The Pacific Coast's Middle West

ISHOP SPALDING, of Utah, is trying an interesting experiment on the Pacific Coast. It is the outcome, in part, of a conviction expressed by the bishop and, in part, of a suggestion made by the council of Department VIII when it met last May in Spokane. Bishop Spalding's conviction may be put in this way: "The statement is sometimes made that the Church on the Atlantic seaboard failed grievously, especially during the fifty or sixty years following 1825, to give aid to the young and weak dioceses and parishes of the Middle West. If a more sympathetic and helpful attitude had been taken by eastern Churchmen the religious history of the region between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi River might have been vastly different. Let not the Church on the Pacific coast, strongly established in great centres like Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles, neglect its 'Middle West'roughly the region west of the Rocky Mountains and east of the Cascades and the Sierras-as the Church on the Atlantic coast neglected its Middle West." The suggestion of the Spokane council was expressed in a message to the Board of Missions asking that since, in the opinion of the council, there is much wealth in the hands of Church people in Department VIII which might be available in the Church's service if the need for it were effectively presented, the Board should endeavor to send occasional deputations of clergy and laity to reinforce the effort of the local leaders to enlist their people whole-heartedly on behalf of the Church's Mission. Board of Missions has not yet been able to act upon this suggestion, but Bishop Spalding, with the hearty co-operation of the bishops on the Coast, has been acting upon his conviction. He is to spend some weeks telling of the Church's progress and opportunities in the Pacific. hinterland in general and in Utah in particular. The plan is wise and statesman-like. The generous-hearted and en

The

terprising people who are building and rebuilding communities that are the wonder of the world, will surely accept heartily the opportunity of furthering the immensely important work of the Church in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, New Mexico and Arizona. On the other hand, the Church people of the Pacific coast will find their lives stimulated and enriched, as have the people on the Atlantic coast, by the visits of a pioneer whose life is an example of high endeavor and useful achievement.

The Pacific Coast's Far West

During part of the winter, too, the Church on the Coast will have the opportunity of meeting and hearing her worthy representative in the Orient, the Rev. John W. Nichols, son of the Bishop of California. Mr. Nichols has recently returned from seven steady and fruitful years of service in the District of Shanghai. Like every worker from the field he comes home with the burden of a great need pressing upon him. Instead of spending his furlough in real recreation of mind and body to fit them to stand once again the effects of immersion for several years in a nonChristian environment, Mr. Nichols begs to be allowed "to take to the road" that he may try to secure the $20,000 needed for the erection and equipment of a school for catechists. The imperative necessity for this we shall not enlarge upon now. Everyone knows that China must be evangelized by the Chinese and that the best service the foreigner can render is to train and direct these helpers. The American missionaries are the corks to float the Chinese net. The net needs enlarging. The school for catechists is one way of doing it. People in the eastern dioceses will not be deprived of the privilege of helping in this enterprise, but for the present Mr. Nichols proposes to ask the co-operation of the people to whom now he especially belongs. We shall watch the effort of Bishop Spalding and Mr. Nichols with. great interest and large expectations.

The blessed Virgin's hymn of praise, The aged Simeon's words of peace. O happy saint! whose sacred page,

So rich in words of truth and love, Pours on the Church from age to age

This healing unction from above; The witness of the Saviour's life,

The great apostle's chosen friend Through weary years of toil and strife,

And still found faithful to the end. So grant us, Lord, like him to live, Beloved by man, approved by Thee,

Till Thou at last the summons give, And we, with him, Thy face shall

see.

-Archbishop Maclagan.

THANKSGIVINGS

"We thank Thee"

That the ministry of healing which Thou didst begin on earth, and which was exercised by Thy servant and evangelist, St. Luke, is still carried on in our Christian hospitals at home and abroad.

For the greater liberality with which Thy people have given of that which Thou hast given them for the extension of Thy Kingdom and the salvation of mankind.

For the ten years of leadership and service given by the retiring General Secretary.

For the memory and achievements of Henry Benjamin Whipple,

For the protection Thou dost extend to. Thy servants in their hour of danger. (Pages 874 and 879.)

For the way in which Thou dost still work with Thy servants, witnessing in the hearts of men to the truth of Thy message.

For the gifts of Thy faithful servants toward the carrying on of the work which in life they loved so well.

INTERCESSIONS

"That it may please Thee"

To bless the ministry of physicians and nurses everywhere, especially in the missionary hospitals of Thy Church. (Pages 858 and 872.)

To bless for large and useful service the new treasurer of the Board of Missions.

To have mercy upon the peoples that have not known Thee and bring them speedily to the understanding of Thy truth. (Page 866.)

To cheer and sustain the children of the Church who are scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.

To deepen in the hearts of all Thy people a sense of their privilege in sharing by gifts and service in the extension of Thy Kingdom.

To arouse the men who bear Thy name so that they may realize their allegiance and render Thee loyal service. (Page 842.)

PRAYER

FOR PHYSICIANS AND
NURSES

LORD, the Healer of all our

the Who knowest how

the sick have need of a physician; bless with health both of body and soul all doctors and nurses whom Thou hast called to be sharers in Thine own work of healing, that they may learn their art in dependence upon Thee, and exercise it always under Thy guidance and to Thy glory; Who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

N January, 1900, I asked for the good will and coöperation of the American Church in the work that, with others, I had been appointed to do a's Secretary of the Board of Missions. After almost ten years I am writing again to thank those who have made my term of service a constant source of joy and satisfaction, not only for their good will and coöperation, to which is due chiefly whatever has been accomplished by the Board in those years, but for the confidence which has been generously bestowed on us all while we worked, and the patience with which the Church has borne our shortcomings. Without these we would have been powerless to serve. Having these the officers of the Board may well be envied by all on account of the rare privilege which serving in this place has been to them.

With so keen appreciation of all that has been done for us to make our work light and efficient, it is the greater satisfaction to be able to say to the Church that the outlook affords abundant cause for hope and confident expectation of greater things to come.

The past ten years have been notable in the Church's life. They constitute, as it were, the first decade of its realization of itself and its mission. During its first centenary of life the American Church had a tremendous work to perform in providing for its own maintenance. And the obligation to establish itself throughout the land involved a task that was well worthy of its best endeavor. During these years there was never absent that mark of its divine origin which compels it to interpret the revelation of the Father to those who have not known Him, so that in spite of the burdens it was compelled to bear in its day of small things, it was represented in unoccupied places in our own land and beyond the seas by those of its

servants the record of whose lives will cast lustre on its history to the latest generation.

Yet in those years the solidarity of the Church had not been conspicuous, and the realization of itself as one body, whose mission it is to fill the earth, could not in the nature of the case be clearly emphasized. With increasing vigor came clearer apprehension, and from time to time signs began to be observed that the Church was getting ready to rise in its might to accomplish the great work that challenges its endeavor.

It were interesting to note these signs did space permit. We must be content with the first definite act which showed the Church's consciousness of its oneness and of its mission. It was a little thing, scarcely noted at the time, but being of the truth it was as a very little seed which growing is about to become a great tree. At the General Convention of 1901 in San Francisco, a resolution introduced by the Bishop of Montana was unanimously adopted, by which it was ordered that the amount of money needed to meet the appropriations for the work intrusted to the Board of Missions should be equitably apportioned among the dioceses and missionary districts. Thus was the principle underlying all the Church has to do clearly recognized, and from that day the consciousness of its oneness in life and mission has been growing more and more apparent. This has been shown in many ways, not only in the increasing sense of responsibility exhibited by the whole body for the development of the weak places in our own land, but in the rapid development of its branches planted in new lands, made possible by steady increase in offerings of lives and treasure for the work's prosecution.

Still other signs of this added strength might be noted in the constantly in

creasing catholic spirit shown in the work of the Board's auxiliaries. The Woman's Auxiliary, which has rendered service whose nature the Church can scarcely realize, becomes every year more solicitous in its endeavor to make the Board's work effective, while in the Sunday-school Auxiliary-that most delicate instrument the Church has to work with, because the future depends on the children's right development - there seems to be an ever-increasing sense of responsibility to make the children understand that offerings are most valuable when they are the expression of intelligent devotion and the result of desire to serve.

To these may well be added the signs of increasing life manifest everywhere in parishes. Eucharists are offered, intercessions are made, information is sought, self-denials are practised with increasing regularity and in ever-increasing numbers, so that it may be said with profoundest gratitude that the whole American Church is rousing itself for its great work. And as though to stop the mouths of gainsayers, the growing sense of responsibility on the part of God's men for the spiritual as well as the physical uplift of the human family, we seem to have come upon the day when laymen are about to acknowledge and accept the obligation laid on them by Him who gave them liberty when He gave them life from above.

Such suggestions as these would be enough to make all God's people rejoice in the sure promise of the future afforded by such growing signs of a consciousness that the Church's life is one. But we have had in the past year an example of the increasing family consciousness that of itself would be enough to quiet the misgivings of the most timid.

When the Blessed One promoted to higher service that servant of His who for so long and so faithfully had served the Church as its Treasurer, the inevitable shock that followed his taking away was almost immediately replaced by an impulse felt throughout the Church to show gratitude for the service

he had rendered and for his example of fidelity, by meeting fully the demands its missionary work lays upon the Church. Nothing could be surer witness of the increasing solidarity of the Church than the manner in which this fine impulse was acted upon everywhere. The result has been that a condition of things which, in May, caused even strong men to falter, was so reversed in September as to cause rejoicing and courageousness, when uncertainty and solicitude had been expected.

Truly this is a day of hope and rejoicing in the Church, when we may forget for the moment all that remains to be done and refresh ourselves for the task confronting us by giving thanks for all He has wrought.

For the privilege of having any part in the Church's work of extension in these momentous years, no man could express the gratitude he feels, but if it may be done without offence, this servant of the Church would count it a joy if he could make the Church understand his keen appreciation of the generous kindness and patience shown him by bishops, clergy and laymen alike, while he has had the high privilege of being. the Secretary of the Board of Missions. A. S. L.

S

OME years ago the Rev. H. B. Delaney, who was then the viceprincipal of St. Augustine's School, Raleigh, while riding through the country saw a Negro boy plowing in a field. He was the only one at work, as his fellow-laborers, man and beast, had succumbed to the intense heat. But the boy with his cheerful whistle was trying to encourage his mule to further effort. Attracted by the boy's grit, Mr. Delaney invited him to come to St. Augustine's. He did and entered as an industrial student. From the very first he did his share of daily work, and after serving a year as a work student entered the school, where he persevered in his studies and at his trade with the same grit with which he had kept at work on that hot day when Mr. Delaney found him. He graduated and is now an efficient teacher of masonry.

A number of years ago a little brown boy living in North Carolina, where his days were spent at plowing, hoeing and cotton picking, was awakened by the impressions made upon him at a nearby town, whither he went to take cotton, to the fact that there was a light in the world which he could not see. But he could not leave home, though his ambition was growing, until he was eighteen years of age. Then he learned of a school conducted by the Rev. John W. Perry, a graduate of St. Augustine's, and determined to go to that school. He was the only support of his mother, but he told her of his ambition and she encouraged him. Mother and son worked hard for a year, and at the end of the year they found, as they had found for many years, that they were still in debt. However, the boy made up his mind to go to school, and entered the school at Tarboro, living himself during the winter on the peas, corn-bread and sweet potatoes which he could carry weekly from his home, twelve miles away. In the summer he again worked on the farm with his mother. In 1887 he applied for

admission to St. Augustine's, where he worked his way, beginning with cleaning rooms and making fires. The next summer he taught a country school, and for five years persisted at St. Augustine's, teaching during the summer, often in debt, obliged to give a portion of his small earnings to his mother, whose health had failed; but he persevered until he graduated, and he is now the principal of an important school in the South which he founded and which is doing good work.

A graduate of St. Augustine's, writing of what he owes to the school, says: "The thing that is most useful in my daily life-the thing that enables one to do a great deal of work in a short time, I find, is discipline. St. Augustine's is the Negro's West Point. I am not sure of retaining all theories, rules, and lessons learned there in class rooms; but I am thankful for the lessons of order, regularity, system, discipline. We learn the discipline of heart, of prayer, praise and worship from the chapel. The discipline of mind-learning a short lesson well, being accurate, exact in detail, specific in recitation, careful in address; this is inspired by the class-room. Then the discipline of body, of head and limb, either on the playground or in the workshop; the high requirement of honor, of honesty, of rugged manhood, of playing hard-true and mighty, of working steadfastly and continually; these are inspired by the industrial work of the school and by supervision over the playground."