Except when the weather was exceptionally bad, from five to
six hundred persons were there nightly. They were met just as the
foreign missionary would meet them. Not one among them, perhaps,
Christian from a purely evangelistic standpoint, and yet, what was the
result? In less than one year they expect to have a permanent church
building to cost $60,000; something like two hundred are ready to enter
and form a Protestant church."
[Sidenote: An Ingenious Italian Expedient]
Is this a hopeful work, this effort to evangelize the foreigners? Let
the following unique instance give its answer, and illustrate also the
intertwinings of the home and foreign work. In a quarry at Monson,
Massachusetts, where over three hundred Italians are employed, there was
among the number a man who had been converted in Italy, through the
faithful efforts of an American missionary. When this convert reached
the Massachusetts quarry, his heart burned within him as he realized the
spiritual condition of his countrymen, who were living without any
religious services. He labored so effectively for their salvation that
in a few months seventeen of the workmen were converted, and they held
regular meetings for prayer and study of the Bible.
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