osing to
introduce. This history then I must now place before you from its very
commencement, so far as memory and a nearly life-long connexion with the
subject enable me to speak.

The true, though remote fountain-head of revision, and, more
particularly, of the revision of the New Testament, must be regarded as
the grammar written by a young academic teacher, George Benedict Winer,
as far back as 1822, bearing the title of a Grammar of the Language of
the New Testament. It was a vigorous protest against the arbitrary, and
indeed monstrous licence of interpretation which prevailed in
commentaries on Holy Scripture of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. It met with at first the fate of all assaults on prevailing
unscientific procedures, but its value and its truth were soon
recognized. The volume passed through several successively improved
editions, until in 1855 the sixth edition was reached, and issued with a
new and interesting preface by the then distinguished and veteran writer.
This edition formed the basis of the admirable and admirably supplemented
translation of my lamented and highly esteemed friend Dr. Moulton, which
was published in 1870, passed through a second edition six years
afterwards, and has, since that time, continued to be a standard grammar,
in an English dress, of the Greek Testament down to this day.

The claim that I have put forward for this remarkable book as the
fountain-head of revision can easily be justified when we call to memory
how very patently the volume, in one or another of its earlier editions,
formed the grammatical basis of the commentaries of De Wette and Meyer,
and, here in England, of the commentary of Alford, and of critical and
grammatical commentaries on some of St. Paul's Epistles with which my own
name was connected. It was to Winer that we were all indebted for that
greater accuracy of interpretation of the Greek Testament which was
recognized and welcomed by readers of the New Testament at the time I
mention, and produced effects which had a considerable share in the
gradual bringing about of important movements that almost naturally
followed.

What came home to a large and increasing number of earnest and
truth-seeking readers of the New Testament was this--that there were
inaccuracies and errors in the current version of the Holy Scriptures,
and especially of the New Testament, which plainly called for
consideration and correction, and further brought h