will have no fellowship with any compromise--with any scheme that merely builds up a party, or seeks the applause of those who have, for the sake of "a fair show in the flesh," done homage at the shrine or yielded to the false oratory and special pleadings of a self-seeking, a self-preferring, a self-aggrandizing spirit. You will show no partiality for consecrated error because of the good and learned and charitable people who advocate it, or because of the flatteries of those who fear your example as weakening their authority and impairing their hold on the smiles of the world.

      You are determined to carry the work of translation to its proper metes and boundaries. You will have no privileged, canonized and time-consecrated terms, exempted by prescription, privilege or concession from the tests of language, the canons of criticism and the laws of interpretation. The most consecrated ecclesiastical terms--the aristocracy of terminology--occasionally, too, the strongholds of error--you will not exempt from the statutes of interpretation, from the umpirage of lexicography. You will pass no special statute in favor of the two houses of baptizo and rantizo, nor grant aristocratic exemptions and privileges to either, but will bring them into court and give them a fair trial, by the canons and laws of criticism, before the high tribunal of inspired apostles and prophets.

      That class of errors which gives the particular currency of one age the power to nullify the legitimate and constitutional currency of another will receive no favor at your hands. For why should ordinances prescribed by Divine authority be reversed, altered, amended or adjusted by any human tribunal to suit the prejudice or caprice of worldly conformity? This species of Protestant Popery is just as abhorrent to your morals, to reason and revelation, as any other form of it.

      Let us, then, still more gravely look at the issues to be made on the present occasion. Protestant Christendom has acknowledged one faith, one Lord, two baptisms, many Lord's tables, and several forms of [626] church polity growing out of these unfortunate and unhallowed traditions; and one of the capital devices of Satan is to blink some matters of grave moment and give others a factitious importance.

      Positive ordinances are belittled by most parties who have substituted human institutions for divine enactments. They enthrone their beau-ideal of the Christian virtues under the name of "Christian Charity," and desecrate divine ordinances under the name of "Rites and Ceremonies." But let me say it once for all, and most emphatically, that Divine ordinances are the very marrow and fatness of the Christian institution--the embodiment of its spiritual promises, joys and consolations. They are like the sun, moon and stars, those Divine ordinances of nature in which and through which God communicates light and life and health to the world. They are as the dew, and the sunshine, and the early and the latter rain, to our hills and valleys, that make them verdant and fruitful, and vocal with the praise of the Lord.

      Zeal for Divine ordinances is the best criterion, and always was the most conclusive test, of a standing or a falling church. The Lord, by Malachi, said to the Jewish community in their decline, "From the days of your fathers you are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith Jehovah." The highest commendation that could be given of Zacharias and Elizabeth, the parents of the Baptist, was that they "were blameless observers of the commandments and ordinances of the Lord." What then pleased the Lord will please him now. The ordinances of sun, moon and stars differ from one another. They are, indeed, all luminaries. Each one of them, however, has its own magnitude and its specific use, as well as its own position in the universe. So of the ordinances of grace. They are all fraught with blessings to the intelligent believing recipients of them; but each one of them has its proper place and its peculiar influence upon those who scripturally submit to it. But out of that place they are unmeaning rites and useless ceremonies. They alike mock God and the recipients of them. They, therefore, not only glorify the wisdom and grace of God, who scripturally teach and dispense them, but also promote the sanctification and happiness of those who receive them. "Therefore," says the Great Teacher, "whosoever shall violate, and cause others to violate, one of the least of these my precepts, shall be of no account in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them shall be of great esteem in the kingdom of heaven."

      Is speaking of the classification of errors of translation, we left for [627] special consideration one class of errors which, with the members of the Bible Union, at this peculiar crisis, is worthy of special regard. It is that to which your new institution, my Christian friends, owes its origin.

      You and those who have compelled you to form a separate and distinct organization alike agree as to the necessity for an improved version. You do not say a new, an absolutely new, version; nor have I ever supposed such a thing necessary or desirable. I, as well as you, love the Anglo-Saxon Bible style; and who that has read it from infancy to manhood does not love it? Love it, I say; not merely admire its simplicity, its force, its beauty, its easy apprehension, but delight in its charms, and in its thousand agreeable associations in our memories and in our hearts.

      They, too, from whom you have been compelled to separate in this particular work admire and love it.

      I have long regretted that most of our approved versions, as they are called, should have needlessly changed the style and language of the Anglo-Saxon of King James. My views are that no change should be made but such as faithfulness to the original requires. True, indeed, there are many antique, quaint and ungrammatical phrases, such as, "We do you to wit;" "I trow not," "Our Father which art in heaven;" "He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit," &c., which a moderate complaisance to grammar and literary taste would correct or amend. But, while tithing these as "mint, anise and cummin," we would rather call your attention to the weightier matters of the common version.

      Its authors, indeed, much more deserve the character of judicious copyists than that of learned and independent translators. King James and his ecclesiastical courtiers were much more in love with Geneva than Jerusalem, and the translators very happily copied and anglicised the Geneva version, and paid a due degree of reverence to his majesty's inhibition from touching with their unclean hands the old-fashioned and canonized "ecclesiastical words;" and by these means, as faithful servants of his majesty, they left in Greek, or in Geneva style, hosts of words, with the whole baptizo family, unamended and untranslated.

      That rantizo and baptizo are Greek words, wanting only half a letter, no man of self-respect and of literary pretensions will deny. And that they are both of frequent occurrence in the Levitical law, is universally conceded. But our pedobaptist friends are slow to learn that in not one instance in the whole Septuagint version are baptizo and rantizo interchanged. Their families were never on [628] friendly terms of intercommunication. They lived together for fifteen hundred years and never once intermarried, nor did baptizo ever employ rantizo, nor rantizo baptizo, down to the forty-third generation, to do for one another any one service. Nor did any Jew, from Moses to Christ, rantize by baptizing, or baptize by rantizing. In English, no Jew ever once tried to dip by sprinkling, or to sprinkle by dipping. This incontrovertible fact, in a law which contained many typical observances of the greatest exactness, must stand through all coming time, as it has stood through all past time, an irrefragable evidence of the folly or weakness of any one presuming that these two words can, by any grammatical, logical or even rhetorical possibility, indicate one and the same thing.

      This fact is, with us, most conclusive and satisfactory proof that no man can be a faithful and competent translator of the Divine oracles, in an age of controversy, as to the initiatory action which Christ commanded, who does not select a term to represent it in the language into which he translates, as definite, precise and immutable as the original term baptizo; and that the Latin immerse, and the Saxon dippan, from the Greek dupto, to dive or dip, do exactly represent the original Greek, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt. There is no need whatever to multiply proof beyond this single fact, although we have volumes of evidence at our command.

      With us it is, at best, but a waste of time to argue that we never can have a faithful, true and intelligible version of the Scriptures until this word is thus translated. Every intelligent Baptist, every well-educated man of no religious party, knows this to be a fact--a fact as true and veritable as that Jesus is the Christ. And shall we, knowing this, presume, before heaven and earth, to give to the world, or to circulate through the Christian church, a false or an equivocal translation, through the fear of men, or that lame and blind charity which yields to the unreasonable prejudices of society and covets the Honor that comes from man, as necessary to aid either the Holy Spirit or the oracles of God in the work of converting sinners to God or the church from her idolatry?

      To assume, as some of our Baptist brethren have virtually assumed, that baptize is an English word, and not a translation of a Greek word, is to say that the whole New Testament is translated whenever the Greek words are printed or written in Roman characters. This is, so far as I now remember its details, the pith of the whole controversy at the late meeting of the American and Foreign Bible Society, in this city. [629]

      We sometimes transfer and naturalize words, as we transfer men from one nation to another; but then we do not say that every naturalized or adopted citizen has been translated from Europe or Asia into America, as Enoch and Elijah were translated to heaven. The Romans, from whom we got the word immersion, did not transfer it from the Greek language. It was, with them, a translation of baptisma; and can we adopt this translation from the Romans, and then call both it and the word which it represents a translation from the Greek into our proper vernacular?

      But, waiving, on the present occasion, any discussion of the merits of this question--any attempt to show that in the judgment of the whole literary world the term baptizo was translated; by the Romans immergo, and that immerse is a verbal from immergo, ages since adopted into our language, and used as synonymous with dip, another naturalized Greek word, transmitted to us from our Saxon forefathers, the meaning of which every child in Great Britain and in the United States understands as well as it does the words bread and water--we proceed to state that the terms church, conversation, communion, fellowship, repentance, charity, bishop, deacon, presbytery, angel, covenant, testament, &c. demand the profound consideration of modern translators, as much as this now-a-days litigated sectarian word baptism.

      We want no special, sectarian or national translation of the living oracles. We ardently desire a perspicuous, definite, forcible and elegant version of the book of life. For this great work we should desire more than the concurrence and co-operation of the whole Christian world, in its modern import; we should desire to have Jews, Greeks, Romanists, Protestants, and even well-educated antiquaries, and literary and moral skeptics, if they could be found. But this would be Utopianism--a chimerical hope. Of "the whole Christian world" we could not interest even the section called Protestant to unite with us. From the galleries, from the high seats of the modern synagogues of Protestant Christendom, the seven demons that pander to that trinity of lusts and passions called the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye and the pride of life have not yet been exorcised. There is too much of the world in the bosom of the Protestant section of Christendom. What, then, must be done? Sit down upon the bank of the river of Babylon and wait till its waters fail--till its channel be dry?

      No! You say, No! by no means! Rather let the Baptist portion of Christendom, without respect to its private opinions, come together, with its chosen men all. And make a Baptist Bible? What! a Baptist [630] Bible! Yes! if it should so happen that God's Bible and the Baptist Bible be one and the same book.

      But we can furnish a version which we can sustain by the testimony of the mighty dead, and by a portion of the living mighty men, of the anti-Baptist Christendom. I will go one step higher and affirm that we Baptists, General and Particular, Old School and New School, Reform and anti-Reform, Orthodox and Heterodox, can make just as good, as true, as faithful, as exact, as elegant, a new version, or an improved version, out of the pedorantist or anti-Baptist versions, emendations, disquisitions and criticisms now at this moment extant, as we could make were we all, with one accord and in one place, to meet and sit upon the original text, in grave deliberation, for seven long years. This is my belief, opinion, conviction, assurance, or whatever else you may choose to call it.

      But we regret to learn that not even the Baptists can be induced to come together in one fraternal phalanx to achieve this great and noble object. Since my arrival in this city I have been informed that there are some of them warmly opposed to it--that even tracts and pamphlets have been issued and put into circulation against an improved version of the living oracles. Two of these now lie before me. They were presented to me in answer to my inquiry for the reasons why the whole Baptist community did not make it a common cause and come up as one man to the work. One of them enumerates no less than ten reasons against an attempt to prepare a new version, and from a quarter that I could not have anticipated. Its eminent author, in the form of a very learned and laborious volume against Romanism, stands in my library on the same shelf with my Debate with Bishop Purcell of Cincinnati on the same subject. And how can it be, I asked myself, that he should now stand with that party in opposing a new and improved version, in our own language, of the words of eternal life? I opened it with much interest, curious to have this mystery revealed. To its title-page my attention was instantly turned, and fixed upon its remarkable motto--"THE OLD-FASHIONED BIBLE." While pondering upon the author's design in this strange motto, I hastily turned to its last page, and again read,--

"Is this," said I to myself, "an ad captandum vulgus, a lure for the unwary reader, or the great argument for the inviolability and immortality of King James's version?" I dared not, till I had read it [631] through, answer this first inquiry. I had no sooner glanced through its ten arguments than my eyes were opened. The spirit of the motto is the soul of its ten arguments. Its body, or substance, is, "The purpose" to have and to introduce a new version "is fraught with injury" and ruin to the Baptists. Alas for the feeble Baptists, if a new version is fraught with injury and ruin to the denomination! But, combining his logic and rhetoric in two lines, he finds their salvation in

After a moment's reflection, it occurred to me that not only the motto, but the whole ten arguments, in their soul, body and spirit, were as good against a new version in the days of Tindal as now, and will be as good, as sound, as conclusive, against a new version, against every change which has been, is now or will hereafter be proposed, through all coming time.

      From the printing of Tindal's version till that of James's version, there was a copy of the Bible in many Christian families, and some of them lay on a stand. Now, on the first motion, in the fatherland, to have an improved version, had the author of the "Ten Reasons" been then living and consulted, he would have raised the time of the "old-fashioned Bible that lay on the stand," and for this good and sound reason--that good sense and good logic are immutably the same, yesterday, to-day and to-morrow. If an old-fashioned Bible lying one year, or one century, on a stand, be a sound and satisfactory argument against a new version of the Holy Scriptures, it will forever be an invincible argument against any correction, emendation or change whatever.

      The ten reasons given in this pamphlet of six-and-thirty pages, arithmetically enumerated and logically arranged, are a mere dilution or expansion of this one popular and prolific syllogism.

      It is again presented in the following words:--The mere purpose to have a new version is "fraught with injury to the denomination"--"destructive of brotherly love and harmony"--"suicidal to the American and Foreign Bible Society"--"and utterly uncalled for by any consideration of principle or of duty." These are the four cardinal points to which are respectively directed the ten reasons.

      The ten reasons are, indeed, essentially, one and all, political or denominational. The glory, honor and integrity of the Baptist denomination, it would appear, are much more, in the eye and heart of their [632] author, than the importance or value of a pure and faithful, a clear and intelligible, translation of the oracles of God. This I hope is not so. But he writes and reasons in such a way as to make it appear so, and thus injures his own reputation much more than he can impede the glorious enterprise. For this cannot fail, Heaven being assuredly on its side.

      Now, the case stands thus:--The common version was gotten up some two and a half centuries since, under prelatical, hierarchical and royal patronage and restrictions. The vernacular of that day, spoken and written, was, in orthography, punctuation, and in much of its common wording, quite different from that of the present day. The knowledge of the original tongues then possessed, was proportionally more than two centuries behind that of the present day, and their general literature and science were still more deficient.

      Since that day, there have been many changes in the common version in the use of capitals, points, verses, sections, paragraphs; some of which materially affect the sense; and, indeed, all of them are a species of notes and comments of human authority. By whose authority they were made, few can now say. But if there were any good reason or logic in favor of these changes, that same good reason and logic demand their continuance though made without the authority of King James and his forty-seven chosen men. But if the authority of King James and his hierarchical counsellors be still paramount authority in the conscience of such men as the author of the Ten Reasons, then they should repudiate all the improvements already made, and restore the identical version of King James, letter and point, for this good reason, that "he who keeps the whole law and yet offends in one point is guilty of all." Nor ought they to translate one word untranslated by these elect translators--not one single amen, anathema or maranatha. But who will stand up in defence of such a position?

      If God values and will sanction and fulfil every jot and tittle of his law; if he commanded Moses to see that he made all things connected with the tabernacle and its service--even to the sockets and the tenons of its boards, and to the loops and selvedges of its curtains--according to a pattern showed him in the mount; and if the same spirit animated and guided the Jews in their best days, insomuch that they counted the words and even the letters of the Pentateuch, lest one error should find its way into the sacred text; and if after he return from their captivity in Babylon, where their language was corrupted, Ezra the scribe in reading their law interpreted every unknown term and repudiated every corruption of the text, so [633] that he caused the people to hear and to understand the oracles of Jehovah, shall we, to whom God has committed the Christian oracles, the holy gospel and its sublime institutions, suffer it to be corrupted, obscured or rendered unintelligible, without the most strenuous effort on our part to preserve uncorrupted the precious deposit, and to extend to our contemporaries and transmit to posterity all "the words of this life?" Forbid it, reason, conscience and heaven! Has not Jehovah said that "though heaven be his throne, and earth his footstool, though he is the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, to this man he will look with complacency, even to him that is of an humble and a contrite spirit, and who trembles at his word"?

      The good sense and good taste of the Grecian poet Homer are never so impressively displayed as when introducing, as he often does, the gods of Pagan superstition into his poem. He always suffers them, without note or comment, to express themselves in their own terms. I could wish that our venerable translators had been as judicious and as discreet as this great Grecian bard.

      But why argue this case any further? The many marginal readings of recondite terms n our numerous and various commentaries, and in our family Bibles and Testaments, the labors of innumerable pulpit orators and lecturers, expended every Lord's day in correcting and explaining the text in all the synagogues in our land; alike demonstrate the need of a new version, and our ability to furnish it,--first by selecting a well-authenticated original text, and then by giving an exact, perspicuous and faithful translation of it, and that, too, in a pure, chaste and elegant Anglo-Saxon style. That our age and contemporaries are equal to this, is quite as evident as that the Greek and Roman classics have been, and can again be, so translated by competent scholars.

      But, according to certain learned doctors, the time has not yet come. No; nor will the time which they have imagined ever come. In all past versions the dignitaries, the prelates, the hierarchs, were compelled into the measure--though sometimes resisting till their thrones were is danger. They too, like some of our modern doctors, could see nothing but denominational ruin, dissension and disaster in such an undertaking; and, still worse, they could neither see nor feel any principle, duty or obligation requiring them to give the full sense of God's book and, Ezra-like, to make the people understand the sacred text.

      But the impending difficulties are somewhat magnified in the imagination of such desponding doctors. The pedobaptist clergy are much [634] more friendly to us immersionists than formerly. They are sharing with us their literary and ecclesiastic honors. They desire an amicable and honorable truce a cessation of sectarian strife, a generous league under the serene and pacific motto, "Let me alone, and I will let thee alone; for we are brethren."

      But this denominational harmony, charity and truce will soon pass away should we have a new version. No, my good brethren; no such thing. They will respect you more. They will in heart and conscience honor you more. And, better still, you will be much more honorable in your own eyes, and in the eyes of Him who looks not on the outward professions, but upon the heart.

      But I have not yet said that which I wish most emphatically to say. I want no Baptist Bible in their sense of that cognomen. Nor would I plead for a new version for the sake of the word immersion. We can prove Christian immersion, as Christ's own institution, against the world, and that, too, from King James's translation. We have done it on many occasions.

      No one has paid less homage to sectarian tenets, prejudices and partialities--no one, it has been said, has more violently assailed the idols of the parties--than your humble servant. I have made myself vile and heretical in the esteem of their warmest defenders. And what has been the result? My experience may be profitable to others. A great revolution has been effected, our opponents themselves being judges. Myriads and myriads have, through our instrumentality and that of our brotherhood, received the gospel during the last thirty years. And, strange to tell, our very opponents who once accused us of the most heretical tenets have themselves acknowledged us orthodox, just as orthodox as themselves, in all that is deemed vital, soul-redeeming and soul-transforming in the Christian doctrine. It will be so in this grand enterprise. Those who deprecate this movement, and inveigh most loudly and bitterly against it, will, when it has achieved its object, acknowledge its value, commend your courage and magnanimity, and gratefully regard on as the benefactors of your age and country.

      But we must meet with a firm reliance on the promise of Divine aid, and in an humble, sincere and prayerful spirit, free from the alloy of worldly policy, of fleshly interests, of sectarian partialities, with the love of truth and of the God of truth in our hearts, with the throne of impartial and ultimate judgment in our eye, and concentrate and consecrate all our learning, all our wisdom, all our patience, all our energies and all our devotion on the transcendent subject. And why should we not? Is it not expedient? is it not necessary? [635] is it not essential to the prosperity of Zion, to the enlightenment, the consolation, of Christians, to the conviction, the conversion, the sanctification, the salvation, of the Christian world, so called, and to the illumination and rescue of Pagandom from the stupidity, the degradation, the tyranny, the abject thraldom, of the low, mean and contemptible idolatries of the regions of darkness and the shadows of death, where no vision is, and the people perish?

      Let us, then, awake from this state of supineness, cold indifference, sinful apathy, reproachful cowardice, and, with an ardent zeal, a lively hope, an assured confidence in God our Saviour, concert, digest and systematize a plan of holy co-operation, of well-concerted action, of successful effort, in this benevolent, noble and godlike enterprise.

      Let us make no truce with error, no covenant with guile, no agreement with hypocrisy, no league with the spirit of darkness, but, as sons of light, put on the armor of light, grasp the sword of the Spirit, and make a courageous, unanimous and brave assault on the gates of darkness, superstition and error.

      And is not the object, the end in view, great, noble and divine? If human redemption cost high Heaven so much as the mission, humiliation, degradation and sacrifice of God's only-begotten and well-beloved Son, to effect the restoration of fallen, ruined, wretched man to the favor and complacent affection of his Father and his God; if the Lord Christ assumed our nature, bore our infirmities, carried our griefs, expiated our guilt by the voluntary sacrifice of himself, and descended into the grave, the regions of darkness and corruption, that he might rescue man from eternal darkness, from everlasting woe; if the Spirit of wisdom and knowledge, of counsel and might, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, with all his powers of knowledge, wisdom and eloquence, became a missionary, sent by the Father and the Son, to inspire prophets and apostles, to animate saints and martyrs, to become the holy guest of Christ's own mystical body the church, and to sanctify, purify, and ennoble that body with the graces of wisdom and knowledge, of love and mercy, and to robe it with the beauty of holiness, to adorn it with heavenly graces, and to present it a pure and holy church, without spot, or wrinkle, or blemish, before the throne of God, amidst the congratulations and acclamations of heavenly hosts of wondering, adoring and transported angels--shall we, the subjects of Almighty grace, the ransomed sons of God, the heirs and expectants of eternal glory, be selfish, lukewarm, cowardly, faint-hearted and desponding, in the work of faith, the labor of love, the patience of hope, for the sake of any ephemeral interest, any worldly policy, any fleshly [636] advantage accruing from our selfishness, our carnality, our earthly-mindedness? No! forbid it reason, conscience, hope and heaven!

      Now, all that faith and hope and love inspire comes from the oracles of God--comes through the words and sentences of heaven inspired prophets, holy bards, apostles and evangelists, embalmed in Hebrew and Greek. These oracles have been committed to the church, and especially to the Baptist church, herself being judge. Her views of Christian ordinances--not merely of faith, hope and love, but of the sealing, sanctifying, animating ordinances of the Christian institution--are, in our best judgment, our most clear and forcible conviction, especially intrusted to the Baptist communities. I am aware that time was when she had not one tolerably-educated man in every hundred of her most enthusiastic, laborious and successful declaimers and proclaimers, and that still the proportion of such is but small. But since the second conversion of the pedobaptists Luther Rice and Adoniram Judson, a great change has come upon the denomination. These noble, self-humiliating; self-denying, self-sacrificing spirits elected a great revolution in the minds of the denomination. One of them died gloriously in the harness, dragging up the rugged cliffs of worldly selfishness and parsimoniousness the car of education--literary and scientific education--subordinate to evangelical and ministerial education--a martyr, truly, in the noble cause. Meantime, his beloved brother Judson exiled himself from his own beloved land, from all the associations of his youth, from all that is dear to flesh and blood, and in the spirit of ancient times, cast his bread and his life upon the waters of the mighty deep, crossed the broad oceans of earth, and went in quest of the lost sheep amongst the mountains and valleys of Pagan Asia, whence came the word of life to Europe and the New World. Noble spirit!--a martyr, too. Perhaps he yet lives on some sunny isle of the wild ocean, seeking to reinvigorate his shattered frame, to reanimate his fallen tabernacle, that he may yet guide a few more lost and wandering pagans to the Lamb of God, that they may be baptized in the fountain of David's house and drink the spirit of the gospel age from the golden chalice of everlasting love. With peace and love in his heart, heaven and glory in his eye, we say, "The Lord bless thee, and keep thee; the Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious to thee; the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace!"⁴ [637]

      Since, I say, the conversion and self-consecration of these brilliant stars of the Baptist Zion, the denomination has been annually ascending in all that gives strength, dignity and power to an evangelical ministry. Yet she is greatly in the rear of some other denominations in those literary accomplishments, in those scientific attainments, that give strength, eloquence and power to those who lead the way in the paths of public reformation. Education, without grace, does nothing in the kingdom of God. Grace, with a very little education, may, with remarkable talents, do much. But the moral, the spiritual, the evangelical power of sound learning, divine grace and eminent talents combined in one person, who can limit or define?

      Still, after all the subtractions which impartial reason and justice can make, the Baptists are this day in all their force, in the addition of all their broken bands and dissociated fragments, the most numerous, the most powerful and the most proselyting denomination in America. They have, too, in their aggregate, as much talent, learning, wealth, power, political, moral and religious, as any other denomination in our country, with a little too much worldly-mindedness and a too great hankering after the idol called popularity. United in one unbroken phalanx, what might they not accomplish? Were they to go forth in the armor of light, with the holy oracles in their hands and in their hearts, not trammelled with the traditions of men, not doing homage to the false glosses and fanciful interpretations of a few rabbis baptized in the fountains of human speculations and a false philosophy, what might they not achieve?

      To conclude--for we have already transcended the narrow limits of a fashionable discourse--having had only a few fragments of time, gathered up amidst many avocations and perplexities, incident to our standing in too many relations to society, I have, with a free hand, sketched but a few of the many thoughts that are now pressing on my mind for utterance.

      Brethren, the time is short. Much is to be done, much can be done, and much ought to be done in the great and solemn and transcendent [638] work of getting up and consummating a perspicuous, forcible and faithful version of the Word of Life, and in presenting it to the Lord, his cause and people.

      Let us fear no sectarian, partisan or denominational opposition. Let us not cater to the whims, the prejudices, the pride or the partiality of any people. Let us not flatter the vain, the worldly or the proud, but, in the fear of the Lord, in the love of Zion and in the hope of a brighter and a better day, add to our faith courage, to our courage the wisdom of the serpent without its venom, the harmlessness of the dove without its timidity, and, in the humble and meek spirit of the gospel, stand up courageously, cordially and with one consent for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; thus giving to our contemporaries and posterity an unequivocal and noble proof of our piety, benevolence and courage. Not conferring with flesh and blood, but, in the fear of God, the love of Christ and the hope of heaven, let us set about this grand and lofty enterprise, pregnant with glory to God in the highest heaven, peace on earth and good-will among men. [639]

[PLA 600-639]