St. Johnsbury Caledonian

For the Caledonian
"What is All This Worth?"

A neighbor of mine who finds it more convenient to borrow my Caledonian than to pay for a copy himself, brought home the paper of Oct 31st with strong expressions of disgust. I ventured to inquire what that genial sheet contained which failed to meet his views.

"This and this, and this," pointing to several articles concerning the meetings of the Woman's Board, and kindred topics. especially emphasizing with his disapproval the announcement of the departure of certain missionaries from Vermont. "The idea of those crazy- headed girls tramping off to India and Africa, to teach the heathen, when they can find plenty of them at home." I suggested that as the Misses Leitch had already labored among the freedmen they would not go abroad unless they felt themselves needed there.

"Charity," said my neighbor with the air of an oracle, "begins at home. Now there is the neighborhood. You go over there some Sunday, and you won't wonder that some people call the place Sodom Corner. Why they are worse than heathen over there, and in a Christian land, too. Now why don't some of your devoted missionaries feel a call to go there ?" I thought I had him in mentioning that the "Rev. Mr. -- who is without a charge this year, had offered to go to that locality to preach part of the time, but he keeps no team, and if"- My worthy neighbor, fearing I might be drifting toward an appeal to his liberality, suddenly thought of his unfinished "chores," and left the room very hastily. He flung behind however, the sneering question "What does all this missionarying amount to any way ?"

Well, Mr. Editor, his question set me to thinking. When I remember young men whom I have known, and how many, I feel sad when I think, who had spent years in preparing for active life, for usefulness with unselfish aims, who were stricken down by death and misfortune before their work was even begun, the question comes back-"What is it all worth ?"

I remember a Christian woman who was left a widow with a son and daughter to maintain and educate from the proceeds of a small property. It would take a long time to tell the sacrifices she made for them and they made for themselves, before they completed their education.

The young man became pastor of a Presbyterian church in Ohio, the daughter married a missionary to Africa. Before she had time to learn the language of the country she found a grave there; and even before that time, her brother was called away from his work by death. Their devoted mother. child- less and poor, was left to struggle on to an old age, dependent on her relatives for a support, and, apparently, not made the object of any especial care even by Providence.

One is almost tempted to rebel here. and to say that it was a misapplication of physical energy. Overwork in both these cases, hastened, if it did not cause the end. "To what purpose was this waste ?"

But was it waste? Did not Providence take care of the result? The moral effect of that self-sacrifice, of those pure lives and untimely deaths. has caused the younger members of a large circle of relatives to look at something higher than mere money-getting. I know of certain noble men and women, inspired by those high examples. Were not those lives worth living, even had they no other results than these?

There were some very tangible results of that young man's manly preaching. He has his monument in a Christian college in Ohio. But that is not what my neighbor's question set me to thinking about. It was of the moral effect of self-sacrifice.

That man or woman who does not feel humbler. who does not feel life to be better worth the living, and trial more bravely to be borne, when the narrative of patient self-sacrifice is read, has need of missionary efforts in his or her personal behalf.

W.