One tunes his facile lyre to please the ear, And win the buzzing plaudits of the town; The other sings his soul out to the stars, And the deep hearts of men.
You cannot depolarize, without destroying, Dante, or Milton, or any of our great poets; no more can you depolarize the great masterpiece of the Bible. Let us take it as we receive it under the guardianship of the Church. Its apparent imperfections are like the surroundings and exterior of its Founder: a scandal to the Greek, a stumbling-block to the Jew, because they could not realize that a God was hidden in the imperfect guise of poor flesh.
What we consider imperfections to be remedied in the Bible were recognized by the Apostles, and by the chief of them, St. Peter, who writes, II. Pet. iii. 16: "Our dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, has written to you; as also in all his Epistles; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." Here was room for depolarization, yet St. Peter did not take it in hand, neither should we desire scholars of perhaps greater knowledge but less wisdom to do so.
[1] Humphrey, "The Sacred Scriptures," _l.c._
[3] "Three Essays on Religion," 1874, p. 258.
[4] "Hibbert Lectures," 1882, pp. 196, 197.
[6] "The Old Testament in the Jewish Church," 1892, p. 11.
[7] See _Dublin Review_, article cited above.
[8] See Humphrey, "The Sacred Scriptures;" also "_Questions Actuelles d'-Ecriture Sainte_," by Brucker, S. J.
THE VULGATE AND THE REVISED PROTESTANT VERSION OF THE BIBLE.
In instituting here a comparison between the two approved and typical English Versions of the Bible as in use among Catholics and Protestants respectively, I have no intention to be aggressive or polemic. As from the first we have taken what may be called the common-sense point of view in judging the Bible as an historical work, which verifies its claims to be regarded as an organ communicating to us divine knowledge, so we proceed to make a brief suggestive examination of two English Bibles: one found in the homes of Catholics, the other in those of our Protestant friends and neighbors, many of whom believe with all sincerity that among the various doubts and difficulties of life they can consult no truer guide than that sacred volume.
