reading his Bible without being baffled by
unmeaningnesses." He complained that "the fatal thing about our version
is that it so often spoils a chapter in the Old Testament by making
sheer nonsense out of one or two verses, and so throwing the reader
out." He habitually used a Bible--a present from his godfather, John
Keble--"where the numbers of the chapters are marked at the side and do
not interpose a break between chapter and chapter; and where the
divisions of the verses, being numbered in like manner at the side of
the page, not in the body of the verse, and being numbered in very small
type, do not thrust themselves forcibly on the attention," and these
circumstances suggested the form of his _Bible Reading for Schools_. The
little book consists of the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah,
running on continuously, with some twenty pages of notes, and he thus
introduces it--

"At the very outset, the humbleness of what is professed in this little
book cannot be set forth too strongly. With the aim of enabling English
school children to read as a connected whole the last twenty-seven
chapters of Isaiah, without being frequently stopped by passages of
which the meaning is almost or quite unintelligible, I have sought to
choose, among the better meanings which have been offered for each of
the passages, that which seemed the best, and to weave it into the
authorized text in such a manner as not to produce any sense of
strangeness or interruption." The attempt was truly laudable, and the
execution admirable for taste and ease. The majestic flow and cadence of
the traditional English are never interrupted. There is no concession to
such pedantries as Professor Robertson Smith's "greaves of the warrior
that stampeth in the fray," or such barbarisms as Professor Cheynes'
"boot of him that trampleth noisily." But here and there a turn is given
to a sentence, which for the first time reveals its true meaning; here
and there a word which really represents the Hebrew is substituted for
one which makes nonsense of the sentence.

The little book has often been reprinted; but as "A Bible Reading for
Schools" it failed, as, to judge by his own melancholy words about it,
he seems to have foreseen that it would fail. People who have charge of
Elementary Education in England, whether in Church Schools or in Board
Schools, are eminently and rightly suspicious about new views in
religion; and _The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restora