Silent Messengers by A. J. S. B.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Mar 9, 1911

Silent Messengers

By A. J. S. B.

Some Uses of Tracts

(Second Reading)

IN THE REVIEW of December 8 and of January 12, we have learned some of the uses of tracts in Reformation and modern times, also simple plans for their systematic use in house-to-house work and in other ways. The Tract Pocket League is increasing in membership and effectiveness. However, we have made only a beginning in this great work, and appreciate only in part the possibilities that are wrapped up in this simple method of proclaiming the message.

“Some years ago a man stepped into a street-car in New York,” says a writer, “and before taking his seat, gave to each passenger a little card bearing the inscription, ‘Look to Jesus when tempted, when troubled, when dying.’ One of the passengers carefully read the card, and put it in his pocket. As he left the car, he said to the giver, ‘Sir, when you gave me this card, I was on my way to the ferry, intending to jump from the boat and drown myself. The death of my wife and son had robbed me of all desire to live; but this card has persuaded me to begin life anew. God bless you.’”

What Tracts Can Do

An experienced worker with tracts has thus epitomized the many uses to which they can be put:—

“Tracts can go everywhere, at home and abroad. Tracts know no fear. Tracts never lie. Tracts can be multiplied without end by the press. Tracts can travel at little expense. They run up and down like faithful messengers—blessing all, giving to all, and asking no gift in return. They can talk to one as well as to a multitude, and to a multitude as well as to one.

“Tracts speak in all languages. They carry the message of gospel truth to the home-born and to the foreigner. They require no public room to tell their story in. They can tell it in the banking house or the shop, the parlor or the kitchen, the railway train or the ocean steamer, the car or the omnibus, on the highway or in the footpath through the fields.

“Tracts take no note of jeers, and no one can betray them into hasty or random expressions. Though they will not always answer questions, they will tell their story over twice or thrice or four times, if you wish it; and they can be made to speak on every subject, and on every subject they may be made to speak wisely and well.

“Tracts can be made the vehicles of truth, the teachers of all classes, and the benefactors of all lands. Thousands upon thousands of people can rise up and testify that a tract was the means of their conversion. Countless others have been cheered, comforted, and stimulated by them.”

Removers of Prejudice

Those engaged in Christian Help work will find the following up-to-date health and temperance tracts to be entering wedges in beginning tract work in districts where prejudice exists against our theological views: “Food: Its Mental and Moral Value,” “Pure Air in the Home,” “Alcohol and Disease,” “Diet and Endurance,” “Dressing for Health,” “Simple Treatments for Common Ailments,” “Drunkenness and Crime,” “What Shall We Drink?” “Simple Treatments for a Cold,” “Liquor and Poverty,” “Is Alcohol a Food?” “The Cure for National Intemperance,” “Patent Medicines,” “A Chat With My Tobacco-Loving Brother,” “Some Effects of Tobacco Using,” “Autointoxication,” and a dozen others,—all listed in our catalogues of publications, and in the booklets, “Fireside Companions” and “Supplies for Home Workers,” which are supplied free of charge by your conference tract society. The worker following the envelope system of distribution (fully outlined in the REVIEW of December 8), may select from this list a sufficient number of tracts for use in the first few packages, following them up from week to week with others on the second coming of Christ, the Sabbath, and other theological questions.

Still Other Uses

“I can not speak in meeting,” said a church-member to his pastor, “but if you will supply me with choice reading-matter, I will pay for it, and enclose it in the packages which go out from my store.” In this way he supplied a great many fishing-vessels with Christian literature. A druggist, who did the same thing in another place, said of the tracts, “They are better than chromos.” Tracts may be handed to passengers of trains at railway stations; they may be distributed from reading-racks placed by permission in public buildings, railway stations, and at country cross-roads. They may be distributed to crowds at conventions, to theater-goers, and to those frequenting baseball games, to the sick in the hospitals, and to the prisoners in jails. In this work, however, as in all other missionary endeavor, we should remember the rights of others, and that our mission in this world is not to convert people, but to be witnesses for Christ.

A. J. S. B.