It is, therefore, as a poet of the sorrows and aspirations of our race that we shall most profitably think of Victor Hugo. He was somewhat too French in spirit to be a poet of mankind; he was too egotistic to be on the heights of his human song; he would have been greater if his knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth had been deeper, and his imitation of him perfect in the measure of his great capacity; he would have left something unsaid which wounded men whose purpose was as high as his own, if he had been more Christian and less Hugoist. But why do we ask all things of all men? Victor Hugo did a great work in his own great way. A dangerous socialism has temporarily profited by his denunciations of society, but in the end of the account it will probably appear that he has advanced Christian socialism by the uplift he has given to human aspirations. Men are not so willing to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt, not so much in danger of leaving the bones of the whole race in the desert, more anxious to move on to their promised land.
It required fifty years of the Elizabethan age to introduce that revision of the English Bible which has so long been the standard edition of the Holy Scriptures in our tongue. It would be strange if the revision of that standard Bible which has just been completed were to come into immediate and general use. The New Testament revision met with a harsh reception from the critics of conservative temper; and it certainly has some defects, though the _sense_ of the original is more obvious, to use the mildest term, in the new than in the older revision. The revised Old Testament has consumed fourteen years of the labor of the English and American committees, and the most obvious fact is that it is a more conservative piece of work than the revised New Testament. The committees probably profited by the buffetings of their New Testament revision brethren; but they had a simpler task, since they had not to settle the text of the original Hebrew, whereas the Greek text of the New Testament is still a battle ground of criticism. After all, however, the two revisions constitute one “revised Bible,” and must stand or fall together. The general judgment may probably run to the effect that the New Testament is revised too much and the Old too little. There is a special defect, however, in the New Testament English—it is not idiomatic, and it is not always intelligible. There is a rumor that it will be re-revised into harmony with the conservatism which characterizes the new Old Testament. It is not to be overlooked that there are various demands made upon a revision. Those who most earnestly desire one have in view a more plain and understandable text for popular use. Wycliffe’s great thought, “a Bible understonden of the people,” is their desire. But the literary demands upon the revisers exclude intelligibility by the people as a governing rule. This group of demands defies the skill of any revision committee. They ask for improvements; but they object to any changes. The Bible as an Elizabethan classic is their admiration and they seem not to be willing that the people should have any other Bible. There would seem to be ample room for both revisions; let the literary people have their English of 1611, while the people have English of this century. We are not yet, however, sufficiently advanced in the thinking which revision requires to qualify even the critics among us to distinguish between a classic text for scholars and a plain text for the millions. A modern English Bible will come by and by; we can afford to wait, and meanwhile to study the fruits of the labors of a Revision Committee loaded down with a great weight of conservative environments. For it is not the classicist alone who stands guard over the old English text; conservative theologians regard that old text as too sacred to be modernized, and distrust modernizing as involving changes in the moral and religious influence of the Bible upon mankind. The intelligibility of the Bible is not, to such thinkers, a leading requisite; reverence for its mysteries ranks all other considerations. We are probably outgrowing this view of Holy Scripture; but it is an opinion strong enough yet to keep utterly dead English locutions in the revised Old Testament of 1885. This conservatism is much stronger in England than in this country; the American Committee desired to substitute modern for obsolete words.