And observe, before we pass on to the account of our own situation in these respects, that this duty incumbent on the Church is to be performed quite irrespectively of any beauty or aptness of outward form which such rendering may happen to possess. An erroneous rendering of a Scripture phrase may have been so well put into words, may carry a sound so terse and epigrammatic, as to have sunk deep into the mind of a nation and to have become one of its household sayings. But who would accept the excuse of beauty or aptness in the case of anything else wrongly come by? It is strange that in this case only has any such argument been used and allowed. Now we in this land possess a version of the Holy Scriptures which may challenge comparison for faithfulness, for simplicity, and for majesty, with any that the world has ever seen. Perhaps its chief defect is that it admits of being too highly praised. Its pure use of our native tongue, the exquisite balance and music of its sentences, the stately march of its periods, the hold on the memory taken by the very alliterations and antitheses, which were the manner of writing when it was made,—these and a hundred other charms which invest almost every verse, make us love it even to excess. And when we intensify all these claims to our affection by the fact that it has been for centuries, and is now, the vehicle to this great English race of all that is pure and holy and lovely and of good report, the first lesson of infancy, the guide of mature life, the comforter of sickness and death, we can hardly be surprised that many, and some of the best among us, refuse to see its faults, and are unable to contemplate with any content the prospect of their being corrected. It is a spirit for which we ought to be deeply thankful, this earnest and affectionate cleaving to the English version of the Scriptures. But good as it is, there is one thing better. And that is, the humble reverence for God’s word, rendering a man willing to make any sacrifice for the sake, if it may be, of nearer approach to His truth. And as the public mind has lately been and now is stirred regarding this matter, I think it may not be a wrong use of our time to-night, if I venture to speak to you of that part of the subject which especially belongs to the pulpit: avoiding details, and trying to remind you in our own case of the need for thinking of the duty at this time, and of our own means of performing it; taking into account, by the way, the principal objections urged against our putting it in hand. The necessity of thinking of the duty at this time arises from two causes, setting in contrast our own circumstances with those under which our version was made: one relating to the things old, the other to the things new.