Embued with the conviction that we have the means adequate to the high
ends here proposed in these very records—well understood and properly
carried out—we have ventured upon these high themes in disregard of the
imputation to which we may be subjected, with some plausibility, of
overstating our cause. We say with some plausibility, only as merging
our feelings for the moment in the superficial view ordinarily taken of
the _real character_ of the religious element—a view altogether ignored
by the history of our race, and the peculiar phenomena of the times. We
may add, it is unmistakably at variance with the consciousness of almost
every individual in Christendom, to whom it is no secret that religious
questions—unless the interest has been neutralized by long neglect, or
quashed by desperate violence—exert a strange and engrossing power over
his soul. In whatever way we look at it, it is a _power_, and in this
view may even be perverted to evil.
“Suppose ye,” says Christ, “that I am come to send peace upon earth? I
tell you, Nay, but rather division.” {37a} In deep sympathy with these
words, and in corroboration of the prophetic spirit by which they are
marked, are the following observations of Stanley, when summing up his
reminiscences of the Lake of Galilee—the toiling all night and catching
nothing—the great multitude of fishes, so that the net broke—the casting
a hook for the first fish that came up—the net cast into the sea, and
gathering of every kind: “all these,” says he, “are images which could
occur nowhere else in Palestine but in this one spot, and which, from
that one spot, have now passed into the religious language of the
civilized world, _and in their remotest applications_, _or even
misapplications_, _have converted the nations_, _and shaken the thrones
of Europe_.” {37b}
Thus demonstrative it is that Religion is no weak, idle, evanescent
figment of man’s imagination, but a real, substantial, controlling power,
shaping his thoughts, it may be unconsciously, and blending itself with
the solid structure of society and nations. Greece and Rome, it has been
well said, have attracted here and there a visitor, but only the Holy
Land has provoked a crusade. Nor is the evidence of its power to be
fetched wholly from the records of the past; we think we see in it in our
own days a germinating principle more potent than anything else now in
operation to work great changes, and rival, at least, if it does not
throw into the shade, all that history has yet unfolded. That this power
may be based in knowledge, and directed to a righteous end, unlike the
character oftentimes it bears on the page of the past, it may deserve
some consideration as a means to this end, whether we may not yet read
our lesson to greater advantage, and educe from the sacred page a fuller
amount of good than in its present state it is calculated to afford. And
we have the more confidence in urging our present suit, because we are
persuaded that the boon we invoke will not long be unattended with other
forms of active beneficence conducing to the same high ends. The church
will almost simultaneously rouse herself to new exertion. A yet more
effective order of Religious Teaching than we can yet boast of—from the
pulpit and the press, will probably be elicited. And thus we shall
evoke, not an isolated power waging dubious war against fearful odds, but
a CONFEDERATE force, equal, we will hope, to the crisis;—a crisis such
as, no one is so obtuse as not to see, demands something vastly in
advance of the elements at present available for neutralizing the fearful
evils now festering at our core, or looming in the no distant horizon.
Such is our argument. The sum is, that the Sacred Books are replete with
good, and that a just appreciation of what is due to our own interests,
no less than gratitude for the gift itself, demands from us the
consecration of whatever further power Providence has, in these latter
days, conferred upon us to that end, to render that good in its utmost
extent salutary and efficacious.
And the time for action presses. Already various undertakings are on
foot to supply the desired object: and there may be reason to fear, in
the failure of help from higher quarters, that some Society—the Religious
Tract Society, for example, as suggested by the “Edinburgh Review,” thus
following up its recent excellent publication of the New Paragraph
Bible—or some self-constituted body, as is this moment sitting in America
for this very purpose—or individual scholars—may appropriate the ground
we should rather reserve as the Special Sphere for the operations of the
highest Authority in the realm.
It only remains that we give utterance to our most fervent hope that this
great work may signalize the reign of our beloved Queen. It will not be
the least sparkling of the diamonds that will lend lustre to her crown.
All concurrent circumstances point to this as the fitting time, and to
her Majesty as the appropriate individual to inaugurate the solemnity.
Religious scruples have given way to a more enlightened and creditable
feeling, and a higher standard of religious truth than that afforded by
the present version is plainly a desideratum. The reflections cast upon
the Protestant faith in the recent trials for Bible-burning in Ireland,
authorized in measure by the concessions of Protestants themselves to the
faultiness of the authorized version, wait to be removed. Let her
Majesty, following in this respect the example of James I., appoint to
this work a body of men the most qualified for the task the realm
affords, and we cannot doubt the result will be a version of Holy
Scripture incomparably better than the present; thus supplying a fresh
cause of exultation in her Majesty’s rule, and a surpassing debt of
gratitude to the hand that conferred the boon.
* * * * *
_Extract from a Speech of M. Guizot at a late Meeting of the Protestant
Biblical Society in Paris_. _See_ Times, _April_ 19, 1856.
“Whether we consider the history of nations, or the private life of
individuals, the moral efficacy and salutary power of the holy books
glowingly manifest themselves. Undoubtedly, even among nations where
it is assiduous and general, the reading of the holy books has not
the effect of stifling the bad passions of men; it does not obviate
all errors and faults. Man remains full of weakness and vice, even
when conscious of the presence of God. But the habitual reading of
the holy books preserves nations from the greatest perils; it
prevents them from forgetting God. It has this advantage—that God
remains for them, not an idea, a name, a system of philosophy, a
riddle, but the true and living God, under whose eye they constantly
live, amid the struggles and casualties of this world.”
* * * * *
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Reed and Pardon, Printers, Paternoster Row, London.