versed in Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac and Arabic. He was often called a 66 walking library." Born about 1568, died 1624. JOHN BOYSE, or Bois, at six years of age could write Hebrew elegantly. He was for twelve years chief lecturer in Greek at St. John's College, Cambridge. Bishop Andrews, of Ely, made him a Prebend in his church in 1615. He was one of the most laborious of all the revisers. Born 1560, died 1643.

Sir HENRY SAVILLE was warden of Merton College, Oxford, for thirty-six years. He devoted his fortune to the encouragement of learning, and was himself a fine Greek scholar. Born 1549, died 1622.

Dr. THOMAS HOLLAND was Regius Professor of Divinity in Exeter College, Oxford, and also Master of his College. Не was considered a prodigy in all branches of literature. Born 1539, died 1612.

CHAPTER III.

THE EXCELLENCIES OF OUR PRESENT VERSION.

In the words of Rev. Dr Chambers, of the American Committee of Revision," King James' Version encountered prejudices and overcame them; it had rivals great in just claims and strong in possession, and it displaced them; it moved slowly that it might move surely; the Church of England lost many of her children, but they all took their mother's Bible with them, and, taking that, they were not wholly lost to her. It more and more melted indifference into cordial admiration, secured the enthusiastic approval of the cautious scholar, and won the artless love of the people. It has kindled into fervent praise men who were cold on every other theme. It glorified the tongue of the worshipper in glorifying God, and by the inspiration indwelling in it, and the inspiration it has imparted, has created English literature. Its most brilliant eulogies have come from those who, hating Protestantism, yet acknowledged the grandeur of this Book, which lives by that Protestantism of which it is the offspring-that Protestantism to which, world-wide, it gives life as one of its roots. When to him who has been caught in the snare of unbelief, or drawn by the lure of false belief, every other chord of the old music wakes only repugnant memories, its words have stolen in, too strong to be beaten back, too sweet to be renounced, once more the thunder of God's power, the pulsation of God's heart. Its faults have been hardly more than the foils of its beauties. It has so interwoven, by the artistic delicacy even of its mechanical transfers, the very idioms characteristic of the sacred tongues, that Hebraisms and Hellenisms need no comment to the English mind, but come as parts of its simplest, its noblest, its deepest thought and.

emotion. Its words are nearer to men than their own, and it gives articulation to groanings which but for it could not be uttered. It has lifted the living world to the solemn fixedness of those old heavenly thoughts and feelings, instead of dragging them by low, secular phrase out of their high and holy thrones, down to the dust of the shifting present, or leaving them dim and dreary behind the fog of pedantry. It has fought against the relentless tendency of time to change language, and has won all the great fields; words have dropped away or have deserted their meaning, as soldiers are lost even by the side which conquers; but the great body of the army of its ancient but not antiquated forms, among the sweetest and the highest speech beneath the voices of the upper world, remains intact and victorious. The swords of its armory may have gathered here and there a spot of rust, but their double edge has lost none of its keenness, and their broad surface little of its refulgence. It has made a new translation, as against something old and fading, impossible, for it is itself new, more fresh, more vital, more youthful than anything which has sought t> supplant it. We need, and may have, a revision of it. Itself a revision of revisions, its own wonderful growth reveals the secret of the approach to perfection. But by very virtue of its grandly closing one era of struggle, it opened another, for in human efforts all great endings are but great beginnings. A revision we may have, but a substitute, not now-it may be never. The accidents of our Authorized Version are open to change, but its substantial part is beyond it, until the English takes its place among the tongues that shall cease."

CHAPTER IV.

OBSOLETE WORDS AND PHRASES IN OUR PRESENT VERSION.

Living languages grow, and in that growth new words not only supply new ideas, but also become substitutes for the old ones. The English of the fourteenth century had to be read with the help of a dictionary in the sixteenth. The English language has not altered so much as this in the last two hundred years; yet the changes are such that many words current in the time of King James are now entirely out of use.

(1.) There is a Change in Spelling. A few of these are instances: "Vats" in Joel ii, 24, is spelled fats; "haul" in Luke xii, 58, is spelled hale; "hoisted" in Acts xxvii, 40, is hoised; and so 66 we find astonished" written astonied; betray,' bewray; "magnificent," magnifical; "delicacies" is spelled delicates; "lose," leese; "since," sith; and "cloak," cloke.

(2.) Changes in Words. Instead of "And they shall pass through it badly used," or hardly served" we read in Isa. viii, 21, "They shall pass through it hardly bestead." In 2 Chronicles ix, 14, we read in our version: "Besides that which chapmen and merchants brought," for "marketmen and merchants," "Old shoes and clouted upon their feet," for "patched" (Josh. ix, 5) "Ouches of gold (Ex. xxviii, 11), "for sockets of gold." "Doves tabering on their breasts" (Nahum ii, 7), for "drumming on their breasts. "The lion filled his dens with ravin" (Nahum ii, 12), for "plunder." So earing is put for "ploughing," eschew for "shun," habergeon for "coat of mail," hough for "hamstring," kine for "cows," leasing for "lying;" to these may be added the names of animals and precious stones as gier-eagle, ossifrage, ligure, bdellium, which are really meaningless. (3.) Changes in the Meaning of Words.-These are the more

numerous, and, most important because they are likely to lead the reader astray. Who would imagine that Ezekiel saying, " as an adamant harder than flint " (Ezek. iii, 9), and Zechariah, saying, "they made their hearts as an adamant stone," both referred to a "diamond"? The Hebrew word here translated "adamant is translated "diamond" in Jer. xvii, 1. The abjects, in Ps. xxxv, 15, are the "dregs of the people." The apothecary, in Ex. xxx, 25, 35; xxxvii, 29, and Eccl. x, 1, is not our druggist, or preparer of medicines, but simply a "maker of unguents." Aha, in Ps. xxxv, 21, and many other places, is not an exclamation of one catching another in evil (as it now is used), but of one exulting over an enemy, and is equivalent to our "hurrah!" Admired and admiration, in 2 Thess. i, 10, Jude 16, and Rev. xvii, 6, have the old meaning of "wondered at" and "wonder." and not the modern one of delighted appreciation. Affect, in Gal. iv, 17, has the signification of "seek after zealously (the Latin affectare," rather than "afficere"). The passage means they seek after you, but not well; yea, they would shut you out from us, that ye might seek after them; but it is good to be sought after always in a good thing." The Greek verb is Zeloo, "to desíre emulously,' ""to strive after." In Judges ix, 53, "all" to brake his skull" is usually understood as if it were "all to break his skull," i. e., "in order to break," whereas all to" is archaic for "thoroughly" or "completely."

66

66