. YALE UNIVERSITY
NOV 25 1918
' LIBRARY

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FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS

Since the war began, everything connected
with publishing has gone up enormously in
price, and the cost of paper alone has
increased sevenfold. Under such circum
stances we are compelled to curtail the size
of our Popular Report, which appears for
the third year in succession in paper cover
and without illustrations. We are con
fident that our friends will appreciate the
motive of an economy which enables us
to give away many thousands of additional
Testaments and Gospels among the sick and
wounded soldiers of all the nations now at war.

FOR SUCH A TIME
AS THIS

WHO KNOWBTH WHETHER THOU ART COMB TO
THE KINGDOM FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS 7

A POPULAR REPORT OF THE BRITISH AND
FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY FOR THE YEAR
MCMXVII-XVIII

THE BIBLE HOUSE, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, LONDON

CONTENTS

Prologue 

I

The Book Translated . . . , .

. 6

The Book Published 

. i6

The Book in Battle 

• 29

The Pilgrim Book 

• 52

The Heart Book 

. 66

The Gift Book 

• 75

Appendix . . . . * .

. 81

Except where otherwise stated, the incidents and statistics in this
Topular Report of the 'British and Foreign Bible Society belong to last
yearns record. Here, it is possible to offer only a periscopic view of
the main aspects of the Society's operations. For a more detailed
account with full statistics the reader is referred to the Hundred and
Fourteenth Annual Report, price One Shilling.

The Bible Hovse, September 191S.

T. H. DARLOW,
Literary Superitttcndenit

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS

PROLOGUE
" The words of the Word euro eternal, a/nd of infinite
significamoe. Their mea/nimg is not exhausted by the occa
sion that gave them birth. UnliTce our half -hearted human
sayings, that pass and a/re forgotten, the words of the Word
are borne up from the fa/r eternity a/nd echo on into the
far eternity, amd the occasion of their uttera/nce within the
sphere of humam, history is only one a/mong a thousand,
to which they equally apply. For they come from Him
who is the sam,e yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and with
whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," —
J. E. Illingwoeth.
No book on earth is so catholic as the Bible. It
comes home to all sorts and conditions of men. It
speaks to the heart of every kindred and people and
tribe, whatever be the stage of culture that they
have attained. It has a message for each country
and each civilization. Sections of Scripture which
convey little to modern Englishmen can lay hold of
remote races with curious power. In China, for
example, veneration for ancestors forms a part of
religion ; and Chinese readers are deeply impressed
by the genealogy of Jesus Christ on the first page
of the New Testament. To take another instance, a
pundit from Nepal, who was engaged in translating
the Pentateuch, grew quite enthusiastic over the
elaborate Hebrew ritual laid down in Leviticus; he
felt at once the importance of rules about purification,

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
some of which may seem to us archaic, if not puerile.
The Bible embraces the breadth and length and depth
and height of human nature. Written at sundry
times and in divers portions during more than a
thousand years, it is like an epitome of history as
well as of revelation. From its summit we gain
a Pisgah sight of the many-coloured experience
of mankind.
The Word of God speaks not to one nation but to
the whole race, and it is given not for an age only
but for all time. Nevertheless particular ages have
concentrated, as it w^ere, upon this or that aspect
of the Everlasting Gospel. Different portions of the
Bible arrest and engage different generations of the
Church. The Reformers, for example, developed
a preference for the dominant ideas of Pauline
theology, and gave a lower place to those elements
in the New Testament which rightly or wrongly they
could not reconcile with the Gospel according to
St. Paul. In the seventeenth century the Puritans
reflected both in temper and conduct their devotion
to the sacred history of Israel. Not a few ardent
Protestants in the nineteenth century have nourished
their souls on the prophetical parts of Scripture ;
while one recent school of theological writers displays
a marked partiality for the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Yet there is a lack of balance in all such prefer
ences. It must be the business of the whole Church
to teach the Bible as a whole.
In these latter days, however, for millions of
people the Bible had been gradually losing its
authority and appeal. This result was due to a
cause more radical than any questions about criticism
or doubts about miracles. The real foe was secularity.

PROLOGUE
The temper and atmosphere of the time — the moral
climate — had grown hostile to the great truths and
ideals of Scripture. Much of God's message became
a sealed book to modern minds. Because, as Carlyle
used to say, the eye only sees what it brings with
it the power of seeing ; and a secular man who
reads the Bible can only appreciate what he brings
with him the faculty to take in. But men grew more
and more blind and deaf to the Word of God, so long
as they spent their lives in furious competition for
riches, and corrupted their souls amid " the cankers
of a calm world and a long peace. "
For nearly two generations people went on per
suading themselves that they had begun a wonderful
golden chapter in the chronicles of mankind. They
had entered on a new era of progress. Wealth
and comfort multiplied enormously. Commerce be
tween nations linked the ends of the earth together.
Civilization widened its borders and subdued the
wilderness into garden ground. Men fondly believed
that year by year the world was steadily growing
more prosperous, more enlightened, more tranquil.
As in the days of Noah, they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and
making speeches to prove that the idea of a flood
was foolishness — until, suddenly, we heard
" Qod loosen over sea and land
The thunder of the trumpets of the night."
The fountains of the great deep were broken up.
Nation has risen against nation and kingdom against
kingdom. There are famines and earthquakes in
divers places. The powers of the heavens are
shaken, and vials of wrath are poured out upon

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
the earth. . . . By instinct we borrow words from
Scripture to describe the awful hurricane of w^ar.
Because no other book understands and utters what
we are experiencing at such a time as this.
During the last four years multitudes of men and
women have practically rediscovered the Bible. In
storm and ruin and heart-shattering anguish we
become aware of the naked realities with w^hich
Scripture is concerned. Amid brooding darkness we
perceive dimly that prodigious events are taking
place which we cannot measure : but we gain a
new sense of the Judgments of the living God. The
ancient prophets and apostles and martyrs know
how to speak to us in our present tribulation,
because they too were baptized in the cloud and in
the sea, they passed through the flery furnace, they
endured to the end. We understand what they are
saying to us now, as we never did before.
The war is more than a commentary on the Bible ;
it is a tragic experience in which and through which
the Bible is born anew for us, and comes to its own.
To men who go in jeopardy of their lives for honour
and duty the New Testament and the Psalms reveal
the secrets of God. Read in a dug-out, in a hospital
ward, in a prison camp, texts which had grown
threadbare glow and burn in letters of fire. And
countless companies of the bereaved and broken
hearted, in homes which will always seem empty
now, learn that there is only one Book for such a
time as this.
In the marvellous autobiography which he called
Grrace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, John Bunyan
has told us how much more the Bible meant to him
when he pored over it in Bedford jail. " I never had
4

PROLOGUE
in my life so great an inlet into the Word of God as
now ; those Scriptures that I saw nothing in before,
are made in this place to shine upon me ; Jesus
Christ also was never more real and apparent than
now ; here I have seen Him and felt Him indeed . . .
in this my imprisoned condition." The like ex
perience comes true for pilgrims innumerable who are
walking through the valley of the shadow to-day.
Jesus Christ Himself grows real and apparent to
us in the pages of the Gospel. The Scriptures that
we saw nothing in before, are made to shine upon
us now. Through our own acquaintance with grief
we draw closer to the Man pf Sorrows, we enter
into the mystery of His Cross and Passion. In
this our condition His mighty words pierce us and
move us as they never did before. His summons to
serve, His warning to watch, His challenge to endure.
His claim for sacrifice, His cup of consolation. His
pledge of victory — we begin to know how much
they mean. The One Redeemer and Restorer of
men "stands other than all the rest, strong among
the weak, erect among the fallen, clean among the
defiled, living among the dead." He is clothed with a
vesture dipped in blood . . . and in righteousness doth
He judge and make war,
# * # * *
When Walter Scott lay on his death-bed he begged
his son-in-law to read to him. " What shall I read ? "
said Lockhart. "Can you ask?" replied the dying
man ; " there is only one Book." In conflict and
agony unspeakable the old order of the world draws
near to its hour of death and its day of judgment :
and we too understand that there is only one Book
rfor such a time as this.

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS

THE BOOK TRANSLATED
"Avoir beaucoup souffert c'est corwme ceux qui saveni
beaucoup de la/ngues, avoir appris d, tout comprendre et
a se faire comprendre de tous."
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.
Although it was born in the crisis of a great war, the
Society has never passed through more fateful days
than these. Once again there is darkness over the
earth. The angel of death is abroad, and we can
hear the beating of his wings. Yet above the ruins
and the sepulchres rises one changeless rock — the
Rock of Ages, cleft for our sakes ; and faithful folk,
who hide themselves there, dwell in peace which the
world cannot give and all the wars in the world
cannot take away. At such a time as this, therefore,
let our loins be girded about and our lights burning,
and our hearts tranquil and steadfast in the service
of the Great King.
Amid the raging of the nations there has been no
pause in the. work of translating the oracles of God.
During these last twelve months the Bible Society*

THE BOOK TRANSLATED
has added to its long list versions in seven fresh
LANGUAGES. We Wonder how many readers of our
Report can recognize their names, or so much as
guess where in the world they are spoken.
In Northern Nigeria, the home of a Babel of
strange tongues, Yergum is current among 50,000
negroes who live among and to the south of the
Murchison hills. These sturdy tribesmen are fetish
worshippers, and sometimes cannibals. But they
are being evangelized by agents of the Sudan United
Mission, for whom St. Mark's Gospel has now been
printed in the Yergum speech.
In the heart of Central Africa the frontiers of
three enormous States converge — Belgian Congo,
French Congo, and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. This
region is the headquarters of the Azande, a race
of black savages estimated to number 300,000, the
majority of whom live south of the Belgian border.
Three or four missions, moving from different points
of the compass, have approached the Azande people
with the Gospel. Members of the C.M.S. and the
Africa Inland Mission are now collaborating in a
Zande version of the New Testament, and St. Mark's
Gospel, translated by the Rev. E. C. Gore, of the
O.M.S., is just published.
In the heart of Central Asia the Rev. G. W.
Hunter, of the C.I.M., has itinerated among nomads
in Chinese Turkestan, reaching the watershed of the
Altai Mountains, whence, he tells us, the streams
begin to flow northward towards the Arctic Ocean.
He has rendered two Gospels and the Acts into the
Eastern or Altai dialect of Kirghiz Turkish, and these
are now issued and in circulation. Copies are often
exchanged for meat or milk, cheese, curds, or butter

FOR SUCH A TiM£ AS THIS
The Naga people, who are found in the hUl
country between Assam and Burma, speak various
•dialects. In two of these the Bible Society had
already published parts of the New Testament. The
Book of Revelation has now been printed in the
Angami dialect of Naga, for the use of the American
Baptist Foreign Mission. For the same mission
St. Matthew's Gospel has been published in Mikir,
spoken by a tribe in the Mikir hills of Northern
Assam. In South America the republics of Peru, Bolivia,
and Ecuador contain about three and a half million
Indians, besides a million half-castes, all speaking
variations of the Quichua tongue — which represents
to-day the language of the ancient Empire of the
Incas. A version of the New Testament in Bolivian
Quichua is being prepared under the supervision
of the Rev. George Allan, of the Bolivian Indian
Mission, and the four Gospels have now appeared
in diglot form, side by side with the Spanish version.
St. Luke's Gospel has also been issued in Ecuadorean
Quichua for the Indians of Ecuador. Both these
editions are published in conjunction with the
American Bible Society.
Revisions During 1917 some revisions of outstanding im
portance have been .successfully carried to a close.
For China the ' Union ' version of the Bible is now
completed in Wenli, the elaborate literary form of
their language which appeals to Chinese scholars.
And after twenty-seven years' labour the 'Union'
version of the Bible has just been finished in
Mandarin, the form of Chinese which is spoken
8

THE BOOK TRANSLATED
and read by the vast majority of the population.
It is instructive to remember that this Mandarin
Bible addresses more human beings than any
other translation of the Scriptures — not excluding
our own English version.
For aborigines in South- Western China the com
plete New Testament has been published for the
first time in Hwa Miao,
More than half a century ago the Bulgarian nation
received the first edition of the Bible ever printed
in their own speech : it was published for them by
our Society. Not long before the war began a
revision of this Bible had been taken in hand,
and the task is now brought to an end, at a cost
to the Society of £2,600 — quite apart from the
expense of printing and publishing this revised
Bulgarian version.
Both Serbs and Croats are Slav people of the same
blood, who before the war numbered about 8,000,000,
speaking what is practically a common tongue.
It is nearly ninety years since the Bible Society
began to provide them with the Scriptures in their
vernacular. But the best modern authorities
pronounce the current Serbian version to be in
many passages inaccurate, while its style is coloured
by provincialisms. In view of these facts, and as
an act of practical sympathy with the needs of
the Serbs in their present suffering, the Bible
Society has allocated £1,000 to defray the cost of
preparing a fresh Serbian translation of the New
Testament. The work has been placed in charge
of certain distinguished Serbian scholars, now
refugees in this country, who have special know
ledge of New Testament Greek, and hold eccle-
9

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
siastical positions in the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Friends of Serbia everywhere will welcome the
announcement of this undertaking, which it is hoped
will be completed during the course of 1919.
For South Africa, in response to an official request
from the Dutch Reformed Church, our Society
stands pledged to bear the expense of producing
and publishing a translation of the Scriptures in
Afrikaans or Cape Dutch, which has already been
begun. This vernacular is current among at least
a million and a half of our fellow-subjects, includ
ing half a million coloured people ; and many of
them are quite unable to follow the classical Dutch
version of the Bible.
For Missions.
For Christian missions of many different com
munions and countries, the translation or revision
of the Scriptures is at present being assisted or
promoted by our Society in at least a hundred
different tongues. We have space for but a single
illustration of this wide-spread activity.
In Portuguese East Africa there are about a million people living
in the region round Lourenfo-Marques, who speak the language
known as Bonga. For the last quarter of a century they have
been evangelized by members of La Mission des EgUses
libres de la Suisse romande, which is commonly known in this
country as the Swiss Bomaude Mission and has its headquarters
at Lausanne. The Bonga New Testament, translated by these
missionaries, was published by the Bible Society in 1903. Various
books of the Old Testament were translated, and arrangements
were made in 1914 to issue the complete Bible. For the
editorial charge of this, two Missions appointed delegates. The
Swiss Eomande Mission was represented first by the Eev P.
Berthoud, and afterwards by the Bev. P. Loze ; while the Eev.
H. L. Bishop represents the W.M.M.S., which has made many
Bonga-speaking converts. This enterprise is being carried out
10

THE BOOK TRANSLATED
mainly at the cost of the Bible Society. A recent letter from the
Eev. D. P. Lenoir, of Lausanne, says : "As regards financial arrange
ments, it is to us a matter of profound gratitude that the Bible
Society has abeady gone to the expense of JE600, of the JE800 which
you estimated that the translation would cost : now you say your
Committee are prepared to add another £200 to bring this work
to its completion. We wish to express our very sincere appreciation
of your liberal help, and to thank you for the kind consideration
given to the difficulties encountered. Our debt towards the Bible
Society will be great indeed, and we trust our native Christians
will bear this in memory when the whole Bible comes into their
possession. It is also gratifying to know that the complete work
win have been the result of hearty co-operation between the
Wesleyan and the Swiss Missions, with the aid devotedly afforded
by your Society. We thank God for this constructive work
accomplished in the sad time of war." The Wesleyaji Methodist
Missionary Society has also expressed deep gratitude to the B.F.B.S.
for its service in regard to the Eonga version. The Bible Society
reciprocates these friendly feelings and thanks the Missions who
have spared their linguists for so vital a task.
Co-operative Effort.
For creating new versions of Holy Scripture no
communion has any monopoly of skilled linguists
and devout scholars. In this sacred duty co-opera
tion alone can enable the Church to make the most
of the men best qualified to carry it out. Under
the auspices of the Bible Society the most competent
translators of different nationalities and schools of
faith unite happily in producing a standard version.
The practical advantages of such a partnership are
manifold. It is not merely that books can be pro
duced more cheaply and distributed more effectively.
It is also that the best available scholarship from
all quarters can be combined and focused on the
difficult task. For more than a century we have
been accumulating at the Bible House experience
in solving the problems which beset all translators
11

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
of the Scriptures — experience which is invaluable as
a guide. Thus in the end there is produced in each
language what practically amounts to a kind of
authorized version. It is no small gain to escape
the curse of rival versions of the Gospel in heathen
lands. It is no small gain that Christian missionaries
in any district should be able to appeal to one and
the same Bible.
Linguistic Pioneering.
When we examine the map of the world from the
standpoint of a philologist, we discover certain regions
and areas over which the Tower of Babel has cast a
specially dense and dark shadow. The sunny islands
of the South Seas, for example, include bewildering
varieties of speech. The great river-basin of the Niger
is the home of scores of tribes, no one of which can
understand any of its neighbours. East Central
Africa, again, exhibits a confusion of tongues per
haps even more thorny and complex. To prospect
and survey such a wilderness of confiicting languages,
and to prepare a way for missionary translators in
the jungle of strange dialects, is one of those tasks
of Christian statesmanship which the Bible Society
exists to fulfil.
The secretary who supervises our Bible work in
East Africa and Uganda is Mr. W. J. W. Roome. He
had gained great experience in connexion with the
Egypt General Mission and the Sudan United Mission,
before he joined the Bible Society's staff and left
London in 1916 for his headquarters at Kampala,
Uganda. In carrying out investigations in African
languages on behalf of the Society, Mr. Roome
undertook last year a long, difficult, and perilous
12

THE BOOK TRANSLATED
expedition across the centre of the continent, pene
trating into "Belgian Congo and French Equatorial
Africa and returning vid Khartoum to Kampala.
Mr. Roome's tour included visits to eight different
missionary societies and 34: stations. He met and
interviewed 88 missionaries. He has sent home
maps showing the districts inhabited by over 400
tribes and sub-tribes. On his journey he travelled
3,890 miles by steamer, 320 miles by rail, 500 miles
by canoe, 250 miles by cycle, and 2,350 miles on
foot. In West Africa the Society's secretary is the Rev.
A. W. Banfield, a gifted missionary translator and
pioneer. Last autumn he left Lagos for another
long tour, travelling far up the Congo, intending to
explore the polyglot dialects which are current in
the interior of Belgian Congo. Mr. Banfield has
already accumulated linguistic information of high
practical value, and has come into personal touch
with large numbers of missionaries who represent
various countries and communions.
How Many Versions are there?
Prolonged research carried out by scholars at the
Bible House has supplied an answer to the question
often asked : " Into how many languages and dialects
has the Bible been translated and published?" In
order to arrive at an answer which shall be approxi
mately accurate, we will limit ourselves to printed
editions which contain, as a rule, at least one com
plete book of Scripture. Moreover we must solve
the standing problem, " When is a dialect not a
dialect?" by assuming that two kindred forms of
speech are sufficiently unlike to be classed separately
13 B

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
when Christian missionaries find it necessary for
their purpose to make a distinct version of the Gospel
in each of the two forms. The Bible Society to-day
possesses records of editions of the Scriptures in
about 725 languages and dialects. This total, how
ever, ^includes (1) a few obsolete languages which are
represented only by printed texts of early manu
script translations ; and also (2) as many as sixty-
five modern dialects in which versions have been
published merely for philological purposes. When
we deduct these, there remain 650 languages and
dialects, in which at least one complete book of
Scripture has been printed for religious use. This
total includes the complete Bible in about 140
different forms of speech.
The Bible Society's own list of versions now
embraces 511 languages. No fewer than a hundred
and eleven of these have been added during the
last dozen years — which is at the rate of one new
language in less than every six weeks. The tide of
conquest may ebb and fiow at the battle-front, but
the Gospel still moves on steadily subduing human
speech to itself. Since the great war broke out in
August, 1914, our Society has issued versions in
twenty-nine fresh languages and dialects which it
had never published before.
w 'Sp .(f V ^B'
For our knowledge of the Bible we depend upon
translations. Yet the late Mr. Gladstone testified
to the truly wonderful fact that even in a trans
lated form the Bible seems not sensibly to lose its
power. "In general, even a good translation is like a copy of some great
picture : it does not readily go home to heart and mind. But who
14

THE BOOK TRANSLATED
tag ever felt, or has ever heard of anyone who has felt, either in
reading the English or in other translations of the Bible, the com
parative tameness and inefficiency which commonly attach to a
change of vehicle between one tongue and another ? Is it believed
that the Epistles of St. Paul in English have seriously lost by sub
mitting themselves to be represented in a version ? At least it may
be said, with confidence, that there are no grander passages in all
English prose than some of the passages of those translated Epistles.
. . . Such is the case of the Bible in its foreign dress. I am not
competent to pronounce that it loses nothing. But it retains all its
power to pierce the thoughts of the heart; it still remains sharper
than a two-edged sword ; it still divides bone and marrow. It does
its work. ... It is the sublime prerogative of the Holy Scriptures
thus to reverse the curse of Babel. They, and they alone, supply the
entire family of man with a medium both for their profoundest
thoughts and for their most vivid sympathies, which is alike avail
able for all : and once more, in a certain and no mean sense, they
make the whole earth to be of one speech."

15

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS

THE BOOK PUBLISHED
" By this printing, as by the gift of tongues, and as by
the singular organ of the Holy Qhost, the doctrine of the
gospel soundeth to all nations a/nd countries imder heaven;
and what Qod revealeth to one man, is dispersed to ma/ny,
and what is known to one nation, is opened to all."
John Poxb : " Acts and Monuments," under the year 1450.
No other human invention has revolutionized the
world like the printing press. Through the miracle
of type ideas can be made common property. The
power of the printed page grows wider and vaster 4n
each generation. Few things in the present war
have been more instructive than the immense im
portance attached to propaganda. When D'Annunzio
and his Italian airmen flew over Vienna and scattered
leaflets instead of bombs upon the astonished city,
they paid dramatic homage to the potency of print.
Nearly forty years ago in Russia the police confis
cated a chest full of vernacular New Testaments,
which they suspected to contain dynamite : after all,
it did contain spiritual dynamite, mighty through
God to the pulling down of strongholds.
The Bible Society has to provide not only that
the Gospel is translated into all languages but
that it is published and circulated in all lands.
War has enormously increased the difficulty as well
16

THE BOOK PUBLISHED
as the urgency of our task. While nations are on
the brink of famine, so that bread and meat and
fuel have to be doled out day by day to hungry
multitudes, we must spare no pains and no cost to
provide men everywhere with the Word of God,
at such a time as this.
It is indeed wonderful that in spite of extraor
dinary hindrances our Society has hitherto been able
to go on fulfilling its world-wide mission almost
unchecked. With profound and humble thankful
ness we can report that during the last four* years
it has sent out altogether forty million volumes —
each volume being a Bible, or a Testament, or at
least one complete book of Holy Scripture. Such
an output far exceeds what we have ever before
achieved in the same space of time.
Under War Conditions.
As the great war is prolonged, however, the eco
nomic strain in all countries, especially in Europe,
grows sterner and more intense. Production every-
w^here is curtailed and cut down. We have to face
a growing shortage of materials as well as of labour.
Inevitably it becomes more and more difficult
to produce books — on the huge scale of the Bible
Society's popular editions. Printers and binders
and paper-makers are drafted into the fighting-
line or the munition factory. The price of paper
alone in England has risen until it is costing seven
times as much as it cost in peace-time. Moreover,
the whole available supply of paper is being rigor
ously controlled by Government, and our Society
will be allowed to buy during 1Q18 qnly part of
the quantity it used during 1917., But even the New
17

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
Testament cannot be printed and published without
paper. It is true that quite two-thirds of the Society's
editions are normally printed outside England —
being produced, as far as possible, in or near the
countries where they will be circulated and read.
But the shortage of paper has grown acute in dis
tant lands such as India and Japan, where the
presses turn out millions of cheap Gospels for us
every year. Until the war began we Mvere accus
tomed to print annually more than a million books
in Central Europe, and about 600,000 books in Russia.
Last year, just before the Holy Synod of the Russian
Church passed out of existence, it authorized a new
edition for our Society of 50,000 Russian Bibles
(without the Apocrypha) ; and at the end of 1917
the Synod's press, before it was declared the property
of the State, had the printed sheets ready for
delivery to our secretary in Petrograd. This big new
edition was produced from stereotype plates prepared
in 1907 ; but in spite of that fact, the cost per copy
stated in roubles is nearly eight times what we
paid the same press for the same Bibles ten years
earlier. Under such circumstances as these it is easy to
understand that we found it hopeless last year to
reproduce not a few editions which were badly
needed in different countries. And there is thus no
room for surprise that the Society's total issues for
1917-18 have fallen to 9,378,000 volumes. Yet this
figure is 429,000 above the total which we announced
four years ago — which was then the highest ever
recorded in the annals of the Society.
Of last year's issues 1,750,000 have been in English
18

THE BOOK PUBLISHED
or Welsh — which, again, is 400,000 more than in the
year before the war.
In India.
When we turn our eyes to the teeming populations
of the East, we are cheered by remarkable results.
India embraces the most diverse aggregate of races,
castes, creeds, and languages ever brought together
under orderly government. For these polyglot mul
titudes the Society has issued the Scriptures in nearly
a hundred different versions, and circulated last year
1,200,000 books. The ferment of a " national spirit "
is one marked feature of Indian life and thought
to-day. Political, social, and religious changes are
stirring the country to its depths. Mass movements
towards the Christian Church form at once the
encouragement and the embarrassment of Christian
missionaries. For the peaceful penetration of India
the Bible is one of the most potent instruments, and
it is being more widely read by educated Indians
than ever before.
In the Far East.
China remains in the throes of anarchy, revolution,
and civil war. Happily, however, these conditions
have not interfered to any serious extent with mis
sionary progress, and there is very little anti-foreign
or anti-Christian feeling shown among the immense
masses of the people. It is most noteworthy that
nearly a third of all the books our Society issued in
1917 were sold in China. We had never before put
into Chinese hands in a single year 3,000,000 copies
of the Scriptures. The bulk of these were Gospels,
jmd nineteen-twentieths of them were purchased
19

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
from colporteurs. Elsewhere in the Far East we
have sent out 750,000 volumes in Korea, and 300,000
in Japan.
Amid the clash and conflict of nations, it is
wonderful that our Society was able last year to
distribute over 600,000 books in Central Europe.
The upheaval and chaos in Russia almost halved our
circulation, but more than 300,000 volumes -were sold
in that country, and our secretary at Petrograd
could report : " We attend to our own business and
find ourselves left in peace to pursue it. True, the
darkness of winter is upon us : but the skies will get
bright by and by."
The business of the Bible Society is only half done
when translators have prepared its versions and
printers and binders have produced its editions.
There remains the further task of placing these
books in the hands of the readers for whom they
are intended — so that the Gospel may become not
only intelligible but accessible to all nations. To
carry out this purpose, the Society maintains its
own depots in nearly a hundred of the chief cities
of the world. In many regions these depots serve
as the central storehouses from which Christian
missionaries obtain their supplies of editions in the
vernaculars which they require.
Depots in Hostile Coantries.
During these years of bitter conflict it is remark
able that at Berlin and Vienna and Budapest and
Smyrna and Constantinople our depots have never
closed their doors ; at Belgrade and Bucharest and
Rustchuk our colporteurs have not ceased their
mission. At Monastir, which in 1917 was constantly
20

THE BOOK PUBLISHED
bombarded, our depositary lived for months in his
cellar. At Bagdad our depot was looted just before the
British captured the city. In the great fire at Salonika
our depot was destroyed ; but the Scriptures are still
being distributed there in a dozen different tongues.
The fortunes of the Society's depot at Jerusalem read like a page
of romance. Early in 1915 our representative was forced to with
draw to Egypt, and for nearly three years no certain news came from
the Holy City. But an American resident, who was allowed to
remain in Jerusalem, promptly stepped into the breach : he took up
his quarters in our depot and slept behind the counter, and for
thirty-four months held out bravely amid many hardships, living on
his sales until relief arrived. A British officer writes : ' When I
entered Jerusalem with the first British troops in December, I was
met by a quaint old man, seventy years of age, who told me he
represented the Bible Society, and presented me with a beautiful
copy of the Scriptures.' About 30,000 volumes, in some fifty
languages, were safe at the depot ; and all the English editions
were swiftly bought up by our British soldiers. The Society hopes
to commemorate the deliverance of Jerusalem by erecting there a
new Bible House, which shall not be unworthy of the city, and some
special gifts have already been received for this object.
For Immigrants.
The mixed medley of races and languages, par
ticularly in regions where immigrants settle, forms
one bewildering result of the modern flux and flow of
population. For example, the celebrated Ford motor
factory at Detroit, which can turn otit 3,000 complete
cars and wagons each day, employs 40,000 workers,
who speak more than a hundred languages and
dialects. We will cite two facts only, to show how the
Bible Society is able to deal with this polyglot problem
in various countries. Last year the Scriptures went
out in eighty different versions from our depot at
Sydney, and in fifty-two different versions from our
depot at Toronto. 21

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
For Missions.
To carry out our Lord's unfulfilled commandment
and evangelize the whole world, no equipment is so
indispensable as the Scriptures. For the missionary
teacher they contain the charter of his message. For
each infant Mission Church they supply the norm of
its faith and provide for the nurture of its spiritual
growth. Men of all varied schools and communions
speak with one voice on this matter. From Northern
Rhodesia the Rev. A. S. B. Ranger, of the U.M.C.A.,
Msoro, Serenje, wrote last year : " The work here
began some seven years ago, and now we have 1,600
baptized Christians — far too many. Our people, in
sufficiently taught, are proving very unsatisfactory,
and we are really in urgent need of the Scriptures
in their own tongue. ... I have practically finished
my version of SS. Matthew and Mark in Nsenga."
These Gospels in a hitherto unwritten language will
be at once published by the Bible Society.
In Persia.
At the present time few countries are more inac
cessible than Persia. Merely to transport the last
consignment of our editions — containing twenty-five
cases — from London to Teheran, cost in 1917 no less
than £270. In spite of invasion, anarchy, famine,
and civil war, the missionaries of the C.M.S. and
the American Presbyterian Mission are courageously
remaining at their posts in Persia, and these books
were sent out in response to their requests for fresh
supplies. Thousands more copies of the Russian
Scriptures could have been sold in Persia last year
by our colporteurs, if we had been able to provide
them. 22

THE BOOK PUBLISHED
Here are a few concrete illustrations of the scale
on which the Bible Society works. The following
Missions have been supplied with the Scriptures
during the past yeg,r for their operations in our
Egyptian agency, which distributes versions in about
seventy different languages : —
The American Presbyterian Mission, the Keformed Presbyterian
Mission, the Swedish Evangelical Mission, the United Free Church
of Scotland Mission, the Danish Reformed Lutheran Mission, the
London Jews Society, the North Africa Mission, the Church of
Scotland Jewish Mission and Schools, the Egypt General Mission,
the Peniel Mission, the Church Missionary Society, the Irish and
Scotch Eetormed Presbyterian Mission, the Waldensian Mission,
and the Friends' Foreign Mission Association.
In Uganda.
A letter from Uganda reached the Bible House at
the end of September, 1917, with a request from the
C.M.S. missionaries for the following editions : 4,000
Bibles, 5,000 New Testaments, and 10,000 separate
Gospels, in Ganda ; 1,000 Bibles and 5,000 separate
Gospels, in Nyoro ; and 10,000 separate Gospels, in
Nkole-^a total of 35,000 books, " to be forwarded as
early as possible."
In East Central Africa.
We quote one or two instances which show how
the Bible Society works hand in hand with the
missionary in East Africa.
In the spring of 1918 the Eev. A. E. Pleydell, C.M.S. missionary in
charge of the Maseno station in the Kavirondo country, wrote to say
that he had already received 2,000 copies each of St. Mark, St. Luke,
and St. John in Luo, and that "these Gospels are selling at a
phenomenal rate " ; he would be very grateful for 5,000 copies more
of each Gospel — which our Society is sending out at the earliest
possible moment.
Here is an example of the eagerness with which black men in
British East Africa welcome the Word of God. At Nairobi, which is
23

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
the capital of the Protectorate, Canon Burns of the C.M.S. received,
in the spring of 1918, consignments of 800 SwahUi New Testaments.
When the first 125 books arrived, they were sold in two hours. When
the next batch — consisting of 250 — was available. Canon Bums
announced at service on Sunday the hour at which he would sell
these books the next day. Half an hour before the time fixed 400
people were clamouring for them, crowding round his office and
trampling down his garden and flowers in their desire to obtain the
Testaments. Within two months 600 of these Testaments were
sold at Nairobi.
In West Africa.
Here are some examples of our Society's service in
the West African mission field.
To the Basel Mission at Accra there were sent out from London
last year 4,588 English Bibles, 1,450 OtsJii Bibles, 1,150 Otshi Testa
ments, 1,283 Accra Bibles, and 650 Accra Testaments, with 24 Greek
Testaments. The sales of Christian literature from the C.M.S. bookshop at
Lagos reach a very high total. Last year the following books were
sent out there from London : 17,268 Yoruba Bibles, 9,395 English
Bibles, 500 Ibo Bibles, 115 Ora Gospels, and 49 Arabic Bibles.
During 1917 this bookshop remitted jB1,265 from the proceeds of
sales of books previously despatched from the Bible House. Never
theless, to provide missionary editions of the Scriptures for West
Africa involves a heavy net loss to our Society.
For the South Seas.
As a rule, grants of the Scriptures are made to
pioneer missions on " missionary terms " — which
means that the books are sent out free of charge,
and carriage paid, to the stations where they are
needed ; there the missionaries sell them at prices
which they themselves fix, and any proceeds, after
deducting expenses of distribution, are remitted to
the Bible House. In the twelve months which ended
at Christmas 1917, the Society sent out altogether
2,210 Bibles and 3,727 smaller portions of the ver^
21

The BOOK PUBLISHED
nacular Scriptui:"6s to various islands in the Pacific.
These books cost £528, apart from carriage.
' The Eev. W. Brown, of the Methodist Missionary Society of
Australasia, has forwarded from Fiji JEllO as an " advance instal
ment towards the cost " of the edition of the Fiji New Testament
with references, which our Society is now printing. He begs for
5,000 copies during the present year, adding : " We are quite out of
the Testament, and as we use it greatly in our day-schools as a
reading book, we need copies throughout Fiji."
Writing from Mailu Island, Papua, to acknowledge fresh copies of
St. Matthew's Gospel in Mailu, the Eev. W. J. V. Saville, of the
L.M.S., says : " We thank God that though we arrived here in 1900'
with none of the Gospels in print and only halt a dozen persons who'
could read, we are now in a position to anticipate that the people-
will not only purchase copies of the Gospels and Acts, but that.
several hundreds can now read them. Immediately on receipt of the
books we held a meeting to thank God for His goodness in sending
us the Scriptures at this awful time of war and trouble, and to ask
for His continued blessing to rest upon your Society. Our hearts,
too, go out in gratitude to your Society for its generous work in
evangelizing the world through the written Word of God."
Writing from Oba Island in the New Heljrides in February 1917,
Mr. A. T. Waters, of the " Church of Christ Mission," acknowledged
the arrival of copies of a New Testament Epistle in Nduindui.
Mr. Waters writes : " I want just to say how satisfied we are with
yom: generous and well-done work on our translation, ' without
money and without price,' literally, and that we feel grateful to
youi? benevolent Society for its help. The people seem ravenous
for the Word of God in their own tongue. We have never before
had such largely attended school-classes, with such sustained interest.
You have now our interest and prayers, and— -may you soon have
some of our money."
For Moslems
i Dr. S. M. Zwemer, the well-known missionary to
Mohammedans, who is editor of the Moslem World
and the author of many books on Islam, writes : —
" The distribution of God's Word is the method par excellence in
all Moslem lands. It is everywhere permitted. It is simple and
unofiiensive. It strikes at the root of Islam by placing the Bible over
25

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
against the Koran, and the sublime story of the life of Jesus, the'
Christ, over against the artificial halo that surrounds the biographies
of Mohammed. In this method of work we have immense advan
tage over Islam. Translations of the Eoran into other Moslem
languages exist and are tolerated ; but they are rare, expensive, and
are necessarily far inferior to the original in style and force. But
the Bible has been translated into nearly every Mohammedan
tongue, and is the cheapest and best printed book in all the Orient ;
nor has it lost its beauty and power in any translation. The Arabic
Koran is a sealed book to all non-Arabic-speaking races, but the
Bible speaks the language of the cradle and the market-place.
Distribution should be by sale, not, generally, by free gift."
In Abyssinia.
The printed Scriptures can penetrate where the
living teacher is often bai^red out. Here is one
example. Although foreign missionaries are not
tolerated in Abyssinia, the Bible Society has its
own depot at Adis Ababa, and our secretary at Port
Said received the following letter last year from
the Archbishop of Ethiopia.
" Peace be to you and grace from the Lord Jesus Christ. I gladly
received your letter dated March 3, 1917, which was carried by Mr.
Kidd, whom you appointed to be a representative of the B.F.B.S. in
Adis Ababa. When we read it, we thanked Jesus Christ that you
were well. As for Mr. Kidd you may rest content, for we hope that
he will be a good follower of his predecessor. ... In conclusion we
ask our loved Eedeemer to help us to distribute His Word in this
country. Praise be to Him always. " (Signed) Matthbos,
" Archbishop of the Kingdom of Ethiopia.
" Written in Adis Ababa, in April 1917."
Mr. Kidd reports the unsettled state of the country, and the disorder
reigning in Adis Ababa. There are street fights daily, and a man was
shot just in front of Mr. Kidd as he was walking to the post ofiSce.
Thieves are notorious for their skill and daring: they have been
known to steal the loin-cloth from the corpse of a criminal gibbeted
on a tree. One night the horse was stolen from our depot yard, and
later thieves relieved the building of some of its roofing, besides
26

THE BOOK PUBLISHED
taking stones from the wall. Notwithstanding all disturbances, our
Bible distribution in Abyssinia has been steadily maintained. The
output last year was 924 volumes. Mr. Kidd sold some Bibles to
Abyssinian soldiers who were leaving for their homes far in the
interior. Those who purchased Bibles made, as usual, a great cere
mony, putting the book first to their forehead, and then kissing it
many times. One very old soldier bought a Psalter, and was seen
constantly kissing the book as he walked up the street.
A railway line from the coast has now reached up nearly as far as
Adis Ababa, and Mr. Kidd has applied for official permission to sell
the Scriptures at the station — if it deserves that name — before the
train leaves, an event which happens twice a week.
The Eev. J. Iwarson, of the Swedish Mission at Asmara, writes as
follows :
"There is a promising reUgious movement in the interior of
Abyssinia, especially among the Moslems, of whom about 10,000 have
during the last five or six years received Christian baptism from the
Abyssinian Church. The centre of the movement is in Sokota, in the
Amhara country, where the apostle of the Christian movement,
the ex-sheikh Zaccaria, now called Noaye Kristos, a person of great
infiuence, is established. Two of his disciples, also ex-sheikhs, Alaka
Paulos of Tigrai, and Alaka Petros of Sokota, visited us last
January, specially in order to acquire copies of the Holy Scriptures,
and to consolidate their acquaintance with Evangelical Christians.
It is worth noting that this religious awakening is of an Evangelical
character. Its original cause appears to have been the study of the
Holy Scriptures distributed by the British and Foreign Bible
Society in Abyssinia. These new Christians are very desirous to
study the Bible, and ' have organized from among themselves a
numerous body of teachers, said to number about 500, with the
object of teaching their youth to be able to read the Scriptures."
A Nyanja New Testament.
We have space for only one fresh illustration of
the wonderful way in which the Scriptures can
open a door and prepare a welcome for the mis
sionary. Speaking at a Bible meeting held a few
months ago at Potchefstroom in the Transvaal, the
Rev. A. Murray, of the Dutch Reformed Church
Mission in Nyasaland, told the following experience :
27

For sUch a Time as this
"A party of missionaries of the Dutch Eeformed Church in
Nyasaland had been delegated to explore the distant regions for a
suitable centre at which to establish a new mission in hitherto un
occupied territory. After travelling for many days, they outspanned
one evening near a native village and immediately sought the chief to
obtain permission to stay the night. Going towards the village they
saw a native sitting on a stool reading a book, and on nearer approach
found him reading the Union version of the New Testament in the
Nyanja language. This man was chief of the village, and in answer
to the astonished inquiry how he had become possessed of the New
Testament in a heathen country, he told the story of his long journey
on foot to work in the mines at Johannesburg, and the surprise he felt
when he found that a book could speak to people in their own
language. In Johamiesburg he went to one of the evening schools at
the mines and learned to read ; and what was better still, he learned
the way to salvation. He purchased a Nyanja Testament from the
colporteur of the Bible Society, and took it back to his home. Here
the visitors found him in the quiet of evening reading his Testament
1,800 miles away from the place at which it had been bought. He
gladly received the missionaries, and eventually his village became
the chief centre of a new mission from which the light is spreading
in Central Africa."
We must indeed give thanks to God because, not
withstanding so many obstacles ashore and afloat, our
service to Christian Missions has hitherto gone on
practically unchecked. We have reason to believe
that no missionaries overseas are being seriously
hampered in their work for lack of the books which
they draw from the Bible Society.
It is written concerning the servants of Nehemiah
that every man with one hand held a weapon, while
his other hand wrought at the work to build up the
walls of the City of God. That picture of the sword
and the trowel is a parable of the attitude of the
Society's friends, at such a time as this.

28

for SUCH A TIME AS THIS

THE BOOK IN BATTLE
" The men ivlio are going to the front need the su2iport of
the only Book from which they can get it."
President Woodeow Wilsok.
Under the heading of "The Bible in War" The
Times published last autumn a striking and signifi
cant article from a correspondent on the "Revived
Interest in the Scriptures." Commenting on an
extraordinary demand for Bibles created in the
United States by the war, it remarked: "There is
little occasion for surprise in this requickened interest
in the Bible. When men are engjiged on great ven
tures which test all their resources of body and soul,
the Word of God is found to match their spiritual
needs with supreme completeness. The Bible is a
great Book for those engaged in great tasks. . . .
" It will not be surprising if in the conflict between good and evO,
of which the war is the overwhelming climax, men find in the Bible
a new importance. It is emphatically the Book for those engaged in
so mighty an enterprise, in which kingdoms collapse and powerful
Governments are overthrown. In it
Is plainest taught and easiest learnt
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so.
What ruins kingdoms and lays cities flat.
"It insists on the supremacy of moral forces, and shows with
unique impressiveness how national well-being depends on right-
39 c

for SUCH A TIME AS THIS
eousness and the fear of God. One after another the great nations
of antiquity are brought before the bar of the Most High, and their
fate is seen to depend on their obedience or disobedience to His laws.
Great armies are employed to execute His judgment in the world.
The Lord Himself is revealed as a Man of War, and those who take
up the sword in His cause acquire a new dignity as they bear them
selves valiantly in the fight. The true soldier has the sense of an
appointed destiny. He is no longer the sport of fate. In failure or
success, in defeat or victory, in life or in death, he is in the hands of
God, Who never forsakes those who put their trust in Him. This
assurance is found throughout the Bible. It is the declaration which
rings out everywhere in Holy Writ. No wonder the valiant soldier
finds the Book a vade mecum, of strength and good cheer.
" The Bible appeals especially to men who, taking their lives in
their hands, devote themselves to the cause of freedom, justice, and
honour. For in such times they learn to see things as they are : that
is, they learn to see them as God Himself sees them. The Bible
interprets the meaning of that vision. It sets a new value on life and
its duties. It gives a new meaning to the world. Coleridge, with the
insight of a prophet, almost before the dawn of modern criticism,
showed the secret of the Bible's power. He declared, it finds men.
It reveals theinseives to themselves. It does something more. In
many parts and in many fashions it manifests God. It may be
impossible to estimate the influence of the war on the religious aspi
rations of the men engaged in it. That this is difBoult is proved by
the different conclusions formed by observers equally competent and
equally candid. But that the Bible is becoming more famiUar to our
troops is significant. For more than three centuries the history of
the Anglo-Saxon race has been shaped by the Bible. It has affected
every part of the national life, nor has its influence been less power
ful in Arpgrica. It has always made for freedom in religion, govern
ment, and laws. Men of all religious opinions wfll agree that in a
revived interest' in the Bible we may find the pledge of a higher
national life and a purer ethical standard for the individual, with
a deeper conception of spiritual realities, in the new world that is
approaching." In every corner of the immense field of confiict
the Bible Society has laboured tirelessly and without
ceasing to provide the Word of God's peace. For
carrying out this sacred object it jjossesses unrivalled
qualifications and facilities. It has been able to
30

THE BOOK IN BATTLE
go where no other institution could go, and to do
what no other institution could do. Long before the
war broke out it had published versions of the
Scriptures in each one of the languages current
among the combatants on both sides. It had
organized and maintained a wide network of dis
tributing centres in all the countries now involved
in strife, And i» each country its experienced agents
have given themselves to the task of effegtive distri
bution- We can report humbly and thankfully that
our Society has used this awful emergency as a unique
opportunity. Since August, 1914, it hats provided
for its war-service considerably over eight million
VOLUMES in SEVENTY-FIVE different forms of speech.
For sick and wounded soldiers and sailors of all
nations the Society undertakes to present as many
Testaments, Gospels, and Psalters as are needed to
all Bed Cross organizations and field and base hos
pitals, whether in this country or abroad. These
books, bound in khaki, are also supplied in any
numbers, free of charge and carriage paid, for
prisoners of war, for interned aliens, and for civilian
refugees. To friends in any country who give away
books among soldiers and sailors, pocket khaki Testa
ments and Gospels are granted at a war discount —
which means that such books can be obtained for
a mere fraction of what they actually cost. ^
In distributing the books the utmost care is
exercised to avoid overlapping and waste, and also
to secure, if possible, that touch of personal Christian
sympathy which adds so greatly to the value of
the gift. The Society's grants have generally gone
through recognized channels and duly accredited
agents, both at home and abroad.
31

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
To grasp the extent and the spiritual value of this
immense distribution, so widespread, so persistent,
so far-reaching, requires no small amount of that
imagination and sympathy which can interpret
bare facts. Mere statistics have no power to bring
home their significance to an ordinary mind. We have
only space to give a few brief fragmentary glimpses
of God's Book in the hands of the fighting men, who
need it — and read it — now as they never did before.
Here is the evidence given last year by an eye
witness, Lieutenant-Colonel W. Beattie, D.D., C.M.G.,
Assistant Director Chaplain Services, Overseas Mili
tary Forces of Canada : — " We are living in great
times, and the greatness and magnificence of them
makes the blood tingle in my veins. Few there are
who have fully appreciated the magnitude of this
war. Nor is it given to many of us to measure the
magnitude of the work of the Bible Society. It has
been my rare privilege to give away hundreds upon
hundreds of copies of the New Testament in Prance,
and it would do your hearts good to see the eager
ness with which the books are accepted. Never have
I had enough. When I offer New Testaments at the
close of a service, the scene is like a busy day on the
Stock Exchange — all hands up and bidding eagerly.
The magnitude of the Bible Society's work is like
that of the war; it is big enough to attract the
biggest men in the world. It is up to us to see that
God's Word is in abundance everywhere. I have no
hesitation in urging people to contribute as largely
as they can to this great work."
Another distinguished Canadian C.F., Major C. W.
Gordon, D.D. — who is known to a multitude of his
readers as " Ralph Connor " — writes as follows :
32

THE BOOK IN BATTLE
" I wish I could find words to express my appreciation of what
the Bible means to men on active service at the front, but no such
words can be found. Almost every boy carries a Bible or Testament,
which they often read in the trenches. A lad whom I buried not
long ago spent the last minutes of his life in his dug-out reading a
chapter of his Bible just before he went out to meet his death in the
front line by a sniper's bullet. . . . The Bible Society is doing a work
whose value it is impossible to estimate, for it is summed up only in
the arithmetic of eternity, by its gifts of Bibles and Testaments to
the men going to the front. May God bless the work of the Bible
Society throughout our army, as throughout the whole world."
In France.
Speaking at Oxford, the Hon. and Rev. J. Adderley
testified recently to the great willingness of the Bible
Society to help him at all times, and declared that
during his four visits to France he had seen the high
value of distributing Testaments. At Y.M.C.A. huts
it was a question which was the worst thing to run
out of — the supply of " Woodbines " or of Testa
ments. Tommies wanted their books always.
Nearly all wounded men who lost their Testaments
asked for them when they got into hospital. To
call the Bible the " ubiquitous chaplain " was quite
correct. Men on lorries and in hospital-trains
and in far-off batteries seldom saw a chaplain or
had a service. The pocket Testament then came in
useful. Mr. Adderley added that he had met with
great ignorance among soldiers, but he was sure that
many had begun to read their Bible anew. He was
quite convinced that a considerable number of the
sort of men who before the war never interested
themselves in religion at all were now determined
to do so for the future. He declared that the work
of the Bible Society must not be allowed to slacken
in any degree: it was all-important.
33

FOR gtfCH A TIME AS THIS
A rdinifeter writes frbfli a Y.M.C.A. hut in France to express " my
eiaeere appreciation of the generous grant of 100 New Testaments.
This hut is in &h advanced atid important area Where we get many
men going up td the front line. The demand for Testaments iS'
iinnaeiisely encouraging: We had run out of supplies. . . . Meii
tnay bg tired of the ineffectiveness of organisied religion, but from
Considerable eipeflenoe out here I can say this-^that those who have
been out in thS line and ' over the top ' will listen as eagerly to it
Sirnpl§ rtiEltdy Bible tstlk as they will to ft Comic song, when once you
get hold of thein."
Another Chaplain ^ith the E.G.A. in France writes : " I am
continually being asked, ' Sir, have you a New Testament you can
give me? My pal in my dug-out wants one, only he doesn't like'
to ask you for it.' "
For Soldierg in Italy.
Among British troops fighting on Italian soil we are circttlatirig
numbers of little khaki-bound English Testaments. Early in 1917
we provided these Testaments for survivors from a torpedoed trans
port who had landed at an Italian port. Then came requests on
behalf of British regiments passing thro'Ugh Italy an their way to or
frOia the Bast. One English lady, whoin we Supplied *ith Testa
ments f6r these soldiersj wrote : " I cannot tell you h6* gladly the
men received them. When they saw the books, they shouted
'Here, sirl New Testaments!'" Jfow that the British Expedi-
ti&hary force has been organiised in Italy, our secretary at Eomg is
ih touch With the British military ehftplaiiis, to whom he supplies
the books for distribution. The fir'st chaplain to *hom he sent
Testaments for a British military hospital in Italy wrote: "Last
night I gave some copies away, and found the men very pleased to
have thetti. It Was a great sight td see Sotne patients start reading
the little booksj aS thollgh this W:as -frhat they had been needing and
unconsciously longing for.''
A training camp for American flying-men was opened in Italy last
year, and it has been our pleasure also to supply them with the
geriptUTes.
For Canadians*
Since the war began our partner in Canada, the
Canadian Bible Society, has given 330,000 Testa
ments to Canadian soldier's serving in Europe, and
34

THE BOOK IN BATTLE
this distribution still goes on steadily among each
fresh contingent which leaves home. Moreover, to
replace Testaments lost on the battlefield, hundreds
of copies go every week for distribution by Canadian
chaplains at the front.
And for AastralianS*
What has been done in Canada has been done also
in South Africa and in Australia ever since the out
break of war. From all the Australian States large
reinforcements are frequently sailing to Europe, and
great care is taken by our Australian Auxiliaries to
present each soldier with a New Testament before he
leaves for the front. Many instances occur of men,
who by some chance had been missed when their
lines were visited, coming to the Bible hut to ask
for a Testament.
One agent in Victoria reports : " When I was visiting the tents in
Boyal Park a soldier pitched a shilling into my bag of Testaments
Etnd said, ' The Bible Society is doing the best work in the camp.
... I have given you all I have got in my pocket, and if I had more
I would empty it all into your bag to help on this good work.'
Another soldier remarked, ' I'm a rough gem (his talk proved it), but
I know the value of the Bible Society's work in the camps, and I
want to give this two shilUngs to help it on. Eough as 1 am, I
know the value of the New Testament and read it.' "
Behind the Lines.
In France there are marshalled behind the French
and British lines huge battaKons of labourers, w^hich
now include multitudes of brown men and yellow
men from Asia and of black men from Africa. In
all the many languages w^hich they speak our Society
had already published the Scriptures, and it is pro
viding copies for distribution among them in their
new quarters. 85

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
Frequently this distribution began before they sailed to Europe.
Nearly 80,000 coolies were recruited in China. Through missionaries
who were attached as interpreters to their labour depots at Weihaiwei
and Shanghai we have carefully distributed Chinese Gospels and
Testaments to such of these coolies as could read, after they were
on board their steamers. At the request of the British Government
many scores of missionaries have been released by various societies
to serve as officers or chaplains of these labour battalions, in charge
of men whose languages they understand. By special Government
permit we have been allowed to ship to France from Shanghai five
tons weight of Testaments and Gospels for the use of Chinese coolies
on French soil.
This is typical of what has been done for labour battalions recruited
from other countries and speaking a babel of strange tongues : for
Chinese and Annamese coolies from Tonquin on their way to work
at munition factories in France — for tens of thousands of Indian
peasants, Bengalis, Santalis, Garos, Lushais, and men from Assam —
for labourers of a dozen races, Bechuanas, Basutos, Zulus, Kafirs,
and others, from South Africa — and for thousands of lumbermen
from Portugal now working at different camps in England, who have
gladly received Portuguese Testaments and Gospels.
The United States entered into the w^ar on Good
Friday, April 6th, 1917. By April, 1918, the
American Bible Society had already issued in its
Army and Navy editions two and a quarter million
copies of the Scriptures. General Pershing, the
Commander of the American forces in France, has
cabled to the Bible House, New York : " I am glad to
see that every man in the army is to have a Testa
ment. Its teachings will fortify us for our great
task."
The Guide Book to Palestine.
The advance of the British troops into the Holy
Land has moved and impressed all lovers of the
Bible to an extraordinary degree. As a popular
journalist points out, the place-names of Palestine
sound like no others in our ears. Small towns and
36

THE BOOK IN BATTLE
villages between the Jordan and the sea are better
known by name to people in Yorkshire farm-houses
and Birmingham side-streets, than places which lie
twenty miles away from their own doors. Words
like the Plain of Mamre, the Valley of Hinnom, the
Cave of Machpelah, the Brook Kidron, are full of
sacred and homely echoes. We rejoice, not without
a strange awe and reverence, to hear that British
soldiers have advanced to Bethlehem, and encamped
on the Mount of Olives, and entered the very streets
of Jerusalem. It will be strange indeed, when the
Londoners and the-Warwicks and the Scottish regi
ments return and settle in their own village homes,
to find that thousands of young soldiers will know
more about Palestine than the parson. In some
measure our Egyptian army has lived through the
experiences of the Exodus. Our troops have tasted
the same gladness which filled the children of Israel
when from the sand-hills of the desert they saw the
Promised Land, and drew near to the corn-fields and
flowers of Canaan. They have still far to go ; but
already they must feel that many pilgrims have
desired to see the things which they see, and have
not seen them.
Letters from the front indicate how deeply the
sight of the sacred places and the storied hills has
stirred the religious imagination of our soldiers in
the Holy Land. Out of the past have sprung up
numberless boyish recollections of Sunday-school and
Scripture reading at home, and taken shape for them
as visible realities. Their eyes have brightened with
a curious mixture of surprise and recognition as they
caught the first glimpses of Joppa and Bethlehem,
Jerusalem and the Jordan. In the pauses of their
37

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
gallant drives through the country they have
crowded to hear their Padres tell once more the
story of the plains by the sea over which they swept,
of the wild passes and rocky gorges by which they
reached the uplands, of the vanished cities on the
hills they stormed, of the old kings and prophets,
and many a later episode of New Testament times.
To-day among our men around Jerusalem there is
no book in more eager demand than the Bible. It
is the indispensable guide-book to the Holy Land.
By cable and by letter pressing requests for fresh
supplies of the English pocket Bible have been
received. The Y.M.C.A. centre says : " Send us all
the Bibles you can ; we can sell as many as you can
send us." "The old places," as a sergeant writes,
" are brimful of Bible history." The one cry at the
moment among our troops in Palestine is not for
Testaments but for Bibles — and Bibles with maps.
A special handy edition of the English pocket Bible
with maps has been printed and sent out to the
Holy Land.
The same experience comes true in the valley of
the Euphrates. " I have never been what is called a
religious man," said a British officer back in Burma
from Mesopotamia "on furlough, " but since going to
Mespot. the Bible has become a new book to me. It
is the same with hundreds of our Tommies — they
are reading the Book as never before. Any and every
day Bible scenes are enacted before one's Very eyes."
An officer of a British regiment called at the Bible
House, Rangoon, last autumn, and in course of con
versation said : " I should like to thank your Society
for its great work in providing our soldiers with
those little Red Cross khaki Gospels. I have been
38

THE BOOK IN BATTLE
throtigh hell^-every man has on the Western front.
The only relief, the only ray of brightness, for weeks
on end, came from the moment or two we could
occasionally snatch to read tho.«ie little books. No
one -who comes through it will ever forget them"
" Hutidreds of thousands of our soldiers have already
proved the truth of President Wilson's words, in
scribed on the fly-leaf of the Bible of every soldier in
the United States Army : When you have read the)
Bible you will know that it is the Word of God, because
you will have found it the key to your own heart, your
own happiness and your oivn duty,
For the Navy,
Our sailors are not forgotten, Early in 1918 a
special edition of 10,000 khaki pocket Testaments,
suitably inscribed, has been sent out to Canada,
where the Canadian Bible Society presents a Testa-»
ment to each of the many thousands of fresh recruits
from the Dominion who are joining the British Navy.
That same month other gifts for British sailorsj in
one direction or another, amounted to more than 12,000
New Testaments. These included 5,500 Testaments
granted free to Miss Agnes Weston, that veteran
friend of the blue-jacket and of the Bible, as well as
of the Bible Society. Another free grant of 1,000
Testaments went to one of the chaplains of the Royal
Naval Depot, to be given away in connesion with
his work among the sailors quartered at the Crystal
Palace.For French Soldiers.
In France during 1&17 alone, our Society gave away«
or forwarded at nominal rates for free distributionj
39

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
97,000 Testaments, Gospels, or Psalters— ^to soldiers
at the front, to the sick and wounded, to refugees,
to prisoners of war, and to the bereaved.
At a farm-house near Nantes one of our colporteurs found that
a yoimg Frenchman home on leave last year had produced a Gospel
given him at Paris in 1915. He said to his mother: "I have a
treasure to offer you as a war-souvenir. This Httle book has been
my comfort. By it I have learnt to know God. And since I have
come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, I fear death no longer, and
I am happy even in war. Mother, do as your son has done, take
this book of life and give yourself to God."
Another poilu, who had been wounded and was going back to the
front, took a Gospel from our colporteur, saying : " When you see
death so close, you don't laugh at religion." Tet another poilu
confessed : " When we are going to attack, I never start without
reading some verse in the Gospel."
"I always carry my Gospel," said another French soldier, "and
many a time under shell-fire it has braced my courage. I have read
it again and again, and I never grow weary of the reading."
Books in their own languages have been provided
for Portuguese, for Moors, for Algerians, and for
Senegalese — all serving in France. In Madagascar
missionaries have distributed a free grant of 5,500
Gospels in Malagasy among native recruits who
were leaving their island for the seat of war.
For Italian Soldiers.
Since the war began an immense distribution,
mainly of Testaments and Gospels, has gone on
among Italian soldiers. This has been carried out
by several different institutions working through
various channels. The Bible Society's contribution
to the total result has amounted to more than a
quarter of a million books.
Prom Italian soldiers in the trenches our agents in Italy have received
hundreds of direct requests for the Scriptures. " I, who am religious,"
writes one man, '* can find no religious book to read when I have the
40

THE BOOK IN BATTLE
time. I beg you to send me a Bible." " I pray you do me the kind
ness to send me a religious book, for which I am very anxious,"
writes another soldier. Some have seen the books in the hands of
their comrades, or have heard them read aloud; others have had
a Gospel and now want a Testament; others write asking for a
romance, or for the life of some saint. In response to every request
we have sent at once either a Testament or a Gospel. Touching
letters of thanks have come from many recipients.
Colporteur Vecchi writes : " If the books were well received for
merly, now they are often accepted with enthusiasm. I have made
it a practice to go out in the evening and stand outside the entrance
to the barracks, and generally I have been so taken by storm that
I hardly knew how to distribute the books. Ons evening in front
of the Engineers' barracks, a sergeant shouted, ' Soldiers, take the
Gospel ; it is the best book you can read.' At once I was surrounded
by a crowd of more than 200 soldiers, and they hustled me so eagerly
that though the evening was cold I became bathed in perspiration.
Some of them wanted to pay for the Gospels. What gave me most
pleasure was that they understood what books they were receiving."
For Serbian Soldiers.
Professor J. W. Wiles, late of Belgrade University,
wrote as follows in the spring of 1918 : —
Among the Serbian soldiers who are now in North Africa there is
manifested a real hunger for the Scriptures. A young officer, who
formerly belonged to Belgrade University where he used to attend
the weekly meetings for Bible Study during 1913-14 held under the
presidency of Dr. Marco Lecoo — a former Eeotor of the University —
wrote recently to a Serbian friend now in London : " I would give
ten years off my lite to get hold of a Bible." It is entirely owing to
the Bible Society that his ardent wish has been granted. And he
is not the only Serbian out in North Africa who has realized that
man does not live by bread alone.
A Serbian officer who arrived in London from Bizerta early in 1918
spoke to me with tears in his voice of the spiritual needs of his
cotmtrymen — of the Serbian soldiers in the trenches, the convales
cents coming out of hospital, the wounded still in hospital, and of the
sad plight of the Serbian civilians, old men, women and children,
confined inthe wretched internment camps of Austro-Hungary. He
asked that an additional 2,000 New Testaments might be sent to the
Salonika front without delay. These requests are only typical of
41

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
many that might be mentioned ; and I thank the British and Foreign
Bible Society with all my heart for the generous way in which they
have responded to all demands. It is a relief to know that the
dismal camps above referred to have been frequently visited by the
colporteurs of the Bible Society. Last night I heard a manly young
Serb tell another : " Always when you are angry with your life, take a
New Testament and read it with pleasure, because our Lord Christ
has shown us the way, the true way of life^how we ought to live
and why."
For Russians.
We hear from Petrograd of a Eussiaij friend, who describes himself
as " a free feUow-worker in the Bible Society's circulation of the
Word of God," and who undertakes to distribute Testaments,
Gospels and Psalters among Eussian soldiers, sending these books
individually by post. One soldier wrote in reply : " I thank you with
my whole heart for the Gospels and Psalters which you have sent me;
I thank you for coming to meet my spiritual need, We fighting men
are cut off from the rest of the world, and surely we need spiritual
encouragement, so as not to give way in the many difficulties of our
life, nor to murmur against God, but rather to seek satisfaction and
peace through His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." This fellow-worker
obtained from our depot at Petrograd last year over 23,000 copies
of the Scriptures.
Words from the Enemy's Camp.
The Bible Society is no respecter of persons. It
provides God's Book impartially for friends and
foes alike.
To our 3,gent at Berlin one Gerrnan army-chaplain writes: "My
heartiest thanks for your bountiful supply. The men frequently
ask for the Scriptures. Now I shall be well equipped for a long
time by your splendid gift. The soldier reads everything he gets
hold of : we can never have enough good books to supply him, and
to prevent him from touching bad ones,"
A Gerrnan soldier at the froijt writes : " To-day's post brought me
your parcel. We were very much delighted, and at once arranged to
bold a Bible-pla^s, which went off without interruption. We have
missed such classes for a long time."
Anoth'^r German soldier writes: "I thankfully acknowledge tha
i2

THE BOOK IN BATTLE
receipt of the New Testaments. May the Lord reward you for them,
and may His Word be blessed to my comrades and me."
A third German soldier v^rites : "I thank you from the bottom of
my heart for the Bible you have sent. I shall never forget your
kindness." A German Eed Cross nurse on the Eugsian frontier writes i " Many
thanks for the 500 German New Testaments and the Gospels in Eussian.
I write to let you know about the blessing that the Word of God is
bringing. Many soldiers tell us that they have no Testament : vhen
they got wounded, they lost all their kit. Some of them have been
wounded four or five times already. I wish you could have seen
sometimes how our men ready to start for the front stretched out
their hands for the New Testaments which I was ftbout to distribute,
Not only private soldiers but their officers asked for copies, for they
realize afresh the stern situation. Eoman Catholic Christians too are
fond of a New Testament or a Gospel. Cannot you send us some
more ? We need many thousands of Testaments and Gospelg,"
For the Wounded.
There is no other book like the New Testament
for a soldier's bedside. It can speak with unearthly
power when he reads it in his dug-out, lit by one
glimmering candle, while the guns thunder overhead ;
but it proves, if possible, more precious still when it
whispers to him quietly as he lies suffering and
helpless in a hospital ward. For he belongs to the
multitude who have come out of great tribulation,
and who can say, " As dying, yet behold we live." The
hearts of smitten men like these open to receive the
words of One who Himself was wounded. By their
own experience they are prepared to accept the
mystery of the Gospel that without shedding of
blood there is no remission of sin. r
Since the war. began military and V,A. hospitals
liave sprung up and multiplied everywhere. To-day
there are more than 1,200 of them in England and
Wales alojtie, With each of these hospitals the Bible

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
Society has been in communication. It offers to
supply copies of the New Testament, the separate
Gospels, and the Psalms — free of all charge and
carriage paid — to be given to all sick and wounded
soldiers and sailors, provided only that some one
who has direct and authorized access to the patients
will undertake to see that the books are personally
and wisely distributed. The Society places no limit
on its offer, but only asks that care shall be taken
to avoid waste and overlapping. For four years the
stream of Red Cross Testaments and Gospels has
been flowing steadily from the Bible House, week by
week and day by day. As fresh convoys o£ patients
arrive in the hospitals, fresh books are asked for and
are at once sent off — so that, although drugs and
dressings and surgical appliances may grow scarcer
and more costly, there shall be no lack of this
Divine remedy for sick and wounded souls.
A wounded soldier from Wiltshire was being
nursed in hospital at Leeds. He produced a torn
pocket Testament, whose title-page was missing. It
had belonged to his brother-in-law, who was killed
at Ypres in 1914. Then the little book was sent
home ; but when its present owner went out to
France he took it with him again into battle, and
"it got wet in the Messines advance last June."
In the same Leeds hospital a patient told the
following experience. At Festubert, during a heavy
bombardment, a Christian soldier from Stockton had
both his legs blown off. As he lay dying, he begged
his friend, a stretcher-bearer from. Sunderland, to
read him Psalm xxvii. So, in that blood-stained
trench, thirty yards away from the Germans, the
wonderful words were heard : " The Lord is my light
44

THE BOOK IN BATTLE
and my salvation ; whom shall I fear ? The Lord is
the strength of my life ; of whom shall I be afraid ?
, . . Wait on the Lord : be of good courage, and He
shall strengthen thine heart : wait, I say, on the Lord."
The wounded man who told this story in hospital was
near enough to listen to the verses. A few minutes
later the stretcher-bearer himself was also killed.
Last year a lady in the north of England received
a free grant of 1,000 Testaments, Gospels, and
Psalters to distribute at a military hospital. Writing
now to the Bible House for a further supply, she
tells of one soldier, who had been a patient for many
months, and who said : " Go on with your work,
lady. You don't know how much the men think of
your books ; they think far more of them than you
know about." She asked another soldier if the men
really read the books after she had left the ward.
His reply was, "Yes, they do — at any rate all of
them who can put their arms out from under the
bed-clothes." " What about those who cannot put
their arms out?" "Oh, those I read to myself."
A negro sailor from West Africa, wounded by a
shell from a submarine, had been landed in Ireland,
where he was being nursed in hospital. His native
speech is Yoruba ; so the secretary of the Hibernian
Bible Society promptly obtained for him a copy of
the Yoruba Bible, published by the B.F.B.S.
What is done in England, we do also, as far as
possible, in all parts of the vast theatre of war.
Wherever the Red Cross flag flutters, we try to send
our little Red Cross khaki Testaments and Gospels.
In Egypt alone nearly 20,000 copies were given aw^ay
last year, for distribution in the numerous hospitals
where our sick and wounded soldiers are nursed.
45 »

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
A colporteur at Cairo writes : " I had offered the Bible several
times to an pnglish soldier in barracks, but he always replied, ' I
only buy useful things.' ' Well,' I said, ' the Bible ia most useful,
for it tells you the way to God.' He said, ' I am not dying, you
have come too early; and this book is not for me, for I am a
Catholic' Later on, I found this same soldier in the Citadel hos
pital, where he was lying ill. He called me to his bedside, and said,
' Please let me have a Bible, for I would like to know the way to
God: it is time now.' "
The Society's gifts fqr distribution in the various
military and Red Cross Hospitals in Malta alone have
amounted to nearly 8,000 Testamepts, Gospels, and
Psalters since the war began. Most of these were in
Enghsh; but a certain number of copies have alsp
been sent out in German, Hungarian, Bohemian,
Slovak, Rumanian, and Arabic — for wounded
prisoners of war.
The senior C.E. chaplain wrptp from Malt^ in May, 1917, to
acknowledge a fresh gift of 1,000 Testaments : " Both my brother
chaplains and myself are most grateful for them ; and they will be a
great help to us in our work here. A free grant of this value ia
exceedingly generous — ^thank you very much indeed. I will instruct
my chaplains to dispenae the books as carefully aa possible."
From our Indian depots at Bombay and Allahabad
and Lahore, free supplies of Testaments and Gospels
have gone to sick and wounded soldiers of different
races at various hospitals in India and Mesopo
tamia. In response to a fresh request, further free
grants of hundreds of Gospels in Indian languages
were sent out in the spring of 1918 for wounded
Indian soldiers nursed in the C.M.S. hospital at
Mengo, Uganda.
We have no space to picture the books provided in
many tongues for sick and wounded soldiers of many
races — at places as far apart as Prague and Salonika
and Belgrade and Busra and Bannu.
46

THE BOOK IN BATTLE
At Potchefstroom, in the Transvaal, one Christian worker at the
Concenljration Camp writes to acknowledge 500 khaki Tpstamenta
which we had sent, and adds : "I have been nearly a year in thig
camp, and during that time have distributed many hundreds of your
Testaments to the outgoing troops, and also to men in hospital. I
have been delighted to see their eagerness in receiving the Scriptures.
Many of them have declared, ' I shall makp this litt}e Testament my
companion.' I can count on the fingers of one hand the men who
have refused a copy. A great many men who have been to German
East Africa and returned here to hospital have brought back with
them their war-worn Testaments. One man, who had received no
less than seven wounds, said how grateful he had been ' to have the
Testament close ^t harid always.' IJe has now recovered, and has
joined up again and left for the Western front."
At Odessa, Mr. Kostsensky has devoted himself whole-heartedly to
visiting the hospitals, giving Gospels away among- the sick and
woijnded soldiers. He has done this work under the authority of an
official permit; and he fiiSds that in almost all cagps the Gosppls were
received with gratitude. The soldiers say : " We take the little books
with us when we leave hospital, whether to go to our homes or to go
to the fighting-line." Mr. Kostsensky also visited the prisoners of
war ; but after these had been put to public works it was not very
easy to reach them. Last year he gave away over 9,O0P (rP^pcls-
One of the scores of missionaries who have come to Europe in
charge of Chinese coolies writes from a General Hospital in France :
" Very many thanks for the Bible Society's gift of Gospels in
Northern Mandarin, which arrived safely this morning. The chaplain
here has at once given away copies to the patients who are able to read.
The sister in charge of their ward tells me that they 9,11 clapped their
hands when the chaplain came in with these Chinese Gospels."
Gospels in Braille type have been presented to French and Italian
soldiers blinded in the war.
For Russian wounded in Persia,
In the spring of 1917 Russian troops drove out the
Turks and again entered Kermanshah. A month
later our colporteur there secured a case of the Scrip
tures from Hamadan, where they had lain during the
Turkish occupation. Its contents included a number
of Russian Bibles, Testaments, and Psalters, which
47

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
were eagerly welcomed by the soldiers. In the hos
pital the patients left their beds and came limping
and hobbling with cries of joy as the colporteur
entered the ward. In the main barracks one Cossack
— a man of violence trying to take heaven by force —
actually began to beat the Bibleman because he could
not have a free copy ; but comrades interposed, and
the price of the book was collected.
The Golden Little Book.
Here is one among many fresh testimonies to the
power and preciousness of Scripture. A wounded
Italian soldier writes : " The Gospel is for me the
only consolation. In certain sad moments I open
the golden little book and set myself to read some of
the w^ords — gracious, sublime, full of the Holy Spirit
— and flnd all the comfort my heart desires. The
Gospel has given peace to my soul ; it has filled me
with charity; it has given me light, for I was in
darkness ; I was w^eak as a reed, and it has made me
strong like a tower."
For Prisoners of War.
If you were a captive in a hostile country, is there
any other gift which you would prize so dearly
as the New Testament in your mother-tongue?
The Bible Society does its utmost to give this boon
everywhere to soldiers who are interned among
their enemies. No other book can teach prisoners
that " stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron
bars a cage." No other message can deliver their
spirits from the bondage of corruption into the
glorious liberty of the children of God.
From Havre, a British chaplain wrote on November
48

THE BOOK IN BATTLE
6th, 1917 : " Accept my sincere thanks for a box of
Scriptures just to hand. I took some of the German
Testaments to a meeting for prisoners last Saturday
night. The men were intensely eager to obtain
copies, and when they saw them on the table there
was quite a rush. Their officer told me that every
day he is asked for the Scriptures."
Pastor Lehr, who is almoner at a camp of prisoners of war in
France, and received from us German New Testaments and Gospels,
writes : " You overwhelm me. My hearty thanks 1 Yesterday eager
hands were stretched out to gather this manna from heaven. I
could have distributed twice as many of the sacred books aa I
brought with me. We talk about our ' 75 ' cannon : but the Gospel
is the supreme weapon."
A Yorkshire vicar who has just received a free
grant of fifty German Testaments for prisoners of
war billeted in his parisli writes : " The Society's
agent in Berlin was the means of supplying my son
and ton other British prisoners of war in Germany
with copies of the New Testament. This act I shall
always remember with gratitude."
In Central Europe last year, our depots at Berlin
and Vienna were able to provide the Scriptures in
great numbers for multitudes of prisoners of war
of various races. Russian prisoners in particular
showed extreme eagerness to obtain Bibles in their
own tongue. Altogether we supplied during 1917
about 320,000 copies of the Scriptures for men in the
different internment camps in Central Europe, and
of these 210,000 went out in Germany alone.
From the London Library, Dr. Hagberg Wright has forwarded the
translation of a postcard from a Eussian prisoner of war, which
reached him vid Switzerland: "We need Bibles and Testaments, and
if possible by the English Bible Society in London." Another
Eussian prisoner in Central Europe wrote : " I thank you from my
heart for your sympathy and for the gifts which I have received —
49

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
two Bibles, twehty-aix Gospels," sent by Dr. Hagberg Wright from
the Bible Society.
For the many thousands of prisoners now interned in Italy we
Supplied last year 2,do0 volumes in German, Hungarian, Bohetniaii,
Sldvenian, Polish, CiOatiah, French and Italian, as well as a few in
Greek aild Hebrew. The distribution has been restricted by the
difficulty of getting supplies in the languages called for. Many of
these books were distributed through the Waldensian chaplains
specially appointed by the Italian War Office to care for Protestant
prigOnCrs. One chaplaiu writes that the need was Urgent, for the
great thajbrity Of the prisoners were quite destitute of the Scriptures,
and received them with evident gratitude.
Froth EumaHia dur depositary writes : " Before Bucharfest was
oaptufed, the Enmanian mUitaly authorities allciwed me to give
Aifky New Testaihentg or Gogpela arnong prisoners of war. I was
able to satisfy many requests, and even German officers thardifully
accepted a New Testament. Many of them told me, ' Before we left
Germany we had books like these, but we lost them during the cam
paign, and so wfe are glad, to get new copies in this foreign country.'
Aftei: Buchar^gt had beeh taken by the Gerinans I had liberty to
distribute books ambag sick and wounded men in hospitals, where I
spoke many a word of consolation. Escorted by a German corporal,
I was also allowed to visit a camp of Eussian prisoners of war, where
the Eussian editions of the Scriptures caused great gladness. When
the time comes — and soon may it come I — for us to receive adequate
Bhpplies of the Scriptures onoo again, we shall find a greater
opportunity than ever to spread God's Word in Eumania."
In Egypt New Testaments and Gospels in Bohemian, Bulgarian,
German, Hungarian and Eumanian were sent to the prisoners-of-
war oaMp : " The bOdkS have gone into the hands of the men through
the kindness of the offlofer commanding the camp where German
prisoners are interned. If you could have seen the men's faces at
our service last Sunday, and heard them sing Gospel hymns in
German, you would have known how much they appreciated this
gift of the i?ible Society in their loneliness." The offioer in command
wrote : " I have to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of Bibles in
various languages. The prisoners were very happy to have them,
and I hereby convey to you their warmest thanks."
A considerable number of Turkish prisoners have been arriving in
Burtha, where the Government of India employs them on railway
work in the Shan States. For these men Testaments and Gospels in
their own tongue are being provided from our depot at Eangoon.
50

The BOOK IN BATTLE
In Ontario.
Among the foreigners interned at Toronto,
Kingston, and Kapuskasing, 2,500 copies of the
Scriptures have been given away in the following
languages : — Arabic, Bohemian, Bulgarian, German,
Hebrew, Yiddish, Hungarian, Ruthenian, Polish,
Rumanian, Serbian, and Turkish. The prisoners'
eyes sparkled with joy when they received the books
in their own tongue. The German prisoners were
delighted to find that they had not been forgotten ;
one of them said : " God bless your Society for sending
us the Bible." *****
We may quote from a special article on the Bible
Society which appeared in the Daily Telegraph not
many months ago : " Few, indeed, realize how great
have been the activities of this learned and uncon-
troversial Society since the first days of the war.
How many of us can grasp, much less visualize,
totals in millions ! Yet it is in millions that the
labours of the Society have got to be expressed."
These little books have been carried "through
bayonet charges, and bombing attacks, in air recon-
naisances, and submarine feats of daring. . . . Upon
the blood-stained fly-leaves, dying hands have traced
their last messages to mother or wife ; at Loos there
was hardly a wounded man brought in that had not
a khaki-bound Testament upon him."
An Army chaplain, well known through all the
English-speaking World, saya for himself: "In the
daily presence of death, the Bible is dearer, its mes
sage more comforting and inspiring, its guidance
more sure than ever before." Yes, the Word of the
Lord is precious at such a time as this.
5X

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS

THE PILGRIM BOOK
Our Lord's command to go into all the world and preach
the Gospel to every creature applies to the Scriptures as
well as to the Church.
There is one Book, and only one, concerning which
w^e can say that the sun never sets on its w^andering.
It travels to the four corners of the earth, and sails
over every sea, and crosses every frontier, and enters
every kingdom, and speaks to the people of each race
in their own familiar tongue. We may venture to
apply to the Bible the words which Coleridge put
into the mouth of the Ancient Mariner : —
I pass, like night, from land to land ;
I have strange power of speech ;
The moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me;
To him my tale I teach.
The pages which follow give some few echoes and
glimpses of the experience of the Pilgrim Book, as it
goes on its great wayfaring among all sorts and
conditions of men at such a time as this.
Part of the business of the Bible Society is to
bring the Book within every man's reach, however
difficult of access he may be. To carry out the dis
tribution of the Scriptures far and wide the Society
relies to no small extent on its own characteristic
52

THE PILGRIM BOOK
agent — the native Christian colporteur. It employs
brigades of these colporteurs, so that on an average
about 1,100 of them are continuously working every
week, from January to December. They serve the
missionary as his aides-de-camp and scouts and
pioneers. They penetrate to many a place which
no missionary visits and surmount many a barrier
which no foreigner could pass. And wherever they
wander — by road or river or railway, through
backwoods or vineyards or bazaars — they offer their
cheap little Testaments and Gospels, from whose
pages they have learnt for themselves the reality
of redeeming Love.
In countries which are being ravaged and wrecked
by war the work of colportage must needs be
crippled. Dozens of our men have been conscripted
to fight in different armies, not a few of them are
wounded or broken-down, and several have been
k^led. In Germany and Austria, in Belgium and
in Siberia, hardly a single colporteur remains on our
staff. In Russia, where Dr. Kean has clung to his
post at Petrograd with splendid courage, our sales
by colportage last year were less than two-thirds
of what they used to be. In France the colportage
sales have been halved. From Rome we hear : —
" The difficulties of our Italian colporteurs multiply. The watch
for spies and peace-propagandists has been intensified, and wan
dering salesmen fall under suspicion ; our men have frequently
Buffered arrest, and two of them have been most unjustly im
prisoned. In some districts there has been unusual opposition from
priests. The cost of food and lodging has risen, the means of travel
ling are much lessened. People in many places simply have no
money to buy books.''
The kind of rejoinder our colporteurs have to face in Italy will
appear from these specimen sentences taken from their reports: —
" We have no money." " We are auch asses that we cannot
53

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
read." "We are too miserable to read." "At thia moment I
can neither pray nor read." " This is a time for weeping, not
for reading." " If there is a God, as the Bible says. He woiild have
foreseen this slaughter and misery and taken steps to prevent it; so
I say there is no God." " Wiiat God? Why hasn't God stopped
this brutal war ? " " The Bible is an old fiddle on which any one
can play any tune he likes.'' " I consider the book yOii sell a pest of
society." " This is a propaganda for fools." " These books are too
cheap I " " These are German books. Their author was Martin
Luther." " I burnt the book. They told me not to read it, because
it did hot speak of the Madonna." " Leave Ua ih peace I We wish
to follow the rehgion of our fathers." " A morte, il protesta/nte."
In Constantinople it is noteworthy that our col
porteurs have been quietly working all through the
war without interruption, and the demand for the
Scriptures increases. The Rev. T. R. Hodgson, who
has remained gallantly at his post in that city, wrote
in April, 1918 : " It seems that the loiiger this ter
rible war continues, the more the need is felt of the
spiritual support and comfort ¦vVhich God's Word
alone can give, and which humanity finds that it
does give. So far, ^e have had no hindrance and
no Opposition." From Athens wOrd comes that our
colporteurs are welcomeid everywhere by the priests,
the teachers of schools, and the people in Greece.
The marvel is that amid the chaos of world-wide
conflict the great majority of bur Bible-sellers
have been able to carry on their calling with so
little interruption and with so much success.^ They
plod their way patiently — these humble, devoted
men — across the rice-fields of Bengal, and over the
snowy passes of Peru, and through the rubber
plantations of Selangor. They sell the Scriptures
to settlers on the Canadian prairie, to pilgrims at
Buddhist shrines in Japan, to students from the
great Moslem university at Cairo, to pleasure-
54

THE PILGRIM BOOK
seekers at crowded fairs in Spain. Everywhere they
carry the Gospel of God's love to the poor. Their
duty is no holiday task. We heard last year of
colporteurs arrested as spies in France, and cast
into prison in Sicily, and dragged to police-stations
as sellers of " immoral literature " in Chile, and
pelted in remote Paraguay. In Burma our travelling
Bible-sellers sometimes go in peril of their lives from
wild beasts, ahd from even more deadly malaria. Now
and again an unarmed colporteur has come suddenly
fa,6e tb face with a tiger in a jutigle track : happily,
the tiger has always been the first to turn tail.
Mote than half the Society's fcolpbrteurs are brown
tnen and yellow nieri who do service in the East —
atnOiig the swariniilg populations of India and China
and Korea atid Japan. One of our British sub-
agents in Malaya has vividly described the experi
ences of a native Bible-seller : —
" In these Eastern lands our men bear the heat and bmrden of the
day and the diSboiiiforts of the night. For them there is little home
life : more often than not a wayside lodging of questionable repute is
the only shelter they can find to sleep in. Far from home and
friends, often denied the opportunity of Christian worship and fellow
ship, specially exjposed to malaria because of their irregular nomadic
life, they go tramping throtigh these tropical islands in sun or rain,
along fever-haunted coasts, through hulnid swamps or dense forests,
among the buyers and sellers in -crowded market-places, canvassing
the huts in tiny hamlets or carrying their packs down the slopes of
fiery volcanoes — anywhere, everywhere, so that men may receive the
Gospel.'* On the nitrate pampa of Ciiile, Colporteur Diaz is
a weU-knotpn figure along the railway line from
Antofagasta, early and late about his Master's
business ; at the end of one hard, weary day, he
said quite simply to his companion, " Often I think
how tired Jesus Christ must have been."
55

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
Altogether our sales by colportage last year reached
the unprecedented total of five million copies of the
Scriptures. It appears, therefore, that more than
half the Society's circulation was effected by this
direct method, which puts God's Word actually
into the hands of each purchaser.
With Camels in Central Asia.
Here is a picture of how the Pilgrim Book finds its
way into the tents of wandering herdsmen in Central
Asia. Mongolia lies to the north of China proper,
which it separates from Siberia. It covers an area
more than six times the size of the German Empire.
Bible work in Mongolia is carried on from the town
of Kalgan as its headquarters. This town forms an
important depot of the overland trade between China
and Russia. It stands near the Great Wall, on the
caravan route from Peking to Lake Baikal. Mr.
Almblad, our sub-agent for Mongolia, is a native of
Finland, who speaks Chinese, Mongolian, and English,
besides knowing something of various Asiatic dialects.
He travels with a caravan of camels, ponies, carts,
tents, and Mongol servants. In May 1917 Mr.
Almblad set out on a tour across the plains of
Central Asia. The following extracts are from a
letter he wrote three months later :—
" I have reached Patsebolong, which lies south of the great Desert
of Gobi. For most of the journey I followed no beaten track. Tha
caravan has wandered to and fro — wherever we could find the tenta
of the nomads ; but I have travelled mainly along the northern border
of Inner Mongolia, crossing twice into Outer Mongolia. The grass
proved very poor all the way, and a traveller has to be content with
glow progress, otherwise his animals will break down. For lack of
rain the grass was all dried up and bleached white. I never felt the
beat in Mongolia so much as I have this summer. In some regions
where the land is deaert and no vegetation covers the red sand, the
56

THE PILGRIM BOOK
noonday heat is intense. We had only one shower of rain until the
day before I reached Patsebolong.
" I have not come across any place where we found a large number
of tenta; but it is one of the peculiarities of Mongolia that every
large district will contain a few tents in lonely corners. The dis
tribution of our books has gone on fairly well, though not so well as
I had expected. StiU, over 2,000 Gospels have entered new homes
in Mongolia this summer. No missionary had visited thia part of the
country before."
At Cairo.
In this picturesque city, the ancient capital of
Egypt, we circulated last year 20,000 copies of the
Scriptures in twenty-nine different languages. Col
porteur Asham Ayoub writes as follows : —
" A man aaid to me : ' I bought this New Testament not long ago,
and now it occupies all my spare momenta. At one time I was very
fond of newspapers, but now I prefer reading the New Testament.
I believe that God speaks to me by thia book : I have joy and peace,
and I rest on my God ; and that is enough for me.'
" I offered a copy of St. John in Arabic to a Moslem who was
drinking in a bar. ' I have another religion, and this is not my book,'
he replied. ' What is your religion and your book ? ' I aaked.
' lalam and the Koran.' ' Have you atudied the Eoran ? ' ' Never.'
' la it lawful in yom: religion to drink wine ? ' ' No.' ' Then why do
you drink ? ' 'I am a sinner.' ' Christ loves sinners.' ' Then He
lovea me ? ' ' Certainly.' ' Then I have to love Him ? ' 'If you
want to love Him, you muat buy His book.' The man took tha
book, paying the price, and promising to study it in order that he
might find out how Christ lovea him."
On the White Sea.
Attached to the Society's depot at Petrograd are
six Russian colporteurs who sold last year over
20,000 books, though they were confined for the
most part to places within comparatively easy reach
of the city, since the difficulties of travelling far
afield were very great. Communication with the
north, however, remained open, and Maslenuikoff,
57

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
our veteran colporteur, made his usual summer tour
via Vologda and the Northern Dvina to Archangel.
Thence he proceeded to the Solovetsky monastery,
halting at many places on the road, and everywhere
meeting with sympathy from the Russian clergy.
Bishop Antony of Vologda bought 600 books from
him, and gave him a warm recommendation to the
priests in the places he was to visit. The Solovetsky
monastery stands on an island on the White Sea,
and is a famous place of pilgrimage. Maslennikoff
reached it with some apprehension, as he had been
told that there were very few pilgrims and that the
monastery had no food. However, he found a large
concourse of pilgrims, and the monks were able to
give them dinner and supper, as in former years, and
were even supplying them with bread for their
return journey. The hunger which the colporteur
met with was for the Scriptures. During his first
three days at the monastery he sold so many of our
cheap Gospels and Testaments that the proceeds
amounted to 415 roubles. From the monastery he
proceeded to Kem, and returned thence to Petrograd
by the new Murman railroad, stopping at several
stations on the way. Last year Maslennikoff circu
lated altogether nearly 5,000 volurnes.
At Baku.
One colporteur sold 4,435 books last year in Baku,
on the Caspian. Several times he met soldiers who
produced from their pockets a New Testament, and
told him that they had carried the book with them
from the first day of their service in the field. He
found also that the Armenians and the Georgians,
who were formerly reluctant to purchase God's
58

THE PILGRIM BOOK
Word, and used to tell him to take his books to the
priests and the monasteries, now pressed round him
to obtain the Scriptures, the sorrows of the war
having turned their thoughts to God.
On the cpast of Morocco.
One of our Spanish colporteurs spent Easter last
year at Melilla. During Holy Week the people are
more inclined to think about religion.
One woman after she had heard the colporteur read from the
story of ourLord'a Passion turned to her daughter and said, " Buy one
of these Gospels, ao that we may have at lea,st once a year algo de
Crista (something about Christ)."
Outside certain houses of ill repute the colporteur was welcomed
with ribaldry, and some women standing at the door showed surprise
that he should offer them the Word of God. So he read aloud to them
our Lord's conversation with the woman of Samaria, as He sat wearied
by the well. Then one of them turned to the rest and rebuked them
for their conduct, adding : " It .would be far better for each of us it
we bought a copy ; for by reading it, we also might be converted from
the evil of our ways like the woman referred to in this book." Her
words took effect ; for not only the women standing round, but
others whom she called from wijihin the house bought Gospels.
An army doctor, who was asked to buy a Bible replied, " Man, of
course I will! Come round to my house." Like several other
of&oera he showed keen interest in the Bible Society, and admired
the cheapnesa apd quality of our editions. He declared that the
Society had a r^oble object, an4 shook the colporteur warmly fey thfl
hand, hoping that he woul4 sell many Bibles in MeliUa.
Propaganda in China.
One result of the war has been to focus attention
on various methods and devices for spreading infor
mation and for popularizing ideas. Governments
have set up special departments directed by persons
who are supposed to be experts in this particular art,
and newspapers continually insist upo^ thpi vit^i
ifapovtftuQSi of propaganda at home and abrpad.
59

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
The Bible Society has long understood and organ
ized the best method of Christian propaganda. No
book is so powerful as the New Testament. Men
are still conquered and converted when they are
brought face to face with Jesus Christ Himself, and
in the Gospel page they can meet Him in a sense
in which they meet Him nowhere else. Among the
teeming populations of Eastern lands like India and
China hundreds of our native colporteurs go to and
fro, selling vernacular Gospels for a farthing a copy.
Last year the Society put nearly 3,000,000 copies of
the Gospel into the hands of the Chinese.
A Pioneer Agency.
Colportage has been an active missionary agency
along the frontiers of China — in the border lands of
Manchuria ; along the marches of Mongolia in North
Chihli and North Shansi ; on the borders of Tibet in
Kansu and Szechwan ; in Sinkiang or Chinese Tur
kestan, where Gospels in several languages have been
circulated ; and amongst the aboriginal Tai or T'o in
the mountainous parts of Kwangsi. Colporteurs
have had a very large share in all the outpost service
that has been done. To place after place and to
person after person it is " the man with the Book "
who has first brought the Good News and opened the
way for further Christian work. Every year the
reports that reach us show how colportage brings in
enquirers, encourages personal decisions, helps to
establish out-stations, and assists in building up the
Church in China. c
The Bev. W. Mudd, of the English Baptist Miaaion, Sianfu, has
had six oolporteura under hia care, who aold over 100 Teatamenta and
nearly 9,000 Goapela, Mr. Mudd reports : " Many, many thanks for
your very timely help In thia day of unbounded opportunity. We
60

THE PILGRIM BOOK
are exceedingly grateful for all that your Society means to ua in the
work of evangelization and of Church education in thia needy district."
Helped by a Chinese Robber.
South of Sianfu lie the hills which were haunted
by the terrible brigand known as " White Wolf."
Last year our Chinese colporteurs made expeditions
into these southern hills, visiting market-towns and
fairs and distributing thousands of Gospels.
One of these colporteurs spent three months in a region infested
with robbers, and several times came into contact with them. This
man was selling his books at a fair where an open-air theatrical per
formance was taking place, when a band of armed men suddenly
Bwoqped down upon the village. The head-men of the place invited
the robbers to dine, and certain villagers managed to collect a little
silver for them, hoping that they would make off as rapidly as they
had come. The robbers, however, would not go until they had seen
some of the fun of the fsiir. They threatened to shoot any person
who ran away, and compelled the actors to go on with their per
formance. Our colporteur had gathered a small crowd round him
under a tree a little distance off. Soon one of the robber scouts espied
them, and came up. " What are you doing? " he asked. "Preach
ing," said the colporteur, " And what is that in your bundle ? "
"0, those are books — Gospel books.'' "Get them out quickly 1"
ordered the robber ; and the seller of books reluctantly did as he
was bid, thinking to himself, " There goes all my journey money 1 "
But the robber's next question was, " Are you connected with the
place where they dig out bullets, the ' Save-the- World haU ' ? "
" Yes, I am," replied the colporteur. Then the robber turned to
the crowd: "Now look here, you people, listen to what this teacher
has to say, and take heed to it, and then you will never fall into my
condition of life. Now then, all you folks, get one of those books
from the teacher." Thereupon the people made a rush for the
colporteur's Gospels, until it seemed as if the books were going out
faster than the money was coming in. Then the robber cried : " Out
with your money, and pay ; if you don't, I will put a bullet through
you." Up went his rifle to his shoulder, and out came the money
from the purchasers' pockets. In less time than it takes to describe,
the astonished colporteur had parted with his whole bundle of more
than 100 Gospels ; and when he collected and counted up the money
for them, it proved to have fallen only a trifle short of the fuU price.
61 ®

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
Figaro and the Bible.
Inside a barber's shop at Barcelona they told a
Spanish colporteur that they wanted none of his
wares. Then, just as he was leaving, some one
asked : " What sort of a book is the Bible ? " Very
soon everybody in the shop who was neither shaving
nor being shaved had gathered in a group round the
Bible-sellen First an assistant bought a Bible ; then
a customer bought another ; and then a man who
Was seated with the lather on his chin told Figaro
in the act of shaving him to stop for a few
minutes while he examined a Bible — which he
finally paid for and asked the colporteur to leave
at his house.
At a village in the Nile Delta the barber was a
Copt, who could not read ; but he bought a Bible to
put in his shop so that his customers might read it to
him. An hour later, our colporteur found twenty
men in that shop listening to a small boy who was
reading the Bible aloud.
In Canada.
Across the Dominion — from the Atlantic to British
Columbia — colporteurs have been busy all last year,
in the Maritime Provinces, in Upper and Western
Canada, and on the prairie. The Manitoba Auxiliary
sends out Bible- wagons, known as "Prairie Schooners,"
to travel among the scattered hamlets and farmsteads.
In Upper Canada the colporteurs and Biblewomen of
our great Auxiliary have been hard at work visiting
the sick in hospitals, the poor (especially the
foreigners) in the congested parts of cities, at the
mining and lumber camps of New Ontario, and at
the great manufacturing and railway centres, as
62

THE PILGRIM BOOK
well as in country districts. Last year they sold
books in thirty-six different languages.
The polyglot immigrants who have invaded Upper Canada are
quite bewildering. At Hamilton, Ontario, a Biblewoman sold a copy
of the Scriptures to a Eussian, who went into a barber's shop and
Bat down to read. Then an Italian came out of the shop and bought
a copy in his own language. Then a Pole and a Rumanian, who
were passing by, did the same. They all Went into the shop and
read the Good Book, glad to get the Scriptures in their own tongue.
This Biblewoman says that nearly half the books she sells are
foreign versions. In the district round Niagara a colporteur sold
Bibles and Testaments in French, PoHsh, Italian, Bulgarian, Hun
garian, Eussian, Lithuanian, Eumanian, and Chinese ; and in a
single month he supplied aeventy persons who had never possessed
the Scriptures before,
A Word in Season.
The wayfaring Biblemen will often display not
only piety and perseverance but no small amount as
well of shrewdness, humour, and common sense.
In September, 1917, Colporteur Tobiyama was in a Japanese
village where he found selling to be hard work, because it was the
time of the half-yearly house-cleaning which is done under police
Bupervision everywhere throughout Japan. People do not want to
be disturbed when all their household goods, and even their house
hold gods, are out in the middle of the street. One woman refused
to buy, saying "I am busy to-day; and I dislike the book of Yaso
(Jesus)," The colporteur replied, " By this house-cleaning of every
thing twice a year, you are able to keep your house very clean. If
you read and obey this book, your heart will be kept clean 1 " Tha
woman quickly laid down her broom and purchased a Gospel, for
she said, "It is of more importance to take care of our heart
than of our house." Notwithstanding the house-cleaning, five Testa
ments and fifty smaller portions of Scripture were sold in that
village. A Japanese farmer declined to buy a Testament because he could
not read a single character ; so Colporteur Hattori asked him, " If a
letter comes to you, do you refuse to receive it from the postman ? "
"No, certainly not. I ask a neighbour or a child to read it to me,"
" I have just brought you a book from the Euler of the universe.
63

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
Even though you cannot read it yourself, won't you get some
neighbour or child to read it to you?" The farmer bought it.
" That book is only good to send you to sleep," said a Spaniard to
Colporteur Sanz. "It is just the contrary," was the colporteiur'a
answer; "it is good to arouse those who are slumbering" — and he
read the text, Awake, thou that sleepest.
Near Marseilles a woman colporteur was one day mistaken for the
letter-carrier. A person ran up to her, exclaiming, " Ah, what good
luck I now I shall get some news!" "Yes," she replied, "the
good news of salvation 1 Jesus Christ loves you ! "
A Greek ^t Port Said who had bought a New Testament challenged
our colporteur a few days later : " This book is not genuine, because
it has not the sign of the Cross on the cover." " If you wUl read the
book carefully," replied the colporteur, " you will find inside how oin:
Lord suffered on the Cross for you and me — and that is what matters."
The Greek went away satisfied.
In Upper Canada a colporteur found a woman busy hanging out
her washing. He said : " I have a book which tells how to wash the
heart and make it as white as snow. It is the Holy Bible, and the
Bible Society will sell you a copy for 15 cents." She stopped hanging
out the clothes, went indoors for her money, and bought two Bibles.
The Imperial Example.
The good confession of King George V, that he
himself reads the Bible daily, produces practical
effects when it is quoted by missionaries among
the millions of our fellow-subjects in India. For
example, the Rev. R. McGheyne Paterson, of Gujarat,
writes : " We have now only to say to the people,
'This is the Book your Emperor reads every day,'
and our copies are invariably sold out ! "
The Pioneer of the Missionary.
In heathen lands the colporteur habitually acts as
a pioneer evangelist. This is notably the case in Korea,
where our colporteurs sold 666,000 books — most of
them Gospels — last year. A missionary sends this per
sonal testimony from Seoul : " Yesterday I went to the
town where one of your Korean colporteurs is living,
64

THE PILGRIM BOOK
and a man and his wife came to me for baptism from
a tiny village up among the mountains, eight or nine
miles away. Six months ago this colporteur had
visited their village, where he took time to 'speak
a good word for Jesus Christ,' and then sold them a
couple of Gospels. Ever since they have been keep
ing Sunday alone up there, reading the books and
worshipping as best they could our risen Lord. The
printed Gospel has been practically their only teacher."
The Eev. L. L. Young, of the Canadian Presbyterian Mission,
writes : " I have every respect for the Korean colporteurs. It is my
candid opinion that of all foreign money spent on the mission field,
that which does the greatest good ia that expended on colportage."
We may fitly close these illustrations of the Pil
grim Book with the following sentences from the
latest report written by a missionary in China to
describe the work of our colporteurs whom he super
intends in the province of Kwantung : —
" One day we passed through a village, and aa we walked along the
narrow lanes between the houses we came to a man who was holding
in his hand the Gospel of Matthew and slowly reading the story
of the Saviour's birth. I opened my eyes in wonder — how had thia
book found its way into thia far-away , mountain village ? It waa
soon made clear. Weeks before, someone had bought the Gospel
from one of the colporteurs who was travelhng in the country, and
the book had been passed along until finally it was brought to thia
remote village, where it fell into the hands of the man who was now
slowly devouring its contents."
How the Word Travels.
" Closed districts do not prevent its entrance ; rough roada cannot
keep it back ; toilsome climbs over ragged mountaina do not weary
it in its journey. Sold in some distant district, it finds its way over
turbulent streama, across mountain ranges, and finally aettlea in
a little country village far removed from the place where it firat
set out on ita journey. Then in its new environment it begins to teU
its life-giving story, and to people who accept ita measage it begins
to manifest its transforming power in heart and life."
65

FOR StJCH A TIME AS THIS

THE HEART BOOK
" Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry unto her,
that her warfa/re is aecompUshed, that her iniquity is
pa/rdoned. — Isaiah xl. 2 (iJ.F. ma/rgin).
The Bible refuses to disclose its secrets to those who
sit down as critics to read it in cold blood. But
it authenticates itself to human experience when
ever that experience becomes deep-felt and im
passioned and nakedly sincere. At such a time as
this we are all breathing something of the heroic
atmosphere in which the great pages of Scripture
were oinginally written. For we too have learned
the meaning of agony and self-surrender, of stern
preparation and suspense, of hearts broken and
lives freely and proudly laid down. We are living
in a world of sacrifice, wherein things unseen and
eternal reassume their reality. There is only one
Book which can speak to the heart of such a worlds
the Book whose language is a cry that God's war
fare is accomplished, that man's iniquity is pardoned.
In these poignant days the Bible comes home
to men in demonstration of the spirit and of
power. We have already quoted examples of how
it inspires the fighting man, and consoles the
wounded, and speaks liberty to the captive in a,
66

THE HEART BOOK
strange land, Here we may add a few illustrationi
of the blended rebuke and blessing of God's Book
as it reaches the hearts of common folk outside
the hospital and the battlefield.
The Rebuke of the Book*
At a railway camp in New Brunswick, among ^
crowd of French, English, and Italian navvies, one
man who wanted a Testament begged our colporteur
"please give me the Good Book." Now the Good
Book is always preying its power to arouse and
rebuke the conscience and to convict wrong-doers of
their evil deeds. Korean Christians tell us that their
heathen neighbours will often confess candidly : " I
cannot read those Gospels ; they make me think of
my sins too much."
In Persia a colporteur offered his books to three
persons standing in front of a shop in the bazaar.
One man asked, " What books are these ? " The
reply was, " They are the Word of God." Thereupon
another said, " My work is to weigh bread in a
bakery, and I generally give less than the right
weight; but if I were to buy your book and read
it, I should not be able to go on cheating with an
easy mind."
Near Valparaiso a thatched and whitewashed hut
stood in its little garden, shady with trees and bright
with a profusion of flowers. The wife of the man
who lived there was a well-known character in the
neighbouring hamlet, for she went from door to
door telling fortunes -^vith cards. Both ghe and her
husband listened while a Biblewoman read them
the story of Christ's birth. "We have a book like
that," they said, and, hunting in a, dark corner, they
67

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
presently unearthed a Spanish Bible which had lain
there for years unopened. " Why," said the Bible-
woman, " here is your great mistake ! You have
never made use of this true fortune-teller — the
treasury of God." Then she read them the account
in Acts xvi of the damsel possessed with the spirit
of divination, and St. Paul's stern words of rebuke.
The fortune-teller was convicted and distressed :
" See what I have been doing ! " she cried ; " can
God forgive me my sin ? "
From the journal of a colporteur in Egypt we
quote the following : —
" In Hadra Camp a Copt aaid that he had no money, but he would
part with a amall box of tea in exchange for a Bible. As he assured
me that the tea cost six piastres — which was the price of the Bible
— and that he was very anxious to have the Book, I made the
exchange. Some time later I revisited the camp and met the Copt
again. ' Forgive me,' he said, ' but the price of that tea was only
tonr piastres. Please take the two piastres [a ^iasire = about 2Jd.]
that I owe you. When I read the Bible, my conscience rebuked me ;
but now that I am paying you, I shall be at rest.' I took the
money, and thanked God for thus quickening his conscience through
the reading of the Scriptures."
The Book and the Sleepers.
From Mbereshi, in Northern Rhodesia, the Rev.
W. Freshwater, of the L.M.S., has been sending
copies of the Gospels in Bemba to his young men
scattered as far away as Livingstonia and Bulawayo
— that is to say, about 900 miles and 1,200 miles
distant. One young African was so delighted with
the Gospel of St. Mark in his own language that
he "saw no sleep," as he put it, until he and his
friends had read right through the book at a sitting.
Last year a young Persian bought a Biljle in the
bazaar. Some time afterwards he met the coipor-
68

THE HEART BOOK
teur again and said, " I have read the book, and
passed it on to some of my friends ; and we are all
of one opinion that this book is what is needed to
awaken Persians from their sleep."
The Word of Reconciliation.
In Argentina a lady had bought a Spanish Bible,
but she went in such fear of her husband, who was
hostile to religion, that she only read it in his
absence. One night, however, she had forgotten
to conceal her book and her husband found it on
the table. Without saying anything, he began to
read it, and afterwards remarked that it seemed
a very good book. Evening by evening, when he
returned home, he went on reading his wife's Bible.
Not long afterwards his wife suggested that they
should go together and see her parents, to whom
they had never spoken for two years. They went,
and asked for forgiveness : and now both families
are reconciled, and are serving God.
No longer a Drunkard.
In Ceylon last year a Buddhist gave this testimony
to our colporteur at Colombo : —
" Formerly I was a drunkard, and used to give much trouble to my
wife and children. One day, returning from work, I was asked to
buy a Uttle book [a copy of the Book of Proverbs in Sinhalese] ; so
I paid three cents and bought it, but soon tossed it away with some
other old books into a basket, as I found that it was a Christian book
and I did not wish to read it. Some time afterwarda I bought
some cigars, and going to the paper-basket took up a book at random
and tore out a page in which to wrap my cigars, and set off to work.
After breakfast I sat down to smoke. As I had nothing else to read,
I pulled out the piece of paper, and to my great surprise I came
across these words : ' Who hath woe ? who hath sorrow ? who hath
contentions ? who hath babbling ? who hath wounds without cauae ?
who hath redness of eyes ? They that tarry long at the wine : they
69

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
that go to seek mixed wine.' So I came home, and without further
delay I aat down to read that book which I had so carelessly thrown
away : and, thank God, that very night I fell on my knees and prayed
God to help me give up this habit ; and now I am a happy man and
no longer a drunkard."
Read in Prison.
At Tangier a lady missionary, Mrs. Isaacs, visits
the Moorish prison, and gives to each of those -vyho
are able to read a Gospel in the Mogrebi dialect of
Arabic. Among the prisoners she found a Moor of
the better class, whose crime — =a very common one
in these days — was inability to pay his debts. After
his sentence expired, he sought out Mrs. Isaacs,
and expressed his gratitude for her kindness in
giving him the Gospel, saying he was intensely
interested in what he had read, and wished to talk
about these truths, which were quite new to him.
He thfen received a note of introduction to Mr,
R. G. Steven, the B.F.B.S. acting-secretary at Tangier,
w^here he came to our depot. At the end of two
hours' reading and explaining, he said, "This, has
been to me the very gate of heaven. From this
time forward I build my hope of pardon on the
Lord Jesus. I believe that He died for me, and
that His blood cleanses me from all sin," This
Moor had been first awakened to his need of a
Saviour through reading the Word of God in
prison.Pardon for a Convict.
In Brazil a police sergeant was sent to do duty
at a convict prison. There he found one of his
former companions, undergoing a long term of
penal servitude for murder. To his astonishment
the prisoner greeted him with the words: "Oh,
70

THE HEART BOOK
sergeant, I've been pardoned I " '* Then what are
you doing here, if you've been pardoned?" The
convict explained that he had read God's Word,
and had obtained the forgiveness of his sins
through Christ. He begged his old friend to read
the Bible — but in vain. After several months the
sergeant had orders to proceed to another post.
On the day he left, the prisoner pressed the Bible
into his hand and with tears besought him to read
it. The sergeant could refuse no longer ; he took the
book, and found it the means of his own conversion.
The Bible and Democracy.
To-day, when we are wallting among ruins and
dreaming of reconstruction, serious Christians realize
that the future of the world depends upon the ideals
which are to govern the collective conscience of man
kind. On this grave matter Sir Robert Borden, the
Prime Minister of Canada, spoke weighty words at
our Society's annual meeting in May last year : —
"The organized life of this nation and of the Dominions of the
British Empire rests, in the final analyais, upon the public opinion
of the people. It is upon that that our national life and our nationaj
institutions rest. ... I do not conceal from you my own cpnvictiga
that unless the democracies of the world can find some mean?
by which war on so gigantic a scale, with such awful results to
humanity, can be avoided in the future, then the existing social order
cannot last. But on what, after all, doea democracy rest? Thg
ideals of democracy, the purpose of democracy, the result of demoi
oracy, must rest upon the collective conscience of the people in any
community, and democracy will attain results, great or small, in so far
as the conscience, the purpose, and the ideals of the people are guided
by that Book which it is the purpose of this Society to circulate,"
The Testimony of a Spanish Socialist.
Here is a side-light on the leavening influence of
Scripture in the minds of workmen : —
71

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
In Spain one of our colporteurs chanced to be present last year at
a meeting of the Labour Party at Eequena. A speaker attacked
plutocracy and bad governments, but reserved his more bitter
reproaches for labouring men themselves. He quoted many sayings
of " the Master of Galilee," and exhorted the men to love one another,
to respect their wives, not to spend their wages at the tavern, but tcf
read good books, " as, for example, the Bible." After the meeting the
colporteur offered to present the speaker with a Bible, but he had
obtained a copy already from another colporteur. However, he took
the Bible, and, holding it up to the crowd, said : " Tou see this book.
You open it, and you will find nothing sensational. It is not a novel
but it contains things far more important for you. ..." The copy
was sold there and then, and the testimony of the labour orator did
much to help the sale of the Scriptures in Eequena.
A Christian Sanyasi.
In India the name Sanyasi is applied to a wan
dering mendicant who belongs to some Hindu
religious order. Such persons, clad in their saffron-
coloured robes, are figures as familiar to Indian
eyes as a country postman or a travelling tinker is
in England. These men have forsaken their homes
and given up all their possessions. They rove about
in poverty, and subsist on the alms w^hich in India
they never fail to receive. Outwardly they bear
a certain resemblance to the early Franciscan friars.
Some Indian Christians, and even a few missionaries
from the West, have adopted this form of life as
the best means of preaching their faith in the
Gospel. Recently a remarkable Christian Sanyasi
has appeared in the Punjab.
Sundar Singh belongs to a well-known Sikh family at Eampur,
where his father held considerable estates. In early days the boy
learnt from his mother's lips all she could teach him of religion.
Before her death she often spoke to him of a peace which must
be sought for before true happiness could be attained. He read
the sacred books of the Sikhs, the Hindu-3 and the Mohammedans,
but without finding what he desired. By that time he was a student
in the American Presbyterian Mission School at Ludhiana, and
7a

THE HEART BOOK
(here he received an Urdu New Testament, which he began eagerly
to read. Ita teaching appeared so subversive of all he had learnt
that in anger he tore it up and burnt the pages in the fire. But the
boy's heart was distracted with doubt and he could find no reat. Aa
time went on he obtained another Urdu Testament and studied
it earnestly. A long inward struggle ensued, until one night he
made a firm resolve that he would obtain peace before dawn. In
Hindu fashion he bathed, and then retired to his room, Testament
in hand, to spend the long hours in reading, meditation and prayer.
Near daybreak it seemed to him that suddenly a cloud filled the
room, and from it shone forth the radiant face of Christ. Instantly
there flashed into his heart the great peace he had sought so long.
Neither persuasions nor threats could move him from the open
confession of his faith. He was driven from home, but received
baptism in 1905 at Simla from the Anglican Mission, where he passed
through a course of theological training. He decided, however, to
lead the life of a wandering Christian Sanyasi, and to devote himself
to proclaiming the Gospel in this fashion to his countrymen. Dressed
in the saffron robe which is the badge of religious mendicants, home
less and penniless, but carrying the New Testament in his hand,
Sundar Singh has been going about on foot for the last few years
among the villages in various parts of India. His pilgrimages have
carried hiin from Travancore to Tibet. Wherever he preaches,
crowds fiock round him to listen. As a speaker he is fervent, practical,
convincing, without emotionalism ; his terse sentences thrill the hearts
of his hearers, and their strained attention witnesses to the hold he
has upon them. His supreme subject is Christ. He draws his illus
trations either from the New Testament or from hia own experience,
these latter being told with simphcity and reserve. Sundar Singh is
a man whose appeal goes straight to the heart of India ; his appear
ance, his message, his utter self-abnegation and poverty, the manner
of his conversion, all combine to make that appeal irresistible to
his own people.
A wounded Soldier.
Here is a confession taken from Mr. G. S. Eddy's
recent volume. With Qur Soldiers in Frajxce : —
" Was I a Christian ? Not me ! I was wild and
going to the devil; but one night I was wounded
and lay in a deserted shell-hole, shot through the
thigh and unable to move for fifteen hours. I was
73

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
feeling for a cigarette to ease the pain a bit, but all
I could find was a little pocket Testament which
some one had given me, but which I had never read.
I managed to get it out, and thinking it might be
my last hour and that I might never be found, I
started to read and try to forget my wound. I read
the twenty-seventh chapter of Matthew, and that
little book changed my life. I have read a chapter
every day since then. . . . I'm off to the front to
morrow, to take my turn again ; but I am no longer
alone, up there in the trenches. It's different now."

We may end with this eloquent testimony by
Archbishop Magee* : —
" The Bible Society receives year by year the
evidence of souls which have been quickened by the
Bible and which have known it therefore to be
the very Word of God. . . . And so, as we distribute
this most precious gift, it never fails to come back
to us enriched with some fresh evidence of its
Divine origin. It goes out from us with our prayers,
it comes back to us with the thanks and blessings
of human souls and hearts. Marked by the hard
hands of the toiler ; stained with the tears of the
penitent ; worn by long use on sick and dying beds ;
every such stain and wear is, as it were, a fresh
clo,sp of gold, a fresh adornment of pearls to the
Book of books, the priceless gift of our Father in
heaven. Infinitely rich then is the return which
God- gives us for the effort we make in His cause.
As we send forth the Book for Him, He gives it back
to us with added proof that it has come from Him."
* The Gospel and the Age, pp. 824-5.
74

THE GIFT BOOK

THE GIFT BOOK
" Let us settle every acccywnt in the spirit of the Book. . . .
Let us deal gently and tenderly, as men who are grateful
that God has been good to us, in paying owr debt of grati
tude by sharing toith our brothers. That is the spirit in
which we should try to start the new world — as men who
have com,e out of the fiery fwmace." — D. Lloyd Gboroe.
Lovers of the Bible who have read the preceding
pages will need no rhetorical appeals to kindle their
enthusiasm for the Bible Society. Among all the
worthy causes and claims which lay hands on them
to-day, they wiU ask themselves whether there be
any cause more worthy, any claim more urgent,
any Christian institution simpler in its object and
wider in its scope and more fruitful in its service
for the Kingdom of God. Holy Scripture is the
revelation of the Gift unspeakable, the Sacrifice
incalculable, the Love that passeth knowledge. And
souls that have received this Gift in its fullness are
baptized into the spirit of the Divine generosity 
according as it is written, Freely ye have received,
freely give.
In normal times, and under ordinary conditions,
the most effective method of distributing God's Book
is to sell it at a low price — if we want men to
prize it and read it, and not to treat it as a mascot.
76

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
The veteran missionaries of all communions agree
on this policy, which has been ratified by the Bible
Society's experience for more than a century in all
parts of the world.
We quote the testimony of a devoted missionary ui the Panjab :
" We do not give away Gospels in North India. The Indian, if
you give him a thing, looks at it with suspicion. He says : ' What
is the jadM? — what is the magic? Now they are getting at me I
There must be some spell about this book.' But once induce him
to pay for it — a farthing for a Gospel — and he puts out of his mind
the notion of a spell. The Indian is one of the keenest business men
that you will find on the surface of the earth, and if he gives a
farthing for a Gospel he will have a rupee's worth of reading out
of it; ^o when you get the Gospel into his hand you are sure it
wUl be read, and there wUl be many others who wUl listen while
it is being read aloud."
Hence the Society, as a rule, makes some small
charge, often a merely nominal sum, for its popular
missionary editions. In any country they are the
cheapest books published, and their price is regu
lated by what the poorest class of readers in that
country can afford to pay. Moreover, the Society's
servants have always full discretion to present a
volume free to anyone they meet, who can read
and desires to read the Gospel, but is destitute of a
coin to pay for it. The result is that, out of every
sovereign which the Society spends in producing
and circulating the Scriptures, less than 7s. 6d,
comes back to it from the proceeds of sales. The
more books w^e sell, the more money we lose.
But each special emei'gency or calamity becomes
for the Bible Society a special opportunity. We have
shown already on what a lavish scale it is providing
for the fighting men, the wounded, and the captives
in the great war. But every year, and all the world
over, it is regularly giving away the Scriptures witlj
7P

THE GIFT BOOK
a free hand to orphanages and asylums, to hospitals
and prisons, to sufferers from fire or famine or flood
or plague or earthquake.
For many years it has been the regular custom of the Bible Society
to offer the Scriptures to all students at the Universities of British
India. When we realize that the University of Calcutta alone has
more undergraduates than Oxford and Cambridge put together, we
begin to grasp the importance of this distribution. Each Indian
student, when he entera college, ia offered a copy of the four Gospela
and the Acts ; half-way through hia courae, he ia asked to accept the
New Testament ; and when he has graduated, the Society endeavours
to arrange that he shall leave with the Bible in his hands. Students
are allowed to select for themselves the version which they prefer,
but almost invariably they choose English. During 1913 no fewer
than 9,000 volumes were thus distributed among Indian students aa
gifts from the Bible Society, and in 1917 the number had risen to
10,300 volumes — each of which was applied for by its recipient.
Cast into the Treasury.
The Society's revenue is like a river which would
dwindle and run dry, if it were not fed continually
by countless little rills and brooks and streamlets.
We cannot be sufficiently grateful for the wonder
ful way in which our friends everywhere have rallied
to the Society's support at this dark and difficult
time. Their generosity has never been more con
spicuous : but indeed it was never more necessary.
The appendix to this little volume gives a clear
statement of our financial position, and we need
not reiterate the particulars.
Counting the Cost.
We wish, however, we could help our friends to
realize how much more the Society has now to pay
for producing and distributing its editions. As every
body knows, everything has grown dearer. But
hardly anything has increased in cost so much aa
77 ^

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
paper. In the days of the Emperor Tiberius, Pliny
the elder records that there was a dearth of papyrus
so alarming that Senators were appointed to control
its distribution in Rome. Paper is now in the same
position as papyrus was then. At the date when
these pages go to press, the price of paper in London
has risen to seven times what it was before the war,
while the quantity of paper which we are allowed
to buy is strictly limited. Other charges have
also increased beyond all precedent. Compared
with the rates which ruled before the outbreak of
war, printing in England now costs nearly twice
as much as it did ; binding costs more than double ;
packing-cases cost four times as much ; while the
rates for freight and for insurance have been
doubled and redoubled.
Under such conditions the maintenance of ade
quate supplies of the Scriptures to meet the needs
at home and abroad is steadily becoming more
difficult than ever. We have cause for thankful
ness that the Bible Society thus far has been able
to meet nearly all the demands made upon it. But
in face of this enormous increase in the cost of
production, the Committee have felt themselves
compelled, with great reluctance, to advance the
selling prices of their editions — without sacrificing,
however, the Society's great ideal of providing books
within the purchasing power of the poor. But
when we' say that the English Bible which we
formerly sold for 6d. is now costing us more than
Is. 6d. merely for paper, printing, and binding, while
the English Testament formerly sold for Id. is now
costing us more than 4td., it will be seen that it
had become imperative to raise these selling prices.
78

THE GIFT BOOK
The extra sum which will thus accrue from sales
can only cover a very small part of our additional
expenditure on paper, printing and binding — without
counting the increased charges for distribution.
That is to say, on each volume of our popular
editions the Society is losing to-day more heavily
than before the war : and they remain by far the
cheapest editions of the Scriptures that are published.
A few concrete illustrations will make this plain.
Our popular Italian pocket Testament, for example, which we sell
at 2^d., now costs over 9d. for printing and binding. The single
Italian Gospels which we sell at ^d. are now costing us over l|d.
In Eussia prices have become fantastic. In November, 1917, we
heard from Petrograd that single Gospels in Eussian, which before
the war cost 2 kopecks each to produce, were then costing 21 kopecks.
The charge for binding a Eussian New Testament, which was formerly
12 kopecks, had risen to 65 kopecks.
All over India we publish single Gospels in scores of the current
vernaculars, which are sold up and down the country for a farthing
apiece : they cost the Society more than a penny apiece.
In Japan our cheapest New Testament in Japanese, hitherto sold
at 5 sen (a sen = ^d.), has now been raised to 10 sen, the present cost
of its production being 16 sen. Single Gospels, formerly sold for
1 sen, are now priced at 2 sen ; but these Gospels are now costing
4 sen apiece to produce.
In South West China, most of the Hwa Miao aborigines are
extremely poor, and little money circulates amongst them ; accord
ingly the Hwa Miao New Testament published for them in 1917,
which costs the Society over 50 cents (Is. 6d.) a copy to print and
deliver in Tunnan, is sold throughout their villages for 15 cents
(about 5d.) a copy.
Oar Supreme Opportunity.
One thing is certain : never again shall we live
through such a time as this — so grave in its perils,
so glorious in its opportunities, so inexorable in its
claims, so tragic in its sacrifices, so irrevocable in its
judgment. By their deeds in this decisive hour men
79

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
pass sentence upon themselves, and betray what
spirit they are of. The ordeal which God has laid
upon us demands treasures that are far more golden
than gold. In answer to the sacred call, millions
of fathers and mothers have given their own flesh
and blood. For those who have no such oblation
to make, it seems a little thing that they contribute
munitions for the campaign. We have all con
tributed, in our measure. Many of us, indeed, are
poorer than we used to be, and often when we
want to spend money or to give money, we find
that it has to go in taxes. To ask to be taxed
is a new experience in English life ; yet, as a wise
teacher reminds us, "half the object of prayer is
to learn to delight in the taxes of God."
The supreme call to every Christian is that daily
call which bids him render unto God the things that
are God's. Not a few who read these pages will feel
that of all war-gifts none can be more fruitful for
the highest issues than money entrusted to the Bible
Society now — when its needs are so urgent and its
opportunities are so immense. To-day the nerve of
national generosity has been touched to the quick
as it never was before. And among the many
causes which plead for help, we have faith that
the Bible Society will not be sent empty away —
at such a time as this.

80

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY
President: H.E.H. THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT, KG.
Vice-Presidents :

1878.1877.

1884.1687.

1891.1893.

190S.1904.

BISHOP MITCHIII80N. D.q.L.,D.D.
The MABQUI8 ol ABBBDEEN AND
TBMAIR, K.T.
The Bt. Hon. SIi }. H. EENNAWAT. Bart.,
BISHOP BOYD-OABPENTEB, D.D.
Tha ARCHBISHOP ol GANIERBURT.
The EABL ol HALSBUBY.
The BISHOP ot ST. ASAPH.
LORD KINNAIRD, K.T.
Aid. Sir JOSEPH SAVORY, Bart.
•BISHOP STBATON, D.D.
BOBEIU? HEATH, Esq.
The BISHOP ol MABLBOBODGH.
J. K. HILL, Esq.
Tha BISHOP ol BATH and WELLS.
The DUKE ol DEVONSHIBE.
LOBD PEGKOVEB ol WISBECH.
The BISHOP ol CHESTEB.
The BISHOP ol ST. ALBANS.
Bey. J. MONEO GIBSON, D.D.
J. TBUEMAN MILLS, Esq.
The Bt. Hon. Sir ALBERT SPICEB, Bart.,
M.P.
Bev. J. O. GBBENHOUGH.
Rot. RIOHABU GLOVEB, D.D.
BISHOP PEEGIVAL. D.D.
BISHOP OAKB GLYN, D.D.
A. S. LESLIE-MELVILLE, Esq.
The BISHOP ot DUBHAM.
The BISHOP ot WAKEFIELD.
The BISHOP ol ST. DAVIDS.
BISHOP WELLDON, D.D.
VISCOUNT OUEDEN.
CANON B. B. QIRDLESTONE.
Bev. W. L. WATKINSON, D.D.
EGBERT BARCLAY, Esq.
BISHOP INGHAM, D.D.
Tha BISHOP ol LIVEBPOOL.
BoT. F. W. MACDONALD.
F. A. BBVAN, Esq.
The DEAN ol WESTMINSTER,
The BISHOP ol LONDON.
BISHOP CLIFFORD, D.D.
Sir GEOBGE EAYIEB OHUBB, Bart.
Sir G. E. ENOX.
BISHOP COPLESTON, D.D.
BISHOP FY30N, D.D.
Bar. W. T. DAVISON, D.D.
Sir 0. ERNEST TBITTON, Bart.
CHARLES FINCH FOSTER, Esq.
Tha DEAN ol WELLS.
Sir ALGERNON COOTB, Bart.
Sir GBORQB W. MACALFINE.
The BISHOP ol OXFORD.
The BISHOP ol HANCHESTEB.
BISHOP OEMSBY, D.D.
BISHOP STIELINO. D.D.
Bay. MABSHALL HABTLEY.
Bay. F. B. MEYEE, D.D.
Boy. D. MAOKIOHAN, D.D.
Sir A. HARGBEAVES BROWN, Bart.
N. W. HOYLES, Esq., K.C. , LL.D.
QEOROE OADBURY, Esq.
P. F. WOOD, Esq.
BISHOP BROWNE, D.D.
The Hon. JUSTICE FORBES.
Bev. B. F. HORTON, D.D.
E. PBBCY HOLLAMS, Esq.
WILLIAMSON LAMPLOUQH, Esq.
. Tha EABL ol DABTMOUTH.
Tha BISHOP ol OABLISLE.
The BISHOP ol ELY.
BISHOP TAYLOB SMITH, D.D.
Eev. PBINCIPAL FORSYTH, D.D.
Bey. TIMOTHY RICHARD, Litt.D.
D. E. K08TE, Esq.
E. J. BABP, Esq.
. The BISHOP ol SOUTHAMPTON.
BISHOP BOBEBTSON, D.D.
Sir GEORGE SMITH.
I. P. WEBNEB, Esq.
. Tha BISHOP ol SOUTH TOKYO.
Sir ANDBEW H. L, VBASEB, E.O.BX
* D»e4audtina

1908. The Bt. Hon. Sir WM. MACGREOOB,
G.C.U.G.
Sir W. P. HARTLEY.
Bay. G. CAMPBELL MOEQAN, S.D.
J. BBNDEL HABEIS, Esq., D.Lltt.
A. J. OEOSFIELD. Esq.
1909. The ARCHBISHOP ol^ORE.
BISHOP MONTGOMERY, D.D.
Prebendary H. E. FOX.
Ray. J. CAMPBELL GIBSON, D.D.
Bey. W. W. JACKSON. D.D.
Sir G. A. OEIBE30N, K.O.I.E., F.B.A.
ELIA3 BOGEBS, Esq.
1910. LORD LANGFOBD. K.O.V.O.
LORD COZENS-HAEDY.
The BISHOP ol EXETEB.
Sir J. T. DILLWYN LLEWELYN, Bait.
Bey. J. D. JONES. D.D.
Bay. ALEXANDEE CONNELL.
Bay, J. H. SHAKESPEARE.
The Rt. Hon. T. E. FERBNS, M.P.
1911. VISCOUNT BRYCE, O.M.
The BISHOP ol WINCHESTER.
The BISHOP ot MADRAS.
Sir THOMAS BARLOW, Bart., M.D.
Bey. DAVID BEOOK. D.C.L.
Bey. J. SCOTT LIDGETT. D.D.
A. W. YOUNG, Esq.
1913. The BISHOP ot NOBWIOH.
Sir HENEY E. B. PEOCTEB.
Tha BISHOP ot STEPNEY.
Bey. CHARLES BROWN, D.D.
Sir ALFRED W. W. DALE, LL.D.
Bey. Sir WILLIAM BOBEBTSON NIOOLL,
LL.D.
191S. The BISHOP ot CALCUTTA.
The BISHOP ol SOUTHWAEK.
Bev. F. LUKE WISEMAN.
Bay. OWEN EVANS. D.D.
Bey. Prof. A. S. GEDBN, D.D.
Sir ANDREW WINGATB, K.O.I.B.
T. CHENEY GAEFIT, Esq.
Ptot. ALEXANDEE M.ACALISTEE, F.R.g.
ALFRED BEAUEN, Esq.
19H. The BISHOP OP RIPON.
Sir FREDERIC G. KENYON, E.C.B., P.B.A.
OANON PELHAM.
The ARCHDEACON ot WESTMINSTER.
Bey. Prol. G. G. FINDLAY, D.D.
G. A. KING, Esq.
Sir J. D. McOLURE, LL.D.
1915. Tha AECHBISHOP ol PERTH, Western
Australia.
The BISHOP ot LICHFIELD.
•BISHOP E. E. HASSfi.
Dr. M. B. SADLEE, O.B.
Sir WILLIAM MAOKWOBTH YOUNG,
191S. The' BISHOP ot CHELMSFORD.
BISHOP TUGWELL, D.D.
Sir T. F. VICTOR BDXTON. Bart.
Sir CHABLES 0. WAKEFIELD.
Roy. J. R. GILLIES, D.D.
EITGENE STOCK, Esq., D.O.L.
Bey. PBINCIPAL W. B. SELBIB, D.D.
Prol. A. S. PEAKE, D.D.
JOHN MOOBE GElFi'ITHS, Esq.
1917. The AECHBISHOP ol BRISBANE.
General BRAMWELL BOOTH.
DAVID DA VIES, Esq,
Boy. JOHN OLIFFOBD. D.D.
The BISHOP ol SHEFFIELD.
JOHN BIGBY, Esq.
Ray. J. H. JOWBTT, D.D.I
JAMBS B. NICHOLSON, Esq.
1918. Bey. ARTHUR TAYLOR.
The Et. Hon. Sir GILBERT PAREBB,
Bart, M.P.
The Rt. Hon. JOHN HODGE, M.F.
BARON SHAW, ol Dnntarmllne.
The ARCHBISHOP ot ARMAGH.
The BISHOP ol BRISTOL.
Bey. SAMUEL OHADWIOK.
Bey. PB0FES80B MABAIS, D.D.

81

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY

Treasurer :
BoBEET Baeclat, Esq.

Chairm,an of Committee :
Williamson Lamplouqb, Ebc(.

Committee :

Elected May 1st, 1918.
Tfi^ dates iTidicaie wJisn members first joiTied the Committee.

D. L. von Braun, Esq. . . 1918
P. W. Brownrigg, Esq. . . 1918
W. van 0. Bruyn, Esq. . . 1910
G. T. Orosfield, Esq. . . 1901
Col. D. P. Douglas-Jones . 1905
C. A. Flint, Esq. . . . 1904
Henri Prey, Esq. . . . 1916
H. Lance Gray, Esq. . . 1906
Ernest Gripper, Esq. . . 1918
M. Gutteridge, Esq. . . 1908
Sir Henry Holloway . . 1917
Sir E. Murray Hyslop . . 1918
Christian H. Kragh, Esq. . 1914
Lieutenant-Colonel G. Mao-
kinlay  1913
William Mallinson, Esq. . 1917
H. W. Maynard, Esq. . . 1898
Gilbert J. MoGaul, Esq. . 1902
Arthur Meroer, Esq. , . 1917

Major-General Sir G. K.
Scott-Moncrieff, K.C.B.
E. E. P. Moon, Esq.
A. W. Oke, Esq. .
Sir Charles J. Owens
B. E. Parkinson, Esq.-
Major H. Pelham-Burn
W. H. Poate, Esq.
E. J. SeweU, Esq.
Colonel E. S. Skinner
Dr. E. T. Smith .
Otto Soldan, Esq. . .
James Steel, Esq. .
Charles P. Sutton, Esq.
Sir Charles J. Tarring
Stuart Trotter, Esq.
Hon. M. Waldegrave
Axel Welin, Esq. .
Eobert Whyte, Esq.

. 1918
. 1916
. 1910
. 1917
. 1916
. 1917
. 1908
. 1901
. 1903
. 1914
. 1915
. 1915
. 1911
. 1907
. 1912
. 1910
. 1907
. 1907

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

Eev. JoHNH.EiTsoisr,M.A.,D.D., 1899 | Eev. S.Nowell-Rostbon.m.a., 1918
Translating '
d Editorial
DeparPment.LiteraryDepartment.

Eev. E. KiLaouE, d.d., Editorial Superintendent. . 1909
Dr. H. P. MouLE, Assistant  1912

1898 19011912 1883

Eev. T, H. Dablow, m.a., Literary Superintendent
Dmartment \^^'^- ^- •*¦¦ R^^niiss, m.a., Home Superintendent .
D^artmmt ] ^'^' *^^°^^™ Cowah, Publishing, Superintendent .
Accountant: Collector;
Mr. A. Buchanan . . . 1911 | Mr. Geo. B. Poolb
Auditors : Messrs. J. and A. W. Sully & Co.
Honorary SoUcitors :
Messrs. Cowabd & Hawksley, Sons & Chance, 30, MiruAng Lane, E.G.
Bankers :
The Bank ob' England, Threadneedle Street, E.G. 2, and
WiLMAMS Deaoon's Bank, Ltd., 20, Birchin Lane, E.G. 3.
The dates indicate the year <tf a^^ointmmt.

82

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY

Secretaries Abroad.

Monsieur A. L. Vasseur {Acting
Secretary),
58, Rue de Clichy, Paris.
Herr A. Hartkopf (Acting Secre
tary),
31, Bernburger Strasse, Berlin.
Eev. B. W. Smith,
25, Palazzo Assicur. Gen., Piazza
Venezia, Borne.
Beiior A. Araujo (Acting Secretary),
2 2/4, "Flor AUa, Madrid.
Eev. W. Kean, d.d.,
Ekaterinhof Prospect, 12,
Petrograd.
Mr. W. DavidSbn,
Bible Depot, Ekaterinburg.
Eev. T. E. Hodgson,
1, Tunnel Passage, Pera,
Constantinople.
Mr. 0. T. Hooper,
Bible House, Port Said.
Mr. W. J. W. Eoome,
P.O. Box 145, Kampala, Uganda.
Eev. A. W. Banfield,
P.O. Box 78, Lagos.
Eev. D. S. B. Joubert, B.A., b.d.,
P.O. Box 215, Cape Toion.
Eev. G. Lowe,
P.O. Box 639, Johannesburg.
Mr. A. Hope,
B.F.B.S., Hassanabad, Teherdn.
Eev. A. W. Young,
23, Chowringhee Boad, Calcutta.
Mr. E. A. Adams,
170, Hornby Boad, Bombay.
Eev. W. J. MowU (Acting Secretary),
Bombay.
Eev. W. E. H. Organs, B.A., b.d.,
P.O. Box 502, Madras.
Eev. D. A. Eees (Hon. Secretary),
B.F.B.S., St. Mark's Boad,
Bangalore.
Mr. A. B. Butler,
16, Thornhill Boad, Allahabad.

Mr. W. H. L. Church,
Bible Depot, Anarkali Street,
Lahore.
Eev. W. Sherratt,
19, Sule Pagoda Boad, Rangoon.
Mr. T. Gracie,
Bible House, Union Plcbce,
Colombo.
Mr. C. B. G. Tisdall,
17-2, Armenian Street, Singapore.
Eev. G. H. Bondfield, d.d.,
17, Peking Road, Sha^ighai,
Mr. H. Miller,
B.F.B.S., Chongno, Seoul, Korea.
Mr. P. Parrott,
95, Yedo MacM, KobS, Japan.
Mr. Chas. E. Bowen,
Bible House, 242, Pitt Street,
Sydney.
Mr. Pred G. Barley,
Bible House, 24"l-243, Flinders
Lane, Melbourne.
Bev. G. M. Clark,
Bible House, 108, George Street,
Brisbane.
Eev. J. H. Sexton,
Bible House, Grenfell Street,
Adelaide.
Eev. A. S. J. Pry,
B.F.B.S.,167,St.George's Terrace,
Perth, Western Australia.
Eev. P. H. Spencer,
Wlmnganui, New Zealq,nd.
Eev. Alexander Telford,
Caixa 73, Bio de Janeira,
Mr. A. E. Stark,
Casilla 568, Valparaiso, Chile.
Mr. W. C. K. Torre,
Casilladel Correo 5 ,Buenos Ay res.
Eev. W. H. Eainey,
Apartardo de Correo 323,
Caracas, Venezuela.
Eev. W. B. Cooper, m.a.,
16, College Street, Toronto,

83

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY

Home District Secretaries.

Eev. James Thomas,
Bible House,li6, Queen Victoria
Street, London.
Eev. W. E. Bowman, B.A.,
Rowley Avenue, Stafford.
Eev. W. G. Jones, b.a.,
36, Abinger Road, Bedford
Park,- London, W. 4.
Eev. J. Alston, b.a.,
9, Prioi-y Boad, Kew, S.W.
Eev. T. Smetham,
63, St. Augustine's Avenue,
Croydon.
Eev. Walter Wall,
12, CMstnut Boad, Moseley,
Birmingham.
Eev. T. A. Wolfendale, m.a.,
6, Radcliffe Park Road, Pendle
ton, Manchester.
Eev. J. Addison Ingle, m.a.,
Lanteglos, Wilderness Road,
Plymouth.
Eev. H. K. Marsden, m.a.,
4, Ashwood Terrace,Headingley,

Eev. H. J. Cossar, m.a.,
St. Luke's Lodge, Alplia Boad,
Cambridge.

Eev. George Daunt, m.a.,
3, Pitman Road, Weston-
super-Mare.
Eev. George Hanson,
126, Wingrove Road, Newcastle-
on-Tyne.
Eev. W. G. Eoberts, m.a.,
[On military service]
Eev. B. W. G. Hudgell, m.a.,
[On military service]
Eev. A. Wellesley Jones, B A., b.d.,
Leven Grove, Kilmorey Park,
Chester.
Eev. W. Crwys Williams,
8, Richmond Road, Swansea.
Eev. J. Crossley,
18, Grosvenor Road, Scar
borough.
Eev. Tom Dring,
151, Mount Road, Wallasey,
Cheshire.
Eev. S. Metcalfe, m.a., b.d.,
2, Fairfield, Kendal.
Eev. H. C. Threlfall, b.a.
[On military service]

The Eev. Elias George resigned in June 1917, after twenty- seven
years' service as District Secretary.
The Bev. Henry Starmer, who had resigned his post at Easter
1917, after thirty-one years' service as District Secretary's Assistant
in the Eastern Counties, died at Norwich just before Christinas.

84

SUMMARY
At our Anniversary in Queen's Hall, London, on May 1, 1918,
it was anno0ncbd that h.b.h. the duke of connauftht, k.g.,
had graciously accepted the unanimous invitation of the com
MITTEE TO BECOME President of the Bible Society. His Boyai.
Highness wrote : " I am well aware op the great good the
Society has done all over the world, and I gladly associate
myself with so noble an undertaking."
The year's issues by the Society now to be reported have reached
a total of 9,387,182 oopies. Of these 718,490 were Bibles, 1,566,683
were New Testaments, and 7,102,009 were smaller portions of
Scripture. During the last four years the Bible Society has sent out more
than forty million oopies of the Scriptures. It should be clearly
understood that by a copy or "portion" we do not mean a leaflet
containing some selected verses : each of these forty million copies
was either a Bible, or a Testament, or at least one complete book of
the Bible.
Of last year's issues, 1,750,000 have been in English or Welsh,
which, again, is 400,000 more than in the year before the war.
Over 1,000,000 volumes have gone out in the languages of our
fellow-subjects in India, where mass movements towards the Church
form at once the encouragement and the embarrassment of our
missionaries. Most noteworthy it is that nearly a third of all the
books we issued last year were sold in China. That immense
country is still distracted by revolution and anarchy and civil war.
Yet the Society has never before put into Chinese hands in a single
year 3,000,000 copies of the Scriptures. The bulk of these were
Gospels, and 95 per cent, were purchased from our colporteurs.
The total issues by the Society since its foundation have exceeded
298,000,000 copies of the Scriptures, complete or in parts. Of these
more than 97,000,000 have been in English.
The Work at Home.
In order to assist and increase the circulation of the Bible in our
own country, especially in places which are not reached by ordinary
booksellers, the Committee grant special colportage terms to all
societies and institutions which regularly carry on the sale of the
Scriptures by colportage among the poor in England and Wales,
85

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
Apart from its war distribution, and exclusive of the losses involved
in the sales of its books at catalogue prices, the Society spent more
than d69,000 in England and Wales last year, mainly in grants of
Scriptures — free or at greatly reduced rates — to the schools and
home missions of nearly every Christian Communion, and to all
the varied agencies of religious and philanthropic activity.
Almost all the English and Welsh institutions for befriending the
blind obtain from the Bible House the Scriptures in embossed type,
at less than one-third the cost of their production.
Students at Theological and Missionary Colleges, who need gqob
assistance, received last year as gifts 31 Old Testaments in Hebrew
and 93 New Testaments in Greek. The Society also presents out
going missionaries with Bibles or Testaments in the vernaculars qf
the fields in which they are to labour.
Translation and Revision.
In spite of the war the work of translation and revision goes
forward imchecked. The list of versions in which the Bible Society
has helped to produce or circulate God's message to men now con
tains FrvB) hundred and eleven different languages. These include
a complete Bible in 132 forms of speech, and a complete New Testa
ment in 119 more. No fewer than 111 new languages have been
added in the last twelve years — which is at the rate of one in less
than every six weeks. During the past year versions have been
published for the first time in s^Ven fresb tongues. Thirty-one
new languages and dialects have been added to the list since the
great war began.
These versions are printed at about fifty different places, and
in sixty different sets of characters, In embossed type for the
blind, the Society has already helped to provide the Scriptures
in thirty-eight different languages.
The Partner of Missions.
The foreign missions of almost every Beformed Church draw sup-
pUes of Scriptures from the Bible Society. These are sent out, car
riage paid, to the remotest mission stations, on such terms that
practically no charge falls on the exchequer of the missions which
receive and circulate the books. In every field the missionaries are
our most enthusiastic helpers and our most grateful friends, testifying
to the indispensable assistance which they thus obtain.
The Anglican Church ia now teaching the Gospel in 189 languages.
Fgr versions in more than 179 of these it depends on the Bible Society.

SUMMARY
The Foreign Missions of the Free Churches also obtain the bulk
of all the Scriptures they use, directly or indirectly, from the Bible
Society. The enterprises and triumphs of Christian Missions are creating 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. Bach new tribe evangelized, each fresh language
reduced to writing and grammar, each new convert baptized, means
gi new call for help from the resources of the Bible House — ^help
which is most gladly given without creating a charge upon the funds
of the Mission which is aided thereby.
In Foreign Lands.
The Society maintains depots in nearly a hundred of the chief
cities of the world. Notwithstanding the war its depots at Berlin,
Vienna, Budapest, .Constantinople, Petrograd and Moscow have
remained open.
It employed over 1,500 native Christian colporteurs and Bible-
women who were continuously at work throughout the year 1917,
supervised by the Society's foreign agents or its missionary friends.
In spite of many hindrances, due to the war, these colporteurs sold
last year more than five million copies of the Scriptures — more
than half our total circulation.
Auxiliaries. At the end of March 1918 the Bible Society had 6,171 Auxiliaries,
Branches, and Associations in England and Wales. In connexion
with these, during the previous twelve months, 3,810 meetings were
held, and 3,469 sermons were preached, on behalf of the Society.
Outside the United Kingdom the Society has over 3,000 Auxiliaries
and Branches, mainly in the British Colonies. Many of these
vigorously carry on Bible distribution in their own localities, besides
sending generous annual contributions to London.
Finance. With profound gratitude we look back across a year of splendid
generosity. Fresh prayers have risen to God, new fountains have
been broken up in men's hearts, and gifts have flowed freely to
answer the Society's need. The contributions from our Auxiliaries,
at home and overseas, last year have risen to jei08,158 — a figure
wbieh (apart from special funds) surpasses all previous totals,
87

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
being £16,000 more than during the previous year, and £18,600
above what it was four years ago.
In England contributions from the Auxiliaries rose to £55,360,
and in Wales to £6,715. The Hibernian Bible Society sent £2,458.
South Africa remitted £6,403 — including a special gift of £3,000.
India and Ceylon sent £5,058 — an increase of £800. Our Auxiliaries
in Australia have raised £13,116 — an increase of nearly £4,000;
and in New Zealand £3,346 — an increase of £737. The Canadian
Bible Society, after defraying the expenses of Bible work in the
Dominion, has contributed £11,642 — which is over £3,000 more
than in 1916-17.
From Legacies we have received £52,824, which is £1,825 below
the recent annual average ; according to rule, this difference has
been transferred into our current account from the Legacy Equaliza
tion Fund.
The extraordinary advance in the cost of production has compelled
the Committee reluctantly to increase the prices of most of their
editions. When we say that the English Bible, which we formerly
sold for 6d., now costs Is. 6d. a copy merely for paper, printing, and
binding, it will be seen that it was necessary to raise the selling
price. But the Society's popular books are still sold at rates which
entail a heavier loss than was the cage before the war ; and they
remain by far the cheapest editions of the Scriptures that are
published. Partly as a result of enhanced prices, the proceeds from
our sales in 1917-18 rose to £109,720. Adding together the various
items, we find that the Society's income last year from ordinary
sources — apart from the Emergency Fund — has reached the record
figure of £299,230.
Expenditure. Under the grave economic conditions which prevail, the Society's
resources have been husbanded with strict economy, which is carried
to the farthest limit consistent with efficiency. In countries within
the area of confiict, our colportage is perforce dislocated, or has almost
ceased for the time being. On the other hand, to produce and dis
tribute the Scriptures has everywhere become far more expensive.
At Petrograd, for example, a Eussian Gospel, which could once be
produced for -^d., cost before last Christmas more than ten times as
much. In some parts of the world it proved so difficult to replenish
our depots that their shelves are sorely depleted and in certain cases
empty. As the war has gone on, we have been compelled to live
upon editions previously printed, which are now exhausted and must
88

SUMMARY
be replaced as speedily as possible. To make good the serious
deficiency in our stocks, we shall have to pay abnormally high prices
for paper, printing, and binding. To meet this inevitable expenditure,
the Committee have now set aside £35,250 in cash — which represents
a very moderate estimate of the sum required. When we add this
allocation to thp £150,253 which the Society spent last year on
translating, revising, printing, and binding the Scriptures, we have
a total under this heading of £185,503 ; and a total under all headings
fif £307,041. This is £49,778 in advance of the total for 1916-17.
The Emergency Fund.
The above figures, however, leave out of reckoning the Emergency
Fund, which the Committee opened in January 1917 to meet the
heavy strain on our finances through war-prices and war-distribution.
Oar friends abroad as well as at home have risen to the occasion,
and made munificent response to the Society's appeal. Down to
March 31st, 1918, this special fund reached the fine sum of £37,839.
But this fund wUl be needed — and more — to meet the strain which
confronts the Society. Compared with the rates current four years
ago, printing in England to-day costs nearly twice as much, binding
costs more than double, and paper costs seven times as much, to say
nothing of extraordinary charges for freight and insurance. The
expenses of urgent reorganization delayed by the war must be heavy.
On all hands and in every country our work has grown far more
costly ; and already there are signs that the cost wUl increase even
further. Therefore the Emergency Fund stUl remains open.

Since the Society's last annual meeting, death has removed ten
of its Vice-Presidents :—
Earl Brassey ; Earl Grey ; Bishop Straton, formerly of Newcastle ;
the Dean of Windsor ; the Master of Trinity ; Archdeacon Sinclair ;
the Eev. Dr. Henry Haigh ; Archdeacon Westcott, of Norwich ; Mr.
Samuel Lloyd, of Birmingham ; and last, but not least, the Eev. John
Sharp, who became a Secretary of the Society in 1880.
The Eev. Arthur Taylor, M.A., for seventeen years Secretary of
the Society, accepted in December the benefice of St. Bride's, Fleet
Street, E.G. To succeed him the Committee have appointed as
Secretary of the Society the Eev. Sydney Nowell-Eostron, M.A.,
vicar of St. Andrew's, Sefton Park, Liverpool, who commenced his
new duties at the Bible House in May 1918.
89

POR SUCH A TIME AS THIS

THE BIBLE SOCIETY EECBIVEB DUEiNG THE
YEAE ENDING MAEOH 31st, 1918: i
From sales of the Scriptures issued from t'ne
Bible House, London, to trade depots,
Auxiliaries, missionary societies, etc, .., £46,758
From sales of the Scriptures abroad  61,528
 £108,286
From sales of magazines  1,434
Subscriptions, donations, etc., paid at the Bible
House  20,148
Contributed by Auxiliaries at home  64,560
Contributed abroad ,..  43,593
Legacies  52,824
Transferred from the Legacy Equalization Fund 1,825
 64,649

Dividends  =  6,560

TOTAL receipts (exclusive of Emergency fund) £299,230

The contributions to the Emergency Fund up to
March 31, 1918, have amounted to £37,839.

90

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS

THE BIBLE SOCIETY EXPENDED DUEING THE
YEAE ENDING MAEOH 31st, 1918:
Translating, revising, printing, and binduig
the Scriptures  %  £134,432
Allocated, but not yet actually paid, for
renewing depleted stocks  35,250
Freight and carriage of Scriptures  15,821

£185,503
Warehouses, depots, and sub-depots abroad  32,402
Maintaining colporteurs and Biblewomen  36,083
Salaries and travelling expenses of secretaries and
sub-agents abroad  22,061
Bible House administration, salaries, repains, rates,
taxes, insurance, postage, etc.  10,073
Home Organization staff, including District Secre
taries  10,856
Beports, magazines, and other Uterature  6,318
Allowances to old and disabled servants  4,744

total expenditure £307,040

91

NOTICE RESPECTING REMITTANOES.
Subscriptions and donations are received at the Bible
House, 146, Queen Victoria Street, London, E.G. 4; also at
the Society's Bankers, The Bank of England, Threadneedle
Street, B.C. 2, and Williams Deacon's Bank, Limited, 20,
Birchin Lane, E.G. 3 ; — advice being sent to the Secretaries at
the Bible House. Cheques (crossed on the Bank of England),
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.

Letters containing Orders for Books are requested to be
addressed, prepaid, to the British and Foreign Bible Society,
146, Queen Victoria Street, London, E.G. 4. The Society's Depot
is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., the Offices from 9 a.m. to
5 p.m. On Saturdays the Depot and the Offices close at 1 p.m.
The Bible House is closed on the usual public holidays.

FORM OP A BEQUEST TO THE SOCIBTY,
I bequeath the sum of Pounds sterling
free of Legacy Duty to "The Bkitish and Foreign Bible
Society," instituted in London in the year 1804-, to be paid for
the purposes of the said Society to the Treasurer for the tiine
being thereof, whose Receipt shall be a good discharge for the
same.

Home Telegraphic Address: Testaments Cent London,
Foreign Telegraphic Address : Testaments London.
Telephone : 2036 Central ; 6174 City.
XJHtWn BBOTHXBB, UUITED, lEB OBSBHAM FBEBS, WOEnia AND LONDOX

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