PREFACE
A few words addressed by the Bishop
of Algoma to the Provincial Synod may form a suitable preface to this little
book, which aspires to no literary pretensions, but is just a simple and
unvarnished narrative of Missionary experience among the Red Indians of
Lake
Superior, in the Algoma Diocese.
| "The invaluable
Institutions at Sault
Ste Marie still continue their blessed work of educating and Christianizing
the rising generation of Ojebways. Founded in a spirit of faith,
hope, and charity, — carrying out a sound system of education, and in the
past 'approved of God' by many signs and tokens, the friends of these two
'Homes'may
still rally round them with unshaken confidence. Their history, like
that of the Christian Church itself, has been marked by not a few fluctuations,
but their record has been one of permanent and undoubted usefulness." |
 "Only
a person deeply interested and directly engaged in the work, as the Rev.
E. F. Wilson is, can understand the force
of the difficulties to be encountered from the ineradicable scepticism
of Indian parents as to the disinterestedness of our intentions with regard
to their children; the tendency of the children to rebel against the necessary
restraints imposed on their liberty; the reluctance of parents to leave
their children in the 'Home'
for a period sufficiently long for the formation of permanent habits of
industry, and fixed principles of right; the constitutional unhealthiness
of Indian children, terminating, as it has here in a few cases, in death;
"the all but impossibility of obtaining helpers for subordinate positions,
such as teacher or servant, who regard the question of the evangelization
of the Indian from any higher stand-point than the financial." |
| "Against
this formidable array of obstacles Mr. Wilson
has not only struggled, but struggled successfully, till now these two
Institutions, over which he has watched with all the jealous vigilance
of a mother watching her first-born child, stand on a basis of acknowledged
success, as two centres for the diffusion of Gospel light and blessing
among the children of a people who have been long 'sitting in darkness,
and the shadow of death.' During the past year sundry improvements
have been made in the Shingwauk Home, which will largely increase the comfort
of the occupants. The most notable event, however, to be recorded
in this connection is the completion and consecration of the 'Bishop
Fauquier Memorial Chapel', a beautiful and
truly ecclesiastical structure, designed, in even its minutest details,
by Mr. Wilson,
and erected by means of funds sent mainly from England, in response to
his earnest appeals for some enduring and useful memorial of the life and
labours of the late revered Bishop of this diocese. Long may it stand,
as a hallowed centre for the diffusion of Gospel light among hundreds yet
unborn, of the Indian tribes he loved so well." |
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