The following words were delivered by the great English preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon to his ministerial students only a few months before he went to be with the Lord. The date was April, 1891--ten years after the Revised Version was published in 1881--it clearly reveals his attitude about the Bible he used, the King James Bible.

"It is sadly common among ministers to add a word or subtract a word from the passage or in some way debase the language of sacred writ . . . . Our reverence for the Great Author of Scripture should forbid all mauling of His words.

"No alteration of Scripture can by any possibility be an improvement . . . . Today it is still the self-same mighty Word of God that it was in the hands of our Lord Jesus.

"If this Book be not infallible, where shall we find infallibility? We have given up the Pope, for he has blundered often and terribly; but shall we set up instead of him a horde of little popelings, fresh from college?

"Are these correctors of Scripture infallible? Is it certain that our Bibles are not right, but that the critics must be so? But where shall infallibility be found? 'The depth said, It is not in me' yet those who have no depth at all would have us imagine that it is in them; or else by perpetual change they hope to hit upon it!

"All possibility of certainty is transferred from the spiritual man to a class of persons whose scholarship is pretentious, but who do not even pretend to spirituality. We shall gradually be so bedoubted and becriticized that only a few of the most profound will know what is Bible and what is not, and they will dictate to all the rest of us. I have no more faith in their mercy than their accuracy.

"They will rob us of all that we hold most dear, and glory in the cruel deed. This same 'reign of terror' we will not endure, for we still believe that God reveals Himself rather to babes than to the wise and prudent and we are fully assured that our old English version of the Scripture is sufficient for plain men for all purposes of life, salvation and goodness . . . . We do not despise learning, but we will never say of culture or criticism, 'These be thy gods, O Israel.'

"Do you see why they would lower the degree in inspiration in Holy Writ, and would fain reduce it to an infinitesimal quantity? It is because the truth of God is to be supplanted. Whenever a man begins to lower your view of inspiration it is because he has a trick to play, which is not easily performed in the light . . . . To those who belittle inspiration and inerrancy we will give place by subjection, no, not for an hour!"

"No greater mischief can happen to a Christian people, than to have God's Word taken from them or falsified, so that they no longer have it pure and clear. God grant we and our descendants be not witnesses of such a calamity."

--Martin Luther