  "Go ye and teach the next one whom you meet— * * * * * Referring to the incident when the disciples, James and John, confronted by the lame man at the gate Beautiful of the Temple, gave him restored health through the power of the Christ, instead of the alms which he solicited, Dr. John Henry Jowett said: "He, the Master, gave fundamentally to those in need. He did not attend to the symptoms, but cured the disease. He gave capacity for incapacity, ability for inability, life for feebleness. He strengthened the wills of those born impotent and gave them the power of self-control. "As Christ gave fundamentally in His earthly ministry, so He has given since. It is still the greatest mission of the church to reach and restore—to give "capacity." Christ said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." It can never come in society, it can never prevail in a nation, until it has first come into individual lives and found expression through them. "All true progress," says the Hon. James Bryce, "has always been from the soul working outward through men's acts, and it is so to-day." Home Missions has pre-eminently been the agent of the church in this fundamental work of reclamation. Let us go to the laboratory of the Mission fields where we may see Home Missions in action, and witness the Christ power to restore, uplift, transform, to give capacity. * * * * * It was a crisp day in early autumn when the visitor from the A pair of strong horses and a light buggy made quick work of the ten-mile drive, to the new mission church at M—— L——. It was through what might be termed new country—so new that the stumps of the recently demolished forest were still standing, seared and slashed remnants of the splendid trees. The first crop raised by ploughing the rich earth between the stumps stood tall and full of the promise of marvelous productiveness when suitable cultivation was possible. It was one of the crude frontier towns of the Northwest. Several Old World kingdoms had contributed to the population. The lives of the people were filled with heaviest toil, for they were conquering a new country. They were renters of the land, or had bought with heavy mortgages, and so their ceaseless struggle was to gain a foothold. Little time or thought had they for the claims of the higher life. There was no reminder of the things of God in the town save a Catholic chapel. To many of the people this faith was most repugnant. There was no Sabbath, though for some the day's toil was not quite so arduous. The saloon, with its warmth and brightness, lured the tired men with the promise of sociability at all times. Among them, however, was a man who had been an elder in a Protestant church across the seas, and he realized what the godlessness of the little place would mean to them all, and especially its effect upon the lives of their little children. He sought the help of a Home Missionary whose duties covered a district of hundreds of miles, and to whom was entrusted the establishing of new fields. When his work called him to that part of Minnesota, he visited M—— L——, holding services in the little district school building, visiting in the homes and doing what he could in a brief stay to rouse and help them spiritually. As he was able, he returned to them several times during the year. How gladly did those welcome him who in the old homes had followed after the things of God! In the summer he arranged to have a student missionary commissioned to the field. In due time the student arrived, spending the four months of his seminary vacation among them. He was an indefatigable worker. Soon the little schoolhouse was most uncomfortably crowded with those who were drawn by the singing and the bright go of the meetings. Services were then held out of doors, the congregation seated on improvised benches of boards laid across tree trunks. The student organized and superintended a Sunday-school—gathered the young people into an Endeavor Society. He formed a singing class—a portable baby organ which he played was their only musical instrument. He arranged games, socials, and picnics; one of the latter, a berry-picking picnic, the proceeds of which, twelve dollars, was given to missions. So close did he bring religion to these people, so desirable he made it, that they became eager for a permanent church. A very little help was given by the Board toward the purchase of the land, and the people attended to the building. The men quarried and hauled the foundation stone; they secured and dressed the timber, and with the labor of their own hands the little church was built before the student returned, and later, beside it, the Women's Board helping, a tiny parsonage was placed. Then came an energetic, devoted Home Missionary to live the Gospel, day by day, as well as preach it; to incorporate Christian ideals into the daily thinking of these people, and Christian purposes into their controlling motives; to make them understand that the Gospel means honesty in business, cleanness of heart and body, health and enlightenment, and whatever makes life worthy here and now and fits it for the future beyond. Thousands of such homely frontier missions are molding the citizenship which makes the very life of the Republic. All honor to the men and women of character and ability who, as Home Missionaries, are devoting their lives to such fields—the most difficult in the world—where no picturesqueness of scenes or people relieves the strain—where sordid sin, monotony, crudity, and newness prevail, but where the returns in character-building contribute to the life of a nation whose mission is the world. * * * * * The following quaint letter was written by Rev. Aratus Kent, a "When I came to Galena (in 1829), there was not any church or clergyman within two hundred miles, and I used to say that my parish extended from Rock River to Wisconsin. Now I can count within these bounds twenty-five churches and fifteen ministers. "Let those then who think little of the influences of the Home Missionary Society blot out of being those twenty-five churches, and drive out of the state those fifteen clergymen, and disband fifty Sabbath-schools, and burn a thousand Bibles, and recall a thousand volumes of the Tract Society, and stop the monthly visit of a tract to five hundred houses, and give back a drunken father to fifty families that are now rejoicing in the peace and plenty consequent upon their regeneration." And yet this work of vandalism is not done until you have taken back that stream of heavenly influence which has gone forth from this district to bless the heathen in our forests and the heathen beyond the ocean, and until you have recalled that company of young men who have gone away for the ministry. "We need within this field more missionaries who can endure privations, and who, to meet their appointments, can face a prairie storm and buffet a swollen stream, and who, like their Divine Master, can take the mountain top for their study and the midnight hour for the season of their devotion. "We want also assistance here in the West to establish literary (educational) institutions upon the right basis, and if the professors of the East would come and see what I see, they would court the honor of contribution to establish the female seminary in Galena which was yesterday projected, and which is next week to commence its existence. This church has sustained a German colporter during the winter." * * * * * About a little valley in the Southland stand mountains grim and forbidding in their rugged beauty—holding close within their bounds those who for generations had found their scanty living upon the sterile mountain sides and in the richer valleys, saying No! to the pressing outside world, with its progress and its change. Many winters and summers passed over the settlement of J——, on —— creek, forty miles from all railroads, shut in by laurel-covered hills and pine mountains; its people, of fine pioneer ancestry and deeply religious, thrown back upon themselves through segregation and isolation, had lost much of the initiative and force that characterized their ancestors, and had crystallized along the lines of their peculiarities, as any people will under the same conditions. Up the creek and into the valley one day there came two "foreign" women from the great world beyond. They were Home Missionaries, but did not use this designation for fear the mountain people might not understand that they came simply as friends to bring to the valley the opportunity America gives to her children. They found the people simple folk, ignorant, but with no touch of vulgarity. Their eyes saw no opening beyond the blue shadows of the enveloping mountains. To a few the longing to know, or that their children might have a "chance," hung like a star afar off, but with little hope of attainment. A dark fatalism presided over their destinies. "What is to be will be, I reckon," summed up their philosophy. About many of them appeared an atmosphere of the unconscious moral heroism that willingly gives its all to meet whatever the day may bring of privation, hardship, suffering, or death. The valley folk were very suspicious of the two friends at first, and curious about them in a shy, kindly way. Why had they come? What were their real motives? Did they mean only good to the valley? It took many months of devoted service on the part of the women to answer these queries. Did sickness ravage some home where many little ones were crowded into two or three rooms? Was some man crushed by the heavy logs while at work? There the nurse friend came with her comforts and her skill to fight for the life of the sufferers, to watch beside them during the long, chill nights of pain—to pray that the healing power of the Christ might be manifested. The two friends found that the valley had no Sunday-school or regular preaching service to mark the Lord's day. Occasionally an itinerant preacher held meetings, but Sunday after Sunday came and went in the valley with no religious service whatever. They found that the children received but poor schooling, and little or no training for life. They found mothers who knew only the monotony of drudgery and were eager to share in the fuller life. They found the wide use of corn whisky to be sapping the moral and physical strength of the men, and that everywhere among them lawlessness prevailed, even though some were anxious for better things. Through the love-service of the two friends and those who followed them, and the co-operation of the people, the valley to-day is transformed even in its outward appearance. Drinking has disappeared except in sporadic cases. Lawlessness is under ban. A great, throbbing, new life has come to stimulate and inspire not only the valley, but its environs. Here the reclaiming power of Christian service meets with fullest response. A church and Sunday-school (also four outlying schools), men's Bible classes, several Endeavor Societies and King's Daughters' Circles, Boy Scouts, Girls' clubs—the ministry of a hospital, schools and dormitories, all are spreading the regenerating forces and bringing in a new day of hope, opportunity, and efficiency to this valley, and to hundreds of others throughout the Southland. * * * * * All along the fine military road built by Spain in Porto Rico—and still more on the bridle paths that pass for roads in much of the island—may be seen little brown shacks, or huts, made of old boards and tin cans flattened out, and thatched with palm leaves. In these the people live. "We had sixty names on the waiting list of the Missionary Home in Porto Rico, and money had come so we could take in a few more, and we—the superintendent and I—went to try to find the most needy. Our search took us into a dreadful, slimy patio, where we found a grandmother and three little girls. We could take but two of them. The oldest was thirteen—we knew she would soon be too old to be helped at all if we did not take her now. The second was under ten, and the youngest was three and a half. We could not bear to leave the dead mother's baby, so we took the oldest and the youngest, and promised the second girl that we would come for her as soon as possible. They lived in a room nine by twelve feet in size, in which twenty-two people slept under some old clothes. Do you wonder that she fell on her knees begging 'Oh, lady, take me, too!'" "The next day the grandmother was taken ill and had to be sent to the hospital, and on Tuesday when I went to the patio again the girl had disappeared. "Three months later we found her, beaten and bruised from head to foot, at the door of the Home. She had been in a place where care and shelter were expected, but when the poor, home-sick girl cried, they abused her and then put her out on the street, and somehow she found her way to our Home. "You would enjoy seeing how quickly the girls in our Home learn to help each other. Mercedes had been in the Home but ten days when Francesca came—a bit of a waif who had never worn shoes in all her life, nor seen a bed before. Of course she knew nothing about undressing and sleeping between clean, white sheets. She tried to do like the others, but got into bed with her precious new shoes and stockings on. Mercedes watched her, and when ready herself, slipped across the room, whispered to Francesca, took off her shoes and stockings, pushed her—but very gently—down on her knees for the evening prayer, and then covered her up in bed as softly and lovingly as a mother." [Footnote: In Southern Seas—Alice M. Guernsey—Women's Home Missionary Society, Methodist Episcopal Church.] * * * * * With soft, Insistent regularity came the beat of the tom-tom over the hills, calling the Indians to the Medicine Lodge dance. There was something weirdly fascinating in the reiterated turn, turn, that carried almost a hypnotic power as hour after hour it called through the stillness. Wrapped in their bright blankets—men on horseback—whole families in wagons—the Indians passed round the curve of the road, to disappear in the big, open depression just beyond, where the Medicine Lodge was in camp. There was a group of rounded tents in which families and guests were prepared to live the four days and nights during which the rites of the dance lasted. It was an untidy and disorderly camp, with children and dogs tumbling about—women kneeling to arrange small strips of meat to cook over the bit of wood fire on the ground, or attending to other home-keeping matters. Dirt, flies, children, and dogs were everywhere. A few feet away stretched the long tent where the ceremony of the dance was to take place. They had taken their places and were ready for the ceremony—mostly men, a few women, a little girl of nine years, a young mother of twenty whose baby two weeks old was held by an aged grandmother, who crouched at the end. All were dressed in beaded finery. All wore moccasins—some men had long beaded stoles—others wonderful beaded waistcoats. The women wore long beaded hair ornaments reaching almost to the ground, as well as strings of beads and other ornaments. The faces of nearly all were marked with spots of bright red or long streaks of yellow and red. The same color was used in the parting of the hair. They sat on the ground in two long rows, facing each other; back of each, attached to the wood trellis of the tent, hung fur pouches of various shapes and sizes, ornamented with beads and containing the "medicine," which was some trifling article—a bit of bone, stone, seed, or whatever, through some special circumstance, had come to be accepted by them as their charm, or "medicine," to ward off sickness and evil—to bring them the good offices and protection of the good spirits. The four or more medicine chiefs, wearing wonderfully ornamented, apron-like front pieces, stand together at one end for a few moments while one and then another addresses the audience. The medicine men then, with drum and rattle, keeping step, lead in the dance down the length of the tent and back. One by one the audience, from their crouching positions on the ground, as they are summoned or moved, join in the dance, swaying while they keep step back and forth for hours at a time, to the sound of drum and rattle. Those being initiated, as were the young mother and the little girl, were expected not to give up, if possible, until the end. The dance is maintained for parts of four days and nights, almost incessantly, except for the interruption of the feast given by some members. The close is marked by the utter exhaustion of many of the dancers, and sad immorality accompanies its progress. Can the Gospel of Christ lift such as these, with a thousand generations of savagery back of them? Let another picture answer. * * * * * Almost half a mile from the Medicine Lodge camp, on a rise of ground, stands a little Christian church—plain but beautiful. From it seem to flow visibly those purifying and redeeming forces that are destined to transform the darkened lives of these Indian children of the great All-father. It is prayer-meeting night. The bell is rung and the audience begins to gather. A number of alert, intelligent-looking, English-speaking young men come in together. One of these, an earnest Christian, will interpret, sentence by sentence, the Scripture reading and the message of the speaker. Some older men and women come next, heavy of feature and step. One is blind and feels his way to his accustomed seat. Old women come wrapped in blankets, their faces seamed with toil and showing the hardness of heathen customs, when sickness and death, unrelieved by faith, wear the heart and waste the body. Mothers come with bright-eyed babies tucked in their blankets, or leading children of various sizes—also some young women, beautiful and intelligent—and a few white employees from the Agency—and the workers from the Mission—until the room is nearly filled. The meeting is opened with prayer, and a quiet fills the room as all are brought into the very presence of the loving Father. And then follows the singing, "My faith looks up to Thee," The message that follows is one of passionate earnestness, as the missionary seeks to make clear to them the meaning of purity of life—of faith in God, of His saving, keeping power. At its close an Indian elder, using his own soft, Indian language, pleads in prayer for the presence of the Holy Spirit to lead his people. Another rises and says through the interpreter: "When I was away at school I learned about Christianity, but when I came back to the reservation and the old Indian life called me, there was none to help, and I went back. I did not work; I gambled, I drank; liquor, I went to the medicine dance—I was very bad. Then came the Mission and it got hold of me. The missionary brought me to Christ. Now I cut off those bad ways. I am happy. I have a Christian home with my wife and my child." This testimony was true. All there knew him to be an industrious, upright, manly Indian, one of the two hundred members of this church, all of whom had, in a few years, been led from the old life of degradation to the pleasant, wholesome peace of the Jesus Road. * * * * * "Missionary work begins with evangelism. It does not end there. The people must hear the good news of salvation. So we have spent much time 'to make the message plain.' It has taken years of labor to put the gist of the Gospel into several Indian languages having no literature, that the people might get the word of God. One had to work to get a clue to a word through a crude interpreter; or by making signs or motions where, as often, no interpreter was at hand, and then guessing between several possible meanings. In this way one would in time get a knowledge of the commonplace things in a language. Then there must follow the task of finding equivalents for Christian terms in the speech of a people without Christian ideas. "Difficult as all this work was, it is only a beginning, only elementary. The message must be applied to all phases of life. A constant educational process must be kept up to incorporate Christian ideals into the daily thinking of the people. This is to be done by the reiterated daily teachings of the schools, and the living example of the missionary, and of those he can educate to lead the people. A bare message unrelated to life is like seed scattered on the road or on a rock. After sowing one must harrow and cultivate and fight insect pests all the season to get a crop. So a constant process of education, moral, industrial, hygienic, must go on, or there will be no regenerated, fruitful characters. "The old Indian linked his hunting and corn planting and simple arts to religion. He lived by the help of his gods. We are trying not to destroy this faith, but to transfer it to the living God, and to make it 'work by love,' instead of by selfishness. Our little girls in the Home are learning to keep house and sew and cook, because it is the work of a child of God to do these things well. We are trying to teach our neighbors by word and example to farm and build and make homes in a way that will be becoming to a redeemed man. They must understand that the Gospel means diligence in business, honesty, carefulness, co-operation, skill, cleanness of heart and body, health and prosperity, and any other virtue that makes life worth living now and always. We think our example in raising seventy bushels of oats or two hundred bushels of potatoes to the acre, garden vegetables, improved cattle and hogs, well-kept horses, small fruits and sheltering trees and pretty shrubs, in what is classed as a semi-arid land, is a part of the Gospel of Christ, who came to make all 'deserts blossom as the rose.' "When our former Mission school boys are found taking hold of agricultural work according to present-day methods and earning a support for their growing families, building their meeting-place, and making some contributions to the church work abroad, we feel that the foundation of a Christian community is being laid. "The clouds return sometimes. There comes a recrudescence of heathenism. Yet faith sees still the leaven at work. An old man's daughter went away to our Santee School and returned a believer in the Christian way. She taught her father what she had learned, and prayed for him. He yielded to her faith and threw away his fetishes after a hard struggle with all the past and present environment that bound him. Then at once his instinct was to make a better home for his family. He must get away from the heathen village, with its squalor, and impurity, and idolatry. It is true that environment does not regenerate the soul, but the renewed soul transforms the environment. Better conditions are evidence of the new life. On the contrary, when some fall back to heathenism, they fall into slovenly attire, ill-kept homes, and neglected fields." [Footnote: Rev. C. L. Hall, D.D., American Missionary Association.] Alaska is a post which beyond any other in the American church demands courage and endurance, both physical and moral. "The natives of Anvik invited the missionary to visit their village, 450 miles by water from St. Michael. "These natives were Ingiliks, partly Indian and partly Eskimo. They lived in underground houses and were superstitious, dirty, ignorant, and degraded. Rude buildings were erected for a mission house and the schoolhouse. In 1894 the first church was erected, the money for it being a part of the first United Offering of the Women's Auxiliary. Little by little the people came out of their holes in the earth and built themselves houses. The community has been physically and morally transformed. A saw-mill, the gift of a generous Eastern layman, has been a most practical means of evangelising, not only furnishing lumber for houses, but healthful occupations for the men. This transformation has been wrought, not by legislation or civilization as such, but by the consistent teaching and example of a devoted Christian man and his splendid helpers. 'Through these long years, in the loneliness of this far-away station, the missionary has remained the kind, wise, spiritual shepherd of these native souls in the wilderness. The mission has pursued high ideals, and has ministered spiritually and helpfully to a vast region.' "A gold strike was made at Nome, and with the first rush of eager prospectors went in a missionary, who aided with his own hands in the building of the church. Though the saloon men were bidding for the only available lumber, the bishop got it first to build a clubhouse for the men, the only competitor of fourteen saloons. "So he goes back and forth across his great district, up and down its rivers in the short summer time—formerly by boat or canoe, but now in a launch, the 'Pelican.' In the winter he is away across the trackless wilderness, a thousand miles or more, behind his dogs, cheerily facing hardships and making light of dangers, carrying his life in his hand as he goes about his daily work. "Particularly is he interested in the preservation and betterment of the native races, the Eskimos and the Indians, endangered by their contact with the white man and their own lack of knowledge. Everywhere his hand is raised and his voice is heard in their behalf. "Alaska is the land of one great river, without which it could scarcely have been explored—much less occupied and inhabited. The Yukon is the great highway. Over its waters in the brief summer, and upon its frozen surface in the winter, go travelers by boat and sled, and among them the representatives of the church. Familiar to the dwellers along its banks is the little 'Pelican' bearing the missionaries, with a half-breed engineer and the faithful dogs. Everywhere along the river in the summer time may be found the temporary camps of the Indians, to whom the short fishing season means food through the long winter for themselves and their dogs. Here a stop is made at a native camp to baptize a baby—there a marriage ceremony is performed; a communion service is held or a call made at a fishing camp to pick up some boys and take them to a far-away boarding school. The work is as varied as it is far-reaching. Not a mission point along the river is neglected, and places which formerly could never be visited by the hand-paddled canoe now look forward once a year to the coming of the 'Pelican,' and wait to hear the familiar throbbing of her motor, as does the New Yorker for his morning mail, or the farmer for the postman's whistle. "Fairbanks, the metropolis of central Alaska, was a new mining camp when the missionary Bishop secured an early entrance for the church. The log building which was a chapel on Sunday became a reading-room on week-days for the rough-clad miners. A hospital was built and it ministered to the sick through the range of a wide territory. Missions both to white men and to Indians have spread along the valley of the river on either hand, and now Fairbanks is the center of what is known as the Tanana Valley Mission, with half a score of workers, schools and missions, hospitals and reading rooms, distributing tons of literature in lonely mining camps, and carrying everywhere the message of the Master. "Over on the coast, at Cordova, may be found the unique settlement work called 'The Red Dragon,' a clubhouse for men which on Sundays is converted into a place of worship. Missions in Alaska minister to human need as a preliminary to and accompaniment of an effective preaching of the Gospel." [Footnote: Board of Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church.] These pictures of the power of Home Missions to restore—to give capacity—are merely typical, and stand for the thousands of others unrecorded except as the lives of the reclaimed individuals and communities make their indelible imprint upon our national life. Surely through the demonstration of such reclaiming power the consciousness must grow that ignorance, degradation, vice, crime, and bitter poverty need not be the inevitable accompaniment of a great civilization, but that these diseased spots in the social fabric are abnormal and curable, if to their removing is directed first the power of Christ in the inner life, and for the outer a social regeneration which will substitute physical conditions that do not menace, but make for righteousness. "In haunts of wretchedness and need "The cup of water given for Thee |
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