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ENCOURAGING WORDS FROM EARNEST WORKERS

Manitoba.

DEAR BRO. RUSSELL:—Just a word to say we are all well and are still rejoicing in the glorious Truth and endeavoring to overcome through the merits of our dear Lord and Redeemer, who has bought us and loves us.

Our time is at present all taken up with things at home, and this seems to be the Master’s will according to our judgment.

Find enclosed a draft for $200.00 which is for the Master and for his work to be used as he may direct. We are his stewards in those things. He can trust some of his saints with this world’s goods, knowing that they are in harmony with himself, and as he wants, they are perfectly willing to assist in any way they can in his work. So, dear Brother, just use this as your judgment may direct for the Master.

With kindest love to Sister Russell and yourself, in which Sister Webb joins, I am yours in the glorious hope, W. J. WEBB.

[Our dear Bro. W., in addition to the financial aid he is able to give to the Lord’s work, has several times so arranged his affairs as to give some months to the Colporteur work, in which Sister W. also joined, taking their two young boys along and sending them to school in whatever town they chose for the work. The little fellows gladly helped in the distribution of tracts and delivery of books, being interested in the truth to the extent that their young minds can comprehend it. God bless the household where his name is enshrined in every heart.—EDITOR.]

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California.

DEAR BROTHER RUSSELL:—I must write to tell you how exceedingly interested I have been in MILLENNIAL DAWN, Vol. III., which I spied out in a bookstore in Los Angeles. I enclose 50 cents, for which I would like you to send me at once Vols. I and II of the series. I would also much like a sample or two of your paper—ZION’S WATCH TOWER—for if it is what I expect it to be, after DAWN Vol. III., I shall at once become a subscriber. Volume III., THY KINGDOM COME, is already circulating among my friends.

Yours in the waiting for Christ’s Kingdom,

Pastor First Baptist Church.

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New York.

DEAR BROTHER RUSSELL:—Enclosed you will find an order for twenty books, together with money order in payment for the same. I arrived in Buffalo on Friday evening. Cannot tell just how long I shall be here, but not a day longer than is necessary to get my clothing in order for winter. I had a pleasant and fairly profitable canvass in W__________. It is a small place, with only about 650 inhabitants, but I found a few precious souls, a few who, it seems to me, are all ready for the truth. I sold a cloth bound set of DAWNS to the president of the library association to be put in the circulating library there. Nearly all my sales there were of full sets. I did not have books enough to fill them all, and am to go back again.

I called on the Presbyterian minister, a man of about fifty-five or sixty years, I think. I said, I called to show you MILLENNIAL DAWN, and before I got a chance to say another word, he said, “I am glad you came, I have always time to look at anything that treats on that subject.” Then he took the books and spent an hour and a half looking at them. I could not get away. He read the preface and table of contents, and then extracts here and there through the books, asking me questions now and then, as to what your books taught about this or that. At last he said, “I believe this will prove to be the most valuable and reliable work I have on these questions, and I am going to write you a line with regard to it that I want you to use here in W__________, and in any place else where it will be of any help to you; and I hope you will urge every member of my congregation to buy the books. I wish you might leave them in every house in town.” He then wrote a paper which reads as follows:

“Having examined very carefully the books, MILLENNIAL DAWN, by Charles T. Russell, it gives me great pleasure to recommend it as a reliable and profitable treatment of its subject, and I would advise any one interested in and desiring to study the subject to purchase this work. Pastor Presbyterian Church__________.”

Also the principal of the school there says his father, a Baptist minister, has the books, and values them very highly. It seems to me strange that any can read the books, and value them, and still retain their positions as pastors or as members of any denomination.

I believe that I am improving a little in my work, and I do hope I shall learn to be a good worker. I do not like to do inferior work. I want to be able to sell as many books as other colporteurs do.

I wish I could tell you half how precious the blessed truths are becoming to me, but I cannot. I read them over and over again, and they are like the Bible itself, in that they never grow old.

Yours in the harvest work, MRS. M. PECK.

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Louisiana.

DEAR BROTHER RUSSELL:—The package containing Teacher’s Bible and DAWN, Vol. III., came duly, also your welcome letter of the 20th inst. Volume Third is far beyond what I could either ask or think. The Teacher’s Bible is all that is claimed for it.

As I look back now and view the way the Lord has led me, I can praise him with my whole heart for sending unworthy me this glorious harvest message, and also in giving me an ear to hear it. It is favor upon favor indeed. In looking back I realize how apt, yea, almost sure, I would have been, ere this, to have been caught in some of the many snares of deceptive errors that, according to predictions, abound at this time, had it not been that the Good Shepherd had reached out a helping hand in the shape of the WATCH TOWER publications just in time.

My dear Brother in Christ, I must tell you, for your encouragement, that I am striving daily to put off the old man and to put on the new. I have nothing to boast of, though, for I fail so often; but my full confidence is in Christ and the robe that he provides, and our Father has promised to give power to the faint, and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. I am striving to abide in him by abiding in his word, that I may bear some fruit. Many thanks for that timely article on fruit-bearing in the May TOWER.

I shall do whatever my hands find to do, praying earnestly that the Lord of the harvest may open an effectual door for the harvest message among my own countrymen according to the flesh, that they also may be sanctified by the Truth, and made ready for the glorious consummation of the hope.

Praying God’s blessing upon you and yours, your brother in Christ, CHARLES STRAND.

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— February 1, 1892 —