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In close connexion with mission work, we may state the progress made during the present century in leavening the world with the Word of God.  Previous to the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804, there was not one society in existence whose sole object was the distribution of the Bible in all lands.  There are now upwards of 50 principal, and 9000 auxiliary Bible societies.  In 1804, the Bible was accessible to only 200 millions of men.  Now it exists in tongues spoken by 600 millions.  The London Bible Society alone sends forth annually upwards of 1,787,000 copies.  During the last sixty years it has issued 39,315,226 Bibles, in 163 different languages, and in 143 translations never before printed.  Its receipts for 1862 amount to L168,443.[A]

[Footnote A:  The American Bible Society circulates upwards of 600,000 copies of the Word of God annually, at home and abroad.  Besides assisting in publishing translations issued by other societies, it has been at the sole expense of publishing the Armeno-Turkish, and Modern Syriac New Testament; the entire Bible for the Burmese, and also for the Sandwich Islands; the Ojibbeway New Testament; the Gospels, or some portion of the Bible, into the languages of the Sioux, Mohawks, Seneca, and Cherokee Indians.]

It surely cannot fail to fill the heart of every Christian with deepest thankfulness, to contemplate these glorious achievements.  The Church, like the angel seen in prophetic vision, has been flying with the everlasting gospel to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.  It has given the Bible to the inhabitants of the old lands of Egypt, Ethiopia, Arabia, Palestine, Asia Minor, and Persia; to the indomitable Circassian; to the mountaineers of Affghanistan; to tribes of India speaking thirty-two different languages or dialects; to the inhabitants of Burmah, Assam, and Siam; to the islanders of Madagascar and Ceylon; to the Malays and Javanese of the Eastern seas; to the millions of China, and the wandering Kalmuck beyond her great wall; to the brave New Zealander; to the teeming inhabitants of the island groups which are scattered over the Southern Pacific; to the African races, from the Cape to Sierra Leone; to the Esquimaux and Greenlander, within the Arctic circle; and to the Indian tribes of North America.  All are now furnished with a translation of that wonderful volume, which, with the light of the universal living Spirit of God, at once reveals to man, in every age and clime, his lost and miserable condition, and tells him of a remedy that is adapted to meet every want of his being—­to redeem him, by a moral power it alone can afford, from all sin and misery, and to bring him into the glorious fellowship of the holiness, the blessedness, and joy of Jesus Christ, and all the family of God in earth and heaven![A]