we thus attempt to evade it
by tampering with the translation. A notable instance of this was
afforded some few years since in a new translation of some of the books
of the Old Testament; in which it was pretended that most of those
points which had been most attacked by unbelievers were, in fact, mere
mistranslations, and that the real meaning of the original was
something totally different; and, in order to show the necessity of his
alterations, the writer entirely allowed the objections of unbelievers
to the common reading; and said that no sufficient answer had been or
could be made to them. This was an extreme case, and probably imposed
only on a very few: but less instances of the same thing are common: St.
Paul's words about being baptized for the dead, have been twisted to all
sorts of senses, from their natural and only possible meaning, because
men could not bear to believe that the superstition of being baptized as
proxies for another could have existed at a period which they were
resolved to consider so pure: and so in the text, a force has been put
upon the words which they cannot bear, in order to remove a supposed
contradiction: and all that would have been gained by the change would
be, to have one instructive illustration the less of our Lord's peculiar
manner of discourse, and one instance the less of the inimitable way in
which his language, addressed directly to the circumstances before him,
contains, at the same time, a general lesson, for the use of all his
disciples in all ages.

Our Lord's habitual language was parabolical; I use the word in a wide
sense, to include all language which is not meant to be taken according
to the letter. Observe his conversation with the Samaritan woman; it
begins at once with parable, "If thou hadst known who it was that asked
of thee, saying, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and
he would have given thee living water." And again, "Whoso drinketh of
the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but it shall be in
him a well of water, springing up unto life eternal." This seems to have
been, if I may venture to say so, the favourite language in which he
preferred to speak; but when he found that he was not understood, then,
according to the nature of the case, he went on in two or three
different manners. When he, to whom all hearts were open, saw that the
misunderstanding was wilful, that it arose out of a disposition glad to
find an excuse, i