berty to send a
few lines by a friend[106] who is leaving Russia for England.
Since my arrival in Petersburg I have been occupied eight hours
every day in transcribing a Manchu manuscript of the Old
Testament belonging to Baron Schilling, and I am happy to be
able to say that I have just completed the last of it, the Rev.
Mr. Swan, the Scottish missionary, having before my arrival
copied the previous part. Mr. Swan departs to his mission in
Siberia in about two months, during most part of which time I
shall be engaged in collating our transcripts with the
original. It is a great blessing that the Bible Society has now
prepared the whole of the Sacred Scriptures in Manchu, which
will doubtless, when printed, prove of incalculable benefit to
tens of millions who have hitherto been ignorant of the will of
God, putting their trust in idols of wood and stone instead of
in a crucified Saviour. I am sorry to say that this country in
respect to religion is in a state almost as lamentable as the
darkest regions of the East, and the blame of this rests
entirely upon the Greek hierarchy, who discountenance all
attempts to the spiritual improvement of the people, who, poor
things, are exceedingly willing to receive instruction, and,
notwithstanding the scantiness of their means in general for
the most part, eagerly buy the tracts which a few pious English
Christians cause to be printed and hawked in the neighbourhood.
But no one is better aware, Sir, than yourself that without the
Scriptures men can never be brought to a true sense of their
fallen and miserable state, and of the proper means to be
employed to free themselves from the thraldom of Satan. The
last few copies which remained of the New Testament in Russian
were purchased and distributed a few days ago, and it is
lamentable to be compelled to state that at the present there
appears no probability of another edition being permitted in
the modern language. It is true that there are near twenty
thousand copies of the Sclavonic bible in the shop which is
entrusted with the sale of the books of the late Russian Bible
Society, but the Sclavonian translation is upwards of a
thousand years old, having been made in the eighth century, and
differs from the dialect spoken at present in Russia as much