67. No better Translators now to be found

Another scholar of the highest genius, S. T. Coleridge, who went as far in metaphysical studies as did Boyle in the pursuit of natural philosophy, has spoken in the like experimental manner of the Bible,—"I can truly affirm of myself, that my studies have been profitable and availing to me, only so far as I have endeavored to use all my other knowledge as a glass, enabling me to receive more light in a wider field of vision from the Word of God."*

As to the Bible in its English form, it is safe to assume the impossibility of gathering a more competent body of translators, than those who did the work so well under King James's commission. Since then, a great many revisions of

* Literary Remains, III. 139.

particular books in the Bible have been published in English, and some of them embodying the best labors of the most distinguished scholars. But who has dreamed of substituting so much as one of them all, in the place of such books as they now stand in the common version? The late Professor Stuart was a man of learning and piety, whose candor ran almost to excess. He prepared elaborate translations of the Epistles to the Romans and to the Hebrews; but while we gladly use them as helps toward the better understanding of those portions of the Bible, who would think of using them for devotional purposes, either to settle his faith, or to stir up its activities? An edition of the Bible, with those labors of that celebrated Professor substituted for those in the common editions, would be a strange affair indeed! It is quite certain that no portion of the work has been done over again since 1611, by any divine of England or America, in a way which, by general consent of the Christian community, could supplant the corresponding portion as it stands in our family and pulpit Bibles.

And what has not been done by the most able and best qualified divines, is not likely to be done by obscure pedagogues, broken-down parsons, and sectaries of a single idea, and that a wrong one,—who, from different quarters, are talking big and loud of their “amended,” “improved,” and “only correct” and reliable re-translations, and getting up “American and Foreign Bible Unions” to print their sophomorical performances. How do such shallow adventurers appear along side of those venerable men whose lives have been briefly sketched in the foregoing pages! The newly-risen versionists, with all their ambitious and pretentious vaunts are not worthy to “carry satchels” alter those masters of ancient learning. Imagine our greenish contemporaries shut up with an Andrews, a Reynolds, a Ward, and a Bois, comparing notes on the meaning of the original Scriptures! It would soon be found, that all the aid our poor moderns could render would be in snuffing the candles,—and these, it is to be feared, would too often be snuffed out! It were better for them to be framing a Hamlet that shall supersede the master-piece of the “bard of Avon;” or a “Paradise Lost” that shall throw the great epic of the seventeenth century into the shades of oblivion. Let tinkers stick to the baser metals; and heaven forefend that they should clout the golden vessels of the sanctuary with their clumsy patches. When one of these nibbling critics tries his puny teeth upon this glorious and indestructible version, it seems as unnatural as that scaring portent mentioned in "Macbeth;"

"A falcon, towering in her pride of place,

Was by a mousing owl hawked at, and pecked."

But it is not well to be too much vexed at these petty annoyances, which will speedily pass away and be forgotten, as has been the fate of all previous pests of the kind.

Not that the utmost verbal perfection is claimed for the English Bible as it now stands. Some of its words have, in the lapse of time, gone out of common use; some have suffered a gradual change of meaning; and some which were in unexceptionable use two hundred years ago, are now considered as distasteful and indelicate. But the number of such words is very small, considering the great size and age of the volume; and the retaining of them causes but little inconvenience, compared with the disadvantages of wholesale projectors of amendment volunteered by incompetent and irresponsible schemers. If ever the time shall come for a new revision of the Translation, let it be done with the care and solemnity which marked the labors of King James's commissioners; and above all, let it be done by men who shall know what they are about, and how it ought to be done.