(e) One set of words, 'heathen,' 'peoples,' and 'nations,' deserves a separate category. 'People' has been mainly reserved for the chosen people, the God-fearing, whereas 'peoples' is used for the heathen nations. Consistency in the use of these words accounts for forty-two changes.

Singulars and plurals are changed eight times. The pleonastic plural cherubims' has disappeared; in only one case does this entail any change of meaning, namely, in Ps. Lxxvii. 6, where 'spirit' replaces 'spirits.'

(g) Omissions and additions of words or phrases are curiously few; they occur only thirty times in practically equal numbers (sixteen, fourteen). The most noticeable omission is the anthropomorphic description of Jehovah riding upon the heavens' as it were upon a horse' (Ps. lxviii. 4). The major part of the additions is due to the appending of the phrase 'Praise the Lord' at the end of eight Psalms.

(h) Changes of mood and tense, of which there are fifty, give in the main greater vividness.

It is clear that revision would not have been undertaken for variations such as have hitherto been enumerated. It was the need of more accurate translations, conjointly with the necessity of excising the damnatory passages, that brought it about. But it is quite right to introduce these lesser changes, subsidiary as they are, when an opportunity like the present occurs. The 196 passages where retranslations are given are second in importance only to the excisions. One hundred and twelve of these are concerned with single words, and eighty-four with larger changes. The supplanting of one word by another falls naturally into two classes: one in which the meaning remains unaltered, as lying' for leasing' (Ps. iv. 2), ' gates 'for' ports' (Ps. ix. 14); the other in which in twenty-nine cases the meaning is changed; e.g., 'Why mock ye so, ye high hills?' replaces Why hop ye SO .?' (Ps. lxviii. 16).

It is when consideration is given to the eighty-four changes of phrases that we get nearer the heart of the matter, though here twenty-eight may be dismissed as unlikely to cause comment, being of such character as ' strange children 'altered to 'strangers (Ps. cxliv. 7), and ' The river of the flood thereof shall make glad the city of God' to 'There is a river the streams whereof (Ps. xlvi. 4). There are thirty more in which the incidence of the meaning is changed without altering the idea conveyed; e.g., 'The children of men are deceitful upon the weights: they are altogether lighter than vanity itself,' becomes 'The children of men are deceitful: tried in the balances, they are .' (Ps. lxii. 9). It is around the twenty-six remaining verses that controversy will chiefly centre. In Ps. xlix. 14' They lie in the hell like sheep:

death gnaweth upon them,' changes to 'Death is their shepherd'; and in Ps. lxviii. II The Lord gave the word: great was the company of the preachers,' appears in a form consonant with the aspirations of some of the more pronounced feminists: 'Great was the company of the women that bare the tidings.' A negative is inserted in Ps. xix. 3 which avoids a contradiction between the two members of the verse. It becomes and their voice is not heard.' The remaining twenty-three verses in this, the most criticised class, are Pss. ii. 7, iv. 8, vii. 15, xvi. 2, xvii. 4, xxix. 1, xxxvii. 20, xli. 8 and 12, xliv. 2, lx. 13 and 30, lxxii. 6, lxxv. 3, lxxvii. 2, lxxxi. 16, lxxxvii. 4 and 5, xci. 9, cvi. 30, cx. 3, cxix. 61 and 165.

1

It is apparent from this analysis that the revisers have been moving on conservative lines, and have decided to propose these changes for the reasons given above: the prevention of the inculcation of a false idea of God through the medium of the Liturgy, incongruous with the revelation in Jesus Christ, and the desire to make intellectual honesty easier for the reader and worshipper.

Though the natural conservatism which is engendered by love of the familiar and of the often used will kick at change, it is a matter of straight dealing for those in authority to propose and carry through changes which, however much they may be combated in some quarters, will be welcomed with whole-hearted relief by thousands to whom parts of the existing Psalter are a stumbling block, but to whom the main part is the bread of life.

THE IDLE MIND

IF Satan always finds mischief for idle hands, he has still more and worse mischief in store for idle minds. Not that all active minds are immune, and when the devil enters into them society must be on guard. Such a one was the Byzantine Andronicus, of whom Gibbon wrote that 'in every deed of mischief he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.' The type persists in the Bolshevist. He may be perfectly sincere. If he be, he is the more dangerous. Corruptio optimi pessima.' He is a crank and incurable. His mind is neither idle nor empty, and education, the sovereign remedy for neglected and ill-nourished minds, only aggravates his symptoms. Happily, however, it will protect against him those whose present ignorance makes them his dupes. Education and the gradual redress of social grievances are a form of insurance which no wise Government in these days will neglect. No man or woman was ever yet a fool or ignorant by choice. It is lack of opportunity that makes them so. 'Lack of opportunity!' says the sceptic, gesticulating axe in hand. 'Why, have you not for three generations been educating at enormous cost? Of course you have, and look at the result! Those whom you teach to read do not read; those whom you train to think do not think; they are ignorant still.' Well, we may have taught children the mechanical art of reading, but not until lately, and but rarely then, have we shown them how to read books; nor have we put books, real books, within their reach, whether in school or out of it. Under such conditions we shall never train anyone to think. Until a bare twenty years ago we spent ridiculously little, most unwisely little, on our public education, and there is much leeway to make up. Its great fault has been that it was conceived and administered on mean, penurious lines. Its other faults may all be traced to that. That incidentally is why it is impossible for a graduate in honours of an ancient University (or of a modern one) to take charge of an elementary school unless he has first acquired the certificate of the Board of Education. It was the acquisition of tricks, not learning, that was required of the man or woman who would teach the children of a bookless school.

And the ridiculous anomaly still survives, waiting for a gust of laughter to sweep it into limbo.

There are many even yet who do not really believe in a liberal education for the masses of the people. They would not perhaps go the length of saying that the nation would fare better if they were uneducated (although we have all heard of that wonderful bailiff who could neither read nor write, poor baffled genius), but they would certainly say that the best education for them is something very simple and, above, all very cheap. And then, forsooth, they complain of their ignorance, credulity, and folly, and of the habits, tastes, and conduct that are the consequence of such an upbringing.

We will hardly-it costs so much-fit a man for work; if it is suggested that it would be wisdom to fit him for leisure too, we are scandalised. What, pianos in a board school, and visits to the theatres and picture-galleries! It was plain enough to Aristotle that the State should concern itself with the right manner of employing leisure,' and Athens did it, but we are a practical people, and we know better. And that is why we still see and hear such things as distressed William Morris years ago :

As I sit [he said] at my work at home, which is at Hammersmith, close to the river, I often hear some of that ruffianism go past the window of which a good deal has been said in the papers of late, and has been said before at recurring periods. As I hear the yells and shrieks and all the degradation cast on the glorious tongue of Shakespeare and Milton, as I see the brutal reckless faces go past me, it rouses the recklessness and brutality in me also, and fierce wrath takes possession of me, till I remember, as I hope I mostly do, that it was my good luck only of being born respectable and rich that has put me on this side of the window among delightful books and lovely works of art, and not on the other side, in the empty street, the drink-steeped liquor-shops, the foul degraded lodgings. I know by my own feelings and desires what these men want, what would have saved them from this lowest depth of savagery: employment which would foster their self-respect and win the praise and sympathy of their fellows, and dwellings which they could come to with pleasure, surroundings which would soothe and elevate them: reasonable labour, reasonable rest.

His remedy, we know, was art, and art alone. To-day perhaps we shall say that the true remedy is a liberal education, in which art assuredly must have its place. Culture,' said Matthew Arnold, 'unites classes.' But we have reserved culture for the children of the well-to-do. The children of the workers have had no access to it, save the tiny percentage who mount the narrow ladder, and are lost for ever to their class. So the humanities are suspect.

But it is not only the children of the workers who misuse their leisure. Things may be seen and heard on our side of the window too that do no credit to school or scholar. Even your public

schoolboy may offend. The reason is the same. The mind is empty. There are empty minds in every type of school, minds that the right use of the mother-tongue would fill. There are many boys to-day in the public and preparatory schools who come from homes where the humanities dwell not, and there is little food for minds. They observe certain conventions in the use of knives and forks, and their playing fields and games give them a great advantage over the worker's boy, but books frankly bore them. What they learn in school is sharply severed from all that they think and say and do outside it. It has no influence whatever on their use of leisure, and unless, by some heaven-sent chance, the boys have found hobbies, we shall certainly see and hear things that we dislike on this side of the window. There is the silly chattering, the empty laughter over senseless jokes, the depraved and depraving taste for the folly and the filth of the sensational Press. Their amusements corrupt instead of elevating. There is no beauty in their souls. Every kind of school, every class of society, knows the type-the empty, uninterested idle mind. We are even in some danger of thinking that it is part of our national genius to be indifferent to intellectual pleasures.

Our English children [said a writer in The Times Literary Supplement some months ago] are not consumed with anxiety to learn anything; least of all has it ever crossed their minds that they must learn English. This is not irony. It is the sober statement of a scholar, who believes what he says to be true, and accepts it as inevitable. Must we not hold that he is a witness, an unconscious witness, to the failure of the orthodox curriculum and methods? There is no training in the right use of leisure here. The boy leaves school rejoicing that those lessons and those books are done with. His education, he thanks heaven, is finished. He is entering now upon life, and between life and the classroom there is no connection. Yet, as Mr. Wood said so admirably the other day at Giggleswick, education is never finished, and anyone who declares his education to be complete is in reality a very uneducated man.

Why are these boys uninterested? What is the remedy?

They are uninterested because we will make education a discipline when it might be a delight. The remedy is the full and free use of English as the chief medium of a liberal education for all but the scholar who has the time and the ability that will win for him the whole reward of a classical education. Even science fails to grasp its opportunities. There have been masters of science in its many branches who have also been masters of English prose. But the approach to the sciences is seldom or never made through books. Even astronomy, with all its fascination, is disregarded. Yet the book would bite deep into the mind,