Home Missions in Action | Page 8

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.
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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