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From American Sentinel, May 31, 1894. 

Apples of Gold Library

First Published: August 20, 2020

The Apples of Gold Library was a series of small pamphlets designed to be enclosed with personal correspondence.1

The Pacific Press began monthly publication of the tracts in 1893. Generally four to eight pages, the small size of this distinctive tool for personal evangelism – 3 ½” x 6” (8.9 cm. 15.2 cm.) made it “convenient to go into a number six envelope without folding.” The publishers explained that the pamphlets were printed on “thin super-calendered paper” so that one or two could be included with a typical letter without increasing the postage. The Library topics initially centered on “the “the leading themes of the Gospel” such as “The Love of God,” “Justification by Faith,” and “Christ Our Righteousness.”2

A subscription for a single copy each month cost 10 cents per year, postpaid. Large quantities of the first tract, “Looking Unto Jesus,” were offered at the rate of 50 cents per 100.3

Monthly publication continued until October 1899, then quarterly through 1903. Thereafter the “Apples of Gold” appeared on an irregular schedule. The Library was nonetheless still listed as a periodical in the Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook through 1908, thereafter as a collection of tracts until it was discontinued in 1915. Altogether, the Apples of Gold Library included 97 titles. The topics broadened to include Adventist doctrines, health, temperance and religious liberty. The length trended longer, too, generally from eight to sixteen pages during the series’ later years.4 The distinctive purpose, though, remained the same. In the final year of publication, Pacific Press encouraged readers to keep on hand a “selected assortment” of tracts in order to send the one best suited to meet the need of a friend or business acquaintance – at no extra cost for postage!5

Sources

Advertisement. Signs of the Times, August 31, 1915.

Advertisement. Sabbath School Lessons on the First Epistle of John for Senior Classes. Fourth Quarter 1893. Oakland: Pacific Press

“Envelope Leaflets.” Home Missionary, October 1893.

Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia. 2nd rev. edition. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1996. S.v. “Apples of Gold Library.”

Notes

  1. This article has been adapted and enlarged by Douglas Morgan from Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, 2nd rev. edition (1996), s.v. “Apples of Gold Library.”

  2. Advertisement, Sabbath School Lessons on the First Epistle of John for Senior Classes, Fourth Quarter 1893 (Oakland: Pacific Press), 2.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, 2nd rev. edition (1996), s.v. “Apples of Gold Library.”

  5. Advertisement, Signs of the Times, August 31, 1915, 542.

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. "Apples of Gold Library." Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. August 20, 2020. Accessed February 14, 2025. https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=G8W1.

. "Apples of Gold Library." Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. August 20, 2020. Date of access February 14, 2025, https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=G8W1.

(2020, August 20). Apples of Gold Library. Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Retrieved February 14, 2025, https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=G8W1.