p. 15 | A Bible Colporteur in an Austrian Prison

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 31, 1907

A Bible Colporteur in an Austrian Prison

THE Bible Society of Scotland is doing a good work by employing Bible colporteurs to sell the Scriptures in Austria. Dr. Clark, of Prague, reports the following interesting experience of one of these agents:—

“Recently, in Lower Austria, he was followed by a policeman from village to village, and at last marched off to prison. On the way he faithfully conversed with his captor on the necessity of personal salvation, till the policeman exclaimed, indignantly, ‘And do you think that I am not a Christian?’ ‘Not such an one as you ought to be, or you would not be marching me to prison for trying to supply men with the Word of our Saviour.’ In prison he was as happy as Paul and Silas, so that the jailer wished he had his comfort and joy. While waiting for his case to be investigated, he obtained permission to write a letter to his wife. This, by prison rules had to be submitted to the judge, who, after reading it, sent for —, and, having talked with him for an hour regarding his faith and hope in God, said: ‘I am going to keep this letter. Here is paper; write another to your wife.’ Whereupon the colporteur wrote twenty pages, relating his religious experience.

“In each of two courts those twenty pages were read and discussed. His sanity was questioned, but after examination two medical men declared him to be as sane as any of his accusers or judges, and, in higher respects, ‘a much better man.’ After seventeen days in prison he was allowed to go free, an orderly, truth-loving, God-fearing man, but with the somewhat paradoxical sentence: ‘We do not fine you for selling Bibles. Go and sin no more.’”