association in America, at Montreal; in December, one month after, with
no knowledge on the part of either of the other's plan, one association
in the United States, at Boston. Was it a mere hap that these two groups
formed simultaneously the associations which were always to unite the
young Christian men of the two countries, and to grow together, till
to-day the little one has become a thousand?
Forty years ago, one little association in London: to-day Great Britain
dotted all over with them; one hundred and ninety in England and Wales;
one hundred and seventy-eight in Scotland, and twenty in Ireland. France
has eight districts, or groups, containing sixty-four associations.
Germany, divided into five _bunds_, has four hundred; Holland, its
eleven provinces, with three hundred and thirty-five; Romansch
Switzerland, eighty-seven; German Switzerland, one hundred and
thirty-five; Belgium, eighteen; Spain, fourteen; Italy, ten Turkey in
Europe, one, at Philippopolis; Sweden and Norway, seventy-one; Austria,
two, at Vienna and Budapesth; Russia, eight, among them Moscow and St.
Petersburg; Turkey in Asia, nine; Syria, five, at Beirût, Damascus,
Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Nazareth; India, five; Japan, two; Sandwich
Islands, one, at Honolulu; Australia, twenty-seven; South Africa, seven;
Madagascar, two; West Indies, three; British Guiana, one, at Georgetown;
South America (besides), three; Canada and British Provinces, fifty-one.
In the United States, seven hundred and eighty-six.
In all, nearly twenty-seven hundred, scattered over the world, and all
the outgrowth of forty years. It has been said that the sun never rises
anywhere that it is not saluted by the British reveille. Look how
quickly the organization of young men has stretched its cordon round the
world, and dotted it all over with the tents of its conflict for them
against the opposing forces of the evil one.
[Illustration: CEPHAS BRAINERD, ESQ.
Chairman of the International Executive Committee Y.M.C.A.]
What are its characteristics?
1. It is the universal church of Christ, working through its young men
for the salvation of young men. In the words of a paper, read at the
last world's conference, at London:--
"The fundamental idea of the organization, on which all subsequent
substantial development has been based, was simply this: that in the
associated effort of young men connected with the various branches of
the church of Christ lies a great power to promote their own development
and help their fellows, thus prosecuting the work of the church among
the most-important, most-tempted, and least-cared-for class in the
community."
[Illustration: BUILDING OF THE Y.M.C.A. IN MONTREAL, CANADA.]
The distinct work for young men was thus emphasized at the Chicago
convention in 1863, in the following resolutions presented by the
Reverend Henry G. Potter, then of Troy, and now assistant bishop of the
diocese of New York:--
"Resolved, That the interests and welfare of young men in our cities
demand, as heretofore, the steadfast sympathies and efforts of the Young
Men's Christian Associations of this country.
"Resolved, That the various means by which Christian associations can
gain a hold upon young men, and preserve them from unhealthy
companionship and the deteriorating influences of our large cities,
ought to engage our most earnest and prayerful consideration."
2. It is a Christian work. It stands upon the basis of the faith of the
church of all ages, which is thus set forth in the formula of this
organization.
The convention in 1856 promptly accepted and ratified the Paris basis,
adopted by the first world's conference of the associations, in the
following language:--
"The Young Men's Christian Associations seek to unite those young men
who, regarding Jesus Christ as their God and Saviour, according to the
Holy Scriptures, desire to be his disciples in their doctrine and in
their life, and to associate their efforts for the extension of his
kingdom among young men."
This was reaffirmed in the convention of 1866 at Albany. In 1868, at the
Detroit convention, was adopted what is known as the evangelical test,
and at the Portland convention of 1869 the definition of the term
evangelical; they are as follows:--
"As these associations bear the name of Christian, and profess to be
engaged directly in the Saviour's service, so it is clearly their duty
to maintain the control and management of all their affairs in the hands
of those who love and publicly avow their faith in Jesus the Redeemer as
divine, and who testify their faith by becoming and remaining members of
churches held to be evangelical: and we hold those churches to be
evangelical which, maintaining the Holy Scriptures to be the only
infallible rule of faith and practice, do believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ (the only begotten of the Father, King of kings and Lord of
lords, in whom dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead, bodily, and who was
made sin for us, though knowing no sin, bearing our sins in his own body
on the tree) as the only name under heaven given among men, whereby we
must be saved from everlasting punishment."
But while the management is thus rightly kept in the hands of those who
stand together upon the platform of the church of Christ, the benefits
and all other privileges are for all young men of good morals, whether
Greek, Romanist, heretic, Jew, Moslem, heathen, or infidel. Its field,
the world. Wherever there are young men, there is the association field,
and an extended work must be organized. Already in August, 1855, the
importance of the work made conference necessary, and thirty-five
delegates met at Paris, of whom seven were from the United States, and
the same number from Great Britain.
In 1858, a second conference was held at Geneva, with one hundred and
fifty-eight delegates. In 1862, at London, were present ninety-seven
delegates; in 1865, at Elberfeld, one hundred and forty; in 1867, at
Paris, ninety-one; in 1872, at Amsterdam, one hundred and eighteen; in
1875, at Hamburg, one hundred and twenty-five; in 1878, at Geneva, two
hundred and seven,--forty-one from the United States; in 1881, in
London, three hundred and thirty-eight,--seventy-five from the United
States.
At the conference of 1878, in Geneva, a man in the prime of life, and
partner in a leading banking-house of that city, was chosen president.
He spoke with almost equal ease the three languages of the
conference--English, French, and German. Shortly after that convention
Mr. Fermand gave up his business and became the general secretary of the
world's committee of the Young Men's Christian Associations. He traveled
over the whole continent of Europe, visiting the associations, and then
came to America to make acquaintance with our plans of work. Now
stationed at Geneva, with some resident members of the convention, he
keeps up the intercourse of the associations through nine members
representing the principal nations. I have spoken of the three languages
of the conference. It is a wonderful inspiration to find one's self in a
gathering of all nations, brought together by the love of one person,
each speaking in his own tongue, praising the one name, so similar in
each,--that name alone in each address needing no interpretation.
[Illustration: BUILDING OF THE Y.M.C.A. IN NEW YORK.]
The conference meets this year, in August, at Berlin, when probably as
many as one hundred delegates will be present from the United States.
But inter-association organization has gone much further in this country
than elsewhere, and communication is exceedingly close between the nine
hundred associations of America.
The first conception of uniting associations came to the Reverend
William Chauncey Langdon, then a layman, and a member of the Washington
Association, now rector of the Episcopal Church at Bedford,
Pennsylvania. Mr. McBurney, in his fine Historical Sketch of
Associations, says: "Many of the associations of America owe their
individual existence to the organization effected through his wise
foresight. The associations of our land, and in all lands, owe a debt of
gratitude to Mr. Langdon far greater than has ever been recognized."
Oscar Cobb, of Buffalo, and Mr. Langdon signed the call to the first
convention, which assembled on June 7, 1854, at Buffalo. This was the
first conference of associations held in the English-speaking world.
Here was appointed a central committee, located at Washington, and six
elsewhere.
In 1860, Philadelphia was made the headquarters. The confederation of
associations and its committee came to an end in Chicago, June 4, 1863,
and the present organization with its international executive committee
was born, with members increasing in number. The committee now numbers
thirty-three, two being resident in New York City.
In the year 1865, a committee was appointed by the convention at
Philadelphia. The president of this convention became the chairman of
the international executive committee, consisting of ten members
resident in New York City, and twenty-three placed at different
prominent points in the United States and British Provinces. There is
also a corresponding member of the committee in each State and province,
and means of constant communication between the committee and each
association, and between the several associations, through the Young
Men's Christian Association Watchman, a sixteen-paged paper, published
each fortnight in Chicago.
On the sixteenth day of April, 1883, the international committee, which
had been superintending the work since 1865, was incorporated in the
State of New York. Cephas Brainerd, a lawyer of New York City, a direct
descendant of the Brainerds of Connecticut, and present owner of the
homestead, has always been chairman of the committee, and, from a very
large practice, has managed to take an immense amount of time for this
work, which has more and more taken hold on his heart,--and here let me
say that I know no work, not even that of foreign missions, which takes
such a grip upon those who enter upon it. Time, means, energy, strength,
have been lavishly poured out by them. Mr. Brainerd and his committee
work almost as though it were their only work, and yet each member of
the committee is one seemingly fully occupied with his business or
professional duties. See the members of the Massachusetts committee, so
fired with love for this work that, in the gospel canvasses of the
State, after working all day, many of them give from forty to fifty
evenings, sometimes traveling all night to get back to their work in the
morning. It is no common cause that thus draws men out of themselves for
others. Then, too, I greatly doubt where there are such hard-worked men
as the general secretaries,--days and evenings filled with work that
never ends; the work the more engrossing and exacting because it
combines physical and mental with spiritual responsibility. We who know
this are not surprised to find the strength of these men failing. Those
who employ them should carefully watch that relief is promptly given
from time to time as needed. There are now more than three hundred and
fifty of these paid secretaries. Now, look back over the whole history
of the associations, and can you doubt that he who meets the wants of
his creatures has raised up the organization for the express purpose of
saving young men as a class? And to do this he employs the church
itself--not the church in its separate organizations, but the church
universal. A work for all young men should be by the young men of the
whole church. First, because it is young manhood that furnishes the
common ground of sympathy. Second, because the appliances are too
expensive for the individual churches. Large well-situated buildings,
with all possible right attractions, are simply necessary to success in
this work. These things are so expensive that the united church only can
procure them. That in Philadelphia cost $700,000; in New York, $500,000;
in Boston, more than $300,000; in Baltimore, $250,000; in Chicago,
$150,000; San Francisco, $76,000; Montreal, $67,000; Toronto, $48,000;
Halifax, $36,000; West New Brighton, New York, $19,000; at the small
town of Rockport, Massachusetts, about $4,000; and at Nahant, $2,000. In
all these are eighty buildings, worth more than $3,000,000, while as
many more have land or building-funds. Third, how blessedly this sets
forth the vital unity of Christ's church, "that they may all be one,"
and also distinguishes them from all other religious bodies. "Come out
from among them and be ye separate."
[Illustration: BUILDING OF THE Y.M.C.A. AT JACKSONVILLE, ILL.]
This association work is divided into local (the city or town), state or
home mission, the international and foreign mission.
The local is purely a city or town work. The "state," which I have
called the home mission, is thoroughly to canvass the State, learn where
the association is needed, plant it there, strengthen all existing
associations, and keep open communication between all. This is also the
international work, but its field is the United States and British
Provinces, under the efficient management of this committee.
As has been said, the convention of 1866 appointed the international
committee, which was directed to call and arrange for state and
provincial conventions. This is the result: in 1866, no state or
provincial committee or conventions. Now, thirty-three such committees,
thirty-one of which hold state or provincial conventions, together with
a large number of district and local conferences.
[Illustration: BUILDING OF Y.M.C.A. AT LYNN, MASS.]
In 1870, Mr. R.C. Morse, a graduate of Yale College, and a minister of
the Presbyterian Church, became the general secretary of the committee
and continues such to-day. Of the missionary work of the committee the
most conspicuous has been that at the West and South. In 1868, the
convention authorized the employment of a secretary for the West. This
man, Robert Weidansall, a graduate of Pennsylvania College, Gettysburg,
was found working in the shops of the Pacific Railroad Company at Omaha.
He had intended entering the ministry, but his health failed him. To-day
there is no question as to his health--he has a superb physique, travels
constantly, works extremely hard, and has been wonderfully successful.
When he began there were thirty-nine associations in the States of
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri,
Kansas, Nebraska, Kentucky, and Tennessee. There was only one secretary,
and no building. Now there are nearly three hundred associations,
spending more than one hundred and ten thousand dollars; twenty general
secretaries, and five buildings. Nine States are organized, and five
employ state secretaries. The following words from a recent Kansas
report sound strangely, almost like a joke, to one who remembers the
peculiar influence of Missouri upon the infant Kansas: "Kansas owes much
of her standing to-day to the fostering care and efforts of the Missouri
state executive committee." In 1870, two visitors were sent to the
Southern States. There were then three associations only between
Virginia and Texas. There are now one hundred and fifty-seven.
[Illustration: BUILDING OF THE Y.M.C.A. AT TORONTO, CANADA.]
Previous to the Civil War the work was well under way, but had been
almost entirely given up. Our visitors were not at once received as
brethren, but Christian love did its work and gradually all differences
were forgotten by these Christians in the wonderful tie which truly
united them, and when, in 1877, the convention met at Richmond, not only
harmony prevailed, but it seemed as though each were trying to prove to
the other his intenser brotherly love. The cross truly conquered. No one
who was present can ever forget those scenes, or cease to bless God for
what I truly believe was the greatest step toward the uniting again of
North and South. Mr. T.K. Cree has had charge of this work since the
beginning. Not only has sectional spreading of associations been done by
the committee, but, in the language of the report already quoted:
"Special classes of young men, isolated in a measure from their fellows
by virtue of occupation, training, or foreign birth, have from time to
time so strongly appealed to the attention of the American associations
as to elicit specific efforts in their behalf." Thus, in 1868, the first
secretary of the committee was directed to devote his time to railroad
employees. For one year he labored among them. The general call on his
time then became so imperative that he was obliged to leave the
railroad work. This work had been undertaken at St. Albans, Vermont, in
1854, and in Canada in 1855. The first really important step in this
work was at Cleveland in 1872, when an employee of a railroad company,
who had been a leader in every kind of dissipation, was converted. He
immediately began to use his influence among his comrades, and such was
the power of the Spirit that the Cleveland Association took up the work
and began holding meetings especially for these men. In 1877, Mr. E.D.
Ingersol was appointed by the international committee to superintend the
work. There has been no rest for him in this. A leading railroad
official says: "Ingersol is indeed a busy man. Night and day he travels.
To-day a railroad president wants him here, to-morrow a manager summons
him. He is going like a shuttle back and forth across the country,
weaving the web of railroad associations." When he entered on the work
there were but three railroad secretaries; now there are nearly seventy.
There are now over sixty branches in operation; and the work is going on
besides at twenty-five points; almost a hundred different places,
therefore, where specific work is done for railroad men. They own seven
buildings, valued at thirty-three thousand two hundred and fifty
dollars. The expense of maintaining these reading-rooms is over eighty
thousand dollars, and more than two thirds of this is paid by the
corporations themselves; most of the secretaries are on the regular
pay-rolls of the companies. How can this be done? Simply because the
officers see such a return from this expenditure in the morals and
efficiency of their men that they have no doubt as to the propriety of
the investment.
Mr. William Thaw, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Company, writes:
"This work is wholly good, both for the men and the roads which they
serve." Mr. C. Vanderbilt, first vice-president of the New York Central
and Hudson River Railroad, writes: "Few things about railroad affairs
afford more satisfactory returns than these reading-rooms." Mr. J.H.
Devereux, of Cleveland, president of the Cleveland, Columbus,
Cincinnati, and Indianapolis Railway, writes: "The association work has
from the beginning (now ten years ago) been prosecuted at Cleveland
satisfactorily and with good results. The conviction of the board of
superintendents is that the influence of the room and the work in
connection with it has been of great value to both the employer and the
employed, and that the instrumentalities in question should not only be
encouraged but further strengthened." Mr. John W. Garrett, president of
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, says: "A secretary of the Young
Men's Christian Association, for the service of the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad Company, was appointed in 1879, and I am gratified to be able
to say that the officers under whose observation his efforts have been
conducted informed me that this work has been fruitful of good results."
Mr. Thomas Dickson, president of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company,
writes: "This company takes an active interest in the prosperity of the
association, and will cheerfully co-operate in all proper methods for
the extension of its usefulness." Mr. H.B. Ledyard, general manager of
the Michigan Central Railroad Company, writes: "I have taken a deep
interest in the work of the Young Men's Christian Association among
railroad men, and believe that, leaving out all other questions, it is a
paying investment for a railroad company."
[Illustration: BUILDING OF THE Y.M.C.A. IN CHICAGO.]
These are a few out of a great number of assurances from railroad men of
the value of this organization. In Chicago, the president of one of the
leading railroads, the general superintendent of another, and other
officials, are serving on the railroad committee of the Young Men's
Christian Association, and it is hoped that at every railway centre
there may soon be an advisory committee of the work. Such a committee is
now forming in Boston. This work should interest every individual,
because it touches every one who ever journeys by train. Speak as some
men may, faithlessly, concerning religion, where is the man who would
not feel safer should he know that the engineer and conductor of his
train were Christians? men not only caring for others, but themselves
especially cared for.
Frederick von Schluembach, of noble birth, an officer in the Prussian
army, was a leader there in infidelity and dissipation to such a degree
as to drive him to this country at the time of our Civil War. He went
into service and attained to the rank of captain. His conversion was
remarkable and he brought to his Saviour's service all the intense
earnestness and zeal that he had been giving to Satan. He joined the
Methodists and became a minister among them. His heart went out to the
multitudes of his countrymen here, and especially to the young; thus he
came in contact with the central committee and was employed by them to
visit German centres. This was in 1871, in Baltimore, where took place
the first meeting of the national bund of German-speaking associations.
At their request Mr. Von Schluembach took the field, which has resulted,
after extreme opposition on the part of the German churches, in eight
German Young Men's Christian Associations, besides an equal number of
German committees in associations. When we remember that there are more
than two million Germans in this country, and that New York is the
fourth German city in the world, we can scarcely overestimate the
greatness of this work. Mr. Von Schluembach was obliged on account of
ill health to go to Germany for a while, and, recovering, formed
associations there,--the one in Berlin being especially powerful, some
of "Caesar's household" holding official positions in it. He has now
returned, and with Claus Olandt, Jr., is again at work among his
countrymen. His first work on returning was to assist in raising fifty
thousand dollars for the German building in New York City.
Mr. Henry E. Brown has always since the war been intensely interested in
the colored men of the South. Shortly after graduation at Oberlin
College, Ohio, he founded, and was for two years president of, a college
for colored men in Alabama. He is now secretary for the committee among
this class at the South, and speaks most encouragingly of the future of
this work.
In 1877, there was graduated a young man named L.D. Wishard, from
Princeton College. To him seems to have been given a great desire for an
inter-collegiate religious work. He, with his companions, issued a call
to collegians to meet at the general convention of Young Men's Christian
Associations at Louisville. Twenty-two colleges responded and sent
delegates. Mr. Wishard was appointed international secretary. One
hundred and seventy-five associations have now been formed, with nearly
ten thousand members. These colleges report about ninety Bible-classes
during the past year. Fifteen hundred students have professed conversion
through the association; of these forty have decided to enter the
ministry, and two of these are going to the foreign fields.
The work is among the men most likely to occupy the highest position in
the country, hence its importance is very great. Mr. Wishard is quite
overtaxed and help has been given him at times, but he needs, and so
also does the railroad work, an assistant secretary.