CHAPTER XXII.

THE BIBLE SOCIETIES.

It was a Hindu who said, 'If I were a missionary I would not argue; I would print the New Testament, and would say to all the people, 'Read that!" The first work of the missionary in reaching his field of work is to see that all the people have the Scriptures in their own tongue in which every man was born. He believes that the leaves of the Word of God are for the healing of the nations. He is assured that what man says may fall into the soil of his field and perish, while the words of God are vital with the life of Him who spoke them, and are certain to bring forth some sixty and some an hundred fold. He knows, too, that the Scripture is able to reach waiting thousands with their silent appeal long before the living messenger can possibly come to them, and that its testimonies to the love of God and the redemptive work of Christ will be given with undiminished force after the messenger has gone to other cities also. To attempt the evangelization of a people without giving them the Word of God would be to write in the sand of their history. Successive waves of time would wash out every mark of evangelism which had reared no mighty corner-stone of inspired truth upon which to found its building. Carey in India, Morrison in China, Moffatt in Africa, Judson in Burmah, these all were led of the Spirit, who wrote the Word to put first things first in their various fields, and immediately put the Sacred Book into the language of those among whom they had come to labor.

Two Bible Societies saw the need in these Islands, and took steps to meet that need long before the clouds of war had risen. The American Bible Society in New York ordered its agent for China, Dr. John R. Hykes, to visit Manila, examine into conditions, and report to the society as to the advisability of establishing an agency at Manila. He reached Manila in September of 1898, looked into conditions, and made a report. This report was favorable to such action, and in 1899 Rev. Jay C. Goodrich, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church from the Newark Conference, was appointed, and, with his wife, took his place. at Manila, arriving in November of that year.

The British and Foreign Bible Society had meantime sent the Rev. H. F. Miller from Singapore on an errand similar to that of Dr. Hykes. Later, Mr. Miller was himself appointed agent, and had arrived at his post some time before the arrival of Mr. Goodrich. Both these societies have been steadily at work during the past four years.

It was not the first attempt of the British and Foreign Society to open work in the Philippines. Through its agency in Singapore, to which city so many Fipilinos resorted when friar antagonism became too pronounced, and through its larger body of workers in Spain itself, that organization had come into close association with many of those Filipinos who waited most anxiously for a new spiritual condition to prevail in their native land. With the help of some of these men, translations of portions of the Gospel, more or less accurate, were made into Pangasinan and Tagalog. In 1888 a converted friar named Lallave, who had spent twelve years in the province of Pangasinan-a Dominican-with a companion named Señor F. de P. Castells, sought and received from the British and Foreign Bible Society permission to undertake the distribution of the Word of God in the Philippine

Islands. With a stock of Spanish Scriptures and the four Gospels in the Pangasinan language, which had been translated by Sr. Lallave while in Spain, these two men took their lives in their hands and entered Manila. They at once began to encounter difficulties. Their books were held up in the custom-house, and their work of distributing the Scriptures was brought to a sudden end by order of the officials. While seeking to unravel the complications which had arisen so that it would be possible for them to carry on their work, and within a week of their arrival in the city, Sr. Lallave, the elder of the two, died of poison in his room at the Oriente Hotel, where they were stopping. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery at San Pedro Macati. His companion was also taken violently ill with similar symptoms, but did not die. It is not capable of exact proof such as would be demanded in a court of law, but on all hands it is believed that the death of Sr. Lallave was due to friar intrigue. They hated him on two separate grounds: he had become a Protestant, and was now engaged in an attempt to put the Bible into the hands of the common people. Foreman says that murders by friars were not uncommon :

"The mysterious deaths of General Solano (in August, 1860), and of Zamora, the bishop-elect of Cebu (in 1873), occurred so opportunely for Philippine monastic ambition, that little doubt existed in the public mind as to who were the real criminals. When I first arrived in Manila, nearly twenty years ago, a fearful crime was still being commented on. Father Piernaviaja, formerly parish priest of San Miguel de Mayumo, had recently .committed a second murder. His first victim was a native youth. His second a native woman enciente. The public voice there could not be raised very loudly against the priests, but the scandal was so great that the criminal friar was sent to another province-Cavite--where he still celebrated the holy sacrifice of the Eucharist. Nearly

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two decades afterward-in January, 1897-this rascal met with a terrible death at the hands of the rebels. He was in captivity, and having been appointed 'bishop' in a rebel diocese, to save his life he accepted the mock dignity; but unfortunately for himself he betrayed the confidence of his captors, and collected information concerning their movements, plans, and strongholds, for remittance to his community. In expiation of his treason he was bound to a post under the tropical sun and left there to die. See how the public in Spain are gulled! In a Malaga newspaper this individual was referred to as 'a venerable figure worthy of being placed high up on an altar, before which all Spaniards should prostrate themselves and adore him. As a religieux he was a most worthy minister of the Lord; as a patriot he was a hero.'

The companion of Lallave was first imprisoned, and then banished from the Islands. But the society felt that its first effort, attended as it had been with the death of one agent and banishment of another, bound it to the Philippines, and made it incumbent upon its officers to avail themselves of the first opening to enter the Islands and carry forward the work to which Lallave gave "the last full measure of devotion!"

Nothing further was attempted by this society until 1898, when Mr. Randle arrived with translations of the first three Gospels and Acts in Tagalog, St. Luke in Bicol, and St. Luke and the Acts in Ilokano, all of which translations had been done by our agent in Spain, with the help of exiled Filipinos,-exiled chiefly through having incurred the displeasure of the friars. Mr. Randle was succeeded by Mr. Miller.

The first work of Mr. Miller was to translate the New Testament into Tagalog. It was found that the translation which had been made in Spain was too faulty to send out in anything approaching permanent form, and such portions as had been put into this vernacular were