Mission House

“ Next day being Sabbath, we had a delightful season there, about thirty attending Church and listening eagerly. The young men and women, living at the Mission House, were being trained to become Teachers. They were reading a small book in their own language, telling them the story of Joseph; and the work every way seemed most hopeful. The Mission House had been removed a mile or so up a hill, partly for Mrs. Gordon’s health, and partly to 269escape the annoying and contaminating influence of the Sandal-wooders on his Christian Natives. ”

“ Before preparing your ballots for choice of your work, I shall have to ask that each head of a family and each unmarried man and woman first pass by the platform and draw lots for the assignment of your rooms in our Mission House. There have been some complaints already, I'm sorry to say, on this question. Some wish to live on the first floor, some on the top, but everybody wants to live on the south side of the house with the glorious views of the sea, and nobody wishes to live on the north side. There is but one way to determine such a question in our ideal state. ”

“ This last class was discouraged as much as possible, for one of the first rules of the Mission House was to show no favour to any man who claimed to be religious, it being Father Rowley's chief dread to make anybody's religion a paying concern. Sometimes a jailbird just released from prison would find in the Mission House an opportunity to recover his self-respect. But whoever the guest was, soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, apothecary, ploughboy, or thief, he was judged at the Mission House as a man. ”

“ Church and manse building, even in the mission field, is very prosaic work, with little of the rainbow of romance about it, but it has to be done. In our case it was a most serious undertaking, for we were 100 miles from the ‘forest,’ and all the wood had to be brought the whole distance, with the exception of some twenty miles, on the shoulders of men from there. The building of our manse was perhaps a more serious affair than it ought to have been. In addition to all the difficulties of the situation, I, in common with most missionaries, knew nothing about house-building. ”

“ I moved after a bit, as the rooms had too many surroundings. On one side was a Board School with 1,200 children; at the back a rag-picking yard, where large quantities of rags imported fresh from Egypt were sorted, and over head resided three families, not always sober, consequently I was glad to get the chance of moving to a little house of three rooms behind the Mission House. There some of my staff lived for five years, when we shifted into the Clergy House which had been built at a cost of ^4,000. We had previously built the Mission House for the lady workers, costing .3,000. ”

“ I do not propose to trace in detail the history of the Church Missionary Society: within the space of a magazine article such an attempt could do little more than produce a list of names and dates. It [485] may be more useful, as well as more interesting, to look at some of the Society's great workers at home, at some of its heroes in the mission-field, and at some of the romances which diversify its history.
THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY'S MISSION HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE.
Of the men who helped to found the Church Missionary Society the first place must be given to Charles Simeon. ”

“ Look in upon a single mission station. A group of three buildings attracts our attention as a bit of New England transplanted, a church, a good-sized school-house, and between the two a neat white painted cottage. The missionaries number four, of whom three are ladies from the North. Over 200 children and youth come daily to the school, where these missionary teachers instruct in branches usual in primary to grammar grades, and also in Christian morals and manners, with the Bible for [18] a text-book, seeking earnestly to develop heart, mind and body to honor and righteousness. ”

“ The reverse side of the card contains the location of the mission house, names of teacher, helper, etc. The intent is that no one willing to listen to the word of life as uttered in private and personal conversation, should fail to be found and to be urged to take his stand with the followers of Christ. We wish to follow up the public service with effective private and personal preaching.
Two of our Chinese brethren at Fresno are to be baptized and welcomed to the Church to-morrow.
Let no one imagine that street-preaching is a new feature of our work. ”

“ At present, the neighboring house, one hundred and thirty feet distant, must be used, and we fear to the detriment of discipline. Plans are drawn for a building to hold sixty seminarians. Because of this building may we ask a special donation in addition to the regular allotment? ”

“ But they have covered the face of the land with country meeting-houses, twice as many as there was any worthy use for, in which faithful service is rendered to subdivided congregations by underpaid ministers, enough in number, if they were wisely distributed, for the evangelization of the whole continent; and each country meeting-house is a mission station, and its congregation, men, women, and children, are missionaries. ”

“ A short distance below the dock-yards is the American Mission, comprising the dwellings of the missionaries and a modest school-house and chapel, the latter having a fair attendance of consuls and their children. Above the dock-yards is the Roman Catholic establishment, a quiet little settlement clustered about a small cross-crowned sanctuary. ”

“ The next idea she sought to develop was a Rest-House or week-end, holiday, or convalescent home, where the ladies of the Mission, when out of spirits, or run down in health, could reside and recuperate without the fear of being a trouble or expense to others. ”

“ Leland's family, the post master of the place and a graduate of Brown's University, and others of respectable standing in Baptist churches in Boston, Cincinnati and San Francisco. But they feel now that they must have a minister on the ground adapted to secure an influence and then they can commence and build a house by the aid of the amount they might receive from the building fund connected with the Home Mission cause. They say it is no use to do anything by way of monthly preaching in other denominations' houses. ”

“ Our Mission Home is a large and commodious mansion built by a slave-holder, whose fortunes went down with the lost cause, and it was purchased by the American Missionary Association. Our school, near by, has a building which compares favorably with some of the Chicago school-houses, two stories and a good basement, the whole accommodating from 300 to 400 pupils, with three noble white teachers and three colored, who have graduated from this school. ”

“ Nothing more beautiful could well be imagined than the picture the mission made in the rosy light of sunset—crowds of savages, children of nature gathered together to receive the rich blessings bestowed on them by the fathers, deriving their authority from the Church whose symbol, the great white building, towering above all else of man’s work, stood like a sentinel guarding the religious life of the mission. ”

“ The Christian world needs arousing to the great work of the church in heathen lands.
There is, however, an inter-blending in all parts of missionary work that should never be overlooked. The home field is the source of the means, and men, and prayers, that must energize the work in the foreign field. Dead churches at home cannot give life to mission work abroad.
There is another form in which the home and foreign fields are blended. The American Missionary Association is ranked, and properly, as a home missionary organization, but it has its relations to the foreign field. ”

“ The missionary now led the way into his house, which, like all Eastern houses, had a central court, enclosed by a wall, within which the sound of a fountain gave a delicious sense of coolness during the heats of Summer. In the rooms all was very plain and simple, and yet there was a neatness and modest taste, that I have found in all parts of the world, to mark the missionary's home, making it a type of Christian civilization. Within is order, comfort, and intelligence, while without is poverty and filth, vice and degradation, in their most disgusting forms. ”

“ For further information apply to the Secretary of the Woman’s Home Missionary Association, 20 Congregational House, Boston.
The interest roused by the late Home Missionary Convention at Chicago shows how real and earnest is the purpose in the hearts of many of our people to undertake with new determination and zeal the task of keeping and of recovering this land for a true Christianity. Every day exposes anew to us, if our eyes are open, the monstrous and fatal dangers which threaten our Republic. ”

“ One night Father Altimira, who was a light sleeper, awoke, thinking he had heard a faint noise in the room adjoining his bed-room, which was used as a store-room for the books, the rich vestments embroidered with gold and silver threads, and the money belonging to the mission. ”

“ Of the 175 ladies appointed to the various departments of missionary labor, twelve are engaged for special home visitation among the people. You can see at a glance that this number is insufficient for that line of duty. Although our teachers are missionaries, and accomplish much through the schools and various agencies set at work for the elevation of the people, yet we ought to have at least one experienced and efficient woman at every mission station, whose entire time should be given to special work in the homes of the people. ”

“ The church at home needs also to come frequently into contact with its missionaries. Nothing will so stir up interest and zeal in the mission cause as to see and hear its needs from living, {223} active workers, fresh from the field. If missionaries were more frequently employed to represent the cause to the churches at home perhaps our mission treasuries would not be so depleted. Mission addresses from home pastors are abstract and theoretical; those from missionaries are concrete and practical. ”

“ The strong evangelical community had been urgent for years that a missionary family live in Homs. This was finally decided upon and the choice of the mission fell on us. There are very few houses for [Pg 165] rent in Homs, and hence it seemed necessary to plan for a missionary residence as soon as possible. ”

“ Home Missions faces forward, realizing that infinitely greater responsibility and service must now enter into the mission of the church at home, if this country is to remain Christian itself and be a force for Christianity in the world. ”

“ Passing back again to the King Street Mission Hall, I found assembled there the band of fifty missionaries, male and female, who visit every Sunday afternoon the kitchens of the various lodging-houses around the Seven Dials. Six hundred kitchens are thus visited every week. After roll-call, and a brief address, we sallied forth, I myself accompanying Mr. Hatton—the young man to whom the establishment of the Mission is due—and another of his missionaries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it seems doubtful whether as many gifts would flow into the treasury and whether the gifts would be accompanied by as much interest, sympathy and prayer.
The hints concerning management thus far presuppose a Home Missionary Society organized on the modern basis of a programme of devotional exercises and various mission studies, and do not apply to those cases in which such exercises have been engrafted upon a sewing society with a long line of Dorcases as Presidents, and antecedents too respectable to be ruthlessly set aside. ”

“ No better work and none looking more to permanent results has been done. Many a missionary and pastor has found his work at once enlarged and all his means of good multiplied, when the house of God has been given him by its aid. And every such edifice stands forth as an eloquent witness of your loving care for the people of the South, and serves as a bond of union between the distant parts of our land. ”

“ The church has been revived, its membership increased to seventy-five, congregations large and growing, a nourishing Sunday-school and mission school, two preaching services on the Lord's day, and a vigorous Y.P.S.C.E.; a wide-awake mid-week service, a woman's missionary society, and a sewing-school for girls. The church edifice has been renovated at a cost of three hundred dollars, and a parsonage is being erected. For intelligence, Christian character and progressive work, this church is considered the best among colored people in the city. ”

“ Another school is soon to be formed in this neighborhood. This “Pine Mountain” field is about 20 × 60 miles, and the little church which the A.M.A. built during the past few [248] months is the only framed “church house” in the whole region. Think of it, O Christian friends, you who hold the Lord’s money in trust, 1,200 square miles, with cabin homes scattered along every “cove” and fertile valley, left, to this year of our Lord 1888, with only one suitable place of worship!
In building this new church, the people themselves have strained every nerve and made large personal sacrifices. ”