UC-NRLF B 3 M Ti mi 1 .iv*^ 'nibX. T LIB R^ R Y I UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, ' Receii'ed /'^'Z^st-^ , iSg3 . Shelf No. Accessions No.-^^ ^■^ f <A?- -30 * . «^r BK NORMAL ADDRESSES BIBLE -DIFFUSION. L^» PUBLICATIONS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. ETON ADDRESSES TO KING WILLIAM IV. 1S40. CONTRIBUTIONS TO HAILEVBURY-OBSERVER. 1S40-1842. CONTRIBUTIONS TO CALCUTTA-REVIEW. 1845-1885. 40 Essays in 40 Years. PANJAB REVENUE-MANUAL. 1865. SERIES OF MANUALS FOR GUIDANCE OF NATIVE OFFICIALS IN THE URDU-LANGUAGE. 1855 to 1859. REVENUE-LAW OF NORTH-WEST PROVINCES OF INDIA. 1867. CODE OF LAND-REVENUE-PROCEDURE FOR NORTHERN INDL\. 1870. MODERN LANGUAGES OF THE EAST INDIES. 1878. MODERN LANGUAGES OF AFRICA. 18S3. MODERN LANGUAGES OF OCEANIA. 1887. MODERN LANGUAGES OF THE CAUCASIAN-GROUP. 1887. LANGUAGES OF THE TURKI BRANCH OF THE URAL-ALTAIC FAMILY. 1889. LINGUISTIC AND ORIENTAL ESSAYS. Series I. 1880. LINGUISTIC AND ORIENTAL ESSAYS. Series II. 1887. LINGUISTIC AND ORIENTAL ESSAYS. Series III. 1891. PICTURES OF INDIAN LIFE. 1881. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC SHRINES OF LOURDES, SARAGOSSA, Etc. 1885 and 1892. POEMS OF MANY YEARS AND PLACES. 1S87. THE SORROWS OF AN ANGLO-INDIAN LIFE. 18S9. NOTES ON MISSIONARY SUBJECTS. 1889. BIBLE-LANGUAGES. 1890. CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON, OR THE VARIOUS FORMS OF RELIGIOUS ERROR. 1890. BIBLE-TRANSLATIONS. 1890. AFRICA REDIVIVA, OR MISSIONARY OCCUPATION OF AFRICA. 1891. NORMAL ADDRESSES BIBLE-DIFFUSION FOR THE USE OF THE YOUNGER CLERGY, AND LAY-SPEAKERS IN GENERAL MEETINGS, TRAINING COLLEGES, AND SCHOOLS. ROBERT NEEDHAM CUST, lld., h VICH-PRESIDENT OF BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE-SOCIETY, HONORARY SECRETARY OF ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, AITHOR OF 1. THREE LISTS OF BIBLE TRANSLATIONS. 1890. 2. AFRICA REDIVIVA, OR MISSIONARY OCCUPATION OF AFRICA. 1891. Kol €lSou dWov ayyeXov Trerofieuov ev fiecroupavij/j-aTL, ^^(ovTa EvayyeXiov alooviov evayyeXi'aal eVt tou? Kadrjixevov^ eVt r/}? 7)}?, Ka\ eVi irav edvo<;, Kal (bvXijp, kuI FXcoaaav, Koi Xdov. Revelations xiv. v. 6. UFI7ERSIT7 k" Semper, Ubique, ab Omnibus." L^rpo m.^^ ^^' LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1892. HERTFORD : PRINTED BY STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS. 5 < ^ 5^ 1 __l^ TO ALL WHO LOVE THE LORD, THE BOOK, AND THE ASSOCIATION, "WHICH HUMBLY, AXD WITH SINGLENESS OF HEART, DEVOTES ITSELF TO THE SERVICE OF THAT LORD, AND THE DIFFUSION OF THAT BOOK, THESE ADDRESSES ARE DEDICATED BY ONE, WHO HAS NOT BEEN AFRAID TO WEIGH EACH WORD OF THIS BOOK IN THE BALANCE OF SCIENCE, TO HANDLE IT, AND SEE ; TO READ ALL THE CRITICISMS, WHICH FRIEND OR FOE HAS WRITTEN TO STUDY THE BOOKS OF NON-CHRISTIAN SAGES, PROPHETS, AND PHILOSOPHERS ; AND YET HAS FOUND NOTHING, THAT CAN EQUAL, OR DIM, OR SURPASS, THE TREASURE, WHICH WE POSSESS. Christmas Day, 1892. ^.jiS^a TABLE OF CONTENTS. Froxtispiece " the Angels bringing the Gospel to Man." The first Angel represents the Preacher. The second Angel the Reader in Places of Worship. The third Angel the private studier of the Word. Title Page. Dedication". Publications by the same Author. Introduction. Table of Contents. ADDRESSES. No. I. Continuity of Translation No. II. World-wide Diffusion of Translations No. III. Translators: Language. No. IV. Object : Effect No. V. Duty, Privilege, Joy No. VI. Education of the World. No. VII. Bible-Society Constitution, etc. . No. VIII. Limitations of Translation and Diffusion No. IX. Foreign Fields of Diffusion . . • Conclusion PAGE I 19 29 5' 73 89 H5 ^33 141 '59 CONTENTS. APPENDICES. No. I. Population of the World, Geographically No. II. Religions of ditto . . . do. No. III. Translations of the Bible (part or whole) . No. IV. Analytical Abstract of Subjects in Ad- dresses FOR convenience OF REFERENCE No. V. Heads of Subjects for an Address No. VI. Specimen-Address to a Theological College No. VII. Hymn for Bible-Society-Meeting . No. VIII. Appeal to the German Nation to found a Missionary Bible-Society .... PAGE 171 171 172 172 178 181 203 206 -^^v»A. OF THB * j.n7ER3IT7J INTRODUCTION. — )-@oc®-(— I BEGIN to feel, that my time for delivering Public Addresses is passing away. In the last sixteen years, I have made 515 Addresses in the different towns of England, and at several foreign Capitals, on very different subjects, Religious, Scientific, and Political. Some have extended over an hour : some have been much shorter : some have been from the Pulpits of London-Churches as Diocesan Reader. As I travelled back from Cambridge yesterday, having on that and the previous day delivered three Addresses on the same subject, " Bible-Diffusion," in three different Halls, presenting the subject from three different aspects, the thought came over me in the train, that I might IXTRODLXTIOX. be of use after my tongue was silent, and myself at rest, if I put together materials for a certain number of Normal Addresses, presenting the great subject from every point of view. I am encouraged to this under- taking from the fact, that at the last three meetings I recognised some figures attending all the meetings, and taking notes, and I gathered, that there were to be sermons on the subject on the following Sundays. I have more than once received letters from hard-worked clergymen, thanking me for one or other of my published Missionary Addresses, which fell into their hands, and was of use for their Annual Sermons : possibly these Normal Addresses, or systematically arranged compendia of facts, arguments, anecdotes, and illustrations, may be of use to young persons of both sexes, who have occasion to address assemblies, whether high or low in culture and education. I may seem very bold, and somewhat heterodox : my experiences have not been confined to the armchair, and College-Study, but have been extended to the tent, the saddle, and the assemblies of non-Christian people, among whom I resided for nearly a quarter of a century, whom I learnt to love, and whose love I was able to conciliate. I have learnt thus to look at INTRODUCTION. XI things from the standpoint of an Asiatic and an African, and not exclusively of an European : an un- travelled Englishman is specially addicted to the weakness of looking on his country as the 6fj.(f)a\o<; of the world, and his preconceptions and environment as the law of Nature : my mind is quite as receptive of new ideas, as my eyes are ready to look at new- objects, or old familiar objects from a new point of view, and devour books coming from every section of the religious world. I have been the unwilling listener to scores of platform-addresses : the ordained Minister in the country speaks with hearty eloquence of the " Book," but f/ia^ is not the subject, which brings the meeting together, but the " Diffusion of the Book." The District-Secretaries overwhelm the audience with statistical details of the issues : Sometimes the issue of one day is likened to the Eiffel-Tower of Paris : or the audience is crushed by financial details : the cost of paper, printing, the scores ot men and women employed in the work : these facts imply the existence of unlimited resources, and perhaps discourage increased benefactions : such thoughts do not lift up the hearts of the audience to God. It is possible, that the Secretaries know the Xll IXTRODUCTIOX. character, and weakness, and susceptibilities of the audience best, and know how to attract new support, and satisfy old supporters : at any rate, such aspects do not come within my experience or favour. The subject should be treated on a much higher level. These Addresses are not calculated to be delivered, as a read lecture, or learnt by heart for a spoken Address : their object is to be suggestive to those, who are preparing themselves for the pulpit, or platform, a kind of reservoir, from which each can fill his own cup. Sometimes a quotation might be suitable, or an anecdote be read, and anyone constantly employed in the duty might with profit have an interleaved copy, and note down fresh anecdotes, choice selections from Exeter Hall Speeches, flowers from the nosegay of the Annual Report, and his own meditations during his walks, or on his couch, when his thoughts mount up to the feet of his Master. I heard an old Deputation-Secretary say, that he was fairly pumped out : Alas ! he could not have known of the underground percolation of the water of Grace, which makes the dry field green with a never- failing harvest, and which no time can pump out, for ideas, thoughts, and words, are always rising in a heart truly dedicated to this many-sided subject. » . 4t'* Vim ^>^:^Jk.^m^ INTRODUCTION. Xlll Particular Addresses should be prepared for different classes of the Community : for the general public, for the younger clergy, for the theological students, for Mothers' Meetings, Young Men's Associations, Sunday Schools, private places of Education of boys and girls. I have in the Appendix given a table of Heads of Subjects, which would enable anyone to work up his notes for an Address suited to his audience : it is a mistake to speak over the heads of an uninstructed audience, or below the standard-level of devout and trained minds. In the Appendix I have inserted a specimen-address for a Training College. For con- venience of reference, I have prepared an analytical abstract of Subjects to assist the preparation of Addresses. I have freely quoted extracts from speeches, and writings, of esteemed authorities, sometimes quoting the name, and occasion of delivery, and indicating by inverted commas the quotation, but very much oftener incorporating the carefully collected sentiments of others in my own text, and hoping, if it is worthy, that my text may meet the same fate from those, who come after me : golden thoughts, neatly turned expressions, and telling anecdotes, are common property, and I have XIV INTRODUCTION. used some so often, that I forget from what source I derived them : I have kept clear of statistics and figures, as I have no taste for them : the Annual Report will from year to year supply them fresh and fresh. Extreme accuracy on debatable points is not to be obtained, and profits not for the purposes of these Addresses, even if attained, as they are of a general, popularized, and unscientific, character : however, errors, prejudices, and exaggeration are avoided as much as possible, and as far as I have been able to detect them. May the Lord bless my endeavour ! Amidst the concourse, and even concussion, of senti- mental appeals to the hearts of the people on every possible quasi-religious, quasi-benevolent, and often very unwise subjects, the fear is, that the first claim of the unique, and in importance unparalleled object of the Bible-Society should be forgotten, or postponed to interests of a less vital nature : the Platform, Pulpit, and Press, must in this material epoch be powerfully and spiritually worked. Every good earnest man, or woman, is not gifted with the power of impressing with their words miscellaneous audiences : such persons are often better Christians, but none the less not such good speakers, as those, to whose lips by God's INTRODUCTION. XV Special Grace words come readily. It is of importance, that the Society should publish good selected Addresses by its chief Protagonists of past and present time, men who have uttered words, which are not forgotten by those who have heard them, such as Dr. Thompson, late Archbishop of York, Mr. Spurgeon, the Earl of Harrowby, Canon Edmunds, Dr. Westcott, Bishop of Durham, and many others, whose names I omit for want of space, but which will occur to all, under whose eyes these pages fall : I would add the names of our living friends, Rev. J. Sharp, Rev. W. Major Paull, Rev. Dr. Wright, Rev. T. Aston Binns, Rev. D. Brodie, Rev. James Thomas, Mr. G. T. Edwards, and others, whom I have not heard, but whom 'others have heard : all according to the particular gift lent to them, and their peculiar idiosyncrasies of training, and thought, and experience, present the great subject with success to their audience, as their knowledge is up to date, all-round, and complete, and their hearers feel, that the heart of the speaker is in the matter : while on the other hand the flash-in-the-pan popular preacher, who tells his audience that he has got up the subject by reading some pages of the Annual Report outside the omnibus on his road to the Meeting, does mischief, mm XVI INTRODUCTION. and his remarks had better be stored up with the words unuttered. Nobody should be asked to speak on Bible-platforms, who is in doubt, as to the Book itself, and the necessity for the Salvation of dying Souls of the Diffusion of the Book, London, Nov. i6, 1892. ' nF THE ''<*'^ £4 OS' ^IFOB.' ADDRESS No. I. On the Continuity of Bible-Translation into the Vernacular of the time from the Return of the Hebrews from their Exile to the present moment. "Shall we, whose lamps are lighted With wisdom from on high, Shall we to man benighted The gift of God deny ? ''—Heber, We must bear in mind, that Languages have only a certain time of Hfe allotted to them, that they come into existence, develop, fade away, and die. On the other hand the Word of God is everlasting, and was given to man as a Rule of Life : if therefore it is not intelligible to man's understanding and heart, it is useless. The great King of Persia, Xerxes, the husband of Queen Esther, issued letters to one hundred and twenty Provinces to each in their own Language : He died B.C. 465, only 2363 years ago : we know the Languages spoken in those Provinces now, and we know as a fact, that they were not spoken I ( 2 ) in those Provinces then : so all but two have disappeared owing to two causes, the population dying out, or to their having changed their Vernacular : only two have survived, Hebrew, the sacred Language of Queen Esther ; and Greek, the Language of the Greek race, which had defeated the great King at Salamis : to these two Languages had been committed the Oracles of God. When a portion, and only a portion, of the Hebrew Exiles received permission from King Cyrus to return to Palestine, B.C. 536, they brought back the Sacred Vessels, and the Book of the Law, but Emanuel Deutsch, himself a Hebrew, remarks, that there was one thing wanting to Ezra, when he tried to found a lasting Commonwealth on the ruins of Zion, which neither authority, nor piety, nor School, nor Synagogue, could restore to its original power and glory, " The Hebrew Language : " so it became necessary to translate the Book, that the returning Hebrews might understand it : hence sprang into existence the Aramaic Targums, for they had become accustomed to that Vernacular in Babylon. There was nothing unusual in this : take the familiar instance of the Northmen, who left Scandinavia and settled in a Province of Northern France : in three generations, before their invasion of England, they had forgotten their Norse Language, and spoke French : a few generations after they adopted English. This notes the first change of Language, and the substitution Jk . m^*. i.i^ 4ii*-»J\.^r-r-^'^ ( 3 ) of a Vernacular, in order that the people might understand, and not depend on the oral interpretation of the Priesthood. How could they hear, if they were not spoken to ? How could they be spoken to, if the Word of God was not in the heart, in the intelligence, and in the mouth, of the speaker, and uttered in such a form, that the hearers could understand it ? With regard to this Aramaic translation it is noteworthy, that our Lord on the Cross quoted the first verse of the XXH Psalm not in Hebrew, but in Aramaic. A portion of the Hebrew race seceded from Ezra, and formed themselves into a separate community at Samaria : they had the Pentateuch, the only Book, which they accepted, in Samaritan, and it exists to this day : it is a Language cognate to, but quite distinct from, the Aramaic : Both Languages have disappeared under the pressure of Arabic, which is now the Vernacular of the whole of Palestine. In the meantime a large community of Hebrews had settled in the new city on the Mediterranean shore of Eg\'pt, which King Alexander of ]\Iacedon had founded, and named after himself About the year 250, and subsequently, the whole of the Canon of the Old Testament, which had by that date been completed (though some doubt this), was translated into Greek, a Language of the Greco-Latin Branch of the Indo-European Family, and is known as the Septuagint : To the early Christian Church of the three first Centuries this translation oc- cupied the position of the Inspired Text. It is notorious, that the New Testament, which came into existence in the ^xaai ( 4 ) last half of the first Century after Christ, was written in the same Language. But the Church of Antioch in Syria, though a Greek Church, did not feci justified in withholding the Scriptures from the indigenous population, and they freely gave them in the Second Century a translation of the whole Bible in the Syriac Language, a form of speech cognate to Hebrew and Aramaic : this is the venerable Peshi'to version, which has survived to our days. And the Church of Alexandria in Egypt, though a Greek Church, was moved by the Holy Spirit to give to the natives of Egypt, the Kopts, a translation of the Book in the Koptic Language in three Dialects in the Second and Third Centuries : this form of speech is totally different both from the Hebrew and Greek, belonging to a different Language Family, known as the Hamitic : these translations have survived to our time : this was the first African Language selected to be a vehicle of Salvation to men. Nor does the marvel end here : one Frumentius, a native of Syria, had been captured as a slave, and kept prisoner in Ethiopia, known now as Abyssinia : after many years he obtained his liberty, but his heart had been touched by the sight of the Heathen Ethiopians, and he returned thither in the Fourth Century, as a Missionary Bishop, and translated the Scriptures into the old Ethiopic Language, a Semitic form of speech, which has survived to our days. In the meantime the old Latin translation of the Greco-Latin Branch of the Indo-European Family, known as "Vetus Itala," had ( 5 ) a large circulation in the Latin speaking portion of the Roman Empire, notably North Africa : It was by no means a perfect version, and had been made from the Septuagint. But a peculiar Grace was giv^en to it : many holy men and women had so appropriated the doctrine contained, had so connected it with their idea of holy life here, and everlasting life hereafter, that, when called upon by ignorant and unsympathetic rulers to give up this Book to be burnt, they refused, and preferred to surrender their own lives. The thought of this makes the heart flutter even in this carnal and degenerate age. At the request of the Bishop of Rome, Damasus, Jerome went to Palestine, acquired the Hebrew Language, and translated the Old Testa- ment, and revised the version of the New. While he was engaged in this duty, the news reached him that Rome had been captured by the Goths, A.D. 410. His translation is the Vulgate. In the fourth century Bishop Ulfilas started a Mission among the Goths on the River Danube, and translated the Bible into the Language of the Goths, of the Teutonic Branch of the Indo- European Family, inventing an Alphabet for the purpose : An antient copy of this venerable book is preserved at Upsala, in Sweden, and I have seen it. In the fifth century, under the guidance of Miesrob, who had already made translations into the Armenian from the Syriac, young Armenians were sent to Alexandria to learn Greek, and brought back a Greek Version, from which a fresh translation was made into the Armenian Language of the Iranic Branch of the Indo-European Family. ( 6 ) In the sixth century the same measures were taken by the Georgian Church to secure translators, who knew Greek, and were able to make use of the Greek Versions : this was the first x\siatic Language, outside the Indo-European and Semitic Families, honoured by being the vehicle of the Word of God. The Georgian Language is of the Caucasian Group. Translations of the Bible were made into the x'\rabic Language, a Semitic form of speech, before the death of Mahomet, A.D. 632, whence, as he knew no other Language, he must have gleaned his imperfect and distorted knowledge of its contents, and ap- propriated the central Truth of One God. In 735 A.D. the Venerable Bede in the Convent of Jarrow, in the County of Durham, died in the act of giving a finishing touch to the translation in the Anglo-Saxon Language of the Teutonic Branch of the Indo-European Family. In the ninth century, as if in fulfilment of a law, which could not be broken, two learned Greeks from Constantinople, C}'ril and Methodius, acquired a knowledge of the Language, spoken by the Slavonic immigrants into South Russia, and translated the Bible into the Slavonic Language of the Slavonic Branch of the Indo-European Family, making use of a special Alphabet invented by themselves. In the ninth century came into existence the interlinear glosses in the old Irish Language, which were the work of the great School of Irish monks, who commenced the Evangelisation of modern Europe : this Language belongs to the Keltic Branch of the Indo-European Family. -i-.*'/*- ( 7 ) Thus at a period antecedent to the Norman Conquest of England there existed seventeen Versions spread over the vast Region from Arabia to Great Britain. They were the spon- taneous efforts of devout Christians. A dark period had since then settled over Europe, but it was a darkness, which preceded the dawn of the Reformation. The Roman Church refused to recognise the great linguistic fact, that the Latin Language had ceased to be the Vernacular of Western Europe. In the four- teenth century a translation was made into the Persian Lan- guage. In A.D. 13S0, Wycliffe completed the translation of the Bible into English. A translation into Bohemian and German had appeared about the same time, and at a still earlier date translations had come into existence in the Provencal and Flemish Languages. The invention of Printing, the revival of Learning, the intro- duction of the Study of the Hebrew and Greek Languages, made a mighty change, and the Church of Rome resisted in vain the determination of Protestant Churches to have access to the Scriptures in their own Vernacular. The Latin Vulgate was printed in A.D. 1462 : Erasmus put forth his Greek Testament at Basle in A.D. 15 16, and a French translation was printed in A.D. 1474, a Dutch in A.D. 1477, ^" Italian in A.D. 1471, a Spanish in the Catalan Dialect in 1478. Thus there were 27 Pre- Reformation Translations before the battle was won. From the date of the Reformation to the end of the eighteenth century, twenty-nine additional translations came into existence, which it is sufficient for my purpose merely to name. ^ C3 Europe. I. Welsh. 2. Gaelic. 3- Erse. 4- Manx. 5- Basque. 6. Nonvego-Danish 7- Swedish. 8. Portuguese. 9- Rouman. 10. Russ. 23. Ehst. 24. Nogai-Turki. ( 8 ) 1 1. Osmanli Turki. 12. Old Norse. 13. Lapp. . , , T7- Asia. 14. tinn. 15. Lithu. ^5- Sinhali. 16. Pole. 26. Malay. 17. 18. Wend (2 Dialects). ^7- Tamil. 19. Magyar. ^8. Formosa. 20. Romansch. America 21. Lett. 22. Karniola. 29. New England. Thus, when the conception of a Bible Society was first enter- tained in 1804, there existed only fifty-six versions. Several of these were absolutely extinct. Several of the Translations had become merely Ecclesiastical vehicles of Ritual, being totally unknown by the people. The old Erse was merely an interlinear Gloss in a Latin Missal. Many were imperfect as translations, and not made from the original Hebrew or Greek. Some had never been printed, nor were worthy of being printed, and of those, which had been printed, the supply was totally inadequate, and the style and material of the book left much to be desired. I leave all allusion to versions prepared by the Bible Societies to Address No. IL It will appear on the slightest examination of the list how imperfectly our good ancestors of the Reformation period under- stood the duty, which is now so obvious to us all. It seems never to have entered into the conception of the holy men of the Post-Reformation period, that it was a duty to supply the Mahometan and Heathen world with copies of the Word of God, ( 9 ) and in a systematic way to re-introduce it to the knowledge of the Church of Rome, the Greek Church, and the fallen Churches of Western Asia, South India, and North East Africa, and to the remnant of God's chosen people. They were content to feed themselves with the Bread of Life, but it was not revealed to them, or brought home from the pulpit to their consciences, that Jesus died for all, that Christ looked down from the Cross upon the poor Heathen also, and that the so-called dogs had a con- genital right to the crumbs from the Christian Table. Let all objectors to the Bible-Society work out these considerations in their thoughts, and thank God. While the Priest and the Levite, the observer of Ritual, and the advocate of the Apostolical Succession, passed on the other side, the good Samaritan made the subject his own, and the Lord has blessed his poor endeavours. In this wilderness of neglect of a sacred duty there were some sweet exceptions. John Eliot's name will live for ever : he went out A.D. 163 1 to the Algonquin Indians, and translated the Bible : he had no linguistic helps : his method was : " Prayers and Pains through Faith in Jesus Christ will do anything." This translation survives as the Language of a dead Nation, but we doubt not, that it is heard among the tongues of the thousands, who are singing the new song before the Throne of the Lamb. At the other end of the world some Dutchmen translated the Bible into Malay of the Malayan Family, A.D. 1723. In South India Ziegenbalg the Dane A.D. 17 14 printed a translation in Tamil of the Dravidian Family. In Ceylon the Dutch printed in 1783 ( 10 ) translations of portions in the Sinhali language of the Indie branch of the Indo-European Family. Another Dutchman, Gravius, whose name is worthy of grateful remembrance, printed a trans- lation of two Gospels in the language of Formosa of the China Language-Group in the Empire of China. Notices of other translations, for instance, Hindustani, and Nancouri in the Nicobar Islands, in Asia, and of Eskimo in America, have passed under my eye, but they had not reached that standard of positive fact, which I think it right to require to warrant a place in my Catalogue : perhaps some may think, that my actual admissions are too liberal. It is a notable fact, that the Anglo-Saxon race on either side of the Atlantic had not wakened to the grandeur of their immeasurable responsibilities up to the end of last century. I humbly submit, that it was part of the plan of the Almighty, that His Law, and His Gospel, should be made known to His poor creatures from generation to generation, from zone to zone, in one language after another, as long as eyes can flash with intelligence, and hearts beat with love both to their Creator, and fellow-creatures. I humbly submit, that in taking steps to supply to all Mankind an unceasing supply of this heavenly food we are discharging a duty analogous to that of the Priests, who in the old Tabernacle kept the flame unceasingly burning, and that, those who obstruct the circulation, and mock at the labour expended, occupy a position analogous to those, who obstructed the building of the Temple, and mocked at the builders. ( II ) And it is as well to consider the subject from another aspect: The antients did not understand the power, and the limitations, of Language. The Secrets of the Lower, as well as the Higher, Criticism were not revealed to them, and it scarcely occurred to them, that the circumstance of a book being transferred to another Language, and another environment of Scribes, literary customs, and scholastic rules, absolutely prevented any tampering with the text without the certainty of it being detected. Thus, had the Pharisees and Scribes at the time of our Lord attempted to falsify the Prophesies, which were fulfilling under their eyes, the existence of the Septuagint rendered it impossible : So later on, if it had entered into the minds of the Priesthood of mediaeval Rome to falsify the Vulgate, which came into existence at a period one thousand }-ears before the Reformation, it would have been impossible, as no less than twenty-seven different versions were in existence in different parts of the World, and no one then knew where and how they were to be found. Mark the circumstances of the Sacred Books of a false Religion, and of a corrupted form of a true Religion : they are invariably shrouded in a Language unknown, or dimly known, or at least one not acceptable to the vulgar. They were enveloped in darkness, placed away in arks of Shittim wood, folded up in silk and precious cloths, shrouded in the death-sheet of a dead language : if read aloud, the meaning was disguised in unin- telligible sing-song chants. The power of the Priests depends on their so remaining, and there is a foolish ignorant prejudice in its favour. The " opus operatum " principle dominates among the ( 12 ) Buddhists : The Siamese Monks do not endeavour to make their teaching interesting : They intone verses in Pali, a dead language, and add a commentary in Siamese more obscure than the dead text. What do the hearers care ? crouched on the ground they heap up merit by appearing to listen, and it never enters into their heads, that they would be in the least benefited by under- standing what was read. In Indian Temples, I have stood and listened to such recitations not with feelings of disgust and aversion, but of pity, love, and sympathy. As the old grey- bearded reciter uttered his nasal twangs, the audience bowed their head : they could understand nothing, absolutely nothing, no more than the worshipper at a Roman Catholic Service understands of the anthems, chants, and Scripture readings : but there was a religio loci, which I felt myself; the heart yearning towards the great Creator, a confession of sin, weakness, and dependence on a Power greater than oneself, and a taking refuge in the Everlasting Arms. The Word of God is not bound by the lapse of Time, the interval of Space, the hardship of circumstance, the lowness of culture, the evil designs of wicked men, the scofifing of the worldling, the intolerance of short-lived Puppets in power : As the Sun rises to lighten the face of Nature, so by unbroken continuity the Word of God appears to enlighten the Soul. It is like a great Tree, which overshadows the world, and the leaves of which are for the healing of the Nations. Admitting that such was the Divine plan, can we conceive any other method than the one, which I am attempting to describe ? The * . 4B'*- i.Att ( 13 ) stream might indeed have flowed from the beginning in a larger and swifter volume, but had the Education of Mankind advanced to an extent, which would enable them to drink of the stream ? the progress has been more like that of a glacier, whose advance was slow and certain, and from time to time tiny streams of melted ice flowed out, but in the nineteenth century by a sudden warming of the atmosphere, by the heat of the rays of the Sun on the inert mass, the chains of the Frost have been burst through, and there has been a magnificent out-pouring. Two other thoughts suggest themselves : the Greek and Latin languages were after Sanskrit the most perfect machines for perpetuating thoughts, that the World has known : they were all just at this epoch losing their power : the hand of death was upon both the Latin and Sanskrit, and a paralysis on the Greek : new Vernaculars were forming from the contact of the rude forms of speech of the immigrants from the East, and thus Language was slowly elevated to the dignity of expressing great thoughts : English had not yet — not in fact till the Reformation — become the conquering Angel prepared to carry the Gospel : free from all the shackles of grammatical inflection, genders, numbers, cases, moods, tenses, etc., it is destined to be the great Vernacular of the world, spoken by men, who are as free as their Language, and carrying a free Gospel. The Romish Priests of the middle ages were blind, blind even just before dawn ; they had a kind of contempt for the Vernaculars, and hesitated to commit God's oracles to them. They erred in ignorance rather than in malice. The second thought is this : in the early days of Christianity, ^^ ( 14 ) owing to the rarity and costliness of Manuscripts, and the difficulty of deciphering them (which all, who inspect them in the British Museum, will readily admit) and the poverty and ignorance of the majority of Christians, the public reading of the Scriptures was to many the only possible means of acquain- tance with them. I have already alluded to the analogous position of the Hindu and Mahometan to this day : until the time came for translators and written translations, there were oral Interpreters in the early Church : the same phenomenon appears in the post-Exile period as attending the reading of the Jewish Scriptures ; there were interpreters (Meturgemen), who translated orally and explained what was read in the Synagogue : it must have been to our notions but poor food for the hungry soul, but it was all that was possible then, and possible now in many lanes of a large city, and many a remote village : and men used to learn to read fluently without understanding the meaning of a single word : it is narrated, that the Missionary Boniface put up at an abbey in his tours, and the Abbess after supper brought her little grandson forward to read the Vulgate : he read it clearly, and the Missionary asked him if he understood it ; and he replied in the affirmative, and read it again. The Missionary then called him to his side, and interpreted the Latin into Saxon, and the boy was astonished to find, that there was a meaning in the words beyond the mere jingle of the Sound, with which he had been previously satisfied. Canon Edmonds remarks, that three things strike our attention : " (i) That the oldest documents of our sacred books are now^ more ^ -^1 TfMifflH I'liiiw m *- ■ i 'mm 4.-.-»'/»- ( 15 ) " highly prized than ever as fountains of authoritative truth ; not as " instruments of popular teaching, still less as apparatus for public " worship. (2) There is no trace of the existence of an ancient Church, " however remote in situation, however lowly in intellectual culture, " in which we do not find some trace of a vernacular Bible. The " highest truths in the world have ever entered in at the very lowest " doors, and the doors have always been open to receive them. (3) " While the distribution of the Bible in translations is so wide-spread, " its distribution is also spontaneous. There is no rule, or canon " of council, or decree, enjoining it upon the messenger of the Cross. " It is due to the great spiritual instinct of the Church, which has " never ceased to follow the motto Sempey tibiqne ab onuiibus. No " missionary work is permanent, or satisfactory, that does not provide " the converts with the Scriptures in the vernacular. No vernacular " version can ever be permanent or satisfactory, that is not in the " loyal hands of a living Church." All the translations were made spontaneously in obedience to an instinct, to the voice of the Spirit, not to the order of an earthly Sovereign. The Emperor Constantine did indeed order Eusebius to have a certain number of copies of the New Testament made for distribution in the original language, one of which has survived to this day in the Convent of Mount Sinai, and was brought by Tischendorf to St. Petersburg, where I have twice seen it. Counting by centuries, we have : — The Old Testament before Christ in 4 languages. The New Testament in the First century. The Syriac and Coptic in the Second and Third centuries. ( 16 ) The Latin Vetus Itala in do. The Ethiopia in the Fourth century. The Gothic in do. The Armenian in the Fifth century. The Georgian in the Sixth century. The Arabic in the Eighth century. The Anglo Saxon in do. The Slavonic in the Ninth century. The Irish interlinear glosses in do. The Persian in the Fourteenth century. The English (Wycliffe) in do. The German in Fifteenth century. The Italian in do. The Spanish in do. The Flemish in do. The Bohemian in do. The French in do. The Dutch in do. Some may think lightly of continuity of translation of one book for two thousand five hundred years. Is it so common a phenomenon of literature ? Is there any other parallel ? Have the Books of the Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the Buddhist, the Confucianist, faithful translations from century to century ? Certainly not. I do not wish to undervalue them : in weighing the intellectual wealth of past ages, and the capabilities of antient men of past ages, the world would be poor without them. We are glad, that it came into the hearts of good men to write such good things, but ( '7 ) is not this treasure like the gold, which has so man}' ages been buried under the reefs of South Africa and Australia, like the flowers which bloom in an uninhabited desert? Our gold has been minted, and re-minted, as it was handed on from generation to generation, from Nation to Nation. Independent of their respective value, the Ruler of the Universe has given them a different destiny. As regards the Koran, I see it stated this very year, that the Sultan of Turkey's authority in Arabia might be shaken, if he sanctioned a publication of a translation of the Koran into the Turkish language, even in Manuscript. With all Mahometans, who do not speak Arabic, religious instruction has the same effect, as if Christians were to learn the Pentateuch by heart in Hebrew. We have the great fact, and we cannot but see the signs of a great design in the fact, that, when Temple and Tower went to the ofround before the advance of the Greek and Roman, who were entirely unsympathetic with the Asiatic and African, all the literature of Assyria and Bab}'lon was buried in the ruins of their cities, and all the learning of Egypt was entombed in sand ; but another fate awaited the one great Book of the Hebrews : their city and their nationality, perished, but the Greek and Roman did not disdain to translate their Book, and its life does not rest on Stele, or Papyri, or baked bricks, in the Museums of Europe, but in versions in many hundred tongues, uttered by living voices, to the comfort of living hearts. Another contrast is worthy of record. In 1526 A.D. Cardinal Wolsey seized the English translation of the Gospel printed by ( IS ) Tyndall in Germany, and burnt it at the North Gate of old St. Paul's Cathedral. Ten years afterwards Tyndall was himself burnt, and while fastened to the stake he cried out, "Lord ! open the King of England's eyes." In iSco in an obscure Welsh valley little Mary Jones cried out, "Oh! that I had a Bible of my own!" and these wishes formed the keynote of the grand Chorus of Harmony, which )-ear by }'ear has spread in volume, until it is heard over the whole earth: that prayer of TxmdaU's was heard, that wish of the little Welsh girl was destined to be the cause of conveying light and knowledge to millions. Wycliffe put the case very neatly, when he wrote : " Since secular men should assuredly understand the Faith, it " should be taught to them in whatever Language is best known " to them." Our duty is clear, to keep up the sacred continuity, to hand on the lamp : in the Agamemnon of /Eschylus, line 312, there is a fine passage : — " ToioiS' cToi/jLoi \afi7raBT](j)6pcov vo/jloI, " aXA.09 ' Trap aWcov Sia8o;^at9 TrXi^pov/iepoL " and a Latin author conveys the same idea : " Quasi cursores vital lampada tradunt." Dear Horatius Flaccus in one of his beautiful odes predicts for his charming poetry an unlimited diffusion, and he mentions the Nations, whom he imagined hereafter reading them ; but this prediction is true as regards the Bible to an extent a hundredfold greater, and more enduring, and a thousand times more profitable. ADDRESS No. II. On "The World-wide Diffusion of the Scriptures in Hundreds of Languages." "The Earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." — Isaiah xv. 9. "The Isles shall wait for His law."— Isaiah xlii. 4. In these days these words are fulfilled. What a faint conception the inspired Prophet must have had of the geographical expansion of the round world, and its fourteen hundred millions of inhabitants ! How little he knew of anj-thing beyond the limits of his own country, and his own generation ! Yet the prophesy has come true. There are no more Continents now to discover, and only a limited amount of unexplored interior regions in Asia, Africa, and America : we have left but little for the geographers of the next century to accomplish ; and the Distributors of the Bible have not failed in their duty, at least in the commencement of it, for it will take centuries to com- plete the good work, but_ we have the advantage now of no ( 20 ) great linguistic surprises being possible. On the subject of Language see Address No. III. In this Address I keep myself to Geography, the most material of all Sciences in its three developments, Physical, Political, and Anthropological. In Europe our work of creation is done : we have but to sustain, improve, and spread, the Eighty Translations, with which the 312^ Millions of the human race, all nominally Christians, have been supplied. It took fourteen hundred years from the day of Pentecost to convert Europe, but now with the exception of the Je^vs, and the kw Mahometans residing in or near Constantinople, all are nominally Christians, but they do not all love the Bible. The Atheist, Agnostic, Skeptic, and Worldling, pass it by, and despise it ; the Roman Catholic Priest forbids his flock to buy copies, and does his best to destroy all the copies, on which he can lay hands : the Members of the Greek and Protestant Churches are more noble, and gladly receive it. Of these eighty translations several are dead, and some are used only for liturgical purposes, e.g., Latin, Greek (the inspired N. T.), Slavonic, Anglo-Saxon, Gothic ; and twenty-five are in subordinate dialects of some particular great Language, or sister-dialects of a Language of second or third-rate importance.- Some are moribund, and on the road to extinction : Others are given to the world in strong conquering forms of speech, like the English, which give promise of lasting for ever, having in themselves the power of modif}'ing their forms, and adapting new word-stores. There is not room for much expansion of ( 21 work in Europe, but for careful rc\'ision and diligent circulation. Several distinct forms of written Character are used, but all are Alphabetic. I quote at this place the important remarks of the Earl of Harrowby, President of the British and Foreign Bible Societ}', made in Exeter Hall, j\Ia)', 1890 The real danger of modern times is lest nominal Christians should fall back into Paganism, worse because it is civilized, and amounts to Atheism or Theism. " Another important point, to which I wish to call }-our "attention is the tone in regard to religious matters in the three "great Latin countries of Europe, France, Italy, and Spain. A "most interesting report is made on this subject by our colporteurs, " who say, that the best test at the present time is the tone of "the working-classes of Europe, and they go into every quarter " of the country, and among classes of the people, whom no " minister ever reaches. According to their reports there is going " on still more rapidly than ever the alienation of the people " from the existing religious churches of those lands. This is " sad in one way, but it is hopeful in another. The feeling of "alienation from the priesthood in those countries is evidently " growing with tremendous strides, and is producing great changes " in the habits and opinions of the people. Concurrently with " these vast changes comes the report, that more and more they "are willing to buy the sacred books for themselves. If you "compare this state of things with that, which prevailed only ten " years ago, you will find that the bitterness against the ecclesiastical "spirit increases, but that the bitterness against religion generally ( 22 ) " is on the wane, as far as our colporteurs report. The spread "of education is enormous in France and Italy. For the first " time those countries are becoming highly educated from the " very lowest ranks, but absolutely without any religious teaching : "the reports state, that the teachers themselves are infidels. " But with all this there is this hopeful sign, that the people "are buying more and more the sacred Book. If they were " accepting copies as gifts, it would not be so much, but, though "this Society gives away a limited numbers of books, it goes on " the principle of selling rather than of giving, so that, when we " tell you of this test of feeling, it is a real test, because the " people sacrifice something in order to get the Sacred Volume. " j\I. ]Monod, with regard to France, says that, he adopts very much " the words of one of his best colporteurs : ' It seems to me " that superstition is not so general as it was, and that what people "call the Protestant faith is honoured by many Roman Catholics, " who ten years ago felt nothing but a bitter hatred against the " Gospel and the Scriptures, which we colporteurs circulate. Blessed " be the Lord for that ! Those times are gone, and the light of " the Gospel seems to spread. The Lord gives me new openings, "and I must hasten to meet them.' Yes, the Society, must "hasten to meet the openings, and I hope that you will do all you "can to help us to meet them. With regard to Italy, what "does our excellent agent say there.? Our Society aims at "making the Bible a household word from the Alps to Sicily, " and this is what we arc doing more and more successfully " every year. That is his report of the work there. Then as yWfii ( 23 ) " to Spain, the other Latin country, our agent says : ' The fact, "which presses on my attention is the quiet but sure advance of "the Scriptures all over the land.' All over Spain! What a " change ! One rises from the study of the simple, often rude, "narratives of the colporteurs, saying to oneself, 'Here is a quiet "silent movement, the Bible is passing rapidly into the hands of "the people.' Therefore my verdict must be, that there is all " to encourage us and nothing to discourage in our work in "Spain. Well, my lords and gentlemen, I would beg you "to follow up these points in the Report, which gives very "interesting details on the subject. Then there is another point, " to which I would call attention, the increased local circulation "of the Holy Scriptures in Europe. That is what the Society "always longed for, and said it meant to withdraw from the " countries of Europe as soon as the nations would do the work " themselves. We have been withdrawing from Switzerland ; there " Societies are springing into life, and the Bible is prospering "largely in the hands of the Swiss. Then there is the remark- "able fact in connection with Germany, that there never was "a greater circulation of the Scriptures in Germany than in "the present year. Germany was the centre of the anti- " christian criticism of the Bible, and the world was taught "from Germany to regard the Bible as an absolutely found-out " Book. But we find that the figures of the German Societies "have of late years gone up by leaps and bounds. German love "of the Scriptures was never greater, apparently, than it is now, "say those, who have watched the progress of Germany." ( 24 ) Asia presents a still more magnificent spectacle : a population of 800 Millions provided with 103 translations, with a capacity for greatly increasing the number. I enumerate the names of the political divisions so as to bring home to the mind the grandeur of the subject : Russia. Turkey. Arabia. Persia. India, Nearer and Further, and the Indian Archipelago. China and Korea. Japan. A very small proportion are even nominally Christians : there are Millions, who arc ^Mahometan, Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, or belonging to some lower form of Paganism. Every degree of culture and civilization is included. There is great variety of Race, of Linguistic Family, and of Written Character, Alphabets, and Ideograms. The outturn already made represents the grandest accumulation of sanctified human knowledge, that the World ever saw in times past, or is likely to see in times to come. Among the versions enumerated is the original inspired Hebrew version, and the Hebrew language, though no longer falsely honoured as the mother of all languages, still maintains its position, as the one fountain, from which the knowledge of the Oracles of God have been derived. Some of the translations are of the highest possible type of excellence, and are understood by scores of ]Millions, men of high culture and intelligence, the heirs of an antient civilisation, compared to which the civilisation of ( 25 ) Europe is a young plant. As in Europe so in Asia, the Vernacular Bible takes its place as an esteemed Classic, and it will be no more possible to exclude it from the Library of an educated Asiatic than it is possible to exclude Plato, and the Greek Tragedians, from an European Library. In Literature it has left its indelible mark : its higher function of Education will be described in Address No. VL The Phenomena presented by Africa are different. The population is estimated, but on no certain data, at two hundred Millions. This is a mere guess : there are fifty-nine translations. The four Regions, North, West, South, and East, are differently situated. The North Region is affected by the contiguity of Asia and Europe : the chief translation in use is that of the Arabic, an importation from Asia, which is not included in the enumeration : the other languages are mostly unimportant, without influence or literature. In the West Region all that exists is the creation of this Century : whether the seed sown will take root is a question, to which no answer can be given : a wave of bar- barism might sweep all away : Christian Settlements at distances from the Coast far in the interior are still in their infancy : some of the Languages brought into subjection are trul}- magnificent : the Printing Press is at work : the circumstance, that every educated Native on the Coast speaks English as his first vernacular, and has his English Bible, is a phenomenon quite peculiar to this Region : other translations will no doubt be added, and the problems pre- sented by the populations of the basins of the Senegal, Niger, and Kongo, are the most interesting and peculiar, that the world ( 25 ) has ever seen. In the South Region an European Christian civilisation is unmistakably forming itself, and it may be antici- pated, that in the twentieth Century the Bible will have unlimited diffusion among an African, an European, and a mixed population. The East Region presents different Phenomena. The influence of Arabic, and the Mahometan Religion, and of contact with India, is felt : one lordly language, considerably Arabized, the Sw'ahi'li, has an extensive influence, but, as the interior has been penetrated up to the great Lakes, a great many cognate languages have been revealed, and translations made. The written Character used is nearly exclusively the Roman Alphabet. In America translations have been made for the use of eighty- six Millions in forty Languages, the European Languages of English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, which are so extensively used, are not included in this enumeration. Twenty-nine translations are provided for the interesting tribes of the Red Indians, who still survive in the Dominion of Canada, and the United States : their linguistic peculiarities will be dwelt upon in Address No. Ill : A special syllabic written Character has been devised for their use : Perhaps the words " Too Late " rise in our hearts, and come to our lips : it seems an impossibility, that such a peculiar race can co-exist intermixed with, and under the unsympathetic influences of, Anglo-Saxon Colonists. At any rate the Bible Society has done its duty, and from the first year of its existence. In Central America four translations represent the extent, to which Christian Europe and North America has been ready, or able, to minister to the spiritual wants of the Survivors of the Kingdom s**r. '•'/».■ ( 27 ) of Mexico : they too seem doomed. In South America provision has been made in three Languages for translation for the use of Native tribes on the Continent, and one for the poor, weak inhabitants of the Southermost Island of Tierra del Fucgo, in a peculiar written Character, not its own, for it had none. In the fairy Islands of Oceania, unknown to the Antient World, and dimly known to the last generation, but now standing out in clear daylight, we find thirty-nine translations for the use of four and half Millions of barbarous Natives, some on the lowest round of the ladder of human culture. The two great obstacles to the diffusion of the Bible are difficulty of access, and hostility of the Priests of the Church of Rome. ]\Iy intimate Survey of the whole world, and study of the great Story of Bible-work, leave me no doubt on this subject. In the four portions of this fairy world, which spreads even up to the gates of the Morning not far from South America, Polynesia, ^Melanesia, ]\Iikronesia, and Australia, access is easy for the translator and the supply of translations. The Middle Ages never threw the dark shadow of a corrupt Ecclesiastical System over these fortunate islands : even now, however, in one or two Islands, which have been appropriated by Romish Priests, a diligent watch is maintained to keep out the Bible, but it is in vain : they might as well attempt to prevent the Morning Sun rising in its glory. Our President, the Earl of Harrowby, remarked : " The past " fifty years have almost seen a repetition of the gift of tongues, " because we have produced translations of the Bible in something " like 140 tongues. Many of these were previously unwritten, and ( 28 ) " had not known a word of literature before. This is one of the " greatest marvels of the half-century. I don't think I am ex- " aggerating, when I say that that extraordinary linguistic feat " of the literary establishment of this multitude of Languages, by " means of the Bible, is almost miraculous." Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, be honour given, but to Thee, Who art the giver ! What shall we render unto the Lord for His mercies during the last ninety years? Exactness of totals is impossible, as year by year additions are made of fresh tribute, laid humbly on the Altar of the Lord, tribute of the first-fruits of Zeal, Linguistic Gifts, and Precious lives, gladly offered, singular devotion, whole-hearted consecration, reflect blessings on the countries, which made the Sacrifice. i.-\ccording to my Language lists compiled, and published in 1890, there were three hundred and thirty-one effective translations, and my pencil notes indicate an addition of twelve in 1891, and I find that 1892 will register an equal, if not a larger, addition, and year by year, when this generation has passed away, those who stand on the brink of the twentieth Century, and look forward to the years, that are yet to come, must lay to themselves the duty of making an annual offering, not unworthy of their opportunities and blessings, and the great character, which they have to maintain. Many translations require careful revision : in some many Books of the Divine Library are wanting, and it may possibly be judicious to limit the supply to a tribe in a low state of culture and intellectual capacity to the most important Books. New Editions in different sizes, written Character, and on different materials, will always be required. ADDRESS No. III. Ox THE Translator, the Translation, the Diversity of Languages, and the Rules laid down for Guidance. " I will gather all Nations and Languages, and they shall come to see My Glorj-. " — Isaiah Ixvi. iS. " Flow hear we every man in our own Language, wherein we were born." —Acts ii. 8. *' We do hear them speaking in our Languages the mighty works of God." — Acts ii. ii. The original texts in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, were committed to paper or parchment by their inspired writers in the form of written Characters of their period, and by a succession of copies of copies have come down to our time : certain texts were accepted by the Bible-Societies as their standard with certain license allowed to the Translator, so as to make use of all available knowledge acquired by qualified Scholars : notice has been made in Address Xo. i of the early Translators : to men like Jerome in the fourth century, and to Erasmus in the fourteenth ( 30 ) century of the Christian era, we stretch out our hands across the abyss of centuries in grateful acknowledgment of the work which the Holy Spirit called them out of the ranks of their contemporaries to do : we cannot pass by without blessing such names as Wycliffe, Luther, Tyndale, Coverdale, and others, who risked their lives in the discharge of their duties, and a debt of gratitude is owing to many others, who before the close of the eighteenth century devoted their talents to the sacred work : with the rare exceptions mentioned in Address No. i these translations were made for the use of European Churches by Pastors or Scholars : but when the Missionary Spirit at the close of the last century was let loose in the world, like the imprisoned Genii from the Lamp, translations were undertaken by IMissionaries in every part of the world, and the Bible-Society became the handmaid to the Missionary Societies, doing this particular work for them, and placing them under heavy obligations. It was then that the venerable names of Carey, Judson, Morrison, and Martin appeared, and later on a whole troop of translators, who in the last seventy years have accomplished the marvellous work recorded in Address No. n. Where can we seek a better ideal of a translator than in the picture, which the Interpreter showed to Christian the Pilgrim (Pilgrim's Progress) ? " It had eyes lifted up to Heaven : the best of books in its " hand : the law of truth was written upon its lips, the world " was behind its back : it stood as if it pleaded with men, and a " crown of glory did hang over its head." I venture to quote the remarks of Sir Charles Aitchison ( 31 ) late Lieutenant-Governour of the Panjab : I am proud indeed of having been a disciple and follower of John Lord Lawrence, but perhaps it is a greater honour to have had men like Sir Charles Aitchison among my own subordinates : " These missionaries were men, of whom the world was not " worthy. They gave themselves and all their worldly goods " to the Master's cause, not simply a subscription, not simply a " tithe or a tenth, but literally all. Carey himself wrote, ' I " might have had very great possessions, but have given all " I had, except what I ate and drank and wore, to the cause " of missions, and Dr. Marshman has done the same, and Mr. " Ward likewise.' These men left to the Mission cause a better " legacy than any worldly possessions : they left the translation " of the Scriptures, the unsearchable riches of Christ, in forty " of the vernacular languages of India. Before Carey's time the " Bible was to the Indian people a sealed book. Carey went " out in 1/93, ^"<^> within eight years, the New Testament in " Bangali was published entire. Within eight years more, the " entire Bible in Bangali was published ; and by 1S34, when " Carey died, the whole Scriptures were published in six of the " Indian Languages ; the New Testament in twenty-three more " of the Indian Languages, and portions of Scripture in ten " languages in addition, in spite of the fact that these missionaries " had actually to cut their own punches, to cast their own " type, sometimes even to make their own paper ; and in face " of the fact that their entire printing press and the priceless " manuscripts of their dictionar)- were entircl)' destroyed b}- fire. ( 32 ) " Was I wrong in saying that this reads like a chapter in " romance ? " To my mind there is no department in which the results " of missionary labour during the last century are more manifest " than in the translation and circulation of the Scriptures. At " the beginning of the century, Bibles were scarce and dear. " Carey's first Bangali Bible cost about £4. A Bangali Bible " can now be had for a few pence. At the beginning of the " centur}', the Bible existed only in some thirty languages ; it " has now been translated, in whole or in part, into something " like three hundred and fifty, to which the Baptist ^Missionary " Society has contributed, I believe, some fifty-six. Now, if " there were no other result of missionary labours than that, " they have conferred an inestimable boon upon the whole human " race, and all the lives, that have been spent in the ^Mission " cause from the beginning till now, would even for that result " not have been thrown away. Apart altogether from the spiritual " aspects of the case, and looking mereh' to the secular side of " it, the philological value of a work like that is simply " incalculable." Let me add a word of commendation of this noble army, of whom Jerome was the first and greatest : they were not all Scholars, not all wise, not all successful : the work of some is forgotten : it was the rough translation of the first man, upon which his successors have built a more perfect superstructure : his work, like that of many a good builder of past and present time, lies underneath the soil : but the good bricks made by the first ( 33 ) man support the fabric : he hewed the primeval forest : he collected from the mouths of barbarians their words expressive of their thoughts, ranged them in vocabularies, grouped them in sentences, learnt to utter them with faltering voice, and was the first to consecrate them to the sacred use of rendering the Word of God intelligible to a family of His poor children, who had hitherto not known Him, but for whom Christ had died. Glory- to the man, who has translated the whole Bible ! And it is found, that the words of the Bible adapt themselves to any form of human speech, is capable of expression in vocables, which had not undergone the discipline of centuries of literature : some may think, that this was a matter of course : I was once sitting at Banaras in the company of some Brahman Pandits, who were attempting to render into Sanskrit some portion of Macaulay's writings, and they were obliged to abandon the attempt : I very much doubt, whether Mr. Gladstone's speeches could be rendered into the IMonosyllabism of China, or the Polysyllabism of the Red Indian, into Fiji, or Zulu, or even our own familiar Persian, and Urdu : so complicated are the constructions of the great writer and orator : but there is a simplicity in the structure of the Hebrew, which renders it convertible at will into any other form of speech, and it goes without saying, that a sentiment, which has been clothed in Greek, can without difficulty be transferred to any form of articulate sound, and it is a mistake to call any Language barbarian, though spoken by barbarians. I have heard a friend on his return from a six months trip to China tell the Committee in good faith, that the position of 3 4r^ ^ -^ -- ( 34 ) the people of China was unique, that it was Impossible to translate the Psalms into the Languages of China, that the text of the Scriptures was useless without notes and commentaries : but are the people of China different in their intellectual status from other nations, for instance the people of India, who require no such helps, and in whose multiform Languages the Books of the Bible flow like melted gold? Do not such remarks come from the obliquity of vision of the man, who knows China, and nothing but China ? Can we not recall the time, when a celebrated orientalist in 1778 expressed the opinion in good faith, that no translation could be made of the Bible in the Languages of China, because the nature of the Languages would not allow of any translation being made : It is difficult to bring back the mind to the standpoint, whence such an opinion could have been maintained. But others of that period told their friends, that some Languages had no grammatical construction : they could hardly have meant, that the sounds left the mouth at random without being compressed into words and sentences, and grammar consists of Sounds, Words, and Sentences : Some at this period fondly believed, that Savages conducted their affairs by the help of symbols, whistles, clicks, grunts, and gestures : We have got beyond that stage of half-knowledge now, and must admit, that all God's children use articulate speech, and none require any extraneous help, which is not asked for by their fellows. Here let me add a wonderful fact. Each family of Languages has a " soul " of its own : its genius at some remote and unknown period lept out of darkness, and became fixed for ever : The ( 35 ) native of China may use English words, but he uses them after his own method : his words must be placed in the precise order, in which the idea rises : there is no suffix to mark the accusative case, and if the order of " the man beat the dog " were departed from, as in Latin and Greek versification, it would be uncertain, who was the sufferer, the man or the dog. The idea that Languages passed through a series of evolution from mono- syllabism to agglutination, and thence on to inflection, is abandoned. A Language-family maintains its idiosyncracy to the end. It is opportune to say a word more on the subject of Lan- guages : there are at least two thousand mutually unintelligible spoken at this moment, and more lie behind not yet revealed : the Bible-Society gleans after the great travellers : each in his stride across continents, or in his course from island to island, lifts the curtain of the unknown a little higher, and reveals new wonders. In the great majority there is an entire want of culture, and there exists neither a literature, nor even a written Character, but the machine itself is perfect, logical, and delicately differentiated : There are Languages, spoken by barbarian tribes in India, with as rich a grammatical apparatus as the Greek, and in Africa as euphonious and methodical as the Osmanli-Turki. The Bible is in such environment, really the book, the first book, the first idea of a book, the only book, and the best book : per saUuvt these barbarians have passed from an ignorance of things human and divine, as thick as surrounds a Gorilla, into the glorious light of Revelation, and have learnt to utter with faltering lips sublime truths, which Prophets, and Philosophers, have felt for, and failed ( 3^ ) to find, which wise men may have dreamt of in their dreams by night, or reveries by day, and which faithful men saw afar off under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, and were glad. It is a great honour, and an enduring one, conferred on a poor uncultivated Language in Canada, or the Xew Hebrides, or the interior of Africa, a Language only used for the vulgar duties of a very degraded form of life, where indecent words are very frequent, and cruel words very abundant, and decent loving words scarce, suddenly elevated, levelled up, dev^eloped by one, who skilfully handles the potential resources of this undeveloped form of speech, and lifts it up to the supreme honour of being the vehicle of God's message to Man ; the golden censer, in which humble pra}'ers morning and night pass from untutored lips, and contrite hearts, right up to the Throne of Grace : the thought is overwhelming in its grandeur : we do not think enough of such wonderful trans- formations. Languages differ from each more entirely than those, who have not studied the subject, can imagine. The old fashioned idea, that at some remote period they all came from one seed-plot, has disappeared, and another idea is gaining ground, that there are several distinct seed-plots, and that j\Ian was created without developed power of uttering articulate sounds, but being endowed with brain power, and so far superior to brute and mute animals, he developed the power of articulate utterances under different environments, and therefore on totally different principles : there is the trace of mind, and logical power, in all : how otherwise can we account for the Monosyllabism of the Chinese, the ( 37 ) Polysyllabism of the Red Indians, the agglutinating system of the Turki, the inflecting tendencies of the Arian ; the use of Suffixes by some Languages, of Prefixes by others, and Infixes by a third, such as the Semitic, where the root is stretched out Hke an elastic string, and servile letters infixed. Just as their origin is different, so is their life, and the end of their lives : some die early, are trodden, and absorbed by coming into contact with some great conquering Language, like the English, which in its march over continent and islands substitutes itself for the poor undeveloped form of speech of a tribe in a low state of culture : in some cases all the tribe, who speak a language, are killed down. Some beget families of Languages, as the Latin and Sanskrit ; some seem to be barren, and only give out dialectal varieties, like Greek and Arabic : some were made use of early in their career as vehicles of civilisation, and thus have prolonged their existence as dead literary Languages : Great Families of Languages exist, like the Arian, Semitic, Dravidian, Turki, Bantu, etc , which clearly each came from one separate seed-plot ; or great groups of Languages, which cannot be affiliated to each other, or at least have not been so in our present knowledge. And as to the dimly known, or totally unknown. Languages of unexplored Regions, we must leave them to the children now in their cradles, the " enfans terribles " of the Twentieth Century, who will stand on our coffins, think little of our labours, laugh at our failures, and talk of us as old fogies, who knew nothing at all : Empty spaces on our maps warn us of the existence of unrevealed Millions, still living their secluded savage lives, not yet poisoned by European ( 38 ) liquors, not yet plundered and put to death by European Geo- graphical Explorers on the Scientific war-path ; not yet shot down by Maxim guns by so-called political Protestants (as at Uganda in 1892); not yet driven like vermin from their land by British Colonists, and great Companies without any feelings of compassion : It seems, as if a great cry were going up to Heaven from every part of Africa for protection and vengeance, when even the fact, that the New Testament has been translated into a particular language, is gravely put forward as a reason for annexing a Province, and enslaving a population. We are as it were standing by the seashore, and listening to the noise of the inarticulate waves : mounted up on a high tower listening to the confused murmur of an unseen crowd below, that floats up to our hearing. There are secrets reserved for the twentieth century, which we shall never know : new Planets gliding into the orb of our vision : new translations of the Scripture will have to be made ; for the end is not yet. Time is on the side of the Bible-Society ; their work will last until the Earth and its Glory passes away. The tendency of the age is for great Ernpires, great Nationalities, and great Languages : this is all in the favour of the Bible- Diffusion, for though only 330 out of 2000 languages have been disposed of, yet all the conquering languages, and a great many of the second class, or permanent, languages, have been dealt with, and before the turn of many hundred arrives to be honoured by becoming the receptacle of the Word of God, it will be found, that their day of usefulness is past, that they have been scorched, and destroyed, under the blaze of some great Vernacular. It is ( 39 ) impossible to say, how or when this may come about : we have instances, shewing that the lapse of centuries has made no change in the framework of a Vernacular, though many changes have taken place of its word-store : and again, Eg\'pt presents the phenomena of the same race in the same locality having absolutely changed its antient language for another of a different family. All these things are far beyond the power of Sovereigns, or Parliaments, or Churches, or Bible-Societies, to counteract. How little should we have known of the existence and nature of many Languages but for the quiet labour of th2 Translators ! over the tomb of one venerable man is recorded the fact, that he translated the whole Bible into a Language, the very name of which was previously unknown : he had found all the tribe savage Pagans, and left them decent Christians. Then again the unsettled speech of many Nations has been settled by the translation of the Bible : no more notable instances can be given of this Phenomenon than that of the English and German, for it becomes the commencement of their literature, and no other book would do it so well. It is not necessary, that the whole of the Old and New Testaments should be translated into Languages only spoken by a few thousand : Selections of certain books are quite sufficient, at any rate, for one or two decades. Money and labour have been thrown away in past years by want of attention to this principle. Many Languages would never have been reduced to writing, would never have survived to later ages, such as the Maeso-Gothic of Ulfilas, the three dialects of the Koptic, the Algonquin of Eliot ; they would have been trodden down under ( 40 ) the triumphant chariot-wheels of some more powerful, or more fortunate Language, leaving no track on the sands of time, but for the Scriptures, which have kept some flickering form of speech alive for a season by lending it a spiritual light of its own, and which have given Immortality to other Languages: many mighty forms of speech, in which law was given to Kingdoms in antient days, have perished and are forgotten, because no holy Prophet condescended to make use of them : " Carent quia vate sacro." There are a great variety of written Characters, of three kinds : Ideogram, Syllabary, Alphabet : the translator should use a sound judgment in his selection of the written Character : the Roman Character is generally used for all Languages, which never had a Character of their own ; but in North America, the translators have fashioned new Syllabaries, and in South America used an entirely new Alphabet. I am not prepared to give a decided opinion on the expediency of such measures : unquestionably it adds to the difficulties of the future. Then again in many Languages there are Dialects, differing from each other in w^ord-store, pronunciation, and even in structure : if there is a standard-dialect, which takes precedence of the others, this is naturally adopted, but, if there are several of equal importance, another question of sound judgment arises as to which should be selected : these brief remarks give an idea of the extraordinary difficulties, which surround the process of rendering God's Word into the Vernacular of the world. It is scarcely necessary to say, that the money of the Society ( 41 ) is not spent in editions of old translations, or the composing of new in the dead Ecclesiastical Languages of Europe, Asia and Africa : where editions exist, copies can be obtained in the Depot by Scholars, or members of the corrupt Churches, who use them, but their preparation is not within the duty of the Bible Society for reasons, which will be fully described in Address No. IV. The existence of these antient translations, however, make us realize a Divine Presence through the Ages : all things are changing : boundaries of Empires, existence of Empires, prevalence of Languages : but one thing is not changed : the Word of God abideth for ever. In the Revelation we read (vii. 9) : — " Lo, " a great multitude, which no man can number, of all Nations " and kindreds, and people, and tongues." In those days not the faintest idea existed of the multiplicity of the forms of human speech : in fact I came on a Hebrew Grammar of last century, in which the author gravely states, that there were about sixty Languages in the world, and all derived from Hebrew : As the work grows under the hand of the translator, as the wonderful story is spelt out in new combination of letters, and words, and sentences, or hesitatingly pronounced in new sequences of strange, but euphonious, sounds, and as the Divine conception of Sin, Faith, Repentance, Pardon, and Holiness, impress themselves on the conscience, and intellect, of simple, docile, and sympathetic savages, how the heart of the translator must be gladdened, how his eye is brightened to think, that in the course of ages it has been reserved to him to be the first ( 42 ) ■ interpreter of Revelation to souls so long lying out of the way of the Gospel ! The first attempts at translation in Languages of races in a low state of culture are often weak : there are no linguistic helps, such as grammars and dictionaries, and the words have to be caught, as it were, alive from the mouths of the people, who cannot understand what the translator is after : Then again abstract ideas such as Love, Patience, etc , have not been developed : it is believed, that 2Co words are sufficient to supply the con- versation in ordinary life of an English villager, so perhaps less would be sufficient for that of a South Sea Islander : Many things actually do not exist, such as sheep, wine, bread, etc. : the Languages, and the ideas, of the speaker have to be developed : many stories are told : I give three : the trans- lator in the Eskimo Language was hard pushed how to render the " Lamb of God," for such things as sheep were unknown : Seals were the familiar objects in Labrador : So he rendered the passage, " the little Seal of God." In South Africa a chief being pushed hard by the translator to give a rendering for Love : " God is Love " : suggested the eatable, which he loved or liked most, which was " Decayed Fish." In New Britain a word for a binding oath not to do something was wanting : a chief struck out the idea of " I would rather speak to my wife's Mother than do such a thing." In countries not in the same or similar latitude to Palestine the translator is hard pressed. Not only the Fauna and Flora are different, but the clothing, the habitations, the customs, the environment of the m^y i.ike * ( 43 ) people, differ from that of the Bible : how is he to find satis- factory equivalents for names of animals, birds, insects, flowers, precious stones, weights, measures, garments, ordinary expressions, and outward evidence of daily life ? What does the Green- lander, the Melanesian, the Fuegian, know about fig-trees and Camels ? What moral will the precept convey to a tribe totally naked ? " He that taketh thy coat let him take thy cloak also." In some regions the sheep are entirely black : how will the phrase be rendered about " white as wool " ? Wliat is to be done in countries, where the idea of ice or snow does not exist ? These are but specimens of the great difficulties, which the external of human affairs present : when we deal with internal preconceptions and ideas, the difficulty is greater. After the first effort, and the test, that the translation is intelligible in the Sunday School, and the Chapel, a first tentative edition is struck off in the IMission-Press by the converts : this is an interesting illustration of the Grace of God on His poor creatures, A Missionary's wife writes how each sheet as struck off was read to the women and girls, and portions committed to memory. The Spirit of God did not fail to apply it to their simple hearts and consciences in His own time and way : the Bible became not only the basis of their religious convictions, but of the moral and social culture, which slowly grew up, and in due time brought forth fruit. It is very sweet to be allowed such peeps into the inner life of these humble tribes : it is, as if we were spying into the chambers of the Ant, or the hives of the Bee : it is the same Power, which regulates the movements of ( 44 ) all His poor creatures. After further corrections the translation is sent home, printed by the Bible-Society, and copies sent back : then in due course comes the time for careful revision by a second generation of Missionaries, who are not very merciful to the shortcomings of their predecessors, and representatives of other ^Missions of different denominations, who use the same Language : but finality has not been obtained in any Language, not even in English, French, or German. These first efforts of good men must not be despised : we think reverently of the translators of the Septuagint and the Vetus Itala : they had consigned to them a certain portion of the Divine Plan for the Redemption of ^^lankind, and they did it faithfully. In the Hexapla of Origen we come upon the obsolete translations into Greek of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, but Origen profited by them, and Jerome made use of them, and then their use, like the use of many a sweet flower, died out : Vulgar tongues have been elevated by a Master ]\Iind, and tuned to the expression of heavenly things, ennobled by becoming the vehicle of God's Message to His poor creatures : The difficulty of expressing religious ideas is not so great as might be imagined. Paganism has made mankind familiar with such ideas as the supreme Deity, Mediators, prayer, sacrifice, confession of sin, penance, the Spirit-world. Each of the dear good Translators, who unexpectedly, and without any preparation, finds himself chosen by God to make a translation in a new language, writes home in the innocence of his heart, that his language is the most difficult in the ( 45 ) world : being devoid of all scientific knowledge, he dwells on the absence of written Character (the presence of which is a stumbling-block in China), of the extraordinary pronunciation, word-store, and mode of describing the relation of idea to idea, which we in Europe call sound-lore, word-lore, and sentence-lore : perhaps he is all the better for being free from knowledge of Latin and Greek Grammar, and for leaning on the Holy Spirit to sanctify his intellect in his blessed work of translation. Certain rules have been laid down for the guidance of trans- lators : The Members of the Editorial Committee sit month by month to conduct this part of the business, and there is one Secretary set apart for this particular duty : a certain amount of experience, of a more organised character than that of an isolated Missionary, is thus attained : it is not pretended, that the Members of this Sub-Committee know the particular Language, but they know better than the Missionary the conditions of a good translation, as there are as many as fifty on the anvil at the same time, and the same, similar, or analogous, phenomena or difficulties, arise in all. In the fourteen or twenty Languages, with which ordinary Europeans are familiar, it is a wonderful pleasure to read the same chapter rendered in a distinct vehicle of symbol and sound : the meaning, or some shade of meaning, latent in the Hebrew or Greek, which has escaped a rendering in familiar Languages, is brought out in some barbarous Language : I give one instance : Rightly or wrongly the phrase " Let us make " man " (Genesis) is interpreted by some as indicating the con- ception of a Trinity : Now in Greek there is a Dual number. S^ ( 46 ) and in some Languages there is a Trial nun;iber, and the Missionaries took credit for using the trial number in expressing the idea of " Let Us Three make man." I only allude to this to illustrate the fact, that some Languages possess a power of expression, which for reasons, which are quite inexplicable, are wanting in others. In Lidia there are abundant expressions to represent the great conception of God : in China there is not one : in the attempt of Translators to find such a compound of monosyllables, as would answer their idea, two Schools have arisen, which are hopelessly divided from each other, and the Bible-Society has to please both. So about the word Baptism, and the human name of our Lord, Jesus, and the unpronounceable Tetragrammata, which indicates the Covenant-God, there is constant and irre- concilable dissension : Whatever may be the result of Divine Teaching, the work of translating is beset by all the weaknesses, perverseness, and wrongheadedness, of poor humanity. I some- times reflect with anxiety on the result a century hence of the divergent renderings launched upon the neo-Christian communities, and as notoriously men are servants, or rather slaves, of words, instead of words being the obedient servants of men, there will doubtless be a crop of so-called heresies, or variations of dogma, arising from the angular proclivities of some translator. In Address IV. I shall describe the object and the effect of all this labour : let me tarry for an instant on the human side : In a lone hut, or surrounded by swarthy Natives, a translator creates as it were a new literature and brincrs into evidence a 1 ( 47 ) new Language, illustrated by the translation of a book familiar to all. A feeling of astonishment rises in the minds of the European linguistic Scholar, when a little book comes by chance into his hands, such as the Gospel of Mark in the Language of Fiji, or Tierra del Fuego, or Karib, or Cree, or Eskimo, or some form of speech of Asia and Africa, of the existence of which no one had heard before : Often have I received letters from Scholars, residing in the different cities of Europe, begging for a copy of some particular translation, of which they had heard : I have a linguistic friend, or rather several friends according to the different branch of Language-study, in every capital, and I gladly satisfy their wishes from the boundless store of the Bible-Society : a thousand pounds could not have produced the specimen of a peculiar, perhaps unique, form of speech, a copy of which I forward at a charge of fourpence : many of them have expressed astonishment : " How do you in London get hold of such wonderful " specimens, not to be attained elsewhere ? " my answer has been : " Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall " be added unto you." — ]\latt. vi. ^t,- The realm of Science is enlarged, new material is given for investigation, the Sum of Human Knowledge is increased ; but the real result will be given in Address No. IV. Another sweet feature in the work of translation is, that a new opening is found for the sanctified labours of women : the Phebe, the S}-ntyche, the beloved Persis, the Tryphosa and Tryphena, of modern days, in translating, revising, and correcting proofs during the passing of the copy through the Press : I could :e. ( 48 ) give many instances, but I refrain, and it is obvious, that the number will be greatly increased as time goes on. Dorcas left behind her perishing vestments for the perishing bod}', and her friends wept over them : these fellow-workers in the Lord leave behind the more enduring clothing in words (some of which will never die) of the Eternal Word, the food of the Immortal Soul, and their friends, when they die, and those, who knew them only by report, will rejoice, when they reflect upon their consecrated labour and sanctified love. It is a comfort also to record, that Africans of pure blood have made independent translations in totally unknown Languages, and that in all cases in every part of the world native Christians take a large share in the work of translation : in fact without a native Colleague no European Translator could do his work satisfactorily. I have alwaj's wished, that there should be a list of honour of all translators published in our Reports, including Jerome, Frumentius, Ulfilas, Cyril, down to the present day : of one thing the Translator ma}' be sure : the name of the Preacher may die : his words were written on hearts, which passed away : the fortunate modern translator commits his words not to brass or stone, or bricks of clay to be baked in an Assyrian kiln, but to leaden types and printed paper, which have in themselves the poten- tiality of ubiquitous distribution, of multiplying beyond the power of Roman Emperor in early centuries, or Roman Priest in later, to destroy, and a repetition by mechanical arrangements, which Time can never destroy. The translator must recollect, that his errors, his perversely private interpretation, his theological and Ecclesi- ( 49 ) astical weaknesses, will thus come under the scorching light of generations, who knew him not, and who will not spare him : but, if he be guided by the Holy Spirit, even as a little child, and allows no prejudices or partiality to come betwixt his philological interpretation and the paper on his desk, his name will ever sound stirring : he will enjoy a blessed immortality with a company* amidst which the forms of Jerome, Bede, Wycliffe, Erasmus, Luther, and Carey, are conspicuous. As I write, the figures of dear Calvert, Moffat, Wenger, Yates, Eli Smith, Patterson, Droese, Steere, Krapf, Schon, and many others, whom I knew in the flesh, and who are now at rest, rise up before me ; great magicians who have opened out the prospect of a new wonderland to countless millions, and rendered things possible, which seemed beyond the power of Human Resource. 5^•.^^ ADDRESS No. IV. On "The object of Bible-Diffusion, and the effect upon " the Educated and Civilized non-Christian Races, " as well upon populations low in culture, and " Devoid of Education." " A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel." Luke ii. 32. " Thy testimonies also are my delight, and my counsellors." Psalms c.xix. 24. A Bible Society is a Missionary Society of the highest order, and with the most entire and exclusive devotion : it is the highest and greatest of Missionary Societies : it is the Queen's daughter, all glorious within, while the Missionary Societies are like the Virgins, which bear her company. Moreover the written Word is superior to the voice of the Preacher, for you can always trust the Book, but you cannot always trust the man : the latter is liable to errors : the former can never err ; while the Missionary Society is necessarily restricted to one denomination. ( 52 ) and therefore cannot be ubiquitous, the Bible-Society belongs to all the Churches, and is ubiquitous : thus we may judge how vastly grander is the position of a Society, which circulates God's Word to the whole world. The saving of Souls, the turning of the heart to God, the rescuing of the brand from the burning, the opening of the eyes of the spiritually blind : such are the sole objects set before us. By our works ye can know us, as all over the world the same story is told about us : the signs of the Ever-Present Lord are made manifest in the blessing, which attends us : we lean not on the arm of Flesh : we do not go about, like weaker folk, and petition unwilling Governments to annex African Provinces, to enable us to sow the seed of the Truth. If any tribe will not accept our Books, we have only to shake off the dust from our shoes, as a witness against them, and go elsewhere. Conversion, a new life, an understanding of the great and precious Promises : this is our great motive, which wins a blessing to those who send, those who convey, and those who receive : and there is a Power greater than Man behind us, a Power supplied by the Holy Spirit, who has blessed our work beyond the fondest conception. He, who spake by the Prophets ever since the world began, has in these last days enabled His poor creatures to glorify Him by publishing His Word in a fresh surrounding of perishing vocables, from Country to Country, and from Language to Language : There may be doubts as to the expediency of some acts of benevolence, or it may appear expedient at one Epoch of a Nation's existence, and not at another : there can be none ( 53 ) as to this : We do all we can to resist all attempts of evil men, and secular or religious despots, to limit the use of this great gift to Mankind : we do all we can to advance the expansion of the knowledge of the Word of God by Man- kind. We wish to bring this Book, so full of patience, hope, comfort and faith, to the homes and hearts of every Nation and Tribe, for it is an additional proof of the Unity of the Human Race, that all can understand it, and value it when understood : Churches may vary in their Shibbo- leths : in this Book there is neither variability, nor shadow of turning. What could the Missionary Societies do without the aid of the Bible-Society? In early days they did indeed undertake the printing of the Manuscripts sent home by their Missionaries, but it was a drain on their funds, and there was not in their home- establishments that amount of experience of the technical side of the work, the dealing with Printers and Paper-Manufacturers, which is gradually possessed by a Society, to whom such details are a daily duty : Moreover many Languages serve the purposes of different denominations of Christ's Church, and the Bible-Society is the servant of all, and brings them together in the joint per- formance of a sweet duty. We are like the Royal Arsenal of Woolwich, which turns out the great guns, to accompany the different Regiments of the Queen, guns which bring down great fortresses, and disperse mighty Armies, and whose sound spreads far and wide, reverberating through the secret cloisters of the heart of man, if he will but listen. We do not forget, that the Bible is ( 54 ) the only adequate expression of God's dealings with the human race in times past : His discipline of His chosen People is but a concrete expression of His mode of dealing with the whole human race. We do not forget, that in that Book, and here we may add in that Book alone, is the Law of Love, leading on to cessation of those tribal wars, which desolate non-Christian races, to the Law of Monogamy dating from the Return of Israel from Exile, and the consequent elevation of women, the awakening of the Heart- Voice, the rendering for Conscience adopted in some Languages ; purity of thoughts, modesty of demeanour, self-control, abstinence from violence and rapine, the germs of civil freedom, the knell of slavery, the respect for human life. The Bible is the corner-stone of the Mission-Chapel, the talism of the neo-Christian village : even before the institution of Mission- Schools in Asia, at least in each village, however humble, someone could be found, who could either read, or repeat what he had committed to memory from the lips of another at some gathering : thus some faint impression of the new Idea, that is floating in the atmosphere of men's minds, is conveyed. A vision rises before my eyes, as I write, not one of senti- mental fancy or poetic imagination, but the record of sights seen in distant countries many years ago. I see the gathering of a party in the streets of a crowded city, or in the groves of an Island of the Sea : Some one proud of his newly acquired power reads from the little book, which is all his own, some portion of the wondrous events recorded in a series of volumes, which spread over fifteen hundred years : it comes to the hearers as a new *'.#.*•- -V -..: — . ( 55 ) revelation, so absolutely unlike is it to what they may have heard before, of Krishna with his 40,000 Milkmaid-Mistresses ; of Rama slaying lofty giants ; of mountains lifted up on the tips of little fingers ; and hundreds of miles traversed in celestial chariots : in this Book he reads of men, who are of the same dimensions, and characters, and feelings, as those that listen : very erring men indeed without any exception ; but the moral is different : there is a something, which suggests new, holier, loftier ideas, and, when the reader's voice drops into silence, they still lean forward, as if he were still reading, for they are desirous to hear more : the electric power has entered their soul. The old, old Story is told to each man in his own tongue, how God made and rules all the world, not this country nor that country: how Jesus lived and died for all: how the Holy Spirit condescends to dwell with all, who do not grieve Him, or drive Him away : and then the Story, the one Story, which enchains all mankind, flows on with the rising and falling cadence of the voice of the speaker or reader, by the lone hill-side, in the crowded room, amidst well wishers, and evil wishers : it evokes feelings from the heart of the hearer never known before : it flows on amidst smiles and amidst tears : smiles at the manger, as the listeners bring up to their fancy the new-born child, and the humble wonder of the Virgin-Mother : tears at the foot of the Cross and at the grave, when they think, that someone has taken away the Lord, and joy with those, that have found Him. In the crowd are antient men of the form and build attributed to Abraham : young women such as the Virgin, or her ancestress ( 56 ) Ruth, or the daughter of Jephtha : Matrons like those well-known in Scripture, such as Rebecca, and Deborah, and Elizabeth, and youths in the dawn of their opening life. Yes ; the deep bell may sound from the Hindu Temple in the neighbouring grove, the voice of the Muezzin in the Minaret of the Mosque may reach their ears, calling to ceremonial, unintelligible, prayer; but in this Story there is a greater attraction, and, while hearts are human, and unaffected by the contagion of the world, it will continue so. B}'gone days rise up, as if they were yesterday : things that happened thousands of leagues away, seem very near at hand : human difficulties disappear in the presence of the new Idea of Salvation, and the sound of Glory is ringing in their ears. From Wilson's Missionary work among the Ojibwa in Canada, I quote the account of his reading about the feeding of the 4000 : the Red Indians listened intently, indicating their wonder by suppressed ejaculation at the fact, that 4000 could be fed with the few loaves and fishes, but what produced most effect was the account of our Lord being mocked and crucified, and His resurrection : their sympathy with the sufferings of their Saviour was most marked, and their astonishment was most evident, when they heard how the stone was rolled away, and Angels announced to the women the great fact of the Resurrection : It may please some to think, that these simple folk would have been astonished at anything true or untrue : let me give two illustrations of the power of the Book on other classes of God's creatures. In Spain a little Protestant child was taken to a public Hospital to die, and in her last moments she gave her ( 57 ) little Testament, which was all she possessed, to the Sister of Charity, a Roman Catholic, who had nursed her. Between the leaves of that little book the Spirit of the Lord was lying, and the keeper of the Bible-Depot in that town remarked with surprise, that during the next few days he sold several copies to females, who stole in after dark. That day Salvation had come within the walls of that Convent : no doubt on the day of confession of these poor women their secret was wrung out of them, and in the presence of the Lady Abbess, and Priest-confessor, there ascended to heaven the smoke of a Sacrifice of burning paper, the unaccepted offering of a modern Cain, who slew his brother: but certain precious promises had been too deeply impressed in the memory of these poor women ever to be effaced, and had been in Faith appropriated by these humble Saints, to whom some day a door by Grace will be found open, which will be shut against the Pharisee and the Priest, who did dishonour to the Word of God. At the other extreme of the intellectual and geographical world, we come upon an assembly of gold-diggers resting from their labours at mid-day : some of them had once known, but had abandoned, God. A new digger had arrived that day accom- panied by his motherless boy : in their rough sport some old hands had searched the boy's pockets, and found a little Testament, all that remained of his dead Mother. In mere wantonness one of them began to read aloud, but his fingers and hands were guided by a power greater than his own, for first he read how Jesus came walking on the Sea, and then the story of the good ( 58 ) Samaritan. The laughter and oaths had ceased, and all were listening, when the wind blew the leaves over, and the reader found himself reading the awful tale of the Crucifixion, a tale well remembered, though it seemed to have been long forgotten, old but still new : as he came to the last words of the penitent thief, and our Lord's reply, the book fell from his hands to the ground amidst awe-struck silence, only broken by sobs. God has His chosen ones in every assembly of His children : He has His corner in every humble heart : a hoarse voice came up from the rear : " Will no one pray? Can no fellow remember a prayer?" The fool may have said in his heart, that there was no God, but these men were not fools, and they knew better, that God was in their midst. The echo of far off Sunda}'-Schools, the warning throb of their own death-struggle, perhaps not far distant, stirred into life their dead hearts. As the lad stooped down to recover his lost Testament, he was caught up by strong arms, and ordered to pray. As his childish treble went up to the clear sky repeating the little prayer, which he had often said kneeling at the knees of his ^lother, hats were off, and heads were bowed, and a deep calm fell over the assembly, while the innocent child became the mouth-piece before God, and His holy angels, of these rough emigrants. Not as yet had he learnt to be ashamed of his innocence : not as yet had his lips been defiled with oaths and obscenities, and his little prayer rose up to heaven above the tall pines ; and who can say how many brands can be saved from the burning by the chance contact of one little Testament ? ( 59 ) A little volume is often circulated at ^Meetings, and is indeed struck off in hundreds, " the Gospel in many tongues " : it is not meant to be gaped at as a wonder or stored away as a treasure : let me say a word as a linguist, who knows something about each Language represented in these pages, and only values them as vehicles of God's Truth. The uninstructed eye looks on a rich parterre of flowers, and sees nothing but their beauty : the scientifically trained eye notes the different species, the tints of colour, and varied conformation of the petals and leaves : the eye instructed by the Holy Spirit lifts itself up to God, and blesses Him for the rich, manifold and enduring gifts of Nature, renewed year by year, to gratify the children of men by their sight and scent : then they die : A?, A?, rai fi a\dxai /*ei', e~av koto, ku—ov o\wvrai ! wrote the Greek Poet centuries before Christ came : So is it with this little volume : to the scientifically trained eye it tells of Language-families and ethnical races, of dialects and patois, of Languages springing into existence, and Languages dying out, and some few actually dead, no longer passing on the lips of men. To the eye, enlightened by the Spirit, it tells of the goodness of God, which never has changed, and which embraces not only His chosen people, not only the mighty and learned, but all and every race and tribe. Luther read out aloud his German version to mark how it sounded : Jerome spouted his Latin in his hut in Bethlehem : the Septuagint- Fathers called to each other, as they rounded off each precious ( 6o ) Greek phrase : Pharisees and Sadducees read their portion from the Synagogue Rolls, and interpreted them in the Targums : the Ethiopian Eunuch certainly read his Isaiah sitting in his chariot : we know the very passage, which our Lord read in the S}'nagogue at Nazareth. We throw our thoughts back over the intervening centuries, and mark Ezra reading in the Great Synagogue in restored Jerusalem : still further back we seem to hear the words dictated by Jeremiah to Baruch, and further back still the words of Isaiah read by King Hezekiah in the hour of his great trouble. We can only wonder when and where the Scribes collected the Records of Israel and Judah, and have no doubt, that the great drama of Job, and the imperishable Psalms, were read, and meant to be read : all that was written, even the Tables of Stone written with the finger of God, were meant to be read, and were read : Narratives, musings, hymns, prophecies, prayers, songs of triumph, words of self- humiliation and repentance, were meant to be read, were written, that they might be read : they were given for our learning until the end of time. No such music has ever echoed continuously, and in unbroken melody, through the corridors of Time, and come down to us so fresh, so full of glowing life, so true to Humanity, giving such unequalled ideas of Divinity. We must not forget the Humanity of the writer, or the Divinity of the subject : it is well in our minds to clothe with flesh and blood the men, who are reputed to have written the volumes of this Book, and making allowance, that they were primarily written for very different circumstances, inquire humbly ( 6i ) how far, in what way, they are suited to our circumstances, and assure ourselves, that we do well to distribute it to others, for whither shall we go for a rule of life, if we abandon this ? the same leaven, which the woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened ; the same good seed, which a man sowed in his field ' Some say, "Why distribute the Old Testament?" It is only lately that an authority of the Salvation Army on being offered a free supply of New Testaments replied, that the Army preferred the Old : it is stated, but we trust that it is not true, that the Boers of the Transvaal having to deal with the Be- Chuana tribes applied for a separate edition of Joshua and Judges as suitable to their requirements : a few days ago a gentleman fresh from China stated, that Genesis was not deemed a fit book for the Chinese, as the story of Lot distressed them : when it is remembered, that the Chinese immigrant is rejected by every country where he ventures to set foot, on account of his low moral standard, this objection seems far fetched. There can be no scruple in distributing the Old Testament, but accompanied by the New, as its complement and best com- mentary. It is of value as setting forth the moral duties of man to man, though by allowing Polygamy, Divorce, and Concubinage, it fails from a Christian point of view as regards man to woman : it inculcates not only the virtues of a man, but of a citizen, and sets forth the unrealized, and unrealizable, ideal of human life, and human Society, love to God, and love to our neighbours : the exhibition of devotion is always manly, and *«L.3 ( 62 ) there is no exaggeration of pathos : where pathos exists, it is genuine. In one particular the power of the Scriptures is unique, and presents a strong reason for the distribution : a reason increasing in importance in proportion to the increase of the knowledge of reading during this Century : It can do its own work itself, and effect conversion without the aid of man. This may be doubted, so I place a certain number of cases, well authenticated, on record : A native Missionary visited a town distant from Calcutta sixteen miles, and found a band of young men meeting together to study the Bible, assembling every Sunday to worship God, and read the Scriptures in the sight of their neighbours, which indicated moral courage. Some of these young men asked the Missionary to preach to them, which he did with delight : he found, that the leader of the movement had been to Calcutta, had heard the Gospel preached, had been induced to read the Bible, and try and induce others to do the same. An European Merchant put up at a village, and on parting gave some cast-off clothes to the villagers : in one of the pockets was a single Gospel, and some tracts, in the Vernacular : they were read : the Spirit of the Lord worked through them with such force, that they were converted. A Missionary gives the following story : " Some time ago " I was in one of the large towns in our district. In the " evening, after a hard day's work, I sat down by the cart to " rest, when three men came up to me, one of them falling II mil iiiHi ii ( 63 ) " prostrate at my feet after slipping a rupee into my hand. I " raised him up gently and inquired what he wanted. From " his conversation I gleaned the following story. Eleven years " ago a blacksmith in his village had bought a copy of the " New Testament from some European, who was passing through, " (I could not learn who it was) and he and this farmer and " another farmer had been reading it all these years. Six years " ago the Brahmans became so enraged, that he was held down " forcibly, and made to drink water, in which a Brahman had " dipped his toe. In all this time they had never met with a " Christian. When I went through this part of the district two " years ago, he saw some of the books, which I had sold to others, " and this day he met someone, who had seen me and bought " books, and he had dropped his work and had hurried in " without delay, reaching me, as I have said, late that evening. " His talk was a continual surprise to me. He seemed to " know the New Testament thoroughly, compared the Pharisees " to the Brahmans, and was very familiar with Paul's epistles. " I went to his village the next morning, and they were very " joyful and entertained us, saying our coming had given them " great support. He bought a first book to learn to read. His " knowledge of the Scriptures was the more remarkable, as he " had only heard them read by the others. When they brought " out the worn book carefully wrapped in a cloth, I touched it " with a feeling of reverence." Sir Charles Aitchison, my friend for many years, made the following utterance at a Meeting : I heartily endorse his senti- <jr..„,J[^ ( 64 ) ments : " The Bible is the best of all Missionaries. Missionaries ' die, the printed Bible remains for ever. It finds access through ' doors, that are closed to the human foot, and into countries, * where Missionaries have not yet ventured to go ; and, above ' all, it speaks to the consciences of men with a power, that no ' human voice can carry. It is the living seed of God, and ' soon it springs up, men know not how, and bears fruit unto ' everlasting life. I can tell you, from my own personal know- ' ledge, that no book is more studied in India now by the native ' population of all parties than the Christian Bible. There is a ' fascination about it, that, somehow or other, draws seekers after ' God to read it. An old Hindu servant of my own used to sit ' hour after hour absorbed in a well-thumbed volume. I had ' the curiosity to take it up one day, and found it was the Hindi ' New Testament. One of the ruling chiefs of India, when on ' a visit to me when I w^as Lieutenant-Governor of the Panjab, ' asked me for a private interview, and told me, though he ' did not want his people to know it, that he read the ' Christian Bible every day of his life. To thousands, who ' are not Christians, but who are seeking after God, the Bible ' in the Vernacular is an exceedingly precious book, and ' is now much studied in India, and is growingly appre- ' ciated every day." Peshab Chunder Mozamdar, the present leader of the advanced Brahmos, in a recent public lecture to Native students at Lahore, recommended the Bible, as the best book they could read, and the diligent study of Christ's precepts therein as the only way to attain purity of heart. In the *'•*.'•»- ( 65 ) large and important town of Islamabad, in Kashmir, \vc are told, that most of the wealthy Mahommcdans possess a copy of the Bible ; many of them read it, and one native gentleman acknowledged, that he was going through it for the eighth time, and liked it more and more. In the South of India we read of a Juvenile Society being formed in one of the Colleges for the Study of the Christian Scriptures, all the members of which are heathen high-caste lads. In Bangal we read of schoolboys choosing copies of the Bible for prizes, and begging that their knowledge of Scripture may be specially noted on their school certificates. I saw lately a leading Pastor of the \^audois Church, and he spoke of the debt due to the Bible- Society, as shown by the readiness with which people were coming forward to join Evangeli- cal Assemblies. One of our Colporteurs in Italy reports, that there are in his district thirty different towns or villages, in each of which he finds little groups of Bible-readers, who meet to study the Scriptures. Who has sown that seed ? There is no trace there of Evangelist or ^Minister, but the Bible has sown it. In Japan it is startling to find, that the Scripture-Union for reading the Bible now numbers ten thousand members, and that in more than eight hundred different places they meet regularly for the study of God's Word. I see, also, that in a Greek village in Bithynia there is formed a company of Bible-readers, which includes most of the inhabitants. A French Pastor on invitation went to a certain village, and found a room, that would hold two hundred people, well filled 5 ( ^^ ) with persons who had assembled to hear him. A regular service was established, at first once a month, but afterwards every week, and now the congregation has grown to five hundred, and a regular church is formed. What do you think was the cause of it all ? There had been no ^Minister there previously, but eleven years before one Bible was bought from a Colporteur of the British and Foreign Bible Society. It had fallen into the hands of some man in that little town, who had taken an interest in it. He had circulated it amongst his friends, and at last they formed themselves into the group of two hundred, who summoned the Pastor of the Reformed Church. That sort of case is not likely to be solitary. In Spain in a small country town a poor carpenter buys a Bible from a Colporteur, because, he says, it seems such a large book for so little money. In the winter evenings he and his sister read it together. At first they don't care for it in the least, but gradually they come to take the most serious view of its message. They summoned their neighbours round them, and at night there was a crowd about the carpenter's shop listening to the reading of the Bible. What happened ? A congregation was formed. They have now determined on building a house for the Minister, and at last they have got an ordained Evangelical Pastor. In Bechuanaland the following circumstances transpired : The Missionary IVIoffat was benighted : to his surprise a woman brought him milk, and lighted a fire, and waited upon him : the reason was asked, and she replied : " When you do so much for ( 67 ) " the Master, Who has done everything for me, it is a very small " matter for me to do this for you." She pulled out of her dress a Dutch Testament, and explained, that she had been sent as a child to a Christian School at Capetown, and had received this Testament as a prize, " and that is zvJiat keeps the oil burning " in me" We now understand what was only dimly visible before, why such attempts were made in the persecutions of Decius and Diocletian to destroy the copies of the Holy Scriptures. An Apostate Christian is reported to have suggested this policy, because, said he, if you burn every Christian, and leave a single copy of the Scriptures, a new body of Christians will spring up from the ashes of this Phoenix : it was supposed, and rightly supposed, that by the destruction of the copies of the Word of God the source of Christianity would be blocked, the very life of the Church extinguished : This was tried not very long ago in the Heathen Country of Madagascar, and it failed : and, if we are true to our duty, we shall render it impossible for anything short of the submersion of the round world beneath the waters of a Universal Deluge to destroy it. Thus in the first Century oral Gospels preceded the period, when Evangelists placed their Gospels on paper : and on the arrival of the Colporteurs, who read aloud, or of the itinerant Gospeller, new possibilities of humanity come into existence : the soil is ready, let but the seed be sowed : the black, the brown, the red, the yellow, races differ much from the white man in physical conformation, in shape of skull, in colour, in antecedents. ( 68 ) in the degree of social culture, but the fact dawns upon them, and upon us all, that there is the same Holy Spirit, the same Saviour, and the same Almighty Father, and nothing but the existence, the continuous, uninterrupted, existence of this Book, in the hands, the hearts, and on the lips, of at least a portion of the human race, would create this conviction : It might have been buried away, like the Book of the Dead in the Mummy pits of Egypt, or like the Assyrian and Babylonian legends in the burnt bricks of ruined Palaces, and have been revealed after the lapse of centuries to astonished explorers : but the stream of the Scriptures has never ceased flowing from the days of ]\Ioses to our own time, a river of the water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding from the Throne of God and the Lamb, illuminating in unbroken succession the Jew, the Greek, and Latin Races, the Keltic, Iranic, Teutonic and Slavonic Races, and working with a miraculous power according to their opportunity, and receptive capacity. Men and Women at all periods, and in all stages of civilisation, not very wise, not very pure, not very holy, but still docile and faithful, have gathered together to hear the story of the Crucifixion, melting to tears at the sufferings of their Lord, none doubting that the tale was true, for it is indeed as true as the Sun, the Stars, the Seasons, and so it will flow on, flow on, to the end of the world. Preachers may fail ; oral, processional, and manual, ritual may usurp the place of Religion, and crush out Spiritual worship, but there will ever be an abiding charm in the simple words of the Gospel, ringing through the inner chambers of man's intelligence, telling him, that God is a Spirit I ( 69 ) to be worshipped in Spirit and Truth, telhng him of Righteous- ness, and warning him of Judgment. Again, I sa}-, what have the fifty years done to strengthen our faith in the Bible ? There is not a place in the East, from which testimony does not come : from the mounds excavated, the old towns investigated, and the countries mapped out : to the truth of the Bible. Topographical researches in Palestine, excavations in Babylon, Nineveh, and the like, all have contributed to place the historical accuracy of the Bible on a broader basis than ever. There is also an evidential value, not always appreciated : As the existence of the Jews in our midst is a standing confirma- tion of the Truth of Scripture, so the survival of this antient Book, and the great fact, that it is better known and more deeply studied now than ever it was in elder da}-s, is a proof, that there is something in it not to be found in other literature. Much as we value the immortal legacy of Greek and Roman literature, and thoroughly as we know them, and would not willingly forget them, we feel that except in some stray passages they do not supply a law of life, a lesson of repentance, a foundation for hope hereafter : it is too late to tear from the nosegays of the different European literature their fairest flower, which has given a tone, a colour, a scent, a taste, a standard of right and wrong, to all other subsequent literature. The Bible is part of the Common law of the British People, and it is the very kernel of European literature. Two other considerations occur to me. What is the profit, says one objector, of such vast issues, thousands of which perish ( ;o ) with no effect resulting from them? Sometimes under the ruthless animosity of a misguided Priest of the Church of Rome the streets of a village are white with the torn-up fragments of Scriptures : it is so, and we fear that in the day of Judgment he will be called upon to explain his motive, standing by the side of those, who stoned Stephen : but out of the thousands of the infants, which see the light, how many die within a few months of their birth, having done nothing, in our eyes at least, to justify their creation ? how many more perish in tender years ? how few out of ^Millions do the great work of converting a Soul, or establishing the Soul of a doubting brother, or holding back a Soul from a great Sin, and what is the worth of a human life, which has not done this ? Can the Ruler of the World do wrong ? one in a thousand may fulfil God's decree : perhaps one in a thousand of the copies issued may carry out God's purpose : I read how of a large supply six copies only were sold, and it so happened, that the history of the life of each of those six copies could be traced along a blessed course of conversion, and establishing of souls : One in a thousand ! if only that one, that chosen one, man, woman, or book, does the work to do which it was predestined, and failing to do which life will be worthless, all will be well : we shall not have toiled through the long night, and taken nothing : at any rate it is our duty to toil : the issue is with the Lord. Did not the IMaster tell us, that some seed would fall on barren ground, that is to say, the copy distributed would be put away on the shelf, until a season of leisure came, which never came, to study it ; and that some seeds :J»" ( 71 ) would be devoured by the fowls of the air, the evil birds of prey, who go about to devour houses and property, and for pretence make long prayers and genuflexions, and steal away men's souls ? It was well remarked in Exeter Hall : " It is said to us, ' A " great deal of your work must be wasted. You scatter the Word " of God by millions, and sometimes it is put on the shelf, and " sometimes it is wrapped in a handkerchief, and sometimes its " work waits for years.' I think it very probable, nay, certain, " that we circulate the Scriptures in excess. It is a way that " nature has. I have seen the sea so filled with fish, that the " sea-birds have sat upon them while they devoured them. There " must be a great deal of waste there. How many of the germs " of different plants do you suppose can find room in the soil to " grow and fructify ? Only a few. I know that I shall not hear " the argument to-day about waste ; but I want to know, whether " that argument would have any affect upon you in this Hall. " It applies to the whole machinery of Religion. Why preach " to a thousand, if only a hundred are going to profit by your " preaching ? Why preach ^lissionary sermons, if some will turn " on their heels and say they care not for it ? Why do these " things? Because our Lord did them. He Himself after preaching " had occasion to say to the diminished crowd around Him, ' Will " ye also go away ? ' We also reply, ' Lord, to whom shall " we go ? '" IMy second point is : does not the knowledge of the Bible, not of the letter, but of the Spirit, drive out the demon of Religious persecution, and the intolerable notion, that one association of ( 72 ) Christian men and women is superior to, and has exclusive privileges over, another ? the Bible seems to tell us, that His service is a free service, and that any attempt to use coercion for the purpose of influencing the faith of man is a sin. It follows, that the interference of the Secular Power is to be deplored : even if in the favour of Bible-Circulation, it is dearly bought : if in opposition, it is rank oppression of the worst kind : we have to be thankful, that in modern times we are free : but here is a specimen of the mode in which matters were conducted only three Centuries back, taken from Green's " English People." " Erasmus made an appeal to the English authorities for a " translation, which weavers might repeat at their shuttle, and " ploughman sing at their plough. King Henry VHI. had " promised it, but the work lagged in hand, and as a preliminary " measure, the Creed (not part of the Bible), the Lord's Prayer, " and the ten Commandments were rendered into English, and " ordered to be taught by every Schoolmaster, and father of a " family : at length in 1539 A.D. a friend of Cranmer was " emplo}'ed to correct and revise Tyndall's translation, and it " was published under patronage of the King." 1 give this Extract to mark the progress of human ideas both as regards divine knowledge, and human liberty. ADDRESS No. V. " On the Duty, the Privilege, the Joy, the Feelings " OF Gratitude of a Christian Nation Permitted " to take a tart in this Great Work." "We are ambassadors for Christ." — II. Cor. v. 20. " What shall I render unto the Lord." — Psalms cxvi. 2. We have received a commission from our Lord to distribute this Book ; we are bound to carry the good tidings without being influenced by the fact, that it falls on deaf ears : that is their affair : our duty is clear : we may leave the issue with One, Who cannot do wrong. Other Societies have done well, but this Society by the blessing of God has done better than all. Praise the Lord for His Goodness in giving such vitality, such Power, to the associations formed with the sole object of diffusing His Word. Gratitude to the Society is annually expressed by young and weak Churches all over the World, by Churches of men and women born of non- ( 74 ) Christian Parents, whose eyes have been opened, to the strong old Churches for favours conferred, but how much more grateful the Churches of Great Britain and North America should be, that they have out of all the myriads of men been chosen to be the Ambassadors of Christ in this matter. He might have made use of the ministration of Angels, but He has in His marvellous goodness, and to our great joy, chosen us : centuries hence the name of the Anglo-Saxon race will be remembered with gratitude by generations still to be born. I wish that the subject were more frequently looked at from this point of view. There is a congenital right of all Nations to share the blessing of the knowledge of the Word of God : to convey that knowledge does not make us poor, but makes them rich indeed, and it is our bounden duty to convey it : our very existence spiritually rests upon the fulfilment of this great duty : not that we do it from our own Power, but from the Spirit, that dwelleth in us. We do not wish to initiate our converts into the differences of European Christianity, or confuse their dawning intellects and tender consciences, with Bible-difficulties : we wish to bring home to their hearts and consciences the Mind of Christ, to awaken in their dormant senses the great Truth of the Fatherhood of God, the new conception, that Christ died for their Salvation, and that the Holy Spirit is ready to dwell with all, who will receive Him. We leave to the Missionary, who often is and ought to be, mighty in the Scriptures, to expound the Way more fully, and show by his life, and words, that the power of his Message is not in the letter, but in the Spirit, and the resulting holiness. ( 75 ) The impulse of Christian love ought to teach us not to live merely so as to work out our own Salvation, and promote our own growth to Perfection, but to seek to promote the Salvation of others, less happily situated than ourselves : this in early Centuries was the motive power of Monastic Life ; later on Missions to the Heathen sprung from the same impulse, and the object is more certainly and more widely promoted by the diffusion of the Holy Scriptures. Let us consider our opportunity : it may not, it will not, last for ever : our strength may pass away like that of the Roman Empire : our commerce may fade like the Venetian Palaces : our candlestick may be removed by the same fatality, which happened to the flourishing Churches of Cyprian and Augustine in North Africa, once consisting of enthusiastic well-cultured Christians, and now their country is occupied by decivilized barbarian Mahometans. Now is the time : it is no light matter, that God at this Epoch has made us so strong, so ubiquitous, so masterful : we have the command of the Seas, and an entirely unprecedented power of locomotion : we have abundance of means, and an educated class with leisure : from those, to whom much is given, much will be required : it is not only necessary, that in this matter we do well, but it is clear that we sin, if we abstain from doing our very best in the cause : consider also the re-acting power on our Churches at home, and the complete knowledge of the saving truths of the Bible thus obtained. And there are heavy arrears of centuries to make up : in Address No. i, I showed that the work never actually stopped, ( 76 ) but it advanced so slowly, that the spirit was dead : the reflex blessing to the Nation was lost : the power, and the art, were diminished. Now, if our grandfathers had wished to do much, that it is easy for us to do, they could not have done it. But now all material obstacles are removed, every door is opened : the success of the past warrants an expectation of much larger success in the future : as we say in business-matters, the concern is now in full swing : the machine must be kept in working order. Let us stand aside for a moment, and think of the wickedness of this generation, of the mischief done by three Protestant Countries, North Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, in the exportation of Liquors, Arms, and Gunpowder, to tribes, who knew not before of the existence of such things, and who could not suppl}' themselves but from Europe and North America : this ought to be an additional inducement to those, who cannot arrest the output of destructive articles of Commerce, that they should at least do their best to send the great antidote. We must reflect with gratitude on the goodness of God to this generation, and to this Nation : in the hour of our greatness we have had the Grace given to us to do something for the Lord, to offer to Him of the tithe of our substance : other smaller Nations may have had the desire to do likewise, but they have not had the power, but we have had both the desire and the power : consider the position of our forefathers down to the time of the Reformation, absolutely, and to a certain extent up to the first years of the present century : Remember ( 77 ) the words of John of Gaunt, " We Englishmen will not be the " dregs of all, seeing that other Nations have the Law of God, " which is the Law of our faith, written in their own language." Even when the New Testament had been collected together, say in the middle of the second century, the Book was by no means a household-book in one sense of the word. In many places there were very few copies, and in some places none at all to be found except in the place of worship, and not then in a language intelligible to the people : it was to the lips of men, that the humbler classes looked as the only possible place, where it could find instruction in the precepts of Christ. Such was the position of the Welsh village and its neighbourhood, when the little Welsh girl went to Mr. Charles, of Bala, for a Bible, and the ball was set rolling, which eventuated in the formation of this Society. I can recollect how in some Churches in England there used to be a copy of the English Bible on a lectern available to the public by Act of Parliament, but as the Church was kept locked up except during a jMorning and Afternoon Service on Sunday, and the written Character of the Book was the old English t\-pe, there was not much opportunity for consulting the Scriptures, and such things as a Concordance, or Marginal Reference, did not exist. Through the labours of the Bible-Society such a famine has ceased in England : but let }-our steps be directed into the vast Cathedrals of France, Italy and Spain : there are plenty of pictures, statuary, dolls upon altars, and relics of bones and skulls, but the Word of God in the Language of the people is ( 7S ) absent : within the locked-up choir are great mediaeval illu- minated folios, interesting as works of art ; but no one can get at them : if they could get at them, they could not read the Characters : if they could read the Characters, they could not understand the Latin translation : And yet next in value to Prayer, which is the private communion of the Soul with God, daily reading, meditating upon, studying and trying to understand, some portion of Holy Writ, seems to be as essential to Spiritual life and growth, as ordinary food is to bodily life : not an ostentatious gathering together of large households, or the droning from the lectern of a half-filled chapel of the particular chapter, which happens to fall to the day in an unsympathetic lectionary : I allude to the private readings, the soul going to God's Word, as it were, for its daily bread. How did generations of good and holy men and women manage to keep alive their spiritual life during the long centuries of Scriptural Famine, and actual Starvation of the Bread of Life ! Let us thank God for the Bible-Society : to Him be glory, for He put it into the hearts of the good old men two generations ago to start this the greatest of Earthly Manufactories, and most world-embracing House of Business. Enter the Bible House in Queen Victoria Street : a foreign visitor to London would imagine it to be the Emporium of some of the Magnates of London, the Princes of Commerce : Mark the inscription facing the door : not one shilling of the contributions to circulate this Bible was diverted from its special ^^/■•.-X. ( 79 ) purpose to be spent in Bricks and Mortar : Oh ! that Missionary Societies would lay this example to their hearts ! On entering the depot you find large cases packed up ready for despatch to the East, the West, the North, and the South, to all the great Capitals of the World : our commerce knows no particular outlet, no particular season for despatch, no treaty of Commerce to protect : it fears no Custom-House, it asks not the rate of exchange : though destined to so many places, there is but one article of commerce, the pearl of great price, which a man sold all that he had to purchase, and call his own, but which we distribute with open hands below cost-price : the best of patented medicines, the most soothing of syrups, the most efficient of febrifuges, the most reliable of antidotes against poison, the most efficient consolation in the hour of death. One day the late Cardinal Manning, who unlike many of the foreign Priests of Rome, knew his Bible thoroughly, called at the Bible-House, to purchase some translation : perhaps his better angel had persuaded him to revisit once more before death a place not unknown to him in his happier youth : he was conducted into the Library on the third floor, and, as Solomon showed to the Queen of Sheba all the glory of the Temple of the Lord, so the Cardinal was asked to inspect the translations of the Word of God in hundreds of Languages, each in their own written Character : it must have passed through the mind of this good and holy man, that the Protestant Churches were not entirely unblessed by God's favour, and he humbly remarked to his companion : " The Holy Spirit is now ( So ) " more outpoured on mankind than it was in former days : " that is the reason." We have to consider what a wide field of interest has opened out to the Bible-Student on the human side of that wonderful Book : all the proper names of the Old Testament, and even of the New Testament, to our forefathers were mere cyphers, the shadow of Nations and Cities, long swept away, but a new posthumous life has come back to Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Media : we know what manner of man the bad Pharoah was, for we can see him, see his very body and face, in the Museum at Cairo : their story is revealed : we know all about the children of Heth and the Hittites : they have leapt out of darkness : the Bible is studied now with a reverent thoroughness, and an appreciative criticism, as it never was before : though we are so many centuries off, we have a power of comparison, a geo- graphical knowledge, a trained intuition, a practised eye, noting details which escaped a less critical age : we are far better able to judge on such matters than the Fathers of the third and fourth Century, who had most imperfect helps, and no experience whatever. We need not be afraid of the Book not standing any tests of the Critics : we might as well be afraid of our own marvellously formed bodies failing to stand the test of the Surgeon. Hear what Mr. Spurgeon said in his last speech in Exeter Hall, 1888, when he stood up weak from long illness: " It is marvellous how wonderful the Bible is the first time " you come to it. I think I almost wish I had never read it J ( 81 ) that I might have the pleasure of reading it for the first time. I frequently hear of that being the case with a convert, when one calls on me. Towards the end of last year a man came to join the Church. He had never attended at a place of worship, but he had been induced to come on one occasion, and God met with him. While I was trying to find out, whether he really knew the Lord he said to me, 'What a won- derful book. Sir, the Bible is ! ' * Yes,' I replied, ' it is very wonderful. How have you found that out?' 'Well, Sir,' he said, ' I can't read except very slowly. I have to spell all the words, and one day I got to John and came to this : " Hence- forth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth ; but I have called you friends." Friends ! That He should call me a friend ! Why, that knocked me all to bits, Sir. So I took the Book into the Shop and said to my wife, " Here, you can read. I'm afraid I've made a mistake here. You read it to me." And she read out, " I have called you friends." Well, for Him to call me a friend ! It melts me, for I have been His enemy all my life, and I never did Him a service. Even now I don't see what I can do to serve Him, and yet He calls me friend. Did you ever notice that. Sir?' he said to me. I said, 'Yes, I have noticed it ; but in the way you have put it it comes to me more fresh than ever.' ' A little further down,' said he, ' I was dead beat, for I came upon this : " These things have I said unto you, that ye should not be offended." Bless me,' said the man, ' I am always afraid of offending Him ; but of ( 82 ) Him to be afraid of offending me ! Isn't it generous ? Isn't it kind ? So condescending-like, that He should be afraid of offending me ! He may do what He likes, Sir,' he said, ' now that He has saved me, and I will never be offended. I cannot be offended with Him ; but it is so beautiful.' And so it is, that He should be afraid lest we should be offended, and guards against it. That is a man who never read the Bible before, and it was all wonders to him. Some of us have made proof of the Word of God in our own daily life, and we would like to bear our testimony to it. I have tested the Word of God in great physical pain, I have had enough of it to be a good and sufficient witness thereto, and there is no pillow for an aching head that is like a promise from the Word of God. And I have not been without struggles of another kind than ph}'sical ; but there is nothing wanted to sustain a man, to put soul into him, but to know that he is in accordance with the mind of Christ ; and to take the Divine doctrines revealed in that Book, and to feed upon them is to make him a giant refreshed with new wine. Doubt its inspiration some of us never can, for it has inspired us ; and when a book inspires a man, that man knows that the Book is inspired itself. One thing also I would add here, and that is my testimony to the wonder, which the Book often excites in me. I could stop when I am reading it sometimes and cry over it. It is not that I understand it. Often it is because I cannot understand it, that my wonder makes me admire. Two young men were talking together about, if they were shut up in prison for twelve ( 83 ) " months, what book they would hke to take to prison with them. " One of them said he would prefer to take the Bible with him. " ' Why ? ' said the other, ' you are not a religious fellow.' ' No,' " replied the other, ' but the Bible is no end of a Book. You " can get to the end of other books. You have spent them *' out when you have read them two or three times ; but you " have only begun with the Bible when your hair turns grey.' It " is perfectly wonderful as to its results when you test them. I " saw an aged woman once, and when I visited her I read from " her Bible. She had marked it all over here and there with ' T " and P ' in the margin of the Bible. I asked her what she "meant, and she replied, 'Oh! that means "tried and proved," " Sir,' and she began to tell me how in time of trouble and in " distress a passage had opened itself up to her so wonderfully, " that she had believed it and taken it to God in prayer, and " that she had proved it true. These are the kind of Bibles I " love. I call that sort of a Bible not a reference-Bible, annotated " as it is, but I think of an expression I once heard from a man " who said, ' I want to buy a reverence-Bible.' He meant " reference undoubtedly, but a Bible, that has been read " and tested, and proved, has become a reverence-Bible to those, " who are made to afterwards know the meaning of the markings " in the margin." " Still there was room," whispered the humble dying man, thanking the reader for the comfort given to him in the hope, that there might possibly be room in heaven for him. " That blessed letter M," said the Countess of Huntingdon, mm ( 84 ) as they read to her (a rich and noble lady). " Not Many mighty, " not Many noble, are called : " without the letter M it would have been, that not any mighty or noble were called at all. In Dr. Stern's Memoirs of his captivity, and Bishop Hanning- ton's wonderfully preserved Journals, we find how these holy men found comfort, the one in his prison, the other in the last hours of his life, in reading portions of the Bible : these are not holiday-experiences, when all around is bright, and if this Book can be of such comfort in life's last and extreme necessity, how the duty is brought home to us to render it accessible to all sorts and conditions of men. If some c}-nical critic asks, "what is the good of all this?" our own hearts will find a ready reply : Duty, Love, Gratitude, Sympathy : Why is England so great and powerful ? Why are we surrounded with comforts denied to other nations ? Because we are a people, who love the Lord, and value His ^Message to Mankind. The day is past for pourtraying human enterprise, and human associations, by figures in pictures or statues : the age is too material, and the comic journals are too ready with a travesty, which holds us back from clothing high Ideals in visible forms. But in the IMiddle Ages, when Fancy, and Art, and Religion ruled the world, such an association as one formed to distribute the Word of Life would have been aptly represented by that mighty Angel in the Revelation, which carried the Everlasting Gospel : or by a figure of the truest and most real Charity : not pity for starving bodies, but for starving souls : crowned with Faith, girt in the Armour of Sanctified Science, and Spiritual ( 85 ) Knowledge : in her hands would have been a Cornucopia scattering blessings over all the races of Mankind. It may occur to some, when their day's work is done, and the hour of their departure is at hand, that they had done nothing in the hour of their strength to aid the diffusion of the Bible for the saving of souls. This thought may press heavily on their conscience : the wish, alas ! would be expressed too late : the duty will not be discharged by a codicil to their will, and a legacy to the Societ}', for they would not be giving their own, tJieir very oion, and the Lord requires each of us to give our very own, and the very best of our own, Time, Talents, Influence, and Resources, to His blessed Service : and Self-Sacrifice is the law of His Service. What thoughts pass through the brain of a Septuagenarian, as he reflects on the progress made during the last half century under his very e}-e. Great Truths, which Socrates, and Buddha, and Kong-Fu-Tzee would have desired to know, and paid a great price to acquire, are now taught without money or price by Native Catechists on the road-side, in the humble hut, or in the streets of the great City. The story of the Son of God, AMio took upon Himself the form of Man, so as to save us from our sins, is read in many and different languages : on the steps of the great Ghat at Banaras, at the great twelve-)-ear Hindu Pilgrimage to the Ganges, and at the annual festival of the Sikhs at Amritsar, in India, on the Hill of Fuh-Chao in China : under the shadow of Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and of the great Pyramid in Egypt, in front of the Joss-house of the Cannibal Negro on the Niger, on the shores ( 86 ) of the great Equatorial Lake Victoria Xyanza, on the floating raft of the Canadian voyageur, in the wigwam of the Red Indian on the Arctic Circle, in the ice-bound habitations of the Eskimo in North America, in the hovel of the Yahgan in Tierra del Fuego ; in the hut of the Kanaka in the New Hebrides in the extreme South and all over the sunny Islands of Oceania ; wherever men can congregate, who have consciences to be moved, and souls to be saved in the day of Judgment. The still small voice is heard amidst the din of the market, the braying of the soldier's trumpet, in the recesses of the secret harem, in the public classes of the Schools, in the long galleries of the Hospital, in the third class compartment of the Railway, on the lone moor sides, amidst the moving and humming of the great idolatrous city, in the house, where thousands kneel to false Gods, and repeat the words of a false prophet : " If I take the wings of " the morning, and flee unto the uttermost parts of the Sea, even " there shall Thy hand lead me ; in Thy Book all my members " were written : " as an instance of the ubiquity of the Scripture even now, I quote an interesting anecdote, how some members of a barbarous tribe were prepared to rob and murder their neighbour, but, as they stealthily approached his hut, they heard him reading his evening-portion, and they were awed, and slunk awa}\ Another story has a romantic character : Some visitors could not find the Native Catechist in his hut : they were told, that he was in the forest, and there they found him stretched on the ground, with all the wild denizens of the forest above and around him, while he was removed as it were from all ( ^7 ) thoughts of the world, and reading intently the translation, which the last ship had brought to him. Like Nathaniel, he was alone under the fig tree, but the Lord had His eye upon him : Apart from its solemn theological and eschatological truths, the human side of the Bible has such a power to attract, and influence, and charm : it is often unnoticed, how deep some portions of the narrative evoke the purest and most holy thoughts, touching the depths of the human heart by its simplicit}', intelligible to the meanest intellect : the recognition of Joseph by his brethren, the words of Ruth to her mother-in-law, of Elisha to Gehazi, of Nathan to David in the matter of Uriah the Hittite : the words of Job throughout the whole of his piteous trials, and the gleaming words of Jehovah at the close of that magnificent drama : and lastly the passages of the Proverbs describing the Heavenly Wisdom, and the praises of a virtuous woman. For a moment, and under a protest, for the sake of our argument, let us set aside all miraculous details, and treat this wonderful library of books, as we treat Homer, the Greek Tragedians, Plato and Virgil : do not our hearts give a response, that these last fail in that peculiar power, which is the speciality of the Bible ? At any rate no one has yet cared to exhibit them in the many Languages of the world, nor has the desire been expressed to possess them. wm ADDRESS No. VL On the Bible itself : On its Diffusion for the Education of Mankind. " The Word of God is living and active, and sharper than any " two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of Soul and " Spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the *' thoughts and intents of the heart." Hebrews v, 12, R.V, On this occasion I go direct to the bottom of the raison d'etre of the very conception of a Bible-Society : is the diffusion of the Scriptures really a necessity ? is it a promoter of Christian life ? What we call the " Bible " is really a library of more than a score of volumes, written in three distinct Languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, at different dates, spread over fifteen hundred years, by very different kinds of writers, in very different styles of composition, a portion being plain prose, and a portion the sublimest poetry ; a portion being so simple, that a child can understand, and a portion containing deep, and still ( 90 ) imperfectly comprehended, mysteries. The volume of the latest date was written fully seventeen hundred years ago ; the events alluded to took place in a country, which has ceased to have an individual existence, which enjoyed a civilisation of a low type long since passed away. Of what profit can such a book at first sight be to the Pagan nations of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania, and North America, which are passing into civilisation and Christianity under the impulse of the nineteenth century ? Nor is this library of volumes, known as the Bible, the only representative of the early religions of mankind, for there have come down to us the ancient books of the Indie and Iranic races, which are anterior to, or contemporary with, the Books of Moses ; these books have never perished from the knowledge, and the constant use, of man. We have had in late years revealed to us the books of the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian, which have been hidden away in the bowels of the earth for two thousand years, and are now produced as archceo- logical curiosities, and they were long anterior in date to the books of Moses. During the interval between the time of Moses and the Christian era — 600 to 400 B.C. — appeared on the human stage three of the greatest men of antiquity ; each propounded such religious and philosophical views, as the world will never willingly let die. They lived in far distant climes : Kong-Fu-Tzee (or Confucius) in China, Gautama Buddha in India, and Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, in Greece. Their utterances have made a mighty and lasting impression on the religious convictions of the world, and it is not easy to realise ( 91 ) what the intellectual state of many millions during the course of many centuries would have been without them. All these Books are now well known, translated into vernacular Languages, and could be made accessible to the humbler classes of the nation to which they belonged, had it been thought advisable, and if they were desired. Why have they been set aside, and the doctrines of Christianity been presented with the sole accompani- ment of the Jewish Scriptures ? It might have been argued, and it is maintained by the votaries of the ancient religions of the Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the Confucianist, and the Buddhist, that their books were OeoirvevaTot also, that is to say, composed under greater than mere mortal influences, and ought not to be superseded, and replaced by the books of another nationality, which obviously were intended only to meet their particular wants. The answer to these objections, and the reasons, which have led to the existence of associations for distributing the volumes of the Old and New Testament, are the same. By faith we believe, that the Bible was in very deed inspired, and was intended to be the vehicle of instruction, warning, and consolation, to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, and that it was not only the best vehicle, but the oily vehicle, not only for the past ages, but for the present and the future ages, as long as this world lasts ; that it is the only receptacle and storehouse of divine truth, that the world ever knew, or ever will know ; that the rulings of ecclesiastical councils, and churches, and synods, are as mere ropes of sand, when brought into collision with, or opposition ( 92 ) to, the Everlasting Gospel, which has the monopoly of the healing of the children of men. These are bold words, and would be catalogued by the free- thinker as narrow-minded and egotistic, but the earnest Christian must ask himself whether it is not so ; whether, just as there is none other Name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved, even so there is none other Book written by man, which contains the way of salvation, except this Book. The Bible is the witness of the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth ; it is the only Book, which tells us of the dealings of the great Creator with the one nation, whom He honoured by choosing them out of the millions of His creatures to be the custodians of this oracle for the benefit of all mankind. In the fulness of time the Word of God, the ^1670? of the Evangelist, the 'A^/ia Hocpia of the Preacher, appeared in the poor environment of humanity for a few short years. The same Word of God appeared in the poor human device of vocables and syllogisms, to last as long as the human heart beats, the eye sees, the ear hears, the intellect understands, and the soul is capable of salvation. The actual gracious words, which passed from His lips, except a very few, have not reached us, for words are as fleeting as clouds, and as changing as the leaves of a tree. Even had these words lived, they would not have been naturally intelligible to any living man at this epoch ; but just as the foliage of the trees of the forest is annually renewed, so noble thoughts put on new apparel from generation to generation, and by the skill of the translator live for ever. By the slow process of decay and ( 93 ) reproduction articulate speech prolongs its existence in a new form ; though the letter has died, the spirit still lives. Fold up, and place away, the old s}-nagogue-rolls, the manuscripts of the poor dead Ve^us Itala, the long forgotten Gothic of Ulfilas, the antiquated Ethiopic of Frumentius, the unintelligible Old Slavonic of Methodius, and even the Anglo-Saxon of the Venerable Bede, j\Iany hearts were stirred by the noble Peshito, and the Armenian brought back from the Council of Ephesus by Miesrob : they had their day ; they did their good work, their best of work, the saving of souls, and died, or by a fate worse than death, were prolonged to our days in a state of petrifaction only to serve a degraded ritual. The Algonquin of John Eliot scarcely saved a soul, save his own ; but the devout scholar still pores with gratitude over the Septuagint of the good Jews of Alexandria, the Vulgate of the Holy Jerome, and the consecrated vessels of the elder Covenant, Hebrew, Samaritan, and Aramaic. The great Book had grown, as it were, by a silent growth ; there are no traces of a ]\Iaster-Builder, no tradition of a plan or a design ; no other book can in any way be placed in com- parison with it. It is clear, that it has been edited and re-edited, and presents scores of places of attack to the assault of lower criticism on the text, and higher criticism on the context. It is clear that the copyist, and the contemporary commentator, have taken liberties ; still there it is, a priceless treasure in an earthen vessel. We care much for the treasure and but little for the vessel, but the integrity in all essentials of that vessel has been cared for by the Most High, for it has been fenced " OF TUF ^>^ T7T t7 r ( 94 ) round from the earliest time, when there was danger of manipu- lation, by a fence, the importance of which is only in these days fully appreciated, the diversity of Language, in which it has come down to us, and the still greater diversity, in which it will be handed on to future generations still to be born. Why do two sections of Christ's Church object to this distribution of the Bible in a Language understood by the people ? Does the Church of Rome fear the effect of the contrast between this great fundamental document and her debased practice? Why do certain members of Protestant Churches maintain a feeble and irrational aversion to the hand, which offers them a treasure ? Do they value their own net so highly as to refuse the fish taken by others ? Will they let dying souls pass away into Eternity with no one to speak to them, because no clerg}^man in Anglican orders is on the spot ? Standing on the bank of the great river of the human race, we see fellow-creatures borne away by the stream into an unknown sea. Shall we let them die, because the so-called authorised guardians of the river are absent or asleep ? Be it far from us to hold back our hands from a work, which blesses, and has itself been blessed ! Let us consider the sudden effect of Bible-knowledge on a single soul. The Moravian missionary had toiled in vain, and made no single convert among the stupid Eskimo. One day four natives drew near to watch a copy being made of a trans- lation of a Gospel ; at their request the translator read a portion, which chanced to be the account of the agony in the Garden. The Spirit of the Lord fell on the hearers. They covered their ( 95 ) mouths with their hands to express wonder ; one man called out, " Read it again, for I would also be saved." He was the first of a line of converts. Every student who leaves a State-College in British India receives from the Bible-Society a copy of the New Testament in his own Language, and it is read. One of them naively remarked, that it told him everything, that he had done, that it settled the problem of life and death, which had perplexed him, that it convinced him of the sinfulness of sin, and at the same time showed a way of escape, whereby he could attain holiness. Oh ! if only a copy of the Veins Itala Latin translation, or one Gospel in the original Greek, had found its way under the eyes of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, or Epictetus, or Hypatia, or one of the seekers after God in the second century of the Christian era ; if certain portions of the Old Testament had by some lucky chance been accessible to Zoroaster, or Kong- Fu-Tzee, or Buddha, or Socrates, or Plato, or Cicero, or the writer of the Sanskrit Bhagavad Gita ; what a new light would have been let into the souls and intellects of those wise and holy men, whose wisdom only failed, because it was human, and could not pierce the rind of the Eternal Truth, which the Holy Ghost had spoken by the mouth of the prophets to the favoured people. Where was wisdom to be found by them ? Where was the place of understanding for the great and wise nations of the extreme Orient, to whom during the long course of centuries neither prophet nor evangelist came ? It would be possible indeed to collect together the pearls of wisdom and deep truths of these non- Christian writers, but there would be no life in them ; they would ( 96 ) not influence the actions, though they might stir the fancy, and rouse the genius, of the future generation. They would not Hve, as they had no divine depths, and source of Hfe in them, while the three great parables of the Master, the Sower, the Prodigal Son, and the Pharisee and Publican ; the words of Nathan to David, " Thou art the man," of Elisha to Gehazi, " Went not my heart with thee ? " of Peter, " God is no respector of persons," of Joseph, " How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God ? " of Moses to the tribes of Reuben and Gad, " Be " sure your sins will find you out ! " the words of the Master : " Let him that hath no sin throw the first stone," " Still there was room," " Father, forgive them : they know " not what they do," " This night thou shalt be with Me " in Paradise," ring through the corridors of time in every Language uttered by mortal lips, with as clear an intonation as on the day when they first were conceived. There is also another point of view. In the great drama of human life, it would appear, as if the part of Hamlet were omitted, if that great Central Figure, in which all wisdom was collected, were withdrawn, to whose future coming so many holy men of distant ages had pointed with out-stretched hand, and in the fact of whose having come so many wise and holy men of subsequent ages have humbly yet undoubtingly rejoiced. Let me add another practical illustration. When the British Power annexed the great kingdom of the Panjab in North India in 1846, I was placed, at the age of twenty-five, in charge of a great district, the inhabitants of which had never seen a white ( 97 ) face. They assembled to greet me, and to crave the maintenance of their old religious beliefs and family customs, which had been guaranteed to them by proclamation. Among these customs, which they clung to, was the right of burning their widows, killing their female infants, and burying alive their lepers. I told them, that such customs were impossible, and I quoted their own sacred poets to show, that life was the best of gifts, and must not be taken away. I remarked to them, that as not one of them would kill a cow, surely it was an equally deadly sin to kill a woman : but they could not see it, so finally I quoted the Sixth Commandment, as settling the matter not only for myself, but for all mankind. The Bible cuts like a sharp sword through all empty sophism, all time-honoured customs contrary to the great Primeval Truth, and the common law of human nature. The custom was stamped out. At no period of history has the essence of Bible-Truth been presented to intellects, educated after the European fashion in State-Colleges, but \\ithout the leaven of a Christian home, Christian environment, and Christian literature. There is a great danger in leaving such }'oung and self-confident intellects exposed to the insidious effects of a newly-produced literature, some of a deadly character, much of a sickly stamp, or degenerating into twaddle. It may be doubted, whether in the struggle, the first struggle with the educated youth of India, China, and Japan, the outward form of Christianity, as it has settled down in Europe, will hold its own. It may be, that the precious ore w^ill be reminted in an Oriental crucible. Greater dangers may 7 ( 98 ) arise at home. The books of the Old and New Testament may suddenly appear in new chronological order, and their component parts in new editorial grouping. We are in an epoch of progressive religion and comparative science. All these things are possible in the opinion of those, who survey mankind from China to Peru, and who, lifting up their eyes to the histor}' of the past, are aware, that the petty nation of the Jews was not the only race of mankind, for whom the Creator cared in the pre-Christian centuries ; that the thesis, that the Jewish dispensation was a dispensation to the whole of the elder world, can no longer be maintained ; that the nations, the kingdoms, the millions, and the isles of the sea, were not forgotten by the God, \\'ho made them and governed them. Still, what- ever aspect religious thought may assume in the regions never blessed till now by the Gospel message, it is our plain and manifest duty to place the text of the Bible in an acceptable and intelligible form before the e\-es of every nation in the round world, because we are convinced, that religious thought must be impressed by the evidence of Christianity, and the life, words, acts, and death, of Christ must stand out as a beacon. His moral law must be a wall, behind which, and out of touch with which, no possible theory or practice of any form of religion can exist, for that, which is morally wrong, can never be held in the nineteenth century theologically right. That which is foul or false in fact, like the future Paradise of Mahomet, or the present polygamy of the ^Mormons, can never co-exist with what is true and holy in religion. We have thus ( 99 ) a sword and sliield, which, if we have but grace to use them wisely and sympathetically, must conquer in the end. Missionary societies will have in the twentieth century to re-cast their con- stitutions, and re-model their practices, for, when native churches are founded, their work is so far done ; but the distribution of the Bible in its simplicity, without note or comment, will never lose its value, until in some distant remote future, the sower leaves off putting his seed into the earth, the builder leaves off building human habitations, the ruler leaves off his duty of ruling his subjects, the preacher's lips are closed, for Human Life will have passed away, this great orb be rolled up like a scroll, and all things fade away like a vision, except the Everlasting Gospel. A Missionary from South India remarked in Exeter Hall, that " throughout India there was no engine more powerful " than the press. At present there is a great unsettlement of " faith there, and it was profoundly interesting to watch the " issue. The result, the answer to be given, would largely " depend on the Christian Church, and on this Society amongst " others. The present hour was the time to propagate to the " utmost of their ability every kind of Christian work, and " especially educational and literary work, for at such a time " as the present the press was of the greatest importance. " The number of readers in India was now reckoned at twelve " millions, and they were increasing at the rate of one or two " millions a year. He was glad to say, that the Tract-Society, " in connection with the Bible-Society, had, for some years, IflMI ( 100 ) " been in the habit of giving books to all, who passed the '' school-examinations. There was no nation in the world, " amongst the people of whom such work was more needed. " They were reading, and he believed, that even John Milton " had more readers in India than in England. A new literature " was springing up and a wonderful mental awakening taking " place, which was due to the religious impulse given by " Christianity. The Bible was now read, and new truths appre- " hended, which were never known before. Hindu preachers were " enforcing Hinduism, schools were at work, and a Hindu Tract- " Society had been started in Madras. Both Hindu and " Mahometan had formed their own Societies to stem the " progress of Christianity. What was wanted, more than any- " thing else, was a living Christian literature for non-Christians." The Poet, whose name is mentioned above, after a life of blameless morality, and studious holiness, bearing great trials with meekness, and in an age, when few men died unstained, dying without stain, John Milton, thus thought of the Bible : He took the Scriptures from his earliest youth as his guide, seeking earnestly the illumination of the Ploly Spirit in order to understand them aright. He frequently laid stress on the plainness and adequacy of Scripture for the guidance and test of human conduct : " We would believe the Scriptures, protesting their plainness " and perspicuity ; calling to us to be instructed, not only the " wise and the learned, but the simple, the poor, the babes ; " foretelling an extraordinary effusion of God's Spirit upon every ( loi ) " age and sex ; attributing to all mankind^ and requiring from " them, the ability of searching, trying, examining all things, " and by the Spirit discerning that which is good." Another consideration is, that the Peace enforced in subject Regions, the Justice and respect for Human Life, the Laws of Sanitation, and the preparation against Famine, have only eventuated in the vast increase of non-Christian populations. The British India of iSSi has grown from 250 to 2S0 Millions in 1891 : the progress of Christianity, compared to this Grand River of Human Life, is but a tiny stream, whatever friendly compilers of Statistics may try to bring out to please their friends at home. No more widows to be burnt : consequently twenty- two Millions of Widows : no more female infants to be killed : many families smarting under the disgrace of un- married daughters above puberty in their homes : no more lepers to be buried alive : consequently the towns and villages shrinking from invading armies of lepers : rol}-gamy going out of fashion adds to the difficulty : no wars exterminate regions : no famine decimates populations : no sooner does an epidemic appear than a sanitary cordon restricts its ex- pansion. On the other side Education, male and female, turns out annually thousands able to read, and sufficiently instructed to laugh at the old-world-legends, which held their old parents captive and enslaved : add to this a constant wasting away of the total of Christians, as enumerated in the Census, first into the category of nominal Christians, and then into open rationalism. ( i02 ) Prosperity and Civilisation are most destructive anti-Christian Factors. The Word of God is our only refuge : the Missionary is only a man, no better and no worse, in the opinion of the people, than the preacher of Brahmoism, Theosophy, Mormonism, and Scepticism : but in the hand of the real Missionary is the great weapon. Such thoughts must be the outcome of the study of past ages of those, who think lovingly of scenes, that arc past, and look forward wonderingly, yet hopefully, and humbly, on what future ages will bring into light. Let us think out the question, as to what sort of evidence would those, who throw stones at the Old Testament, have liked to have had : We have no evidence of the existence of the Phenician Alphabet, the mother of all Alphabets, at an earlier date than the time of Solomon. In Egypt we have Hieroglyphics and Hieratic documents, of which the date can safely be carried back to the time of Abraham and beyond : not copies of copies, but the original documents : and owing to the dryness of the climate the actual papyrus, or other material, has survived. It was possible then, that the very Books of Moses should have come down to us, the ipsissima graininata. The two tables of stone were in fact imperishable, and may still some day turn up : there are plenty of stone-Inscriptions dating farther back than the Exodus. But all Manuscripts have perished : we have the three famous codices of the New Testament dating back to the third Century A.D., and the earliest Indian (Sanskrit) or Semitic (Hebrew) MS. now existing, are not earlier than the time of Alfred, King of England : Everything is copy of copy of copy, B ( 103 ) full of errors of the translator and defiled by the audacity of the annotator. God's Word is therefore in earthen vessels. If we do not believe the evidence before us, it seems as if all possibility of believing anything of a date anterior to the invention of printing were taken away. Had the Hebrews only been a Nation possessing the art of recording Monumental Inscriptions, as were their contemporaries and neighbours, the Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians, we might have now had their contemporary records of the Hebrew Scriptures, but such was not the Lord's will : The belief in the Scripture is, and must ever remain, a matter of faith : When we look upon, as I have looked upon, the Egyptian Stele, or Papyri, or the Assyrian, or Accadian clay-tablets, or the Inscriptions of Asoka, the King of India, 303 B.C., carved on rocks and pillars, which tell their own tale, and rest on human evidence, we do not pretend, that these writers were inspired, but that their Inscriptions are genuine and authentic, and worthy of our belief, as expressing the thoughts of men in old times, and nothing more. The Church has never defined exactly what Inspiration means, and consequently many of the best Christians are not entirely of one mind. My own belief is, that the writers of the Bible were supernaturally and divinely enabled by God, as no other men ever have been, for the work which they did, and that, consequently, the Book, which they produced, is unlike any other book in existence, and stands entirely alone. Inspiration, in short, is a miracle. We must not confound it with intellectual power, such as great poets and authors possess. To talk of Shakespeare and Milton and ( I04 ) Byron, being inspired, like Moses and St. Paul, is beside the mark. Nor must we confound it with the gifts and graces bestowed on the early Christians in the primitive Church. All the Apostles were enabled to preach and work miracles, but not all were inspired to write. We must rather regard it as a special supernatural gift, bestowed on about thirty people out of mankind, in order to qualify them for the special business of writing the Scriptures ; and we must be content to allow that, like everything miraculous, we cannot entirely explain it, though we can believe it. We do not admit for a moment, that they were mere machines holding pens, and, like type-setters in a printing-office, did not understand what they were doing. We reject the " mechanical " theory of Inspiration. We dislike the idea, that men like Tyloses and St. Paul were no better than organ-pipes, emplo}-ed by the Holy Ghost, or ignorant secretaries or amanuenses, who wrote by dictation what they did not understand. We admit nothing of the kind. But we do believe, that in some marvellous manner the Holy Ghost made use of the reason, the memory, the intellect, the style of thought, and the peculiar mental temperament, of each writer of the Scriptures, to do the work, to which men of such different antecedents, were called, as Amos, the herdsman, and Jeremiah the Priest, who was ordained to be a Prophet, while still in the womb. We only know, that there is both a divine and a human element in the Bible, and that, while the men who wrote it were really and truly men, the Book, that they wrote and handed down to us, is really and truly the Word of God. We know the result, but we do not understand the process. ( 105 ) Let me try and convey another consideration, why \vc should press forward the work of Translation and Distribution. We are dealing with great Vernaculars, not so great as our own, the greatest in the world, and still growing, but the Vernacular of a country is one of the instruments of mental gymnastics, of national union, and moral elevation. Wherever the Hindu race is found, notwithstanding the sectarian division, the story of Rama the faultless is told, and with profit : It was under the leading of the Holy Spirit, darkly and dimly visible to the great Hindu Poet, that that wonderful character of Patience, Submission, and Purit}', was thought out and chronicled : so to the Buddhists the presence of Buddha, the man who conquered himself, and showed the way of self-conquest to others, is ever present : the wise, wholesome, and moral words of Kong-Fu-Tzee are on the lips of every Chinese : it is some step in advance, some link between persons not allied in blood, that they possess a knowledge of the same great story : The words of Buddha and Socrates do indeed rise in the memory and will live for ever, and we never ought to admit for an instant, that there was no good implanted by God in the human race outside the limits of the Jewish and Christian dispensation : the words of a dead father, or a letter written by a dead mother, come back on our hearts after a lapse of time with a power for good, but in the Scriptures we have a living message, the heritage of all mankind. Come : if any of the new school of Theosophy, or the old ones of Philosophy, has anything better, let it be produced, and put to the test of the effect, which it makes on millions of readers in every mCi -^ sees: t^: ezl :r =. rTgr. "» iW : rz ize t~)i b: ite. oe vt^: i^H^aw ViML. »_i ._ -c: .__ £ sucj of Jf«gg af !?v£zsr^ir IT zrx: 'zi'Jrr Spr±: : sud 2£ ISt C 107 ) are a rr^lcngaricru an cminatjp of tiie wrifer'a nonin&nt seBEti- menis- It has alreadv been siated. -r~^~ a ^i-od Bibte-Tra«slgl.rjr n\es a Vamacniar previouslj in iix : trr-'q, regards ziie sivie, snc ihe words used : certain ^crds ~o longer ar-pear in coT:vt3-aBnrTr dt wri ting : rvrf^-.n ioeas are locKsd sp, or iroGiien jjz^^rz. Z) era . ::? e the taste ^riri good feeling C3f a Xation haxe beer, fzmed Dn a high, ideal Tertallian, in the ^cond rfrit'iirv-, 3r~ rrer: ne xmcDEsnons testimony bome by m3r^'K-^^^^-^ non-Christian as well as Christian. t3 " the spark of Divine knowledge hiddt^r; in ihe sonls of aZ mer : " He had passed half his li^ b^ore his conversion, and toi-LC speak with knowledge : In the nest csriniry. Ongen. bom of Christian parents, writjes : "^ the Divine Word sl:nnbers in idie ** hearts of onbelieve-s, while it is awake in the Christian : 'n '* siumbers, but is none the less really present as Tescs was. when " He slumbered during the strrm tn the Lake of Ger~'esargdi : '* it will awake as soon as the soul becomes anxious for Salvation." Clement writes, diat " die undostanding of Man is indeed "gy a " dower in a sunless cabin, till the Light c-f God mILs an k : " sod now die experience of die last eighty years tells ns, that the newer opois suid expands to i:3 fullness. This is a grsit encouragement to those, whose hearts are in die <£naaon of ck ScriptEres. It was Dan\-in that uTOte, that lie Go^jel "w-as hke the Magician's i^-and : so indeed it has proven : it tciuches diings widi an Ithuriel-spear, and brings them back tc their r^ proportion and shape. It is ottsi forgx?trai. that in :^ next ( 108 ) generation there will be new elements of evil to contend with. As in the Roman Empire, the new Religion fused itself with the old Paganism, and developed into Gnosticism, and Manicheism, so from the contact of Christian Truth with Hinduism and Buddhism, new forms of belief are being developed : they represent the corrupt conceptions deeply engrained in the human heart : if absorbed, they will modify the great eclectic Faith : if trodden down, from the expiring ashes new beliefs and new sects will spring up : the age of persecution is past and gone, and they cannot be extinguished by the slaughter of the heretics, and the burning of their books, as in the days of the power of the Church of Rome. How important then is it, that this Book should take a large part in the Education of the rising generation, and when this object is once attained, no power will be able to eject it : if in secular literature Homer and Shakespeare could never disappear from sight without leaving a void not to be filled, what a far greater vacuum would be caused by the disappearance of the Old and New Testament. No Book in antient and modern time has occupied so large a space, moulding our National life, and it is manifestly our duty to hand it on to those also, who have hitherto not been blessed by its presence. We must not fall into the opposite error of blind Bibliolatry : In outward form it is a secular book, liable to the incidents of human life : and worldly environment : it can be burnt, buried, torn up, and has no superhuman protection, and, when we judge it fairly, it lacks the freshness of the Greek and Latin Authors, and the depth of Hindu Speculation, and something more : it ( 109 ) lacks the free air of toleration : the Hebrew race was narrow- minded and intolerant beyond other Nations : How knightly seems the form of Asoka, the Hindu king, who in the centuries before Christ imprinted on Rocks all over his vast dominions the Inscriptions, which have come down to our time : " The " King records prayers for those, who differ from him in creed, " and hopes that they following his example may obtain Salvation : " He ordains tolerance, by desiring that all unbelievers ever\'- " where may dwell unmolested, as they also wish for moral " restraints, and purity of disposition, for men are of various " passions and various desires." What a " sad " contrast this is to many of the denuntiations of the Psalmist, the Prophet, and the Chronicler, and to the conduct of the Jewish Priests, who crucified an innocent man, and stoned Stephen, because they disagreed with their religious views. I now quote extracts from speeches made in Exeter Hall, wise and thoughtful remarks. Our President, Lord Harrowb\-, spoke thus : " When I look at the immense change, that will take place in "■ the relations of Christendom with the great mass of heathendom " and of the Mahometan population, it is impossible not to feel, " that it is a matter of the gravest and deepest anxietv. We " are evidently destined within the next fifty years or so to be " in communication with this mass of heathendom and Mahomc- " tanism. Civilized Europe, and these hundreds of millions of " unchristianized people, will be in close and daily communication. " Is it possible in the nature of things, that that should not react ( no ) " on Christendom ? In one way or another it is a tremendous " new factor of the future, the complete mingling together of this " mass of heathendom, and the smaller number of Christians all " over the world. In one way or another Christianity will be " deeply affected, and I would urge, that, if these populations " remain unchristianized and untouched by the religion of Christ, " the position of Christianity will not be the same, that it must " be deeply affected by it. It will reflect upon us, and will make " our position more difficult at home. The few millions of " Christians are likely to be brought into ever-increasing contact " in the coming years with immense masses of heathendom. Was " it likely, that this would fail to react upon them ? And, if it " ended in those masses remaining unchristianized, would not " the arguments against Christianity be greatly strengthened ? " There were two great lines of work before the Bible-Society, " in Europe, where it could probably work better than any " Missionary Society, and in the heathen world." I\Ir. ]\IacXcil, in a powerful address in Exeter Hall, uttered these suggestive words : "When we read the names of far-off countries, and of men, " bound in the chains of traditions and habits, that are not ours, " let us remember that j-ear by year the mighty forces of the " Word of God are entering into their many-sided lives, and that " we can by Divine help broaden the stream of the Divine Word " amongst the numerous elements of the world's life. We have " confidence in the immense and inexhaustible force of the " Word of God to quicken that, on which it fastens. We I ^y^ ( III ) " know what it has done, we know what it is doing ; and we " are certain, that we cannot bring it freely and frequently into " contact with the mind of man, but vast results will ensue in " every sphere in which man's affairs do lie. Remember that in " thus casting the Word of God among the nations we have the " right to reckon upon great allies for that Word. It finds allies " in the heart of man. It find allies in the very structure of " man's mind ; a structure, which all the deep alienation of man " from God has not utterly shattered and broken up, but which " remains ever in pathetic testimony to the true origin of our " race. The Word of God finds allies in the sense of sin, to " which reference has been made. It finds allies in our sorrows, " in our aspirations, in the deep, tender, undecipherable, tendencies " and capacities of our nature. And, above all, it has an ever- " present ally, if such an humble term may be used of such an " august and glorious Power, it has a great ally in the Spirit " of God, Whose chief sphere of operation is in the mind of man, " and Whose chief interest is the ^^'ord. I am here to testify " on behalf of the Bible, and to wish God-speed to this great " Societ}-. I trust that from to-day and forward the scattering " of the Word of Life by means of this great agency will be " widespread and more abundant than ever. We look upon this " as a great agency, not from heaven, but upon the earth, for " throwing the manna round about the tents of all mankind ; and " I trust, that that may increasingly be done, for the Bible is " just like manna. You remember when the manna was first sent " down. That is very like the Bible. I do not say, that the ( 112 ) Bible comes from heaven printed and bound ; but it is more wonderful than if it did. But we are here scattering the Bread of Life, and, if only the people get it round about their own tent door, and in their own tongue, and into their own hand, and read it with their own eyes, it will become to them what manna was to Israel of old. When the Israelites began to ask such questions as to liow the manna came there, and what for, \'ou remember that IMoses stopped all the argument by saying : ' Just what it is ; take it and eat it.' " For the Bible is a Book " Which he may read that binds the sheaf, Or builds the house, or digs the grave, Or those wild eyes that watch the wave In roarinsrs round the coral reef." " Spread the Book. I rejoice to think, that Christ's miracle of " the feeding of the five thousand is being re-enacted all over " the earth. You remember how Christ told the people to sit " down by companies, so as to make the thing workable and " manageable. Now, I rejoice to think that, when we look at " mankind, and view men of different tribes and kindreds, we " see, that the world was never before in such splendid order " for starting off with the bread-basket, filled with the Word of " Life." The closer and closer study of the Bible is the desideratum of the age : that Book does not shrink from the dissecting knife of the cynic, nor the acid-tests of the h\-pcr-critic : it does not tremble under the scalpel of the vivisectioner. He is guilty of ( IT3 ) high treason against the Faith, who fears the results of any inves- tigation, whether philosophical, philological, historical, or the so-called higher criticism. We could not with a clear conscience continue the circulation, if we had not an intelligent^ and entire, conviction of its essential genuineness. The timorous imperfectly- instructed devotee cries out, that it is not fair to raise questions, impugning the accuracy of hitherto accepted conclusions : // is fair, and Just, and our dut\-, to weigh all things, and I should be glad to find in such quarters more fairness in dealing with the Sacred Books of the non-Christian World " damnant et plaudunt quod non intelligunt." Even the mistakes and premature speculations of careful, learned, and reverent (not professionally but actually) students arc infinitely more to be prized than stolid, unthinking, ignorant, acquiescence : We know that the Bible is pure gold, and are not afraid to test it, and are not surprised to find a percentage of alloy, with which fond and foolish translators, and commentators, and editors, have without evil intentions, yet with uncritical rashness, presumed for purposes of human convenience to temper the precious metal. ^r/ ' • ■ - ADDRESS No. VII. Ox THE Constitution of the Society : On its Opponents. " In necessariis Unitas. "In omnibus Caritas. " " Concordia parvK res crescunt." The Constitution of the Society is unique : when it came into existence in 1S04, there was nothing like it, because it \\as entirely undenominational, and designed for the wants of our own and foreign countries, to feed our own people, and to feed the stranger. Sprung from its loins, but entirely independent of the British Society, though acting on the same principles, and in entire harmony with, are the only two other entirely ^Missionary Bible- Societies, the National Society of Scotland, and the American Bible-Society of New York. All other Societies are little better than Bible-Clubs, to supply the needs of their own people : The Bible-Society of Holland is to some extent a Missionary Society, but is unable to provide for its own Colonies without the help of the British Society. ( 11^ ) I tried some years ago by publishing an appeal ^ in the German Language to rouse my Protestant friends in Germany to the necessity of their founding a German Bible-Society in Luthers's land, and incorporating in one association their local associations, in some of which by their rules, sales to Roman Catholics were forbidden, and in others the translations were restricted to the German Language : my appeal was premature : Germany has indeed Colonies, but has not yet risen to the level of her respon- sibilities to the races, who are subject to her : her time will come. There are four classes, whom we have to feed : I. Those, who receive the Word of God joyfully, and those, who find it suits their station and environment to appear to do so. God alone is the searcher of hearts : the physician gives his medicine, whether the patient takes it, or places it on the shelf: our duty is that of the physician : fresh copies are required from generation to generation : formerly there was a great destitution : the book and the reader in due course perish : the Word of God is imperishable, and appears from time to time in new outward form of paper, print, and binding : I have already expressed my opinion, that much of this could be left to the Trade in certain localities, but in the rural districts the Bible- hawker, or Bible-Club, must ever be required : there can be no greater act of benevolence than to present a copy to the young on confirmation, where such a Church-Rule exists, or Baptism in the case of Baptist-Churches, and at a wedding, and to mourners in the hour of their bereavement : our Lord ^ See Appendix No. \'lll. ( 11/ ) Himself sat in the Temple with the elders, was present at a wedding, and at the grave of Lazarus. II. Next come the class of nominal Christians, who care not for, and who try to appear to despise, the Word of God, or pick holes in it. Anything is better than to keep the Bible on the shelf, or under a napkin on a table, never to open it from year to year : this indeed is the generation, which neither read with their eyes, nor hear with their ears : if anyone despise the Bible on its human side, he only convicts himself of folly : he may not believe the precious promises, or miracles, but he cannot deny the facts of the existence, and nature, of this wonderful Book : this class must be supplied : we know not where a falling spark may ignite : we do know, that the Holy Spirit lurks between the leaves : just as the w^ords of the Orator, the sentiments of the Poet, the thoughts of the Philosopher, dead centuries ago, when we come upon them, set the heart leaping, and produce a strange feeling of joy and thankfulness, that God put it in the hearts of men to speak like Demosthenes, write so sweetly as Virgil, and argue like Socrates, so the Bible has its own power, human to all without exception, so long as they are men. Divine to those, who are called to inherit the promises, and by faith to hear the Divine Voice speaking through the imperfect symbols of human conception, grammar, and writing. We must not pass this class by : we are our brother's keeper. HI. The Members of the Greek, and Roman Catholic, and fallen Churches of Asia and Africa : they call themselves ( ii8 ) Christians, but it is a form of Christianity not accompanied by a Vernacular Bible, such as is understood by the people. In the Middle Ages they attempted to give object-lessons of Christianity by pictures and statues : their own knowledge of anything beyond the historical outline of our Lord's Life, and Passion, was small : that of the people was non-existent : of all the realities of Religion, the soul seeking out for God, and finding Him, they had no conception : Millions are starving for the Bread of Life, and deserving of our utmost compassion. IV. The fourth class, which require supplies of Bibles at our hands, are the Millions of non-Christians, to which allusion has already been made in Address II. The constitution of the Committee is Catholic, and this is not only a most sweet feature, but also a necessity : it is sweet to meet Christians on a platform raised above the level of our historical denominations : Nothing would induce me to change my particular Church, or to frequent any other than my own (though I should not scruple at occasional attendances in other Churches), yet it is a joy to feel a union based solely on the love of Christ, and love for the Bible : Jews and Unitarians are not admitted to the Committee : the letter call themselves Christians in the sense that a follower of Mr. Gladstone calls himself a Gladstonian, but neither Jew nor Unitarian admit what to us is an essential, the Divinity of Christ. I now proceed to show the necessity : nothing but the union of all the Churches, which send out Missions to different Regions of the World, would enable us to discharge our duty. The Hi ( 119 ) greatest of all the Churches in the Mission-Field, the Episcopal Church of England, does indeed use more than one hundred translations in its Mission-Fields, but that is only one-third of the total of translations, actually effective and in circulation : the rest of the great Field is occupied by Episcopal, or non- Episcopal, Churches of England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada, and the United States. The Missionaries of those Churches have made the translations, sent them home, received back supplies of copies, and made use of them. In the Mission-Field, in the presence of non-Christian populations, and face to face with the Priests of Rome, on whose premises, with rare exceptions, such as the Arabic and Tamil, no translations are found, the Protestant Missionaries forget, or fold awa}-, their Shibboleths : the great central truth, that Christ died and rose again, the feeling of the gigantic pro- portions of the work to be done, of the harvest to be gathered in, and the limited number of labourers, unite them as true brothers in the Lord : they take counsel at periodical Conferences, they join in revisions of a translation common to all : People talk in England of a Union of the Churches : in the Mission Field there is a practical Union already. Hear Mr. Spurgeon's last words in Exeter Hall : " I have a lurking hope somewhere about me, I sometimes " hope, tliat it is by the way of the Bible that all believers in " Christ will come together. Each one here loves the Church, to " which he belongs, or else let him clear out of it. But there is " nobody here, that loves the divisions of Christendom. We would »»*? — - ( 120 ) " all end them if we could. How to do it I cannot tell. Unity " I love, but attempts at unity always create fresh divisions. All " the schemes I have ever seen have been but partly successful. " When we shall all come to the Word of God and each man " shall say, ' There, I will retract everything I have said, if it is " not in accordance with that Book. I will come down to the " strict Word of Christ, and walk in the spirit of it to the utmost " of my ability,' then shall we all come together. You see, that " things, that come near to one point, come near to one another. " And oh, that it might be so ! For my own part I do not see, " if there are great differences, why they should not be held, so " far as they are great differences, most conscientiously held, and " yet, wherever there is a point, upon which there can be common " service, we might all heartily agree. I delight in the Word of " God, with regard to the hope I have of the return of the Churches " to the one common faith, because there are many, who have " adulterated the Word of God, taken away its tone and spirit, " until we are coming to a minimum of faith, when only a few " things will be regarded as essential, and even those are questioned. " But as we venerate the Word of God, we shall come back to " the old truth again, for the Word has not changed, and the " Gospel of the Grace of God has not changed. We shall, there- " fore, as we come back to the immutable foundation, come back " to the truth itself. God grant that that may come to pass ! " It appears to me, that the Churches at home do not realize the importance of the work doing, and their responsibilities before God to carry it on : No Ministration of a Church can be said *r. •■/*.- ^ . .^-w' » ( 121 ) to be complete, in which the subject is not annually brought before its Members from the Pulpit, or the Platform, or both : one of the object of these Addresses is, that hard-worked Ministers may supply themselves from these pages with facts and new side- lights for presentation to Congregations. And let me tell these ^Ministers a secret, that by handling this subject, and being led to look into it, they will, at least some of them, gain a clearer insight into the wonderful history and contents of this Book, the continuity of translation for more than 2000 years, the diffusion of these translations all over the world ; they will remark the Providence of God, which from most unpromising material has raised up Translators, and revisors of translations : if some antient translations have become fossilized, they resemble the trunks, which stand amidst the forest of younger trees, to remind us, that in old times as now the Bible was a great Power, and to assure us that a thousand years hence, so long as the hearts of men beat, so long as the throats of men emit articulate sounds, so long as the intellect of men is capable of receiving impressions through the eye and the ear, so long as the conscience of Man is susceptible of the influences of the Holy Spirit, so long it will remain a great Power, the greatest in the World. In a former work I ventured to state, that the Bible would outlive Kingdom and Churches, and I was reproved for writing so by a Church Dignitary, who reminded me, that the Bible owes its existence to the Church : I am not prepared here to argue on that subject, but in my opinion every association of Christian men, call them by what name you like, owes its existence to ( 122 ) the Bible, and will perish without it : for the Bible, without the intermediate influence of Priest and Preacher, speaks to the Soul, and it has done, and will do again, the work of Conversion of Souls without the aid of man : the Preacher may err ; the Bible can never err. May we not believe, that the Word of God will be abiding, when walls of Chapels and Churches, even the most spiritual, crumble to the ground, when decrees of Councils, boasted Church- order, mediaeval mummeries, and vain Shibboleths, the creation of well-intentioned, tho' ignorant, men, are forgotten, and all stand before Christ, and see Him face to face. The largeness of the scope of Bible-Societies is such, that it confounds all human state : it cares as much for the poor as for the rich, for the stranger as warmly as for the fellow-countr}'men, for the poor Heathen as well as for the Christian. Nobod}-, who enters the Bible-House, and looks around, can say, that he has no interest in its welfare, and can himself derive no blessing from its operation. The supervision of the work by the different sub-Committees requires no ordinary knowledge, intelligence, memor}-, and general acuteness, on the part of the Secretaries, and the Superintendent of the Publication-Department, under the orders of the Com- mittee : it is not all plain sailing : the work is of Divine character, and fortunately on the Committee are men suited for the totally dissimilar branches of the business. The work of the Editorial Committee is a Science of its own : Different Languages, different dialects of the same Language, different forms of written Character, in two or three of which sometimes the same *.*.»-^ ( ^^3 ) Language is exhibited, present problems, which require knowledge and care : the nomenclature of the Language, and the orthography, and transliteration, require attention : I pass over the endless details, which occupy the attention of the Printing-sub- Committee : the t}-pe, the paper, the style, the binding, the Maps, the marginal entries, the Chapter-headings, the references : all require careful attention : the proof-reading opens a new chapter of anxiety, and the alternative readings : there are thirty-eight varieties of Alphabets, two of Syllabaries, and one of Ideograms. The printing goes on in many parts of the world : the Roman Alphabet, which is used for all Languages, unprovided with their own form of written Character, and which is available for alternative editions in Languages, which have their own written Character, has unfortunately undergone endless varieties : words have been transliterated on totally different principles : all this will cause great confusion in the future : The Blind are not forgotten : in several Languages editions have been published : here also there is a diversity of systems, and the problem is not a simple one. The Committee is not tied down to any rendering of a word, or sentence, on Ecclesiastical grounds : its hands are free, and it accepts that rendering, which philologically seems the right one, placing, if necessary, an alternative reading in the margin. It strives by the use of neutral terms, such as Baptism, Priest, &c., to place a true text in the hands of the reader, leaving it to the Pastor, or Missionary, to expound the meanings. This is the method most consistent with its Catholic constitution, and the ( 124 ) most prudent : any divergence from this practice for the purpose of pleasing particular denominations, will lead to disagreeable consequences. The rendering of the name of the First Person of the Trinity is a difficulty in China, and of the Second Person in India, while the mode of rendering the name of the Covenant- Jehovah, the tetragrammata, has caused heart-burnings in Persia : A desire to meet all legitimate wishes, truthfulness, and sanctified common-sense, have hitherto carried the Committee through all its difficulties. Free distribution is neither practised nor desired : there are auxiliary associations, or enthusiastic individuals with more benevolence than sound judgment, who undertake this. All copies are sold below cost price, often at many hundred miles from the place of publication, and yet the proceed of sales reaches one hundred thousands pounds, which gives an idea of the vastness of the operations. In passing from a Missionary Society-Committee into the assembly of the Committee of a Bible-Society, it is felt at once, how much freer the air is ; it is like the peak of an Alpine height, above the clouds of controversy, the darkening of the councils and deliberation of Churches, and the contest about externals : we feel, as if we were Bible-Christians of the first Century of the Christian Era : we knew nothing about Creeds, and fold up the word "Church" in a sealed envelope: the "Word of God" occupied its place. There remains much work still to be done : the end of the twentieth century may not see it completed. i ( 125 ) A. A careful revision should be made of all translations, which have not the confirmation of a Revision-Committee, or the general acceptance of a community able to form an opinion. B. Where only some, not all, the books of the Bible have been translated, it will be a question of judgment for the Committee, whether the Language is likely to live, and how far further additions are required : it is not every Language, which need be honoured by the whole Bible, C. There are still Millions of Non-Christians unprovided, cither from want of translation, or deficiency of Distribution-agency. D. Christian communities are coming into existence in every part of the world, some weak, poor, and low in culture : some rough, forgetful of their Christian training, and lapsing into infidelity : both these classes require unceasing care. E. Where Missionaries have been expelled, or refused entry, the agents of the Bible-Society should proportionally be more energetic. I now quote the words of our President, the Earl of Harrowby : " But when I look at what we have done, and at the great " openings we have now, and at all the experience we have " gained, and at the hopes we have had, and the triumphs of the " Bible in the past, I cannot but look back on those fathers of " the Protestant Churches in our land, who in simple faith some " ninety years ago started this great Bible-Societ}-. It had then " no facts to go upon, only Faith. They did not know, whether " the Bible would be accepted by the populations of the world ; " they did not know, that openings would result, and that the ( 126 ) " Bible would approve itself as suited to every colour and tribe " on the broad surface of the globe. They had nothing but pure " P^aith in God's promise. But the}' laid the foundations of this " Society simply and broadly ; one great principle being, that " they and their friends would circulate the Scriptures without " comment. They went on that broad principle, on which we have " gone ever since, and on which we mean to go unfalteringly " to the end. They adopted wise arrangements as to the rules, " that should guide our Society. No Society has changed " less. Fifty years have seen no change in regard to the " rules for the distribution of the Sacred Book. We have " rested on the wisdom of the patriarchs of the Christian Church, " who founded the Society, and every year has proved to us " more and more their wisdom and righteous judgment. We have " followed them close!}', and decline to be led aside from their " simple line of Faith ; and, follo\\-ing in their footsteps, we hope, " by God's blessing, for still greater triumphs for the Sacred " Book to attend our course, and to hand on this sacred work " in permanence and joy to those, who shall come after us. The " enormous work of the Society is conducted b}' a Committee " planned with the greatest wisdom. Fifteen members representing " the Church of England, fifteen members representing the other '' Christian Protestant Churches, and six foreigners resident in " London compose our permanent ministry. They are aided by " two clerical secretaries, one representing the Nonconforming " Churches, the other the Church of England ; and six members, " those who have attended the least, go out in rotation every ( 127 ) " }'ear, so that fresh blood is coming in constant!}-. You have " this great Society managed entirely by lay influence with the " ardent support of the various Christian Churches. I attribute " to the character of the organization, which is very little known " in the country, a great deal of the continued blessing, which " God has poured upon the Society, and I thank Him for the " wisdom of our forefathers, who laid the foundations so well." An all-round friend of ^Missions was asked, what his feelings were to his ^Missionary Society, and his Bible-Society respectively : His reply was, that he loved the former as his wife, and was read}' to make sacrifices for it ; but he loved and revered the latter as his mother, to whom he owed his ver}- existence. The onl}- avowed antagonist of the work of Bible-distribution is the Church of Rome, and the reason is obvious : During the Middle Ages the Bible was not studied, and the practices of that Church insensibly deviated from the principles of the Bible, and when in the time of Erasmus, and subsequently, the Priests became aware of it, they tried to keep the knowledge of the Bible from the laity, and restrict it to the Latin Language : the Jew may have had a plausible reason for keeping his Old Testament in the original Hebrew : the Christians of the early Greek Church ma}' have desired, though unwisely, to keep his New Testament in the original Greek ; but the claim of the Church of Rome to keep it in Latin was ridiculous, and obviousl}' with evil intentions. We cannot follow their line of reasoning : they admit, that Prayer may be offered in the Vernacular : why not the Lord's Prayer ? At one time there was a tendency to restrict W^au ( 1^8 ) Prayer to Latin also, but in the Council of Frankfurt, A.D. 792, a Canon was passed, directed against the idea, that God can only be addressed in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. Others there may be, who are not altogether friendly, who find some of our methods objectionable, or the constitution of the Society faulty : some again fail to see in the Bible that great supreme Power, that exclusive greatness, which renders it fit for world-wide distribution : to these last we can only say " Look to the end." I wish to say nothing hard against either. To illustrate what I said a little while ago of the Church of Rome preventing the Bible from being read, I may tell you that last year quite in the South of Italy, at Catanzaro, there was an auto-da-fc' in the street, not a burning of men and women : thank God, the laws of Italy do not permit that : but on it there were Bibles, Xew Testaments, and Portions, which you had sent there, which the colporteurs had sold, and which the priest was burning to the glor}- of God, according to his ignorance. The colporteur was a man of more than common courage and intelligence, and he went to the priest and said, " Sir, you have been committing a double sin : you have been " taking these books from the poor people, who have bought " them, and you have robbed them : and, secondly, you have " been committing a sin by burning the Word of God." The priest was not a stupid man, and he said, " You are a pretty " fellow to come to teach me my duty. I am pastor of this " flock. Your books are poison-books, and it is my duty, as " the shepherd of my flock, to prevent them from having them." ( 129 ) Then there ensued a discussion, of course with no result. The colporteur, struck with an idea, said to the priest, " Here is a book. I am going to give it to you upon your promise to read it before you burn it." So he promised. The book given was the Compendium of Controversy. It simply passes, en revue, the various doctrines of the Church of Rome, without a word of comment, but with verses of the Bible underneath them. The priest was struck with that, and he wrote to Florence to get a Bible : the same, that he had burned, he had to pay for. He was convinced ; and, the Spirit of the Lord working on him, he wanted more instruction, like the eunuch of Ethiopia, and he wrote to the depot-keeper at Florence, asking the name of a minister. The instruction was given, and he threw off his priestly garb, came to him, and said, " Here I am, sir," telling his story. The minister said, to put him to the test, " I cannot maintain " you ; what can you do to work ? " The poor fellow, like many others, knew no work but to say his Mass. Then the other said, " Here are copies of the New Testament, and " portions ; go out and sell them to make your living." The priest accepted this, and he is now in Naples, selling the very books, which he had burned. At a late meeting at Kensington, Dr. Maclagan, the Arch- bishop of York, not entirely a friend of the Evangelical movement, insisted most forcibly on the need of realizing the slow and gradual steps, by which the providence of God has brought us to this great result. The early Church waited, and was content to wait, a century and a half for its Bible. They had the 9 ( 130 ) " patience " to endure persecution with but little of " the comfort " of the Scriptures," which brings " hope." Up to, and after, the Reformation, the possession of a Bible was a comparatively rare thing ; even the present century had known thousands without the power to read the Book, when they possessed it. Now most people have one on their shelves ; but it ought not to stay there, it ought to be constantly at hand, it ought to be constantly brought before the people ; we might even do well to revive the custom of having it read, as the old chained Bibles were, at all hours, in our churches. We have, indeed, a double responsibility in this matter : we must make a right use of our own Bibles^ not making the Word of God a kind of fetish, but giving it a constant, reverent study ; and then we are bound to send it far and wide, as this Society helps us to do, to the tropics, to the Arctic regions ; we are bound to give the missionary his weapon. "It is a blessed work," the Arch- bishop concluded, " in which we can all unite ; I trust this " Meeting will stir all our hearts, that we may do more for it " than we ever did before." Another interesting consideration is, that, though the Missionaries of different Protestant denominations differ in many particulars of practice, yet they all agree in this fact, that their only true sword is the " Word of God " : they do not always put the same inter- pretation on particular passages, but they agree in this, that the Bible is the Message of God's love to His creatures, made known to them through Christ, and that it is the only sure and certain instrument of conversion of the Soul of Man. And, "^'**^' ( 131 ) when they give to the races of mankind the precious gift, by a kind of necessity they convey with it to a great majority another gift, less intrinsically precious, indeed, but still, one of infinite value, the power to read, and thus lay the foundation of an indigenous literature. Someone has said boldh', that, if anyone removed from the shelves of the British INIuscum all the books, which have been written against the Bible, or in defence of the Bible, or in illustration of the Bible, many words of European Languages would cease to have a meaning, or to be represented in printed works, or Manuscripts, for we scarcely realize how closely entwined with the literature of modern Europe, with the treasur}' of modern thought, and the inmost musings of the consciousness of each one of us, is that wonderful Book : it may be urged, that a secular book, which had attained a world- wide circulation, would have done the same, but has any secular book attained, and maintained, and is prepared to prolong, such an influence ? Among the smaller circles of classical scholars, Horace, Virgil, Homer, and Plato, may occupy an unassailable position, and to a wider educated circle the same may be said of the great Masters of Poetry and Prose, but the Bible knows no limitation of class, or grade of civilisation, or environment of ideas, or prejudices of nationality : it was meant for ]\Ian in his totality ; in his wondrous power of taking Heaven, as it were, by storm, through the strength of his intellect ; in the depth of his degradation, when he is only removed from the brute beast around him by the actual power of emitting articulate sound, and the possible power of accumulating knowledge, and handing it on ( 132 ) to the next generation. I repeat again, that I reverence and thank God for the books of the Hindu, and Zoroaster, Kong-Fu- Tszc, Buddha, and the Great Philosophers, but I fail to see, that they have left such a mark on the tv/iole world, with such advantage to the ivhole world, and with such a certainty of lasting by their own innate vigour to the end of Time, as the one Book, the diffusion of which I am now recommending. JS3C ADDRESS No. VIII. " The Limitations imposed by the Rules of the Bible " Society on the Circulation of the Reports and " Periodicals." " Within this nvvful vohime lies The mystery of mysteries. Happiest they of mortal race, To whom God hath granted grace To read, to fear, to hope, to pray, To lift the latch and force the way. But better had they ne'er been born. Who read to doubt, or read to scorn." It is obvious, that in an Association consisting of elements so variant, and even discordant, organic rules had to be laid down to exclude possible divergence of opinions, and the wisdom of these rules is evidenced by the unbroken cordiality, and mutual love, that has prevailed. The Committee wishes to be all things to all men (only in the Lord), so long as the text is not tampered with, and the translation is philologically accurate : it circulates portions with certain reservations, and the New Testament, but declines to circulate the Old Testament without ( 134 ) the New, deeming the latter the completion, and fulfilment, and interpreter, of the former. In English none but the Authorized Version is circulated : Some would wish the Revised Version to be supplied : under the organic Rules this cannot be, nor is it wise to attempt it. Translations must be made from the originals, Hebrew or Greek, and this excludes versions made from the Greek Septuagint, or Latin Vulgate, except under peculiar circumstances. No Note or Commentary is permitted : this might lead on to theological and denominational difficulties, and in fact such have arisen. Page-headings, Chapter-headings, conventional division into Chapters and Verses ; marginal alternative readings, philo- logical, not theological ; marginal references to the text of the Inspired Scriptures, not to the Apocrypha : all these are details, which can be inserted, or not, as seems suitable. The Apocryphal Books are not circulated : great discussion has taken place on this subject in past years, and the matter has been finally settled : this rule creates a dif^culty in our relations with the Continental Churches, who appear to place the Apocryphal Books on a level with the Canon of the Old and New Testament, but it cannot be helped : no grants of money can be made to a Continental Bible Society, which circulates the Apocrypha : this seems to be stretching the Rule very far. On the whole, however, I think that it is right to do so, as really the Canons of the Old and New Testament present a bulk of material calculated to try our utmost strength to provide, and sufficient for the work of Salvation to the readers. ( 135 ) The /\nnual Report is exceedingly interesting : Gcograph}', Political Ilistor}-, Ethnology, Philology, four great Sciences, sub- serve to the objects of the Bible-Society : The Arts of Printing, Paper-Man ufactor}', the resources of Commerce, and Steam- Navigation, are all called upon to contribute to the one great object. ]\Iaps, and Statistical Tables, vary the monotony of the written Report, and a strong human interest pervades the whole : to me it has all the varied and stirring interest of a three-volumed Romance, with the advantage of being true : this may perhaps be partly owing to my long study of the four great Sciences enumerated, but also to my sympathetic love to the human race in its entirety. " The proper study of mankind " is man," and where, and how, can it be better studied than in marking the manner, in which each section of the human race receives the proffered gift of Salvation, and how far it profits by it ? The story is told of the world's history in relation to the Bible in a straightforward, manly way, not in the sickly, namby-pamby, sensational style of some Missionary Societies, who introduce the Divine Name into every page, and tell us more about the workers, and their wives, and families, and their marriages, and the birth of their children, than of the work itself These Reports tell us, that, just as in domestic life, so in the life of the Society, there arc the instructive alternations of light and shade, of success and failure, of advance and retrogression : doors opening and being shut : welcomes offered and outbursts of opposition : for after all we arc all brothers : the same poor, weak, human creatures : the butterflies of the ( 136 ) day : not knowing what is for our welfare, or our loss. The Periodicals of the Society maintain the interest from month to month, and are calculated to instruct both the young, and the old. Are we satisfied, and sitting with folded hands ? Certainly not : like Alexander, we are panting for new victories, and spying out new regions to invade : Besides, we are for ever refashioning our weapons, and devising new methods : There never was an Association, which had less of the claptrap of Sensationalism : our work is very patent to the eye : we do not attempt to build up churches : we supply books : we are brick- makers rather than masons, but a good brick is a very important thing. We live in this century in a condition liable to change : we have to deal with a great variety of customers, and we must adajDt ourselves to our ever-changing environment : We must keep close to our principles, continue to turn out the very best material, but be prepared for modification of methods. Our earnest desire is to meet the lawful requirements of all, and by any means to save souls : although, therefore, we lay down the rule of only circulating translations made from the Hebrew and Greek, we do not hesitate under certain circum- stances to circulate translations from Jerome's Latin Vulgate in certain Languages, when we are satisfied, that we shall find sales, in certain quarters, of those versions, to certain mistaken people, who would purchase no other. It is sheer nonsense to condemn the Vulgate, which converted Luther and Calvin. There is nothing in these translations, which would keep a Soul from ( 137 ) God, nor is it true to sa\', that the Romish Church tampered for their own views with the text of the Vulgate, or deliberately made false translations into the five Vernaculars of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German : if anyone says so, let him point them out : the error of the Romish Church is the misapplication of texts, and false interpretations of texts, and the withholding ot the Book from the Laity : The time will come, when these versions will cease to be demanded, and drop out of circulation. The English Douay Bible never was circulated, as being contrary to the Rule, which restricts the Societ}' to the authorized English Version. A very suggestive illustration of the comparative circulation of the Scriptures among Protestants and Roman Catholics, is furnished by the literary histor}' of the Hungarian Bible. The Reformed Church of Hungary received its first complete edition from Karoli, the T}-ndale of his native land, in 1590. The rival Jesuit version, that of Kaldi, did not appear till 1626. Since then the Reformed book has, up to 1874, gone through some 71 editions; up to that date, of the Jesuit version only three have been required. The Magj-ar-speaking Protestant population of Hungary is about half that of the Catholic. If the circulation of Scriptures among the latter had been but equal in proportion to that among the former, the Jesuit Bible, taking as basis of calculation the number of editions, would in 1874 have been, not in its third or fourth, but in its 146th issue. As things stand, the circulation among the Reformed seems about forty-nine times greater than among the Romanists. It should be added that. ( 138 ) while the Protestant editions are mostly in handy volumes, the others are all large and voluminous : certainly not intended, as they would be quite unsuitable, for popular use. If we had a tabula rasa, and no predilections and prejudices to contend against, expediency would suggest, that the translations should be issued free from the bondage of Chapters and Verses, page-headings, chapter-headings, marginal notes or references : how sweet the pages appear of Lasserre's French Gospels in modern flowing French, printed like other literature ! Why should we add to the prejudice against Bible-reading, by publishing the Book under different conditions to other religious hterature ? I feel instinctively, that we are approaching a new departure. In China there is a distinct crusade against the Rule forbidding Notes and Comments : In Australia a Bishop has resigned con- nection with the Society, because we refuse to circulate the Revised Version : if we did, probably other Bishops would resign, because we did so. Another crusade is carried on by the advocates of so-called pure translations, as if the Vulgate, and its descendants, were impure ? I mentioned above, that Trans- lations circulated by the Society, must be from the original Hebrew and Greek : an attempt has lately been made to use Translations made from the Septuagint : there are two aspects of this subject : if the Russian speaking population will accept a Pentateuch translated from the Septuagint, and will accept no other, there seems nothing wrong in extending to it, under protest, the same license as is allowed to the Vulgate Trans- lations of the New Testament in certain European Languages, ( 139 ) But if it is asserted, that the Septuagint was translated 250 B.C., from Hebrew MSS., superior to those, of which copies have come down to our time, and that the uninspired Greek Translation of the Old Testament is to rank with the inspired Hebrew Text of the Old Testament, and the inspired Greek Text of the Xew Testament, there is nothing for it but to oppose this view to the uttermost, as it cuts to the bottom of all previous practices of the Society, and is manifestly "per se" wrong. Another crusade has commenced against such neutral terms as " Baptism," and such new expressions as " John, the Dipper " may soon appear in foreign versions, alienating those, who sprinkle, but do not immerse. In some French versions, the neutral term " Priest " is rendered " Sacrifateur " : some Christian hearts may be pained by reading of Christ as the " Grand Sacrifateur " : hitherto the Bible-Society has stri\-en to occupy a central position, and avoid stupid conservatism, as well as dangerous liberalism, " in medio " tutissima." Then come doubts from good people at home, about the necessity of Notes and Commentaries : I extract from " Church Work," 1890 : " But what one cannot help seeing is, that " ' the Bible without Note and Comment,' that substitute for " religious instruction, which was to satisfy every scruple, holds " a very perilous position. On the one hand, it is not likely " in and by itself, to develop the fear and love of God in the " minds of children : and that, we are bound to believe, is the " object of all instruction, that is termed religious ; and, on " the other hand, it cannot find favour in the eyes of those, who ( HO ) " regard the Bible as an historical record of the same character " as the annals of any nation would be. The thorough Secularist " may take Professor Huxley's view, and object to having his " child's notions of physical science perverted by means of the " Bible used as a reading book ; and the Churchman, with " equal consistency, may say, that he wants his child to be " taught out of Holy Scripture what Holy Scripture is designed " to teach, but which the child cannot ahva}'s get out of the " mere words. Perhaps the end of the controversy may be, that " the New Testament alone will be used, and thus children will " grow up with no knowledge of the progressive nature of the " Divine Revelation." Then we come to another objection, brought forward by Professor Driver : Some of his " Sermons on Subjects connected with the Old Testament," breathe an admirable spirit, and manifest a deep appreciation of the moral and spiritual elements, which he recognizes as pervading all the Scripture. He objects to our calling the Bible absolutely " the Word of God " ; but he is quite willing to call it " //-^ ITord of God mediated by JiunicDi " iiistrunientality" which is probably the sense, in which most persons would use the phrase in the present day. ^232^ ADDRESS No. IX. " On the Foreign Field, Auxiliaries, Agencies, Depots, " Colporteurs, Carriages, Bible-Women." «' Ves, verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the end of the world."— Romans x., i8. " Are they not all ministering Spirits, sent forth to minister to them, who shall he heirs of Salvation ? "—Hebrews i., 14. " God does not need Either man's work, or His own gifts : His state Is kingly : thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; They also serve, who only stand and wait." Jili/f on. —Sonnet in his blindness. I HAVE been for many years constantly on the move in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and have had special oppor- tunities of visiting the different Agencies. In one year I have traversed Lapland as far as the North Cape, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and North Russia : in another. South Russia, Trans- Caucasia as far as the Caspian Sea, Armenia, Asia Minor, Syria, and Turkey : in a third or fourth, Egypt to the Cataracts, Tunis, ■H ( 142 ) Algeria as far back as the Sahara, Morocco, the whole length of the once Christian, and now decivilized. North Africa : Each country in Europe, each great city, has been repeatedly visited, the depots inspected, the organisation considered, and the Languages classified. Now that is all over, I am glad that I was permitted to do it. Reading, and brain-picking of all capable of giving informa- tion, whether for Asia, Oceania, Africa, or America, has supplied the rest : I feel the blessing of all that my gifts and opportuni- ties permitted. I never returned home without a feeling of joy and gratitude, not unmixed with wonder at the sights, which I had seen. My training and experience in India has led me to appreciate realities : the conquering of an antagonist, the subduing of a rebel Chief, the restoration to order after a rebellion, and the good order of a District, and so on : and the amiable con- ventional, sensational, and highly-seasoned, expressions in some Reports did not satisfy me : but there is something very real, very tangible, in the work of the Bible-Society : if mistakes are made (and they are made) they cannot be concealed : if there is order, business, progress, and results, they are unmistakable, when you are in the country, and face to face with the Agents. A lady, in sending from abroad a voucher, that she will raise her own subscription to the Society from £2 to £^, and that her fellow-traveller will raise hers from five guineas to ten, adds : " The more I travel, the more I see what a blessed work the " Bible Society docs, and the more I long and pray for its " extension." Our Field is the World : I should m\'sclf like to divide it with --.^r^jfT ( 143 ) the two Sister-Socictics, so as to prevent overlapping, and in the Jubilee-year, when the Secretaries of both the National Society of Scotland, and the American Bible-Society, were present at the Bible-House, I proposed it, but there were difficulties, and the matter stands over : it certainly will come to pass in the next generation, as it is so obviously economic, that it should be so. So far as regards the Home-Field v/ithin England, my own idea is, that the distribution to the General Public by way of selling, might well be entrusted to the Booksellers' Trade, and indeed all copies in expensive bindings, all copies of the Revised Version, all copies with Notes and Commentaries, all copies of the Douay Version, can only be obtained from sources other than the Depots of the Bible-Societ}'. I am bound to say, that our experienced District-Secretaries do not agree with me. There remains the supply of copies to the numerous Institutions, public and private,- at reduced rates, Schools, Hospitals, Chapels, Sailors' Homes, and a long list of Associations. We have a great number of auxiliary helpers. Beyond England the most advanced Agency is that of Auxiliary Committees, and this is the most desirable form, where it can be managed, as in British India, Australia, Canada, South Africa : the time may come, when the British Colonies will assume independence in this, as in other matters, and this is as it ought to be. So also in Protestant Countries in Europe : it is not right, that a British Societ)' should intrude : the way has been shewn. — ' '^ ( 144 ) the machinery started, the desire felt, and such countries as Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and North Germany, should be left to themselves : and this policy is being gradually worked out : The Foreign Societies, which exist on the Continent, cannot in any sense as }'et be called Missionary Societies, as in some there is a Ruling, that only German translations are to be issued, and in others, that no copy be sold to a Roman Catholic : they perform the laudable work of Bible-Clubs, to supply copies of the Scriptures to Protestants : this is a different thing from the object of the three great Missionary Bible-Societies of London, Edinborough, and New York : but, as time goes on, the good German nation will grasp the idea, and carry it out. In countries, where an Auxiliary Society is not possible, there are Agents paid by the British and Foreign Bible-Society : ten in Europe : France, Belgium, Germany with Switzerland, Austria with Roumania, Italy, Spain, Portugal, North Russia, South Russia, and Turkc}' with Greece. In Africa there are three : Algeria and Tunisia, Egypt and Palestine in Asia, and Morocco. In Asia there are five : Persia, Burma, Singapur, China, Japan : in America three : West India Islands, Brazil, and the Argentine Republic. I have the pleasure of the acquaintance of all the Agents in Europe and Africa, having visited them, some repeatedly, in their fields : it is one thing to see and hear them during a short interview in the Committee-Room, and another to witness their work, hold sweet converse with them, pump them dry with questions, and mark their characters, and mode of doing business ( 145 ) in their offices, and in their Fields. The}- are a most remarkable body of men, and I write this as one, who has been ruling Districts, and commanding men, holding much higher office than their's, for a quarter of a Century. They differ as enormously from each other in character, and antecedents, as their Regions, and the population occup}-ing their Regions, differ, but, though I have a practised eye as an Inspector of work going on, and a very fearless habit of expressing my opinion, I have always felt a deep satisfaction at the reality of the work, and the ability, the intelligence, and the devotion, of the Agents. I have had long and intimate conversations with all, and have to be grateful for much information imparted by them, which I could have obtained nowhere else, and towards all I cherish feelings of respect, sympathy, and to some of love. Now I could not say as much for all the ^Missionaries, whose work I have during the last fifty years inspected : in many cases neither the men, nor the work, were satisfactory. I do not say that I always regarded subjects eye to eye with the Agents of the Bible-Society : unless, as in some cases, they had had charge of more than one Agency, their views and possibilities were limited to their own environ- ment, and this made their minds narrow, and sometimes angular : as a rule a long residence in one office is not desirable, and yet on the other hand the singularly accurate knowledge, possessed by some of them, was the result of long and repeated tours, and a familiarity with the people quite unique of its kind for the purposes of the Society. I have been favoured by corres- pondence with many long after we had parted, and I shall ever 10 ( 146 ) treasure the memory of this admirable body of men, and the Committee deserves credit for their sound judgment in the selection. Under the Agents at the chief towns are Depots, presided over b}' an official : the inspection of these Depots is exceedingly interesting, and so are conversations with the Depositary in out-of-the-way places, like Kief, Warsaw, Breslau, Prague : they are not travelled men, nor learned men, but of great simplicity of character : I remember on one occasion, that the Depositary on parting with me stood on tip-toe, and kissed me on the cheek, which I greatly appreciated, as indicating, that I had by my remarks and bearing towards him and his work, drawn to myself his sympathy : it is only by inspecting Depots, and extracting the explanation of the Depositary, that I was able to get at facts with regard to some versions, which had been incorrectly named in our catalogues, and arrive at a clear nomen- clature for m}' lists of effective Bible-Translations : generalities never satisfied me : I hunted evey hare down till I caught it. I pass now to the Colporteurs : my only objection is to their name : they arc in reality book-hawkers, such being the meaning of the French word : thc}- are the last link in the chain, which attaches the Societ}- to thc populations, whom it supplies with Scriptures : we see such men going about the villages of our own country selling laces, and buttons, and other female gear : they are but the unsanctified t}-pc of one of the most remark- able Agencies, which the requirements of the Bible-Society have called into existence. I have come in contact with them, and ^„^SA^j^x^mBSBS^^Sa^ ( 147 ) talked to them everywhere in the Regions above alluded to : they are not wise, or educated, they do not labour for hope of gain, they are not gifted to be preachers, nor would they be allowed to use the gift, if the}' had it : they are brave men, and consecrated men : in many districts the}- know, that insult and abuse, and ill-usage and imprisonment, awaits them, but they care for none of such things : If the Bible-Society had done nothing else, it would be deserving of praise for the develop- ment of so much unknown faith and heroic fortitude, such singular God-given talents, such noble instances of devotion : it penetrates, where no ^Missionary Society can get an entry, it is ac- ceptable in places, where they are not : when I looked at them, and considered the extraordinary variety of their appearance, the difference of the Language, which they spoke, the difference of their antecedents, my wonder was, how this small army would have supported itself, if the Bible-Society had not come into existence : and my conviction was, that their very existence showed, that there must be a special blessing attending our work for the real welfare of God's people. Their business is to supply themselves from the Depot with copies of all sorts suitable to the requirements of their arrondissement, to carry them in a sack upon their backs, and to trudge from town to town, and village to village, offering them for sale : while on the one hand they are forbidden to hold religious meetings, and preach, on the other hand they are not to be dumb dogs : they are to exhibit their wares to those, who converse with them, and to the women at the door of their homes, and in the place where ( 148 ) they lodge ; they are to explain their contents, and read portions, if they can secure hearers : Sometimes they are received joyfully : years ago even the Roman Catholic Priests used to welcome them, and purchase : but an open antagonism to the Bible-Society is now the policy of the Vatican : in countries like F'rance, which arc educated and civilised, no real opposition is offered ; but in Austria, where the peasantry is in deep ignorance, the Priest opposes the Colporteurs in every way, following his steps, so as to get hold of the copies sold, and tearing them up, calling them " accursed books " : Sometimes are found even among the Priests, those, whose hearts are touched by the Word of God. One Colporteur reported, that going to an inn one day to get some dinner, he had a New Testament before him, and when the waiting-maid came he said to her, " You were going " to buy a book the other day ; will }-ou do so now " ? to which she replied, " I should not be a Christian, if I bought that " cursed book." The proprietor then came in, and told the man to be off, saying he ought to be ashamed of himself for driving such a scandalous trade, upsetting the whole country. In face of such opposition, all he could do was to pray, " Father, forgive them, they know not what they do " : this seems scarce!}- credible, but there is no doubt of the fact, and we can only humbly ponder what excuse in the day of Judgment the Priests, the ordained servants of Christ, will make in reply to the charge : for the Language, in which the Books are written, is their own, and the matter contained in the book is but a translation of the contents of their own Latin breviary : it is too K^HS^HiBBBIKaE ( 149 ) late in the day for educated men to pretend, that the translations are otherwise than accurate of the Greek and Hebrew originals, and in many cases they are accurate translations of the Latin Vulgate : Our Lord's command was clear, that, even if they were in very deed tares sown by the enemy, they should be left alone till the harvest. I have visited some of these Colporteurs in their humble homes : I remember at Constantine, in Algeria, entering the room, where one Colporteur, a discharged soldier, lived : the furniture consisted of a bed, table, and a book-case, full of his Bibles, and he remarked, that it was all that he required, as he got his meals at a restaurant : in conversation with them they evidenced a fire, and zeal, in their work, such as is not ordinarily evinced in secular work : their salaries were not large : they had to render accounts of books sold, and cases of dishonesty, and gross misconduct, were rare : On one occasion I had reached, in my tour, Baku, on the Caspian Sea, and I went on board a ship in the harbour, and felt rather proud of getting to this inland Sea : while I was there, a ship came across from the opposite side, and on board was a Colporteur, who, with Bibles on his back, and his life in his hands, had penetrated into Transcaspia, and across the Oxiis, and had sold all his stock to people, who had never seen a Bible before. I have been all my life a great traveller, and feel quite at home with races differing in Language, creed, and dress, but I have never been able to get beyond the range of the British and Foreign Bible-Society, though I have often been beyond the protection ( 150 ) of the British flag. We come to a knowledge of the extreme ignorance of the people, from little anecdotes jotted down in their diaries : A Colporteur, on getting out of a train, was asked by the Police what were the contents of his sack : he opened it, and said "Bibles": the Policeman took off his hat, and saluted it, and remarked, that he had never seen one before, and he purchased a cop}-. A village-woman, when shown a copy of the New Testament, made a similar remark, adding that she had heard of the existence of the book from her mother, who had once seen one. In some parts of Austria the Colporteur can only show copies, and not sell them : he can take orders, and then the copy is sent by the Post : it is understood, that this vexatious regulation is not to check Bible-distribution, but against the sale of seditious Secular literature, of which the State is more afraid than of the Bible. In Russia, the Colporteur is v.-elcome, and the Commander of garrisons admits him into the fortress, that he may sell to the soldiers, remarking that a good Christian makes a good soldier : At Port Saiyad the Colporteur visits every ship, and effects large sales in many different Languages. Fifty years ago, English travellers on visiting Italy, had to declare at the Custom-House, whether they had copies of the Scriptures, and the agent of the Bible-Society, living at Leghorn, a free port, had to smuggle copies on the person of himself and his wife, so as to get them into Florence : With Constitutional Freedom came liberty to circulate the Word of God, and in all the large towns of Italy there are Bible-Uepots : at Rome actually under the shadow of the College of the '"^*^ J ^ ( 151 ) Propaganda : and Colporteurs have the free exercise of their vocation : I remember how, in one of my frequent visits to Rome, the Colporteur spied me out, and rcmarkiui;' from my cast of countenance, that I loved the Bible, came across the street to offer me the pick of his wares. France is mapped out into Colporteur-arrondissements to an extent, which would wound the susceptibility of a Frenchman, if he realized it. The Pope has divided British India into Papal Dioceses : they are no more visible, or appreciable, to the British Government, than are the great astronomical circles of Latitude and Longitude : so also, great French Provinces are grouped, so as to suit the migratory powers of a Protestant Colporteur, and the President of the Republic is not conscious of it. In Russia the Govern- ment is friendly, and all ranks are glad to purchase, and assist the sale, but there exist troubles about the particular versions to be circulated. In Turkey, as a rule, there is freedom, but sometimes the work suffers from the stupidity, rather than the hostilit}', of the Rulers. The distribution to the Pilgrims, who flock to Jerusalem at the time of Easter, is one of great interest, and is practically unchecked. But there is one other Agency of the Bible-Society, still more interesting, that blessed combination of syllables and letters, the Bible-Women : I look back with gratitude to the happy fact, that the Holy Spirit put it into my heart to propose this measure some years ago in the Committee, and that it was accepted. The measure is restricted to those countries, where by antient custom women are secluded from social intercourse •^S2 ( 152 ) with men, and very much kept to their homes : it follows, that women present the only agency possible for communicating a knowledge of the Book of Life to the wives and sisters of the present, and the mothers of the coming, generation. It is part of the scheme to work through IMissionary Societies of all denominations, making them annual grants for the maintenance of a certain number of Bible-Women. It might have been anticipated, that suitable women would not have been available, but the Lord provides : a great blessing has attended this movement, and a large sum is spent, and well-spent, annually in this branch of the Service : I myself, at Beirut, in Syria, had the opportunity of meeting three Bible-Women in the house of a friend, and I heard from their own lips the story of their work : one worked among the Jews, the second among the Mahometans, and the third among the members of the Christian Asiatic Churches ; widows they were, and widows indeed, whom the Lord had singled out for a Service of peculiar blessing to their own Souls : Energy of character, and devotion, were developed by the circumstances and opportunities of each : I was in the Depot at IMoscow, when a woman came in with an empty bag, and proceeded to fill it with books from the counter ; I watched her with surprise, and found, that she was the childless widow of a colporteur : from love to the cause, and love to his memory, she continued the Service, with the details of which she was familiar : I laid my hands on her shoulder, as she was leaving the Depot, with the words, " The Lord will bless " you. Sister " : the class of Agents, to which she belongs, is ( 153 ) called " Hawkers," for they are daily entrusted with a certain amount of books, and receive a percentage on actual sales : the name of this handmaiden of the Lord appears in the lists, given in the Annual Report of the Society for 1892, page 384 : IMaria Andreavna. May there be many like her ! " Women who " laboured much in the Lord." Sometimes a wheeled conveyance is fitted up to accompany a Colporteur, who requires a larger supply than he can carry on his person for a more extended trip. In some Asiatic countries there are European Colporteurs. Sometimes arrange- ments are made with ]\Iissionaries to conduct themselves the operation : the difficulty in such cases is the rendition of accounts, as is required by sound economy, and healthy order of human affairs. The Missionary has very little leisure. We have to reflect, that all the labour of translation, printing, and conveying to different Sea-ports, would be thrown away, if there was not an efficient machinery in each Region to conduct the distribution : I remember the sentimental cry some years back of a " Million of Bibles for the Chinese " : the cases were sent round the Cape, and arrived at a Treaty- Port : had any care been taken to select the particular version in the Language of the place ? Was there any machinery for distribution ? All these things are well thought out now. There are few branches of Christian work more interesting than the Scripture-distribution, which Dr. Baedeker has been able to effect in the prisons of Siberia. With the ready per- mission of the authorities, and the equally ready support of the ( 154 ) Biblc-Societ}-, he has distributed the Bible, whole or part, in some thirty languages. " If anyone wants to know what sin is," Dr. Baedeker recently said at a Bible -Society meeting, "let " him go to Siberia. The sickness, degradation, and absence of " all moral standard is something beyond description." But the prisoners received the Word of God with great joy, and with excellent policy the Government allowed Dr. Baedeker to visit every prison in Siberia, and to give a copy of the New Testament to every prisoner who could read. " There is no " reason," Dr. Baedeker says, " why Siberia should not be as " good a country as Canada ; and it is a fact full of significance " that there is no people better affected to the Bible than are " the Russians generally." " They hug it," Dr, Baedeker says, " to their heart." The Committee, with its Sub-Committees, manages an Empire larger than that of any earthly Sovereign, on which the sun never sets, and in which Prayer never ceases. Letters come in from the North and the South, the East and the West : the names of great cities far off are as familiar household-words : Languages are spoken of with familiarity, and as the ordinary work of the day, of which no one in Europe, outside the walls of the Bible-Society, or some particular Missionary Society, knows even the names, except a few German Scholars in their quiet studies : it is an Empire, that will last for ever, that will outlive Churches and Kingdoms, that does not rest on the wisdom, or strength of Men, for it is from the Lord. And with regard to the Society it may be humbly said, " By iB ( 155 ) " its works }-c .shall know it." It is a great blessing to be always giving, and asking no return : the Word of God is indeed freely given, but its human surroundings, the paper, the printing, the cost of translation, the cost of distribution, must be partially paid for. In after ages, if the world falls into a slumber again of a thousand years, and then wakes up to new life, it will be a wonder to future generations, that such a girdle should have been thrown round the world, such a casting net thrown into the ocean, such a scattering of pearls, and precious stones. The Roman Catholic Monks and Nuns fondly imagine, that by creeping into Hospitals, and surrepti- tiously baptizing dying children, they people heaven with Angels. May we not humbly think, and humbly hope, that the Holy Spirit has made use of some of the leaves cast broadcast, like the leaves of a great forest in Autumn, for the saving of souls, that the labour has not been all in vain for those, to whom the Scriptures have been sent : of the blessing to those employed in the duty no one can doubt : a duty performed, a command obeyed, an act of benevolence thought out, and carried into execution. In every Conference of Missionaries, whether it be held in the Metropolis of London at the Monthly Social Gatherings, or in the Decennial Conferences in every part of the world, where earnest men gather together to take stock of the work done, and to cry out : " Watchman ! what of the night ! is the dawn " yet breaking ? " one figure is always welcomed, if present, or missed, and looked for, if absent : the Agent to the Bible- ( 156 ) Society, the emergency -man, the one in a thousand, the universal friend, the benefactor from one point of view, and the receiver of benefits from another : the man of no denomina- tion, but an all-round Christian, who places his foot on the stone on Mount Olivet, which marks the spot, whence the Risen Saviour, after giving his great Command, having accomplished the Salvation of Mankind, ascended into Heaven, and looked his farewell look down over the Brook Kedron into the streets of Jerusalem in captivity, and on the great round world beyond. Listen to this Agent's words : " We have only one patent, only " one specific, the Elixir of all the ages, the Palladium in a " thousand battles, the Saver of Millions of Souls : the electric " shock from our batteries vibrates through space and time : our " girdle encircles the earth : we know neither Jew nor Greek, " neither bond nor free, neither Lutheran nor Calvinist, neither " Papist nor Protestant : our fellow-creatures to us are grouped " under a larger denomination : ' Do you love Christ, the Son of " God, Who died, and rose again : the ^16709 of the Evangelist, "the 'A'yia ^ocpia of the Preacher?' If you can find anything " better, more ready, and more sure, to save, oh ! in pity let " us know, for we also have souls to be saved : we have studied " the ' Book of the Dead,' of the Egyptians, the tablets of the " Assyrians, the baked bricks of the Akkadian, and the Babylonian, " the Veda of the Brahmin, the Tripitika of the Buddhist, the " Avesta of the Zoroastrian, the King-Shu of Kong-Fu-Tshee, " the immortal utterances of Socrates, the Koran of Mahomet : " we have looked over the wide world, we have searched the ( 157 ) " remains of the wisdom, and greatness, and hopes, of the Elder " Nations, and can find no other endurable name, by which men " can be surely saved, except that of the Lord Jesus : if you " cannot tell us anything new, share the old blessing with us, for " Time is short, and the Lord's advent is at hand. Take the " Book, which we offer, and study it for the welfare of your " Soul." " Plurima qucesivi, per singula quceque cucurri, Nee quidquam invenio melius quam ' Credere Christc' " Christmas Day, 1892. -^!^ CONCLUSION. " From the rising of the Sun unto the going " down of the same My Name shall be great among *' the Gentiles." Malachi i. Ii. Happy are they, who Just know, and know no more, their Bible true. And in that Charter read with sparkling eyes Their title to a Treasure in the Skies. Let me throw together a few stray thoughts, before I la}' clown my pen for ever on this my favourite subject. A French author beautifully remarks : " Plus I'ame est pres de Dieu, " plus la pensee est pres de I'ame, plus le style est pres de " la pensee, plus tout cela est beaux." This remark applies peculiarly to this subject. No painter has ever dared to place a halo round a living head : no writer calls a living man a Saint : but round this Book there is a halo, and we listen to the words contained in it, as to the utterance of a Saint. We should have a portion of it always in our thoughts, and a portion very near our lips, if the opportunity for judicious utterance occurs, for a ( i6o ) chance word, like a stone, dropped into a quiet pool, creates circles ever expanding : a pebble thrown at hazard by a child may disturb sitting doves, and send the thoughts after them in a thousand heavenly directions : sometimes, when man's soul has been slumbering, a chance sentiment from this wonderful Book, may, like the sudden clang of a trumpet, excite deepest emotions, and rouse echoes, which have long been silent. No one can read the Gospels, however respectable in his own eyes, but he gets a check on his conscience, and no one, however fallen, but he finds a kindly and supporting welcome. The beautiful allegory of the sunken bells, the bells of the church swallowed up by the sea, and supposed to be heard on a still night ringing from below, was meant to illustrate the persistency of original feelings in spite of subsequent difficulties and doubts. What is the best gift, which we would give to those, whom we love, whose interests lie near our heart, of whom it can be said, that we arc our brother's keeper ? It is not fine gold : it is not deep learning : it is not high station among men. Such things some never have had a chance of attaining, and such things some have not cared to attain : what is it then, that we should desire to give to the red, black, yellow, and brown, races, which by the Providence of God lie with hands, and intellects, and souls, bound at our mercy? Not rum, and lethal weapons, or even cotton-fabrics, but the Law of the Lord, the Gospel of the Saviour, and the uncompromising Morality, which accompanies them. If any one were to read over the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs in Urdu to an Indian Raja, the words of King ( i6i ) Lemuel would sound to him, poor effeminate Princeling, as a new Revelation. Let us shut our e}-es, and retrace by the help of our accumulated knowledge, the history of Man backwards from the great Anno Domini, as far as we can, and note what an influence on personal character of men, who were great and wise, powerful, and even good, as men call goodness, such a Book, as we now have each on our table, or in our re\-olving book-case, close to our hands, would have exerted, holding back from crime : the prudent advisers of men in power, or of excited crowds, had nothing in those days to appeal to to stay the bloody hand : no sure and certain hope to sustain those, on whom the world was closing : the last chapter of Ecclesiastes must read a lesson to many a ^\orldly soul, who finds too late, that here is not his rest. Let us consider the matter from another point of view. Certain beautiful Legends occupied different corners of the elder world : not lying legends of monks and saints, but stories, overlaid indeed by the varnish of fiction, }'et still based on a foundation of Truth in an age ignorant of the principles of History. In certain Regions of Asia live the legends connected with the names of the faultless Rama, the blameless Gautama Buddlia, both eldest sons of kings, who, out of a spirit of self-sacrifice, gave up all for the benefit of their fellow-creatures. In Europe, the legends of King Arthur, the brave Roland, and the Cid, live a life, that can never die, for in the hearts of each generation the same symphony is heard, as if by enchantment, representing the silent homage of after generations to noble acts done, or noble words ( i62 ) uttered, by men of former ages : these are the Echoes of the Past. When any of us sit conversing by the sea-side, the lapping of the waves of the ocean, as they rise and fall, seem to fill up the interval of human sounds : so is it with the stories, the Legends, the words of advice, and warning, that are contained in that Book, the diffusion of which we are now discussing. The Legends of the Hebrew Race, from Abraham to Jesus of Nazareth, already occupy a wider intellectual area, than any of the Legends above alluded to : these last are National, while the Book belongs to the Human race at large, and the object, which we have at heart is to make it Universal, the one monotone, which underlies the ]\Iusic of the world. At the end of this Century the ubiquitous Chinese emigrant, the Indian cooley, the Polynesian Kanaka, will come suddenly into close daily contact with men of other colour, race, antecedents, and prejudices : they cannot kill each other down, as was the fashion in past ages : they have to live to- gether : in the Diocese of Ne\v Westminster, in North America, the Chinaman comes into contact with the Red Indian, which last century seemed to be an impossibilit}-, and both learn to read the Bible in the English Language side by side in the same ]\Iission-school. We see what a wondrous factor in the twentieth Century, the Diffusion of the Bible may prove to be : if we wish to bring into action a Conscience, or Heart-Voice, amidst the races slowly entering on the path of civilisation, let us adopt the only policy, which can realize this wish, give them a standard, by which they can weigh their living acts, teach them of a hope, that fadcth not away, and of a fire, which is never quenched, to ( 1^3 ) destroy the enemies of God, whose existence they cannot, and dare not, den}-. Let no one undertake to plead on the platform the cause of Bible-Diffusion by Bible-Societies, who has not a downright belief in the Book itself: if he has not the leisure, or the gift, to work out the problem himself in the Greek and Hebrew Language, let him accept the late works of Westcott and Lightfoot, as his guides, for these writers belong to our own epoch, are thorough-going, and not afraid of the difficulty of the problem : W^e want no half-hearted friends on the Bible- Society-platform : on the other hand, unless the Speaker has proved his armour, he had better not step down to combat the modern Goliath of Skepticism. If an}'one is allowing himself to drift into a habit of surface- doubt, let him boldly sink a shaft into the very depths of his inner life, grapple with the problem as a man wrestling for his life, and he will not fail to find a solution. If external evidence, or mathematical proof, be wanting, he must fill up the vacuum with the Light of Christ illuminating his soul. Nothing more than a study of Bible-Diffusion, helps to remove from the minds of educated men that limited conception of the words " world and mankind," from which many esteemed writers, li\ing and dead, and even great thinkers, whose experience has been confined to European quarries of knowledge, cannot free themselves : in a light and airy way Historians and Theologians write of " the world," when they mean the Roman Empire, because it seems to them, as if the Roman Empire ^^BC^2^^^^^^^2 ( i64 ) included the whole world : Even the writers of the Old Testament were not free from the narrowness of vision : Jeremiah describes Jerusalem as the "Joy of the whole Earth": the great Nations of China and India in their isolated splendour and greatness, might have smiled at such a term being applied to the tiny town of the petty Hebrew tribes, of whose existence they had never heard. We cannot exclude, now at least, from our view these great Regions of Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania, regions \\hich Caesar never knew, unknown to the Roman Praetors, Historians, and Geographers : We cannot say, that the Covenant made with the Jews was, or pretended to be, a Covenant with the "whole congeries of God's children," whom He had marked with different colour of skin, supplied with distinct conformation of skull and skeleton, differentiated by totally variant forms of speech, which can by no possibility be traced back to one source, endowed with different natural gifts, con- genital and acquired, and trained by the different discipline of ages and environment. We gaze with wonder at the multiform development of Creation-forms of Man : we recognize that His Book is the one thing good and needful for all. There was indeed the great alternative : Egyptian records liave come down to us, the ipsissima graviuiata of a date anterior to Moses : the Assyrian records, the very identical records, exceed in age the Historical and Prophetical Books of the Hebrew people. It did not please the Great Disposer of human events, that His chosen people, to \\hom were entrusted His Oracles, should be skilled in the art of the penman on pap)-rus, or the ( i65 ) engraver on metal, or the incisor on clay bricks, or the inscribcf on stones. Neighbouring nations were so, and numerous Inscrip- tions in the Greek Character of a date long anterior to Anno Domini, have survived : The battle of Potidoea was fought B.C. 432, and one hundred and lifty Athenians were killed. Time has not been unjust to the Monumental Inscription, and has spared the famous elegiac lines to rouse the emotion of future ages, and confirm the narrative of Thuc}-dides, and there are some still older : I have read them with m}' eyes, and touched them with m}- hands, not without emotion at Athens, and in far awa}- India the same feeling has overwhelmed me, when reading and touching the stones of the Inscriptions of Asoka. Why have not the Law of the Lord, the Psalms of David, the utterances of the Prophets, come down to us in such indestructible, immutable guise ? It was not the Lord's will, and copies of copies of copies, the oldest of which in the Hebrew is only of the ninth Century A.D., and of Greek of the third Century A.D., furnish the medium, through which the waters of life are conveyed to the thirsty Soul. After all, the treasures of Classical Literature, Greek and Latin, rest upon no firmer basis : the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Zoroastrian, the Confucianist, are in the same predicament : the more acute that the literary power of after generations becomes, the worse for the literary heritage of past ages. There does indeed exist a third alternative, in addition to the actual Inscriptions, as in Egypt and Assyria, and the copies of copies of copies, as is the case with our Book : I allude to the memory- of Man, No one in an age of Literature and a ( i66 ) kind of universal Knowledge, can realize what the memory of man can do, when a life is led of isolation, and devotion to one particular subject : to commit the whole Koran to memory, and to repeat it, is a feat, of which Mahometans are proud, and which is honoured by a title and a peculiar head-dress. For many centuries the Greek hexameters of Homer were handed down from generation to generation by a succession of Bards : so it was in former days in India : some of the earlier Sanskrit Poems are supposed to have been handed down by memory at an epoch before the Phenician Alphabet found its way to India, and gave birth to the magnificent Alphabetic systems of India. Even now, when a European Scholar is doubtful of the precise accuracy of a particular portion of a writen MSS., a Pandit in India is asked to recite the Chapter, without being informed of the particular lines, where the doubt has arisen, and the listener takes a note of the rendering, which his faithful memory supplies. It will be obvious that the Library of the Bible was of a bulk far beyond the possibility of oral transmission, and the lapse of more than thirty Centuries since the days of Moses, and the dispersion of the Hebrew Nation, render that form of transmission impossible. The New Testament came into existence in a literary period, when the pen had superseded the memory and the art of the Sculptor. The main difference betwixt our Book, on the one side, and the secular treasures of Literature, and the Religious Books of non-Christian Races, on the other side, is firstly, that the powers of Reason, or sanctified common-sense, are applied to our Book, ( i67 ) which is certainly not the case as regards the non-Christian Books ; and secondly, while the secular Books contain much to charm, to instruct, to develop the mind and intellect of the reader, the "Book" deals with the interests of the soul, the life that we are living now, the life that is to come, that is Eternal, Professer Huxley may indulge his humour about the Gadarene pigs : the incident is unquestionably a difficult one : our Lord may have said, that He maketh the Sun to rise upon the Just and the Unjust, while we know, that it never rises at all, and that the Queen of Shcba came from the uttermost parts of the Earth, while we know, that in the round globe there are no uttermost parts, and that Saba, or Sheba, whence the Queen came, was not so very far, according to modern notions, from Jerusalem. The Psalmist tells us, xcvi. 2, that " The world " shall be established so, that it cannot be moved," while we know well, that it is in ceaseless rotation : Human Knowledge is finite and limited to its epoch, but there are survivals even to this day of erroneous conceptions : the Almanacks still tell us the hour of sun-rising and sun-setting, without offence to our sense of right. We must place the Book in the same crucible of sanctified common- sense, and be filled with grateful wonder, that after its long wanderings from country to country, from language to language, from papyrus to parchment, and thence to paper : from manuscript to print, it has come down so perfect, so beautiful, so soul-stirring, as we find it. And after all the moral difficulties are more perplexing than the material, for if Samuel was abso- lutely right (I. Samuel xv. 3) in ordering Saul to slay both man ( i68 ) and woman, infant and suckling, and to spare none : if Elijah was right in slaughtering the Priests of Baal on Mount Carmel : if ivJiat ivas deemed by the people of Israel to be right morally is akuays right, how are we justified in not doing the same to the Idols and Priests of India? and we cannot justify the European settlers, in exterminating and enslaving the poor Aborigines, who are to them as the Canaanites were to the immigrant Hebrews. And we must recollect, that buried Scriptures, like those of the Egyptians and Assyrians, though they are indeed accurate expressions of the thoughts of the writer, speak to us only with a phonograph-like authority : it is the voice, the very voice, indeed, calling across the abyss of centuries, but it does not explain, why for centuries and centuries, if necessary for our Salvation, it has allowed millions and millions to be born, live, and die, and still withheld itself from their hearts and consciences : thus, it has lost its humanity, and its sympathy with human joys and sorrows. But the Book, the diffusion of which we urge, has never undergone this paralysis, this living entombment : it has from the first days of its utterance lived on the lips of men, and has never been a dead letter : it comes to us environed with the love and honour of generations, bathed with the tears of Saints, crowned with the glory of Martyrs, muttered by dying lips, read aloud in the assemblies of men, exercising the intellects of the most learned, meditated upon in the secret chamber by the most ignorant and humble. It is vain to shut our eyes to the expansion of ideas, and ( i69 ) the accumulation of facts, of the present Epoch, and to try and pose as the old Clergyman, or Nonconformist Minister, of the last century, who with few opportunities for locomotion, and a very scant supply of intellectual food, passed from the day of his ordination to his death, reiterating the same commonplace plati- tudes, treading in the same narrow religious groove, concealing his ignorance in a certain amount of conventional verbiage, not hesitating to attribute the Psalm " By the Waters of Babylon " to the prophetic spirit of David, and treating Hebrew as the Mother-Language of the World. No one can appreciate too highly the benefits of True Science. Above all human powers it conduces to the adoration of the Greatness of God, the admira- tion of the multiform magnificence of His Creation, and the confirmation of the truth of Holy Scriptures. Let us not be afraid of the physical powers, with which He has endowed our Nature, or the reasoning powers, with which he has equipped our Intellects. All our Knowledge, all our Powers, mental or material, come from Him : in Him we live and move, and have our Being : Not without His permission the great Heathen Sages of the past in Europe and Asia spake to their con- temporaries, and left their immortal utterances to our time for our benefit : Not without his Inspiration the Prophets and Evangelists have revealed to us the fullness of knowledge, secrets which they from the standpoint of their limited worldly know- ledge, imperfectly understood, but which it is given to us in the nineteenth Century by earnestly studying the Inspired Book to appreciate. It is a frightful error to have our Religious views ( I70 ) out of sympathy with human knowledge. No doubt the twentieth Century will sit in judgment on us : to them will be given a higher development, the result of our accumulated inquiries and experiences, and some things, which we reverently place aside, as beyond our finite power to comprehend, will be revealed to them to understand clearly. We have done what we could. APPENDIX No. I. PULATION OF Tiir: World (in round numbers) Europe 312I Millions. Asia . 831 Millions. Africa Oceania America To tal . 205 4i 86 Millions. Millions. Millions. 1439 Millions. APPENDIX No. II. Religions of the World (approximate). Pagan Mahometan Jews . Christian Total 842 Millions. 173 Millions. 9 Millions. 415 Millions. 1439 Millions. Detail of Christian. A. Protestants . . • I35 Millions. B. Greeks, etc., etc. . C. Roman Catholics Total . . 415 Millions 85 Millions. 195 Millions. ( 172 ) APPENDIX No. III. Actual and Effective Translations of the Bible IN i8qo. Europe . 80 Asia . . 113 Africa . . 59 Oceania . 39 America Total . 40 331 N.B. 24 may be added for 1891 and 1892. APPENDIX No. IV. Analytical Abstract of Subjects in Addresses for Convenience of Reference. Address No. I. — 120 Languages of King Xerxes : Death of the Hebrew Language : Targum : Samaritan translation : Greek Septuagint translation : Syriac : Kopt : Ethiopic : Old Latin : Vulgate : Ulfilas' Gothic translation : Armenian : Arabic : Slavonic : Anglo-Saxon : Old Irish : translations between 800 A.D. and the Reformation : translations subsequent to the Reformation up to the end of the iSth Century: detail: John Eliot: Ziegenbalg : Gravius : the primeval plan that the Law and Gospel should ( 173 ) be diffused : the protection afforded against falsifications by multiplication of Versions : the ordinary fate of Books of non- Christian Belief, and in degraded forms of Christianity : the Languages had to be prepared for the task of conveying God's Message : the old fashion of teaching by Interpreters, and the ignorance of the Vulgate : story of Boniface : Canon Edmund's remarks : summary of translations of each century preceding the Reformation : the unique circumstances attending the trans- mission of the Bible : the unique destiny of the Old Testament : prayer of Tyndall in the hour of death : wish expressed by little Welsh girl : Latin and Greek quotations. Address No. II. — -Fulfilment of prophecy : circumstances of Europe : dead Languages : remarks of Earl of Harrowby : state of Asia : Regions : Religions : position already gained by the Bible : state of Africa : state of America, North, Central, South : Syllabaries : state of Oceania : the two obstacles of Bible-diffusion : further remarks of Earl of Harrowby : number of translations. Address No. III. — The Translators : Jerome : Erasmus : the Reformation-Heroes : the group of modern Translators : quotations from Pilgrim's Progress : remarks of Sir Charles Aitchison ; praise of the Translator : difficulty of translation : singular adaptability of Hebrew and Greek : mistaken views with regard to people of China and Barbarian races : remarks on Languages : the purifying influences of a Bible-Translation : different origin of Languages : different life, and fate, of Languages : work for next generation : tendency to great Empires and great Languages : incidental ( 1/4 ) results of Bible-translations : written Characters : Dialects : dead liturgical Languages not attended to : a Divine Presence in the continuity of Translation : difficulties surrounding first attempts : the Eskimo "little seal": the South African rendering for "Love": the New Britain's paraphrase for " Oath " : the absence in some Regions of physical objects, or analogous customs mentioned in the Bible : the testing of the first attempt at Translation : the Mission-Press : the reprinting in London : the Revision of the text : first efforts not to be despised : fond mistake of early Translators : the Editorial Committee of the British and Foreign Bible-Society: the "trial" number in some Languages: the diffi- culties about terms for God, Jesus, Baptism, Jehovah, etc. : the astonishment of Continental secular Scholars : the Labours of Women : of natives of Africa, Asia, America, and Oceania : necessity to form a list of honour of the great Translators : dangers attending perversely private interpretations of the Hebrew and Greek. Address No. IV. — The work purely ^Missionary : the sole object Conversion of Souls, or Strengthening of the Converted : assistance rendered to Missionary Societies : features of the Book : a scene in an Oriental country of a Bible-reading : a scene in Canada : story of the little girl's Testament in Spain : story of the gold-diggers' camp : the little volume : " Gospel in many " tono-ues " : a retrospect of the reading of the Bible : reasons for distribution of Book : anecdotes connected with the power of the Bible to convert without the aid of Teachers or Preachers : remarks of Sir Charles Aitchison : remarks of Pertab Chunder ( 1/5 ) Mozamdar : Bible-reading in India, in Europe, in Japan, etc. : ]\Ioffat in South Africa : reasons why in early centuries attempts were made to destroy the Bible : it is impossible now : the stream of Bible-diffusion has never ceased flowing : modern dis- coveries confirm its truth : evidential value of its existence : it matters not that so many are destroyed : there is great apparent waste in the gifts of Nature : the duty and grace of Tolerance brought home : Erasmus and King Henry VIII. Address Xo. V. — Gratitude compels us : our bounden duty : arrears of centuries to make up : every door now open : the goodness of God to this generation : Remarks of John of Gaunt : Previous famine of the Book : Blessing of private Bible-reading : Visit to the Bible House : Cardinal ^lanning's visit : New fields of Bible-Study opening out : Mr. Spurgeon's speech in Exeter Hall: "Still there is room:" "That blessed letter ]\I:" conso- lation in the dying hour : Figure of the Angel of the Revelation, or of true Charity : a wish to help the Society may be expressed too late : a legacy is not sufficient service : Picture of the varied scenes, surrounded by which the Bible is read : the native Catechist reading alone in the forest : pure and holy thoughts evoked by Bible-stories. Address No. VI. — What is the Bible ? the other Sacred Volumes of Non-Christian Religions : Confucius : Buddha : Socrates : reasons for rejecting their books, and adopting the Bible as the only vehicle of Salvation : the Word of God in the flesh, and in the form of the Book : noble thoughts are handed on in new ( 176 ) Language : the old Versions' work is done : Lower and Higher Criticism : Objections of certain Churches : Story of the Eskimo : Students in Indian State Colleges : regret that seekers after God in old times did not come into touch of the Old Testament : the clear echo of the great Truths of the Bible : the great central figure : the Story of the Sati, Slaughter of Female Children, Burning of lepers : the danger of Secular education without the Bible : what is morally wrong cannot be theologically right : important crisis in Lidia : story of the Poet Milton : enormous increase of non-Christian population : wasting away of the neo- Christians : required evidence of the genuineness of the Old Testament : Manuscripts perish : the Hebrews were not a Monu- mental people : Inspiration : what is it ? Divine and human element in Bible : the spreading of great Vernaculars, and with them of knowledge : necessity of a High ideal : Scripture common ground in all literature : Remarks of Tertullian, Origen, Clement : new Religious developments are forming : important that the Bible should be part of the Education of all the world : danger of Bibliolatry : Inscriptions of Asoka : Remarks of Earl of Harrowby, and of ]\Ir. McNeil : the Bible is not afraid of criticisms : pure gold does not fear the tester. Address No. VII. — Constitution cf British and Foreign Bible- Society : the National Society of Scotland : the American Society of New York : Bible-Clubs : Dutch Bible-Society : necessity for a great German Society : four classes who require the Bible : good Christians : nominal Christians : members of the corrupt Churches : non-Christians : the necessity to send the Scriptures : union of ( 1/7 ) the Churches in this matter : Mr. Spurgeon's remarks : the Christian Minister should do more than he does : the Bible will outlive Preacher and Priest : the difficulties of the operations : thoughts for the Blind: Committee is entirely free from Ecclesi- astical bias : the translations are philologically accurate : free distribution discouraged : the work that remains to be done : Remarks of our President, the Earl of Harrowby : feelings felt towards the Bible-Society : the antagonists of the work : anecdote of events in South Italy : Remarks of Dr. Maclagan, Archbishop of York : Agreement of all denominations in essentials : Peculiar position of the Bible. Address No. VIII. — Necessary limitations: English Authorized Version : Hebrew and Greek originals : no note or Commentary : no Apocrypha : Interest of Annual Report : Periodicals : liability of the epoch to change of method : Latin Vulgate : Greek Septuagint : Circulation in Hungary : Lasserre's French Gospels : Word for Baptism : Consequences of absence of Notes and Com- mentaries : objection to absolute term " Word of God." Address No. IX. — Foreign Field : Home Field : Auxiliary Committees : Withdrawal from Protestant Countries : Agents : Description of them : Depots : Colporteurs : their usefulness and devotion : Anecdotes : Bible-women : Hawkers : Carriages for Bibles : necessity for local Agents : Dr. Boedeker in Siberia : Vast Empire of the Bible-Society : known by its works : welcome extended to Bible-Society's agent at all Conferences : His remarks. CONXLUSION. — Final thoughts : the best of all gifts : Legends 12 taPRKP ( i/S ) in the elder world : the power which the Bible will exert in the twentieth Century : necessity of a downright Belief in the Bible : how doubts are to be met : a wider conception of the words " World and IMankind : " the alternative of the Bible having come down to us like Greek or Asiatic Inscriptions : another alternative of their being handed down by human memory : powers of Reason and Sanctified Common-Sense : admitted difficulties to be met in that way : we ought to be grateful for the state in which it has arrived to us : had it come to us like the buried Egyptian records, all its humanity would have been gone : it has always lived on the lips of men : our religious conviction must not be out of harmony with contem- porary Human Knowledge. APPENDIX No. V. Heads of Subjects for an Address. 1. Love for the Lord Jesus, and the Book. 2. Importance of the Subject. 3. Social State of Nations without the Book. Anecdotes : A. India and China. B. Oceania. C. Africa. D. Mahometan Countries. E. Countries with a corruption of Christianity ( 179 ) 4- Motix'cs for circulating Translations. 5. Continuity of work : A. Pre-Rcformation Period. B. Post-Reformation Period. C. Nineteenth Century. 6. Spread of Education, outburst of Missionary Spirit. 7. The Bible-Societies : origin and history, and peculiarities A. British and Foreign. B. National Society of Scotland. C. American Society. D. Continental Bible-Clubs. 8. Features A. Worldwide. B. Missionary. C. Undenominational. D. Friendly to all. E. No Note, or Commentary ; No Apocrypha ; No Septuagint, or Vulgate, when possible to avoid. F. Alternative readings of a philological nature. 9. Religious Books of other Nations A. Hindu. B. Zoroastrian, C. Buddhist. D. Confucianist. E. Mahometan. I* ( ISO ) 10. Description of the Bible-House, Oueen-Victoria-Strcct. 11. Divisions of Subject: A. Home-work in Great Britain and Ireland. B. Foreign-Translation. C. Distribution. D. Agencies, Auxiliaries, etc, 1 2. Home-work : A. Bible-Women. B. Sailors' Homes. C. Depots. D. Grants of Bibles. 13. Translations: A. Languages. B. Translators. C. Magnitude of work. D. Term-Questions. E. Abstract ideas. F. Want of Words to express new objects and ideas. 14. Publications : A. Reports. B. Periodicals. C. Maps. ( isi ) APPENDIX No. VI. Specimen Address to a Theological or Missioxarv College, delivered at Wvcliff College, Oxford, Oct. 31, 1885, amended and brought up to date. H aavvero^, Kcii eaKOTivfiefi], ciuvoia ijuwu ai'ciOaWei etV to Ouv/^uia-ov Avtov 0a'S'. — Clement. A MOST delightful subject : if there is one thing more charming than the Study of Languages, it is the Study of the Bible : and here we have both combined. When I was studying Sanskrit fifty years ago, my Professor used to talk in high terms of Professor Lassen, who had done so much for Sanskrit Literature, and he spoke depreciatingly of Professor Bopp, who only cared for the zvords of a Language, not the sense : he cared for the pebbles of a tesselated pavement, not the pattern : but Bopp was right : The words of a Language, the way in which they are compounded, or modified, the order, in which they are grouped, the shades of variation of meaning, which they assume, present wonderful phenomena ; in fact many words are indestructible. Take the letters, k, t, b, and b, r, k : they meant " to write and to bless," when Moses tells us, that God wrote the letters of the two tables of stone : they convey the meaning of writing and blessing to countless millions up to the present day. ( lS2 ) Forty years ago, when scholars wrote books on the Science of Languages, they set many persons thinking : we all owe them a great debt : yet I always regret, that when about to publish a Book on the Science of " Languages " (for that word is used without reservation), they did not communicate with the Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, for they would have heard of scores of Languages, in Africa, Oceania, and North America, the existence of which they positively ignored, though portions of the Scriptures were translated into them : they only knew a portion of the Linguistic world, and undertook to write for the whole. I had the good fortune of being a ^Member of the Committee of the Bible-Society, the Church ^Missionary Society, and the Translation-Committee of the Christian Knowledge Society, when I undertook my humbler effort of collecting in one focus the knowledge of others : I knew ^Missionaries of all denominations, in ever}' part of the world, and thus tapped a virgin- fountain. When I published my Languages of Africa, Scholars wrote to me from Germany to ask, whence I got such a mass of new information : I replied, that it was from Religious Societies, from the ^Missionaries, whom Secular Scholars used so much to despise : " Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and other " things will be added unto }'0U." It has been remarked in an Annual Report, that the Eastern Church has never been jealous of translations of the Scriptures into the Vernaculars : The same principle, that led Jerome to Bethlehem, to translate the Bible into the great Vernacular of ( i83 ) the West, the Latin, called the Vulgate, had previously led to the Syriac, Koptic, Armenian, and Ethiopic versions : Ulfilas published his famous Moeso-Gothic translation, and Cyril and Methodius at a later period published the Slavonic translation, inventing; an Alphabet for the purpose : Rome, when she fell into unscriptural errors, sealed up the Book, which would expose those errors : Still, in spite of herself, she permitted the existence of De Sacy's French translation, Scio's Spanish, Almeida's Portuguese, Diodati's Italian, and Van Ess's German. Later on she has grown wiser by necessity : In France the game was up, and the Bishops persuaded the Pope to allow a new French translation to go forth : In the same manner a magnificent Arabic translation has been published at Beirut, and a good Tamil version in South India. There were fifty-six versions of the Scriptures, when, in 1804, the Bible-Society commenced its work. It laid down certain principles : no notes or commentaries, but alternative readings on philological grounds were subsequently permitted : The Apocr)-pha was excluded : originally the " textus receptus " of the Hebrew and Greek were to be strictly followed, but since the completion of the labours of the Revision-Companies, any variation is permitted within the limits of the Revised transla- tions. Many of the translations have been made from the English : some again are translations of previous translations in Oriental languages : others again are made direct from the Hebrew and Greek : Critical Helps are always liberally supplied by the Bible-Society. It may, and must, happen, that a com- I* ( i84 ) petcnt Scholar in an African or Oceanic language is not a Hebrew, or Greek, Scholar : A thorough knowledge of the Scriptures, and a prayerful spirit, are as necessary ingredients of a good Translator, as a sound knowledge of the Language, which is to be honoured and blessed, and developed, by becoming a vehicle to convey God's Word to Man. It is thus with the greatest satisfaction, that the Bible-Society accepts the work of a Missionary : this great Catholic Society knows no distinction of Denominations : the question is not as to the particular Church, to which the Translator belongs, but whether he loves the Lord, and the Bible. Occasionally, however, by the necessity of the case. Secular Scholars have been employed specially to make translations. It may be broadly asserted, that the mighty work of translation has been done by Missionaries in the field of every Denomination of Christ's Church. And wisely so : the Scholar does his work generally well, takes his salary, and his interest in his work is gone : in some cases his work remains in his Library as a " tour de force " : But the translation of the Missionary, from the first moment, that it leaves the IMission Press, has to undergo a running fire of the criticism of the Missionaries, the Native Converts, the Sunday-school teachers and pupils ; and the severest critic of all, because he knows most about it, is the Translator himself, who seeks God's glory, and not his own glorification. Hence follows the immediate necessity of Revision, not by one man, but by several : we do not think much of a " one- man " translation : Where there arc several Denominations, ( iS5 ) occup\-ing the same field of Language, we take care, that every branch of Christ's Church is represented : We have a notable instance of this in Madagascar, where, in the midst of war and tumult, the work of revision was completed. Large sums are paid out in remunerating the Translator, the Revisor, and eventually the Proof-reader, for it is no ordinary Proof-reading: In the case of the Yahgan, in South America, six months were occupied in getting the proof-sheets to the Translator and back again. Every ingenuity of Art and Science is utilized in the work conveying God's Word to the ears, and hearts, of Men. And the wonderful vehicle, the God-made vehicle of Language, though multiform and various, is always found adequate to convey the Word : the Divine Word itself is so marvellously enshrined in human vocables : it is so human in its outward form, that it lends itself readily to new renderings : the pure gold is easily cast in the new linguistic mint. Some Languages are said to be devoid of words capable of expressing abstract ideas, and the Translator has turned, often too readily, to the use of loan-words from the Greek, the Latin, the Hebrew, the Arabic, the Sanskrit, or some dominant Language, whichever happened to be the ruling power in the Translator's mind. My own idea is, that the abstract words were not found, because they had not been previously wanted, but that there was an inherent power in the Language to evolve them by its own formation-process : We know, that such is the case in the great Bantu Language of South Africa. PVom East, South, and West Africa, comes the same tribute of admiration : Though totally unwritten, and unculti- ( iS6 ) vated, still the mental logic of the barbarian has evolved a variety of sister-Languages with a structure so regular, so exact, and so precise, endowed with such order, and philosophical arrangement, that its Vocabularies can be expanded to an unlimited extent, and in translating the Bible there was no need to borrow a single foreign word. But the Translator finds a difficulty in Jiinine. In each of the great Languages there are several Dialects, and th-e battle has not been fought out, as in the great Languages of Europe, to establish a Standard-Dialect : which is to be selected ? It has happened in the ■ Ashanti, and the Chuana, that different Missionaries of different Nationalities have adopted different Dialects, and persuaded the Society to publish distinct translations. It is much to be regretted, as the appearance of a literature in a Dialect has the tendency to stereotype it, and render a fusion of different Dialects into one common Language impossible. There is great objection to translations into Patois, or Pigeon- Languages, or Jargons, which occupy a position lower than that of a Dialect, being only the business form of words, used by different nations, who have each their own Language. The idea of a Pigeon-English translation in China is odious, but the Com- mittee has given way and allowed for European Jews Patois translations, also an Indo-Portuguese in India, a Mauritius-Creole, and several West Indian varieties. The Word of God must be understood by the humblest man, woman, and child : Sometimes we are obliged to level down proud literary Languages, such as the Osmanli-Turki, and Bangdli, to the comprehension of the ( i87 ) unlettered poor, so at other times we level up the poor, unsettled, uncultivated form of mixed words of some petty tribe, to the dignity of being the vehicle of God's Message to men. Consider the dignity of the work of translation : it is not indeed composing a new Bible, but it is making the old Bible comprehensible for the first time to a new people. On the tomb of more than one venerable translator, the inscription could have been recorded, " He translated the whole Bible into a Language previously unknown." On one venerated Scholar, Dr. Schon, some years ago, at my request, Oxford conferred the Degree of D.D., doing honour to itself by entering this great and truly "beautiful" name on the roll of her learned sons ; and the University of Cambridge created a new precedent, conferring the Honorary Degree of ^Master of Arts on the Venerable Henry Johnson, a Negro of pure blood, and yet a courteous gentleman, a devoted Missionary, and a good linguist, who, vrith the help of his Pastors in the region of the upper Niger, exhausted worlds of Science already partially discovered, and discovered entirely new forms of speech, and clothed the Gospel with this new material : It is a great marvel : Just as a new Planet rolls itself into the orbit of human sight, so new Languages of new tribes keep springing out of the Great L^nknown Centre of Africa, into the arena of our knowledge, exhibiting new forms of Grammatical structure, new word-stores, each in fresh moulds, and calling out to the young African Christian Churches to come over and make use of them, and ennoble them by committing to others the Oracles of God : Not without reason we may rejoice, that in the first and second ■ ! ■■■■ .1. ( 188 ) generation of released slaves, we have discovered that the natural intelligence and trained aptitude of the Negro is as good as our own : Bishop Samuel Crowther was not only a Negro Bishop of a Negro Diocese, but he was honoured by the Royal Geographical Society as the discoverer of new Countries ; he has written Gram- mars of Languages previously unknown, and translated the Holy Scriptures into them. I drew the attention of my dear Negro friends, some years ago, to the fact, that no Language had ever perished from the Reservoir of Human Knowledge, to which a portion of the Scriptures had been confided, and that of all the scores of Languages, in which the great King Xerxes issued his letters, as recorded in the Book of Esther, only the Hebrew, and Greek, which were the vehicles of Divine Truth, had survived. If then the Negro Scholars, as true Patriots, desired a prolonged life to their wonderful Languages, they should lose no time in committing to them some portion of God's Word, for the very fact of a Language being the chosen instrument of conveying Divine Truth to poor Mortal Men, confers upon it immortality : And the Negro Clergy have answered to the appeal. In the next Century, we shall know something about the Languages of the West of Africa. But, when the work of translation commences, new difficulties arise. No class of men are so narrow in their vision as Missionaries, except Scholars, and the Scholar- Missionary is a most untractable individual. He raises up an isolated pinnacle of his own judgment, and can see only with one, and perhaps a distorted, eye. Thus, in China, the Divine Name is the cause ( 1^9 ) of a long, and hopeless, quarrel. Instead of making the words obc}' him, the Translator allows himself to be bound as a slave to the word. Not so were the inspired writers of the New Testament : they gave the Greek words by their holy touch a new significance. To meet the difficulty of two wholly irrecon- cilable Schools, the Bible-Society on one occasion published an Edition of the Scripture, leaving a blank wherever the word " God " appeared, to be filled in by hand at the pleasure of the Missionary. In India, for many years, a difficulty has arisen as to the mode of transliterating the Holy Name of Jesus. The Mahometan world has handed down the tradition of " Esa," and it is well known, that Esa was the Son of Mary, and venerated as the Spirit of God, and in fact was Jesus : yet Missionaries will have the word expressed as " Yusuh," and gradually among an ignorant people they will become separate individualities. In Persia a new controversy has arisen : In all Mahometan countries the " new " name of Jehovah had always been rendered by the word Rab, analogous to Lord, or Kyrios, or Adoni : An attempt has been made to introduce some form of Yahveh, which indeed is the practice of translators of non-Mahometan countries. The word " Baptism " has rent from the Bible-Society one of the most esteemed of the Evangelical Churches, the Baptists : all com- promise is hopeless : the insertion of the word " Baptism " in the text will not satisfy them : they appeal to the fact that Luther used the word " taufe," and they must have "Dipper, Dipping, Dip," and have founded a separate Bible-Society. Then ( I90 ) comes the difficulty of abstract words, already alluded to. The word Love is an abstract word, and the idea of pure and holy love is no doubt unknown to Races in lower culture : the trans- lator has to feel his way to some phrase, to express the idea, and in one instance a ridiculous blunder was made, and the words " decayed fish," a South African delicacy, inserted : But the writers of the New Testament must have been equally tried in selecting words such as : in addressing hearers, who knew no passion but lust, who had no faith in anything, who were fierce to resent insults, and con- sidered lowliness of heart as cowardice. Then again, it requires a nice knowledge of a Language not to use vulgar, or slang, phrases : it will occur to anyone, how distressing it would be, to have slang-phrases interwoven into the story of our Lord, or his service : this is where the Salvation Army so grievously errs. I have said enough to shew the extreme difficulty : the holy men, who have succeeded, have laboured in a pra}'erful spirit, admitting, that the guidance of the Spirit of Jesus is as much required by the translator, as it was by the Evangelist, or Apostle, both being human agents placing Divine truths in the earthen vessels of poor, perishable, changeable, insufficient, vocables, the distorted reflections of untutored, and variable, and capricious, human thought. So much for the Language, which is the gift of God : but the aberration, and proclivities, of Human Knowledge, or rather ( 191 ) un-Kno\vledge, have produced new difficulties, new stumbling- blocks. The question arises : in what written Character shall the translator render his translation ? The written Character is a purely human machiner}% with nothing Divine in it, )-et it is a real difficult}', giving scope for fresh idiosyncracies, and obstinac}', and narrowness of \ision, in the Scholar- ^Missionary, Asia has its own multiplicity of magnificent Alphabets, or Syllabaries, in past ages, or Ideograms, accepted by the people, far surpassing our own imperfect Roman Alphabet for the purpose of differentiation of sounds, and it would be wrong and foolish, to attempt to tread out such written Characters : no sane Government, or prudent association, would attempt it : there is no objection to alternative Editions in an adapted Roman Character for such persons as prefer it, and such is the case both in India and China : but as regards some of the non- Arian Languages of India, the Languages of Africa, Oceania. North and South America, they have not been ever committed to writing : their words float in an immaterial form from mouth to mouth, and have to be caught alive by the translator : it has been generally accepted, that in such case the Roman Alphabet is the best medium to have recourse to. But the imperfection of the Roman Alphabet is obvious as regards the English Language, but it becomes more so as regards other Languages, which have peculiar sounds, breathings, gutterals, nasals, and clicks. The Church [Missionary Society induced Dr. Lepsius, of Berlin, to prepare a Standard-Alphabet, and his work is a most remarkable one, but with rare exceptions the ( 193 ) Missionaries, other than German, would not adopt it, or adopted it with modifications : On the East of Africa they would not look at it : to the South they ignored it : on the West it was partially adopted : in many cases every new Translator set to work to make his own Alphabet with no previous experience of this very difficult subject : In Ashanti-land there are two versions of the Scriptures, differing but slightly, in two Dialects of the same Language, but owing to the use of different modifications of the Roman Alphabet, unintelligible to any but those brought up in the particular IMission-Schools. This state of things is deplorable : it will be worse in future years for Africa than Asia. In /\sia a great variet}- of totally different symbols represent the sounds of difterent Languages, but in Africa the same, or similar, symbols will have a different value, possibly in the same ]\Iission-Field, owing to the angularity of the first ^Missionary mind. I issued a Circular to all Missionary Societies, and sent them a copy of Lepsius' Standard-Alphabet, but it was throwing words awa}- : In North America the vagaries of Translators have been still greater. The Languages are described as Polys\-nthetic, the words are of inordinate length, in fact, comprising a whole sentence : it appeared to the Missionaries, that such words expressed Alphabetically would occupy more than a line ordinaril}' printed, and would be un- pronounceable by their simple converts. So they devised a simple form of Syllabar}-, consisting of circles, squares, and dots, and persuaded the Bible-Society and Christian-Knowledge-Society, to have types cut and the work executed : This was a sad ( 193 ) retrogressive step in the onward path of Human Progress, and has the consequences of cutting off these awakening races from all epistolary correspondence with their neighbours, and debars them from making use of any literature but their own scanty supply. This outlook never occurred to the narrow vision of the Inventors. Still more strange is the policy of the Missionaries in Tierra del Fuego, in South America. From mere wilfulness, the Translator adopted an Alphabetical s}-stcm called Pal^otype, and, as he adhered to it in spite of remonstrance, the Bible- Society, under a protest, consented ; but, when I showed a copy to the inventor of this unhappy Alphabet, his pleasure was spoilt by finding, that the South American adaptor had materially departed from the principles of his system. Strange as it may seem, the Written Character has, in parts of Europe, a political and religious importance. The Roman Catholicks in some Provinces of Austria, insist on their converts using the Roman Character, while the authorities of the Greek Church insist on the use of some form of the Cyrillic Alphabet. Where Religion has become a mere ritual, and outward form, such things are of importance. The determination of individual IMissionaries to have one system — and one only — tJicir ozvn pet, seems particularly ridicu- lous to an Indian Civilian, who has spent years of his life transacting business with a circle of Native subordinates sur- rounding him, using simultaneously three Languages and three forms of written Character, the Roman, the Arabic, and the Nagari, without inconvenience, or without any particular prefer- ence for either, and speaking a fourth to the countr}- folk. 13 - ^ ■■jigyfP^pqgpwBP'SPiBP ( 194 ) Then difficulties arise about the pointing of vowels, and mode of punctuation, the paper, the size, the binding, the price, and the type, for even, when the Character is fixed, there is often a plurality of types, and some like one, and some another. The printing goes on in many parts of the world, in all the great capitals of Europe, and in many in Asia, and some in Australia : The first translation is often struck off in the Mission-Press by the very people, for whose use the translation is made. Then Editions are stereotyped, or the plates corrected. Add to this occasional differences of opinion betwixt the Sister-Societies, or the Parent Society, and its Auxiliaries. It may be truly said, that no such business in vastness, variety, complication, delicacy, and importance, was ever transacted under one roof Great progress has been made in the affiliation, and classifica- tion, of the Languages of the world according to their structure, but we are a long way from finality yet. Few, if any, would assert now, that the Hebrew was the Parent-Language, spoken in Paradise, as generally received by good ignorant men in past Centuries : The number of Languages has been extended beyond all conception : Sixty used to be deemed the maximum number, and in a general way " Indian " was spoken of as the Language of India, and "Chinese" of China. It may safely be stated, that at this moment there are more than two thousand forms of speech mutually unintelligible, whether they are called Languages or Dialects of Languages. In the Regions, which I have traversed, in my published works : The East Indies, 539 : Caucasus-Group, 12: Africa, 590: Oceania, 196: Turki Family, 12: in all 1349, 195 ) and, as I advance onwards in other Regions, the number seems to be Legion : in China there are more than two score. Up to this date the action of all the Bible-Societies has accomplished only 354 up to 1892, and fifty are on the anvil, but some only revisions, or extensions. All the most important, the great domi- nant Vernaculars in Asia, such as Arabic, Turki in two Dialects, Malay, the six or seven great Vernaculars of India, those of China, six or seven of Africa, have been disposed of. The process of absorption, and extinction, of weaker Languages, and Dialects, is always going on, and proceeds rapidly, as Culture advances : a weak form of speech is scorched and killed by a more powerful neighbour : The fittest survives in the struggle for life. The printing of the Bible in the Xama Dialect of the Hottentot Language has been arrested by the news, that the tribe prefer to speak Cape-Dutch, My task on the present occasion is limited to Oriental and African Languages. This excludes Europe and America. In Western Asia two great Languages are conspicuous : the work is completed in the Arabic, and the Turki, in the Dialects of Osmanli and Azerbijani : in three Dialects also of i'\rmenian the whole Bible has been translated, and portions in a modern Dialect of Syriac, In Persian the whole Bible has been printed, but is under revision. In Kurd and Georgian the New Testament only. In Osset and Kumik portions have been published. This brings us to the gate of India, where from Pastu on the North- West frontier to Burma on the South-East, over the two Peninsu- lars of Nearer and Further India, such progress has been made, '- ..:-.dfcji ( 196 ) as renders the completion of the whole work probable in a reasonable time, with exception of Cambodia, under French protection, and Roman Catholic Bible-exclusion, In China the entire Bible has been translated into the Dele- gate's version into that form of Character, which is intelligible all over the kingdom, each section of the population interpreting the Ideograms in their own Vernacular. But the tendency of modern ideas is to publish separate versions for each Province in their peculiar Language, and in several cases in Roman Character : The New Testament is also in Manchu. In Japan, by the combined aid of the three Societies, the whole Bible has been completed. Another sealed country has been thrown open to the Bible by the publication of the New Testa- ment in the Language of Korea. In Northern Asia, which is now entirely under Russia, trans- lations in four Dialects of Mongol, in two additional Dialects of Turki, the Jaghatai and the Kazan, The time has come for a separate Agency for Russia in Asia, and a systematic dealing with the Languages spoken North of the Oxus, the Sea of Aral, and the Caspian, The Bible-Society has no better friends than the Emperor and the people of Russia. In the Indian Archipelago the Society has an Agent at Singapur : the whole Bible is translated in the lingua-franca of that Region, the Malay, but beyond that Language Dutch Scholars have supplied translations in the Languages of Java, Sunda, Borneo, the Celebes, Batta, from Island on to Island to the confines of Oceania. Somethingr has been done for the ( 197 ) Phillipines, but a vast work still remains for the next Century to accomplish. The beautiful Islands of Oceania have been more fortunate. In name unknown to the general public, and only dimly to the Geographer, the Missionary, like the mole, has done his work in a quiet, and unseen, manner : The whole Bible has appeared in the Languages of the Maori of New Zealand, of Lifu, of Aneityiim, the Hawaii of Sandwich Islands, Fiji, Samoa, Rarotonga, Tonga, and Tahiti, and large portions in the Languages of several other Groups or individual Islands. The Motu tribe in New Guinea now read in their own form of speech the four Gospels. When I allude to a portion of the whole Bible, my hearers may rest assured, that other portions will follow as time goes on. The time is at hand, when the inhabitants of all these Islands will be Christians, and have as their first and best Book, the Bible, a present to them from the great British and American People. I have reserved Africa, my dear Africa, and its adjacent Islands, for the close. The whole Bible has been translated into the Malagasi for Madagascar, the Amhara for Abyssinia ; the Xosa, or Kafir, the Chuana, and the Suto, in South Africa ; the Yariba, Efik, Akra, and Ashanti, in West Africa ; very large portions have been translated into the Tigre, the Galla, and the Swahili, in East Africa ; in Zulu, Herero, and Nama-Hottentot, in South Africa ; and in Pongwe, Benga, Dualla, Ewe, Hausa, Ibo, Grebo, and Mende, and a good beginning made in many other «». > •fc:^'^.-J|ifc. ( 198 ) Languages : The work goes on joyfully : We seem to have the touch of every part of that great, and no longer dark, Continent : it is a kind of triumph to welcome into the Committee-Room of the Bible-House a new Messenger from Africa, who hands in his new translations, the choicest tribute which any God-fearing man can offer to the Lord. Against our efforts the Roman Catholics fight in every part of the world, imputing inaccuracy to the translations. In all French Roman Catholic Reports, Evangelical IMissionary Societies are called " Societes Bibliques," intended as a term of reproach, but really cur greatest honour, as we will not preach less or more than the Gospel as delivered to us. This then is the work of the Bible-Society in the Translation Department. It is a great honour to Great Britain, and North America, the two branches of the Anglo-Saxon Race, that the Lord has put it in their hearts to make His Word known to the Nations. It is a realization of the vision of St. John, at Patmos, Rev. xiv. 6 : " I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the " everlasting Gospel to preach unto those, that dwell on the " Earth, and to every Nation and Kindred, and Tongue, and " People. " How can they hear, if they are not spoken to } How can they be spoken to, if their Language be not acquired ? How can the Gospel be brought to the villager, the women, and children, if holy men do not devote their lives to the work } I wish to impress upon my hearers, that the Bible-Society is the chief, and the first, and the greatest, of IMissionary-Societies : it is ( 199 ) the Queen's daughter all glorious within, and the other Societies are but the Virgins, that bear her company. What would be thought of those, who did not consider the Gun-Foundry of Woolwich part of our Military Force? The Bible-Society sup- plies the great Guns, that shake down the world ; other societies are limited in their territorial expansions : our Motto is " ubique : " other societies are restrained by shibboleths, and creeds, and decrees of councils : we know nothing but Christ crucified, and His Message to Mankind : no Missionary Society resents our appearance in their field : the Bearer of Bibles is a welcome guest ever)-where : in every house in Europe, in every Asiatic City, in every African hut, and ever}' American wigwam, and always to all, who truly love their Master. I appeal to some of my hearers, who have a call for Missionar}' work, to take Service in our Regiments of Agents, Translators, and Colporteurs. At Japan, and in South China, we want men with orderly minds, trained intellects, and hearts consecrated, to represent us : the work of translation is done, or provided for : in these countries the work of distribution is commencing. In this great work Enthusiasm does not go for much : the work has to be done by steady continuous, and intelligent, labour from year to year. A sure way of getting at non-Christian tribes is by helping the Bible-Society, who are doing their work steadily and systematically, and would accomplish this task earlier, if it had larger resources. I have sent a copy of our Specimens of Languages and Dialects to every Library in Europe, pointing out, how much Science is indebted to the Bible- ( 200 ) Society, who in the course of the carr}'ing out its proper duty- has been marvellously extending the boundaries of Human Know- ledge : Scholars w^ould indeed be ungrateful, if they did not honour the agents of Religious Societies, who in the course of the discharge of their sacred duties, had revealed new worlds of interest, and illuminated the Temple of Science. A few words in closing on the spiritual side of the question. We are obeying the commands of the Lord to preach the Gospel : we are but carrying out the original programme of the Jewish and Christian Church since the return of the Hebrews from Babylon : there was a necessity for an open Bible then, and it exists still, in spite of the Jesuits in Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, who write, that only the New Testament and the Psalms should be permitted to laymen and women, by special permission to each individual, and the copies thus lent are to have copious Jesuistical notes. The European world has outlived such pu- pillage : it is a dishonour to the Word of God, and the Conscience of Man : Asiatic, African, and North American races shall be spared the ordeal : they shall have God's Word, and God's Spirit will teach them to make a g-ood use of it. And to those in Europe who cry, " The Bible is dead," and would record a verdict " Found out, dead, let it be buried," we reply, " Bury it, if you can : drown it in the ocean : burn it with " fire : place pyramids over it : but it is too late in the History " of Mankind : the Emperors Decius and Diocletian, tried to do " so, and failed. Roll the stone of Human Unwisdom, Agnos- " ticism, and Knowledge falsely so called, against the Cave : ( 20I ) " seal it with the seal of men, who have not yet learned to know " themselves, or to agree with each other as to a better substitute. " But the Word of God is not bound : by its own vitality it will " burst those seals, roll away that stone, and come forth, conquer- " ing and to conquer : Let the servants of the Lord share in " the triumph." And to those, who put forward the other books of the elder world, the Veda, the Tripitika, the Avesta, the Classics of Confucius, the Koran, we reply that we know them, admire them, and think that the Literature of antient days would be poor without them : we would add to this category the words of Socrates, as handed down by Plato and Xenophon : but we do not find in them a sufficient Rule of Life, a consolation in the hour of affliction, a sure hope in the hour of death. The same rebellious, unchastened spirit, puffed up by a little knowledge, not properly digested, or corrected by other knowledge, which refuses to accept God's Word, will rajl against God's Work in Nature, the mystery of pain and sorrow, the suffering of the good, the ease of the wicked. The sages of antient days thrashed out such subjects, but found no solution. Much in them is wise, but it is human wisdom : Does it sustain by faith in One, that is mightier ? Does it hold out hope ? Does it open out a Future beyond the grave ? Does it conduce to Holiness in the path of ordinary life ? Test the Bible by its works : I repeat, by its works, for like a mighty man, it has done wondrously. While occupied in reviewing the Languages of the World, I have reviewed also 'A J-^^^-^ us^ ( 202 ) the Religions of the World, and the Customs, and Habits, of the Xon-Christian World, their degrees of Culture and Barbarism. If they have attained Oriental Civilisation, there has never been found a clear line of demarking Right from Wrong : but always, everywhere, ^Murders of Wives, of Children, of Parents, of Lepers : Cruelty of every kind, Profligacy, Wickedness of every kind in High Places, without reproof : No human law has had authority to denounce, what the Rich and Powerful chose to do. If they have been left in the lower grades of Culture, as Millions have been in every part of the World, other and un- heard of Crimes are tolerated and practised : Cannibalism, Human Sacrifice, Burying alive, Sorcery, cruel tortures, Witchcraft, Magic rites, contempt of human life, contempt of all laws of God and ]\Ian. But when the Bible comes in contact with such Races, mark the change ! Darwin said that it was the Magician's wand : the Book adapts itself to every Language, every degree of Culture, and finds an entry into every heart of the Human Race : It is especially human, but it touches crime with an Ithuriel-spear : it cuts through with a sharp sword all Sophistry : it lets light into dark places : it is the same for the Great as for the Small, the Poor as for the Rich, and it deals with the Individual, the Famih-, the Community : it brings with it a Pon'cr : yes ! this Legend of the Man Jesus has a Power : it arouses a Heart's voice. No Christian man could order in a temper, or fit of rage, a favourite wife to be killed, and go on the same as before. The Greek Poets con- ceived the idea of a Nemesis : the Roman Poets wrote about ( 203 ) " mens conscia recti " : the Bible in the native Language of every tribe and Nation shows, how the former may be avoided, and the latter be attained. December, 1802. APPENDIX No. VII. HYMN FOR BIBLE SOCIETY MEETINGS. Maj' 4, 1892. WORKERS WITH THEE.— 2. Cor. vi. i. To us the message came : But, Lord, to Thy great name, All glory be ! The work is Thine, not ours : Thy Grace falls down in showers : We only lend our powers, Working: with Thee ! We thanks to Thee record For those, who serve the Lord So faithfully ; Ever on Angel's wing The Word of God to bring To sin and suffering. Working- with Thee ! ( 204 ) Thy Holy Spirit then Began to dwell with Men, Mean though they be, To touch their lips with fire To sweep the sacred lyre, And holy thoughts inspire. Working with Thee ! And those, to whom the gift Of Tongues is granted, lift Their souls to Thee, Rendering God's Holy Word Into a new accord Of sounds before ne'er heard, W^orking with Thee ! Thy Grace then sanctifies Art, which the printer plies So skilfully : Parts working out the whole, While paper-reams unroll Volumes to heal the soul. Working with Thee ! The stately ships unfold Their sails : from deck to hold One pearl we see : The Word of God now shown In every Language known To man from Zone to Zone, Working with Thee ! ( 205 ) Out cries the Colporteur, The man well-known " sans peur," " Give them to me ! " With Bibles on his back, He stumps his ceaseless track ; No blessings can he lack. Working with Thee ! The Harem-door opes wide, The Bible-women glide In with step free, A welcome there to find. To heal the sick and blind, To light the darkened mind. Working with Thee ! One ship lies in a calm By islands fringed with palm. Isles of the Sea : The dusky natives bring Their free will-offering, And ask one only thing. Working with Thee 1 To us these days fulfil The Patmos-vision : still We Angels see Bearing th' Eternal Scroll, A message to the soul Of Man from Pole to Pole, Working with Thee ! ( 206 ) And, when before Thy Throne, Trusting in Thee alone. We all shall be. May some of us appear, Lending a faithful ear Thy blessed words to hear, "You worked with Me." B. F. B. C. APPENDIX No. VIII. Appeal from an English Protestant to the great, GOOD, PIOUS, German Nation, to found a National Missionary Bible-Society, on the models of the Societies of England, Scotland, and the United States of North America. Das vereinigte Deutschland ist jetzt eines der grossten und machtigsten Lander der Erde. Nicht nur griindet es Colonien in Africa und Asien, sondern es nimmt auch hervorragenden Anthcil an dem Werke der Bekehrung der Volker, die noch auf dem Pfade der Finsterniss wandeln. Der deutsche Missionar ist eben so wohl bckannt als der deutsche Gelehrte, Die ( 207 ) deutschcn Missionsgesellschaften sind hochgepriesen in alien Landern, und der Name des deutschcn Gelehrten wird nur mit Hochachtung genannt. Deutschland ist es, dem wir einen Luther vardanken und damit die Bibeliibersetzung ; Deutschland war es, die Wicgc des Protestantismus, von dem das grosse Licht der Reformation ausstrahlte, und Deutschland ist es, das grosse, freie und religiose, welches Missionare zu den Heiden entsendet. Warum nun folgt Deutschland nicht dem Beispiele des Englischen Volkes, dem Schottlands und der Vereinigten Staaten Nord- Americas, die Bein von seinem Bein, Fleisch von seineni Fleisch sind, und grlindet eine grosse deutsche Bibelgesellschaft ? Die grosse Liebe, die mich zum deutschcn Volke und zur Heiligen Schrift hinzieht, veranlasst mich mit diesen Aufrufe mich hervorzuwagen. Eine Nation kann unmoglich vollstandig organisirt sein, wenn sie nicht ihre eigenen Angehorigen mit den heiligen Biichern in ihrer eigenen Sprache versehen kann, noch kann sie voll- standig unabhangig genannt werden, wenn sie in Bezug auf das " Brod des Lebens " abhangig ist von einer, wenn auch blutsverwandten und eng befreundeten, so doch immerhin fremden, Nation. Die British and Foreign Bible Society hat lange Jahre das Vorrecht genossen, ihre deutschen geliebten Brlider mit dem " Brode des Lebens " zu versorgen. Aber lasst mich diese aufriittcln zu einem cdlen Wettkampfe ! Was wurden die Amerikanischcn Burger oder das Schottische MMM ( 208 ) Volk sagen, wenn man sie auffordern wlirde, solche Almosen von England anzunehmen ? Unter derartigen Vcrpflichtungen zu stehen, das geht wohl an fur kleine protestantische Staaten wie Holland, Norwegen, Diinemark, die Schwciz und Finland, well sie eben nicht die Mittel und Ouellen besitzen um das grosse Werk selbststandig auszufiihren. Aber Schweden und Holland zum Beispiel haben bereits das Joch abgevvorfen. Soil da Deutschland in Fesseln bleiben ? England scheut durchaus nicht die Kosten, und es kommt ihm nicht entfernt in den Sinn, seine Beihiilfe in Zukunft zu verringern oder gar einzustellen. Ich gestehe sogar gerne zu, dass ein eigener Reiz in der Uberlegenheit liegt, die ein kleines Inselreichs in den stand setzt, ganz unschatzbaren Segen einem Lande zu Theil werden zu lassen, das viel grosser ist als es selber. Ich schlage auch nicht vor, das Werk, die Romisch- Katholischen Provinzen mit Bibeln zu versehen, nun sofort und ganz plotzlich zu beginnen ; das mag mit der Zeit kommen. Aber ich crhebe meine Stimme laut und mit Nachdruck zu dem deutschen Volke und rufe : " Versorgt Eure eigenen pro- testantischen Gemeinden mit der Bibel ! " Ebensowenig zielt mcin Vorschlag darauf ab, dass die " British and Foreign Bible Society " in ihren Anstrengungen nachlassen solle zur Beschaffung von Bibeln in Sprachcn anderer Nationen Europa's, Asien's, Amerika's, Africa's und Australasian's. Das ist cinmal unser altcs und stolzcs Vorrecht, das wir mit un- serm Handel, unsercn Colonicn und Eroberungen, iibcrkommen ( 209 ) haben, und wir habcn durchaus nicht den Wunsch es aufzu- geben. Wann immer die deutsche Missionsgesellschaft sich an uns wendet, wir werden immer bereit sein, sie mit Bibeln in den Sprachen Sumatra's oder China's oder Japan's odcr Indien's oder Africa's oder der Eilande Oceanien's oder Xord- oder Siid- America's zu versorgen. " So gewiss die Wahrhcit Christi in uns ist, so soil uns dieser Ruhm nicht gestopfet werden!" Ich bin mir sehr wohl bewusst, dass viele Schwierigkeiten zu uberwinden sind. Aber tretet ihnen nur muthig entgegen. Lasst alle provinciellen Gesellschaften sich zu einer einzigen grossen deutschen Bibelgesellschaft vereinigen, under dem Protec- torate Seiner ]\Iajestat des Kaisers ! Zwei oder drei Jahre werden vergehen miissen, bevor sich der Wechsel von dem alten zum neuen System vollzogen haben wird, und es wird ein Abkommen mit der British and Foreign Bible Society getroffen werden miissen, um mit vercinten Kraften die Romisch-Katholische Bevolkerung Deutschlands mit Bibeln zu versorgen, Aber soil das Land, das Hunderte von i\Iis- sionaren nach alien Theilen der Erde entsendet, ohne die Hiilfc von dessen Sohnen England liberhaupt die Ubersetzung der Bibel in fremde Sprachen nicht ausfuhren konnte, soil dieses Land, welches in Kaiserswerth die Anstalt fur Diaconissen schuf, die jetzt als werkthatige Engel liber die ganze Erde wandern, sich nicht der ersten und wichtigsten Pflicht entledigen, die Heilige Schrift unter dem Kostenpreise in die Hande von Mann und Wcib und Kind in Deutschland zu legen ? 14 ^^■JN^^'i ( 210 ) In dem Jahresbericht der British and Foreign Bible Society fiir 1880 findet sich folgende Stelle : " Obgleich es klar ist, dass " die Zeit noch nicht gekommen ist, kann das Commitee nur " den einen Wunsch hegen und nur dieses eine Gebet auf den " Lippen haben, dass Gott alle Besprechungen dieses Themas " segnen und die Herzen seiner deutschen Kinder zu noch " grosserem Eifer und hoherem Ehrgeiz begeistern moge. Das " Commitee wiirde es als ein UngUick betrachten, wenn ihre " eigenen Anstrengungen, wie erfolgreich dieselben auch immer " sein mogen, so angesehen wlirden, als seien sie nur dazu " da, um die deutschen Briider von einer Last zu befreien' " zu der sie ihre eigene Nation fiir verpflichtet halten. Und " wie grosse Freude sie auch an ihrem eigenen Werke " haben, immer und immer wieder werden sie mit Begeisterung " ausrufen ; 'Der Herr segne Euch ! Wir wunschen Euch GlUck " ' und Erfolg zu Eurem Werke im Namen des Herrn ! " ' Was fiir ein Vortheil kann deshalb fiir Deutschland darin liegen, ausgedehnte Landermassen in Africa zu erwerben ? England hat immer und immer wieder wahrend des Ictzten Jahrhunderts die Erfahrung gemacht, dass politische Errungenschaften auch geistige Verantwortlichkeiten mit sich bringen. Grosse Nationen werden vom Herrn nur abgeordnet, iiber Heiden zu herrschen zu dem einen Zweeke, sein Konigreich auszubreiten. Aber wie konnte da die deutsche Nation die Bibel nach Africa tragen, wenn sie selber dieselbe " forma pauperis " als ein Almosen fiir ihr eigenes Volk aus der Hand einer fremden, wenn auch frcundlichen Nation empfiingt, die selber das Geld zu ( ^11 ) diesem Zwccke von kleinen Kindern und dcnuithigcn Christen einsammelt ? Lasst mich cs ausrufcn mit Posaunenstimmc : " Es gicbt in " Deutschland noch viel Land zu erwerben fiir den Herrn. Die " deutsche geistige Armee, die grosse Landwehr von Glaubc, " Liebe und Hoffnung, sie sollte nicht langer mehr auf die " Htilfe cnglischer Alliirtcn angewiesen scin ! Deutschland giesst " seine eigenen grosscn Kanonen, mit dcnen es diese Welt " erobert. Soil es da nicht seine eigenen Bibcln drucken und " vertheilen, die nicht nur diese, sondern auch jene Welt erobern ? " Nehmt keinen Anstoss an meiner Kuhnheit ! Sowohl der Missioniir als der Gelehrte, der nichts nach Mission fragt, sie beide wisscn, wie hoeh ich das deutsche Volk schatze. Bei dem internationalen Orientalischen Congress in Berlin 1884 gebrauchte ich folgende Worte : " Es mangelte dem England er vor "der Neige des Lebens die Zeit, den Organismus sclbst derjcnigen " Sprachcn zu studicren, die ihm so gelaufig sind wie seine eigene. " Unter solchen Verhaltnissen schulden die Englander Deutschland " um so grosseren Dank fiir das, was seine Gelehrten fiir Indien " und Africa geleistet haben. Ich, der ich den ganzen Umfang " dieser Arbeiten kenne, sage hier in Berlin, ohne den Vorwurf " nationaler Ruhmredigkeit zu verdiencn : W^ir bediirfen nichts- " destoweniger frischer Schaaren thatiger Missionare, welche hinaus- " gehen, und neue Grammatiken und neue Worterbiicher vcrfasscn." Und wieder, in einem Aufsatze iiber " Helden-Missionare in Africa " schrieb ich : " Im Glauben hat die heiliiie und demiithiee Protestantische ■^rn mm ( 212. ) " Kirche des Continentes, arm an materiellen ^litteln, aber reich " an Intelligenz, Eifer und Selbstaufopferung, einen goldenen " Strom von Missioniiren hinausgesandt von den Hauptquartieren " in Base], Barmen, Bremen, Berlin, Hermannsburg, Leipzig und " Herrnhut, um die Vorposten zu bilden in den gefahrlichsten " Stellungen, um Tod und Gefangenschaft zu erdulden, um grosse " literarische Werke zu vollfuhren, lebendige Kirchen zu griinden " und sich die Zuneigung der Africaner zu erwerben. " Die Xamen dieser pflichttreuen Manner und Frauen, die auf " ihrem Posten gestorben sind, sind nicht bekannt in England, " aber sie sind eingezeichnet im Buche des Lebens." Ich will nichts mehr hinzufugen. Ich lasse die Angelegenheit in den Handen des guten deutschen Volkes, Robert Need ham Cust. LoxDOx : August, 1885. <^^ Oy THB ^^ [trBfI7ERSIT7l STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS, PRINTERS, HERTFORD. K ijtfS =2 TU luobo 3^^ /i 6 f UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY ^■■:mr -^^o^m jm* ,»• s-^ -• '■ mCJ'--^.jmiki!i #.• *i. •V* s^.,4. f^ . ..^•^^ . • ■ _^ • . >