The Story of a Few Tracts

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 18, 1909

The Story of a Few Tracts

ABOUT forty years ago there lived in a little village in northern New York an isolated Sabbath-keeping sister who had taken part in the 1844 movement.

She used to tell how Brother and Sister White, when passing through that section with a horse and carriage, first visited her. When she accepted the message, Elder White wrote her name down on his list as the twenty-ninth Sabbath-keeping Adventist of whom he had any knowledge.

For years this devoted sister stood a lone witness for present truth, persecuted by her own family, and looked upon by the community as crazy because she believed the advent doctrine and kept the Sabbath.

She had talked the truth to all who would listen, and had given reading-matter to all who would read; and as none of the good church people would accept the message, she thought it useless to do any more. So when Elder C. O. Taylor, one of the pioneer ministers in New York, urged her to take a few more tracts for distribution, she told him that it was of no use to do so, for no one would read them. Nevertheless, at his earnest solicitation, she took a few, which she hid away to prevent her husband from burning them.

In the spring of 1871 a young farmer and school-teacher, while working alone in the field, heard a voice which said, “Why does Sally Dunton keep Saturday while every one else keeps Sunday?”

His mental reply to this question was, “O, she is crazy!” As he could not get the matter out of his mind, he began to read literature written to uphold Sunday sacredness, but being disappointed because of a lack of Bible authority, he began to study the Bible itself with a view of preparing a Biblical argument for Sunday observance.

Failing to find the expected Bible proof for the Sunday-rest day, he was ready to investigate the claims of those who observed the seventh-day Sabbath, and so visited this so-called crazy Adventist, and asked for reading-matter on the Sabbath question.

Overjoyed by the knowledge that some one had sufficient interest to come and ask for reading-matter, she drew forth from their hiding-place those tracts which she had thought it useless to take from Elder Taylor, and gave them to the inquirer.

The immediate result was that he kept the next Sabbath. Later he was joined by his wife, his mother, and sister, and a little Sabbath-school was organized. Thus after years of lonely waiting, and after she had given up all hope, that faithful witness had the joy of seeing four persons brought into the truth.

The influence of those tracts did not stop there. The young man soon entered the ministry, and by voice and pen witnessed for the truth in many States from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and still lives and works to advance the message.

His son, following the steps of the father, carried the torch of truth to foreign shores, and preached the everlasting gospel in a strange tongue to a people that had long been in darkness, thus widening the circle of influence which had its beginning in the giving out of those tracts. Eternity alone will reveal the results which have come from that little seed sowing done so long ago by that humble sister. Therefore, beloved,—

“Sow thy seed; be never weary, Let no fears thy soul annoy; Be the prospect ne’er so dreary, Thou shalt reap the fruits of joy.”