mit of freer though still reverential handling,
should be permitted to continue as stumbling-blocks interfering with its
acceptableness and usefulness.

The plan which he suggested as meeting the difficulties of the case was
the following:

That by proper authority a Committee of Revision of the English Bible
should be appointed, whose business should be, retaining the present
authorised version as a standard to be departed from as little as
possible to settle upon such indubitable corrections of meaning and
improvements of expression as they agreed ought to be made, and have
these printed _in the margin_ of all Bibles published by authority.
That, as an essential part of the scheme, this Committee of Revision
should be renewed periodically, but not too frequently--he appeared to
think that periods of fifty years might serve--at which times it should
be competent to the Committee to authorise the transference from the
margin into the text of all such alterations as had stood the test of
experience and criticism during the previous period, as well as to fix
on new marginal readings.

He was of opinion that in the constitution of the Committee care should
be taken to appoint not only divines of established reputation for sound
theology, and especially for their knowledge in connection with the
original languages of the sacred volume, but some one author at least
noted for his mastery over the vernacular language.

It will be seen that this plan, while it provides for corrections of
errors and substitution of understood for obsolete or mistaken
expressions, leaves undisturbed the associations of aged Christians, and
prepares the younger generation for receiving the marginal amendments
into the text. Wordsworth conceived that fixing the duration of the
period of revision was of great consequence, both as obviating all
agitation in the way of call for such a process, and as tending in the
matter of critical discussions respecting the sanctioning, cancelling,
and proposing of amendments to bring them to something of definitiveness
in preparation for each era of revision.

The same process, under certain modifications, he thought applicable to
the Book of Common Prayer. In this he deprecated all tampering with
doctrine, considering that alterations ought to be confined to changes
rendering the services more clearly understood or more conveniently
used. It is fair to add, however, that I have heard him express a strong
de