The community supported a regular ministry from the beginning. Its members have been keen evangelists, trusting largely to “revivals” for their success, staunch Radicals in politics and total abstainers to a man. Both ministers and people entered with interest and sympathy into the scheme for union between themselves, the Methodist New Connexion and the United Methodist Free Church, which was successfully accomplished in 1906. See [Methodism].
BIBLE SOCIETIES, associations for translating and circulating the Holy Scriptures. This object has engaged the attention of the leaders of Christendom from early times. In an extant letter, dated A.D. 331, the emperor Constantine requested Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, to provide him with fifty copies of the Old and New Testaments for use in the principal churches in Constantinople. In 797 Charlemagne commissioned Alcuin to prepare an emended text of the Vulgate; copies of this text were multiplied, not always accurately, in the famous writing-schools at Tours. The first book printed in Europe was the Latin Bible, and Copinger estimates that 124 editions of the Vulgate had been issued by the end of the 15th century. The Italian Bible was printed a dozen times before A.D. 1500, and eighteen editions of the German Bible had already been published before Luther’s version appeared.
The Reformation quickened men’s interest in the Scriptures to an extraordinary degree, so that, notwithstanding the adverse attitude adopted by the Roman Church at and after the council of Trent, the translation and circulation of the Bible were taken in hand with fresh zeal, and continued in more systematic fashion.
Thus, the Revised French Geneva Bible of 1588, which was issued in folio, quarto and octavo, and became a standard text, bears the following note on the verso of the title: “Les frais de cet ouvrage, imprimé en trois diuerses formes en mesme temps, pour la commodité et contentement de toutes sortes de personnes, ont esté liberalemet fournis par quelques gens de bien, qui n’ont cherché gagner pour leur particulier, mais seulement de servir à Dieu et à son Église.” The Corporation for the Promoting and Propagating of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England (founded in 1649) bore the expense of printing both the New Testament and the Bible as a whole (Cambridge, Mass., 1663—the earliest Bible printed in America), which John Eliot, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, translated into “the language of the Massachusetts Indians,” whom he evangelized. In Arnauld’s Defence (1669) of the famous Port Royal version of the New Testament in French (issued, 1667), he states that it had been printed in many forms and sizes, including very cheap editions for the poor, and goes on to describe how its circulation was promoted by “les sacrifices que s’imposaient les pieux solitaires pour faire participer les plus indigents au bienfait de leur entreprise. Dès que leur traduction fut prête, ils envoyèrent de Paris un grand nombre de colporteurs chargés de la vendre au prix de revient et même, dans certaines circonstances, à des prix réduits; et ils couvrirent la dépense par des dons volontaires” (E. Pétavel, La Bible en France, p. 152).
To meet the cost of publishing the Finn Bible in 1685, the editor, J. Gezelius, bishop of Åbo, obtained an order from the Swedish government for the appropriation of certain corn-tithes, still known as Bibel Tryck-Tunnan. When the Finnish Bible Society began to publish editions of the Scriptures, the tsar Alexander I. contributed 5000 roubles from his privy purse, and ordered that these corn-tithes should again be appropriated to this purpose for five years from 1812. In 1701 at Frankfort-On-Main there appeared a quarto edition of the Ethiopic Psalter, whose editor, H. Ludolf, writes in his preface: “Quamobrem nullum gratius officium Christianae huic nationi a me praestari posse putavi, quam si Psalterium Aethiopicum, quod apud illos non aliter quam in membrana manuscriptum habetur, et caro satis venditur, typis mandari, ejusque plurima exemplaria nomine Societatis Indicae in Habessinia gratis distribui curarem.”
In 1719 appeared the first of numerous editions of the French New Testament, connected with the name of the Abbé de Barneville, a priest of the Oratory at Paris. Impressed by the popular ignorance of the Scriptures, he himself translated, or caused others to translate, the New Testament into French from the Vulgate, and formed an association to distribute copies systematically at low prices. The prefaces to his various editions contain details as to the methods of this association, and repeatedly insist on the importance of reading the Scriptures. (On this Société biblique catholique française see O. Douen, Histoire de la société biblique protestante de Paris, Paris, 1868, pp. 46-51.)
Christian missionaries to non-Christian lands have naturally been among the most skilful translators and the most assiduous distributors of the Bible. The earliest complete Arabic Bible was produced at Rome in 1671, by the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. Protestant missionary societies have engaged energetically in the task not only of translating, but of printing, publishing and distributing the Scriptures. Thus the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (founded 1698), besides its other activities, has done much to cheapen and multiply copies of the Scriptures, not only in English and Welsh, but in many foreign languages. Early in the 18th century it printed editions in Arabic, and promoted the first versions of the Bible in Tamil and Telugu, made by the Danish Lutheran missionaries whom it then supported in south India. The earliest New Testament (1767) and Old Testament (1783-1801) in Gaelic were published by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (founded 1709). The S.P.C.K. now publishes versions of the Scriptures (either complete, or in part) in 38 different languages (without reckoning versions of the Prayer Book in 45 other languages); and during 1905-1906 the S.P.C.K. issued in England 116,126 Bibles and 17,783 New Testaments.
The earliest noteworthy organization, formed for the specific purpose of circulating the Scriptures, was the Canstein Bible Institute (Bibelanstalt), founded in 1710 at Halle in Saxony, by Karl Hildebrand, baron von Canstein (1667-1719), who was associated with P.J. Spener and other leaders of Pietism in Germany. He invented a method of printing, perhaps somewhat akin to stereotyping—though the details are not clearly known,—whereby the Institute could produce Bibles and Testaments in Luther’s version at a very low cost, and sell them, in small size, at prices equivalent to 10d. and 3d. per copy, respectively. In 1722 editions of the Scriptures were also issued in Bohemian and Polish. At von Canstein’s death he left the Institute to the care of his friend August Hermann Francke, founder in 1698 of the famous Waisenhaus (orphanage) at Halle. The Canstein Institute has issued some 6,000,000 copies of the Scriptures.
In England various Christian organizations, which arose out of the Evangelical movement in the 18th century, took part in the work. Among such may be mentioned the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge among the Poor (1750); and the Society for the Support and Encouragement of Sunday Schools (1785). An institution was founded in 1780 under the name of the Bible Society, but as its sphere was restricted to soldiers and seamen the title was afterwards changed to the Naval and Military Bible Society. The first ship among whose crew it distributed the Scriptures was the “Royal George,” which had 400 of this society’s Bibles on board when it foundered at Spithead on the 29th of August 1782. The French Bible Society, instituted in 1792, came to an end in 1803, owing to the Revolution.