The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-06-07

| every European language, not only into l the chief family of languages spoken by | the great races of the East and West
 but into strange barbaric tongues which
 have never before been crystallized into
 written shape. into dialects spoken in the
 bush and in the jungle. in the torrid zone
 and in the Arctic regions.
 Small Beginnings.
 A century ago about 300 respectable persons of different denominations as
 sembled Tn the old London Tavern ir Bishopgate. Although the country at that
 time was in a panic and arming itself tc l the teeth at the prospect of a great in
 Vasion, these respectable persons were
 busy with a work of peace. On that day
 the British and Foreign Bible Society
 came into existence. Granville Sharp was
 in the chair. William Wilberforce was the orator, and Zachary Macauly was on the | first committee-three brothers in arms who were to win the greatest victory of l peace in the annals of our countryside | emancipation of the slave-and who were equally zealous in this work of faith. | The first task of the Bible Society was
 to issue large edition of the Scriptures
 in Welsh, so that the Welsh people who | had hardly been able to obtain them in | their own tongue might now have the privilege for which many pious people | had long yearned. An eyewitness has de- scribed the reception of these Welsh New Testaments when completed in the town of Bala: "When the arrival of the cart which carried the first load was an- nounced the Welsh peasants went out in
 crowds to meet it. welcomed it as the Israelites did the ark of old. drew 1t into the town. and eagerly bore off every copy as rapidly as they could be dis persed."
 During the frs years work of the Bible Society they spent 691 pounds. and thought they had done a great thing. So they had, but they were to do more. Last year they spent 241.143 pounds, and since tie foundation of the society they have ex- pended 130e0,000 pounds Those are large figures. but when translated into num- bers of books they are bigger still. The Society last year issued over 5000 GOO copies of the Scriptures and since it's commencement total of 1S0,0O0,000. Think of it. Ponder over it! 1so,OOO, 900! Seven | thousand volumes are sent out from Lon don alone every day of the week. through
 every week of the year. The output from l all the societys depots, including Lon | don. averages 16000 copies per day. Pile up the issues of one day and they would reach higher than the cross on St. Paui's. A Babel of Tongues.
 Where do all these Bibles and Testa-
 ments go? Who buys them? Who reads them? Who pays for them? The an- swers to these questions are a chapter of modern romance. To know where they go, pay visit to the packing rooms of
 the societys depot in Queen Victoria Street. It is a lesson fin geography. The oblong wooden boxes. lined and strongly bound with tin. are labelled with names of places lover the hills and far away" names which conjure up the glamor of the East, names which bring back mem ories of old renown and ancient faiths, names which call up visions of horrid
 bloodshed and dark fanaticism, names of
 thea New World and the Old. of the East and "of the West, of the civilized world and of savage lands,
 Look inside the covers of these books.
 What a babel of tongues Is here! What strange and unfamiliar characters! Here
 are pages that read from right to left. from the last line upwards to the first, | from the top straight down in vertical l columns. Here are sixty different alpha l bets and 2G0 different languages. These | little books. penny Testaments and ten
 penny Bibles, represent the work of hun
 dreds of scholars and hundreds of mis-
 sionaries and hundreds of natives who l throughout the course of a century in
 the service of the Bible Society and with
 the seal of faith, have translated with painful labor the long tale of the Scrip turcs.
 And how are these books circulated how paid for? As a rule Scriptures are granted to foreign missions on mission
 ary terms''-that is to say. the Bible So.
 ciety sends out the books needed, free
 of cost and carriage paid to missionarie
 at their distant stations: in return the : missions remit to the Bible house any proceeds arising from copies which they sell after dcducting the expenses of cir culation. Only a small proportion Of the huge cost of production is received hacl by sales. To take one instance. eacl copy of the first Ganda Bible for the people of Uganda. who TOW number 50O Christians, cost the Society 6s. 4d. tC print and bind, and los. 4d. more to con Ney from London to Gganda-the can rage for hundreds of miles from tn, coast being on the heads of negro DOT
 ters The natives paid their fraction o
 the cost of these copies in cowrie shells which do not go very far when trans
 lated into English money.
 The Bible Society goes on extending its business cheerfully piling up enormous losses. The greater the losses the more the Society Is pleased. because it means that Bibles are having a larger. circula-
 tion among very poor peoples Neverthe- less the Society does not encourage giv- ing the volumes tndiscriminately free ot charge. except in ease of Restitution O. misfortune, The average man who makes
 q little self-sacrihce to buy his Bible values 1t all the more