The Tract League by A. J. S. B.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jan 12, 1911

“The Tract League”

By A. J. S. B.

Literature in Reformation Days (Symposium)

A LITTLE tract has often been the means of saving a soul. A brief publication of this kind is frequently read when a book or a magazine would be pushed aside. Even before the days of the Reformation, the patient Waldenses (A. D. 1100) prepared hand-written leaflets containing extracts from the Scriptures and their “Noble Lesson,” for distribution from house to house.

On his way to his martyrdom at the Council of Constance (A. D. 1415) John Huss, the noble Bohemian Reformer, distributed hand-written leaflets containing the Lord’s prayer and the ten commandments.

“Printing,” said the indomitable Martin Luther, “is the latest and greatest gift by which God enables us to advance the things of the gospel.” In addition to many books, he issued over three hundred tracts and pamphlets. “The skilful printers of Germany and Switzerland,” says De Felice, in his “Protestants of France,” “poured forth an incessant stream of French, Dutch, and English Bibles, besides an infinite number of tracts and treatises by eminent Reformers. The demand for these books could never be sufficiently supplied. At Nuremberg, Mentz, and Strasburg, there was an eager struggle for Luther’s smallest pamphlets. Of his catechism one hundred thousand were sold. The sheets of his tracts, often wet from the press, were hidden under the purchasers’ cloaks, and passed from shop to shop. The most hated and the most feared of all the agents of reform, in this remarkable period, by priest and pope, was the humble colporteur or Bible-seller.”

Some time ago the writer asked ten hundred eighty Seventh-day Adventists, located in forty-four different churches, to tell briefly how they were led to accept present truth. Of the total number two hundred thirty stated that they had been led to change their belief through reading our publications. Of this number forty-seven were converted through reading our tracts, eighteen of which were mentioned by name: “Elihu on the Sabbath” (six conversions); “Scripture References” (two); “Which Day Do You Keep, and Why?” (two); “Heralds of His Coming” (one); “How the Sabbath Came to Me” (one); “Is Man Immortal” (one); “Who” “Changed the Sabbath?” (one); “Christ’s Second Coming” (one); “Sunday Not the Sabbath” (one); etc., nine of them being Sabbath tracts.

Interesting Experiences

CASE 1.—Last month a lady was baptized in San Francisco who had been a Roman Catholic up to seven weeks before her baptism. Last September, in an interior town, she picked up a portion of a tract on “The State of the Dead.” The truth it contained impressed her so strongly that she spent several hours among the bookstores and news-stands trying to find the name of the publishers, but failed. Immediately upon her return to San Francisco, she renewed the search, but not until she had spent three days did she find that the tract was a Seventh-day Adventist publication. She was directed to our dispensary, where she found the sought-for literature on a table in the waiting-room. She was convinced, after an investigation of about six weeks, and is now rejoicing in the truth.

CASE 2.—Brother Guy Dail, of Germany, reports that one of our Armenian brethren was recently arrested for circulating in Constantinople a Turkish tract, entitled “Who Is Jesus?” written especially for the Moslems. When taken to the police headquarters, the high officials took his tracts and investigated their contents. One asked: “How dare you sell such things to the Moslems?” He replied that the literature was good, and well adapted to the educated and cultured. A high officer took the tract and retired. He was gone about half an hour, and then returned and told our brother: “I have read this through. Would that more such good literature were circulated in place of so much cheap trash. It contains many quotations from the Gospels. Go and sell all the tracts you can.” So the brother was allowed to go free. He sells from twenty-five to forty tracts a day.

CASE 3.—The following remarkable instance is reported by one of our workers: During the secession war of America, a chaplain was passing through a hospital, and he left in an empty bed a tract which was a copy of the hymn, “Will You Go?” The soldier came to his bed, picked it up, read the title, and dropped it. A second time he picked it up, and read,— “We are traveling home to heaven above— Will you go?” and then threw it down again. Soon afterward he picked it up again, and read it through. Then, after deliberating over the matter in his quiet hours, he finally wrote on it, “By the grace of God I will go,” and signed his name. Some months later he was killed in battle in Virginia.

CASE 4.—Passing through Switzerland, a tract distributor presented a tract to a man in a town notorious for gambling. On his return, some days later, he met the man, who exclaimed, “I thank you for saving my soul and body.” He then explained that on that day when he received the tract, he had lost heavily in gambling, and was contemplating suicide, but the tract arrested his attention, and led him to Christ.

CASE 5.—A foreman in one of our large publishing-houses informed me that he became an Adventist through reading

a Danish tract, entitled “Both Sides of the Sabbath Question.” This tract was handed him by a young man on a street corner in Christiania, Norway, one Sunday morning while he was on his way to church. He read it, investigated, and found the truth.

CASE 6.—One of our brethren states that one tract, entitled “The State of the Dead,” led him to attend one of our Sabbath-schools, which in turn led to Bible readings, the reading of our large books, attending Bible lectures by our ministers, and finally to his conversion.

CASE 7.—A tract distributor, passing through a sparsely settled country district in Canada, gave away many tracts. One of them, entitled “Repent or Perish,” was found floating in the Frazer River. A man saw it, took it out, dried it, read it, and by it was converted.

CASE 8.—In 1785 a tract was given to a family in Virginia. The family numbered fourteen, and that tract was the instrumentality used in the conversion of the whole family.

CASE 9.—“A few days ago,” writes one of our workers, “we received a letter from a person in Kentucky who had picked up a tract on the railroad right of way, evidently carelessly thrown out of a car window. This person picked up the tract, read it, became impressed with its importance, and wrote to our office for a number of books.”

CASE 10.—A lady not of our faith, becoming somewhat disturbed on the Sabbath question, went to a prominent member of her church for help. The gentleman said that he did not then have the time to sit down and talk it over with her, but would send her something to read on the subject. Soon after, as he was passing through a railroad station, he saw a reading-rack that our people had placed there. In it he saw a tract entitled “Seven Reasons for Sunday Keeping.” Thinking this was just what he had been wanting, he eagerly took it from the rack, and without waiting to read it himself, mailed it to the lady. The reading of this tract resulted in her becoming an active member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. This is but one of scores of similar cases in which one little tract has brought a soul into the truth.

CASE 11.—We would recommend that the one reading this item make a diagram of the following true story related by the general agent of one of our union conferences: “About twenty-five years ago a sister living in New York sent the tract ‘Who Changed the Sabbath?’ and copies of the Signs and REVIEW to the wife of a Methodist minister. This minister’s wife, not being able to answer the truths set forth, appealed to her husband for those Sunday texts of his, and to their great astonishment he found none. More tracts followed. Within six months the truth regarding the state of the dead was seen and accepted. Next came the Sabbath. The final decision was made by both the minister and his wife the same day, the same hour, although neither knew the step the other was taking. He had been away preaching, and when he came in to tell his wife the good news, he found her also rejoicing in the Sabbath blessing. Three years later a tent-meeting was called for, and soon a church of twenty members was organized. So many of the leading members of this minister’s flock became Seventh-day Adventists that the church building and grounds fell into the hands of our people.” In making the diagram, write the word tracts at the left; to the right indicate the following results of their circulation: (1) Minister and wife; (2) church of twenty members; (3) church-school (five additions to church); (4) twenty additions; (5) one minister; one general agent (has trained three State agents); (6) one nurse; (7) fifteen canvassers, who have sold four thousand books, valued at ten thousand dollars, thus giving the message to twenty thousand persons, besides leading five to accept the message.

CASE 12.—The late Elder J. M. Rees once related the following interesting circumstance: “At the first camp-meeting held in North Carolina, we had a missionary meeting; and while we were holding that meeting, a man and his wife stepped into the back part of the tent, and I noticed that they were interested in what we had to say. Our meeting had not been in session long until a sister got up, and produced a little bunch of tracts, yellow with age, sewed together, and she said, ‘Somebody sent me these tracts, and I accepted the truth from them, I do not know where they came from.’ Her husband said he accepted the truth, too, from reading those tracts. Then another arose, and said the same thing, and another, until eight persons in that congregation had testified that they had received the truth from reading those tracts. They all lived in the same neighborhood. The meeting closed; and the strange woman who had stayed in the rear of the tent, stepped forward to the woman who had spoken first, and facing her, said, ‘Do you know me? I am your sister, who left North Carolina twenty years ago. We sent you those tracts.’ You never saw such a greeting as they had then, and we all wept in sympathy with them. Then, when the greeting was over, the man said, ‘Yes, we are the ones who sent you the bunch of tracts. We lived in Kansas, and when we sent those tracts, we were so poor that we did not have any money, and we wondered how we were to get the postage to send them. We prayed that the Lord would help us to get the postage to send them, and he gave it to us, and we sent them.’”

Join the “Tract League” To-day

The foregoing are but a few of many like incidents which have resulted from the distribution of these little “silent messengers.” What has been done in the past can be done again. What part will you have in this winter’s campaign with tracts?

Many are now joining the “tract league.” The brethren are consecrating a pocket, and the sisters a portion of their hand-bags, to a good selection of tracts. Others are buying fifty-cent, one-dollar, and five-dollar packages to be used in envelope distribution by packages, as recommended in the REVIEW of October 13 and November 10. Still others are filling neat reading-racks with them, thus reaching thousands passing through railway depots, hotels, post-offices, and other public buildings.

In addition to the little booklet recently issued by the Review and Herald, the Pacific Press has just published a thirty-two-page envelope-size booklet entitled “Fireside Companions.” This contains the following:—

Complete lists of all tracts, including the new illustrated Spanish, and recent Japanese, Chinese, and Korean tracts.
Topically arranged lists of tracts.
A tract sample case for church librarians and missionary workers.
Full description of the one-dollar and five-dollar packages (with photographs); and, last, but not least,—
Definite instructions regarding the systematic use of tracts,—a reprint of the reading which appeared in the REVIEW dated December 8.

Either or both of these booklets may be had free of charge upon application to your conference tract society. Secure them at once, and join the other members of the “tract league” in sowing the country with these little messengers “as the leaves of autumn.” A. J. S. B.