The Carlisle independent., 1909-06-10

7HE cAHSLS
 Tt is said of us French working men that we are opposed to religion. That is not true. We are done with an imposed religion, religion of forms and ceremonies; but We are ready to hear if anyone will teach us the true religion the religion of free dom and earnestness."
 The speaker, a French workingman in his blouse, was standing at the cor ner of a Paris boulevard, talking with a stranger, whom yet he had recog- nized as "a Christian minister" It was ten o'clock on hot August night. few weeks after the suppression of the Commune, nearly thirty-eight years ago. The smoke of its fires was still ascending. the bodies were hardly cold which filled those ghastly trenches in Pere la Chaise, into which thousands of Cummunards had been mown by the averaging cannon of the army of the republic; the blood was hardly dry on the wall, not many rods away, against which 40 priests had been stood and shot to death by those Communards in their day of mad power, for the sole crime of being priests. Yet that workingman said truly, writes Louise Seymour Tough ton. in the Christian Herald. That in- furiated French mob had not been ami mated by hatred of religion in itself but simply by hatred of that religion of forms and ceremonies" because in their inmost hearts they felt that it had deceived and betrayed them. The workingman disappeared in the crowd of the Parisian boulevard. and
 has never since been seen or heard of, but his words have come sounding down through all these years. and be- cause of them hundreds of thousands, yes, great multitude whom no man
 can number, have been taught ''the true religion of freedom and earnest ness" For the words were spoken to Rev. Robert w. McAll then the pas tor of a large church in England, and their immediate result was the begin | ming of the work now known all over the Christian world as the McAll Mis- sion, but to the people of France as the Popular Mission" the mission to the common people.
 Readers of the Christian Herald know how Dr. McAll left his comfort able church and, without ever again
 receiving a cent of salary, began work which, with its halls. its boats, | Sl, f,,,I OI porteurs, its automobile and tent work. has covered France from Calais 1 to Marseilles, penetrated into Tunis and Algiers, and brought the light of
 the Gospel to almost pagan Corsica. Pages might be written of remark
 able incidents of the boat and other
 work of this great mission.
 Floating chapels," or missionary
 boats" are so well known to readers
 of this paper that it Till perhaps be
 news to them that this form of evan
 gelistic work began with the McAll
 Mission. All the rivers of France are connected by canals. so that there are | 20.060 miles of connected inland wa | terways in France. About seventeen
 years ago a floating chapel Le Bon 1 Messager (The Good Messenger),
 was built for the McAll Mission and l launched upon these inland water
 ways to carry the Gospel to as many | as possible of the villages and hamlets not reached by railway. many of them 1 without even Roman Catholic i church. A few years later, by the | generosity of an American lady. sec ond mission boat, La Bonne Nouvelle tThe Good News), was launched. The
 story of these two boats might fill
 volumes The people of many farm
 ing hamlets and waterside villages
 have heard the Gospel for the first time, and heard it gladly" Night l after night the chapel, seating about
 150 people, would "a packed with 20C
 or even 250 people. wedged beyond
 the possibility of the place, perhaps
 as many mora covering the roof of the l boat and the river bank and the bridge l connecting twin" villages on opposite
 banks of river or canal When the
 boat moves on to the next village the l people follow it, three miles, SIX, nine
 and even 12 miles. But it is impos
 sible, with only two boats, to visit al l the riverside villages and hamlets o1