But, it is asked, are we able to do this? As regards the text of the New Testament, where these variations principally occur, certainly we are. The whole ground has been of late years thoroughly and repeatedly worked over, and the evidence is well known. In many of the most important of varying passages, the decision of biblical scholars would be shortly and easily made, which reading to adopt or reject, or whether to take the middle course of fairly representing the uncertainty. The number of such important variations is but limited; and in most of them, the voice of ancient testimony is all one way. So that it seems to me there would be no formidable difficulty, as regards the things old, in setting right at this time the unavoidable errors, and supplying what were the necessary defects, of our English Bible. We now come to the second of the reasons which seem to press on the Church at this time the duty of reviewing her stewardship of the Holy Scriptures; and that reason concerns the things new—the form in which those Scriptures are represented in the vernacular tongue. In the main, as has been already said, we have in this respect nothing to regret, and but very little that we should be compelled to change. The character and spirit of our version are all that we can desire. But it is utterly impossible for any one capable of judging to deny, that it is disfigured by numerous blemishes, far too important to be put by or condoned. The gravest of these are due to manifest errors in rendering; errors, about which there could be but one opinion among biblical scholars of all religious views. Others have arisen from principles adopted and avowed by the translators themselves: as, for instance, from the unfortunate one of allowing a number of apparently equivalent English words an equal right to represent one and the same word in the original, whereby very important passages have been disguised and confused. Others again owe their source to causes which have come into operation since the version was made. Certain words have, as time has gone on, passed into new meanings. Others, which could formerly be read without offence, have now, by their very occurrence, become stumbling-blocks, and tend to remove all solemnity, and even all chance of fair audience, from the passages where they occur. Some few blemishes may also be due (and it is hardly possible altogether to put by this source) to doctrinal or ecclesiastical bias on the part of the translator. Of the various elements which were wisely united in the body of men entrusted with the preparation of our version, one was much weakened during the work by the death of two of its leading members: and some apparently forced or inconsistent renderings have been thought to be not altogether unconnected with this circumstance.