Long ago the Psalmist said: "The entrance of thy words giveth light;"
and blessedly and gloriously is this truth being realised.
No matter where a missionary goes, he feels much hampered if he has not
the Book in the language of the people. It is a matter of thankfulness,
that in these later years--thanks to these glorious Bible Societies--
there is hardly a land or nation where a missionary can go, but he will
find the Bible printed in the language or languages of that nation, and
offered to the people at rates so reasonable, that the poorest of the
poor may have it if they will. But it was not always so, and we need
not go back to Wickliffe or Tyndal to read of difficulties in the way of
presenting to the common people the Word of God in their own tongue.
All the great missionary societies in their earlier days had their
Careys, and Morrisons, and Duffs, who struggled on, and persevered
against oppositions and difficulties that to ordinary mortals would have
been insurmountable, and would have filled them with despair.
The difficulties that John Eliot had to overcome ere he was able to give
the Bible to the Indians of New England, were numerous and exasperating;
but his indomitable will carried him through to ultimate success. Sad
indeed is it to think, that there is not a man, woman or child of them
left to read his Bible. All the tribes for whom, at such a cost of
tears and difficulties, he translated the Book, are gone. The greed for
land and the cruelties of the early settlers, were too much for the poor
Indian. From his different reservations where Eliot, Brainard, Mayhews,
and other devoted friends tried to save him, he was driven back, back,
with such destruction and loss at each move, that ultimately he was
simply wiped out. And so to-day, in the library of Harvard University
and in a very few other places, there are to be found copies of Eliot's
Bible; sealed books, which no man can read; a sad evidence of "Man's
inhumanity to man."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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