By Rev. Clemme Ellis White
(early 1900's)
A Rescue Mission is a soul saving place; a place where human wreckage is salvaged through the making over of lives by the Gospel's power. It is an oasis in a desert of despair; a haven of hope for the homeless and heavy-hearted; the salvage department of the church; the church at work downtown every night of the year. The rescue mission is truly an arm of the church working in the dark places of our big cities, and usually in the slum districts.
By the grace of God, it is able not only to put a new suit on a man, but much more important, to put a new man in the suit.
The mission is a relief a society, an employment bureau, a reading and rest room, a restaurant, the poor man's hotel, a place to be fumigated in and where one may get a bath. The mission is a place devoted to the reconditioning, the rehabilitating of human derelicts who have been wrecked by the storms of life. The mission is a spiritual awakener, a crime preventer; it is a soul saving and a life saving institution. Our missions keep the spiritual supreme; in a mission under the power of the Gospel, which is daily proclaimed, men are changed from liabilities to assets, from loafers to laborers. The mission does not pauperize men; instead it helps men to help themselves.
Who founded it?
Jesus Christ, the first mission man, the founder of the rescue mission, perpetually identified Himself with mission work and continuously interested Himself in that group which every rescue mission seeks to reach. Hear Him as He reads, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” (Luke 4:18)
Hear Him again as He outlines the program of rescue mission, “I was hungry and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, an ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked and ye clothed me: I was sick and ye visited me: I was in prison and ye came unto me” (Matt. 25:35-36)
Nothing was nearer to the heart of our Lord than real mission work and nothing is more scriptural than the work of the real rescue mission.
