THE BIBLE IN CHURCH: TRADITION AND REVISION..
THE practice of reading the Revised Version of the New Testament in church is becoming more and more prevalent. A good deal of controversy has taken place lately in the Times and elsewhere upon the subject. It is obvious that many scholarly persons are distressed by the change. Simpler churchgoers do not speak so readily, but we find it difficult to imagine that this innovation can give them pleasure, and difficult to understand why the clergy are beginning so late in the day to press it. If they believed in verbal inspiration, wo should be able to see their point of view, but no educated people any longer apply that doctrine to the Greek any more than to the English New Testa- ment. If it were indeed written by the hand of God using the pen of man, as in earlier days some men thought, it would seem reasonable to make any sacrifice, whether of poetry, tradition, or custom, to reproduce the sacred idiom. It would be right to change the wording every few years as phrases might change their shade of meaning. But such considerations belong to the past. We have all come to agree with St. Paul in the matter of literalism. For us Englishmen the spirit of Christianity is preserved in the familiar version of the New Testament, perhaps the finest specimen of our language which exists or ever will exist. To deface this version for the sake of extreme verbal accuracy, an accuracy which constantly destroys both cadence and precision, and only rarely makes any material change of sense, would surely seem to involve a grave error of judgment. Such accuracy is of consequence in the professor's classroom, in the pulpit, or even in the Sunday-school, but in the services of the Church it counts for little. The scholar does not go to church for the sake of study ; nico questions of verbal equiva- lents jar upon his mood. The unscholarly man is irritated by what seems like the constant falsification of his recollection. The words which have sprung to his mind upon so many occa- sions of joy, of peace solemnity, of distress are changed, and the change can only, to his mind, be for the worse. The phrases of the Authorized Version have become both the inspiration and the expression of the Englishman's conscience and aspiration, just as all Christians admit that in broad outline the doctrines of the Christian faith are both the inspiration and the expression of the experiences of the human soul. Ordinary men who do not think very deeply make no distinction between the familiar words and the Light that lighteth every man. A man may not think very deeply and yet worship very devoutly ; and during the church service he ought to be offered an aid to devotion, not the privilege of puzzling. Needless to say, we are no friends to obscurantism ; but of that there is no question. Every man is at liberty to instruct himself on the nice subject of
linguistic equivalents, but he does not come to church to be • instructed, unless perhaps during the sermon.
There are certain short, one might almost say proverbial, passages in the Gospels which may be said, in Biblical language, to have been engraved for hundreds of years upon the " fleshy tables " of the English " heart." Perhaps the most conspicuous instance of these proverbial sayings is " What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? " In the Revised Version the words " forfeit his life " are substi- tuted for " lose his own soul." Every man who was brought up to go to church knows the Authorized words ; probably they seem to him an epitome of the Christian faith. They are so much truer, so much nobler, than the equally familiar " Honesty is the best policy," and they make so much deeper an appeal. Will not the ordinary man hear them changed with a kind of shiver ? If he knows Greek, the substitution of the word " life " for " soul " may do no more than irritate him ; but if he is a simple fellow, may he not be much distressed, and even shaken in faith ? How would the words have struck a devout soldier coming home on leave ? The interpretation he might put upon them is in contradiction of the whole doctrine of Christian sacri- fice, and is not in harmony with the Passion, or any one of the central ideas of the faith. Why should such an explanation be suggested in Divine Service ? The suggestion is inevitable for ignorant folk if the Revised Version is read in the Lessons.
The substitution of " love " for " charity " in the famous chapter in which St. Paul defines the great new virtue which he places above faith is open to less serious objection. It seems, however, to the present writer that the arguments against the
change are stronger than those in its favour. The word " charity " has been sullied by a cynical phrase, " as cold as charity," but only in that one phrase has its meaning been seriously injured. True, it is sometimes used in its narrower sense of almsgiving; but no person who pays the slightest attention to St. Paul's words, certainly no one who has them in his memory, could be confused by these colloquial customs. St. Paul made his meaning almost miraculously clear, and obviously he did not mean what in the present day we mean by " love."
There was at one time a strong feeling that the use of the word " damn " in the Authorized Version " was liable to mis- interpretation, and a good many excellent people were very rightly afraid lest it should convey to simple people a suggestion of everlasting torment. But for years the mind of man has refused the thought of ceaseless physical torture after death. Alas ! the imaginatton of it still obsesses madmen, just as it obsessed poor Cowper ; but no change from a stronger to a weaker word will do them any good. The present writer has always felt inclined to agree with Ruskin, who said that if change were desirable, the best method of cleansing the word from undue terror would be, not to substitute for it the milder word " condemn," but to do away with " condemn " altogether and use " damn " in every instance, thus making the passage describing the ordeal of the woman taken in adultery run " Hath no man damned thee ? . . . Neither do I damn thee." What, however, is the pulpit for if it is not possible to give from it a sufficient explanation of errors arising from a fluctuating phraseology ?
To turn to smaller instances which in no way concern the fabric of faith, why should St. Paul's wonderful discourse upon immortality, familiar to every man in the Burial Service, be badly injured from the literary point of view in the Revised New Testament ? Why is it worth while to declare death " abolished " instead of " destroyed " ? Why should the imaginary objector, who does but personate the materialist feat which dogs the footsteps of every man's faith, be addressed as " Thou foolish one " instead of ordered away as " Thou fool " ? The whole passage is weakened by this rather mealy-mouthed alteration. Instances might be multiplied for ever which do no more than destroy the music of the prose and break with tradi- tion. Some of them are almost too trivial to enumerate. Why substitute " mirror " (which suggests a furniture-shop) for the " glass " in which men darkly discern the things of the spirit, and why in the Magnificat should " princes " be put off their " thrones " instead of the " mighty " from their " seats " ? The former version suggests the triumph of a political party, the latter the power of God which for ever laughs to scorn the boasts of earthly tyranny.
It cannot, we admit, be denied even by the strongest advocate of the use of the Authorized New Testament that certain passages in the Epistles have been clarified to a very material extent by the Revisers. There remain, however, when they have done their best or worst, some things " hard to be understood." Dees not this fact call rather for a revision of the Lectionary than for a more widespread use in church of the Revised Version ?
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