AT THE ASSEMBLY

Evening Star, Issue 19407, 16 November 1926, Page 11

AT THE ASSEMBLY

HOME MISSION NIGHT [By A.A.B.] WELLINGTON, November 13. The Presbyterian Church has many homo mission stations in _ sparselypopulated ureas, their location being found throughout the length and breadth of the dominion. Last night, in St. Jolm-’s, the convener of the committee with jurisdiction over this work looked out with smiling countenance upon a big assembly as lie introduced one of the church’s workers from this field. The missionary received hearty welcome. He began well by telling the story of his call, a prayer, and its answer. Ho was a mystic, but a practical mystic, as when he set out to lend a hand with the milking j" so that the farmer, on finding him so situated, not only granted him the rise of a hall for service, but invited him to tea, and from a backslider was won over to worship. But the missionary was something more; he was a humorous mystic, alternating so deftly and so .quickly in his narrative from the grave to the gay that only a consecrated mind and heart could have so effectively sustained the part he did. A couple of motorists, belated through an accident, drifted to his door one day. He gardens while they give themselves to repair. With the instinct of a Good Samaritan he rescues one man from lying prone bencath.the car executing repairs, and persuades the other, and so captures both for a cup of tea at the mission manse. Talk and explanation follow. The motorists declare themselves to be commercial travellers, the missionary a “sky-pilot.” The pilot know his part, and the commercials theirs; for the former had fine occasion to speak a word for the upward way, and the latter left a subscription for the mission. By such lively incidents ho at once interested and enlightened the assembly, not forgetting a timely warning of the danger of tho people in the backblocks, both young and old, lapsing into paganism if neglected by the church. He gave, too, before sitting down, and in no uncertain way, the secret of staying power in the missionaries’ lob—again a mystic, yet none tho less v powerful, touchcommunion with One who came “to seek and to save that which was lost. After tho missionary came tho mission superintendent. In kindly, yet forcible, utterance he made plain the claims of the mission, of the great opportunity lying open, to the church through'its agency, and which it could neglect only at its peril. He made telling reference to an idea of economising of church forces in men and money. Too much, he declared, was made of church divisions in their land, whose history did not concern tho same. Should not something in the way of what Canada had effected recently by church union be sought in the dominion P It was a suggestion which won the approval apparently of the assembly, and, not unlike the man who made it, big in humanity and common sense.