MISSIONARY WORK by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 19, 1878

MISSIONARY WORK.

By James White

The tract and missionary work is of great importance. This branch of labor in the cause must not be neglected. The field is broad, the work is vast, and those who labor in word and doctrine are few. Much will have to be accomplished through the press. A thousand men and women are wanted to go forth to circulate our publications, and to read sermons in private houses and school-houses. We are preparing a series of discourses for this purpose, twenty-five or thirty in number, which will cover the grounds of our faith and hope. They will each contain about the same amount of matter as one of our sixteen-page tracts.

Here will be a field of usefulness for at least one thousand good readers and missionary workers. These very sermons in tract form will be just the reading for the missionary workers to circulate.

The T. and M. Societies generally have empty treasuries, and most of them are in debt to our offices of publication. And we suggest that it is their first duty to pay these debts. A new pioneer paper will have to be published near the north line of what used to be the slave States, but not in the year 1879. Times are hard. The societies are in debt, and there are tons of reading matter at the offices that should be put in circulation. These works are just what the times demand, and they should be circulated.

1. The History of the Sabbath, by Elder J. N. Andrews, is packed up at the Office at Battle Creek, not less than three thousand copies. The shelves and boxes which hold this invaluable work should be emptied before January, 1880. Five hundred at least should be shipped to England to be circulated in the Old World wherever the English language is read.

2. The Spirit of Prophecy. There are now three volumes of this work in print, and the fourth will be printed the coming winter. There are seven pamphlets, and will be ten in all, containing a choice selection of the matter in the last three volumes. The volumes should be in every Seventh-day Adventist family in the land, and where they are not able to purchase they should be held by the church as a sort of circulating library to be worn out in the hands of candid readers. In every young church and young, unorganized body of Sabbath-keepers a full set of these books should be properly located to go the rounds from house to house. And the pamphlets should be located in like manner in those places where economy may suggest a smaller outlay of means. The presence of the writer of these works upon the speakers' stand before the thousands at our camp-meetings is regarded as a powerful means of removing prejudice, but second in importance in gaining this object is the reading of her works. The field is opening before us to that degree that her personal labors can extend to only a very small portion of it. The books must do the rest, and are the proper representatives of the work to which God has called her. There is important work for the T. and M. Societies during the year 1879.

We might mention other works that are burdening our shelves, which, if circulated, would accomplish great good, and the money received from them would pay debts at the banks on which the Association is paying interest at the rate of ten per cent per annum. These debts must be paid. The T. and M. Societies must pay up. At these times we have to figure closely and move carefully.

Bro. Matteson wishes to publish a monthly in Norway in the Danish language; but while the ADVENT TIDENDE is barely self-sustaining we judge this not advisable. We therefore offer the TIDENDE to the Scandinavian people in Europe as well as in America, post-paid, for $1.00 a year. When the TIDENDE shall be fully supported by American patronage, and the cause in Europe has gained sufficient strength, a monthly should be started in Denmark or Norway. Another season it is expected that there will be one tent in Norway and one in Denmark.

Let us all do what we can in spreading abroad the truth for this time, not forgetting, by the way, the injunction of the apostle, “Owe no man anything.” J. W.