Many of our stories bear on the desirableness of a diligent and frequent revision of our work. We give an extract from the notes of one of our committee, in 1833:—
“Having been somewhat struck with the example of the ladies of Wisbeach, recorded in the extracts for last October, of recanvassing their districts once in three years, I thought it might be well to visit a neighbouring village for this purpose. I did this, with the cordial concurrence of the collector, who though diligent and persevering is incapacitated by circumstances and health from extra exertions. We visited every house in the place, with scarcely an exception, and found 23 persons willing to pay for bibles and testaments. The place has had a constant, though small supply, but there would be a much larger demand, were it not for the lamentable want of education. Perhaps the discovery of such a state of things may prove in some instances one of the indirect benefits of bible visiting. The effects of the bibles and testaments already distributed, were in some instances happily observable. Many were shown me which had been purchased from the society, and some appeared to have been used and valued as we should wish. One elderly and very poor woman showed me her bible, and said, ‘eighteen years ago I learnt to read in it.’ I asked how she had learnt at so advanced an age, being now nearly sixty: she replied, ‘I went down on my knees and asked God Almighty to teach me, and he did.’ I said I did not doubt that this was the best way, but I asked her what means had been used? She told me that she had heard a sermon preached on a text in St. John, which so strongly impressed her mind, that she felt an earnest desire to read it again. Having found the place, she spent nearly the whole night trying to spell the words, and returned to the employment the next day, till her son came in, and on his expressing surprise at her attempting to read, she said, ‘Then why should not you teach me? so he taught me whenever he came in from work, and now I can read a chapter any where in the bible.’ In this case, if the Bible Society did not excite the desire, it was ready to furnish the means of gratifying it, to the great and lasting blessing apparently of the individual in question.
“Another very old woman spoke in such terms of her testament, as to make me feel most thankful she had ever had it. She reads it constantly, to her old infirm husband, and says, ‘I know it is all I have to attend to, for I am getting very forward in age.’ I expressed a hope that she knew to whom to look for safety in the hour of death; she burst into tears at the name of the Saviour, and earnestly expressed her sole dependence upon him, saying, she found herself full of sins and infirmities, but that his redemption was sufficient. She showed me a friend’s tract sent her several years ago by a lady, and said it had done her as much good as any thing (saving her bible) that she had in the house; also a little hand-bill, dropped in the road by some ladies, it was entitled, ‘Do you ever pray?’ and she said she had read it over and over, and it always reminded her of her duty. I cannot precisely repeat her conversation, but it made me strongly feel the truth of that text: ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days.’ In the road I met a very infirm and afflicted old woman, the survivor of a husband and, I think, of six children, living on two shillings per week. I asked her whether she had a bible. ‘Ah, I paid in for one several years ago, and it is the greatest comfort I have had.’ I afterwards saw her in her own abode, a wretched hovel, with a chimney in the middle, where she lives with her old and most wretched mother-in-law. She showed me, with pride, her precious bible, for which she had paid 7s. 10d., and said, ‘I spared the money when I wanted it for bread many a time, but I have never grudged it, it is all the comfort I have, and much more comfort than victuals to me.’ I believe, also, the effects of it may be seen in her forbearance and attention to her afflicted companion. Having completed my round, I took my list to the collector, who gladly received it, and will enter with fresh spirit on her increased task.”
The benefit of carefully revisiting our districts, has been lately again exemplified; when on our collectors going to nearly all the families of a small circuit, about one hundred, most of which had already provided themselves with bibles from our institution, they obtained sixty-four new free subscribers, (many indeed of but one half-penny per month,) and twenty-three for bibles and testaments. This was after the interest of the people had been excited by an address from the zealous agent of the Norwich Auxiliary Society, delivered at Overstrand, in the church of the long tried friend and unwavering advocate of our cause, the Rev. John Cubitt. One poor woman said, that after hearing the gentleman, she went home, and poured out her soul to God for the heathen, and on offering her half-penny, she said, “she gave it to the Lord, and wished she could make it more.” Her husband, and a daughter, have also subscribed a penny per month, free.
When a district becomes fairly stocked with bibles, we cannot expect to find so many anecdotes, furnished by the contrast between the condition of destitute villages, and that of those supplied with the holy scriptures, but we think we may say that within the last ten years, owing, as we believe, to this society, combined with the extension of education, and other causes, there is, amongst the people of this neighbourhood, a perceptible advance in their acquaintance with the word of God. This is, we think, apparent, if only in the increased readiness with which the people turn to the chapters and verses referred to by ministers in their sermons, or on other occasions, when the scriptures are read and explained to them. We hope, and we cannot but believe, that acquaintance with the letter of scripture must produce its corresponding fruits. Of these, however, it is not our province to speak rashly, but we may observe that the contrast is very striking between the moral state, and intellectual powers of the labouring classes of those countries where the scriptures are in general use, and those where they have no access to the written rule of life. The operations of the Bible Society, and the need that exists for its redoubled exertions are fully set forth in the annual reports, and in the monthly extracts. You may not, however, be displeased to have a few facts bearing on these points, which came under the notice of two of your own associates, during excursions on the continent, in the summers of 1836 and 1838. In the little intercourse that they managed to get with the people, they had reason to feel the contrast above alluded to; they felt the want of an acknowledged rule of common reference in conversing with individuals of those countries from which the bible is very much excluded. If, for instance, they gave a tract on the keeping of the sabbath, they found the people had no sense of the sabbath, as a day of religious observance, because they had no understanding of its being enforced as such in the scriptures. There was no bringing them “to the law and to the testimony,” which they possessed not. Very different is the effect of conversing with the well-taught peasantry of Scotland. You are aware that the scriptures are circulated with difficulty in the Austrian dominions. In Prague, once the seat of biblical study, and whence issued one of the very earliest printed translations of the bible, a bookseller told your associates that the Bohemian bible was a prohibited book; he might obtain a copy for a known customer, but it would be a smuggling transaction. Your associates were much struck by the wretched appearance of the Jews in that city. They have a separate quarter there, as well as at Frankfort, and in both it was melancholy to drive through the narrow, crowded streets, and to observe the squalid degraded countenances, and the repugnance with which they seemed to regard the christian strangers. It made them long to extend to them the boon which they could receive with equal pleasure and profit—their own scriptures, in their own revered language. Your associates did not scruple to offer a few tracts in their passage through Austria and Bohemia, and they noticed that those which consisted solely of scriptural extracts were received with the most pleasure: they often left groups reading them aloud, around the post houses. The same may be said of the French text books, selected by Mrs. Fry, which were always received as a most acceptable present, and so were the few copies of the New Testament, which they were able to carry.
A friend of theirs, Mrs. R. Fox, of Falmouth, had been in the South of France, last Spring, and had mentioned to your associates, that she had been much pleased with a young pair, Roman Catholics, who kept the small hotel attached to the post-house at Orange. She found they were just married, and she left them a bible as a wedding present. Your associates asked the pleasing young landlady, if she had made any use of the bible. “Yes,” she said, “her husband and herself read a chapter of it every evening;” and the warmth with which they received the friends of the donor, proved their true value for the gift.
In France, though there may be some opposition to the dispersion of the scriptures, especially in the south, no danger can be incurred by the attempt. In the Sardinian dominions, the case is far different, and it ought to teach us to value our own privileges, when we reflect on the sufferings still endured by others, in their adherence to the testimony of Jesus. When your associates were at Nice last July, they heard of a very respectable man, a small farmer, who had just been released from the dungeons of the neighbouring Villa Franca, where he had been spending six months in a vault sunk in the rocky cliff below the level of the sea, for the crime of reading the bible to his wife, under his own tree on a Sunday. The gentleman who told them this fact, assured them also, that though P–’s affairs had suffered from his imprisonment, he was not a man to be daunted, nor was he likely to waver in his faith, or in his practice of studying the scriptures. Two other householders had also been imprisoned that spring for the same cause.
Your associates could venture to give but few tracts and one or two testaments in their passage through Piedmont and Savoy. These however were received with much interest. The contrast was striking when they reached Geneva, and found a bible in every set of rooms of their well appointed hotel. They believe this is usual in the Protestant cantons, at least they found the same at other hotels, and Mr. Scholl the pasteur of Lausanne told them, they had been placed there by the committee of the Bible Society. A great work of religion is carried on by means of this society, and also of the Protestant Evangelical Societies of France and Swisserland, which combine the objects of bible, missionary, and tract societies. For the former, they chiefly employ the colporteurs or travelling salesmen, described by M. de Pressensé in his excellent account of the operations of the Bible Society in France, (printed in the appendix to the last report 1838,) and all that is there said of the usefulness of this devoted class of men, was amply confirmed by the information your associates gained respecting their labours. These too they perform for so small a remuneration, that it is clear they are only prompted by conscientious motives. 100,000 copies of the scriptures are now yearly distributed in France, and the directors of the societies find, that it answers much better to sell them at a low price, than to give them away. The people are less willing to surrender their bibles to be burnt by the priests, if they have paid a sum of money, however small, for their purchase. In some few instances, the Roman Catholic priests themselves have been willing to promote the sale of the scriptures. Amongst the countries which your associates most desired to see provided with the scriptures, should any opportunity offer of aiding the supply, were the valleys of the Alps, the people of which are confined by the snows for months together, and express great desire for a store of winter’s reading. They met with a gentleman who had lately visited Felix Neff’s parishes of the Hautes Alpes. They asked if his work stood; he assured them it did, and said that Neff’s people showed the effect of his labours by the morality of their conduct, and especially by their kindness towards each other, and freedom from petty quarrels, and disputes about their strips of fertile land, which, from the general barrenness of the soil, form a frequent source of litigation amongst little proprietors in such situations. They are however, excessively poor; the best Sunday dinner they had to offer our friend was soup made with suet, like tallow, and dried beans, with black bread two years old chopped with a hatchet; the fare which killed poor Neff: he much wished that a supply of bibles could be sent them, for they greatly needed them. They had kept up the schools established by Neff, and in the long winter’s evenings used to meet in the cow-houses (for warmth) to read by lamp light, but they were very destitute of books of all kinds. In no way, perhaps, could a grant of bibles be better bestowed, than amongst these well-disposed mountaineers, who may be in danger of losing the christian standing they have acquired under the influence of a most devoted minister, if they are not assisted to keep up their knowledge of the word of God which he so successfully laboured to infuse.
We cannot omit to notice, that our association had pleasure in taking its little share in the grant issued by the Parent Society, in thankful commemoration of the event of the first of August, 1834, the abolition of slavery throughout the British dominions. Some of our subscribers especially, took this occasion of proving that a liberal spirit is not to be circumscribed by restricted means. The behaviour of the negroes on the day of their first emancipation, and on that of its completion by the termination of the apprenticeship, Aug. 1st, 1838, has been such as to afford an assurance that they could appreciate the gift. A private letter from Trinidad says, that the first of August last, “was spent in praise, reading the scripture and prayer; all was order and peace. Not a drum or dance was heard, and the best of feeling pervaded every heart;” and another from Jamaica, that “the day was there held as a sabbath.”
In retracing our course, many pleasing recollections present themselves; we could name an aged friend of the cause, who had always given us her cordial support, the last act of whose existence as to worldly affairs was to put into her daughter’s hand her subscription for the bible and other societies, in advance for the ensuing year, (1832,) with a warm expression of the love for that gospel which must, she was convinced, finally spread and prevail. We could speak of another, a member of our committee, who has carried the good wishes of us all to a distant island, (Ceylon,) where she is placed, and we doubt not to useful purpose, amongst scenes of heathen darkness, which she could effectively feel for, when she little expected to behold them. Others of our fellow-labourers have been called to other spheres of active duty; but in one sense we may truly say, that our band has never been disunited. It will be seen from the prefixed statement of our secretaries that we have distributed 2450 bibles and testaments, since our commencement, but we fear that the obvious remark (on the inspection of our accounts) will be this, that our efforts have not advanced in the ratio that might have been expected; we are, however, convinced, that there needs but a vigorous push to carry the present year’s gathering ahead of any former sum, and this gratification we would call upon our friends, to secure for themselves and for us. We trust indeed that the work of renovation has been already put in train by the labours of Mr. Wiseman, (the society’s agent, to whom we have already alluded,) in forming new village associations, and in exciting a fresh spirit of zeal amount us. Our hearty desire is, that every family in all our districts may be brought into direct connexion with a society, which has already circulated nearly eleven million copies of the holy scriptures.