DEAR MR. EDITOR,
With 1903 drawing so rapidly to a close, there is one branch of service to which I would like to call the attention of your readers.
It is only very lately that my own eyes have been opened to its special value and usefulness.
In the month of July a friend of mine proposed that we should visit some of the villages of Westmorland with sheet-almanacs. Another friend pooh-poohed the idea, saying that the almanacs would be stale so late in the year. Undeterred by adverse criticism, my friend completed his plans, and off we went, I feeling very curious as to how the people would take to almanacs that had half run their course.
I confess, to my surprise and gratification, the people took them eagerly, and with evident pleasure, and in many cases immediately hung them on their walls.
On reflection, whilst always being a strong advocate of tract distributing, and still so, I could not help being struck with certain great advantages the sheet-almanac has over the tract or...gospel book. For instance, the tract or book is given. The reading of it may occupy ten minutes; it may be read a second or third time, or read by more than one in the house, but in the vast majority of cases it would probably be placed in a drawer or cupboard, and there lie for a time out of sight and memory.
On the other hand, the sheet-almanac is placed on the kitchen or sitting-room wall, and there it looks the family in the face for a whole year, and catches, by its size, the eye of every visitor. I heard just lately of several members of a family being converted by means of one almanac.
I am sure the almanacs are prepared with great care and prayerfulness, and their plain, arresting texts prove most suitable agents in the hands of a God of abounding mercy for bringing-blessing to souls.
With the advent of 1904 new almanacs will be procurable, and it would well repay me the trouble of writing this appeal if it stirs some of the Lord's people to take up more distinctly this blessed and fruitful branch of service.
I would like your Christian readers to cast their mind's eye over their immediate district.
They know the names of towns and villages of which you and I have never even heard. What a happy thing it would be for them, during 1904, if the Lord tarry so long, to reflect that in every cottage or home there was hung up the printed gospel, catching the eye of all in the house every day of the year! And not only would they have the joy of seeing the people taking the almanac: with pleasure, but they could make them a special subject of prayer throughout the year. I commend this idea to the prayer and practical interest of 'the Lord's people: The last days of December are peculiarly fitted for this service. People are in the mood for that sort of thing, and then when this happy piece of Christian work is finished, there remains a whole year for the distribution of the cheaper and more easily carried tract and gospel book.
May the great Lord of the harvest impress our hearts with these immense but lessening privileges, and give us real courage and zeal to do what we can to forward the work of the gospel.
The year 1904 may be the last that the Lord may leave us here. Whether or not, may we so enter upon it that it may be the happiest and most fruitful. A. J. P.
AM I longing to do impossible great things for Christ, yet at the same time omitting the possible -small things that daily come to my hand? "He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much.”
You have only one life to live. If you had four or five lives, two or three of them might be spent in carelessness. But you have but one only. Every action of that one life gives coloring to your eternity. How important, then, that you spend that life so as to please the Savior, who has done everything for you!