148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Beautiful as was that old version, there was abundant rea- 

 son for a revision. The progress of biblical scholarship had re- 

 vealed multitudes of imperfections and not a few gross errors in 

 the work of the early translators, and these, if uncorrected, were 

 sure to bring the sacred volume into discredit. 



Nothing could be more reverent than the spirit of the revis- 

 ers, and the nineteenth century has known few historical events 

 of more significant and touching beauty than the participation in 

 the Holy Communion by all these scholars prelates, presbyters, 

 ministers, and laymen of churches most widely differing in belief 

 and observance kneeling side by side at the little altar in "West- 

 minster Abbey. 



Nor could any work have been more conservative and cautious 

 than theirs ; as far as possible they preserved the old matter and 

 form with scrupulous care. 



Yet their work was no sooner done than it was bitterly at- 

 tacked and widely condemned ; to this day it is largely regarded 

 with dislike. In Great Britain, in America, in Australia, the old 

 version, with its glaring misconceptions, mistranslations, and in- 

 terpolations, is still read in preference to the new ; the great body 

 of English-speaking Christians clearly preferring the accustomed 

 form of words given by the seventeenth- century translators, rather 

 than a nearer approach to the exact teaching of the Holy Ghost. 



Still another law is that when once a group of sacred books 

 has been evolved even though the group really be a great 

 library of most dissimilar works, ranging in matter from the 

 hundredth Psalm to the Song of Songs, and in manner from the 

 sublimity of Isaiah to the offhand story-telling of Jonah all 

 come to be thought one inseparable mass of interpenetrating 

 parts ; every statement in each fitting exactly and miraculously 

 into each statement in every other; and each and every one, and 

 all together, literally true to fact, and at the same time full of 

 hidden meanings. 



The working of these and other laws governing the evolution of 

 sacred literature is very clearly seen in the great rabbinical schools 

 which flourished at Jerusalem, Tiberias, and elsewhere, after the 

 return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, and especially 

 as we approach the time of Christ. These schools developed a 

 subtlety in the study of the Old Testament which seems almost 

 preternatural. The resultant system was mainly a jugglery with 

 words, phrases, and numbers, which finally became a " sacred sci- 

 ence," with various recognized departments, in which interpreta- 

 tion was carried on sometimes by attaching a numerical value 

 to letters; sometimes by interchange of letters from differently 

 arranged alphabets; sometimes by the making of new texts out 

 of the initial letters of the old ; and with ever-increasing subtlety. 



