THE HOME MISSIONARY. Go....... .PREACH the GOSPEL............Mark xvi. 15. VOL LIX. NOVEMBER, 1886. No. 7. THE TREASURY. THE fact as to its condition is briefly this. At this writing, the first week in October, the Treasury is $30,000 in arrears. To missionaries for labor reported, $20,000; to four friends, $10,000, advanced on their individual responsibility to missionaries. The way the arrears came about is briefly this. The receipts from legacies in the financial half-year just closed were $66,666.74 less than those of the same months of last year. This deficiency is partly offset by the increase, most gratefully acknowledged, in the gifts of the living during the last six months of $19,068.57; but there is still the large sum of $46,598.17 not so offset. The income for legacies must always be an uncertain factor in the Society's resources: but experience warrants the Executive Committee to plan for the year, counting surely on substantial help from this source. Sometimes, as now, their plans are embarrassed by unusual delay of this part of the receipts. An obvious inference is briefly this. The $30,000 must remain due -even if the arrears be not increased-until the churches and individual friends of Home Missions contribute the money to cancel it. No large legacy is known to the officers as likely to be paid soon. Those four friends cannot honestly pledge their personal credit for more. The Society has no property whereon to borrow money, even if that method were thought wise by its constituents. The Committee have "trusted the churches," and have come as near as they dared to undertaking all the work laid upon them at Saratoga last June. Are those who desire to have that work done ready now to pay the workers?—Now, before the cold of winter pinches the missionaries and their families more severely than we are willing to see them suffer through our lack of service. We are sorry to receive the resignation, by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Taylor, of his secretaryship of the Rhode Island State Home Missionary Society, in which office he has efficiently served the home missionary cause since 1877. He has been selected to care for a kindred work, as secretary, in Boston, of the New England Branch of the American Tract Society. We congratulate our sister society on its acquisition, and wish him all success in his new sphere of Christian labor. We call the attention of pastors to the fact that this issue of The Home Missionary contains valuable material concerning the foreign department of the Society, which may be used with advantage in the next missionary concert. THAT one copy each of the Sunday-School Times, The Beacon, and The Watchman, which were offered to home missionary pastors in our October issue, has been asked for by at least six pastors. Application has also been made for " The Berean." DOES any home missionary need fifteen second-hand books of "Gospel Hymns, No. 3" (in good repair)? If so will he please send his address to us through The Home Missionary? Will you please give in the same the address of the missionary who knows of eight Sundayschools in need of libraries? Would any one like the Missionary Herald?-A Friend. [Rev. G. E. Northrup, Eskridge, Kansas, is the missionary who knows "of eight Sunday-schools without one library."-Ed.] OUR FOREIGN WORK AT HOME. THIS subject is of more than usual interest to the mind of the Christian public just now, and the present issue of The Home Missionary may be considered a reply to the variety of questions and requests for more information concerning the work of the Society among the "foreign world which God has brought to our shores." The following extracts from "THE SIXTIETH YEAR," a paper read at Saratoga last June, tells the whole story in a few condensed paragraphs; while the personal experiences of superintendents and missionaries, both American and foreign, present glimpses of every-day life in this department of the work. For three years past the foreign departments have held a prominent place in our programme for their promise. They begin already to deserve it also for their fruits. GERMANS. Superintendent Albrecht, of the German department, making Omaha his center, has traveled nearly round the globe in the last twelve months; that is, he has compassed more than 24,000 miles within his field in the service of the Society. Eight new churches have been planted among our German population, and, best of all, several of them in great cities. Three years ago we had no German church in any Western city of influence. To-day we have churches in St. Louis, Chicago, and Springfield, Mo., and promising missions in Kansas City and Omaha-all of which are destined to become centers of influence and of power. For country work, Dakota still offers the most alluring field. Thir teen German Congregational churches have now been organized in that Territory, and other points are ripe for occupation, but waiting for men. The western counties of Nebraska are also rapidly filling with a substantial German population. Our general missionary, Suess, has more calls in that direction than he can answer, showing that Congregationalism, when rightly presented, has no terrors to the Teutonic mind. The same is true of Northwestern Kansas, where the school-houses and sod houses of the new settlers are open and waiting for the gospel in the German tongue. Further west, Washington Territory and much of the Pacific coast present hopeful fields for occupation. While this rural work is important, and not to be neglected, the wisdom of seizing on the cities is fully appreciated. Why not leave this city work to the strong local churches? Because it will not be done. Our American city churches have large parishes and many enterprises of their own. They are not lacking in sympathy with foreign evangelization, but they lack the surplus force to start it. It is generally for the Society, in the person of its Superintendent, and backed by a generous appropriation from its treasury, to inaugurate these city efforts, which, when once started, always invite to local co-operation. SCANDINAVIANS. It is less than two years since the Society created a special Missionary department among Scandinavians, and selected Mr. Montgomery to superintend it. We have to-day, East and West, twenty Scandinavian missionaries at work. Minnesota is still the chief center, one-fourth of the whole population being Scandinavians. In one densely habited district of Minneapolis, within a radius of five blocks, there are thirteen houses of worship, in only one of which is the English language spoken. Eleven of them are Scandinavian, and most of them are overflowing at every service, although at least three of them will hold 1,500 people each. Missionary work among such a people is full of promise. We have neither Catholicism nor infidelity to contend with. Sweden and Norway, it has been well said, are the "New England of the Old World." The multitudes who come to us from these lands have but to be welcomed with the open hand of fellowship, and drawn into intelligent sympathy with our churches, to co-operate with us in saving America. The most notable event of the year has been the opening of a Scandinavian department in Chicago Theological Seminary. Twenty-one students, most of them Swedes, and the rest Danes and Norwegians, are already availing themselves of the instruction thus offered. Carleton College, at Northfield, Minn., has made a movement to supply worthy young men with a preliminary training, scarcely less important. By all these means the most urgent need of our Scandinavian missionary work is likely to be supplied-namely, an educated ministry. SLAVONIC POPULATION. The story of the year among the Bohemians and Poles has been one of most marked and inspiring progress. Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit are still the populous centers of the field. Bethlehem and Cyril Chapels, in the city of Cleveland, are four miles apart. Here Superintendent Schauffler and his devoted assistants are preaching or teaching the gospel to a thousand persons every week. Their labors have resulted in the conversion of at least twelve Bohemians. Let us hope these twelve may be a new college of Apostles to the massed ignorance and unbelief of their countrymen! A young people's prayer and Bible-study meeting, with fifty members, led by young Bohemians, is an established success. Such work cannot proceed without opposition. One Bohemian paper, while waining its friends against the truth, thus confesses to its power: "When once your children are accustomed to the Sundayschool, the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Reverends, and the prayer-meetings, and all this religious humbug, no power can then turn them from it. The children will spontaneously be preserved to the church." From its source this is rare testimony, but how true it is, "our enemies themselves being judges," we gratefully acknowledge. A year ago Mr. Schauffler was toiling almost alone. He has to-day two valued American assistants, Rev. F. M. Price, trained to missionary work in China, and Miss Clara Hobart, who from teaching Bohemian children for some years in the day schools of Cleveland, found it but a step-and to her a glad one-to teach them of Christ. Under her tui tion female Bible readers are being trained for future service. The Bohemian Mission in Chicago, under Rev. E. A. Adams, late of Austria, is now eighteen months old. It began with a Sabbath attendance of sixteen, which for a year never rose above thirty. During the past six months it has taken a fresh start, showing an average audience at Sabbath preaching of seventy adults. A Sabbath-school or children's meeting reaches a regular attendance of 325. More than this number cannot be accommodated, and have to be locked out. There is, besides, an English school of 175, most of whom are Bohemian children, who know the English tongue. An industrial school of 225 girls, with their twelve teachers, meets every Saturday, devoting the first hour to sewing, and the last to singing and Bible recitations. A Bible-study and prayer-meeting Thursday evening, a cottage prayer-meeting Tuesday, and a singing meeting twice a week complete the list of agencies. Associated with Mr. Adams are two native helpers, one of whom reports the past six months having made 2,486 calls, and held 1,617 conversations and Bible readings. The city of Detroit is a Polish center. A Sabbath-school of 200 members and other religious efforts have made a beginning among this most difficult because most ignorant and vacillating population. |