Part 24 (1/2)

”That must have been exciting,” said Miss Morel. ”I know I should enjoy such work. What did you find out, and what could you do about it?”

That was a question not to be glibly answered, J.W. knew. But he meant to be fair about it. ”We found out plenty that surprised us; a great deal,” he added, ”that ought to be done, and much more that needed to be changed. We even went so far as to draw up a sort of civic creed, 'The Everyday Doctrines of Delafield,' The town paper printed it, and it was talked about for a while, but probably we were the people who got the most out of it; it showed us what we church members might mean to the town. And that was worth something.”

Miss Morel was sure it was. But she came back to her first idea about the home churches. ”Don't you think that much of the preaching, and all that, is pretty dull and tiresome? I came from a little country church, and it was so dreary.”

J.W. thought of Deep Creek, and said, ”I know what you mean; but even the country church is improving. I must tell you some time about Marty, my chum. He's a country preacher, helped in his training by the Rural Department of the Home Missions Board, and his people come in crowds to his preaching. Country churches are waking up, and the Board people at Philadelphia have had a lot to do with it.”

”Well, I'm glad. But anyway, home missions is rather commonplace, haven't you noticed?” and Miss Morel looked almost as though she were asking a question of state.

”I can't say I've found it so,” J.W. said, stoutly, ”I was some time learning, but I ran into a lot of experiences before I left home. Take the work for colored people, for instance. I had to make a speech at a convention, and I found out that our church has a Board of Education for Negroes which is doing more than any other agency to train Negro preachers and teachers and home makers, and doctors and other leaders.

That's not so very commonplace, would you say so?”

”Well, no,” the young lady admitted. ”It is very important work, of course; and I'd dearly love to have a share in it. I am a great believer in the colored races, you know. But you are making me begin to think I am all wrong about the church at home. I don't mean to belittle it. Perhaps I appreciate it more than I realized. Anyway, tell me something else that you have found out.”

”There isn't time,” J.W. objected. ”But if you won't think me a nuisance, maybe I can tell you part of it. For example, Sunday school.

Long ago I discovered that the whole church was providing for Sunday school progress through a Board of Sunday Schools, and there isn't a modern Sunday school idea anywhere that this Board doesn't put into its scheme of work. I was a very small part of it myself for a while, so I know.”

”Yes, and even I know a little about the Sunday School Board,” confessed Miss Morel. ”It has helped us a lot in the Philippines. And so I must admit that the church does try to improve and extend Sunday school work.

What else?”

J.W. told about his experiences on the Mexican border, where home missions and foreign missions came together. Then, seeing that she was really listening, he told of his and Marty's college days, how Marty had borrowed money from the Board of Education, and how the same Board had a hand in the college evangelistic work. He told about the deaconesses who managed the hospital at Manchester, and the training school which Marcia Dayne Carbrook had attended when she was getting ready to go to China.

That school had sent out hundreds of deaconesses and other workers.

The thought of Marcia made him think of Joe, and he told what he knew of how the Wesley Foundation at the State University had helped Joe when he could easily have made s.h.i.+pwreck of his missionary purpose. Of course the story of his visit to the Carbrooks in China must also be told.

Miss Morel changed the subject again. ”Tell me, Mr. Farwell,” she asked, ”were you in the Epworth League when you were at home?”

”I surely was,” said J.W. ”That was where I got my first start; at the Cartwright Inst.i.tute.” And the story jumped back to those far-off days when he was just out of high school.

As he paused Miss Morel said, ”I was an Epworthian, too, and in the young women's missionary societies. We had a combination society in our church, so I was a 'Queen Esther' and a 'Standard Bearer' as well. Those organizations did me a world of good. You know, when I think of it, the women's missionary societies have done a wonderful work in America and everywhere.”

”I guess they have,” said J.W. ”I know my mother has always been a member of both, and she's always been the most intelligent and active missionary in the Farwell family.”

The talk languished for a while, and then Miss Morel exclaimed, ”I know why we've stopped talking; we're hungry. It is almost time for luncheon, and if you have an appet.i.te like mine, you're impatient for the call.”

J.W. looked at his watch and saw that there was only ten minutes of the morning left. So they separated to get ready against the sounding of the dinner gong.

But J.W. was not hungry. He was struggling with an old thought that to him had all the tantalizing quality of novelty. The talk of the morning had become a sort of roll-call of church boards. How did it happen that the church was busy with this and that and the other work? Why a Board of Hospitals and Homes? Why a Deaconess Board, even though deaconess work happened to be merciful and gentle and Christlike? What was the church doing with a Book Concern? How came it that we had that board with the long name--Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals? He had traveled from Yokohama to Lucknow and back, and everywhere he had found this same church doing all sorts of work, with no slightest suspicion but that all of it was her proper business.

So picture after picture flickered before his mind's eye, as though his brain had built up a five-reel mental movie from all sorts of memory film; a hundred feet of this, two hundred of that, a thousand here, there just a flash. It had all one common mark; it was all ”the church,”

but the hit-and-miss of it, its lightning change, bewildered him. The pictures leaped from Cartwright to Cawnpore, from the country church at Ellis to Joe Carbrook's hospital in China; from New York and Philadelphia and Chicago and Cincinnati and Was.h.i.+ngton to the ends of the country and the ends of the earth; and in and through it all, swift bits of unrelated yet vivid hints of _Advocates_ and _Heralds_, of prayer meetings and inst.i.tutes, of new churches and old colleges, of revivals and sewing societies, of League socials and Annual Conferences, of deaconesses visiting dreary homes, and soft-footed nurses going about in great hospitals; of beginners' departments and old people's homes; of kindergartens and clinics and preparatory cla.s.ses. There seemed no end to it all, every moment some new aspect of the church's activity showed itself and then was gone.

It was a most confused and confusing experience; and all through the rest of the day J.W. caught himself wondering again and again at the variety and complexity of the church's affairs.

Why should a church be occupied with all this medley? Why should it be so distracted from its main purpose, to be a Jack of all trades? Why should it open its doors and train its workers and spend its money in persistent response to every imaginable human appeal?

Perhaps that might be it; ”_human_.” Once a philosopher had said, ”I am a man, and therefore nothing human is foreign to me.” What if the church by its very nature must be like that? what if this really were its main purpose--all these varied and sometimes almost conflicting activities no more than its effort to obey the central law of its life?