ySTUDIA IN /

THE LIBRARY

of VICTORIA UNIVERSITY

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THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY

OF THE

AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

ELIAS BOUDINOT President of the American Bible Society, 1816

The Centennial History

of the

American Bible Society

BY HENRY OTIS DWIGHT

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1916

All rights reserved

Copyright 1916 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published, April, 1916

V-A.J

PREFACE

In dealing with so serious and significant a subject as the effort of a Society to increase the circulation of the Holy Scriptures in the world the point of view has been that of an humble servant acknowledging that success in the effort can proceed only from the guidance and help of Him to whom these ancient writings belong.

The plan of this book has excluded many things which may have been expected to appear in a review of labours cov ering a whole century of the world's progress. Its aim was to make a book to be read by the people rather than a manual of reference for the student.

It is natural, then, for this Centennial History to seek in every chapter the glory of God. The pervasive, living power of the word of God is emphasised by the facts of distribu tion in many lands, and these facts suggest praise and thanks giving on the part of all who have shared in the development and progress of the Bible cause.

The author would frankly confess his obligation to the Rev. Dr. William I. Haven and the Rev. Dr. John Fox, his colleagues as Secretaries of the Society, for kindly criti cism of the manuscript, much to its advantage.

In publishing this record of the first hundred years of the labours of the American Bible Society we would suggest that it is only the beginning of a story which, please God, will con tinue until the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. The future is impenetrable to the vision of the present writer as it was to the men who founded the Society a hundred years ago and bravely set forth on un known paths. Many things clearly ought to be done in the years immediately before us. In the meantime all may look forward with yearning and pray with the beloved disciple, that the Lord Jesus Christ may hasten His coming.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER		PAGE
I	THE BIBLE THE BOOK OF THE NEW WORLD .	i
II	THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE IN AMERICA .	. 6
III	A CRISIS IN THE GROWTH OF THE NATION .	• M
	FIRST PERIOD 1816-1821
IV	THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SOCIETY	21
v	FINDING ITS F'EET	71
VI	THE AUXILIARY THEORY	40
	SECOND PERIOD 1821-1832
VII	EARLY EXPERIMENTS	• 48
VIII	A WIDER OUTLOOK	• 55
IX	GROWTH OF AN ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM .	. 61
X	SOME OF THE GREAT MEN	. 69
XI	LATIN AMERICA BETTER KNOWN	75
XII	A NOTABLE ADVANCE	• 83
XIII	THE AUXILIARY SOCIETIES AT WORK. ....	. 92
XIV	Go IN THIS THY MIGHT	. 102
	THIRD PERIOD 1832-1841
XV	A MOST CHRISTIAN ENTHUSIASM	. Ill
XVI	RESPONSIBILITIES FOLLOWING A GREAT DECISION .	. iig
XVII	VENTURES IN LANGUAGES	128
XVIII	INDIVIDUALISM IN DEMOCRACY	136
XIX	AGENTS IN PARTIBUS	T/l/l
XX	THE FINANCING OF THE BIBLE SOCIETY . . .	• 153
XXI	THE GAINS OF TWENTY-FIVE YEARS .	162
	FOURTH PERIOD 1841-1861
XXII	AMONG DESTITUTE AMERICANS ....	• J/1
XXIII	OTHER DESTITUTE AMERICANS	. 182
XXIV	A VISION OF PERPETUAL GROWTH	. 191
XXV	A CLEARING HOUSE FOR NEEDS	• 199
XXVI	TURBULENT EUROPE	208

CHAPTER

XXVII

XXVI II

XXIX

XXX

XXXI

XXXII

XXXIII

XXXIV

XXXV

XXXVI

XXXVII

XXXVIII

CONTENTS

PAGE

AMONG THE FOREIGN AGENCIES — IN LATIN AMERICA 217 AMONG THE FOREIGN AGENCIES — THE LEVANT . . 226

LIGHT FOR THE DARKER LANDS 236

STORM CLOUDS 246

FIFTH PERIOD 1861-1871 THE BLIGHT OF CIVIL WAR .... TESTS OF THE SOCIETY'S EFFICIENCY . SOME FRUITS OF CHRISTIAN FEDERATION

THE PULSE OF LIFE

THE ONE TALENT HID

PEOPLES WHO KNOW NOT GOD'S LAW . THE JUBILEE CELEBRATION OF 1866 . FORGET NOT ALL His BENEFITS .

258 268 277 287 297 308 318 326

SIXTH PERIOD 1871-1891

XXXIX PAYING THE COST OF WAR 337

XL EVENTS AND EMERGENCIES IN THE BIBLE HOUSE . . 347

XLI MAKING THE BIBLE SPEAK WITH TONGUES . . . 357

XLII DISTRIBUTION IN THE HOME LAND 368

XLI 1 1 THE BIBLE SENT AS A FOREIGN MISSIONARY . . . 379

XLIV SYSTEMATIZING THE DISTRIBUTION ABROAD . . . 390

XLV THE CALL OF THE FAR EAST 401

XLVI JAPAN AND KOREA 411

XLVII MEDIATING BETWEEN EUROPE AND ASIA .... 420

XLVIII SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS OF SERVICE 431

SEVENTH PERIOD 1891-1916

XLIX AT THE BIBLE HOUSE 440

L CHANGES IN THE AUXILIARY SYSTEM 451

LI NEW METHODS AT HOME 460

LII LATIN AMERICA 470

LIII OPENING DOORS OF THE FAR EAST 482

LIV THE WHITE ELEPHANT AND THE DRAGON .... 490

LV AMERICA IN THE ORIENT 503

LVI THE BIBLE IN APOSTOLIC FIELDS 512

LVII THE PROBLEM OF MEANS 521

LVIII THY ORDINANCES ARE MY DELIGHT 530

APPENDICES 538

INDEX . 579

ILLUSTRATIONS

Elias Boudinot, President of the Society, 1816 Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

The Bible House, New York 192

James Wood, President of the Society, 1916 . . . 442

CENTENNIAL HISTORY

INTRODUCTORY PERIOD CHAPTER I

THE BIBLE THE BOOK OF THE NEW WORLD

THE beginning of the story of the American Bible Soci ety is found in those providences of God which made the Bible the book of the American Colonies.

Had there been no endeavour in the seventeenth century by European kings and rulers violently to control intellects and consciences awakened by the Reformation, there might have been no American Bible Society. It is not necessary to speculate upon this point. There is, however, occasion to call to mind, sometimes, the extent to which early settlers of the American Colonies now forming part of the United States had emigrated from their homes because they were lovers of the Bible. The Dutch and Swedes, who settled in New York and on the Delaware River, came out of the tur moil of religious wars, and brought their Bibles with them. The settlers of New England emigrated in order to secure liberty of conscience. They not only brought the Bible over on the Mayflower, but in the period from 1620 to 1640 they called about them some 20,000 people from the old country, who, like themselves, had suffered for the sake of this char ter of their liberty. In 1689 the Friends had well estab lished their " Holy Experiment " in Pennsylvania. To New York, Maryland and South Carolina Huguenots fled, Bible in hand, from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Like them were the German Mennonites and Pala tines, who escaped from religious oppressors in their home land, and became rooted in Pennsylvania. The Presby terians from Ulster, who took refuge in the Carolinas and

2 THE BIBLE IN THE NEW WORLD

in Georgia, were plain God-fearing people, who made the Bible the guide not only of their politics, but of their lives. The Virginia Colonists of 1607 may have included mere gold-seekers ; but, under Captain John Smith, Jamestown was early provided with a church, and the Bible became a source of instruction to many of the settlers.

So, of almost all of the early immigrants to America, it might be said as the Roman Catholic Brunetiere said of the Huguenots, when speaking of the paralyzing effect of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes upon moral progress in France : " It drove into exile the people who called them selves men of the Bible, and who carried their morality, faith, and intelligence everywhere. . . . Louis XIV cut the nerve of French morality for the metaphysical satisfaction of having God praised only in Latin."

Stephen Charnock, the old Puritan of Cromwell's time, noted as a result of his observation that " all God's provi dences are but his touch on the strings of the great instru ment of the world." That these men, the American Colo nists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, had been driven from their homes by religious persecution, was griev ous ; but, in truth, this emigration was simply a turning of the wrath of man to the glory of God.

These men loved the Bible. It may seem a little singular, perhaps, that if we leave out of account Eliot's Version of the Bible in the language of the Massachusetts Indians, and some Bible portions which Spanish Friars printed in Mexico in the end of the sixteenth century, we find the first Bible printed in America to be German, published in Philadelphia in 1/43, by the enterprising Christopher Sauer, in order to supply the large German population who demanded the Word of God.

Bibles in English were a monopoly of the king's printers in England and Scotland at this time; but the monopoly existed to insure the text rather than to give wealth to the printers. A small nonpareil Bible, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, could be had for a shilling, or at most for a shilling and sixpence. With such prices American printers could not compete; so American readers depended upon the king's printers, too.

A VOTE FOR BIBLES IN CONGRESS 3

With all the other upheavals which the Revolution brought to the colonies it suddenly stopped Bible sales. Con nection had been severed with the London printing houses. In 1777 a famine of Bibles was one of the many ills which a distracted Congress was called upon promptly to remedy at one of the Pennsylvania towns where it was able to meet in security. Dr. Allison, one of its chaplains, petitioned Congress to order the printing of at least twenty thousand Bibles. The lack of suitable paper, and even of sufficient type, in all the thirteen States for such a work negatived the scheme; but Congress voted by seven States against six to import twenty thousand Bibles from Holland, and this plan was set in execution.

Six States voted against the proposition. These were: Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Dela ware, and New York. The seven States which considered scarcity of Bibles a concern of national importance were : Georgia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Let us note, by the way, that the vote of New Jersey in that Congress was cast by Elias Boudinot, one of the Trustees of Prince ton University, eminent as a lawyer, who was afterwards President of the Congress, and later the first President of the American Bible Society.

About the time that Congress was making its provision of Bibles Robert Aitken, of Philadelphia, printed the first English Bible which came from an American press. The enterprise nearly ruined him, for almost as soon as the book was ready, peace with Great Britain was signed. Cheap Bibles from England appeared in the bookshops again, and the Aitken Philadelphia Bible lay dust-gathering on the shelves of the book-sellers. It is worth noting that the Bible which fed the soul of Abraham Lincoln in the Ken tucky log cabin of his boyhood, was one of those cheap little Bibles imported from London.

The records of Bible printing in America show that many souls were being fed in those days by the wonderful words of life. In the later years of the eighteenth century, Bibles were printed not only in Philadelphia, New York and Bos ton, but in Trenton, New Jersey ; Worcester, Newburyport,

4 THE BIBLE IN THE NEW WORLD

and Northampton, Massachusetts ; at New Haven and Hart ford, Connecticut ; at Albany, New York ; and at Wilming ton, Delaware, etc. The Bible had become the book of the New World.

God's book had become man's book, since need to know themselves and their God everywhere impels men to read, ponder and absorb its teachings. The book so becomes to lovers of the Bible a groundwork for their activities, habits and character. In the Bible we all have found high and in spiring ideas of God, answering every yearning of the needy soul. There we all have been won over to noble concep tions of right, purity and service, have acquired certainty that life is more than meat or raiment; and Bible axioms have been taken up so as to become a part of our very na ture. From the Bible the people have gained that enthusi asm for high attainment which ennobles the humblest man or woman and brings success, in some degree, to every ef fort permeated by a will to follow the leading of the Divine Master. Jt is this nurture in the Bible which has built up in our people a breadth of vision, and a deep consciousness of duty sure to show itself in good will to the less favored, such as appears in the widespread impulse to aid missionary and Bible Societies established for the sake of God.

Bible distribution among those who have it not used to spring from what scoffers called a mere theory ; that is, from a belief that the book has the same living power to change men of every race which it has shown among those of our own race. But the idea is exploded which regards this as a theory. The Bible is to-day in the hands of tens of thou sands of people, speaking several hundred different tongues, and belonging to all the races of mankind. After one hun dred years of labor, the belief which led men to begin mis sionary enterprises has become absolute certainty. In every land those changed through the living and pervasive power of the Bible gain, and transmit to their children, some tend ency to a nobler life. Bible readers thus influence perma nently the community, or the nation, or the race, of which they are factors.

In the thirteen American Colonies large groups of choice souls were more or less hidden from sight by another sort

WHO THE INFLUENTIAL MEN WERE 5

of settler, who cared nothing for the Bible ; had no use for any rule or any theory that did not result in some way in gaining fields, or harvests, or more precious valuables which can be weighed, and counted, and jingled. Nevertheless, generally speaking, the influential men and leaders of the colonies were apt to be found among the religious sections of the people.

To use the words of an anonymous writer in the old Panoplist: l " In no other country that ever existed was less restraint put upon men with regard to their religious or moral sentiments and behaviour. Here (in America) if a man is corrupt in his religious sentiments, there is nothing to obstruct his publishing them to others, beyond the re straint which he feels from the opinions and frowns of the virtuous, or the superior deference which the truth always challenges from falsehood. Here, if anywhere, men speak and act for themselves. Yet in no other country did Christianity ever command more respect from the people at large, or exhibit a greater influence on the minds and con duct of men taken in a mass. . . . Let not the writer be understood to mean, by the foregoing remarks, that the great body of the people of the United States, or that a ma jority of them, are Christians in the most important sense of that term. What he intends is that the proportion of such Christians is comparatively large, and that the influ ence of Christian doctrine and example over the great mass of the people is such as to warrant all that he has said."

Dwellers in that half-mastered wilderness noted in their midst shining lights, seemingly small and insignificant as the firefly flashes of a summer night. But amid the toil and murk which were the lot of that people, those little lights became beacons for wanderers, because they had been kindled from the great light for the feet of men — the Word of God.

*A religious magazine founded by Rev. Dr. Jedidiah Morse and published in Boston.

CHAPTER II

THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE IN AMERICA

IN each of the American Colonies, before any large ex pansion took place, a policy had to be adopted toward the Indians. They were curious, suspicious, and often hostile to the pushing white strangers. Even inanimate nature op posed the advances of the Colonists upon its hidden treas uries. The forests resisted the intruder with their silent mystery and isolation ; with their heavy undergrowth here, and tangled ropes of the wild grape there ; and now and then with a broad abattis of huge trunks, twisted by a cy clone as though intended to bar, by acres of interlaced and jagged branches, access to some hidden, great prize. Moun tains hindered any advance, walling in the land beyond with steep, rocky heights, or bewildering adventurers by offering them dark glens, and deep gulches that led to nothing more than another line of walls. Rivers forbade progress, with their deep, dark, unfeeling waters that could not be passed. And so it was fully a hundred years after the earlier land ings before the colonists made any great advances away from the coast.

Meanwhile the great rivers of the Atlantic coast had be come friendly helpers to those who explored northern New York and the broad interior of Pennsylvania. Before the Revolutionary War, too, adventurous hunters from Vir ginia and the Carolinas had found passes through the moun tains into Kentucky and Tennessee, and had let the Ken tucky, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers carry them, with their families, far westward toward the Mississippi. In 1792 Kentucky was admitted to the Union as a state, and in 1796 Tennessee. Pennsylvania was the least thinly popu lated of the states ; and at the end of the eighteenth century groups of settlers were scattered in meadow land and along

6

EFFECTS OF THE WESLEYAN REVIVAL 7

river banks as far to the westward and northward as the Indians would permit.

About the same time the breezes brought from England to the eastern colonies of America unwonted voices. Where doubts and scoffings had filled the air, at the end of the eighteenth century stirred by the Wesleyan revival, the call to teach all nations rang out clear and positive. The ap peals of William Carey in England had led to the establish ment of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792. His ideas had aroused the churches to such an extent that the London Missionary Society was formed in 1795, with the aim of evangelising those South Sea Islands described to the world by Captain Cook ; the Church Missionary Society, with an eye to reaching Africa, in 1798; the London Religious Tract Society in 1799.

A pleasing circumstance which appears on examining the American religious periodicals of the opening years of the nineteenth century is the quickness of the healing of the wounds left by the Revolutionary War. One ancestry, one faith, one language, may permit petty misunderstandings, such as might spring up between husband and wife ; yet such ties are too strong to be permanently broken. Noble impulses in one must naturally react upon the other. The English religious press was often quoted in those early American publications ; and there was little or nothing to suggest that but a few years earlier friendly relations with England constituted a crime. In England there was a So ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and a Society for the promotion of Christian Knowledge — both formed in the seventeenth century. The Massachu setts Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge among the Indians was established in 1803. Following the establishment of a Religious Tract Society in London, a Connecticut Religious Tract Society was established in New Haven in 1807. The Massachusetts Missionary Society had already been established in 1800. The New Hamp shire Missionary Society began in 1804 " to oppose that tor rent of errors which threatens to deluge our infant settle ments." The same impulse which had stirred British Chris tians, awakened among the feeble American Colonies quick

8 THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE

response, as though the command to teach the world had now first been spoken.

In 1803 the purchase of " Louisiana " from the Emperor Napoleon added to the American domains an enormous tract of wilderness west of the Mississippi River, whose bound aries were then inconceivably distant, since they included one-third of the entire area of the present United States. This purchase of a wilderness, ridiculed at the time even more than Mr. Seward's purchase of Alaska was, gave the United States unchallenged ownership of the lower Missis sippi, and had the effect, at the time unexpected, of increas ing among the states of the Union still in the embryo stage, with little real solidarity, a broader aspiration and a stronger sense of nationality. This was a fitting prelude to the strong outburst of feeling among religious people which fol lowed information of the establishment of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804.

The suggestion of the Reverend Joseph Hughes, when a few men were discussing the formation of a Bible Society for the supply of Wales, had the effect of an electric shock to quicken men's faculties. At the thought of a Bible So ciety, Mr. Hughes had remarked: " And if for Wales, why not for the whole world ? " No one could nor would any one wish to put that question out of mind. It led to the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society; and when, a few years later, the latent power in that remark had been proved by experience, the same question led to the establishment of many Bible Societies in the United States.

The first was the Philadelphia Bible Society, organised in December, 1808. It adopted a constitution differing some what from that of the British and Foreign Bible Society, but specifying that the Bibles which the Society should publish must be without notes ; copies being distributed in all languages calculated to be useful, whenever this seems to be necessary. Some thought that the Philadelphia So ciety ought to design to serve the whole country. It was, however, the feeling of the founders of the Society that this would not be wise. A general Society, extending through out the United States, would be unwieldy, they thought, and would languish in all places excepting the centre of its

THE FIRST BIBLE SOCIETIES 9

operations. It appeared to them that if similar societies were established in the principal cities of the Union, they might, by corresponding with each other, and occasionally uniting their funds, act with more vigour and greater effect than the one general Society. "If no similar Society should be formed in any part of this country," the Managers said, " then it will be the duty of this Society to extend its arm.1 from Maine to Georgia, and from the Atlantic to the Mis sissippi."

They immediately sent circulars to leading persons in the different religious denominations throughout the United States urging them to establish Bible Societies on a similar basis.

The good people in Connecticut next moved to organise a Bible Society (in May, 1809). Then came Massachusetts with its Bible Society in July of the same year. New York followed in November, 1809, and New Jersey in December. Within six years time more than one hundred Bible Societies had been organised in the United States, with the simple purpose of providing Bibles for the poor who had no means of supplying themselves. Almost every one of the new So cieties had in its Constitution provision for extending its benefactions when possible to heathen lands.

The British and Foreign Bible Society sent hearty con gratulations to each of these new Societies; and realising that such societies would need tangible help in beginning their operations, it made grants of from Three Hundred to Five Hundred Dollars to each of the state Societies. In the masterly history of the first hundred years of the British and Foreign Bible Society, Mr. Canton remarks 1 that by the end of 1816 that Society had presented to sixteen American Bible Societies 3,122 pounds sterling.'-'

It is not a matter for surprise that those connected with the American Societies frequently expressed their affection

1 Vol. I, p. 248.

2 The donation of five hundred pounds which it made to the American Bible Society upon its organisation is not included in this amount; nor is a donation of one hundred and fifty pounds to the Bible and Common Prayer-Book Society, which hardly stands in the same general category as the interdenominational Bible Socie ties.

io THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE

for the British Society under the title, " Venerable Parent." A little later than this, a speaker on the Bible cause in New York expressed his feeling in fulsome language, as follows : " With the profoundest veneration I bow before the majesty of the British and Foreign Bible Society. This illustrious association (its history is recorded in Heaven, and ought to be proclaimed on earth) has been instrumental in distributing a million and a half of volumes of the Word of Life, and has magnanimously expended, in a single year, near four hundred thousand dollars for the salvation of man. This transcendent institution is the brightest star in the constella tion of modern improvements, and looks down from its celestial elevation on the diminished glories of the Grecian and Roman men.'5 *

A true missionary impulse leads Christians who wish to tell the glorious facts to those who do not know Jesus Christ "to begin at Jerusalem." This is the natural order; but men at home who are stubbornly refractory may not bar others from hearing the message of Jesus Christ; so the impulse to tell facts to all will not tolerate sitting still until the last inhabitant of the home city has surrendered.

A plain, rather bashful student in Williams College, Samuel J. Mills, musing on this subject, felt the need of our own frontiersmen. He also pictured the ignorance of the wild barbarians beyond, and then questioned whether poor, dark Africa must wait until all in America have consented to drink of the water of life. In his diary is one sentence, which, to him, was the conclusion of the whole matter: " Though we are very little beings, we must not rest satis fied until we have made our influence extend to the remotest corner of this ruined world." With unfailing persistence Mills held that doctrine up to the very end of his short life.

The first public work to which Mills put his hand was to go with some like-minded students in Andover Theological Seminary to some of the leading clergymen of his acquaint ance. The students announced to the astonished pastors that they were ready to give their lives to work as foreign

1 See the address of George Griffin, Esq., at the ratification meet ing held in behalf of the American Bible Society at City Hall, in New York, May 13, 1816.

SAMUEL J. MILLS 11

missionaries ; and they wished to know whether Christian people would support them in this enterprise. This was early in 1810. The quiet earnestness of Mr. Mills' ques tion impressed the good ministers, and they took the matter seriously in hand. The formation, in September, 1810, of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis sions followed. The despatch to India of five of the de voted volunteers as missionaries of the American Board was the first step taken by that great Society toward ex tending its influence " to the remotest corner of this world."

Mills was not one of the five chosen to go abroad. Per haps he was disappointed ; but he was soon called to mis sionary work at home which, as we shall see, was destined closely to connect him with the organisation of the Ameri can Bible Society. It is a little singular, by the way, that the man who drafted the constitution of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804 was ^Iso a Samuel Mills, for forty-three years a member of the directing " Committee " of that Society. The extent of the territory added to the United States by the purchase of " Louisiana " was so great, and current knowledge of its people so little that the Massachusetts Missionary Society in October, 1812, ap pointed Reverend J. M. Schermerhorn as one of its mission aries, in co-operation with the Connecticut Missionary So ciety, to explore the West and Southwest. Mr. Samuel J. Mills was selected as a companion to Mr. Schermerhorn on this adventurous journey.

Five months were allotted to the young men for their work ; this would be mainly occupied in travel, much of the time through pathless forests. It was a happy alleviation of the strain of such a journey that the two young mission aries were introduced to General Andrew Jackson at Nash ville, Tennessee, then on the point of starting for Natchez with fifteen hundred soldiers ; the war with Great Britain having just commenced. General Jackson liked the young men, and invited them to go as far as Natchez on his steamer ; which they were glad enough to do. It was some thing of a descent from this high level of comfort as guests of the general commanding the army, when the two men engaged passage on a flat-boat from Natchez to New

12 THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE

Orleans ; preferring this discomfort to an expenditure of six times as much money for the sake of going on a steamer.

The return journey from New Orleans was still more painful. The two missionaries were just one month going from New Orleans overland to Nashville, a distance of five hundred miles through heavy forests, thick canebrakes and bridgeless rivers, so remote from human habitation that wolves and bears and rattlesnakes were ready to dispute the right of way.

\Yhen the explorers returned from this long expedition, they made a moving report of the extraordinary situation which they had found. Almost as soon as they had passed Pittsburg, the story became monotonous ; the little settle ments were without religious privileges. Again and again they found districts where fifty thousand or more people were without opportunity to hear preaching, and almost entirely without the Bible for their own comfort or for the bringing up of their children.

Mr. Mills was so moved by the prevailing destitution that at every opportunity he gathered people together and in duced them to form a local Bible Society ; for there were plenty of good people who, when brought together, found that they could work with some prospect of success. In this way the Ohio State Bible Society, the Indiana Bible Society, the Illinois Bible Society and the Nashville, Ten nessee, Bible Society were formed. The Kentucky Bible Society at Lexington was reorganised, and stirred with new hope. A new Bible Society was established at Natchez, Mississippi ; and finally, after consulting with the Roman Catholic clergy of New Orleans, the New Orleans Bible So ciety was organised ; the Roman Catholic Bishop saying that if the books circulated were the translations favoured by the Roman Catholic Church, he would contribute to the So ciety's funds.

The two explorers had been furnished by the New York Bible Society and the Philadelphia Bible Society with a certain number of Bibles, with which they rejoiced the hearts of those responsible for the work of the new Bible Societies which they left on their trail.

In 1814 the Massachusetts Missionary Society appointed

RELIGIOUS DESTITUTION OF SETTLERS 13

Mr. Mills to make another tour over practically the same ground which he had examined two years before; this time to preach and distribute religious literature, seeking to en courage the different communities to organise for the sup port of pastors at least a part of the year. The Rev. Daniel Smith of Georgia was appointed to be Mr. Mills' com panion on this journey.

After visiting various points from Steubenville to Mari etta, they urged the Missionary Society to establish a river mission ; the preacher to go in a boat along the Virginia and the Ohio shores, stopping at eight or ten stations, so that the people might hear a sermon at least once in a while. Meeting a man in Illinois who said that he had been trying for ten years to buy a Bible, it was brought home to Mr. Mills' heart that this man was one thousand miles from any place where a Bible could be printed, and that many of the people in that wilderness must remain destitute to the end of their lives.

This second expedition brought Mr. Mills to New Orleans in the middle of February, 1815, a month after General Jackson's victory over General Pakenham and the English Army. He went about among the hospitals, distributing Scriptures to sick and wounded of both armies. He visited the prisons, comforting and cheering the British prisoners. He distributed in the city three thousand French Testa ments which the Philadelphia Bible Society had sent to New Orleans ; Roman Catholics receiving them gladly, and rarely objecting. It was to Mills a happy experience.

Mr. Mills returned directly to Massachusetts on fire with the tremendous needs of the West and South. His soul was burdened by the problem of awakening the people of the Eastern States to an understanding, in the first place, of the enormous possibilities of the Western country ; and in the second place, of the religious destitution of the settlers throughout these new territories. In times when prompt and radical action in behalf of the kingdom of Jesus Christ is necessary, God commonly thrusts forward a man to show the people what should be done. For that critical moment the man thus thrust into the work by our divine Master was Samuel J. Mills.

CHAPTER III

A CRISIS IN THE GROWTH OF THE NATION

OCCUPIED with strenuous labours for their daily bread and with efforts to lay the foundations of their future wel fare, settlers in the West and South had no time to con sider ideals. These sturdy well-meaning people, left with out wise advisers, were carelessly preparing for themselves catastrophe, and for the nation humiliation. Many were in clined to say to God, like some of the ancients, " Depart from us for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways." Their fair lands were in danger of becoming strongholds of ungodliness.

The reports of Mr. Samuel J. Mills and his companions aroused Christians everywhere to the danger of such a situ ation. Mills' passionate words were not the ravings of an alarmist. But he wrote, " There are districts containing from twenty to fifty thousand people entirely destitute of the Scriptures and of religious privileges. How shall they hear without a preacher ? Never will the impression be erased from our hearts that has been made by beholding those scenes of wide-spread desolation. The whole country from Lake Erie to the Gulf of Mexico is as the valley of the shadow of death. Only here and there a few rays of gospel light pierce through the awful gloom. This vast expanse of our country contains more than one million in habitants. The number of Bibles sent them by all the So cieties in the United States is by no means as great as the yearly increase of the population. The original number of people still remains unsupplied.

" When we entered on this mission we applied in person to the oldest and wealthiest of the Bible institutions, but we could only obtain a single small donation. The existing Societies have not yet been able to supply the demand in

14

THE LOCAL SOCIETIES INADEQUATE 15

their own immediate vicinity. Some mightier effort must be made. Their scattered and feeble exertions are by no means adequate to the accomplishment of the object. It is thought by judicious people that half a million of Bibles are necessary for the supply of the destitute in the United States. It is a foul blot on the national character. Chris tian America must arise and wipe it away.

" The existing Societies are not able to do this work. They want union ; they want co-operation ; they want re sources. If a National Institution cannot be formed, appli cation ought to be made immediately to the British and For eign Bible Society for aid." 1

All seem to have agreed that Bibles were essential in this emergency. Missionaries could do little without them, and even where there was no missionary the Bible could awaken the conscience. In 1814 many persons thought that since there were nearly a hundred Bible Societies in the land, with patience, the danger of irreligion becoming rooted in the new settlements would be dissipated. This opinion sprang from blind ignorance. Referring to the inadequacy of the existing system, Mr. Mills said that in order to get five thousand copies of the Scriptures in French as a partial supply for forty or fifty thousand French Catholics who are destitute, " we have to go or send to the several Bible Socie ties from Maine to Georgia, and to wait until we receive in formation from the Directing Committees. Four, five, or six months must elapse, and perhaps a year before we are able to make a report. And by this time the most favour able opportunity for distributing the Bible may have passed by. And although it may be found that we are possessed of ability to effect the desired object, yet if we are obliged to conduct in this way, we shall be very liable to be defeated, and we may have to send to the directors of the British and Foreign Bible Society requesting that they would make a donation of Bibles for the supply of the destitute within the limits of the United States." :

Aspirations for some unity of action between the Bible

1 Life of S. J. Mills by Gardiner Spring, p. 83-86. t, October 1813, p. 357.

16 A CRISIS FOR THE NATION

Societies appeared occasionally in the religious periodicals, but nothing practical resulted. At last, in the autumn of 1814 the Honorable Elias Boudinot, LL.D., President of the New Jersey JJible Society, sent to all the Bible Societies in the United States a statement that on the 3Oth of August, 1814, the Board of Alanagers of the New Jersey Bible So ciety adopted the following resolution :

" Whereas it is the duty of the New Jersey Bible Society to use all the means which a kind providence has put into their power to promote the great objects of their associa tion ; and whereas the greatest union of Christians, of every profession, in so desirable a cause, promises most success to the undertaking— On motion it was resolved that a com mittee of three be appointed to take into consideration, and report their opinion of the most probable means in the power of the society for uniting the people of God, of all denomi nations, in the United States, in carrying on the great work of disseminating the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the habitable world, making report to the present session of the Board of Managers."

Dr. Boudinot, and the Rev. Drs. Wharton and Wood- hull were appointed a committee to consider and report on the foregoing, who, after duly considering the same, re ported these resolutions, which, having been laid before the society, were approved and included in the circular to the Bible Societies. The substance of these resolutions was : First, that it would greatly promote the accomplishment of the important purposes for which the Bible Societies in the United States have associated, if a union of them all could be obtained, by an annual or biennial meeting of delegates, to be appointed by the societies in each state, at some central place to be agreed on, to conduct the common interests of the whole respecting the distribution of the Sacred Scrip tures beyond the limits of particular states, or where a so ciety in a state cannot furnish so many copies as are wanted. Second, that each Bible Society be requested to appoint at least two delegates to meet at Philadelphia on the Monday preceding the third Wednesday in the following May with full power to form a plan for a well organised and consti tuted body or society, to be called the " General Association

DR. BOUDINOTS TENACITY 17

of the Bible Societies in the United States," or such other name or title as may then be agreed on, for the purpose of disseminating the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa ment, according to the present approved version, without note or comment. Third