CENTtJRY S WITNESS TO THE BIBLE. 



79 



those facts about the Bible emerged in the nineteenth century 

 that must now be considered. 



T. The existence of Bible Societies. 



No sooner had the century begun than an unparalleled tribute 

 to the unique claims of the Bible was paid by the formation of 

 the British and Foreign Bible Society. Its sole object was to 

 translate, to multiply and to circulate, at home and abroad, the 

 Holy Scriptures. N"o precedent for such a concentrated and 

 vast undertaking had ever been set in the case of any other 

 writings accounted sacred. The Bible Society came into 

 existence, too, amid national anxiety and distress. Men's 

 minds were preoccupied and perplexed. On the other side of 

 the Channel, Napoleon had an army and flotilla ready to 

 invade England. Mutineers were to be found in the navy. 

 There were disloyal malcontents among the people. Bread was 

 frightfully dear. Taxation was terribly high. 



But notwithstanding all this, there were men in England 

 who had heard God's voice speaking to their hearts with 

 authority and love from the pages of the Bible. Their own 

 happy experience made them distressed for those to whom its 

 pages were, from one cause or another, inaccessible. Enquiries 

 put to 17,000 families had shown that half the working-class 

 population in the town-area of London were destitute of the 

 Scriptures.* 



Similarly, within ten parishes in the country-area of 

 Flintshire, there were 1,300 inhabited houses without a Bible. 

 In Wales and in the Highlands there were multitudes unable 

 to obtain the Scriptures in the only language they could read.f 

 And as for the countries abroad, tens of thousands of prisoners of 

 war J from them, were within easy reach, and were willing enough 

 to read the New Testament, if it could be had in their tongues. 

 The founders of the Bible Society knew no other book to meet the 

 case. To provide the Holy Scriptures in their vernaculars for 

 people wishful but unable to get them, the British and Foreign 

 Bible Society was formed in 1804. Many Societies have since 

 been established with the same object. Taking them all together, 

 they create a distinction which no other collection of writings 

 shares with the Bible. 



* History oj the B. and F. Bible Society, by W. Canton, vol. i, p. 80. 

 + /6., pp. 5-7 91. + lb., pp. 123, 124. 



