How to Use Present Opportunities by E. M. Graham

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 11, 1913

How to Use Present Opportunities

By E. M. Graham

THE most successful way to labor is to meet people where they are. We should therefore be wide-awake to the matters that interest the public generally, and make use of them to accomplish our work.

In three months from the time this service is held, the festival of Christmas will be here. This is a time to which many people in the world attach much importance. Then they gather their families together, and in order to make them happy, give them presents. It is a time when hearts are warm and more liberal than at other times.

What can we do to turn this interest to the benefit of the work of the Lord, and so also help the people themselves? We can make use of this custom of giving presents to place many of our good books in the homes of the people. A special line of books has been prepared for this purpose, called “home workers’ books.” A prospectus has been prepared for these books, which is so attractive in appearance that it takes little more than showing the prospectus in many places to sell the books.

The books included in this prospectus are “New Testament Primer,” “Gospel Primer,” and “Little Folks’ Bible Nature,” for the little ones; “Best Stories From the Best Book,” “House We Live In,” “Bible Child Life,” “Uncle Ben’s Cobblestones,” “Elo the Eagle,” for the older children; “Story of Pitcairn,” “Advance Guard of Missions,” “Making Home Happy,” “Making Home Peaceful,” “Steps to Christ,” “Mount of Blessing,” “Christ Our Saviour,” “Our Paradise Home,” and “His Glorious Appearing,” for the youth and older members of the family.

This is a reading age. Almost every one, old and young, reads something, and the large majority read mainly that which is harmful. In many cases this is because they have ready access to little else. It is said that an alarmingly large per cent of the children and youth in this country, notwithstanding its boasted privileges and enlightenment, have access only to fiction. The bookstores are loaded with it, the library shelves are filled with it. Statistics and reports show that the increase of criminality among the youth is due in a large degree to harmful reading.

This being so, is it not our duty as a people to place in the hands of the parents of the country and the world such books as would be helpful to their children? It is encouraging to know that many parents realize the danger of these harmful books, and welcome any opportunity to provide good literature.

The books contained in this list are beyond anything the world produces, and are recognized by the people of the world as what they want for their children.

Last spring one lady called at the California Tract Society office to look at children’s books. She said she had been unable to find in the bookstores anything suitable to give to her children at Christmas-time, and had at last sent to New York, but even then did not get what she wanted. Similar instances could be multiplied many times.

That this work pays financially has been abundantly proved. One sister in twenty-five hours sold $23.75 worth of books; another in twelve hours sold to the value of $17.30; another in one morning—from nine to half past eleven—took eight orders, amounting to $3.75.

As forty per cent discount is given on some of these books, and fifty per cent on others, it will readily be seen that these sisters made good wages for the time they worked.

But the financial success is a small part of the matter, except as it gives us more money to give to the cause of God. The great thing is to get the good books into the hands of the people, that they may do their appointed work.

We have our own children, and long to see them saved. Should we not also feel a heavy burden for other children and youth, that they may be led to the Lord? Recently we learned of a lad who had a fine library of about fifty books, many of them our books. He was given a copy of “Best Stories” when seven years of age, and that had so molded his taste for reading that the excellent collection of books he possessed at the age of fourteen was the result. How different this would have been had his first book been some exciting pirate story or something similar.

In view of these facts, may we not expect that as many of our people as possible will take up the sale of these home workers’ books between now and Christmas? One successful worker with them says: “The main thing is to get out early, before others occupy the field. The books will sell themselves at sight with very little talking.”

All necessary instruction and supplies can be obtained from the tract society office, through the church missionary secretary. Thousands of these good books should be sold in the next few weeks. Who will come up to the help of the Lord in this work?

E. M. GRAHAM.