ue
reading, "His FATHER and his mother" instead of the old piously
fraudulent words "JOSEPH and his mother."

An even more important service to the new and better growth of
Christianity was the virtual setting aside of the last twelve 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 theology 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.(501)

(501) The texts referred to as most beneficially changed by the revisers
are I John v, 7 and I Timothy iii, 16. Mention may also be made of
the fact that the American revision gave up the Trinitarian version of
Romans ix, 5, and that even their more conservative British brethren,
while leaving it in the text, discredited it in the margin.

Though 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 an invitation to the holy
communion, and thinking that so an 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