BIBLE SOCIETY

Waikato Times, Volume 195, Issue 22513, 23 November 1944, Page 8

BIBLE SOCIETY

WORK IN DOMINION SECRETARY VISITS HAMILTON The society had not failed to meet the Dominion’s requirements with the necessary supplies, said the Rev. David Caider, E.D., 8.A., of Wellington, Dominion secretary of the New Zealand British and Foreign Bible Society, when addressing Waikato memoers at tne annual meeting in Hamilton yesterday afternoon. Mr Caider said that the society had started the war period with a double stock of Scriptures stored in the Wellington Bible House. The society’s orders from London, however, were immediately restricted by the import regulations, while the necessity for keeping the local booksellers in fair stocks of the cheaper missionary lines of Bibles, and the general need of the churches, had at times almost exhausted what was on hand. “As the Maori Bible is almost out of print, its revision and reprinting have called for our immediate attention,” said Mr Caider. “This is now being prepared for under the supervision of a panel of Maori scholars, and we are hopeful of having the whole work in readiness for final printing as soon as the war is over. The absolute beauty of the diction of our present Maori Bible has fry these efforts become more and more apparent, and its revision is chiefly directed to typographical errors and a few muchmeeded verbal improvements. World-wide Activities “The world work of the society proceeds in strength,” the speaker continued. “Even the war has not stopped the greater proportion of our world-wide activities, and what is of necessity lacking in such places as Europe and China is being prepared for so that double duty can be done immediately peace smiles again on these lands. Quite recently our British Society, working in harmony with the American Society, made arrangements for 345,000 copies of the Scriptures, in eight different languages, to be printed in Sweden. “A mark of the goodwill in which the society is held in England was seen in that the British Treasury agreed to forward all the money necessary for this printing to the Swedish authorities,” said Mr Caider. “Printing is done also in Canada, in India, and in Australia. This year our Australian friends are hoping to print the Scriptures in 15 different languages. Last year they managed them in six. In China the work is being done by the Chinese Christians —by men whom we trained over many years. They are having a special Chinese paper manufactured, and are turning out copies of the Scriptures in such numbers that our depots are once more supplied with the necessary stocks.”