GREAT WORK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 October 1938, Page 9

GREAT WORK

DISTRIBUTION OF SCRIPTURES ADDRESS BY REV A. T. THOMPSON Speaking at the annual meeting of the British and Foreign Bible Society (Masterton branch) yesterday, the Rev A. T. Thompson, late Commonwealth Secretary of the society, pointed out that this year two notable celebrations were being observed, the authorisation by Royal injunction of the Bible in English tongue and the Reformation. These had been celebrated with more interest and enthusiasm in the Old Country than in New Zealand. These two great events of 400 years ago, said Mr Thompson, were most intimately related. Without the Bible in the language of our people the Reformation could not have taken the form that it did. It was the Bible that rooted the principles of the Reformation in our British national and private life. When they examined the main agencies by which Christianity was planted in the world and gradually extended and perpetuated it, they found two, namely, the inspired messenger and the inspired message in the language of the people. Mr Thompson traced the development of this process throughout the history of the Christian Church in its gradual spread through the world. In the year 1804, when the British and Foreign Bible Society was established, the Scriptures were rendered in at least 72 versions. Today, the society had on its own list 723 versions and the total number, including that of all societies, was well over 100. At the annual meeting of the society in London, tne Archbishop of Canterbury, who presided, was presented with a copy of the first gospel in the thousandth language, that of Sakata, an African tribe. The society had issued twelve new versions during the past year and had distributed 111 million copies of the Scriptures.