Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1846 Excerpt:...have been performed, each one of us can attest who has seen throughout the State the copies of the Book which have been left by your Society in the home and the hotel. No public house, where it will be received, is without it. But many homes are yet destitute of it, as we learn from the Report just now submitted. Sir, no one can state too strongly the importance of the work you have in charge. While the Book is translated and sent into foreign lands, we cannot forget that this is a charity which should begin and should be zealously prosecuted at home. We hear eloquent descriptions of missionary effort. Large sums of money have been expended. Noble men and women, martyrs in their day and to their cause, have devoted themselves to the work, and proofs are not wanting of their success. They have left homes of comfort and friends and the sympathy of Christian civilization for the wild abodes of unfriendly men in heathen lands. They have taken up the cross and borne it over the waters that it might, with the blessing of the Father, be developed through personal danger and suffering and reproach and death, into the crown of everlasting life. But there is, we cannot fail to remember, a duty in this behalf that lies nearer to us at home. The Bible, if it is wanted any where, is wanted here; not so much translation into foreign tongues as editions in our own. And until our home wants are supplied, and the Bible placed in the hand of every man who can read its pages, we have not fairly entitled ourselves to extend the work beyond our borders. But why should we exert ourselves to circulate this Book. If we cannot answer this question at once and satisfactorily, let the work cease. Yet an answer is found in every heart. Every experience can supply it. The inner life of...