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Title: Home Missions In Action

Author: Edith H. Allen

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HOME MISSIONS IN ACTION


BY

EDITH H. ALLEN




To

MY FATHER A

Christian Patriot




FROM THE PUBLICATION COMMITTEE

The general topic for the text books for 1915-16, as first chosen
by the "Committee of Twenty-eight," was "The Church at Its Task."
This committee is composed of representatives from the four
missionary organizations: the Home Missions Council; the Council
of Women for Home Missions; the Conference of Foreign Mission
Boards and the Federation of Women's Boards of Foreign Missions.

The outbreak of the great war of the nations brought new duties
and questions of adjustment to the Christian church; the Committee
has recognized this in changing the original topic to "The Church
and the Nations."

This book is written from the standpoint of the words chosen as
the key note for the year, "Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on
earth." It recognizes the fact that the Kingdom cannot come to our
land, or to the world unless all social conditions are drawn
within its scope; it emphasizes the desire of Home Missions and
the church to work toward this great end, and the recognition of
their responsibility for its accomplishment. But unless the
nations of the world are trending toward the day when peace shall
reign and hatred and strife cease among men, these desires cannot
be realized. With this in view the portions dealing with social
conditions and peace possibilities have been written.

That this book may reveal the far-reaching potentialities of Home
Missions as a dynamic force for reclaiming, educating, healing,
and integrating our nation into a land over which the Christ shall
reign and that from Him it shall also draw its ideals and its
power, is the hope and the prayer of the author and the Council of
Women for Home Missions.




CONTENTS


I.    A NATIONAL FORCE

II.   A RECLAIMING FORCE

III.  AN EDUCATIVE FORCE

IV.   A HEALING FORCE

V.    AN INTEGRATING FORCE

VI.   SOURCES OF POWER





I


A NATIONAL FORCE  PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH


O God, we pray for thy Church, which is set to-day amid the
perplexities of a changing order, and face to face with a great
new task. We remember with love the nurture she gave to our
spiritual life in its infancy, the tasks she set for our growing
strength, the influence of the devoted hearts she gathers, the
steadfast power for good she has exerted. When we compare her with
all other human institutions, we rejoice, for there is none like
her. But when we judge her by the mind of her Master, we bow in
pity and contrition. Oh, baptize her afresh in the life-giving
spirit of Jesus! Grant her a new birth, though it be with the
travail of repentance and humiliation. Bestow upon her a more
imperious responsiveness to duty, a swifter compassion with
suffering, and an utter loyalty to the will of God. Put upon her
lips the ancient gospel of her Lord. Help her to proclaim boldly
the coming of the Kingdom of God and the doom of all that resist
it. Fill her with the prophets' scorn of tyranny, and with a
Christ-like tenderness for the heavy-laden and down-trodden. Give
her faith to espouse the cause of the people, and in their hands
that grope after freedom and light to recognize the bleeding hands
of the Christ. Bid her cease from seeking her own life, lest she
lose it. Make her valiant to give up her life to humanity, that
like her crucified Lord she may mount by the path of the cross to
a higher glory.

--Walter Rauschenbusch.


       *       *       *       *       *


Home Missions may be defined as the out-reaching of the Christian
church in America to those peoples and places in our land beyond
the immediate environs of the local church.

From the time the Pilgrim, the Dutch, the Cavalier stepped on
these shores the church (and included in it Home Missions) has
exerted a most powerful influence upon the ideals and standards of
life on this continent.

While shaping and moulding the thought and life of the people, it
has itself developed a content and vision infinitely greater, more
inclusive, more of the spirit of the Christ's "I am come that ye
might have life and have it more abundantly," than was dreamed of
in the days of its beginning.

"The hidden forces of national life are instinctive and
unconscious. One cannot differentiate natural influences so as to
ascribe to each its value. The ideals of nations, like those of
individuals, are derived from all the concrete qualities of
character." [Footnote: F. H. Giddings in "Democracy and Empire."]
The ideals which are a compelling force in our nation to-day
cannot be ascribed to any one force, but are the result of all
those formative reactions which are the product of racial,
economic, social, ethical and religious forces, the latter being
pre-eminently the most marked.

It will be remembered that into the new and harder life of the
successive frontiers, Home Missions entered, bringing a saving power,
as well as one that softened and glorified the renunciations and
sacrifices attendant always upon frontier life.

Indeed, the most marked characteristics of our national life
until recent years have been those born of contact with frontier
conditions--courage, discipline, an austere sense of duty, a
passion for work, marvelous practicality joined to a fundamental
idealism and love of sentiment, an unconquerable hopefulness and
an innate kindness and personal helpfulness.

Of necessity the conditions and environs of the country have
reacted upon the religious ideals and life of our people. We can
not enter into the fullest understanding of the present place and
influence of Home Missions as a National Force, or a study of its
immediate future, without pausing to review the background of the
past. For we recognize that growth, organization and development
are all functions of _time_.

The early fathers had no thought of founding a nation when they sought
refuge and a new start on this continent. Jamestown, New York, Plymouth
and their outgrowing settlements were intensely individualistic. They
were the individual Cavalier, Hollander or Pilgrim, only in larger
proportions, bearing all their characteristics.

To appreciate the characteristics and spirit of these colonists,
we must consider the special significance of the age that gave
them birth. They "were the children of a century in which the
human spirit had a new birth in energy of imagination, in faith
in its powers to dare greatly and achieve greatly." [Footnote:
Hamilton Wright Mabie--American Ideals, Character and Life.]

They were inspired most strongly by religious aspirations,
although combining with these impelling political convictions.
In the Puritan colony, "membership in the church for some time
remained a qualification for voting."

"In nearly every document which conveyed authority to discoverers,
explorers, and settlers in the New World, the Christian religion
was recognized." [Footnote: Hamilton Wright Mabie--American
Ideals, Character and Life.]

Their faith was of heroic quality, of rock firmness; their
obedience to duty as they saw it, almost absolute.

The Bible exerted a tremendous influence. It was not only their
religious guide and teacher, but was also their library, daily
companion and for some time their only literature. It became
wrought into the very fibre of their thought.

This dominating religious attitude, while modified in the
different types--the Friends, Huguenots, Moravians--gave the
impulses which have had so strong a formative influence upon the
life of the nation.

Recognizing fully the incalculable value of this early religious
contribution, we cannot fail also to realize the limitations of
the religious outlook of that period, and the effect of these
limitations upon the social life of the country. Seventeenth
century religion laid its emphasis upon the subjective--upon
definitions of religious belief--and found expression in theological
discussion and opinion. It concerned itself intensely with the
individual as regards his spiritual life, but took little or no
account of the outward conditions that bear so powerfully upon
the inner life. Thus in its growth the church failed to exercise
that commanding influence in the redemption of society and the
_forming_ of social conditions which should have accompanied the
preaching of individual salvation.

It entered deeply, reverently, passionately into the spirit of the
first commandment: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might," but failed in
holding with equal grasp the second, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself."

Had the church, had Home Missions, entered fully into the spirit
of this second commandment, its enormous restraining, organizing,
saving power would have contributed more fully to the _forming_ of
the community life before it so desperately needed _re_forming--to
dealing with those great fundamental conditions which have led to
the "submerged" of our civilization.

To-day we are coming to recognize the vital connection between
spiritual regeneration and the bringing of the Kingdom of God on
Earth. Home Missions is essentially and radically concerned with
both. Rev. David Watson in his "Social Advance" says:

"Theology and sociology are closely kin and in a sense
complementary. Theology deals with man's relation to God,
Sociology with man's relation to his fellows. The one is the
science of God, the other is the science of society.

"The goal of all real social advance, as of all Home Mission
effort, should be the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth
in all its gracious fullness; and the method fourfold, by
spiritual dynamics (the church and its Home Missions), moral
culture, economic change and wise legislation."

First, the Gospel, with its message of individual salvation, and
the Kingdom of God, this opening the way for and bringing with it
education and moral culture, and the control of economic forces by
legislation.

"Only through the unified action of all these forces is continued
progress assured."

The church has eagerly sought to comply with the first three
requisites, but its failure to recognize the specific influence it
might exert along the lines of the economic and legislative have
retarded mightily the better day in this land and hindered the
best and highest attainment of our democracy.

The concept of the Christian ideal to-day is that it shall save the
individual, but also remove that which produces crime and makes sin
almost inevitable--in short, that it shall seek to redeem the
environment as well as the sinner, and give more wholesomeness,
more fullness, more joy to life through redeeming its conditions,
as well as saving its soul.

On the church and its outreaching Home Missions as the instrument
for the Kingdom-progress, rests a heavy responsibility in supplying
that spiritual dynamic and inspiration which is back of all social
upbuilding. It must produce the men and women whose characters are
such that in their attitude toward industry, labor, legislation, in
all their social capacities, they will seek to live Christ's social
principle, "What ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them," and to bring the Master's Beatitudes as a working principle
into life.

Before considering what we have left undone, let us review in
outline the splendid record of Home Missions.

Since the early days when Roger Williams pressed into the wilderness
of Rhode Island, the Christian preacher and teacher have followed
the advancing line of the successive frontiers--no hardship, no
denial, no scarcity of food, no privation, no want or cold so great
that Home Missions hesitated to go, with its spiritual healing, its
community service, bringing the very heart of Christ's love and
service into these new centers. When adventurous home-seekers reached
the Alleghanies, the Iowa Band soon followed. When the fate of the
great Northwest hung in the balance, a missionary statesman came to
its saving.

When the frozen North called men with its lure of gold, an
indomitable missionary led in all that made for the better life.
When a devastating war had spent its fury and a helpless Africa,
bound by heaviest chains of ignorance and superstition, waited,
Home Missions responded.

When the deposed Red brother suffered every form of grievous
wrong, Home Missions brought him brotherly love and helped him
find the Jesus Road. When the alien stood bewildered in our midst,
Home Missions gave him guidance. When the dumb appeal of the
isolated mountaineers was realized, Home Missions followed the
lonely mountain trail. To the mines and the lumber camps, to the
ancient Spanish folk of our continent, to those deluded by the
false Prophet--to all of these Home Missions has carried its
threefold ministry of saving, teaching and training.

Home Missions counts its lives laid down for the Christ on a
hundred fields. No pen can tell of the magnitude of its influence
on our national life. Its little enterprises are now the great,
strong city churches of Nebraska, Kansas, California, Oregon, in
fact of all the States.

It was a Congregational pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Porter, who
preached the first sermon on Lake Michigan, as he held a service
in the carpenter shop of Fort Dearborn in 1833. The population of
what afterward became the city of Chicago then numbered three
hundred. As a result of the efforts of Rev. Mr. Porter, who
organized the first Presbyterian church in the city of Chicago
while working also for the Congregational church, many of the
present centers of Christian influence were instituted in that
city.

It is instructive to note the returns from one Home Mission
enterprise. On the Pacific coast the Congregational Home Missionary
Society in sixty-two years spent $1,646,000. In thirty-two years
the churches thus founded sent $864,000 to carry Christ's message
to foreign countries, and $302,000 through other Congregational
agencies for uplift in this country. This was given in addition
to all the local philanthropies and social service rendered in
their own communities by these organizations.

The history of the first Presbyterian Church of Portland, Oregon,
is one of the outstanding illustrations of the fruitfulness of
Home Mission work. "This church was organized on January first,
1854, with ten members. It was a strictly Home Mission work,
dependent upon the Home Board for its existence. When it was
reorganized in 1860 it had but seventeen members, and they were
unable to pay the salary.

"During the next four years it received aid from the Board of Home
Missions to the amount of eleven hundred dollars. Then it undertook
self-support. It has been blessed in having a line of far-seeing
pastors who have led it on from strength to strength.

"As its members increased in wealth they grew in their interest in
the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Every enterprise which
helped on that Kingdom was either begun or promoted by the First
Church. The first missionary to Alaska went out from it, and her
expenses were paid for six months from the treasury of the First
Church.

"The steady development of the Oregon Territory engaged the eager
interest of this church from the first. It is said that in all
that district, including Oregon, Washington and part of Idaho, no
Presbyterian church was ever erected which did not receive some
aid from the members of the First Church of Portland.

 "In a single year of its history it has contributed twenty thousand
dollars to Home Missions, and it is because of the large share in the
Home Mission work of the Presbytery of Portland taken by the First
Church that that Presbytery was able to assume self-support, and so
become the first self-supporting Presbytery in the great Northwest.

"This church also fostered the educational interests of the
Northwest. Albany College in Oregon owes its existence in large
measure to its generosity. Portland Academy was early taken over
by its members, and to-day is equal to any secondary school in the
country. The San Francisco Theological Seminary came into a full
share of aid and care. The Ladd professorship is a lasting proof
of the spirit of that church.

"The increasing numbers of Chinese attracted the attention of the
church, and the first mission to the Chinese by the Presbyterian
Church was established in 1885 on petition of the pastor of the
First Church.

"Its foreign mission work has been extensive. Not only has it sent
out its own members to the foreign mission field, but it has been
from the very beginning a liberal supporter of Foreign Missions.
The first Foreign Mission Society of Oregon was organized in this
church, and the splendid North Pacific Board of Missions, broad
enough minded to see the whole task of the church, was organized
here, and is to-day an eager supporter of Home, Foreign and
Freedmen's missions.

"Nor has the church been unmindful of its debt to this ever-growing
city of Portland." [Footnote: Rev. Charles L. Thompson, D.D.]

Illustrations of similar service might be multiplied many times
from the history of other denominations.

With all this glorious, Christ-filled service, Home Missions has
ministered to only a small part. Over sixty millions of the nearly
one hundred of our population are non-Christian and allied with no
religious organizations whatever--Catholic, Hebrew, or Protestant.

Still more than forty thousand Indians in this country are without
Christian ministry. Still great districts in our Southern mountains
wait the coming of opportunity and uplift. Still large numbers of
Mexicans in the Southwest, ignorant and superstitious, are a retarding
element in their communities. Still vast immigrant settlements remain
untouched by regenerating influences and absorb, as well as contribute,
much that is deteriorating.

Still the traitorous hierarchy, Mormonism, makes enormous strides
almost unchecked by Christian effort. The Mormon Church officially
makes the following report of its mission work in this country and
abroad in one year: Tracts distributed, 10,892,122; gospel
conversations, 1,744,641; families visited, 3,532,273; books
distributed and standard church works, 500,614; meetings held,
92,072.

Still from our cities comes the bitter cry of the submerged and of
the women and girls whom unspeakable sin is claiming. "The United
States has the largest proportion of women workers to the
population in the world (one in five). [Footnote: Henry C.
Vedder--The Gospel of Jesus and the Problem of Democracy.] It has
done less toward the regulation of this form of labor--less for
the protection of its women laborers--than any other country."

The recent investigations in Chicago and other large cities show
the close relation between insufficient wages and vice.

One of the greatest obstacles to the relief of these conditions is
the indifference of well-to-do people who do not come into
personal contact with the wrongs and sufferings of the working
people.

Still we are confronted by the sad spectacle of more than a
million of the nation's children at work in factories and cotton
mills for their living, and helping to support their families.

"The child is the embodied future. We can never have good
citizenship without protected childhood. Child labor is a process
of squandering future wealth to satisfy present need." [Footnote:
See report of Eleventh Conference of Child Labor held at Washington,
January, 1915.]

Defrauded childhood! Children, loaded with heavy tasks beyond
their strength, robbed of the light and joy of life, plead for
childhood's rights and that spiritual development that should make
known to them the companionship of the Saviour and the love of the
Heavenly Father.

The testimony printed in the fall of 1912, concerning child labor
in the canning factories of the Empire State, shows that more than
a thousand children were employed in the canning industry that
summer; one hundred and forty-one were less than ten years old.

An experienced manufacturer has said, "You can protect a machine,
you can guide the buzz-saw, but no law that you can enact can, in
a large industry, protect the heart and soul of the child."

A marked improvement has been made in the last five years in combating
the evils of child labor. Many states forbid the employment of children
under fourteen years of age in factories and mills--but in North and
South Carolina, in Georgia and Alabama, children under fourteen are
still permitted to labor in factories ten or twelve hours a day.

To reach this evil from the Federal standpoint, the powers of the
Inter-State Commerce Commission should be invoked.

A bill is now pending (February, 1915) before Congress to bar from
interstate commerce the products of mills, mines, quarries,
factories and workshops employing child labor.

Home Missions must also face to-day the infinitely complex and
rapidly increasing problem involved in the adjustment of our
population to cities and away from rural districts. Thus cities
are becoming dominant factors to be reckoned with in all the
elements that enter into the question of religious and moral
uplift, as well as the ideals and the welfare of our nation.

Here the aggregation of immigrants focuses acutely the complex
problems peculiar to them.

Here is the child laborer in factories and on the streets.

Here women and girls struggle under fearful economic pressure.

Here is the political boss--and what ex-President Roosevelt terms
"organized alliance between the criminal rich and the criminal poor."

Here is the class consciousness and hatred--the cry of anarchy and
socialism.

"To-day seventy-six per cent of the population of Massachusetts live
in cities; of New York, eighty-five and one-half per cent; New Jersey,
sixty-one and two-tenths; Connecticut, fifty-three and two-tenths;
Illinois is one-half urban, and forty per cent of California's people
live under city conditions." [Footnote: Frederic C. Howe--The City,
the Hope of Democracy.]

Contrasted with this peculiar burden of the city, there is the country
church and the adaptation needed to maintain it in any degree of
effectiveness, when its very life blood has been drained for the
city. It has made untold contributions of ministers, missionaries,
church officers and members to the cities and distant fields, leaving
the mother church childless and weak in its advancing years.

Changes that leave almost none of its former constituency confront
the country church.

Old farms and village stores pass into the hands of aliens--in
many instances Hebrews--summer boarders claim the attention of the
faithful women of the congregation for the most favorable months
of the year. Sunday sports engage the interests of the indifferent,
and there are many other disintegrating elements.

In a land where progress calls to progress, where the results of
hasty development create a large share of its problem--a land
where the need of Christian effort is paramount, and where such
effort is so vital to the world, the decadence of the country
church is of far-reaching significance. Home Missions is called to
direct its energizing, constructive ability to the solution of
this baffling and discouraging feature of its problem to a greater
degree than ever before.

Home Missions at this time also confronts a new opportunity and
obligation--to make its voice heard, its influence felt, for
international peace.

These winter days of 1914, in which the world has apparently lost
its soul in the fury of slaughter, speak very loudly to the heart
of Christianity.

No force for the upbuilding of the Christ power on earth can
ignore the significance and solemnity of this time.

Has Christianity failed in these warring lands, or have they who
are controlled by Christian standards and ethics in other relations,
failed to apprehend that the Christ test--His principles--must be
brought to bear upon _all_ of life--upon personal, individual,
national and international relations?

The fruition of Christianity must at last bring in the day when
the conscience of Christian nations will hold true to the Master's
teaching. "What ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them," must be wrought into national consciousness and practiced
as an international principle. With the fatherhood of God, the
_brotherhood_ of man is the very heart of the Gospel message.

Home Missions must take account of the moral reactions of such
carnage as is now taking place.

"Death meets those myriads whilst indulging the most appalling
passions--their hands filled with weapons of carnage, their hearts
with fratricidal hate. It is the sense of the moral death involved,
searing of conscience, deadening of heart, blunting of moral faculty,
fruits of death brought forth in the soul of the survivor, which are
more horrifying to the enlightened consciousness than the dying groans
of the stricken can be to the more bodily nerve. The thing to fear is
not pain, but trespass; not suffering, but sin--the peculiar sin of
war is that it corrupts while it consumes, that it demoralizes whilst
it destroys. It is not because war kills that it is the devil, but
because it depraves; and it is because it depraves that it is condemned
by the religious consciousness. The damage that it inflicts upon the
persons and property of men is trifling beside the damage it inflicts
upon morals; and it is this that is exciting in thoughtful minds a
fresh interest in the whole military conception. The ominous thing is
not the body prostrate on the battlefield, but the brute rampant in
the mother-land; the general lowering of ideal, the blatant materialism
and defiant selfishness." [Footnote:  Walter Walsh--The Moral Damage
of War.]

Home Missions must consider the responsibility of our Christian
nation toward the attitude of world thought that made possible
this war. It was John Hay in his instructions to our American
delegates to the First Hague Conference who said: "Next to the
great fact of a nation's independence is the great fact of its
interdependence." [Footnote:  William I. Hull--The New Peace
Movement.]

Through travel, cultural influences, commerce, the rapid circulation
of news, the cultivation of sympathy, there is a recognized oneness
of the world to-day; a solidarity which, notwithstanding all the
differences arising from remoteness, race, legislation, and religion,
binds together the world as never before.

The world is realizing to-day, as one of the results of this
conflict, that in the largest sense its interests are one, and
that all nations are interdependent.

"America must remember that the military idea and the ideal of
democracy are absolutely opposed."

Dr. Josiah Strong, in a powerful presentation of the effects of
the war says: "Evidently the increasing interdependence of the
nations is creating new international rights and duties, but there
is no world legislature to recognize and legalize them, there is
no world judiciary to interpret and apply them, and there is no
world executive to enforce and vitalize them.

"The economic and industrial organization of the world has far
outgrown the political organization of the world." [Footnote: The
Gospel of the Kingdom, January, 1915.]

Some new world organization is needed and must come to supply this
deficiency.

Home Missions must use its influence to build up a Christian
sentiment for the adjustment of international disagreements other
than by bloodshed and slaughter.

"The following facts are significant. The European war is said to
cost over _one hundred million dollars_ a day in money, stoppage
of industry, and destruction of property.

"The United States has spent in preparedness for war during the
past ten years a sum six times the cost of the Panama Canal."
[Footnote: New York Peace Society Leaflet.]

The European war says:

"That a world that prepares for war will get it sooner or later.

That militarism has revealed itself as an enemy to civilization
and must be destroyed.

That autocrat rulers with power to make war have no rightful place
in the modern world. That no more attempts at world domination are
wanted, no matter by what nation or race.

That nationality and national boundaries must be respected,
territories being enlarged only by the free consent of the
population to be annexed, and colonization taking place only by
peaceable commercial and industrial methods.

That, while military preparedness cannot preserve peace,
_preparedness against attack_ is essential.

That a league or federation of the peaceably inclined nations for
mutual protection and for the preservation of international law
and order has become a necessity of the immediate future.

That lasting peace may be secured through the development of
international law, the extension of democracy, and the cultivation
of the spirit of international justice and good will."


Home Missionary women must assume their full share in all efforts
to spread illuminating information on this subject, and through
their personal attitude, thinking, and praying, strive for the
establishment of world relations that will make for peace.

The destruction of homes, hunger, sickness, poverty, degradation,
all fall heavily upon women and their helpless little ones.

When the guns have ceased their work of death and the ruined land
turns to rebuild its broken commerce and industry, it is the
children who must grow up under the privations and the stunting
burdens of fearful taxation. From the cradle to the grave, they
must pay the billions of treasure eaten up by devastating,
destroying war.

Let every Home Missionary woman, to whom this land is dear, who
cherishes father, husband, son or brother, who clings to loved
home and precious children, use all her influence to bring in the
day when the Christ standard shall be the standard for all our
national and international relations.


O bells, to-day let warfare cease!
Christ came to be a Prince of Peace.
No longer let the sound of drum
Or trumpet, campward calling, come
To vex the earth with dread, and make
The hearts of wives and mothers ache.
Leave battle flags to moths and dust--
Let sword and gun grow red with rust!
Earth groaned with carnage--let it cease--
Ring in the thousand years of Peace!

Ring out the littleness of things,
Ring in the broader thought that brings
Swift end to all ignoble creeds.
Ring in an age of noble deeds
For all things pure, and high, and good--
The era of true brotherhood.
Ring out the lust for gold and gain--
The greed that cripples soul and brain,
And open eyes, long blind, to see
What grander, better things there be!
[Footnote:  Eben Rexford.]


Home Missions is one of the greatest contributors to national
righteousness. Through it the higher life of the community is
developed in the formative period; through it belated peoples
receive the spiritual transforming dynamic that makes them reach
up to the higher and better in their surroundings and gives them
a developing effectiveness and efficiency.

It brings the same force with greater power into the lives of the
children, giving them also a training of minds and hands that
equips them for an enlarging sphere of usefulness.

It brings the most telling force possible to the upward struggle
of our primitive and dependent people, patiently leading them by
the road of sympathetic understanding into some strength to stand
amidst the overpowering complexity of the civilization that
surrounds them, in which they as yet are not advanced enough to
become more than a problem.

The Negro and Indian testify to the marvelous transforming power
of the Gospel of Christ brought by Home Missions--a power that gives
moral fiber, a wholesome attitude of life in which work and ambition
have place.

To all that is noblest, highest and best in our national life, Home
Missions has given in large measure.

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.




II


A RECLAIMING FORCE


   "Go ye and teach the next one whom you meet--
    Man, woman, child, at home or on the street--
    That 'God so loved them' each in thought so sweet
    He could not have them lost through sin's defeat,
    But sent you with His message to repeat  That pardon
    through His Son might be complete.
    So shall our land be saved from sore defeat
    And gather with the nations at His feet."


       *       *       *       *       *


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
Women's Board stepped from the train at a small station in
Northern Minnesota and was met by the Home Missionary pastor.

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.
There were Norwegians, Swedes, Hollanders, a few Poles, and some
Americans of the sort who perennially move on, hoping for better
conditions.

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
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 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,"
"Lovingly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling to you and to me."
Did ever the words seem so fraught with meaning, so filled with
the yearning love of the Master?

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
    On shadowed thresholds dark with fears,
 From paths where hide the lures of greed
    We catch the vision of Christ's tears.

"The cup of water given for Thee
    Still holds the freshness of Thy grace;
 Yet long these multitudes to see
    The sweet compassion of Thy face."




III


AN EDUCATIVE FORCE


"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."

"After all, it is the children who are the important factors of
our nation, and every one of them neglected is a reproach to every
Christian, man or woman, in the churches who has a dollar or a voice.
When the Spartans were demanded to give fifty children as hostages,
they wisely replied, 'We would rather give one hundred of our most
distinguished men.'

"It is an irrefutable fact that the work with the children pays
the best dividends to the state and nation. There is a Doric oracle
which says, 'If the Athenians want good citizens let them put whatever
is beautiful into the ears of their sons.' If we Americanize this
oracle it would read, 'If the Americans want good citizens let them
put whatever is beautiful and useful into the ears of their sons and
daughters.'"


       *       *       *       *       *


It is instructive to note the inter-relation and interaction of
forces and influences that have been powerful factors in national
development, and to consider their sources.

The American passion for education had its roots far back in
Holland, in the period when that country was the world's great
intellectual center, as well as the world's leader in commerce and
manufacturing. The most powerful single factor in shaping Colonial
thought and character was the Bible. It was from Holland that
England received its first Bible printed in the English tongue.

It is said that under the persecution of Phillip II and the Duke
of Alva, fully one hundred thousand Hollanders crossed the channel
to find homes in England.

Industrious, self-supporting, self-respecting men, and women they
were, refugees for freedom and for conscience' sake--among them
were scholars, bankers, merchants, and intelligent, plain people.
They came from a land of free schools and universities.

The counties in England in which the Hollanders settled sent the
Pilgrims and the Puritans to America. These counties also gave
birth to the University of Cambridge; the Puritan movement in England
was largely under the leadership of men who had studied in Cambridge,
and it was that educational center of broad culture, thought, and
inspiring ideals which furnished America the first scholars and
leaders of New England.

The first free school of America was opened by the Hollanders in
Manhattan in 1633. It was known as the Collegiate School, and
though it has changed somewhat in character, it is still one of
the leading preparatory schools of New York City.

Regard for education thus came to this country with the colonists,
though not all the colonies attached the same importance to it.

In the Home countries of the colonists, the schools had been
an adjunct to the churches. It was natural, therefore, that the
impetus for the establishment of schools in this country should
come from the church.

"One of the first provisions made by the Virginia company in their
settlement of Jamestown was to set aside land for the use of a college
to 'teach Indian children the rudiments of religion and the Latin
language,' and money was collected in England to establish a school
which should prepare children for this college. The failure of the
company a few years later defeated these plans."

"Twenty years after the landing at Plymouth, the Massachusetts
Colony ordained by law that every child should be taught to read
and write and understand the principles of religion and the capital
laws of the country. A little later in the same section, every township,
when it numbered fifty householders, was required to support a teacher,
and towns numbering a hundred householders, to establish a school to
teach Latin. These were rude pioneer experiments, for the conditions
which surrounded them were rude; their importance lay in the fact that
they gave education a first place in public interest and accustomed
people to think of education as a function of the community." [Footnote:
American Ideals, Character and Life--Hamilton Wright Mabie.]

From these feeble beginnings has come that greatest bulwark of the
Republic--the free school.

It lies at the very foundation of our national life. It makes
possible our democracy. A helpful government by the people is not
possible if the people are ignorant and superstitious.

It is the greatest institution for citizenship. "Through it come
knowledge of the meaning of our institutions, the interpretation
of our national past, and a reverence for the national symbol--the
flag."

It is a fusing force whereby children of many nationalities,
differing in feelings, sympathies, purposes, and class, become
Americans.

The forty-eight States in the year 1912 spent $450,000,000 on the
public schools of the country. The nation's tobacco bill for the
same period was nearly three times as great, and it spent five times
as much for liquor.

Even with this large expenditure, the provision for the school
population of the country is, in places, fearfully inadequate. In
our large cities, if the truant and labor laws were properly enforced,
the lack of school provision would be still more apparent. In New York
City alone more than 100,000 children are attending school but half
the time.

As we turn to study the need for Mission Schools, and their place
as an educative force, it is well that we should seek to realize
something of the splendid achievements of our public schools as
well as where they seriously fail.

Their efficiency differs with the vision and effectiveness with
which they are administered by the different states.

Many states have added incalculably to the usefulness of the
schools by relating the curriculum to life through industrial and
vocational training, but much remains to be accomplished in attaining
a proper balance in the adjustment of the cultural and the practical
in the public school courses.

The state of Ohio affords an interesting illustration of the wider
relation of the public schools to the life of the school
population.

"In the winter of 1914, nearly one thousand boys and girls of
Ohio, in five special trains, were sent on a tour which embraced
the cities of Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, as a reward
for their efficiency in agriculture and domestic science. The
people of Ohio have found that it pays to encourage thrift and
industry in their children, for since these "corn tours," as they
are termed, were started, the annual value of the corn crop of Ohio
has become almost twenty million dollars _more_ than it formerly was."
[Footnote: Outlook, Dec. 16, 1914.]

Public School, No. 23, of Mulberry Bend, New York, stands in the
heart of an Italian district of more than 100,000 souls, and draws
also from the great Chinese section. Various other nationalities in
less degree contribute their quota, so that the school ministers to
the children of twenty-nine different nationalities.

This school is fortunate in having a teacher of unusual ability
and magnetism for its new students in English. A visit to her room
on the top floor well repays the effort of exploration in a very
foreign quarter of America's greatest city, and the long climb up
the winding cement stairs of the school building.

As you enter, the class is asked to bid you "Good morning," and
the familiar greeting comes to you in the soft Italian accent,
mingled with the higher-keyed voices of the Japanese and Chinese.

The group of ten Chinese young men impress you by their alertness,
neatness of appearance, and evident eagerness to learn. An Italian
boy who had been set at a trade when very young is now having a
belated chance to learn to read. A number of girls of various sizes
help to make up the class, with little Italian Mary, ten years old,
quite new to America, beautiful and winning in spite of her unkempt
appearance and poor clothing.

With the exception of two who had acquired a little English, the
class entered school three months before with no knowledge of
English. All are able to write their names and addresses and simple
sentences in English on the blackboard.

They can go through the transaction of buying a newspaper, explaining
each action involved, and making correct payment or exacting correct
change.

When questioned, they give quickly and correctly the names of the
President of the United States, the Governor of New York, the Mayor
of New York City, and answer other questions on civic affairs.

It was deeply stirring to see a little Italian whose patois English
was scarcely intelligible, step forward, with conscious pride, to
be the standard-bearer and hold the flag while the class, with eager
enthusiasm, saluted, touching foreheads and extending arms at full
length as they repeated, the foreign tongues giving queer twists to
the words:

"I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it
stands, one nation, indissoluble, with liberty and justice for all."

Many night classes likewise afford opportunity for new Americans
to learn English. Public School No. 95, located on Clarkson Street
in the old Greenwich Village of New York, where now many Italians,
Irish and a few Jews find homes, carries forward a remarkable
service to its neighborhood.

Here the opportunity of helpful evening recreation is given to
girls and boys. These evenings include basket ball games and
athletics, Boy Scout activities, moving picture exhibits, public
concerts and meetings, with such speakers on popular themes as
Commissioner of Corrections Katharine B. Davis. Other public
schools give carpentry training in actual shop work, qualifying
the students for positions in trade. They also prepare students to
pass the civil service examinations for public positions and give
suitable training for positions on the Police and Fire Department.

The establishment of continuation schools in a few stores and
factories is an inestimable boon to some of the toilers thrust too
early into the livelihood struggle.

The employers are finding it to their interest to spare their
workers for certain hours and days for such schooling because of
the increased efficiency and intelligence of their service.

A peculiarly neglected group in the foreign quarters of all our
cities are the older women--workers and mothers in the homes. To
these Home Missions is striving to bring some knowledge of the
tongue of the new country through classes arranged especially for
them.

It is startling to find that the United States census for 1910
reports a greater percentage of illiteracy among native whites of
native parentage than among native whites of foreign parentage.
The proportion of children from five to fourteen years attending
school is greater among those of foreign parentage and foreign
birth than among native Americans of two or more generations.

For the entire population over ten years of age, the following
table gives the percentage of illiteracy:


                                        Foreign   Foreign
                               Native   or Mixed   born    Native
                              Parentage Parentage Whites   Negro[A]

United States as a whole....... 3-7        1.1     12.7     30.4

The North...................... 1.4        0.9     12.7     10.5
The South...................... 7.7        4.3     18.8     33.3
The West....................... 1.7        0.8      9.5      7.0

For the children of school age from ten to fourteen, the following
table shows the percentage of illiteracy:

United States as a whole....... 2.2        0.6      3.5     18.9

New England    ................ 2.2        0.6      3.5     18.9
South Atlantic................. 5.0        0.8      5.3     18.9
East South Central............. 5.8        0.9     11.4     20.7
West South Central............. 4.1       11.2     34.6     22.4
Etc............................ ---       ----     ----     ----

[Footnote A: United States Census for 1910].

In some Western states the percentage of illiteracy is as low as
one-tenth of 1 per cent.

       *       *       *       *       *

An examination of schools in fifty-two cities representing with
fairness the entire United States, shows that the majority of
children who enter complete only the fifth grade; of one thousand
children of school age, only one hundred and twenty graduate from
the grammar school and six from the high school. [Footnote: Henry
C. Vedder--The Gospel of Jesus and the Problems of Democracy.]

It is axiomatic that if children are to be spared by law the strain
of enforced labor upon immature bodies and minds, and to be properly
conserved because they are the most precious of the nation's resources,
they must be prepared by suitable training for the life work that lies
ahead--"making a living being an indispensable foundation for making a
life."

Through special circumstances certain parts of our country have
been slow in developing the free school so as to make possible even
a most elementary education for their children. This is notably true
of sections in the South. From the early days when the University of
Virginia entered upon its honored service to higher education, the
schools and colleges of the South have been influential, but through
the force of peculiar economic condition these have ministered to the
privileged classes, while the great masses of Negro and white children
in the isolated regions were given few opportunities for even the most
elementary schooling.

The devastation of war left an impoverished South, and as free schools
depend upon the generosity of the individual states, many, though
desirous, were utterly unable to make suitable school provision for
their children.

Sections in the North thus neglected may also be found, as some of
the islands on the coast of Maine and other more or less isolated
regions of New England, New York, and other states will testify.

There have been great gaps where the government has failed to
make adequate educational provision among the Indian tribes. The
Spanish-speaking people are also exceptional in their educational
needs. Though the government has done much, yet Cuba and Porto
Rico are among the places where conditions make necessary special
educational effort.

The vast number of non-English-speaking adult foreigners calls for
unusual educational provisions.

As the church sent out the school in the early days to become one
of its greatest contributors to our national life, so ever since,
the church has earnestly sought to supply the neglected with that
knowledge which is power.

It is increasingly the aim of the schools founded and maintained by
Home Missions to lead to self-realization and self-help, to bring the
Christ motive to the inner life, and efficiency and effectiveness to
the mastery of outward circumstances through the training of minds
and hands.

Among the early Home Mission schools, were those opened to give
guidance and direction to the millions of Negroes in their baffling
struggle upward from bondage to all that freedom means of ability
toward self-direction and development.

"At Kent Home for Negro girls at Greensboro, North Carolina, the
schedule of the day's activities shows the scope of such schools.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The day's work begins early, breakfast being at 6:30. Busy hands
have the house in perfect order, and advance preparations made for
dinner by the time the chapel bell rings at 8:30.

"All the work of the Home is done by the girls under the supervision
and with the practical assistance of teachers. They are marked and
graded in this as in their school work. They are also making creditable
progress in general cooking, plain sewing and dressmaking.

"The students in the college range in age from sixteen to sixty
years. One of the latter took eleven years to graduate, keeping
two girls in school and a large family at home at the same time.

"The taste for reading must needs be cultivated in most of the
girls who enter our Homes. The gift of $100 from a former 'Kent
girl' and her husband, provides the nucleus of a library made up
of such books as girls need and enjoy; better still, it is reaching
more than our girls. Neither college nor village has library
opportunities for colored people, and so the supply at Kent Home
was made available to those outside." [Footnote: Woman's Missionary
Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.]

       *       *       *       *       *

"It was a Negro girl from Boylan Home, Jacksonville, Florida, who
went back to her cabin home to find no floor but the earth, and nothing
to sit on but home-made stools. But she had the equipment for producing
better things, and was soon conducting quite a dressmaking business for
the neighborhood.

"A frequent sign of progress is the request of a girl to buy a broom
to take home to her mother. Neither mother nor girl had known in the
past anything better than a bundle of twigs wherewith to sweep the
rough wooden or earth floor of the cabin."

       *       *       *       *       *

Spelman Seminary at Atlanta, Georgia, founded (1881) and
maintained by the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society,
has carried forward a varied and far-reaching service to Negroes.

One student referring to her own experience says--"I thought I was
going to Spelman to learn books, but I soon found that sewing, washing
and ironing, sweeping and dusting, cooking and all sorts of work are
included in getting an education here.

"While carrying on high school work I completed the three years'
course in cooking. Plain sewing had been thoroughly mastered.
Basketry, practical gardening and agriculture were a part of the
grade work. Now while I am completing the course in Normal training
I am taking bench work, more advanced agriculture and care and raising
of poultry. This knowledge will be needed as I seek to better the home
conditions of the pupils in the country schools under my care.

"I have also some knowledge of nursing gained at MacVicar Hospital,
which is connected with Spelman and which gives full nurse training
courses to some eighteen or twenty students each year."

One of the most telling features of Spelman's community service is
the sending out of a county supervisor of public schools to introduce
industrial training and better methods of school work.

During the last year of Normal work each student-teacher is sent
out to visit the county schools with the supervisor whom Spelman
employs for the rural work in Fulton County.

There are eight rural and seven suburban Negro schools in the
county. The school buildings range from an old house or a one-room
building, with almost nothing to work with, up to a good school
building fairly equipped.

The following is told by one of the Normal students of her work in
the country schools:

"Mothers' clubs were formed and fathers were interested so far as
possible in order to secure the sympathy and co-operation of the
parents in introducing industrial work.

"The tools were crude. In many instances jack-knives, stones and
glass were used if hammers, planes and saws could not be obtained.

"Sewing was taught to both boys and girls. At first the boys
objected, but such remarks as 'Can't she see us is boys?' failed
of results, and soon the boys became thoroughly interested in
making good sized boys' handkerchiefs from flour sacks. Baskets
were made from pine needles, reed, willow, and rushes, and mats
from corn shucks.

"Early in the term the untidy, neglectful school yards were converted
into gardens, farmers supplying the seed, and when no mule could be
procured for ploughing, four boys were harnessed to draw the plough,
while another guided it.

"Parent-teachers' clubs were organized and many mothers came for
instruction."

The fact that the last census reports thirty-three per cent of the
Southern Negro population above ten years as illiterate, shows a
vast need here of additional educational effort of the kind that
Missions are bringing--the all-round training that gives ability
to earn a living, combined with the moral and spiritual qualities
which alone can produce worthy citizenship.

       *       *       *       *       *

In Porto Rico and the island possessions of the United States,
Mission schools have rendered the greatest possible service.

There were almost no schools for the plain people on the islands
under Spanish rule. Our government, when it assumed control,
addressed itself vigorously to the task of providing schools as
well as giving the islands wholesome physical conditions, but
there was great need of supplemental Mission schools, especially
for the younger children.

In addition to the lack of sufficient public schools, there are
reasons involved in the former religious control of the islands
which make the Mission school most essential in bringing to the
citizens of to-morrow quickening ideals and constructive training.

"Mercedes, Juanita, Pachita, Juan, Felipe--here they are, all out
at play, just like American school children at recess, only that it
is too hot for hard running games. Where is the schoolhouse? Why,
under that cocoanut tree. Yes, that little shack, thatched with palm
leaves. See the American flag floating atop it! That tells the story.
If the breeze that waves it could speak to you as it does to some
older people, it would say, 'In all this beautiful island outside
the city of San Juan, there was but one schoolhouse when it came into
the possession of the United States. Spain had kept the men and women
in ignorance for more than four hundred, years. Every bright fold of
Old Glory means new life, new joy, new hope to the boys and girls of
Porto Rico, for now they have a chance.'"

       *       *       *       *       *

The concentration of Orientals on the Pacific coast has laid a heavy
responsibility upon Home Missions to interpret to them the message
of Christ and the meaning of true citizenship in the Republic.

A number of the larger denominations have responded effectively to
this call, and their schools and missions extend from the Golden Gate
north to Seattle and south to San Diego.

Homes for girls, with kindergarten and primary schools, and evening
classes for young men are most important and telling features in
this service.

The story of one girl in the Home maintained in San Francisco by
the Woman's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal
Church is typical of the far-reaching character of all missionary
service to Orientals.

       *       *       *       *       *

Miss Caroline Lee, a remarkable student, was graduated from the State
Normal School of California. She is at present (January, 1915) attending
the Training School of the Young Women's Christian Association in New
York City, preparing to fill an important position in China under the
National Board of the Association.

Her child life was filled with tragedy and hardship. Her earliest
memories are of a river boat in China and of being sold and brought
to San Francisco, and sold again.

Here, suffering from the result of a serious fall, she was found
by a missionary and taken to the Mission Home, where she spent five
months in the hospital.

In the helpful atmosphere of the Home, she developed a remarkably
bright mind and a sweet Christian spirit.

Having completed her school course, she became an efficient worker
among her own people, reaching heathen as well as Christian homes
through the children in her kindergarten classes, who were devotedly
attached to her.

The qualities of her character and service brought her an opening
to a position of great importance in Christian work in China. As
she returns to China, she becomes another of the many links in the
far reaches of Home Missions by which it influences the ends of
the earth.

       *       *       *       *       *

Home Missions probably faces no greater challenge than is presented
to its faith and accomplishment by Mormonism.

Through constant recruits of hardy, industrious, but uneducated
immigrants, the growth of Mormonism is rapid and of immense political
significance.

The Mormon church, with its great foresight, has established strong
colonies in many states. In at least eight the influence of the
church in civic affairs is paramount.

Because of the fundamental principle of religious tolerance in this
country, and the insidious methods of Mormonism, it is most difficult
for Christianity successfully to combat this menace. It is acknowledged
by those whose experience in Utah and other Mormon states gives them
authority, that Christian education of the Mormon young people is the
surest and best method of bringing enlightenment, independence of
thought, and release from church dominance.

Mormons realize the value of early instruction in religion. Forty
thousand children are under regular instruction in Mormon religion
classes held in the public schools at least once a week, immediately
following the day-school sessions. The regular school teachers (if
Mormons) instruct these classes.

"I recently made a circuit of two score towns in eastern and southern
Idaho (Mormon territory) in quest of students. It was a strenuous
piece of work and required traveling by rail, on horseback and foot.

"Perhaps the most fruitful work of the summer consisted in personal,
intimate talks with the younger professional and business men. They
do most certainly betray dissatisfaction with the old order. A few
are diligently working to liberalize their church against the inertia
of the membership and the alert opposition of the crafty leaders. One
of these _leaders_ I recently heard openly disparaging education as
'not quick with the Spirit,' and deploring the tendency to question
the authority and validity of the priesthood. By far the larger number
of younger dissatisfied men are leaving religion out of their accounts,
living for personal gain, and when pressed, avowing hostility to all
religion.

"The need of cultural advantages is most apparent throughout rural
Utah. The work, therefore, of our academies not only fills a great
need educationally, but responds effectively to the appeal for good
home environment. Christian education is the leaven that Utah needs.

"The graduating classes of the New Jersey Academy for the past three
years have all become Christian girls and members of the little
Presbyterian church.

"I am confident that a new era is dawning--an era marked by intellectual
development and religious awakening, an era of questioning, an era of
intelligence. This cannot fail to be effective in breaking up the
crust of dogmatism and superstition which has retarded the independent
religious thinking of these people for many years." [Footnote: Rev.
Mr. Wittenberger--Presbyterian.]

Probably nowhere in our country is there greater eagerness for
"book learning" than among the mountain people of the South. The
passionately desired schooling in the mountains is often secured
only at the expense of great hardship. Booker Washington has said
that the measure of attainment is not the result accomplished, but
the obstacles overcome in attaining it.

There is much illiteracy among the older people, but through the
Mission schools and the improved educational system of the states,
comparatively few children now are lacking the opportunity of some
elementary education. The training received in the district school
is often very meager and the term of a few months' work much too
short.

Through the many months when the schools are closed, the young people
are thrown upon their own resources. They are without stimulating and
helpful outside interests, and deterioration is the inevitable result.

It is interesting to note that in September, 1914, the Kentucky state
legislature appointed a Commission on Illiteracy. The Commission has
launched an educational campaign with the watch-word "Illiteracy
eliminated in 1920."

A number of Southern states have recently made earnest efforts to
reduce the percentage of illiteracy within their borders.

The story of what was accomplished in a campaign for the elimination
of illiteracy in Rowan County, one of the most backward mountain
counties in Kentucky, is both picturesque and instructive.

During the fall months of 1911, 1912, 1913, under the enthusiastic
leadership of the County Superintendent and a corps of fifty
volunteer and unpaid teachers, practically every man, woman and
child in the county was taught to read and write. A special
feature of this campaign was the holding of moonlight schools,
making possible the attendance of the older people.

Almost all of the fifty teachers who gave this splendid service
were graduates of a Mission School, the Morehead Normal School,
which is under the administration of the Christian Women's Board
of Missions.

Helpful and commendable as such methods are, they cannot supply
the place of a Mission School giving regular educational and
industrial training. These are qualified to bring to peculiarly
backward communities some grasp of the larger, fuller life, and
equipment for living it.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The Mission teacher was making her way along the mountain trail
toward a log house. As she drew near, a woman, scarcely more than
a child, came to the door, looking eagerly up the creek. A tiny
two-year-old boy tried in vain to pass her that he might play in
the shallow water of the creek.

"A wailing cry reached the teacher's ears as the mother turned
into the room and in a moment was again standing in the doorway,
this time holding in her arms a smaller bit of humanity.

"As the teacher reached the house she paused, for a man was riding
down the creek. At sight of him the face of the mountain woman in
the doorway assumed a stolid, almost hard, look, as if life had
already brought to her all the misery and trouble it could, and
there was nothing now but indifference.

"The man rode to the door saying, 'Hullo, Ocie.'

"'Howdy, Alf,' was the reply.

"He swung round sidewise on the horse and remarked:

"'They had a fight up to Lef' Fork las' night. Boys been a drinkin'.
Jim, he's dead. Andy's not hurt much. They hev taken him to the
Cou't House.'

"That was all. The child-woman's expression scarcely changed. The
man sat his horse quietly, then with the words, 'Yo pa'll be down
some time this mawnin' afte' ye,' he turned and rode up the creek.

"The teacher crossed the foot log, lifted the fretting child into
her arms and drew the mother after her into the house. The room was
without light, excepting from the open door; the bare, rough-hewn
floor and table were spotless. One chair, a bench and an old chest
of drawers was the only furniture besides the large bed with its
neat, homespun blue counterpane. The hearth of the huge fireplace
was swept clean, and although the middle of May, a good fire was
burning. The teacher, sitting on the bench behind the table, let
the little boy play with her watch, her purse, her rings, until
in a wealth of happiness and satisfaction, he fell asleep in her
arms. The girl-wife shifted the sleeping babe in her arms, raised
her head, and with all the pathos of a hurt and ignorant child
spoke her heart to the woman whom she knew would understand.

"'I've fearn this thing for a long time. Las' winter befo' the
baby come, I used to set befo' the fire all night long, dreadin',
dreadin'--I didn't know what--this, I guess. We've been married
nigh onto fou' years now, though I ain't but seventeen; Andy he's
comin' nineteen. It's agen the law to marry that young, but pa he
hed a big family and Andy, he was a mighty nice young man, so we
fixed it all right.

"'We never hed no preachin' fo' more'n three year befo' yo' all
come, exceptin' when Mis' Lawson's baby died and when Ben and Lizy
was married, ole Brother Bonat come over an' preached a couple o'
nights. Fo' more'n year now Andy an' Jim ha' been hangin' roun'
Eskin's store, an' you've never know'd 'em exceptin' as the rough
men they are. When yo' all come I tho't maybe yo' could get 'em
back, but it was too late. Now Jim, he's dead, and Andy--cou'se he
never'd tetched Jim if he'd been hisself.'

"The soft, hopeless drawl stopped, and again there was silence.
Soon the sleeping children roused, the dog barked, and three men
came to the doorway--the father and brothers. Without greeting,
the old man said: 'Yo'd better come home, Ocie. Jim, he's dead,
an' Andy'll hev to go to Moundsville, I reckon.' (Moundsville
meant the state penitentiary.) The teacher helped to dismantle the
poor little home and saw the few household belongings loaded on
the ox sled.

"The silence which she knew was more acceptable sympathy to the
tearless child-woman than words would have been, was only broken
when they were standing on the steps above the creek. Then the
words were interrupted by the child-mother.

"'It's too late to help this now, but ef yo' all will just see
that there's a school here where my children can learn what their
pa an' me an' Jim didn't know, an' will keep the meetin's agoin'
at the schoolhouse so they'll know how to be good, I'll be mighty
glad. These here little fellers named Jim an' Andy, too, yo' know,
an' I want 'em to hev more of a chanct than we've hed. They's lots
of us up here thet hed in us a great big feelin' of wantin' to be
somethin' and to do some-thin' that we didn't know what nor how,
'n' I guess we get reckless sometimes thinkin' it's no use.'"
[Footnote: Alma C. Moore--Christian Women's Board of Missions.]

       *       *       *       *       *

The detailed and comprehensive report of the Commissioner of
Indian Affairs, issued in January, 1915, emphasized the desirability
of the attendance of Indian children at near-by public schools, to
obviate the dreaded separation from parents which is entailed when
they must be sent by the government to distant Indian boarding schools.

The report mentions the gratifying increase last year in the number
of Indian children in attendance at the neighborhood public schools.

Some tribes are still peculiarly neglected educationally. The
Navajos are a conspicuous example.

Twenty-four thousand Indian children remain without schools.

The religious motive enters deeply into the psychology of the
Indian, and no greater stimulus toward better living can be given
them than Christianity affords. Therefore the Mission School is
especially adopted to bring the Indians into helpful and constructive
relationships as individuals and citizens.

Of great significance in the uplift of the Indians is the recent
opening of several schools for training young Christian Indians
for leadership in Christian work among their own people.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The transition which is now going on from the old days of hunting
and fishing to the new period of commercial development throughout
all Southeastern Alaska must have a profound effect upon the future
of this people.

"More pupils applied for admission to the Sheldon Jackson School at
Sitka this year than could possibly be accommodated. The industrial
departments of this institution have received careful attention.
The general claim of all this work is to give full practical and
theoretical training, with a view to preparing the girls for the
task of home-making and the boys as wage earners." [Footnote:
Woman's Board of Home Missions, Presbyterian Church in U.S.A.]

This aim holds true also for the schools of all Protestant
Missions in the far North.

Education is one of the expressions of the passionate desire and
purpose for betterment of those who gave their impress to our
national life. Hamilton Mabie says: "Among Americans education is
not only a discipline, a training; it is also a symbol. It means
living an ampler life in a larger world."

The church-Home Missions--from the beginning has been the largest
factor in the spread of schools and colleges--the greatest single
educative force of this country.

The record of the Home Mission activities of the various denominations
tells the story of the founding of academies and colleges, throughout
the length and breadth of the land. In Kansas the State Normal School,
State Agricultural College and the State University were founded by
Home Missionaries.

Of the great Eastern universities and colleges it will be recalled
that many were established by the Christian church. Among these
are Harvard, Williams, Columbia, Princeton, Rutgers, Vassar and
many others.

Home Missions is still an active and deeply needed educative
force. It brings the most powerful influence to the great groups
of the neglected in our land, giving them visions of bettered
physical conditions, yearnings after higher spiritual purposes,
and determinations for a fuller realization of life in all its
meaning, with the power of attaining these ideals.




IV


A HEALING FORCE


"During the spring months an epidemic of diphtheria and other
infectious diseases visited a district of nine or ten villages in
New Mexico. Many children succumbed to these diseases, the number
of those who died being about one-tenth of the entire population
of the district.

"No people in the world are kinder-hearted than the Mexican
people. Everybody, even the children, visits the sick, and attends
the _velorios_ (wakes) and funeral rites of the dead, without
regard to the contagious character of the disease.

"This fatal custom is re-enforced by a fatalistic philosophy.
Whatever befalls one, he receives it with an '_Asi me toco_' (It
was my fate). Whatever comes, he says:

"'_Es par Dios_' (It is of God). Each man has his appointed time
to die. Until that time he is safe, and when that time comes
nothing can save him. There is no such thing as contagion; disease
strikes when and where God will. Medicine will cure, if it is the
will of God. What the medicine may be is of little importance; a
glass of water will cure as well as anything else, is a frequent
saying, if it is the will of God.

"She, the missionary nurse, thereupon took up her station in the
sick room, kept out the numerous callers, administered antitoxin,
and nursed the child back to life. She had saved the child. She
gave the antitoxin treatment in other cases where the parents were
willing. She thus treated fifteen cases, losing only one."


       *       *       *       *       *


"The healing of the seamless dress,
    Is by our beds of pain.
 We touch Him in life's throng and press,
    And we are whole again."

       *       *       *       *       *

Of all the compelling qualities that drew humanity irresistibly
to Him, the compassion of the Christ was the most winning. This
constraining love was the very heart of His Gospel.

The masses of the suffering in His day knew only the ostracism of
society because of their affliction.

The blind must sit idly through the glory of the day by the dusty
road-side, begging bread from the passing throng; the crippled lay
in their misery and impotence at the gateways of the temples,
sustained by the occasional coins tossed by the more fortunate as
they hurried by. Nervous and mental sufferers must range through
the wilds of deserts and waste places, or share the tombs where
the lepers took refuge, being judged possessed of devils and fit
only to be outcasts.

The pity of Christ, as well as His power to heal, disclosed a new
force in the world-a love that could tenderly share the darkened
outlook as well as minister to all the needs of such as these.

The compassion of the Christ reached and lifted the hopeless heart
of suffering humanity as His touch soothed the torturing agony of
disease and brought hope and healing into a world hardened to pain.

It released a power the beneficence and helpfulness of which
increase year by year as science adds to its ability, and a growing
sense of responsibility widens its use.

The Christian era ushered in the day of hope for the sick-poor--a
day that has progressed steadily, to an ever-enlarging vision of
what was in the heart of Christ for the healing of the nations.

Ancient writers tell us of some efforts in pre-Christian days
toward the institutional care of the sick. The earliest records
mention the treatment of the sick in the Greek temples of Aesculapius
in 1134 B.C.; these were probably not for the poor. Seneca very
much later refers to the infirmaries established by the Romans for
the well-to-do classes.

In 226 B.C., the Buddhists in India are credited with some small
efforts to provide for the sick poor, as are also later the fire
worshipers of Persia.

"When the example and teachings of Christ began to bear fruit, and
when Jerusalem and the roads approaching it began to be crowded
with pilgrims, special accommodations for the use of the sick were
established. When monasteries and convents followed, they too,
provided for the sick."

From the Roman word "hospitalia" (apartment set apart for guests),
our word hospital is derived.

In the writings of St. Jerome, who established several, the word
"hospital" is first used for a curative institution.

It is of interest to know that the oldest hospital now in use in
Europe, the Hotel Dieu, was founded in Paris, in 600 A. D. by the
Bishop of Paris.

All the early hospitals were church institutions, and the wards
were clustered about the chapel, as may be seen to-day in the
arrangement of beautiful St. Luke's hospital in New York City.
Thus we find that religion, not medicine, gave birth to hospitals.

An accelerating influence in their growth came through the
necessities of war, which threw large numbers of the injured and
suffering upon communities quite unprepared to receive and
minister to them.

It was to meet such a need that the first hospital was established
in the United States on Manhattan Island in 1658.

The "New Netherland Register" says "This hospital was established
at the request of Surgeon Hendricksen Varrevauger for the reception
of sick soldiers--who had been previously billeted on private
families."

In 1679 the hospital consisted of five houses.

Early in the eighteenth century pest-houses were established at
Salem, Massachusetts, at New York, and Charleston, and in 1717,
a hospital for contagious diseases was built in Boston.

The teachings and writings of Benjamin Franklin were of marked
importance in promoting sanitary science and in securing the
building of the first chartered hospital in the United States,
which was erected in Philadelphia in 1755. The record shows four
hundred and thirty-five patients treated in this hospital in the
year 1775.

That year was also marked by the building of the New York
Hospital, which was destroyed by fire almost as soon as completed,
and rebuilt in 1791. It owed its origin to two professors of
King's College (now Columbia), which at that time was a church
institution.

The necessities of war have from early times had a marked effect
upon the development of hospitals. Dr. James Tilton, in presenting
recommendations to Congress in 1781, says of his experience in the
Revolution: "It would be shocking to humanity to relate the history
of our general hospitals in the years 1777 and 1779, when they
swallowed up at least one-half of our army, owing to the system of
placing nearly all the sick of the army in the general hospitals,
where crowds and infection wrought a fearful mortality, and where
more surgeons died in the American service in proportion to their
number than officers of the line--a strong evidence that infection
is more dangerous than weapons of war."

The death rate of the English and French soldiers was so fearful,
and the neglect and condition of the wounded men so appalling in
the Crimean war (1854), that the entire English nation was aroused.
It was a woman, Florence Nightingale, who was sent out by the nation
and given full authority to act in the emergency upon which hung
the fate of the armies.

Not only did this noble woman, with her band of thirty-seven
nurses, bring healing instead of death in those army hospitals,
but she instituted reform in sanitation which was adopted by
hospitals throughout the world.

To her also humanity owes the inestimable boon of the trained
nurse of education, refinement and ability. Before Florence
Nightingale gave herself and initiated the movement for the
training of young women of standing as nurses, such work had been
left to the rough, uncouth, and often low-lived men and women, of
whom the unspeakable Sairey Gamp, immortalized by Charles Dickens,
is a fitting type.

As the Christian church was the first to give healing to the
needy, so it has carried this ministry wherever in the world its
banners have been set up.

Throughout this land, from Alaska to the Gulf, may be found
hospitals established by the Christian church--the greater number
the product of Home Missions.

The Home Mission nurse, or deaconess-nurse, is an important factor
in connection with nearly every mission station.

In lumber sections, in mining camps, on Alaskan river boats, in
far back mountain settlements, in the patios of Porto Rico and our
island possessions, with the Negroes of the South, the Orientals
of the Pacific coast, the backward peoples, the Mexicans and
Indians, the depressed of our great cities, at the gates of the
nation--wherever the cry of human need in our land has been met by
Home Missions, there these ministers of healing have carried their
blessed service.

If the nurse, or deaconess, is to fulfill her mission to the
sick, she must have training. There must be deaconess homes and
hospital's for this, where also the sick poor who can rarely be
properly cared for in their dark, crowded, unsanitary homes may
find help. In answer to this double need, deaconess hospitals
have been established.

"The deaconess nurse goes into the homes of the poor, bringing
the skilled touch of the nurse and the loving heart of Christian
womanhood to the service of the neediest. Contagion has no terrors
for her; Filth, vermin, and dangerously unsanitary conditions are
matters of every-day occurrence. No service so quickly opens the
heart to good influences as that which comes in hours of deepest
need and helplessness, to lead the heart through human tenderness
to the Source of all goodness and love. Whole families have been
won to Christ through the services of a Christian nurse.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Babies first! The wee folk, doomed to the ill's to which tenement
life is heir, must have safe food; a luxury unattainable, or it
would be if the House did not have a dispensary from which over a
thousand bottles of milk, modified by the doctor's prescription for
each individual case, are given out each month.

"It is worth while to visit the Medical Mission at 36 Hull Street,
Boston. There will be found a dental clinic, opened in the spring of
1912, and the school nurses send the children there to get acquainted
with the pleasures of the dental chair, and, most important of all,
to learn how to care for their teeth. Then there are the orthopedic,
and the regular surgical and medical clinics.

"Soon after lunch I went with a nurse to make call's on a few of the
out-patients. We read of dark stairways, but I had no conception of
such dark and crooked ways. Why the children do not have broken
limbs all the time I cannot imagine.

"We entered three places--I suppose the people who live in them
call them homes; each has two or three rooms, with one or more
beds in every room, even the kitchen. If there were three rooms,
one was window-less. A mother, with a three weeks' old baby, was
scrubbing the stone steps. The babies were bound up like papooses,
and the nurse had to unwind the little living mummies to care for
them.

"Later, returning to the Mission, we attended the 'Italian
Mothers' Club.' How they luxuriate in their weekly treat! They
sing, sew on garments which are theirs when completed, listen to
talks from visitors and workers, and always close the hour with
the Lord's prayer. Children cling to their skirts or lie in their
laps as they discuss their personal problems, and all look up when
spoken to with the never-failing Italian courtesy.

"Some of the year's statistics are a revelation as to the work
done: Dispensary treatments, indoor, 12,522; outdoor, 1536; new
patients, 4649; operations, 329; obstetrical cases, 151; calls
made by nurses, 3075.

"In one week at the morning and evening clinics, ninety-seven
patients were treated at the dispensary besides the vaccination
cases." [Footnote: Woman's Home Missionary Society, Methodist
Episcopal Church.]

       *       *       *       *       *

"She was an epileptic. The sadness that is bound up in the word
only those who have experienced it can know. She worked with her
needle as long as she could. At the warning cry of one of the
terrible attacks, her mother tenderly cared for her.

"'There is only one thing that rests on my heart,' said the mother,
as she lay on her death-bed. 'I am satisfied about everything else
and ready to go, if only there was some friend to care for my poor
epileptic girl.'

"A friend promised to place the daughter in the Lutheran Home
for Epileptics, and the mother died praising God for those who,
in following His Son, had provided for those who were afflicted."
[Footnote: The Women's Missionary Society, Lutheran General
Council.]

       *       *       *       *       *

Nowhere is the twofold service of the Mission hospital more
needed than among the Negroes of the South, where the unsanitary
conditions in and about the homes, and the widespread ignorance
of the simplest laws of health are so pronounced. A number of the
Boards maintain hospitals providing care for the sick Negroes and
the training of colored girls as nurses for their own people.

Among these MacVicar Hospital is outstanding in the character and
efficiency of its service.

This hospital is a department of Spelman Seminary, maintained by
the Woman's American Baptist Home Missionary Society at Atlanta,
Georgia. Its workers are members of the school faculty and they
are paid from the school fund. A small charge, to outside
patients, is made.

The trustees have set aside one-half of the annual income of a
small endowment in order to provide free operations and treatment
for those to whom even a small payment is impossible.

Negro women and children from the city have the privileges of the
hospital, and patients also come from various parts of the state
for medical and surgical treatment.

The hospital is able to take adequate care of the health of Spelman's
large family of six hundred people. When smallpox is in the city,
vaccination day is held and every boarder, day pupil, teacher, and
workman must report to the hospital.

The doctors from the city co-operate in the work at MacVicar,
giving their services freely.

One of the most valuable features of the institution is the
training course for nurses, to which those in training must give
their entire time for three years. They must have completed the
eighth grade in school before beginning.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of those in dire need of physical as well as spiritual regeneration
in our land are the Mexicans, of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico,
California, and the large colonies in some of the cities of Texas.

The prevailing ignorance, untidiness, and superstition of the
homes call insistently for more missionary nurses to teach
cleanliness, sanitation, and economy, and the training of mothers
in the care of their little ones and in the preparation of
wholesome food.

       *       *       *       *       *

The latest report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs states that
the Government maintains fifty-one hospitals (six additional are
under construction), with a combined capacity of 1432 patients, to
care for a population of 331,250 persons. In view of these figures,
it is not difficult to realize the urgent need of the field workers
and nurses in connection with Christian Missions among Indians.

The report shows also the estimated number of 21,980 Indians
suffering from tuberculosis, and 35,769 afflicted with the highly
contagious eye disease, trachoma. The death rate per thousand
among the Indians last year was 30.76. The percentage of deaths
due to tuberculosis was 31.83, while the birthrate was 38.79 per
thousand.

The Commissioner of Indian Affairs says:

"I am fully aware of the fact that to perpetuate the Indian race,
the inroads of tuberculosis must be stayed. To do this it is
essential that better sanitary conditions be instituted in the
Indian homes, and cleanliness, better ventilation, and sufficient
and nourishing food be secured."

Realizing the importance of these matters, a study has been made
of the physical conditions of the government Indian schools. An
effort has been made to detect incipient tuberculosis and trachoma
and segregate and treat those infected, so that healthy families
may not be infected through the return of a child who has been
infected at school. Regular talks are given to the children on
sanitary matters.

There is vital necessity for more hospitals to care for the
children and other members of the family in the early stages of
disease.

Fully sixty per cent of the Indians under the supervision of the
Indian service are still entirely dependent upon the government for
medical assistance. The medical staff employed by the government
comprises one hundred and twenty-eight regular physicians, devoting
their entire time, and fifty-nine contract physicians giving part
time service.

A unique and most helpful feature of the Indian Missions
maintained by the Women's Board of Domestic Missions of the
Reformed Church in America are the separate buildings known as
lodges, set apart for the use of the Indians.

Here the specially needy sick find care and shelter until other
provision can be made for them.

Here when the journey has been long, or necessity compels, mothers
bring their little ones for rest, or to spend the night.

Young girls pressed by temptation or needing shelter can find
security and safety at the lodge.

The lodge sewing machines and laundry facilities are greatly
appreciated by the women who seek the help of such conveniences
from time to time.

Here mothers are taught many helpful lessons in sanitation,
the care of babies, and the preparation of food for the sick.

Occasionally Indian feasts and celebrations connected with
the Mission are held or prepared in the lodge by the Indians
themselves under the supervision of a worker.

The lodge matron knows the Indians and how to help them, and is
loved and trusted by them because they realize her sympathy and
appreciate what her kind hands do for them in the care of the
sick, and often, also, in the preparation of their dead for burial.

Many a sick and needy one at the lodge has turned from the old
Indian road of darkness, pain, and dread, and found rest, and
help, and light in the Jesus Way.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Here in Alaska the hospital boat was launched this summer, and
will be of great use.

"One of the important results of my visit, I trust, will be a
report of a medical survey made of the natives in Haines and Kluckwan.
A number of estimates of the amount of tubercular and other infectious
diseases among these people have been made, but, so far as my knowledge
goes, no careful, exhaustive, complete medical survey of any one village
has ever been made, or put into suitable form for presentation. I fear
that this will disclose a most appalling condition (unless it should
prove that the estimates hitherto available have been very carelessly
made). Whatever it may show, I feel sure that it will help us in
presenting to the United States Government the medical needs of these
people in such a way as to compel the serious attention of Congress,
and result in an appropriation annually for the introduction of such
sanitary measures throughout Alaska as will eventually eradicate the
dreadful source of contagion now existing.

"It seems almost inconceivable that while so much has been done for
the Indians of the plains, for the people of the Philippine Islands
and for Porto Rico, in the way of sanitation, these natives who have
been wards of the nation for forty-seven years should have been almost
entirely neglected in this respect. According to the information
which I have, there is not a single government hospital in all Alaska,
and only one hospital of any kind--our own at Haines--that is being
maintained for the benefit of the natives; nor are there any homes
for the aged, the incurables, or orphans, though these are sadly
needed. While the church has been ministering to their spiritual
needs, and the government and church together have been supplying
educational facilities, all agencies have failed to meet the
fundamental problem of physical regeneration.

"The question may be asked, as, indeed, it has been, 'What is the
use of attempting to save a dying race?' and secondly, 'Can the
race be saved?' I have little patience with Christian men and women
who ask the first question, but shall reply most emphatically that
on commercial grounds alone we should save these people. They ought
to become a very valuable asset in the new economic development of
the entire territory of Alaska. When properly trained and disciplined
they make excellent workmen. Their natural adaptation to the climatic
conditions should prove a valuable commercial asset. In the name of a
common humanity; in the name of the gospel of the brotherhood of man,
as well as for commercial reasons, I do not hesitate to say that they
should be saved.

"Can they be regenerated physically? Possibly not as a race; but
as individuals without hesitation I answer in the affirmative. The
introduction of proper sanitary measures by the government; the
development of educational systems by both church and state; and
the ministry of spiritual advisers working hand in hand, would
form a combination of agencies that in ten years would completely
transform, rebuild and place on the sure road to health and
prosperity, this people." [Footnote: Rev. M. C. Allaben, Woman's
Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.]

       *       *       *       *       *

The mountain made a steep descent to the road except for one shelving
bit of level ground upon which rested, as if it had alighted there,
a one-room cabin, for which an end of a tree trunk served as a
doorstep. A loosely-hung wooden door provided the only light by day,
except that given by the flickering of the flames from the burning
logs on the old open fireplace.

On a big bed in the corner, the only one the home afforded, lay a
little baby girl, burning with fever. Over her bent her young
mother, widowed, though still in her early twenties.

Pretty fair-haired children of two and four years of age crouched
in sleepy misery on the foot of the bed, sharing in their childish
way their mother's anxiety.

An older girl of six, pretty, but already womanly in her busy
household ways, heaped another log on the fire and hovered over it
for warmth. She was barefoot and, like the others of the household,
including the sick baby, wore the scanty day-time clothing, having
no other, for they were of the very poor of the mountains.

It was the lonely, desolate hour between midnight and morning. The
watchers in the cabin listened intently for the sound of hoof-beats
which would mean that the Mission nurse had been home when the
summons came, and would soon be with them.

Hark! Yes!--through the night came the beat, beat of the hoofs of
old "Bess" as she struck the road in a swift steady trot.

Emma, the oldest girl, is down in the darkness at the road to meet
the beloved nurse and help her dismount. She holds the lantern while
the saddle-bags are swung off and old "Bess" is blanketed and tethered.

As she enters the cabin Miss M---- goes immediately to the bed,
and holding the lantern for light, examines her little patient and
finds a bad case of pneumonia. The Mission hospital is not yet
completed, and there is no doctor within many miles. She must fight
alone for the little life.

Swiftly the saddle-bags are unpacked, yielding the "wonderful
salve" (antiphlogistine) and other medicines--a small wash basin,
soap, wash cloth and towel, flannel and a change of clothing for
baby.

Emma is bidden to heat water, which she does by filling an old
black kettle and standing it on the blazing embers of the open
fire.

How the nurse worked, and watched, and prayed as the hours passed,
and no improvement! The day came and went, and another night
brought closer the shadow--the little one seemed hardly to breathe.
Then the mother fled out in the darkness to rock back and forth in
an agony of weeping, which was hushed only when the quiet voice of
the nurse said: "You make it harder. Pray instead."

At last the waiting nurse feels the little body relax under
her touch. Sleep and restoration begin to steal back the ebbing
vitality--the little life is saved.

To-day within reach of this home, and many like it, the Mary
Isabel Alien Memorial Hospital at Gray Hawk, Kentucky, stands with
open doors and inviting beds for all who suffer. [Footnote:
Women's Board of Domestic Missions, Reformed Church in America.]

Whatever equipment and loving service can do to provide healing
may be found here.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The military occupation of Porto Rico drew the attention of
the Christian churches of the United States to their opportunity
and responsibility for sending the light of the true Gospel to that
island where it had never penetrated. Soon after this the investigations
of a military surgeon demonstrated the important fact that ninety
per cent of the working population of the island were affected with
the hook-worm disease. Apart from other diseases which were present,
here was a great economic and humanitarian problem. The government
had done much, but as elsewhere, other agencies were needed if the
physical ills of the Porto Ricans were to be healed. In response to
this need Dr. Grace Atkins went to Porto Rico in 1900 as the first
medical missionary under the Woman's Board of Home Missions of the
Presbyterian Church. She started a clinic in a room of her rented
house, and treated many sick people in their homes. Being impressed
with how little she could do in this way for many who were seriously
sick, or who needed operations, she urged upon the Board the erection
of a hospital. In response to her call to the church, in February,
1904, the present hospital buildings in San Juan were opened to
receive patients. There were forty-five beds and, at that time,
this was the only hospital on the island in which the sick could
be properly treated.

"That there is need for the work and that the hospital is
meeting that need is shown by the number of those who come
for treatment. This has increased from seven thousand in 1907
to over nineteen thousand in 1914. The majority of these naturally
are treated in the dispensary, where a clinic is held daily, except
Sunday. On Monday all day is required to treat those who come, the
number reaching almost two hundred at times. Many come in from the
surrounding country, often walking from ten to thirty miles. All
classes of diseases are seen. Besides the more common ailments, with
which all are familiar, there are many cases of hook-worm anemia and
a number of other diseases peculiar to the tropics. Then there are
many who need surgical treatment. Blind men come in led by little
boys; some are brought in rocking chairs by their friends; others
are carried in hammocks, while still others arrive in coaches or
automobiles. One woman may have a piece of a needle broken off in
her hand and another a large tumor which needs a major operation
for its removal. Each one must be examined, a diagnosis made and
the proper treatment and instructions given. The most serious cases
are admitted to the hospital when there are beds available. On an
average six to eight cases a week have to be refused admission
because the beds are filled.

"In the private rooms are treated many Porto Ricans and many
Americans. The latter not only receive medical attention needed,
and much appreciated, on a foreign shore, but also an education
in practical Christianity which in many cases proves a great
surprise as well as a benefit to themselves and the hospital.
Practically all the patients in the wards are Porto Ricans. A
few of the more serious medical cases are admitted, but the
majority are those who need operations. Able to pay nothing or
very little, there is no other place where most of them can receive
treatment which will enable them to support themselves and those
dependent upon them. The blind have been made to see and the lame
to walk. So many apply for admission that there is always a waiting
list. Many lives have been saved in the children's ward by taking
in babies who have become sick from improper or insufficient food
due to ignorance or poverty. Tuberculosis of bones fend joints is
common and many little sufferers have been restored to health and
strength.

"That the work done in the hospital is not only helpful to
individuals but that it could be done by no other institution
present or projected is the testimony of the head of the
Department of Health, who is an American and has resided many
years on the island.

"One of the most important departments of the hospital is the
training school for nurses. There were practically no trained
nurses on the island and no provision for their training when
our school was opened. About sixty have graduated and are doing
faithful and efficient work as head nurses in our own and other
hospitals, and in the homes of their own people. There are usually
about fifteen pupil nurses. In addition to the regular hospital
work a department of district, or visiting, nursing has been started
and each one is trained to do actual practical work in the home. Not
only is this valuable for the nurse, but it makes it possible to
follow up many of the cases from the clinic, or hospital, and
supervise their diet and care and so try to keep them well, which
is especially important for the babies. One of the graduates is
doing this in connection with the settlement work of our church in
San Juan. Her work has suggested to the local Board of Health the
desirability of establishing a similar work on a larger scale. This
is an illustration of the indirect benefits of missions throughout
the world.

"But men are souls and merely have bodies, so that, however important
it is to heal the body, our Master came to save the soul and our
duty is to point them to Him. Every day in the wards and in the
clinic the Bible is read and prayer is offered. On Sunday a service
is held in which the Gospel message is explained. They have never
had the Bible and know nothing of the true Gospel. The are either
entirely ignorant of religion or their ideas are erroneous. By the
spoken word in the hospital and by giving them the written Word to
carry to their homes, the way is prepared for the entrance into
their hearts and lives of the divine Healer and Saviour.

"The three years' course affords opportunity for the thorough
religious instruction of the nurses in a weekly Bible class and
in the church services which they attend on Sunday. With very few
exceptions they have become members of evangelical churches before
graduation." [Footnote: Presbyterian Hospital, San Juan, P.I.]

       *       *       *       *       *

"Of first importance in the physical well-being of the boy or girl
is the knowledge that will lead to a wholesome development of body
and mind.

"One of the most importan