1000089435

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY

THE Society was formed in 1804, solely 'to encourage

the wider circulation of the Holy Scriptures without note

or comment'. It is a partnership of Christian people,

belonging to many different communions, who unite to

provide every man who can read with God's message to

him, in his mother tongue.

The Times

says of it:-

'Little imagination is needed to understand the value of

the Society's labours. Its object is simple and compre–

hensive, namely, to translate the one Book which can eve.r

with success be expected

provide the common basis of

morality and spiritual knowledge to all members of the

.human family, into every language however barbarous ; to

print it in any script however complex ; to place it in every

man's hands however remote ; and to provide it at a price

at which the poorest may purchase it. Towards the fulfil–

ment of these aims the Society has already gone far, for

the languages which it can co:r;nmand are spoken by seven–

tenths of mankind.'

'It is truly an international organization, and its ideals

are as practical as any that ha\.-e yet been devised by inter–

national statesmanship for the improvement of the relations

between people and people

~nd

man and man. There can

little true human fellowshiJ>

large portions of mankind

either never learn, or are allowed to forget, the principal

lessons of history and the central religious truths which the

pages of the Bible enshrine. However interpreted, the New

Testament,

the brotherhood of man is not to remain a

merely pious aspiration, must become a book accessible

to all.'

'A copy of the Scriptures, as faithfully translated as

scholarship can render them, is one of the few things that

change hands in this modern world of which it can be said

without qualification that the giving is good and the gift

perfect.'

The specimens of 630 different tongues presented in the

preceding pages graphically illustrate the extent of our

translation work.

From depots in nearly a hundred principal cities

the

world, by means of the Society's 1,000 colporteurs, and by

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