Modern pedagogy has brought to the attention of even the man in the street the realization that education consists not merely in its accepted scholastic aspect, but also that training of the eye and hand which in turn fosters the larger development of the mind. In the latter sense our people are far from uneducated. Taking this aptitude of theirs as a starting-point, some twelve years ago we began our industrial department, first by giving out skin work in the North, and later started other branches under Miss Jessie Luther, who subsequently gave many years of service to the coast.
The coöperative movement is the same question seen from another angle, and is almost contemporaneous with our earliest hospitals.
It is not unnatural that man, realizing that he is himself like "the grass that to-morrow is cast into the oven," should worry over the permanency of the things on which he has spent himself. Though Christ especially warns us against this anxiety, religious people have been the greatest sinners in laying more emphasis upon to-morrow than to-day. The element which makes most for longevity is always interesting, even if longevity is often a mistake. Almost every old parish church in England maintains some skeleton of bygone efforts which once met real needs and were tokens of real love.
The future is a long way off—that future when Christ's Kingdom comes on earth in the consecrated hearts and wills of all mankind, when all the superimposed efforts will be unnecessary. But love builds for a future, however remote; and at present we see no other way than to work for it, and know of no better means than to insure the permanency of the hospitals, orphanage, school, and the industrial and coöperative enterprises, thus to hasten, however little, the coming of Christ in Labrador.
CHAPTER XXVII[ToC]
MY RELIGIOUS LIFE
No one can write his real religious life with pen or pencil. It is written only in actions, and its seal is our character, not our orthodoxy. Whether we, our neighbour, or God is the judge, absolutely the only value of our "religious" life to ourselves or to any one is what it fits us for and enables us to do. Creeds, when expressed only in words, clothes, or abnormal lives, are daily growing less acceptable as passports to Paradise. What my particular intellect can accept cannot commend me to God. His "well done" is only spoken to the man who "wills to do His will."