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The Value of a Tract

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Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 13, 1879

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 5, No. 7.

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The Value of a Tract.

A lady belonging to the Society of Friends was traveling by railroad, when a man in a state of intoxication came into the carriage and threw himself on the seat immediately in front of her. After some pitiable displays of folly he dropped asleep. Her heart was drawn out in pity for the wretched man, and lifting up a silent prayer to Him who giveth the increase, she gently slipped a Gospel tract into the pocket of his overcoat.
Years after she paid a visit to a friend at a village in a Western State, and, as was her custom, she took a handful of tracts and went out one evening to walk, with a design of scattering the truth as she had opportunity. In the outskirts of the village she saw a man seated at the door of a small farmhouse reading a tract. She went up to him and asked if he would accept one of those she was distributing. "Gladly," he said, "for under God I owe my salvation to a tract which told me of the grace of God in Christ. This is the tract," he added, presenting that which he had been reading. "It is very precious to me, and once in a while I take it out of my desk and read it over again."
As she took the tract out of his hand she read her own name on it. "Where did you get this tract?" she asked. "I might well be ashamed to tell you," he said; "and yet I am willing to take shame to myself that my Lord may be glorified." And then he related to her what his manner of life had been, and how, when returning from a visit, he had become so intoxicated as to be oblivious of all that passed on the way.
His wife, in attending to his soiled clothes, had found that tract in the pocket of his overcoat. How it came there he could not tell. But, mortified and filled with remorse at the thought of his folly, he had read the tract, which made known to him the faithful saying, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. "And," said he, "He has saved me, the chief of them."