J. S. JAMES by J. S. JAMES

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 11, 1915

J. S. JAMES

By J. S. JAMES

Furlough Reflections—No. 2

J. S. JAMES

[Written while sailing on the Mediterranean Sea, July 10, 1914.]

I should not forget to mention the cordial welcome home given us by the Mission Board and our people in general. We were not lionized, nor did we desire a display of any such sentiment; but everywhere we went, from Washington to California, we found the people eager to hear about the work in foreign fields,—always questioning, inquiring, comparing, imagining,—their interest betraying an undoubted relationship to that cause which lies nearest the Master's heart.

Our Mission Board is heavily burdened with the task of counsel and assistance, in order to give the greatest amount of profit both to the home field and to the workers themselves. And here I reflect that it is in no small degree a privilege to be identified with this cause, and associated with workers who have upon their hearts and before their faces continually the one purpose of meeting the mind of God in his work among men. We had laid aside our regular work to rest and recuperate for a time, and again and again as our spirits chafed from the thought of inaction and a changed environment, we were cautioned that the fruits of rest must be realized in preference to anything else. A furlough is an expensive arrangement

to both the individual and the Mission Board, but it is much to be preferred to a funeral, and infinitely more pleasant. Traveling expenses must be met and salaries paid, while at the same time the mission field is deprived of our active service. The greatest economy, therefore, would be realized in being situated so that we could be reequipped with health and strength and return to our field again. This did not mean that we were to remain idle, which would have been sore punishment for us indeed. Idleness is a cure for nothing, and we felt that we must be doing something that would contribute in some way to the progress of the work in the field we had left. In this we were not disappointed; for as I now look over my diary and sum up the work I have been privileged to do, I could not gather from it that I had been on idle furlough.

At the close of the General Conference session I had the pleasure of attending the camp meeting in South Dakota, where I met numerous friends and former fellow workers. I very much enjoyed this meeting, it being the first of its kind I had attended in seven years, although much of my work on behalf of missions had to be done under physical suffering and weakness. After this meeting I went with my family to the Pacific Coast, where it was our good fortune to spend the remaining portion of our furlough in sunny California, making our home at the Pacific Union College, near St. Helena, in order to give our boys the advantage of the school.

In this field, during the summer and fall months, I visited most of the camp meetings, numerous churches, and many of our institutions. I was given a hearty welcome by all, and the interest with which the people listened to my talks on the progress of the message in India, and the liberality which characterized their response, were sure indications that our brethren thoroughly believe in the great task which has been committed to them. This evidence impressed me as it never had before. To see the large, well-filled tents, and the halls with so many eager listeners assembled at the hour announced for foreign missions; to look into the faces of hundreds of believers who followed with feelings of joy and sorrow the mission story of toil, hardship, suffering, joy, conversions, growing

missions; to note the lively interest displayed in mission topics when other matters of vital interest in the conference or institutions were also pressing in for consideration; to mingle with the people and feel the more than formal grip of hands, and hear them say, with genuine earnestness in their voices, “God bless you and your work! Our hearts are with you,”—to note all this, and more, has many times sent me to my tent or room with thankfulness welling up in my heart that I could again touch hands and hearts with such a people. You who may read these lines, could you but know how these things fire the zeal, deepen the consecration, and brighten the hopes of the furloughed workers who sojourn with you a few months, you would be stirred to greater limits of self-denial for the Lord's cause. Seeing these things has caused me many times to exclaim, “God hasten the day when all our indebtedness and other hindering causes shall be cleared away, and this people can justly and fairly turn their whole heart and resources to the finishing of the work in all the world.”

In the light of his former experiences there are some things that are exceedingly hard for a returned missionary to reconcile. One who has been hedged about for years with heathen superstition, ignorance, and degradation; who has lived in the midst of pinching poverty and economic suffering; who must begin, build, and advance the work with the crudest and most meager facilities; who has to guard with rigid economy the expenditure of every penny, and make one

dollar do the service of ten; who after paying tithe and offerings, invests a large part of his remaining salary in furthering some needy part of the work—for such a one to return to a civilization such as is known in the Occident, and witness the extravagant luxuries of home life, the wanton waste of money and means, the multiplied facilities of an overdeveloped civilization, and the vast waste consequent to the hurry and rush of the age, is enough to make any one who has seen it, long for some way to forget it.