Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-03-07
BIBLE SOCIETY DAY
Centennial Celebration Att
 tended by the President.
HAVE SENT OUT 27O,Ooo,OOO BIBLES
Justice Brewer Said the Proper Way to Estimate Value of a Life Was by Deeds and Not
 by Years.

WASHINGTON, March 7.-President and Mrs. Roosevelt, Justice Brewer of the United States supreme court, Sena- tor Deliver of Iowa, the British am- bassador and Lady Durand and many other persons prominent in official, dip lomatic and social circles attended the service yesterday in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the British and Foreign Bible society at St. Johns Episcopal church. Justice Brew er and Senator Deliver were the prin- cipal speakers. Dr. Daniel c. Gilman, ty, presided and made a few remarks, in which he said that during the life time of the British and American soci- eties they had circulated 270,OOO, ,OOO copies of the Bible and parts of the Bi- ble to the nations of the world.
 Justice Brewer said the poorest way to oiestimate the value of life, whether of an individual or an organization, is by numbering the years We should count by deeds, not years. So, said he, we celebrate the anniversary of the A1A LUSH AS1OAC ScSiCty AiOt oc hAuSA DC- cause it has endured for a century as because of the gigantic good it has ac- complished.
 ''It is scarcely necessary before this audience," continued Justice Brewer, 'to enter upon eulogy of the great book of books. But this is the age of the iconoclast, when destructive criti- cism runs rampant. Some criticism, in- deed, is reverent and useful-that which seeks simply by correcting wrong trans lations and arranging in chronological order the matchless truths of Scripture. It is striving to remove from the sacred volume the dust that careless centuries have strewn upon it. |~
 ''but there are other critics without such lofty aim who strive to destroy the faith of other men simply because it is held. The iconoclast is a popular man. To him the Bible appears mere ly as a sort of crazy quilt of untrue history, distorted science, weak poetry, impractical morality and vague fore shadowings of the unknown and un- knowable. Yet we who believe know there are passages in the Bible unsur- pdSSou HI SOlSuu beauty HI LUG lltcFd- ture of the world; that its ideals of morality are those to which the best within us is always aspiring; that it's promises are the sweetest and most comforting that have ever come to the tired hearts of man."
 Justice Brewer declared that the greatest glory of this nation lies in the fact that ever and always she has striven to translate into the vernacu- lar, of international law the parable of the good Samaritan and the Golden Rule.
 Senator Deliver said that the Bible society had contributed more than any other influence to unite the creeds of Christendom into one grand whole, rep resenting universal Christianity.
 "One of the grandest enterprises 1 ever heard of any organization Sena- tor Deliver said, twas the offer of this society to make language for barba- rous. people, whose speech had not even attained to the dignity of an al- phabet. The society undertook to make first an alphabet, then 8 transla ton of the Bible and finally literature. Ger tainly the brain of man never conceiv- ed a grander philanthropic purpose"