“Mission Work Among Jews.” New York Times, May 15, 1893, p. 8.

MISSION WORK AMONG JEWS

PRESBYTERIAN GENERAL ASSEMBLY MAY CONSIDER IT.

Not Yet Taken up By the Home Board, Which Is the Creature of the Assembly, Not of the Presbytery — The Rev. Dr. Roberts Doubts If the Establishment of Special Missions Would Be Favored — Printer Drucker's Account of His "Conversion."

It looks as if the New-York Presbytery might have been counting without its host in the proposition that the Presbyterian Home Board give to mission work among the Jews in this city "its special attention at this time," and that the subject might, after all, be referred for instructions to the General Assembly, which will meet this week in Washington.

"Our board is the creature of the General Assembly, not of the Presbytery," yesterday said the Rev. Dr. William C. Roberts, who has charge of the Home Mission office, and who is also Stated Clerk of the General Assembly. "It is our practice and desire to act upon the suggestions of local bodies. But none of them can direct us what to do. We are bound only by the instructions of the General Assembly.

"In other respects our course is in a large sense discretionary. Indeed, I do not understand that the Presbytery requests us to extend actual aid at once in this direction, but that the proposition was tentative rather, expressing present views, no doubt, but likely to be taken up for thorough discussion at another time.

"If it was meant, as Dr. Schauffler suggests, to be a direct request, and to be immediately operative, we would naturally take it under advisement. I am not now prepared to say that we would not decide to refer it to the General Assembly, in order that responsibility might be assumed by our highest body and rest there."

"Has the General Assembly ever made any declaration in regard to mission work among the Jews?"

"I may say, "Dr. Roberts replied, "that it has not indorsed that kind of work."

"How has your board regarded it?"

"It is against the policy of the Board of Home Missions to make such distinctions as are implied in the proposition that came up before the Presbytery. The Gospel is preached in thirty languages in this country by missionaries who are assisted by our board. We have missions among the Turks, among the Syrians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Bohemians. We try to send to these people men who speak their language. But in every case we minister to those who in their own country were attached to a form of religious belief most nearly corresponding to the Presbyterian denomination in this country."

"Would you consider that you had no right to assist missions to the Jews without instructions from the General Assembly?"

"Well, our work is a matter of administration. We make no distinction of races, but carry missions to all who may desire them. It is only necessary that there should be human beings in need of the religious instruction which we can impart and desirous for it."

"How do you think the General Assembly would act in this instance?"

"I doubt whether the General Assembly would approve the establishment of special missions to the Jews. It is quite certain that if such a proposition were made to the General Assembly a broad question would come up for discussion. I can understand the desire of those who are interested in this work among the Jews that special provision should be made for it, and it may be that they think this will become, along with other class work, a matter of merely administrative detail.

"The General Assembly, however, has not yet taken that view, but has seemed inclined, on the contrary, to make a sharp distinction between such work as we are now doing and the work of proselyting which is proposed in anything undertaken among the Jews. If the Presbytery meant to request the Home Board to extend aid to Jewish mission work in this city there will, doubtless, arise questions within the scope I have indicated which will need to be carefully considered before any practical assistance is extended from this office."

The Rev. Oscar E. Boyd, who also has charge of a department of the work under the Home Mission Board, took the same view of the matter as Dr. Roberts. His impression of the action of the Presbytery was that this matter had come up for discussion in order that members of the Presbytery might begin to think about it, and that it was perhaps intended to pave the way to a more definite proposition looking to the possible establishment of a church for converted Jews under a regularly ordained minister.

"We are a long ways from any such step," he said, "but the members of the Presbytery will now have a chance to look into the matter and prepare themselves for a thorough consideration of it whenever it may come up again."

Figures are not available to show what the Rev. Dr. Faust may have accomplished in the way of conversions to Christianity among the Jews who attend his services at the Allen Street Presbyterian Church. The work in that church is comparatively new and has not yet been well enough established to indicate what results may come.

It has been conducted at very small expense, but the congregations have grown, as Dr. Schauffler has explained, and they are now so large that Dr. Schauffler and his associates on the Church Extension Committee think that they ought to receive special attention.

Dr. Schauffler in an open letter in the City Mission Monthly for April of this year, in which he deals with Jewish mission work, refers to conversions that have occurred under Mr. Warzarviak, saying that scores of Jews had accepted Christ as their Saviour without really joining the Church. He said yesterday that public confession of the new faith by baptism had been made by about twenty-five persons at that mission.

"Not all of these," he said, "have remained true to their profession. But that would be the case among Gentiles as well as among Jews. Where is the Church in which all the members remain steadfast to the profession?"

Dr. Schauffler has appealed for $8,000 with which to carry on the work among the Jews for the next year. This would be divided between the mission and the home and would be somewhat of an increase upon expenditures for last year or the year before.

He thinks that the extra money for which he asks can be used to good advantage, and is very hopeful that those who may have become interested in the work will see that it does not languish for lack of funds.

Samuel Drucker of 31 Stanton Street, a Jewish printer, yesterday gave a queer story of his alleged conversion to Christianity in the Rev. Mr. Freshman's church in St. Mark's Place. He said:

"In the early part of last September I was pecuniarily embarrassed, and spent a good deal of my time in a Houston Street coffee house. Here I became acquainted with a young Jew who was in the same fix that I was, and he and other Jews invited me to call at Mr. Freshman's mission. When I asked them why, they told me that if I were to say that I believe in Jesus Christ as my Saviour and expected Messiah I would get assistance.

"I called on Mr. Freshman, to whom I told my poor circumstances, and attended the mission meetings. The first week Mr. Freshman gave me small sums of from 25 cents to half a dollar. The third week he asked me whether I believed in Christ, and I answered 'Yes.' I was now getting larger amounts of money from him, from $1 to $3 at a time, and he asked me to make a public profession of faith. I rose in the meeting and said that I believed in Christ and the New Testament; that all the prophecies had been fulfilled; that God had opened my eyes, and all that kind of talk, for I knew that after giving such testimony I should get money. I was in need, and wanted money.

"On the third Sunday in October Mr. Freshman baptised me, after having told me that after my baptism he would do all in his power for me. Then he gave me the place of sexton and janitor in his house, also lodging and $4 a week. A week later he gave me a black suit of clothes and several other things, and asked me whether I was born again and had become a new man. I answered, 'Yes.'

"Afterward I was sent to other churches to testify that I had been converted in Mr. Freshman's church. He was highly pleased with my performances in this direction, and shook me warmly by the hand, but I saw that he was simply advertising his own church, and that he did not believe either. Nor did his converts, most of whom were out of work.

"In November Mr. Freshman and his wife took a trip South and West to stir up the churches in behalf of his work, and I got a ticket for Philadelphia from his assistant, Mr. Goebelein. In Philadelphia I worked for a while setting type, and when my work was done I returned to New-York, and after some time, I was taken to task by Mr. Goebelein for not attending the meetings regularly.

"On the first Sunday in February I got up in church and made the following speech: 'Friends, if I stand up to-night you must not think that I am going to testify to Christianity. I confess that I am now a Jew, and shall die as a Jew, because I never believed in Christianity. You may ask the reason why. I never thought that a Jew could be converted. If he is converted, he is not converted by Jesus Christ, but by money.'

"With these words I went away and returned to Philadelphia, where I found work at my trade. A friend of mine sent me a copy of THE NEW-YORK TIMES which contained an article about conversion of Jews, and I thought it was my duty to come on and give my experience about Hebrew Christians. I did not find a single one of Mr. Freshman's converts who was really converted, and this I know from what they told me. Whenever they got money from him they would go to a coffee house and play cards."