Note 1 — LETTER XXVII.

If ever your clergy mean really to help you to read your Bible,—the whole of it, and not merely the bits which tell you that you are miserable sinners, and that you needn’t mind,—they must make a translation retaining as many as possible of the words in their Greek form, which you may easily learn, and yet which will be quit of the danger of becoming debased by any vulgar English use. So also, the same word must always be given when it is the same; and not in one place translated “mansion,” and in another “abode.” (Compare verse 23 of this same chapter.1) Not but that “mansion” is a very fine Latin word, and perfectly correct, (if only one knows Latin,) but I doubt not that most parish children understand by it, if anything, a splendid house with two wings, and an acre or two of offices, in the middle of a celestial park; and suppose that some day or other they are all of them to live in such, as well as the Squire’s children; whereas, if either “mona” or “remaining” were put in both verses, it is just possible that sometimes both the Squire and the children, instead of vaguely hoping to be lodged some day in heaven by Christ and His Father, might take notice of their offer in the last verse I have quoted, and get ready a spare room both in the mansion and cottage, to offer Christ and His Father immediately, if they liked to come into lodgings on earth.