The necessity of thinking of the duty at this time arises from two causes, setting in contrast our own circumstances with those under which our version was made: one relating to the things old, the other to the things new.
When that version was made, rather when it was constructed and amended out of former ones, the available sources whence the sacred text was to be derived were very few indeed, and those for the most part not of a high order. In almost every case where the real text is matter of doubt, and has to be ascertained by evidence, our translators had not that evidence before them. By far the greater and more important part of it was not brought to light in any trustworthy form till within the memory of living men. Nay, one of its most ancient and principal witnesses has been within the last few years discovered and given to the Church. And the consequence is that, setting aside all cases of indifferent or unimportant variations, there is by this time an immense weight of responsibility pressing on the Church with regard to these varieties of reading: a weight which it seems to me only those can be contented to rest under, who are not aware of its magnitude. We, the Churches of Christ in this land, are causing to be read to our people, to take but a single very solemn instance, words respecting one of the foundation doctrines of the faith which are demonstrably no part of Scripture at all. And we of the Church of England are doing worse: we are reading those words by special selection, implying that they convey a proof of that doctrine, on the Sunday set apart by its name. This is perhaps the most prominent example: but there is no lack of others: we might quote instances where the text found in our English Bibles, which passes current with millions for the word of God, has but the very slenderest, if any authority to rest upon, and where other words, which very few of those millions ever heard of, really are, according to the Church’s own belief respecting Scripture, the message of God to men. We might produce examples again, where the evidence of the great authorities is so nearly balanced, that to the end of time, if no more witnesses are discovered, the question never can be decided which of two or more is the true reading.