The Daily Dispatch

LOCAL MATTERS,

Colporteur Convention--Fourth Day.--Convention opened at 9 o'clock. Usual religious exercises. Prayer by Mr. George Sturdevant. Minutes of yesterday read and approved. Colporteur exercises continued by Rev. Bernard Philips, of Caroline county; Mr. J. V. Rouse, of Spottsylvania county; Mr. Jacob Snyder, Smith county, Mr. A. H. Price, Virginia, and Mr. George W. Taylor, of Weston, Va.

Our reporter entered the meeting when Mr. Taylor was speaking. He had not been engaged long in the work. He had found great moral destitution in his district. He had found great good resulted from the distribution of the Society's temperance tracts. People did not consider the self-sacrifice of colporteurs--their deprivation of home comforts, absence from family endearments, and endurance of opposition and discomforts in their labors. He believed the officers and members of this Society were honest, self-denying men, and they were now training up in these colporteurs men who would carry the glad tidings of salvation to millions of immortal souls. He blessed God that there were men who were willing to bow the knee with sinners in the gold mines and the coal pits, the hills and the valleys, the fruitful and the waste places of our land.

Rev. Mr. Cook, assistant Secretary of the A. T. Society in New York, then rose and stated in behalf of the business committee, he would present some of the subjects which should occupy their attention and be generally understood and discussed. And first, the history and power of that instrumentality which was mainly used by the A. T. Society, the press, in the relations which it held to the evangelization of the world--was a theme which could well occupy extended consideration. Such a knowledge was vastly useful to the colporteurs in their addresses and labors. Another subject underlying their whole work was the duty which was inculcated of personal Christian labor for the salvation of men. The A. T. Society did not send forth its colporteurs to engage in personal missionary work, but to scatter religious publications--and in sending forth these publications, Christian men were selected to distribute them, acting as Christians and not as colporteurs with reference to their delicate responsibilities to the great Head of the Church, would perform Christian labor in connection with the diffusion of printed truth. The catholic character of the society should also be considered. It was an organization of all denominations to proclaim Christ and his salvation to those perishing in their sins.

Another topic was the publishing department and the principles upon which it was governed. Each colporteur should be acquainted with its operations. The relations of this society to foreign missionary operations and to other institutions, to the Bible Society, to the Sunday School Union and to other denominations, should also be considered. The duties of colporteurs next claimed attention. Of preparation by prayer, by the study of the society's documents, by a knowledge of personal feelings, of personal visitation, conversation and how long protracted--of selling books and the best mode of effecting their introduction into families, churches and schools, and whether other books than those published by the Society should be circulated--of supplying destitute families with books, how and when--of the propriety of making grants and to whom--of intercourse with errorists of various classes, and the best manner--of devotion of time and mind to the work, of intercourse with ministers of the gospel and the best mode of co-operating with them to do good, and of personal relations; all there were questions worthy of mature deliberation.

In regard to the publishing department of the Society, the first topic he would discuss, he would say it was under the control of Mr. Halleck. Some book or tract was first recommended to the attention of the Society by a friend, that was adapted to wide usefulness. Each of the members of the publishing committee read over the work, or tract, as amended or condensed by the Society, and no book or tract could be put to press unless its sentiments were unanimously endorsed by the committee. Everything denominational was thus excluded. Some books of former ages, embodying valuable gospel truths, were carefully and laboriously condensed and modernized. The practical only, were retained.

The committee being composed of members of each of the different denominations, they united in sending out those truths that clustered around the cross and nearest to it. The points of difference were further from the cross--the extremes--and they were carefully eschewed. Their publications were squared by the Bible and not by systems of human philosophy.

In a short period the Society would publish a book in which every word of Episcopacy, of Presbytery, of Baptism, of Methodism, Lutheranism, and Moravianism, that God had revealed to the world, was embodied--the Bible. (Sensation.) They had already published the New Testament with notes, and would shortly publish the Old. This arrangement of publishing the Bible would not interfere with the Bible Society. It was made in compliance with the loud and repeated calls for the Scriptures. They had engaged Dr. Edwards, of Boston, to prepare the commentaries upon this plan: that where the holy spirit had indited truth by His servants, so plainly that it could not be made plainer by exposition, to let the truth stand; and where the language was defective in conveying to the mind the teachings of the spirit, there to employ the pen of the commentator and to sum up great practical truths, not for the Biblical scholar, but for the people--that the destitution of the country might spell it out by the lightwood torch in their humble cabins. Dr. Edwards was nearly half through with his commentary on the Old Testament.

Of the New Testament and commentary, some 80,000 copies had already been disposed of, and the demand was increasing. Great good would thus result. It would be impossible from reading these notes, to say to what denomination the author belonged. They were eminently useful to Sabbath School teachers and the people generally, who thus found the Bible explaining itself. They co-operated harmoniously with the Bible Society in spreading that Society's Bible without notes, and the spread of these Bibles with notes, it was believed would in no wise militate against the interests of the Bible Society, but rather increase its prosperity.

The progressive character of the American Tract Society rendered it in the minds of some, obnoxious, because they feared it would absorb all the other organizations. (Dr. Killen remarked playfully, the Mammoth Cave that would take in the Sunday School Union and the Bible Society.) But this progression was necessary. Each Society had its work, and enough of it to do. The American Tract Society pursued its own work, and desired not to do the work of other societies, or absorb them. There was a world lying in wickedness--the harvest was abundant, but the laborers were few. Mr. C. continued his remarks at some length and was followed by other speakers, but we are compelled, from want of space, to cut short our report. The convention adjourned to meet at nine o'clock this morning.