Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/72

20 having occurred in 1835, Mr. Anderson preached upon this subject on the 4th of October; and as he had made it for some time his particular study, the historical facts he adduced in the pulpit were so new, and withal so interesting to most of his hearers, that they earnestly requested him to publish the sermon. It was printed accordingly, under the title of "The English Scriptures, their First Reception and Effects, including Memorials of Tyndale, Frith, Coverdale, and Rogers." So cordial was its reception by the public, that he was advised to prepare an enlarged and improved edition; but on resuming his investigations for this purpose, new fields successively arose before him, so that not merely days, but whole years, were finally needed for the task. In this way, many a pamphlet has unexpectedly expanded into a folio. The very difficulties, however, as they grew and multiplied, only endeared the task to the heart of Mr. Anderson, and stimulated his enterprise, so that after he had fairly embarked in it, the great purpose of his life seemed to be unfulfilled until it was fully and fairly finished. He had previously, indeed, contemplated a history of all the translations of the Bible that had been made previous to the nineteenth century; but as this would have involved the history of almost every country, and been too much for any one mind to overtake, he contented himself with the English department of the subject, which he soon found to be ample enough. From 1837 to 1845 all his studies were devoted to it, while his researches extended through the library of the British Museum, the Bodleian at Oxford, the University library and others at Cambridge, the Baptist Museum at Bristol, and many private libraries and collections, from whose stores he filled whole volumes of note-books, which he arranged and turned to account in his study at home, after each pilgrimage of research. The result was a most voluminous publication, which the impatience of the general reading public scarcely cared to encounter, and therefore, when it appeared, the demand for it was, as it has still continued to be, extremely incommensurate with its merits and importance. But still, the "Annals of the Bible" is one of those works which possess a strong and lasting, though silent and unobtrusive, influence. Upon a most important subject it has gathered together those materials that hitherto were scattered over the whole range of English history and antiquarianism, and were only to be met with incidentally; and it serves as a store-house to the theologian, in which he finds ready to his hand what would otherwise have cost him whole days or weeks of tiresome investigation. In this way, it will continue to be reproduced in a variety of forms, and be conveyed through a thousand channels of religious public instruction, where even the name of the work itself, and its diligent meritorious author, are either passed without mention, or utterly forgot.

Amidst all these labours as an intinerant preacher, founder and secretary of religious societies, correspondent of foreign missionaries, and earnest painstaking author, Mr Anderson's diligence as a minister continued unabated; and it was rewarded by the increase of his little flock into a numerous congregation, and the esteem of the most eminent religious characters in Britain of all the different denominations. Annoyances, indeed, not a few he had to encounter among his own people during the decline of life, when the love of change had introduced new men and new measures among them; but into these congregational misunderstandings we have no desire to enter, not only as they were so recent, but so exclusively confined to the denomination among whom they originated. They were sufficient to darken his closing days with sorrow, and