On Tract Distribution by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Nov 10, 1904

On Tract Distribution

By William Ambrose Spicer

A SISTER at the Washington Memorial church thanked God in the missionary convention service that about twenty-five years ago a timid young man gave her a tract called “The Third Angel’s Message.” A worldly young woman, attending all the gaieties of the hour, she was nevertheless challenged by the truth of the message. Her father, a stanch Methodist, a pillar in the church, read the booklet, and the next Sunday his neighbors were astounded to see him at work on his farm. The truth in that tract later brought our sister fully into the faith, and for years she was the only Sabbath-keeper in Washington. Doubtless the young man who timidly gave out the tract never will know until the last day what it accomplished, or that the bright, cheerful look on his face as he gave it out, impressed our sister to look into it to see what it was that he found so much satisfaction in.

Our friends in Wales have had a good experience in selling tracts. They sell even the little one-cent leaflets. The Newport, Monmouthshire, church led out in this. They wanted the people to have the message of the tracts, and wanted them to pay the price so that they would understand that the literature was worth reading. They have sold thousands of tracts, and are still at it.

In an English city, recently, a canvasser distributed copies of a little leaflet on the Sabbath question. One gentleman was so impressed by it that he paid for fifty thousand of the leaflets, and hired our brother to put them out. One was dropped into the letter box of a gentleman, who was much impressed by the truth in the tiny tract. He wrote to the office for permission to reprint, and had fifty thousand copies struck off, and hired a regular hand-bill distributing agency to scatter them. The time has come for the literature to be scattered “like the leaves of autumn.”

W. A. SPICER.