Wensleydale....

..112 16 0

..

Windsor and Eton.

1500 5000

..

MONTHLY EXTRACTS

FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY.

Appleby, August 2, 1842.

THE Success which has attended the operations of the Appleby Ladies' Bible Association, established July 12th, 1841, has been greater than was expected by the most sanguine of its supporters and well-wishers. New Districts have been formed, including all the principal Villages in the neighbourhood; and arrangements made for their being regularly visited by efficient Collectors. Nor have the benefits of this Association been confined to the County Town, and the Villages in its immediate vicinity. Within a few days after the first Anniversary Meeting, the sum of ll. was paid to a Collector for this Association by a Cumberland Agricultural Labourer; who stated, that the money was a bequest left by his brother, recently deceased, to the Appleby Ladies' Bible Association. The young Lady to whom the legacy was paid made some inquiries into the circumstances of the case; and, among other questions, asked whether there was any Bible Association in the neighbourhood of the residence of the deceased. "No," was the answer; " but my brother had once attended a Bible Meeting; and afterwards he thought a great deal about the Bible Society; and hearing, a little before his death, that a Ladies' Bible Association had been established at Appleby, he determined to bequeath to it the money which I have now paid!"

It seems desirable that such an occurrence as this should be made known, for the encouragement of the friends of the Bible Society in general, and of those persons in particular who, in secluded and thinly populated districts, have been induced to further, by their personal services, the objects of that noble Institution.

From a Major of the Royal Engineers.

Νου. 28, 1841.

I HAVE duly received the Annual Reports which I requested to be forwarded to me; and, in referring to the List of Contributions in the last, I find that an additional contribution of 16l. 10s. will make mine, with what I last sent, amount to 500l. Would you, therefore, kindly give directions, that in the next Report that sum be inserted in one amount. I should also wish to be noted as an Annual Subscriber of 10l.: for both which purposes I send you an order upon my Agents for 26l. 10s.

(An additional Donation of 1001. has since been received from the writer of the above.)

I BEG to enclose an application to the British and Foreign Bible Society for a grant of Bibles and Testaments for the use of the Glasgow VOL. IV.

awakened endless discussion. But here (he proceeded) I must begin by saying, that if the act itself be a good act, at least the old cavil against the Society cannot hold, that it was "doing evil that good may come." It should rather assume another form, and say, that some persons "do good," i.e. circulate the Bible, “that evil may come," i.e. that they may secretly promote ends adverse to the Church, to God, and truth. Granted, there may be men of such perverted minds: am I, therefore, on a supposed Scriptural rule, not really such, to withhold my hand from a pure good, because others, co-operating with me, do it with an ill design, and hope to accomplish a bad end?.

It is said, indeed, that union between the various Religionists-or it may be, false religionists of the day is itself an evil, which takes place on the platform of the Bible Society. I protest against this use of the term union.as incorrect and invidious. I call it by a much more fair and appropriate term, co-operation, towards one single object, confessed equally by all to be good. I unite with none; I desire to unite with

none.

I can, if a true Christian, unite with no one, who is not a true Christian also, whether in the Bible Society, or in any other Society under the sun. But if I co-operate with discordant elements, working together towards one important and confessedly good object, what do I otherwise than follow the leading of that Divine Providence itself, which makes the wrath of man to praise Him, and shuns not to use, as his own instruments for good, even those whose hearts, he knows, think far otherwise?

I lament indeed, always, a spirit of disunion. I would willingly have union, even in the Bible Society; -a union of hearts, if we cannot have it in certain opinions-a cordial and affectionate, as well as effectual, cooperation, "as far as we have already attained." And I do regret any fears, even so sagaciously expressed as by our Chairman, of the present spirit of the times; as if we were now really in a case of hopeless or most perilous dissension, and so on. I venture to dissent also from an opinion I have heard elsewhere, that it is happy for us a Bible Society has been established, for that in these times it never could have been established anew. I verily believe that the same spirit which so heartily and gloriously sustains the Society in all its beneficent and Christian operations, now it is formed, would assuredly have been sufficient to have formed and erected it de novo, if it had possessed no previous existence: unless, indeed, we are come to this conclusion at last, that the various circles and communities calling themselves Christian have now come to a clearer understanding of their own opinions only for the purpose of more violently opposing the opinions of others. This might be true of mere human dogmas; but that the Scriptures, now better understood by each party, because more extensively diffused and read and appreciated (by the means of this very Society, among other means), should necessarily lead to a stronger spirit of disunion than ever, and that people should agree the less as they believe and understand the more of Divine Truth,-God forbid! Nothing, I am sure, can be more happily contradictory of such a charge than the very Report, read, Sir, by your worthy Curate, which I am now to recommend to your acceptance; one-beyond any other, I can venture to say, I have recently heard on any such occasion-calculated to unite all hearts, and to warm every soul by the most truly Scriptural and edifying statement of doctrine; a statement at once giving glory to God, as our Maker, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, and assigning to man his place as a sinner, and as having his only hope through grace; and expressed in terms which made me long and even thirst with desire for the Meeting to remember them; aye, for all the inhabitants of this town, nay, of this country, nay, of the land, nay, of this our habitable globe (sharers in the gift of a common immortality), to have heard them, as their true guide to immortal bliss.

Sir, continued the Archdeacon, you have very justly declared from the chair the object of this Institution to be beautiful, from its simplicity, and true definiteness-so to speak. It is the most defined and simple object in the whole world-the extended and universal diffusion of the Volume of Inspiration in every language and nation of the earth. Here it began; here it has continued; and here, if it lasts a century longer (i. e. with the world itself in its present constitution), it will be found at the end of the most remote period. The durability, the sameness, the unchangeableness of the object, is one of its chiefest and highest charms. The language held by this Society to-day was its language yesterday, and will be so to-morrow. I have been looking into the first Reports of this Institution; and its earliest wishes, aspirations, and performances, seem as if they were also its latest. I see many periods in its history; but, I see no change. From the first it declined every object, or adjunct, beyond its own simple, pure, and Divine undertaking. In those early, palmy days of its history, a Porteus, a Barrington, a Wilberforce, to mention no more, saw and felt no grievance in the necessity of omitting from its circulation even the Prayer-Book. I deny not that Bishop Marsh-whom, with yourself, I mention with the respect due to his talents and acquirements would have added the Prayer-Book at home, while abroad he commended its operations. But the requisition was over-ruled. Then, in other quarters, Tracts were attempted to be bound up with the Sacred Volume: this was forbidden. Prefaces were afterwards attempted; and with what success, was sufficiently made known in the masterly administration of the respected Owen. Then came the celebrated Apocrypha question. There were those who fought hard, and laboured long, to retain that ancient appendage to the Word of God; but, when the victory was fairly gotten against them for the one simple and unchangeable object of this ever-consistent Institution, they were the first to enter the stores and chambers of its treasures, and, with their own hands, to separate the incongruous matter, deliver the sheets to the flames, and break up and hammer to pieces the very types used for printing them. The attempt at the imposition of a test, more recently, was likely to meet with a similar fate; and it did meet with it. I am sure I could bid God speed to any Christians, met together as such, in any tested community, that would secure the purity of its members, and carry out beneficent designs. It is not for me to inquire or to know what success has attended the particular case alluded to: this only I know, that the British and Foreign Bible Society has gone forward, year after year, towards its own single and beneficent object, and with what results we have not now to learn; and this, without any test at all, but a willingness to contribute to the distribution of the pure text, in whole or in part, of the unmixed word of God; the basis of its transactions abroad, as far as by possibility it could be carried out, and its sole distribution at home, being the Authorised English Version.

Such, then, has been the negative; and now for the positive portion of its history. It has proceeded with undiminished-I may say with increased success-through the thirty-eight years of its existence. It has