Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/329

Rh quently, the books of Tobit, the Maccabees, or Bel and the Dragon, are of equal authority with those of the apostles and prophets. They would not receive the Bible, therefore, unless it included the Apocrypha, and in an evil hour the Society yielded to their demand. They not only gave money in aid of foreign societies that published these adulterated Scriptures, but actually printed Bibles with the Apocrypha intermingled or appended, to further the circulation of the Word among Romanist, Greek, and semi-Protestant communities. This was a bold step, which the British public would not have tolerated; it was, besides, a breach of faith against those principles on which the Society had been founded. Concealment, therefore, was added to fraud, and impunity only increased the evil. At length it became so great, that the translation of Scripture was intrusted to men who vitiated the text by neological versions of the original, in compliance with Western scepticism, or disfigured it with bombast to suit the taste of the East. It was thought enough to disseminate the Word of God, and that if this were but done, it mattered little with what extraneous or corrupt additions it might be accompanied. "I would distribute the Bible," said one advocate of this perversity, "though the writings of Tom Paine were bound up in it." "And I, too," said another, improving upon the idea," though the history of Tom Thumb should be inclosed in it."

In this way a pious fraud was commenced, that went onward step by step, until it attained the maturity of full-grown Jesuitism. And still the unsuspecting public increased their liberality from year to year, and satisfied themselves that all was right. At length it fell to Robert Haldane, by the merest accident, to detect this monstrous evil while it was as yet in its infancy. In 1821, being in London, he had occasion to visit the offices of the Bible Society, where he left his umbrella, and called next day to recover it. While he thus "looked in," he was requested to join a sub-committee which was then sitting. He complied; but as the business went onward, he was astonished to discover how much the Apocrypha had been already circulated among the foreign translations of the Bible. His appeals on the occasion were loud and earnest, and the society agreed to discontinue the practice. Thus matters continued quiet till 1824, when it was found that the practice was still going on and all that good might come out of it. Finding his remonstrances ineffectual, Mr. Haldane now appealed to the Edinburgh Society, which had hitherto acted in connection with the British and Foreign Bible Society; and as none of those Apocryphal sympathies were harboured in the north that still lingered in England, the Edinburgh branch withdrew from the coalition, and formed an establishment of its own for the circulation of an unmixed, unadulterated gospel. Such a secession could not be accomplished without a controversy; for the parent society, that felt itself rebuked by the movement, endeavoured to justify itself to the Christian public; and thus the two parties entered into a conflict that lasted for years, and was waged with all the earnestness not only of a religious, but a national warfare. It was England and Scotland once more in the field, while the canon of Scripture itself was at issue. In behalf of the British and Foreign Bible Society, not only the mere advocates of expediency were enlisted, but men of the highest reputation for learning, orthodoxy, and piety, and the chief religious periodicals of the day. On the other side, Dr. Andrew Thomson, the most formidable of controversialists, and Robert Haldane, by whom the evil had been detected and the resistance commenced, were the principal champions.