Home Missions in ActionAllen, Edith H. (Edith Hedden)
History
Home Missions in Action
Allen, Edith H. (Edith Hedden)
Home missions
The concept of the Christian ideal to-day is that it shall save the
individual, but also remove that which produces crime and makes sin
almost inevitable--in short, that it shall seek to redeem the
environment as well as the sinner, and give more wholesomeness,
more fullness, more joy to life through redeeming its conditions,
as well as saving its soul.
On the church and its outreaching Home Missions as the instrument
for the Kingdom-progress, rests a heavy responsibility in supplying
that spiritual dynamic and inspiration which is back of all social
upbuilding. It must produce the men and women whose characters are
such that in their attitude toward industry, labor, legislation, in
all their social capacities, they will seek to live Christ's social
principle, "What ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them," and to bring the Master's Beatitudes as a working principle
into life.
Before considering what we have left undone, let us review in
outline the splendid record of Home Missions.
Since the early days when Roger Williams pressed into the wilderness
of Rhode Island, the Christian preacher and teacher have followed
the advancing line of the successive frontiers--no hardship, no
denial, no scarcity of food, no privation, no want or cold so great
that Home Missions hesitated to go, with its spiritual healing, its
community service, bringing the very heart of Christ's love and
service into these new centers. When adventurous home-seekers reached
the Alleghanies, the Iowa Band soon followed. When the fate of the
great Northwest hung in the balance, a missionary statesman came to
its saving.
When the frozen North called men with its lure of gold, an
indomitable missionary led in all that made for the better life.
When a devastating war had spent its fury and a helpless Africa,
bound by heaviest chains of ignorance and superstition, waited,
Home Missions responded.
When the deposed Red brother suffered every form of grievous
wrong, Home Missions brought him brotherly love and helped him
find the Jesus Road. When the alien stood bewildered in our midst,
Home Missions gave him guidance. When the dumb appeal of the
isolated mountaineers was realized, Home Missions followed the
lonely mountain trail. To the mines and the lumber camps, to the
ancient Spanish folk of our continent, to those deluded by the
false Prophet--to all of these Home Missions has carried its
threefold ministry of saving, teaching and training.
Home Missions counts its lives laid down for the Christ on a
hundred fields. No pen can tell of the magnitude of its influence
on our national life. Its little enterprises are now the great,
strong city churches of Nebraska, Kansas, California, Oregon, in
fact of all the States.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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