ture. He never passes a day without reading in his Bible, feels the greatest thankfulness to the association for it, and, there is every reason to think, is become, under the divine blessing, a really changed and reformed character."

Another strong instance of the value attached by the poor to this best of treasures, may be seen in the following account of another collector. "An old woman, with tears in her eyes, ran after us in the street, and requested, as a favour, to be allowed to subscribe, stating that her father, above ninety years of age, was at the point of death, and she had no Bible to read to him. Upon visiting them, the collector says, I found he could not survive long; and, considering that no time was to be lost, I told her I would give her a Bible. Upon which, bursting into tears, she said, Then let me give a penny for some other poor person; I'll try to save it every week! Since that time, this poor woman has regularly paid a penny every week!"

One poor man expressed his wish to subscribe, individually, for his three children as well as himself; remarking that he would rather leave them the blessed gospel for a legacy than any worldly goods.

From the Ninth Report of the Bristol Auxiliary Bible Society. Merchant Seumen.

Amidst the various descriptions of persons to whom the attention of your district associations has been directed, one large and interesting class of men has been, till within the last year, almost entirely unsupplied with the word of God: while gaols, and hospitals, and schools, and workhouses, were furnished with the sacred volume; and while the cottages of the poor throughout the city were canvassed for the same benevolent purpose; the ships in our harbour received but few such visits of mercy, and the merchant seamen of our port were comparatively neglected. The trial, however, has been made, at length, and has succeeded. An active and benevolent individual, a member of the Redcliff-District Association, has, within the last nine months, supplied the seamen, by his own personal exertions, with 1060 Bibles, and 120 Testaments, and has received from them about 2001.

From the Committee of the Ladies' Branch of the Auxiliary Bible Society at Newcastle, 8th February, 1820.

The Committee of the Ladies' Branch have the pleasure to report to you the progress of the society, in connexion with which eight associations have already been formed, six are in active operation, and the others, they confidently hope, will very shortly become efficient. The Committee feel highly gratified in stating, that the society has very generally met with the liberal support

from the more opulent, and has been invariably most gratefully received by the poorer classes, among whom, although the state of the establishment of the society is as recent as the 15th of November, they have obtained 922 subscribers, for copies of the sacred volume: the total sum collected up to the 28th January amounts to 172. 14s. 10d.

LONDON FEMALE PENITENTIARY.

The annual meeting of this institution was held on Monday, the 8th of May, at Freemasons' Hall, W. Wilberforce, Esq. M. P. in the chair. The Report stated that there had been, during the last year, about 250 applicants for admission, of which 103 had been received; 46 had been reconciled to their friends; 27 placed out in service; 16 discharged for misbehaviour, or at their own request. Much good appears to have been effected in the past year. Several pleasing letters and accounts were read from the Appendix, giving evidence of a happy change in several of them who were now in service, or with their friends. Six had received the reward of one guinea, for having been one year and upwards in the same service; two of whom received a second gratuity for completing the second year; 19 is the average of the ages of the applicants.-Indolence, bad female companions, frequentings of fairs, the theatre, dances, &c. were stated to have been among the causes which had contributed to lead them into evil. Several instances were adduced of the good done through the means of the instruction in the Asylum, and even among those who had been discharged for misbehaviour. It appears that the houses would, if fitted up for that purpose, contain about 50 more than the 100 now received, provided the annual income, which is rather fallen off in the last year, would allow of that increase.

Ample testimony was borne, by those who addressed the meeting, to the excellent management of the penitentiary, and that it afforded a specimen of industry and economy. Several of the present inmates are become decidedly serious, and much good is to be expected from an institution, in which all the sub-matrons, as well as the head, are truly pious characters. The Report was never more encouraging, or the Appendix more replete with interesting matter.

FRANCE.

PROTESTANT BIBLE SOCIETY OF PARIS.

At page 781 of our last volume, we presented an account of the first annual meeting of this society, and gave the address of the noble President; we are now enabled to lay before our readers a summary of the the First Annual Report, taken from the Appendix to the 4th Report of the American Bible Society.

Citizens of all classes have brought their contributions, and nothing is more interesting than the reports of the Committees.

appointed to receive those of the less opulent families. "Every where," say they, "we have been received with a consideration and respect savouring of a religious character; every where they have testified the most lively satisfaction with our undertaking, and we are convinced that, among the least instructed part of the population, religious ideas prevail, which our excellent society will not fail to develope more and more. In the humblest dwellings we have found books of piety, and we are satisfied that they are in daily use. It is especially in the houses of artizans and labouring people, dwelling in the fifth and sixth stories, that we have remarked the greatest attachment to religion. It is there that offerings have been bestowed with the greatest eagerness. They were often only the mite of the gospel, yet we have more than once considered the offering too large; but to refuse them would have been to humble the pious hand which presented them, and to impair the pleasure attached to the sacrifice.

We will merely add to this picture the trait of a father of a family, who, having nothing to subsist on but the produce of his daily labour, wished, notwithstanding, to subscribe, of his own accord, the annual sum of ten francs, On the representation of his pastor, to whom he applied, that this contribution appearedbeyond his means: "I should be very unhappy," said this respectable man, if I could not economize this sum to procure the satisfaction of taking a part in an enterprise so conformable to my sentiments and my wishes."

(After speaking of the disposition made of the scriptures, the Report thus remarks, in relation to the principle which has governed the distribution.)

The poor man who asks for a Bible with the sincere desire of perusing it, is sure to obtain it of the society; but an effort to spare something out of his earnings, to pay at least a part of the price, is deemed a more sure pledge of the sentiment which induced the request, of the care which would be taken to preserve it, and of a profitable use being made of it: a greater value being generally attached to property acquired by a voluntary sacrifice than to a mere gift.

With what transports of joy have the pious of the Reformed Churches in Languedoc, Provence, Dauphiny, and other places, received those silent missionaries, whose mute eloquence has warmed and cherished domestic piety, and reinstated in every habitation the word of consolation and of life! A small number of churches in those provinces have requested at once 2000 Bibles, even after having received a considerable quantity. Each day brings to the Committee larger demands than they have the means of satisfying. The scarcity of the Protestant scriptures, the necessary delays in the receipt of those imported from abroad, and the unavoidable slowness in the work of binding, have not

permitted all these wants to be supplied at once; but they are provided for as fast as practicable, and the consistories, the pastors, and the private individuals who have occupied themselves in inquiries into the wants of the poor, present the most encourag ing pictures of the good done by our first efforts.

Other Protestant communities, less numerous and more scattered over the face of France, are no less worthy of the attention of the society. Some of them are connected with the nearest consistorial churches, others remain uncollected, without pastors, and without public worship. The department of Somme alone, numbers about 6000 individuals in this state of abandonment and religious deprivation; but it is there, above all, it is among those reformed Christians, so long kept in ignorance, that the faith of their fathers is preserved in all its purity. In the absence of the sacred books, of which violence had deprived these obscure families, and whom fear or poverty had prevented from replacing them, oral traditions, transmitted from generation to generation, have preserved the remembrance of the most interesting narra tives, of the most important lessons, and of the most holy commandments. Passing from the memory of fathers, into those of the children, prayers the most fervent, and hymns the most suitable to sustain faith and hope, have never ceased to sound in their huts, and the paternal blessing has, in those places, assumed the place of that of the ministers of the Lord. When at length the divine written word has returned to the bosom of these insulated dwellings, what thanksgivings have arisen for the unexpected blessing of Providence.

Extracts from the speech of M. P. A. Stapfer, delivered at the first anniversary of the Protestant Bible Society of Paris.

(After reviewing some of the objections made to the free circulation of the Bible, and refuting them successfully, and after producing the testimony of the 7th council of Nice, "that the principal function of the priest's office consists in making known to men the holy scriptures," the remark of St. Jerome, that "to be ignorant of the holy scriptures, is to be ignorant of Jesus Christ," and the sentiment of St. Maximus, that "the mind which has not been nourished by the divine scriptures can bear no fruit, though it have received a thousand times the instruction of the preacher," he thus proceeds :)

If the success of the friends of the sacred scriptures in France had been in proportion to the excellence of their intention, perhaps this France would not have had to lament, either the triumph of infidelity, nor the overthrow of social order, nor the proscription of its clergy.

But, have I heard aright? Yes! It is a member of that very clergy, entirely enveloped in a persecution as barbarous as inpious; it is an eloquent defender of the faith who condemns this VOL. VII. 2 Q

wish-and who praises heaven for not having granted a more signal protection to this pious enterprise. Its full success would, in his opinion, have rendered the misfortunes of France still greater than they have been.

"Behold," says he, "England, where crimes have multiplied since the formation of Bible Societies!" If the author of this accusation were unknown, would we not suppose we heard Celsus or Porphyry charging upon infant Christianity all the crimes committed at Rome under the reigns of Claudius and Nero?

Happily, facts which give the lie to this denunciation, offer themselves in crowds. I shall only cite one, well authenticated by the most respectable persons.

In the county of Kent, and particularly in the jurisdiction of Colchester, formerly celebrated for the number of criminals who filled its prisons, crimes have diminished to such a degree, since the establishment of an Auxiliary Bible Society at Colchester, that in 1817, a year of scarcity of provisions and labour, cruel in the extreme, the mayor of that city, of more than 13,000 souls, declared, at a numerous meeting of that society, that there had not been, during the whole year, a single individual condemned for a crime; and that the prisons were completely empty. The assizes of 1817 offered a similar result; and the presiding judge remarked, from information furnished by the principal inhabitants, that since the formation of the Bible Society, every year had witnessed at once a decrease of persons charged with crimes, and an increase as well of the distribution, as of the well directed study of the sacred books among the indigent population.

The classification of the persons executed in England in latter times, pleads our cause with as much strength as the experience of Colchester. It results from the most exact investigations, that out of an hundred malefactors in the prisons of Great Britain, ninety do not know how to read, and that 99 out of 100 of those who read have never had a Bible in their hands. A great proportion of the persons condemned in London, in these latter times, are Irishmen, a nation which, more than any other, has remained in ignorance of the holy scriptures; while Scotland, that one of the British states, where the reading of the Bible, as well the Old as the New Testament, is more generally in use, is distinguished by the small number of criminals originating from that kingdom, and detained either in its own prisons or in those of the metropolis. I speak of the Bible as an whole, and I call the attention of those persons, who are, in respect to the distribution of the writings of the apostles, of the same sentiments as ourselves, but who do not believe that the reading of the Old Testament is exempt from inconveniences, and even from dangers, to this cir

cumstance.

Having already drawn too largely upon the patience of my audience, I ought to interdict myself from treating of a question so