p. 133 | Tracts by Jos. Clarke

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 24, 1863

Tracts

By Jos. Clarke

ARE a powerful agency for good. Often when people are too busy or too hurried to peruse a volume, they will devour a tract. Who is there can despise a little, clean tract of eight or ten pages, neatly printed on white paper, and full of meaning?

It would require much more means than most of us can spare to circulate books and pamphlets gratuitously, but these little one and two cent tracts we can scatter among our friends and acquaintances freely, and this will prepare the way for larger works; and this work of the colporter we can perform at less cost than the tobacco-chewer is at for his favorite narcotic poison.

The package of twenty-seven tracts, for 40 cts., is convenient to put in one's pocket, and when one meets a friend, and the conversation turns upon present truth (as it always does with live Seventh-day Adventists), one can pull the twenty-seven tracts a little out of the wrapper, just far enough to read the titles (just as the collector selects a bill from his filed package of notes, accounts &c.), and select just such a tract as fits the subject under examination.

I tell you, brother, these tracts are just the things for a practical, working man, as he goes and comes from his work, or place of business, or as he frequents the public haunts of business, and questions are asked, or objections proposed. I say they are good and timely.

Who is there so poor he cannot buy a package of tracts for distribution among his neighbors? only forty cents for 27 choice tracts, and one tract might wake some honest soul to further investigation. Let us all be colporters that can't be preachers, and let the preachers, too, circulate these winged messengers as their wise zeal prompts; but especially I address the dear brethren and sisters whose sphere is limited, to resolve ourselves into a band of colporters, in a careful, humble way, first looking carefully, speaking to the point, and if there is a prospect for good, lend or donate a tract, with a heartfelt prayer to God that bread cast upon the waters may return.

As you spend an evening with a friend, or as you argue with an opposer, or as a friend calls at your house, or visits your school, a tract may enforce the arguments you have advanced, or preach in a way you could not.

Many a wealthy brother who sends to the Office for $1,75 worth of books, might as well send for $10 or $20 worth, and soon sell them out among the brethren or others, or keep them for a kind of circulating library, for the benefit of himself and family and neighbors.

We might make a business of propagating our faith, instead of seeking pelf. Some might work in one way, some in another; and after we have spent time and money, we shall not go hungry nor suffer for raiment,

neither need we neglect our business, only be a little more careful of our time, and manage a little better.

Especially do we all need the History of the Sabbath now, that we may keep up with the weekly questions in the Review. Brethren, let us be wide awake in finding ways of doing good.

Jos. CLARKE.