HKB
and facilities which in more auspicious times he might have enjoyed, did more for the English Bible than all King James's translators. So did Luther for the Bible in Germany.
It is an unfortunate result of King James's translation of the Bible by an imposing council of learned men, that it has tended to discourage individual effort in respect to a labor of this kind, and to create a prejudice against it as necessarily incompetent and untrustworthy. Societies and councils have their spheres in which they are useful; yet they often transcend them and intrude on those of individuals. But there are great works which individuals can perform better than multitudes or councils. Councils did not make the Bible at first. It was made by individuals, each man acting for himself, and giving utterance to the mighty thoughts that God had given him. A council did not make Paradise Lost, and could not; nor has a council ever produced any immortal work of genius or learning, unless it is the English Bible of King James. With this exception, these are all the works of individuals. As individuals, therefore, have generally been the prosecutors of literary enterprises, in the department of Bible translation no less than in other departments, and as individuals have been eminently successful and useful in this department of labor heretofore, both in England and other countries, let it be hoped that they may be again.
There is a vast accumulation of knowledge to be made available by some one, or in some way, for the production of an improved English Bible, that shall bear the same relation to the advanced knowledge of these times, which Tindal's, Coverdale's, and that of King James did to theirs. More study has been expended on the sacred text and its interpretation, and more progress made in Biblical knowledge in the last seven generations, than in all time before. This knowledge is treasured up in critical editions of the original Scriptures, critical commentaries on them in Latin and other languages, in Greek and Hebrew Lexicons, and in other works in the various departments of Biblical learning, embracing commentaries on the English Scriptures, several of which are extensive and valuable. No man can gainsay them, no man can disparage them. They are monuments of the most precious and valuable learning of their times. Scholars with ample means and ample time for critical research, and those whose tastes and professions and convictions of duty incline them in that direction, may in a long series of years become masters of much of this learning, and receive the benefit of it. A few are masters of it, but how few! But how are the people to obtain it? When are they to find the time to obtain it? Where are they to find the means? The clergy are the instructors of the people on sacred subjects. Biblical learning is a part of their profession. They study it by day and by night, from youth to old age; but how are the great mass of clergymen even, amidst their parish cares and homiletical labors, and with their limited means and restricted libraries, to obtain much of this knowledge? Some of it they may obtain, but much of it they will not, and cannot.