It arises, in the first place, from a wrong estimate of the character of the poor, and especially of the religious poor. The sympathy which is professed by the author of these Reasons, is for suffering which only exists in his own conception. Those who subscribe to Bible Associations have no feeling of the cruelty which they are said to endure. The best delight which can animate a human breast, is afforded to them by the means of the Bible Society, in the easiest manner, as well as in the highest degree.
Persons in higher situations of life, are apt to look upon those beneath them, as incapable of feeling those pleasures which they themselves enjoy. Thus the clean cottage, the small, but decorated garden of a poor man, is passed by with indifference by the rich; yet the poor man has, perhaps, more exquisite pleasure in his enjoyments, than another, pampered with all the superfluities of life. So may it be with these small subscriptions to Bible Associations. Although poor, a man is equally a man; he has drank “milk sweet as charity from human breasts;” and feeling, as acutely as any other, his own spiritual wants, he may have as earnest desire for the relief of his fellow-creatures. Such I am persuaded is the state of many of the poor, and their language in giving to these Associations is not the pang which cruelty extorts, but of this kind—“I am not rich myself, but I will give my money, because I know that he who giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord; because the souls of multitudes are perishing for lack of that knowledge, which I am able, in a degree, to impart to them.”
But not only is this charge founded upon a wrong conception of the character and habits of the poor, but upon a mistaken view of the real political and moral influence of these Associations.
It is admitted on all hands, that the best remedy for national distress would be to create in the poor a spirit of independence; to raise them above a state, in which they would stoop to receive from the public, that support which ought to be procured by their own industry and foresight. On this ground, we establish clubs to provide against sickness; banks to deposit savings; and there is reason to conclude, from the example of Scotland, that if the principle of honest independence were duly cultivated, and means supplied for its full operation, an almost total subduction of our Poor Rate might take place. Bible Associations have, then, a direct tendency to teach and to set at work this very principle. They teach the poor economy, a habit of foresight, the benefit of order and christian co-operation. They raise the poor from the rank of beggars to that of benefactors; and, whilst in common with clubs, they cherish a habit of prudence, they root out the habit of selfishness, which clubs have, perhaps, a tendency to produce.
I may be permitted to say in conclusion, that although we may lament that such controversies should arise, because, as the author of these Reasons states, our divisions are by these means made greater, still it is our comfort to know, that the effect of such controversies is to create inquiry into the facts upon which they are founded. And this inquiry, all that love truth, must most earnestly desire. The friends of the Bible Society wish to lay open every fact, to offer every plan for investigation, conscious of the simplicity and purity of their object and conduct.
When the members of this Society, those of them, at least, who are not under an error of judgment, are said in this pamphlet to “have the aim and ambition to puritanize the whole community, and to raise the fabric of enthusiasm upon the ruins of church and state,” I look to fact, which our author will at least allow to be as good a weapon as hypothesis, and having used in vain all my faculties to discover any ground for the assertion, I venture to conclude, either that the author has in his study dreamt of enemies whom he cannot have seen, or that he has inserted this passage for the purpose of concluding his work with a flourish, even at the expence of truth.
I recollect a fable, by which, some years since, this same false and foolish charge was illustrated. It said, that philosophers had fancied they saw a monster in the sun, which, however, upon further examination, proved to be a fly in their own glass. And my firm conviction is, that the supposed monsters in this Society will prove to be flies in the glasses of our opponents. From no single fact, at least, in the constitution and general proceedings of the Bible Society, can these persons shew, that the slightest ground for such portentous apprehensions as are suggested, does exist, but in their own imagination.
The Bible Society has now existed long enough to prove how vain are aspersions of this kind. If such suppositions had been warranted, fourteen years would have developed them; but they still remain utterly unproved, and this Society is sufficiently known, and has been sufficiently examined. We have, indeed, sometimes seen its brilliancy for a short time obscured by works like our author’s, where every thing is charged and taken for granted, but these clouds have passed away, and then we have, when they have passed, observed this institution in the mean time risen to a higher meridian, beaming with more pure and brilliant lustre, and imparting more extended and beneficent animation.
It is a happiness for the friends of the Bible Society to know, that opposition like this, is not new against an institution of the most acknowledged merits; and which has the testimony of the very writer of these “Reasons.” At an early period of the existence of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the very same opposition was raised against itself. In the year 1718, that Society thought proper to answer these allegations, and I will extract a passage from a preface which it published to some missionary letters.
Extract from the Preface to a Collection of Letters from Foreign Missionaries, part 3, published by the direction of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London, 1718, page vii.