The tract distributor may look for opposition in the work.
1. Ridicule. Sometimes he will be ridiculed. There is the shake of the head or the scornful look; sometimes even personal abuse, but these things, which are often the expression of deep conviction, will do the tract distributor no harm, but sometimes a world of good.
2. Direct antagonism. An earnest preacher used to tell that forty years ago he narrowly escaped a martyr’s crown in a railway journey.
“I was quietly handing out some gospel tracts in a train when, with a great rage, a man rose and held a revolver to my head, threatening to shoot me there and then unless I desisted. The passengers all seemed greatly alarmed, and a scene occurred, amid which, coward as I too often am, I felt quite undisturbed, but soldiers of the King must sometimes be under fire.”
3. Resentment. The tract distributor has known many a time what it is for persons to resent his approach with the offer of a tract. Murray McCheyne, of Dundee, made tract distribution part of his ministerial life. One day he gave a tract to a fashionable lady, who said to him, “Surely you do not know who I am.”
McCheyne replied: “He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world, and unless you are trusting Him, you will stand no chance on that day, no matter who you are.”
We should pray for such as we meet them in our work.
4. Legal restrictions. In certain cities tract distribution is forbidden, and care should be exercised by Christian workers to find out the attitude of local authorities before undertaking the work.
Note: Last fall the Supreme Court held unconstitutional the ordinances of three cities which restricted the distribution of pamphlets “on sidewalks and other public places.” The Court said, referring to contentions that the ordinances were necessary to prevent littering the streets:
“Although a municipality may enact regulations in the interest of the public safety, health, welfare or convenience, these may not abridge the individual liberties secured by the Constitution to those who wish to speak, write, print, or circulate information or opinion....The purpose to keep the streets clean and of good appearance is insufficient to justify an ordinance which prohibits a person rightfully on a public street from handing literature to one willing to receive it.”
“In the same opinion,” states a city newspaper, “the Court also invalidated a fourth ordinance requiring house-to-house canvassers to obtain permits from the police chief.”