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 I For the Detained 
 
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 Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society 
 Methodist Episcopal Church 
 36 Bromfield Street, Boston, Mass. 
 
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Op en Doors for the 
 Detained Volunteer 
 
 TO HER WHO SAYS 
 “THE DOOR IS SHUT ” 
 
 Y OU think often of that white day when, 
 after months of irresolution, you signed 
 the Student Volunteer Declaration. The 
 days that followed brought fresh knowledge of 
 the world need, and the decision, made perhaps 
 reluctantly and under pressure of conviction, 
 grew into a passion. To go to the field came to 
 seem the supreme raison d’etre —the one thing 
 worth doing. And now, after all this, God does 
 not permit. Health or family or some other 
 hindrance bars the way. While others of the 
 Band are preparing to sail, you are trying to bid 
 them a cheerful Godspeed, but in your heart you 
 are saying, “Why this waste? What channel 
 for this pent-up longing to help? ” With another 
 sorely tested you ask, “ Why is light given to one 
 whose way is * hid and whom God hath hedged 
 in?” Life looks full of “ common days and level 
 stretches white with dust.” 
 
 Let me say that the one who writes this little 
 word is no cold-blooded sermonizer, but one who, 
 too, would go but God bids stay; one who must 
 pray daily for help to say, 
 
“ I worship Thee, sweet Will of God, 
 
 And all Thy ways adore. 
 
 Ill that He blesses is our good 
 And unblest good is ill, 
 
 And all is right that seems most wrong, 
 
 If it be His sweet Will!” 
 
 It will be more easy then to believe me when I 
 say I am finding out that the door is not shut, 
 but wide open. 
 
 Dear girl, you who are looking backward with 
 a tear, and forward with a sigh, there is a place 
 of privilege and power waiting for you in the 
 home church. That home community, no matter 
 how small or commonplace it may look, thirsts 
 for the uplift of a great service. The need and 
 want of the world is here as surely as it is yonder. 
 Some whose lives touch ours to-day, cry, “ I 
 would see Jesus,” as well as the Greek or the 
 Hindu. 
 
 The young people of the church need you and 
 they have a right to expect much from you. At 
 first they may be a little in awe of one who had 
 planned such a transcendental career as that of a 
 missionary, but they are ready to admire and 
 love and imitate. You may lead them to seek 
 the things that are above in conversation, books, 
 their fun, or in a career. A young woman I knew, 
 who returned to what seemed a very dull com¬ 
 munity, within two years had inspired eight young 
 people to enter college. 
 
 Then the mission study class that has lan¬ 
 guished for lack of a leader, you can make live 
 and grip hearts, as a mission study class can 
 
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That company of Standard Bearers is waiting for 
 the new life of your consecration. You may lead 
 it on to victory. Last year reports came that 
 some companies had died. Only one reason was 
 assigned—lack of leadership. 
 
 There is a small door often overlooked because 
 not so imposing as some—work with boys and 
 girls. Your voice will lose its note of regret as 
 you see their faces kindle over Gordon and Mac- 
 kay, and their figures straighten to heroic bear¬ 
 ing. You will find use for all you know, and be 
 on the qui vive for more. 
 
 The Sunday school class you will be asked to 
 take will lose its bored look, as it studies w r ith 
 you the Modern Acts of the Apostles, the current 
 events of the Kingdom. One day we stood by 
 the little graveyard where lie the charred remains 
 of the Paotingfu martyrs—Horace Tracy Pitkin 
 and others who, like him, went to God in a chariot 
 of fire. That night some one read the eleventh 
 chapter of Hebrews, and it was as if we heard it 
 for the first time. Each word burned its way 
 into our hearts. 
 
 You surely will not make the mistake of one 
 college girl whose pastor gave her a class of red- 
 haired, freckle-faced little Mamies and Annies 
 from a part of town known as the Patch, and she 
 looked down on that class. She thought she knew 
 too much. Heaven pity her! She knew far too 
 little, and she had forgotten the stern words of 
 the Master concerning him who despised one of 
 the little ones. 
 
 The women of the church need you—you who 
 now take your place as a woman among them. 
 
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You know something, doubtless, of the Woman’s 
 Foreign Missionary Society and its marvelous 
 history—how the little band of eight who, forty 
 years ago, organized in weakness and in fear and 
 in much trembling, now hear the rallying cry of 
 three hundred thousand members and eight hun¬ 
 dred thousand dollars. With your trained mind, 
 your up-to-date methods, your missionary ardor, 
 you can make the monthly meeting a tonic to 
 women burdened with many domestic cares. It 
 may mean a breath from the sea, a vision of moun¬ 
 tains and space as they walk abroad with God 
 in the wide earth. And you will discover un¬ 
 suspected riches in the most unpromising members. 
 She may be some old black Mary, half blind, crip¬ 
 pled with rheumatism, no provision for a lonely 
 old age. She had done a bit of work for one about 
 to sail for the field. When money was handed 
 her she cried, “ Oh, please don’t pay me! I want 
 to feel as I sit at home that I have fifty cents in¬ 
 vested in you in China.” Old black Mary inspired 
 the whole auxiliary and she often gave wings to 
 that missionary’s lagging feet and spirit as she 
 thought, “ I must be worth it. I must be worth 
 it, precious money such as that.” 
 
 Who can foretell the future? Your baffled 
 purpose may live again, multiplied many fold in 
 some other life or lives that you have inspired to 
 volunteer. It may be one of the boys or girls of 
 the King’s Heralds. A little eight-year-old saw 
 an ugly idol exhibited in a Sunday school talk. 
 She went home and said to her mother, “ When 
 I get to be a big lady, I must go and tell those 
 people that idol is not God.” And that child 
 
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resolve flowered into a half-century of great mis¬ 
 sionary service in Burma, for the child became 
 Mrs. Ingalls. It may be the selflessness of your 
 spirit that will help some mother, so that instead 
 of a stone of stumbling she may be a bulwark of 
 strength to the son or daughter ready to volunteer. 
 
 May it not be that you and I need this work at 
 home to test the purity and strength of our pur¬ 
 pose? Do we say, “ Oh, if it must be at home, 
 why can’t it be among the Mormons or in the 
 Black Belt—something really heroic and worthy?” 
 An incoming sophomore was spending her vaca¬ 
 tion in the country, where were several families 
 of French Swiss farmers. Their children she in¬ 
 vited to her temporary home, week by week, 
 taught them Bible and missionary stories, singing, 
 and incidentally the English language, for some 
 of them could not as yet use the tongue of their 
 adopted country. Is it not a good omen that 
 this Student Volunteer, quick to sacrifice a golden 
 holiday for her little foreign neighbors, 'will not 
 be found wanting in that distant field to which 
 she is under appointment? 
 
 Is our enthusiasm for humanity of such ardor 
 that it will burn brightly at home? If it smol¬ 
 ders here, we may well fear it would go out entirely 
 in the mist and murk of heathendom. If our 
 heart fails to quicken over him whom we see, how 
 can we hope it will kindle toward those w T e have 
 never seen? Can we endure the test and ring 
 true? Then for us there is a special word, “For 
 as his share is that goeth down to the battle, so 
 shall his share be that tarrieth by the baggage, 
 they shall share alike.” And the word is to us as 
 
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truly as to David, “ Thou didst well that it was 
 in thy heart.” 
 
 Not only does the home church need us and 
 we the work, but the work at home is vital to 
 success yonder. More than a year ago we were 
 at Port Arthur. With many a responsive thrill 
 we climbed 203 Metre Hill and as an especial 
 privilege were allowed to row about in the harbor 
 and watch the divers at work bringing up parts of 
 sunken Russian war-ships. It was a sight to- 
 remember—the diver buckling on his harness and 
 going down, down, for buried treasures. He 
 seemed so unafraid, and yet the very breath of 
 his life depended on the man at the pump. Sup¬ 
 pose that comrade grew tired or dissatisfied, be¬ 
 cause pumping is tame and monotonous. “It is 
 unthinkable,” you say, “ when it means a life.” 
 
 Yet do we not know beyond the shadow of 
 doubting that we are as necessary to those who- 
 go, that on our faithfulness in prayer that pre¬ 
 vails, in love that never fails, in giving that costs,, 
 hangs their success—yes, their life? Do we give 
 ourselves to the work of developing in the home 
 church a strong base for world-wide conquest 
 with the same consecration as those on the field? 
 Then are we one with them in service, and some 
 day one in reward. 
 
 This is not all hypothesis. It is being done. 
 As one Student Volunteer was about to graduate, 
 her only sister died; and this sister had said, “You 
 go with no anxiety for father and mother, now 
 no longer young. They will always have a home 
 with me.” She went back to a town of less than 
 one hundred. There were no young people, for 
 
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they were away, either getting or using an educa¬ 
 tion. She organized a mission band among boys 
 and girls, became a virtual pastor’s assistant, 
 though unsalaried—she was a real Volunteer— 
 went once a week to a neighboring city to lead a 
 mission study class in the Young Woman’s Chris¬ 
 tian Association, acted as friendly visitor to coma¬ 
 tose auxiliaries, all the time studying, praying, 
 yearning after her chosen field with purpose that 
 knew no limitation. 
 
 Detained Volunteers are secretaries of foreign 
 mission boards, leaders in the Student Volunteer 
 Movement, in social settlements, in every activity 
 for the uplift of America and, through America, 
 the world. When they knew God did not permit, 
 they lost no time in complaints, but speedily 
 found the other work God had for them to do. 
 After all, it is one army the wide world round, 
 and “ there’s good fighting all along the line.” 
 
 The door shut? It is flung open to a large life 
 and a great service, if only we are in Him who 
 said, “ I am the Door.” 
 
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