PRESSING NEEDS 331 all the departments of the Association work-which will probably cost $200,000. 2. Three more Army secretaries. 3. Three men for work among native young men. 4. Perhaps most important of all-an able, experienced and successful man for the general supervision of all the work. The Episcopalians have Bishop Brent, the Methodists have Dr. Stuntz, the Presbyterians have Dr. Rossiter, and it would seem as if the Association would accomplish its greatest mission if a man corresponding to these were sent out to supervise the work. No account of the work of the Association in the Philippines would be complete which did not recognize the credit due to Miss Helen M. Gould, of New York, who has made this work possible. In addition to her splendid financial contributions she has given a personal service to the soldiers the value of which is beyond computation. Not to speak of the Traveling Libraries-in one of which I found "Life's Golden Lamp," published by The New York Observer-which go to the Army posts and are read and re-read by nearly every soldier there, Miss Gould sends, through the Association, a large number of Testaments and Psalms, in each of which she writes a verse of Scripture. The one that I have in hand as I write, similar to those which are in the pockets of hundreds of soldiers, bears this inscription: "Be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity." (1 Timothy 4:12.) CHAPTER XXXII BIBLE DISTRIBUTION Withholding the Scriptures-President Roosevelt's WHAT HATEVER the friars gave or withheld, one thing is certain-they were not willing that the Filipinos should read the Bible. Aglipay, the organizer of the Filipino Independent Catholic Church, is taking advantage of every means which may tend to loosen the hold of the Roman Church upon the natives. His latest step is to distribute an address of President Roosevelt commending the study of the Bible. Already one hundred thousand copies of the address and Aglipay's letter commending it have been circulated in Spanish, Tagalog and Ilocano. In this address, which was given before the Long Island Bible Society at Oyster Bay on June 11, 1901, Mr. Roosevelt said: "One of the highest tributes of modern times to the worth of the Bible as an educational and moral influence of incalculable value to the whole community came from the great scientist Huxley, who said: "Consider the great historical fact that for three centuries this book has been woven into the life of all that is noblest and best in our history, and that it has THE MAGNA CHARTA OF THE POOR 333 become the national epic of our race; that it is written in the noblest and purest English, and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary form; and finally, that it forbids the veriest hind, who never left his village, to be ignorant of the existence of other countries and civilizations and of a great past, stretching back to the furthest limits of the oldest nations in the world. By the study of what other book could children be so much humanized and made to feel that each figure in that vast historical procession fills, like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval between the eternities? But the Bible has been the Magna Charta of the poor and of the oppressed. Down to modern times no State has had a constitution in which the interests of the people are so largely taken into account; in which the duties, so much more than the privileges, of rulers are insisted upon, as that drawn up for Israel in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Nowhere is the fundamental truth that the welfare of the State, in the long run, depends upon the righteousness of the citizen, so strongly laid down. The Bible is the most democratic book in the world." " The President closed his address with these earnest words: "If we read the Bible aright, we read a book which teaches us to go forth and do the work of the Lord in the world as we find it; to try to make things better in this world, even if only a little better, because we have lived in it. That kind of work can be done only by the man who is neither a weakling nor a coward; by the man who in the fullest sense of the word is a true Christian, like Great Heart, Bunyan's hero. We plead for a closer and wider and deeper study of the Bible, so that our |