The story of the Bible Society

Preface

In the following pages an attempt has been made to sketch the origin, growth, and progress of the British and Foreign Bible Society during the hundred years which began on the 7th March 1804, and which will be brought to a close on the 6th March next by the universal observance, among the Reformed Churches, of "Bible Sunday" as a day of thanksgiving for the blessing which the free circulation of the Holy Scriptures has been to the world.

Special attention has been paid in the earlier parts of this book to the unforeseen and providential developments by which the Society has been enabled to realise in some degree the world-wide purposes for which it was instituted ; and the reader has been placed in a position to understand the Society's methods, the nature and extent of its operations, and the sympathy and financial vi PREFACE

encouragement which it has extended to every effort to disseminate the Scriptures. In the later chapters prominence has been given to the personal and religious aspects of the work.

This story of the Bible Society has been undertaken at the desire of the Committee, and is published with their approval as a memorial of the Centenary.

WILLIAM CANTON.

?ith February 1904.

Contents

PRELUDE

I. "WHY NOT FOR THE WORLD?" .

IL "built in TROUBLOUS TIMES" .

CHAPTER I "why not for the world?"

"Surely a society might be formed for the purpose.. But if for Wales, why not for the kingdom? Why not for the world?"

The words were spoken amid a hum of eager conversation. The time was the 7th December 1802. The place was the counting-house of Mr Joseph Hardcastle, a prosperous merchant who carried on business at Old Swan Stairs, near London Bridge. Though the room overlooked the Thames, the river was scarcely visible from its lighted windows in the dark of that winter morning, when, in keeping with the early habits of the period, the committee of the Religious Tract Society had met to breakfast at the hospitable board of one of its members, and to attend to the affairs of their society. The speaker was their secretary, the Rev. Joseph Hughes, minister of the Baptist congregation at Battersea ; and this was his reply to an appeal which the Rev. Thomas Charles of Bala had just made to the committee for assistance to supply the people of Wales with the Scriptures in their native tongue.

Ordained to the ministry in 1780, Mr Charles had withdrawn from the Church a few years later, and thrown in his lot with the Calvinistic Methodists at Bala. Summer and winter among the wild hills he had carried the tidings of the Gospel, founding Sunday schools as he went, and supervising the itinerant schoolmasters whom he provided at his own expense for the benefit of the scattered villages. As early as 1787 he was in correspondence with Thomas Scott, the Commentator, regarding the dearth of Bibles in the Principality. Often in his journeys he had been asked for the Scriptures, but "there were none to be bought for money, unless some poor person, pinched by poverty, was obliged to sell his Bible." During the sixty-nine years which had elapsed since its first Welsh edition in 1718, the S.P.C.K. had published 65,000 Bibles and 5000 Testaments — an average of about a thousand copies a year among a growing population of some hundreds of thousands. In 1770 the Rev. Peter Williams had printed at Carmarthen the first of several small editions of a quarto Welsh Bible with notes, "but the price, iBs., was too high for the poor to command."

Especially after the great spiritual awakening in 1791-3 the scarcity of the Scriptures had been keenly felt ; the hearts of the people had been stirred to their very depths, ignorance was disappearing before the Sunday schools and the itinerating day schools, and on all sides a bitter cry was rising for the Word of God. Repeated efforts had been made to induce the S.P.C.K. to print an edition of 10,000 copies. The Rev.

"WHY NOT FOR THE WORLD ?"^ 7

Thomas Jones of Creaton, who was not less active than Mr Charles himself in this emergency, had given the society security that 4000 copies should be paid for as soon as they were ready for sale, but the S.P.C.K. had questioned the need and shrunk from the expense. In 1796 it had at length consented to undertake the venture, and in 1799 an edition of 10,000 Bibles and 2000 Testaments had been issued. This supply proved quite inadequate to the demand. By April 1800 every copy had been sold, and whole districts were still unprovided for. Applications were made for yet another edition, but unhappily the straitened finances of the S.P.C.K., whose work was not confined to the distribution of the Scriptures, did not at the moment admit of another large expenditure. To Mr Charles it was a disheartening result after twelve years of unwearied endeavour.

In this same year, 1800, had occurred an incident which touchingly illustrated both the scarcity of the Scriptures in Wales and the desire of the people to possess them. In a valley under Cader Idris, in the parish of Llanfihangel, there was a little Welsh girl of sixteen who had long loved the Word of God, but who had no other chance of reading it than by going to the house of a relative two miles from her home. For years she had been saving all she could, and now in 1800 she travelled from Llanfihangel to Bala — twenty-eight miles through the mountains — to buy herself a Bible. Alas, she had come too late ; every copy of the new edition had been disposed of. Deeply moved by the girl's tears and the simple piety of her story, Mr Charles gave her a copy which had been laid aside for one of his friends, and Mary Jones retraced her long journey, happy in the fulfilment of her heart's desire.

The population of Wales had now reached 540,000, and their spiritual needs called for renewed exertions. A project was started by Mr Jones of Creaton, for the printing of an edition at Chester, but it was found impracticable. Next, it was proposed that a Welsh Bible Fund should be raised by subscriptions from all parts of the Principality. The poverty of the people occasioned deep discouragement, but it was not without hope of being able to interest his generous English friends in the furtherance of this plan, that Mr Charles had gone up to London in December 1802 for one of his regular periods of service at Lady Huntingdon's chapel in Spa Fields. As he lay awake a morning or two before this meeting of the 7th — for the subject was " much on his mind " — the idea occurred to him of having a society established in London, on a basis similar to that of the Tract Society, for the supply of the Scriptures to the Welsh ; and this was the design which, as a member of the R.T.S. committee, he had now laid before them, with an eloquent appeal to their sympathy and influence.

Amid the hum of conversation which followed Mr Charles's address, the voice of Mr Hughes was heard : " If for Wales, why not for the kingdom? Why not for the world?"

CHAPTER II "built in troublous times "

The vast project suggested in those memorable words was hailed with enthusiasm. Week by week it was discussed and developed. In an essay on The Excellency of the Holy Scriptures : an Argument for their more general Dispersion, Mr Hughes appealed to the public to assist in founding "the first institution that ever emanated from one nation for the good of all." A code of regulations was drafted by Mr Samuel Mills, and revised and expanded in debate at Old Swan Stairs, until in all essentials it assumed the shape in which it became the constitution of the British and Foreign Bible Society^ — the happy title proposed by Mr Hughes in place of the original "Society for promoting a more extensive Circulation of the Holy Scriptures at home and abroad." At a general meeting of the R.T.S. in May 1803, the project was advocated with fervid eloquence. Progress, however, was seriously retarded by doubt, indifference, incredulity, and sectarian prejudice. Nothing came of a resolution that application should be made to his Majesty George III. for his patronage ; and though by the beginning of lo THE BIBLE SOCIETY

1804 the promoters had secured the adhesion of such distinguished men as William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, Charles Grant, Zachary Macaulay, Lord Teignmouth, and Henry Thornton, at the actual inauguration of the Society "no royal prince, no nobleman, no bishop, no member of Parliament was present."

In February 1804 invitations to a public meeting at the London Tavern were sent out to those who were thought likely to espouse the cause. They were accompanied by an address (prepared by Mr Hughes), from which a single passage may be taken to indicate the spirit of faith and courage that animated the projectors : —

" If the present period is not the most auspicious to such undertakings, neither is there any danger of its being fatal to them. ' The wall of Jerusalem,' it is written, ' shall be built in troublous times.' In fact, how many successful eiforts for the promotion of human happiness have been made amidst the clouds and tempests of national calamity ! It also should be remembered that the present is the only period of which we are sure. Our days of service are both few and uncertain : whatsoever, therefore, our hands find to do, let us do it with our might."

The times were indeed troublous. Once more a French army of invasion was massed along the coast from the Zuyder Zee to the mouth of the Seine. England was a vast camp, with 520,000 men under arms. The troops lay down to sleep with their marching orders, notwithstanding the watch kept in the martello towers and the patrol of the long line of British ships-of-war.

On Wednesday, 7th March 1804, the British and Foreign Bible Society was founded at the London

"BUILT IN TROUBLOUS TIMES" 'ii

Tavern, in the presence of about three hundred persons of various denominations. Mr Granville Sharp presided. When Mr Robert Cowie, Mr William Alers, Mr Samuel Mills, and Mr Hughes — all members of the R.T.S. — had spoken of the need for the Society and of the nature and range of its contemplated work, the Rev. C. F. A. Steinkopff, pastor of the German Lutheran church in the Savoy, and a member too of the R.T.S. committee, described the scarcity of the Scriptures in the foreign countries he had visited, and appealed to the compassion and munificence of British Christians on behalf of his German fellow-countrymen. Then, on the spur of "an impulse which he had neither the inclination nor the power to disobey," rose the Rev. John Owen, curate of Fulham and chaplain to Dr Porteus, the Bishop of London. He had come to the meeting with much hesitation ; he was amazed to find that Quakers had been invited to take part in the proceedings ; but the appeal for Germany had touched his heart, and the scene before him — the unexampled combination of Christian denominations whom doctrinal and ritual differences had kept for ages asunder — carried him back in the spirit to the zeal and charity of the apostolic age.

"To him it appeared," as he afterwards wrote, " to indicate the dawn of a new era in Christendom ; and to portend something like the return of those auspicious days when the multitude of them that believed were of ' one heart and one soul ' ; and when, as a consequence of that union, to a certain degree at least, ' the Word of God mightily grew and prevailed.' " Inspired by these deep emotions.

he threw in the weight of his advocacy, and moved the adoption of the resolutions establishing the British and Foreign Bible Society. They were carried with enthusiastic unanimity, an executive Committee was elected, Mr Henry Thornton, M.P., was appointed Treasurer, and a sum exceeding ;^7oo was subscribed on the spot.

The single object of the Society was "to' encourage the wider circulation of the Holy Scriptures, without note or comment." No test of any description limited the liberal catholicity of its constitution. All creeds and professions were heartily welcome to co-operate in a work designed for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Though a singular spirit of conciliation and self-effacement prevailed, care was taken to safeguard denominational susceptibilities. Three Secretaries were appointed — the Rev. Joseph Pratt, secretary of the C.M.S., and the Rev. Joseph Hughes, to represent the two great divisions of English Christianity, and the Rev. C. F. A. Steinkopff to represent the Protestant Churches on the Continent. . The same representative principle characterised the constitution of the executive Committee of laymen, six of whom were foreigners and the ^remaining thirty Churchmen and Nonconformists in equal numbers. In April the Rev. John Owen was elected Secretary in place of Mr Pratt, and on his earnest recommendation ; and on the i6th May the office of President was accepted by Lord Teignmouth, who, as Sir John Shore, had been Governor-General of India in 1793-8, and on his retirement had been raised to the peerage.

"BUILT IN TROUBLOUS TIMES" 13

In this manner, after fifteen months of labour and prayer, the British and Foreign Bible Society was started on its great and beneficent mission. The distribution of the Holy Scriptures' was no new idea sprung upon the religious world. It entered into the scheme of the S.P.C.K., founded as far back as 1698. It was one of the objects of the S.P.G. (1701), of the Scottish Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge (1709), of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge among the Poor (1750), and of the Society for the Support and Encouragement of Sunday Schools (1785). Indeed one organisation, founded in 1780, bore the name of the Bible Society, but as its work was confined to soldiers and sailors, the title was afterwards changed to the Naval and Military Bible Society. Later still, the French Bible Society was instituted in 1792, but its projects were wrecked by the outbreak of the Revolution, and it was dissolved in 1803.

In the design of the British and Foreign Bible Society, however, there was an unprecedented breadth of purpose. In its constitution there was a catholicity of spirit which appeared to many to be wholly impracticable. That catholicity, in truth, was essential to its efficacy and its permanence ; but it was nothing short of marvellous that at a time when the conflicts of Churchmen and Nonconformists were most bitter and most deplorable. Christians of all communions should have consented to unity of action, and should have subordinated their personal convictions and even their prejudices to the achievement of one sacred object. This was not the only particular in regard to which devout persons thought that they perceived the overruling of Providence. In the events which led up to the formation of the Society, still more in the framing of its constitution — a constitution which, strange to say, is virtually the same to-day as it was one hundred years ago — they discerned "the impress of a divine direction." "Almost everything," wrote Mr Owen in his History, "almost everything that is wise and efficient in the practical departments of the institution arose out of accidental and extemporaneous discussion." Skill and foresight, organisation and patronage were not lacking ; but as the passing years brought with them unexpected growth, and spontaneous departures, and an undreamed-of development of resources, there was much to deepen the solemn impression that, in a very special manner, the blessing of God rested upon this work.

Though its organisation and the exclusiveness of its purpose gave the Bible Society an extraordinary distinctiveness, it was intimately allied in its origin with many of the religious and humanitarian movements of the time. Their firmest adherents were often among its staunchest friends. The committee of the R.T.S. founded it ; the L.M.vS. and C.M.S. came into close alliance with it; it worked in hearty collaboration with the Sunday School Union. Like them it could have traced its descent from the spiritual awakenings which took place in this country in the eighteenth century, and the names of John Newton, Thomas

"BUILT IN TROUBLOUS TIMES" I5

Scott, Charles Simeon, and the eminent men of the Clapham circle, vindicated its place in the Evangelical succession. In that passionate revival of religious life men have recognised a countervailing power prepared against the anarchy and paganism of the French Revolution and the colossal tyranny of Napoleon ; and to its effects on the mind and character of the nation— far beyond any other cause or influence — has been ascribed the stability of Great Britain in the most terrible crisis the world has ever known.

Taken by itself as a simple event, it is astonishing that in such a year as 1804 it was possible to found a Bible Society at all. During the whole of those twelve months and for eight months in 1805 Napoleon was waiting for his "six hours' mastery of the Channel." Not a few doubted the endurance of our wooden walls and hearts of oak, and went to sleep half prepared to be aroused by tap of drum or glare of beacon -fire. Farmers returned from market with lengths of bunting, to be stitched by their girls and run up on their church-tower at the first news of the landing of the French. In at least one great house in Norfolk coaches were kept ready to whirl the children and the women into the depths of the Fen country. And there was some justification for troubled minds, for the Government had issued " Regulations for the preservation of good order, to be adopted in case of actual invasion " ; arrangements had been made for the safety of Queen Charlotte and the royal princesses ; there was an armed escort ready with thirty waggons to hurry the treasure of the

Bank of England to the crypt of Worcester Cathedral ; and a sentry stood beside the big gun on Edinburgh Castle to start the beacons and church-bells in angry summons from sea to sea. The times too were of the hardest. Three per cents, had fallen to 54J, and bread had risen till it reached IS. 4Jd. for the quartern loaf. Yet in spite of heavy taxation, of the need for economy among the well-to-do, of the pinch of poverty among the poor, the Society prospered, and was able to set its hand to the world-wide task which it had undertaken.

The tension was not relaxed till the joy-bells rang out for the victory of Trafalgar and the host encamped along the Channel poured across the Rhine to new conquests. Indeed until the arrival of Napoleon at St Helena, ten years later, the history of the Bible Society must be read with a background of warfare ever present in one's memory.

Chapter III

Let the reader now conceive himself at the centre of a vast panorama — a busy, ever-changing picture of the Bible Society's work during the first dozen years of its existence. The four quarters of the world revolve into his view ; the landscapes of strange countries, people of every colour and of many tongues, distract him with a bewildering multiplicity of interest. From the outset the Society was in action no less than in name Foreign as well as British. By the close of 1816 its operations had extended to Greenland and the Red Indian settlements of Canada ; to the colonists in Australia and the missionaries in the South Seas ; to India and China and the Malay Archipelago in the far East ; to the backwoods of America, the plantations of the West Indies, the seaports of Brazil and Chili, in the far West. If the unity of its adherents had suggested a return to the days when the multitude of believers were "of one heart and one soul," the extension of its labours recalls that first rapid diffusion of the Gospel which has ever been one of the wonders of Christianity.

B "

In this chapter we shall briefly survey a portion of the work on which the Society was engaged at home, and then proceed to sketch the undertakings which were simultaneously in progress in so many parts of the globe.

It was a memorable day in July 1806 which brought to Wales the new supply of the Scriptures — an edition of 10,000 copies of the New Testament. When the news reached Bala that the cart conveying the first precious consignment was on the way, "the Welsh peasants," writes an eye-witness, "went out to meet it, welcomed it as the Israelites did the Ark of old, drew it into the town and eagerly bore off every copy as rapidly as they could be dispersed. " Late in the summer twilight young people could be seen reading the books, and when night had fallen they still turned the pages by the glimmer of dim lamp or rush-light. In the morning labourers carried them afield, that they might turn to them in their intervals of rest. Two years later an edition of 20,000 Bibles and 30,000 Testaments was put into circulation, and one of these Bibles Mr Charles gave to his baby grandson, who afterwards became president of Trevecca College in South Wales, and related the incident at one of the Jubilee meetings of the Society. Up to June 18 17 there had been printed for Wales 52,297 Bibles and 91,188 Testaments — a yearly average of 11,000 copies of Scripture since the Society had been founded.

At one of the early meetings of the R.T.S. committee at Old Swan Stairs, a resolution was passed in which it was provided "that no English translation of the Scriptures should be gratuitously circulated by the Society in Great Britain." The promoters, no doubt, foresaw what was afterwards amply proved by experience — that, as a rule, gratuitous distribution is a mistaken policy ; but another consideration probably entered into the framing of that limitation. It was the general opinion that outside Wales — and even the dearth in Wales was questioned — there could be no great scarcity of the Scriptures in these islands. Actual inquiry soon dissipated this misconception. In the Colchester' district it was ascertained that of 1059 families, 521 were totally destitute of the Bible, and many of the others possessed "only mutilated and nearly useless parts." In the first year of their existence the Bristol Auxiliary circulated 4210 Bibles and Testaments, and the Manchester and Salford Auxiliary 7034. At Sunderland there were 25,000 persons who attended no place of worship, and "among 500 vessels trading from that port but a few were furnished with a single Bible." Of 925 families in Southwark, it was found that 530 had no copy of the Scriptures ; and in the course of eleven and a half years 20,085 Bibles and Testaments were distributed in that populous borough. We pass, however, from this section of the Society's home work to notice details of more pitiful interest. Here is Newgate with its unspeakable horrors ; men in hundreds, women in hundreds, women with numerous children, all unemployed, uncared for, herded together like the beasts which perish.

They pass the time in gambling, drinking, fighting, masquerading, singing evil songs, telling tales of vice and villainy, planning new crimes. Among the prisoners there are boys and girls from nine to thirteen years of age. There is a chaplain, but his chief function appears to be on the scaffold. He does not visit the wards. "He never knows that any have been sick till he gets a warning to attend their funeral." Newgate, the typical English prison, is in keeping with the criminal law, which recognises two hundred and twenty-three capital offences, and dooms a child of ten to the gallows. Is it not time that the mercy and compassion and hope of the Word of Life should not only be made known within prison walls, but should be brought home to the hearts and consciences of all men so that the existence of such dungeons of infamy should be tolerated no longer? Among the jails, hulks, convict-transports, penitentiaries, workhouses, and hospitals, the Society distributed in these years over 3000 Bibles and 5200 Testaments, at a cost of about ;^i300. Were the books wasted? Let one incident serve as an answer. When the convicts on board the Three Bees, bound to Port Jackson, learned that the Scriptures were not furnished by Government, they sent Lord Teignmouth a letter of thanks, with 169 signatures. "Your gift," they wrote, "gives a new object to our hopes. ... It assures us that we ' in no wise are cast out.'"

Work on a larger scale and of an exceptional character was accomplished in connection with the prisoners of war. In 1805 there were 30,000 of them ; in i8ri the number had grown to 47,600 — Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, Dutchmen, Danes, Norwegians, detained on parole, confined on the old battleships in the Medway and Hamoaze, drafted inland for safety, interned at Greenlaw in Berwickshire and in the palisaded casernes of Norman Cross. At their wits' end what to do with so many, the Government built Dartmoor on the granite waste of the treeless " Forest " to accommodate from seven to ten thousand. The first grant from the Society was voted two days before Christmas 1805. The Scriptures were received with thanks, with tears, with joy. The men were seen reading them against the bulwarks of their prison -ships or within the stone walls of their courtyards, and in hospital they cheered the last hours of the dying. Many stinted themselves to obtain them. "Not my own," said one poor fellow ; "I pay six rations a month for the use of it." Reading-parties were arranged ; even schools were formed, in which "old men with spectacles" learned to read the Word of God. The Scriptures were the surest antidote to national antipathy and the true solace for individual sorrow. "They have contributed," wrote a French officer from one of the ships in the Medway, "to sweeten the bitter cup of which an inscrutable Providence has condemned us to drink deep for so many years."

During the conflict with the United States, forced on us by the policy of Napoleon, many American prisoners shared the fate of these foreigners. Over three hundred were taken on the ist June 1813, when the Shannon captured the Chesapeake. They were committed to Dartmoor, and a special consignment of 1500 volumes was forwarded for their use — an act of Christian brotherhood which was long remembered in the States.

From 1805 until the fall of Napoleon ;^6558 was spent in providing prisoners of war with the Scriptures, and over 49,600 copies were distributed by the Society. Whenever cartels were despatched, particular care was taken that every man as he embarked should have a volume of the Word of God to take home to his family ; and to many of the French officers small consignments were intrusted for distribution on arrival at their destination. In what unknown ways, and among what people, the work bore fruit can only be conjectured, but more than once the colporteur of a later day was aided and befriended by old men who had not wholly forgotten their days of exile in England.

Nor were the British prisoners of war forgotten. Over 6000 volumes were sent to them in their French prisons. Our own soldiers and the foreign soldiers in our midst — the thousands of Hanoverian troops who passed over into England and formed "The King's German Legion" in 1803, and the twelve hundred Black Brunswickers who dashed across four hundred miles of country between Bohemia and the mouth of the Weser — our seafencibles, sailors, and fishermen (British and foreign), the poor of all nationalities, were offered the Gospel in their own tongues ; and in supplying these wants an expenditure of ;^3i42 was incurred.

Thus, apart from its large and deliberate operations abroad, the Society in doing its home work was in a measure carrying out the world-wide task it had undertaken. But it was not of cartels and convict-ships alone that it took advantage ; missionaries, Government officials, travellers, emigrants, schoolmasters, captains and pursers of longvoyaged merchantmen were all used to convey the sacred volume to strange lands and the isles of remote seas.

Within four hundred miles of London Bridge, however, there was a land of mountain, heath, and forest almost as little known as Tasmania to the Committee of the Bible Society, — "a dark and remote country inhabited by wild Scots." The genius of Sir Walter had not yet thrown a glamour over "the hills beyond Pentland " ; Telford had but begun his nine hundred miles of new roads ; the first stage-coach from Perth to Inverness did not start till 1806, and it was not till 1809 that the Bridge of Dunkeld — the door to the central Highlands — was thrown open for traffic. Englishmen were yet alive who had seen the formidable creatures of the kilt and claymore when the Young Pretender marched to Derby, but in the Highlands the feudal days of chief and vassal had gone by ; the small farms and clachans of the clansmen had been cleared to make room for the sheep-walks of capitalists, and thousands had been driven out to eat the bitter bread of exile.

There was still a population estimated at 335,000 of whom 300,000 were said to understand no language but Gaelic. In many places all the religion that existed was a strange medley of halfforgotten Catholicism and fragments of a more ancient nature-worship, a superstitioys dread of the spirits of wood and river, and a rooted belief in charms, incantations, holy wells, and Beltane fires. Schools had been founded both by Parliament and by the Scottish S.P.C.K., but in the vast parishes the children were far-scattered and separated by moor and marsh. The scarcity of the Scriptures was extreme. In answer to an inquiry, a minister in Islay "did not suppose that among 4000 souls under his care there were a dozen Gaelic Bibles " ; in Skye, with its 15,000 inhabitants, scarcely a copy was to be found ; and all the Western Isles were in a similar condition. The price (25s.) was prohibitive, and even had the people been wealthy, the books were rarely obtainable. Nor was this state of things surprising. From 1618 to 1767 the only Scriptures in circulation appear to have been about 1200 copies of the Irish Bible, the language of which was sufficiently akin to their own to be generally intelligible. Between 1767 and 1804 there were issued 30,000 copies of the New Testament and 5000 Bibles in Gaelic, and an edition of one or more of the sections of the Old Testament which were printed before the version had been completed.