BIBLE SUNDAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 142, 17 June 1922, Page 5

BIBLE SUNDAY.

CELEBRATION IN AUCKLAND. INTERCHANGE OF PULPITS. There will be an interchange of pulpits in the 70 odd churches of Auckland tomorrow, when ministers of all sects will impress on their congregations the importance of the work of the British and Foreign Bible Society, which, in the last year, has expended just on £500,000 in the propagation of the Gospel throughout the world. The scope of the society's work may be realised when it is stated that it has had the Bible printed in 538 different languages, of which ten new forms of speech were added last year, and that the issue last year numbered over eight and a-half million books. Activity in New Zealand has been much increased with the appointment of the Rev. A. T. Thompson as the Dominion secretary, and in addition to the circulation of the Bible in English there has been disseminated here editions in fifteen other languages, most of them in Marathi, Chinese, Maori and French. Mr. Thompson, who will speak in three of the Anglican churches to-morrow, points out that apart altogether from the religious aspect of the society's work a very important educative and social service is being carried on, from the fact that the very best scholarship is employed for the Scripture translations, which are consequently accepted in many foreign countries as education classics. The natural effect is that in a number of semi-barbaric, coun-

tries the basis of education is being laid on Western ideals and Christian morality, that will nrohablv have as great ft Tcsiilt eventually as the League of "rsntions in V)rin<nri . the different nations of the world together in understanding and amity.