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Gift of the Publish

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THE WORD AMONG THE NATIONS,

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A MACEDONIAN SHEPHERD.
THE WORD
AMONG THE
NATIONS

A POPULAR
ILLUSTRATEDREPORT
OF THE BRITISH
AND FOREIGN
BIBLE SOCIETY
FOR THE YEAR
MCMVIII-IX

THE BIBLE HOUSE
QUEEN VICTORIA STREET LONDON

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
Except where otherwise stated the incidents and
statistics in the following pages belong to last years record.
It should be noted that this period is reckoned to end on
"December 31 J/, 1908, as regards the Bible Society's
foreign work ; and as regards its home work, on March
315/, 1909. T. H. DARLOW,
Literary Superintendent.
The Bible House,
August, igog.

CONTENTS.
PAGES
Proem .  i
The Confusion of Tongues .... 7
A Great Company of Publishers .... 30
The Unrest of the World ..... 38
The Migration of Common People • • • . 57
Messengers of the Word ..... 68
With Signs Following . . . . . -91
;^ s. D  104
Appendix . . . . . . . .111

' ' When the Lord gave the law from Sinai He wrought
great ma^'vels with His voice. The Voice sounded from
the South ; and as the people hastened to the South, lo!
it sounded from the North. They turned to the North,
and it came from the East. Tliey turned to the East,
and it came from the West. They turned thither, and it
came from heaven. They lifted up their eyes to heaven,
and it came from the depths of the earth. And they
said one to another. Where shall wisdom be found? ^
'¦'¦And the Voice went forth throughout the world, and
was divided into seventy voices, according to the seventy
tongues of men, and each nation heard the Voice in its
own tongue. ... And each one in Israel heard it according
to his capacity ; old men, and yout/is, and boys, and
sucklings, and women ; the Voice was to each one as
each one had the power to receive it."

THE WORD AMONG THE NATIONS.

PROEM.
No human endowment is more wonderful and mysteri
ous than the power of speech. It is a distinctive faculty
in man which sets him apart from all other living
creatures. The dumb beasts, as we significantly call
them, can utter characteristic sounds ; but these sounds
fall far short of articulate words, and the two are
separated by a gulf which no animal has ever crossed.
Language, in its proper sense, is something unattained
and unattainable by the mute creation. For it really
begins when a definite sound is recognized by mutual
understanding as the symbol of some particular idea,
and so can be used as a means of communicating that
idea. Language, says W. von Humboldt, is the out
come of "the eternal striving of the human spirit to
make the articulated sound equal to the expression of the
thought." For man is a social being, and one prime
necessity of his existence is fellowship with his kind.
Out of this imperious instinct which urges us to com
municate with one another, primitive speech was born.

THE WORD
Curious and fantastic theories have been held regarding
the primeval language of mankind. One long-cherished
notion was expressed by St. Jerome when he wrote,
in an epistle to Damasus : "the whole of antiquity
affirms that Hebrew, in which the Old Testament is
written, was the beginning of all human speech. ' ' Origen,
in his eleventh homily on the Book of Numbers, states his
belief that the Hebrew tongue, originally given through
Adam, survived in that part of the world which was the
chosen portion of God. By similar logic, the Buddhist
priests in Ceylon claimed that Pali, the language
of the Tripitaka which is their sacred canon, was the
mother of all other tongues. At Antwerp, in the year
1580, Goropius published a book to prove that Dutch
was spoken in Paradise ; while less than a century ago,
J. B. Erro, in his work El Mundo primitivo which
appeared in 18 14, claimed that Adam and Eve talked
Basque. The most learned modern philologists, how
ever, are not disposed to dogmatize about the genesis
of this mysterious faculty of speech. The whole process
is hidden in the darkness of an impenetrable past.
One authority considers that the earliest form of lan
guage consisted of unconnected monosyllables which
were used as names for visible objects. But to the
enquiry, " how did such primitive names come to
exist?" he frankly admits that he has no answer : "It
" must be confessed that upon this subject nothing very
" satisfactory has yet been said, or is likely soon to be
' ' said. The question is exceedingly far-reaching and
" its solution is necessarily devoid of adequate data. . . .
" So far, the theories advanced have been mere guess-
" work, although the guesses possess various degrees
"of plausibility."*
* Introduction to the Natural History of Language, by T. G. Tucker, igoS.

AMONG THE NATIONS
Two points, however, emerge, which have become
accepted among the ablest scholars. It is agreed that
all existing forms of language, in spite of their be
wildering diversity, are one in essential characteristics,
just as humanity is one in its separateness from the
lower animals. When we are able to describe that
which unites men, we may perchance understand the
formation of speech which is the symbol of their union.
Further, it is agreed that language, which serves as the
means whereby men communicate, is also incidentally
an immense help to them in every attempt to think.
Max Miiller goes so far as to affirm, "without speech no
reason, without reason no speech." And if we hesitate
at that sweeping dictum, we cannot but feel how
strangely our words can crystallize and embody our
thoughts, giving to airy nothing a local habitation and
a name. Man's first step towards real knowledge of
any object is generally to give it a name. As soon as
we name it, we begin to make it knowable, for we have
brought an individual object into a general class. Words
are far more than mere labels. They have subtle power
over the processes of the mind. They colour our
emotions and shape our ideas. Hegel recognized this
when he wrote, "it is in words that we think."
* * *
If we turn from questions of philosophy to questions
of divinity, we are confronted by a corresponding
limitation. Here, too, we are only able to think by
the help of words. Countless generations of men have
pondered over the supreme problem — how to find
language which can express the unutterable nature and
thought of God. The rabbis of Jerusalem and the mystics
of Alexandria discoursed, not always very consistently,

THE WORD
of a Divine Word, whereby the Most High makes
Himself known in action and teaching. The later
Stoics preached in another sense their doctrine of the
Spermatikos Logos (the Generative Reason) and affirmed
that one Divine Word was the essence alike of gods and
men. And that very term Logos stood in Greek alike
for reason and for speech in which reason takes rational
and coherent form. It was the term borrowed by the first
Christians when they set forth the Eternal Gospel : In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh,
and dwelt among us.
Such language expresses a mysterious truth which the
wisest philosophers have never exhausted. Yet simple
work-a-day men and women, who know nothing about
philosophy, can receive and rejoice in the glorious
assurance that God Himself has broken silence, and
uttered the incommunicable secret, and shown us how
we may think about the mystery of His own Being :
in these last days He hath spoken unto us in His Son.
The supreme and final Word of God is the Divine
Person of Jesus Christ, transcending the world yet
immanent in it, now incarnate for us men and for our
salvation. Here is the distinctive doctrine of Christianity.
The revelation in our Lord's Person sums up everything
that went before it in the ancient Scripture. "All the
words of God which were spoken in divers parts and in
divers manners, were so many fragments of the truth
which formed a perfect whole in Christ."
In the story of the healing of Bartim^us, the Arabic
version of Tatian's Diatessaron has preserved a gloss
which is lacking in Greek MSS. In answer to the
question "What wilt thou that I should do unto Thee? "

AMONG THE NATIONS
we read that the blind man said unto Him, " My Lord
and Teacher, that Thou shouldest open my eyes, and that
I may see Thee.'' Here is the enduring office and
function of Holy Scripture — to open our eyes and bring
us face to face with Christ Himself. It is most true that
the Word is "new born every day over again in the
hearts of the saints." He is alive for evermore in the
experience of His Church. In this sense it has been
beautifully said that ' ' the Gospels are not four, but
' ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of
thousands,' and the last word of every one of them is
' Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of
the world.'"*
Yet it remains also true that Christianity is a historic
faith. Apart from what we know about our Lord from
the Scripture, He would dissolve into a phantom or
evaporate into a vague sentiment. By virtue of the New
Testament His Real Presence lives and moves among
us still. The whole content of God's revelation is written
in letters whereof He is Alpha and Omega ; and in each
chapter of our Christian experience He still makes Himself
the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last. This is
why Ignatius bids us " fly to the Gospels as to the Flesh ' '
— the very outward manifestation — "of Christ" ; and
on the other hand writes in the same epistle, "for me
' ' the documents are Jesus Christ ; my unassailable
' ' documents are His cross and His death and His
' ' resurrection, and the faith that is through Him ; in
" which I hope through your prayers to be saved." f
* The Confiict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire,
by T. R. Glover, p. 140.
t Ignatius, Ad Philad, 5 and 8.
5

THE WORD
During the last century of Christian progress at home
and abroad, there has grown up, in the economy of God's
Providence, one great institution whose privilege it is to
act as the Steward of modern Christendom in translating
and distributing the Scriptures. The British and Foreign
Bible Society exists for one sole and supreme object. It
leaves all questions of interpretation and criticism and
comment to be dealt with by recognized and appointed
teachers, while it labours with a single eye to place the
Book which all men need in the hands of each man who
is willing to receive it. The chapters which follow will
present a series of pictures drawn from the records of the
Bible Society's multifarious service at home and abroad
during the past year.

AMONG THE NATIONS

THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES.

" Oh, but the heavenly grammar did I hold
Of that high speech -which angels' tongues turn gold!

Or if that language yet with us abode
Which Adam in the garden talked with God !
But our untempered speech descends — poor heirs!
Grimy and rough-cast still from. Babel's bricklayers."
Francis Thompson.
We all know what it means to belong to a nation.
Yet when we try to define precisely what constitutes a
nation and separates it from other peoples and tribes, we
soon discover that wq have embarked on no very simple
task. We may perhaps agree that a nation consists of
men who share the same blood and the same soil, the
same faith and the same speech. They have a sense
of common descent. They not only inhabit one country,
but they come of one stock. In earlier times they traced
their lineage back to some primitive ancestor — Father
.^neas or Father Abraham. They inherit common
memories and traditions and institutions. They live
under the same law. They worship at the same altars.
They have been welded together in conflict against
common foes. And, finally, they use the same language :
the great sacrament of nationality is a common mother-
tongue.

THE WORD
Now it is plain that not every nation fulfils all these
conditions. The Swiss are a nation, though four
different languages are current in their cantons. The
Poles are a nation, though the kingdom of Poland has
been blotted out from the map of Europe. The Bible
shows us how from a tribe the Jews became a nation, and
conquered a country for themselves and obtained national
laws and government. And the Jews are a nation still,
though for more than eighteen centuries they have been
wandering homeless in the world. Bishop Creighton
has declared that nations with their diversities of
temperament and institutions and customs form part of
that Divine order which is revealed in the facts of
human history.
It is true indeed that the old national order is changing
before our eyes. Populations shift and migrate, and
whole peoples die out. Not a few races seem to wither by
mere contact with Europeans. In Canada and the United
States the red man lingers only in vanishing remnants.
The Carib has practically disappeared from the West
Indian islands. In the Pacific the Kanaka and the Papuan
are dwindling. The last of the Tasmanians expired
within living memory. The Australian aborigines are
in rapid decay. We hear present-day prophets pre
dicting that the earth will soon be divided among a few
dominant peoples. Others, again, believe that nations
themselves are growing cosmopolitan and losing their
old distinctiveness. It is argued that capital has
become international and that trades-unionism is fast
following the example. "On the horizon of modern
thought we are in sight of the fact that in the progress
of the world the days of ' nationalities ' in the old sense
are numbered." *
* Benjamin Kidd : "Principles of Western Civilization," p. jSg.

AMONG THE NATIONS
Yet such predictions can never be more than guess
work. We are aware, on the other hand, in quite recent
years of a most significant and wide-spread revival of
nationality. Race-consciousness grows more intense,
while race-hatreds certainly do not grow less bitter. Among
Magyars and Czechs and Poles and Irish and Welsh,
national spirit reasserts itself by a passionate pride
in national speech. Whatever the future may have in
store, we and our children are living in a polyglot world.
Few English people realize the extraordinary diversities
of language which divide the different kindreds and
tribes of mankind. Take Chinese, for example, which
is spoken by nearly a quarter of the human race. Chinese
consists mainly, if not entirely, of words of one sylla
ble : it has no inflexions, no declensions, no conjuga
tions, and little or no grammar. There are Bantu
languages, spoken by savages in Africa, which possess
complicated inflexions and a most elaborate system of
sustained grammatical concord which pervades each
sentence. In North America the Indian languages
build up a complex idea by combining many syllables
into a single word : thus in Cherokee, ' ' wi-ni-taw-ti-ge-
gi-na-li-skaw-lung-ta-naw-ne-le-ti-se-sti" is equivalent to
"they will by this time have come to the end of their
declarations of favour to you and me. ' ' The Polynesians
possess only ten consonants — f, k, 1, m, n, ng, p, s, t, v.
The speech of the Hottentots is full of clicks and clucking
sounds. An early French missionary to Annam wrote :
" When I arrived and heard the natives speak, particu
larly the women, I thought I heard the twittering of
birds, and I gave up all hope of ever learning it."
In Annam similar words are distinguished by modulations.
For instance, " ba pronounced with the grave accent means
a lady ; pronounced with the sharp accent, it means the

THE WORD
favourite of a prince ; pronounced with the semi-grave accent,
it means what has been thrown away ; pronounced with the
grave circumflex, it means what is left of a fruit after it has
been squeezed out ; pronounced with no accent, it means
three ; pronounced with the ascending or interrogative accent,
it means a box on the ear. Thus : — Ba, ba, ba, ba, is said to
mean, if properly pronounced, 'Three ladies gave a box on
the ear to the favourite of the prince.' "*
In Melanesia and the New Hebrides each little island
speaks a different dialect, unintelligible to its neighbours,
who have been its enemies for uncounted generations :
there are cases where two or three such dialects occur
on one small island. Strabo described the Caucasus
as "the mountain of tongues, " and many of its upland
valleys still form a kind of linguistic museum : for
by its situation this range caused a natural eddy in
the migrations between Asia and Europe, so that
remnants of many tongues have been there stranded
and preserved. When the Tsar of Russia kept his
coronation festival at Moscow, he received in audience
representatives of all the hundred and twenty races
and tribes included under his sway, each wearing
a distinctive costume and using a separate speech.
Among our fellow-subjects in the Indian Empire
more than a hundred and fifty different languages
are spoken — not mere dialects, but languages as different
from each other, at least, as French is from Spanish.
Surely of all buildings ever erected on earth the
Tower of Babel has cast the longest and the blackest
shadow. * * *
The Task of the Translator.
The complete Bible in a heathen tongue ! Do we
realise what a world of consecrated toil this represents ?
* Max Miiller, Lectures on the Science of Laiiguage. Second Series, p. ji.
lO

AMONG THE NATIONS
Behind the finished Book lie its earlier sections, the
New Testament or the Psalter or one or two Gospels ;
behind these, again, lie the first attempts at the Lord's
Prayer and a few scattered texts, and behind all lie the
reduction of the language to writing and the preparation
of grammar and dictionary. The Bible learns to utter
God's thoughts in a new tongue as a child learns to
talk. First in broken words, which gradually gain
shape and distinctness ; then in sentences, which,
though disjointed at first, grow more and more closely
connected till ultimately the child's words become a
more or less complete vehicle of his thoughts. Such
is the life-history of the first complete Bible in a
heathen tongue, prepared in New England by the
earliest Protestant missionary, John Eliot, one of the
Pilgrim Fathers. He began to study the language of
the Massachusetts Indians, about 1643, with the help
of an Indian who had been captured in war. .Soon
the infant Massachusetts Bible began to learn its new
lesson, and growing day by day, it stood forth before
the world in 1663 in the dignity of complete manhood.
At the end of his Indian Grammar, Eliot lifts the
veil from its history and tells us a little of what it
cost. He writes :
"I have now finished what I shall do at present: And
in a word or two to satisfie the prudent Enquirer how I
found out these new wayes of Grammar, which no other
Learned Language (so far as I know) useth ; I thus inform
him : God first put into my heart a compassion over their
poor Souls, and a desire to teach them to know Christ,
and to bring them into his Kingdome. Then presently 1
found out (by Gods wise providence) a pregnant witted
young man, who had been a Servant in an English house,
who pretty well understood our Language, better than he
could speak it, and well understood his own Language,
1 1

THE WORD
and hath a clear pronunciation : Him I made my interpreter.
By his help I translated the Commandments, the Lord's
Prayer, and many Texts of Scripture : also I compiled
both Exhortations and Prayers by his help. I diligently
marked the difference of their Grammar from ours : When
1 found the way of them, I would pursue a Word, a Noun,
a Verb, through all variations I could think of. And thus
I came at it. We must not sit still, and look for Miracles :
Up, and be doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer
and Pains, through Faith in fesus Christ, will do any thing."
John Eliot's experience has been reproduced in the
lives of many subsequent translators, whose prayers
and pains, joined with their faith, have moved away
mountains of difficulty and opened out a way for the
voice of God to hearts hitherto unconscious of His
tones. This noble self-sacrifice and heroic drudgery of
the translators, coupled with the magnificent devotion
of those who have carried the Book in their hands and
the generosity of those who have provided the funds,
make the work of the Bible Society incomparably
sacred. Such gifts are indeed sanctified by the altar.
Poverty-stricken Languages.
The Mosquito Indians in Nicaragua had originally
no word for sin. The idea had to be expressed by their
word saura, which means bad in anything, e.g., bad
to eat. Another word sometimes used for sin is wattaui,
which means ' ' out of the way ' ' — a significant expression.
The Indian race is not blest with a forgiving spirit ;
nevertheless their phrase representing the verb "to
forgive" is a speaking one indeed: in literal English
it means, "To take a man's fault out of your heart."
God's mercy has taken this form in Mosquito-Indian,
' ' The law of God's white heart. ' ' Doubtless, Christianity
may be credited with the birth of these combinations.
12

AMONG THE NATIONS
The language being notably poor, and the ideas of the
people correspondingly circumscribed, some ideas of
the Gospel could not be given to them except in a cast
of their own words specially framed for the purpose.
Dr. George Smith, of the Australasian Methodist
Mission, who reduced the language of New Britain to
written form and translated a Gospel into it, declares
that among those islanders the active-transitive mean
ing of the verb "forgive " is utterly unknown. " Even
in a land like Fiji, now a Christian country, we have not
yet been able to translate the sixth petition of the Lord's
Prayer in any other way than : ' Be not angry with
us on account of our sins, as we are not angry,' etc. "
Regarding the Ibo language, which is current among
at least 3,000,000 tribesmen in Southern Nigeria,
Archdeacon Dennis writes : —
" Our search after suitable words gives us glimpses now
and then of the state of things existing from time immemorial
in this part of the pagan world. It is at least suggestive
that the same word has to do duty for • right ' and ' might,'
that there is no way of distinguishing between ' to punish '
and 'to make suffer,' that 'truth' has as its nearest equi
valent ' good word,' that ' servant ' and ' slave ' are synony
mous, that ' friendship ' and ' fornication ' are scarcely
distinguishable, that ' hope ' can only be expressed by a
paraphrase, and that ' conscience ' has to be transliterated.
Naturally, we find the language sadly deficient in all that
relates to the unseen and spiritual, while on the other hand it
is redundant in what concerns the body and every-day life.
The word ' soul ' has no equivalent, and the equivalent for
' spirit ' is so monopolized by superstition that necessity
alone has induced us, after much hesitation, to adopt it.
The same is true to a less extent of the word for ' holy.' "
The Rev. H. C. Withey, of the American Methodist
Episcopal Mission is just completing — at the Bible
13

THE WORD
Society's charges — the first version of the New Testament
ever made in Ki-Mbundu. This is one of the strongest
Bantu languages of South-West Africa, where it is
spoken by a people in the central region of the Portu
guese Colony of Angola. Mr. Withey has spent twenty
years among these Ki-Mbundu, and he thus describes
their speech : —
" The)' have a full vocabulary for vices, but a limited one
for virtues. The equivalent for ' sacrifice ' was very difficult
to find, not because they had not the idea, but because it
was so seldom mentioned in ordinary conversation. The
word for ' Saviour ' we coined, according to the analogy of
other names derived from verbs, and proved afterward not
only that we were warranted in so doing, but also that this
term was in actual use among the natives. The missionaries
at first could find no noun for 'love.' They had the verb,
however, and they thought by omitting the prefix of the verb
' to love ' (ku-zola), and thus dropping the sign of the
infinitive, they would have the noun eola left. As it happens no
such word exists in Ki-Mbundu ; but the nearest approach to
it in sound is a word which means "a hook." One day a
missionary was speaking very earnestly, and using this word
eola, while the natives sat completely mystified. Finally,
one said to the others, ' I know what he means : he is talk
ing about those big iron fish-hooks.' "
" On one occasion I was stuck fast for the Ki-Mbundu word
for 'plague.' I named the Portuguese equivalent, ' peste,'
and asked a native for the word in his own language ; but he
could not tell me. Three or four days later some men were
talking about rats, and said what a dibebu they were. I had
found the word I wanted ! "
In the New Hebrides.
The rendering of the names for the points of the
compass has proved curiously difficult in numerous
dialects spoken on certain small islands in Oceania.
H

AMONG THE NATIONS
For instance, a word meaning ' seawards ' may be used
for east, or west, or south, according to the side of the
island upon which the speakers are living. On the
island of Efate, in the New Hebrides, the word 'suefate'
or '¦sueula,' used on the north side of the island, means
' south wind,' but used on the south side of the island it
means ' north wind ' — the literal sense of the term being
'coming down from Efate, or from inland.' So at
Havannah Harbour, the word ' tokalau,' which is
literally 'abide on the sea,' may mean a wind blowing
from any part of the sea visible from the Harbour — that
is, any wind from the east to the north or west.
On the other hand, from the island of Ambrym we
hear* of a beautiful word, the native word for love.
Literally translated, it means ' the heart keeps calling,
calling for me ' ; and ' love of God ' in the native
Ambrym language is 'the heart-callings of God.'
Another most picturesque thought is locked up in their
word for ' good-bye ' ; it means literally ' fire in the sky
again to you,' that is to say, 'another dawn,' and is
equivalent to our old English word ' good-morrow. '
In Uganda.
At the Society's annual meeting in Queen's Hall last
May, an impressive address was delivered by the Rev.
H. E. Maddox, of the C.M.S. Mission in Unyoro, part
of the Uganda Protectorate. Our Society has published
Mr. Maddox's translation of the New Testament into
Nyoro, and he is returning to Africa to complete
the Bible in that language. In his speech he gave
some vivid examples of the " traps " which beset trans
lators engaged in rendering the Scriptures into an
African tongue. * Saints and Savages, p. 797
15

THE WORD
" When St. Peter was asked, ' Doth not your Master pay
tribute ? ' he answered ' Yes ' ; but if in the language of
Unyoro we were to translate the word ' Yes ' by the equiva
lent for ' Yes,' the meaning conveyed to a native would be
' Yes, He does not,' because the word affirms whatever has
gone before, including the negative.
" Many people think that the same word in Greek should
always be represented by the same word in the native
language. Let us try. Take the word 'carry.' You may
carry a box, or you may carry a sick man ; but if you used
for the sick man the same word that you have used for the
box, you would suggest that you were trying to balance him
on the top of your head.
" Many passages are extremely difficult to translate.
' The fir-tree is a dwelling for the stork ' — but there are no
fir-trees in Uganda. Shall we then choose a tree which is
like a fir-tree ? The stork will not live in it. We must
surely choose a tree where the stork does live, whether it is
like a fir-tree or not."
Swahili. One of the great languages of the world is Swahili,
which serves as a lingua franca throughout the main
part of East Africa. The principal translator of the
Swahili Bible was Dr. Steere, who went out in 1863 as
a member of the U.M.C.A., and was consecrated Bishop
of Central Africa in 1874. A lady missionary, who
worked for many years under the Universities' Mission,
recently described how, by her knowledge of idiomatic
Swahili, she was able to assist Bishop Steere in his
translation. For example, in Rev. xix. 8, the wife of
the Lamb is said to be ' arrayed in fine linen clean and
white,' and 'linen' the Bishop had rendered by the
word bafta. Now bafta, says Miss Allen, " is a word
commonly used in the bazaars for the very poorest,
16

AMONG THE NATIONS
cheapest, glazed calico that is made — such as no self-
respecting draper in England would deign to have in his
shop. So I exclaimed, ^ Not bafta/ I can't have the
Lamb's wife clothed in bafta.' " Finally, she persuaded
the Bishop to adopt instead kitani, the Arabic word for
linen. The Swahili New Testament was published in
1883, and the Bible in 1891. In this language our
Society has issued over 100,000 copies of the Scriptures.
The Ideal Translator.
Illustrations such as these help us to appreciate the
story told of Olivetan, Calvin's cousin, who made the
earliest French version of the Bible which was translated
direct from the original Hebrew and Greek. It is said
that the name Olivetan means literally " burner of oil,"
and that it was bestowed on him as a soubriquet, by way of
homage to the immense labour which he devoted to his
version, trimming his lamp through so many midnight
vigils. A true translator will spare neither oil, nor pains,
nor patience, in order that the Scriptures may speak as
clearly and simply and sweetly as possible God's message
to each man in his own mother-tongue. Where can we
seek a better ideal of a translator than in the picture
which Interpreter showed to Christian: — "It had eyes
lifted up to heaven ; the best of books in its hand ; the
law of truth was written upon its lips ; the world was
behind its back ; it stood as if it pleaded with men ; and
a crown of glory did hang over its head."
Translators of the Scriptures come from all races,
from all ranks in life, and from all sections of the
Christian Church. In heathen and Moslem lands most
of them are missionary scholars, but we find not a few
exceptions. The version of the Bible in Tagalog, the
most widely spoken language in the Philippines, was
17 c

THE WORD
begun in Spain by a Filipino who had been carried over
there and was encouraged in his undertaking by our
Society's Agent at Madrid. The work was afterwards
carried on by the Society's Agent at Manila, who
completed it in Australia with the aid of another
Filipino. St. Mark's Gospel was translated into Masai
by a Government official in British East Africa.
The version of the Burmese New Testament which
is now passing through the press has been the work
of a Christian Burman who is a translator in the
service of the Burma Government. The Dinka version
of St. Luke's Gospel used by the C.M.S. Mission
in the Sudan was revised by an ex-Agent of our
Society ; he based his study of Dinka on the linguistic
researches of certain Jesuit missionaries, made available
by an Austrian philologist who prepared the version.
The history of many versions in Polynesia shows that
these were begun by native Christians who had left their
own homes and gone forth to other islands as pioneer
missionaries of the Gospel.
Six New Versions.
During the past year pioneer versions in six fresh
languages have been added to the Bible Society's ever-
lengthening list. Kanauri and Rabha belong to Asia ;
Ora and Ndau to Africa ; and Mailu and Lau to
Oceania. Each of these languages was reduced to
written form in order that it might become the vehicle of
the Gospel.
In publishing these new versions the Society serves
various sections of the Christian Church. Kanauri
will be used by Moravian missionaries, and Rabha by
American Baptists ; Ora will help to nurture a Mission
which may be called a grandchild of the C.M.S., for it is
i8

AMONG THE NATIONS
the offspring of the Niger Delta Pastorate of the Anglican
Church. Ndau will serve both the American Congre-
gationalists of the A.B.C.F.M. and the South Africa
General Mission. In the Southern Seas Mailu is used
by the L.M.S., and Lau by the Melanesian Mission.
Kanauri. This version is for a tribe on the southern slopes of the
Himalayas, where Kanauri is the language of the Kanawar
country to the north and north-east of Simla, and it is
spoken by about 20,000 people. Although some of the
men are also able to speak Hindi, Kanauri is the only
language understood by the women and children. It is
allied to, but distinct from, Tibetan. Kanauri possesses
a highly developed dual, a middle but no passive voice, a
double imperative, and certain vowels and consonants
peculiar to itself. Our Society has published St. Mark's
Gospel in this tongue. The version is the work of the
Rev. J. T. and Mrs. Bruske, of the Moravian Mission
at Chini, about fourteen days' march from Simla. The
Anglican congregation at Simla presented .^50 to the
Bible Society as a Centenary offering, expressing the
wish that it might be used to publish a Gospel in one of
the Simla hill-dialects. The gift has helped to pay for
printing the Kanauri St. Mark.
Rahha. Along the north bank of the Brahmaputra river, in
Northern Assam, is the home of the Rabhas. At
one time they were a fighting clan of the Bodo race, and
furnished recruits for our regiments in Assam. To
day they consist of peaceful farmers, whose religion is
demon-worship, and whose chief vice is drunkenness.
The Gospel of St. Mark in Rabha, which has just
19

THE WORD
left the press, is intended for the Rangdania sub
division of this clan, which is said to include about
18,000 people. The translator, the Rev. A. C. Bowers,
belongs to the American Baptist Missionary Union, and
is at present the only missionary at work among the
Rangdanias. According to his own estimate, perhaps
1,000 of these people are able to read; but education is
rapidly spreading. The Rabha children in the schools
are being educated through the medium of Bengali, and
are familiar with the Bengali characters, in which this
edition of St. Mark has been printed.
Ora. This is the mother-tongue of 15,000 tribesmen living
in Southern Nigeria. Though it is the language of the
Benin territory, it is not understood by the people of
Benin city, who speak the Addo language instead.
Such a fact illustrates the bewildering Babel of dialects
to be found throughout West Africa.
For some time the Delta Pastorate of the Anglican
Church has been spreading the Gospel in this part of
Southern Nigeria, where there is now an organized
native Christian community, numbering 500 souls.
In August, 1908, Bishop Johnson, brought to the
Bible House a manuscript of the Four Gospels
in the Ora language. The translation had been made
under his supervision by a native evangelist named
Isaiah Akinluyi. Years ago this man was captured and
carried off from his home in the Ora country to serve as
a slave in Yoruba-land. During his exile there he
acquired a knowledge of the speech of his task-masters,
which enabled him subsequently, after he had regained
his freedom, to translate the Gospels from the Yoruba
New Testament into his native language. Akinluyi is
20

AMONG THE NATIONS
totally unacquainted with English, and, therefore,
could not use the English version. Our Society has
published St. Matthew and St. Mark in Ora, and the
other two Gospels will very shortly follow.
Ndau. In South Africa the Four Gospels have been translated
into Ndau, the language of a tribe inhabiting the
Melsetter district on the eastern edge of Rhodesia. The
translators are Mr. Hatch, of the South Africa General
Mission, and Dr. Wilder, of the A.B.C.F.M., who have
worked together in preparing these Gospels, which
are now being printed by the Bible Society.
Lau. In the Solomon Islands of the South Pacific, Lau is
one language spoken on the island of Mwala, where
it forms the mother-tongue of a race of fishermen dwelling
round the western and northern coasts. These people
live on densely populated little islets, and they may
number 6,000. Already there are about 160 Lau
Christians, who show great eagerness to possess
the New Testament in their own language. St.
Matthew's Gospel was translated into Lau by the Rev.
W. G. Ivens and the Rev. A. I. Hopkins, and printed
four years ago at the Melanesian Press, Norfolk Island.
The Bible Society has arranged to take over this Gospel,
refunding the cost of its publication, and has also under
taken to bear the expense of printing any further books
which may be translated. Mr. Hopkins expects to have
St. Luke ready before long.
Mailu. Along the south-eastern coast of British New Guinea,
Mailu is the mother-tongue of the natives of Toulon
4 21

THE WORD
Island, which is also called Mailu or Mailukolo. This
island lies about four miles off the coast, opposite the
east end of Table Bay, and is being evangelized by the
L.M.S. During 1907 our Auxiliary in New South
Wales undertook to publish a translation of St. Mark in
Mailu, which had been prepared by the Rev. W. J.
Savile, a L.M.S. missionary on the island.
Three more complete New Testaments.
Last year saw the New Testament completed in Bicol,
one of the chief languages of the Philippines, where it
will be used by the American missionaries in that archi
pelago ; and also in Shambala, which is spoken in
Usambara, a hilly plateau overlooking the plains of
German East Africa, and is employed by the German
Evangelical Mission there.
The New Testament has also been completed in Dobu,
the language of an island off the east coast of New
Guinea, where it will be employed by the Australian
Methodist Mission. The Rev. W. E. Bromilow was
engaged last year at Sydney in completing the version
of the New Testament for our Society to publish. In
the early days of Mr. Bromilow's experience, his wife
was once sitting in their house at Dobu, when word was
brought that the natives were burying a dead woman
and her living child along with her. Mrs. Bromilow
ran out and rescued a baby boy literally from the breast of
his dead mother. She took him home to the Mission
House, where he was carefully tended, and grew up into
a young man who went to Sydney with Mr. Bromilow
to act as his assistant in translating and revising this
Dobu New Testament.
The number of complete Bibles on the Society's list
remains 105— the figure reported in 1908. The number
22

AMONG THE NATIONS
of complete New Testaments has risen to 102. There
remain 211 other languages in which only some part of
the Testament has as yet been printed, making up the
total to FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN DIFFERENT
LANGUAGES, in which the Bible Society has promoted
the translation, printing, or distribution, of at least some
part of Holy Scripture.
Towards Unity.
At the Lambeth Conference last year, the assembled
Bishops made this indisputable pronouncement : ' The
waste of force in the mission field calls aloud for unity.'
It is the privilege of our Society to draw Christians of
different communions into united service so that they
may secure a common version of the Charter of their
faith. During the last twelve months this principle of
union has found fresh opportunities for practice.
The Society has devoted money and pains without
stint to produce versions acceptable to Jews. No form
of speech gives rise to more perplexing problems than
the spoken language of the Jews in Central Europe,
commonly known as Yiddish, which is current in various
dialects. Our Society has translated the whole Bible
into Yiddish, and has printed the New Testament and
part of the Old. With the consent of the Rev. Marcus
S. Bergmann it has now been decided to produce a
unified standard Yiddish Bible, based on his own
version, and embodying whatever is best in other
versions. We are deeply indebted to him for uniting
with other scholars in this work, which will be pro
duced and published by our Society.
A similarly unified version is on foot in West Africa,
where the Scriptures had already been printed in three
dialects for the Ibo tribes. The New Testament in

THE WORD
'Union Ibo,' prepared by Archdeacon Dennis of the
C.M.S. at the expense of our Society, has just been
printed ; and he hopes to complete the Ibo Bible on the
same lines.
In the Transvaal and Rhodesia, efforts are being
made to secure a uniform system of orthography among
the Missions working there. In South Africa the
Society has also sought to encourage a movement
towards the fusion of the two great Kafir versions. In
China, the translators of the ' Union ' versions in Wenli
and Mandarin are making steady progress with the Old
Testament. For European immigrants into Canada, the Society
has just increased its numerous diglot editions by pub
lishing St. Matthew in Yiddish and English, and the
New Testament in Ruthenian and English : it has also
printed the Lithuanian Bible specially transliterated
into roman characters.
The Hebrew Bible.
The preparation of the Society's new edition of the
Hebrew Bible goes forward steadily under the patient
and laborious editorship of Dr. C. D. Ginsburg, the
learned Orientalist, who is receiving assistance from Dr.
Strack of Berlin, Dr. Eberard Nestle of Maulbronn, and
Dr. W. Aldis Wright of Cambridge. The Pentateuch
has been issued and received with a chorus of praise.
Experience proves, however, that the type used for the
Massoretic Apparatus is too small, and larger type will
be substituted in the completed Bible. Isaiah will
be the first book to appear in this new form.
Newly Revised Bibles.
Last year saw the publication of the Revised Hun
garian Bible, a work which has occupied many years,
24

AMONG THE NATIONS
and employed the best scholarship of the country. It is,
perhaps, too soon yet to state with absolute certainty the
reception which this Bible will meet with from the
Hungarian people ; but everything points to a complete
success, and from all sides — from the Churches, from
the press, and from private persons — we have a uniform
recognition of the value of the new book, and of its
superiority to the version which it has replaced. In less
than six months after its appearance, the Society was
obliged to take steps for the publication of a second
edition. The final revision of the Bengali Bible — originally
translated by William Carey — was completed last year
by that eminent Bengali scholar, the Rev. Dr. G. H.
Rouse, of the Baptist Mission, the news of whose death
in the spring of igog reached Calcutta on the very day
on which this revised Bible was ready for issue.
The revised Cree Bible, the crown of Archdeacon
Mackay's life-long labour, has now been published for
the Cree Indians in Canada. The revised Chuana Bible,
based upon the first version prepared for the Bechuana
by Robert Moffat and his colleague, William Ashton,
has also passed through the press under the care of the
Rev. A. J. Wookey, of the L.M.S. Bechuanaland
Mission, who has spent on it many years of toil.
The Society's shilling English School Bible, and
the new Welsh Reference Bible, mentioned in last year's
Report, have both met with a warm welcome.
Revisions of the Bulgarian Bible, and the Ganda
Bible are now being taken in hand by expert scholars
in each country. 25

THE WORD
For the Chuvash.
The Society has just undertaken to publish the New
Testament and Psalter in Chuvash. The agricultural
tribe called by this name numbers over half-a-million
people, and dwells in the valley of the Volga, for the
most part in the provinces of Kazan and Simbirsk.
They are considered to be of Mongolian origin, and
to have been greatly modified by the intermixture with
them of a Tatar element. Their language belongs to
the Turki stock, but is written only in Russian characters.
The Russian Orthodox Church converted them as
a body to Christianity, though it is said that some
relics of their ancient heathen practices still survive.
On the bank of the Volga stands Simbirsk, a town
of 44,000 inhabitants, from which education has gone
forth to the Chuvash people. Here is the seminary
for the training of teachers for the Chuvash schools,
an institution initiated, and still managed, by Inspector
J. Jacobleff, himself a Chuvash. The schools are
bi-lingual, instruction being given in Russian as well
as in Chuvash, and an important work of the seminary
has been the preparation of Chuvash school-books.
This seminary was the fitting place for the translation
of the Scriptures into Chuvash. Over thirty years ago.
Dr. W. Nicolson, a former Agent of the Bible
Society, suggested to Mr. Jacobleff the idea of making
such a version. He gave himself to the realization
of it, spending upon it much time and labour, and
also much of his own money, though at the same time
the Bible Society generously supported his translation-
work. After several editions of the Gospels, singly
and together, in igo2 a large edition of the Four
Gospels and Acts and of the Psalms was published,
and put into circulation in a few months. In igo3,
26

AMONG THE NATIONS
Mr. Jacobleff printed, with the assistance from our
Society, a small experimental edition of the Epistles.
But the volume now projected will be the first
complete Testament in Chuvash. It has again
been carefully revised, and Mr. Jacobleff believes it
now reaches the utmost perfection to which he and
his assistants can bring it. The book will be printed
at the Russian Government printing-office in Simbirsk.
Through all these years, work has also been done
upon the Old Testament, and experimental editions
of various parts have been published. The whole
Old Testament is now practically ready for the
compositor, and is only waiting till the problem of
expense has been solved.
For the Gipsies.
One of the most interesting schemes now engaging
the attention of the Society's Editorial Committee is the
proposed versions in Romany for the use of the gipsies
of Europe. Their exact number is not known, but a
quarter of a million would be an outside estimate.
Roughly speaking, gipsies can be classed under three
heads. First, there are the wide wanderers, who pass
backwards and forwards over the Continent from Russia
to Spain, and sometimes even migrate to Siberia or
America. The individual members of these nomadic
bands are of various origin and speak different dialects,
though they themselves are hardly conscious of the
differences and can understand one another. Then
there are other gipsy bands whose wanderings are
restricted within a country or province, such as the gipsies
of Great Britain, of Spain, and of Germany. Their
tendency is to develop dialects more or less incompre
hensible to their brethren in other lands. Moreover,
27

THE WORD
Romany, as spoken among gipsies of this class, has lost
its proper grammatical forms, and consists merely of a
vocabulary of uninflected Romany words intermingled
with some adopted foreign vernacular. The third class
consists of sedentary gipsies. After three generations
of sedentary life, gipsies, as a rule, entirely relinquish
Romany in favour of the language of the regions where
they are settled. The majority of gipsies, however, are
bi-lingual, and retain an extraordinary love for their own
Romany speech. The Christian evangelist must recog
nize this fact if he would win the respect and confidence
of these wandering folk, who survive as relics of an
earlier age. Reinhold Urban, in his tract entitled Die
Zigeuner und das Evangelium, writes with reference to
the Romany tongue : " With it one will often find the
key to the hearts of these distrustful, reserved, brown
people." At present we are confronted with the difficulty that
all gipsies are more or less illiterate. This obstacle,
however, will diminish as time goes on. In many
countries elementary education is being made compulsory
even for nomads. Professor Finck, of Berlin, the well-
known Romany expert, considers that their vocabulary is
sufficiently rich to make a version of the New Testament
into Romany quite practicable. He divides Romany
into two main groups of dialects — the western and the
eastern. The western includes Romany as current in
Germany, Bohemia, Wales, and Italy ; while the eastern
includes the dialects of Greece, Turkey and Asia Minor,
Rumania, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Of these eastern
dialects the Greek Romany is the most ancient, besides
being the most complete in its forms, and all eastern
gipsies understand it. On the other hand, Gitano, or
Spanish Romany, is so largely coloured by Spanish

AMONG THE NATIONS
phraseology that George Borrow's version of St. Luke
in Gitano has proved of little value outside the Peninsula.
It is not easy, however, to find competent scholars who
are qualified to translate the Scriptures into Romany.
The translation of St. Luke's Gospel into Eastern
Romany has been undertaken for the Bible Society by
Mr. Bernard Gilliat-Smith, of the British Consular Ser
vice at Constantinople, who has gained a thorough
knowledge of the German gipsies' dialect from residence
among the gipsies themselves, and has also spent
several years in a close study of the chief philological
works on Romany.
Speaking with Tongues.
Space forbids us to enumerate scores of other new
translations or revisions which are going forward at the
present time, under the Bible Society's auspices and
largely at its expense. We may fitly conclude this
section by quoting from a speech delivered last winter in
Kensington Town Hall by the Bishop of London : —
" I ask you to stand by this Society as it goes on its
way, really carrying out in modern form the old miracle
of the tongues. When people say to me : ' Is the
Christian Church speaking with tongues ? ' I say, ' Yes,
in the Bible Society.' When you think that the
Christian Church, through the Bible Society, has
turned the old message into 412 languages and more,
day after day, year after year, this seems to me the
modern equivalent of the gift of tongues in early days."
It is the high privilege of the Bible Society to serve
as one chief instrument whereby God works to cancel
the curse of Babel and to multiply the blessings of
Pentecost.

2g

THE WORD

A GREAT COMPANY OF PUBLISHERS.
' ' The Lord gave the Word : great was the company
of those that published it." — Psalm lxviii. ii.
After the Scriptures have been translated and revised,
it remains that they should be printed and published.
For this purpose more than sixty different alphabets and
characters are needed. In certain countries, such as
China, special paper is used, to suit the popular taste.
Only about one-third of the volumes issued by the
Society each year are printed in England and sent out
from the London Bible House. The great bulk of the
Society's output consists of editions of the Scriptures
in foreign languages, which are printed as far as
possible in the countries where they will find their
readers. Thus, for example, Spanish Bibles are printed
at Barcelona and Italian Bibles at Florence and
Hungarian Bibles at Budapest, while Arabic Bibles
come from the press of the American Mission at Beirut.
Half a million volumes in five and twenty versions are
bound every year in Berlin. All our Society's editions
in Chinese and Japanese are printed and bound in the
Far East, where this work can be most efficiently and
economically carried out.
But it is not enough merely to print great editions of the
Scriptures in hundreds of different versions. The Bible
Society maintains depots for the storage and sale of its
books in more than a hundred of the chief cities of the

AMONG THE NATIONS
world. Such depots are found, for example, at Rome,
Moscow, Alexandria, Ispahan, Bombay, Johannesburg,
Buenos Ayres, Winnipeg, Sydney, Seoul, Shanghai,
and Singapore. From these central storehouses con
signments of the Scriptures are sent out to booksellers
and missionaries as need arises.
In this manner our Society labours to provide all
Reformed Churches with the versions and editions
required for their foreign missions. It co-operates with
the missionaries in preparing the versions, it prints the
editions they ask for in the form they desire, it bears the
loss involved in selling the books at reduced prices, and
it pays the carriage of the consignments to the remotest
mission stations. How much trouble and expense the
mere transit involves will be realized by one or two
instances. It takes three months for a supply of
Scriptures from our depot at Shanghai to reach a
missionary in some distant provinces of China. Recently
seventeen cases of books were despatched from Shanghai
to a mission at Liangchow, in the province of Kansu ;
they had to be sent first of all 1,500 miles by river, and
then 500 miles more by mule across the mountains ; the
freightage alone cost more than the money value of the
books themselves. Not long ago the Society spent ;^6o
in freight in order to supply a remote African mission
station with p^ioo worth of Scriptures. The payments
for packing cases used at the Bible House in London
during igo8 amounted to ;^540.
The Society expended last year ;^I03, 000 in translating,
revising, printing, and binding the Scriptures.
Missions and the Bible.
To survey in a few sentences the prospects of
Christian missions in non-Christian lands is to attempt
31

THE WORD
the impossible. Yet wherever the unrest of humanity
grows acute, we discover fresh openings and opportunities
for the Gospel. In the words of an experienced ob
server : "Missionary work began by detaching men,
one by one, from the old systems : now we are running
great seams of disintegration through the old institutions
and organizations — we are beginning to feel the gathered
momentum of the past." The Bible Society has its own
mission. Its silent messengers enter countries like
Nepal, and Tibet, where missionaries fail to penetrate.
By circulating last year 150,000 copies of the Scriptures
in South America, it is leavening a continent which
most missions neglect. And everywhere in the broad
foreign policy of the Christian Church it plays an
indispensable part. An American preacher has declared
that what a road-bed is to a railway, the Bible is to
missionary enterprise. " No reliable road-bed, no per
manent train service ; no well-sustained Bible Society,
no permanence in missionary advance."
In the complicated task of distributing the Scriptures,
the missionaries of every Reformed Communion are our
most enthusiastic and untiring helpers. Experience
teaches them the profound truth of the words which
Bishop Steere wrote from East Africa — words which can
never be quoted too often : "I feel here that our work
must be all unsoundwithoutavernacular Bible; and this,"
he added, "the Bible Society has made possible to us."
The missionaries need the vernacular Scriptures for
building up their converts and for training their native
preachers and teachers. Unless a Christianized people
possess the Bible and live by the Bible, neither indi
vidual believers nor the Church as a whole can ever
arrive at maturity and strength. Holy Scripture is the
original source and norm of Christian truth. The study
32

A TIBETAN LAMA, HOLDING JJUL.-DHIST SCRIPTURES.

AMONG THE NATIONS
and use of the vernacular Bible guarantees in the end
the preservation of the Church through storms of
persecution, and the revival of the Church in times of
spiritual apathy.
At the Transvaal Missionary Conference which met
in Johannesburg last autumn, our Society was described
as "the foster-mother of missionary undertakings."
It provides them with the books they need on such terms
that the circulation is carried on without cost to the
missions which receive and distribute the volumes.
The Witness of Missionaries.
We may cite a few recent testimonies from our mission
ary friends. In October, igo8, the Paris Evangelical
Mission in Basutoland celebrated the seventy-fifth anni
versary of its foundation. At that great festival of
thanksgiving a special welcome was given to the Bible
Society's Agent in the Transvaal by the Rev. C.
Christeller, who spoke as follows : —
"The way your Society has helped us in our work is im
possible to describe. The fruits we have reaped have been
brought forth by the Book your Society has helped us to sell
so cheaply that the poor as well as the rich have been able to
buy it. If you travel through the whole country, whether
along the mountains or along the plains, you will find in every
village that the people have the Bible, the whole Bible, in their
houses, and that they hold it as a treasure. We ask you to
transmit our thanks; the thanks of the Church of Basutoland ,
the thanks of the whole Basuto nation, to your Society, which has
given us such a treasure."
To-day the Paris Mission in Basutoland has nearly
25,000 adults enrolled as communicants or catechumens,
and the contributions of these native Christians amount
to ;^4,ooo a year. In the Suto language, our Society
33 D

THE WORD
has published over 36,000 Bibles and 126,000 New
Testaments, and it has just issued an edition of 10,000
copies of the Pocket-Bible in this version.
On the Upper Congo.
In the summer of igo8 appeared the first edition of
the Mongo New Testament, printed at the expense of
our Society by the " Regions Beyond Missionary
Union " Press at Bongandanga, in the Congo State.
The following communication has since been received,
signed by twenty-one missionaries on the Upper Congo : —
"We, missionaries of the Congo Balolo Mission, desire to
express our heartfelt thanks for the kind interest and sym
pathy which the British and Foreign Bible Society has shown
in our work of translation, and the invaluable help it has
given us in the publication of the New Testament. It has
been thought most suitable that at this time we, as members
of this mission, should send a small donation as a token of
our esteem and gratitude."
The letter encloses a gift of ;^5 iis., which is doubly
valuable, coming, as it does, from these standard-bearers
of faith in one of the dark places of the earth.
In Uganda.
Travellers in Central Africa grow eloquent over the
fascination of the shores of the great equatorial fresh-water
sea, where such a striking chapter has been written in
the history of the modern Church. Sir H. M. Stanley
declared that the story of Uganda missionary enterprise
was an epic poem. The Bible Society has printed and
sent out altogether more than a quarter of a million copies
of the Scriptures in six different languages current in
the Uganda Protectorate. The contrast is enormous
between the pagan tribes of Central Africa, where there
34

AMONG THE NATIONS
is no Bible, and the people of Uganda to-day. Every
thing that the native Christian in Uganda has learned
about the Gospel, he has read for himself in his own
language out of the Book in his own possession. For
the C.M.S. missionaries in Uganda have realized the
fact that no religious teaching is of value which is not
founded upon the Word of God. The Bible permeates
the life and thought of the people. An adherent of
Christianity in native speech is called a "reader." In
Uganda, a missionary does not ask a man, "Why do
you not come to church ? ' ' but " Why do you not read ? ' '
The reading of the Bible, at present almost their only
book, has led them into the way of salvation. By
means of the printed page, the Spirit of God finds
access and entrance to human hearts.
In the Bible Society's Egyptian Agency the following
missions were supplied last year with Scriptures in the
versions which they required at their respective centres of
operation : —
The Church Missionary Society, the North Africa Mission,
the United Free Church of Scotland Mission, the American
Presbyterian Mission, the Reformed Presbyterian Mission,
the Swedish Mission, the London Jews Society, the British
Syrian Mission, the Edinburgh Medical Mission, the Irish
Presbyterian Mission, the Presbyterian Church of England
Mission, and ' La Mission Apostolique. '
The Printed Gospel.
Missionaries are keenly alive to the evangelistic
value of the printed Gospels. We read, for example,
in the report of the Batala Mission in the Panjab : —
" Owing to sickness in the earlier part of the season, we
were unable to reach more than 200 villages where
there are no Christians. In most of these 200 villages
we were able to sell one or more Gospels. The price is
35

THE WORD
not much, but the influence of a single Gospel is
infinitely more than it is in England. We do not give
Gospels away, as we often find that the book is not
valued if obtained free. We feel that the Gospel may
speak and does speak to people, after the preacher has
left."
In China.
Here is a characteristic testimony from China. The
Rev. C. J. Voskamp, of Kiaochow, in the province of
Shantung, writes as follows : —
" Whenever I am at one of our out-stations, I see the
Christians, both men and women, with their Bibles wrapped
up in a piece of silk or in a new handkerchief. These books
are all issued by the British and Foreign Bible Society, which
I deem to be one of the greatest benefactors to all the nations
on the earth. What every missionary is longing for is to see
his new converts become Bible Christians.
" In these Bibles, there are numerous red paper slips
marked with annotations made during their study of the Bible.
The Bible teaches them the Chinese characters, and from the
Bible they learn to read. The Bible purifies their language.
The Bible supplies them with new inscriptions, far deeper
and more glorious in meaning, for their walls. The Bible
cleanses their faces, their houses, and their habits. The
Bible opens for them new views for this life and a brighter
future. The Bible gives them a new sermon, a new prayer,
and a new song of praise."
From Manchuria, an Irish Presbyterian missionary
writes : —
" At any inn where I may be passing the night on a tour,
I enjoy bringing out a bundle of the beautiful small edition
of St. Mark's Gospel in coloured pattern-paper covers. After
talking awhile to an attentive group, I ask them to buy.
Long live the Society which issues the ' Good News ' in an
artistic form for half-a-farthing a volume ! "
36

AMONG THE NATIONS
In Korea.
A leading missionary in Korea writes: — "The
greatest factor in our work has been the circulation of
the Scriptures and their study as the Word of God."
No other country in the world supplies such remarkable
evidences of the evangelistic power of the New Testa
ment. Again and again we hear of little companies of
Christians gathered together in some heathen village,
simply through reading the Scriptures; so that when the
missionary visits the place where only a colporteur has
been before him, he finds not only enquirers, but
believers waiting for baptism.
In Saskatchewan.
We may close these testimonies by quoting a resolu
tion which reached the Bible House from Canada during
the summer of igog : —
"The Synod of the Diocese of Saskatchewan desire to
express their deep gratitude to the British and Foreign Bible
Society for its liberality in publishing a revised version of the
Holy Scriptures in the Cree Indian language. ' They realize
the truly Christian generosity of the Society in providing the
Word of God, not only for the millions of China and other
thickly populated countries, but even for the few and scattered
natives of this land, and they earnestly pray that God's
abundant blessing may rest on the Society and its glorious
work." To prepare and produce a first edition of i,ooo copies
of the revised Cree Bible — including the expense of
making plates — has cost our Society altogether ;^i,8oo,
or 36s. a copy. These Bibles are sold to their Indian
readers at an almost nominal price. Only the merest
fraction of the sum expended upon the edition can come
back to the Society from the proceeds of its sale.
31

THE WORD

THE UNREST OF THE WORLD.
A Society which has no frontier, and whose servants
are busy in the four corners of the earth, is compelled
to take wide views of things. To-day we are looking
out upon a world of unrest, with thunder on the horizon.
The horoscope of the future is written over with signs
of incalculable change. And yet Christians have learned
how to face social upheavals and political revolutions
without dismay. We believe that at the root of
human unrest there is a hunger and thirst after some
better thing. And when we see earthly principalities
and powers shaken into the dust, we can lift up our heads,
because we know that by means of these very changes
redemption draweth nigh.
In most civilized countries scientific men have estab
lished observatories, with delicate instruments to register
shocks and concussions caused by the earthquakes which
vibrate through the crust of the globe. The Bible House
may be compared to a seismological observatory, where
perturbations and upheavals in remote places are detected
and recorded, as they produce their effect upon the cir
culation of the Scriptures. Even literal earthquakes
create claims on our Society. After the appalling dis
aster in Sicily and South Italy during the closing days
of 1908, Italian Testaments and Gospels were freely
distributed among the distressed survivors, and one of
our colporteurs at Palermo did excellent service among
the refugees and wounded from Messina. Gifts of
38

AN OLD TURK.

AMONG THE NATIONS
English Bibles and Testaments have also been sent to
various churches and Sunday-schools in Jamaica, whose
buildings and books were destroyed by the terrible
earthquake in 1907.
Transformation in Turkey.
But when we turn to regions of political and social
disturbance, we realise how intimately the Bible Society
is connected with the nations of the world. In Turkey,
for example, men have witnessed during the last few
months — to quote the words of Mr. Asquith — " one of
the most amazing revolutions in the annals of history. "
It sounded like a fairy tale to hear that at Constantinople
a Constitutional Parliament had assembled, which
included two elected representatives from Jerusalem.
A fresh epoch has opened in the Near East, and every
Christian must hope that the corrupt and degraded
despotism which ruled so long at Yildiz Kiosk has
finally vanished, and that out of this national upheaval
a better and happier Turkey will rise on the ruins of the
old. For a century the Bible Society has been issuing
edition after edition of the Christian Scriptures in
Turkish, in Greek, in Armenian, in Bulgarian, in
Albanian, in Arabic, in Servian, in Rumanian, in
Hebrew — and in all the many tongues spoken by the
mixed nationalities under Ottoman rule. But the
Society's efforts have been hampered and thwarted by
the bigotry and perversity which made Old Turkey the
despair of her friends. The Bible was regarded as an
instrument of revolt, and the colporteur as a political
agent preaching sedition. The Sultan's censorship of
the press was carried to fantastic extremes. Certain
versions of the Scriptures did not escape condemnation.
In their efforts to suppress everything Macedonian, the
39

THE WORD
censors required the word "Macedonia" to be erased
from the Acts of the Apostles, and the official title
"Vilayets of Salonika and Monastir " to be substituted;
they would not suffer the man of Macedonia to call
across the sea, " Come over and help us." A story is
told that certain books on chemistry were confiscated,
because they contained the cryptic symbol H2O —
which stands for water ; the censors in their wisdom
imagined this to signify ' ' Hamid the Second is a cipher. "
Not long ago a number of Gospels were sent to Salonika
by the National Bible Society of Scotland, bearing on
their cover the picture of an aged Jew standing at the gate
of Jerusalem, while underneath were Greek words mean
ing "the gate of the city." Now to a Greek "the
city" stands for the metropolis, i.e., Constantinople,
where the Greek Patriarch resides. The censor at
Salonika insisted that this picture would be taken to
represent a Dervish standing at the gate of Con
stantinople, and that it would be an incentive to the
Greeks to try and recapture the ancient Byzantine
capital. So the covers had to be torn off before the
books were admitted.
In the Balkans.
One great benefit of the new Turkish Government,
as far as the Bible Society is concerned, appears in
Albania. Down to the summer of igo8 our colporteurs
in Albania and Macedonia were watched by hostile
authorities and persecuted by police agents and spies.
For many years the Society had been forbidden to issue
the Albanian Scriptures in what is known as the
' national ' character. Editions were allowed in the
Gheg and Tosk dialects, but these make the Gospel
accessible to comparatively few Albanians. Early in
40

AMONG THE NATIONS
igog, however, we have been permitted to print an edition
of the Four Gospels at Monastir in the new Albanian
character, and our staff has been strengthened so that
these books may pass promptly into the hands and
homes of the people.
Our Sub-agent at Monastir writes : — " The marvellous
changes which have happened in our country mean much for
the people of the Balkans, and not less for the Bible Society,
since the doors have been opened wide for the Scriptures
which bring light and salvation. When I think of our
troubles and difficulties and hindrances, of the fear which
possessed every Albanian who dared to buy a copy of the
Scriptures in his own tongue, all that has happened seems
to me like a dream. I can hardly believe that, when our
books arrive now, we can put them forthwith into the hands
of the colporteurs ; whereas formerly months of valuable
time were wasted in endeavours to get them sealed and
stamped by the local censors. Sales in Albania have never
been so high as they have been since the Constitution was
proclaimed. Many schools have been opened, and the
Albanian language is to be taught in the Turkish schools
there. This reminds me of the need for hastening the
translation of the entire Bible into Albanian, which the
Albanians are looking for with the greatest eagerness. Our
colporteurs reach the remotest corners of the country, help
the poor shepherd, comfort the sick and the prisoner. On
my last tour in Albania, I was amazed to find what the
people knew of our Society, and how much its work is
appreciated. Though the people are generally uneducated,
yet the Bible can be found in homes where you would least
expect it."
This new era of liberty in the Turkish Empire is a
strange and welcome experience. Apparently it will
grant us all we have ever asked — freedom to distribute
the Scriptures in the languages of the people.
41

THE WORD
The East-End of Europe.
The disturbed condition of south-eastern Europe last
autumn focussed attention upon the rival races which
mingle and conflict there. Our Society is prob
ably the only British institution which carries on
regular and systematic Christian work in every one of
the countries in question. Nor is it without significance
that among these peoples there is a manifest deepening
of interest in the Scriptures. We cannot doubt that
spiritual forces are evoked by crises in national existence,
and that in an atmosphere of patriotism and self-devotion
men's hearts grow sensitive to the Word of God.
For the hardy peasants of Bulgaria, who include
over 3,000,000 adherents of the Orthodox Church,
our printers have been unable to supply enough
copies of the Bulgarian New Testament to meet the
demand. In the Kingdom of Servia, where nearly the
whole population belong nominally to the Orthodox
Church, two devoted colporteurs have been traversing
the country for years, journeying with a horse and cart,
which enables them to visit sequestered villages and
hamlets. In Rumania, again, our Bible workers have
had remarkable success ; the circulation in 1908 is more
than double the result reported six years ago.
The Orthodox Church.
In all these countries the priests of the Orthodox
Church, as a rule, show themselves friendly to the
distribution of the Scriptures, and will even stand by the
colporteur's side and assist him in his work. On the
boulevard at Bucharest, a priest took his place beside our
colporteur and urged the passers-by to purchase the
Scriptures ; the Bible, he said, was the best book in
existence. In Wallachia a colporteur describes how
42

AMONG THE NATIONS
he accepted an invitation to visit a certain priest's
village on the next holiday. When he arrived
by sledge — for it was winter— the priest stood beside
the sledge in the snow. A crowd gathered, and
the priest read the Bible aloud to the people and
explained it: "We priests," he concluded, "can tell
you nothing in our churches, save that which is written
in this Book." Thirty Bibles, and more than thirty
Testaments, were sold in that village. The Servian
' popes ' — or parish priests^ — are invariably friendly, and
will sometimes accompany the colporteur and recommend
his books. In Croatia a colporteur visited a theological
seminary for Servian priests at Karlovicz, and sold a
number of Bibles and Testaments in Servian and other
languages. From Dalmatia our colporteur writes : "In
towns where the inhabitants belong to the Greek Church,
they are friends of the Bible Society. In such places I
always go first to the priest, and I must say that hitherto
they have all received me with kindness. On a recent
occasion one priest announced my presence from the
pulpit, and told his flock that they ought now to seize
the opportunity of procuring the Scriptures, pointing out
also the value of God's Word in the household ; and
thus in every family where the people could read I sold
a copy." The same colporteur describes how hospitably
he was entertained by the monks in a Greek mon
astery, and how, at another town, he was invited by a
bishop to the Old Catholic seminary, where he sold more
than loo volumes among the students.
The Greek Patriarch at Constantinople has permitted
our Society to purchase a large number of copies of his
own recently published edition of the New Testament in
the original Greek. These books have considerably
assisted our colporteurs in their work, not only in Greece,
43

THE WORD
but also among the islands of the .^gean. In Crete,
bishops and monks are friendly to the Bible Society. We
deeply regret that copies of the Modern Greek version
of the New Testament are still prohibited from entering
the Kingdom of Greece.

In Russia.
In the Russian Empire two movements of religious
significance force themselves upon our attention, both
of them springing from the emancipation which has
come to pass in quite recent years. One is a move
ment of recoil from Christianity. The people have
been carried away from their moorings by a flood of
new ideas on political, social, and economic questions.
The material conditions of life have become exclusively
important to them ; the perspective of values has
changed ; men are awakened as out of a sleep, and
they seem to themselves to have come into a new world
of thought and action, wherein Christianity has no part.
Side by side with this, however, we note a remarkable
religious movement, taking place for the most part
outside the Russian Orthodox Church. In many towns
and villages new congregations are being formed and
obtaining legal registration. For generations past our
Society has received special encouragement and assist
ance in Russia, alike from Church and State. Every
year we draw something like 350,000 copies of the
Scriptures in Russ and Slavonic from the printing
presses of the Holy Synod at St. Petersburg. Through
out the dominions of the Tsar, the village ' popes '
almost everywhere countenance and assist our colpor
teurs, nearly all of whom belong to the Russian
Orthodox Church.

44

AMONG THE NATIONS
The Church of Rome.
In strange and unhappy contrast we have to face
the hostility of the Roman Church in nearly all countries
where it exercises power. The ultramontane policy
which controls the Vatican inspires bitter opposition
to the circulation of the Bible without note or comment
in the language of the common people. Austria
presents a melancholy example of this clerical intoler
ance translated into law. In certain Austrian provinces
— Upper Austria, Salzburg, and the Tyrol, for instance
— the authorities persistently refuse to grant our
colporteurs any licenses whatever ; and throughout
the Austrian dominions it is a criminal offence for a
colporteur to sell a Bible in any other way than by
booking an order for it. The annexation of Bosnia
and Herzegovina by Austria deeply concerns the
Bible Society, since it brings these lands within the
scope of the Austrian press-laws. Hitherto in Bosnia
our colporteurs have been unshackled by regulations
which compel them to go about with ' samples, ' and
forbid them to sell their books direct. Meanxi^hile, it
is noteworthy that the sale of obscene prints goes on
unhindered in Vienna and other great Austrian cities,
where such gutter-stuff is freely exposed in shop-windows
and restaurants.
The same spirit of ecclesiastical intolerance obtains,
though to a somewhat less degree, among the Latin
nations of Europe. It rises, however, to a climax
in the Republics of South America, where the Roman
Church appears in its most corrupt and superstitious
form. Religious liberty has been generally established
by law ; but we hear far too often of Bible-burnings,
instigated or carried out by priests, who do their
45

THE WORD
utmost to lay hands on any copies of the Scriptures
which their people may have purchased from the
colporteurs. The Coptic Church.
It is not without relief that we look away to those com
munions which still represent ancient Christianity in the
East, among which the Bible is not a forbidden book.
The modern Copts, who number probably not far
short of a million, trace back their lineage to the ancient
Egyptians who built the pyramids at Gizeh. The
Coptic Church has survived twelve centuries of Moslem
persecution and oppression. In its liturgy it virtually
uses the tongue which represents what was spoken in
Egypt 3,000 years ago. The Coptic Patriarch of
Alexandria, Cyril the Fifth, claims to be the 112th
successor of St. Mark, and has under his jurisdiction
four Metropolitans, including the Metropolitan of the
Abyssinian Church, as well as fifteen other bishops.
One characteristic feature of the Coptic Church is the
large amount of Holy Scripture which is read in its
services. While its priests are often most imperfectly
educated, sixty-five young Copts have recently been
appointed lay-preachers and deliver Arabic sermons at
the ordinary services or in churches at special times.
These preachers are found mostly in Cairo and the chief
towns of the Delta. In October, 1907, a decree of the
Khedive gave permission to the Copts and other Christ
ians to have their own faith taught in the Government
schools, on condition that they provide and pay the
necessary teachers. Already Bible-teaching is being
given in ten Government schools in Cairo, which are
46

AMONG THE NATIONS
attended by about 500 young Copts. Arabic Gospels
and Testaments for this purpose are being provided on
nominal terms by our Society.
The Coptic Patriarch and the Bible Society.
The Coptic Church in Egypt has manifested a lively
practical interest in our Society, which has endeavoured
to strengthen this good feeling by showing its sympathy
with the Church. In September, igo8, it presented a
beautifully bound copy of the Arabic Bible to the
Coptic Patriarch at Alexandria. His Holiness acknow
ledged the gift by a letter, of which the following is a
translation : —
"May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ enjoyed by His
Saints and Apostles settle on you, our dear and beloved
friends, the President and the Members of the Committee of
the British Bible Society. May God bless you all. With
Christian greetings and in the love of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ, we have pleasure in making known to you that
the Holy Bible presented to us by you has been gladly
received. Therefore we take this opportunity to express our
gratitude and appreciation of this valuable gift. In closing,
we pray that the noble work of the British Bible Society may
be crowned with success and may ever be to the glory of
Jesus. "(Signed) Kerillos V.,
" Patriarch of St. Mark's Apostleship H2."
A similar Bible was also presented to the Coptic
Archbishop of Behera and Menoufieh, who resides at
Alexandria and was equally cordial in his gratitude
and sympathy. Shortly after the presentation he paid
a visit to the Society's headquarters in Alexandria, and
was surprised and deeply interested to learn that our
Egyptian Agency circulates the Scriptures in neariy
47

THE WORD
seventy different languages every year. The Arch
bishop made a donation to the Society's funds, and a
Coptic Auxiliary was formed last year in Egypt, which
has already raised ;^20 for the same object.
In a Georgian Church.
Mr. C. T. Hooper, who now has charge of the Society's
Egyptian Agency, paid a visit to Syria in igo8, and
addressed several Bible-meetings at Alexandretta. Mr.
Hooper writes :
" I obtained permission to address a large gathering in the
Georgian church. The people listened most attentively to
my story of the Bible Society and its great work. The old
priest was present with all the leading men of his community,
who at the close expressed their good wishes for the Society
and their pleasure in what they had heard. The local
missionaries say that this is the first time that a Protestant
has been allowed to speak in the Georgian church."
The Syrian Patriarch of Antioch.
The ancient Syrian Church of Mesopotamia, other
wise known as the Jacobite Church, has only one
Patriarch, who is elected from among the bishops by the
suffrages of the whole Church, the laity as well as the
clergy, and then confirmed in his office by the Turkish
Sultan. In 1874-5 the then Patriarch, Ignatius Peter
III., visited England by invitation of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Dr. Tait, and was received by the Queen
at Windsor. He was accompanied by Bishop Abdalla,
named Gregorius — which is the official name of the
Syrian bishops who hold, or have held, the See of
Jerusalem. In 1888 Bishop Abdalla Mar Gregorius,
who was then occupying the See of Emesa (Homs),
again visited England during the meeting of the
48

AMONG THE NATIONS
Lambeth Conference, and took back with him to Meso
potamia a gift of paper and binding materials granted
by the Bible Society for a new edition of the Syriac
Bible. Early in igog. Bishop Mar Gregorius, who has
now succeeded to the Patriarchal Chair of Antioch,
came to London for the third time, in the interests of the
education of his Church and people. He visited the
Bible House, and the Committee have presented him
with a large number of printed copies of the Scriptures
in Syriac and Arabic. The books will be sent out to
Mardin, which has been for many centuries the seat of
the Patriarchate.
In Abyssinia.
For many years no missionary enterprise has been
permitted in Abyssinia. Yet through the Swedish
Evangelical Mission at Eritrea, copies of the Scriptures
in Ethiopic, Amharic, Galla, and Tigrinya, provided by
our Society, pass in considerable numbers into this
closed land. One member of the mission, the Rev.
Karl Cederquist, has been permitted of late to reside
at Adis Abeba, where he receives and distributes Bibles
and Testaments in Ethiopic, Amharic, and other
Abyssinian languages, sent out to him by our Society.
It is curious to learn that a consignment of 370 volumes
which was despatched from Alexandria in July, igo7,
arrived at Adis Abeba only in March, igo8. Mr.
Cederquist wrote as follows in March, igog : —
" Our book-store here will soon run short of Amharic Bibles,
single Gospels, and copies of the Four Gospels and Acts.
At first no one would buy these last-named books ; but by and
by the people got to like both the single Gospels and the handy
little volume containing the Four Gospels and the Acts of the
Apostles. The complete Bible in Amharic is liked by many.
Time after time people talk about the joy they felt when they
49 ^

THE WORD
had learnt to read the Bible in their own tongue, and found
that they could understand it, although their priests told
them that they never would."
Our Committee at once agreed to send out to Mr.
Cederquist a fresh supply of the Amharic Scriptures
which he asked for in this letter.
In South Africa.
The legislative union so lately achieved in South
Africa has doubtless been brought about by more causes
than one. Great financial and commercial interests and
the need for public economy convinced all parties that
the change was imperative. But the possibility of such
co-operation between leaders who were so recently op
posed in bloody warfare was rooted in something deeper
than material concerns. One chief factor in the blend
ing together of the white races has undoubtedly been
their common regard for those Scriptures which our
Society has so widely and generously distributed in
South Africa. Common religious faith has dissolved
racial prejudices and distrust, and made co-operation
possible. The Speaker of the Transvaal Legislative
Assembly, General Beyers, addressing the last annual
Bible-meeting in Johannesburg, declared that "the
power lay in the Bible. It was because of that book that
the people of the Transvaal were living in peace and
harmony ; and it was from that cause that they found in
the bosoms of the Dutch people no feeling of revenge
against the English."
In Madagascar.
The secularist tendencies of France have been
emphasized by the French Colonial authorities in
Madagascar, where the present Governor-General has
50

AMONG THE NATIONS
shown unmistakably his intense dislike of all religious
work and influence. In the words of Dr. G. L. King,
the Anglican Bishop in Madagascar, "the missionary
is discouraged, and to some extent hindered, by an anti-
Christian government ... It seeks to overthrow,
not this or that ecclesiastical system, but the name
and power of Christ." Three-quarters of the Protestant
mission schools, which formerly contained 200,000
scholars, have now been closed. The greatest diffi
culties are thrown in the way of getting permission
to build new churches or to rebuild old ones. The
revival of heathen customs, dances and songs, often
of the most questionable character, is encouraged. In
the face of this open hostility and covert attack, in spite
of official influence brought to bear on the weaker race
and the constant appeal to self-interest to reject or
neglect the Christian religion, the Church in Madagascar
is not proving faithless to its high and heroic history.
Thousands of Malagasy Christians remain loyal to the
Gospel. Prayers are offered up in public for the success
of missionary efforts, such as have not been heard in
more quiet and peaceful times. The converts are stand
ing firm, and voluntary native helpers are coming
forward. Yet under such conditions it is not surprising to learn
that the circulation of the Scriptures in Madagascar has
declined from over 17,000 copies in igo6 to under 10,000
in igo8. At the united request of all the Protestant
missions in the island, our Committee resolved early in
igog to employ twenty-four native Christian colporteurs
in Madagascar, who will sell the Scriptures in the mar
kets and villages under the direction of the missionaries
themselves. One generous friend in England has under
taken to support twelve of these colporteurs.
51

THE WORD
In Persia.
Last year's events in Persia have resulted in a state ot
anarchy for which no cure has yet been found. The
chaotic condition of the country makes the task of the
missionary and the Bible-seller perilous, and well-nigh
impossible. Nor is it easy to foresee the outcome. A
secular despotism in Persia might prove less intolerant
of Christianity than a ' Pariiament ' filled with Moslem
fanatics. The Indian Empire.
During igo8 India has drawn the attention of the
world to a greater degree than in any year since the
Mutiny. The calm of the last half-century has been
succeeded in certain provinces and districts by stormy
disaffection and sedition. In its leading article, Feb.
1 2th, igog, the Calcutta Statesman wrote most sym
pathetically of our Society's beneficent work in Bengal,
where the dissemination of the Scriptures has recently
been beset with peculiar difficulties owing to political
hostility against everything that is foreign. In some
cases buyers of the Gospels have been told that ' ' it was
wrong for supporters of swadeshi to purchase the book."
The Statesm-an continues :
"We do not suppose for one moment that this deplorable
attitude has the sanction or approval of any of the leaders of
educated Indian opinion ; for, whether they accept Christianity
or not, they cannot but be aware of the moral worth of its
teaching, and therefore would not wittingly put obstacles in
the way of the circulation of such noble and elevating
literature as the Bible contains. ... As at the present time,
movements are developing in Bengal which call for readiness
on the part of the Society to cope with them, it is well that
Christian people and others who value the Bible should
realize that their help is now required more than ever.
52

A .-iIARALHA <i| THE LIECCAN.

AMONG THE NATIONS
Whole communities have been quickened with aspirations
for social advance. . . It can readily be imagined that among
such peoples the circulation of the Bible may have an
incalculable influence for good ; and the Bible Society should
therefore be placed in a position to pursue its work with
energy and zeal. Nor do we disguise the conviction that, in
the critical period through which India is passing, the work
of shaping a social and political fabric worthy of the
traditions of England and of the aspirations of the educated
classes of India would proceed on surer lines and with
infinitely less friction if the ideal of the Society were accom
plished and the Bible were placed in every man's hand."
India to-day is seething with a ferment of ideas and
aspirations — produced by contact with the culture of the
West. Many of these ideas have a directly Christian
origin. Others, again, are the fruit of the materialistic
and atheistic literature which has been sown broadcast
over the land. To the sinister influence of such
literature there is one supreme antidote : the mind and
heart of India must be permeated with the Bible. Last
year our Society circulated 680,000 copies of the
Scriptures in the Indian Empire.

In the Malay Peninsula.
Quite recently the British possessions in Malaya have
been augmented by a strip of territory lying between
South Siam and the northern borders of the Federated
Malay States. This territory, which has now passed
from the control of the Siamese Government, includes
Kelantan, Tringanu, Kedah, and other states, forming
an area altogether as large as Servia. More than
twenty years ago, when no Christian missionaries had
entered Kelantan or Tringanu, agents of the Bible
Society were distributing Malay Testaments and Gospels
53

THE WORD
there, until the native rulers intervened. Under the
new order of things, we trust that it will be possible to
renew this earlier attempt.
In China.
A new Emperor of China has commenced his reign
auspiciously, and the missionary outlook is full of
promise. Nominally, religious freedom does not exist ;
but in practice — apart from the restrictions on students
in Government schools and colleges and on the higher
officials — there is in China as wide a tolerance and as
unrestricted an opportunity for missionary work as in
any non-Christian nation. Nowhere else on earth are
such vast religious issues trembling in the balance.
' ' Can any Christian contemplate the prospect of this
people breaking away from their ancient and cherished
past — not knowing whither they are tending, nor who
are their best guides, nor what is their safe goal — with
out being deeply moved ? Rival voices are calling,
rival prophets attracting, and rival claims striving for
the mastery of this people, who constitute, in population
at least, the greatest factor in the world's life."
With profound thankfulness we record that the
circulation of the Scriptures in China has out-stripped
all previous records. Our own Society distributed
1)365,000 copies last year, more than ninety-nine per
cent, of which were actually sold. To quote from the
China Inland Mission report, " Gates of brass have been
broken and bars of iron cut asunder, so that the land
which Morrison found closed against the Gospel and
without a Bible, is now not only open throughout its
length and breadth and possessed of the Word of God
in its own tongue, but has a Protestant Church with some
54

AMONG THE NATIONS
200,000 communicants and probably about three-quarters
of a million adherents."
In the Far East.
Elsewhere in the Far East, we can also rejoice over
favourable omens and widening opportunities. In the
south-west provinces of Japan, our Society, which works
here in partnership with the National Bible Society of
Scotland, sent out last year the unprecedented number
of 311,000 books.
In Korea, through much tribulation, multitudes are
entering the kingdom of God. The results of the won
derful religious awakening have shown themselves in an
eagerness for the Scriptures which it has been often
difficult to satisfy. Nearly 46,000 Korean New
Testaments and 116,000 portions of Scripture were
sold last year. Protestant missions report 85,000
communicants and catechumens — which means a
Christian community of at least a quarter of a million —
who are importunate for the complete Bible in their
own tongue. The work of translating the Old Testa
ment makes steady progress, and we earnestly hope
that before very many months the Korean Bible will be
printed and published.
" Korea is dragged out of her age-long darkness and
slumber, into the stern light of the warfare and ambitions of
stronger nations. Oppressed, outraged, her self-respect all
bruised, forced reluctantly into inevitable subordination, the
iron has entered into her soul. Where shall she find comfort ?
The Word of God has been put into her hand just in time.
Tens of thousands are reading it, societies in remote villages
are formed for studying it, and mighty waves of spiritual
influence are sweeping over the land. It is Pentecost to-day,
and the words of the New Testament are the tongues in
which men tell the wondrous deeds of God."
55

THE WORD
This imperfect review may fitly conclude with a con
trast which Dr. W. T. A. Barber has drawn in eloquent
words. Not many months ago, there swept into Peking
the train bearing the Dalai Lama from Tibet — the
mysterious, incarnate Buddha emerging from his remote,
inviolable solitudes. And as he reached the railway
station at Peking — itself not long ago unknown to the
outside nations — there stood upon the platform the Bible
Society's colporteur, who during this last year sold there
nearly 15,000 Gospels and Testaments. O striking
symbol ! The far-away darknesses and superstitions of
mankind are coming, thick and fast, within our ken : as
they come, waiting to greet them stands the Living
Word, which drives away all darkness, opening the
doors of the palace of new thought, healing the ache of
unknown sorrow, bearing the power that transforms the
world.

56

.,^^c*^

'WHERE SU.MMEli AITERNOONS .\RE SPACIOUS

AMONG THE NATIONS

THE MIGRATION OF COMMON PEOPLE.
No phenomenon in the present day is more impressive
than the tides and currents of migration which year by
year carry fresh multitudes away from their native
shores. A century ago only rich men could travel.
To-day hosts of labouring folk are moving to new homes
in distant countries. Silently, ceaselessly, the great
exodus goes on, mainly among the poor. In every
continent it is arousing fierce political and social conflict,
and it promises to work out strange international results
in the blending of races and the fusion of tongues.
Everywhere it creates new needs and opportunities for
that missionary service which is the peculiar function of
the Bible Society.
The peasants of Europe are gravitating towards the
open spaces of America. From all parts of Austria-
Hungary, from Russia and Poland, from Italy, Servia,
Bulgaria and Rumania, a stream of emigration flows
westwards, year by year growing stronger and deeper.
The great majority of continental emigrants sail from
the German ports of Bremen and Hamburg, entering
Germany for this purpose at Myslowitz, the railway-
junction where the frontiers of Germany, Austria, and
Russia meet. At these three centres — Myslowitz,
Bremen, and Hamburg— the Bible Society watches for
the emigrants with its colporteurs. Last year the
financial crisis and industrial depression in the United
States hindered tens of thousands who would otherwise
57

THE WORD
have set out for the new world ; but there is every
prospect that the outflow of population will speedily
resume its former volume. At Myslowitz, Colporteur
Jendrny can speak most of the Slav languages, and has
also acquired a certain amount of Hebrew and Yiddish,
in order to converse with the crowds of Jews leaving
Russia and Poland for the States. At Bremen,
Colporteur Pliska makes such good use of a tricycle
presented to him by an English friend, that he has
gained the name of ' ' the flying book-seller. ' ' He is
specially qualified for his task by his remarkable collo
quial knowledge of Central European languages.
Recently he has picked up Rumanian, and is now able
to "get along" in fifteeji different forms of speech.
Often, however, a kindly action has more influence than
a long harangue. Here is a quaint example. Pliska
saw a group of Ruthenians sitting in the Emigration
Hall at Bremen, one of whom had a long rent in his
coat. They gave no heed to the colporteur's books ; but
he left the volumes for them to look at, saying that he
would be back in a minute. He returned with needle and
thread, which he gave to the man with the torn coat.
This friendly act touched their hearts, and they bought
six copies of the Scriptures in Ruthenian. Among
these continental emigrants last year our Society
sold or gave away nearly 15,000 copies of the
Scriptures in the following languages : — Polish, Russ,
Bohemian, Servian, Sloven, Croatian, Bulgarian,
Rumanian, Italian, Hungarian, German, Yiddish, and
Hebrew. This may sound a dry statement : yet a little
imagination will reveal the immense value of such work
and the advantage of bringing God's Word to these
crowds of travellers, all on their way to a new worid
and a new life. 58

AMONG THE NATIONS
In Canada.
Immigrants landing in the United States are cared
for by the American Bible Society. Those who enter
Canada are welcomed by the agents of our great
Canadian Auxiliary, who meet them when they come
ashore and present them with copies of the Gospels in
their varied mother-tongues, giving them also informa
tion for their journey westwards and an opportunity to
write letters to their friends at home. Among the
motley groups of aliens, the Scriptures are valued and
treasured. Canada's first gift to her new settlers is
carried with them as they travel westwards, to produce
its results in the heart, the home, and the nation.
Here is an illustration. Among the hundreds of new
arrivals by one steamer at Quebec came a group of
Russians, each of whom received a little Russ Gospel.
A few months later those same men were working in
one of the camps on a western railway-line, and were
seen in their leisure reading Russ Bibles. How had
they obtained the books? Their curiosity and interest
had been aroused by the Gospels, and, not knowing
that Russ Bibles could be bought in Canada, they had
written home to St. Petersburg for copies.
It is not easy to realize the polyglot population of
the Dominion. About two persons in every five speak
French. There are more than 100,000 Red Indians, for
whom our Society has issued the Scriptures in fifteen
languages. But the settlers from Europe far outnumber
these. The German population of Manitoba and
Saskatchewan now amounts to 75,000, and is increasing
by about 2,000 a year ; there are seventy German
churches, whose pastors are very friendly to our
Society. Some foreign communities, such as the Dukho-
bors, Galicians, and Mennonites, live to a large
59

THE WORD
extent isolated from the settlers round about them.
In Manitoba, we hear of an Icelandic Synod of the
Lutheran Church. A colporteur near Port Arthur
writes : — " I visited some Croatians, who bought ten
Testaments ; the month before they had bought four
Bibles and five Testaments. Among some Finns, I
sold eight Bibles. " At a lumber-mill in British Columbia,
our agent found nearly lOO East Indians at work, most
of them Sikhs. Not without need, therefore, the
Canadian Auxiliary has largely increased its staff of
Bible-sellers. Last year, forty colporteurs were engaged
for longer or shorter periods. They carried the
Scriptures in forty-four languages across the prairies
and through the forests of the Dominion, taking the
trails to lumber and mining-camps and visiting the
bunk-houses there, searching out lonely farmsteads and
isolated shacks, everywhere appearing as Christian
friends and messengers of the Word of God.
In South Africa.
We find a still stranger medley of nations and
kindreds and tongues in South Africa. From the
Society's depot at Johannesburg the Scriptures have
been sold in seventy-three different versions. Since
Chinese coolies were introduced into the Transvaal,
our Society has placed in their hands nearly 7,000
books, mostly Gospels, in Mandarin and Easy Wenli ;
but, as a consequence of the gradual repatriation of
these coolies, the sales of Chinese Scriptures at
Johannesburg were more that 2,000 fewer in igo8 than
they were in igo7.
The seventy gold mines on the Witwatersrand stretch
for forty miles from east to west ; but Mr. Irving, our
colporteur at these mines, has a sphere of influence
60

AMONG THE NATIONS
immeasurably wider than that area. Within the labour
district of the Rand, 234,000 native Africans are em
ployed, gathered from almost every part of South Africa,
from the Cape to Lake Nyasa, while even British Central
Africa supplies its quota.
The following extracts from Mr. Irving's reports speak for
themselves : — " On coming to the Geduld Mine 1 found that
1,500 Amaxosa boys had arrived. A good many purchased
Bibles." These Amaxosa, or Kafirs, come from Cape
Colony, and last year we distributed 2,271 copies of the Scrip
tures in their tongue. " I sold several Testaments to natives
from German West Africa, and one to a Hottentot from
Namaqualand." . . . "At the Windsor 'Mine we were sur
rounded by a crowd of Bechuana lads, who expressed their
delight and bought a goodly number of Chuana Scriptures."
. . . "I visited the location of the Damaras and sold quite a
number of Herero books." .... "A Shangaan bought six
Chi-Tonga Testaments. Two years ago, at the Robinson
Mine, he had learned to know the Lord Jesus, and as he was
going home he wanted to take the Testaments with him." . .
" We sold a good many of the recently published Testaments
in Union Nyanja to the boys from Livingstonia. " . . . . " On
asking one of them what he knew about Christianity, he
pulled out his well-worn copy, and said, ' I came here all the
way from Fort Johnstone, and this has been -my staff. ' "
" At the Dynamite Factory there was a company of the
Ma-Karanga boys. They were delighted and astonished when
they saw the Karanga Gospels, not knowing that the Scrip
tures had been translated into their tongue. They had been
taught to read by a native teacher, and had become Christians
since they reached the Rand. They bought all the Karanga
books I had, and asked me to bring more." ..." On taking
the Amharic Scriptures to the natives who ordered them, I
found that most of them had left, but others bought the books
and were greatly pleased."
" In the course of one afternoon, at the Simmer en Jack
Mine, I sold the Scriptures in Arabic, Sheetswa, Thonga, Chi-
61

THE WORD
Tonga, Ronga, Pedi, Bemba, Zulu, Suto, Xosa, Dutch,
English, Portuguese, and Nyanja."
The four Basuto chiefs who visited London in Febru
ary, igog, were presented by our Committee with specially
bound copies of the Suto Bible, each bearing an
illuminated inscription. In acknowledging the gift,
Seiso, the leading chief, said with impressive simplicity,
" This Book is the link between us and you."
From Russia into Siberia.
The stream of migration from Russia into Siberia has
been rapidly increasing since the close of the war with
Japan. During igo7, as many as 700,000 new settlers
passed eastwards along the trans-Siberian railway, and the
total for 1908 was 760,000. Sometimes as many as
6,000 pass through in a single day. Most of these are
Russians seeking new homes, and many of them are
extremely poor. At Cheljabinsk railway station, which
is the door into Siberia, our colporteurs meet the emi
grant trains. Besides thousands of copies which were
sold, 2,500 Testaments or Gospels were given away last
year to people too impoverished to purchase even the
cheapest editions. Early in the spring, Colporteur
Michailoff obtained a permit from the chief of the police
to work in the barracks built at Cheljabinsk for these
immigrants. He writes : —
' ' All who receive the copies are grateful ; many send their
little ones up to me to kiss my hand and thank me for the
'Bread of Life.' At first I show them the covers of my
volumes, and explain who is giving them these copies of the
Book which shows them the way of salvation. Then I tell
them about the Bible Society, and the great work it carries
on in all lands. It is a responsible duty, and I pray God to
give me wisdom to fulfil it in the right spirit."
62

AMONG THE NATIONS
Out in Central Asia, where the Chinese and Tatar
mingle with the Turk, the Persian and the Russian, one
heroic missionary, the Rev. G. W. Hunter, of the
C. I. M., holds the field. He has needed Scriptures in eight
different languages and these it has been our privilege
to supply. " Let me say," he writes, "how I value the
ungrudging help of the Bible Society in all my work !
I often meet people to whom I cannot talk one word ;
but the Bible Society comes to my aid with its polyglot
gift of tongues, so that I can supply them with the
precious books which they may take and read in their
tents or distant hill-encircled homes."
The Asiatic Abroad.
The same flux and flow of races may be found in
unexpected corners of the world. It is difficult to realize,
for instance, that over forty languages are current in
Burma, excluding dialects not yet reduced to writing.
Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, and Chinese are spoken there by
hundreds of thousands of immigrants, for whom as yet
not a single English or American missionary has been
set apart. To them, as to many others, God's gracious
Word is brought, if brought at all, only in the printed
Gospel as sold by our Society's colporteurs. In the Far
East the Chinese are everywhere. We hear of a Chinese
colporteur being sent to his fellow-countrymen at
Vladivostock and on the banks of the river Amur in
Siberia. A Russian colporteur is being sent to work
among the Russians in Manchuria, while Japanese
colporteurs visit the Japanese in Formosa. -In the
picturesque and polyglot island of Mauritius, six
colporteurs are employed — four Hindus, one Tamil and
one Telugu. To Samoa last year a grant of i,ioo
Samoan Bibles was sent out to the L.M.S mission.
63

THE WORD
Concerning this version Robert Louis Stevenson wrote :
"Take our Bible here in Samoa. It is not only a
monument of excellent literature, but a desirable piece
of typography. I would gladly pay as high for as good
an edition of its English sister, if one existed." But in
addition to these books, a supply of Chinese Scriptures
has also been sent out to Samoa for distribution among
the 1,300 Chinese coolies from Shanghai and Canton,
who are working on cocoa and rubber plantations in the
islands of Upolu and Sarii. To Fiji, 7,500 Fijian Bibles
and Testaments were sent out early in igo8. A recent
issue of the Mission Field described the numerous Indian
coolies who find their way to the sugar plantations on
those islands. On one plantation Gospels were sold
in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu ; then men who
spoke Kanarese and Malayalam enquired if no books had
been brought for them, Panjabis asked for something
in Gurmukhi, and Marathis were also met with. The
latest census shows that, whilst native Fijians who have
been evangelized by the splendid work of the Methodist
missionaries are growing fewer, these heathen coolies
from India are increasing alike by birth-rate and by fresh
immigration. In the West Indies, Scriptures in their own languages
are supplied to the Chinese and Syrian settlers in
Jamaica and to negro labourers on the banana plantations
in Guatemala. In British Guiana there are over 100,000
East Indian coolies, most of them from North India, for
whom our Society sends out Hindi Gospels and Testa
ments.
In South America.
Already there is a wonderful mingling of races in South
America, "the Continent of opportunity." Besides
64

AMONG THE NATIONS
negroes and numerous tribes of aboriginal Indians,
millions of immigrants arrive from Europe, while Asiatics
can enter freely, and a colony of Japanese is being settled
close to Rio. A Brazilian colporteur in the State of
Santa Catarina came upon a German colony at Joinville,
"a nice, quiet, and scrupulously clean town. It sounds
very odd to hear the black people speaking German.
German beer, German sausages, and German customs
are everywhere. I sold German Scriptures easily —
more than £i worth in a day. If I had had twenty
more Bibles I could have sold them all." Argentina
last year received more than a quarter of a million fresh
immigrants, of whom 107,000 were Spaniards and
79,000 Italians, besides men of thirty-four other nation
alities. In Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay our
colporteurs sold the Scriptures in the following eighteen
versions : Spanish, Italian, French, German, Arabic,
Hebrew, Polish, Croat, Servian, Greek, Portuguese,
Hungarian, English, Rumanian, Basque, Bohemian,
Quechua, and Aimara.
At Port Said.
At the great sea-ports of the world sailors and passen
gers of all nations meet and mingle on the quays. A
typical example of the Bible Society's work is found at
Port Said, the gateway between the east and the west,
where more than a million visitors, passengers, soldiers
and seamen call every year. Our colporteurs are
constantly visiting the steamers and transports which
stay at Port Said, as a rule, for only a few hours ; no
other regular Christian agents take advantage of the
opportunity thus presented. Last year the Scriptures
were sold in Port Said in thirty-five different languages,
a witness to the polyglot character of the human freight
65 F

THE WORD
which passes through the Suez Canal. Here are some
experiences of colportage :
" I went on board an Austrian warship, whose crew were
greatly surprised when I offered them books in their various
tongues. Very quickly I disposed of all my Croatian books,
and sold copies as well in Italian, Bohemian and Servian.
They asked me questions about the Society, which I was glad
to answer - . . On board a Russian steamer I found a large
number of pilgrims bound for Jerusalem, most of them
advanced in life. That afternoon I could not sell a copy,
owing to the disfavour of a Russian priest on board. Next
morning I returned, and the priest asked me about our
Society ; so I took him ashore and showed him the dep6t
at Port Said. Afterwards he invited me back with my books
and recommended the pilgrims to buy, and in a very short
time I sold more than fifty copies."
In the Holy City.
At Jerusalem itself the Bible Society maintains a
depot, which becomes more frequented and more useful
year by year. During igo8, 5,600 books were sold
there in twenty-seven languages and dialects. Greek,
Armenian and Roman priests and monks visited the
depot to buy the Scriptures, and the Armenian convent
purchased a number of copies for the use of its inmates.
Every Easter cosmopolitan companies of pilgrims make
their way to Jerusalem, where about 20,000 strangers
gather from far and near to keep the festival. The
pilgrims are for the most part Russians, Armenians,
Bulgarians, Greeks and Abyssinians, the majority of them
being very poor. At Easter, igo8, a special attempt was
made to reach these foreigners, who spend most of their
time lingering about the various churches and shrines.
Colporteur Segal who can converse in twelve languages,
was sent from Port Said to undertake the enterprise.
66

AMONG THE NATIONS
For five weeks he went in and out among the
pilgrims, who seemed to attach a special value to the
Holy Books which they purchased in the Holy City.
The colporteur writes :
"During my stay in Jerusalem I sold the Scriptures
regularly in a street near the Russian church, where many ol
the pilgrims lodge and through which they pass by hundreds
every day. I was sitting there with my books before me
when some pilgrims came up and said : ' Though we do not
know how to read, yet we wish to buy some of your books
for our children at home. But first we want to be certain
that they are the real Scriptures.' For some time they
hesitated doubtfully, until a Russian priest came by and
bought a New Testament for himself; at once the others
followed his example, and I sold forty copies that afternoon.
Another day a pilgrim took up a Testament, saying :
' I should very much like to buy this holy book ; what does it
cost ? ' I answered : ' The Bible Society sells the book at
less than its cost price, so that the poorest pilgrims can
obtain the Scriptures for themselves.' He expressed his
gratitude to the Society and paid for the book. Afterwards
some of his friends came to buy for themselves, and one
Russian asked me : ' Whence does your Society bring such
books ? ' I replied, ' From your Russian Fatherland. We
bring them here for you pilgrims.' ' Indeed this is a noble
Society, and I shall pray much for it and its work.' "

67

THE WORD

MESSENGERS OF THE WORD.
' ' Mankind -may have a thousand tongues but it has
only one heart, and that heart understands one language
the whole world over — the language of Divine Love. "
The Bible Society employs one characteristic set of
agents, who carry God's Book from door to door and
pass it from hand to hand. No method of circulating
the Scriptures is more intimate and more effectual. All
the year round these colporteurs, as we call them, who are
drawn from many races, tramp along the foot-paths of
many lands. As a rule they are natives of the country in
which they labour, and so their common talk is racy of
the soil. They are at home among the folk to whom
they offer their cheap little Testaments and Gospels at
prices which even peasants and coolies can afford to pay.
They belong to various communions of Christ's Church ;
but at least they can always bear simple, heart-felt testi
mony to the power of the Word which they distribute,
and their experiences are as variegated as their dress
and their speech.
The Bible-seller's duty is no holiday task. He is
exposed to all extremes of climate, and often runs con
siderable risks from popular prejudices and religious
rancour. No one would embrace such a calling except in
a missionary spirit : the wages are too meagre, the
hardships and hazards are too real. Last year our col-
68

AMONG THE NATIONS
porteurs were arrested as spies in Nicaragua, robbed and
reviled in Burma, bitterly mocked by social democrats
in Germany, knocked down in Bosnia, driven out of
villages in Peru by priests who burned their books, stoned
in remote corners of the Philippines, beaten by Moslems
in Baluchistan, forced to hide among the woods in Brazil.
From the awful earthquake at Messina a colporteur with
his wife and children escaped — bruised, wounded, half-
naked, penniless, but saved.
Yet in spite of solitude and hardship and danger,
these wayfaring men find compensations and encourage
ments of their own. Here is a Bible-seller in the far
east of Siberia who has entered some large military
barracks on the river Amur, armed with a permit from
the Russian governor and an open letter of commenda
tion from the Russian bishop. As he crosses the
barrack-yard, a general notices his knapsack and calls to
the soldiers : " Little brothers, come and look at these
good books ; they are cheap and profitable for one's
soul." And here is a Bulgarian colporteur at the Rustchuk
railway-station, accosted by a Bulgarian priest who says :
" My son, you have a blessed lot in being privileged to
distribute this Word of Life." Then turning to the
people who stand by, the priest continues: "Every
household which does not possess this book and read it
every day, is not worthy to be called a Christian house
hold." One of the chief railway officials took up the
priest's testimony : " Yes, I used to think the Bible was
only good for ancient times ; but since I began to read
it, I have found in it the greatest help and comfort a man
can have."
And we think kindly of that apothecary among the
Transylvanian mountains who spoke like a friend to
69

THE WORD

Colporteur Freska and called him 'colleague'; for he—
the apothecary — was engaged in selling that which cured
men's sick bodies, and his ' colleague ' was engaged in
bringing them that which was balsam for their sick souls.

It would be a fascinating journey, if we could trace
the footsteps of these pilgrims, who carry the Gospel in
their wallets and its great watchword on their lips, along
the highways and byways of the world. We should
follow them across the bleak plains of Mongolia, and
through the apple-orchards of Tasmania, and over the
sultry mountain-ridges of Spain. We should pene
trate remote corners of Europe where no other evangelist
ever comes, and the Bible is a book unknown. We
should lodge with gold-miners on the Orinoco and
lumber-men on the St. Lawrence, and tramp through pale-
green rice fields in Bengal, and watch the stars reflected
in the inland sea of Japan. The succeeding paragraphs
will supply some glimpses of the experiences encountered
by the Bible Society's nine hundred colporteurs in their
wanderings during the last twelve months.
A Crimean Veteran.
"I know some one who is sure to buy from you,"
said a lady to Colporteur Saix. An old Frenchman
soon came upon the scene, and Saix showed him a New
Testament. He looked at it, and ejaculated " C'est bien
(;a!" Then he told how in the Crimean campaign a
comrade of his was wounded beneath the walls of Sebas-
topol. As the wounded man lay dying, he begged that
someone would read to him out of the book he kept in
his cloak. "I read to him till he breathed his last,"
said the old soldier, "and then kept the book for myself,
70

ON A RIVER IN SUM.ATRA.

AMONG THE NATIONS
for it contained a story of a Shepherd and sheep which
interested me. Afterwards I was severely wounded
myself and lay unconscious many days. When I
recovered, my little book had disappeared, and no one
could give me news of it. I regretted it so much, and
kept thinking of it constantly. I have often related the
incident to my neighbours, and that is why this lady,
after she had opened the book at a passage about that
Shepherd, called me, et c'est bien qa! I am glad you
came, for I did not know where to get hold of that
book and did not even know whether it was still being
printed. ' '

At Wiesbaden.
At the Andreas fair held outside Wiesbaden, Colpor
teur Dreher visited the vagrant traders, who wander all
over the country with their booths, a queer, nomadic,
half-vagabond race, and not infrequently they bought
Bibles or Testaments. When throngs of visitors
arrived at the fair from Wiesbaden, Dreher took up
a good position behind a table on which he spread out
his editions, while a huge placard announced that he
had books "for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews."
Notwithstanding any amount of chaff, he sold during
the first three days of the fair 700 volumes, and during
the following week 500. On some days he was at work
from 7 a. m. till i o'clock next morning. Dreher gives
an amusing account of how he met some strolling
players erecting a "merry-go-round." "What have
you got that is new ? ' ' they called out. And when he
replied, "The saving Gospel of Jesus Christ," they
stared at him in perplexity, but some of them bought
copies. 71

THE WORD
In Barracks.
At Budapest, Colporteur Tatter did good work in the
barracks, and obtained from one colonel a special permit
to work among his regiment ; in consequence of this
unusual favour he was able to sell a large number of
New Testaments to the men. In another barracks the
following scene took place : —
"One of the senior lieutenants told me in a friendly way
that as he himself possessed a Bible he would gladly help me
in my work. Thereupon he ordered the regimental trum
peters to sound their trumpets, and forthwith the corporals
came running to the spot from all quarters. They received
orders to permit me to work among the men unhampered,
So I set out accompanied by the corporals, who called into
each room, ' Buy these books, they are good.' Some of the
corporals even went with me into the rooms and encour
aged the soldiers to purchase. I paid four visits to these
barracks, and sold over 200 New Testaments and several
Bibles, most of them to Roman Catholics."
Towards the close of last year we engaged a fresh
Russian colporteur, a member of the Orthodox Church,
to circulate the Scriptures among Russians in Poland.
He also was able to get a permit to visit the military
barracks, the strict rule being now sometimes relaxed
in favour of time-expired soldiers of unblemished
character. For six weeks this man was busy among the
troops in garrison at Warsaw, and sold 350 books.
In the German Black Country.
For dense and varied population, and for the high
average of intelligence among the people, who are
mainly engaged in manufactures and mining, the
Rhineland and Westphalia have peculiar importance.
Among these eager millions, social democracy and
agnosticism find their ablest recruits. We must recollect
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that on the Continent of Europe the name ' socialism '
implies much more than an economic system ; it
commonly involves as well a materialist creed which
denies the very existence of God. With the busy
manufacturing city of Essen for his headquarters.
Colporteur Rogowski sold last year no fewer than
8,500 copies, of which 3,600 were Bibles. As many as
32,000 men are employed in Krupp's great cannon and
steel works, where hundreds of chimneys pour forth
their murky smoke while steam and coal-dust have
painted the houses black. Here a colporteur has,
indeed, a difficult task. At Essen, the social democrats
are his worst enemies. They deny every article of
Christian faith and scoff at all things sacred. The col
porteur is greeted by : " You idiot ! Do you really believe
that swindle ? Fancy a man carrying round such books ! ' '
One social democrat, who bought a New Testament,
added, "When I have read it, I shall burn it. I only
want to see what it is like."
Among Social Democrats.
With the remarkable growth of Berlin in population
and in manufactures — it is now, with its suburbs, a city
of three millions — a large foreign contingent of Poles,
Slovaks and Italians has been attracted there. In
Berlin our colporteurs find that a majority of the work
ing men whom they meet are estranged from Christianity
and hold the socialist creed, with its dreadful negative of
things unseen and eternal. One colporteur gained
permission to visit a factory ; but any men desirous of
buying the Scriptures were overwhelmed with ridicule
by their fellows, and treated as persons of weak intellect,
until under such bitter mockery they turned away.
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THE WORD
Among the factory- workers and miners in Galicia,
Colporteur Pawelek's work was made difficult by the
opposition of the social democrats, who are rapidly
becoming as great a power in Austria as they are in
Germany. They label the Bible, "the black priests'
book." In Styria, Colporteur Kock reports that the Bible has
two sets of enemies — the socialists and the priests ;
these mutual foes join hands in their warfare against
God's Book. Kock suffered actual violence from the
socialists. He spoke to them about the Crucified
Saviour, and was told that to-day it is the worker who is
crucified. In Styria, again, one member of the Reichs-
rath, who was also a Roman priest, had incited the press
against Colporteur Kaisersberger, and matters went so
far that our agent was hardly able to find a lodging.
Through an autumn night he had to wander about till
dawn, no one consenting to give him shelter. Even
food was often refused him, and in one district he had to
carry bread about in his pocket.
From Bosnia, Colporteur Stehly sends ample testimony
to the difficulties of that field. In a wild highland
district the people only laughed and mocked at him. At
one town he could not even procure a lodging, and had
to make for another, where there is a factory employing
eight hundred hands ; but he found that they were
mostly social democrats, who received him with "blows
and hustling."
Strange Superstitions.
In out-of-the-world corners the Bible-seller comes
across many curious examples of superstition. A French
countrywoman in Mayenne asked quite seriously, "Our
cow is ill ; if I buy your book, will it stop her from
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AMONG THE NATIONS
dying?" A good wife in Croatia was anxious to know
whether she ought to pray to the Virgin and St. Anthony
of Padua. Colporteur Hertelendy replied that according
to the Bible she should pray to God alone. She was on
her way to church to buy candles and light them before
her favourite shrines ; but when she heard what
Hertelendy had to say about the Bible, she reconsidered
the matter. "I'll buy a Bible, ' ' she said shrewdly, ' ' for
that lasts : the candles will only burn out."
Let the Bible do its Work.
From the Gironde, Colporteur Rousseau sends this
picture : — ¦" Passing on my bicycle through a village
where I had been busy two days before, I saw five or
six people sitting under a shed, listening to a boy of
twelve as he read aloud from a New Testament which I
had sold. Though I was greeted in a very sympathetic
manner, I did not stop or interrupt the reading, leaving
the Word of God to touch their hearts." This colporteur
has grasped the spirit and aim of our Society — to let the
Bible do its own work.
" I am an anarchist, "said a Frenchman, near Dunkirk,
' ' Indeed, ' ' said Colporteur Vanhoucke : ' ' but Christ died
for anarchists also. " " Ah ! "said the other, looking closely
at him, "you are right" — and he bought a Gospel.
Another French colporteur came into the orchard where
a husband and wife were gathering apples. " You see I
have no time," said the husband, who was up in a tree ;
and his wife chimed in, "I am busy too, holding the
ladder. My husband cannot come down, even for the
Gospel " ; " Yes," answered the colporteur, " but Jesus
Christ made time to come down from heaven. He
descended for your sakes, out of pure love. It is well
worth coming down from your apple tree to procure the
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THE WORD
book I offer. " " Well, ' ' said the woman, who had grown
serious, "come down, husband." Then they bought a
New Testament and promised to read it.
At a Hungarian farm Colporteur Holik met three
men, two of whom bought Bibles ; but the third farmer
had no money in his pocket, so he invited the colporteur
to his home. Along the road their talk turned on the
Fall and the part which Eve took in leading her husband
astray. "Adam," said the man, "was undoubtedly
wrong in listening to Eve." But when they reached
the house, this farmer's wife would not hear of her
husband spending his money on a Bible. ' ' No, no, ' ' said
the husband to his wife, "I am not going to fall into
Adam's sin and listen to you." So he paid for the Bible.
At Rostoff Railway-station.
The railway-station of Rostoff, on the Don, is a busy
place, forming the junction of the Caucasian railways
with those of Russia proper. Here, last year, our
colporteur sold 3,290 books. Among the purchasers
are wealthy people on their way to the health-resorts of
the Caucasus, while in the harvesting season there is a
great movement of labourers to and fro through Rostoff.
As the train-times are arranged, the colporteur has to
attend very early in the mornings and very late in the
evenings. In July, the temperature by the station
thermometer rose to 35° Reaumur, or 110° Fahrenheit.
In that oppressive heat the colporteur went along and
through the trains, carrying his load of books and
trying to persuade the perspiring passengers to buy the
Scriptures.
Down a River in Northern Russia.
Every summer one of our Russian colporteurs goes
on a Bible-selling tour in the province of Archangel,
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AMONG THE NATIONS
which stretches across Northern Russia. Although this
province is half as large again as France, yet the
people spread over its huge area are fewer than the
population of such a town as Sheffield. Colporteur
Maslennikoff must make long tiring journeys in order
to sell Testaments and Gospels among these widely
scattered folk. Sometimes he travels by train, some
times he drives about in a cart, or passes up and down
the rivers in a passenger steamer.
In the autumn of igo8 Maslennikoff paid his
first visit to London, although he does not know
a word of English. He is a short, thick-set man,
who looks as though his life in the open air has made
him as hard as nails, and his broad smiling face is
tanned a deep ruddy brown by wind and sun and
rain. He came fresh from a tour in Northern Russia,
of which he gave an account with the assistance of an
interpreter. His summer expedition must for the most
part be along the waterways — down the Northern Dvina
and one or other of its many tributaries. And for some
years past it has been made in an open boat, in order to
reach the smaller places which are not touched at by
the river-steamers. The tributary chosen this last year
was the Vychegda, and the starting point Ustsysolsk.
The name of Maslennikoff's boat Colporteur was
painted on her side in Russ characters, and a Russian
flag, with "Bible Society" inscribed across it, floated
from the stern.
During his long voyage of 730 miles, which took
six weeks to accomplish, he visited forty towns and
villages along the rivers Vychegda and North Dvina
before he reached his destination, the town of Archangel,
on the White Sea. Many of these places were too
small for a steamer to call at, and had no wharves. As
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THE WORD
the colporteur's boat drew near a village the people
would run down to the bank to see what the curious
little craft with its flag meant. They had never heard
of a Bible-boat before. Sometimes Maslennikoff made
some sales among the passengers on steamers plying up
and down the river, which he could often approach
when they were moored at the wharves. He had many
friendly talks with the men employed in steering the
timber-rafts which drift down the stream with the
current. These men lead hard lives, spending day and
night on their rafts, with no shelter between them and
the open sky, exposed to the full force of wind and
rain. Their food is black bread and potatoes, and they
earn such low wages that they are too poor to buy even
the cheap Gospels in the colporteur's stock. On this
voyage Colporteur Maslennikoff sold from his boat
altogether 2,885 copies of the Scriptures, and 286 copies
he also gave away.
By Sledge in Siberia.
Our Agency owns a sledge and harness at Cheljabinsk,
and purchases a horse regularly each winter, selling it
again later in the season. Immediately after the
Russian New Year a horse was bought, and two
colporteurs started on a long tour in the north of the
Orenburg and Ufa Provinces. The distance to Troitzk
is about 100 miles, and there are but few villages on the
road they took over the bare snowy steppe. They
came upon a hamlet with about ten huts, mostly built of
turf and earth. It turned out to be a new settlement of
Molokani (lit. 'milk-drinkers ')— a sect that abstain from
strong liquors, and resemble what in England we know
as 'Bible Christians.' These Molokani wished to
summon a meeting, but Michailoff told them that he
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AMONG THE NATIONS
must push on over the steppe, where many of their
brethren also wanted the Scriptures. He sold, however,
in that small hamlet, 7.50 roubles (15s.) worth of books.
In Eastern Lands,
Among the teeming millions of the East, one chief
problem for our Society is the problem of distribution.
The Bible has been translated and printed in all
the principal languages. We can publish large editions.
But how shall the books be distributed in numbers
sufficient to reach all who are ready to take and read?
God has left this to human agency. The Scriptures
must be carried by Christian hands into the countless
towns, villages, and hamlets where these multitudes live
and die. Thus it comes to pass that more than half of
the Bible Society's colporteurs are brown men in India,
or yellow men in China.
In India, last year, our native Christian colporteurs were
able to dispose of 230,000 copies of God's Word. These
books were mostly Gospels in the various vernaculars,
which are sold for a farthing a-piece. The colporteurs are
stationed at points where they are likely to meet large
numbers of their fellow-countrymen who have never
heard the story of God's love in Christ, nor seen the
book which contains it. With a hearty word of com
mendation on the part of the seller, these tens of
thousands of Gospels have gone on their errands of
mercy throughout the length and breadth of the land.
In South India.
The colporteur is ubiquitous, his opportunity limit
less, his task unique. In South India there is hardly a
spot where you may not find him in the course of his
wanderings. It may be that, like the vendor of fruits
and sweetmeats, he will come up to the window of your
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THE WORD
railway-carriage and offer you his wares — a Bible, a
Testament, or Gospel in any language spoken in the
district. It may be in a Hindu home, or tramping a
country road, or passing in and out among the crowds
that throng a weekly market, that you will see the man
with the satchel trying to interest his fellow-countrymen
in the Christian books and inducing them to buy and read
copies for themselves. Thus the cheap little Testaments
and Gospels are carried far and near and offered to
wayfarers by the road-side, to dwellers in country villages,
as well as among the crowds outside the temples at
heathen festivals, or on the river-bank and sea-beach
where pilgrims gather for sacred bathing.
Sometimes the colporteur is received with rabid abuse,
or threatened with violence by mobs shouting Bande
Mataram ! One man was beaten by soldiers of the Nizam,
and his books were confiscated. Another had his per
sonal property stolen while he slept. Several more
report insult and ill-treatment as a common occurrence,
especially in these days of antipathy to everything
British. Famine and pestilence, moreover, stand in the
way of their work. " Instead of asking us to pay half
an anna for a book," remarked a villager plaintively,
" why don't you give us half an anna to buy food and
medicine ? " At other places, however, the colporteurs
are welcomed in friendly fashion. A village schoolmaster,
here and there, will recommend his boys to buy farthing
Gospels. Near Kottayam, the colporteur found revival
services being carried on among the Syrian Christians,
during which there was a good demand for the Scrip
tures. We hear of a heathen festival where, one evening,
seventy books were sold among the crowd.
Curious objections proceed from men of many castes
and races. Journeying by boat, a colporteur's fellow
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AMONG THE NATIONS
passengers, who were farmers, asked him if it were not
a sin to leave your own father and to call another father;
likewise, was it not a sin to abandon your father's
religion, customs, and manners ? In reply, he said :
" In olden times your fathers travelled by bullock-carts,
and yet you do not scruple to take advantage of railways
and telegraphs. So in former days people knew little
about Christianity, but now it is commonly known and
many acknowledge its excellence. ' '

Christ or Krishna.
Again, we read how a mining agent, a Brahman by
caste, took the colporteur to his house where some Sri
Vaishnavas were seated, to converse with them about
religion. They said : " Christ and Krishna are one and
the same. When Christ was born, shepherds visited
Him first ; and similarly Krishna was born in the house
of a shepherd." The colporteur adds: "I disabused
their minds by showing them the difference between the
character of Christ and the character of Krishna."

In the Jungles of Malabar.
In the course of an autumn tour among the jungles at
the foot of the Western Ghats in Malabar, the colporteur
went from hut to hut proclaiming the story of Divine
Love. Some of the more ignorant people were afraid
and hid themselves, or fled. Others, who are practically
slaves to rich Muhammadans or Sudras, had never
handled money. Most of them heard the Word of God
willingly, however, and such as had been taught to read
offered cocoa-nuts and areca-nuts in exchange for copies
of the Gospel. 8i G

THE WORD
Farmers in the Transvaal.
Among the Dutch farmers our colporteur sold last
year i,2g7 Bibles, 202 Testaments, and 24 Psalters. He
visited twenty scattered districts of the Transvaal, and
travelled with his mules and wagon over 3,000 miles.
General De la Rey, who will be remembered as one
of the most fearless Boer leaders during the late war,
showed friendly practical interest in this colporteur's
work at Hartebeestfontein. In order to exhibit the
Bibles more effectively, the General brought his own
wagon close to the colporteur's, stretched a sail over the
two, and assisted in producing a better display. On
this occasion the colporteur was astonished at the number
of the books sold.
By torch-light in Annam.
Here is a torch-light scene at a river-side village in
Annam, where our Sub-agent, M. Bonnet, obtained leave
to assemble the people. A stalwart boy beat the gong
for the common crowd, and another lad went to call the
notables. When the meeting was over and 100 copies
of the Scriptures had been sold, darkness began to set
in. A sampan (native boat) was wanted to reach Ngo-
Xo. The villagers went to find one, and then brought
torches to escort M. Bonnet and his two native helpers
down to the water's edge, where the flaring lights cast
red reflections in the stream. ' We received you in a
poor house,' said the headman, 'but come again and
spend a few days with us. We will welcome you better.'
At a Buddhist Monastery in Cambodia.
In Kompong-Chnang, fifty miles from Pnom-Penh,
M. Bonnet was very well received by the superior of a
Bonze monastery, to whom he applied for hospitality.
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AMONG THE NATIONS
The superior immediately had M. Bonnet's packages
carried to his cottage, and offered him tea. Our Sub-
agent at once produced his books. The Bonze, after
carefully examining a volume and handling it in every
possible manner, opened it, and seeing it was written in
Cambodian, began to read it aloud, by the dim light of
a dilapidated lamp, with many tokens of joy. The
other Bonzes and a few Cambodians sitting on the
floor, listened to him intently. The old man read for an
hour, and when he was tired he passed the book to a
younger man, who with a firmer voice continued to read
for all to hear. There were eighty Bonzes in that
monastery, and almost every one bought a book.
In China.
During the year igo8 more than a million and a
quarter copies of the Scriptures were sold by colportage
in China. Across the eighteen provinces of the Flowery
Land our Society maintains a company of four
hundred Bible-sellers — all of them Chinese Christians.
Most of these men work under the supervision of
missionaries belonging to the various Christian Churches
that are engaged in spreading the Gospel in the Chinese
Empire. The ministry of the colporteur is humble in
appearance, but none the less far reaching in its results.
A missionary at Kaifengfu, Honan, sends this sig
nificant testimony: "From an evangelistic point of
view the work they accomplish is admirable. How few
comparatively would hear the Gospel, were it not for the
colporteurs. ' '
Autolycus the Evangelist.
In China, the colporteur is a man with a message quite
as much as a man with a book. Many of these men have
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THE WORD
the gift of ready speech. Their knowledge is often
limited, and sometimes sadly deficient : but what
they know, they gladly and boldly tell. No one who
has accompanied a colporteur on a journey and heard
him pour forth some story from the Old or the New
Testament, or preach the message of repentance and
salvation to a group of villagers, can question his value
as a herald of the Gospel. It is true that his speech
is generally crude and colloquial, and that he may refer to
Bible characters as though they were personages in con
temporary Chinese history ; but the stories lose none of
their charm. Even in Chinese dress they preserve a
matchless interest and freshness, and it is not surprising
that ' unlearned and ignorant ' men want to get the book
in which they can read the stories for themselves.
Naturally, the colporteur comes to be looked upon as a
representative of the ' Jesus Church, ' or a teacher of the
' foreign ' religion ; and it is also natural that he should
become the guide and helper of many who wish to learn
more of the 'doctrine,' or to join the Church. In no way,
indeed, does the Society's partnership with missions
become more effective than through its colporteurs.
A Colporteur's Journal.
What manner of men are these Chinese colporteurs,
whose wages amount to from ;^i2 to ;^i6 a year?
The best answer will be to give some extracts translated
from the journals of two men who were employed by our
Society last year in the Province of Kansu. Colporteur
Kao Ki-cheng writes : —
" In February 1 was at a place called Kinchuanpu, where
I could get no one to take me in, so I went to a temple,
where the priest allowed me to stay ; the priest himself
could not read. When the people came to burn incense, I
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AMONG THE NATIONS
preached the Word to them, until the priest owned that the
doctrine was good, but said, ' If all believed that, what
would we priests eat?' Another night I arrived at a place
about dusk ; it was raining fast, but no one would take me
in. I asked a farmer if I might sleep in his doorway, but
he even objected to that. An old man coming by, said,
'This is a seller of good books ; if they won't let you sleep
in the doorway, come to my house.' The old man got a
meal for me ; then went and invited all his neighbours in,
and they listened well to the explaining of the Book.
"During November, I was in the P'ingfan district, and at
one place the Superintendent of the Tax Office opposed me.
1 turned on him and said, 'You accuse me of serving
foreigners, but does your honour know where all this wool
goes to on which you collect taxes ? It goes to foreign
countries. I am not serving foreigners, but God, whom the
foreigners came to tell us about.' I then explained the
contents of the books I sold, and kept at it until dark.
The official became friendly, and invited me to stay with him ;
but a relative came in who would not hear of my remaining.
'All right,' I said, 'my Heavenly Father knows,' and I left.
Going through the yard, I saw a small house, and asked if I
might stay there. I was told it was a pig-sty. ' Never
mind,' I said ; so I stayed there and slept in the straw with
the pigs and dogs, and had a warm night ! Next morning I
sold about 200 cash worth of books."
"I, too, must do something."
Tsin Tien-ling, the second of these colporteurs, writes
with a similar directness and simplicity : —
' When the pastor asked me to take up colportage work
and so help the people to get a knowledge of the Lord Jesus,
1 felt very unwilling. I knew from Kao that the work was
terribly hard — walking, walking all the month, and perhaps
not selling many books ; so I declined, but I could see the
pastor wanted me to go. One day, after his telling us how
Jesus had left heaven and all its joys, coming into this world
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THE WORD
to endure untold shame and bitterness that we might go to
heaven, I felt that I, too, must do something to tell the
people of His love, so I said that I was willing to go.
The pastor soon set me up with the different kinds of books,
and I started off". . . In the seventh moon, I went to the north
west of Liangchow. In some places the people bought
freely, but in others they all pleaded that they could not read.
Then I sat down and read to them, especially that wonderful
first chapter of St. Matthew, where it tells the genealogy of
Jesus, which goes back to our Chinese Hsia dynasty. In
Tatsing and Tumentsi the people were very hard to reach.
1 sold very few books, and the scorn and ridicule were very
hard to bear. When I returned, the pastor told me how
others had suffered to make Jesus known, and also read to
me words of encouragement out of God's Book ; and at our
week-night meeting, when I told the brethren my experiences,
as is our custom, they all prayed the Lord to give me courage
and patience, which I am sure He will."
Helping the Hwa Miao.
Missionaries of the United Methodist Mission and of
the China Inland Mission have been the leaders in
the wonderful work recently done amongst the Hwa
Miao, in the great Province of Yunnan. Thousands of
these aborigines have been baptized already. Naturally
the need of a translation of the Scriptures was at once
felt ; and naturally also, as soon as the Hwa Miao
language had been reduced to written form and a single
Gospel translated, the Bible Society was called into
partnership, and two Gospels, translated by the Rev. S.
Pollard and Pastor Li, have been printed and published.
" We want Books in our own Tongue."
"A Miao reads his book, takes it on a journey, carries it in
his bosom, or in his rug. . . . The Gospel, indeed, will be a
companion, and it needs to be printed in a durable form.
In my district there are Nosu, Laka, Lisu, Peh Miao, Pai Ih,
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AMONG THE NATIONS
and Mantze. We hope that all these tribes will fall into
line — if so, all will be clamouring for their own Gospels.
The Chinese books are all very well for a while, but "we
want our own " is the cry. . . . The Miao script is simple
and easily learnt. . . .
"The arrival of the Gospel of St. Mark in Hwa Miao was
hailed with great satisfaction by the people, and in a very little
while the first load of 800 books was disposed of. Since then,
as fast as the books came the people have bought them, and
some are still needing copies. It is a great delight to the Hwa
Miao to get their own books. Very many can now read the
Gospel through, and in numbers of villages the book is read
at evening prayers. A good number of Chinese Gospels
have also been sold. . . . We are very glad of the help
rendered by the Bible Society, and hope soon to give you
more work to do in printing for other tribes."
Space fails us to describe the explorations of Mr.
Fergusson, the Society's Sub-agent inSzechwan, through
the borderland between China and Tibet. His new
map of the country occupied by the ' ' Eighteen Tribes,
has found a place in the Journal of the Royal Geogra
phical Society. Another Sub-agent, Mr. Amundsen, had
unprecedented success on the frontier of Yunnan.
"At the tin-mines west of Mengtze I had an excited crowd
which became so great that the trader, by whose shop I was
standing, began to throw my books into the street in order to
get me away from his premises. The crowd followed me to the
inn, where I actually had to shut the doors in order to keep
them out of my room. We sold altogether on this journey
between 14,000 and 15,000 books — not a bad result in the
backwoods of China."
Under Mongolian Tents.
Mr. F. A. Larson, a stalwart, long-limbed, fair-haired
Swede, has spent sixteen years in Mongolia, and
probably no other foreigner understands the language
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THE WORD
or the people so thoroughly. He travels among these
nomads with a caravan of camels and ponies, which are
the property of the Bible Society. A good camel costs
^lo, and will carry a load of 400 lbs. Mr. Larson
recently returned from a journey which lasted sixteen
months over the wind-swept Mongolian plains, during
which he put into the hands of the people 12,300 Gospels
in Mongol and Tibetan.
" All the Lamas in Mongolia can read, and they form
nearly one-third of the population. As a rule they read not
Mongolian but Tibetan, for the purpose of reciting their
Buddhist liturgies and formulas in a quite mechanical way,
without at all understanding what the words mean. Only
the chief lamas and more educated men really understand.
Very few ordinary Mongols can read their own language ; but
when a Mongol does know how to read he often sets up a
private school, and for a small fee parents encamped anywhere
in the neighbourhood can send their children to him to learn
reading and writing. The teacher's fee for each child may be
one or two sheep for six months, or perhaps a pony for a
year. These teachers, however, have no Mongolian school-
books, and I specially endeavour to circulate the Gospels
among them and their pupils. Our Mongolian Gospels form
the only primers — in fact the only printed books accessible for
these Mongolian schools."
In Japan.
Last year the Japanese colporteurs sold a quarter-of-a-
million volumes. Here is a vignette of one of them,
Mr. Kawakami, who, with the help of an assistant,
disposed of the record number of 680 books in a single
day. Under ordinary circumstances this would be im
possible, but he happened to attend a festival where
people gathered round him, attracted by the lively
strains of his violin. They showed themselves so eager
to buy that he soon found that nothing more was needed
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AMONG THE NATIONS
than for him to hand out the books and take the money
in return. Presently his pocket became so heavy with
coppers that the seams gave way, and out rolled the
coins on to the ground — much to the amusement of the
crowd and of the colporteur, for whom it was rather a
good advertisement. Mr. Kawakami 's sales last year
exceeded 34,000 copies.
In South America.
Early in igog, the newspapers recorded an unprece
dented voyage by the British cruiser, Pelorus, which
steamed up the Amazon for 2,300 miles, right through the
heart of South America, crossing the frontier between
Brazil and Peru and penetrating to Iquitos, less than
500 miles from the Pacific coast. Such an expedition
illustrates how our Bible-sellers make their way into the
fastnesses of a continent, and carry God's Word up tangled
water-ways and through virgin forests to people whom
every other Christian agency forgets. Last year, for ex
ample, the Society's colporteurs crossed some of the highest
passes of the Andes, visited the nitrate pampas of Chile, and
sold 20,000 copies of the Scriptures at Rio railway station.
On the Shore of Lake Titicaca.
On the shore of this wonderful mountain-sea, which
lies in the clouds two miles and a half above the level of
the Pacific, stands the town of Puno, whose mixed
population is composed of Spanish-speaking folk and
Aimara and Quechua Indians. Here Colporteur Litardo
met an Indian schoolmaster, who knew something of the
Gospel, having obtained one of our Aimara Gospels,
and was anxious to obtain some copies for his boys.
His little school for Spanish-speaking boys and Indians
is poorly equipped compared with English schools ; but
Litardo found the master a warm friend of the Bible.
8g

THE WORD
For British Colonists.
Nor are our own kith and kin forgotten, who make
fresh homes in Greater Britain beyond the seas. The
colporteur, with his Bible-cart, carries the Book of books
to scattered farmers in Natal, and calls at many an iso
lated settlement in New South Wales and Queensland,
amid the soft grey-green foliage of the bush — seeking
in the loneliest and dreariest places to supply some means
of grace and to kindle some hope of glory.

At the Society's annual meeting, in igo8, an appeal
was made for new colporteurs in the Far East, and it
was suggested that friends might make themselves in
dividually responsible for the support of one or more
colporteurs in China. To this appeal, taken up and
repeated in many quarters, there has been a most
encouraging response. As a result, we are thankful to
announce that 122 new colporteurs are now being thus
supported in China, Korea and Japan.
Towards the end of igo8 our Committee made a care
ful survey of the Society's operations, to determine how
far colportage might be wisely extended. They decided
to authorize a number of new colporteurs in different
countries, which will involve an additional expenditure
of over ;^3,ooo a year. Even during the past twelve
months the number of our colporteurs has increased in
certain countries, and their work, as a whole, has proved
signally successful. The Society's total sales by colpor
tage last year reached the unprecedented total of over
2,600,000 books — over 300,000 more than the figures
given for igo7.

go

AMONG THE NATIONS

WITH SIGNS FOLLOWING.
" He that has lost his God can find Him again in
this Book, and towards him who has never known
Him ii wafts the breath of the Divine Word." Heine.
The legends of many races tell us of magical books
by virtue of which wizards could work enchantments,
and of mysterious and awful words whose very syllables
held superhuman power. Behind such stories we may
perhaps recognize some dim sense of the mystery of
language and the strange spell of written words. In
Rhodesia a Mashona youth had been working at
Salisbury, where he was taught to read ; and when he
went back to his heathen kraal he took home with him a
copy of St. Mark's Gospel in Shona. By way of
exhibiting his wisdom he began to read it to a company
of his friends. Word by word, sentence by sentence, he
spelt it out, to the amazement of the listeners. " What
is this?" they cried, " this thing telling us all sorts of
news in our own tongue? What can it mean? Sorcery!
Made by white men ! What prodigies these are ! ' '
To primitive man, however, not merely words and
books appeared miraculous ; to his eyes all material
things seemed possessed by mysterious presences which
could work him harm. Everywhere he was haunted by
the dread of jealous powers which compassed his path
and his lying down, and watched him with envious or
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THE WORD
hostile purpose. Life became one long anxiety, as he
strove to guard himself against their influence and, if it
might be, to propitiate their wrath. Here is a vivid
picture of the fears which still hold sway over two-thirds
of mankind — a picture drawn not by any Christian
missionary but by a scientific anthropologist.
"The power in the stone, the filmy soul lurking in all
things visible, the mysterious human bond of totem in emu or
fish, the guardian angel in a greasy rag, the living or even
imaginary frog that, hoisted on a pole, will awe a country
side—certainly these show diversity enough, no matter to
what primitive stage of man you turn. The Zulu, who
doubts of God, likes to have the snake of his father's soul
curled upon his roof. Foxes, bears, and trees find wor
shippers ; toys are dowered with mortality, and Juggernath
is put to bed. The Chibokwe woman spreads meal before
her wooden bird in hope that her childbirth may be eased ;
her husband stripes a toy canoe with red and black to please
the fishing spirit. Powers of evil must have their due ; the
goddess of Indian cholera receives her off"ering, and the
small-pox image her coat of vermilion daub. For luck or
vengeance the Congo man drives nails as thick as quills upon
a porcupine into his wooden god ; lovers thrust pins into
inhuman hearts, and Sister Helen melts her waxen man.
Medicine men cry aloud for rain, and snuff crime upon the
air as a dog smells blood. All night dark forms are now
dancing in the moon, while the drum throbs to ecstasy, and
antelope skulls glimmer upon their circle of sticks. Every
morning in a million households Shiva, beside his patient
bull, receives the offering of water, rice, and a green leaf or
two. Vishnu's footprint is painted anew upon the forehead
of his own ; the schoolboy prays to the elephant god for
wisdom in his examination ; and Kali, dumbfounded at her
husband's sacrifice, mercifully checks her carnage. In China
the praying-wheels are spinning round, the burning prayers
ascend to the sky, mingling their smoke with burning gods.
Every day millions of her people wake to accept three
92

AN EflYI'TIAN llEGCAR.

AMONG THE NATIONS
contradictory religions ; and once a year her emperor mounts
the triple Altar of Heaven and prostrates himself before the
universe, alone in upper air."
The Word of God's love came to a world of darkness,
beset with shadowy terrors and dominated by demons.
The Gospel, and nothing else, has power to deliver men
from the bondage of superstition and corruption and
translate them into the kingdom of light and peace.
Some time ago a Chinese enquirer described the Bible
as "the heart-book"; last year it was described by
another simple believer as "the book that can scatter
sorrow." These happy phrases — unpremeditated words
that rose to the lips — are passing revelations of the
unseen, but ever-living ministry of the Divine Word in
the souls of those who read its pages.
The Energy of the Word.
All the recorded sayings of Christ put together fill but
a narrow compass. The Four Gospels could easily be
printed in a single issue of The Times. Yet, brief as
they are and simple in outward form, they have changed
the axis of the world. The most startling achievement
of recent science has been to discover what enormous
energy can be contained in a single atom of radium.
This thing is an allegory of the spiritual energy which
resides in the Word of God. The Gospel can never be
called old, except in the sense in which time is old, while
morning is always new. It moves among the nations
to-day, instinct with the power of an endless life.
The Book only begins its mission when it reaches the
hands of those who read it, and the real story of a
year's work can never be expressed by statistics. We
quote, therefore, a few fresh examples which bear witness
to the enduring spiritual potency of the Scriptures.
g3

THE WORD
A Brahman in Burma.
In a jungle village in the Pegu district of Burma one
man held himself for many years haughtily aloof from
the other villagers. If their shadow fell across his food,
the food was thrown away. For he was a Brahman of
the highest caste, whose proud traditions clung to him
in his adopted country. Three years ago there came
into his hands a copy of the Gospels in his own lan
guage. Before long he grew ill-content with Brahman-
ism, as the little book told him of the universal brother
hood and the common salvation. He sought and
obtained a New Testament, then a Bible, and studied
them eagerly. To-day that Brahman is a humble and
devout believer in Jesus Christ.
An Armenian in Rumania.
It is not generally known that a good many Arme
nians are settled in Rumania. One of them encountered
last year by Colporteur Klein spoke of how he loved his
Bible, and told a curious story of how he first grew
acquainted with God's Word. He was employed in an
apothecary's shop, and noticed that leaves were being
torn out of an old book to wrap up drugs. He took
away some of these leaves to read, and discovered that
the book was God's Word. Then he sought to gain
possession of as many leaves as possible, but the apothe
cary would not allow this, and told him it was a sin to
read the book. So the young man began to long for
the day when he could buy himself a copy, and he is
now the happy possessor and diligent reader of the
Bible.
The first Bible he had ever seen.
One of our Japanese colporteurs at Uwajima, in the
island of Shikoko, sold a Japanese Bible to a man starting
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AMONG THE NATIONS
out on a photographic tour. He wanted a book to
read during his journey, and bought the Bible just as he
would buy an ordinary novel. On the deck of a coasting
steamer he was sitting reading the book when another
passenger, the Rev. W. P. Turner, a missionary at
Uwajima, fell into conversation with him and advised
him to study the Bible carefully. A few days later Mr.
Turner met this man again at a hotel in a small town
where he had gone to hold a service. He attended the
meeting at Mr. Turner's invitation. He took his Bible
and was deeply impressed by what he heard. At the
close he said : "This is the first time I have attended a
Christian meeting, and this Bible is the first that I have
ever seen or read." He promised when he returned, to
attend Mr. Turner's services at Uwajima. He kept his
word, and soon became so interested in Christianity that,
after due study and preparation, he was baptized, and
has since shown himself a sincere Christian.
At Bordeaux.
Our colporteur at Bordeaux visited a poor old French
woman who was nearing the end of her life, and spoke
to her of the Saviour, the Friend of the poor. She
replied : "Oh, I know Him. I learned to know Him
from this little book which you see on the cupboard,
which I bought a few years ago from a man like you.
You couldn't believe the good it has done me. I have
known better days, but I hardly suffer from my poverty ;
for I leave everything to God, and I have peace in my
heart."
A Well-worn Testament.
In Bohemia, a very poor and aged villager, who had
bought a German Testament over thirty years ago,
showed the venerable and tattered book to our colporteur.
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THE WORD
The covers were patched over with linen, the back was
stitched together in curious fashion with thread and
string, and the print was almost obliterated with thumb
ing—but the old man reads it still. He is the caretaker
of the village cattle, and carries this Testament with
him over the green hill-pastures.
" The Lord preaches on the Mount."
"I had not much religion," said a Frenchman, "but
I bought a Gospel on the recommendation of a colpor
teur. I wouldn't read it myself, but bought it for my
little boy to play with. Out of curiosity I looked at the
headings of the chapters. When I read 'The Lord
preaches on the Mount,' I thought, 'I must read this,
just to see whether Jesus Christ was a better preacher
than our cures. ' Well, believe me, I never came upon
such wonderful reading ; I have read that sermon more
than twenty-five times."
A Drunkard Transformed.
Colporteur Athanasoff writes: — "I met a Bulgarian
to whom I had sold a New Testament two years ago.
From being a confirmed drunkard, he has become a
changed character. He told me, ' It is due to reading
the Gospel. I say to you, friend, that I have proved
the divine power of the Gospel to save a man from sin
and from himself. ' ' '
" I heard it from St. Luke."
Dr. R. Grierson, of the Canadian Presbyterian
Mission in Korea, writes : —
"It is my custom, when conducting examinations for
baptism, to ask each applicant from whom he first heard the
Gospel. In Kyung Sung recently, the answer received was
' I heard it first from St. Luke.' So it would seem that the
96

AMONG THE NATIONS
Evangelist being dead, yet speaketh, and every Testament or
Gospel is a silent persistent preacher in the house of the
purchaser. The Korean is determined always to get the
full worth of every article he purchases, so he reads and re
reads his book. If this were a living preacher he might talk
back and argue, but the printed page speaks without evoking
a foolish reply ; its unanswerable truth irresistably enlightens
the conscience."
St. John iii., 16.
From Burma we have this reported by a missionary
helper : —
" A few weeks ago a Burman came to my house and asked
for instruction with a view to Christian baptism. He is in a
responsible position, drawing good pay in a Government
department. He said that he had bought a copy of St. John's
Gospel from a colporteur, and had come for instruction
because of the words in St. John iii., i6 : 'Whosoever
believeth on Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.' "
In the Madras Presidency.
By special request, a Telugu Bible was presented
recently to the consort of a ruling Rajah. This Bible —
we are told by one who knows her well — has become
her constant meditation and delight. ' ' The room in her
palace, which was filled with idols and idol-pictures, is now
the prayer-room, adorned only by the Bible and other
Christian books. . . . She has asked me to send a small
gift to the Bible Society in Christ's name, and to express
her longing that the Bible shall be distributed so that
everyone may know the truth of it. I must not mention
her name, but you can think of her as a Ranee."
"Doubtless . . . rejoicing."
Some years ago, in the Chinese Province of Yunnan,
Mr. Owen Stevenson went to a market place near
97 H

THE WORD
Kutsingfu with Scriptures. A boy ran home to his
father in another village and told him of the foreigner
and his books. This aroused the man's interest, and he
obtained a copy of St. John's Gospel from Mr. Steven
son. After some time the poor old man turned up at
the preaching hall in Kutsingfu, having simply
" devoured " the Gospel. He knew about Christ as the
Bread of Life, about His giving sight to the blind and
raising the dead. He knew of Christ's death on the
cross and His resurrection from the dead. Better still,
he was led to accept Christ as his Saviour. Thus was
the first believer in Kiitsingfu brought to God.
Up the Sleeve and in the Heart.
From Hankow, one of our Chinese colporteurs writes :
" A young man has repeated to me the Four Gospels and
the Acts from memory. This is truly through the power of
the Holy Spirit ; for his father has threatened to disinherit and
beat him to death if he comes to us. He dare not take a
Bible home, or read it in his home ; but he keeps a Gospel
hidden up his sleeve, and whilst at work in the fields he com
mits it to memory. Fifteen months ago he did not know a
single Chinese character ; but each time he manages to steal
away here from his village I teach him the characters which
he does not know in the new chapter, and he remembers from
once telling."
A Chinese Colporteur's Father.
From Shantung, the Rev. W. H. Sears, of Pingtu,
writes : —
" The father of Dai Chen-hai, one of our colporteurs,
strongly opposed his son joining the Church. When he saw
his son bow his head to ask grace before meals, or kneel down
to pray, he would immediately drive him out of the house.
Neither would he let his son say one word about Christianity.
98

AMONG THE NATIONS
The son, however, would leave a New Testament in con
spicuous places, and soon the father found himself looking
into it out of curiosity. He grew interested, and now he
has read the New Testament through, and is a zealous
believer. He prays, talks about the doctrine freely and is an
applicant for baptism. This man was so opposed to Christian
ity that it is not likely he could ever have been reached in any
other way than by reading the Ne.w Testament."
In a Prison Cell.
A letter has been received from a man in a Japanese
prison, confessing that for sixteen years the writer had
been a thief. He had spent several years in jail at
different times, and had planned to organize a large body
of accomplished pickpockets for systematic robbery of
travellers. At the same time, his mind had been occupied
by thoughts about what would become of him after
death. He obtained some books of Buddhist teaching,
but was not satisfied with their mystical and contradictory
statements. The prison warder advised him to try read
ing what Christianity taught on the subject. He secured
a copy of our five-farthing New Testament, and in a very
short time found an answer to his questionings. He
learned that Christ had died that he might have life. In
that prison cell he called upon God, and in contrition
and penitence confessed his sins and received assurance
of their forgiveness. He wrote that he was now sending
copies of the New Testament to the men whom he had
tried to influence for evil.
A Korean Tramp and the New Testament.
In the early days of the mission at Taiku, in Southern
Korea, meetings were held in a house with a tiled roof,
set amidst a thickly populated section of that city of
straw-thatched buildings. One Sunday morning, as the
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THE WORD
Korean believers and enquirers were assembling for wor
ship and instruction, a genuine tramp arrived and seated
himself in the veranda, attracted, no doubt, by the
tiled roof — thinking that this was a rich man's resi
dence, and that as the sun was nearing high noon there
was the chance of obtaining a portion of rice and a bit
of good pickled cabbage. The gathering which he
found there and the feast of spiritual things were out
of the ordinary in this man's experience, and he listened
attentively. Finally he said, " I cannot understand all
you say, but it seems good. I want to get one of your
books." So he purchased a copy of the Chinese New
Testament — the only version available in those days —
and went his way. He was evidently a man of some
education as he could read Chinese intelligently.
About a year or so later, the missionary in Taiku
was requested to visit Myriyang, where there were
reported to be some enquirers. Arriving at the place,
who should come to welcome him but the same
tramp who had sat in the church-veranda at Taiku on
that Sunday morning many months before. The
missionary found enquirers not a few, and the first group
to be baptized some months later numbered fifteen.
During his visit, the missionary found himself one even
ing in the midst of a circle of interested listeners. The
subject of their conversation was ' ' the wonderful
Book." Finally our tramp friend held up his copy of
the Chinese Testament — with its covers, and its pages next
to the covers, worn to tatters by constant use — and
said, as he pressed it to his breast, ' ' I love this Book as
a mother loves her child. When she lies down at night,
she takes it in her arms and lies down with it. When
she rises up in the morning, she straps it on her back and
goes out with it. That is the way I love this Book.
lOO

AMONG THE NATIONS
Though I read it a hundred times, it always comes with
a fresh flavour to my mouth. ' ' The group of enquirers
there was the one result of his testimony. The tramp
is still roving about with his Book, everywhere reading
and telling the contents of the wonderful volume.
A Convict transformed.
In the prison of the town of Talca, in Southern Chile,
a notorious bandit was confined, who had long eluded
the authorities. A criminal from boyhood, his hands
were stained with the blood of more than one victim.
At last, however, he had been captured and sentenced
to penal servitude for life. To a wild mountaineer
this was worse than death, and in his desperation the
convict would strike his guards, hoping to force them to
shoot him. Happily, one of these guards was a
Christian, who belonged to the Presbyterian Church in
Talca. Moved with compassion, he spoke to his
prisoner of Christ, the sinners' Friend, and gave him from
the Gospels a brief outline of Christ's life. The convict
listened, at first with scorn, afterwards with interest,
and finally asked if the book containing this wonderful
story could be bought. Hearing that it might be
purchased for a very small price, he drew his knife from
his belt and said : " Se-nor, I have no money, but pawn
this knife and buy a Bible with the proceeds." The
warder put the knife in his pocket and went his way,
but the next day he brought his own Bible and presented
it to the convict. The latter read and re-read the book,
and gradually a change was observed in his conduct.
It was the outward token of inward renewal. He
became a new creature. The power of the Old, Old
Story transformed him, and he grew meek and obedient
to his jailors, doing his daily round of duties with
lOI

THE WORD
cheerfulness and resignation. After some time, he was
removed to the prison at Santiago, where he proved the
means of bringing some of his fellow-prisoners to a
knowledge of Christ. A priest, who sometimes visited
this penitentiary, complained to the Governor that
several convicts were reading the Bible and talking about
salvation. But the Governor was a keen observer and
a just ruler. Referring to the ex-bandit, he replied :
"If reading the Bible has changed that man's life, it
must surely be a good book, and I see no reason to
forbid the prisoners to peruse its pages."
It touches their hearts.
A pioneer missionary in Nyasaland, Mr. Edwin Price,
has spent fifteen years among African savages, who are
slowly learning to read the New Testament which the
Bible Society has published for them in Yao and in
Nyanja. Mr. Price was recently asked what part of the
Scriptures appealed to such savage readers most forcibly.
His answer was : "I should say the Crucifixion ; they
can understand that. We explain the Cross to them by
pointing to the cross-beam in a native hut — a post
is fastened upright in the ground, with a beam across
it at the top which holds up the roof. We tell them
that Christ was nailed to such a cross, and that He died
because He loved us, and that His sacrifice was offered
for us all : and it touches their hearts."
The Cross Inside.
God's Word of reconciliation brings men's hearts
together at a common focus. The Bible Society's
mission is central, in that it fixes attention upon the
whole content and purport of Holy Scripture. In these
days, when so many Christians have their souls
I02

AMONG THE NATIONS
distracted by side issues and their activities diverted
into the details of doing good, it is no small gain to be
recalled continually from things accidental to what is
the very essence of Christian faith. In Canada, last
year, an Italian immigrant objected that there was no
cross stamped on the cover of the Italian Bible which
was offered him. "No," replied the colporteur, "but
if you read the book, you will find the Cross inside."

The Bible Society does not argue or apologize. It
goes on quietly acting. It distributes everywhere the
Book about which so many men dispute, and in this
way it subjects the Bible to a crucial experiment on a
vast scale. As the result of this experiment we can say
confidently that ' ' the Word of prophecy is made more
sure." Human experience in every land bears witness
that God's message verily speaks in Holy Scripture —
the message of Redeeming Love from His Heart to our
hearts. By its inherent spiritual vitality and by the
effectual working of the Holy Spirit through its pages,
the Bible produces and maintains the Divine life in the
soul of man.

lO'

THE WORD

£ s. d.

' ' The question is not how much of our money we will
give to God, but how much of God's money we will keep for
ourselves. "
" Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive . . . riches. "
Rev. 5 : 12.
Such world-wide Christian service as we have des
cribed, even when it is conducted on lines of severe
economy, entails heavy expenditure. The Society spent
last year ;^ 103, 000 on translating, revising, printing
and binding the Scriptures ; ;^5 1,000 on its depots
and Agents abroad ; and ;^44,ooo on its colporteurs
and Biblewomen.
The cost of the Books.
The expenses incurred for translations and revisions
are often unavoidably large. Taking some new re
visions which came into use last year, we find that
the Society spent ;^45o on the last revision of the
Icelandic Bible, .;^658 in the last revision of the
Hungarian Bible, and no less than .^3,520 on the last
revision of the Hindi Old Testament. These sums are
quite apart from any cost of printing and binding.
The scale on which the Society conducts its operations
may be realized by two or three examples. In South
America Spanish and Portuguese are the dominant
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AMONG THE NATIONS
languages, and for that great neglected continent the
following new editions have been printed during the last
few months or are now in the press. In Spanish :
23,000 Bibles, 20,000 Testaments, and 100,000 separate
Portions of the Gospels or Acts. In Portuguese: 10,000
Bibles, 20,000 Testaments, and 100,000 separate Portions
of the Gospels or Acts. On these new editions for
South America, including the making of plates, the
Society is expending the large sum of ;^4,354, and this
does not include the cost of binding the books or
sending them abroad.
Within the last few months our Committee have also
given orders for the following Malagasy editions : —
10,000 Bibles with central references, and 20,000 Bibles
with the text alone. These latter are sold at is. each,
and cost the Society about 2s. each. The outlay in
making plates for, and printing, these two editions
amounts to nearly ;^2,ooo, and this is quite apart from
the expense of binding and the charges for freight.
The prices charged for the Books.
The preceding pages have already illustrated one
controlling principle of the Bible Society's mission.
Far from doing business at a profit, it habitually sells
its popular editions at prices which involve serious loss.
Those prices are fixed in any country not by considering
how much the books have cost to produce and distribute,
but by considering what the poorest class of labourers in
that country can afford to pay. Thus, in England, the
English New Testament can be bought for id., and the
English Bible for 6d. ; the Revised Version may be had for
lod. , while an excellent school Bible in admirably clear
type is sold for is. The Society's 6d. Dutch Bible is the
cheapest book in South Africa. All over India Bibles
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THE WORD
in each of the great vernaculars are sold for is., while
New Testaments are charged 4d., and single gospels
sell for one pice (i.e., }(d.) each. In China, where a
coolie often earns only 6d. or 7d. a day, the New Testa
ment in an excellent fo7'mat is sold for 2d., while cheaper
copies may be had for a fraction over id. A well-bound
Chinese Bible is sold for 6d. In Japan, a New Testa
ment can be bought for 5 sen (i.e., i%d.), which costs
7 sen to print and bind.
A colporteur in Ceylon writes: — "I met two Brahmans.
One of them asked me to give him a book. I told him I was
quite willing to sell him one if he was prepared to buy it. He
asked me the price and I told him 2 cents (about ^d.), showing
him a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel. He said ' Why do you
sell this book at such a cheap price ? The cost of the paper
alone must be more than 5 or 6 cents.' I said : ' The price is
low so as to put the book within the reach of even a poor
man.' Then they each bought a Gospel and went away."
The poverty of the Poor.
Low as these prices appear, they are beyond the
reach of many impoverished folk, eager to read the
Gospel. It is difficult, indeed, for us to realize that
myriads of human beings live just above the limit of
starvation. In many lands we hear of people in such
poverty that they are literally unable to find one small
coin to purchase that Book which is the consolation and
compensation of the disinherited. An old Frenchwoman
at Beauvais, who had not a sou, bought St. John's
Gospel for a piece of bread and a rasher of bacon. At a
little town in Styria, a shoemaker had no money, so he
soled the colporteur's shoes as payment for a Bible. In
Lombardy, a street-hawker eagerly exchanged two note
books for an Italian New Testament. Among the
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A SINHALESE WOMAN, WITH A TOMTOM.

AMONG THE NATIONS
Servian mountains the people in some districts were
so poor that our colporteurs had to accept bread in
payment for their books, instead of money.
In Oran, one Arab gave a few oranges for a Gospel,
others some eggs, and others offered bread. From Siberian
villages on the banks of the river Yenesei, our colporteur
writes : "Many a time I have taken bread in place of coins
in exchange for a copy of the Scriptures." In the
Panjab, Miss Green of the C.E.Z.M.S. at Karachi, tells
of a young man so eager to get a Sindhi Testament that
he made a bead picture-frame to give in exchange for
the volume. In Upper Burma, an old Shan woman
wanted a Gospel for her grand-children, and could only
give some rice in return. Near Cerro in the Andes, a
Peruvian Indian who had no money gave our colporteur
three candles for a Testament.
Mr. Larson sends a graphic account of how the Scrip
tures are bartered in Mongolia : —
" The Mongols have no money : they use lumps of uncoined
silver. Gospels are generally bartered for milk — camel's
milk, mare's milk, cow's milk, goat's milk, and sometimes
sheep's milk ; also for Mongolian cheese, fresh, or in a high
state of decay ; and for argol {i.e. dry dung, used for fuel).
The milk I drink ; the cheese I generally give to the Mongols
who travel with me ; while the argol is indispensable for
making fires."
At one poverty-stricken village in Galicia some men
went into partnership to purchase a Ruthenian Bible as
common property, and arranged to meet every week in
each other's houses by rotation that they might study
this Bible together.
In Malabar the country-folk are so indigent that they
often hesitate to spend three pies {= }{,d.) on a. complete
Gospel, but buy instead a copy of the Sermon on the
107

THE WORD
Mount or some other selection from the Gospel, issued
by the Basel Mission at one pie apiece.
Free Gifts.
While, as a general rule, the Society's editions are
sold at some small fixed charge, our colporteurs have
authority to give a copy of the Scriptures gratis to any
person who is able and wishful to read, and yet too
destitute to pay even part of the price. Thousands of
volumes are granted annually by our Committee, free of
all charge, in cases of special need, at home as well as
abroad. Last year, for instance, 400 pocket Bibles were
carefully distributed by visitors of the Ragged School
Union among crippled children in London ; while an
English Bible was given to each boy or girl emigrant
sent out to Canada from Dr. Barnardo's Homes and
similar philanthropic institutions. Hebrew Bibles were
presented to impoverished Jews in Morocco, whose
books had been destroyed during the bombardment of
Casablanca. The Scriptures were provided for prisoners
in Russia, in Rumania, and in Brazil. The Committee
granted Gospels in French, English, German, Italian,
Spanish, Dutch, Flemish, Arabic, and Malagasy, for
distribution among convicts of various nationalities in
French Guiana. M. Etienne Matter, of the Societe de
Patronage des Prisonniers Liberes, writes: — "Nous
vous sommes bien profondement reconnaissants de ce don
genereux, et nous vous en remercions de tout coeur au
nom des malheureux condamnes qui pourront, grace a
vous, entendre le divin message."
« * ¦*
On the whole, out of every £1 which the Bible Society
expends in preparing, producing, and distributing the
Scriptures, less than 8s. comes back to it from the
108

AMONG THE NATIONS
proceeds of sales. For the remainder, the Society relies
entirely upon the gifts of Bible-readers and Bible-lovers
in many lands. This Report has indeed marred a noble
tale in the telling, if it needs rhetoric to enforce its lesson.
The facts themselves plead, trumpet-tongued, and bring
home their appeal to every Christian heart.
The Testimony of a Great Administrator.
We cannot conclude more fitly than by quoting the
letter which Sir Robert Hart, G.C.M.G., wrote on April
15th, igog, regretting his enforced absence from the
Society's annual meeting.
"Of making of books there is no end, but there is
only one Bible, and your Society is doing a work that
can never be fully valued in preparing it in all languages
for the use of all men, and in supplying missionaries
with what they require for their growing work through
out the earth. You have made wonderful advances
these last hundred years, and you will follow them up
till every man possesses his own copy of the Scriptures
in his own tongue, and what you do is at the bottom of
every missionary effort, and rears walls around to pro
tect and support the result of such labours. Our Lord's
last promise was to be with His disciples to the end of
the world, both in time and space, and His presence will
accompany His Word to all the quarters you send it to.
I admire the zeal with which you beat up recruits and
push on the doings of this grand Society ; and as I can
not be with you on May 5th, may I say how much I
value what you do — how much I realise its importance —
and how much I feel that its effort will know no failure
and will be more and more appreciated as time rolls
on."

log

APPENDIX.

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

FORM OF A BEQUEST TO THE SOCIETY.
I bequeath the sum of Pounds sterling
free of Legacy Duty to "The British and Foreign Bible
Society," instituted in London in the year 1804, to be paid for
th e purposes of the said Society to the Treasurer for the time
being thereof, whose Receipt shall be a good discharge for the

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

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY.

President : The MARQUIS OF NORTHAMPTON, K.Q.

Vice= Presidents :

¦873. 187&
1877.

1893.

1894.

1895.

1S96.

1897.

1899.

BISHOP MITCHINSON. D.C.I.., D.D.
BISHOP MOORHOUSE, D.D.
The EARL of ABERDEEN.
The Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. KENNAWAY,
Bart, C.B , M.P.
ARCHBISHOP MACLAGAN, D.D.
BISHOP BARRY, D.D.
The BISHOP of RIPON.
Re». ALEXANDER MCLAREN, D.D.
Rev. W. H. DALLINGER. LL.D., F.R.S.
Rev. I. OS-WALD DYKES, D.D.
Sir THOMAS FQ-WELL BUXTON, Bart.,
G.C.M.G.
The ARCHBISHOP of CANTERBURY.
*Rev. JAMES H. RIGG, D.D,
W. SCHOOLCROFT BURTON, Esq.
BISHOP ROYSTON, D.D.
JOHN CORY, Esq.
The EARL of HALSBURY.
LORD BRASSEY, K.C.B.
The BISHOP of ST. ASAPH.
LORD KINNAIRD.
The DEAN OF WINDSOR.
Rev. A. M. FAIRBAIRN, D.D.
R. N. CUST, Esq., LL.D.
The BISHOP of LICHFIELD.
Alt Sir JOSEPH SAVORY, Bart.
The BISHOP of NEWCASTLE.
*The ARCHBISHOP of SYDNEY.
A. MCARTHUR. Esq.
Rev. CHANCELLOR EDMONDS, B.D.
J. STORRS FRY, Esq.
BISHOP JOHNSON, D.D.
Rev J, G. ROGERS, D.D.
ROBERT HEATH, Esq.
The ARCHBISHOP of the WEST INDIES.
ARCHDEACON SINCLAIR, D.D.
The BISHOP of MARLBOROUGH.
Rev. H. J. POPE, D.D.
J. R. HILL, Esq.
VISCOUNT PEEL.
The BISHOP of BATH and WELLS.
The DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE,
LORD PECKOVER of WISBECH.
The BISHOP of CHESTER.
BISHOP GOE, D D.
The DEAN of DURHAM.
The BISHOP of ST. ALBANS.
Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.
The EARL of STAMFORD.
J. TRUE MAN MILLS, Esq.
Sir ALBERT SPICER, Bart., M.P.
Rev. J. G. GREENHOUGH.
Rev, RICHARD GLOVER, D.D.
The BISHOP OF HEREFORD.
BISHOP STUART, D.D.
The DEAN of NORWICH.
The BISHOP of PETERBOROUGH.
Hon. J. J. ROGERSON.
A. S. LESLIE-MELVILLE, Esq.
LORD RADSTOCK.
The BISHOP of DURHAM.
Rev. CANON CHRISTOPHER.
Rev. D. MacEWAN, D.D.
The BISHOP of WAKEFIELD.
T. A. DENNY, Esq
VISCOUNT WOLVERHAMPTON.
Rev. CANON A. R. FAUSSET, D.D.
The BISHOP of ST. DAVID'S.
BISHOP WELLDON, D.D.
VISCOUNT CLIFDEN.
Rev. CANON R, B GIRDLESTONE.
Rev W. L. WATKINSON, D.D,
ROBERT BARCLAY, Esq,
HENRY MORRIS, Esq.
BISHOP INGHAM, D.D.
The BISHOP of LIVERPOOL.
The MASTER of TRINITY.
Rev. F W. MACDONALD.
F. A. BEVAN, Esq.
The BISHOP of WINCHESTER.
The BISHOP of LONDON.
The BISHOP of LUC KNOW.
Sir GEORGE HAYTER CHUBB, Bart.
The Rt. Hon. Sir SAMUEL J. WAY, Bart.

• Deceased since March 3i5t, 1909.

1901, LORD ALVERSTONE, G.C.M.G.
Lord Chief Justice.
Sir G. E. KNOX.
Rev. GRIFFITH JOHN, D.D,
1902. The BISHOP of CALCUTTA.
The BISHOP of UGANDA.
The BISHOP of HOKKAIDO, Japan,
Rev. W. T. DAVISON, D.D,
Sir CHARLES ALFRED ELLIOTT,
Sir C,' ERNEST TRITTON, Bart.
THOMAS HODGKIN, Esq., D.C.L.
CHARLES FINCH FOSTER, Esq.
1903. The DEAN of WESTMINSTER.
Rev, C, H, KELLY,
Sir ALGERNON COOTE, Bart.
G. W. MACALPINE, Esq,
GEORGE SPICER, Esq.
MARTIN JOHN SUTTON, Esq,
1904. The BISHOP of BIRMINGHAM.
The BISHOP of MANCHESTER.
BISHOP ORMSBY, D.D.
BISHOP STIRLING, D.D.
Rev. ANDREW MURRAY, D.D.
Rev. MARSHALL HARTLEY.
Rev. F. B. MEYER.
Rev D. MACKICHAN, D.D.
Sir A. HARGREAVES BROWN, Bart.
N. W. HOYLES, Esq., K.C., LL.D.
THOS. PUMPHREY, Esq.
GEORGE CADBURY, Esq.
P, F. WOOD, Esq.
G. F. SUTTON, Esq.
1905. The BISHOP of BRISTOL.
The Hon. JUSTICE FORBES.
Rev. R, F. HORTON, D.D
GENERAL BOOTH, D.C.L.
E. PERCY HOLLAMS, Esq.
WILLIAMSON LAMPLOLTGH, Esq.
1906. The EARL of DARTMOUTH.
The BISHOP of CARLISLE.
The BISHOP of ELY.
LORD STRATHCONA, G.C.M.G.
LORD WIMBORNE.
BISHOP TAYLOR SMITH.
Rev. PRINCIPAL FORSYTH, D.D.
Rev. TIMOTHY RICHARD, Litt.D.
Rev. D. ROWLANDS.
D. E. HOSTE, Esq,
SAMUEL LLOYD, Esq.
E. J. EARP, Esq.
1907. The BISHOP of SOUTHAMPTON.
The BISHOP of EXETER.
The BISHOP of MOMBASA.
Sir GEORGE SMITH.
Rev. J. B. PATON. D.D,
R. GILLESPIE, Esq.
J. RICE LEWIS, Esq.
*J, POLLARD, Esq.
I. P. WERNER, Esq,
1908, EARL GREY.
The BISHOP of SOUTH TOKYO.
Sir ANDREW H. L ERASER, K.C.S.I.
Sir WM. MACGREGOR, G.C.M.G.
Sir W. P. HARTLEY.
Rev. G. CAMPBELL MORGAN, D.D.
T. RENDEL HARRIS, Esq,, Litt.D.
C. D. GINSBURG, Esq., LL.D.
A. J. CROSFIELD, Esq.
EMIL WALSER, Esq.
Rev. JOHN SHARP.
1909. The ARCHBISHOP of YORK.
BISHOP MONTGOMERY, D.D.
Sir ROBERT HART. Bart., G.C.M.G.
Rev. Preb. H. E. FOX.
Rev. J. CAMPBELL GIBSON, D,D,
Rev. W. W. JACKSON, D.D.
Rev. R. WAROLAW THOMPSON, D.D
Rev, GEORGE BROWN, D.D.
G. A, GRIERSON, Esq., CLE., Ph,D„
Ll-D.
ELIAS ROGERS, Esq.
W. ALDIS WRIGHT, Esq,, LL.D.
F, F, BELSEY, Esq.
F, P. WEAVER, Esq., M.D. I

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY.

Treasurer :
Robert Barclay, Esq.

Chairman of Committee :
Williamson Lamplough, Esq.

Committee :

Elected May sth, 1909.
The dates indicate ¦when members first joined the Committee.

C. A. Bingel, Esq. 1906
F. S. Bishop, Esq, 1908
*W. G. Bradshaw, Esq, 1909
A. Brauen, Esq. 1897
R. D. Cheveley, Esq. 1906
G. T. Crosfield, Esq. 190 1
A. T. Dence, Esq. - 1905
Col. D. F. Douglas-Jones- 1905
C. A. Flint, Esq. 1904
Sir William Godsell 1903
H. Lance Gray, Esq. 1906
M. Gutteridge, Esq. - 1908
H. Koenigs, Esq. 1897
G. B. Leechman, Esq. 1908
Geo. Maddox, Esq. - 1905
H. W. Maynard, Esq. 1898
G. J. McCaul, Esq. - 1902
"T. P. Newman, Esq. 1904

F. D. Outram, Esq.
W. C. Parkinson, Esq.
W. H. Poate, Esq.
*A. RoUand Rainy, Esq.,
M,B., M.P.
*C. G. F. Rees, Esq. -
Leslie S. Robertson, Esq.
Major-Gen. C. G. Robinson
W. H. Seagram, Esq.
E. J. Sewell, Esq.
Colonel D. V. Shortland
Colonel E. S. Skinner
Sir Chas. J. Tarring
G. H, Wedekind, Esq.
*C. H. Werner, Esq. -
Robert Whyte, Esq. -
Sir And. Wingate, k.c.i.e.
A. W. Young, Esq.

1905 1905
1908 1902
1909
190 1
1898
1902
190 1
1900 1903 1907 1893
19091907
1903 1891

Not on the Committee last year.

The Committee meet, as a rule, at the Bible House, 146, Queen
Victoria Street, E.C, on the first and third Mondays in every Month, at
Half-past Eleven o'clock ; and oftener, as business may require.
Secretaries :
The Rev. Arthur Taylor, m.a. The Rev. John H. Ritson, m.a.
ji: irj-i ¦ 1 I Rev. R. KiLGOUR, D.D., Editorial Superintendent.
& hdztorial - n/r .-, t- a • J ±
r, , . . Mr. Crayden Edmunds, m.a.. Assistant.
Department J '
Literary "| The Rev. T. H. Darlow, m.a., Literary Superintendent.
Department j Mr. A. G. Jayne, b.a., Assistant.
Home \ The Rev. H. A. Raynes, m.a.. Home Superintendent.
Department j The Rev. Harry Scott, Assistant Home Secretary.

Accountant :
Mr. W. P. Wakelin.

Warehouse Manager :
Mr. W. BlLLOCH.

Collector :
Mr. Geo. B. Poole.

Honorary Solicitors :
Messrs. Hollams, Sons, Coward & Havvksley,
.70, Mincing Lane, E, C.
Bankers :
Williams Deacon's Bank, Ltd., 20, Birchin Lane, E.C.

114

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY.

Foreign Agents and Secretaries.

Paris — Pastor D. Lortsch
Berlin — Mr. M. A. Morrison
Rome — Rev. R. O. Walker, m.a.
Madrid — Mr. W. Summers
St. Petersburg — Rev. W. Kean, d.d.
Ekaterinburg — Mr. W. Davidson
Constantinople — Rev. T. R. Hodg
son.
Alexandria — Mr. C. T. Hooper
Cape Town — Rev. G. P. van der
Merwe
Johannesburg — Rev. G. Lowe
Durban — Rev. J. Baptist Rose
Ispahan — Mr. "Th. Irrsich
Calcutta — Rev. A. W. Young
Bombay — Mr. R. A. Adams

Madras— Ke\. W. E. H. Organe,
B.A., B.D
Bangalore — Rev. E. P. Rice
Allahabad— Kev. T. S. Wynkoop
Lahore— Ur. W. H. L. Church
Colombo — Mr. T. Gracie
Rangoon — Rev. W. Sherratt
Singapore— Mr. C. E. G. Tisdall
Shanghai — Rev. G. H. Bondfield
Seoul— Mr. H. Miller
Kobi^—Ur. F. Parrott
Whanganui — Rev. F. H. Spencer
Rio de Janeiro — Rev. F. Uttley
Callao—Mr. A. R. Stark
Jamaica — Rev. G. O. Heath
Toronto — Rev. W. B. Cooper, m.a.

Home District Secretaries and Assistants.

Rev. James Thomas,
Bible House, London.
*Rev. J. Cynddylan Jones, d.d.,
Whitchurch, Cardiff.
Rev. W. Fisher, m.a.,
Bible House, London.
Rev. D. C. Edwards, m.a.,
Llanbedr, R.S. O. , Merionethshire.
Rev. W. R. Bowman, b.a.,
Rowley Avenue, Stafford.
Rev. W. G. Jones, b.a.,
122, Barons Court Road, West
Kensington, W.
Rev. J. Alston, b.a.,
Meadowside, Lancaster
Rev. T. Smetham,
S3, St. Augustine's Avenue,
Croydon.
Rev. Elias George,
.f.2, St. Peter's Road, Leicester.
Rev. F. Stanton Eardley,
Broughton, Henleaze Road,
Bristol.

Rev. H. Starmer,
12, Cedar Road, Norwich.
^ Resigning in the Autumn, igog.

Rev. Walter Wall,
12, Chestnut Road, Moseley,
Birmingham.
Rev. T. A. Wolfendale, M.A.,
41, Barr field Road, Pendleton,
Manchester.
¦Rev. W. F. HoDGE, m.a,.
Ridge End Villas, Headingley ,
Leeds.
Rev. A. H. Gaskell, m.a., b.d.,
ig, Staverton Road, Oxford.
Rev. J. Addison Ingle, m.a.,
Walden, Mount Gold Road,
Plymouth.
Rev. John A. Cooper,
Carrick-a-Rede, Central Avenue,
West Bridgford, Nottingham.
Rev. H. T. H. Wightwick, m.a.,
32, Panton Street, Cambridge.
Rev. A. J. Marrs,
7, Gowan Terrace, Jesmond,
Newcastle-on- Tyne.
Rev. J. O. Haughton, b.a.,
Picton Cottage, Waterloo,
Liverpool.

Mr. Robert F. Crosland, J.P.,
Oldfieldnook, Cleckheaton.
t Resigning, October ist, igog.

"5

THE WORD

SUMMARY.
The British and Foreign Bible Society exists for one single
object — to supply every man with the Holy Scriptures in his
own mother-tongue. It concerns itself solely with circulating
that Book which is the Charter of Christ's Church through
out all the world. And in this aim it unites Christians of
almost every communion.
The Year 1908-1909.
Last year the Society issued over 5,934,000 copies of the
Scriptures — complete or in parts. This total is 246,000
copies in advance of the output in the previous year, but it
was surpassed by the figures announced in 1903 and in 1906.
Compared with 1907-8, Bibles show an increase of 20,000,
while Testaments are about 20,000 fewer. In Portions, how
ever, last year's issue was 246,000 above the year previous,
and constitutes a record in the experience of our Society.
The steadily increasing demand for these Gospels and
Psalters, which circulate mainly in the mission field, shows
how the Society is fulfilling its vital function as the partner
and pioneer of Foreign Missions.
The issues from the Bible House in London for the past
year were 1,884,000 copies— an increase of 46,000 on the
previous year. The growth was entirely in our English and
Welsh editions— a slight recovery after several years of
decline. The London Bible House issued 733,000 copies in foreign
languages, which for convenience had been printed in
England. The bulk of our circulation, however, consists of
editions which, as far as possible, are produced and pub
lished in the countries where they will be sold and read.
116

AMONG THE NATIONS
The Society prints the Scriptures at about fifty different
places, and in sixty different alphabets and characters.
The total issues by the Society since its foundation have
been 215,500,000 copies of the Scriptures, complete or in
parts. Of these, more than eighty-two millions have been
in English.
The Work at Home.
Of last year's issues, 1,151,126 volumes were in English or
Welsh, and circulated mainly in the British Empire, Of the
Society's English Penny Testament, 109,801 were issued,
making a total of 8,944,445 during the last twenty-four years.
The English Scriptures issued last year included 1x8,568
copies of the Society's 6d. Bible ; 100,359 copies of the lod.
Bible ; and 50,692 copies of the new is. School Bible. The
issues also included about 30,000 Bibles and Testaments in
the English Revised Version. Nearly 50,000 copies were in
Welsh, and about 2,900 volumes were circulated in embossed
type for the blind.
In England and Wales the Society spent about ;^9,ooo
last year, mainly in direct grants of Scriptures — free or at
greatly reduced rates — to the Sunday Schools and Home
Missions of nearly every Christian Communion, and to all the
varied agencies of religious and philanthropic activity.
Nearly all the English and Welsh Institutions for befriend
ing the blind obtain the Scriptures which they require from
the Bible House, at less than half the cost of their production.
Students at Theological and Missionary Colleges in England
and Wales, who need such assistance, receive as gifts, about
1,000 Testaments in Hebrew or Greek each year. The
Society also presents outgoing missionaries with Bibles or
Testaments in the vernaculars of the fields in which they
labour. A subsidy of nearly ;^5oo a year is given to the London
Biblewomen and Nurses' Mission, which employs over 150
Biblewomen and Nurses, who read and sell the Scriptures in
the poorest districts of the Metropolis. 117

THE WORD
Translation and Revision.
The Society's list of versions now includes the names of
FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN distinct forms of speech. This
means the complete Bible in 105 different languages ; the
New Testament in 102 more languages ; and at least one
Book of Scripture in 211 other languages.
To print these languages, sixty different sets of characters
are required. Twenty-eight new names have been added to
the list during the last four years.
The Society's expenditure last year for translating, revising,
printing and binding the Scriptures was £102,8^6.
In embossed type for the blind the Society has helped
to provide Scriptures in over thirty different languages.
The Partner of Missions.
The Bible Society co-operates with the missionaries of
almost every Christian communion in preparing the versions
which they need. It prints the editions, bears the loss in
volved in their sale at reduced prices, and pays the carriage
of the books to the mission stations. Where colportage is
undertaken to facilitate distribution, the Society also makes
grants towards the support of colporteurs working under the
missionaries' supervision.
From the Bible Society, the Church of England, with com
paratively insignificant exceptions, obtains almost all the
Scriptures required for its foreign missions.
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts has procured Scriptures from the Bible Society in
seventy languages. The Church Missionary Society uses one
hundred and seven different translations which come from the
Bible House. Equally important help is rendered to the
Universities' Mission to Central Africa, the Melanesian
Mission, and the South American Missionary Society.
Nonconformist Foreign Missions obtain the bulk of all the
Scriptures they use, directly or indirectly, from the Bible
Society. 118

AMONG THE NATIONS
It furnishes the London Missionary Society with the Scrip
tures in fifty-eight different languages, and the Methodist
Missionary Societies of Great Britain and her Colonies with
ninety-one versions. Presbyterian Missions throughout the
world use one hundred and thirteen of its versions. It
published the Kongo version for the Baptist Missionary
Society, and also suppHes many of their stations in China
and Jamaica. The China Inland Mission and other un
denominational societies practically obtain all the Scriptures
they use.
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 authenti
cated version of the Scriptures in a new tongue. Each new
tribe evangelized, each fresh language reduced to writing
and grammar, each new convert baptized, means a new claim
for help from the resources of the Bible House — help which is
most gladly given, on such terms that it creates no charge
upon the funds of the Mission which is aided thereby.
In Foreign Lands.
The Society maintains dep6ts in about a hundred of the
chief cities of the world.
It employs about 900 native Christian colporteurs who were
continuously at work throughout the year 1908, supervised by
the Society's foreign Agents, or its missionary friends. These
colporteurs sold last year over 2,600,000 copies.
It supports 600 native Christian Biblewomen, mainly in
the East, in connection with forty different missionary
organisations. The Society's grants for Colporteurs and Biblewomen during
1908 amounted to nearly ;^44,ooo.
Auxiliaries. At the close of 1908 the Society had 5,259 Auxiliaries,
Branches, and Associations in England and Wales. During
1908 as many as 4,651 meetings were held, and 3,195 sermons
preached, on behalf of the Society. 119

THE WORD
Outside the United Kingdom the Society has about 2,521
Auxiliaries and Branches, mainly in the British Colonies.
Many of these carry on Bible distribution vigorously in their
own localities, besides sending generous annual contributions
to the Bible House in London.
The Centenary Fundi
From this fund ;^ii7,iii has already been spent, for the
most part on definite special objects involving capital
expenditure, but also relieving the Society's annual charges.
Thus large sums have been laid out in securing sites, dep6ts,
or other premises for the Society at important centres, mainly
in the East.
Considerable sums have also been voted for new versions
and editions of the Scriptures, and recently for extended col
portage in South America, in Burma, in China, in Korea, and
in Japan.
Expenditure. The general expenditure for the past year has been
;^236,562. This is an increase of ;^io,o69 over the total of
the previous year ; but it still falls ;^ 19, 000 below the
expenditure in 1903-4, which was the highest in the Society's
history. With regard to the items of this increase, we note that, as
was the case in 1907, the cost of foreign depots has again
risen : — this year by ;^3,i6i. This, however, is by no means
an unsatisfactory sign of the general development of the
Society's work in its Foreign Agencies, especially in the Far
East. The amount spent on colportage from the General Fund has
increased by ;^2,342, chiefly in India, China, Korea, and
Japan. Other items of expenditure show an increase
amounting altogether to ;^i,878.
The Committee have expended altogether ;^io2,876 in pro
ducing versions and editions of the Scriptures ; this is ;^2,689
more than in the previous year. 120

AMONG THE NATIONS
Receipts.
On the other hand, the general receipts for the year were
;£^237,3i3— showing a decline of ;^2,237 as compared with
the figures for 1907-8.
Examining the several items of this total, we find that
donations paid in to the Bible House increased by ;^7ii.
Collections and subscriptions paid in to the Bible House also
increased by ;^i,036.
Legacies. The Legacies received during the past year amounted to
;^38,924 — a large decrease on the previous year. As the
Society's annual receipts from legacies naturally vary to an
extent which cannot be foreseen, the Committee have formed
a " Legacy Equalization Fund," by means of which they use
as income from this source in any year the annual average of
the legacies received during the previous seven years. Acting
on this rule, the amount from legacies to be now carried into
income is ;^4i,655.
It is satisfactory to report that the Society's total receipts
from sales, which had fallen to ;^88,522 in 1906, were last
year, ;^92,265.
Free Contributions.
The Free Contributions received from auxiliaries at home
and abroad have been ;^68,66o— a decrease of ^^4,450- Of
the decrease, ;^i,i34 appears in the receipts from Auxiliaries
in England and Wales, while the Colonial Auxiliaries have
paid in ;^3,3i6 less than in the previous year. More than
;^2,ooo of this Colonial decline is due to the fact that the
Canada Auxiliary has been involved in unusually heavy
expense by the rapid growth of organized Bible work within
the Dominion. Australia has sent £2,19^^ and New Zealand
;^i,62o. The Hibernian Bible Society's total contribution
has risen to ;^i,5oo. 121

THE WORD
A small Balance.
Payments and receipts, under sundry Special Funds, raised
the Society's Total Expenditure last year to ;^237,o4i, and
the Total Receipts to ;^238,040, leaving a net excess on the
year's working of £<yy).
In the autumn of 1908 the Committee made a careful survey
of the Society's operations, to determine how far colportage
might wisely be extended in each Agency. They determined
to authorize a number of new colporteurs in different countries,
which will involve an increased expenditure of over ;^3,oooa
year. Even during the past twelve months the number of
our colporteurs has increased in certain countries, and their
work as a whole has proved signally successful.
In. face of this forward movement and the inevitable
expansion of the work in every continent, there is need for a
generous increase in the Society's income.

Our Friends above.
Since the Society's last annual meeting nine more of its
Vice-Presidents have been called to their rest and their
reward : The Archbishop of Sydney ; the Dean of Peter
borough ; Dr. J. H, Rigg, the Nestor among Wesleyan
ecclesiastics ; Canon Fleming, the silver-tongued divine ;
Sir Lovelace T. Stamer, formerly Bishop of Shrewsbury ;
Sir George Livesey, a great captain of industry ; Mr. Daniel
Wellby, experienced in business and beautiful in character ;
and Dr. Theodore Duka, the veteran Hungarian patriot, who
fought gallantly for the liberty of his fatherland sixty years
ago. Last, but assuredly not least, among these, we com
memorate our dear friend, Mr. Caleb R. Kemp, beloved and
revered by all his colleagues, and for sixteen years Chairman
of the Committee ; we thank God for every remembrance of
him, and for his inestimable services to the Bible Society.
1 22

AMONG THE NATIONS
The Chairman of the Committee.
To this post, filled for so long by Mr. Caleb R. Kemp,
the Committee have unanimously elected Mr. Williamson
Lamplough.
The Staff.
Last summer the Rev. John Sharp finally laid down his
charge as Editorial Superintendent and Consulting Secretary,
and retired from the Bible House, after twenty-eight years of
such service as few men have been privileged to render to the
Bible Society. With deep satisfaction we record the recent
appointment of the Rev. R. Kilgour, M.A., D.D., to the
vacant post of Editorial Superintendent. Dr. Kilgour has done
twenty years' service in the Church of Scotland's Mission at
Darjeeling, and for the last four years has also been engaged
on behalf of our Society as translator of the Naipali New
Testament. Mr, Arthur G. Jayne, B.A., has been appointed Assistant
in the Literary Department at the Bible House.
Mr. A. E. Butler has been appointed a member of the
Society's staff in India. Mr. Butler left for Lahore early in
February, 1909, to take the place of Mr. W. H. L. Church,
Secretary of the Panjab Auxiliary, during the latter's furlough.
The Rev. J. O. Haughton, B.A., Assistant Curate of St.
Peter's, Birkdale, has been appointed District Secretary of the
South-West Lancashire District.

123

THE WORD

CONDENSED STATEMENT of RECEIPTS
EXTRACTED from the
For the Year ending

Receipts.

from sales of scriptures.

Sales through Trade Depots, Auxiliary
and other Societies ... ... ... ;^3 1,242 16 9
Sales in the Society's Foreign Agencies 61,021 16 6

92,264 13 3
free income.
Contributions from Auxiliaries ... ... 68,660 7 10
Annual Subscriptions, Donations, Legacies,
&c. (paid in London) ... ... ... 77,115 7 i

;£'238,040 8 2

124

AMONG THE NATIONS

AND PAYMENTS OF the BIBLE SOCIETY,
ANNUAL REPORT,
March 3 ist, 1909.

Payments.
For translating and revising the Scriptures,
and for paper, printing and binding ... ;^io3,ii3 15 4
For rent, taxes, establishment, &c., of over
100 Foreign Depots and Warehouses in
the chief cities in the world, grants to
other Depots, salaries of foreign Agents,
Depositaries, &c  51.223 4 10
Towards the maintenance of Colporteurs
and Biblewomen  43.924 '3 2
For the Bible House staff and expenses of
the House in London, District Secretaries,
travelling expenses, and grants to assist
kindred societies in Bible distribution ... 27,265 14 3
For London Warehouse expenses and staff,
reports, literature, freight and carriage
of Scriptures, &c  11,5131210

^^237,041 o 5

125

The Bible in the World

A Monthly Magazine of the British and Foreign Bible Society.
Profusely illustrated, id. Post Free for a year, 2S.
Annual volumes, cloth, \s. 6d. each.

The Bible Society Gleanings
For villagers and young people. Fully illustrated, monthly, ^d.
Post Free for a year, is.
Annual volumes, cloth, gilt sides and edges, is. each.
The Annual Report for 1908-9
Paper cover, to non-subscribers, is.
"The Word among the Nations"
The Society's Popular Illustrated Report for 1908-9.
Fifteen full-page inset illustrations. Boards, is, post free.
The History of the British and Foreign
Bible Society
By William Canton, In Four volumes. Vols. I. and II., 1804-
1854. Illustrated, Published by Mr. Murray, Albemarle
Street, W. Price, 155. net per volume. Vols. III. and IV.
in preparation.
The Story of the Bible Society
A Popular Record. By William Canton. One Vol., 8vo.
Illustrated. Published by Mr. Murray, Albemarle Street, \V.
Price, 6s,
Historical Catalogue of the Printed
Editions of Holy Scripture in the Library of the
British and Foreign Bible Society
Compiled by T. H. Darlow, M.A., and H. F. Moule, M.A, In
t-wo vols,, 8vo., large paper, bound in dark blue buckram, top
edges gilt. Vol. I,, English, now ready. Vol, II., Other
Languages, ready early next year. Only 500 sets printed,
of -which 200, numbered and signed, now remain for sale
in England and America. Price of each set (not sold
separately), 3 guineas net. To be obtained at the Bible House,
146, Queen Victoria Street, E.C.
126

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