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Gift of the Publishers

THE BOOK ABOVE EVERY BOOK

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THE BOOK
ABOVE EVERY BOOK

THAT WHICH IS PECULIAR TO THE BIBLE,
AND HAS CAUSED IT TO BE SPOKEN OF AS
ONE BOOK RATHER THAN MANY, GIVES IT A
VASTNESS BEYOND COMPARISON, SO THAT THE
GREATEST WORK OF INDIVIDUAL LITERARY
GENIUS SHOWS BY THE SIDE OF IT LIKE
SOME BUILDING OF HUMAN HANDS BESIDE
THE PEAK OF TENERIFFE.  J. R. Seelef

THE BIBLE HOUSE
QUEEN VICTORIA STREET LONDON

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
Except where otherwise stated^ the incidents and
statistics in this Popular Report of the British and
Foreign Bible Society belong to last year's record. It
should be noted that this period is reckoned to end on
December 31J/, 1909, as regards the Bible Society's
foreign work ; and as regards its home work, on March
3 1 J/, 1910.
T. H. DARLOW,
Literary Superintendent.
The Bible House,
August, 1910,

CONTENTS,

PAGE

Books and their Values , ...,., I
The Test of Circulation ...... 9
The Test of Translation . . , . . .13
The Test of Ubiquity ....... 32
The Test of Cheapness , . . . , . .55
The Test of 'Vitality ....... 67
The Test of Catholicity ..,,,., 93
Appendix . . . . . . . . . .109

" Other men's writings are of such a kind that
many a reader hath repented not a little of pains
spent thereon. , , . But the man whom death over-
taketh while with these writings his thoughts are
busy, happy is he! For these then with the whole
heart may we all be athirst; these may we embrace;
in these have our conversation without ceasing; kiss
these lovingly; yea, even die on these, and into these
be transformed, since 'studies' (tee know) 'into
inanners pass.' . . . These writings bring before thee.
Reader, the lively likeness of that all-holy mind; and
the very Christ himself in his talking, in his healing,
in his dying, in his rising again, — the tvhole Christ,
in a zoord, they so present to thy vieio, that if thou
shouldst behold his form with thy bodily eyes, methinks
thou wouldst see him less !"
Translated from the Latin "Paraolesis Ad Lectorem Pium"
prefixed by Erasmus to the first edition of his Greek Testament,
published at Basel, 1516.

THE BOOK ABOVE EVERY BOOK

BOOKS AND THEIR VALUES.
When we compare and contrast the precious things
which have been produced by human toil and
thought and skill, none of them appears more
wonderful than a book. For books are an abstract
and epitome of man's development. To explore their
origin we must go back to primeval generations in
the morning of the world, before history began.
There could be no books before the art of writing ;
writing again is only a symbol for speech. How did
men first learn to express their thoughts in spoken
words ? How did articulate sounds become crystal
lized into written characters ? He who has the key
to these mysterious secrets will find little left to
marvel at in mechanical contrivances like paper and
printing. To say this, however, is not to deny that the mere
body of a book possesses high importance and
interest. So far as form and material are concerned,
it seems that books once claimed kinship with trees.

THE BOOK
Many well-known words survive which testify to
this derivation. For example, liber meant, first of
all, the bark of a tree, and codex meant the trunk,
while book is only the Saxon form of " beech," and
leaf tells its own tale, corroborating the others, and
we still speak of binding in boards. Yet, after all,
these material and mechanical aspects of a book are
no more than accidental things upon which its vital
entity and essence in no way depend. The book is
unaltered whether its chapters be stamped on clay
cylinders, or illuminated on vellum scrolls, or rushed
off a rotary press at the rate of a thousand copies
every hour.
In these days, when new authors and fresh editions
are poured forth upon us in torrents and cataracts,
we sometimes question whether the enormous multi
plication of books is an unmingled boon to mankind.
To walk round some huge library like the Bodleian
at Oxford affects many people with a profound sense
of bewilderment and depression. An omnivorous
student like Thomas De Quincey confessed that in
such a place he always felt saddened by the thought
that he could not hope to live long enough to read
a tithe of the volumes which surrounded him ; but
ordinary persons turn away with a sigh of relief
that of them no such task is required. They say to
themselves that of making many books there is no
end, and they feel secretly persuaded that only a few
authors can be worth reading after all. Indeed,
sensible men, as they grow older, will generally con
struct for themselves a private Index librorum pro-
hibitorum, which often includes the bulk of so-called
"literature." They simply refuse to open any books
belonging to certain classes, in which they take no

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
interest, or which they positively dislike. Even the
most voracious readers recognize the truth in Bacon's
maxim : " Some books are to be tasted, others to be
swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."
In one of his delightfu.1 Essays, Charles Lamb has
described the books which are no books — biblia a-biblia,
" things in books' clothing perched upon shelves, like
fcdse saints, usurpers of true shrines." He says : " In
this catalogue I reckon Court Calendars, Directories,
Pocket Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered on
the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at
Large . . , and generally, all those volumes which
' no gentleman's library should be without ' : the
Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew) and
Paley's Moral Philosophy, With these exceptions, I
can read almost anything."
Vital Values.
How can we distinguish that vital quality which
gives value to a book — by virtue of which it " doth
show, contain and nourish all the world?" In his
lecture Concerning Kings' Treasuries, Ruskin main
tains that every real book embodies the best of a
real man. It is written because the author has some
thing to say which, so far as he knows, no one has
yet said and no one else can say, and so he is bound
to say it. In the sum of his life he finds this piece of
knowledge, this vision of truth, manifest to him.
This he has seen and known, and this, if anything
about him, is worth remembrance. This is his
writing, his inscription or scripture. This is a
genuine book. And we only read it as it ought to
be read, when we try honestly to enter into the
author's thoughts and to share his passion. So

THE BOOK
Montaigne could say concerning his Essais : " All
the world knows me in my book and my book in
me." So Milton wrote in his Areopagitica : " A
good book is the precious life-blood of a master
spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to
a life beyond life,"
The People of the Book.
The phrase which Muhammad commonly uses iu
the Koran to designate Christians is " the people of
the Book." And we cannot refuse to recognize a
fitness in the description. It is true, indeed, that
other religions possess sacred writings of their own,
to which they attach immense importance. But
Christianity claims in a special sense to be a historic
faith. That is to say, it is founded upon certain
wonderful events and experiences, which actually
took place in human history — events and experiences
which, as Christians believe, contain and convey the
revelation of God. Now the record of these events
and experiences is summed up in the Bible, Outside
its pages we have no sufficient or satisfactory know
ledge concerning them. And thus our Christian
faith connects so closely with the Christian Scriptures
that we can hardly resent being called " the people
of the Book." We claim, indeed, to be much more
than such a title implies ; but we must be poor,
ignorant, imperfect Christians if we are less.
The Book of God.
To those who read this report, Christianity is the
religion of the Bible. It is in the pages of Holy
Scripture that we find ourselves face to face with
One who is our Maker, our Redeemer, our Judge,

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
Beyond any other means of grace our inward life
draws from the fountain of the New Testament,
Amid the conflict of ecclesiastical authorities our
hearts pay homage to the Book of God, That sacred
name is not used unadvisedly. For the dominating
feature of Scripture is the way in which it discloses
the converse of God with men, the intimacy between
men and God, A divine Voice may indeed be heard
in murmurs and undertones through many a poet
and philosopher of ancient and modern times. But
in the Bible — and nowhere else except in the Bible —
that Voice grows clear and distinct, authoritative and
unmistakable, until finally it speaks in the holy and
awful accents of One who embodies all its meaning
in Himself, In the Bible we see God drawing near
to His children, preparing a chosen people to receive
His message, and at last revealing in Christ His
heart and will to the world. Now the Bible narrates
this revelation in the words of the prophets and
psalmists and saints and apostles to whom it was
gradually granted. And the narrative is given in
such a wonderful way that, as we read their testi
mony, we ourselves begin to enter into their experi
ence, and thus the earthly record of revelation
brings us also into fellowship with the Heavenly
Revealer, Men do despite to Holy Scripture when they
praise what may be called its accidental features,
and ignore its supreme quality and central function.
Thus, for example, to admire the Bible chiefly as a
treasury of sublime literature is to miss the mark :
its real value is independent of literary form. It
contains, indeed, marvellous eloquence and marvel
lous poetry. But the Lord is not in the eloquence.

THE BOOK
He is not in the poetry. He is in the still small
voice which speaks quite as clearly in broken
sentences and homely phrases, but speaks always
with demonstration of the Spirit and with power.
When we are asked why we receive Scripture as the
Book above every book, as the only perfect rule of
faith and life, we answer with all the fathers of the
Reformed Churches : " Because the Bible is the only
record of the redeeming love of God, because in the
Bible also we find God drawing near to man in Christ
Jesus and declaring in Him His will for our salvation.
And this record we know to be true by the w^itness
of His Spirit in our hearts, whereby we are assured
that none other than God is able to speak such
words to our souls." His Book is far above every
book, because it is the precious life-blood of the
Master Spirit, embalmed and treasured up on pur
pose to a life beyond life.
There is only one Book for the Christian Church.
''Hither, as to their fountain, other stars
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light."
Almost all Christians formally admit this supremacy
of the Bible. Even amid the darkness and confusion
of the middle ages, its authority was never denied.
Every mediaeval theologian would have maintained
that the whole doctrinal system of his Church was
based upon Holy Scripture. The Reformers did
nothing unusual, nothing opposed to the customs of
the Church in which they had been bred and brought
up, when they made their confident appeal to Scrip
ture ; and to begin with, at least, their opponents
never challenged their right to make such an appeal.
But to these Reformers the Bible was a personal,
6

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
rather than a doctrinal revelation. They appealed to
the Bible on the ground of their personal experience
of what the Scriptures had been to them. They had
felt and known that the God who had made them
and redeemed them was drawing near to them in
His Book, and there making manifest to them His
power and willingness to save. So they made haste
to translate and print the Bible for all sorts and
conditions of men to read ; because, with the Bible
in his hand, a plain man could hear his Father's
voice and learn his Redeemer's purpose and trust his
Lord's promises.* In the Bible, as in no other book,
we taste the good gift of God and the powers of
the world to come. This is the sole and sufficient
justification for a Bible Society.
The Test of Experience.
When we compare Holy Scripture in this way
with other literature, we raise the grave question
of how it should be read. In these days we are
told insistently, " Let it be read like any other book."
And we recognise deep wisdom as well as a fair
challenge in the cry. But no great book can be
appreciated properly, still less mastered, by a single
perusal. And no book is read for the second time —
unless it be merely as a pleasant diversion — in the
same spirit and temper in which it is opened for
the first time, A book w^hich we take pains to
study becomes its own champion, its own evidence.
Now this holds true pre-eminently with regard to
the Bible, The spiritual potency of God's Book
can only be apprehended by familiar experience of
¦* Compare Principal Lindsay's History of the Reformation,
i. 453.

THE BOOK
its contents, which deepens into wonder and j
as we realize its personal application, and hear
inward voice bearing witness with our spirits : " 1
day is this Scripture fulfilled for thee."
It may be said that such mystic Divine powers
these remove the Scriptures from the range of c(
parison with any other book that is published.
we shall learn a profitable lesson if we try
measure the Bible by a few commonplace crit(
of popularity and influence by which other bo
are judged. We may apply to it the tests of
culation, of translation, of ubiquity, of cheapn
of vitality and of catholicity. And we shall i
that, tried even by these standards, one Book coi
out far, far in front of all the rest.
The Bible stands by itself, alone, with a w
gap between it and the remaining volumes of
library. No book but this deserves Victor Huj
description :
" Le livre oil, Dieu se rend visible.''

ABOVE EVERY BOOK

THE TEST OF CIRCULATION.
There are men that tvill malce you boohs, and turn them
loose into the world, with as mtich despatch as they would do a
dish of fritters." Bon Quixote, ii. 3.
We adopt the crudest and most elementary test
which can be applied to any book when we reckon
up how many copies of it have gone forth to find
readers. Yet even in earlier ages, when each copy
had to be written out by the hand of a scribe, this
test could furnish certain reliable evidence as to the
popularity of the work which was multiplied by such
slow and patient labour. We have few statistics of
the copyist's trade, and it is difficult to estimate the
output of a monastic scriptorium. But from the
number of manuscripts of various ancient books
which have survived the ravages of time we may
form some idea of the value set upon them in the
past. Now there is no literary production of
antiquity for which we possess anything like the
same wealth of manuscripts as for the New Testa
ment. All the extant plays of Sophocles we owe
to a single manuscript preserved in the Laurentian
Library at Florence, Of the New Testament there
exist nearly 4,000 Greek MSS., more or less complete,
besides over 8,000 Latin MSS. of the Vulgate version,
copied when Latin was understood by every educated
man in Western Europe, 9

THE BOOK
About the middle of the fifteenth century Guten
berg's printing press inaugurated a revolution which
has not yet exhausted its results. By the miracle of
type ideas could henceforth be made common pro
perty. It is significant that the first book to be
printed in Europe was the Latin Bible, of which a
hundred other editions appeared before the year
1500. Within a century of the invention of printing
the Bible had also been published in German, Italian,
French, English, Dutch, Spanish, Bohemian, Danish,
and Swedish, as well as many times over in its
original tongues. Since that time editions of the
Scriptures have been multiplied in hundreds of
languages, until the number of the volumes which
have been issued defies all computation.
It is not altogether easy to arrive at a just com
parison between the circulation of the Bible and the
circulation of other books, Down to quite recent
years publishers printed editions only on a moderate
scale. When the history of publishing in England is
written it may be found that the first modern book
of which half a million copies were sold was Queen
Victoria's Leaves from the Joumal of our Life in the
Highlands, which appealed to every one, and was
issued at a low price. Now that novels as well as
works of standard literature have begun to appear
in extremely cheap editions, they go out in immense
numbers which would have seemed incredible fifty
years ago. Many illustrations might be given : we
need quote only one or two leading examples. It
has been estimated that no fewer than twenty-four
million volumes have passed into circulation of the
works of Charles Dickens, Of the novels written by
Mrs. Henry Wood her publishers state that over five
10

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
million copies have been sold. Mr. Hall Oaine counts
his readers by millions. In France the novels of
Zola have reached a sale which exceeds two and a
half millions, apart from translations. And in the
United States vast circulations are claimed for
American authors whose names are little known
on this side of the Atlantic, To-day there seems
hardly any limit to the vogue of a new book which
appeals to the general taste and fascinates popular
imagination. We turn now to the circulation of the Scriptures,
Consider, to begin with, the results announced by
those great institutions which exist in various
countries in order to make the Bible cheap and
readily accessible. Last year the British and Foreign
Bible Society issued 6,620,000 copies ; the Scottish and
Hibernian Bible Societies, 2,300,000 ; the American
Bible Society, 2,826,000 ; German Bible Societies,
about 900,000 ; Dutch and Scandinavian Bible
Societies, about 400,000 — making a total of over
13,000,000 copies. It must be remembered that the
great bulk of these books are sold, though generally
under cost price. To these must be added the Bibles
sold annually by ordinary publishers — which at a
very moderate estimate will amount to 2,000,000
volumes more. Thus we have a total issue of
15,000,000 new copies of the Scriptures, complete
or in parts, which have gone into circulation in
different countries during the last twelve months.
It is proper to observe, however, that of this
enormous output by no means the whole consists
of complete Bibles or Testaments, The great British
and American Bible Societies, in particular, send out
every year millions of separate Gospels and Psalters,
11

THE BOOK
mainly for use in the mission field. In China, indeed,
where considerably over 3,000,000 copies were sold
last year, these books consisted principally of Gospels
or Psalters,
We may add that since its foundation in 1804 the
British and Foreign Bible Society alone has issued
more than 222,000,000 copies of the Scriptures, of
which nearly 72,000,000 have been Bibles or Testa
ments in English,
Little need be said to emphasize the overwhelming
eloquence of figures such as these. It is a simple fact
that one Book is always in constant demand, and far
outsells every other volume that is published. Not
long ago an eminent bookseller in New York summed
up the case when he said : " You may talk as you will
of your multitudinous editions of popular novels, but
the Bible leads them all, year in and year out."
Judged by the test of circulation, this Book stands
high above every other book.

12

ABOVE EVERY BOOK

THE TEST OF TRANSLATION.

' Yet never the story may tire its,
First graven on symbols of stone.
Re-written on scrolls of papyrus
And parchment, and scattered and blotvn
By the winds of the tongues of all nations
Like a Utter of leaves vyildly whirled
Down the rack of a hundred translations
From the earliest Usp of tlie world."
Riley.
Let us turn to another criterion which helps to
measure the popularity and importance of books.
We can estimate the influence of an author, to
some extent at least, by the number of languages
into which his writings have been translated. For
each version in a fresh form of speech opens the
door to a new race of readers, and correspondingly
w^idens the constituency to which a book can appeal.
It will be worth while, therefore, if we try to reckon
up how many different versions have been published
of some of the masterpieces of human literature.
Take the imperishable poems commonly ascribed
to Homer, poems which are sometimes styled " the
Bible of the Athenians." Scholars have rendered
the niad or the Odyssey into more than a score
of languages current in modern Europe, But these
versions of Horner are made merely for the use of
13

THE BOOK
students of literature : not with any idea of winning
new worshippers for the gods of Olympus,
Take Shakespeare, the prince of English poets, who
to-day is being read and acted more extensively than
ever he was. In the British Museum, or in the
Shakespeare Memorial Library at Birmingham, we
may find editions of one or other of his dramas
translated into thirty-three different languages, in
cluding Icelandic and Japanese.
Take, again, that singular Russian genius who has
probably exerted a wider influence over the world's
thought than any other living writer. Books by
Count Tolstoy have already been published in as
many as thirty-three modern tongues.
Take the Puritan tinker whose dream Coleridge
pronounced to be "incomparably the best Summa
Theologice Evangelicce ever produced by a writer not
miraculously inspired." For more than two centuries
John Bunyan has served as the beloved interpreter
of their religion to the English-speaking race. The
Pilgr-im's Progress is now translated into no fewer
than a hundred and eleven languages and dialects,
which are current in nearly every country on earth
from Lapland to Fiji.
Five Hundred and Thirty Versions.
Yet, if we add together all these versions — of
Homer and Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Bunyan 
they amount to fewer than half the versions of the
many-languaged Bible. By means of the translator,
working in partnership with the printer, God's Book
is being made the common property of mankind.
The Gospel has been actually published in over five
hundred and thirty different forms of human speech.
14

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
We may put it in another way, and say that at least
some book or books of Holy Scripture can be had in
the vernaculars spoken by seven-tenths of the popu
lation of the world. The Bible lies open, more
or less completely, to seven persons out of every ten
who are alive to-day.
Chief among the varied agencies which have
brought about this result stands the British and
Foreign Bible Society, which has helped to translate
or to circulate the Scriptures in 424 different tongues.
The Society's list of versions now includes the com
plete Bible in 105 languages, the complete New
Testament in 103 more languages, and some book
or books of Scripture in 216 other languages besides.
To this ever-lengthening list thirty-four new lan
guages have been added during the last five years,
most of them having been reduced to writing for
the first time in order that they might become
vehicles of the Gospel,
Six New Languages.
During the past year the Society has published
versions of the Gospel in six new languages, aU of
which were reduced to written form expressly for
this purpose. For three of these new versions we are
indebted to Continental scholars, whUe the other
three have been contributed by English missionaries.
Thus the Society remains true to its title — Foreign
as well as British.
St. Matthew has been printed in Ongom, the speech of a
powerful Bantu tribe inhabiting the basin of the Gabun River
in French Congo. This version is due to an agent of the French
Soci^t^ des Missions ^vang^liques.
Two Gospels — St. Matthew and St. John — have been issued
15

THE BOOK
in Naniau, -which is current in the district of that name on
the south coast of British Ne-w Guinea. Here the London
Missionary Society has supplied a translator of these Gospels
in the person of the Rev. J. H. Holmes. His station, TJrika,
is a delta village lying among a network of creeks, swamps,
and rivers which discharge their waters into the Gulf of Papua.
The surrounding district contains 40,000 cannibals, all speaking
Namau. The island of New Caledonia, shaped like a gigantic torpedo
240 miles long, lies nearly midway between Queensland and
Fiji. For the last half-century it has been used as a French
convict-settlement, and thither many of the Paris communards
of 1871 were deported. On the east coast of the island are
found the Houailou and Pon^rihouen tribes, not free from
cannibalism, whose religion appears to consist mainly in an
intricate and thorough-going system of taboos relating to
persons as well as inanimate things. A vivid description of
the natives of New Caledonia is given in a work entitled
La Grande Terre, by Pastor Maurice Leenhardt, a French
Protestant missionary of the Societe des Missions ^vangeliques,
who has also translated certain Gospels into Houailou and
Pondrihouen. In the former language the Bible Society has
printed St. Mark and St. John, and in the latter St. Mark.
Two other fresh versions have been issued by our Society
in co-operation with the Melanesian Mission. Fiu, in which
St. Matthew's Gospel has been printed, is a dialect current
in Mwala, one of the densely-wooded Solomon Islands, where
the annual rainfall is five times as great as in England. Other
dialects spoken on the same island are Saa, in which the
Bible Society has already published the four Gospels and Acts,
and Lau, which appeared on the Society's list in 1909, when
St. Matthew was issued in that tongue.
The New Hebrides are a chain of islands, partly coralline
and partly volcanic, which stretch for 500 miles along the South
Pacific, peopled by tribes of Papuan descent with an astonishing
variety of languages, in twenty-five of which our Society had
already published versions of the Scriptures. Raga is spoken
on Pentecost, or "Whitsuntide Island, where St. Luke's Gospel
has noTf been printed by the Melanesian Mission, the Bible
Society bearing the cost. 16

rhofo hy

A Fir MAX OF MWALA, SOLOMCN ISLANDS. .
Bu K /'¦/(' Penxi^.-^inii of the MeJaiie.-/aii M/^,--)on.

Beatt/e. Hohart.

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
The Confusion of Tongues.
Consider briefly how much this result involves and
implies. It has been said that of all the buildings
ever erected the Tower of Babel casts the longest
shadow. We live upon a strangely polyglot planet,
whose inhabitants are set asunder by the bewilder
ing confusion of races and tongues.
Here, for example, is a recent picture of the city of Tiflis : *
"Sixty-two distinct languages, say the ethnologists, are spoken
in its streets ; it holds heaven knows how many groups of
separate nationalities. Eastern and semi-Eastern, aU determined
never to mingle. , , , For Tiflis lies, of course, at the cross-roads
of a very important and curious part of the world, Midway
between the Black Sea and the Caspian it has received a
sloughed-ofE portion of many Eastern tribes moving west, far
too vital ever to change or mingle ; and it lies also at the foot
of the only practicable route where Russia and Asia can shake
hands across the enormous mountains of the Caucasus, , , .
"So confusing is the human kaleidoscope that one wonders
how the people themselves keep separate and disentangled and
know without considerable reflection which is their o'wn lan
guage. In less than two minutes you pass a Persian with his
high cap of smooth lambs' wool, a Mullah with flowing robes
down to the ground and turban green or white, a veiled Tatar
woman, a keen-eyed Armenian in modern dress, a Russian in
uniform, specimens of various mountain tribes with long knives
in their belts, Cossack soldiers leading their horses to bathe in
the Koura, Kurds dark and malignant of face, Turkish gipsies,
other types from Daghestan and further east beyond the
Caspian, slant-eyed, dressed in coloured rags, and belonging to
no tribe or nation one can name — and through them all, useless,
lazy, unreliable, the ubiquitous, long-nosed Georgians with their
splendid clothes and their passion for their o'wn wine."

* At Tiflis the Bible Society has a dep6t, which is the head
quarters of its colporteurs and book-hawkers who carry the
Scriptures in dozens of versions from the Black Sea eastwards
beyond Bokhara and Samarcand to Tashkent,
17 0

THE BOOK
Now, if the Bible is to come home to all nations
and kindreds and tribes, It naust become naturalized
In each country. It must learn to speak Its message
to every man in his own tongue in which he was
born. The missionary conquest of the w^orld involves
an immense task in the mere translation of the
Scriptures, Many persons Imagine that translating
Is not so very difficult after all. We recollect,
perhaps, our own. youthful attempts at Greek and
Latin composition ; but those efforts He so far
behind us that we forget what pains they cost and
what sort of results they produced. Exact and
Idiomatic translation Is never easy. In the pages
of Punch we used to find parodies of the grotesque
fashion In which educated Hindus misapply EngHsh
phrases and idioms. But if Horace and Sophocles
could come back and read the classical exercises
which win prizes at a modern university, they
might chuckle over our "babu" Latin and Greek.
In truth, this problem of translating out of one
language into another is choked ¦with thorny diffi
culties, "Translation," said Dryden, "Is a kind of
drawing from the life ; where every one wdll acknow
ledge that there Is a double sort of likeness, a good
one and a bad. It Is one thing to draw the outlines
true, the features like, the proportions exact, the
colouring Itself perhaps tolerable ; and another thing
to make aU these graceful by the posture, the shadow-
ings, and chiefly by the spirit which animates the
whole,"
The Task of a Translator,
M, Maurice Maeterlinck, who has himself ren
dered Macbeth into French, speaks feelingly about
the inherent difficulties of such a task.
18

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
"Translators face to face with Shakespeare are like painters
seated in front of the same landscape. Each will make a differ
ent picture ; and for this reason, that around the literal sense
of the words there floats a secret life which is all but impossible
to catch, and which is, nevertheless, more important than the
external life of the words and of the images,"
This may seem fanciful to those who do not understand what
is the real difference between poetry and prose ; but a little
experiment 'will show that it is true. Let them try to translate
a sentence like Trespassers vrill be prosecuted, or Keep to the left,
into a foreign language, and they will find it easy enough.
Let them attempt a line like After life's fitful fever Tie sleeps
well, and, if they have any sense of the difference between
poetry and prose, they are not likely to be satisfied with their
attempt. In the first case the literal sense of the words is
all that they possess. In the second, it is only a small part
of what they signify. They have also a power over the mind
which is like the power of music, or of the voice and gestures
of a great orator ; and this is what the translator cannot com
municate to his version, because he cannot analyze it, and has
no command of the process by which Shakespeare charged his
words with it. This power is the power of emotion, and trans
lation becomes difBcult always in proportion to the amount of
emotion that is successfully expressed in the original. The
logical meaning of words can be exactly understood ; their
emotional power cannot. Indeed, like the emotional power
of a landscape, it varies 'with the nature of the recipient, and
thus M, Maeterlinck is right when he says that versions of the
same poem may vary as much as pictures of the same landscape.
There is no such thing as an exact translation of a great
poem, because no two men ever have exactly the same emo
tions. However sensitive a translator may be, and however
accomplished, the emotion aroused in him by the poem which
he translates will not be the same as the emotion expressed in
the original, because he is not the same man nor in the same
circumstances as the original poet. The translator must be
inspired by his original, as a painter may be inspired by a real
scene ; and in each case there will be as many different versions,
none of them exactly like the original, as there are translators
or painters. It might therefore be supposed that a translator
19

THE BOOK
need not aim at any kind of fidelity ; but M. Maeterlinck insists
upon the importance of fidelity and tells us how exacting is the
ideal of the conscientious translator. And no doubt he is right,
for the translator's loyalty to his original is like the painter's
loyalty to nature. Bach knows that an exact imitation is
impossible, but each reverences the source of his inspiration too
much to misrepresent it ; and without this reverence there can
be no sincerity or precision or richness in either art.
Our English Bible.
It is significant that the finest translation in the world is the
English Authorised Version of the Scriptures. That may not
be an exact translation, but it is the result and culmination of
a series of attempts to make one. All the translators tried, not
to produce a pretty piece of literature on their o'wn account,
but to render into English words which they believed to be
inspired. This belief of theirs aroused in them a high religious
emotion, which, half unconsciously perhaps, they expressed in
their different versions ; and, since they all shared in this
emotion, each of them was able to make use of the labours of
his predecessors and to some extent to improve upon them.
Thus the Authorised Version expresses the religious emotions of
the English people as they were inspired by the original, and all
the translators had this in common, that they were as faithful
as they could be to the original. They differed in detail accord
ing to the difference in the mind of each ; but their common
fidelity gave them a cumulative power, the result of which was
the richness and precision and sincerity of the Authorised
Version.*Pioneer Versions.
It Is hardly possible for us to Imagine what it costs
to translate the Scriptures for the first time into the
tongue of some barbarous tribe which possesses no
alphabet, no vocabulary, no grammar. When Henry
Nott, the predecessor and companion of John
* Quoted from a communication by its Paris correspondent
in Tlie Times of September 1, 1909.
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ABOVE EVERY BOOK
Williams In the South Seas, had spent twenty
years in Tahiti so that he might perfect himself
In its language, he then proceeded to spend twenty
years more In order that he might render the
Bible Into Tahltlan, We do not sufficiently re
cognize the heroic drudgery of the noble army
of translators, who toil on with untiring patience
to give men of all races the Gospel In their
native speech. The difficulties are enormous, the
labour Is almost inconceivable, the initial mistakes
are not seldom astonishing and amusing also.
Imagine the translator In New Guinea who wanted
the proper idiom for " far be it from me to do this
thing." He consulted an Intelligent catechumen and
explained the Idea to be conveyed, " Yes," replied
the catechumen, "I understand exactly. We have
the precise Idiom : we say, ' May I speak to my
mother-in-law before I will do this thing ! ' " For
in that land of strange taboos one of the unpardon
able sins Is for a man to open his lips to his wife's
mother.
Some Linguistic Difficulties^
How can you find a name for " lamb " among the
inhabitants of some Island where the only quad
rupeds are pigs and rats? How can you render
" whiter than snow " In the dialects of West Africa,
where snow Is utterly unknown? How can you
translate "harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and
all kinds of music " In the language of the Siberian
Samoyedes, whose sole notion of music Is the
sorcerer's drum ?
Some of the most uncouth languages Indulge in
curiously elaborate Inflexions. St, Mark's Gospel
21

THE BOOK
Is published by the Bible Society In Lengua, the
speech of an Indian tribe In Paraguay, Eight
hundred inflexions Is quite a moderate number for
a regular verb In Lengua, Many words, however,
are of enormous length. The word for eighteen
is " Sohog-emek-wakthla-mok-emlnik-antanthlama,"
Literally translated, that means, "Finished my hands,
pass to my other foot — three," for fingers and toes
serve as units. The word for butter In Lengua Is
" Waltkyanamankukingmlnik-ikpithmuk " — which
means, literally, " the grease of the juice of the udder
of the cow,"
The translator of the Gospels into Hwa Miao, which
have just been published by the Bible Society for an
aboriginal tribe in Western China, found great diffi
culties In obtaining any equivalents for certain terms.
He could get no rendering for "the Comforter" In
St. John xiv,, In spite of repeated inquiries, until at
last his Hwa Miao teacher came to say that " he must
be absent for a day, as a friend had lost her child
and he was going to console her '' : the word which
he employed meant, literally, " to bring her round a
corner."
The Moral Problem.
But the translator's worst difficulty of all Is the
moral difficulty. Here Is one Instance of it, from the
experience of a gifted linguist who encamped for
some time among an Indian hill-tribe, and set out to
translate the Parable of the Prodigal Son Into their
speech. But he discovered that their only notion of
feasting was to get Intoxicated on native beer. Their
only word for festival meant " much beer-drinking."
So when he tried to render the phrase in the parable,
22

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
" they began to be merry," he had the utmost diffi
culty in finding any word for rejoicing which did not
also suggest drunkenness. Such an experience illu
minates the real problem. Not only the heathen, but
the speech of the heathen, must be Christianized,
Their language itself needs to be born again. Their
very w^ords have to be converted from foul meanings
and base uses and baptized Into a Christian sense,
before those words can convey the great truths and
ideas of the Bible,
Very broken and Imperfect to begin with must be
the first version of the Gospel In a barbarous tongue.
And yet with all Its defects and shortcomings, each
of these versions — even the earliest and the crudest
— becomes a means of grace, " It tells me my heart,"
confessed the negro In the West Indies, " It makes
men new," cried the Bechuana in South Africa, So
out of the mouths of savages comes testimony to the
wonderful Word of God,
The Work of the Reviser.
The task of Bible-revision, as well as Bible-trans
lation, Is going on continually. At this present time
nearly a hundred different versions are being made
or Improved or completed In various parts of the
world. The work Is carried on by missionaries and
scholars and Ungulsts, generally organized In com
mittees under the Bible Society's auspices, and often
at Its expense. The last revision of the LIfu Old
Testament involved above 40,000 corrections. The
Bible Society expended over £3,000 on revising the
Malagasy Bible, and £3,500 on revising the Hindi
Old Testament — in both cases apart from all cost
of printing and publication. But no pains and no
23

THE BOOK
expense are wasted which enable God's Book to
speak as clearly and simply and sweetly as possible
to each man in his own tongue.
Besides providing the Scriptures in every language,
the Bible Society aims at one accepted version In
each language. By Its experience and Its resources
it has Influence and authority to unite the most
competent scholars at this sacred task, and so
to provide for each heathen land a practically
authorised version. It Is no smaU gain to escape
sectarian translations made by separate Missions,
Whatever else divides Christian missionaries abroad,
at least they should appeal to one and the same
copy of the Bible,
The Redemption of a Language.
Such work has plainly a high scientific interest
and value. From one point of view the Bible Society
Is a great philological institute. It has crystallized
and created scores of languages, which, until then,
had no alphabet in existence. It has taken many
a corrupt and degraded dialect and purified Its forms
and phrases, so that the poor miserable jargon has
become clothed and In its right mind — transformed,
like the demoniac of old, into a messenger of re
deeming Love,
Even in a faulty translation, with many Inadequate
terms, the Word of God Is far more pure and holy
than anything else in the speech of a heathen tribe.
The Rev, A, W, Banfield, who has translated the
Nup6 Gospels for a race on the Upper Niger, tells us
that the natives themselves have often said to him :
" You take our words and so change them that
we hardly recognize them again," , . . "We never
24

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
thought that you could say such pure things [with
our language,"
Scholars admit the Immense Influence which has
been exercised by the English and the German
versions of the Bible upon the languages of England
and Germany, But even the lowest and most sordid
forms of speech can be transfigured as they learn
gradually to express Christian ideas. Though they
have lien among the pots, yet they become as the
wings of a dove covered with silver and her feathers
with yellow gold.
"The home-speech of the mouth of God."
It Is one chief concern of the Bible Society that
In each country the Scriptures shall be rendered not
into a formal literary style, suitable for scholars
and courtiers, but into the " vulgar tongue " which
common men understand in the market-place, which
mothers use with their children in the cottage. There
are not a few countries where alongside of a scholarly
standard translation of the Bible it has been found
necessary to provide colloquial versions as well. In
China, for example, besides the Bible In Wenli, the
literary language dear to all educated Chinese, and
the Bible In Mandarin, the most widely current ver
nacular, our Society has published the Scriptures,
or some part of them, In fifteen other colloquial
dialects of Chinese, each spoken by millions of
people. To meet the needs of fifty thousand Malay-
speaking Chinese In the Straits Settlements, the New
Testament is being rendered Into their special form
of the language, known as " Baba " Malay, For
educated Arabs no finer version can be desired than
the Arabic Bible translated by Dr, Cornelius Van
25

THE BOOK
Dyck. But our Society has been constrained also
to publish Gospels In the local varieties of Arabic
current in Morocco, Tunis, and Algeria,
Last year the natives of Algeria gave an enthusiastic welcome
to the new version of St, Luke's Gospel in their o'wn colloquial
Arabic, Nearly 6,500 copies were circulated — more than half
of which the colporteurs sold, copy by copy. They carried this
Gospel from north to south and from east to west of Algeria,
flnding eager purchasers everywhere. Many Arabs kissed the
book reverently before putting it into their pockets. One col
porteur's approach to the to'wns on his route was heralded by a
crowd who announced the coming of the man "who sells the
Gospel in our own language." On his arrival he was surrounded
by purchasers who pressed their money into one of his hands,
and eagerly snatched the books out of the other.
Recent Progress.
Year In and year out companies of scholars and
linguists are carrying on quiet, persistent labour in
many lands where versions are being completed or
made more perfect. Now and again we gather the
slow-ripening fruit of their toil. Thus, for the sub
jects of the Emperor Menellk a complete New Testa
ment has at last been pubUshed In TIgrlnya, a Semitic
language spoken by 3,000,000 people In the Tigr^
province of Abyssinia. Careful revisions are going
forward in no fewer than fourteen of the greater
languages of the world. Of these, the awakening
East fitly claims the major part. In India the Bible
is being carefully revised in MarathI, and In Kanarese,
Still further eastwards, the revision of the Japanese
Bible has been actually taken In hand ; In China the
revision both of the Wenli and Mandarin versions
makes steady progress; while the Korean Bible
rapidly approaches completion. Every year native
26

'^,..

I'liuUi bij

A MOORISH COI'NTRY WOiH.N

.\ Cnvilla.

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
scholars take a larger share in the task of translating
and revising the Scriptures.
Among reference Bibles published for the first time
during the year we may mention the revised edition
of Segond's version — which Is the only modern refer
ence Bible in French, The Urdu New Testament has
been issued with references, and a corresponding edi
tion of the Urdu Old Testament is In the press.
In Central South Africa the various Missions have
long used several different systems of spelling. But
a recent Conference In Johannesburg, held at the
Instance of the Bible Society, has happily agreed on
a uniform orthography for Chuana and Pedl, two of
the current vernaculars.
At home, Dr, GInsburg's new edition of the Hebrew
Bible goes steadily forward ; the Book of Isaiah has
appeared In the form In which the whole will be
finally published and has received an enthusiastic
welcome from Semitic scholars both in this country
and on the Continent.
With the friendly consent of the Oxford University
Press, Dr. H. Julian White has undertaken to edit
for our Society a pocket edition of the Latin New
Testament, presenting the text of the great critical
edition of the Vulgate on which he has long been
engaged with the Bishop of Salisbury.
In Braille type for the blind, new books of the
Bible were completed last year In Welsh, Spanish,
Italian, Gujarati and two forms of colloquial Chinese.
The re-Issue of the English Bible In revised Braille
has now been completed. The Bible Society has
helped to provide the Scriptures In embossed type
for the blind in thirty-one different versions. From
the Sudan our depot-keeper wrote last year : " A
27

THE BOOK
blind sheikh wishes to have the Bible In raised
type ; please send as many of the separate books
of the Bible as are to be had," Two cases of bulky
volumes of the Arabic Scriptures in Moon type for
the blind were accordingly packed and dispatched
from Alexandria to the Society's depot at Khartum.
For Missions in Many Lands.
The services rendered by the Bible Society to
missionary organizations are vital and manifold.
In almost all the chief mission fields — as, for
Instance, In China and India, In Uganda and South
Africa — the Bible Society maintains Its ovra repre
sentative, whose functions Include not a few
important and difficult duties. He has to organize
the representative committees which undertake the
task of translation or revision in local vernaculars.
He must arrange for printing and producing such
new editions of the Scriptures in different languages
and characters as shall meet the popular needs, alike
in quantity, size, and format. He has generally to
engage, supervise, visit and encourage the colporteurs
maintained by the Bible Society In his agency. He
has to correspond with all the missions at work
there, and to arrange that they shall be duly sup
plied with the editions of the Scriptures which they
need from the Society's local depots. Generally,
also, he has to decide, in consultation with repre
sentative missionaries, at what prices editions shall
be sold.
These selling-prices are fixed according to one
controlling principle of the Bible Society's mission.
Far from doing business at a profit, It habitually
sells Its popular editions at prices which Involve
28

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
serious loss. Those prices are fixed In any country,
not by considering how much books have cost to
produce and distribute, but by considering what
the poorest class of labourers In that country can
afford to pay.
Missionary organizations obtain their supplies of
printed Scriptures at a further discount off the
catalogue price which Is charged to an ordinary
purchaser. Thus, there is a margin between what
a missionary has to pay for Scriptures and what
he may receive for the re-sale of them ; this naargin
covers the cost of copies which he may wish to give
away. In all cases the Bible Society pays the
carriage of the books, so that there is no Increase
of cost to some remote mission station above the
price charged at one of the Society's depots.
The services which have been thus roughly defined,
constitute what is by far the greatest contribution
of the Bible Society to Christian missions abroad.
There remains a minor function of the Society,
which, however, Is only supplementary.
In places where the Bible Society has no repre
sentative of Its own — as, for Instance, in many parts
of Africa, and In the South Seas — grants are made
on " missionary terms," This means that the Society
defrays the whole cost of production and freight,
and sends the books out free of charge. It leaves
the missionary to fix the prices of sale, to repay
himself local expenses from such proceeds, and
to remit any ultimate balance to the Bible
House, During the past year over 7,000 copies of the
Scriptures In the Ibo and Hausa languages were
sent out from London on " missionary terms " to
29

THE BOOK
stations of the CM.S, in Nigeria ; the cost of these
books, apart from freight, was £747.
We may give another example to illustrate the ser
vices which the Bible Society constantly render to the
missionary. Last year the following missions drew
supplies of the Scriptures from the Bible Society's
depots within the boundaries of its Egyptian
Agency :
The Church Missionary Society, the North Africa Mission,
the United Free Church of Scotland Mission, the American
Presbyterian Mission, the Reformed Presbyterian Mission, the
Irish and Scotch Reformed Presbyterian Mission, the Swedish
Evangelical Mission, the London Jews' Society, the British
Syrian Mission, the Irish Presbyterian Mission, the Mission
of the English Presbyterian Church to the Jews, the Church of
Scotland Jewish Mission and Schools, the Waldensian Mission,
the Dutch Presbyterian Mission, the Egypt General Mission,
the United Methodist Free Church Mission, the Friends'
Foreign Missionary Association, the Friends' Africa Industrial
Mission, the Universities' Mission to Central Africa,

What we have called the test of translation as
applied to the Bible surely yields astonishing results.
What can be more Impressive than the fact that
this Book alone among all others Is made readable
for men of every colour and In every country ? Can
there be more convincing proof that It alone Is the
Book of humanity ? Other reUglons indeed, includ
ing those which proselytize, possess holy books of
their own. But, as Professor Warneck points out,
these are not spread abroad at all In foreign lan
guages, they have done little missionary service —
none at all, Indeed, In the comprehensive manner of
the Bible, Moslems are forbidden to translate the
30

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
Koran from its original Arabic Into any " profane "
tongue. There are Indeed a few early versions of
the scriptures of Buddhism, and some versions or
adaptations of certain sacred Sanskrit writings of
Hinduism, But In modern times the translations of
non-Christian sacred books have been made by Euro
pean scholars for scientific purposes. None of them
professes to be a universal and oecumenical book.
Only the Bible Is the Book of the whole human
race. All the world over Christians differing in
blood and speech discover their unity In Its pages.
The Holy Spirit has submitted to the limitation of
language so that in every tongue the Gospel of
redeeming Love may be magnified. And God's
manifold wisdom will only be Interpreted In all its
fulness when the Divine thoughts are uttered through
the characteristic words and forms of all languages.

31

THE BOOK

THE TEST OF UBIQUITY.

" To His kingdom there shall be no frontier."
Reading of Isaiah viii, 7
in a recently discovered Syriac MS.
On the site of Troy German excavators have found
the remains of no fewer than six ancient cities, one
above another. The sixth of these we may roughly
identify with the Troy of Greek legend. Immortalized
by Homer, But as far back as 2000 B.c, there was
standing on the same site an earlier city, the second
of the series. And among the remains of this second
city there has been discovered a weapon of nephrite,
or jade, a rare stone not found anywhere nearer than
China, and testifying to the distances which trade
could travel in prehistoric times.*
That fragment of jade — carried across Asia from
the land of Sinim to be buried on the shore of the
Levant — will serve for a parable of the extraordinary
dispersion of Holy Scripture, God's Book is become
the most ubiquitous book in the world. It marches
ahead of the pioneers of civilization. It penetrates in
front of the newspaper correspondent. The first
European traveller in modern days to enter Merv was
O'Donovan, the dashing correspondent of the Daily
* Cf. Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic.
32

photo from life

THK DK1M)SI':1I HALM LAM V C)F TIBVIT,

By The Graphic

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
News. But when he rode Into the city he found that
the Scriptures had preceded him. From a Jewish
merchant in Merv he purchased a copy of St,
Matthew's Gospel, published by the Bible Society In
1880 In Jaghatal Tatar, the dialect of the Tekke
Turkomans, Years before the first nugget of gold
was discovered In the Klondyke, the Bible Society
was printing the New Testament In Tukudh, for the
Indian hunters of the Yukon valley. Years before
the British expedition entered Tibet, the Bible Society
had published the New Testament In Tibetan, and
Gospels and Testaments were carried over the
snowy Himalayan passes, so that our soldiers came
upon well-worn copies of these books when they
reached Lhasa, the Forbidden City.
In Closed Countries.
The Scriptures can find a way through doors which
are fast barred against all other Christian influences.
They enter and bear their testimony where no living
voice may proclaim the Gospel, The ancient realm
of Abyssinia excludes missionaries, but Testaments
In Ethiopic and Amharic and Gospels in the ver
naculars of the tribesmen have been percolating for
many years into the dominions of Menelik. No
Christian teachers are adnaltted Into Afghanistan
or Nepal ; but native traders take the Nepalese
Testament across their frontiers, and caravans over
the Khyber carry Pashtu Bibles to Kandahar and
Kabul, Our reports show how often the printed
Gospel proves itself an effectual evangelist. It can
win Its own welcome and deliver its mighty message
even apart from human aid. For to lonely souls
the Holy Spirit of God Is His own interpreter.
33 D

THE BOOK
The Society's Depots.
In order that God's Book may be brought within
reach of His children far and near, the Bible Society
has established depots In nearly a hundred of the
principal cities of the world. Of the books which it
issues, two-thirds are produced In foreign countries
for foreign readers. Part of the Society's Centenary
Fund is being systematically devoted to securing
new sites, depots, or other premises, at Important
centres of population. The Society now possesses
a widely-spread network of Bible Houses In most
of Its Agencies abroad. Recently larger or more
suitable dep6ts have been built, or acquired, or
opened, In cities as widely apart as Barcelona,
Bombay, Colombo, Khartum, Port Said, Rangoon,
and Singapore, It is also proposed to secure new
headquarters for the Society's work at Alexandria,
the commercial capital of the Nile valley, and at
Buenos Ayres, which ranks second only to Paris as
a centre of the Latin peoples.
The Dispersion of Races.
One astonishing phenomenon In human society
to-day Is the vast silent migration which is every
where going on. Foreign peoples continually filter
into strange lands, and the ends of the earth flow
together In bewildering confusion. Last year, for
example, more than a quarter of a million immigrants,
mainly Spaniards and Italians, entered the Argentine.
Canada received 200,000 new-comers, representing
fifty-three nationalities ; and about one-third of the
Scriptures which our Society circulated In the
Dominion were In languages other than English.
Russian peasants cross the Urals into Siberia at the
34

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
rate of 2,000 a day. In Korea 1,000 Japanese are
landing every week. Formerly Trinidad was nomi
nally Christian ; but for the last thirty years Inden
tured coolies from the East Indies have been coming
Into the island, where most of them remain. Fresh
coolies arrive at the rate of 2,000 a year, so that
to-day this Island, named after the Holy Trinity, has
a heathen population of 100,000 — more than one In
three — who build temples to Haluman, the Hindu
monkey god.
When we realize this strange flux of races we
understand why the Society's dep6t at Johannesburg
has supplied versions of the Scriptures in seventy-
nine different languages and dialects, Including
Maori and Icelandic, Our depot at Jerusalem sold
the Word of God last year In twenty-five versions.
For the same cause Chinese versions are sent to
Samoa and to Tahiti, and Malay versions to Cape
Town, Syrian traders gladly buy Arabic Testa
ments In Jamaica, in Chile, in Argentina, and in
Brazil, Indian colporteurs are employed among the
Indians In Natal and In British Guiana, Chinese
colporteurs among the Chinese In Siberia and Korea,
To-day, more than ever, the Bible Society must per
severe In Its world-wide mission to cancel the curse
of Babel and to multiply the blessings of Pentecost,

Here are two instances of " outlanders " in Venezuela,
""What do I care for a Bible now?" said a German shop
keeper at Valencia, "I left all that sort of thing behind me
in Germany, A Bible does not help a man to make doUars."
"Have you only this life to think about?" replied the col
porteur. "There is something better than dollars to live for.
The Bible teaches a man not only how to make money honestly
and how to spend it well, but how to live so that he will receive
35

THE BOOK
heavenly treasure in another world." The shopkeeper remained
silent for a few moments, and then said, ' ' Senor, your words
are true. Although I have never read a Bible since I left
Germany twenty years ago, I will buy one now and read it
again." At the town of San Joaquin a Jewish trader, who had come
from Morocco thirty years before, was delighted to hear that
he could buy a Bible. "Read me the story of Joseph," he said
to the colporteur, "I have not heard it since my youth. Let
me hear a Psalm of David and a chapter from the Prophets."
It was a grand opportunity to read him the Scriptures and to
show from the Prophets that Jesus Christ was Messiah and
King. He listened with rapt attention to the end, and
although a Jew he bought the New Testament with the Old,
saying, "I wiU read both."
The Mission of the Colporteur.
To put the Scriptures into the hands of otherwise
neglected multitudes of mankind, the Bible Society
has developed one characteristic type of agent. The
colporteur, with his wallet of cheap little Gospels
and Testaments, seeks men out wherever they make
their homes, and offers them God's Book in the
speech In which they were born. First and fore
most, the colporteur must be an earnest-hearted
Christian, qualified by his own experience to com
mend the Book which he carries. As a rule he Is
also a native of the country where he travels, and
so he moves naturally among the people, familiar
with their customs and ways of thought and
quaint idioms of speech.
Throughout last year the Society employed no
fewer than 1,100 of these wayfaring Biblemen, who
wont about selling the Scriptures at prices which the
poorest can afford to pay, and disposed of as many
as 2,900,000 copies of the Word of God, These
36

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
men are selected, organized, and superintended with
the utmost care by our agents, or not seldom by our
missionary friends — who, be it said, themselves take
rank among the most zealous and effective of Bible-
sellers, The number of colporteurs shows an in
crease of nearly 200 — partly through the generosity
of Individuals, for as many as 158 Chinese col
porteurs are now being personally supported by
friends In England, Half of our colporteurs are
natives of India or China — the two great empires
which contain together about three-sevenths of the
human race. Besides these, 100 Korean colporteurs
have been busy In their own country. In Europe
225 colporteurs have visited the towns and villages
of the Continent, offering the Scriptures from door
to door.
The colporteur's vocation lies mainly aloof and
apart from great cities. In most countries popula
tion is not congested into huge swarming centres
of industry. For example, the empire of Austro-
Hungary, which embraces forty-two millions of
people, contains only six cities which are larger
than Norwich, In Russia, nearly a third of the
total area still remains forest ; and eight Russians
out of every nine live in scattered villages, where
only colporteurs can effectually carry the Scriptures.
More than ninety per cent, of the teeming multi
tudes of India are peasants. When we consider
the significance of facts like these, we begin to
understand that after we have translated the
Scriptures and printed the Scriptures, one vital
task remains unfulfilled. This Is the work of our
Bible-messengers — to use their familiar German
name — who carry to these innumerable hamlets
37

THE BOOK
and wayside cottages and lonely huts and home
steads the Gospel In each man's mother-tongue.
Autolycus the Evangelist,
Be It remembered, moreover, that the colporteur
Is a genuine evangelist. He is chosen not merely
for his cleverness as a shrewd hawker, but because
he has learnt to know and love the Bible, Its power
dwells In his heart, and Its message Hves on his lips ;
and when he sells a Gospel he can add his warm,
personal word of witness to the Redeemer whom
it proclaims. At the same time It Is no part of
the colporteur's duty to make proselytes, or to detach
adherents from any Christian communion. He has
explicit instructions that he shall, as far as possible,
avoid controversy. And the peace of God follows
him as he wanders, and abides with him where he
enters In,
In Perils Oft.
The experiences of these Biblemen are not free
from hardship and peril. Last year In Gallcia one
was arrested and Imprisoned for eleven days as a
Russian spy. Another spent three weeks In prison
In Honduras. Another had to beat a hasty retreat
from bullets in the streets when revolution broke
out at Lima. Another suffered violent assault in
a village of the Nile Delta. Another was pelted and
plundered In Burma. Another was nearly drowned
In a flooded river In Salvador. Another suffered
shipwreck on a coral reef off the coast of Yucatan,
Another was beaten by a crowd of young students,
who tore his books to pieces, at Lahore ; but when
it was proposed to transfer him to a safer station his
38

QITCHK IN'IlUNS IN lir.\TKM.\l,.\

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
reply was, " No, I am not afraid : God will take care
of me," Such is the spirit in which these humble,
faithful, heroic Bible-sellers are making God's Book
the most ubiquitous book In the world.
The Burden of the Colporteur.
Few white men know, fewer perhaps regard, the circum
stances under which colportage is carried on in the tropical
island of Java, Our colporteurs need sympathy and encourage
ment, as they bear the heat and burden of the day and the
discomforts of the night. There is little home-life for them.
More often than not a wayside lodging-place of questionable
repute is the only place where they can sleep. Far from home
and friends, often denied the opportunities of gathering with
Christians, more open to malaria than most men because of their
irregular nomadic lives, tramping through the island in sun or
rain, along its fever-haunted coasts, through humid rice-swamps or
dense teak-forests, among the buyers and sellers of the crowded
market-place, canvassing the huts of tiny hamlets or journeying
up and do'wn the slopes of Java's flery volcanoes — anywhere,
everywhere, so that men may receive the Book of Life, they
bear lightly the things that affect the body, but are often
saddened by indifference, opposition, and the apparent thank-
lessness of their work. How they contrive to clothe themselves
decently, send their children to school, and pay their way
generally on the small salaries they receive, it is difficult to
understand : yet one seldom meets with complaint. Poor in
this world's goods, yet are they rich in eternal treasure that no
chance or change can take from them,"
In Brazil one of our colporteurs closed his December
letter last year thus : " I am very content In my work,
I have opportunity to speak with all classes of people
about the love of God, No one Is happier than I am,
because of this privilege of winning souls for Christ.
I do not trust in myself, but in Him who sends me,"
In Ceylon some one asked a Sinhalese colporteur,
39

THE BOOK
" How Is It that you are always so happy, for I
very well know the difficulties in your work aud the
burdens you have to bear, and still you keep
smiling?" In reply the colporteur opened a Bible
and pointed to Psalm Iv, 22 : " Cast thy burden upon
the Lord,"
At the end of a journey among the Andes, during
which he sold 1,500 copies of the Scriptures, Colporteur
Valenzuela writes : " My pen has no skill to explain
to you on paper the way God has blessed His Word,
If I were to tell you all, ten thousand words would
not be enough."
Beginning at Jerusalem.
One colporteur in Colombo belongs to a respectable
Sinhalese family, whose members are all influential
Buddhists. Since he embraced the Christian faith
he has gone through much persecution, his own
relations practically disinheriting him. He writes
thus concerning his first month's work :
" "When I took up work for the Bible Society, the first house
I went to with Bibles to sell was my father's. There, in the
presence of my parents and my seven brothers, I requested
them to buy a copy of the Holy Scriptures, the book which so
marvellously changes a man's life, if only he accepts its teaching
and lives it. One of my brothers said, ' There are eight
brothers in our family including yourself ; you are the only
one who is a Christian. You say that you serve an all-loving
and all-powerf ul God. If that be so, how is it you are under
going all sorts of privations ? Look at us ; none of us are
in want ; we have all that we need. But you are not so, and
the great secret of this is that you have left our religion and are
serving another God. Tlierefore we do not want your Bibles.
You can do whatever you please with them ; we can get on as
we have done up till now without them.' However, I am
extremely thankful to say that by the grace of God I broke
40

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
down all their arguments, and in the end the first copy of the
Holy Scriptures sold by me was to my own family. I told them
it was quite true that from a worldly point of view they might
be getting on far better than I ; but I enjoyed many blessings
which they did not possess. I read them the parable of Dives
and Lazarus, to which they, especially my dear old mother,
carefully listened. It was that which chiefiy broke do-wn their
arguments, and led them to buy a copy of the Bible."
He further states that he has been in the habit of visiting his
family periodically, "to give instruction about the Gospel of
Christ, Occasionally some give ear to my words, and others mock
me, saying I am mad. But my dear mother has at last found the
truth of the Christian religion, and I am praying continually
that more and more her heart, and that of the others, may be
opened fully to the salvation offered by our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ."
Hie et ubique.
These Biblemen penetrate to the most odd and
unexpected places. We hear of them last year
selling the Scriptures under the shadow of Dante's
tomb at Ravenna; among rubber-gatherers in the
valley of the Amazon ; in restaurants at Paris, and
In cafis at Cairo, and In gambling-dens at Johore ;
among lonely settlers In Queensland ; along the new
Hejas railway line which Is creeping from Damascus
down towards the holy cities of Islam, Last year a
colporteur for the first time visited Nova Zemla, and
distributed Testaments among the Samoyedes on
that desolate island in the Arctic Ocean, Another
colporteur carried the Scriptures for the first
time to Buddhist monasteries beside the turquoise-
blue waters of the sacred Lake Mansarowar in
Tibet, The colporteur travels in all manner of ways — by
train or steamer or sledge ; on horse-back or mule-
41

THE BOOK
back ; oftenest of all on foot. In French Indo-China
he Is conveyed by native boat, or in a bullock-cart, or
even on an elephant. In Natal he drives a waggon
with a pair of mules. In Mongolia he crosses the
great deserts with a caravan of ponies and camels.
Last summer one agent floated down the Tigris from
Diarbekir to Mosul, the site of ancient Nineveh, on a
raft constructed of goat-skins, Inflated with air and
fastened on to a frame of timber — almost exactly
like the rafts shown In bas-reHef on the Assyrian
monuments in the British Museum.
Across the Hills on Foot.
Two colporteurs tramped from Santiago to Valparaiso, over
100 miles, to call at the little ¦vdllages and farmhouses along
the route. Such a journey across rough mountainous country,
under a broiling Chilian sun and laden -with hea-vy packages
of books, was no light task. On their second day they
arrived at a solitary hut at the foot of a hill. Here they
found a farm-labourer and his wife, who had never attended a
Gospel service of any kind, nor ever conversed with a Protestant
minister ; but they had been led to Christ by reading a Bible
brought by a Christian friend from a neighbouring town, and
by the few explanations which he had given them. When our
colporteurs presented themselves at the door of this rancho and
announced that they sold the Bible, the woman replied, "We
have a Bible already, brothers, but won't you come in and rest
yourselves ? " She proceeded to press upon them that generous
hospitality for which country-folk in Chile are proverbial. Thus,
in the most unlikely places, we find those who by means of the
Bible have learnt to know their Redeemer and to recognize the
brotherhood of those who believe in Him.
Before da-wn on the fifth day the colporteurs arrived at
Valparaiso, weary and footsore, but glad at heart, for they had
sold more than 150 books, for the most part in homes which
before had been in ignorance of the existence of a written
revelation from God to man. Was not the fatigue worth
while ? 42

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
At Vladivostocfc.
On the Pacific coast of Siberia Colporteur Tchebikin
works among the Russian soldiers, who are quartered
there In such numbers that the maritime province
seems one vast military camp. Tchebikin has proved
himself to be a thoroughly capable man ; by ad
mirable patience and tact he has succeeded where
others have failed. The notes, permits, and passes
which he has received from different regimental
authorities would make up quite a ream of writing
paper. At the end of last year a special permit was
issued to him to visit the " Russian Island," which
lies due south of Vladlvostock, and forms a sort of
Kronstadt to the "Citadel of the East." This rare
privilege enables Tchebikin to visit all forts and
garrisons, not excluding the " Russian Island," until
September 29, 1910. It will give our colporteur
great opportunities to distribute God's Word among
the various garrisons, and it constitutes a very
remarkable proof of the authorities' confidence in
the Bible Society and in Its servants.
In Burma.
Last year in Burma nearly 8,000 villages and
over 130,000 houses were visited by the colporteurs,
who sold 53,000 books.
In most cases the books are sold copy by copy, after much
patient, earnest persuasion on the part of the colporteur
and many objections, doubts, and hesitations on the part
of the purchaser. Fifty, a hundred, two hundred houses wiU
be visited in the course of a day, and the sales may not
amount to a dozen. But then from time to time, in the cool
of the evening, perhaps even after darkness has set in, the
colporteur is cheered by the arrival of some Nicodemus-like
43

THE BOOK
enquirer, who will sit and discuss "religion" — and there is
nothing the thoughtful Oriental likes better — until a scoffer
by daylight goes quietly home with his mind full of new
ideas and a small book in his hand more precious than all the
rubies of Burma.
In Korea.
A Presbyterian missionary sends the following
description of a Korean colporteur whom he
supervises :
" Colporteur Chung Soo Wun is referred to by our Korean
Christians as a striking example of what an ignorant man,
filled by the Spirit, can do to advance the cause of Christ.
Accustomed to hard work from his early years, he is not
ashamed to be seen carrying a heavy load of books on his
back. He presses the sale of the Scriptures, and gives his
simple testimony with an earnestness difficult to resist, and
wins a respectful hearing when he tells what the Gospel has
done for himself. He believes that the Gospel is intended for
all classes, and consequently he is to be seen 'with his books not
only in the streets, in the market-places and sarangs of the
common people, but at times in Buddhist temples also, where,
despite difficulties, he succeeds in flmding listeners and occa
sionally a purchaser. A priest, attached to one of these temples,
heard the colporteur's message, bought a book, and became
so interested that he is now a sincere and earnest enquirer.
Nor are the small islands lying off the coast neglected by our
brother. From one of the most distant of these — which took
him twenty-four hours to reach by native boat, and had never
been visited by any missionary — he lately brought the welcome
news that, mainly as the result of reading some portions of
Scripture purchased by the islanders, an interest had been
aroused that had resulted in over forty believers,"
In Bosnia.
Colporteur Lakacs went into a market-place in
Bosnia on one of the festival days of the Greek
Orthodox Church, which the country-folk were
44

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
celebrating with music and dancing. Some of the
young men bought Testaments as presents for
their partners In the dances, and the village priest
recommended the colporteur's books.
Wayside Apologists.
From the Chinese province of Shantung the
Rev, C, J, Voskamp, of the Berlin Mission at
Tslngtan, writes :
""When I go out with the colporteurs, I am mostly a silent
listener, or I give a friendly nod to my apologist of the Chris
tian faith as he stands in his cow-skin paletot.
"'"What! I have a soul, you say?' cries the wheelbarrow-
man by the wayside, as he lights his pipe ; ' what curious
doctrines are told now-a-days ! ' ' Look at your loaded wheel
barrow ; why does it not move by itself, while you are resting
here ? ' replies the colporteur. ' It is by the strength of your
arm that it is moved. So with your soul ; and here is the
power ' (showing a Bible) ' which moves our soul and heart, the
power of that eternal love with which God loves the world.'
"'You are not a Chinese, you do not worship the idols,'
says an old temple-keeper, when invited to buy a book.
' "Which idol ? ' is the colporteur's rejoinder. ' Look at these
idols, they are all stamped 'with a seal.' ' O, ye immortal
gods 1 ' cries the colporteur, with a sarcastic smile, ' are ye
indeed made genuine by a stamp ? '"
In a cafe at Budapest a young man asserted that
the sale of the Bible ought to be forbidden, because
It contained objectionable matter. The colporteur
replied that God did not make a secret of the sins
of mankind, and asked him how a faithful biography
of his own life would read.
In Annam some peasants said to the colporteur:
" You say we must worship your God. The bonzes
(Buddhist monks) say we must worship Buddha,
45

THE BOOK
Which shall we worship ? " He replied, " Worship
Him who loves you, God so much loved men that
He gave them His Son, And He will give them
eternal life also. Here are books that will prove
to you the truth of my words. Worship Him who
loves you," What a simple, profound reply !
Side-lights on many Regions.
From the colporteurs' journals we get strange
and vivid glimpses Into men's thoughts and Hves
In distant lands. Even in European countries
there exists amazing Ignorance and superstition,
A Spanish monk at Meira snatched the Gospel
from a woman's hand and forbade her to read it,
exclaiming, "Jesus did not teach the Gospel in
Castilian," Near Kempten, in Bavaria, a workman
at a cheese-factory declared: "Your books are Pro
testant, for It says In them that the Mother of God
was married," In the lower valley of the Rhine
there are Roman Catholics who, when they look at
the title-page of the New Testament, will remark,
" New, indeed ! No ; we will keep to the old one,"
At Bremen a German-speaking emigrant from
Russia, who had bought a copy of Allioll's version
of the Bible, brought it back the next day, saying
that he was Catholic, not Apostolic: he had read
on its title-page that It contained the text
"approved by the Apostolic See," At MIsleta, In
Spain, while a colporteur was speaking about the
Prodigal Son, one of the audience Interrupted him :
" We don't want to hear about the Prodigal Son ; he
was a Protestant,"
From regions more remote and less civilized come
curious evidences of the social condition of the
46

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
people. Imagine the state of that province in
Persia where, In some villages, the colporteurs
were mistaken for spies, and in others for Govern
ment officials : In both cases, " as soon as the people
saw us at a distance, they left all they had and fled."
In Annam the villagers are afraid of our Sub-agent
when he arrives for the first time. They think he
Is a Customs officer, come to see whether they have
any opium or brandy, or a French soldier who will
be quartered in their homes. On the Malabar coast —
whence King Solomon probably procured his Ivory,
apes, and peacocks — a colporteur went from hut to
hut among the palm-trees, and found some villagers
willing to listen with attention and approval; but
others fled or hid themselves, afraid that he w^ould
use magic to bewitch them Into the Christian faith.
In a Frozen Land.
Right in the heart of northern Siberia, more than
5,000 miles east of St. Petersburg, stands the city of
Yakutsk, on the banks of the river Lena which drains
a vast region where " there is only one-seventh part
of a man to a square mile." Yakutsk Is said to be one
of the coldest places on the face of the earth. From
December to February the mercury will be frozen for
weeks together. Colporteur Korotkl and his son
Ivan spent the winter of 1909-10 among the Yakuts
who Inhabit this great lone land, for whom the Bible
Society has published the four Gospels in their own
tongue. The Bishop of Yakutsk showed a friendly
Interest In our colporteur, giving him an open letter
of recommendation addressed to the clergy of his
sub-Arctic diocese. Early In November Korotkl was
allowed to travel among the Bishop's personal
47

THE BOOK
servants, who accompanied their master to Vllluisk,
400 miles north-east of Yakutsk, They travelled by
sledges, which were drawn sometimes by reindeer,
sometimes by horses.
On their outward journey Korotki 'writes : " We passed no
dwelling for five days, save the solitary post-stations, which are
kept by quite illiterate Yakuts. I sold copies of the Bible to
several of the clergy at places where the Bishop stopped and held
services." In Viliuisk Korotki spent a fortnight, and every day
saw him engaged in house-to-house colportage, which resulted
in a sale of seventy-nine books. "No colporteur," he 'writes,
"had ever been here before, and I found the inhabitants more
religiously inclined than in the town of Yakutsk. Many
welcomed me, and were glad of an opportunity to purchase a
copy of God's Word."
Korotki's journey back to Yakutsk was accomplished in four
days and nights' continuous travelling. The only stoppages
made were to put in fresh relays of horses or reindeer at the
lonely post-stations, while a hurried bite and glass of hot tea
were swallowed. "The reason for such haste was that the
medical inspector, who was taking me back 'with him free of
charge, had heard in Viliuisk that a band of 'politicals' intended
to hold him up. It was for this also that we had a Cossack
convoy." When Korotki reached Yakutsk he found his son Ivan laid up
with severe frost-bite. During his father's absence Ivan had
undertaken a tour in the vicinity of the town, 'visiting 'viUages
within a radius of about 170 miles. " I hired a horse and sleigh,"
he 'writes, " to take me to the villages. My driver was able to
speak Yakut. We could not travel much during the nights
owing to dense fogs, and the cold was something past description.
On entering a hut or wigwam we made straight for the open
fire. We rose in the morning feeling frozen inside. The great
drawback is that so few of these Yakuts are able to read, which
makes our work much more difficult."
On the Road to Nazareth.
As one result of the new political order of things
at Constantinople it has been possible for the first
48

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
time for many years to send a colporteur into the
Holy Land, He is an Armenian, " with grace In his
heart and sunshine in his face," who has carried the
Scriptures from door to door in Bethlehem, Hebron,
Tiberias, Nazareth, and Cana of Galilee. On his
way to Nazareth he drove in a vehicle with three
Roman priests, two Moslems, a Turkish soldier, and
a robber In chains. The colporteur brought out the
Gospels In Turkish, which the robber understood,
but, as his hands were chained, the soldier held the
book while the robber read aloud St, Luke xv, ;
he wanted to keep the volume, so as he had no
money the driver paid for It, When they reached
Nazareth each passenger bought a copy of the
Scriptures in the language which he knew best.
At the Water-gates of the World.
Quays and harbours everywhere are thronged with
polyglot seamen, belonging to scores of nationalities.
The Bible Society pays special attention to the varied
needs and opportunities which are met with In a port.
At Marseilles and Las Palmas and Antofagasta, at
Bombay and Singapore, sailors from many lands can
obtain the Scriptures In their own tongue. Port
Said Is the great gateway between the East and the
West, where Mr, Rudyard Kipling asserts that you
can meet any given person If you will only wait
long enough. Last year our colporteurs in that
harbour visited 2,416 passenger and cargo steamers,
besides Greek sponge-fishers, and fruit-boats from
Palestine ; more than 10,000 copies of the Scriptures
were sold In thirty-nine different languages. Here
are two or three glimpses of these colporteurs at their
work In the harbour of Port Said,
49 E

THE BOOK
Colporteur Segal boarded a Russian steamer which was carry
ing Turkish and Egyptian pilgrims to Mecca, One fellah from
Egypt bought a copy of the Zaboor {i.e.. Psalms), and after read
ing it for a little tossed it into the sea, saying, "Evil is upon me
for reading that book." Near by stood a Moslem from Bosnia,
who wanted to buy a Croatian Bible ; but he said, " I cannot take
it with me to Mecca, because ill would befall me." Then some
Turks purchased copies of Job and the Gospels, whereupon the
Egyptian repented of his folly, and bought another copy of the
Psalms. "On board an English ship the chief steward, who was a
Chinaman, greeted me and asked, ' Don't you know me ? ' 'I
am not sure that I do,' I replied. ' On our last voyage I bought
eight Chinese Gospels, which I gave away to my countrymen,
and now I want some more.' "
"Having obtained permission to board an Austrian battle
ship, I took 'with me a good supply of Scriptures in a variety
of languages ; and although it was near the end of the month,
when sailors usually have little or no money, I sold them a
Croatian and a Hungarian Bible, sixteen New Testaments in
five different languages, and eighteen Croatian Gospels, As I
was about to leave, the officers called me into the mess-room,
and after some friendly conversation, in which they asked
about our Society, they bought an English Bible and three
German Bibles,"
A Journey towards Timbuktu.
Our Society has recently appointed the Rev. J. A.
Mesnard as Its Sub-agent for pioneer work in Sene-
gambia. M. Mesnard Is a Frenchman by birth and
a probationary minister of the French Wesleyan
Church, He has served for two years as a mission-
schoolmaster In Dahomey, where he acquired the
Popo language. After spending some months In
Algeria to gain experience and to make progress
In Arabic, M, Mesnard left Tangier early in the spring
of 1910 for St, Louis, Senegal. A provisional plan
has been drawn up for his work during the next
50

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
eighteen months. At St. Louis he begins the study
of the Bambara language, and Is to take a short
journey up the river Senegal. He will next visit
Bathurst, and make a journey up the river Gambia.
He will then proceed to Konakry, and find his way
on into the Interior.
" Deep in that lion-haunted inland lies
A mystic city, goal of high emprise."
M, Mesnard hopes to reach the watershed of the
Niger, so that It may be possible for him to
travel down that river and penetrate In 1911 as
far as Timbuktu. From St. Louis, just before
Easter, 1910, M, Mesnard writes : " Our work in
Senegambia will be, I believe, very Interesting and
successful — at any rate, much more than I thought,
... I am very happy here; there Is a magnificent
field opening before us. I wish I had ten lives — I
would give them all for Bible work in the Sudan."
Where Men may not Enter.
One outstanding feature of life In many Eastern
lands is the general seclusion of women. Only those
who have lived in the East understand how wide
spread and rigid and jealous that seclusion can
become. Only women who have penetrated behind
the close-drawn curtains of the zenana realize
what an atmosphere too often reigns there — of
Idleness and Ignorance, of sensuality and super
stition. Nowhere Is the Gospel more sorrowfully
needed than among these multitudes of women
who are shut away beyond the reach of all ordinary
evangelists and missionaries. To carry the Scrip
tures into the recesses of the zenana the Bible
51

THE BOOK
Society maintains 600 native Chiistian Biblewomen,
who work under the direction of about forty
different missionary organizations in the East,
They are employed chiefly in India and Ceylon,
in Egypt and Syria, And they can visit tens
of thousands of their neglected sisters, reading
and explaining the Gospel to them, and teaching
them to read It for themselves.
The opportunities in such service are Immense,
as Its results are incalculable. Sir Andrew Eraser
quotes the saying : " The greatest need of India
Is a new grandmother," For the grandmother In
her seclusion wields almost despotic authority over
the men as well as the women of an Indian home.
And the Book of books can speak with strange
spiritual power to those who hear It for the first
time, " One day the passage which was being
read In a zenana seemed to exert unusual Influence,
As she listened, the Hindu -wife became absorbed,
her dark eyes glowed with new light, 'A woman
wrote that,' she exclaimed at last ; * no one but a
woman could know what you say.' But it was
the story of the Magdalene who bathed our Lord's
feet with her tears, and the words were those
uttered by the Son of God."
The Price ol Ubiquity.
Last year the Bible Society expended altogether
on Its colporteurs and Biblewomen no less than
£47,520. In some parts of the world the cost
cannot but be very heavy. Take South America,
for Instance. In that continent during the year 1910,
fourteen colporteurs are being employed In the
RepubHcs of the Pacific slope, and their combined

/

A'' ' 1. 'IV

.i:r»:.

A QUECHIA INDIA.N l.N PERI
.STANDING BKFilUK A \VALI, i>V INCA MASONRY 500 YKARS OLD.

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
salaries will amount to £1,750. Travelling ex
penses form a further heavy Item. During six
months of 1909 the travelling expenses of four
of our ablest and most experienced Bible-sellers
were as follows : Colporteur Herrera In Peru, £86 ;
Colporteur LItardo in Peru and Bolivia, £74 ; Colpor
teur VlUafuerte In Bolivia, £68 ; Colporteur Orellana
on the Nitrate Pampa of Chile, £60— a total of £288.
The immense distances which the men must
travel and the physical obstacles which have to be
overcome Inevitably make their travelling expenses
a serious charge. It Is not easy to realize that
the western regions of South America are the most
mountainous mission-field in the world. Yet those
enormous elevations have to be scaled if the Bible
Is to be carried to the scattered Inhabitants on the
slopes of the Andes, Peru has a population one-
third less than that of London, yet Its people are
dispersed over a wild mountainous territory, far
more rugged than Switzerland, eight times as large
as England, with no roads and only a few railways,
Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Columbia present
similar obstacles to the traveller. Outside the
cities of Lima and Callao there are no regions
In Peru with a centralized population, and conse
quently the colporteurs must cover very great
distances In order to reach the Inhabitants,
Thanks to our Society and kindred Institutions,
aided by their missionary coadjutors, the Bible
Is by far the most ubiquitous book in the world
to-day, the most extensively circulated, and most
widely read. But there are still multitudes in many
lands who have never even seen It, Last year^ In
Brazil our colporteur In the State of Santa Catharina
53

THE BOOK
met a man who " was surprised to come across such
a book as the Bible, He did not know what it was,
' Did you write it ? ' he said, ' No,' ' Did you print it ? '
' No,' ' Did you bind It ? ' ' No,' ' Then why do you
sell that, and nothing else ? ' I gave him my reason,
and told him what the Book had done for me and
for thousands more besides. The man bought a
Bible, and ten Gospels to give away,"
We cannot close this section more aptly than by
citing the following experience which occurred
among the snowy peaks of the Andes, Crossing
those great mountains by the steepest and loftiest
railway In the world, as high above the sea as the
summit of Mont Blanc, Colporteur Valenzuela met
a middle-aged man who put one unanswerable
question : " How Is It that during all the years of
my life I never before heard that Jesus Christ
spoke these precious words?"

54

ABOVE EVERY BOOK

THE TEST OF CHEAPNESS.

"Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;
The beggar is taxed for a comer to die in.
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us.
We bargain for the graves we lie in ;
At the devil's booth are all things sold,
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;
For a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking :
'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
'Tis only God may be had for the asking."
J, R. LowBix,
In this democratic age the Idea of popularity Is
closely bound up with the Idea of cheapness. When
tradesmen advertize bargain-sales and railway com
panies issue excursion-tickets "at popular prices,"
we understand them to mean prices which appeal
to the multitude and bring what Is offered Into the
reach of common people. Now within living
memory books of all sorts have grown amazingly
cheaper. For one thing, the reading public in this
country has Increased by leaps and bounds since
the auspicious year 1871, when It was decreed that
every child In England must go to school. To-day,
the whole population is reached by means of the
printed page. Moreover, both the cost of printing
and the cost of paper have steadily diminished,
55

THE BOOK
until we are now able to produce books at prices
which would have seemed Incredible only a gener
ation ago. Hence It becomes one sure sign of an
author's widespread influence that his works are
issued In sixpenny editions. Lord Rosebery once
declared the imprimatur of successful writing to
be the thumb-mark of the artlzan.
The Price of Books —
It Is by no means easy to determine the prices at
which books In manuscript used to be sold, In classical
and in naediseval times, and then to translate those
prices Into their equivalents in our present currency.
Among the later Greeks and Romans the craft of
the copyist was certainly carried on in an organized
way and on a large scale at centres like Rome and
Alexandria and Constantinople, while the cost of
reproducing manuscripts was lessened by employing
slaves who were trained to act as scribes. St, John
Chrysostom's sermons distinctly assume that his
hearers possessed, or had access to, copies of the
Scriptures. Probably such copies were less costly and
more common at Antioch In the fourth century than
they were at London In the fourteenth, Hallam esti
mated that the price of books in Europe was reduced
four-fifths by the Invention of printing. Printed
books, however, appeared at first In very limited
impressions. Down to the end of the fifteenth
century an edition seldom exceeded three hundred
copies.
— and of Bibles.
The earliest printed Bibles were by no means
cheap. Copies of the first Bible ever printed at
56

Photo hii

¦Johnston ond Boffmonn.
A SLIMPE IN THE STREET AT LI'CKNOW

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
Rome, 1471, cost 10 papal ducats— about £50 of our
money. No fewer than eighteen editions of the
Bible had been printed In German — all cumbrous
and costly folios — before Luther Issued his version
of the New Testament, which was sold for a florin
and a half,
Coverdale's Great Bible, which King Henry VIII.
ordered to be placed in every parish church In
England, cost 10s. unbound and 12s, bound — prices
equivalent to about £6 and £7 5s, to-day. The first
Bible printed in Scotland, a folio edition of the
Geneva version, appeared at Edinburgh In 1579, and
by an order of the General Assembly each parish In
Scotland subscribed for a copy, the price being
£4 13s. 4d, Scots currency, or about 7s, 6d, In con
temporary English money — equivalent to over £4
to-day. Under the Stuarts the price of English Bibles was
kept up by means of various patents and monopolies
granted to the printers, and this developed a
lucrative trade in smuggling pirated editions from
Holland into this country. The British and Foreign
Bible Society was founded in 1804 In order to make
the Scriptures cheap and accessible to every one.
At that time the cheapest English Bible cost more
than 4s, 6d, and the cheapest English Testament
cost more than Is, 6d, The Society's earliest
published price list announces an edition of the
English Testament, brevier 12mo, "strongly bound
In sheep," price Is, ; and an edition of the English
Bible, nonpareil 8vo, In calf, price 3s, The Society's
Fifth Annual Report states that the sale prices
"are fixed upon an average of 201. per cent, below
the cost prices." 57

THE BOOK
The Bible Society's Cheap Editions.
During more than a century of progress our
Society has not only achieved astonishing success, but
it has advanced far nearer to its Ideal. As a rule,
It sells the Scriptures — because ordinary persons will
value and read a book which they have spent even
the smallest coin to secure. The most experienced
and devoted missionaries unanimously ratify this
policy of common-sense, knowing by experience the
mischief worked by Indiscriminate free distribution.
Most of the Society's books, however, are cheap
popular editions, and their prices In any country are
fixed not by what the edition costs to produce, but
by what the poorest class of labourers In that
country can afford to pay. These cheap editions
are provided In each language, and their circulation
represents the bulk of the Society's work. Better
bound copies are provided for people who require
them: but upon such books the Society does not
feel justified In Incurring loss.
Some examples will Illustrate how this works out
In practice. The cheapest edition of Shakespeare's
works ever Issued In England was priced at Is., In
paper covers. Our Society sells an English Bible,
bound, for 6d., and another in larger print for lOd. ;
the Revised Version may also be had for lOd,,
while an excellent school Bible In admirably clear
type Is sold for Is, All these editions entaU con
siderable loss. Of the Society's penny English
Testament more than 9,000,000 copies have been
issued during the last quarter of a century — at a
net loss of over £25,000, In France, Italy, and
Germany the Society's cheapest Bible is sold for
about Is,, which also Involves a loss on each copy.
58

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
The Society's 6d, Dutch Bible is by far the cheapest
book in South Africa,
In the Mission Field*
It is in the mission field, however, that the greatest
differences occur between the actual cost of pro
ducing the books and the prices at which they are
sold, A few concrete cases will make this clear. In
each of the great languages of India the Society
pubHshes a Bible at Is,, the cost of production
varying from Is, 8d, to 3s, New Testaments In India
are sold uniformly at 4d,, though the cost price
varies from 5d. to Is, 2d., the average being about 8d,
Single Gospels are sold uniformly at ^d., their cost
varying from |d, to Id,
In Madagascar a Bible which costs about Is, 8d, to
produce Is sold at Is. In Japan a New Testament
which costs 7 sen to print and bind may be bought
for 5 sen, that is, IJd.
In China the wages of a common coolie In many
provinces amounts to no more than 6d. or 7d, a day.
The New Testament in an excellent format Is sold for
2d., while cheaper copies can be had for a fraction
over Id. Beautifully printed Gospels are sold from
Jd. to Id. each. A well-bound Bible is sold for 6d. ;
If it were an ordinary Chinese book, It would be
considered cheap at seven times that price.
The Expense of Production.
Moreover, in all the above-mentioned instances, " cost of pro
duction " means simply the bare amount spent on paper, print
ing, and binding ; it takes no account at all of the heavy
expenditure necessarily incurred by a great publishing house
for establishment, salaries, distribution, freights, and discounts,
59

THE BOOK
Since our Society does not confine itself to populous and acces
sible areas, but sends its books into every inhabited region
which it can possibly reach, the total expense of providing a
Bible for a reader must needs be greatly increased. For in
stance, the Society has on occasion spent as much as £60 in
freight, merely to send out £100 worth of Bibles and Testaments
to a remote mission.

Editions, again, cost more in proportion to produce
when only a limited number of copies can be dis
posed of. But our Society does not refuse to under
take a translation or to print an edition because
it may find comparatively few readers. Bibles in
some versions cost quite 4s, apiece, and they are sold
for Is, because that price is aU that their readers
can afford to pay.
For the Cree Indians.
To revise the Bible for the Cree Indians, and to
print an edition of 1,000 copies In syllabic character,
cost our Society more than £1,700, These Bibles
are sold for a mere fraction of what they have cost.
The Indians are very grateful for so generous a
gift ; and the missionaries who are working among
the Crees have been quick to recognize its value
for their own labours. The Synod of the Diocese
of Saskatchewan recently forwarded the following
resolution :

"Tlie Synod desires to express its deep gratitude to the
British and Foreign Bible Society for its liberality in publishing
the Revised Version of the Holy Scriptures in the Cree Indian
language. The members of the Synod realize the truly
Christian generosity of the Society in pro'viding the Word of
God not only for the millions in China, among other thickly
60

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
populated countries, but even for the few and scattered natives
of this land ; and they earnestly pray that God's blessing may
rest on the Society and its glorious work,"
"Cheaper than Cigarette-papers,"
Such low prices Impress even casual purchasers.
In Algeria, Colporteur Rolot has become known as
the man who sells Gospels for two sous. We hear
of Moslems In Constantinople complaining because
the New Testament costs so much less thau the
Koran. At Alexandria a colporteur offered some
halfpenny Gospels to an Armenian, who exclaimed,
" What, Gospels for a halfpenny ! Why, they are
cheaper than cigarette-papers." Then he added, " I
want a New Testament for myself first, and then
fifteen Gospels for my comrades," and he gladly paid
the price. In Brazil, however, one man objected :
" Your book is no good, because it Is so cheap." " Do
you ever use homoeopathy ? " asked the colporteur.
" Yes, hardly anything else." " Well, did It ever do
you any good?" "Most certainly." "But I don't
believe in your remedy." "Why not?" "Because
it Is so cheap." He saw the point, and bought a New
Testament. From Tunis our colporteur writes :
" In a barber's shop a customer asked me what my trade was.
On hearing that I was a Bible colporteur he said, ' Then you are
not a Jew, but a Protestant.' In our conversation I directed
his thoughts to Christ as the Messiah foretold by the prophets.
"When I had finished reading several passages and answering his
questions he said, ' It is marvellous ; please sell me a Bible.
Here are five francs.' ' No sir,' I replied, ' it costs only one
franc and a quarter.' His answer was, 'It is wonderfully cheap,
Be assured that I "will study it.' "
61

THE BOOK
" Yet how precious ! "
During the spring of 1910 many thoughts and
prayers turned anxiously to the great Chinese city of
Changsha, the capital of Hunan, which was for long
the most anti-foreign and anti-Christian province in
China, Down to 1901, Changsha, with Its 200,000
people, was closed against missions, A missionary
of the C.LM, described how the earliest convert in
that city came to him, holding a copy of the Chinese
New Testament, " Oh, how precious Is this Book ! "
he exclaimed. " You sell it to the people for a very
small sum (a fraction over a penny). How cheap it
is, and yet how precious ! Why, ten thousand ounces
of gold would not buy this Book, for herein Is con
tained the Way of Life,"
Curious Coin.
Low as are the prices charged for the Scriptures,
we hear again and again of folk in such dire poverty
that they are literally penniless. At Pisco, in Peru,
last year a shoemaker bartered a pair of boots for a
Bible, and another man gave away his walking-
stick for a Testament, On the frontier of China
a missionary reports that he exchanged some
Tibetan Gospels for coral beads and cloth. High
up among the Andes a man parted with a pigeon
for a Testament. At a lonely hut In Venezuela a
man and his wife gravely "offered a sucking-pig
for a Bible, as they had no money," In Styria our
colporteur writes, "I was sometimes constrained
to take fruit for my books. Thus one peasant gave
me 32 lbs, of apples for a Bible, Another time
I had to accept eggs, as the people could not pay
62

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
In cash, but were eager to possess the Scriptures,"
In Dalmatia we read : " Despite the great poverty
which reigns here, the desire for the Word of God
Is manifest. In one village I could sell only a few
Gospels ; there was no money. I had left it, and
walked a considerable distance, when a lad came
running after me with three eggs, which he offered
for a Gospel, Another time, at an Inn, a young
fellow gave the landlord his coat in pledge for the
6 heller (= ^d.) with which he wanted to buy a
Gospel." At Namakal, In the Madras Presidency,
when a colporteur had read the Scriptures and offered
them for sale, the people said, " What shall we do ?
There Is no rain. These books are good, but we have
no money to buy them," Thereupon the colporteur
accepted an offer to exchange some Gospels for
palmyra fruit. At Jerusalem our colporteur does
not omit to visit the Russian, Coptic, and Abyssinian
convents, and here antiquities are sometimes offered
in exchange for copies of the Scriptures.
For the Blind.
In the United Kingdom one person in every
thousand is blind. In India over 350,000 and in
China over 500,000 are totally blind, while other
Eastern countries contain a similar proportion of
people in the same pitiable condition. Copies of
the Scriptures In embossed type for the blind were
first issued by the Bible Society In 1838, and ever
since then they have been steadily circulated, at
great expense, either free or much below cost-price.
The Society has now published— or helped to circu
late—the Bible, or some portion of It, for the blind
In thirty-one different languages— employing six
63

THE BOOK
different systems of Braille type as well as Moon
type. In nearly all these languages the Bible Is the
only book thus Issued — the sole book which Is avail
able for the blind to read.
Books In embossed type for the blind cannot be
other than cumbrous and expensive, A complete
English Bible In Braille type costs £5 to produce, and
occupies thirty-nine big volumes, which fill a shelf
7 feet long. Our Society has just Issued a new
English Braille Bible, each volume of which costs
from 2s, 3d, to 3s, This Is sold to any British
institution for befriending the blind at Is, per
volume. Moreover any poor blind man or woman
who applies can obtain from the Society a Gospel or
a Psalter in English Braille as a free gift, on the
recommendation of some minister of religion.
Without Money or Price,
The Bible Society Is not in bondage to Its rule that
normally the Scriptures shall be sold rather than
given away. While Its cheap editions circulate at
nominal prices all over the world, its colporteurs
have discretion to present a volume free to any one
they meet who can read, and really desires to read
the Gospel, but Is too Impoverished to find a single
coin with which to purchase It. Moreover, In cases of
special opportunity, or emergency, or calamity, copies
of the Scriptures are freely distributed among those
who need such gifts. Here are a few examples of
the way In which God's Book Is put Into the hands
of His needy children. Free grants of vernacular
Scriptures were made last year to the convicts at
Italian penal settlements ; to Chinese prisoners In the
gaols at Shanghai and at Hong Kong ; to political
64

By Ifnd permi-^sion of the

High Commis.'^ioner for Canada.

A CANADIAN SETTLER,

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
prisoners and exiles in Siberia ; to Nicaraguan
soldiers engaged in a campaign In Central America ;
to priests and monks in the Buddhist temples and
monasteries round Hangchow ; to lepers in the
asylum at Pretoria ; to inmates of the prisons at
Moscow ; to dock-labourers on the Volga at Nijnl
Novgorod ; to hospitals at St. Petersburg, Odessa,
and Tiflis ; to emigrants sailing from Hamburg and
Bremen ; to Armenian orphan children at Mersina ;
to the sufferers from earthquakes in Sicily, and in
Japan. Copies of the Scriptures In English were accepted
last year as gifts from our Society by 5,300 students
at Indian Universities. In the Transvaal 3,000
Chinese Gospels were given away among the last
batch of coolies before they set out to return to
China, At Quebec 28,000 Gospels In thirty- two
different languages were distributed among immi
grants landing from Europe.
For our own Country.
In our own land the poor are not forgotten. The
Society spends several thousands of pounds each
year in making grants of the Scriptures at home,
either free or at greatly reduced prices. In this
generous fashion It becomes the willing partner in
aU forms of Christian effort and service. It helps
countless Sunday-schools belonging to all denomina
tions. It joins hands with orphanages and hospitals
and asylums ; with soldiers' institutes and sailors'
homes and theological training colleges; with mis
sions to navvies and hop-pickers and emigrants and
deep-sea fishermen. It supplies the Scriptures to
prisons, and barracks, and training ships, and police
65 V

THE BOOK
and railway stations. It remembers the blind, the
crippled, and the fallen. It places a Bible in the
pocket of every boy or girl whom philanthropic
institutions send out to begin life afresh in Canada.
It Is safe to say that our Society has done more
than all other agencies combined to put into the
hands of the poorest of the English poor that Book
"¦which is compensation for all things,"

On the whole, out of every £1 which the Bible
Society expends In preparing and distributing the
Scriptures, about 7s. 7d., comes back to it from the
proceeds of sales. For the remainder it must rely
simply upon the gifts of Christian people. This is
why it needs and claims the generous help of every
reader and lover of the Bible,

66

ABOVE EVERY BOOK

THE TEST OF VITALITY.
"Men's Works have an age like theinselves ; and though they
out-live their Authors, yet they have a stint and period for their
duration : This only is a work, too Jiard for tlie teeth of time,
and cannot perish but in the general Flames, when all things
shall confess their Ashes."
Sir Thomas Bbownb : Religio Medici.
Literature divides Itself Into two main classes —
books which are permanent, and books which are
fugitive. And so another criterion which we apply
to the Bible may be described as the test of vitality.
Compared with most other books we can say that it
survives, while they die and are forgotten.
This will appear when we turn to the statistics of
modern publications. Every year in January The
Publisher's Circular prints an analysis of the number
of books which have been published in this country
during the previous twelve months. And though
the figures Include hundreds of pamphlets, primers,
calendars, and bound serials, yet they yield clear and
conclusive evidence on the question under considera
tion. During 1909, the number of publications recorded
— new books and new editions together — was for the
flrst time over 10,000, the actual figures being 10,725.
This Is an increase of 904 upon the total for 1908,
The new books published during 1909 amounted to
8,446— nearly 1,000 more than in 1908, and 2,475
more than in 1899. 67

THE BOOK
The new editions issued during 1909 of books which
had appeared already amounted to 2,279, This was
30 fewer than in 1908, but 683 more than in 1899,
It appears, therefore, that of the total number of
publications In 1909, about 21 per cent, consisted of
new editions. Many of these were reprints of stan
dard authors. So that we may safely say that of
the new^ books issued in England not one In five
ever reaches a second edition. There is no reason
to suppose that new publications are any less
ephemeral In France and Germany and America,
The average life of a modern book Is only about
four or five years : after that, the bookseUers tell
you, " It is dead " — and It has no resurrection.
Whereas the Bible to-day, at the end of so many
centuries, Is more vitally alive than ever. It Is being
printed In vaster numbers, and Is circulated more
widely over the world; it is studied more pro
foundly, and cherished more passionately ; it is
exerting a mightier influence upon mankind than
at any previous period in its history,
" The seasons change, the 'winds they shift and veer :
The green of yesteryear
Is dead : the birds depart, the groves decay :
Empires dissolve and peoples disappear, , . ,"
" Other books pass away ; but of this the silver
cord shaU never be loosed, nor the golden bowl
broken, nor the mourners that go about the streets
proclaim that at last the great Book Is dead and
carried to the charnel-house of dead religions."
The Secret of Vitality.
It is worth while to enquire what are those
essential qualities in a book by virtue of which it
68

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
remains evergreen for ages, while generations of its
rivals vanish like withered leaves. Style has been
called the great antiseptic of literature : and few in
deed are the authors whose works endure unless they
possess this distinctive charm. Style, however, Is far
from being the supreme characteristic of Holy Scrip
ture, Judged merely as Greek literature, the prose of
Plato stands high above the prose of the Apostle John,
The power of the Bible does not reside In wisdom of
words. We have already considered the test of cir
culation ; but what does that actually tell us ? The
number of copies of a book which are sold may only
Indicate how far the book appeals to some passing
interest or curiosity, how far it reflects a fleeting
emotion, or catches the mood of the hour, or pleases
the humour of the crowd.
The history of Hterature proves that for any book
to succeed permanently. It must correspond to some
demand which has a permanent place In human life.
We observe that almost the only modern books
which circulate by millions come within the general
category of romance. Because for ordinary readers
the dry bones of prosaic fact must be touched by an
enchanter's wand before they assume any appear
ance of life, any attribute of love or pity or even
hate, " ' But,' you say, ' it is only a romance,'
"True. It is only human life in the highways and hedges,
and in the streets and lanes of the city, with the ceaseless throb
bing of its quivering heart ; it is only daily life from the
workshop, from the court, from the market, and from the stage;
it is only kindliness and neighbourhood and child life, and the
fresh wind of heaven, and the waste of sea and forest, and the
sunbreak upon the stainless peaks, and contempt of wrong
69

THE BOOK
and pain and death, and the passionate yearning for the face
of God, and woman's tears, and woman's self-sacrifice and
devotion, and woman's love. Y'es, it is only a romance." *
The masters of modern romance, Scott and Dickens
and Victor Hugo and Tolstoy, are essentially human
ists. In this they are allied to the kings of literature,
Homer and Shakespeare and Goethe. The classics
of humanity are classic because they deal 'with
matters of enduring and universal Interest —
matters which concern every one and touch the
heart of the race. Now there is one Book, and only
one, which embraces all the heights and depths of
human nature. The Bible belongs to those elemental
things, like sunshine and mother's milk, which can
never become obsolete or out of date, because they
are the common need and the common heritage of
mankind. The Bible is concerned with our deepest
wants, our darkest problems, and it faces them with
absolute seriousness and sincerity. It speaks with
accents which are not of this world. It teaches us
about the only things which really matter in the
end. When Sir Walter Scott lay on his deathbed,
he begged his nephew to read to him. " What
book shall I read ? " asked Lockhart. " What book ? "
said the dying man, " there is only one Book,"
" Nuovo ed Eterno."
On the title-page of an Italian pocket Testament
printed at Lyons in 1551 we read : Tl Nuovo ed
Eterno Testamento di Giesu Christo — " The New
and Eternal Testament of Jesus Christ." The vitality
of this Book appears not merely when we compare
it with the masterpieces of literature. The everlast-
* J. H. Shorthouse: Preface to " JoJin Inglesanf."
70

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
ing Gospel is as mighty to-day to quicken human
hearts and to regenerate human characters as ever
It w^as in days gone by. We will quote a few out
of many fresh examples which bear witness to the
power of an endless life.
Condemning and Convincing.
Continually the Spirit of righteousness uses the
Bible to arouse men's consciences and convict them
of their sins. In Cairo last year a Moslem who had
begun to read the Scriptures quickly confessed,
" This book condemns many things that I do. It
goes against my will and my actions." A Sinhalese
goldsmith w^ho had bought a copy of the Book of
Proverbs from a colporteur in Ceylon, opened it
casually at the beginning of the eleventh chapter
and began to read : " A false balance is an abomina
tion to the Lord : but a just weight is His delight."
At once he flung the book away, declaring that as
it was quite against his trade he would never read it.
Near Casablanca, an intelligent Moor said to our
colporteur, " No, we won't buy your books, for they
will make Christians of us." " Exactly so," was the
answer. " A book which is capable of doing what
you have just said demonstrates itself to be a book
of power, and when it changes a man's heart and
conduct it proves that it is what it claims to be —
the Word of the living God."
The "Jesus Book" in Japan.
A young Japanese who studied the Bible for some
time in order to controvert it, was finally converted.
Returning to his native village, he fearlessly con
fessed his new faith. This roused bitter opposition,
headed by an old school-fellow who came with the
71

THE BOOK
demand, "Give up this hateful thing, or leave our
village." " I will go," said the Christian, " but first
let me tell you all what It Is that I believe, so that
you and I may know just why I am being expelled."
Accordingly, Bible in hand, he met the village
assembly that night, and then for several other
nights, until he had won adherents enough to start
a Sunday-school — to the fierce anger of his anti-
Christian school-fellow. The latter, however, was
drafted off into the Japanese army and sent to
Manchuria, There, to his disgust, he found himself
under a sergeant who was a devout Christian and
gave him a New Testament, He vowed to destroy
the book as soon as he was free from his service.
Just before being ordered home to Japan, he and his
comrades were looting a Chinese house, from which
he brought away a splendid scroll Inscribed with
most Impressive words. On his return to his native
village, they made him a feast of welcome, at which
the soldier proudly displayed his trophy and praised
its beautiful motto. The Christian listened to the
admiring comments, and then said : " But those are
not the words of a Chinese sage ; they are taken
from the ' Jesus Book ' which you despise and hate."
The soldier was deeply Impressed. Finally he came
to the Christian and said, " I surrender, I surrender.
That God of yours and that Book of yours find me
out wherever I go. Now I will try to know them."
Thereupon he sought further teaching and Is now
waiting for baptism.
Called to be a Soldier.
A young Bulgarian soldier In camp at Shumla
bought a Bible. Returning home after the com-
72

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
pletion of his military service, he incurred no little
persecution, even In his own household, by his stead
fast witness to the Gospel. So he went to the village
priest and asked if It was wrong to read the Bible.
" No," said the priest, " the Bible is the best book in
the world." "But my friends persecute me for reading
this book, and call me a Protestant." Then the
priest said to the young man's friends, " You do not
well to trouble this man ; let him read to you, and
read for yourselves, and pray to God for guidance,"
The result was that the man's friends and neighbours
began to give heed, and became attentive hearers of
the Word, " This Is God's doing," said the young
man to a colporteur, as his friends came to buy for
themselves the book whose witness they had
believed, " Who has taught this man ? " they asked,
" These are divine things of which we have never
heard until now ! "
More than he expected.
A young Indian employed in one of the railway
offices at Madras overheard the remark that the best
book from which to learn English was the English
Bible, Accordingly, he managed to obtain a copy
from a friend, giving him in exchange a volume of
Renan, The young man set himself to read the
Bible in order to Improve his knowledge of English,
Before long, however, the Book began to grip his
attention ; it fascinated him ; he read it through
once, twice, thrice. At length he was convinced that
the Christian faith was true, and that Christ was able
to save him from his sins. He went to see the mis
sionary who tells the story, and after long conversa
tion satisfied him that his knowledge was clear and
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THE BOOK
his experience definite. In the end he was baptized
and received into Church fellowship — won, like
Tatian and Justin Martyr, by devout study of the
Holy Scriptures,
A Japanese Testament in Canada.
In the Canadian north-west a colporteur had sold
a Japanese Testament the year before to a Japanese
immigrant woman at Fernie, The colporteur now
writes :
" On that occasion I sold an English Testament to another
person in the house, chiefiy through the influence of that
Japanese woman. She stood up bravely for what she knew to
be right, and her broken English, spoken from a simple heart,
carried by storm the opposition to the Word of God. I can see
her now as she stood pleading : ' May-be you sorry — you so
long time read — you not member — me not read much — me not
Xlistian — me read more — perhaps me be Xlistian.' Ever since
then, she had been diligently reading the New Testament in her
own tongue, and now she declared to me that she had no
doubt that God had received her into the Household of
Faith, through His Son Jesus Christ. I asked how she knew,
and her reply was so refreshingly simple : ' Nobody teach me — I
read the Bible, and I think, and God help me think, and I
know. Now I hope God will stay with me always.' I gave her
His promise that He would never leave us. ' Oh I that is good,'
she exclaimed. She was testifying to her o'wn countrymen, and
was the means of helping me to dispose of the Scriptures among
them."
A Borrowed Book.
Writing from Horqueta, In Paraguay, Mr. Whit-
tington, of the Inland South American Missionary
Union, relates the following experience :
"Towards midday, as the sun was very hot, I reined up for
shelter at a house near Yaguaretecue. There, after some con
versation, I gave my host a Gospel, when another man came in
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ABOVE EVERY BOOK
and, seeing the Gospel, began to examine it carefully. After
he had read some passages, he said that he had one like it ; so
he went off, and soon returned with an old brown-backed book
which turned out to be a New Testament. He J;old me that a
little more than a year ago he had heard the Gospel preached
in the south of Paraguay, and had believed ; but he was without
a Bible or any portion of the Scriptures, and so he had no means
of further instruction. Still he clung to his new hope, and
although through these long months he had not met a single
Christian or any one to help him on in the Way, yet joy and
peace hitherto unknown possessed his soul. At last he had
discovered a New Testament, and borrowed it from the owner.
Since then he had been carefully reading it, and trying to carry
out its instructions in his everyday life. Naturally, he has
taken most things literally, but, according to Christ's command,
he is seeking to let his light shine. He keeps a small school at
present, and endeavours to interest his scholars in the Gospel.
I gave him a New Testament for himself and some Gospels for
those whom he had interested. He was well pleased, and said
that he would return the old brown-backed Testament to its
owner, who lived about three leagues away.''
The Bible in Bengal.
From Bengal a CM.S. missionary sends the follow
ing testimony :
About three years ago an infiuential member of one of the
reformed Hindu sects found by the road-side a discarded copy of
the Prayer Book in Hindi. He read with interest the texts
concerning change of heart and mind, as well as other portions
of Scripture, including Psalm xcv. These, however, did not
satisfy him, and at the first opportunity he bought from a cate-
chist one of the Bible Society's cheap little Gospels.
Having read this, nothing would content him but a copy
of the complete Bible. He obtained it, and read first of all the
four Gospels, and has since expressed himself as impressed by
the unity and witness borne to each other by the various parts
of the Bible.
Up to this time the man had received very little help from
any teacher ; and it was not until he had been persecuted on
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THE BOOK
account of his changed life that he left his native viUage, bring
ing with him his wife and children, that they might all be more
fully instructed with a view to baptism. This took place in due
course, and he returned to live among his fellow-villagers, who
in some cases read the Scriptures with him, two of his former
persecutors purchasing Bibles. He is now a preacher of the
O.M.S., and never ceases urging his hearers to read the Scrip
tures for themselves, telling them that it was not man's preach
ing, but the -written Word of God which brought him light
and salvation.
By a Grave-side in China.
A Baptist missionary living at Pingtu, in the
province of Shantung, describes how a very zealous
Chinese Christian named Wii first became Interested
through purchasing the Gospels from a colporteur.
Mr. Wii, who belongs to a literary family, was a
teacher till the death of his aged father five years
ago. Being religiously disposed, he tried many ways
to obtain "merit," When his father died, he gave
up his school and spent a whole year by his father's
coffin — eating and sleeping beside it on the bare
earthen floor. Then, after his father's burial, he
passed long months by the grave-side, reading over
and over again the Gospels which he had bought
while he was thus gaining " merit." This he kept up
for years — till he grew so deeply Impressed by the
Gospel that he forsook all his man-made "merit"
and became a most earnest follower of our Lord.
Last year he was baptized, and now two other men
in that village have been led to Christ by Mr. Wii,
who says that he can never forget the power of the
Gospels he bought from the colporteur,
A Pilgrim Book,
The Rev. J. Steele, of the English Presbyterian
Mission, Swatow, writes : " There is now attending
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ABOVE EVERY BOOK
our church at Taichlao, in the Haiyang hsien, a man
who was led to take interest in Christian teaching
by reading a Bible which came into his hands when
he was working on an estate near Penang. That
Bible had been the property of one of our people
who went to Penang from our congregation at
Mienhu. The book had thus travelled from China
to the Straits Settlements, and did Its work there ;
while we reap the results in a place separated from
Its starting-point by about forty miles,"
After an Earthquake.
In the hiU country of Southern Rajputana there
was in 1909 an earthquake of sufficient magnitude
to occasion much anxiety among the people, easily
moved to superstitious fears. "What does it mean?"
they asked. "What calamities are impending?
What can we do to prevent them ? " No one could
speak with authority. Messages were sent from
village to village, caUing together the men of wisdom,
the religious guides and teachers of the people.
Among those summoned was a village Guru named
Chimman, who had come under the influence of a
Christian lady, and whose boy she had taught to
read. At the place appointed some four hundred people
assembled, among them half a hundred Gurus of
repute. For several hours they gave their several
opinions. At length one called on Chimman to
speak. He said, "I cannot read well, but my boy
has with him the Book of God," The lad, only
thirteen years of age, stood up before them all.
He opened his Hindi Bible and read our Lord's words
in St, Luke xxi, : " For these things must come to
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THE BOOK
pass, but the end Is not just now, ... In your
patience possess ye your souls," Then he read on
concerning the judgments of the latter days and
the coming of the Son of Man from heaven with
power and great glory, concluding with, " Heaven
and earth shall pass away : but My words shall not
pass away,"
A great hush fell upon the people as these words
were read. It was as if a divine answer had come
to their perplexities and questionings, a solution for
the mysteries of earth and heaven. Then one said,
" Chimman, you can pray. Pray to Jesus Christ for
us," And Chimman, who could not read very weU,
lifted his voice in prayer, while Hindu and Mussulman,
Guru and Chela, bent their heads In reverence :
" Jesus, Lord, have mercy on us. Wash us In Thy
precious blood. Make us fit to stand before Thee,
accepted In Thy kingdom of righteousness and peace."
On the Edge of Mongolia.
The Rev, O, Oberg, of Saratsi, in the Chinese
province of ShansI, writes :
" Colporteur Chang, during the warmer season, worked in the
mountain region on the borders of Mongolia, north of Saratsi,
where every man has to fight for his o'wn rights. One day we
went to visit a village fifteen Chinese miles away. We were
invited to a house, where we were astonished to find no
idols nor any signs of the usual pictures of the gods, but in
place of these there was a New Testament hanging on the wall.
On questioning our host, I learned that he had bought that
Testament from Colporteur Chang, and had also through the
same man been led to believe in the true God,"
A Korean Tramp and his Testament.
In the early days of the mission station at Taiku,
In Southern Korea, the church building was a house
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with a tiled roof, set amidst a thickly populated
section of this city of straw-thatched buildings. One
Sunday morning, when the Korean believers and en
quirers were assembled for worship and Instruction,
a veritable tramp arrived and seated himself in
the veranda, attracted thither, no doubt, by the
tiled roof, thinking that this was some rich man's
residence, and that as the sun was nearing high
noon, there was the chance of obtaining a portion of
rice and a bit of pickled cabbage. The sort of gather
ing he found there, and the feast of spiritual things,
were out of the ordinary in the tramp's experience,
and he listened attentively. Finally he said, "I
cannot understand all of this, but it seems good, I
want to get one of your books." So he purchased
a copy of the Chinese New Testament — the only
version available in those days — and went his way.
He w^as evidently a man of some education, as he
understood how to read Chinese intelligently,
A year or so later a missionary was requested to
visit the neighbourhood of Myriyang, where there
were reported to be some enquirers. Arriving at the
place, who should welcome him but this same tramp
who had sat In the church veranda at Taiku on that
Sunday morning many months before ! The mis
sionary found enquirers not a few, and the first
group to be baptized, some months later, numbered
fifteen. During his visit, the missionary sat himself
one evening in the midst of a group of interested
listeners. Their subject was " The Wonderful Book,"
and much comment was passed on the story of
salvation in the New Testament. Finally our
tramp friend held up his Chinese Testament — with
its covers and Its pages next to the covers worn
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THE BOOK
to tatters by constant usage — and said, as he pressed
it to his breast : "I love this book as a mother
loves her child. When she Hes down at night, she
takes it in her arms and lies down with it. When
she rises up in the morning, she straps It on
her back and goes out with It, That Is the way
I love this book. Though I read It a hundred
times, it always comes with a fresh flavour to
my mouth," The group of enquirers was the proof
of his testimony. The tramp had gone forth with
his Testament, reading it and preaching It, and
everywhere telling the contents of the "wonderful
volume."More Beautiful than Music.
From Brazil a colporteur writes :
"One evening an old man came into a shop where I was,
and began to tell those around me what he had been reading
that day in the New Testament. He spoke of the Baptism, the
Temptation, the Transfiguration, the rich young ruler, and the
confession of St. Peter. I was astonished, and could not under
stand how he had got hold of the Testament. He said, ' Don't
you remember reading this morning in a house, where a boy
was so interested that he bought two Gospels ? He took them
home, and told us what wonderful things were in the books. I
said, ' But thou dost not know how to read.' He said, ' Uncle,
I heard the colporteur read, and it was more beautiful than
music' So I took the two Gospels 'which he bought from you,
and I have been reading them all day long. And this seems to
me to be the true religion, because it does not allow any one to
live in sin.' "
The Bible and Books of Magic.
At a village In North India resided an aged Brah
man, skilled in the use of mantras, or magic spells to
work good or ill, and especially in the art of casting
the evil eye on any whom he wished to harm. He
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ABOVE EVERY BOOK
was much resorted to and made an income by such
sorcery. Ho had taught this black art to his son,
and at his death bequeathed him his books and
papers. In some way this young man obtained a
copy of the Urdu Bible. As a result of reading it, he
gave up casting the evil eye, destroyed his books of
magic, and was found by a missionary to be already
a confessed Christian, although unbaptized,
A Chinese Soothsayer bums his Books.
In the north-west of the province of Chihli, Mr.
Sciderbom heard the following testimony direct from
a soothsayer who is now a Christian. He said :
" I have studied Chinese books for thirty years, but
I never found any like your Book." He had then
read the New Testament through. But before he
finished it, he had of his own accord publicly burned
his soothsayer's books. Moreover, he told the people
of his village that he would no longer receive money
from the temple revenues for his school- teaching, nor
would he keep his school in the temple yard. The
people thought he must be crazy, but he answered,
" Up till now I believed in those false, empty books
and deceived you, but now I am going to believe in
the truth." He is at present learning the doctrines
of Christian faith, and awaiting baptism.
The Result of a Testament in Formosa,
In Formosa, or Taiwan, as the Japanese call it,
Mr. Alexander Lawrence came upon the following
experience :
Some time ago, a Japanese Christian named Goto was in
the habit of distributing the Scriptures among his friends in
different parts of Taiwan. One shopkeeper, to whom he offered
a Testament, refused to accept it, saying that he would not read
81 G

THE BOOK
it, neither would he allow it to remain in his house. "I am
going to leave it," said his friend, " whether you want it or
not, and I hope you will read it," After Goto left the house
the man felt constrained to examine the Testament, Curiosity
led him to read it. The more he read, the more he felt it con
tained a personal message for him. He studied it carefuUy, and
the light of the Gospel streamed into his soul, and he wished to
be a Christian. He was eventually baptized ; and shortly after
his baptism, he died, rejoicing in the hope of everlasting
salvation.The Bible its Own Witness in CeyIon«
Miss Case, of Jaffna, tells how an opponent of
Christianity became an earnest Chi-Istian worker.
In his own words the story runs thus :
' ' I was a strict Hindu. I never ate meat and always kept
caste. In my 'village a young Christian lived, who used to
reason 'with me and show me even from my Hindu books
that I was wrong. I knew nothing about Christianity at that
time, so I could not retort. But I determined to purchase a
Bible and read it, so that I could make fun of him. I got
one and began to read it. But I found that something
in me told me that what I read was true and right. So I
became a Christian."
The New Testament in Baffin Land.
For the Eskimo people the Bible Society has
Issued translations of Holy Scripture in three
different forms of speech. For those dwelling in
Baffin Land the Society publishes the New Testament
In the dialect called " Baffin Land Eskimo," translated
by the Rev, E, J. Peck, of the C.M.S., who has laboured
among the Eskimos since 1876, Leaving Newfound
land In the middle of last summer, Mr, Peck and
two colleagues sailed along the coast of Labrador as
far as Cape Mugford, From that point it became
necessary to traverse a sea of ice for over 300
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ABOVE EVERY BOOK
miles to the south coast of Baffin Land ; and then
for 200 miles further their course lay westwards
through Hudson Straits,
From an Eskimo hunter, who was out In his canoe
prospecting for seals, It was ascertained that some
Eskimo were congregated at a sheltered bay called
Lake Harbour, Mr, Peck writes : " Under his direc
tion we sailed Into Lake Harbour, where we w^ere
most cordially received by a large party of these
northern people. We found a number of waiting
and faithful souls In this desert waste. Some of
them, who had been instructed at Blacklead Island,
had travelled to Lake Harbour and taught their
feUow-countrymen to read the Gospels and Acts.
I went to visit the various tents — for the Eskimo are
tent-dwellers during the summer months — in order
to converse with the people one by one. In all my
experience among the Eskimo I have never noticed
such marked signs of the Holy Spirit's power. True
repentance has been wrought In not a few hearts,
and their desire to know more of Christ and to
follow Him was most sincere. Some, with tears in
their eyes, spoke of the Saviour's love, and one poor
woman, who had recently lost her husband, testified
earnestly to the comfort she had received through
trusting In the Lord."
In his journal Mr, Peck writes again: "Here we
see again the leading of God, For one of their
number, with the help, of a copy of the Gospels
which she had carefully read and studied, had tried
to teach her neighbours, Sunday after Sunday she
had gathered the Eskimo together, and had taught
them what she could,"
"These remarkable signs were due to reading
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THE BOOK
the Gospels and other books which had been brought
to them by the Eskimo from Blacklead Island. I
took with me this year the Epistles and the Book
of Revelation. Through the kind and liberal help
of the Bible Society — which Is the very heart of aU
missionary societies — the whole of the New Testa
ment is thus In the hands of many of the Eskimo,
and we may look forward to still greater signs
of blessing."
The Missionary Book,
The province of Yunnan in South- West China con
tains a number of aboriginal tribes, such as the Miao
— who are themselves divided into various clans —
the Lesu, the Laka, and others. These people for
the most part understand Chinese very imperfectly,
and speak distinct languages of their own, A
remarkable movement towards Christianity is in
progress among them, notably among the Hwa
Miao, in whose tongue our Society has lately issued
the Gospels of St. Mark and St. John. The C.I.M.
missionaries describe the way in which tribesmen
from remote villages gather at a mission house for
instruction. In some of these villages idolatry has
been completely swept away, and that without the
intervention of any foreigner. The following con
versation took place at a C.I.M. mission station :
Missionary: "What are you?" Tribesman:
" Laka," Missionary : " Where do you live ? "
Tribesman : " Two days away." Missionary : " How
many families live in your village ? " Tribesman :
" Forty." Missionary : " How many are studying
books, and how many believe?" Tribesman: "We
all believe," Missionary : " Have you a chapel ? "
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Tribesman ; " No." Missionary : " Do you have
worship ? " Tribesman : " Yes, once in seven days."
Missionary ; " Where, then, do you gather ? " Tribes
man : " On the main road." Missionary : " Have you
any one that can preach ?" Tribesman: "Oh, no ; we
have only had the Book six months." Missionary :
" How, then, do you worship ? " Tribesman : " We
sing and pray, and then we study our books,"
It appears that the books in question are Chinese
Gospels or Testaments, which the more intelligent
among these people are able to read and explain
to the rest ; no version has yet been published In
the Laka language.
Testimonies might be multiplied from missionaries
of many communions, who bear witness from their
own experience to the wonderful power of the Bible
as an evangelist, even when It precedes Christian
preachers and teachers. We may quote from a letter
written by the Rev, A. Cabral, of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, U.S.A., who is rector of Trinity
Church, Porto Alegre, Brazil,
" It is a pity that the Bible has not been even more circu
lated than it was in Brazil before the advent of the missionary.
Had it been more circulated, we should have had fewer diffi
culties to fight in teaching tho doctrine of Christ. The fear
of the private examination and study of the Bible is the cause
of the backward religious state of these South American
countries. Not to allow private reading of the Bible because
of certain abuses is like not allowing a person to eat in order
to avoid indigestion. The colporteur goes from house to house,
from city to city, and leaves behind him that Book of which
the reading of the most mysterious part has attached to it
the promise, 'Blessed is he that readeth.'"
From the Gold Coast, a native Christian catechlst
wrote to our Society : " As one cannot cut bush
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THE BOOK
without a cutlass, so also without your aid In sending
Bibles and Testaments to missionaries, we would
hardly be led to Christ,"
The annual address of the Ceylon Synod to all the
Methodists In Ceylon contains the following sentence :
" As members of a Protestant Church It Is your busi
ness to be defenders of the faith — you, too, are set
for the defence of the Gospel, You cannot do this
better than by helping the Bible Society in distributing
the Word of God among the people."
In Korea.
In no country are Christian missions winning more
manifest success than in Korea, Among the Korean
Christians themselves a remarkable movement Is on
foot to distribute the Gospel among their fellow-
countrymen. To help them in this effort, our Society
published last year a special edition of St, Mark in
Korean, which is sold at 1 sen (= ^d.). By the begin
ning of March, 1910, nearly 600,000 copies had already
been bought by Korean Christians for distributing
among their neighbours, and another 100,000 were
being printed. One striking feature connected with
the purchase of these Gospels has been " Day Collec
tions." This means that Korean Christians promised
to leave their homes and distribute Gospels and
preach at their own charge in heathen villages for
a certain number of days — varying from three to
ninety — during the three winter months when severe
weather prevents work In the fields. At one gather
ing 159 men pledged themselves to give in the
aggregate 2,721 days for this purpose.
In Korea last year nearly 200 Christian congrega
tions observed " Bible Sunday " and collected gifts for
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ABOVE EVERY BOOK
our Society, One missionary sends 15 yen (= 30s.)
from a company of Korean catechumens on the east
coast, which (he says) " grew up entirely because the
Bible Society made It possible for me to open up
work out there. The offertory meant not a few
supperless days to those who contributed. The
people are desperately poor, but have a great zeal for
the Lord. About 150 attend church, though none
of them has yet been baptized." It sounds like a
modern echo of the legend of St, Martin of Tours, the
young soldier, still unbaptized, who cut his mantle
in twain to give half to a shivering beggar; and
behold ! that night he saw in vision Christ Himself
arrayed In the severed cloak, saying to the heavenly
host, "My servant Martin, though no more than a
catechumen, has clothed Me with this mantle,"
The New Turkey.
The past year has provided thje world with one
signal example of changes which had their origin In
the living influence of the Scriptures, Those who
know Turkey most Intimately confess how large a
part the Bible, In the vernaculars of the country, has
played In the making of tjie New Turkey, The
American missionaries, who have been working for
so many years in nearly every province and part
of the Sultan's dominions, have made It one of their
chief aims to teach and to circulate God's Book, In
their schools and colleges they have about 40,000
pupils daily engaged In systematic Bible-study,
Surely it Is a significant fact that Enver Bey, the
Intrepid Albanian leader who risked everything In
the interests of constitutional government In Turkey,
declared in Smyrna, not many months after the
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THE BOOK
promulgation of the Constitution, that he and his
colleagues would never have dared to take the steps
they did for the establishment of a just and stable
government but for their reliance on the foundations
laid by the American Mission schools during the last
fifty years. Now the power at the back of these
American schools has been the Bible In the
vernacular. The world marvelled to see the New Turkish party
putting into their motto the words " Equality " and
" Fraternity." Islam has never stood for either.
Still more remarkable is the recent proclamation by
the Sheik-ul-Islam, the religious chief of Muhamma-
danism, declaring that constitutional government is
sanctioned by the Koran ; that Christians who truly
worship God are the true brethren of Moslems, and
that they also will have a place in Paradise ; that
it Is the duty of a Muhammadan Government to
protect the Christian and the Jew, just as it protects
Moslems, and that before the Government and before
God all are equal. Here Is strange doctrine, and we
search In vain through the Koran to discover where
the Sheik-ul-Islam found warrant for proclaiming It,
The revolution in Turkey could never have taken
place but for the leavening truths of the New
Testament, The Answer to Criticism.
No other book exerts such a living influence in the
world to-day as the Bible, Such vitality Is all the
more wonderful when we remember that the Bible
has been passing through a century of the fiercest
and most remorseless criticism which any book ever
had to face since time began. As a matter of fact,
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ABOVE EVERY BOOK
the Scriptures have gained far more from criticism
than they can ever lose. At one of our Society's
Centenary meetings, the then Prime Minister, Mr,
A, J, Balfour, declared that " these critical researches
make the Bible far more a living record of the
revelation of God to mankind than it ever was in
the pre-critical days," Indeed, most of the questions
over which Biblical scholars dispute and contend
have little bearing upon the vital spiritual content
of Holy Scripture, When criticism has exhausted
itself, the Bible remains Intact In everything which
makes It to be the Bible, Its liquid texture can
receive no mortal wound. We meet God In these
pages as we meet Him nowhere else. His revela
tions In nature, in history, in the human con
science, only confirm and illustrate the one supreme
manifestation of Himself, Not all the saints to
gether have added a single ray to the glory of God
which is in the face of Jesus Christ, As a veteran
missionary testifies : " We come back to this, that in
the Bible we have the very Word of God made more
sure to us than before, even by the experience of doubt
and controversy through which the Book has come.
Theories and views which could be shaken have been
removed, but the Book itself and Its great revelation
of God have come out of the testing unshaken, and
they remain to us for ever."
A New Chapter in Christian Evidences.
The experience of the Bible Society among all
races and In all lands constitutes a new and ever
lengthening chapter in the great volume of Christian
Evidences. The argument which that chapter con
tains has been excellently summed up in words which
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THE BOOK
we borrow from a most distinguished missionary to
China, Dr. J, C, Gibson, who acted as one of the
two Chairmen of the Shanghai Conference In 1908,
" We hear from all quarters that men have lost
faith in the Bible, that it has had Its day, and can
never again hold with us the place that It held with
our fathers. We hear of attacks on the Bible from
the side of literary scholarship, and of others on
the side of archaeological research. . . . Does the
British and Foreign Bible Society make any reply
to these attacks? Does It apologize for Its work?
Does It ever write or print in defence of the Bible ?
With all Its printing In countless languages — not
a line! not a word! It hears all that is said,
smiles at all that is written, and goes on Its
way !
" The supreme test of the Bible is not in the
regions of scholarship and archaeology. This Book,
on the face of It, addresses itself to the hearts of
plain men ajid offers them a cure for their troubles,
and comfort for their sorrows. Does it In practice
make good its claim?
" Now It Is the glory of the Bible Society that it
applies this test, and makes this experiment on a
large scale. You say the Bible is a failure? WeU,
we shall not argue, but we shall try. We shaU carry
It to the cultured homes of great civilized races, and
to the squalid huts of remote tribes, to quiet viUages
sleeping among the fields where harvests ripen, and
to the battlefields of the world where all the fiercest
passions of men are let loose to devastate and
destroy ; and we shall see what It can do."
" The Bible Society makes this testing experiment
on a large scale. It has acted in the faith of those
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ABOVE EVERY BOOK
wko know that the Bible has been the life-giving
Word of God to themselves and are constrained
to share It with all men. They had no need to
experiment, yet what they have done Is for all
men a great and crucial experiment. It has been
carried on now for a hundred years, In all lands and
among all races, and from this most searching trial
the Bible Society brings back to us the unfailing
Bible, ' the word of prophecy ' now indeed ' made
more sure,' for It has not only brought comfort to
sorrowing souls, and led sinners into the peace of
forgiveness ; It has al^o both planted and nourished
the Church of God, and imparted to it that divine
Ufe which unites in one all the members of the
Body of Christ. The Bible Is no effete Book, It
has not only come unscathed through tempests of
opposition and survived the more deadly frosts of
indifference. It has, by the spiritual power Inherent
In it and the effectual working of God the Holy
Ghost through it, produced and maintained wherever
it has come the sanctifying power of the divine life.
But only life can produce life, and therefore It is
that we affirm with a growing assurance that this
is indeed the living Word of God which shall never
be slain or silenced — the Word on which rests our
own eternal hope — the Word which we hold forth
to aU men for the obedience of faith. We find
in it no cunningly-devised fables, and our loyalty
cleaves the more firmly to this word of prophecy
which is daily naade more sure to us, as there rises
on our ears across wide oceans and from distant
lands the swelling voice of growing multitudes of
souls, new-born Into the kingdom of God, who join
their testimony to ours that they have found In
91

THE BOOK
this ancient Book the power and presence of our
Lord Jesus Christ,"

In the famous Tribuna of the Uffizi gallery of art
at Florence, a tourist armed with his guide-book
went up to the curator: "Are these your master
pieces?" he asked; "I certainly don't see much In
them myself." " Sir," said the curator, " these
pictures are not on their trial : it is the visitors
who are on their trial." Those who see little in the
Bible should realize that after so many generations
of Christian experience the Bible is not for the first
time on Its trial now.

92

ABOVE EVERY BOOK

THE TEST OF CATHOLICITY.
" Thei-e is nothing parochial about the Bible Society."
The Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfoub.
Much of what has been already said Illustrates the
universal character of the Bible, No other book has
been Issued in such Immense numbers. No other
book has found Its way everywhere Into the remotest
corners of the earth. No other book has learned to
speak in so many tongues. It can be read to-day in
every human language which possesses a literature,
as weU as In the speech of scores of barbarous tribes
for whom no other literature exists except this. Nor
must we lose sight of the fact that the printed page
is now exercising a far wider and more potent
influence In the world than ever before. The
wonderful spread of education among non- Christian
nations is multiplying year by year the missionary
energy of the Bible, In the ranks of the Japanese
army the war correspondent of the Standard news
paper declared that he could not find a single
iUiterate soldier, and the attendance of all childrou
at school is more strictly enforced In Japan than in
England, From the Government schools in India
more than a million new readers are turned out
annually. The best educated part of the Indian
Empire Is Burma, which, to quote the words of the
last census, " enjoys an elaborate system of in
digenous free education " imparted to the boys iu
93

THE BOOK
every village by Buddhist monks, who thus prove
schoolmasters Into Christ, when they prepare their
pupils to read the Burmese New Testament, In
China the character In which the language is
written makes reading peculiarly difficult; but an
astonishing reform in the system of education Is
spreading fast through all the eighteen Provinces,
Here, as in other Eastern lands, the power of the
vernacular press Is extending and Increasing with
rapid strides. In the Dutch East Indies forty news
papers are now published in the Malay language.
Perils of Progress,
Such progress carries ¦with It corresponding draw
backs. As civilization and science become more and
more universal, they create their own temptations
and perils. We hear, for Instance, of cheap Chinese
versions of modern authors — not only of books like
Nicholas Nickleby and The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes, but of French novels like La Dame aux
Cam4lias, and we are told that China Is being
flooded with translations of rationalistic and agnostic
literature. In the Government schools of Manchuria,
boys learn scepticism Imported from the West, and
not a few of the students take pride in avowing
that they belong to the " Wu Shen Hui," or "No
God Society." In Java, "the cinematograph exhi
bitions all over the island make it possible for any
native, by the occasional expenditure of a few
cents, to gain a finished education In crime." At
fairs and festivals up and down India cheap
vernacular books are sold, some of them definitely
anti-Christian, and others terribly demoralizing. Is
there not more urgent need than ever to provide
94

BTHMESK GIRLS,

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
the Book which above every book contains the
secret of righteousness and regeneration?

No Respecter of Persons,
In a previous chapter we have spoken of the
universal appeal which the Bible makes to all
sorts and conditions of men,
" It takes the suffering human race,
It reads each wound, each weakness clear :
And strikes its finger on the place,
And says : Thou aUest, here and here I "
Other books come home to particular sections and
classes of mankind : they are for the educated, or
for the high-born, or for the wealthy. This contains
a common and catholic message which declares at
the very outset that " there is no difference," A
humble fruit-gatherer In Ceylon read the first page
of the Sermon on the Mount, and was well pleased,
"These are very good teachings indeed," said he,
" but as we belong to the lower castes, these
teachings are not for us," The colporteur told him
that our Heavenly Father Is no respecter of persons,
and that In heaven there Is no caste at all : where
upon the man was greatly astonished, and said that
he would read the Gospel.
God's Book Is catholic, partly because it is not all
cast In one and the same mould. Certain parts
of the Bible appeal with unexpected force to different
races, and to men In various stages of civilization,
who read the Scriptures with other eyes than ours.
We may illustrate this point by a few actual exam
ples. When Dr. Kilgour was translating the Old
95

THE BOOK
Testament into Nepali, he found it an arduous, not
to say a tedious, task to render the long chapters of
ritual regulations in Leviticus ; he was surprised,
however, to discover that his Nepalese assistant, who
was not a Christian, considered those chapters to be
among the most interesting and Important In the
whole Pentateuch. So, again, the Chinese, who lay
enormous stress on reverence for ancestors, are
profoundly impressed by the first chapter of St.
Matthew's Gospel, because It begins with the gene
alogy of our Lord, wliich, as a colporteur w^rote last
year, " goes back to our Chinese Hsia dynasty." In
Egypt Moslems are attracted by the Book of Genesis,
which they call " the history of the creation of the
world." In China, Genesis is also a favourite, because
it is " the book which tells of the beginning of
things." In the south of Europe the Book of
Proverbs is often purchased eagerly by Freemasons,
who look back to King Solomon as the legendary
founder of their craft. In heathen lands it is by
no means uncommon for missionaries who are
translating the Old Testament to make a version
first of the Psalter and then perhaps of Genesis,
and then to translate the Book of Jonah before
attempting any other of the prophets. They realize
that Jonah Is the one thoroughly missionary book
in the Old Testament, and they find that its
message comes home to their converts with peculiar
power. We constantly forget that the Scriptures were not
composed, primarily, for Englishmen, nor written by
Europeans, This fact involves far-reaching conse
quences. Here is one illustration. It Is frequently
stated that young Indian students find great difficulty
96

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
in understanding the language of the Authorised and
Revised Versions of the English Bible, The follow
ing pronouncement, however, appeared recently In
the columns of The Indian Social Reformer, an able
and Influential newspaper edited and published by
non- Christians at Bombay, "The Bible is perhaps
the one English book which the Indian boy feels the
least difficulty In following, as the forms and ideas
are those with which an Oriental is most familiar,"
It would be quite Impossible for European boys to
foUow the Ideas of the Vedas or the Tripitaka,
however admirably translated. There Is only one
Book which rises above national and racial dis
tinctions, and makes Its appeal to the general heart
of humanity.
The Book of the Universal Church.
But while the Bible possesses this great catholic
note, and is able to speak to men of all races in their
own tongue without losing the force and sweetness
and charm of its message, we must admit that it
appeals pre-eminently to Christians. In their esti
mate it stands peerless and supreme. There Is but
one Book for the universal Church, There Is only one
charter for the whole congregation of Christ's flock
dispersed throughout the world. There is only one
norm and standard of faith. We may quote from an
address delivered by Canon Scott Holland last year
at the anniversary of the Universities' Mission to
Central Africa : " So, I say, if you want to be good
Catholics, be Bible Christians. That is the real con
clusion. The Bible Is the stronghold of Catholicity,
Go back there, and let us cling to the Synoptic Gos-
97 H

THE BOOK
pels, the Pauline Epistles, and all that Is In them as
expressed there by Jews, Then you will know that
you are delivering the message in the shape in which
it can be absorbed by every nation on the face of the
globe." This Book has been cherished above every book in
the spiritual history of Christendom. In the Middle
Ages we hear of precious copies of Scripture which
were bound in gold and silver, and had their je'welled
covers studded and embossed with tiny relics of the
saints. But in truth the books and chapters of the
Bible constitute one glorious reliquary of sacred
experience. There is a deep sense in -which we may
say concerning the great verses of Scripture, " Are
they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister
to them who shall be heirs of salvation ? " And if
the texts had tongues, and could repeat the tale of
their ministry down through the generations of the
faithful, what marvels of experience they would
reveal. Their biographies would be gathered from
the four winds of heaven, and from the uttermost
parts of the sea, "from lonely chambers, from
suffering sick-beds, from the brink of the vaUey
of the shadow of death, from scaffolds and fiery
piles witnessing in sunlight, from moors and
mountains beneath the stars, and in high places
of the field, turning to flight the armies of the
aliens." The manuscript pages of mediaeval Bibles were
blazoned into rare beauty by patient hands. But
if, by some miracle, the saints' experience of Scrip
ture could shine out between its lines, what an
illumination of the text would be there ! Indeed, we
come to the meaning of the Bible by example as well
98

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
as by grammar. Its most penetrating commentary
is written In living letters. To read the book, or any
part of It, by this light of actual experience, helps us
to take it home as a possession to our own hearts. As
Dr, John Ker says, there are promises and precepts
which seem to lie beyond our reach ; we have nothing
to draw with, and the well is deep. But some one of
like passions has passed that way before us, and has
left a cup to be let down with his name and story
graven on the rim.

The Communion of Saints.
Moreover, to study the Scripture as It has been
translated into the experience of the Church, makes
us realize the oneness of Christ's life throughout His
far-spread family. These self-same verses in all
generations have made glad the city of God, And
in this common meeting-place of believers we find
the fellowship of saints indeed,
"The Word dwells in us to-day with a halo of mystic vindi
cations about it that it could not possess in the beginning.
It comes to us not only as a message from God, but tremu
lous -with the countless Amens it has awakened in the heroic
souls it has fashioned and inspired. The promises upon which
God's servants in every age have hoped receive back into
themselves sublime reactions from the spiritual forces they
have kindled within the elect, and come to us vocal with new
significance. The experiences of the devout and the believing
in aU ages are gathered back into the Divine message by
which such souls were helped and sanctified, and through
this living voice within us ¦we realize the doctrine of the
communion of saints. It is in this high spiritual sense that
the Church is the interpreter and the guardian of God's
Word." 99

THE BOOit
In this sense the witness of the Scriptures to Christ
Is verified and attested by the society of the redeemed
and the forgiven, in whom and upon whom Christ has
wrought His works of power. In this Protestant sense
the Church does confer authority on the Bible. This
is far removed from the Roman doctrine that the Bible
derives Its authority from the fact that ecclesiastical
synods and councils have pronounced it to be true.
We say with Luther : " The Church cannot give more
force or authority to a book than it has in itself. A
Council cannot make that to be Scripture which in
its own nature is not Scripture." The Church con
fers authority upon the Bible, in so far as the life
and experience of the saints confirm and ratify Its
mightiest assertions. And It Is very wonderful to
find how in every age and in every land the most
Christlike Christians meet and are at home with
one another in the pages of the New Testament.
There "their speech is one, their witnesses agree,"
There they learn to use a common language
concerning the incommunicable secrets of the
heart. One Impressive aspect of this unity of spirit was
brought out at the recent German Lutheran Confer
ence held in MoUe, where Professor Meinhof delivered
a striking address on the Muhammadan peril in Africa
and its connection with a common language. He
pointed out that one great means by which a common
language is introduced among Muhammadans is the
pilgrimage to Mecca. At that sacred centre devout
Moslems come together from strange and remote
corners of the world of Islam between Sumatra and
Sierra Leone, and realize their one faith by praising
one God in one and the same tongue. The Roman
100

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
Church similarly realizes the unifying power of
a common ecclesiastical language. In St. Peter's
at Rome there are confessionals where strangers
confess and receive absolution in all forms of
speech. And a foreign priest who finds his way
to Rome, though he cannot understand a single
sentence of Italian, can nevertheless say Mass in
any Italian church.
Professor Meinhof went on to say : —
"Are not we Evangelicals In danger lest in our
narrow circle of home relationships we lose sight of
catholicity ? We possess nothing which corresponds
to a central shrine for pilgrimage. Yet I believe that,
for those who have eyes to see, there exist among us
forces which make more powerfully for the oneness
of the universal Church than anything in St, Peter's
or at Mecca. I refer to the Bible, Though it may
seem as if the translation of the Bible would open a
door for error, yet experience proves that Its results
are the very opposite. The translation of the Bible
practically leads to an astonishing unity of spirit
among all Evangelicals, The goal of our Evangelical
pilgrimage lies in the Scriptures, This Is why we take
care that the Africans shall be able to read the Bible
in their mother-tongue, St, Peter's at Rome is indeed
august ; yet I have been still more deeply moved with
what I saw In the home of the British and Foreign
Bible Society at London, Our unity lies In the work
of translating the Bible, and there also lies our
future." Throughout Christendom the Bible is the one sacred
Book which all Christians have venerated and to
which aU Christians professed to appeal. Among
101

THE BOOK
some ancient communions, indeed, the Book itself
became a kind of fetish. In the Armenian and
Coptic Churches the faithful might kiss It, but only
the priest was privileged to turn Its pages. It was
revered and left unread, until, by lapse of time and
change of speech, it became unreadable. In the
public liturgy of nearly every unreformed Church
the Scriptures are read as a rule in some ancient
language which cannot be understood by common
people. And there are Churches still bitterly hostile
to the Bible Society's mission — which offers every
man the open Bible, without note or comment, In
bis own mother-tongue. Wherever the Church of
Rome is dominant it displays what Bishop Gore
has called its "disastrous reluctance" to the free
circulation of the Scriptures, We still hear of
Bible-burning instigated or carried out by Roman
priests in regions as far apart as Venezuela and
Sardinia. In the kingdom of Greece, through
prejudices which are partly political and partly
ecclesiastical, the New Testament in modern Greek
remains a forbidden book.
On the other hand, new proofs occur that the
Ancient Oriental Churches recognize the value of
the Bible and appreciate the services of the Bible
Society. At Damascus the Society's agent had an Inter'sdew
last year with the Orthodox Greek Patriarch of
Antioch, and begged for his friendship and sym
pathy with our work in his diocese, which consists
of the vilayets of Damascus and Aleppo. The
Patriarch kindly promised to do what he could to
facilitate the task of our colporteurs In those places
where Greek Christians of his flock were to be
102

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
found. In Travancore and Cochin nine Bishops of
the Syrian Church have been presented with copies
of the Society's version of the Bible in Malayalam :
the gifts were accepted with sincere gratitude, and
evoked the promise that special prayer should be
offered on behalf of our Society and its work. At
Busrah, on the Persian Gulf, the Chaldean Patriarch
urged his subordinates to imitate his own example
and to cultivate good feeling and amity with the
Protestant mission and colporteurs.
At Jerusalem.
The Society's work In Jerusalem received, last
year, high ecclesiastical approval and commenda
tion. The Russian Archimandrite accepted a copy
of the Russian Bible. Four specially-bound copies
of the New Testament In Greek were presented by
our representative to His Holiness the Greek
Patriarch of Jerusalem, whose photograph we
reproduce in this chapter. It Is Interesting to
remember that the dignity of Patriarch was for
mally assigned to the Bishop of Jerusalem at the
Council of Chalcedon, a.d. 451. His Holiness
graciously accepted the Testaments, and showed
himself deeply interested in the world-wide enter
prise of the Bible Society. He expressed his sur
prise when he learned the number of languages
into which the Scriptures have been translated,
and remarked that " it was a marvellous achieve
ment both from a religious and literary point of
view." The broad and Inclusive lines on which the Bible
Society Is organized appealed strongly to the
103

THE BOOK
Patriarch, while its vast aims and achievements
called forth his high admiration.
The following is a translation of a letter written
in Greek, signed by His Holiness and sent to our
agent, together with a donation to the funds of
the Bible Society : —
" 4" Damianus, the Most Blessed and Holy Patriarch of the
Holy City Jerusalem, and All Palestine, Syria, Arabia beyond
Jordan, Cana of GaUlee, and Holy Sion,
"Most Honourable Mr, 0, Thomas Hooper, Director of the
British and Foreign Bible Society in Egypt, We invoke
Heaven's rich blessing upon your esteemed Honour.
"We have safely received the four volumes of the New
Testament sent to us by your Honour, and hereby express
the very warm gratitude due to you, both for the gift itself
and for the good and kind feelings which prompted it. In
addition, therefore, to the fitting expression of our thanks,
we offer hearty prayers unto our Lord and Saviour who feeds
us with the heavenly and eternal bread of the Scriptures,
beseeching Him that He may strengthen and defend you by
His invincible grace in your Honour's untiring efforts to
distribute the Divine Word, which are weU-pleasing unto God.
" In the Holy City Jerusalem, 6th March, 1910.
"(Signed) An earnest supplicant to the Lord on behalf of
your esteemed Honour, "*t" Damianus, Bishop of Jekusalbm."
In the Russian Empire.
In Siberia the Orthodox Bishop of Irkutsk gave
our Agent his blessing, and desired a wide circulation
for the new version of St, Matthew's Gospel In
Buriat MongoHan, The Bible Society has just
printed this version for the use of the Irkutsk
Branch of the Orthodox Missionary Society, It
Is often forgotten that the Russian Church carries
104

THE GREEK PATRIARCH OF .JERUSALEM.

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
on missionary work among Moslem and pagan
tribes found In various Asiatic provinces of the
Tsar's dominions. Throughout that great Empire, in
which Church and State are so intimately allied,
generous privileges of free travel and transport
have been granted to the Bible Society for many
years past, both by the State and by private firms.
To show what this friendly help means, we may
mention that last year members of the Society's
staff In Siberia travelled altogether 40,000 miles,
and their travelling expenses only amounted to
£66. This will illustrate how much we owe to the
Government and other railways, and to steamboat
companies and owners, which grant our colporteurs
free passes by rail and river, as well as free freight
for our books.
In other parts of the world not a few railway
and steamship companies adopt a similar policy.
We gratefully acknowledge valuable help of this
kind from Dutchmen In Java, from Japanese In
Manchuria, and from Englishmen in India, In
British Guiana, In the West Indies, and, last but
not least, In the Republics of South America,
Such friendly co-operation becomes a tribute of
world-wide sympathy.

An eloquent preacher describes how a Canadian
bishop encamped one evening on one bank of a great
Canadian river : a company of Christian Indians
were on the other. As the Englishmen gazed into
the falling fire they heard a hymn across the river.
This was succeeded by a hush. The song of the Red
105

THE BOOK
Men across the water drew out a song from the
English, and that touched the Indians to a prayer,
whose measured tones just reached them across the
water. ""What wa^ the river between?" asks the
bishop. On one side rose prayers and praises In the
speech of Milton and Shakespeare ; on the other in
words borrowed from the glee of the waterfaU or
from the sighing of the pine-wood. Yet once again
the whole earth seemed to be of one language and
of one lip.
Towards Unity.
We may be thankful that in these latter days
Christians everywhere are growing weary of their
unhappy divisions, are longing after unity, are be
ginning to cherish a more catholic spirit. Is there
any institution In our country so catholic as the
Bible Society? No other Christian organization
unites so many Christians who are severed by
theological or ecclesiastical differences, but clasp
hands In this sacred cause. Christianity Is the
religion of the Bible. We are aU " Bible Christians "
in the deepest sense of that name. And w^hile so
many controversies still keep English believers
apart, we cling to the great Society which binds
us together.
With earnest prayer and expectancy we looked
forward to the World Missionary Conference which
met last June in the capital of Scotland. That great
assemblage, representing every Reformed Church in
Christendom, was not only a council of war in the
campaign against evil, but also a mighty witness to
Christian unity in faith and service. We praise God
for one more proof that He Is kindling everywhere
106

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
in the hearts of His children a new passion for
reconciliation and reunion, a new longing for the
fulfilment of Christ's unfulfilled prayer. And of such
reconciliation and reunion we may see in the Bible
Society Itself a herald and harbinger.

107

THE BOOK ABOVE EVERY BOOK

Where does the Bible Society get Its income ?
The answer to this question may be succinctly given
thus. During the year 1909-10 each sovereign which
the Society received was made up as follows ; — 7s. 7d.
came from sales of the Scriptures ; 5s. 9Jd. came from
Free Contributions by Auxiliaries at home and in the
Colonies ; 3s. 7d. came from legacies ; 2s. 6d. came
from subscriptions, donations, collections, etc., paid
in direct to the Bible House; and 6|d. from dividends.

How does the Bible Society spend its income ?
Here is the answer, reduced to Its simplest terms.
During the year 1909-10 each sovereign which the
Society expended was laid out In the follow^ing pro
portions : — 8s. lOd. went towards preparing, printing,
and binding editions of the Scriptures ; 3s. lOd. went
to support the Society's colportage staff — including
European Sub-agents, native colporteurs, and Bible-
women ; 4s. 9cl. went to maintain the Society's depots
and sub-depots in the chief cities in the world, and
to pay freight and carriage of the Scriptures, with
salaries and travelling expenses of the Society's
foreign agents ; lOJd. was spent on the Society's
deputation staff, home and colonial ; 5d. was spent
In producing reports, magazines, and other literature ;
7d. was spent on postage, rates, Insurance, Bible
House expenses, wages, repairs, interest, exchange,
etc. ; 4d. was spent on allowances to old and disabled
servants at home and abroad ; and 4|d. was spent on
the secretarial and clerical staff.

108

APPENDIX.

NOTICE RESPECTING REMITTANCES.
Subscriptions and donations are received at the Bible House,
146, Queen Victoria Street, London, E.C. ; also at the
Society's Bankers, Williams Deacon's Bank, Limited,
20, Birchin Lane, E.C. ; — advice being sent to the
Secretaries at the Bible House. Cheques, Bankers' Drafts,
and Post Office Orders (on the General Post Office), should
be made payable to The British and Foreign Bible Society,
and addressed to the Secretaries,

FORM OF A BEQUEST TO THE SOCIETY,
/ bequeath the sum of Pounds sterling
free of Legacy Duty to "The British and Foreign Bible
Society," instituted in London in the year ISO4, to be paid for
the purposes of the said Society to the Treasurer for the time
being thereof, whose Receipt shall be a good discharge for the

Telegraphic Address . Telephone :
Testaments, London, No. 2036 Centrad.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY.

President : The MARQUIS OF NORTHAMPTON, K.Q.
Vice- Presidents :

1878. BISHOP MITCHINSON. D.O.L., D.D.
1878. BISHOP MOORHOUSE, D.D,
1877. The EARL of ABERDEEN.
The Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. £ENNAWA!, But.,
O.B., M.P.
1878. ARCHBISHOP MACLAQAN, D,D,
1884. "BISHOP BARRY, D.D.
Tho BISHOP of RIPON.
1881!. *Bov. ALEXANDER MoLAREN, D.D.
1888. Boy. J. OS'WALD DYKES, D.D.
Sit THOMAS FOWELL BUXTON, Batt.,
Q.O.M.Q.
1S87. Tho ARCHBISHOP of CANTERBURY,
1888. W. SCHOOLOROFT BURTON, Eaq.
BISHOP ROYSTON, D.D.
1889. Tho EARL of HALSBURT.
LORD BBASSBY, K.O.B.
The BISHOP of ST. ASAPH.
1891. LORD KINNAIRD.
Tho DEAN of WINDSOR.
Rot. A. M. FAIRBAIRN, D.D.
1892. Tho BISHOP of LICHFIELD.
Aid. Sir JOSEPH SAVORY, Batl.
Tho BISHOP of NEWCASTLE.
1893. Rot. CHANCELLOR EDMONDS.
J. STORRS FRY, Esq.
BISHOP JOHNSON, D.D.
Rot. j. a. ROGERS, D.D.
1891 ROBERT HEATH, Esq.
Tho ARCHBISHOP ot the WEST INDIES.
ARCHDEACON SINCLAIR, D.D.
Tho BISHOP ot MABLBOROUQH.
Rot. H. j. POPE, D.D,
J. R. HILL, Esq.
VISCOUNT PEEL.
Tho BISHOP of BATH and WELLS.
The DUKE of DEVONSHIRE.
LORD PEOKOVBR of WISBKOH.
The BISHOP of CHESTER.
•BISHOP GOE, D.D.
The DEAN of DURHAM.
Tho BISHOP of St. ALBANS.
BeT. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.
•The EARL of STAMFORD.
J. TRUEMAN MILLS, Esq.
Sir ALBERT SPICER, Bait., M.P.
Rot. j. G. GBEENHOUGH.
Rot. RIOHARD GLOVER, D.D.
Tho BISHOP ot HEREFORD.
BISHOP STUART, D.D.
1807. The BISHOP of PETERBOROUGH.
Hon. J. J. ROGERSON.
A. S. LESLIE-MELVILLE, Esq.
LORD RADSTOCK.
Tho BISHOP of DURHAM.
1898. r.ev. CANON CHRISTOPHER.
liOT. D. MaOEWAN, D.D.
The BISHOP of WAKEFIELD.
VISCOUNT WOLVERHAMPTON.
1899. The BISHOP of ST. DAVID 3.
BISHOP WELLDON, D.D.
VISCOUNT OLIFDEN.
Rot. canon R. B. GIRDLESTONE.
Rot. W. L. WATKINSON, D.D.
ROBERT BARCLAY, Esq.
HENRY MORRIS, Esq.
1900. BISHOP INGHAM, D.D.
Tho BISHOP ot LIVERPOOL.
The MASTER of TRINITY.
Rot. p. W. MAODONALD.
F. A. BEVAN, Esq.
1901. Tho BISHOP ol WINCHESTER.
The BISHOP of LONDON.
BISHOP OUFFORD, D.D.
Sir GEORGE HAYTER CHUBB, Bart.
The St. Hon, Sit SAMUEL J. WiY,
Batl,
LORD ALTBRSTONE, a.O.M.a.,
Lotd Chiof Jnatico.
Sit G. E. KNOX.
BeT. GRIFFITH JOHN, D.D.
IBOa. Tho BISHOP of CALCUTTA.
The BISHOP of UGANDA.
BISHOP FYNES, D.D.
Bov. W. T. DAVISON. D.D.

189S.

IS9I.

1902. Sir CHARLES ALFRED ELLIOTT, K.0.8.1
Sir 0. ERNEST IBITTON, Bart.
THOMAS HODGKIN, Esq., D.O.L.
CHARLES FINCH FOSTER, Esq,
1908, Tho DEAN of WESTMINSTER,
Rot. 0. H. KELLY.
Sit ALGERNON COOTE, Bait.
Sit G. W. MAOALPINE.
GEORGE SPICER, Esq.
MARTIN JOHN SUTTON, Esq.
190i, Tho BISHOP of BIRMINGHAM.
Tho BISHOP ot MANCHESTER.
BISHOP ORMSBY, D.D.
BISHOP STIRLING, D.D.
KOT. ANDREW MURRAY, D.D.
ReT. MARSHALL HARTLEY.
ReT. F. B. MEYER.
Rot. D. MAOKICHAN, D.D.
Sit A. HARGREAVES BROWN, Bait
N. W. H0YLE8, E8q.,K.O. LL.D.
THOS. PUMPHBEY, Esq.
GEORGE CADBUBY, Esq.
P. F. WOOD, Esq.
•G. F. SUTTON, Esq.
1905. Tho BISHOP ot BRISTOL.
The Hon. JUSTICE FORBES.
BOT. R. F. HORTON, D.D.
GENERAL BOOTH, D.C.L.
E. PERCY H0LLAM3, Esq.
WILLIAMSON LAMPLOUGH, Esq.
1900, The EARL ot DARTMOUTH.
The BISHOP of CARLISLE.
Tho BISHOP ot ELY.
LORD STRATHOONA, G.O.M.O,
LORD WIMBORNE.
BISHOP TAYLOR SMITH.
EOT. PRINCIPAL FORSYTH, D.D.
EOT. TIMOTHY RICHARD, Litt.D.
ReT. D. ROWLANDS.
D. B. HOSTE, Esq.
SAMUEL LLOYD, Esq.
E. J. EARP, Esq.
1907. Tho BISHOP ol SOUTHAMPTON.
Tho BISHOP of EXETER.
The BISHOP of MOMBASA.
Sit GEORGE SMITH.
ReT. J. B. BATON, D.D.
B. GILLESPIE, Esq.
J. EICE LEWIS, Esq.
I. P. WEENEE, Esq.
1906. EARL GREY.
Tho BISHOP of SOUTH TOKYO.
Sil ANDREW H. L. ERASER, K.O.B.I.
Sit WM. MACGREGOR, G.C.M.G.
Sit W. P. HARTLEY.
Rot. G. CAMPBELL MORGAN, D.D.
J. RENDBL HARRIS, Esq., Litt.D.
0. D. GINSBURG, Esq., LL.D,
A. J. CEOSFIELD, Esq.
EMIL WALSER, Esq.
Rot. JOHN SHARP.
1909. The ARCHBISHOP of YORK.
BISHOP MONTGOMERY, D.D.
Sil ROBERT HART, Bait., G.C.M.G.
Rot. Piob. H. E. FOX.
ReT. J. CAMPBELL GIBSON, D.D.
EOT. W. W. JAOKSON, D.D.
EOT. R. WARDLAW THOMPSON, D.D.
Rot. GEORGE BROWN, D.D.
G. A. GRIEESON, Esq., O.I.E., Ph.D.
ELIAS ROGERS, Esq.
W. ALOIS WRIGHT, Esq., LL.D,
Sil FRANCIS F. BELSEY.
P. P. WEAVER. Esq., M.D.
1910. LORD LANGFORD, K.O.V.O.
The BISHOP ol TRURO.
The BISHOP of GIBRALTAR.
Tho MASTER ot the ROLLS.
The Rot. LORD WILLIAM GASCOYNE
CECIL.
Sil J. T. DILLWYN LLEWELYN, Bait.
EeT. J. D. JONES.
ReT. ALEXANDER CORNELL.
EOT. J. H. SHAKESPEARE.
T. E. FEEENS, Eaa., M.P.

' Deceased linn McwGh Si, 1910.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY.

Treasurer ;
Egbert Baeclay, Esq.

Chairman of Committee :
Williamson Lamplough, Esq.

Committee •
Elected May i, 1910.

The dates indicate when -members first joined the Committee.

C. A. Bingel, Esq.
P. S. Bishop, Esq.
A. Brauen, Esq.
•W. van 0. Bruyn, Esq.
E. D. Cheveley, Esq. -
G. T. Crosfield, Esq. -
A. T. Dence, Esq.
Col. D. P. Douglas-Jones
0. A. Flint, Esq.
Sir William Godsell -
H. Lance Gray, Esq. -
M. Gutteridge, Esq. -
H. Koenigs, Esq.
G. B. Leechman, Esq.
H. W. Maynard, Esq.
Gilbert J. MoCaul, Esq.
T. P. Newman, Esq. -
•A. W. Oke, Esq, 'Not

. 1906
- 1908
- 1897
- 1906
- 1906
- 1901
- 1905
- 1905
- 1904
- 1903
- 1906
- 39081897
¦ 1908
- 1898
- 1902
- 1904
- 1910

P. D. Outram, Esq.
W. C. Parkinson, Esq.
W. H. Poate, Esq. -
Charles G. P, Eees, Esq.
Leslie S. Eobertson, Esq. -
Maj.-Gen. 0. G. Eobinson -
W. H. Seagram, Esq.
E. J. Se-well, Esq.
Colonel E. S. Skinner
•Eugene Stock, Esq., d.c.l.
Sir Chas. J. Tarring -
•E. B. Trotter, Esq. -
•Hon. Montagu Waldegrave -
•C. Hay Walker, Esq. -
G. H. Wedekind, Esq.
Eobert Whyte, Esq.
Sir And. Wingate, K.C.I.E.
A. W. Young, Esq.

1905
19051908
190919011898
1902
1901
19031910
1907
1910 19101907
1893 1907
1903
1891

on the ComTnittee last year.

The Committee meet, as a rule, at the Bible House, 146, Queen Victoria
Street, E.C, on the first aud third Mondays in every Month, at Half -past
Eleven o'clock ; aud oftener, as business may require.

Secretaries :
The Eev. Aethub Tatlob, m.a. The Eev. John H. ErrsoN, m.a.
Tra-nslati-ng

The Eev. E. Kilgoue, d.d.. Editorial Superintendent.
Mr. Oeaydbn Edmunds, m.a., Assistant.
(The Eev. T. H. Dablow, m.a.. Literary Superintendent.
(Mr. A. G. Jatne, b.a., Assistant.

& Editorial
Departmetit.
LiteraryDepartment.Hom^ (The Eev. H. A. Eaynes, m.a., Hom^e Superintendent.
Department. [The Eev. Haeby Scott, Assistant Some Secretary.
Accountant : WareJiouse Manager ;
Mr. W. P. Wakelim. Mr. W. Bulloch.
Collector :
Mr. Geo. B. Poole.
Honorary Solicitors :
Messrs. Hollamb, Sons, Cowabd & Hawrslet,
30, Mincing Lane, E. C.
Bankers :
Williams Deacon's Bank, Ltd.,
20, Birchin Lane, E. G.

112

ABOVE EVERY BOOK

Foreign Agents and Sectetaries.

Pastor D. Lortsch,
58, Bu^ de Clichy, Paris.
Mr. M. A. Morrison,
81, KUniggrdtzerstrasse, Berlin.
Rev. E. 0. Walker, m.a.,
25, Palazzo Assicur. Qen.,
Piazza Venezia, Borne.
Mr. W. Summers,
i, Leganitos, Madrid.
Rev. W. Kean, d.d.,
Ehaterinhof Prospect, 12, St.
Petersburg.
Mr, W. Da'vidson,
Bible Depdt, Ekaterinburg.
Eev. T. E. Hodgson,
1, Tunnel Passage, Pera,
Constantinople.
Mr. C. T. Hooper,
27, Bamleh Boulevard,
Alexandria.
Rev. G. P. van der Merwe,
P.O. Box 215, Cape Town.
Rev. G. Lowe,
Box 639, Johannesburg.
Mr. Th. Irrsich,
Julfa, Ispahan, Persia.
Rev. A. W. Young,
23, Choioringhee Road, Calcutta.
Mr. E. A. Adams,
74-78, Hornby Road, Bombay.
Eev. W. E. H. Organe, b.a., b.d.,
P.O. Box 17, Madras.
Rev. E. P. Eice (Honorary),
Bangalore.
Rev. T. S. Wynkoop, m.a.,
18, Clive Boad, Allahabad.

Mr. W. H. L. Church,
Bible Depdt, Anarkali Street,
Lahore.
Mr. T. Graoio,
Bible House, Union Place,
Colombo.
Rev. W. Sherratt,
19, Sule Pagoda Boad, Rangoon.
Mr. C. E. G. TisdaU,
n-ijArmsnian Street,Singapore.
Rev. G. H. Bondfield,
17, Peking Road, Shanghai.
Mr. H. Miller,
B.P.B.S., Ghongno, Seoul, Korea.
Mr. P. Parrott,
95, Yedo Machi, KobS, Japan.
fMr. Chas. E. Bowen,
242, Pi« Street, Sydney, N.S.W.
Rev. G. M. Clark,
Imperial Chambers, 30, Adelaide
Street, Brisbane.
fMr. Fred G. Barley,
313, 315, Little Collins Street,
Melbourne.
fRev. J. H. Sexton,
Bible House, Grenfell Street,
Adelaide.
Rev. P. H. Spencer,
Whanganui, New Zealand.
Eev. P. Uttley,
Casilla del Correo, 625, Buenos
Ayres.
Mr. A, R. Stark,
Casilla 58, Callao, Peru.
Rev. G. 0. Heath,
P.O. Box 69, Kingston, Jamaica.
Rev, W. B. Cooper, m.a.,
347, Yonge Street, Toronto.

t Appointed and sup-ported locall-ij.

11.3

THE BOOK

Home District Secretaries and Assistants.

Rev. James Thomas,
Bible House, London.
Rev. W. Pisher, m.a.,
Bible House, London.
Rev. D. C. Edwards, m.a.,
Llanbedr,R.S.O., Merionethshire.
Rev. W, R. Bowman, b.a.,
Rowley Avenue, Stafford.
Eev. W. G. Jones, b.a.
122, Barons Court Boad, West
Kensington, W.
Rev. J. Alston, B.A.,
87, Meadowside, Lancaster.
Rev. T. Smetham,
53, St. Augustine's Avenue,
Croydon.
Rev. Elias George,
42, St. Peter's Road, Leicester.
Rev. P. Stenton Eardley,
Broughton, Henleaze Road,
Bristol.
Rev. Walter WaU,
12, Chestnut Road, Moseley,
Birmingham.

Rev. T. A. Wolfendale, M.A.,
41, Barrfleld Road, Pendleton,
Manchester.
Rev. A. H. Gaskell, m.a., b.d.,
19, Staverton Road, Oxford.
Rev. J. Addison Ingle, m.a.,
Walden, Mount Gold Road,
Plymouth.
Rev. John A. Cooper,
Carrick-a-Rede, Central Avenue,
West Bridgford, Nottingham.
Rev. A. J. Marrs,
69, St. George's Terrace, Jesmond,
Newcastle-on- Tyne.
Rev. J. 0. Haughton, b.a.,
Picton Cottage, Waterloo,
Liverpool.
Rev. H. K. Marsden, m.a.,
4, Ashwood Terrace, Headingley,
Leeds.
Eev. D. E. Walters, m.a., b.d.,
15, Heathfield, Swansea.
Eev. H. J. Oossar, m.a.,
St. Luke's Lodge, Chesterton,
Cambridge.

Rev. H. Starmer,
12, Cedar Road, Norwich.

Mr. Eobert P. Crosland, t.p.,
Oldjieldnook, Cleckheaton.

114

ABOVE EVERY BOOK

SUMMARY.
The British and Foreign Bible Society exists for one single
object — to supply every man with the Holy Scriptures in his
own mother-tongue. It concerns itself solely with circulating
that Book which is the charter of Christ's Church throughout
all the world. And in this aim it unites Christians of almost
every communion.
The Year 1909-1910.
Last year the Society issued the unpiecedented number of
6,620,024 books— including 843,784 Bibles, 1,198,226 New Testa
ments, and 4,578,014 smaller Portions of Scripture. This result
is 685,000 in excess of the output in the previous year, and con
stitutes a record in the history of the Society. Three times in
the last seven years the total has exceeded 5,900,000, but hitherto
it has always been below 6,000,000 copies.
The immense growth in the Society's issues has been a growth
of Portions, for the most part of Gospels and Psalters, which
circulate mainly in the mission field. These are sold at nominal
prices, representing a mere fraction of what they cost to produce
and distribute. And the rising demand for these books year by
year shows at least with what splendid success the Bible Society
fulfils its vital function as the partner and pioneer of Christian
missions. From the Bible House in London 2,395 cases of Scriptures,
weighing 293 tons, were shipped abroad during the past year.
But only about 28 per cent, of our total issues go out from
London. The Society's editions are produced and published, as
far as possible, in the countries where they will be sold and
read. Of the 844,000 Bibles circulated, 493,000 were English ;
and among these, nineteen out of every twenty were the English
Authorised Version. Nearly 3, 000 volumes went out in embossed
type for the blind.
The Society prints the Scriptures at about fifty different places,
and in sixty different alphabets and characters.
115

THE BOOK
The total issues by the Society since its foundation have
exceeded 222,000,000 copies of the Scriptures, complete or in
parts. Of these, more than eighty-three millions have been in
English.The Work at Home.
Of last year's issues, 1,120,182 volumes were in English or
Welsh, and circulated mainly in the British Empire. Of the
Society's English Penny Testament, 108,508 were issued, making
a total of 9,052,953 during the last twenty-five years.
The English Scriptures issued last year included 125,079 copies
of the Society's 6d. Bible ; 81,035 copies of the lOd. Bible ; and
53,477 copies of the new Is. School Bible. The issues also
included over 33,000 Bibles and Testaments in the English
Re'vised Version. About 46,000 copies were in Welsh.
In England and Wales the Society spent about £9,000 last
year, mainly in direct grants of Scriptures — free or at greatly
reduced rates^to the Sunday Schools and Home Missions of
nearly every Christian communion, and to all the varied
agencies of religious and philanthropic activity.
Nearly all the English and Welsh Institutions for befriending
the blind obtain the Scriptures which they require from the
Bible House, at less than half the cost of their production.
Students at Theological and Missionary Colleges in England
and Wales, who need such assistance, receive as gifts over
1,100 Testaments in Hebrew or Greek each year. The Society
also presents outgoing missionaries with Bibles or Testaments in
the vernaculars of the fields in which they labour.
A subsidy of £500 a year is given to the London Biblewomen
and Nurses' Mission for the maintenance of over 90 Bible'women,
who, during the year ending December 31, 1909, sold 1,687
(Copies of the Scriptures amoug the poor living in the slums of
London.
Translation and Revision.
The Society's list of versions now includes the names of four
hundred and twenty-foub distinct forms of speech. This
means the complete Bible in 105 different languages ; the New
Testament in 103 more languages ; and at least one book of
Scripture in 216 other languages. 116

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
To print these languages, sixty different sets of characters
are required. Thirty-four new names have been added to the
list during the last five years.
The Society's expenditure last year for translating, revising,
printing and binding the Scriptures was £106,953.
In embossed type for the blind the Society has helped to
provide Scriptures in over thirty different languages.
Tte Partner of Missions.
The Bible Society co-operates with the missionaries of almost
every Christian communion in preparing the versions which
they need. It prints the editions, bears the loss involved in
their sale at reduced prices, and pays the carriage of the books
to the mission stations. Where colportage is undertaken to
facilitate distribution, the Society also makes grants towards
the support of colporteurs working under the missionaries'
supervision. From the Bible Society the Church of England, with com
paratively insignificant exceptions, obtains almost all the Scrip
tures required for its foreign missions.
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts has procured Scriptures from the Bible Society in seventy-
one languages. The Church Missionary Society has used one
hundred and seven different translations which come from
the Bible House. Equally important help is rendered to the
Universities' Mission to Central Africa, the Melanesian Mission,
and the South American Missionary Society.
Nonconformist Foreign Missions obtain the bulk of all the
Scriptures they use, directly or indirectly, from the Bible
Society. It furnishes the London Missionary Society with the Scrip
tures in fifty-nine different languages, and the Methodist
Missionary Societies of Great Britain and her Colonies with
ninety versions. Presbyterian Missions throughout the world
use one hundred and thirty-one of its versions. It published
the Kongo version for the Baptist Missionary Society, and
also supplies many of their stations in China and Jamaica.
The China Inland Mission and other undenominational societies
obtain from the Bible Society practically all the Scriptures
they use. 117

THE BOOK
The enterprises and triumphs of Christian Missions are creat
ing as many new and imperious claims upon this Society —
which has never refused to publish a duly authenticated version
of the Scriptures in a new tongue. Each new tribe evangelized,
each fresh language reduced to writing and grammar, each new
convert baptized, means a new claim for help from the resources
of the Bible House — help which is most gladly given, on such
terms that it creates no charge upon the funds of the Mission
which is aided thereby.
In Foreign Lands.
The Society maintains dep6ts in about a hundred of the chief
cities of the world.
It employs over 1,100 native Christian colporteurs who were
continuously at work throughout the year 1909, supervised by
the Society's foreign Agents, or its missionary friends. These
colporteurs sold last year 2,900,000 copies.
It supports 600 native Christian Biblewomen, mainly in the
East, in connection with forty different missionary organisations.
The Society's expenditure on colporteurs and Biblewomen
during 1909— including grants from the Centenary Fimd —
amounted altogether to £47,520.
Auxiliaries. At the close of 1909 the Society had 5,269 Auxiliaries,
Branches, and Associations in England and Wales. During
1909 as many as 4,801 meetings were held, and 3,414 sermons
preached, on behalf of the Society.
Outside the United Kingdom the Society has about 2,700
Auxiliaries and Branches, mainly in the British Colonies.
Many of these carry on Bible distribution vigorously in their
own localities, besides sending generous annual contributions to
the Bible House in London.
The Centenary Fund.
The Committee have followed out their policy of devoting this
Fund for the most part to definite special objects, involving
capital expenditure, but also relieving the Society's annual
charges. Further sums have been laid out in securing sites,
dep6ts, or other premises at important centres, mainly in the
118

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
Bast. Grants have also been voted for new versions and
editions of the Scriptures, and for extended colportage in China,
in Korea, in Japan, in Burma, and in South America. Altogether
£141,668 of this Fund has already been spent.
Expenditure. The total payments from the General Fund for the past year
have been £242,006. This is an increase of £5,444 over the
total of the previous year.
In producing editions of the Scriptures, the Committee have
laid out £106,953 ; this is £4,077 more than in the previous
year. The cost of foreign dep6ts — £34,131 — shows a decrease
of £1,658. On the other hand, the amount spent from the
General Fund on colportage — £44,953 — has risen by £1,550.
Other items of expenditure show an increase amounting to
£1,475.
Receipts. The general receipts for the year were £233,722 — showing a
falling off of £3,591 as compared with the figures for 1907-8.
Examining the several items of this total, ¦we flnd that the
total receipts from sales during the past year have amounted to
£89,121, against £92,265 in the previous year. This decrease of
£3,144 is mainly due to a reduction in the amount received from
foreign sales ; the proceeds of home sales have remained almost
stationary.Legacies. The Legacies received during the past year, amounting
altogether to £58,998, show a great increase. It is the Com
mittee's rule, however, to use as income from this source in any
year the average of the Legacies received during the previous
seven years. Acting on this rule, the amount from legacies to
be now carried into income is £42,052, the balance being placed
in the Legacy Equalization Fund.
Free Contributions.
Perhaps the most significant item in the Society's income is
supplied by the Free Contributions from its Auxiliaries at home.
119

THE BOOK
During the year these Home Auxiliaries have paid in £58,109
a decrease of £1,958. Our regret at this faUing off is aU the
keener in face of the inevitable expansion of the Society's work
¦with which we are confronted. When the Committee laid plans
for celebrating our Centenary, the first object which they set
before themselves was to increase the Society's normal income
by £15,000 a year. That object has certainly not been realized ;
and nothing is more necessary to-day than to multiply our
annual subscribers.
The Colonial Auxiliaries last year have sent £9,805 — a welcome
increase of £1,212. Thus the total Free Contributions have
amounted to £37,914 against £68,660 in 1908-9 — a net decrease
of £746.
We may mention that £228 has come from the Republics of
the Andes, £319 from the Yoruba Auxiliary at Lagos, £562 from
Johannesburg, £3,162 from Australia, and £1,513 from New
Zealand. In Canada the united Auxiliaries raised altogether
the splendid sum of over £21,000 : much of this was spent on
extended Bible work in the Dominion, but a Free Contribution
of £3,966 has been remitted to London. The Hibernian Bible
Society's Contribution has risen to £1,622.
A Deficit.
Payments and receipts, under sundry Special Funds, raised
the Society's Total Receipts last year to £234,728, and the Total
Expenditure to £242,890. Thus the Cash Account shows a
deficiency of £8,162 on the year's working.

Since the Annual Meeting in May, 1909, ten more of the
Society's Vice-Presidents have entered into their rest and
reward : Bishop Barry, formerly of Sydney ; Canon Fausset,
of York ; Dr. R. N. Oust, the Indian civilian and student of
languages; the Rev. Dr. W. H. DaUinger, F.R.S., the distin
guished man of science ; Dean Lefroy, of Norwich, the eloquent
ecclesiastic ; Mr. John Cory, of Cardiff, the munificent philan
thropist ; Mr. T. Anthony Denny ; and our venerable fellow-
worker, Mr. Alexander McArthur, at the age of 95 ; 'with two
other friends who 'will long be kept in affectionate remembrance
at the Bible House — Mr. Joseph Pollard and Mr. G. F. Sutton.
120

ABOVE EVERY BOOK
The Committee have to mourn the death of one of their own
colleagues— Mr. George Maddox, of Hampstead, who had been
a member of the Committee since 1905.
The Staff.
Mr. C. T. Hooper has been appointed Agent at Alexandria.
The Rev. J. A. Mesnard, of the French Methodist Church, has
been appointed the Society's Sub-agent in Senegambia.
Miss Edmunds has been appointed Lady Assistant in the
Home Department.
After more than twenty-two years' ser-vice the Rev. Dr.
Cynddylan Jones ha/S resigned the post of District Secretary for
South Wales, to which he was appointed in 1887. The Rev. D.
Burof Walters, M.A., B.D., of the English Congregational
Church, Merthyr Tyd-Til, has been appointed as his successor.
The Rev. W. F. Hodge has resigned his post as District
Secretary for Yorkshire, and is succeeded by the Rev. H. K.
Marsden, M.A., senior curate of St. Alkmund's, Derby.
The Rev. H. T. H. Wightwick, M.A., has resigned his post
as District Secretary for East Anglia, having accepted the
Principalship of the La'wrence Military School, Murri, Panjab.

121

THE BOOK

CONDENSED STATEMENT OP RECEIPTS
EXTRACTED pbom the ANNUAL REPORT
Fob the Year ending

Receipts.

PBOM SALES OP SCBIPTUBES.
Sales through Trade Dep6ts, Auxiliary
and other Societies  dE31,298 11 8
Sales in the Society's Foreign Agencies 57,822 6 9
89,120 18 5
PBEE INCOME.
Contributions from Auxiliaries  67,914 3 9
Annual Subscriptions, Donations, Legacies, &c.
(paid m London)  77,693 6 10

£234,728 9 0

122

ABOVE EVERY BOOK

AND PAYMENTS OP THE BIBLE SOCIETY,
(GENERAL and SPECIAL FUNDS),
Mabch 31st, 1910.

Payments.
For translating and revising the Scriptures,
and for paper, printing and binding .. . ... £107,257 11 2
For rent, taxes, establishment, &c., of over
100 Foreign Depots and Warehouses in the
chief cities in the world, grants to other
Dep6ts, salaries of foreign Agents, De
positaries, &c  49,864 7 10
Towards the maintenance of Colporteurs and
Biblewomen  45,483 10 4
Por the Bible House staff and expenses of the
House in London, District Secretaries,
travelling expenses, and grants to assist
kindred societies in Bible distribution ... 28,830 18 9
For London Warehouse expenses and staff,
report, literature, freight and carriage of
Scriptures, &c  11,453 16 8

£242,890 4 9

123

The Bible in the World
A Monthly Magazine of the British --l^^^lr^^'^ ^°'"'^'
Profusely illustrated, id. Post Free for a year, 2S.
Annual volumes, cloth, is. 6d. each.
The Bible Society Gleanings
For villagers and young people. Fully illustrated, monthly, id.
Post Free for a year, is. , , , ^..^u
Annual volumes, cloth, gilt sides and edges, is. eacn.
The Annual Report for 1909-10
Paper cover, to non-subscribers, is.
"The Book above Every Book"
The Society's Popular Illustrated Report for 1909-10.
Fifteen full-page inset illustrations. Boards, is. post tree.
The History of the British and Foreign
Bible Society
By 'William Canton. In Four volumes. 'Vols. I. and II., 1S04-
1854, Illustiated. Published by Mr. Murray, Albemarle
Street, W. Price, iSs. net per volume. Vols. III., I'V. and
in the press.
The Story of the Bible Society
A Popular Record. By William Canton. One vol., Svo.
Illustrated. PubUshed by Mr. Murray, Albemarle Street, W.
Price, 6s.
Historical Catalogue of the Printed
Editions of Holy Scripture in the Library of the
British and Foreign Bible Society
Compiled by T. H. Darlow, M.A., and H. F. Moule, M.A. In
Two vols., Svo., large paper, bound in dark blue buckram, top
edges gilt. 'Vol. I., English, now ready. Vol. II. , Other
Languages, ready before the end of igfo. Only 500 sets
printed, of which 200, numbered and signed, now remain
for sale in England and America. Price of each set (not
sold separately), 3 guineas net. To be obtained at the Bible
House, 146, Queen Victoria Street, E.C.
UirWIH BBOTHEES, LIMITED, THE GBESHAM PEESS, WOKINQ AND LONDON.

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