This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Feb. 14, 1942.
On your kitchen wall no doubt there is a big calendar, the right kind of a calendar that is easily seen, and there, around the number “20,” I want you to put a circle. And now I will tell you why this date has a deep significance for the people of Canada.
We have many women’s organizations in Canada, amusement clubs, study clubs, handicraft guilds and missionary societies. But we have many women in Canada who belong to no organization at all. We are all concerned, deeply concerned, with the state of the world at this brittle moment.
There is not a home in Canada that will not feel the impact of war long before peace comes. Many feel it now. Already there are sacrifices, anxieties, adjustments. There are empty chairs and sad partings and people whose hearts grow cold with dread when a telegraph boy stands at the door. All this makes a basis of fellowship.
Every person can help in the matter of morale, which is a vital form of defence. There is no doubt that women are largely responsible for the atmosphere of their homes. A sour-faced, discontented woman takes the colour out of the furniture and spoils the taste of a good dinner; she saps her children’s strength and lowers her man’s efficiency. Just as surely as a woman of faith and courage makes up for any lack in her home’s equipment. “Better a meal of herbs, etc.” writes the Psalmist, speaking on this theme.
There is one source of poise and strength to which we all have access, whether we are learned or unlearned, organized or unorganized. It requires no membership card, sponsor, fee or introduction; and that great reservoir of power is going to be definitely approached on Friday, Feb. 20, when the missionary women of Canada of all denominations are asking all women to join them with the World’s Day of Prayer.
Some who are reading this may be cynical about prayer and say, with Voltaire, that God is on the side which has the heaviest artillery. But I hope that if this thought is in your mind you will realize that this is Hitler’s philosophy and has no place in the mind of a loyal Canadian. Cynicism is a poisoned weapon. Hitler and his associates gain a victory every time a free country wavers in its faith. No man was ever made strong to endure, or brave in battle, by the thought that life is a sham and God is a myth.
We are all strengthened by other people’s faith. My own heart has been warmed and my faith renewed as I read in that revealing book, The Soong Sisters by Emily Hahan, of what Christianity has meant to the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek and, through them, to the people of China; how they started the New Life Movements in China, calling together the missionaries of all denominations to help in raising the standard of the people’s homes, manners and morale and personally organizing schools and hospitals.
China now has a Christian leadership that commands the admiration of the world, and it all began because there was a Christian captain on the steamship Colfax, “a second-class side-wheeler running out of Boston in the year 1875.” On this ship there was a little Chinese boy 14 years old, who had hidden himself on the boat to get away from the monotonous job in his uncle’s silk store. When the stowaway was brought before the captain — who listened attentively to his story — he was not put ashore, but given a job as a cabin boy. The boy said he was determined to get an American education and that is why he ran away.
When the boat came to Wilmington, South Carolina, Capt. Jones took the boy to some friends there who were ardent workers in the Methodist Church and as they were already interested in missions, they received the bright-eyed Chinese boy as a gift from heaven. After careful training he was baptized in the Christian faith and given a new name, Charles Jones Soong (Jones being in compliment to the sea captain).
He was educated at Trinity Methodist College and in 1883 returned to China to preach the Gospel. In the course of time he became the father of a notable family — his three daughters being the famous Soong sisters. The youngest one is Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Through his wife’s influence, Chiang Kai-shek became a Christian, too, not only in name but in daily practice.
The women who are behind the World’s Day of Prayer have used on their program some lines from the pen of Canon Frederick George Scott:
“We grovel among trifles and our spirits fret and toss
While above us burns the vision
of the Christ upon the Cross.”
That does not mean that we must in any way condone our enemies’ evil ways nor cease to fight against them, but it does mean that we must not darken our hearts with hatred or the desire of revenge on the individual. Let us think with pity of the victims of Hitler’s madness — the ill-clad German youth freezing in the snows of Russia, German people tormented in prison camps because they dared to speak the truth, German girls reduced to worse than slavery in the brutal Nazi system of population for future wars.
Let us think, too, of the Italian doctor who brought over the wounded British airmen to their own camp because he had no medical supplies, and was given safe conduct back, loaded with surgical dressings. Let us think of the sorrows of the common people in all the over-run countries. Let us think, too, of the Japanese people who wept in the streets when this war was started. Let us remember that in all the enemy countries there are those who have not bowed the knee to brutality.
Let us on the Day of Prayer remember that we have never yet sent the full power of Christian faith to flow out to the world, and that is why a part of humanity has lost its way. It has gone off the beam, like the plane that crashed into the side of a mountain.
Now, a day of prayer is not a time when we wait upon God as a delegation goes to see the government to tell them some things they should know. We cannot tell God anything He does not know, but we can open our own minds and hearts to receive instruction and strength. We can have our tempers improved and our vision cleared.
A World’s Day of Prayer, if we enter into it earnestly by laying aside all our hatreds and prejudices, our conceits and superiorities, may create a beam of spiritual light that will circle the globe. Who knows what humble effort might tip the scale toward a righteous victory?
Let us not be so much concerned with what God can do for us, as with what He can do through us.
Some of McClung’s columns from the 1930s and 1940s have been collected in a book, The Valiant Nellie McClung: Selected Writings by Canada’s Most Famous Suffragist, by Barbara Smith.
