The Work of the Colporteur

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 18, 1910

The Work of the Colporteur

The object of the colporteur is always the same—to sell as many Bibles as possible to those who do not possess the book, and to induce the buyers to read it. He sells the Bible, or separate portions of it, because long experience has taught that if it is given away, the recipient does not place the same value upon it, and is not nearly so likely to read it. Human nature is the same in Siam as in Salem, Mass., in the Philippines as in Philadelphia.

The colporteur gets a small commission on his sales, and a small salary: he must live. But the work is so trying, the pay so small, the danger still so great in many places, that only a strong faith in his calling, a devotion to the Christian religion like that of the missionaries themselves, would keep a colporteur at his task. The colporteurs are the nameless and unsung pioneers of Christendom.

Many qualities are required of the colporteur, of course, besides devotion. Perhaps the greatest of these is tact. It is his task to sell a religious book to people generally of alien faith, and often hostile. He must be quick and ready to refute objections, to turn aside hostility, to keep his patience, his temper, his humility, to appeal to the necessary racial motives, to understand the characters of those with whom he is dealing. This explains, of course, why the colporteurs are chiefly natives of the lands where they work.

The colporteur must also know the Bible from cover to cover himself, be able to explain it, to expound it. He must be something of a preacher—an evangelist. When all these things are considered, the number of good colporteurs to be found in Siam, in China, in Korea, and other such lands, is amazing.

—Selected.