The importance of literature
THE IMPORTANCE OF LITERATURE
by D. M. PANTON
Do we realise the extraordinary dynamic of the printed page? Dr. Goodell, of the American Board of Missions, passing through Nicodemia in 1832, having no time to stop, left with a stranger a copy of The Dairyman's Daughter in the Armenian-Turkish language. Seventeen years afterwards he visited Nicodemia, and found a church of more than forty members and a Protestant community of more than two hundred. Dr. Griffith John tells of eight churches in China reared by tracts alone. Sir Bartle Frere, travelling in India, was amazed to find a small town in which the idol shrines and temples were empty, but the townsfolk had been given an old garment by an English resident, in a pocket of which, forgotten, lay a Gospel portion with eight or nine tracts in the vernacular.
The printed page never flinches, never shows cowardice; it is never tempted to compromise; it never tires; never grows disheartened; it travels cheaply, and requires no hired hall; it works while we sleep; it never loses its temper; and it works long after we are dead. The printed page is a visitor which gets inside the home, and stays there; it always catches a man in the right mood, for it speaks to him only when he is reading it; it always sticks to what it has said and never answers back; and it is bait left permanently in the pool.
Another powerful reason for using literature is that the printed page will reach those otherwise utterly unreachable, and may be the only chance they will ever have of eternal life. Someone once gave four copies of H. L. Hasting's lecture on the inspiration of the Bible to four infidels at different times. All four were converted and became ministers of the Gospel in four different denominations. Many decades ago a lady gave some leaflets to two actors. One of the actors, led by this tract to attend church, and so becoming converted, was Dr. George Lorimer, pastor of Tremont Temple, Boston. Through his influence, Russell H. Conwell was led into the ministry. Thus the Baptist Temple in Philadelphia together with the work of the Tremont Temple, and the personal influence of these two notable pulpit speakers, is traceable to one little leaflet in the hand of a woman.
Luther wrote a pamphlet on Galatians which falling into Bunyan's hands led him to Christ.
The printed page is deathless: you can destroy one, but the press can produce millions: as often as it is martyred, it is raised: the ripple started by a given tract can widen down the centuries until it beats upon the great White Throne. Its very mutilation can be its sowing. When Leigh Richmond was once travelling by coach, passengers got out to walk and he began to give a tract to every wayfarer he met. One of his fellow-travellers smiled derisively as he saw a tract treated contemptuously by the receiver, torn in two, and thrown on the road. A puff of wind carried it over a hedge into a hayfield where a number of haymakers were seated and soon they were listening to the tract; read by one of their number who had found it. He was observed carefully joining together the two parts which had been torn asunder, but were held together by a thread. The reader was led to reflection and prayer, and subsequently became an earnest Christian and tract distributor himself; and of the rest, within twelve months three became active Christian workers.
Nor let us forget the enormous electric voltage prayer can put behind the tract. God's message enters doors locked to the evangelist; it can be enclosed in every letter; its economy places it within the reach of all; it preaches in the factory, the railway carriage, the kitchen; it visits the hospital ward and the workhouse, and whispers in the ear of the dying. For prayer—that is, God—is behind it.
