Home Missions in Action Part 3

He sought the help of a Home Missionary whose duties covered a district of hundreds of miles, and to whom was entrusted the establis.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.d!

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 cla.s.s--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 citizens.h.i.+p 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 Congregational Missionary at Galena, Ill., to the Congregational Home Missionary Society under date of April 9, 1844:

"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 a.s.sistance here in the West to establish literary (educational) inst.i.tutions 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 pa.s.sed 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, hards.h.i.+p, 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 cla.s.ses, 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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.