SOME years ago—

“Some years ago!” Why, it was as long ago as five times the age of your grandpapa—he was eighty, I think—a brave man and a few sailors got into a small ship on the coast of Spain, spread its sails, and away westward they sped, over the ocean wide and rough with waves. They found America at last. Others came. Villages grew up. Still they came.

About this time, three thousand miles away, walked two—

“Lovers, I guess.”

Indeed they did love each other, if that is what you mean. See them in the picture of the “Two Missionaries;” were there ever sweeter faces, purer and more pitiful? It is because the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts. Dress and feathers don’t make beauty so much as a right heart, you must know.

These two hearts were walking near the dear old church, and as they walked they thought of the sermon the day before about bearing the tidings—the Gospel—to the needy. They had heard of America, and their hearts bled for the people here.

“And did they go to a seminary, and learn how to teach and preach, and get ordained, and get married, and come over here and have a Sunday-school and church?”

They left all to follow Jesus—fathers, mothers, everybody, everything, “for Jesus’ sake,” for wild America.

“And how did most of the people in America look when they got here?”

How does this creature on the following page look? or that one?

“Now you don’t mean that the Americans then were such objects?”

The very same. And our two sweet, beautiful missionaries came to them and learned their language and lived among them, and taught them of the true God, and Jesus Christ, the Saviour.

“Did they stay more than a year that way?”

They lived and died among them. Then their children took up the work, and they have been carrying it on ever since!

“And what came of it all?”

Why, many of those fierce savages put off their war paint and wild ways, and settled down in good homes like nice Christian people, with churches and Sunday-schools and ministers of their own. Some of them now look almost as sweet as the two sweet faces of the Two Missionaries. That’s the way it often works when God puts his grace into a rough heart. It really changes the face too into beauty. God can make everything beautiful.

“But what about the picture on the next page?”

You mean that queer-looking man going ahead with a child in his arms and a big boy by his side?

“It is a family on a journey somewhere.”

The “somewhere” is America. They are peasants (the poor working folks) of—Denmark, maybe.

They have heard of America—what a goodly land it is for the poor and homeless, and where they can be free to worship God—so they have sold the cow and poultry and a few other things, and putting into bundles what they have over, and saying a sad good-by to the dear old hut where they have always lived, they are on their march to the sea. They will soon be aboard the ship, Safety; then, after two months—

“Two months! why, the Teutonic of the White Star Line has just crossed the Atlantic in five days, sixteen hours and a few seconds.”

Yes, but this was long ago.

But the two months are gone; they have landed at Castle Garden, New York, and now those nine have become ninety thousand. You see, no sooner had they got nicely settled upon a little spot of land, and in a neat cottage, and two or three cows about them, and a patch of potatoes growing near by, when away went a letter back to Denmark to their cousins to pack up and come too.

Well, ever since the ships have grown larger and faster, bringing loads and loads of peasants, five hundred thousand some years, from almost every nation on the other side of the ocean.

“And those two sweet-faced missionaries, did they teach all these low people the good ways of God?”

Yes; they and their children. Don’t you see, they stand for all good missionaries whom Jesus sends? They are all beautiful in his eyes. Where in the Bible does it say something like “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings; that publisheth peace, etc?” If beautiful feet, beautiful everything—so beautiful that all among whom they go with these tidings become beautiful too!

See those children in the opening picture, coming down the road with bundles under their arms? Look them over, and say if you think they live in a palace, and if they wear silks or furs.

No, no, poor things! a sorry dinner they’ve had. A bed of straw for them to-night. But in a few years some cousins in America will send them some money; then they will be here, and somehow they must be made beautiful as those two sweet-faced ones. Oh! so much work in this land for Jesus, to meet these heathen at Castle Garden with the good news and make them beautiful. Oh! for more home missionaries. What say you?

L.