SEPTEMBER, 1852.

AN ADDRESS

TO THE BIBLE UNION CONVENTION, HELD AT MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, APRIL 2, 1852.

BY A. CAMPBELL.

"God said, Let there be light, and light was" (Gen. i. 3.)

MEN, BRETHREN, AND FATHERS!

THIS was the first speech ever made within our our universe. It is, indeed, the most sublime and potent speech ever made. It is. however, but the expression of an intelligent omnipotent volition. It was pregnant with all the elements of a material creation. It was a beautiful portraiture of its Author, prospective of all the developments of creation, providence, and redemption. It was a Bible in miniature, and future glory in embryo. We, therefore, place it as the motto of an address upon the greatest question and work of our age-Shall we have the light of life as God created it?

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All was chaos before God uttered this oracle. All was order, beauty, and life when he ended this discourse. Creation was but a sermon-a speech. Its exordium was light, and its peroration was man. Redemption, too, was in perspective, shown in the first utterance that broke the silence of eternity. Hence its author is called "THE WORD OF GOD"-" the light and the life of man." Hence, too, in its first enunciation, we are carried back to this primordial oracle. the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were created by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men." True, "this light" yet "shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." Under the same divine imagery, at the end of the volume, he is called "The Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last." "All things were created by him and for him; and he is before all things, and by him all things subsist." The "word became incarnate and dwelt" amongst men, and they "beheld his glory"—the divine image of the invisible Jehovah-" the glory as of an only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The volume emphatically called THE BIBLE, spans the arch of time. In its commencement it rests upon an eternity, to us past, and in its termination upon an eternity, to us future. But God himself, in Hebrew, is called " The Eternities of Israel," and time is but a continued creation of the spiritual tenantry of the Eternities of Israel, commencing in the first and terminating in the last. This heaven descended volume is, therefore, the chart of the interval that lies between the heaven that is past, and the heaven that is to come. It delineates the path of life, and in harmony with "the divinity that stirs within us," it points out an hereafter, and intimates an eternity to man. How important, then, that we have it in our own language, as they had that first received it from the hand of God! As the golden cherubim that overshadowed the Propitiatory, while guarding the written word of God with one eye directed to the throne of glory, and one immovably fixed on the printed tablets of the divine constitution; so ought we to guard the Sacred Oracles committed to the church of Christ, and preserve them in their primeval purity and integrity.

In full conviction and assurance of these preliminary statements, and of the eternal truth and value of the Divine Oracles, and of the obligations therein contained and resting upon the church of Christ, to translate them into all lan

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guages, and to give them to the human race, I would very respectively submit to your consideration and adoption the following resolution:

Resolved, That it is a paramount duty of the Christian church of the nineteenth century, to give to the present age, in our own vernacular, a perspicuous, exact, and faithful version of the Living Oracles of God, as we find them in the Hebrew and Greek originals of inspired prophets, apostles, and evangelists.

In submitting to your consideration and adoption this resolution, it is assumed that we have not now extant, in our own language, publicly accredited, such a version as that proposed in the resolution which I have at present the honor to submit to your most grave and solemn consideration. And is not this a generally, nay, a universally conceded fact, throughout the length and breadth of Protestant Christendom? Is there a single sect, party, or denomination, known to history or to any one of us, that in its aggregate, or even in a respectable minority of its most intelligent communion, is fully satisfied that it has in its possession such a translation of either the Jewish or Christian Scriptures? Nay, is there a learned Rabbi, Doctor, or Minister of any denomination, that can or would, ex animo, affirm the conviction, that we have such a version in public use? If any one doubt it, let him assume the task-the herculean task—of examining the popular commentaries and versions from those of Luther, Beza, Erasmus, or that of Rheims, A.D. 1582, down to Dr. Boothroyd, of 1836, patronized, or occasionally used, by our religious denominations, Romanists and Protestants; and if he does not find objections to, and emendations of, each and every one of them, proposed by hundreds and by thousands, I will concede the position assumed.

Dr. George Campbell suggests some four hundred and fifty emendations, in the single testimony or gospel of the Apostle Matthew; and Dr. Macknight nearly as many, in his translation of two of Paul's Epistles-viz.: that to the Romans and that to the Hebrews. And what shall we say of Drs. Whitby, Benson, Doddridge, D'Oyly, and Mant, Gill, Pierce, Thomas Scott, Taylor, of Norwich, Philosopher Locke, Dr. Boothroyd, Professor M. Stuart, and Secretary Thompson? From all these, and others beside, we have imported from Pater Noster Row, London, the Holy Bible with its twenty thousand emendations! In the United States, these, and many others not named, are found, not only in our public libraries, but in many of our private libraries. Indeed, these all stand on my own shelves, with several others not named, of equal value and importance.

In this country, we are happy to find no by-law established version of Old Testament or New. We voluntarily use that introduced by King James, merely because it was in fashion, and by law of Protestant Britain appointed to be read in all the churches of its establishment. We have, indeed, been favored with one volume from the British press, called the English Hexapla, exhibiting six important versions of the New Testament Scriptures-viz.: that of Wickliffe, of A.D. 1380; Tindal's, of 1534; Cranmer's, falsely so called, of 1539; the Geneva, 1557; the Rheims, or the English College of Rheims, 1582; and that of James, of 1611. These, with one exception, were made within 77 years -the life time of one man.

We have also the Polyglott Biblia Sacra, containing the Greek and Hebrew originals, with the Latin Vulgate, German, English, French, Spanish, and Italian versions, under the supervision of Dr. Samuel Lee, Professor of the Hebrew Language at Cambridge, England, Doctor of Divinity, and honorary member of all the great literary societies in Britain and on the Continent of Europe. This is the greatest and best offering of the press of the 19th century—indeed, of any century, since the first of the Christian age. We are, therefore, better furnished

with the aids and materials for an improved and correct version, than at any former period in the history of Christianity.

If, in the judgment of Paul, the greatest honor and advantage bestowed upon the Jews, was that "to them were committed the Oracles of God," just as he spoke them, is it not our greatest privilege and honor to have the Oracles of God, just as he spoke them, committed to us, not only for ourselves, but for our children and our contemporaries in all the earth?

The Jews' religion possessed no proselyting spirit or precept. "He showed his statutes unto Jacob, and his testimonies unto Israel-he has not dealt so with any other nation-and as for his judgments, they have not known them." The Jews sent no missionaries abroad. There was no missionary spirit infused into their religion. There was no commission given to the patriarchs or the Jews, none to Judah or to Levi, "to go into all the world," and preach and teach to other nations the statutes and the judgments, the precepts and the promises, that God gave to them.

They needed no translators nor verbal expositors for themselves. Their dispensation was circumscribed by the flesh, and the language of Abraham had no spirit of extension in it; and therefore, Levi was commissioned" to teach Jacob God's judgments-to make Israel know his laws-to place incense before God, and holocausts, or whole burnt offerings, upon his altar." Beyond this they had no obligation or mission.

But God has been to us more gracious than to Israel, according to the flesh. He has given to us a better constitution of grace—a better covenant, established upon better promises. He has called us to a noble work, and given to us a large mission. He has committed to us the Christian Oracles, with authority to announce them to the whole human race.

But they have come to us in a translation, and in an imperfect translation, by no means equal, in clearness and force, to the original. He has, however, also given to us the originals; but only a few can read them, and, of that few, all read them after having been taught the vernacular Scriptures. They read the originals through the spectacles of their vernacular versions; and, superadded to this, through the spectacles of a ready made theology, imparted to them by early education and high authority-parental or ministerial, or both. It has become part and parcel of their individuality. Few can ever divest themselves of it. It is harder, far, to unlearn than to learn; to divest ourselves of old errors, than to acquire new truths. Still it is our duty, as it is our safety and honor, to take the Living Oracles, and, with an unveiled fcae, an unblenching eye, and an honest heart, to learn and study what God has spoken to us.

To the Christian church are committed the Oracles of Christ, as to the Jewish church were formerly committed the Oracles of God. The original Scriptures were given in solemn charge to the Jewish people, that nothing was to be added to them or subtracted from them. They were to preserve and teach them to their children through all generations.

A similar ordinance in the New Testament, with the most solemn sanctions, gives to the Christian church the keeping of the Christian Scriptures. If any one add to them, God will inflict upon him all the maledictions found in the Holy Volume. If any one subtract from them, God will take away from him all the Christian birth-rights promised in them, and consign him to perdition.

But they were committed to both people in their own native language, directly from those persons to whom God had given them in charge. Were they, then, to translate them into other languages? This question, though not pro

pounded in the very words of the book, and consequently, not formally answered, is, nevertheless, clearly intimated, and most satisfactorily disposed of, in the Christian Scriptures. To its consideration and disposal we are now, in the providence of God, especially called; and it is our special duty, on the present occasion, to investigate the subject, and ascertain our duties and privileges on all the premises exhibited in the Christian Records.

On such questions and occasions as the present, it is essential to success that we entertain and cherish clear, enlarged, and lofty conceptions of the whole subject and object of Divine revelation, and that we duly appreciate the times and circumstances in the midst of which our lot has been cast.

The Bible, in its vast and glorious amplitude and object, is the Book of Life -the charter of immortality to man. It is, in its manifold developments and details, most worthy of God to be both the author and the subject of it, and of man to be both its theme and its object, in the awful grandeur of his origin, relations, and destiny. Every thing superlatively interesting to man, with respect to the past, the present, and the future of his being, and of his well-being, constitutes the all-engrossing theme and intention of the volume. It follows, therefore, that its faithful preservation and transmission from age to age, and from nation to nation, is, and ought to be, the paramount duty and concern of every one who believes its Divine authenticity, and realizes its transcendent value. We shall, therefore, endeavor to ascertain our immediate duty with regard to an improved translation of it in our own language and country, at the present time.

To this end, it is also essential that we appreciate and comprehend the character and the spirit of our own age, and the actual condition of the Christian profession in our own country, and indeed, in our own language wherever spoken, at home or abroad. It is almost as difficult to appreciate our own times -the spirit and the progress of our own age-as it is to see ourselves, either as others see us, or as we really are.

And what is the actual condition of the present church militant? I mean of the whole Christian profession-not within Popedom nor in the patriarchdom— but in the European and American Protestantdom. Is it not emphatically in a politico-heretico belligerent state? There is, indeed, much said in praise of a catholic spirit, and much said against a narrow, contracted, sectarian, bigoted spirit. But alas! how many praise the life which they never dare to lead. If all who praise truth, virtue, temperance, charity, practised these virtues, what a happy world-what a triumphant church we should have. Too much credit, as well as too much credulity, has ruined many a man. It has, alas! too often bankrupted and ruined church and state.

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There cannot be an honest league between truth and error. A smiling face over a frowning heart, is an abomination to earth and heaven. True charity rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth." There can be no compro'mise between God's truth and man's error. "Let God be true," as Paul said, though it should make every man a liar”—no matter on whom the falsehood lies. We never can heal the wounds of sectarianism but by the healing unction of heaven-descended truth. But the truth must ever be spoken in its own spirit, which is the spirit of love and of a sound mind.

But what are the bearings of these aphorisms upon the subject of a faithful translation of the Christian Scriptures? Much, very much, as we hope the sequel may show. We desire-I mean the true church of Christ desires-to know the whole truth-the mind and will of God.