Excerpt from A Translation of the Minor Prophets: With an Occasional Brief Note Introduced

All translations made by large bodies of men, and where the work in its details is done by committees and then voted on by the body at large, are necessarily compromises. They are such, because many men of many minds, nominally religious, compose these committees. Some are half skeptics, some Unitarian, Universalist, and scholarly critics of every description. The received version of the Scriptures is, in its doctrinal parts, no exception to this rule, nor is the revision.

The mystical interpretation which has come down to us, and is so largely accepted, makes void the word of God to a certain degree, especially in the reading of the prophets. They all, except Jonah, write of the second coming of Jesus Christ and of events to take place just precedent to, and at, the time of His personal appearing; and the translators, failing to catch the idea, or unwilling to believe it, substitute for the person the thing, the neuter for the masculine. Very often, the plural is put for the singular, and prophecies that are yet future are regarded as already fulfilled. Vida, for an instance, the first paragraph, of seven verses, in the forty-first chapter of Isaiah, where there are fifteen futures, changed into pasts or presents. The translators did this because they thought that the prophecy was fulfilled by Cyrus but there is no reference to Cyrus or his times. It is to the anti-christ, or false Messiah, and his times, which precede the coming of Jesus Christ, the true Messiah, by seven years. Jehovah is the speaker.

The Spiritualistic mode of interpretation which prevails among all the evangelical denominations, comes to us from the dark ages. The churches of the Reformation ought to have disowned it, but they did not, neither did they affirm it. The great minds of the churches, in those days, had their all-absorbing specialties, in settling and defending the funda mental articles of their faith, order of church government, etc.

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