The fiat given to the use of the old authorized version is substantially honourable to the nation—perhaps equally so with the fiat that gave it existence. There is a pregnant power in the words, as symbols of the burning _thoughts_ of the men engaged, not pale reflexes of _things_, that has secured the all but universal use of the present version, with all its imperfections, despite the labours of Lowth, and Horsley, and Campbell, and Henderson, and Good, and others—all eminent names—more or less to displace it. “The Spirit of the Living Creatures was in the Wheels, and whither the Wheels were to go the Spirit of the Living Creatures went with them.” {10a} ‘FOREMOST in the conditions of a correct version is PURITY OF TEXT.’ There is no doubt, we believe, in the minds of all qualified to pronounce on this part of the question, that the text, both of the Old and New Testament, generally unassailable as it is, is yet, on some not unimportant points—and what is unimportant in such a document?—susceptible of improvement. We wish, by all means, to have the benefit of this improved text, as no consideration of _consequences_ can weigh against the _actual_ inconveniences that belong to the text, in some instances, as it now stands. The discrepancies, for example, in the Chronicles, {10b} in matters relating to _numbers_, with the statements in the corresponding passages in 2 Samuel and Kings, furnish most damaging weapons in sceptical hands wherewith to assail the Sacred Books. Some of these discrepancies are only imaginary, but others, it must be confessed, are palpable and incontrovertible, and ought not to stand, as they now do, in our Bibles, open, without a word appearing on the page in their defence, to the most unmitigated contradiction. {11a} The fact is, the text in these instances is _corrupt_, and there need be no scruple, considering the way in which NUMBERS were variously written of old, by letters, ciphers, or words, and more especially the liability of transcribers to err in these matters, in arriving at that conclusion. This extreme devotion to the Massoretic text on the part of our translators, to the overthrow of common sense, and disregard of the thousand arguments that plead for a change over the one thus pertinaciously followed, is most detrimental to the credit of the Sacred Volumes; for two statements diametrically opposed cannot, of course, be both correct; the weaker, therefore, should naturally be made to give place to the stronger. In some cases, _possibly_, this may be done by a new recension of the text; in others the alteration should be summarily made in conformity with the obvious maxims in universal use for determining the truth in the case of contradictory documents. {11b}