For nearly two hundred and fifty years this translation has been in common use. During that time, it has had free course and circulation among successive generations speaking the English tongue. . It was made ready in good season to cross the Atlantic with the first English colonists of America. During that time the reigning dynasty of England has changed once and again, America has become the greatest of republics, science has been even more often and fully revolutionized than politics, the arts of life have almost created society anew by marvellous inventions and discoveries, popular intelligence has brightened from its dawnings into the broad light of day, philosophy has restlessly traversed a thousand circles of inquiry and speculation, and theology has been rushing backward and forward through successive alternations, like a ship beating into port against wind and tide, and losing on one tack, what may have been gained on the other. And yet this glorious version, alone unchanged, remains unrivalled. Though, here and there, some have murmured and threatened, and some have complained and reviled aloud, and some have put forth their skill in “improved” or “corrected” versions, they have been wholly unheeded by the great body of readers. The common version was never more popular than it is now. It is in greater demand, more abundantly supplied by the press, more elaborately adorned by Christian art, and more widely spread abroad than ever before. This among a people so intelligent and cultivated, and so prone to progress, is an unexampled popularity. There must be inherent and pre-eminent excellence in a work which keeps such firm hold upon the esteem and veneration of a race of men, who show but little conservatism as to any other matter of general concernment. While all else has been falling away, the word of the Lord “liveth and abideth for ever.”

This enduring popularity may in part be accounted for by the personal character, the vast scholarship, and exalted piety, of its authors. The way had been well prepared for them by a succession of older translations and revisions so excellent, that our Translators modestly say, in their Preface, that they did not “need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one; but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one.” Still, their work, though much assisted by the labors of the devout men and martyrs who had wrought in the same line before them, is essentially original. It was done with such prudence, diligence, and scrupulous care, that even the men who would fain have supplanted it with something of their own, have been forced to extol it, as Balaam did the tabernacles of Jacob. “Let us not too hastily conclude,” says Mr. Whittaker, “that the Translators have fallen on evil days and evil tongues, because it occasionally happens an individual, as inferior to them in erudition as in talents and integrity, is found questioning their motives, or denying their qualifications for the task which they so well performed. --It may be compared with any translation in the world, without fear of inferiority; it has not shrunk under the most rigorous examination; it challenges investigation; and, in spite of numerous attempts to supersede it, has hitherto remained unrivalled in the affections of the country. (Historical and Critical Enquiry. P. 92.)” Who would be so tasteless and senseless as to insist on infusing new wine into the old bottle? Let us rather, to use the strong language of its able vindicator, Mr. Todd, “take up the Book, which from our infancy we have known and loved, with increased delight; and resolve not hastily to violate, in regard to itself, the rule of Ecclesiasticus,-- ’Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him.’”

The work, though not absolutely perfect, nor incapable of amendment in detached places, is yet so well done, that the Christian public will not endure to have it tampered with. It would be impossible, as has been demonstrated in the foregoing biographical sketches, to collect at this day a body of professors and divines, from England and America together, which should be equal in numbers and in learning to those assembled by King James; and in whom the churches would feel enough of confidence to entrust them with a repetition of the work. The common version has become a permanent necessity, through its immense influence on the language, literature, manners, opinions, character, institutions, history, religion, and entire life and development of the Anglo-Saxon race in either hemisphere.

Taking into account the many marked events in divine Providence which led on to this version, and aided its accomplishment, and necessitated its diffusion,--and also that to uncounted millions, and to other millions yet to be born, it is the only safeguard from popery on the one side, and from infidelity on the other, we are constrained to claim for the good men who made it the highest measure of divine aid short of plenary inspiration itself. We made this claim regardless of the supercilious airs of flippant Sadduccees, or the pitying smiles of literary pantheists. Not that the Translators were inspired in the same sense as were the prophets and apostles, and other “holy men of old,” who “were moved by the Holy Ghost” in drawing up the original documents of the Christian faith. Such inspiration is a thing by itself, like any other miracle; and belongs exclusively to those to whom it was given for that high and unequalled end.

But we hold that the Translators enjoyed the highest degree of that special guidance which is ever granted to God’s true servants in exegencies of deep concernment to his kingdom on earth. Such special succors and spiritual assistances are always vouchsafed, where there is a like union of piety, of prayers, and of pains, to effect an object of such incalculable importance to the Church of the living God. The necessity of a supernatural revelation to man of the divine will, has often been argued in favor of the extreme probability that such a revelation has been made. A like necessity, and one nearly as pressing, might be argued in favor of the belief, that this most important of all the versions of God’s revealed will must have been made under his peculiar guidance, and his provident eye. And the manner in which that version has met the wants of the most free and intelligent nations in the old world and the new, may well confirm us in the persuasion, that the same illuminating Spirit which indited the original Scriptures, was imparted in rich grace to aid and guard the preparation of the English version.

The readers of this admirable version shall do well, if they avail themselves of every help toward a right understanding of it according to the intent of its authors. But such as can obtain no other help that the Book itself affords, by prayerful study and comparison of scripture with scripture, may rely on it as a safe interpreter of God’s will, and will never incur his displeasure by obeying it too strictly. Whosoever attempts to shake the confidence of the common people in the common version, puts their faith in imminent peril of shipwreck. He is slipping the chain-cable of the sheet-anchor, and casting their souls adrift among the breakers. Against all such attempts let them be fully warned, who can only hear the “lively oracles” of God address them “in their own tongue wherein they were born.” Let them never fear but that the All-merciful who has spoken to the human race at large, to teach them his love, his will, and his salvation, has so cared for the souls of the fifty civilized millions who now use the English speech, as to repeat to them his teachings in a form most sure and sufficient as to the whole round of saving faith and holy living. The best fruits of Christianity have sprung from the seeds our translation has scattered.