The Missionary | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 26, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 45.

The Missionary.

The Australian Mission.

THE following interesting items are from a private letter by Elder M. C. Israel:—

You will remember that when we got the Australian Handbook, we selected the Geelong Free Library as the first one to which to offer the SIGNS and Good Health for a year. Elder Haskell, Elder Corliss, and myself went up there last Thursday [October 1] to see what could be done. I visited the library, and found that they had received some copies of the SIGNS, but none lately, except a few numbers that we sent a few weeks ago. These had been well read, judging from their looks. Good Health has been received regularly, and both it and the SIGNS occupy as good a place as there is in the room. The librarian is going to call here for our bound books next week. It is very interesting to me to visit the places and persons that we sent reading matter to two years ago. I did not then even dream of ever seeing them.

We arranged to send the SIGNS to the reading-room of the Albert Home Coffee-rooms, also a bound volume of the same and our pamphlets. The proprietors are religious, and keep the best house in the city.

Geelong and vicinity looks like a "delight-some land." The city proper, with East and West Geelong, covers quite a large extent of territory, and has a population of from fifteen to twenty thousand. It has the air of a country town, where land is not so valuable but that the citizens can have good-sized lots to build their residences on. From different parts of the city, green fields and little villages, forming a charming background, can be seen for miles. Rents are lower here than in Melbourne, and the cost of living is less.

I have visited Williamstown twice. They have a set of our bound books in the library of the Sailors' Rest; they have the SIGNS also, and we have furnished them with pamphlets and tracts, and all are well received.

The SIGNS has done and is doing a great deal to make a good impression on the minds of the people; for it shows them that we have no especial hobby, but that ours is a work of reform on all points where reform is necessary. Persons who have received the SIGNS once,

frequently ask for it when they meet us again, saying that they have been much interested in reading it. Persons on the cars have been heard to say, "These people are making quite a stir, and it is their literature that is doing it." A prominent man came in on Friday, and said he had been getting the SIGNS and tracts from the distributor at the Richmond Library; and after reading them, he had sent them to his friends. He believes that our views are correct.

Temperance Hall in Melbourne is the headquarters of the temperance organizations of Victoria. Here they have a library and reading-room, and a place for the sale of temperance literature. Brother Scott has furnished them with what publications we have on the subject of health and temperance, and has shown them a set of the temperance charts, one of which they have placed in their show window. They offer to act as agents for us in that line of our works, and to take subscriptions for our health journals. The temperance organization here is quite strong, and an earnest effort is being made to pass a local-option law and other laws in favor of temperance. Petitions asking for these laws have been circulated among all the churches. The decided position taken in our periodicals on the temperance question will make us many friends. I think more tobacco and liquor are used here than in America, in proportion to the population; but the people are very orderly. It is not common to see a drunken person, and one seldom hears profanity on the streets. I don't remember of hearing an oath since we came here.

Our forty-foot tent will be ready in about a week. It is made so that we can put in a twenty-foot extension at any time; this makes quite a good-sized tent to begin with. We think the weather will be suitable to commence tent-meetings in the course of a month. It has not been decided where the tent will be pitched first.

Our meetings are held in the front room of the mission at present; but when our numbers increase, we shall have to move into a hall in the city, where it will be convenient for all to attend. We have looked at Protestant Hall, just east of the Town Hall. We can get a room for Sabbath meetings for a small sum per week. The man who has charge of the hall was interested in the truth in England. He knew the SIGNS, and said he used to get it every week in England, and a Supplement every month. He was very friendly, and will grant us all the favors he can. Last week we sent a set of bound books and some pamphlets and papers to the Sailors' Rest in Calcutta by the first officer of the steamer Indus. The different lines of steamers and ships will take packages for us free to any of their places of destination.