90 THE REV. T. H. DARLOW, M.A.^ ON THE CHARACTER 



evaporate in translation. We know that, in the past, 

 extravagant theories have sometimes been held as to the 

 verbal inerrancy of the Scriptures. There was, for example, 

 the claim put forth by certain Swiss reformers in the Formula 

 Consensus Helvetici of 1675, which declared the vowel points 

 and accents of the Hebrew text to be inspired by God. 

 Orthodox Moslems hold the absolute verbal infallibility of the 

 Koran, and feel bound, therefore, to discourage any translation 

 of their sacred book, which must be read in its original Arabic. 

 It was for similar reasons that the rabbis of Palestine, who 

 worshipped the letter of their Hebrew Testament, regarded the 

 Septuagint version as a national disaster. They called the date 

 on which it was begun " the fast of darkness," and compared 

 it to the day on which the golden calf had been made. Yet we 

 know how the Septuagint, whatever its defects, proved the first 

 great missionary version of Scripture, and became, in God's 

 providence, one chief preparation for the spread of the Gospel. 



This whole subject of translation has a real bearing on the 

 problem of inspiration. It suggests to us, as De Quincey has 

 said, that " the great ideas of the Bible protect themselves. 

 The heavenly truths of God's Word, by their own imperish- 

 ableness, defeat the mortality of languages with which for a 

 moment they are associated. The truth of revelation is 

 endowed with a self-conservative and self-restorative virtue ; 

 it needs not to be protected verbally by successive miracles ; 

 it is self -protecting." The Word of God in the Bible is not of 

 a nature to be affected by verbal changes such as can be made 

 by time or accident. " It is like lightning, which could not be 

 mutilated, or truncated, or polluted." May we not say, further, 

 that God's revelation resides, not in any selected chapters, or 

 texts, or phrases, but in the total content and purport of the 

 Bible, supplemented and corrected by itself ? 



From the history of the versions of Holy Scripture another 

 conclusion of grave practical import emerges. The world-wide 

 experience of missionaries confirms the weighty dictum which 

 Bishop Steere, of the U.M.C.A., wrote from Zanzibar — " Our 

 work must be all unsound without a vernacular Bible " ; but it 

 also proves that, for the Christian Church in any country, 

 nothing is more vitally necessary to preserve its purity, nay, to 

 secure its permanence, than the Scriptures in the language of 

 the people. There are few more tragic chapters in ecclesiastical 

 history than that which records how Islam was able to conquer 

 North Africa, so that those coast-lands are now dominated by 

 the Crescent which once paid homage to the Cross. How can 



