Work for Home Missionaries.
By Editor
WHEN the SIGNS was started, calls were made for lists of names of those who would read the paper six months on trial. It was understood that the paper should be stopped at the end of the six months; but at the close of the half-volume of the SIGNS, the publishers decided not to stop all these papers, for they were receiving letters daily from these trial subscribers that they were just becoming interested in the SIGNS, which led them to search the Bible with a pleasure never before experienced. The persons who have sent papers to their friends and acquaintances have been urged to visit them and ascertain if they are reading the paper with interest. If they are, the publishers should know it. If not, the paper should be discontinued. But this should not be the only object of these visits, nor the chief object. Here is a glorious opportunity for missionary work. How many deeply interested ones there may be who have become partially convinced, but do not yet see the whole line of Bible truth; who have become thoroughly aroused to their lost and helpless condition, but have not yet found peace in their Saviour; who need some earnest Christian brother or sister to come to them in love, and point out to them some Bible requirement, or some blessed Bible promise. While it is the privilege of each to give a word of cheer to the desponding, of faith to the doubting, and of instruction to those seeking for light, it is the duty of all to force their views upon no one, but to be "ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you, a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear." That there are those who are earnestly inquiring for light and duty, and who feel that they need encouragement and instruction, may be seen by the following extracts from a letter which, although a private letter, we take the liberty to publish. To the writer we would cite the words of the apostle James: "If any man of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." It may be some over a year ago since a gentleman called and wanted me to take the SIGNS OF THE TIMES on trial. I was not much interested at first; for I had a kind of horror of anything that was all religious. I have been to Sunday-school more or less all my life, and read the Bible some, and my teachers have explained it to me; but I never read it with the attention and understanding that I have since I have been reading your valuable paper. I see things in a new light; but Oh! how far I am from understanding its truths: how far from my Saviour. How many, many times since I have been reading your paper have I taken my Bible and compared the two; and then wept bitter tears over my own sins. I have no one to go to for help, my mother was a Christian but she died when I was very young, and I do not feel like going to a minister because I am but slightly acquainted and rather diffident about going to strangers, so I am alone in the dark, searching for truth, without a hand stretched forth to help. No one knows my feelings on this subject. I am a mother with two dear little girls to bring up and instruct. Oh! how I need a strong arm to lean upon, how I need help from God but know not how to seek it. I want to instill into their minds the knowledge I now feel the need of myself, so that when they grow to womanhood they will not have to think as I do, if I had only had Christian parents I might have been different. What a responsibility rests on us parents, when we look at it in the right light. Every hour of my life I feel the need of aid I cannot call for, for it all looks dark before me, yet whichever way I turn these words keep haunting me, "Find your Saviour and be saved."