8(5 THE REV. JOHN SHARP^ M.A., ON THE LAST 



gathering, 159 men pledged themselves to give 2,721 days in the 

 aggregate to such work. 



How unsparing of labour in trying climates have translators 

 of the Scriptures been ! What toil, and risks, and sufferings, 

 sometimes even unto death, do not the Bible-colporteurs undergo 

 with the sole object of placing the Bible within reach of their 

 fellow-men, and inducing them to buy and read its message ! 



A colporteur in Egypt was advised by a school teacher not to 

 go into a certain part of a village. " Why ? " he asked. 

 " Because they will beat you." " I am going there immediately," 

 he replied. He went and was quickly surrounded by a crowd 

 of Moslems. " Why do you come among us, the Faithful ? " 

 they asked. I come," he said, " that you may buy and read 

 these books, and become Christians." " Are you not afraid to 

 speak such words to us ? " " No," he said, not even if you 

 should seek to kill me." " Verily yours is a true religion," they 

 said : " God will give you no small reward for being willing to 

 labour, and to be insulted, and even to die for your faith : come 

 and dine with us." " No," he said, " I must go round the 

 village." In that village he sold 55 books of Scripture ! * 



Among all the valuable treasures of the library in the Bible 

 House, there are none more touching and sacred than the books 

 enshrined there which bear silent witness to lives surrendered 

 from devotion to the Book that reveals Christ. 



VII. The witness from archceological, etc., researches. 



The nineteenth century, like some of its predecessors, besides 

 friends, produced some active, able, and even bitter opponents 

 of the Bible. Their lines of attack were varied. On physical 

 and metaphysical — on historical and linguistic — on moral 

 and theological grounds, in turn, any divine element in the 

 Bible was denied. Grouping them under the general title of 

 " destructive critics," it may suffice to sample these adversaries 

 by such names as Strauss (1835) and Bauer (1845) in Germany ; 

 Kenan (1863) in France; Theodore Parker (1842) and Colonel 

 Ingersoll (1879) in America ; and among others in England, 

 F. W. Newman (1850), some of the writers in Essays and 

 Reviews (1860), Mr. Charles Bradlaugh (1862), Bishop Colenso, 

 with his arithmetical puzzles (1862), and the author of 

 Supernatural Religion (1874). They showed that the unqualified 

 claims sometimes advanced for the inerrancy of the letter of 



* Kev. W. Fisher in The Churchman, Sept. 1909, p. 707. 



