The Missionary

The Missionary. BY ELDER A. ROWLEY BABCOCK. Though the missionary and the cause we represent are a bit unpopular, there are some opportunities that come in a "Mormon" boy's life that other boys do not have. There are some advantages in belonging to an unpopular sect. The individual or the people who have to work agaiv.ft wrong impressions and prejudice, gain an experience of men an! the realities of life in a way that is not possible to gain under ordinary circumstances. The missionary in his travels learns something of the commercial world and what governments and nations are doing. To learn about farming and what plants have been made to produce, one can learn most about them by getting on the farm and working with plant life. In the same way more can be learned about men and their religions by getting among men. We can see in men's lives what their religion has done for them, hence man's spiritual ideas and aspirations are largely a product of his religion,—to use religion in the broader sense, and not mere creedism. This is where we have the missionary, today, in the great field of men, conversing with them, not on theological lore alone, but on ethics, education, and the great daily problems that are confronting peoples and nations. He meets aristocrats, and comes in contract with college bred professionals with long titles. We also find him down among the slums in the thickly populated tenement districts of the larger cities, talking with the people on subjects that concern them most in their every-day living. The elder is on the ground, and can study the needs of the people from a close range. Often meetings are held in their crowded quarters,

THE MISSIONARY. 823 giving the missionary an excellent opportunity for real constructive work. He is not only uplifting those who are most in need, but he is building character for himself at an enormous pace. Not every fellow he meets is just as congenial as choice would be, but here a golden lesson is learned: to bear and for. bear, to grant sincerity to others as he would like to be granted in turn. His faculty for reasoning necessarily has to broaden on these occasions. This sort of work developes and brings to the surface the best that is in a man, and crowds out all that is bad. Not a few young men have come into the field void of any set aim in life. They haven't yet decided into which channel they will let life's stream of efforts flow. The extreme necessity of concentrating along some line of work, is realized, with the result that a decision is often made of how and where he will work. No doubt the greatest upward step in the young man's life, is to have set out to accomplish a dreamed of goal, to have gotten under way. We have strong reasons to believe that more failures come from ill-directed energy than from lack of energy. I recall how I used to look upon the returned missionary almost to envy his exalted ideals and development. To talk to him, he wasn't the same old fellow; he made me feel my littleness and inability to reason on the great subjects that are so interesting in life, I could see in my returned brother something that most young men feel deficient in: the art of expressing onesself clearly and mingling among people without fear. To have uplifted a few souls and shown them a better way, to have accumulated a store of rich experiences, and decided on a life's work, are excellent points gained; but perhaps the greatest achievement of the missionary is that he has learned to love all his fellow men more dearly and become better acquainted with his God. With the endless army of young men going and coming from the field of life's experiences, is there any reason why the "Mormon" people should not be better aquainted with the problems of life than any other people in existence? Nkw Haven, CoNN.