These wise, though rather melancholy, words occur in the Preface to a little book called A Bible Reading for Schools, and in its fuller and alternative title, The Great Prophecy of Israel’s Restoration, Arranged and Edited for Young Learners.  Arnold, himself a constant and attentive student of Holy Writ, “liked reading his Bible without being baffled by unmeaningnesses.”  He complained that “the fatal thing about our version is that it so often spoils a chapter in the Old Testament by making sheer nonsense out of one or two verses, and so throwing the reader out.”  He habitually used a Bible—­a present from his godfather, John Keble—­“where the numbers of the chapters are marked at the side and do not interpose a break between chapter and chapter; and where the divisions of the verses, being numbered in like manner at the side of the page, not in the body of the verse, and being numbered in very small type, do not thrust themselves forcibly on the attention,” and these circumstances suggested the form of his Bible Reading for Schools.  The little book consists of the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, running on continuously, with some twenty pages of notes, and he thus introduces it—­

“At the very outset, the humbleness of what is professed in this little book cannot be set forth too strongly.  With the aim of enabling English school children to read as a connected whole the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, without being frequently stopped by passages of which the meaning is almost or quite unintelligible, I have sought to choose, among the better meanings which have been offered for each of the passages, that which seemed the best, and to weave it into the authorized text in such a manner as not to produce any sense of strangeness or interruption.”  The attempt was truly laudable, and the execution admirable for taste and ease.  The majestic flow and cadence of the traditional English are never interrupted.  There is no concession to such pedantries as Professor Robertson Smith’s “greaves of the warrior that stampeth in the fray,” or such barbarisms as Professor Cheynes’ “boot of him that trampleth noisily.”  But here and there a turn is given to a sentence, which for the first time reveals its true meaning; here and there a word which really represents the Hebrew is substituted for one which makes nonsense of the sentence.

The little book has often been reprinted; but as “A Bible Reading for Schools” it failed, as, to judge by his own melancholy words about it, he seems to have foreseen that it would fail.  People who have charge of Elementary Education in England, whether in Church Schools or in Board Schools, are eminently and rightly suspicious about new views in religion; and The Great Prophecy of Israel’s Restoration gave currency to a view which in 1872 was probably new to most School Managers and School Boards.  He carefully disclaimed any intention to decide the authorship of the chapters which he edited.  But