A NEW USE FOR TRACTS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 27, 1901

A NEW USE FOR TRACTS.

A NEW ENGLAND sea-captain made a voyage to India. While in port there a wealthy Malay merchant came on board, who asked him if he had any tracts he could part with. The captain was surprised at such a request from a heathen, and asked him:—

“What do you want with English tracts? You can not read them.”

“True; but I have use for them, nevertheless,” said the Malay, thru his interpreter. “Whenever one of your country or of England calls on me to trade I put a tract in his way and watch him. If he reads it with interest I infer that he will not cheat me. If he throws it aside with contempt or with an oath of profanity, I have no more to do with him. I can not trust him.”

Little as this man knew of Christianity, he had learned that a man who did not reverence the truth of God was not careful for the rights of man, and was a man to be avoided. And he had learned to distinguish between those who reverenced the things of God, and those for whose sake the name of God is blasphemed among the heathen, and by whose misconduct Christianity is misrepresented and disgraced.—Common People.