Tract Scramble

On one occasion the Rev. John Townsend and his daughter, later known as Sister Abigail, were on their way by train to a distant village where he was to hold a meeting. While seated in the carriage, they were busy looking over their tracts and arranging them in packages. Suddenly the train stopped, and Mr. Townsend looked out of the window to see if he could find out the trouble. As he did so, he accidentally dropped a packet of tracts, which were caught up by a gust of wind and blown about in all directions.

There was no hope of recovering the tracts, so they prayed that they might be picked up by those who could read them and profit thereby.

Years passed, and Mr. Townsend was again back in that neighborhood for a meeting, at which he told of the lost tracts on the occasion of his previous visit. After he had finished speaking, the meeting was left open for testimony, and a man in the meeting rose to his feet, evidently embarrassed, and not accustomed to speaking in public. He told that he was a farmer, and that on one occasion some years before he had been working in the field, when a shower of papers fell all round him. Picking up as many as he could, he brought them home, and he and his wife began to read them together. Being a better scholar than he, she looked up the Scripture references, as a result of which they were both converted. She was sitting beside him in the meeting that day. They were the answer to the prayers of Mr. Townsend and his daughter.

Meetings were held later in the farmer's home, when many souls were saved. In the providence of God there was an abundant harvest from the unintentional scattering of the seed from the railway carriage window.