GREAT TRACT WRITERS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 1, 1877

GREAT TRACT WRITERS.

Peter Waldo set to work with his cargo of tracts among the Piedmontese valleys, and from his labors there sprang those Waldensian churches, which, through thirty-five persecutions, held fast the pure truth of Christ, although gashed by the spear of Savoy and scorched by the fagot of Rome. Then came John Wycliffe, the grand tract writer and distributer. One of his tracts carried in the pocket of a nobleman into Bohemia, and lent by him to a man whose name was John Huss, brought him to the knowledge of Jesus. Then came Martin Luther, who wrote a preface to his comment upon the Epistle to the Galatians, and that preface found its way into the heart of a Bedfordshire tinker, named John Bunyan. And John Bunyan wrote a preface to his comment upon the Epistle to the Romans, and it was while reading that preface that John Wesley was convicted of sin. John Wesley was a zealous tract writer and an efficient tract distributer fifty years before the tract society was born. Then Richard Gibbs, an old Puritan doctor, wrote a book, years and years ago, called the “Bruised Reed,” which fell at the right time into the hands of Richard Baxter, and brought him under the enlightening power of the Spirit of God; and then Baxter’s ministry was like the sun in his strength, and he wrote a book called “The Call to the Unconverted,” which continued to speak long after Baxter himself had ceased to speak with human tongue. That “Call to the Unconverted” went preaching on until it fell into the hands of Philip Doddridge, and it was the means of bringing him to a richer faith, and a deeper experience of the things of God. Then Doddridge wrote a book called “The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,” which, just at the critical period in his history, fell into the hands of William Wilberforce and led him to Christ. Wilberforce wrote “Practical Christianity,” which fired the heart of the most famous tract writer the world has known; for who has not heard of Leigh Richmond? He wrote the simple annals of a Methodist girl, and published it under the title of the “Dairyman’s Daughter,” and I should like to know into how many languages that has been translated, and been made of God a power for the spread of truth! The same book on “Practical Christianity,” went to a secluded parish in Scotland; and it found there a young clergyman who was preaching a gospel that he did not know, and it instructed him in the way of God, and he came forth a champion valiant for the truth, until all Scotland rang with the eloquence of Thomas Chalmers. Look at it. Not a flaw in the chain. Richard Gibbs, Richard Baxter, Philip Doddridge, William Wilberforce, Leigh Richmond, Thomas Chalmers—is there not power in a tract?—Everybody’s Paper.