they want "to find out the very words the Apostles used." True believers have been in a state of delusion; they were credulous enough to fancy that the authorised version of the Scriptures tolerably faithfully represented God's revelation to humankind. But no, says Dr. Tischendorf, it has been so seriously modified in the copying and re-copying that it ought to be set aside altogether, and a fresh text constructed. Glorious news this for the Bible Society. Listen to it, Exeter Hall! Glad tidings to be issued by the Paternoster Row saints! After spending hundreds of thousands of pounds in giving away Bibles to soldiers, in placing them in hotels and lodging-houses, and shipping them off to negroes and savages, it appears that the wrong text has been sent through the world, the true version being all the time in a waste-paper heap at Mount Sinai, watched over by an "invisible eye." But, adds Dr. Tischendorf, "if you ask me whether any popular version contains the original text, my answer is Yes and No. I say Yes as far as concerns your soul's salvation." If these are enough for the soul's salvation, why try to improve the matter? If we really need the "full and clear light" of the Sinaitic Bible to show us "what is the Word written by God," then most certainly our present Bible is not believed by the Religious Tract Society to be the Word written by God. The Christian advocates are in this dilemma: either the received, text is insufficient, or the proposed improvement is unnecessary. Dr. Tischendorf says that "The Gospels, like the only begotten of the Father, will endure as long as human nature itself," yet he says "there is a great diversity among the texts," and that the Gospel in use amongst the Ebionites and that used amongst the Nazarenes have been "disfigured here and there with certain arbitrary changes." He admits, moreover, that "in early times, when the Church was not so critical in distinguishing the true from the false," spurious Gospels obtained a credit which they did not deserve. And while arguing for the enduring character of the Gospel, he requests you to set aside the received text altogether, and to try to construct a new revelation by the aid of Dr. Tischendorf's patent Sinaitic invention.

We congratulate the Religious Tract Society upon their manifesto, and on the victory it secures them over German Rationalism and English Infidelity. The Society's translator, in his introductory remarks, declares that "circumstantial evidence when complete, and when every link in the chain has been thoroughly tested, is as strong as direct testimony;" and, adds the Society's penman, "This is the kind of evidence which Dr. Tischendorf brings for the genuineness of our Gospels." It would be difficult to imagine a more inaccurate description of Dr. Tischendorf's work. Do we find the circumstantial evidence carefully tested in the Doctor's boasting and curious narrative of his journeys commenced on a pecuniary deficiency and culminating in much cash? Do we find it in Dr. Tischendorf s concealment for fifteen years of the place, watched over by an invisible eye, in which was hidden the greatest biblical treasure in the world? Is the circumstantial evidence shown in the sneers at Renan? or is each link in the chain tested by the strange jumbling together of names and conjectures in the first chapter? What tests are used in the cases of Valentinus and Basilides in the second chapter? How is the circumstantial testimony aided by the references in the third chapter to the Apocryphal Gospels? Is there a pretence even of critical testing in the chapter devoted to the apostolic fathers? All that Dr. Tischendorf has done is in effect to declare that our authorised version of the New Testament is so unreliable, that it ought to be got rid of altogether, and a new text constructed. And this declaration is circulated by the Religious Tract Society, which sends the sixpenny edition of the Gospel with one hand, and in the other the shilling Tischendorf pamphlet, declaring that many passages of the Religious Tract Society's New Testament have undergone such serious modifications of meaning as to leave us in painful uncertainty as to what was originally written.