could have grown this big without the help of God."
The girl blushed Standing near the desk waa an
impeccably dressed middle-aged man.
"I'm Mr. Harris," he said quietly. "Come In."
Thirty minutes later the corporation executive had
purchased a Bible for himself and 25 more to distribute
to his Immediate staff.
"I've had a successful life," he told the salesman, "but
I've always felt there was something lacking. Perhaps
the Bible is the answer."
These three incidents, while seemingly isolated, are
inextricably related. The biggest best seller in history is
selling better than ever. Everybody's buying one rich
man, poor man, Protestant, Catholic, and Jew. Yet the
modern renaissance of the world's oldest book defies
explanation. No one quite knows why it's happening.
Publish en offer conflicting reasons. Some say it's the
beauty of the new editions, which has changed the Bible
from its traditional black-and-white past to the colorful
editions of today. Others claim it's the dedication of a
new kind of salesman, who has taken the Bible out of
the bookstores and brought it right into the living rooms
and offices of the country. Still others say that there is
a genuine resurgence of faith in our time and Bible sales
are merely one indication of it perhaps the best
Whatever the reasons, there's no doubt that the renais
sance is here. Bible sales which have always out
stripped any other book are estimated at triple that of
pre-World War II, and there's no end in sight
The quality of the new editions is undoubtedly a factor.
The Bible itself, of course, remains unchanged, but
supplementary art and text make some editions richly
beautiful one-volume libraries of the faith.
Some of the art work is outstanding. Chicago's Catholic
Press, for instance, has reproduced in full color more
than 100 old masters, tracing Bible stories with great
paintings, from Rembrandt's Motet to Fra Angelico's
Cruet Irion. Some of the art transcends denominational
lines. Guy Rowe, commissioned by Texas publisher
Houston Harte to create new pictures of the prophets
for a modern Protestant edition of Old Testament stories,
won an award with Harte from the Christophers, a
Catholic layman's group.
Oome or the art was bom in persecution. Menorah
Press discovered a Jewish refugee who hid from
the Nazis for three months in a French garret His
only book was a Bible. He began sketching scenes and
characters, and after the war used them to illustrate
Menorah 's new Jewish Family Bible, making two trips
to Israel to complete the project
Supplementary text is equally appealing. Many new
editions feature, in addition to the basic Bible, synopses
of chapters, maps of the Holy Land, a concordance or
dictionary of Biblical terms, and other helps peculiar to
each faith. Jewish Bibles, for instance, explain the Jew
ish holidays and their rites and meanings. Catholic
Bibles describe in words and pictures the Mass, the
sacraments, the rosary, and other prayers.
One of the most exhaustively supplemented Protestant
editions is the New Analytical Bible, created for the
John A. Dickson Publishing Co. It uses no art, but
contains both the original King James Version and (in
brackets) clarification of its archaic words from the
American Revised Version, plus 800 pages of explana
tory text, including probably the most comprehensive
cross-indexing of Biblical names, places, and subjects.
So attractive are some new Bibles, both from the
artistic and scholarly viewpoints, that they often sell on
sight One door-to-door salesman uses the same brief
sales talk to each prospect "You know better than I do
what you think of the Bible," he says, turning the pages,
"but what do you think of thit Bible?"
Most Bible salesmen, however, add something of their
own to Bible selling an intensity unequalled in any
other field. Like the ex -schoolteacher who prayed be
fore approaching each new home, many of them con
aider their work a mission.
One summed it up, Tm selling the most important
product in the world. If I don't sell It, It's because the
family already has one or because, somehow, I've failed
to make them understand the necessity of owning one."
Such doorstep evangelism, naturally, often meets re
sistance, but this new breed of salesman is usually equal
to any occasion.
One salesman encountered an agnostic who told him
caustically that the only Bible he believed in was the
baseball record book. The salesman smiled and showed
him where the Bible mentioned southpaw pitchers.
(Judges, 20: 16: "There were seven hundred chosen men
left-handed; every one could sling stones at an hair
breadth, and not miss.") The man bought one.
Most communities permit house-to-house canvassing,
but sometimes problems arise. One saleswoman, selling
Bibles in a small-town residential neighborhood, was
arrested as a peddler. She showed the policeman her
permit, then, before he could get away, she sold hint a
Bible and went back to ringing doorbells.
Where does this new breed of salesman come from?
Almost anywhere. Nearly all Bible publishers consider
the professional, high-pressure type of salesman worth
less, even undesirable. Many prefer to recruit their
salesmen from ordinary walks of life a staff of former
insurance agents, white-collar workers, and bus drivers
is not unusual because they'll be selling to ordinary
people and because they'll never consider themselves
better than their "product" The executive director of
one large publishing firm said flatly, The best Bible
salesman in the world is the man who just bought one."
High on the list of those who consider Bible selling a
dedicated ministry is the Dickson Company, whose staff
includes a large group of ordained ministers and active
church laymen. One such salesman, who had given up
a pastorate he held for 12 years, explained, "I can spread
the word of God farther in the Bible ministry than I
could by having a church and always ministering to the
same people."
That such ministering bears fruit is beyond argument
It's a rare Bible salesman who can't recount at least one
instance of a broken home mended, a teen-ager turned
from a life of crime, a rich man who became philan
thropic, or a convict who became a minister all because
someone placed a Bible in their hands.
The following case history a favorite at one Bible
house is fairly typical
A St. Louis salesman was canvassing a poor neighbor
hood when he came to one home of indescribable squalor.
"I shouldn't have been in the neighborhood," he said
later. "When I came to this place, I wanted to run. The '
husband was a jobless alcoholic. The six children were
half-naked. The wife was numb with despair. I gave
them a Bible and left. It was all I could offer."
It was the wife who turned to the Bible for comfort
"I didn't find it," she wrote the salesman some time
later. "Instead, I began to realize that I was not without
fault Instead of kindness, I had given my husband only
rebuke. When I stopped feeling sorry for myself and
complaining about how badly he was treating us, I began
to see how much worse he was treating himself and how
much he needed help."
The salesman still hears from them. The husband, in
spired by his wife's new-found goodness, stopped drink
ing. He's now a railroad brakeman. Three of their chil
dren finished high school. One went on to college.
Where will the Bible renaissance end?
"When we've got a Bible in every home in America,"
the official of one firm said. "And even then we won't be
through. There are nearly 30,000 new marriages and new
homes being created every week. We aren't even keeping
up with that pace."
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