I was often reminded in my journeys of the early pioneers of our country who went through the forests, tomahawk in hand, blazing the trees as a signal of their intended occupancy of the land at some future time. These visits were the Christian pioneer’s way-marks, not blazed on the trees with axe or tomahawk, but blazed on the hearts of men in a state of nature by kind Christian words, and sealed with earnest prayer; while the books and tracts, including many Bibles and Testaments, were deeds of trust to those that faithfully used them; and many by them have secured a title to eternal life.
The books were like Jacob’s well—the digger was gone—but they have quenched the thirst of many a weary traveller on life’s journey, and their smoked pages are still crying, “Ho, every one that thirsteth,” come and partake of the waters of life “without money and without price.” A poor woman who had a small tract given her, on her death-bed had it brought to her, when she kissed it, and said, “This led me to my dear Saviour.”
CHAPTER VII.
I visited an old woman, who told me that soon after she was married some one lent her Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, and that it was the means of the conversion of herself and her husband; that he had died happily some years ago, but she had never been able to get a copy of the book since. I then presented her with one, and she wept for joy. I asked her if she had a Bible; she said, “No;” that they had a Bible when her husband died, but some time after a little school was opened in the neighborhood, and she wanted her four little boys taught to read, but had no books nor any way to get them, and she had to cut her Bible into four parts to make each of them a book, and they soon went to pieces, and she lost her Bible. I then gave her a Bible, and her joy seemed complete.
On another occasion I sent a notice that I would be at a little church in a certain neighborhood to aid them in organizing a Sabbath-school, and to supply the destitute with books. After exhorting for some time, and arranging for the Sabbath-school, I distributed all my stock, and was about to leave.
A young woman came up to me, having just reached the place, and asked me for a book. I told her I had given away all that I had brought with me. She burst into tears, and said, “I left my babe, three weeks old, in the field where my husband was hoeing corn, and walked five miles in my bare feet to get a book; and now I am disappointed.” In a few minutes an old woman who had seen seventy winters came to me with a crutch under one arm, and a cane in the other hand, and told me she had come two miles to get books for her sons, who were raising large families over the mountains, that were as wild as the deers. I returned soon, and gave the necessary supply.
One day a man entered my room wearing a hunting-shirt and moccasins, with a gun in his hand and a long knife hanging to a belt at his side, and asked me if I was the man that gave books to the poor people in the mountains. I told him I was engaged in that business. “Well,” said he, “we live in an out of the way place, where we have neither schools nor preaching; and we met together last Sunday to see if we could not raise a Sunday-school, and teach our children to read, but all the books we could find was one New Testament; and some one said there was a man in F—— that was giving books to the poor, and so I have come to see you about it.” I gave him all the light I could as to forming and conducting a Sunday-school, and added twenty Testaments, with fifty small volumes of Tract Society books, and some tracts. He soon had them all in the bosom of his hunting shirt, and I have seldom seen a happier man.
The next Sabbath the school was started. In six months a church was organized, and soon after a little church built, and a man of God was preaching to them once each month. That bosom full of books was the means God blessed to this result.
On another occasion I stopped over night with a good man, who related to me the following fact.
“A few years ago a minister came to my house late on Saturday night on his way to preach at L——, about thirty miles distant. Finding he could not reach the place in time to meet his appointment, he told me if I would gather in my neighbors, he would preach for us. There were but a few families in all this valley, and so far as I knew, he was the first preacher that ever had been in it, at least he preached the first sermon. I sent my boys out and gathered in my neighbors. At the close of his sermon he gave every one a tract. Among the rest he gave one to a poor widow with a large family, but neither she nor any one of her children knew a letter. She took it home with her without any knowledge of its contents.