Respecting the latter, it is fitting to watch with all jealousy that no man add unto it or take from it; it is precious for its own sake. Not so, however, with the former; its worth is not in itself, but only in that which it enshrines. The two sentences-- “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” “Gwir yw’r gair ac yn haeddu pob derbyniad, ddyfod Crist Iesu i’r byd i gadw pechaduriaid,” are very different in form, whether judged by the eye or the ear, and yet the truth conveyed by the former to an Englishman, or by the latter to a Welshman, is essentially the same. And although one who had learnt to prize that truth under either of the forms here given would naturally cherish also the very words by which it had been taught him, his reverence for the truth would impel him to adopt the other form in preference whenever that might be the better instrument for conveying it to another. Changes, therefore, in the form of Scripture may be lawful and right. Moreover, as a matter of history, the form of Scripture has, from the very beginning, been passing through a continued succession of changes, and with this fact it is most important that the Bible student should familiarize himself. These changes may be arranged under two general classes. One class of changes has arisen out of the perishable nature of the documents, of which the Bible at the first consisted. It is scarcely needful to state that we do not now possess the original copies of any of the books of the Old or the New Testament. Even while these were still in existence it was necessary to transcribe them in order that many persons in many places might possess and read them. In the work of transcription, however careful the transcriber might have been, errors of various kinds necessarily arose; some from mistaking one letter for another; some from failure of memory, if the scribe were writing from dictation; and some from occasional oversight, if he were writing from a copy before him; some from momentary lapses of attention, when his hand wrote on without his guidance; and some from an attempt to correct a real or fancied error in the work of his predecessor. If any of my readers will make an experiment by copying a passage of some length from any printed book, and then hand over his manuscript to a friend with a request to copy it, and afterwards pass on the copy so made to a third, and so on in succession through a list of ten or a dozen persons, each copying the manuscript of the one before him in the list, he will, on comparing the last with the printed book, have a vivid and interesting illustration of the number and kind of variations that arise in the process of transcription. In the case, therefore, of even very early copies of any of the books of the Scriptures, some sort of revision would become necessary, and the deeper the reverence for the book, the more obligatory would the