The Death of Christian Britain

— The Salvation Economy —
and text posters for twenty-nine different occupations and in seven foreign
languages for distribution in western Europe and Scandinavia.
Tract distribution was work not merely for organisations but for the
individual evangelical. ‘A tract is a vicarious witness that can go where a
humble minister of the Gospel would be debarred from entry.’ 53 Predicting
the impact of tracts was almost impossible: ‘Why should some tracts carry
with them blessing resulting in abundant fruit, and others be apparently
worthless paper?’ The answer, most tract organisations recommended, was
‘praying always when giving them’. 54 Of all forms of missionary work, it
required the least resources: ‘The outfit of the tract distributor is modest
enough. It consists in the acquisition of one or more suitable tracts, a
gracious manner, a humble heart willing to be guided, and a prayerful spirit.
Let your behaviour, before and after offering the tract, be Christ-like and
gracious.’ Careful advice was given:
Cultivate an attractive manner of offering a tract. You see a gentleman
sitting quietly on a seat, resting; do not bustle up to him, thrust a
tract upon him with a hasty word and be gone . . . If you can spare
the time, sit down for a moment, take a booklet from your pocket,
and begin reading it. Then in a minute or two say, perhaps, ‘I wonder
whether I might offer you a copy of this booklet.’ He takes it with
a smile and a word of thanks, while you add, it may be, ‘I have read
and re-read it many times; I feel sure you will enjoy it.’ A moment
or two later you leave with a bright ‘Good morning’, which he,
engrossed in his reading, looks up to acknowledge and returns to the
tract. Even if you have not time to sit down, spare a moment to slow
up, offer a booklet with a bright smile and a courteous word, and
leave him with the realisation that you are a messenger of God, interested
in his eternal welfare. 55
If offering a tract to a member of the opposite sex, ‘wisdom and discretion’
were required: ‘Let dignity be added to courtesy, and to both a gravity
that consorts with the holy business at hand.’ Every opportunity was to
be taken: ‘You get into a lift and find yourself alone with the lift-man.
“Fourth floor, please; slip this in your pocket and read it when you get a
chance.”’ Taxi drivers, the novice was advised, ‘rarely refuse a courteously
offered booklet.’ 56
There were almost endless variations on the religious publication.
Charles Cook specialised in visiting prisoners in London prisons and using
the stories he heard there to write tracts on ‘sad ends’. 57 Tracts contained
a fairly limited style of content: didactic exhortation to keep the Sabbath,
acknowledge sin, and come to Christ without delay. After the mid-1850s,
the several hundred Drummond Tracts showed a noticeable shift towards
the narrative story, dramatic and sometimes melodramatic in form, and
invariably claimed as true. There is little way to assess the authenticity of
51