The two reasons for further revision which were illustrated in the last lecture are, as will have been seen, of universal application, and must sooner or later apply to every version of the Scriptures, however perfect that version may have been when it was first made. But whatever the skill with which King James’s translators fulfilled their labours (and it is universally acknowledged to be worthy of the highest praise), it would be a vain fancy to imagine that theirs was a perfect work. They themselves would never have claimed such an honour for it, and already in their own day some of their renderings were called in question by competent men. Even if they had never failed in applying the means at their command for the interpretation of the Hebrew and Greek originals, they knew that the knowledge then possessed of these ancient tongues was far from complete, and that by further study and advancing research it would be possible to attain to a more accurate and extensive acquaintance with them. The progress made in the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew during the last two centuries has, in fact, been such as the revisers of 1611 could have little anticipated. A long list might easily be drawn up of eminent scholars who have given themselves to the investigation of the grammar of the two sacred languages, and of others who have laboured in illustrating the meaning of their terms. In the case of Hebrew, large additions to our knowledge, both of its grammar and its vocabulary, have been won from a source almost entirely unexplored in former times; namely, the study of Arabic and other cognate languages; and in the case both of Hebrew and Greek, much has been gained by the labours of those who have given themselves to the investigation of the general principles of language, and to the study of the relations which different languages sustain to each other. The knowledge of Hebrew and Greek thus attained has been from time to time applied by a still larger number of eminent men to the elucidation of the several books of the Bible, and an immense amount of valuable material for their interpretation has thus been stored up. The meaning of obscure and difficult passages has been elaborately and independently discussed by men of different nationalities, and of different types of theological opinion, and in this way the sense of many passages formerly misunderstood has been satisfactorily determined. And such being the case, it is clearly the incumbent duty of all who truly reverence the Scriptures to desire that these imperfections and obscurities shall be removed, and the more so that some of these erroneous renderings have been used by the opponents of the Bible as their weapons of attack.