SETTING out from Garanhuns with Mr. Gillanders for a companion, a good load of Scriptures and tracts, a few pots and pans, and a pick-ax, our first objective was Aguas-Bellas―a town about a hundred miles away. Here three good meetings were held, and at the close of the last one, in response to my appeal, seven men and women quietly rose to their feet as a sign of their acceptance of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour.
To my dismay, I found that an intimation sent to another place some seventy miles beyond had not been forwarded, so that nobody would be expecting us. To remedy this somewhat, I purchased a dozen loudexplosive rockets at Aguas Bellas. As towards nightfall we neared the little community of Bananeiras, I sent up my rockets, which echoed and re-echoed over the surrounding forest-clad hills, and created quite a sensation―not to say a scare―through that countryside. Result: we had a crowded meeting that night among the thirty converts and their families and neighbors, the visible fruit of our previous colportage work and last year’s visit. After another meeting among these fine folk early next morning, we pushed on, and for another week or two we continued in the same direction, leaving Scriptures and tracts all along the trail, and holding many little meetings, mostly of the farmhouse order. We visited the wonderful falls of Paulo Affonso, 250 feet high, on the great Sao Francisco river, one of the least known of the world’s wonders, and after covering many hundreds of miles of rough country we eventually reached the city of Joazeiro, in the State of Ceara.
Joazeiro is one of the largest inland cities of Northern Brazil, a regular jungle town of thousands of mud huts. It is like a kingdom within a kingdom, and is ruled and fortified by a preposterous priest who claims Divine authority and attributes for all his strange and perilous pretensions. He has completely fascinated and fanaticized all that part of Brazil, and is worshipped as a miraculous saint. Famed far and wide, he draws many thousands of poor, ignorant, ragged, and travel-worn pilgrims to this, Mecca of Brazil. There is neither constitution nor law in Joazeiro, for the very Government fears this priest, and nobody can buy or sell without his consent. It was clearly a dangerous place for Gospel workers, and this was to be the first attempt to pierce its walls with the Word of God. At this point we were joined for a while by Senhor Antao, our faithful colporteur; so, after prayer was made, we divided the city up between us, and half-tremblingly launched out. Within ten minutes I had sold a Bible in the first house entered. It was imperative to work as briskly and unobtrusively as possible, for the danger was only too evident. Nevertheless, it is doubtful if we should have escaped alive or intact if much prayer had not been made. God’s hand covered us, and only when we had practically finished all we had set out to do, and sold about twenty-five Bibles and Testaments and many Gospels, did the storm break, and I was brutally ordered by one of the priest’s cut-throats to clear out of the place within two hours. “How dare you sell these new-sect books in this holy city?” he shouted.
A printed handbill soon appeared, directed against us, and one of the chief men in the place, a strong apoplectic Catholic, created an uproar in the hotel which formed our temporary headquarters. The situation was alarming, and I might easily have been torn to pieces by the ignorant rabble. Happily, my companions were still at work in another part of the city, ignorant of all this, and in less than half an hour I had so cooled down my hot-headed antagonist that he apologized and wanted to buy a Bible. Strange to say, in another town not twenty miles away, we were so well and so kindly received by the inhabitants that we had more demands for the Bibles than we had books with us to supply―our relay of Scriptures being in another city 30 miles distant.
Leaving the benighted state of Ceara, we hurtled along in the Ford through a lonely big forest with few inhabitants, and soon ascended the great divide which separates that state from the more westerly one of Piauhy. We had a very hard time of it that first afternoon, climbing up the rugged tracks of the great Ariripe Plateau.
My companion had more nerve―and youth―than I possessed, so he took the wheel, while I walked on ahead, far up the precipitous road, to keep an eye on the luggage and carriers, and mend the road. Whenever I heard the old Ford groaning and roaring far away down the hill, it became the occasion for specially earnest prayer―as very often happened on the journey―and when the headlights of the car began at last to appear, an hour or two later, great was my relief and joy.
Soon we were keenly on the lookout for some place where we could pass the night. Naturally, we were very tired and hungry, too, and every fitful firefly in imagination was transformed into some desirable sheltering hut, for our radiator was far too dry and dirty for us to contemplate with satisfaction the idea of another camp in the forest that night, with radiator soup and―ugh!―radiator tea.
Darkness falls very rapidly in these latitudes, and soon we had to reduce speed to avoid losing ourselves in the enfolding jungle.
Swinging round one of the numerous and abrupt curves in the forest track, quite suddenly we came upon one of the most bizarre scenes I can record. A large, high-pitched, thatch-roofed house (if such it could be called), open to the wind on three sides, seemed to promise poor accommodation―but the very quaint appearance of the large group of its inmates, lit up by the strong light of our car, gave good promise of an interesting time. Three or four men of rather ruddy and fair complexion―for Brazil― whose bearded faces beamed with good nature, and about the same number of picturesquely attired women and some few children, some of them with white sheets over their heads because of the cold, gave us a warm-hearted reception, and soon helped us to unload the car and make ready to pass the night. A homely meal was prepared of mandioca-root flour, sweet potato, and salt meat, and by that time we were quite one of the family, heartily laughing at each other’s humorisms, one of their young men being the source of much innocent amusement by his clever mimicry.
Supper over, I broached the matter of a meeting to welcoming ears, and let them into the mystery of the lantern we carried, The excitement became intense among old and young: it was such a great and unheard of thing in those wilds. The lantern was vowed to be the very latest and most wonderful invention of the civilized world, and somehow or other they soon managed to rig up a screen with an old towel of doubtful hue, which had evidently been used for every other purpose than its ostensible one.
The subject chosen was “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and the audience seemed to have as much to say about the pictures as the showman himself; but as it was all done in a respectful and intensely interesting manner, no objection was made. Nevertheless, I was enabled to finish with a little talk in a quieter mood, and to reply to a few pertinent questions from my rugged-looking audience.
It was quite late ere our new friends would allow us to turn in, but as it was a fine night, with no wind, we slept soundly till daybreak.
While preparing to push on I was approached by a young man of the previous night’s audience, who could read fairly well, and who keenly wanted a New Testament. Of course, we decided to let him have one, but for his own sake, human nature being what it is, especially among the gipsies, we did not give it to him, as we could have done. We therefore obtained our purpose, and the man his New Testament, by swapping hoes―his was a little less dilapidated than the one we carried―to straighten up the hills and holes en route. We also stipulated strongly that the book was to be read aloud to all, and as our gipsy friends are pretty sure to keep him to his promise, well, something is going to happen some day in that far-away forest!
We were just well on our way west, when right across our path stood a fine-looking young woman, with a colored scarf tied over her hair, and two children by her side. She, too, had been one of the overnight’s congregation, for several families had been present. We pulled up the car smartly, and smilingly she presented each of us with a lovely red rose. Thanking her warmly, we were about to move on when she hesitatingly ventured to ask me for a sheet of writing paper. Surprised at the request, I managed to find the article among our luggage, and gave it to her; but she handed it back again, saying, “Oh, sir, will you please write me out a prayer for a woman that is a sinner to pray?”
Taking her just where I found her, I complied by writing out in a clear, bold hand: “Oh, God, be merciful to me, a sinner, for Jesus Christ my Saviour’s sake, Amen!” And I gave her a Gospel.
Then we rode on into the forest.
Travel now became very difficult, and the country was more thinly populated, with towns a hundred miles apart, but we rarely failed to have a meeting of some kind every day. We used our lantern to good effect from time to time, showing slides of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” and Old Testament pictures, which furnished excellent occasion for teaching the Truth, especially the concluding picture―Moses and the serpent―which never fails to drive home God’s plan of salvation. In one little township, a rendezvous of the terrible bandit, Lampedo, we took the place by guile, offering to give a free lantern lecture. The whole village turned up to what they expected to be a cinema show, and heard a full Gospel Message instead.
We were soon in forest and jungle land with a vengeance, and the going was very heavy at times. Our car resembled a mowing machine for several hundred miles, and the amount of stuff we plowed up by the way each day would suffice to cook a good meal. It was traveling by faith, for the trail was out of sight, completely hidden by forest growth, which was sometimes as high, and higher, than the car itself. Many a night we spent in these lonely tiger-infested forests, though a good campfire ensured a quiet time. Some of the hill-climbs seemed almost impossible, making us feel badly the need of more horse-power than our gallant old Ford provided, and several times we needed the strong arms of a dozen men and youths to hoist us up bodily over the rocks and chasms of these rarely traversed regions; but wherever we went, mountain top or valley, forest or desert, there the Word was preached and the Bible left in the hands of the people.
Once we found ourselves benighted in a dense forest, with no water to cook our evening meal, and weary of radiator tea―a common resource―whilst it was far too dark to see the character of the country passed through. At length a glimmer of a fire was seen among the forest trees, and a closer examination revealed a little mud hut with somebody in it. After sundown these country folk will very rarely open their doors, or even reply to any questions from passing travelers, for bandits are far too frequent these days. On this occasion, however, the invisible inmates received our pot and rice over the top of the barred log door, and cooked us a badly needed meal. We passed the night under the lean-to thatch outside, and early next morning beheld the faces of our hosts. They were three lonely women, and very soon we had a grand opportunity of preaching to them. Rarely have I experienced such glad attention to God’s Good News as in that little log hut.
At last, after nearly 1300 miles of travel, we struck a bit of civilization again in the city of Floriano, on the banks of the big Parnahyba River, which divides the two states of Piauhy and Maranhao. Here we were delighted to find a small Baptist congregation of very real and well-taught converts, though they rarely receive a pastoral visit. In the whole vast state of Piauhy, as large as Great Britain and Ireland, there are only three native pastors and one missionary. Throughout our whole journey we came across only three small Christian congregations, although these fields are already “white unto harvest.”
In Floriano we made a careful canvass of the city, street by street and house by house, selling about sixty Bibles and Testaments, and many Gospels, and having many interesting conversations with the people, who received us well. We finished up with a splendid and inspiring meeting of several hundred people, many of whom came straight from the Catholic Church (where special services were being held to worship the Virgin Mary, whose month it was), to attend our gathering. One felt the Truth was going home. All this so stirred up the local priest that he sent a man who threw a burning Bible at us. Then he prepared a vitriolic manifesto, and sent it to the printer’s that it might be ready to broadcast through the city as soon as we were well out of the way. It was a terrible production, that might even have made an Anglo-Catholic blush for shame, and I wish that space would permit me to reproduce it integrally, as a sample of the Christianity after which, they hanker. I will, however, merely translate several paragraphs of this Catholic Apostolic (?) production.
“CATHOLICS, AWAKE!”
“It seems that the gates of Hell have been burst, and that legions of demons there detained have been scattered over this city, and all over our beloved Piauhy, in order to pervert souls.
“We are informed that there are going about among us two pseudo Englishmen, emissaries of the fatal heresy of Protestantism, engaged in a subtle, secret, infamous, and audacious propaganda to de-Christianize our country!
“They are sellers of false Bibles of Protestant origin labeled as Catholic.
“Catholics of Floriano! Repel with dignity these intruders, enemies of our faith, our families, and our traditions; enemies also of our free country.
“People of God! Vote a solemn contempt for these carriers of accursed heresy, mercenary sellers of false books; not receiving them into your houses, avoiding their friendship.
“Burn the books which in good faith you may have bought; thus their diabolic propaganda among us will be of no effect.
“TO THE FIGHT! TO THE FIGHT!”
It is difficult to imagine the mentality of a man capable of writing such inflammable rubbish. Into such dense dark jungles Rome leads its victims. Unhappily for the intentions of the reverend canon, the printer employed by him was a good friend of our host, and he ran across the road and surprised us with a copy of the priest’s bombshell, just wet from the press. “I shall earn enough with this to buy a Bible!” he exclaimed, and he proved as good as his word.
We were bound to leave that afternoon, and had only two or three hours to spare. It proved sufficient for me to write off a counter-bulletin, in the same form as the priest’s, to be scattered through the city as soon as the priest had launched his bolt at our absent heads. The rejoinder was largely Scriptural, and briefly read as follows:
“UM CONTO DE (₤25).
“The undersigned, British subject, of London, England, employed by the Bible Societies, which are not affiliated with any religious denomination, in view of the bulletin published by the vicar of Floriano, so full of inexactitudes and injuries, herewith offers the sum of Urn Conto de (₤25), if it can be proved that anything in the books we have sold in this city is not equally to be found in the priest’s own Bible.
“What is the motive of this conspiracy of the modern clergy in depriving us of our undeniable right, and our solemn obligation to read the Word of God for ourselves? Why so much fear and clamor? Is it because the vicar’s own Bible contains many such passages as the following?”―then came a striking series of Bible quotations, re the sin of idolatry, concerning the ONE Saviour and Sacrifice; that grace is free and full, and that the bishops should be married men; and other topics, concluding with the remark, “All this is in the priest’s own Bible; hence the reason of his interesting bulletin, for which I thank him, and which I shall take to England as an exuberant proof, not of the good education and courtesy of the illustrious sons of this progressive and emancipated city, which. I gladly acknowledge, but of the ecclesiastical intellect and the moral character of a man who styles himself a minister of God.
“Meanwhile, the ₤25 are at the disposal of the vicar or anybody else who cares to accept the challenge.
“(Signed) FREDERICK C. GLASS,
“GARANHUNS,
“9th May, 1928.”
On our journey we varied our itinerary somewhat in order to include several other cities (we canvassed thirty-two in all), and considering the terrible poverty abounding after three successive years of drought, our sales of Scriptures were good, little opposition was met with, and we even sold a Bible to an aged Catholic priest, He was a trifle suspicious, however, and asked Mr. Gillanders to what religion he belonged. “To the religion of the Holy Scriptures,” was the wise reply. The priest made no rejoinder.
Many other meetings were held, one being in the open air, after dark, at the close of a village fair. Here again the lantern proved of the greatest value. One young man was so impressed that he bought a number of Testaments to sell again.
In another place a woman handed over all her long-treasured and beloved idols, some of which were of real value, that we might carry away and destroy them. But enough. I have said sufficient to show that in the faraway jungles of Brazil, the old time Gospel has still its attraction and charm for all who are sincere at heart, and humble before God.
Of course, we had our troubles—broken springs, burnt bearings, etc., and heavy expense; but it was well worth it all a thousand times.
Our total sales were about 120 Bibles, 280 Testaments, and many hundreds of Gospels.