The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-08

the context, it is on the whole improbable
that the withdrawal of a single supposed
authority from the heap will induce any
body to doubt what he has been accus-
toned to believe. The ways of theologians
are not as the ways of experts in any other
subject of thought. But so much as this
at all events may be affirmed with the greatest
confidence-that many doctrines now COM
monty held among Christians would never
have been believed with the same unAinch-
ing confidence if there had not been found
in the Bible, as ordinarily read, texts which
are now known to be either spurious or to
be gross misrepresentation of the original
The famous Interpolation, John v, Z, is
case in point. No falsifcation of q documen-
tary record is established by more over
whelming evidence. Yet the fraudulent
scribe who first adduced the testimony of
the Three Heavenly Witnesses knew perfectly
well what he wanted to prove, and that the
words he inserted would go far to prove it;
andit is quite impossible that in uncriticalages
a text so distinctly and emphaticslly in point
should not have had the strongest in
huence in forming and confirming the gene
raj belief. So, also, no reasonable person
will deny that the solemn words from
the 10Th chapter of the book of Job which
are read in the English Burial Service-'I
know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he
shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;
and though after my skin worms destroy this
body, yet in my flesh shall see God'-have
had much to do with the firm faith of Christians
in the actual resurrection of the individual
body. Yet the best critics hold this passage
to be one of the worst mistranslations in the
whole Bible, and that the words, strongly as
they affect us, are a mere travesty of the
meaning of the original
Those who consider with ourselves that,
whatever else religion ought to be, it
ought before all things to be true, will of
course decline to take consequences into ac-
count when they contend for so simple a
matter as the application of the most ap-
proved methods of modern scholarship to the
scriptural text. We are, however, very far
from supposing that more accurate exhibit
ton of the meaning of that text would really
shake the allegiance of the mass of Protest
ant Christians to the opinions commonly
entertained by them. If the Bible had always
been what it now is to critical and instructed
eyes, the body of doctrines generally under
stood to constitute Christianity might have
been different from what it now is,
but the existing doctrines have been
held too long and too firmly to be
materially changed by the recasting
of the authorities at this date. The
persons who, with Lord Shaftesbury, appre-
hend great loosening of belief, are either
persons who are in the habit of going through
bead-roll of texts which they cannot bear to
have changed, or they are persons who,
dimly discerning and acutely disliking the
more searching processes OF inquiry which
lie beyond the application of mere scholar,
ship, are determined to resist the first en-
croachments of that dangerous instrument
the intellect. For all immediate purposes, we
are not sure that much greater revolution of
popular opinions on theological subjects
would not be effected if Bible without
numbered and divided texts we're to come
| into exclusive use than would be brought
| about by the most stringent revision of the
| authorized version. So long as theological
doctrines are supposed to be proved by iso
| lated texts, just as legal doctrines are esta
blished by citations from a code-the method
indeed having been borrowed originally il
all probability by the theologians from the
lawyers-there will always be room enough
for dispute whether q particular doctrine i!
| proved, and in such a controversy the re
| ceived doctrinal view will always have the ad
vantage. There is so little chance PRACTICAL,
of any considerable change of religious opin
ions resulting merely from new translation
that one wonders that even a clergyman
should brought by fear of it to tolerate th
scandals of the present version. If we sa,
that much which is given in the Old Testa
ment as representation of the meaning o
the minor prophets is sheer unmitigatet
nonsense, we probably only express the ma
ture opinion of so respectable person as DR.
Pusey.