Prayer-book, carried sometimes to the height of superstition. Nor is the influence inconsiderable, which our English Version, together with the Liturgy, have exerted on the national taste, by inspiring a love of the simple grandeur and sublimitv which characterise the inspired model, and which are reflected in the almost primitive compositions adopted by our Reformers from the Latin service-book. Now it is with similar predilections, and perhaps with a still deeper reverence, that the Mussulman regards the Koran, which, with all its revolting absurdities,-revolting to us as Christians,-is invested with the same majesty of antiquity, the same captivation of style. the same hallowed associations in his eyes, that the English Bible wears in ours. Add to which, that it contains borrowed truths, but truths not the less sublime because they are borrowed, adapted to take a certain hold on his heart and conscience also. With this book he will compare all others that make pretensions to a sacred character; and it becomes, therefore, of the first importance, that the Scriptures should sustain that comparison, by an adequate representation of all the beauties of the inspired original. It is likely enough, that the severe simplicity of the Evangelists may not immediately please the childish passion of the Orientals for the florid and the marvellous. But the preceptive parts of the New Testament are in a style perfectly consonant with their taste and habits of thought, while the poetical parts of the Old Testament can perhaps be adequately felt and relished only by a native of the East. The whole Bible is an Oriental work, the production of Arabians, Syrians, and Asiatic Jews; and to suppose that it would not be acceptable to the same people, if restored to its native character, is absurd. But this can be achieved, we are persuaded, only by a native, or by one who, like Ali Bey, has been, from his youth, naturalized among the natives, and who will be able to avail himself of all those delicacies of expression and niceties of arrangement, which, in every language, denote taste and breeding, and ou which the charm of poetry itself essentially depends. Dr. Henderson complains that the version of Ali Bey is truly Mahommedan; that it exhibits the Mahommedan God, it' • Mahommedan geni, Mahommedan saints, Mahommedan conversion, the Mahommedan Scriptures, the Mahommedan Sabbath, the Mahommedan Antichrist, and the Mahom'medan Paradise.' And might not Dr. H. have added,'. remarks Professor Lee, which would have accounted for

almost all that had preceded, It is written in a Mahom• medan language! The imbecility of this objection is mar-> vellous in a man of Dr. Henderson's attainments. Could he have borne a stronger testimony to the excellence of Ali Bey's

performance? Where did Mahommed get his phraseology? Were not those very words previously familiar to the natives? Was not Allah, the Mahommedan God,' the God of the Arabs before the son of Abdallah claimed to be his prophet? Did he not borrow many of these words from the Jewish Scriptures? With equal wisdom it might have been urged against the first Latin translators, that they had exhibited the Roman Deus, the Roman pontifex, the Roman cœlum. When our Lord himself said to the penitent robber, "This "day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," did he use a new word, or one which had previously implied the Christian heaven? The objection, had it any force, would extend further than the Critic thought of. According to his reasoning, we must adopt no word, of the import of which the Mahommedans have formed an inadequate notion. He objects to every word in use among the Moslems, because, strange to say, they connect with them Mahommedan ideas.

• Heaven,' remarks Professor Lee, according to the creed of the orthodox Turk, is a place replete with every sensual gratification; would it not then, according to our Reviewer's principle, be an unholy thing to introduce such a word into the Christian Scriptures? I suppose it would; and that the consequence would be, we should be compelled to form a new vocabulary of religious phraseology, which, after all, no one would understand?

It is obvious to any man of common understanding, that new ideas can be conveyed only through the medium of phrases in previous use, employed in a new sense. Whether syna

gogue' means an assembly of Jews or of Christians (as James ii. 2); whether the day of assembly,* means the Mahommedan, the Jewish, or the Christian Sabbath-Friday, Saturday, or Sunday; whether 'ghost' means breath, disembodied spirit, phantom, or the Divine Being; whether lord' (dominus, seigneur, effendi) means a nobleman, or Jesus Christ, or Jehovah; whether the word means speech, the Bible, or the Son of God; can be determined neither by their etymological origin, nor by their use in secular literature or common parlance, but only by the connexion in which they occur. But Dr. Henderson, like the Abbé Dubois and other sagacious critics of his stamp, requires that a Biblical Translator should find Christian words, abstract terms, metaphysical phrases, ready coined to his use, in languages which have never before been made the vehicle of a single Christian or philosophical idea. This is tolerable in a Papist, who would lock up the Scriptures

*Jumaa, the word objected to as meaning the Mahommedan Sabbath, literally, the day of assembly,' is in use among the Eastern Christians.

in an unknown tongue, lest they should be descerated by being exhibited in a vulgar medium. And Dr. Henderson would really seem to have imbibed no small portion of this spirit, when he deprecates the accommodation of the sacred, established, and unbending phraseology of the Spirit of God, to the capricious notions and erroneous language' of those for whose use such versions are intended.

For my part,' remarks Professor Lee, I had always supposed that versions of the Scriptures should be so made as to be intelligible, at least to those for whom they had been intended; and that how unbending soever the phraseology of the originals might be, they must be rendered, in a translation, by the phraseology in use among the people, for whom such translation is made in order that they might understand them, however different their style and taste might be from that of the original Hebrew or Greek texts. I take it for granted, every one who has thought at all uponthis subject, will come to the same conclusion.'

The first object of a Biblical Translator must be, to render himself intelligible. To convey adequate ideas by the phra seology of any first translation of the Scriptures into the languages of Pagans or Moslems, is clearly impossible; because, to a certain extent, such ideas have to be created in their minds. As in the case of children, words are but the moulds which their thoughts afterwards fill up their conceptions expand, their meanings grow up to the words, till at length they outgrow them, and the utmost resources of language are felt to be circumscribed, and speech seems a poor, straitened, and imperfect vehicle. Next to being intelligible, a Translator would be anxious to give the spirit of his original. In this, and not in a literal rendering, which may often grossly misrepresent the meaning, fidelity consists. Where the idioms of the respective languages differ, a verbal translation would be a preposterous travestie. If even the meaning were conveyed, the style would be misrepresented; and we have the authority of no less a person than Dr. Henderson, for maintaining the importance of a close adherence to the sacred style. The greatest deformities in our Authorized Version arise from a too literal rendering of idiomatic phrases, by which either no meaning or an incorrect meaning is conveyed to the English reader. Yet, with all its imperfections, it has scarcely the air of a translation. So natural is the style, except where the obscurity of the passage has compelled the Translator to be literal, or at least, so naturalized has it become to our minds, that we almost forget its foreign extraction, and are ready to look upon the Bible as an English work. From the progress of Biblical researches

and Biblical criticism, we may anticipate, as one great advan tage, that, as the text becomes purified and settled, and its obscurities are removed, it will be less and less necessary to adhere to a literal rendering. Dr. Henderson seems to think otherwise; as if the labours of Griesbach, Kennicott, &c. had no better object than to enable us to adhere the more closely to the identical words of the original, any deviation from which he stigmatises as a daring attempt to improve on the language of the Holy Spirit.' To this strange remark, Professor Lee replies:

What will Dr. Henderson say, when I tell him, that, upon his principle, the sacred writers themselves are chargeable with all the iniquity which he has here heaped upon Ali Bey? That the Evangelists and Apostles, in making citations from the Old Testament, have never observed any thing like the uniformity which this new canon of his would make universal? What must be his surprise to find, that Luke, and Paul, and others have made this daring attempt to improve on the language of the Holy Spirit; and that no translation has hitherto been made, not chargeable with this crime?'

If verbal correctness were of this fundamental importance, what must we think of the varied language in which the same circumstance or address is recorded by the several Evangelists! How must the foundations of faith be shaken by the different readings! How pernicious must be the marginal variations in the English Bible! But the sacred writers appear to have attached no such importance to the mere letter of what was written. Even our Lord, in enumerating the precepts of the Decalogue, pays no attention to their precise order. It is only the spirit of modern controversy that has rendered the exact reading of the original, a matter of essential importance; and in such cases, the appeal lies from all translations to the sacred text. But so different are the provinces of the Biblical critic and the translator, that some of our most learned scholars and annotators have proved themselves quite unable to present, even in their own language, a pleasing or unexceptionable version. There is reason to doubt whether a translator would not be disqualified for his task by minute critical habits and a scrupulous verbal accuracy. The scope and the spirit of Scripture are continually overlooked and obscured by our verbal critics. Scholars have their different places and offices in the Church of Christ. Luther was not a Griesbach, nor Griesbach a Luther. The best translations have not been the production of a critical age, nor of the first-rate critics.

The practical importance of this view of the subject will be placed in a still stronger light, if we consider that a correct VOL. XXI. N. S.

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translation of the sacred Scriptures, or even a genuine, unexceptionable text, does not exist. With regard to the Hebrew Scriptures, it is now generally admitted, that the received text, is very defective, and that a further collation of Hebrew MSS. is highly desirable. The discrepancies between that text and the Septuagint Version, prove, either that the variations in the original coaices must have been considerable, or that the Greek Translators felt themselves at much greater liberty than would now be deemed allowable, in rendering the general sense of the original. But the Septuagint itself is supposed to have come down to us in a mutilated or incorrect state. The Vulgate is notoriously obnoxious to criticism. All the modern versions executed by members of the Church of Rome, partake of its imperfections. The English Psalter is a translation from a still more imperfect Latin Version. The labours of Griesbach have put us in possession of a far more unexceptionable Greek text than King James's Translators had access to; but objections have been urged against his canons of collation. In the mean time, our Authorized Version is confessedly chargeable with interpolations, omissions, mistranslations, latinisms, obsolete expressions, ellipses improperly supplied, and a long catalogue of verbal inaccuracies. Nay, the Improved Version of the Socinians is, in some passages, more favourable to orthodoxy, than the received Translation!

Now let us see in what a situation the Bible Society are placed! Ought they not at once to suspend all further proceedings, and wait till a special committee of translators and learned critics can agree upon a genuine text and a few faultless versions? Why, they have never yet given away a single correct copy of the Scriptures! No, nor the Bartlett's Buildings Society either. Wicked men! the Bible Committee are sending the Propaganda edition of the Arabic Bible, all over the East, though modelled on the Romish Vulgate. They are aiding and abetting a Romish priest, a certain Leander Von Ess, in circulating a version of his own, formed on the same model. I confess,' says a writer in the Christian Remembrancer, (Dr. Henderson's new ally,) with my feelings as a Protestant, I see no cause for rejoicing in this.' No! not rejoice in the circulation of that very version from which the Protestant Reformers drank in their light, from which they derived their weapons! Can that Version be inefficient, which produced the Reformation? Or are our Protestant Versions so immaculate as to authorize us to stickle for their exclusive` adoption? What can we think of this holy concern for the purity of the sacred text, united to such indifference respecting its circulation? It is as if a man should say, he saw no