80 



THE EEV. JOHN SHARP, ON THE LAST 



II. The Constituency of the Bible Societies. 



It is a remarkable fact that loyalty to one Book has for over 

 a century proved a bond of union between men and women of 

 diverse nationalities, ranks, wealth, learning, politics and 

 religious convictions. When the Eev. John Owen, Chaplain to 

 the Bishop of London (Dr. Porteus), moved the Eesolution 

 establishing the British and Foreign Bible Society, he tells us 

 that he did so under an irresistible impulse created by the sight 

 of so many Christians waiving their doctrinal and ritual 

 differences to give themselves with one heart and one soul to the 

 circulation of the Holy Scriptures.* The same unity of spirit 

 has been a marked characteristic of the governing body of that 

 Society, its Committee, for more than a hundred years. 



So, too, the Bible-cause has been able to brincj tooether on 

 the same platform in happy unanimity " statesmen of the first 

 rank and talents who " (in the words of Hannah More) " had 

 never met but to oppose each other — orators who had never 

 spoken but to differ."! It has formed a bond of union that has 

 girdled the globe. Witness the world-wide observance of the 

 Centenary Bible Sunday on March 6th, 1904, and the cordial 

 messages which were announced two days later from King 

 Edward VII., from the German Emperor, from the King of 

 Sweden and Norway, from the Queen of Holland, and from 

 Theodore Koosevelt, President of the United States. 



Twenty years ago, in a speech at the Mansion House, 

 Archbishop Benson said : " This is a day in which Christians 

 who are in earnest have their thoughts turned to the subject of 

 re-union. How is it to begin ? The scriptures are a real, 

 sound, true beginning, and in the time to come, if it ever 

 please God to realise to our descendants this great vision, 

 people will, and must, point back to the Bible Society as having 

 caught the first rays of that Day-star." No other book has 

 proved such a basis of union as the Bible proved in the 

 nineteenth century. 



The Eeport of Commission VIII which collected information 

 as to " Co-operation and the Promotion of Unity " for the 

 Edinburgh Missionary Conference of June, 1910, saysj : "There 

 is no sphere of missionary work in which the value of 

 co-operation has been tested and appreciated more than in the 



History of the B. and F. Bible Society, by J. Owen, vol. i, p. 44. 

 t Christian Morals, vol. iij p. 27. % Pp. 55, 56. 



