ook of Books,"
and puts forth claims which will be conceded only after it shall have
sustained the most extensive, minute, and even prejudiced scrutiny. The
Bible has more readers than any other book; and that which claims to be
an improved Bible must, if it secure anything like a general attention,
meet with criticisms from all quarters. Mr. Sawyer is fortunate in one
respect: his work will be examined and judged by multitudes who never
undertook to criticize any other book; he will have, therefore,
ultimately, a popular judgment of his task and its performance. But he
is unfortunate in another point: for he must meet that popular sentiment
which at the outset looks with disfavor upon anything that has even the
appearance of meddling with the commonly received and almost universally
approved version of the Holy Scriptures. Let us, in a brief space and
with as little of formal and scholastic criticism as possible, examine
Mr. Sawyer's translation.

A work of such a character as this should be judged not more by its
absolute or intrinsic merits than by a comparison of them with the
design avowed and the claims advanced by the author. In a task of such
magnitude we ought not to expect to find everything perfect. If the
completed structure have a symmetry of proportions and excellence of
finish approaching reasonably near to the plan proposed, we should not
too severely censure minor defects. Critics rarely accord all that
authors claim; the former measure the actual achievement,--the latter
look to the ideal conception; if the one be in a reasonable degree
commensurate with the other, we should be lenient toward the faults of
the performance.

With this charitable substratum for our critical structure, let us test
Mr. Sawyer's new version by contrasting it with his own avowed design
and the claims with which he introduces his completed task. In the
Preface he says,--

"This is not a work of compromises, or of conjectural interpretations
of the Sacred Scriptures, neither is it a paraphrase, but a strict
[strictly] literal rendering. It neither adds nor takes away; but aims
to express the original with the utmost clearness and force, and with
the utmost precision."

This is a somewhat pretentious claim. A strictly literal rendering of
any language into another is by no means always an easy task; and it is
especially difficult to couple, as the translator in this case asserts
he has done, the utmost clearness, force, an