instrument, Verse; compassing almost equally with Verse man's thought
however sublime, his emotion however profound.

Now in the course of my remarks I happened--maybe a little
incautiously--to call the Authorised Version a 'miracle'; using that
word in a colloquial sense, in which no doubt you accepted it; meaning
no more than that the thing passed my understanding. I have allowed that
the famous forty-seven owed an immense deal to earlier translators--to
the Bishops, to Tyndale, to the Wyclif Version, as themselves allowed it
eagerly in their preface:--

Truly (good Christian reader) wee never thought from the beginning that
we should needs to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one
a good one ... but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones
one principall good one, not justly to be excepted against: that hath
bene our indeavour, that our marke.

(See [Footnote 1] at the end of this lecture.)

Nevertheless the Authorised Version astounds me, as I believe it will
astound you when you compare it with earlier translations. Aristotle (it
has been said) invented Chance to cover the astonishing fact that there
were certain phenomena for which he found himself wholly unable to
account. Just so, if one may compare very small things with very great, I
spoke of the Authorised Version as a 'miracle.' It was, it remains,
marvellous to me.

Should these deciduous discourses ever come to be pressed within the
leaves of a book, I believe their general meaning will be as clear to
readers as I hope it is to you who give me so much pleasure by pursuing