ster, January
8; Francis Walker Bacon, at Boston, January 17; Edmund Batchelder
Dearborn, at Boston, January 22; Henry Perkins Kidder, at New York,
January 28. The corresponding secretary made a statement as to some of
the more valuable gifts of books for the month, the donation of chief
value being a full set of Force's "American Archives," from the Hon. M.
P. Wilder. The secretary, the Rev. Mr. Slafter, also made a statement
concerning the proposition recently made by Mr. Benjamin F. Stevens, an
antiquarian of local celebrity, formerly resident in Vermont, but now in
England. He has made a collection of titles of manuscripts relating to
American affairs during the period from 1772 to 1784, which manuscripts
are in the government archives of England, France, Holland, and Spain,
and number 80,000 or more. Many of them are of the first historical
importance, and have never been published. The proposition is that
Congress shall be induced to take some measures for the printing of
these indexes and the more important of the manuscripts. The society, on
Mr. Slafter's motion, adopted a resolution in favor of the project, and
appointed a committee to cooeperate with other committees or societies in
urging the matter at Washington. Mr. Slafter declined being chairman of
the committee, and it was made up as follows: Abner C. Goodell, John
Ward Dean, Albert H. Hoyt, Edmund F. Slafter, and Charles L. Flint. The
historical essay of the session was read by Mr. S. Brainard Pratt, of
Boston, and its subject was "The Bible in New England." In referring to
the use of the Bible in the Sunday service, by reading of selections
therefrom, he said this was for a long time resisted. The first reading
of the kind was in the Brattle-street Church, in Boston, in 1699, and it
was regarded as an audacious innovation, as savoring of Presbyterianism,
and being but little better than Episcopalianism in disguise. The next
church to adopt the practice was that of South Reading, in 1645, and the
next was in 1669, when the Old South Church, in Boston, took up with it.
The progress of the movement was very slow, as is indicated by these
facts, and the fact that in the South Parish Church, of Ipswich, there
was no reading of Scripture, as a part of the service, until the year
1826. The essayist said there have been 326 versions, of varying
editions, of the New and Old Testaments, or both, published in New
England, namely: In Rhode Island, 1; Maine, 12; Verm