verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark. For among these stood that sentence which has cost the world more innocent blood than any other—the words "He that believeth not shall be damned." From this source had logically grown the idea that the intellectual rejection of this or that dogma which dominant opinion had happened at any given time to pronounce essential, since such rejection must bring punishment infinite in agony and duration, is a crime to be prevented at any cost of finite cruelty. Still another service rendered to humanity by the revisers was in substituting a new and correct rendering for the old reading of the famous text regarding the inspiration of Scripture, which had for ages done so much to make our sacred books a fetich. By this more correct reading the revisers gave a new charter to liberty in biblical research.[1]
Most valuable, too, have been studies during the latter part of the nineteenth century upon the formation of the canon of Scripture. The result of these has been to substitute something far better for that conception of our biblical literature, as forming one book handed out of the clouds by the Almighty, which had been so long practically the accepted view among probably the majority of Christians. Reverent scholars have demonstrated our sacred literature to be a growth in obedience to simple laws natural and historical; they have shown how some books of the Old Testament were accepted as sacred, centuries before our era, and how others gradually gained sanctity, in some cases only acquiring it long after the establishment of the Christian Church. The same slow growth has also been shown in the New Testament canon. It has been demonstrated that the selection of the books composing it was a gradual process, and indeed that the rejection
- ↑ The texts referred to as most beneficially changed by the revisers, are I John, v, 1; I Timothy, iii, 16.
Though the revisers thought it better not to suppress altogether the last twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel, they softened the word "damned" to "condemned," and separated them from the main Gospel, adding a note stating that "the two oldest Greek manuscripts, and some other authorities, omit from verse nine to the end"; and that "some other authorities have a different ending to this Gospel."
The resistance of staunch high churchmen of the older type even to so mild a reform as the first change above noted may be exemplified by a story told of Philpotts, Bishop of Exeter, about the middle of the nineteenth century. A kindly clergyman reading the invitation to the holy communion, and thinking that so affectionate a call was disfigured by the harsh phrase "eateth and drinketh to his own damnation," ventured timidly to substitute the word "condemnation." Thereupon the bishop, who was kneeling with the rest of the congregation, threw up his head and roared "damnation!" The story is given in T. A. Trollope's What I Remember, vol. i, p. 444. American churchmen may well rejoice that the fathers of the American branch of the Anglican Church were wise enough and Christian enough to omit from their prayer book this damnatory clause, as well as the Commination Service and the Athanasian Creed.
