734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark. For among these 

 stood that sentence which has cost the world more innocent blood 

 than any other the words " He that believeth not shall be 

 damned." From this source had logically grown the idea that 

 the intellectual rejection of this or that dogma which dominant 

 opinion had happened at any given time to pronounce essential, 

 since such rejection must bring punishment infinite in agony and 

 duration, is a crime to be prevented at any cost of finite cruelty. 

 Still another service rendered to humanity by the revisers was in 

 substituting a new and correct rendering for the old reading of 

 the famous text regarding the inspiration of Scripture, which had 

 for ages done so much to make our sacred books a fetich. By 

 this more correct reading the revisers gave a new charter to 

 liberty in biblical research.* 



Most valuable, too, have been studies during the latter part 

 of the nineteenth century upon the formation of the canon of 

 Scripture. The result of these has been to substitute something 

 far better for that conception of our biblical literature, as forming 

 one book handed out of the clouds by the Almighty, which had 

 been so long practically the accepted view among probably the 

 majority of Christians. Reverent scholars have demonstrated 

 our sacred literature to be a growth in obedience to simple laws 

 natural and historical ; they have shown how some books of the 

 Old Testament were accepted as sacred, centuries before our era, 

 and how others gradually gained sanctity, in some cases only 

 acquiring it long after the establishment of the Christian Church. 

 The same slow growth has also been shown in the New Testament 

 canon. It has been demonstrated that the selection of the books 

 composing it was a gradual process, and indeed that the rejection 



* The texts referred to as most beneficially changed by the revisers, are I John, v, 1 ; 

 I Timothy, iii, ] 6. 



Though the revisers thought it better not to suppress altogether the last twelve verses 

 of St. Mark's Gospel, they softened the word " damned " to " condemned," and separated 

 them from the main Gospel, adding a note stating that " the two oldest Greek manuscripts, 

 and some other authorities, omit from verse nine to the end"; and that "some other au- 

 thorities have a different ending to this Gospel." 



The resistance of staunch high churchmen of the older type even to so mild a reform as 

 the first change above noted may be exemplified by a story told of Philpotts, Bishop of 

 Exeter, about the middle of the nineteenth century. A kindly clergyman reading the invi- 

 tation to the holy communion, and thinking that so affectionate a call was disfigured by the 

 harsh phrase " eateth and driuketh to his own damnation," ventured timidly to substitute 

 the word " condemnation." Thereupon the bishop, who was kneeling with the rest of the 

 congregation,, threw up his head and roared "damnation!" The story is given in T. A. 

 Trollope's What I Remember, vol. i, p. 444. American churchmen may well rejoice that 

 the fathers of the American branch of the Anglican Church were wise enough and Christian 

 enough to omit from their prayer book this damnatory clause, as well as the Commination 

 Service and the Athanasian Creed. 



