CENTURY^S WITNESS TO THE BIBLE. 



85 



proportion of this money came in small contributions from 

 those who had little to spare out of their earnings. In some 

 cases the donors were only removed a few steps from heathenism, 

 and even from cannibalism. 



" Three hundred miles south of Samoa, green against the 

 blue waters shows the wooded crest of Nine. * Savage Island ' 

 it was named by Captain Cook, who found it a hornet's nest 

 of unapproachable barbarians. With a cheery 'farewell,' and 

 a prayer for divine protection, Paulo, the Samoan, and his wife 

 were put ashore in October, 1849. Strangely enough they are 

 not murdered straightway. . . . The fierce men with long 

 wild hair and trappings of many-coloured feathers are held in 

 check by a mysterious fetish — a book which the Samoans carry 

 about with them — to which they speak, which talks to them. 

 At length two noted braves are sent to slay the strangers. 

 They steal up to the palm-thatched house. They see Paulo 

 sitting quietly reading his book. They wait awhile. He still 

 sits reading with a peaceful face ; and a great fear and 

 trembling fall upon them ; they are powerless. Again they 

 wait ; it cannot be done ; they speak to him and again return 

 home. The man of the Book prevails."* 



Porty-two years later (1891) at the Mansion House in 

 London, the Eev. W. G. Lawes, the veteran missionary of Nine 

 and New Guinea, reminded his hearers (including the Lord 

 Mayor, the Duke of Connaught, and Dr. Benson, Archbishop of 

 Canterbury) how the 5,000 inhabitants of that very "Savage 

 Island" had sent the Bible Society £1,500 to repay it for Bibles 

 provided for them in their own tongue.f 



But gifts of money are not the only form in which the Bible 

 has been served by self-sacrifice such as no other book has been 

 able to command. Twenty-five years ago there was not a 

 Christian among the thirteen millions of Koreans. A year or 

 so ago there were about a hundred thousand baptized Church 

 members. They are very poor, but they are intensely earnest 

 in prayer, in the study of the Scriptures, and in personal labour 

 to disseminate them among their heathen neighbours. During 

 the winter of 1909-10 they purchased from the Bible Society for 

 this purpose 600,000 copies of St. Mark's Gospel at ^d. a copy, 

 and they volunteered to leave their homes and visit heathen 

 villages with the books at their own charges, each giving up a 

 definite number of working days for this purpose. At one 



* History of the B. and F. Bible SocietT/, hy W. Canton, vol. iv, pp. 12, 13 

 t 76., p. 198. 



