MR. HEYWOOD'S MOTION.

293

scientiously carried out, whenever such passages occur, would convert their office every Sabbath from that of teachers into that of critics. Mr. Heywood, in his speech, pointedly refers to the fact of a Scotch preacher founding his celebrated sermon before the first personages in the kingdom, on a text which is improperly translated; "so that there was really no connexion between the subject of this excellent discourse, and the true interpretation of the text on which it was ostensibly based." We need not say how such an exposure must tend to weaken the confidence of the people either in their preachers or their Bibles. But this is probably only an instance of the manner in which the mistakes of the present version are slurred over by some of those, whose duty it is to explain it correctly; or rather, perhaps, it affords a proof that many, even of the highest classes, would prefer to take the present version such as it is, rather than to be critically enlightened from the pulpit, as to the genuine sense of the original.

The pith, however, of Sir George Grey's reply to Mr. Heywood's motion, seems to centre in the remark,-" that the appointment of such a commission as that proposed would have a tendency to unsettle the faith of a great body of the people, and to lessen their respect and reverence for the authorised version of the Scriptures." A double fallacy lies on the surface of this opinion, which will be obvious to all who have gone along with us, in the course of our investigation in the preceding article. It supposes that the faith of the people is implicitly wedded to the existing version in every particular; and that the respect for it is such, that it must be shaken by any attempt of the authorities of this land to improve it. We differ entirely from the view thus taken, and we are sure that we do not misinterpret the faith of the people at large, by saying that it is now no longer a blind faith, as it was in the age preceding the Reformation, but one which seeks to be enlightened, and would consider itself degraded by the supposition, that its faith and knowledge could not keep pace with each other. Its reverence for the

Scriptures is not so essentially bound up with the English authorised version, that it must needs retain every portion of this version, or cease to believe the Scriptures to be the word of God. Wherever education has extended itself, in any moderate degree, among the people, they are already fully aware that their faith rests not upon this or that particular version, but upon the truth of the original Scriptures. They are therefore prepared to believe that the English version, good as it may be in some sense, is no such infal

lible representative of Holy Writ as is here supposed; and even the marginal readings have long ago taught them that there may be room for much distrust or doubt, as to the correctness, exactness, or desirableness of many things in the present reading of the text of the English Bible. Were the present version intended only for the use of the uneducated portion of our community, there might be some force in Sir G. Grey's objections; but considering that this version must be accepted, by the educated as well as the illiterate, as the standard of all religious doctrine and practice-the genuine exponent of God's truth not only to the mind of the poor and untaught and unquestioning reader, but that it demands to be received as the sole legalized instructor, (as to the text,) in all colleges, schools and pulpits, it is evident that apologies for such a version, which are not based upon the simple assurance of its being throughout, as far as it may be, an accurate translation of the divine volume, in all respects, involve an egregious fallacy; for they suppose that the whole people of this country are, and will be, content with what but imperfectly represents this volume. That a large section of the educated and inquiring classes are in the present day fully cognisant of its defects, and anxious for their removal, is so obvious a fact, that whoever is not aware of it must have shut his eyes to one of the most striking symptoms of religious progress in the study and acquirement of Scriptural knowledge, during the age in which we live. This very circumstance it is, that a love of the Bible and of Biblical teaching has been awakened in men's minds in our days, much more than heretofore, which makes them less disposed to accept the present version at so high a rate as formerly, and makes it a subject of greater regret that this version should be one which, instead of uniformly strengthening their faith, would in its existing state be more apt in some instances to weaken it, if they were to rely too implicitly upon the mere letter of the authorised rendering. Amidst doubts of this kind which are thus sometimes raised, and of which infidelity has taken advantage in various instances, it is surely little better than a species of mental hallucination, to talk of the settlement of the faith of the body of the people, in connexion with their reverence for the authorised version. We might just as well have talked, before the Reform Bill was introduced, of the reverence of the people for the English constitution. Undoubtedly this was the subject of as much veneration in the minds of many as our English Bible now is; and yet, nevertheless, we may safely admit that there were

none who reverenced it more than those who attempted to sweep away, with the most unsparing hand, deformities which had become incidental to an ancient system of government, and to remedy defects which a more advanced state of our institutions demanded.

There were, however, then, as well as now, persons who decidedly set their faces against all change of our political system, on the avowed plea that such changes were highly hazardous, and that the time for making them was not arrived. Similar arguments are also thus urged against all alterations in our religious polity, and upon grounds equally futile. The vis inertia may, indeed, sometimes operate as a salutary check to the too fervid wheels of political or religious excitement; but not unfrequently it is also the morbid symptom of the body's weakness and decline-of unwieldy corpulence, aged imbecility, or hopeless decrepitude. If, as it has been alleged by some, of whom better things might have been hoped for,* that the time is not come to move in such matters as the reformation of our Bible version, and this in any shape,† then assuredly we are fallen upon evil times. Can it be that centuries of increasing light and improving knowledge have rendered us, as a nation, less willing to take advantage of this light, by letting it shine forth from the pages of divine truth in our vernacular Bible? Can it be that our religious animosities, our party differences, have grown to such an intense degree of bigotry, since the principles of the Bible have been more generally diffused in our land, from the days of the Reformation, that we cannot now agree, either as scholars or as Christians, in allowing the Bible to reflect a purer light among us-one that might be altogether untinged with the prismatic hue of sectarian prejudices? If this be really the case, truly we may as well shut up the sacred volume altogether, or consign ourselves again to the darkness of the mediæval ages; for what is the value of all the moral influence that this volume has had upon our minds and religious tempers? To assent to the dogmas of those who would thus enlist us on the side of a laissez faire system, in religion as in church politics, must be indeed to pronounce a sharper

* We refer to some letters that have lately appeared in the Times by Dr. Cumming, in opposition to the work of Bible revision, and which have been ably answered by several correspondents in that journal.

We are of opinion that if nothing could be done at present in the way of a revised edition of the Bible by authority, there might be a large addition to the marginal readings, which the ministers of the Church should be authorised to substitute, if they thought proper, in the room of the existing

text.

satire upon our ecclesiastical system, and our common Protestantism, than Romanism, with its sibilant tongue, or infidelity with its foul breath, has ever given utterance to. But even were the dangers as great as those imagine who always see lions in the way, wherever a path is marked out by which great ends are to be accomplished, we must not shrink from what we believe to be an imperative duty on the part of every nation to whom the word of God has been transmitted,-to have it among them in their own language with as much purity as is compatible with the work of translation. The interests of divine truth and of sacred wisdom are not to be compromised for any mere temporary advantages. An inestimable treasure is placed in our hands, and we are not to permit it, under any circumstances, to be hid under a bushel or laid up in a napkin. It should be treated by us with all the active care that is due to so excellent a gift. To suffer needless obscurities to remain on the page where there might be clearness of vision; discrepancies where there might be agreement; deformities where there might be beauties; erroneous or vague renderings where there might be correctness and certainty, is to manifest but a very imperfect sense of our obligations and responsibilities in this great matter. It is to suffer the fine gold entrusted to us to be wasted or to become dim, in passing through the mould and crucible of a translation, which is thus imperfect by our own negligence or prejudice, instead of seeking that it may come forth a more worthy representative of the original itself, and thus, a nearer reflex of the image of the Divine Mind.

ART. II.-1. Etudes Littéraires sur les Ecrivains Français de la Réformation. Par A SAYOUS. Seconde Edition.

2 vols.

2. Histoire de la Littérature Française à l'Etranger depuis le commencement du 17e siècle. Par A. SAYOUS. (Ouvrage couronné par l'Académie Française.) 2 vols. Paris et Genêve.

WE have placed together two publications of M. Sayous, because the second is, in a great measure, a continuation of the first; and although the writers who, during the seventeenth century, composed French works on a foreign soil. were not exclusively Protestants, yet the majority belonged to the persecuted church. We shall, therefore, avail our

selves of this opportunity for the purpose of examining the principal characteristics of Huguenot literature, and we shall endeavour to point out, as briefly as we can, the way in which the greatest religious movement on record, since the introduction of Christianity, modified and new-moulded the intellectual culture of our French neighbours.

Let us, in the first place, endeavour to ascertain what was the relative state of parties when the sound of the gospel trumpet roused large portions of Europe from the sleep of death. We see, on the one hand, a once powerful and admirably organized body, the self-constituted centre of every species of authority, beginning gradually to lose its former position through the weakness, follies, and vices of many of its most eminent members. Ecclesiastical discipline has become a farce; religion, a round of superstitious observances; scholasticism," an insincere, unreal system, a collection of principles, the data of a prescriptive authority.' On the other hand, we find that the spirit of liberty is agitating in various ways the whole mass of the community. The revival of literature, the discovery of the New World, the invention of printing a multitude of concurrent causes, open wide and unexplored fields to the researches of human speculation. Was it at all likely that thinking men would remain satisfied with a barren code of philosophy which, after having degenerated into a mere set of mechanical formulæ, regarded Greek with suspicion, and pronounced a deleatur against Hebrew? The reaction was three-fold. An intense contempt for the theological dogmatism of the middle ages hurried thousands into scepticism; carrying its intolerant enthusiasm almost to the borders of irreligion, the "Renaissance "movement may be considered merely a literary revolution on behalf of classical antiquity; the Reformers, in fine, rushed to the only post in the field of battle, on the maintaining of which hung the destinies of the world.

We may compare this triple movement to three streams which have sprung from a common source; after following for a short time a parallel course, they at length work each for itself a distinct channel, and proceed in opposite directions. If the "Renaissance," for instance, broke asunder the fetters of Peripatetism, it ended in raising fresh barriers around the human mind. Instead of worshipping the Stagyrite, Cardinal Bembo and his friends prostrated themselves before the statue of Cicero. They no longer pro

Dr. Hampden.