Under Many Flags

by Katharine Scherer Cronk; Elsie Singmaster

Hugh C. Tucker

Not only did he put the Bible into the pulpits and bookcases of Brazil, but its spirit of love and service found expression in the hearts of the people, in parks, schools, and playgrounds.

"No, no, don't stop!" said the man, when Dr. Tucker started to help load the mules. "Read more. Let the others load the animals while I call my neighbors, that you may read to them, too, and tell them what these things mean, for they are new and strange to us."

Every day they met people who asked, "Where are you going, and what is this new book you carry with you?"

"How can these things be?" said one man. "Is it true that so long as two thousand years ago such wonderful things happened and today I hear of them for the first time and even yet my friends have not heard? You are slow about giving the Bible to my people!"

Now Dr. Tucker had thought he was giving the Bible to the people of Brazil just as fast as he could, but he redoubled his efforts. He sent out still more colporteurs. They gathered the people in the public squares of the cities and read and preached to them, and the people listened gladly. Sometimes the colporteurs started out with sacks filled with Bibles and came back with their sacks full of the images the people had been worshiping and had cast away when they read, "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

Dr. Tucker has given more than a million Bibles to Brazil. He presented a Bible to President Prudenti Moraes on his inauguration day. He has found many ways of giving the spirit of the Bible in addition to putting the book into the hands of the people. He does not wish anyone to think that this is a magical book, and that it is enough merely to have it.

When he took Bibles to the sick boatmen down in their poor little mud huts by the river-side, he found they had no one to care for them properly,—there are many thousands of sailors coming into the port of Rio every year,—so Dr. Tucker became the "seamen's friend." He rented a house and made it a Seamen's Home. In one year more than ten thousand sailors came to his Home. Most of them were glad to pay for their meals and beds, but he did not turn any away if they were ill or had no money. There were free beds and free meals for those who needed help, and doctors to care for those who were sick, and employment found for those who were out of work.

While he was preaching in the slums of Rio he found many people who were poor and sick, as there are in all great cities. He went to a young Brazilian doctor and asked him to visit the homes of the poor people in the slums.

The young doctor came back and said, "Why, Dr. Tucker, it is almost enough to make anyone ill just to go into these homes and see how the people live. There are so many dark rooms and so little sunlight, and the houses are very dirty. In almost every home someone is sick." Dr. Tucker remembered how the multitudes came to Jesus and were healed, and so he thought one of the best ways to give more of the Bible to the people was to help those who were sick.