Transcribed from the 1870 Strahan & Co. edition by David Price. [Picture: Decorative header] BIBLICAL REVISION Its Duties and Conditions * * * * * A SERMON PREACHED IN ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL AT THE SPECIAL EVENING SERVICE, ON SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 1870 * * * * * BY HENRY ALFORD, D.D. DEAN OF CANTERBURY. * * * * * [Picture: Decorative divider] * * * * * STRAHAN & CO., PUBLISHERS 56, LUDGATE HILL 1870 * * * * * [Picture: Decorative header] “Every scribe that is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.”—MATT. xiii. 52. THE Scribes were the guardians of the law, and its readers and expounders to the people. It is related of Ezra, that he was “a ready scribe in the law of Moses which the Lord God of Israel had given: he had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.” But in exercising this guardianship the Scribes were only representing the Church of which they were members. They were a class of persons told off for especial attention to this duty, which in fact belonged to the whole community. To the Jews as a people, the Apostle tells us, were committed the oracles of God: and the Church in all times is the witness and keeper of Holy Writ, as of a sacred deposit committed to her. The character assigned in the text to the Scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, belongs, in all its particulars, to her, who both is the sum, and constitutes the ideal, of all such guardians and expounders.