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 618 BIBLE SOCIETIES BIBLIOGRAPHY of the act of 1813. It was urged that to pub- lish a Bible in which the apocryphal books wore made canonical, was worse than merely to publish them as apocryphal at the end of the Old Testament canon. The London soci- ety, on a revision of its course, decided it to be erroneous, and resolved, Aug. 19, 1822, that the moneys of the society should henceforth be used only in printing the canonical books, and that if the auxiliaries published the Apoc- rypha, they should do it at their own ex- pense. When, in accordance with this act, Leander Van Ess asked aid in publishing his Bible, and promised to include the Apocrypha at his own expense, the society appropriated 500 for the purpose (Sept. 24, 1824). The anti-apocryphal party procured the rescinding of the act the following December, on the ground that the apocryphal books wero still undistinguished from the canonical, and that therefore, although the society's money was not used to publish them, they nevertheless had the apparent sanction of inspiration by the good company in which the society allowed them to be put, by consenting to have them intermingled with the inspired books. The society, in rescinding the above act of appropri- ation, advanced only one step further in the apocryphal reform. It had in the act of re- scinding declared that the money of the society might be applied to aid those editions of the Bible in which the apocryphal books were printed at the end of the canon. The anti- . apocryphal party had already achieved too many victories to be satisfied with such moder- ate ground. The Edinburgh society now pro- tested (Jan. 17, 1825) against this compromise of Protestantism, and procured in the following February a rescinding act which swept the records of the London society of all former acts on the subject. The matter stood now where it had before 1811, but the anti-apocry- phal sentiment was conscious of its strength, and now initiated positive proceedings. A two years' contest followed, in which the ground was all reviewed, and the end of which was a resolution of the London society (May 3, 1827) that no association or individual circulating the apocryphal books should receive aid from the society ; that none but bound books should be distributed to the auxiliaries, and that the aux- iliaries should circulate them as received ; and that all societies printing the apocryphal books should place the amount granted them for Bibles at the disposal of the parent society. Thus ended the controversy, which threatened for a time to split the parent society itself, and which did result in the secession of many aux- iliaries on the continent. Previous to this con- troversy, the Roman Catholic church had in many instances (especially on the continent) acted with the Protestants; but, as already mentioned, that church had abolished the Bible society of Ratisbon (1817) in the midst of the contest. Meanwhile the London society con- tinued the aid of its funds, under its successive prohibitions in reference to the Apocrypha, to the individual enterprise which still per- sisted, at Munich, in the circulation of the Bible. Gradually the Roman Catholic church withdrew its favor from an enterprise that re- fused its aid in the circulation of that which she deemed the canon of Scripture, until, from the cooperation which had characterized the early history of Bible societies, the move- ment became essentially Protestant. When the British and Foreign Bible society was formed, there was a great destitution of the Bible in all countries ; the Bible had been printed and circulated in only 47 languages and dia- lects; but since 1804 more than 100,000,000 Bibles, New Testaments, and portions of the Bible have been issued by Bible societies; and the Scriptures are now circulated among near- ly all the nations of the earth, and in more than 200 different languages and dialects. Be- fore the invention of printing the Bible was the most expensive book in the world, costing in England, in the 13th century, 30 a copy. At the time of the American revolution the cheapest Bibles were valued at not less than $2 a volume. For some years (1844-'53) the American Bible society sold its nonpareil Bible without references at 25 cents a copy, and its pocket pearl Testament at 6J cents ; and now (1873) this cheapest Bible is sold at 40 cents, and this cheapest Testament at 10 cents. It is a principle of the society to make the prices of Bibles and Testaments as low as possible. BIBLIOGRAPHY (Gr. pifi.lov, a book, and yp&Qeiv, to describe), literally, the description of books. Among the Greeks the term fSipAto- ypafyia signified only the writing or transcrip- tion of books; and a bibliographer with them was a writer of books, in the sense of a copy- ist. The French term tibliographie was long used to signify only an acquaintance with an- cient writings, and with the art of decipher- ing them. In its modern and more extended sense, bibliography may be defined to be the science or knowledge of books, in regard to the materials of which they are composed, their different degrees of rarity, curiosity, reputed and real value, the subjects discussed by their respective authors, and the rank which they ought to hold in the classification of a library. It is therefore divided into two branches, the first of which has reference to the contents of books, and may be called, for want of a better phrase, intellectual bibliography ; the second treats of their external character, the history of particular copies, &c., and may be termed material bibliography. The object of the first kind is to acquaint literary men with the most valuable books in every department of study, either by means of alphabetical catalogues simply, or by catalogues raisonnes, accompa- nied by critical remarks. It is the province of the bibliographer to be acquainted with the materials of which books are composed, and their different forms, the number of pages, the typographical character, the number and de-