The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-03-07
NOTABLE PERSONS ATTEND
TOOTH ANNIVERSARY OF BRIT-
 ISH BIBLE SOCIETY.

[AossoonA nno &oFs- Aoososeats 1fttteh
 Ambassadors and Lady Durand and
 Diners Prominent In Diplomatic mud Social Circles Present at the Exercises
 -Addrssses by Justice Brewer and Senator Doiitver.
 Washington, March e-President and Mrs Roosevelt. the British ambassador land Lady Durand. and many ether per sons prominent in official. diplomatic and social circles. attended the service to-day in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the British and Foreign Bible society at St. Johns Episcopal church. Justice Brewer and Senator Deliver were the principal speakers. Dr. Daniel c. Gilman, presi- dent of the American Bible society, pre- sided, and made a few remarks, in which he said that during the lifetime lof the British and American societies they had circulated 27O.OOo, 900 copies Sf the Bible and parts of the Bible to the nations of the world.
 Justice Brewer said the poorest way to estimate the value of life, whether of an individual or an organization, is by numbering the years. We should count by deeds, nto years. So, said he, we celebrate the anniversary of the British Bible society not so much be- cause 1t has endured for 6 century as because of the gigantic good it has ac- complished.
 Tt is scarcely necessary before this audience" continued Justice Brewer, ito enter upon a eulogy or defence of the age of the iconoclast when destruct- i've criticism runs rampant Some criti- cism, indeed, is reverent and useful that which seeks simply by correcting wrong translations and arranging in chronological order the matchless truths of scripture It is striving to remova from the sacred volume the dust that careless centuries have strewn upon 1t.
 But there are other critics without such lofty aims who strive to destroy the faith of other men simply because | it is held. The iconoclast is a popular man to-day. To him the Bible appears merely as a sort of crazy quilt of un- true history, distorted science weak poetry, inpracticable morality and vague foreshadoWings of the unknown and unknewalble. Yet we who believe know that there are passages in the Bible unsurpassed in solemn beauty in the literature of tn eworld; that it's 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 vernaen- lar of international law the parable off the good samaritan and the Golden Rule.
 Senator Deliver said that the Bible society had been more than any other influence to unite the creeds of Chris tendon into one grand whole repre- senting universal Christianity. "One of the grandest enterprises ever heard of any organization" Sena- tor Deliver said. twas the offer of this society to make a language for a bar barous people, whose speech had not even attained to the dignity of an al- phabet. The society undertook to make first an alphabet, then a translation of the Bible and finally a literature. Cer- tainly the brain of man never conceived a grander phiIanthropic purpose