The opportunities of the year just closed we may not reclaim, but we are beginning a new year with its new opportunities. The colored people, eager for improvement, struggling with poverty, appeal for schools and churches, but it costs $400 for each teacher or minister. The Indians want their children to come into the mission schools where they may learn "the Jesus way," but it costs $150 for each pupil. The mountain people of the South, unlettered, simple-hearted, credulous, are the prey of Mormon missionaries, who are working zealously for converts, and, as one reports, with "good success." The antidote is Christian teachers and preachers, but here again is an average cost of $400. The Chinese field, besides the work for men in mission schools, presents an opportunity for women's work among twenty-five hundred Chinese women in San Francisco, who are accessible in their homes, and who respond gratefully to Christian sympathy and instruction. Was there ever such gracious opportunity to the Christian church to gather into the fold the "other sheep" of the Great Shepherd? He has said, "them also I must bring." Would He bring them in through us? Let us arouse ourselves that we may not so lose these opportunities God has given to win this land for Christ. We have done something, but it is so far short of the need. Our offerings—have they been so much a part of ourselves, have they cost us so much that they have been worthy tokens of love to our Lord?
The American Missionary Association has come to its fiftieth year of work and appeal for these to whom the gospel is to be preached, through church planting and Christian schools. It comes burdened with obligations for the work already done, and for that of the year just begun. Can we not, each one of us, double our gifts to this work in this A. M. A. Jubilee year? This, with one true self-denial offering from every woman in the Congregational church, and friend of the work, and not only shall the Association come next year to its fiftieth anniversary with rejoicing, but hundreds of new voices from the millions of people to whom we are sent, will join also in the song of Jubilee.
ADDRESS OF MRS. SYDNEY STRONG.
A speaker at our Toledo meeting two years ago, when she had told of her life work in China, closed her remarks by saying: "American sisters, the women of China look to you for their examples of Christian womanhood. Do not disappoint them: for if you do, it will be the greatest blow foreign missions can have." During the past year, in our work in Ohio, when I have known so much of the needs over this broad land of ours, I have wondered continually what some of the Christian converts of China would think could they visit our shores and go into the mountains in our Southern land and see the women there, how perfectly ignorant they are, some of them not even knowing their alphabet, and, what is sadder still, not even knowing that they are hundreds of years behind the women living but a few miles from their mountain home. If these Chinese converts could go down from the mountains into the plains and see our negro sister there in her cabin home, and realize how she is oppressed and how so few there care for her soul; if they could go into the West and visit the Indians, and realize how America has treated the Indian, how she has given him land until she wanted it herself and then has taken it, and pushed him farther West until now she has him in a place where the land is so poor it is not likely she will ever want it; if they could go and see their Chinese sisters—their own flesh and blood—and realize that America had the opportunity right at her own door of teaching and raising up Christian Chinese women to go back and teach their own kindred the "old, old story," what do you suppose they would think of Christian America? My sisters, what do you think of it? Are these conditions due to lack of money? We can all give when we are interested. Poverty is a thing of comparison. We are all poor compared with our neighbor on the avenue, and we are all rich compared with our neighbor who lived on crusts of bread last week and knows not where her crusts are coming from this week. No, my friends, we can give when we are interested.
In this connection I have been thinking a little of a dear friend, who when asked if she could not increase her contribution to five dollars for the work this coming year, said: "Possibly I can another year, but this year I cannot, for I am going abroad and I have to economize." "Economy!" Is not that just the place it always begins? Can we look back over the last two years, those of us who have been affected by the hard times, and truthfully say that we did not begin at the giving end to economize? It seems to me that this is just where we all make our mistakes. Is not this just the reason why our church work is so cold and lifeless? We are trying to do Christ's work in man's way and we can no more do it than the Indian we are told about, who tried to run the machine controlled by electricity in his own way rather than in the way the inventor intended it to be run. God has given us a plan for doing this work and saving souls, and we are trying man's way rather than God's way. What is man's way? It is to do church work, go to missionary societies, and give—when we have time and money. What is God's way? "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, and prove me now herewith, saith your God, and see if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing." Have we done it? Have we brought the tithes all in?
We use much more wisdom in material things often than we do in spiritual things. Can we not learn a lesson from the farmer? What does God say to the farmer! "Sow, and ye shall also reap." But the farmer says, "I cannot; I haven't enough. If I had plenty I would sow, but I haven't. My family could not live as well as my neighbor; we could not set a good enough table; we might even have to go hungry." But the command comes again: "Sow, and ye shall also reap," and I venture to say that there is not a farmer in this country of ours but who would go hungry, yea, he and his children would go bare-footed, but he would take some portion of the grain that he had and throw it broadcast over his field, knowing that it would lie there and decay, but trusting in the Lord that it would come back to him after many days. Why cannot we use the same wisdom in spiritual matters?
But there is something that is of more value even than money. It seems to me that the one thing we need is more consecrated women in our churches, women that have more love for their Master and for his cause, women that do not do this work from a sense of duty, but because they love their Lord and Saviour. It seems to me we ought to put love in the same place where Christ put it, on the same pinnacle where Paul put it: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, it profiteth me nothing; though I understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing; and though I give my body to be burned, and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing."
My dear friends, if we only had this love, this consecration, we would be interested in everything that interests our Master. And hearing of our sister in the mountains who knows nothing of him, we would hasten to go ourselves or make it easy for others to go and tell her of His love. And thinking of our colored sister in the South who is oppressed and down-trodden, if we loved Him we would hasten to go with joy and tell her of the yoke that is easy and the burden that is light. And remembering our Indian sister who is so in the dark and is so destitute of knowledge we would find a way to tell her of Him who is the light of the world. And knowing of our Chinese sister here on our shores, who looks forward to a heavenly home for her husband, though she has no such hope for herself, we would go and tell her—or see that some one else told her—of Him who said: "Whosoever cometh unto me shall have eternal life." Our work then would not be done from a sense of duty but as the expression of our love and joy, and all we would ask in return would be the words: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me."