Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible SocietyBorrow, George
Religion
Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible Society
Borrow, George
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence; British and Foreign Bible Society; English letters
I forgot to tell you yesterday that my poor servant is dead. He died of
the pestilential typhus caught in the prison; his body at the period of
his death was a frightful mass of putridity, and was in consequence
obliged to be instantly shovelled into the Campo Santo or common field of
the dead near Madrid. May Christ be his stay at the Great Day; a more
affectionate creature never breathed.
Hear now what the _Madrid Gazette_ says of our Society, in an article in
which it reproves in the strongest terms the conduct lately pursued by
pseudo-agents, and gives me a rap on the knuckles for an anti-catholic
expression or two in the advertisement in which I denounced them. The
_Gazette_ is the official organ of the Government, and all it says is
under authority:--
'We will not conclude this article without bestowing the merited tribute
of praise on the project truly magnificent of the Bible Society,
considered not under the religious but the social aspect. Christianity
has been, is, and will be the grand agent in the civilisation of the
world; and the preaching of its doctrine, and the propagation of its
maxims among the nations who know it not, is the most costly present
which can be offered them, and the pledge of belonging one day to the
civilised world; or if they already belong to it, of ameliorating their
actual condition in society.
'Excellent moral results must also be produced among the poorer classes
of the people in Christian countries by the distribution of copies of the
sacred writings; and the Bible Society acts with the highest prudence, by
accommodating itself to the civil and ecclesiastic laws of each country,
and by adopting the editions there current. In Spain, where every
translation of the Bible is forbidden, and in general every book of
religion, without previous censure and license of the ecclesiastical
authority, much good may arise from distributing either of the two
translations, that of Father Scio or that of Amat; but precisely as they
are, and without the suppression of the notes, which explain some
difficult passages. If the great object be the propagation of the
evangelic maxims, the notes are no obstacle, and by preserving them we
fulfil our religious principle of not permitting to private reason the
interpretation of the sacred Word.'
Excuse me this long extract.
I remain, Revd. and dear Sir, most truly yours,
G. BORROW.
_P.S._--I should wish to make another Biblical tour this summer, until
the storm be blown over. Should I undertake such an expedition, I should
avoid the towns and devote myself entirely to the peasantry. I have
sometimes thought of visiting the villages of the Alpujarra mountains in
Andalusia, where the people live quite secluded from the world. What do
you think of my project?
To the Rev. A. Brandram
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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