Women's Work for Jesus

Annie Wittenmyer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429619885
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Published in 1987: The writer of these simple pages has left the home duties of women, so long and ably discussed, on the one hand, and the questions of their social and political privileges on the other, and entered the broad, uncultivated field lying between the two.

WOMEN’S WORK FOR JESDS.

_____

CHAPTER I.

A VIEW OF THE HOME FIELD.

WE look over this broad land with its teeming millions, to find that the religious demands of our populous and rapidly growing country are not being met; that the activities of the Church are not keeping pace with the activities of the world; and that the Gospel of Christ is not being preached to the masses.

Nor do we mean by the masses the degraded and criminal, the drunken and licentious, who live in garrets and cellars, and crowd the lanes of our populous cities.

The non-church going multitudes represent all classes, from the lordly millionaire who lives in a palace and fares sumptuously every day, to the humble rag-picker who gathers a scanty living from the gutter.

From careful calculations, based upon facts and statistics from every quarter, we are forced to conclude, taking in the whole extent of our country, that one-half of our people absent themselves from the house of God. And of those who do attend public worship, thousands sustain false and idolatrous systems of religion, so that a still larger proportion are without Christian teaching.

It has been estimated that ‘not more than one-sixth of the people of the United Slates ordinarily attend public Christian worship.”

And the American Sunday School Union for 1865,—and there has been very little change since,—report that, “In no one of our Eastern States are one-half of the children in the Sunday schools, and in some of our Western States three-fourths of the children and youth are not only ungathered into the Sabbath school, but large numbers are beyond the reach of any established church.”

A deep, undefined feeling of scepticism prevails, which, added to the consciousness of being uncared for, breeds discontent and hatred toward the Church. For these multitudes are living all around us, many of them within sight of our churches; but our Sabbath bells come to them with no voice of invitation; their hearts have not been touched; their sympathies have not been stirred; the hand of Christian love has not been reached out to them; and many of them are saying, and saying bitterly “There are none who care for my soul.”

They have a sense of being uncared for, neglected, not wanted by the Church.

Not long ago, I saw a drunkard stagger along the street till he came to a church. He stopped and leaned against it till I approached. I found him intelligent and penitent, and full of good desires, but too weak to cope with the adversary alone.

He lived next door to the church—under the very shadow of the stately temple—but not one of the 300 members who statedly worshipped there had visited him, or expressed any interest in his salvation, although with his little family he had lived there for months.

Thus neglected, thousands abandon themselves to evil courses, and live unrestrained lives of sin.

And infidelity, and scepticism, and Sabbath desecration, and revelry, and drunkenness, and debauchery prevail on every hand.

Men set their traps openly for the feet of the innocent, and barter in human flesh, and make themselves drunk on the blood of souls.

And this irreligious element in our midst is being largely augmented by accessions from abroad

A tide of emigration has set in upon us, from all lands, bringing to our shores thousands of pagans, infidels and false religionists.

Our great city centres, which are the chief receptacle of this influx, are already feeling the corrupting, demoralizing influence of these anti-christian elements; while, on our Western borders, thousands of pagans are gathering, and building their altars and setting up their idols in our very midst.

When political economists and statesmen, looking out upon these storm-clouds, openly express their fears and tremble for the safety of their country, it is time for the Church to arouse herself, put on her strength, and go forth to her God-given mission.

A great moral contest is before us. The doctrines of Christ are to be confronted by the teachings of Confucius; our simple forms of worship that we love so well, by the ritualistic mummeries of Romanism; our spiritual religion, by materialism and German rationalism; our churches, by play-houses, and beer-gardens and pagodas.

“We are living, we are dwelling,

In a grand and awful time,

In an age, on ages telling—

To be living is sublime.”

Sublime, if we rise to the glorious possibilities before us.

This land is the great missionary field of the whole world.

The Lord is sending his benighted children from all lands, to our very doors, to be taught of us the lessons of saving truth.

The people of every kindred, nation and tongue, under the skies, are coming to be one with us, in all things.

And we are to lift them up to our Christian civilization, or they are to drag us down towards their barbarisms.

There is power enough in Christianity to hold us, and keep us steadily moving forward on the ascending plain of progress we now occupy; and power enough to lift all these coming millions to out level, and lift us all to a higher plain of Christian civilization.

But this power must be applied. These masses must be brought in contact with the refining, elevating influences of the Gospel.

A glorious opportunity is before the Church. This land may be made the joy of the whole earth—the radiating centre of Gospel light and influence—a heavenly gateway for all nations.

And upon the fidelity of the Christian Church, in this last quarter of the nineteenth century, will in a large measure depend the future welfare of our own land, and the early enlightenment and Christianization of the world.

If a general view of the Home Field reveals a mission of such extent and magnitude, what shall we say, when we carefully look over the details of the work to be accomplished?

In addition to the wide-spread preyslence of immorality and scepticism, we will find schools of rank infidelity; blatant teachers of false doctrines; political combinations for personal aggrandizement, endangering public peace and safety; whiskey rings; gambling hells; nests of vice that breed contagion of the most virulent character; social cancers that feed on the vitals of our moral life; and sinks of iniquity where the degraded and wrecked and ruined of every class gravitate and fester and rot, till the moral atmosphere around us is reeking with social miasma.

The moral condition of thousands in our large cities is simply horrible.

None but those who have made themselves familiar with these haunts of vice and poverty, can form a conception of the degradation and wretchedness of the abandoned classes.

In the lower wards of New York, where nearly a quarter of a million of souls find a home, the moral destitution is almost incredible.

Huddled together in garrets and cellars, or congregated by hundreds in tenement buildings, which are little else than pest-houses, their spiritual and physical condition is truly appalling.

They seem crowded down, and “hedged in “to lives of sin and shame.

And New York, the gateway of the nation, the receiving depot for a large part of the migrating population of the world, is only a very little worse than the other large cities of our land.

Whole streets, and in some cases wards, are abandoned to the degraided and criminal classes, and become plague spots worse than Sodom, where sin and crime run riot.

Multitudes crowded into these loathsome localities, morally diseased, and spreading disease, with the malignity of demons, crowd each other down the steeps of death.

No power of legislation, no system of benevolence can reach their desperate case.

Nothing but Christianity can go down to the depths of their degradation, and lift them up, and undo their heavy burdens, and break their galling chains, and lead them forth to lives of purity and peace.

There is power in the Gospel to purify and sweeten all this putrid mass of humanity.

The followers of Christ are the salt of the earth, and if the salt has not lost its savor, these perishing millions for whom he died may be reached and saved.

But there is an important class, in these homes of sin and wretchedness, demanding special attention:

THE CHILDREN OF THE DEGRADED POOR.

There are thousands of children in these training schools of vice, who know no other teaching, and over whose suffering condition angels might well weep.

In their innocence and helplessness they find themselves, without any choice of their own, in narrow, filthy quarters; nursed by drunken mothers; abused and cursed by brutal, besotted fathers; neglected and forsaken; struggling with the first gasp of life for life itself; breathing a polluted atmosphere; and overcome in their first contests with evil.

Children, who have a life without a childhood; a soul without a window to let in the light of heaven; who are driven on through the blackness of despair, by the scorpions, hunger, want, and cold, to madness and to crime.

This is no fancy sketch—no overdrawn picture.

Thousands are in the midst of this fearful struggle.

Few have the strength to pass safely through the perils of such a childhood; and it is well. For every generous impulse is trampled down, every aspiration crushed out, and all the powers of their being are brought into one long, fierce, agonizing struggle for life and for bread.

The abodes of sin and shame are red with the blood of murdered innocents.

Would God I could portray the fearful scenes of suffering I have witnessed. Scenes of agony too deep for human words, the remembrance of which brings tears as I write.

My sisters, who are wasting their sympathies on novels, and shedding their ready tears over imaginary heroes, would do well to look about them for the real heroes and martyrs writhing under the foot of humanity near their own doors.

This important class is beyond the ordinary range of Church and Sabbath school efforts, and can only be reached by an earnest outgoing spirit of Christianity.

In their helplessness and wretchedness they have a right to look to the Church for sympathy and help. The Gospel of Christ demands their salvation, by every consideration that can move to Christian effort.

They are more accessible and teachable than older sinners; their young hearts yearn for sympathy and love, and there is much to inspire hope in their behalf.

The strong arm of the Church should be reached out to them; she should become the nursing mother of these straying lambs of the flock, and shelter them in her fold of love.

Thousands might be saved, who if left to drift on in the corrupt channels in which they find themselves, will live and die in the slums of vice.

The Protestant Church in the past has left this great work for the most part to the Church of Rome, or to the enterprise and generosity of a few individuals.

Every denomination should have its homes and schools for poor neglected children.

And many of the wealthy men and women of the Church have reason to blush with shame, that they have given so much to fine churches, and fine houses, and extravagant living, and so little to save these helpless, perishing ones.

Clod is writing his fiery judgments in many a professedly Christian household, who have thus squandered the Lord’s substance. The sword has entered their own flesh, and their sons and their daughters are treading the ways of death.

But we turn from these sickening scenes to the literature of the country.

It has been said, that “of the making of books there is no end,” but none save those wh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Chapter I. A View of the Home Field
• Chapter II. How can The Masses be reached and evangelized
• Chapter III. Adaptation of Woman to Home Missionary Work
• Chapter IV. A Plea for Christian Women’s Work
• Chapter V. The Follies and Excuses of unfaithful Professors of Religion, discussed
• Chapter VI. Time and Ability for Christ’s Work
• Chapter VII. Cross-Bearing and Christian Privilege
• Chapter VIII. Tract Distribution — Women’s Work in Heathen Lands — Drunkenness among Women
• Chapter IX. Thoughts and Suggestions for Christian Workers