OCR Text |
Show is the first impulse given to some consecrated girl or woman toward the wide and whitened fields of harvest, then have we occasion of rejoicing and of hope; then have we great and defined responsibilities toward our life-members. It seems to me that the attitude of the Board toward these members is very much the same as that of the church toward its membership, and includes to same degree the same loving interest, care and helpfulness toward the end implied, and the same expectation that, by these swelling columns of names our working force is to be augmented now, while we can nowhere else so naturally look for those who are to come up and take the places made vacant by the removals and changes which every month brings. It is a hackneyed saying, but none the less correct, that there can be no interest in a subject without knowledge and information upon it; and the sources of information in regard to missions are certainly abundant and varied enough to meet the tastes and needs of all seekers, could only the readers be brought face to face and mind to mind with them, A few months ago forty-seven young ladies gathered for the first topical meeting of their society just formed. The hour passed with the reading of papers and the presentation of items of current interest in regard to various departments of the field before them, and when they adjourned, the enthusiasm and surprised delight with which they exclaimed among themselves, "Isn't it interesting?" "I did not know that there was so much worth learning?" "Has it not been a short hour?" bore the usual testimony to the very natural necessity of information before interest, of knowledge before works, and shows to some of us why it is so difficult to establish Mission Bands and Circles among our young people; and encouraged us again, as it has before, to feel assured that if we can gain their attention to the subject for a beginning, more than half the labor is done. And if it be the duty of life-members to know much about missions, what is the reciprocal duty of the Board toward those who are to be trained in this direction? Knowing something of the depths of heathen darkness and depravity, feeling that human strength alone can do little to lighten them, |