Selling Bibles in the Philippines by Walter Prichard Eaton

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 27, 1910

Selling Bibles in the Philippines

By Walter Prichard Eaton

JUAN was a native colporteur. He had worked over horrible roads till he was five weeks from Manila, in the Cagayan province. The “Evangelio de San Mateo” could not find purchasers, even for the low price of two cents. Night was falling as the weary Juan reached the provincial capital, without knowing where he was to lodge. Finally he met a servant of the local governor, who offered, in exchange for two books, to find Juan a lodging with his brother.

Thus, when the colporteur departed the next day, two Gospels were left in that town. The brother used his up, leaf by leaf, rolling cigarettes; but the servant read his copy. One day he chanced to leave it in the governor's chair. Don Jose, the governor, found it, read it, became interested, then perplexed. He did not know what to think of it, so he resolved to take the five weeks' journey to the nearest missionary.

When he reached the missionary, he took from his pocket a small package wrapped in the fine white bark of the gobo tree. This contained an inner package wrapped in silk, and this in turn the stained and worn copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew, left by the servant in the chair.

“Five weeks I have been on the road,” said Don Jose. “With my companion I have traveled over the far blue mountains and by strange rivers. While we came along the narrow trail in the valley, we sometimes knew that armed savages of the head-hunters stealthily followed us in the shadows of the trees. By boat and raft and trail we came. I have come, Señor Missionary, because my people need help. Americans have among them a book of the gospel, that every man may learn for himself the way of life and truth. I have come to get you to go and teach my people out of that book.”

But the missionary had no one to send. The Bible Society, too, was without funds even to send a colporteur back again. The disappointed governor had to go back alone. But the story of his trip was told abroad; and one day, three years afterward, a man came to the Bible agent in Manila, and asked to be sent to Cagayan. He had been a volunteer soldier, a teacher, a half-dozen things, sticking to nothing. The agent mistrusted him, and had no funds; but the man, who was an American named Sanderson, persisted; and finally, some funds coming in, he was sent as a colporteur, on half pay.

Don Jose had died, and the new governor was hostile; but Sanderson was not daunted. He sailed, rode, walked, even swam, to get from place to place, preaching everywhere and selling the Scriptures. In November, 1906, he perished in a great flood, and nobody knows where his body lies; but six months later, when a missionary pushed his way up into that wild region, he found a thousand converts waiting for him, and now the valley is dotted with chapels.—Walter Prichard Eaton.