EDITORS, AND REVISERS OF THE BIBLE.
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If it is difficult to arrange page-headings so as to make them of practical value, still harder is it to prepare chapte1·-headingswithout touching on the forbidden ground of" note and comment." There is much difference of opinion as to the comparative advantages and disadvantages of chapter-headings. They certainly tend to widen the gulf between chapter and chapter, which is already in many cases far too wide. If they could be printed together at the beginning of each book this objection would be done away with, and a most valuable help would be offered to the reader of the Bible. In the first English Bible ever printed, that of Coverdale, A.D. 1535, the chapter-headings of each book were printed together at its beginning. There does not appear, on the face of it, any objection to the publication of the headings in this form by the Bible Society instead of their being printed between the chapters. The plan however has not hitherto been carried out. Passing from the arrangement of these headings to their sub-stance we come at once to a practical difficulty. The headings are to be pure summaries of the contents of the chapters, free from anything which can be fairly called comment ; but a Christian must perforce read the Old Testament in the light of the New, and he cannot help reading both Old and New Testament through a doctrinal atmosphere tinged by the ideas which he has imbibed in the course of his life. Thus there is a constant tendency to run into comment, to give a Messianic interpretation to the prophecies and types, and to throw the concrete statements of the Scriptures into an abstract and doctrinal form. Certainly a chapter-heading ought not to be a comment, though it ought to regard the contents of the chapter from a Christian point of view, and in the light of the whole of God's revelation. The headings prepared by the translators of the English Authorised Version are very fair on the whole, though it must be granted that they are capable of improvement. They vary very much in merit. Some are thoroughly analytical ; occasionally the theological element has been omitted altogether, as in the heading of Num. xxi. 7, wher,e we read "they repenting are healed by a brazen serpent;" or in the heading of Psalm Iii., where we are told that '' David, condemning the spitefulness of Doeg, prophesieth his destruction.'' The headings in the Apocalypse are remarkably free from comment, but those in the prophetical writings of the Old Testament have a defect running through them, namely, that promis,es and threatenings relating to Judah and Is.rael are applied (in about fifty instances) to '' the Church," whereas a neutral term, '' God's people," would not have limited them either way. Those who prepare chapter-headings will find the work of the English translators very helpful, but they will do well to avoid the
