Page:Bohemia's claim for freedom.djvu/14

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bequest of the Bible to their heirs. It remains always an object of wonder how it was possible that the Unity of Brethren undertook to publish an edition of the Bible in six big volumes when there were so many excellent editions, as that of Melantrich and Severin, already in circulation. And it seems all the more wonderful when one knows that the same work had three times to be republished within a few years, in a nation numbering then no more than about five millions.

During the persecution (1620-1781) all the Bibles that were clandestinely imported into Bohemia and Moravia were printed abroad by the emigrants.

As regards the modern circulation of the Bible in Bohemia, the Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society writes as follows.

"The Society has had a very interesting work in the country, as you know, for many years. Apparently we have put into circulation in the Bohemian language:—

325,492 Bibles and Old Testaments.
817,222 New Testaments, with or without the Psalms.
647,819 Portions of the Bible, not less than a single book.
10,000 Diglot Gospels (Bohemian-English in parallel columns).

This makes a total of 1,800,533 volumes. I have not included in these figures the circulation of 1914. In that year we only circulated 44,235 volumes."

The Roman Catholic Church, too, has published

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