The Pioneer Agency - the Book Work by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 4, 1912

The Pioneer Agency — the Book Work

By William Ambrose Spicer

HERE in the sessions of the South American Union Conference, I hear constant emphasis given to the importance of the book work as the pioneering agency.

All about are unentered portions of the field, perhaps fanatically anti-Protestant, where something must be done to plant the standard of the truth. Every time it is the worker with the literature who is looked to to break through the barriers. And the reports show that in many places where the bookmen have pioneered the way, there are now interests calling for the evangelist.

The efforts made to train colporteurs and to organize this department in Spanish South America are bearing splendid fruit. In 1910 the sales amounted to $19,260, and that was an achievement that gladdened all hearts; but during 1911 the sales reached $31,630.

In many parts the priests resolutely oppose the colporteur’s work; but the testimony is that generally the Lord works deliverance, and the efforts of the priests are frustrated in one way or another.

The pioneer bookmen are sowing the seeds in most-out-of-the-way places. At La Paz, Bolivia, for example, we had expected to find Brother O. H. Schulz awaiting us, as our party came down from Lake Titicaca. But he had failed to get through from Cochabamba, in central Bolivia, where the only means of travel is by horse. At last he came, a few hours before we had to leave for Chile; and we were all glad to hear his report of book work in the interior. He had been delayed by floods that washed out mountain roads and raised the rivers. A number of travelers had lost their lives in attempting the same journey. But with a horse to ride, and one or two others as pack animals to carry the books, our pioneer bookmen are pressing into the most remote parts, wherever men dwell who can read this message of the Lord’s soon coming.

Brother Schulz has just sent a message to the union conference session, from which I quote as follows:—

During the year and a half that I have been in Bolivia, many a time it has looked as if the heavens were shut out with dark clouds; especially when taken to the police office in some fanatical town, or when the books were prohibited by some bishop, after many orders had been taken, or when the poor people talked of burning or stoning me. But all this is nothing. The truth goes forward anyhow. Bolivia is not a hard field any more for me. I have been tried many a time in it, under various circumstances, and I must say that there is no other field dearer to me than Bolivia. My motto is, “Steadfast and sure while the billows roll.”

So divine grace ministers courage and love for the work as difficulties are met and overcome. Let us follow the pioneers with our prayers as they push forward the frontiers of our work. The union conference is looking for bookmen to go into Patagonia and the Falkland Islands, and to establish a work along the Straits of Magellan. Chile has the city farthest south in all the world — Punta Arenas. As our brethren here see that the message is bringing forth fruitage in Alaska and in Iceland, they feel that, as keepers of the southernmost outpost, they must make definite efforts to establish permanent work in the far South. And it is to the bookman that they look to lead the way.

W. A. S.

Santiago, Chile.