What Next? by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 23, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 17.

What Next?

By Editor

Of all attempts that we have ever seen to set the New Testament against the Old, the weakest and silliest is now going the rounds of the press, and is reported as coming from "a member of the firm of Thomas Nelson & Sons," who are to handle, in this country, the Revised Old Testament. He estimates the sales for the first few months at 200,000, whereas 1,000,000 of the Revised New Testament were ordered in advance. And then he adds:—

"Perhaps the difference in favor of the two [new?] is illustrated by the closing words of each in the King James' version. The last word in the Old Testament is 'curse,' and almost the last word in the New is 'come.'"

The silliness of this would be bad enough even were it honest; but it is not honest. He proposes that the test shall be between the "closing words" of the two, and then takes the last word in the Old, and "almost" the last word in the New. But why "almost" the last? why not the last in the New as well as in the Old? Oh, that would not answer his purpose at all, for then he would have simply "curse" as the last word in the Old, and "Amen" as the last word in the New, and it would never do to have the New Testament to seem to be saying "Amen" to the Old. He is unfair also in selecting his word "come" as "almost" the last word in the New Testament; it is the fifteenth word from the last, while in the Old Testament it is only the eighth from the last. So in fact the word "come" upon which his whole argument (?) rests, is actually a good deal nearer to the last word of the Old Testament than it is to the end of the New. When prejudice against the Old Testament will resort to such unworthy shifts as is revealed in the above, we can only in astonishment inquire, What next?