principals of large educational colleges both in England and Scotland,
and scholars like Dean Scott, who were known to take great interest in
questions of textual criticism. A few of these might almost be
considered as definitely experts, but all taken together certainly made
a very competent body to whose independent judgement the settlement of
difficult critical questions could be safely committed. And, as I
venture to think, the text which has been constructed from their
decisions, their resultant text as it might be called, will show that
the Revisers' text is an independent text on which great reliance can be
placed. It is the text which I always use myself in my general reading
of the New Testament, and I deliberately regard it as one of the two
best texts of the New Testament at present extant; the other being the
cheap and convenient edition of Professor Nestle, bearing the title
"Novum Testamentum Graece, cum apparatu critico ex editionibus et libris
manu scriptis collecto. Stuttgart, 1898." This edition is issued by the
Wurtemberg Bible Society, and will, as I hear, not improbably be adopted
by our own Bible Society as their Greek Testament of the future. The
reason why I prefer these two texts for the general reading of the
sacred volume is this, that they both have much in common with the text
of Westcott and Hort, but are free from those peculiarities and, I fear
I must add, perversities, which do here and there mark the text of that
justly celebrated edition. To Doctors Westcott and Hort all faithful
students of the New Testament owe a debt of lasting gratitude which it
is impossible to overestimate. Still, in the introductory vol
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