My brethren, we but return to primitive usage, when we claim this prerogative, this majesty, for the Book of God. Dear in all ages has this writing been to the heart of the Church’s martyrs and the Church’s saints. It is a new view, this, of the right of a community to stand between a man and his Bible! Surely it is a putting of proprieties and decorums in the place of truth and experience and the one thing needful. Is it thus that God acts? What greatest of God’s works has been wrought by method and rule? Cornelius and his assemblage receiving the Holy Ghost before Baptism is a type, surely, for every age, of the manner in which God Himself, in the free, unfettered breathing of His Divine Spirit, passes by at His will the mechanism of order, and reveals Himself in the liberty of an elemental strength.
(2) But while we assert thus earnestly the supremacy of conscience, and the right of the individual man to the possession of the Book of Light, we would also, and not less earnestly, commend to you this great Society as the servant and the minister of all the Churches.
Very touching is it, to Christian hearts, to read the simple record of her ministrations in this chief capacity. The destitution of the Church in Wales called her into existence. The Church in Ireland had been for more than a century without an edition of a complete native Bible, when she interposed. The fortunes of Continental nations have their reflection in her history. The wars of the first French Revolution are chronicled in her account-books. Her first French Bible was printed for the prisoners of war in 1805. Through her efforts, in the same disastrous time, hundreds of Spanish captives might be seen in prison yards reading in their own tongue the living, life-giving Word. The great Abolition Act of 1834 suggested the gift of the New Testament to a hundred thousand of the then emancipated slaves. The Spanish Revolution of 1868 opened a new country to the Gospel, and has spread already two hundred thousand copies of the Holy Scriptures among the people of that still distracted and storm-tossed land. The consolidation of Italy—last of all, the erection of a constitutional throne on the Roman Capitol itself—has been followed by the formation of a new Bible Society, to which we give the right hand of fellowship, and hope ere long to resign the field which is her own. The protracted agonies of a yet nearer neighbour, under a succession of strokes and plagues unexampled in history, have been soothed by the holy offices of this Society, extending, alike to Imperialist, Republican, Communist prisoner, the comfort, in his hour of distress, of that Book not of this world, which at once blesses earth and opens Heaven. Not a country, not a province, escapes the notice of that vigilant eye, which watches from the shores of England each door opened by the Providence of God for the entry of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. No Society, of this Church or that, for Christian Missions, can dispense with her aid in furnishing the divine material. In two hundred and fifty Versions, of the languages and dialects spoken on the face of this earth by nations of the great dispersion, more than one hundred millions of copies of God’s Word have been issued, or aided in the issuing, by this marvellous agency of evangelization.
Brethren! an organization thus blessed, thus vivified, by the Omnipotent Hand, stands no longer on the defensive in the battle-field of Christianity. One by one, unfriendly voices are silenced. One by one, enemies are becoming friends. Already the reverend rulers of our own Church, with comparatively few exceptions, have seen their way to sympathy and co-operation. It was ungrateful—I know it was involuntary—to accept help for all manner of Church action, and to refuse thanks, or even recognition, to the hands which bountifully supplied it. We thank God, those days are past. Without ceasing to be the handmaid of all Churches, the British and Foreign Bible Society is certainly the friend, the “deaconess,” of one. Your presence to-day in this great Metropolitan Cathedral—where so lately Royalty itself bowed the knee, in thanksgiving for a precious life restored, to the all-ruling Majesty in the heavens—proves that your work is regarded and honoured, as it ought to be, by that great National Church of England, of which you are all, I well know, either dutiful members or else cordial well-wishers.
Thus our tried and honoured Society sets out on another year of anxious, responsible, yet (under God) most hopeful service. We give thanks to-day, we pray also to-day, for this mighty bulwark—it is so—of the national prosperity! Every largest, every humblest offering, of time or wealth, of effort or sympathy, given to her, is given, be ye well assured, to England’s honour, to England’s strength, to England’s prosperity. The land of the Bible is a land of light, a land of peace, and a land of liberty. Nations may war for fame or supremacy, for treasure or territory, for frontier or empire—war may breed war, and an iron heel alone coerce the savage writhings of an implacable foe—England’s peace, England’s honour, is in surer safe-keeping, so long as she acknowledges the Christ of the Bible, and suffers not a creeping infidelity to seduce her from the allegiance of the life-giving God.
But Oh, brethren, let us not be highminded, but fear! Let us not boast ourselves in our light nor in our freedom! Let us not count but weigh our safeguards! Let us make large allowance for waste, even in our blessings! Holy Scripture is multiplied among us, till it is a very proverb of cheapness—see that there be not, concerning it, at once an arrogance and a despite! Is the Bible dear to your hearts, as well as plentiful in your homes? Do you not only fight for it, but wrestle with God over it? Do you draw from it, not your weapons of attack, but your helmet and your shield and your breastplate? In these days you sorely need them. Remember how only (St. Paul says) we can wield the Spirit’s sword—even by praying always in the Spirit. Take to your heart the words of a great orator of our time, speaking, as a Catholic Priest, in the very centre and focus of Romanism, in behalf—strange, strange, strange phenomenon—in behalf of a new Bible Society for Italy!—“Catholics and Protestants, but all Christians, behold, we are united in this city, which has been the cause of our separation! This Book is our bond of union. . . . We are all children of the Bible, but we are fallen, divided, powerless. . . . The Bible has been neglected. . . . The life of the Church is the life of the soul in Christ, and of Christ in the soul. . . . Direct and vital dealings with God’s Word will give reality to our religious life, and will defend us alike from scepticism and from superstition. . . . A day is coming—and my heart tells me it is not far off—in which the question shall not be whether men are Roman Catholics, or Greek Catholics, or Lutheran Protestants, or Reformed Protestants, but only whether they are true Catholics, and, above all, true Christians. . . . We shall enter the city of God, Bible in hand, singing in every language, and in every denominational peculiarity, but with one faith and with one heart: and that city of our unity shall be called the city of Peace, for it shall be, as saith the Prophet, the city of Truth.”
Such is God’s order: Truth first, then Peace: Light first, then Love; Love out of, because of, the Light.
May God, of His infinite mercy, realize that hope, grant that prayer, in His time—and bring us all, in the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ!
LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.