Gist of the Lesson
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The Gist of the Lesson was an annual Sunday School aid written by Reuben Archer Torrey from 1899 to 1928. It featured commentary and suggestions on the International Sunday School lessons. The Gist was designed to fit into a vest pocket or purse pouch. It was tall and skinny, with rounded corners so the book wouldn’t snag as you slipped it back into your pocket. Each book was 3.5 x 5.5 inches, with rounded corners, contained 165 pages, and sold for 25 cents.
In many English-speaking nations, the Protestant churches followed a standard lesson schedule devised by an interdenominational committee. The International Standard Sunday School Lessons were published from some time in the 1870s on, and as a 1906 encyclopedia noted, the uniform lesson plan “has given rise to a literature, both permanent and periodical, that has widely popularized Bible study.” The Gist of the Lesson was Torrey’s contribution to that body of literature.
The Record of Christian Work for December 1900 (Vol. XIX, no. 12, p. 906) remarks that "Last year Rev. R. A. Torrey put forth through the Revell Co. the first series of his vest pocket commentary on the International Sunday School lessons, The Gist of the Lesson. So compact, fresh, suggestive, and biblical was it that the little book had a large immediate sale. It is continued for 1901 (Revell Co., 2 3/4 x 5 1/2, leather, 25 cents net) and is in every sense the best compact "help" on the Sunday school lessons.
The Gist sold well: a 1906 publisher’s ad boasts "nearly fifty thousand copies sold annually.” Torrey brought out the first edition from his publisher Fleming Revell in 1899, and kept publishing it regularly right up until his death in 1928. After that 29-year run, the publisher kept printing "The Gist by R. A. Torrey" annually for decades until at least 1959, sometimes with the label "originated by R. A. Torrey" and edited by Ralph G. Turnbull.
In his Introduction to the 1910 edition, Torrey says “To be able to be of any assistance to the many thousands throughout the English-speaking world who annually provide themselves with this “Gist of the Lessons” is indeed a great privilege." He goes on, "The purpose of this little book is to furnish busy men and women with the text of the Sunday school lessons and suggestive comments upon them in such a form that they can always carry them with them and thus improve spare moments on the train, street cars and elsewhere."
The small print is crammed onto the pages with minimal margins. The sentences bump right into each other with no transitions, as Torrey warns: “condensation of thought, expression and form have been aimed at. Consequently oftentimes a single sentence covers a complete line of thought, and the following sentence has no close connection with it, but takes up a new line of thought. Each sentence therefore should be pondered by itself. It is hoped that the reader will frequently find food for much reflection in a single sentence. The aim is to suggest thoughts rather than to fully work them out. …the book is for study, not mere reading. It is a book of seed thoughts."