British and Foreign Bible Society
The Society was formed in 1804, solely ‘to encourage the wider circulation of the Holy Scriptures without note or comment’. It is a partnership of Christian people, belonging to many different communions, who unite to provide every man who can read with God’s message to him, in his mother tongue. The Times says of it :—
‘Little imagination is needed to understand the value of the Society’s labours. Its object is simple and comprehensive, namely, to translate the one Book which can ever with success be expected to provide the common basis of morality and spiritual knowledge to all members of the human family, into every language however barbarous; to print it in any script however complex; to place it in every man’s hands however remote; and to provide it at a price at which the poorest may purchase it. Towards the fulfilment of these aims the Society has already gone far, for the languages which it can command are spoken by seven-tenths of mankind.’
‘It is truly an international organization, and its ideals are as practical as any that have yet been devised by international statesmanship for the improvement of the relations between people and people and man and man. There can be little true human fellowship if large portions of mankind either never learn, or are allowed to forget, the principal lessons of history and the central religious truths which the pages of the Bible enshrine. However interpreted, the New Testament, if the brotherhood of man is not to remain a merely pious aspiration, must become a book accessible to all.’
‘A copy of the Scriptures, as faithfully translated as scholarship can render them, is one of the few things that change hands in this modern world of which it can be said without qualification that the giving is good and the gift perfect.’
The specimens of 630 different tongues presented in the preceding pages graphically illustrate the extent of our translation work.
From depots in nearly a hundred principal cities in the world, by means of the Society’s 1,000 colporteurs, and by
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