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Selections from Mary B. McQuesten’sMissionary Society Addresses
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Generally speaking…the foreigners that come to this country menace…the welfare of our labouring class. A great many foreign immigrants do not consider pauperism discreditable , and this is something new on Canadian soil…foreigners of certain classes furnish the criminal list beyond all proportion to their numbers … their presence is menace of a very deadly kind to the body politic. The sense of urgency is clear in the above statement, and it was also considered that the immigrants in their “insufficient literacy, virtue and intelligence posed a threat” to democracy itself (Moir, Enduring 165-66, 168). The Presbyterian General Assembly of 1912 set up a “Department of the Stranger” with chaplains to meet immigrants at the borders, and the women’s Missionary Societies created “Stranger’s Committees” to maintain the contacts. Some of these missions were “less successful” than others. For instance, many of the Jews did not welcome the missionary efforts to “bring a ray of true light to illuminate Israel’s gross darkness,” and many of the Chinese took advantage of these missions only long enough to learn “enough English to assure them of good jobs” (Moir, Enduring 167-69). Those readers interested in postcolonial considerations will find that the McQuesten writings will provide valuable material for the study of the Victorian colonial attitudes that formed Canadian culture, both its positive and its negative aspects. The letters clearly demonstrate that, at the time, this colonial attitude was a shared ideal, supported by the churches as well as by the government and the courts. As we come to know the Victorian writers through their own words, we receive an ever-expanding portrayal of life in Canada during the Victorian era. The increasing accumulation and analysis of diaries, letters, and extant writings will provide us with a larger, but never complete, picture of the culture of the era. Indeed, as time progresses, it will always be subject to yet another “post” analysis. Selections from Mary B. McQuesten’s Missionary Society Addresses ❧ And now let me try to enlist your sympathy, on the behalf of the women & children, in those heathen lands. I want each one of you to-day to picture herself as born in a heathen country, and not in our own Christian Canada. Remember, it was only the kind Providence of God, that made us Canadian women & not heathen (A146-8432). Either we must go ourselves to the nations that are in darkness, or if it is impossible we must do our very utmost at home to send others. If we cannot go down the mine—remember, we must hold the ropes. (A145-7193) Post-Colonial Considerations 33 A145-(7193) ADDRESS TO WFMS (GRAFTON, ONTARIO, 6 JULY 1892) As one reads these accounts of the first attempts at Foreign Mission work, what strikes one as the most remarkable fact is the extraordinary opposition of Xtian5 people to the movement, that the Christian Church could ever have sunk to such condition of selfishness & narrowness as to forget that its peculiar mission was to spread the good tidings of a Saviour to the World. It is really inexplicable, how those professedly Christian men, the ministers of the church could read their bibles without accepting the commandments of the Saviour as there laid down, moreover it is very difficult to comprehend how they could be Christians at all, just the same as it is very difficult to understand now, how any one can possibly be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and not obey his commandments. For if we will not shut our eyes to the real duty that is laid down for us in the Word of God, there are just two courses indicated for the true disciple of Christ,— Either we must go ourselves to the nations that are in darkness, or if it is impossible we must do our very utmost at home to send others. If we cannot go down the mine—remember, we must hold the ropes. Therefore it comes to this, either those who call themselves Christians do not read their Bibles or they deliberately disobey the Saviour’s commandments. Is this a safe thing to do? Then the question arises Can any one be a Christian without reading the Bible. It is the word of God, it is the Revelation of God’s will to man, of what we must do to be saved, and having read this revelation of the Father’s Will, how can we dare disobey? No matter whether we...