v\-\ \^> O- 
 
 Hjomatt’s |)oarb of missions. 
 
 POSSIBILITIES 
 
 OF 
 
 WORK 
 
 IN 
 
 OUR AUXILIARIES. 
 
 ALICE M. KYLE. 
 
 Boston: 
 
 Frank Wood, Printer, 352 Washington Street. 
 1894. 
 
T HEN we touch upon a topic like this, we 
 
 ’ ’ have come to the very heart of tilings, 
 for in our auxiliaries we find the seat of life,— 
 the impulse to warm, healthful, vital service, 
 which sends the current of life-giving force 
 through every artery of our body politic. We 
 do not say of our auxiliaries, “ You are a part 
 of the Woman’s Board,” simply. We say, 
 ■“You are the Woman’s Board.” 
 
 The questions that concern work in auxilia¬ 
 ries become at once, therefore, of the most 
 practical interest to us all. To quote from an 
 admirable paper read at a recent meeting of 
 one of our Branches: “There are two ques¬ 
 tions that are ever seeking for an answer, 
 ‘ How shall we increase the interest in our 
 auxiliary meetings?’ and, ‘ How shall we raise 
 a little more money this year than we did 
 last ? ’ ” The writer of this paper went on to 
 say: “ I cannot answer these questions. If I 
 could I should not be here to-day, for I should 
 have been offered long ago the position of 
 Secretary Extraordinary to the Woman’s 
 Board, and should have been sent through the 
 country to answer them in the various aux¬ 
 iliaries.” 
 
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The office of Secretary Extraordinary is still 
 vacant, and these questions are still confront¬ 
 ing the earnest women who love the coming 
 kingdom of our God, and who are seeking 
 prayerfully, persistently, and hopefully, a solu¬ 
 tion of these and kindred problems. In the 
 suggestions offered you at this time there is 
 no claim to originality. There has been 
 simply a gathering up of various thoughts and 
 methods out of the experiences of some wise- 
 liearted women, who have been for many 
 years familiar with the work of sustaining 
 auxiliary meetings in the face of variety of 
 difficulties and discouragements. Yet with 
 what a grand measure of success this has been 
 done, let the record of this Woman’s Board 
 these twenty-seven years bear eloquent witness. 
 
 In the opening sentence of the report of the 
 Home Secretary of the American Board, there 
 is a striking phrase: “The first duty of the 
 architect is to think in shadow.” There is, in 
 these words, a marvelous suggestiveness. By 
 and by there will be a fair and perfect temple 
 of God, as the living stones, out of all nations, 
 and people, and kindred, and tongues, are 
 built up a spiritual house. But for the present 
 we work and think in shadow, and we need of¬ 
 ten to behold in vision the thing which shall be. 
 
 The difficulties of our work are different, 
 however, in different places. 
 
 The small, struggling missionary society in 
 a country church, where the people are scat- 
 
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tered; where for nine months in the year the 
 condition of the roads is one of the first con¬ 
 siderations regarding any kind of a gathering; 
 where the people handle very little money, — 
 here is one set of difficulties. People living 
 in such communities are very apt to think 
 that in large towns or cities where there are 
 good sidewalks, a comfortable church parlor, 
 and “plenty of workers,” it must be a very 
 easy matter to have large and interesting 
 meetings, and a full treasury, — especially 
 where there is the impulse to generous giving 
 which comes from frequent touch with our 
 real live missionaries—God bless them! — and 
 with a mine of information at hand in mis¬ 
 sionary libraries. Our friends in the city 
 dwell upon the leisure of the long winter 
 evenings in the country, and the fewer social 
 and religious engagements of the people, and, 
 it is true, they overlook some of the obstacles 
 in the work of a village society. Yet dwellers 
 in the city must crave some much-needed 
 sympathv because of the multiplicity of or¬ 
 ganizations, the almost distracting variety of 
 urgent and deserving claims upon purse, time, 
 and strength with which those who work in 
 city churches are increasingly conscious. 
 
 But, after all, many of our difficulties are 
 common to all, for human nature is every¬ 
 where the same. There would seem to be 
 three troublesome elements in our work. If 
 you were asked to name them, would not the 
 
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reply be sadly unanimous? Would you not 
 say, and say truly: — 
 
 First, That there is too little comprehen¬ 
 sion of our work, of its claims and of its 
 pressing needs, among the average women of 
 our churches; 
 
 Second, That there is too little expression 
 of the spirit of prayer among the women who 
 honestly love the work, and are trying to 
 shoulder its burdens; and, 
 
 Third, That there is too little, far too little, 
 of a self-denying, systematic liberality among 
 the women who so largely make up the mem¬ 
 bership of our Congregational churches. Is 
 it not your experience, that the few give a 
 great deal, while the many give nothing, or 
 very little? 
 
 Dr. Richard’s figures, as given at Madison, 
 are worthy of earnest thought and attention. 
 He says: 1 ‘ When even in Massachusetts one- 
 
 sixtli of the churches and in Connecticut 
 one-eightli of the churches gave nothing last 
 year (to foreign missions), is it not manifest 
 that something needs to be done to help them 
 regain their birthright privilege in the king¬ 
 dom? In one of the most intelligent and 
 generous States of the country, whose aggre¬ 
 gate gift to the American Board is very large, 
 one church gave an annual donation of one- 
 tentli of a cent per member; another, one- 
 twelfth; and another church of one hundred 
 and eleven members gave two dollars, or at the 
 
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rate of one fifty-fifth of a cent per member!” 
 What shall these facts, dear disciples of Jesus 
 Christ, move us to do in the year of grace 
 before us? 
 
 We notice in every case these difficulties 
 mentioned indicate a lack,—a lack of informa¬ 
 tion ; a lack of whole-hearted consecration; a 
 lack of the spirit of self-forgetful love. Would it 
 not seem, then, that to supply this lack should 
 be our unceasing endeavor, the one end toward 
 which all methods should converge? Nothing 
 should be counted useless or trivial which adds, 
 directly or indirectly, one particle of light, or 
 warmth, or love to even one woman’s mission¬ 
 ary purpose and zeal. .We cannot emphasize 
 this too strongly, or say it too often to our¬ 
 selves and others, in days when we see little 
 result of faithful and long-continued effort. 
 “ Despise not the day of small things,” is a 
 word of Divine, not human, teaching. We 
 heed it in all other relations of life. Why not 
 in this? 
 
 We need, also, to dwell humbly and repeat¬ 
 edly upon the truth that we—you and I— 
 cannot kindle this flame of sacred love for 
 missions in the heart of any woman; more 
 than that, we cannot very much increase it, or 
 make it a steady, beneficent glow, at which the 
 hearts of chill and suffering women far away 
 shall be warmed. Three things, however, we 
 can and must do if we are obedient to oui 
 Lord’s command: “Go ye, therefore,” and 
 
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would carry His message, “The Master is 
 ^ome and calleth for tliee,” to any unrespon¬ 
 sive heart. We can seek to awaken a desire 
 for knowledge, and to supply means of obtain¬ 
 ing that knowledge. We can seek to be our¬ 
 selves so filled with the spirit of Christ that 
 we may be personally winning to these whom 
 we seek to ally with us, and we can pray much 
 for the vivifying breath of the Holy Spirit 
 upon their hearts. If we comply with these 
 conditions, shall we not be made glad again 
 and again by finding that God has honored 
 our faith, and that the very women we hesi¬ 
 tated to ask are ready, aye, and waiting, to 
 have a part in our beloved work? 
 
 Some one—Oliver Wendell Holmes, was it 
 not?—has said that the education of a child 
 should begin a hundred years before he is 
 born. So the training of an auxiliary must 
 
 begin in the cradles of its leaders, or before. 
 
 % 
 
 Choose carefully your auxiliary officers; 
 much depends upon them. It is better to 
 have a winning, tactful woman, provided al¬ 
 ways that she has a genuine love for missions, 
 even if she may not be conversant with the 
 history of all the mission fields. That she 
 can learn, but no one can acquire tact. An 
 auxiliary president should, have a firm grasp 
 upon all the details of the work. She should 
 keep her finger upon the pulse of the treasury, 
 and strive to come into personal touch with as 
 many of the members as possible. For fos- 
 
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tering this interest a meeting of the auxiliary 
 officers for prayer and conference, monthly, 
 has been found invaluable. 
 
 But now that our auxiliary is officered, the 
 next thing is to have a meeting. An auxiliary 
 without a meeting is like a rose without per¬ 
 fume: it may be a good thing in its way, it 
 may be the only thing possible under the 
 circumstances, but it is not complete. A 
 Home Roll may be used for invalid ladies, or 
 busy house mothers who say truly that they 
 cannot attend meetings, and they may be 
 made to feel that they belong to the society 
 by a Missionary Book Club, which shall 
 circulate leaflets and Life and Light. 
 
 But for active members we beg for some 
 kind of a meeting .regularly held. And one of 
 the first concerns must be to find a suitable 
 place for the meeting. In the city the natural, 
 and, doubtless, the fitting place, is the church 
 parlor. In scattered communities the meeting 
 is oftener held at the parsonage or in some 
 other home. Usually it occurs in the same 
 place month after month, and, as was said the 
 other day, “the same faithful old stand-bys 
 attend.” A wise plan lias been tried in one 
 or two instances of holding neighborhood 
 meetings; that is, going from one part of the 
 town to another. Real benefit might come to 
 the work in such places, if some winning 
 woman should succeed in getting permission 
 to hold the meeting in a home where the 
 
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ladies do not usually come to missionary 
 meeting. 
 
 Let the matter be well “talked up,” and the 
 neighbors urged to come in. Then when the 
 afternoon has arrived, some friend who has a 
 carriage at her command is pressed into the 
 service. She calls for several interested 
 women living at a distance, and the result is 
 that new faces are seen at this auxiliary meet¬ 
 ing. The next month repeat the experiment 
 in another district, and while the average atten¬ 
 dance may not be larger, the number of people 
 reached during the year will surprise you. 
 
 These afternoon meetings may be varied by 
 an occasional evening meeting, to which the 
 gentlemen are invited, and some specially 
 attractive feature added to the programme. 
 
 In a village where there are several churches 
 a visiting afternoon is sometimes tried, and a 
 whole auxiliary goes a visiting its neighbor 
 society. Another society has a pleasant fashion 
 of remembering sick members with a few 
 flowers or a little leaflet sent directly from the 
 meeting. Sometimes a “calling afternoon” 
 is substituted for the regular meeting. The 
 ladies come together as usual, prayer is offered, 
 asking that the service of the afternoon may 
 be blessed, and then the ladies separate, each 
 calling upon some one who is not able, or not 
 interested to attend the meeting, and seeking, 
 with love and tact, to interest her in mission¬ 
 ary service. 
 
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Many societies have received a blessing by a 
 missionary reception given by the young ladies 
 of the church to the auxiliary and friends. 
 This reception should be, so far as possible, ar¬ 
 ranged with the same care that any ordinary 
 reception demands; personal invitations should 
 be written, and everything done in honor of 
 the guests of the afternoon, but the lliission- 
 ary cause should be the chief thought of the 
 hour, and should be suggested in every possi¬ 
 ble way. By the way, this matter of personal 
 notes of invitation, though by no means new, 
 is one worthy of much emphasis. Be willing 
 to give lavishly and to expect small returns. 
 One lady told me that if she wrote twenty 
 notes of invitation to a meeting, and saw four 
 ladies present as a result of those notes, she 
 felt amply repaid. But let us not think our 
 work accomplished when the friend for whom 
 we have been working comes once to our 
 meeting. Very likely if we rest there, the 
 time of the next meeting will slip by and she 
 will not even think of it. Can we not secure her 
 further interest by asking her to help us in 
 some little way at our next meeting ? Aim to 
 have as many ladies take part in the meetings 
 as possible, and, believe me, when you have 
 impressed upon your friend that you really 
 need her presence and help, you have often 
 won her. 
 
 Of course each part must necessarily be 
 brief, in this plan, but would not that in^itself 
 
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be a gain? Do we not often make a mistake 
 in thinking people know all about the subject 
 in which we are so deeply interested? Do we 
 not fail to have our programme simple enough? 
 It is encouraging to know that, month by 
 month, the demand for the lesson leaflets and 
 for the other literature published by the 
 Woman’s Board is increasing. Sometimes it 
 is well to have a meeting devoted to one 
 special missionary, with whom the ladies have 
 become acquainted through the blessed Prayer 
 Calendar, or through her picture in the new 
 album of missionaries just issued by the 
 Woman’s Board. If through these and other 
 methods we are able to stimulate interest, and 
 to enlarge the store of knowledge, a more gen¬ 
 erous and systematic giving must follow; 
 while, oh, the new gladness that will come to 
 hearts that thus enter into the joy of their 
 Lord! But the thought that above all else we 
 need to emphasize, as we now enter upon the 
 “Jordan of our difficulties,” is that of the 
 wonderful possibilities with which God in¬ 
 trusts us in the matter of believing prayer. 
 If as we meet, month by month, each woman 
 would dare to utter but one single petition, 
 think how there would sweep up before the 
 throne of grace a great wave of intercessory 
 prayer. It is possible, in our auxiliary work, 
 to love, to plan wisely, to give, to learn, to 
 grow in knowledge and in grace; but first of 
 all, last of all, and in the midst of all, let us 
 
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remember it is possible for us who have not 
 gifts of gold or eloquence, or brilliant mental 
 endowments, to pray, and pray , and pray 
 again, until the place shall be shaken; until 
 there shall come upon us a power for service 
 which shall subdue all difficulties, and gladden 
 the hearts of all who love the triumph of 
 Christ’s kingdom—both here and “unto the 
 uttermost parts of the earth.” 
 
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