CONTENTS. § 1. The Old Record Chest. § 2. Copyists' Errors. § 3. Neces- The Oldest Bibles in the World. § 1. The Vatican Manuscript. § 2. The Sinaitic Manuscript. § 3. The Alexandrian. § 4. PAGES ANCIENT VERSIONS AND QUOTATIONS. § 1. Various Early Versions. § 2. An ancient "Revised Bible." § 3. How Revision was regarded fifteen centuries ago. § 4. 1. The Bible Poot. § 2. Eadhelm and Egbert. § 3. The § 1. Growth of the Language. §. 2. The Parish Priest of Lutter- § 1. Printing. § 2. Revival of Greek Learning. § 3. Tyndale's § 1. Preparation for Revision. § 2. The Jerusalem Chamber. § 3. The Revisers at Work. § 4. Claims of the Revised PREFACE TO THE TENTH EDITION. Not SEVEN years ago, on the completion of the Revised Version of the Bible, this little book was written. Questions that must always be of interest to men were then brought into special prominence. only among the poorer classes, but among many more educated people as well, there was a vaguely puzzled half-suspicious feeling with regard to the new Bible attempting to supersede the venerable old version, which their fathers and forefathers for hundreds of years past had read as God's inspired message to the world. Men were surprised at finding some passages of the old Bible altered so as quite to change their meaning, and still more perhaps at noticing here and there verses entirely omitted, which they had always regarded as part of the inspired Word of God. And so the questions constantly arose when the New Version was talked of, "What fresh information has come to these Bible Revisers? By what right do 5 men, 1800 years after the time of Our Lord, venture to meddle with the words of His revelation?" which easily led to still further questions as to the existence of the sacred originals of our present Scriptures, and the way in which these Scriptures have come down to us. It is a good thing that people should be roused by any cause to ask such questions, not merely because more attention will thereby be drawn to a Book on which such vital interests depend, but also and especially because he who seeks the answer to them, must indirectly learn, in pursuing his inquiry, what is of great importance to an intelligent appreciation of his Bible. It is the smallest part of the gain of such an investigation that he should learn what Bible Revision really is, its continually recurring necessity, and the advantages that accrue from it if wisely and faithfully carried out. He will also gain (what is of much value in these sceptical days) a view of the reception of the New Testament writings in the age soon after that of the apostles, in the lifetime of men whose fathers and grandfathers had been contemporaries of St. Paul and St. John. The inquiry will take him back to view the Scriptures of the second, and third, and fourth centuries, already translated into several different lan guages to hear the testimony of a "great cloud of witnesses," the ablest scholars and deepest thinkers of those days bearing united testimony to these Scriptures as the production of the apostles and evangelists, regarding them with deepest reverence as the inspired Word of God, and earnestly devoting the best of their powers to the study and elucidation of them. But perhaps the most important result from his inquiry will be the sense of continuity arising from the view, at various points, of the line of connection. between the Apostolic Bible and our own-the conviction of the substantial identity of our Scriptures with those of the first century. One cannot help noticing what a haziness there is in many minds as to how this Bible of ours has come down to us, a haziness which in the writer's opinion is the fruitful parent of much unspoken doubt, or at least of that uneasy sense of want of foundation" which, though most men are too indolent to trouble themselves about it, is often unconsciously undermining and weakening the power of their beliefs. The reason chiefly is that they cannot trace the continuity of the book from apostolic days to their own. They have just two points to fix upon, one the present existence of their English Bible-the other a dim hazy speck thousands of years ago, when, as they are told, "holy men of old spake as they were |