The importance of having good reading cannot be overestimated. As one goes from place to place the lack of this is felt. Few Christians are without a weekly or daily newspaper, yet again and again one finds not one good helpful Christian paper in such homes, and the prophet's word might be used, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."
It is true the Word of God must have first place in a Christian home. We believe where the Book of Books is valued and studied as it should be by us, anything that helps to further understanding its precious contents will be hailed with great delight.
Eternity alone will fully reveal the loss to many who now heap up riches upon the earth and fail to lay up treasures in heaven. Oh, how many a child of God we have heard bless the Lord for the written ministry. It goes where the voice cannot go, and will speak when we are gone. Many have been brought to God through reading some gospel incident recording the conversion of others. Upon no subject should we be more awake. What a field we have in the home and among our neighbors to serve the Lord Jesus. These fields lay open everywhere. What are we doing in this respect?
What one tract did!
A woman whose name has been forgotten dropped a tract in the way of a very wicked man. He picked up the tract and read it and it was the means of his conversion, and through him multitudes were brought to Christ.
Who can measure the influence of one little tract put into the hands of an unconverted person?
An aged Christian a short time ago came into a tract depot and bought a few dollars' worth of tracts, and said, with tears coursing down his cheeks, that a neighbor living near by for nine years had just died and that he had never so much as given him a tract or paper setting forth the Gospel before him, or warning him of his danger, and now he had died suddenly and he feared he was lost.
O, beloved, what are we doing? What a thought for us? One soul gone into eternity-lost forever-whom we knew on earth!
Often there are difficulties in the way of speaking to people about eternal realities, when one gospel tract, of but one or few pages, handed on with a kind word, or silently, or sent through the post, could do the work. It can reach the king's palace, it will enter the jail and prison, the borne of the poor, and stay for weeks, months and years, and turn tip in time and deliver its message true and faithful just the same as it could the day it left the kind and thoughtful hand that passed it on.
Thousands upon thousands can rise up and testify that a tract was the means of their conversion. Thousands will tell us they have been restored from paths of sin and vice to that of peace and righteousness by the truth carried by these silent messengers of God.
Others have been cherished comforted and stimulated in their Christian lives by them; and, again, what light and truth they have carried to people and homes, making the Bible a New Book to them.