tures and uplifting entertainment are as valuable educational effort as classroom exercise. In Fairport, three miles distant, on the lake shore, one of the iron ports and fishing harbors of the Great Lakes, no social work was attempted until two years ago, when in a small way the college girls started gymnastic classes, a cooking class and a library. The new school building provided a place for this work, but there is much more demand than can be met by the limited time of college students. The young foreigners are eager to read, but there are not books enough to go around. Twelve is the largest number that can be accommodated in the cooking class, so that a selection has to be made. Only a few can receive the gymnastic training, whereas the whole school should have the opportunity. The doors should be thrown wide open during the evening for clubs, lectures and various social activities, for the fathers and mothers and working boys and girls in such a community where "working papers" are called for at the earliest opportunity. (2) Rural Vocational Guidance Vocational guidance is as much needed in the small town and rural community as in the city. Perhaps country people are more at sea than their city brethren with fewer guides available. Painesville, the county seat, has worked out a plan which may prove instructive. Each of the seven churches has appointed a committee of three to look after the working boys and girls of their own parish, to become acquainted with them, find out why they left school, what they are doing, whether they can be helped to further training and a better job, in a word to be friends and counsellors to them. At the first meeting of this joint committee, held in the public library, the names of all the children who have dropped out of school during the last two years from the sixth grade through high school, as well as additional names secured from a recent religious census, were gone over and assigned to the seven parishes. This is only one side of each committee's work. In addition each member selects one vocation from a list of twenty-one, to investigate as thoroughly as possible, finding out the positions available and the demand, as well as the training required. In this particular county, one of the especial fields for boys is nursery work, and for girls a variety of occupations from teaching and stenography to domestic service. But the investigation is not limited to what may be done within the county but extends to the lure of the city-the chances of a boy or girl in Cleveland, for example. After the information is collected, it is to be posted upon a bulletin board in each Sunday School and in the public library. There is to be a shelf of vocational literature in the library and at stated times various advisers from the committee will be present to answer questions. The pastors and priests of the city have all responded most cordially to the invitation to join in this federated effort and have seen fit to appoint their wisest heads upon their respective committees. Little expense is attached to this procedure. It is, moreover, a help to each church. It may well be extended to the entire county by utilizing these bulletins in local schoolhouses and recognizing the library at the county seat as the clearing house for all inquiries. This will be more practicable as soon as the library is made a county library, a measure which is now on foot. (3) Branch Library Stations This will lead to the third advance step, namely, the establishment of branch library stations in local schoolhouses, throughout the county. Possibly the rural book wagon will soon be a common sight. (4) Ungraded Classes Without question an ungraded room should be established at the county seat. There are a sufficient number of retarded pupils in Painesville alone to warrant the employment of a special teacher. The teachers would welcome such a provision. Medical examination should go with it. The special teacher at the center might well be an adviser to the teachers in the surrounding townships, for almost every rural school contains from one to six retarded or defective pupils. In one school of twenty-four, six are behind grade. In another school of fifteen there is a family of three children, one eleven years old in the first grade, one nine years old in the second grade and the third twelve years old in the third grade. The rural problem of retardation is quite as serious as the city problem, for a young high school graduate, with little or no experience, is helpless in meeting this most difficult situation. If Lake County or any rural county in the state of Ohio will work for five years to accomplish these four things, our schools will have doubled their efficiency as servants of the common welfare. HOW LONG, OH GRANDPA! How long, oh Grandpa, must a growing age Have we no brains? New minds, new furnished, strong, Because of you the young mind of to-day July 19, 1913. One scene in the great religious pageant which showed Indians and Hindus, Eskimos and Zulus, Chinese and Turks-peoples of all lands living, speaking, praying, singing, sacrificing, working. Not since the World's Fair of twenty years ago has so much of the world gathered together at Chicago as at the great missionary exposition and pageant of May 3 to June 7. This time it came in costume and color, in house and hut, in temple and shrine, in street scene and pilgrimage, in picture and model, in exhibit placard and moving picture, in tableaux vivants and impressive pageant, in descriptive speech and interpreting, inspiring music. It took 20,000 participants from the churches, who gave their time and met their own traveling expenses, to impersonate the peoples of the world at their play and worship, at their weddings and funerals, in their triumphs and griefs, at work and at rest, in their spiritual darkness, yet ever coming into the light-Indians and Hindus, Eskimos and Zulus, Chinese and Turks-peoples of all lands in living, speaking, praying, singing, sacrificing, working attitudes of human life. That so many thousands volunteered to do this; that for five weeks every afternoon and evening, six days a week, the Coliseum and Auditorium, the two largest and most expensive places of assembly in Chicago were required for the exhibits and pageants and the nearly half million people attracted by them; that a guarantee fund of $100,000 was put up by 400 July 19, 1913. people to warrant a daily outlay of $6,000— these facts of the mere massing of means and people at these two focal points arrested the attention of Chicago as nothing within its boundaries has ever done, except the World's Fair. From London, through Boston, Cincinnati and Baltimore, this missionary "world" rolled in upon Chicago. Its managers, and those who took the principal parts in song and act and speech, had perfected technique in the other cities, but found their greatest facilities and met their greatest response in Chicago. British art and thoroughness, devoutness and cosmopolitanism were impressed upon the original inception and design, plan and purpose of both exposition and pageant. American originality, versatility, sympathy and spirit characterized every feature of the reproduction so that it was an American interpretation of the world's life, an American version of the greatest drama-the emergence of the peoples out of darkness into light. Perhaps the point of contact between America and the world's other lands and people, between religion and humanity-the point at which the whole great affair was invested with the magic of a human interest story-was the stirring tableau representing immigrants pouring in from all lands through the national gateway at Ellis 529 530 STREET SCENE IN JERUSALEM The visitor was brushed by the costumes of the East, ran across the potter's wheel, stopped before the oriental shop, walked through the city gate of Jerusalem. Island. Maps of the world's two hemispheres were the background of the scene and around the government inspector immigrant families. were grouped, trying each in its own way to comply with his tests of health, money, character, children and the prospects of meeting friends and getting work. A little way off was a prairie schooner on its way West, bearing the motto of the earlier pioneers, "Pike's Peak or bust." The Indian trading-post, the Mormon colony, the frontier missionary and master, railway construction camps, the farming schoolfrontier, the city shop and slum traced the westward-flowing streams of human life through all their experiences across the continent. midst of this tumultuous life appeared the school In the house and the church, the circuit rider and the home missionary pastor, Negro jubilee singers and revivalists, the city mission and the evangelist, the playground and the boys' and girls' club, the Young Men's and the Young Women's Christian Associations and the Travelers' Aid, and across the city's frontier-in-the-rear, the social settlements. Every way that life turned, religion was seen lifting upon it in some way. In the foreign section the visitor passed through the streets of Jerusalem or Damascus, brushed by the costumes worn there, ran across the potter's wheel, stopped before the oriental shop, walked through the city gate. robed Hindus flitted by. Whiteseen under the hard lot of their grinding toil and Turkish women were their living death in the harem. Outcast lepers stood in forlorn contrast over against the model of a leper colony. Sick and suffering human beings, persecuted by witch doctors, medicine men and priestly incantations, drew the contrast with medical missions, their nurses and surgeons, their hospitals and convalescent homes. It was in the pageant at the Auditorium that all these contrasts were drawn with high dramatic skill and musical effect. "Darkness and Light" fell vividly upon the scenes of four episodes. The episode of the North displayed the triumph of the missionaries medicine man among the American Indians, over the whose chief lifts skyward the Book with the message of peace and love. The episode of the South centered its tragedy of the slave raider and his victims around the heroic figure of David Livingstone. There he stood in the very human flesh and red blood in which he sought to heal "the open sore of the world." There he was seen again "going about doing good" when Stanley found him-and left him, refusing to leave his unfinished work though homesick to return with his discoverer. child widowhood culminated in the episode of The tragedy of the East in the rescue of the last victim of the Suttee from the flames of her husband's funeral pyre, by the edict of the British empire. The episode of the West furnished the stupendous climax in dispelling the sway of the vengeful goddess of the volcano and the priests of Peleé by the Christian Queen Kapiolani's interposition in saving a young bridegroom and a little child from being thrown into a fiery crater to expiate the wrath of the goddess. The final episode brought together in impos- "From North and South and East and West They come-the victors in the fight, They come ! In a holy exultation, With the sound of jubilation, They come, they come!" In Chicago as in London, where this Pageant event is seen in these most far-reaching and July 19, 1913. The episode of the South in the pageant centered it s tragedy of the slave raider and his victims around the heroic figure of David Livingstone. There he stood, in the very human flesh and red blood in which he sought to heal the open sore of the world.'" humanizing of religion was set forward by demonstrating the identity between missions and all the movements for human progress; the comity and co-operation of many denominations having very divisive differences in creed, ritual and government, was demonstrated to be practicable only on their community of interests in the human service they are all trying to render. As many as 550 churches of 22 denominations took part. A co-operative unity is the one and only hope for a reunited Protestantism. The revival of pageantry in religion was one of the avowed purposes of the missionary education movement of the United States and Canada, under the auspices of which the exposition and pageant were held. "The missionary movement recognizes the value of the dramatic element in religious education and undertakes to co-operate with those 1Four Epochs of World Conquest. Oliver Huckel. Missionary Education Movement, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City. July 19, 1913. desiring to secure full benefits from its use. Those interested in its form of religious education should seek to acquaint themselves with those principles which scientifically relate the use of the dramatic instinct to other educational processes. Unless the work of preparation and presentation be regulated in this way, the method will not only fail to yield satisfactory results, but much harm may be done. Only those productions molded by the dramatic spirit will be published by the Missionary Education Movement, which are especially calculated to serve the purposes of religious education." Strictly in consonance with this, an English musician of note, Hamish McCunn, was engaged to compose the music and John Oxenham, a wellknown English author, wrote the text. The type of a new, dignified, devout and impressive effort to revive the visualizing and dramatizing of religion's appeal to the eye and the imagination, has thus been set and standardized, so that 531 "FROM NORTH AND SOUTH AND EAST AND WEST THEY COME." Immigrant families at Ellis Island trying each in its own way to meet the tests of health, money and character which are the open sesame to the New World. One of the booths at the exposition. it is sure to be followed, perhaps on a wider and higher scale than ever before in the history of the church. For nine months the singers, ushers, explainers, and participants came together in their respective groups under their stewards, to study and practise the song and story of the life of many lands. Both the religious spirit and the dramatic art are to be congratulated upon the removal of so much of the barrier which has so long divorced them and upon the restoration of that reciprocity which will surely promote, the highest purposes of each. "The World in Chicago" is a proposition, the corollary of which is Chicago in the world. And this is as true of the church everywhere as of the city anywhere. For only as the world rolls in upon the heart and conscience of the church, through the eye and ear, the touch and vision of its members, will the church obey the mandate of its Master, "Go ye into all the world." |