This system of labor developes the dormant power of the church. Hundreds whose influence for good was never felt outside of their own family circle, have become successful laborers in this heaven-born work. Many of them are now able ministers of the New Testament, who would have remained “hewers of wood and drawers of water” had it not been for this system of doing good. I call to mind the names of a score of men who have been brought into the work of the ministry either directly or indirectly by this system of colportage.
Shall a work of so much power for good, and so much needed, be unsupported? The price of one ocean steamer would support it efficiently over the whole land for one year.
The issuing of this history is what the writer never intended to do, or allow others to do while he lived. He has prepared it, if he knows his own heart, purely with the hope it may do good. He trusts it may suggest to some whose supreme desire is to honor Christ in the salvation of men, a way by which they may gain the blessing of those who “turn many to righteousness,” and who shall shine, above the brightness of the firmament, “as the stars for ever and ever.” That this may be the gracious reward of him who writes, and of all who read this book, is the fervent prayer of THE PIONEER COLPORTEUR IN THE ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS.
NOTE.--The labors of this single-hearted, devoted, and fearless servant of Christ were at first secured for one year to explore some of these wild mountain gorges. Having been continued five years as above, they were extended southward in the Alleghany range, and at length over the whole states of Virginia and North Carolina, till he had had the coöperation of three hundred colporteurs, and their visits had reached five hundred thousand families, over forty thousand of whom attended no place of evangelical worship. Usually they read the Scriptures, conversed, and prayed in each family; and they gathered into Sabbath-schools seventy thousand children, many of whom received their first book and learned their first lesson through this agency. Such wonderful effusions of the Holy Spirit as in some instances above recorded, were rarely witnessed, but these continued labors were evidently owned in the conversion of multitudes of souls. As the writer of the above sketches, now a commissioned minister of Christ, has well said, “It must have been the work of God, who causes weak things to confound the mighty. It was God who led the way, and raised up men and means, and guided his servants, and blessed them with his presence; and to him be all the glory.”