THE GOSPEL IN TRACTS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA · Sep 6, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 36.

THE GOSPEL IN TRACTS.

IN these days of busy people and much reading, in these days when seed should be sown beside all waters, in these days when seed must be scattered as the leaves of autumn—sown morning and evening—too much stress can not be laid upon the importance of the leaflet and tract. They should be in all languages, and on hand for all occasions. They contain the truth in brief, pointed lessons, comprehensible to any one who can read. They often give a grain of comfort to a troubled mind, and often start an aimless mind on a train of thought that leads to a desire for further truth and usefulness in life. A missionary of experience says:

The opportunity for the work of the printed page in China has never been as great as it is now, when she is awakening from her long sleep. Japanese political and social literature is having a wide field in China, and the people are eager, hungry to read anything that relates to Western learning and methods. It is the great opportunity in the history of the evangelization of China for the tract societies to spread far and wide the Christian message, and I hope that it can be vigorously seized.

The Chinese and Japanese regard Christianity as a phase of "Western learning and methods," and it is important that they receive the truth in regard to it, rather than to be given the popular perversions of Christian doctrine, or to be left with the idea that Christianity is properly represented in business exploit or military aggrandizement.

A Congregational missionary, in a recent address concerning tract work, is quoted as follows:

Among my earliest recollections are the Sunday afternoons when, as a little boy, I ran by the side of my mother, and helped her in the distribution of tracts, which were carried to the humble cottages of the lowly. It was the only reading they had, and our visits were looked forward to with pleasant anticipation. Tracts have had a greater influence upon the world than many people imagine. The tract society has a great future before it, if it will only seize the opportunity. Two new fields of great magnitude are open. First, the West, with thousands of small places too small for the church and the Sunday-school. Here are thousands of people cut off from everything to divert the mind, with neither lectures nor shows, and, in many cases, not even having newspapers. Some time ago I had a letter from Montana. A good woman had given a freighter a bundle of literature to scatter on his way among the lonely ranchers. One bundle was given to a woman, who afterward wrote to say, "The papers you have sent saved my life; I was about to commit suicide when I received the reading. I read every scrap, then re-read. I thank God for your timely gift." I received a letter from a young lady who had gone to New Mexico for her health. She says the spiritual destitution is deplorable. The nearest church is twenty-five miles away, and the service is in German. The English-speaking church is about the same distance in another direction, and there is preaching once a month. She tries to gather a Sunday-school, but many are afraid of her on account of her lung trouble. Yet here, and in a thousand localities, is where the distribution of tracts would most certainly reap a rich reward. There is no other way of reaching these places.

Referring to the vast settlements of foreigners in our Northwestern States and Canada, another missionary says:

A great opening, and one of incalculable importance, is the new frontier, forming at the rate of nearly a million a year of every tribe and kindred and tongue. It must be remembered that thousands of these new-comers, when they leave their homes, leave their religion behind them. It will take a long time to train men and women to preach to these people, but the tract society can reach them by preaching in every language, through tracts that will bring the Gospel to aliens in the language in which they were born. The very sight of the simple Gospel message in their own language will touch their hearts. Many of these people are homesick past belief. The breaking away from native land is heart-breaking, and the reading of one of these little comforters would bring great joy to many a weary heart. No more important work ever came to our people than this, to Christianize the multitudes that are now thronging to our shores. It needs a faith that believes in casting bread upon the waters that will be seen only after many days, but whose return is nevertheless sure. What we sow, that shall we also reap.