God's Answers

Emigration of families--A visitor's impressions--The great life-work --Emigration of the young, begun 1870--First party of boys to Canada with Miss Macpherson and Miss Bilbrough--Their reception--Mr. Merry takes oat second party out boys--Miss Macpherson returns to England and takes out a party of girls--Canadian welcome and happy homes-- Canadian pastor's story.

CHAPTER III.

1870-1871.

Workers' meetings at Home of Industry--Training Home at Hampton opened--Personal experiences--Welcome in Western Canada--Help for a Glasgow Home--Scottish Ferryman--"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings"

CHAPTER IV.

1872.

The need of a Home further West--Burning of the Marchmont Home--Home restored by Canadian gifts--Miss Macpherson and Miss Reavell arrive in Canada--First visit to Knowlton in the East--Belleville Home restored by Canadian friends--Help for the Galt Home--Miss Macpherson returns to England--Miss Reavell remains at Galt

CHAPTER V.

1872-1874.

Letter from Rev. A. M. W. Christopher--Letter from Gulf of St. Lawrence--Mrs. Birt's sheltering Home, Liverpool--Letter to Mrs. Merry--Letter from Canada--Miss Macpherson's return to England-- Letter of cheer for Dr. Barnardo--Removal to Hackney Home

CHAPTER VI.

1875-1877.

Mrs. Way's sewing-class for Jewesses--Bible Flower Mission--George Clarke--Incidents in Home work--The Lord's Day--Diary at sea--Letters of cheer from Canada

CHAPTER VII.

1877-1879.

"They helped every one his neighbour"--Miss Child, a fellow labourer --The work in Ratcliff Highway--Strangers' Rest for Sailors--"Welcome Home"--"Bridge of Hope"--Miss Macpherson's twenty-first voyage to Canada--Explosion on board the "Sardinian"--Child-life in the Galt Home--The Galt Home now devoted to children from London, Knowlton to those from Liverpool, and Marchmont to Scottish Emigrants

CHAPTER VIII.

1879-1880.

Experiences among Indians--Picnic in the Bush--Distribution Of Testaments--"Till He Come"--"A Home and a hearty Welcome"

CHAPTER IX.

Questions and Answers--Sorrowful cases--Testimonies from those who have visited Canada--Stewardship

INTRODUCTION

BY

THE REV. JOHN MACPHERSON,

Author of "The Life of Duncan Mathieson."

From East London to West Canada is a change pleasing to imagine. From dusky lane and fetid alley to open, bright Canadian fields is, in the very thought, refreshing. A child is snatched from pinching hunger, fluttering rags, and all the squalor of gutter life; from a creeping existence in the noisome pool of slum society is lifted up into some taste for decency and cleanliness; from being trained in the school whose first and last lesson is to fear neither God nor man, is taught the beginnings of Christian faith and duty, and by a strong effort of love and patience is borne away to the free, spacious regions of the western hemisphere, of which it may be said, as of the King's feast, "yet there is room," and where even a hapless waif may get a chance and a choice both for this world and the world that is to come. This is a picture on which a kind heart loves to rest. But who shall make the picture real?

Go and first catch your little Arab, if you can. I say, if you can; for he is too old to be caught by chaff, and you shall need as much guile as any fowler ever did. Then with patient hands bestow on his body its first baptism of clean water, a task often unspeakably shocking; reduce to fit size and shape a cast-off suit humbly begged for the occasion, and give him his first experience of decent clothing. Thereafter, proceed to the work, sometimes the most trying ever undertaken, of taming this singularly acute, desperately sly, and often ferociously savage little Englishman, training him to be what he is not, or harder task still, to be not what he is. Having, by dint of much pains and many prayers, obtained, as you hope, some beginnings of victory over the most wayward of wills, and the most unaccountably strange of mixed natures, with its intellectual sharpness and moral bluntness, its precocious knowingness and stereotyped childishness, its quickness to learn and slowness to unlearn, prepare for the next stage of your enterprise. Lay out your scheme of emigration, get the money where you can, that is to say, call it flown from heaven and wile it out of earthly pockets, anticipate all possible emergencies and wants by land and sea, finish for the time the much epistolary correspondence to which this same fragment of humanity has given rise, tempt the deep with your restless charge, bear the discomforts of the stormiest of seas, and inwardly groan at the signs of other and worse tempests ready ever to burst forth in the Atlantic of that young sinner's future course; and when after many weeks of anxious thought, fatiguing travel, and laborious inquiry you find a home for the child, fold your hands, give thanks and say, "What an adventure! What a toil! But now at length it is finished!" And yet perhaps it is not half finished.