Rev A Brandram No 89
Montreal 21st December 1839
My Dear Friend,
The present letter will consist of miscellanea, the items of which I forbore to notice in my other letters, that my narratives might not be too much broken, intending afterwards to make a letter of them by themselves, which accordingly I now do. The first is an item that regards what I may call my great-scale movements. My commission of visitations, you know, embraces all the British North American Provinces. In a former letter I believe I intimated to you my intention of leaving the Canadas for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in the Fall of the present year. When I had that arrangement before me, and mentioned it to you, I was not aware that my visit to Upper Canada would consume so much time as it did. After I had spent about a month in my summer tour in the Upper Province, I began to fear that I should be longer detained there than I had expected or wished; and at the close of the second month I perceived that I must either visit the Province less extensively than it should be visited, or else give up my intention of going to Nova Scotia in the Fall of the year. For a month longer this matter vacillated before me still unsettled. At length I concluded that it would be better for the interest of the Society that I should make my visitations in the Canadas more complete before I should leave them, although at the expense of delaying my visit to Nova Scotia from the Fall of 1839 till the spring of 1840. This therefore I arranged in my mind, and then pursued my visitations through, and to the full close of the summer, and until the frost and snow had made an appearance. Notwithstanding this lengthened to her that is still sufficient work before me in these two provinces for the winter season. With the winter however will conclude my Canada work, and when the ensuing season fairly opens, I shall proceed, if the Lord will, to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. In October I wrote to each of the auxiliaries in these eastern provinces with whom I had previously been in correspondence, and who expected me in the Fall mentioning to them my change of purpose, and the causes of it, saying the same time that in consequence of this delay I should be enabled to spend more time with them than I could have done had I gone in the Fall as I had previously proposed. At the time I arranged in my mind to go to Nova Scotia as above noticed, it was my intention to return from that quarter to the Canadas in order to complete my visitation of them. By the present arrangement, as I have said, I will finish my business entirely here before I go so as not to have occasion to return; and further, I think I shall be able to visit the Eastern societies more suitably than would have been the case had I followed my first plan. To do the best for all the Provinces, and to promote your interest the most, is been my intention in thus planning and acting; and I shall be glad if my arrangements meet with your approbation.
The next item I take up is upon the subject of the Bible depot in Montreal, about which I wrote you, in the first instance in my letter of the 20th December1838. My purpose in laying before you this plan, was, in a chief degree, to prevent a lack of Books which had been often felt, and the consequent injury to the general circulation of the Scriptures in this quarter. There were difficulties connected with this arrangement, I foresaw, from the beginning, but the desirableness of completely preventing a deficiency of Bibles here at any time outweighed these difficulties, and they were left to be remedied as circumstances might direct when they should arise. One of the difficulties was, the non-continuance of your Agent here in whose hands the depot was to be, and likewise his frequent and length and absences from Montreal where the Books were deposited. Thus far all has gone well, for Mr. Milne the Agent engaged by the Montreal Bible Society has attended to the depot and in every way well, during my absences, and he continues to attend to it on my part, as having his residence in this city and being seldom long absent from it. – We have now made a year's experiment in this matter, and during this time I have learned, through an extensive visitation, the nature of this country, and the state and feelings of our various societies in regard to the matter. With the knowledge of thus acquired on the one hand, and in the view of leaving the Canadas as bearing on the point in another way, it becomes necessary to take up the consideration of the subject afresh, and to arrange for the future. In regard to the views of the Auxiliaries all over the country, I think I may say, they are decidedly favourable to this plan thinking it would be greatly conducive to convenience on the one hand, and on the other, to the keeping up a constant supply of the Scriptures, so that Bible operations, might not be hindered by a deficiency of Books, as has been often the case hitherto.
The general plan I would propose for a kind of permanency is this: – That the two great societies here, namely, that in Toronto and in Montreal should order from you direct all such supplies as they judge they may need from season to season, for themselves, and for the various branch societies connected with them. So also the Society at Quebec, and some others which may prefer direct connection with you, instead of being branches of the two central and extended societies mentioned. But nevertheless, and in addition to this, I think you should keep constantly on hand in this city of Montreal, an ample stock of Bibles and Testaments fully able to meet all runnings out, and extra demands that may at any time occur; and this supply or depot should be in your own hands, or managed say, directly in your name. Arrangements that have lately been entered upon in the Montreal Bible Society will make this plan easy for you, and I hope satisfactory. The Committee here has accorded to have a house for their stores and sales distinct altogether from the separate and private business of their Depositary. Hitherto these two have been combined, but circumstances have occurred to render an alteration proper.
The present Agent of the Society will act as Depositary, with the help of his family in his absence on visitations in the country. From confidence in the person to be in charge of this establishment, and from combined circumstances, the Committee anticipate pleasing and extended results from their new arrangement. Now the depot in your hands above referred to, could be kept in the house, and the management of it could be entrusted to the Depositary and Agent noticed, who would send out Books according to orders he might receive. His Books and Accounts would be kept separate from those of the Montreal Bible Society, and statements would be made out and sent you annually. The Depositary would act thus, not on his own responsibility, that under the superintendence of the Montreal Society. It is proposed that you should pay £10 to this house or establishment for storage on your Books, and another sum of the same amount for what we may call Factorage. The whole expense to you therefore by this arrangement, would be £20 annually. This plan taken in its several parts, would as it appears to me be a very suitable arrangement. It would be well I think that you should make an experiment of it for one year, and thereafter you might act as circumstances should direct. Probably the Tract Society, and the Sunday School concerns may be transacted in the same house; but should they, they will be altogether distinct. I mention this that you may fully understand all the circumstances of the case in the proposed arrangement.
My third item is about Cheap Bibles, of which I wrote at length, and with particulars, in my letters No 76, and 80. Since these letters were written you have lowered the price of all your Bibles, by taking out the stereotype plates. This is I think a wise arrangement. But nevertheless it does not meet the particular case I endeavoured to bring before you. What is wanted is a Nonpareil Bible say on 3rd or 4th class paper, or 5th or 6th is there are such numbers of tolerable paper, so that its original price may be a great deal lower still than your lowest. There might also be a Bible of another size or two on paper of the same sort. I humbly think you should reconsider this subject, and hope you will do so, and come down at once as low as you possibly, with any propriety, can, in the price of at least one of your Bibles, and one of your Testaments. Should you take up the subject anew, please look back at what is said on it in the two letters referred to in this paragraph. I would urge the subject, and I know you will forgive me for doing so, though you should not consider it proper to accede to my petitions, which yet I hope you will.
Analogous to the item just finished is the one about different or new editions of the Bible. Your notice as to a Paragraph Bible in your letter of May 21st well suits the case considering all the circumstances of the Society, namely, that you will wait at present and look on to see how the Tract Society's one makes its way. I trust it will make its way well, and that you will by and by follow in the track they are marking out.― Your Pearl Bible with marginal references will meet I trust the wishes expressed by friends as noticed in my letter No 80. An impression on similar paper would perhaps be desirable, and it would be a little cheaper.
In the postscript to my last letter I said, "What has become of the large order in my letter from Toronto of the 23rd May? For this supply we have been looking our eyes out these last two months: but we have seen or heard nothing of it, and the season is now far advanced, we fear closed." And closed now it is with a witness, and boarded over with ice, with horses and carriages passing over, yet the Books are not come. – Sometime after writing this postscript, and whilst re-thinking on the subject, I took up your letter of the 3rd July, in which you mentioned the receipt of my Toronto letter which contained the order here referred to, and I perceived I thought by the phraseology of your letter, that you had not observed that there was an order for books in the letter at all. You say, "Your letter did not lead to the adoption of any resolution, for we trust the supplies you ordered for the people are now all safely with you." On viewing this to be your meaning I turned to my letter from Toronto to see what I had there said, and find my wording to be, "Repeat the invoice of the 20th December." The saying "Repeat" supposes the former one come or counted upon, and indicates clear enough a wish that the same quantities and kinds should be sent again. Some of the expressions in the same paragraph plainly imply this view of the order noticed, for it is called "a fresh supply," and to come out "in the Fall of the year," whereas the 20th December one was to be sent and to come here in the Spring: and further, it is called "a new order." Thus I think I make out a case for myself, and against you. But supposing this oversight made at the reading of my letter, how could you read my letter from Sandwich, and print it too without seeing the overlook, and inquiring into the matter, and finding it, and saying you had perceived it, and that you were sorry, and all that? Now, have you not printed in your newspaper No 6, these following words, "In my last letter I begged you would have the goodness to send out to the Montreal depot, the same quantities and kinds as requested in my letter of the 20th December last; and to send them out in good time, that they might arrive before the St. Lawrence navigation closes for the season. I now mention this that the notice may serve as a kind of duplicate to that letter."
Well the matter is now past, and the St. Lawrence shut up; nor will it break up its ice for any of us, not even for the Bible. You will naturally fear that we have been much put out for want of the books. We have been put out, and will be more so before a new supply can come. Nevertheless we suffer, and will suffer less than what you may fear. Fortunately we had a pretty good supply laid in through your different shipments during the summer. Our greatest loss consists in the want of certain kinds rather than the want of Bibles. By the lack of these kinds we are unable to make up orders, and unable also to meet the needs of our daily purchasers in this city. Nevertheless, as I said, we are better off than could have been expected under the disappointment.
The order in my letter from Toronto of the 23rd May, and also that in my letter from Sandwich of the 18th July, I now cancel, and you will have another in their stead by the same conveyance which will carry this letter. To this therefore I refer you, and so close this item.
[I come now to say a few words respecting Invoices. You say September 10th, "On another head too I really believe we are not blameable, excepting it to be for a misdirection. On inquiry I find that all the Invoices are prepared just as you desire them to be with a full statement of the contents of each case (!). To yourself duplicates of these Invoices are sent. On these certainly has not been seemed necessary to send a copy of the contents." This say is so unlike Mr. Brandram's that I must needs suppose him to be merely an oracle in this instance, through whom somebody is thus speaking. I do not know of whom you inquired, but if you had inquired of me, I would have given you a different statement of the matter from the one here emitted. My statement is this: – First, of the Invoices per the Douglas and the Houghton containing the large supply of Books ordered on the 20th December there were no duplicates at all. Nor can I suppose these sent and lost: for if they had been sent they would have come along with the others in the same ship, and been both delivered safely, or both lost. Secondly, the Invoices that came with these books had no enumeration of the contents of each case; and hence it happened as I stated in my letter No 85, that three days were taken up, and in hard working, to make up a supply for the country, which order could have been made up in three hours with a proper Invoice. This is not my personal complaint, occasioned by the personal labourer here referred to, but it is that of the agent of the Montreal Bible Society at a time when I was more than 1000 miles distant from this place and him. Now be so good as communicate to your informant these things, for they are truths and facts. – The Invoices by the Resolution and the Prince George came in original and duplicate, and both of them had the enumeration of the contents of the several cases. You will perceive from the above that there is no outlet from the blame in question by the door of "misdirection", for there were no misdirections, as far as I can see in the case. But a word more about this escape by the door "misdirection." When in Quebec Mr. Atkinson read me a letter from Earl Street to him in answer to one he had written in which were complaints it seems identical with mine as to the want of notification of the contents of each case in the invoice, the excuse offered was, that as a duplicate of each Invoice was sent to me, the error had arisen from sending me through misdirection, the Invoice intended for Quebec, which Invoice, it was insinuated, had as a matter of course the contents of each case marked on it. Now, that it is not a matter of course to mark the cases as is here signified I know too well; and in respect to this same identical Quebec invoice, I beg leave to notify the duplicate which duly reached me, had no enumeration of the contents of each case on it. Please to hear a little more about the subject of Invoices, for it is the last time but one I shall ever touch upon it, if it can well be avoided. I would say, your Invoices, that is those which have come to me, have very seldom had the enumeration in question and that notwithstanding the notices and petitions that have been conveyed to Earl Street on the subject. I infer that others have fared as bad, and probably worse in the matter. But whether you hear of it or not, you may be sure inconvenience is felt everywhere. You see it was so that Mr. Milne here and Mr. Atkinson in Quebec, and both independent of each other, and of me. – Your first remission of books to me in Mexico consisted of 48 cases and there was not a line of directions on the Invoice as to what each case contained. I had therefore to open, empty, and refill with proper Invoices each case. This took me many days: and from standing in a dampish place where the books were stored, an illness followed lasting for some weeks with much danger. – From all the circumstances taken together respecting this matter of Invoices, I would again, and earnestly press upon your attention the propriety of having, as I said in a former letter, a standing order to have all our invoices done in the manner here indicated. Should this not seem good to you, then in that case, I would recommend an improvement on the other side, namely, to make your invoices to consist of, and be comprised in, one line, which line would just say, for example, "2000 Books, value £400:" and this plan will have one merit and the advantage of saving your clerks, whose dolorous complaint about making up my duplicates you have sent me once and again. How I pity them: but I pity still more, as you see, as in justice I ought, the poor wights on whom you lay the burden of emptying and filling again one by one all your cases, spending a day instead of an hour, just to make up the deficiency of your deficient Invoices. – Finally, for the present on the subject, I observe, I do not want this enumeration on my duplicates. Put it on the originals, and all originals, and I am satisfied, and others also will. Forgive my rallying, but do not forget what I have said.]
[Your Bible Society Reports number 3, 5, 6, and 7 have come to hand, and from 8 to 10 copies of each. 1, 2, and 4 have not appeared. They have all come by way of New York, and have cost exactly the same postage as if they had been unstamped. Had they come per British Mails through Halifax they would have come free. I took special care to notice in my letter No 82 the difference between sending via New York and via Halifax. After retaining for my own use one copy of each of the numbers come to hand, I have sent the rest to different parts of the country. With every copy I thus send I have to pay one penny according to the post office regulations in this country, and it is the same unstamped and unstamped papers. Mr. Wilkes has, I believe received the same numbers and copies as I have, and he has generally distributed his in this city. To whom else in this country you have sent your Reporter, I know not, but should be glad to learn, to prevent me from sending also to the same persons, as not improbably I may have done in the dark. The best plan to act upon in this matter, as it appears to me, will be, in the first place to send them all through the post office, and by the British Mail Packets, for only in this way will they come free. In the second place, every copy should be addressed to the very individual to whom ultimately it is to come, and for whose benefit it is intended, because every second sending incurs postage. What I have said applies to the post office rules of all British America as to this second sending. But I may add, that the same is or was the case in Jamaica, with the only difference of greater disadvantage. If for instance, you sent 20 or 50 copies to Mr. Tinson in Kingston. They will all come free into his hands, if they have come by the British Mails. But then Mr. Tinson cannot send them free through the post office into the country. Nor has he the advantage we have here of sending any printed sheet through the post office, all over the country for one penny paid in advance. There is no such regulation in Jamaica, and therefore for the transmission of such papers a special contract must be made with the postmaster. But if you should address your Reporter to any individual over all the Island it would come to him free. Your plan then should be, to have a list of all the persons to whom you may choose to send your Reporter, and by this list to address each copy to everyone in particular. Your list I think should contain the names of the President, Treasurer, and Secretaries of each of your societies as they stand in your Annual Reports. Some additional names might be added, of persons taking a lively interest in the Society's work, although they may not hold any of the above named offices.]
I have seen Mr. Willoughby, (now the Reverend) and more than once, since my return from Upper Canada. I mentioned to him what you said to me in your letter of the 5th March in answer to his application in reference to the employment of an Indian he noticed, in the distribution of the Scriptures. He informed me that the Indian was dead of whom he had written to you.
You were kind enough to notice in your Monthly Extracts, as I had begged you would, the formation of the first Bible Society among Red Men of North America, as it took place at the Chippeway Indian village on the River Credit U.C. on the 9th May of this year 1839. I sent two copies of your Extracts No 4, containing this notice to the Indian village, one to Mr. Slight and one to Mr. Jones. – In your letter of the 10th September, when noticing mine of the 18th July in which is an account of the formation of the second Red Man's Bible Society, at Moravian Town, you say, "We shall not print your account of the visit to the Indians. It is so much like the former one, and matters are on so small-scale that it might where the appearance of magnifying small matters." This is true, and yet I would plead for your doing honour to the Squaws of Moravian Town, and you may perhaps do it in your forthcoming Report, if not in your Extracts or Reporter. The liberal manner in which the Indians subscribed is also worthy of being noticed to their praise and encouragement. See letter No 85, from, "I had suggested to them" – onto – "by some of the other Indians." I now transmit to you the letter I received from the Rev. A. Luckenbach containing list of subscribers to this Indian Bible Society. You will see that there are 16 women's names and 19 children's on it. The document perhaps is worth placing in your archives, or at least of showing to your friends. – I send you also a longer list of Indian Bible Society names, and a document perhaps of greater curiosity, namely, the letter from the St. Clair herewith enclosed. You will there see a long list, and I may well say an honourable one, of Indians with their Chippeway names, and their Bible subscriptions, amounting to £14:13:9. And that you may properly estimate the merits of the case, read the letter of the Rev. Mr. Douse which is appended to the list, and which I here copy, (though you have it,) and verify. "I am happy," he says, "in being able to forward to you a list so large and respectable from my charge. They have done nobly. Of them it may justly be said, that 'in the abundance of their joy, and their deep poverty, they have abounded unto the riches of their liberality; for to their power, yea, and beyond their power they were willing of themselves.' Five years ago they were drunken, dirty, and ragged Indians: but now they are sober, clean, and well provided, and can find a little to spare. What hath God wrought! To him be all the praise: Amen." The Saviour has given a place in his Record to the widow and her two mites, and you may well be justified in giving a place in your Records to our Indians. Thus I plead for them, but leave all to your superior wisdom and judgment.
[My begging attention to the Indians in your periodicals, leads me naturally to my next item of miscellanea. You say, in your letter of the 10th September in reference to inserting portions of my letter No 85 in the Monthly Extracts, "In quoting from your letter we may perhaps leave out a sentence or two," and then you mention an expression in regard to Admiral Vansittart, and another regarding his son John. I agree most fully with your leaving out the sentences, and thank you for the improvement of my letters for the public eye by the same. I give you a carte blanche for all such improvements, and leave all these matters in your hands. I am aware of a kind of habit of writing rather to yourself as an individual and an intimate and dear friend, instead of writing what the public may see, or even what is suitable for the ear of the Committee. Forgive me, and improve me. – Notwithstanding however the general liberty I wish you always to take and frankly with my letters, I would at the same time petition, as I once did before, in favour of the large points, as I may call them, namely, the semicolon, colon, and the full stop. These, I beg your transcribers and printers, may put always just as I put them, without any alteration whatever. There are some other things also that I could wish to be adhered to as I put them, and which is not always done. You have printed in your Reporter No 7 Muncy instead of Munsey as I wrote. Now I cannot tell why my letter here should be set aside, and another substituted in its place. Again, in my letter No 77, which is in part printed in your last Annual Report, you have printed in page LXXXVII, line 9, warlike and peaceful, instead of war-like and peace-full as I wrote. As to names, (which if new I always give you with printers' clearness,) I should like to see them carefully attended to in the printing. Some years ago I wrote, and more than once on errors on this head; though I have observed similar oversights since that, I have been un willing to trouble you about them. In your 33rd Report, page CV, 3rd line from the bottom, you have printed Robertson for Paterson, and Coro for Coco, through which changes you have rendered it next to impossible to identify either the place the person.]
Your observations on my observations about mirth at public meetings are kind and corrective. perhaps I wrote too sweepingly. We need animated spirits as well as heavenly spirits. But yet I have seen, or rather heard, such mirth-making at religious meetings as left evil effects on the godly, and even offended the taste and feeling of the careless. Against such, I will, as I have done before, both speak and write: whilst at the same time I will gladly smile with you, and yours, and make you smile in turn, when words and things concur suitable for the same.
Sir George Arthur's donation was paid in to the Parent Institution, and not to the Honduras Bible Society. I asked him specially upon this point, and he specially told me as I have here stated. His name and donation ought therefore to have been in your general subscribers' list according to custom; and I doubt not but you will there insert it in your next Report.
Some months ago I communicated by letter, and lately in person with the Quebec Bible Society in reference to Mr. Atkinson's letter, and application for help which you referred to me. On examination into the state of things within their sphere, they found them better than they had thought. They will not therefore at present need help in the way of a grant of Bibles; and as to Bible readers you cannot help them.
I lately received a letter from Mr. Norman in the Havanna. He says he had received five dollars for Testaments sold at Matanzas, where, you will recollect, I could sell none, when I was there. He saw the rest of the books on the Bookseller's shelves, offered for sale without any impediment from authorities civil or ecclesiastical. Some, though but a few copies of the Scriptures are being sold in the Havanna, and no opposition to their sale is mentioned. We must, in regard to that Island, have long patience, both as to sowing and reaping.
I have also not long ago a letter from Mr. Watts of Carthagena. He says, "Spite of the priesthood a moral revolution is spreading slowly throughout the country. They have just received a deep blow in their iniquitous designs." This deep blow consisted in the public mind having been greatly turned against the friars in consequence of their opposition to government in the suppression of monasteries, and their exciting to an actual rebellion in Pasto on account of this measure. All these things, no doubt, and indeed everything, will prepare the way for the circulation of the Holy Scriptures, and the advancement of the kingdom of God. Since I received Mr. Watt's letter it has often been on my mind to say to you, and I now do it, that probably it would be well for you to authorize him to find out and employ a colporteur in that country. Not unlikely something could be done there in that way.
In my letter from Toronto I mentioned in Mr. Mayerhoffer as offering himself as an agent for you to distribute the Scriptures in Hungary, Austria, etc., and from whom you had some communication direct, or through Dr. Steinkopff. I said I would inquire all I could about him. I have done so. I do not know that he is exactly the person who would suit you, and yet he might be useful. With this ambiguity I would leave the matter till you yourself say something about him, in the view of his own communications, and your wishes and designs respecting the countries mentioned, and the employment of the means here offered to you. Mr. Meyerhoffer thinks he would be able to circulate the Scriptures in those countries extensively. He is a native of Hungary, and speaks the Hungarian, Croatian and Slavonic languages, all of which are there used. He also speaks and writes in German and Latin, and can converse in French. He was formerly a Catholic priest, was changed by the reading of the Scriptures, and is now a minister of the Church of England: he has a living the Toronto, and has been about 10 years in Canada. A considerable difficulty in the case perhaps would be the employment of him as a permanent agent, and he might not look for less. He has rather a large family. I think he spoke of £200 per annum as what he would engage for: I have been thinking that if he could get along this leave of absence, you might visit his home, and make a trial of what could be done in your work. He could I believe obtain leave for 18 months.
[I give you now a little item intermediate to a larger one. If there is anybody in Earl Street who would take the trouble of numbering your letters, I would gladly pay him a penny for each, at even twopence rather than not have it done. If they were numbered I should always know at once when anyone is missing. Let him begin at or with 1840.]
In your letter of the 21st me you say, "The Conclusion of our Report has been sent to you. Your opinion of that Conclusion I shall be happy to learn." In acknowledging your letter in which this is contained, I said this conclusion had not come to hand. I learned afterwards however that it had then come to Montreal, but had not been sent to me. Afterwards I got it, and read it with interest. Since of course I have seen it in the Report itself, and have read it again. The two letters by J. H. I have also received and read. I much like your conclusion. It is true, cogent, apposite, and firm. The use of the Septuagint by our Lord and his Apostles is, I have often thought, a remarkable fact, and surely it is well calculated to stagger the sticklers. You have done well to bring this forward. It was delicate ground, popularly, to hint at a defect in our Authorized Version. You felt it, and your remarks, as you observe, were wrung from you. It was right however and necessary for you to do what you have done. Perhaps you have prepared the way a little towards the obtaining an Improved Public Version, which I think in the present day, and under the Bible Society, through persons of different denominations combined, could be easily effected. I daresay you will get well pulled and bedaubed for what you have said about our perfect version, more perfect of course than the originals, as the Catholics say of the Vulgate, and the Lutherans almost of Luther's translation. I like your prayer at the close very much. May God hear it, and speedily, and largely may he answer it. – In regard to the versions from the Vulgate, I fear our good Protestants, at least many of them, have not candour enough for forming a true judgment of them. They are certainly better than they generally suppose. Our English Version, would not, I believe, appear so perfect as many think it, nor these versions from the Vulgate so defective, were a fair comparison made. I have lately read the Four Gospels of the De Sacy's Version, and in the Rhemes Testament. They are both wonderfully correct, and beyond all doubt these translations may justly be styled the word of God. When I have finished the Rhemes Irish version, as I may call it, I may perhaps say a few words more regarding it. – Your Mr. J.H. has, I think, managed Mr. Theld pretty well. He might have done more justice however to the truth, and to our cause, in regard to the use of the word Penance, the rendering of which I may say is the most objected to. The only impression on the mind of a Protestant as to the meaning of this word is that it expresses external religious performances or austerities, and no more. Now this is not the only nor the chief view which the Catholics think of it. In a note of the Rhemes version on Matthew 3.2, it is stated that the expression do penance "does not only signify repentance, and amendment of life, but also punishing past sins by fasting, and suchlike penitential exercises." This sentence in which the Catholics understand the words that have been so much blamed ought to be better known. Nor do the Catholic scruples to interchange, as I may say, the expression do penance with our word repent, as you may see by comparing, in the Rhemes Testament, Matthew 4.17 in Mark 1.15. These passages of parallel, and in this Catholic version the former is rendered do penance and the other repent. Further, the Catholics have not scrupled to throw away the word penance altogether, and to take the words repent and repentance in its stead all through the New Testament, as may be seen in the first number of the Irish National School Lessons from the New Testament on page 14. Let's have, by all means, truth, justice, fairness, and honesty, come what will. Pray who is your J.H.? If what I have said about penance is worth anything, you might show it to him.
In the matter of the above paragraph, you see how fully I side with you. When occasion offers I stand up in your defence all through regarding this thing, and endeavoured to justify your ways. There are some other points to, of days of yore, that come now and then before me, in which I am called to plead on your side, and I try to do the best I can to destroy the misconceptions and prejudices that exist in the minds of some against your Grand Institution. But, will you bear with me, if I tell you, by I am not able to defend you on all the scores brought against you. On one point I join and most readily, with your enemies and slanderers. Not to keep you in suspense: it is on the absence of prayer at your Public and Committee meetings. When speaking about you in this case when you are blamed in it, as you are by some of your best friends, I offer in your defense the various circumstances that conduced to your general understanding and practice on the point at the commencement of the Society. Still however I add against you, that it was wrong to enter into this understanding, and that it is doubly wrong to continue in it. Now however at all events I think the time is fully come when you may and should change your practice. I believe that Dissenters generally would concord with Churchmen in the matter, and Churchmen with Dissenters. The fact of public prayer being practiced in so many of your Auxiliaries at once opens the way, and removes the difficulty. The fact also of the Tract Society is constantly practising what is here indicated, is a strong argument, as that Society is founded on, and is conducted on, principal similar to your own, and this Society has never experienced any difficulty or inconvenience in this holy practice, so commendable in the sight of God and of man. It is certainly a great blot on the face of the Bible Society this want of public prayer at their meetings, or rather, the blot lies alone were chiefly on the Parent Institution, for many, I believe most, of the children do better than the parent in this case. – This subject being on my mind when writing to Mr. Hyde some months ago, I inquired of him what was the practice of the American Bible Society in this matter of public prayer at the general and committee meetings. His answer you shall have verbatim, and I beg you will way it well as it ought to be. He says: – "You are aware that the British and Foreign Bible Society is our great exemplar. Because they thought it inexpedient to commence their meetings with prayer, our board thought so too. In this respect your noble Society perhaps has much to answer for. In my opinion it is all wrong; and the sooner the Society in England reforms in this respect, the sooner shall we here. Our Auxiliaries generally open their meetings with prayer." – I would not weaken these well expressed sentiments by lengthening my observations on the subject. Nor will I put this paragraph in brackets. I wish, and my petition to yourself, and to each one, and all of the Committee, is that this subject should be taken into immediate and full consideration; and if this is the case, I have no doubt of the result you will come to. I conclude then by humbly and earnestly supplicating you forth with to appoint a sub-committee to consider this matter most seriously as its importance demands. There are, I know, some in New York and elsewhere also, who are weekly praying against you in this matter, and for you. May the Lord direct you to the proper acknowledgment of his name in your great and blessed work.
Believe me, Ever Truly Yours,
James Thomson.