FOREIGN OPERATIONS.
EUROPE
FRANCE.
To the Paris Tract Society, the Committee have voted £100 to reduce the price of the Almanach des Bons Conseils, £120 towards the free circulation of 100,000 tracts, including a monthly grant to the agents of the Home Missionary Society, and £300 for the publication of various tracts monthly in editions of 10,000 each.
To Toulouse, £300 has been given; and to M. Puaux, £100.
Grants have also been made to the Strasbourg Society of £10; to M. Jenkins, of Morlaix, for Breton publications, £19 10s. 5d.; and to Pastor Maillard, of La Mothe, £20, for the publication of a Hymn Book.
BELGIUM AND HOLLAND.
The Committee have furnished the Belgian Evangelical Society with the means for publishing an edition of 3,000 of a new translation of the Rev. Newman Hall’s “Come to Jesus,” and 5,000 each of eleven Flemish tracts. They have also continued their subsidies to the Flemish Christian monthly periodical, and, for a period of the year, to the French Chrétien Belge.
Rotterdam.—M. Herklotts has issued from the auxiliary—Tracts, 57,181; Books, 1,747; Handbills, 13,050; total, 71,978. The “Sinner’s Friend” has been reprinted, and 7,050 copies issued.
Amsterdam.—During the past year, a Workmen’s Exhibition was held in this city, and the Committee sent to Pastor Adama v. Scheltema £10 in English tracts, £10 in foreign, and £10 in Dutch tracts. A handsome kiosk was erected for their reception. They were wisely distributed and well received.
SWITZERLAND.
Grants voted to Switzerland, £146 14s.
RUSSIA.
St. Petersburg.—Twenty-three new tracts have been printed—121,000 copies—at a cost of £80 to the Society. They are chiefly translations from English tracts, and all contain the Gospel of our Lord.
The sales, including nearly 8,000 German tracts and books, have reached during the past year 115,823 copies. The gratuitous circulation has been, in addition, 2,600 tracts.
At Riga, M. Loeswitz still pursues his tract publication in the German, Lettish, Esthonian, and Polish languages. His scheme involved the printing of 90,000 tracts and books in these tongues at a cost of over £300, towards which the Committee contributed £100.
SWEDEN AND NORWAY.
The Stockholm Missionary Union, of which the Rev. Mr. Wiberg is Secretary, has issued sixteen new tracts, in editions of 10,000 each, at a cost of £44, towards which the Committee have voted £20.
The gratuitous circulation during the year amounts to 80,000, by the hands of sixteen agents employed in various parts of the kingdom.
Through the Rev. J. Storjohann, the Norwegian Chaplain to the Port of London, the Committee have printed six tracts in Norse, amounting to 15,500 copies.
GERMANY.
Hamburg.—The Lower Saxony Tract Society has received the usual grant of £350. It has printed during the year 870,000 publications, and circulated by sale and gift 1,060,000.
Mr. Oncken’s circulation for the year ending March 31, 1870, was 1,030,306. The grants made to him have been £300 for tract printing, £100 for the purchase of tracts from other German Societies, and £13 for Spanish and Russian tracts.
The Bremen Society, conducted by Dr. Jacobi, has received £85, principally for German versions of the Society’s English tracts.
The miscellaneous grants are two of £20 each to Mr. Lehmann, of Berlin, one of whose distributors has been imprisoned for giving away a tract under prohibited circumstances; £30 to Dr. Adelberg, of Erlangen; £10 to Pastor Tretzel, Nüremberg; £20 to Nassau; £30 to Baden; and £20 English books for the daughter of the late Dr. Fliedner, at Hilden.
HUNGARY.
The sums expended in this field amount to £460:—35,000 copies of tracts in Hungarian have been printed, and 13,000 in Slavonian.
ITALY.
The books printed at the Typographia Claudiana, at the cost of the Society, during the past year amounted to 40,500 copies.
Grants voted to Italy, £819 4s.
SPAIN.
From November, 1868, to February, 1870, 1,500,000 tracts have been printed at Madrid, at a cost of £1,490.
“Tracts are a mighty power rightly used, but tracts can be wasted and the tract brought into contempt. The rule we desire to see carried out in Spain is, tracts given to all who purchase Gospels; an assortment to purchasers of Bibles and Testaments, given to those who can read, or who have sons or children who can read for them.”
TURKEY.
The works printed during the past year at the cost of the Committee by the American Missionaries in Constantinople, who have received the usual grant of £300, have amounted to 13,000 copies in Arabo-Turkish; 8,000 in Armenian; 3,000 in Armeno-Turkish; and 6,000 in Bulgarian.
ASIATIC OPERATIONS.
INDIA.
The report from India speaks of movement and progress both in printing and circulation.
Madras writes:—“The past year records the largest number of distinct publications that have ever been published in any one year. The average number of new publications has only been seven: this year seventy-seven distinct publications have been issued, sixty-four of which are new tracts and books. The printing is about the average.”
From Bombay, Mr. Bowen says:—“Our circulation is much in advance of what it ever was. Our financial condition is good.”
From Colombo Mr. Murdoch says:—“The subscriptions are somewhat in advance of the preceding year; but the most encouraging feature is the great increase, amounting to 45 per cent. beyond former sales.”
The amount of paper granted to the various printing presses during the past year has been considerably increased, being 3,062 reams; while 754,110 books and tracts have been printed during the year by the various Indian Auxiliaries.
CHINA.
The total grants during the year have amounted to £247. Returns of publications printed not received in time for the Report.
BRITISH NORTH AMERICA.
The grants of tracts and Sunday-school libraries made to this part of the field amount to £546.
WEST INDIES, ETC.
Including Jamaica, Antigua, Turk’s Island, Demerara, Cuba, Brazil, Honduras, Mexico, have received grants to the amount of £169.
AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, TASMANIA.
The grants during the year to our brethren in these distant parts of the globe were as follows:—
Adelaide, £35 14s.; Goulburn, £5; Hobart Town, £13; Melbourne, £10; Victoria—Miscellaneous, £22; Sydney, £104 10s.; Launceston, £6; Queensland, £7 15s.; Miscellaneous, £10; Total, £204.
AFRICA.
The grants made to this continent amount to £73.