Among the most recent developments of the work of the Church of Christ
your Girls' Friendly Society has taken a foremost place. I would say
in all sincerity, that when I read your last report with profound joy
and thankfulness, I was impressed, no less by the completeness of your
ideal, than by the variety and expansion of your work. I do not say
this to commend; this is not the time or the place for commendation.
"Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give the praise."
You will not be content, will you? you will not be content, if you are
true to your ideals, with holding out the hand of loving sympathy in
your own home and neighbourhood to a humble sister needing a sister's
care and guidance? Your love will follow her about that she may never
be lost sight of. It is a trite complaint that in this day the old
relations between master and servant have vanished, or almost vanished
away. The bond is no longer one of reciprocal loyalty, but of common
convenience. Hence it is liable to severance at any moment in the
feverish, ever-restless, fluctuating conditions of modern life. It was
impossible that these relations should remain unchanged while all else
was changing. The domestic servant or the shop girl has no longer a
fixed home; she is a wanderer on the earth. It is just here that the
catholicity of your plan should step in and counteract the evil. It is
your part to realise this catholicity. When a girl once enrolls herself
in your numbers, she is _yours_; everywhere, whithersoever she
may go, the friendly eye will rest upon her; the friendly hand will be
stretched out to her wheresoever she may be. She will find everywhere
a home, because she will find everywhere friends. You cannot set this
ideal before yourselves too definitely, or strive to realise it too
earnestly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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