Thursday, 25th.—Passed the Isle of Wight this morning, and Beachy Head in the afternoon. As night came on the long rows of electric lights on the marine parades of Eastbourne, Hastings, and St. Leonard’s were very effective across the water. Got our pilot aboard at Dungeness just before midnight.
Friday, 26th.—Home again! How infinitely good is the gracious Lord, who permits one to go on His errands, and meanwhile takes care of all that is so dear! We were off Margate when I went on deck, about 7 A.M., and shortly afterwards secured a powerful little tug, which towed the “Harmony” swiftly up the Thames to London Docks, where she now lies at her usual moorings, awaiting the hundred and twentieth voyage.
“Then, at the vessel’s
glad return,
The absent meet
again;
At home, our hearts within
us burn
To trace the cunning
pen,
Whose strokes, like rays from
star to star,
Bring happy messages from
far,
And once a year to Britain’s
shore
Join Christian
Labrador.”
I lay down the pen which has transcribed those lines of Montgomery’s as a fitting close to my chapter, “Homeward Bound.” If it has had any “cunning,” it has been simply because I have described what I have seen with my own eyes in Christian Labrador. Traversing nearly three hundred miles of that grand, but bleak and desolate-looking coast, I met with scarcely any heathen. Only at Ramah I found one or two who had no Christian names, because they had not yet publicly professed Christ. They were, however, candidates for baptism, and their few heathen countrymen to the north of that station are, from time to time, attracted to the sound of the Gospel. But if the mission in that land be nearing the close of the evangelistic phase, our task is not done, and still we hear the voice of the Divine Spirit saying: Separate me this one and that one for the work whereunto I have called him in Labrador.
Yet I hope and pray for a wider result from these pages than increased interest in the one field so closely connected with Britain by the good ship “Harmony.” Labrador in its turn is linked to all the mission provinces in the world-wide parish given to the little Moravian Church, and I trust this glimpse into the life and labours of our devoted missionaries there will quicken the loving intercessions of my readers for their fellow labourers in all our own fields, and for the whole great mission work of the Church of Christ.
I will conclude with a stirring stanza[D] from another poet, who found a theme and an inspiration in contrasting the wretched condition of the people of Labrador, prior to the arrival of missionaries, with the wonderful change wrought among the poor Eskimoes through their noble efforts under the blessing of God.