BIBLES IN COLOMBIA

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 15, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 50.

BIBLES IN COLOMBIA.

A DECISION was recently rendered by the courts of the United States of Colombia by which the agent of the American Bible Society is now permitted to continue the sale of the Scriptures in that country. The case went into the courts through an attempt to show that the colporters of the American Bible Society were violating the laws and corrupting the morals of the inhabitants by offering the Bible for sale, and by attempting to distribute it gratuitously. The agents of the Bible Society have been working in Colombia for years without hindrance, and in some places a great many copies of the Scriptures have been sold. Recently an agent sent one of his assistants to canvass the town of Socorro and the towns and villages adjacent to it. He was subjected to some annoyance, and was brought before the alcalde, who seized his saddle-bags and books, confiscated the latter, and ordered him to offer no more books for sale in that place. A series of legal and ecclesiastical examinations followed, and then came a decision of the authorities in Bogota that the sale of the Scriptures is not prohibited by the laws of the republic; that the articles of law that the Roman Catholic clergy attempted to use gave no right to the Roman Catholic Church to interfere in the commerce of books that were not prohibited, and that the censorship is to be invoked only in the case of books used for public instruction in the government schools.—N. Y. Christian Advocate.