The Best Book to Sell

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Apr 6, 1905

The Best Book to Sell

THE Book is the best book of all to sell in homes where it has not entered. In many fields in which we are now operating, the sale of the Bible is an important part of missionary work. The Bible Society Record not long ago courteously acknowledged the effort our Mexican workers are making to co-operate with the society. Our workers in the West Indies have long had the record of being most active in putting Bibles in the homes of the people. There lately joined us in Peru a Bible colporteur who has long been selling the Word of God in that priest-ridden land, often amidst persecution and peril to life. But what a Book that is to carry to people who have it not!

The last issue of the Bible Society's organ gives the following account of the entry of the Bible into a Guatemalan town:—

Some five years ago a man named Elias received a tract in this city, entitled “Thirty Reasons Why Rome Is Not the True Church.” He could not

read, but the tract fell into the hands of one of his brothers who could. He read it over, and doubts and fears began to possess him. At last he became so desperately in earnest that he went off into the timber, far from any human being; he fell upon his knees, and cried to the great God, pleading that, if the facts stated in the tract were true, he might know it. He communicated with his sisters, and a desire took possession of their hearts to have a Bible. They spoke to the priest of their longings. He told them that a look at a Bible would be worth a thousand dollars. They were poor; how could their desires ever be realized? Some six months later a colporteur slept one night outside of San Martin; the next morning, bright and early, he took his pack and wandered through the city, passed block after block of houses, going by many an open door, and at last, away to the opposite side from which he had entered, he knocked at the closed door of a humble shanty. The owners responded, and the colporteur asked permission to leave his packs while he went from house to house to sell the Bible. The Bible! A man selling Bibles! If a book were worth one thousand dollars to look at, what would be the price of the book itself! These were the thoughts that filled the hearts of these anxious ones. The colporteur explained that through the grace of God, the generosity of some of God's children, and the American Bible Society, they could have a copy for one dollar (at that time about twenty cents, gold). What interest! What joy! What gratitude! The Elias family now had the long-desired Bible.

Truly it is a grand work to put the first Bible into the hands of a seeker after truth. Guatemala, by the way, is as yet untouched by us, though our Central American workers are pressing toward it.