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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
tries . This department has not yet had any proper share of the attention which it imperatively requires , and which it is the duty of the Society to see given . It may be fully supplied at very little more expense or trouble than that of correspondence . It requires nothing but Common punctuality and moderate activity to render such a correspondence most pleasing , interesting and useful . It is the channel by which the most agreeable , social communication can be maintained , and the Society will be grossly and inexcusably
negligent if it does not provide so cheap and easy a gratification . The executive of the Association ought , at stated pariods , ( even though they bs distant ones , ) to interchange letters with some regular correspondent of an official character in every important station . How far further it should extend its foreign views must depend on circumstances as they arise . Home , it is obvious , is the proper sphere of every one ' s primary exertions . There he best knows how far those exertions are likely to produce adequate results , arid there his personal superintendence can give them effect . When cases arise which may be thought to require extraordinary efforts , a society has ready means of appealing to the public , without the necessity of making previous provision for such exigencies out of its ordinary revenue . In this way the Calcutta case ( though out of all the ordinary boundaries of the Society ' s means ) was safely left to public zeal , which certainly went quite as far as the occasion called for , viewing it in comparison with other objects , and with the quantum of funds applicable by any probable apportionment to such distant schemes .
In the Book department , might not the Society further give some attention to the subject of a corrected version , for general use , if not of the whole Bible , at least of the New Testament ? I do not depreciate the labours of the compilers of the Improved Version . It was a valuable work , and it supplies an armoury of offence and defence on biblical questions of a controversial character . But there may be times , let us hope , when we may take some of those things for granted , about which at others we are obliged to war . I may on this head have peculiar notions , but I own that , for the common practical use of the Scriptures , I do not like a text bristled , like " the fretful
porcupine , " with offensive and defensive commentaries , with various readings , and italic signs of dubitation . All these are useful enough in their way , but the mind sometimes seek repose . It may be a delusion , but it is a pleasing one , to fancy that one reads with some certainty the ipsissima verba ofthe inspired teachers , to think of other things besides contested readings and disputed senses ; and a perpetual flood of aliases is a bad help to such a frame of mind . To this feeling , and to a desire , which all experience , of leaning on some sort of established conclusions , I apprehend we are to attribute that the Improved Version has not , after all , supplanted , even in Unitarian congregations or families , the old J&ecerved Version . That translation is in the
irrain very excellent ; if for no other reason valuable , it dwells in those deep recesses of the mind and memory where infancy placed it , and whence no appetite for refinement , and not even the conclusions of the judgment , will drive it . All that we want , except for the purposes of the student , is ( taking the Received Version ior our basis ) to amend it where absolutely faulty , so as to give a plain , straight-forward representation to the English reader of the best text—say that of the last edition of Griesbach . All controversial
and even critical matter ( except , perhaps , a few brief elucidations of the history of each book ) should , if thought necessary at all , form a separate and distinct volume . To come to the last branch of the Society ' s duties , —it has within its sphere
Untitled Article
406 Unitarian Association ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1827, page 406, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1797/page/14/
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