One Verse Each Day

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 24, 1913

One Verse Each Day

REV. ARTHUR TAYLOR, one of the secretaries of the British and Foreign Bible Society, in a report given at the annual meeting in Queen’s Hall, London, recently, told of how a Bible colporteur caught a man out in Tasmania in the gospel net. The story follows:—

“There was another colporteur whom I met in Tasmania. I never met a man of greater humility of spirit joined with a greater courage. He told me how he went to one man and said to him, ‘Do you read your Bible?’ And the man replied, ‘You are a queer one to ask a question like that!’ The colporteur said, ‘Do not take offense at what I am saying.’ The man admitted frankly that he did not read the Bible as he ought to do. ‘Well, now,’ said the colporteur, ‘I want you to do something for me. It is not much. I want you to promise me that you will read one verse every night, only one verse. I am not asking much; and I want you to say one little prayer when you read it. I want you to pray, “Lord, teach me.” Now it is not much, is it?’ And the man agreed to do this. Some time afterward he met our Bible seller again and said, ‘You are a cunning one, you are! Mind you, I have done it; but I do not say that I have not read more than one verse. Do you know, I am beginning to see things as my old mother saw them? She was not so far wrong after all.’”