The object of the Society is twofold—embracing both the purposes which I have just been enforcing:—The conversion of souls, sought by direct and appropriate means; and the general benefit of all classes of society, by a supply of works in general literature purified by the presiding power of Christian truth, righteousness, love, and wisdom.
The first object was originally the only one, and has ever been the chief; and the good done by the religious tracts which the Society has circulated, nobody can calculate. Who can tell the blessings conveyed in “The Dairyman’s Daughter” and “The Young Cottager,” tracts which, though old, can never be out of date—tracts which have been very rarely equalled, and, I believe, never surpassed? Others less striking have been the instruments of vast usefulness. The annual circulation from the London depot, I see, is 41,044,772; the total of issues, including those which are from foreign societies, connected with this, 49,000,000. The total circulation of tracts for seventy-one years reaches the enormous amount of nearly 1,335,000,000. It would seem, looking at these almost incredible numbers, as if the world could not contain so many books written of Him; and yet how many, many millions of the men and women in the world know nothing of Him, and have never yet been reached by any of these publications! What shoals have been and still are coming forth on the other side, full of infidelity and superstition and vice! So that, after all, the work of this Society is not half done.
The second object—the hallowing of literature with a Christian spirit—has increasingly occupied the attention of the Society of late years, but never, in the slightest degree, to the neglect of the first. The catalogue of its published books includes, besides solid divinity, lively histories, pleasant biographies, sparkling fictions, religious, moral, and descriptive poetry. Old works are brought out in modern dress under the care of competent editors; works entirely new are issued under the sanction of the Committee, which renders itself responsible for their contents. The pencil of the artist, the burin of the engraver, are employed in the illustration and adornment of many of the publications; and in an artistic as well as literary respect, “The Leisure Hour” and the “Sunday at Home” stand deservedly high amongst our popular periodicals. They are making way amongst the intelligent and the tasteful, conciliating prejudice, producing favourable impressions of Christian truth, and guiding the young into right paths.
The prophet Ezekiel stood in the court of the Temple at Jerusalem, and watched the flow of waters issuing “from under the threshold of the house eastward,” and descending the slope of Zion into the Valley of Jehoshaphat; he watched and followed the man with the measuring line in his hand through the waters, which were first ancle and then knee deep, and which, as they proceeded along the limestone gorge, rose up to the loins, and then became waters to swim in—a river which could not be passed over. When it reached the Dead Sea it healed the waters of it, and where it came everything lived. Then the prophet saw, in vision, groves, orchards, gardens, rising on each side of this river. Such is the Old Testament type of the Gospel of Christianity. It may be applied to all forms of its influence and action. We venture to employ it as a figure of what this Society is doing. It issues fertilizing, life-giving, and healing streams, because it is filling the world with books written about the many things which Jesus did, and is doing, and will do for the sons of men. “And by the river, upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary; and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine.”
ABSTRACT OF THE SEVENTY-FIRST REPORT
OF THE
RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY,
FOR THE YEAR ENDING MARCH 31, 1870.
The object of the Religious Tract Society, like that of the public ministry of the Word, is to impress the contents of the sacred volume—its doctrines, its precepts, its promises, its prospects—separately, or in varied combinations, upon the consciences and affections of men according to their spiritual needs. In pursuing this object, it strives to imitate the Divine book itself, and to teach, not by doctrine only, but by history, biography, poetry, parable; and to tinge its information or instruction, as to the events of every-day life, with the spirit of pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father—disinterested benevolence and personal holiness.
There have been issued, during the year, THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-THREE new publications, of which ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE were Tracts. The Books include a revised Quarto Paragraph New Testament, and two Parts of the Old; a historic Survey of the Papacy; a Grammar and Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, and many of a general character adapted for both adults and youth; and amongst the Periodicals, a new one entitled “The True Catholic.”