the vote was taken, and the suggested alteration either adopted
or rejected. If adopted, due note was taken by the secretary, and, if it
was thought a case for a margin, the competing reading was therein
specified. If there was a plain difficulty at coming to a decision, and
the passage was one of real importance, the decision was not uncommonly
postponed to a subsequent meeting, and notice duly given to all the
members of the Company. And so the great work went on to the end of the
first revision; the members of the Company acquiring more and more
knowledge and experience, and their decisions becoming more and more
judicial and trustworthy.

Few, I think, on reading this simple and truthful description, could fail
to place some confidence in results thus patiently and laboriously
arrived at. Few, I think, could forbear a smile when they call to mind
the passionate vituperation which at first was lavished on the critical
efforts of the Revisers of the text that bears the scarcely correct name
of the _textus ab omnibus receptus_.

But what I have specified was only the first part of our responsible
work. By the memoranda of agreement between the English Companies and
the American Committee, it had to be communicated to the American Company
of the Revisers of the Authorised Version of the New Testament, among
whom were some whose names were well and honorably known in connexion
with textual criticism. Our work, with the American criticisms and
suggestions, had then to undergo the second revision. The greater part
of the decisions relating to the text that were arrived at in the first
revision were accepted as final; but many were reopened at the second
revision, and the critical experience of the Company, necessarily
improved as it had been by the first revision, finally tested by the
two-thirds majority the reopened decisions which at the first revision
had been carried by simple majorities. The results of this second
revision were then, in accordance with the agreement, communicated to the
American Company; but, in the sequel, as will be seen in the lists of the
final differences between ourselves and the American Company, the
critical differences were but few, and, so far as I can remember, of no
serious importance.

The critical labours of the Revisers did not however terminate with the
second revision. The cases were many where the evidence for the readings
either adopted or retained in the text was only