Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1892-03-10
A VERY STRANGE BIBLE.
DR.. Harwood's Famous Translation of the
Good Book.

DR.. Harwood's Famous Translation of the
Good Book.
Various famous bibles-the Tayer-
ner's, the Bishops the Vinegar, the
Breaches and the wicked Bible" so
called because of its omission of mot"
from one of the commandments
known to the humblest bibliophile,
says the Anti-Jacobin. More curious
than any of them, and now, [ should
think, hardly less rare than some, is
an extraordinary version of the New
Testament, which is considerably less
than 200 years old. 1t owed its ex-
istence to the Rev. Edward HARDWOOD,
D. D., an eighteenth century Bristol
divine, whose happy thought it was
"to clothe the genuine ideas and doc
trines Of the apostles with that pro-
priety and perspicuity in which they
themselves, l apprehend, would have
exhibited them had they now lived
and written in our own language.
The good Doctor seems to have been
panied that "the bald and barbarous
language of the old vulgar version"
had from long usage acquired a ven
cradle sacredness;" but he was not
without a hope that an attempt to
diffuse over the sacred page the ele-
gance of modern English" might. al
lure men of cultivated and improved
minds" to a book "now. alas. too gen
orally neglected"
DR.. HARDWOOD therefore proceeded
to make the New Testament an emf
nently genteel book Every word
that had dropped out Of vogue in
polite circles was plucked away, the
very plain-spoken warning to the
Laodicean church assuming in his
version this form: Since, therefore,
you are now in state of lukeWarm-
ness. a disagreeable medium between
the two extremes, | will in no long
time eject you from my heart with
fastidiOus contempt" "Disagreeable
medium." "Fastidious contempt"
Considered as a euphuistic phrase Of
the strong English original by a lit
erary exquisite, the sentence is de-
licious, but when we remember who
the speaker is we find that we are
laughing at something like bias
phemy. Laugh we may at the de-
scription of Nicodemus as "this gen
tleman," of St. Pauls Athenian con-
vert Damaris as "a lady of distinc-
tion," and of the daughter Of Herod-
las as "a young lady who danced with
inimitable grace and elegance. J"
young lady. rise, y are the words adj
dressed to the daughter of Jairus.
The father of the prodigal is gen
tleman" of good--or, as DR.. HARDWOOD
preferred to put it-"of splendid
family; ST. Peter on the Mount Of
TRANSPORTATION. exclaims: "Oh, sir!
what a delectable residence we might
fix here" and ST. Paul is raised to the
standard of Bristolian respectability
by having a ''pOrtmanteau" conferred
upon him in place of the mere cloak
mentioned by himself as having been
left at Troas.
The apostolic statements: 1--WE shall
not all die, but we shall be changed"
is of course too faultlessly simple to
escape the Doctors mauling, and
after he has done with it it appears
thus: eve shall not all pay the COM
mon debt Of nature, but we shall, by
a soft transition, be changed from
mortality to Immortality" But even
after reading these prodigious trans
lations we are naturally prepared for
meddling with the Magnificent and
the Nunc Dimittis. But Dr. Har-
woods passion for elOquence stuck at
nothing, and the "men of cultivated
op1 in,nrova6 y,,ip6cD r,,,ct howe How
woodian versions OF the two great
hymns Of Christendom. Here are the
openings of both:
my soul with reverence adores my
Creator and all my faculties with
transport join in celebrating the
goodness of God, my Savior, who
hath in so signal manner conde-
scended to regard my poor and hum
BILE station. Transcendent good
ness! every future age will now con-
join in celebrating my happiness.
90, God! Thy promise to me is
amply fulfilled! / now quit the post
Of human life with satisfaction and
joy, since Thou hast INDUCED mine
eyes with so divine a spectacle as the
great Messiah"
These extracts will serve as salts
flying examples of the way in which
the New Testament may be made
elegant throughout, and DR.. Har-
woods work is such that-to use his
own phraseology-it leaves the most
exacting velleity without ground for
quiritation. Still he is SO largely
forgotten that the ground is prac-
tically free to the modern stylist.