"WHAT IS WANTED MOST"

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2660, 4 January 1916, Page 3

"WHAT IS WANTED MOST"

ANNUAL MEETING OF THE MELANESIAN MISSION. A fine recruiting speech on behalf of the Church in the mission field, was made by the Bishop of Stepney, at the annual meeting of the Melanesian Mission held in London recently. The Bishop of Rochester, 'who presided, referred to the loss of two missionaries, Mr. Long and Mr. Drew, during the past year, making the toll eight ill nine years. One-by one they had literally sacrificed their lives in tho devoted but hopeless attempt to do far more than ono man's work. "Wo must not bo! content to seo mail after man dying at his post in this way simply because the mission is so hopelessly understaffed." The Bishop of Stepnoy said people wero continually asking how the war was going to aifect ilie supply of men for the - mission field? He had been told some timo ago that under the .inspiration of tho ivar there had been a certain increase in the number of offers made for this work—in tho first placo by men who on joining the Army had undertaken, if they returned,, to go into the Church's fighting line; while there wero others who, bent on tile service and rejected for some, reason by tho military authorities, had turned to the •uission field instead. He spoke of the! way in which their country's causo had ' appealed to young men wlio'had seemed the last people in the world likely to ! 'contemplate a military life,' and 'who somehow had suddenly become fitted for it merely because 'they were generous and bravo. If only such men could once see and feel tho greatness of this other need, God would lit thom for it in the same manner. "If only," the Bishop said, "we could put the cause in- the full splendour of its convincing claim! If only.it could be put in such a way that men whoso hearts havo risen to a great claim may see, as we. are beginning to see, in tho call of the Church a call and a service even more glorious, and rise and respond to it in a new sort of way I" At i time like this we realised tho utter folly that characterises the immobility of the Church. . Men must learn to go where they were wanted.- If you happened to be the sixth curate' at .a fashionable West End church, the parish might seem to have a strong claim to be kept- up to that sort of top-hole of efihrtency in which "ever since Mr. So-and-So's time" it had subsisted. "But in the light of the war wo could see the folly, the bad economy of all this. The qwstion is not—Are we doing what is wanted, but Are we doing what is wanted mostP The happiest day I can imagine is one of fair health and strength absolutely full of things that must be done. If, my dear young brother," tho Bishop concluded, "you do not feel that about your life in England, that unique joy of being busy—as in the sight of God—with things that really must be done, I think you might well consider the needs of the foreign mission field." Archdeacon Uthwatt, who has b?en permanently invalided homo from the Solomon Islands, and the Rev. H. Langley Hart, missionary at Raga, also addressed tho moeting. "The Rfed Cross St. Bernard dogs are a great help to us in finding the wounded, and'it is remarkable how they know tho dead from the unconscious," says a nursing Gister with the Dardanelles force in a letter. "When they find a living man, they give a low mournful howl to fetch us. We don't let them out till the battle is 'over, and sometimes we can't tell exactly where they have found the man, so when no ono goes to them they come to us carryyig the man's cap, which lets us know whether ho is a Turk or a Britisher, and they lead us to the 'very spot."