of this great
movement, does not the question come home to us, Why has all this been
done? For what have the hundred labourers in the great work freely given
their time and their energies during the four and twenty years (speaking
collectively) that were spent on the work? For what did the venerable
Convocation of our Province give the weight of its sanction and authority
when it drew up the fundamental rules in accordance with which all has
been done? Can there be any other answer than this? All has been done
to bring the truth of God's most Holy Word more faithfully and more
freshly home to the hearts and consciences of our English-speaking
people. And if this be so, how are ministers of this Holy Word to answer
the further question, When we are met together in the House of God to
hear His word and His message of salvation to mankind, how hear we it?
In the traditional form in which it has been heard for wellnigh three
hundred years, or in a form on which, to ensure faithfulness and
accuracy, such labour has been bestowed as that which we are now
considering? It seems impossible to hesitate as to our answer. And yet
numbers do hesitate; and partly from indifference, partly from a vague
fear of disquieting a congregation, partly, and probably chiefly, from a
sense of difficulty as to the rightful mode of introducing the change,
the old Version is still read, albeit with an uneasy feeling on the part
of the public reader; the uneasy feeling being this, that errors in
regard of Holy Scripture ought not to remain uncorrected nor obscurities
left to cloud the meaning of God's Word when there is a current Version
from which errors are removed, and in which obscurities are dissipated.
Why should not such a Version be read in the ears of our people?

This is the question which I am confident many a one of you, my dear
friends, when you have been reading in your church--say the
Epistles--have often felt very distinctly come home to you. Why should
such a Version not be read in the ears of our people? Has it been
forbidden? No, thank God; full liberty, on the contrary, has been left
to us by the living voice of the synod of this Province that it may be
read, subject to one reasonable limitation. Was it not the unanimous
judgement of the Upper House of the Convocation of our Province,
confirmed by the voice of the Lower House {122}--"That the use of the
Revised Version of the Bible at the lectern in the public services