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 The Bible 
 in Foreign 
 Missions 
 
 American Bible Society 
 
 Bible House, Astor Place 
 New York 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Columbia University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/bibleinforeignmiOOamer 
 
The Bible in Foreign 
 Missions 
 
 I N the year 1912 the American Bible So¬ 
 ciety issued 4,049,610 Bibles, Testaments, 
 Psalters, separate Gospels, and other portions 
 of Scripture. Out of this total 2,224,099 vol¬ 
 umes were put into circulation in foreign 
 lands. Lands which are known as pagan re¬ 
 ceived 1,717,935 of these books, the remainder 
 for the most part going into territories where 
 the prevailing form of Christianity deprives 
 the poor of the written Word or where Islam 
 denies the redeeming power of Christ and 
 man’s need of it. 
 
 The Society’s Agencies Abroad 
 
 For greater efficiency and precision the 
 Society has organized twelve Agencies in 
 foreign lands mentioned below, with the 
 date of establishment of each and the number 
 of issues in 1912 and the total issues. 
 
 Founded Issues in Issues from 
 
 Levant (Turkey, Syria, and 
 
 Egypt).... 
 
 La Plata (South American re¬ 
 publics, except Brazil and 
 
 Venezuela). 
 
 Brazil.. 
 
 Japan..... 
 
 China... 
 
 Mexico.. 
 
 Korea. 
 
 West Indies. 
 
 Venezuela... 
 
 Slam... 
 
 Central America.. 
 
 Pbilippine Islands... 
 
 Total.. 
 
 
 1012. 
 
 beginning 
 
 1836 
 
 167,688 
 
 3 , 309,848 
 
 1864 
 
 64,699 
 
 1 , 226,222 
 
 1876 
 
 70,594 
 
 958,368 
 
 1876 
 
 133,055 
 
 2 , 637.162 
 
 1876 
 
 1 , 367,404 
 
 15 , 919,326 
 
 1878 
 
 19,431 
 
 810,560 
 
 1882 
 
 88,214 
 
 545,972 
 
 1882 
 
 72,409 
 
 522,514 
 
 1888 
 
 6,463 
 
 70,381 
 
 1890 
 
 98,556 
 
 860,832 
 
 1892 
 
 31,472 
 
 297,125 
 
 1899 
 
 53,742 
 
 1 , 066,537 
 
 
 2,167,727 
 
 28 , 224,847 
 
 3 
 
Bible Distribution Beyond the Fields 
 of the Agencies 
 
 In some foreign lands outside of the Agency 
 fields Christian workers are supplied with 
 Scriptures by the Society directly. Thus, in 
 some countries of Europe, in Arabia, in Per¬ 
 sia, in Africa, east and west and south, and 
 in the Micronesian Islands and the territory 
 of Hawaii, such aid is rendered. The num¬ 
 ber of volumes circulated in such lands in 
 1912, so far as reported, was 55,827. 
 
 The Languages 
 
 The Bibles used in the foreign fields are in 
 about one hundred languages. Of these sev¬ 
 enteen are Chinese dialects and styles. A 
 missionary in China, much impressed by the 
 effort of the Society to reach the masses with 
 the Scriptures, wrote a few years ago to the 
 American Bible Society: “Your Society has 
 been more endeared to me for the help it has 
 rendered in publishing the Scriptures in the 
 Colloquial, and placing the Bible within the 
 reach of our church members, Sunday schools, 
 and Bible classes.” 
 
 Printing Bibles Abroad 
 
 In 1912, out of the total issues of the So¬ 
 ciety, 1,941,751 books were issued by the 
 foreign Agencies, being printed by contract 
 on mission and other presses in Constanti¬ 
 nople, Beirut, Bangkok, Shanghai, Chentu, 
 Weihsien, Foochow, Hinghwa, Yokohama, and 
 Seoul. The contract printing for the Bible 
 Society forms an important part in the sup¬ 
 port of several mission presses. 
 
 4 
 
The Distribution of Scriptures 
 
 Abroad 
 
 Bibles, except they reach the people who 
 need them, remain unfruitful. An essential 
 part of the work of the Bible Society is the 
 maintenance of colporteurs to go into high¬ 
 ways and hedges and persuade men. For¬ 
 tunately, the Bible Societies have special fit¬ 
 ness for such a work. They go as representa¬ 
 tives of Christendom, with no denominational 
 badge, bearing the royal banner of the cross. 
 They go lightly equipped, like the shepherd 
 boy with his sling and a few stones gathered 
 from the bed of the brook. Moreover, they 
 who carry these books for the service of the 
 Lord are a great host. In 1912 the American 
 Bible Society reported the employment of 810 
 persons, men and women, as Bible distrib¬ 
 utors in other lands. And these are believers, 
 able to give a reason for the hope that is in 
 them, and to tell of their own experience of 
 saving grace. They supplement the story of 
 the preacher, they co-operate with every one 
 who loves the name of the Lord. They go 
 bearing heavy burdens; enduring hardship; 
 suffering persecution and abuse; they are 
 arrested and haled before magistrates and 
 cast into prisons; they live on the simplest 
 food, and they are literally worn out in the 
 Master’s service. 
 
 The Missionary and the Bible 
 Colporteur 
 
 These men do real missionary work whose 
 value is acknowledged by all missionaries. 
 One missionary in China says: “The Bible 
 
work is not only a valuable adjunct to evangel¬ 
 istic effort in China and elsewhere, but without 
 it all our work would be sounding brass and 
 tinkling cymbal.” A missionary in Persia 
 writes: “The Book goes farther than the 
 missionary. After the tour of the missionary 
 the Scriptures sold remain, bearing their 
 silent testimony to his teaching. Every now 
 and then we run across a New Testament in 
 some unexpected quarter, and find that it is 
 being read.” One in Turkey speaks from 
 another point of view in saying, “We regard 
 our Bible colporteurs, whom you sustain, as 
 pioneers in evangelistic work here—as the suc¬ 
 cessors of John the Baptist in this wilderness 
 of races and of faiths which jostle one another 
 in our wide fields.” 
 
 They who engage in Bible distribution in 
 lands where Christ is pot known are true 
 missionaries, laboring to expel selfishness and 
 its train of sins, and to implant in the hearts. 
 of the people a passion for what is pure and 
 right. 
 
 The Bible in Missions 
 
 Dr. Alexander McLaren once said: “The 
 work of the Bible Society is the necessary 
 supplement of all our missionary work. ‘ What 
 God hath joined together, let not man put 
 asunder ’; but if we set before us the alter¬ 
 native — which, thank God, we have not — a 
 missionary without a Bible, or a Bible with¬ 
 out a missionary, I say, ‘ Give me the Bible, 
 and we will do without the missionary.’ ” 
 
 As to the place held by the Holy Scrip¬ 
 tures with the missionary himself, it is unique, 
 
 6 
 
supreme. They furnish him with his com¬ 
 mission, his great and sole reason for being a 
 missionary. The Bible is the missionary’s 
 life, his message, his armor, his two-edged 
 sword. Its truth is in him a quenchless 
 spring. He has found the fountain of living 
 waters and he knows it. He is tempted in as 
 many directions as there are varying phases 
 of life around appealing for speedy and human 
 remedying; but he knows that it is the Bible 
 that has ‘ made him to differ, ’ and that the 
 remedy it proposes and the life its truths im¬ 
 part are the only things he has for man. 
 
 A missionary in Turkey emphasizes the 
 place of the Bible in the daily life of the newly 
 won followers of Christ. He says: “The 
 Bible enters so much into every part of our 
 work that it is impossible to give a report of 
 the work of the Bible Society apart from our 
 other work. In the church or in the family, 
 in the schools, the orphanages, the hospital, 
 or in the villages, the Bible is the one book 
 that is read by all. ” 
 
 The late Dr. Pease of Micronesia, speaking 
 of the people of the Gilbert Islands, stated 
 that from the Bible they learn morality even 
 without a teacher. To discard intoxicants 
 and tobacco and to observe the Lord’s day, 
 are duties which they easily find out for 
 themselves and rigidly practice. Lying and 
 licentiousness, their former habits, become 
 at once causes for excommunication from the 
 church. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. House, of the American 
 Board’s Balkan Mission, describes a case that 
 is but one of many thousands in foreign mis- 
 
sion fields. He says: “Near Samokov in 
 Bulgaria there is a little town which years ago 
 seemed to be in almost hopeless darkness. 
 The first ray of light, as far as we know, came 
 from a New Testament purchased by a poor 
 lame shoemaker who says of himself that he 
 was a very bad man before that purchase. The 
 reading of that Testament seems to have al¬ 
 together transformed his life, to the wonder 
 of all. From that small seed of the Word a 
 plenteous harvest is now being reaped in 
 that town. ” 
 
 Among people of different races and in 
 regions separated by the diameter of the 
 earth the Bible has transforming power. The 
 vital need of every missionary is to have at 
 hand the book in the language of the people 
 among whom he is stationed. 
 
 Bible Translation by Missionaries 
 
 In Asia the many tongued, the translation 
 of the Scriptures represented the first gun in 
 the conflict for the overthrow of paganism, 
 superstition, and unbelief. Long before China 
 opened even five ports to western civilization, 
 far-seeing missionaries outside the walls were 
 struggling with its difficult language and get¬ 
 ting a version of the Bible ready for the day 
 when the people should begin to wake up, and 
 were receiving aid from the American Bible 
 Society in this work. In India and Burma 
 missionaries as early as 1820, working in the 
 Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Burmese and various 
 other versions, asked and received aid from 
 the American Bible Society. When Turkey, 
 
 Persia, and Syria were little more to Amer- 
 
 8 
 
icans than names from ancient history, Amer¬ 
 ican missionaries were supplementing the 
 archaiac,antiquated Armenian versionby trans¬ 
 lating the Scriptures into the speech of the 
 people; were adding to the ancient Peshitto 
 version used by Nestorians, one in the modern 
 Syriac which common folk could understand; 
 were bringing into being a new and more in¬ 
 telligible Turkish version, and an Arabic ver¬ 
 sion which has become standard. Of the 
 latter version a veteran missionary wrote to 
 the American Bible Society, “The blades of 
 Damascus were ever as famous as those of 
 Toledo, but the fame of your Scriptures, the 
 ‘sword of the Spirit,’ in Arabic, printed at 
 Beirut, has surpassed them both; for they are 
 to be found in almost every country where 
 the Arabic is spoken or known as the repos¬ 
 itory of the Koran. ” 
 
 Giving Letters to Pagan Languages 
 
 Missionaries have not only enriched lan¬ 
 guages by giving them the Bible, but have 
 given destitute languages letters. Of such 
 was Mr. Ousley, born a slave in one of our 
 Southern states, a devoted and efficient mis¬ 
 sionary of the American Board in Portuguese 
 East Africa. He gave the Tonga tribes let¬ 
 ters and then some of the Gospels, and his 
 work was made available to all people using 
 that tongue by the American Bible Society, 
 which printed it. Dr. Hiram Bingham was 
 another of the missionaries whose privilege it 
 has been to endow a people with letters. The 
 Gilbert Islands in Micronesia had no alphabet. 
 
 Dr. Bingham gave them an alphabet and then 
 
 9 
 
the whole Bible. His work too was given to 
 the multitude by the American Bible Society, 
 which has printed nine editions of the Gil- 
 bertese Bible. 
 
 The Bible Society and the Mis¬ 
 sionary 
 
 Missionary work is commonly regarded as 
 including the pulpit, the school, and the hos¬ 
 pital. The literary part of the missionary’s 
 labor and the source of the Bibles circulated 
 are rarely mentioned, perhaps because these 
 make no noise. Literary work flourishes in 
 the quiet library of scholarly writers. If the 
 literary worker translates the Bible he is 
 mentioned with approval and respect, but his 
 translation work, often aided with money from 
 the Bible Society, would remain on his library 
 table were it not for that Society. Or if 
 printed at great expense by his mission, it 
 would remain a purely local and very costly 
 work. 
 
 The Bible Society is the publicity depart¬ 
 ment for Bible versions in the foreign mis¬ 
 sionary field. It takes from the translator’s 
 table the one precious copy of a new version 
 and transforms this fruitage of missionary 
 life into printed books which will teach truth 
 and wisdom to tens and hundreds of thousands. 
 Dr. Elias Riggs, sixty years ago, translated 
 the Bible into modern Armenian. The Amer¬ 
 ican Bible Society alone has printed and cir¬ 
 culated 489,782 copies of that version. More¬ 
 over, the Bible Society gives wings to a ver¬ 
 sion made for one denomination that it may 
 
 reach missions of every denomination wher- 
 
 10 
 
ever the language of that version is used. 
 Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck, with aid 
 from the American Bible Society, translated 
 the Bible into Arabic for missions ‘in Syria 
 and Egypt; but that splendid version of the 
 Bible printed by the American Bible Society 
 goes to missions wherever Mohammedans are 
 found: in Asia, Africa, North and South 
 America, and the islands of the great oceans. 
 The work of the Bible Society that makes the 
 Bible versions effective is one of the links 
 which bind together foreign missionaries and 
 the American Bible Society. Not long ago a 
 missionary in China wrote to the American 
 Bible Society: “ Dr. Hykes modestly refers to 
 the work of the American Bible Society as a 
 valuable ‘adjunct’ to evangelistic effort in 
 China. From my standpoint as a missionary 
 I would not speak of it as an ‘ adjunct, ’ but 
 as lying at the very foundation of all of our 
 evangelistic work.” 
 
 The Appeal of an Unlimited Range 
 
 of Work 
 
 The Bible Society offers a wider range of 
 Christian efficiency than any missionary board. 
 It transcends denominational lines and ex¬ 
 tends an offer and an opportunity for reaching 
 out to places and people otherwise inaccessi¬ 
 ble. Your denomination may perhaps have 
 no mission in Korea, in South America, in 
 Turkey, in Bulgaria. There is no convenient 
 way by which you can do anything to promote 
 the kingdom of our God in those regions 
 through any agency in which your denomina¬ 
 tion is represented other than the Bible Soci- 
 
 11 
 
ety. So while your organized missionary so¬ 
 cieties are well engaged elsewhere, in the 
 Bible Society is a way by which you may take 
 satisfaction in doing something for these parts 
 of the world. 
 
 It also stands to reason that in work which 
 is common to the Bible Society and the mis¬ 
 sionary societies, supporters of the mission¬ 
 ary societies in their good work in foreign 
 missions should bear their full part of the ex¬ 
 pense involved in carrying out the necessary 
 undertaking of increasing knowledge of the 
 Holy Scriptures among the Gentiles. 
 
 What Are You To Do about this 
 
 Appeal ? 
 
 The history of the American Bible Society 
 is a history of the wonderful blessing of God 
 upon this effort to carry the Holy Scriptures 
 to all nations. It is also a vision of the un¬ 
 dimmed glory springing from the effective¬ 
 ness of the Bible to turn the hearts of men. 
 “Dan"’ Crawford, in “Thinking Black,” tells 
 this story of a young man converted by the 
 mere reading of St. John’s Gospel. This he 
 had got in the mission school, but he went on 
 his way in sin, reckoning without God and the 
 Word of God, still clinging, however, to his 
 copy of John’s Gospel. One day out of the 
 pages of “John of the Bosom” came the call 
 “ Follow me ! ” “ The gun cotton of that Gos¬ 
 pel came in contact with the tinder of his re¬ 
 bellion, and this young man was literally ex¬ 
 ploded into the Kingdom.” He could only 
 explain his conversion in these quaint, choice 
 
 words: “I was startled to find that Christ 
 
 12 
 
could speak Chiluba. I heard him speak out 
 of the printed page, and what he said was 
 ‘Follow me’.” Then this ignorant African 
 entered the new era of reading the old book. 
 Now God is staring at him from every page 
 and showing him his duty simply and satis¬ 
 factorily, his soul settled for eternity on the 
 living Word of God. 
 
 You Should Share in this Work 
 
 The dissemination of the Bible in pagan 
 lands is God’s own remedy for degeneration 
 among those races who know Him not. The 
 missionaries of the American Board in Ma¬ 
 dras were convinced of this in 1839 when they 
 sent an irresistible appeal to the American 
 Bible Society thus worded, “We feel con¬ 
 strained to ask you to fill the censers in our 
 hands with fire and incense, that we may run 
 quickly among the people and stay the plague 
 which is abroad among them.” 
 
 That cry comes to the American Bible So¬ 
 ciety more and more persistently from the dif¬ 
 ferent countries in the foreign field. In 1912 
 orders for 300,000 volumes of Scripture had 
 to be refused by the Bible Society Agent in 
 China because he had not the money to print 
 them. Let not such a terrible accident occur 
 again. It is a time for individuals, for Sun¬ 
 day schools, for churches to realize that they 
 can have a share in the great work here briefly 
 described. The widow of a Presbyterian mis¬ 
 sionary in Mexico has just written to a Secre¬ 
 tary of the Bible Society: “Recently it has 
 been my pleasure to make my three sons, all 
 
 born in old Mexico, Life Members of the 
 
 13 
 
grand Society of Bible work. The lads are 
 fifteen, eighteen, and twenty-three years of 
 age, but I wish them all to be associated with 
 the Bible work all of the years of their life, 
 and it may be that will help to control their 
 interest and service for God." 
 
 Will not you contribute $30 to the Ameri¬ 
 can Bible Society and so become a Life Mem¬ 
 ber, entitled to receive all its reports, as well 
 as its monthly literature ? Will not you con¬ 
 tribute to the Society on the annuity plan; 
 making a gift to the Society, that is to say, 
 conditioned on receiving a stated sum annu¬ 
 ally during your lifetime ? And you who 
 would fain continue to labor for the Kingdom 
 after leaving this life—will not you help this 
 work by bequeathing to the American Bible 
 Society a sum for Bible distribution ? In one 
 of these ways, or in some other way, Chris¬ 
 tians should unflinchingly carry on this Bible 
 work, which after all is God’s, for its initi¬ 
 ative came from God and not from man. 
 
 May all who read this story pray for the 
 faith and the clear vision which shall make 
 members in the Church of Christ naturally 
 and simply fellow-laborers with God in the 
 great work which he is carrying on through¬ 
 out the world. 
 
 18,1913; 26m 
 
 14 
 
Foreign Agencies of the American 
 
 Bible Society 
 
 In the Order of their Establishment 
 
 Levant Agency. 
 
 Rev. Marcellus Bowen, D.D., Bible House, Constan¬ 
 tinople. 
 
 La Plata Agency: 
 
 Rev. Francis G. Penzotti, Casilla de Correo 304, Lavalle 
 1467, Buenos Ayres, Argentina. 
 
 Japan Agency : 
 
 Rev. H. W, Schwartz, M.D., Yokohama. 
 
 Ch ina Agency : 
 
 Rev. John R. Hyres, D.D., 14 Kiuklang Road, Shang¬ 
 hai. 
 
 Brazil Agency: 
 
 Rev. H. C. Tucker, Caixa 454, Rio de Janeiro. 
 
 Mexico Agency: 
 
 Mrs, F. S. Hamilton, Box 1373, Mexico City, 
 
 Korea Agency: 
 
 Rev. S. a. Beck, Seoul. 
 
 West Indies Agency: 
 
 Rev. W. F. Jordan, 1761 Brooklyn Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 Siam and Laos Agency : 
 
 Rev. Robert Irwin, Bangkok, Siam. 
 
 Central Atnerica and Panama Agency: 
 
 Rev. James Hayter, Guatemala City, Guatemala. 
 
 Philippines Agency : 
 
 Rev. J. L. McLaughlin, Manila. 
 
 Venezuela Agency: 
 
 Rev. Gerard A. Bailly, Caracas, Venezuela.