The Common People's Gospel

• Gunpei Yamamuro
• 119 pages.
• Published 1899, revised 1988

In 1899, Japanese pioneer Salvation Army officer Commissioner Gunpei Yamamuro wrote, in Japanese, a book he titled The Common People's Gospel. It sold three million copies in Japan alone. In 1988 it was translated into English, and many, many more copies were sold throughout the world. The English translation was polished by Retired General Arnold Brown, who described the author's original work as having 'the sharpness of a samurai's sword in the way in which they slash through sophistication or indifference to expose basic spiritual truths'.

This latest reprint - in the Classic Salvationist Texts series - has been further revised to replace vocabulary and expressions of thought which have changed in meaning during the past 20 years. What has not been replaced, however, is the spirit of the book, which reflects the spirit of the author - a legend in and beyond his lifetime.

The Common People's Gospel will inspire and challenge 21st-century readers as surely as the original version led millions to find and develop faith more than a hundred years ago. The sword has not been blunted with age.