71. Has Survived Great Changes
And yet this glorious version, alone unchanged, remains unrivalled. Though, here and there, some have murmured and threatened, and some have complained and reviled aloud, and some have put forth their skill in "improved" or "corrected" versions, they have been wholly unheeded by the great body of readers. The common version was never more popular than it is now. It is in greater demand, more abundantly supplied by the press, more elaborately adorned by Christian art, and more widely spread abroad than ever before. This among a people so intelligent and cultivated, and so prone to progress, is an unexampled popularity. There must be inherent and pre-eminent excellence in a work which keeps such firm hold upon the esteem and veneration of a race of men, who show but little conservatism as to any other matter of general concernment. While all else has been falling away, the word of the Lord "liveth and abideth for ever."
This enduring popularity may in part be accounted for by the personal character, the vast scholarship, and exalted piety, of its authors. The way had been well prepared for them by a succession of older translations and revisions so excellent, that our Translators modestly say, in their Preface, that they did not "need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one; but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one." Still, their work, though much assisted by the labors of the devout men and martyrs who had wrought in the same line before them, is essentially original. It was done with such prudence, diligence, and scrupulous care, that even the men who would fain have supplanted it with something of their own, have been forced to extol it, as Balaam did the tabernacles of Jacob. "Let us not too hastily conclude," says Mr. Whittaker, "that the Translators have fallen on evil days and evil tongues, because it occasionally happens an individual, as inferior to them in erudition as in talents and integrity, is found questioning their motives, or denying their qualifications for the task which they so well performed.—It may be compared with any translation in the world, without fear of inferiority; it has not shrunk under the most rigorous examination; it challenges investigation; and, in spite of numerous attempts to supersede it, has hitherto remained unrivalled in the affections of the country."* Who would
* Historical and Critical Enquiry. P. 92.
be so tasteless and senseless as to insist on infusing new wine into the old bottle?