But besides the inconvenience of the change so pathetically pleaded, there is the time-honoured Phraseology of the Bible—that phraseology that has earned the suffrages of a whole people, young and old, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, and been associated with our Literary glories—to warn us off the holy ground. Into what critic’s crucible, it may be asked, do we propose to place the Bible, and what frigid, tame, and insipid version, among those with which we have been of late years familiar, do we design to substitute for our own old authorized translation? Plainly, none. We know of none—valuable as some of them unquestionably are—worthy of competing, in whole or in part, on an extended view of the question, with our own; while, in point of phraseology, to which the objection specifically refers, the advantage is all in favour of the old version. But if the question at issue were—which it is not—between Phraseology on the one hand, and Fidelity on the other, we should and could have no hesitation in deciding for the latter. But we really think it possible to preserve most of the beautiful phraseology of the present version, and even add to it, while we disencumber the text of its errors, and render it a more faithful reflex of the Divine Original. But the outward Dress and Ornament of the book do not exhaust all the objections incident to the question. There are yet others of a _subtler_ order—the exponent of deeper feelings—to which we must briefly advert. And first, there are those who find few or no difficulties, for their part, in the Bible, as it now stands, and therefore, naturally enough, object to a change. The Bible, they maintain, is a plain book, and the very terms of the Announcement at the head of it, as a Revelation of God’s will to man, upon the knowledge of which his salvation depends, precludes, they argue, any other supposition. To a certain extent they are right; and God forbid we should be understood to mean that the Bible, in its present English dress, is not satisfactory on all the great points of faith and duty. We are sometimes told the contrary, indeed, by those who have formed exaggerated views of the inadequacies of our version; but such an opinion is entitled to no manner of respect; on the contrary, it would be very easy to produce passages—_key-passages_, we might call them, from which the WHOLE TRUTH of the Gospel might be extracted—which would utterly defy any other translation than that exhibited in the authorized version. But while conceding all this, we are not debarred from seeking a version yet nearer perfection than the present, if it is to be had. There are subordinate lessons, surely, that might be rendered more precious and instructive; and it cannot be a right or creditable principle to direct our inquiry only to that which _saves_, in the vulgar sense of that term, and give only a listless and perfunctory attention to all the rest. Not unfrequently, however this arid notion of the