House of Refuge

“ We are standing, you know, in the cheerful kitchen of that Refuge for the Homeless in the renovated old slaughter-house in Newport Market, and I want you to come with me to see the boys' school, which occupies a very considerable portion of that weatherproof but ramshackle building.
Only those who are acquainted with the poverty and the crime of this great metropolis can estimate the deep and urgent need that still exists for refuges in which homeless, destitute, and neglected children can be received for shelter, food, and clothing. ”

“ And though most of these guests be now gone into the Camp, because there is little left here for them to devour, do not the cellars, the store-houses, the kitchen, and every part of the house speak of their having been here, and of the poverty and disorder in which they have left us?”
“Aye,” said the refectorarius, “wonderful hath been the waste! The revenue of the abbat, the common property of the house, and the incomings allotted to the several officials to enable them to bear the charges and do the duties of their offices, have all been anticipated and consumed! ”

“ The Directors of the house of Refuge, while having a due regard for the well-being of its inmates, very properly take care that they are not so comfortable or so well fed as to lead them to remain longer in the reformatory than necessary. As soon as the boys appear to be really reformed they are indentured out to farmers and different trades. In the year 1867 no less than 633 boys and 146 girls were started in life in this way. ”

“ How commodious, how useful a refuge is that which the Hospitallers’ house of hospitality in Jerusalem affords to all poor pilgrims who face the various dangers by land and sea, with the pious and devout wish to visit the Sacred City and our Lord’s sepulchre, as is well known to the whole universe! There, indeed, are the indigent assisted, and every sort of humane attention is shown to the weak fatigued by their numerous labours and dangers. ”

“ Homeless refugees, running through the streets like wild creatures driven before a prairie fire, came pouring past, and some stopped to build their lean-to shacks of pieces of board and sacking against the sheltering wall of the house. ”

“ The city of refuge is builded as a hiding place and a shelter; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land; as an asylum for the afflicted; a safety for those fleeing from the power of sin which pursueth to destroy. In that mountain my people shall rest secure. Above it the cloud of glory descendeth. Thence it encompasseth the saints. There angels shall ascend and descend. There the soul shall feast and be satisfied. There is the bread and the water of life. ”

“ As the years went by that wing was added to, piece by piece, as funds were provided by the Government and by public subscriptions, and now the Province possesses a Refuge for its aged, infirm, and disabled homeless ones, and also for a large number of orphan children, of which it may well be proud. ”

“ Four hundred refugees, released by colored soldiers, have just come, empty-handed, into our lines. In the jail-yard, where they once found chains and a lash, all the refugees now find a temporary home. The men and large boys go at once to the Government farms to build huts, and in due season to take their families to the house-warming. Twenty-five refugees came ten days ago; and more will come, from time to time, all winter long. ”

“ Behold, you far-off lights,—
⁠From smoke-veiled heights,
If there be dwelling in our wilderness!
⁠For Love the refugee,
⁠No stronghold can there be,—
No shelter more, while these go shelterless. ”

“ But why talk of refuge? Who needs it, if the refuge spoken of be a city or a castle, into which men fly for safety? It is all sunlight here. No sound of war in our streets. We do not hear the rush of armed men against the doors of our dwellings. We do not come with weapons to church. Our lives are not at the mercy of an assassin. Why, then, talk of refuge? ”

“ Their garments are torn and disordered, their faces haggard, their figures emaciated; for they have made their way hither through pathless deserts, suffering hunger and hardship, with no other shelter thin a hollow tree, the lair of a wild beast, or an Indian wigwam. Nor, in the most inhospitable and dangerous of such lodging-places, was there half the peril that awaits them in this thoroughfare of Christian men, with those secure dwellings and warm hearths on either side of it, and yonder meeting-house as the central object of the scene. ”

“ When these refugees regained the place of their former farm or town, the houses were burned, plundered or without windows and roofs, the well filled with soil, forest grew on the fields, birds had their nest in the neglected abandoned church. Children asked in vain for their parents and parents after their children. No one knew their unknown fate; only rarely was anyone found to be lost forever. And yet, these poor refugees tore joy when they regained the land of the dear hometown. ”

“ Over 100,000 sought refuge in the station-houses, glad to obtain the bare floor to rest their weary limbs; but how many pace our streets nightly, poverty-stricken and despairing, but too proud to seek a shelter in these abodes of crime! ”

“ STORM REFUGEES PRECIPITATE A PANIC IN A CONVENT.
The Ursuline convent and academy, in charge of the Sisters of St. Angelo, proved a haven of refuge for nearly 1,000 homeless and storm-driven unfortunates. No one was refused admittance to the sheltering institution. Negroes and whites were taken in without question and the asylum was thrown open to all who sought its protecting wings.
In the midst of the storm the hundreds or more negroes grew wild and shouted and sang in true camp-meeting style until the nerves of the other refugees were shattered and a panic seemed imminent. ”

“ When one of those holy houses succeeded in remaining standing, the wandering village folk made it their place of refuge, and it was impossible to prevent the refectories and dormitories from being invaded by women. ”

“ The buildings embracing the Refuge Department are plain but substantial, and well adapted to the purposes for which they are designed. Every possible provision is made for health and comfort. One of the buildings shelters the male sex, another the women and children. ”

“ They were supplied with wells of water, and Levites were placed in turn as porters or gatekeepers, to be ready to welcome every fugitive into these homes of safety.
So God has done everything for you, to make the Gospel Refuge accessible. Your parents and ministers—your Bibles and churches and good books—are all, just like these refuge signals, pointing away from the cross-roads and by-roads of human reason, and human error, and self-righteousness, to the Lord Jesus Christ, and saying, “Flee! flee! flee forPg 72 refuge to lay hold on the hope set before you!” ”

“ With eager eyes they watch for your coming to their deliverance, and the homeless refugee pines for the hour when your victorious arms shall restore his family to the shelter from which they have been driven. ”

“ How can it be otherwise, when a system prevails which whirls families and scatters their members, as the wind whirls and scatters the leaves of autumn? These shores of refuge, like the eternal shore, often unite again, in glad communion, hearts that for long years have mourned each other as lost. ”

“ There is yet one place of shelter,
Where the foeman cannot come,
Where the summons never sounded
Of the trumpet or the drum.
There again we'll meet our children,
Who, on Flodden's trampled sod,
For their king and for their country
Rendered up their souls to God.
There shall we find rest and refuge,
With our dear departed brave;
And the ashes of the city
Be our universal grave!" ”

“ For meeting with these in public or in private her husband would leave her continually alone with her children, after his day's work was done, and spend in feeding the poorer outlaws the money he had toiled for, and very frequently would bring some hunted refugee home to live, or even to prepare to die, in his house. ”

“ Then, if you are not driven back by the intolerable stench, you may gain admittance to the dens in which these thousands of beings who belong, as much as you, to the race for whom Christ died, herd together. Have you pitied the poor creatures who sleep under railway arches, in carts or casks, or under any shelter which they can find in the open air? You will see that they are to be envied in comparison with those whose lot it is to seek refuge here. Eight feet square—that is about the average size of very many of these rooms. ”

“ During the fine weather, the poor refugees arrive daily, in their national dresses, all travel-soiled and worn. The night they pass in rude shantees, in a particular quarter of the town, then walk off into the country — the mothers carrying their infants, the fathers leading the little children by the hand, seeking a home where their hands may maintain them. ”

“ The thirty thousand inhabitants, women and children and old men, set forth to seek an uncertain refuge in a neighbouring city, which is threatened almost as directly as their own and which to-morrow, it may be, must in its turn set forth, but whither none can say, for the country is so small that its boundaries are quickly reached, its shelter soon exhausted. ”

“ Towns, villages, hamlets, and lone farms were unprepared to house or to feed the scores of millions who descended upon them—rich refugees in limousines piled high with canned foods and guns—slum masses in rags and on foot, with nothing but fear and hunger to drive them ahead. ”

“ As for the present, we all know that the work is done mostly by Arabs from the neighbouring villages, either journeymen, who come in the morning and return home in the evening, or regular labourers, who live in the Colony with their families. It is they who are doing for us the work of the “home of refuge.” ”

“ It is also to be a city of Refuge, and a safe asylum when the storms of vengeance shall pour upon the earth, and those who reject the book of Mormon, shall be swept off as with the besom of destruction. ”

“ It has sent forth its bravest and best from cottage and farm and manor-house to fight for truth and liberty and justice. The news of grievous wounds and still more grievous deaths, of men missing and captured, comes often to that quiet hamlet, and the roll of honour in the little grey stone church grows longer and longer. ”

“ Recent information also leads me to hope that the emigrants from Her Majesty's Provinces who have sought refuge within our boundaries are disposed to become peaceable residents and to abstain from all attempts to endanger the peace of that country which has afforded them an asylum. ”

“ The English Society of Friends has given some money with which to put up wooden huts, on which old men and Belgian refugees were working when I passed that way. There is a French charity that tries to outfit these new homes in the devastated districts, one of the numberless efforts of the French to put their national house in order. But for all that charity can do, the lot of these villagers is a bitter one: their strong men have gone to the front ”

“ The Night Refuge is a cellar with a kitchen, a few holes in the wall for sleeping purposes. Its counterpart exists in every great city. Thieves, prostitutes, men and women, the very dregs of life, pass their battered days and nights in these foul caves. ”

“ When the Sisters left the parish church, where they daily took part in the public devotions for peace, they were besieged by hundreds of these poor, half-frantic refugees, beseeching shelter over night in the church or schools, which were already full to overflowing. The days were warm and pleasant, but the nights were very chilly and sometimes rainy. Where would those poor people go and what could they do without food or shelter for all those little children? ”

“ The hospitable wayside inns, the quaint villages, the picturesque peasant cottages which the tourist in this region knew and loved are but blackened ruins now. And the people are gone too—refugees, no doubt, in the camps which the Government has erected for them near the larger towns. One no longer hears the tinkle of cow-bells on the mountain slopes, peasants no longer wave a friendly greeting from their doors: it is a stricken and deserted land. ”

“ He must imagine a city of narrow streets and low houses, thronged with a numerous population, dresses the most various in shape and the most lively in colours, all anxious, all talking, all agog as if something extraordinary was to happen ”

“ Fly to the City of thy Refuge, fly!
"Then ye shall appoint you cities, to be cities of refuge for you; that the slayer may flee thither which killeth any person at unawares.—And they shall be unto you cities of refuge from the avenger."—Numbers, chap. 35.
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Note 3, page 9, line 8.
And dark the chambers of its imag'ry.
"Every man in the chambers of his imagery." ”

“ I have told this poor little story to illustrate a fact which, as time passes, is beginning to be lost sight of: the fact that we workers among the refugees are trying, first and foremost, to help a homesick people. We are not preparing for their new life an army of voluntary colonists; we are seeking to console for the ruin of their old life a throng of bewildered fugitives. It is our business not only to feed and clothe and keep alive these people, but to reassure and guide them. And that has been, for the last year, the task of the American Hostels for Refugees. ”

“ These refugees tell of the great caravan composed of homeless persons in its wild flight to the hills for safety, and in that great procession women, harnessed to vehicles, trudging along and tugging at the shafts, hauling all that was left of their earthly belongings, and a little food that foresight told them would be necessary to stay the pangs of hunger in the hours of misery that must follow. ”

“ The fear of it never died down in the heart of the hunted man, nor the duty of it in the heart of the hunter. The holiest sanctions confirmed it,—the safety of society, the honour of the family, love for the dead. And yet, from this endless process, which hunted a man like conscience, a shelter was found in the custom of Eastern hospitality—the 'golden piety of the wilderness,' as it has been called. ”