4. The Tin Tabernacle
Chapter 4
The Tin Tabernacle
Early in 1888 Mrs. Carmichael called the children into the dining room one evening to tell them that nearly all of their money had been lost. They knelt together around the table as she committed the matter to God. What seemed overwhelming did not overwhelm her, for she believed that there was nothing she could not expect His wondrous kindness to do. “He has been so kind about other things that we cannot doubt but that He will care for this too.”
There is nothing in Scraps to indicate that their life was interrupted. Amy’s work with the shawlies grew until it began to cause a certain disturbance among some of the church people. To have this crowd of crude and unorthodox characters filling and overflowing the large hall, the prayers of two or three of them sometimes rising simultaneously, was unsettling, to say the least. One official stood in the doorway watching them with folded arms and knitted brows. There must have been some sighs of relief when the crowd grew so phenomenally that they needed a hall that would seat five hundred. The church had no such facility. Amy spotted an advertisement in a magazine for a building made of iron that could be erected for five hundred pounds. It was an awesome sum for her but she knew how to pray and taught the mill girls to pray. An experience when she was ten years old had planted a seed in her mind about the matter of finances for God’s work. Sent out by her grandmother in Portaferry to collect funds for some charity, she approached a man who had just finished building himself a new house. He refused to give anything. Stunned, the little girl pondered the wisdom of asking money from people who don’t really love God. Why not, she thought, ask God to make people who love Him want to give? Amy and the shawlies did exactly that.
Not long afterwards, Amy was fulfilling one of the more odious duties of a girl in her time, “returning calls” with her mother. This meant sitting in drawing rooms with a cup of tea and a piece of cake balanced precariously on the saucer, trying to be polite when one couldn’t help thinking of better ways to spend the time. But the God who teaches us to pray has many ways of answering, and that afternoon’s boredom resulted in the hostess’s mentioning Amy’s work to a friend. The friend asked Amy to lunch.
An old house, a charming garden, a butler at the door. A table set in a sunny room. White cloth, shining silver. An old lady “like a white violet.” A few days later, a letter saying she wished to give the hall. Amy did not doubt that this was God’s answer.
One thing, however, was lacking. Where would they put it? They asked God. Not one to fold her hands if God might be expecting her to do something besides pray, Amy went straight to the office of the owner of the biggest mill in that part of the city and asked what he would charge for a slice of land. He mentioned a ridiculously small sum. The hall was put up on Cambria Street. Amy named it The Welcome and sent out printed invitations to its dedication, to take place on January 2, 1889.
Come one, Come all,
To the Welcome Hall,
And come in your working clothes.
The invitation described the organization as “The Mill and Factory Girls’ Branch of the YWCA.” She invited her minister to dedicate it. “The windows were in and the curtains were up in time,” she wrote, “in spite of the croakings of the Tin Tabernacle’s raven friends.” Above the platform she hung a long strip with the words, That in all things He may have the pre-eminence. She meant it. She herself (“Nobody”) sat that evening, not on the platform as would have been expected of the prime mover of the enterprise, but in the middle of the audience. Two students of American evangelist D. L. Moody opened the work of The Welcome with a mission in which, for the first time in the British Isles, was sung the gospel song, “I know whom I have believed.” “Souls were won every night,” Amy recorded, but then for a time there was nothing, no power, only deadness. It was her fault, she believed—she had grieved the Holy Spirit by levity following a meeting. “There was nothing wrong in the fun, but it was not the time for it.”
Her brothers and sisters were interested in their big sister’s work at the “Tin Tabernacle,” and no doubt helped her there occasionally. In one issue of Scraps Norman refers to “the most charitable of all charitable objects, The Amy’s Mill Girls’ Society.”
It must have been a lively place, judging from the weekly schedule:
Sunday 4:30
Bible Class
“ 5:30
Sunbeam Band Meeting
Monday 7:30
Singing Practice
Tuesday 7:30
Night School
Wednesday 7:30
Girls’ Meeting
Thursday 7:30
Sewing Club
Monday and Friday 1:20
Dinner Hour Meeting
Wednesday 1:20
Dinner Prayer Meeting
Thursday 4:00
Mothers’ Meeting
First Wednesday in the month—Gospel Meeting—All Welcome.
It was too much for Amy to do by herself. She needed help. What kind? She looked as usual in the Bible for guidelines, and found them in the book of Ezra. When the exiles returned to Jerusalem, they set about rebuilding the temple of the Lord. The enemies of Judah and Benjamin asked to join in the work, claiming that they worshipped the same God. The leaders refused their offer, saying that this house was no concern of theirs but a task which Cyrus, King of Persia, had assigned to the Jews alone. This caused offense and slowed the work, but the Jews stood fast on the principle. Amy would not think of building in any but substances that would survive fire—gold, silver, precious stones. The Lord led her into this truth at the very beginning, she told her “children” later, “and He has kept it as a settled thing in my heart ever since.” She prayed for the right kind of helpers. They came—a band of loyal friends and cousins whose gifts she herself had the gift of recognizing and encouraging.
Methods for raising money which were generally taken for granted by churches and other religious organizations were to Amy thoroughly secular, wholly out of keeping with a life of faith, and unthinkable for The Welcome. She wrote a long piece on the subject for Scraps.
We must have money. We can’t build spires ninety feet high without it, we can’t decorate our churches with elegant windows without it, we can’t issue costly programmes for our social meetings without it, we can’t furnish our sanctuaries with real polished mahogany without it. . . . How are we to get it? You may touchingly plead for the 865,000,000 heathen abroad. You may paint a picture terrible and true of the state of the home heathen at our doors. You may work yourself into hysterics over these and other intensely real realities but you won’t get the money. So another plan must be devised. We shall get up a fancy fair.
A clipping from the newspaper advertising a Grand Bazaar to Liquidate a Debt on Argyle Place Presbyterian Church is pasted in, describing everything from a “fairy palace of a thousand lights,” a Punch and Judy show, ventriloquism, and a shooting gallery, to THE FULL BAND OF THE GORDON HIGHLANDERS. Amy, giving free rein to her imagination, offers other possibilities:
Idle young ladies who like to do good will work sofa blankets, smoking caps, babies’ petticoats, and tea cosies. . . . They will entrap old men and young into buying just one ticket for the exquisite chimpanzee which some kind friend presented to aid us in the liquidation of our church debt (he was sick of the creature however, and glad to get rid of it). . . . Nobody will escape without being regularly besieged by gypsy women, Queen Elizabeths, Mary Queen of Scots, Robinson Crusoes, Robin Hoods, knights, pages, fools, apes and asses, just to buy this very cheap pincushion at 5 /11, and this beautiful pair of slippers at £ 1.19.10, and this sweet baby doll with real petticoats at 19/6—and nobody will escape our clutches without being pretty well fleeced—that I can honestly assure you. Oh yes! we shall get the money for our poor dear little church, and everybody will have the pleasing consciousness of having devoted themselves to the noble cause of screwing, wheedling and extorting money out of a selfish, thoughtless public—for the Cause of God! Ah, there is where a little incongruity seems to come in. Let us fancy for a moment we are a band of Israelites who want to build a magnificent abode for the Mighty Presence to dwell in. We convene a committee . . . Moses says, stroking his beard meditatively, “Ah, the people’s tastes must be considered, in the present state of society we cannot do otherwise, though of course it is not a desirable course to pursue.”
“But brother,” remarks Aaron, “the Tabernacle must really have decent curtains, and if they are to be of goat’s hair they will cost quite a large sum of money, and then they must be embroidered. . . .” Then Bezaleel speaks: “You speak, my brethren, as if nothing but the curtains should be considered, but there is a great amount of carving in wood and cutting in stones to be thought of and various curious things to be devised out of gold and silver and brass. These too will cost money.” There is a silence. Moses looks puzzled when in a very hesitating voice Aholiab says, “Have not we, Bezaleel, got both time and talent to devote to this work? Could we not spend and be spent in the service of the sanctuary?” But he is quite squashed by the head-shakings of the committee. Such a thing would never do. “What would become of our families if we worked for nothing? Really Aholiab should be ashamed of himself—such an idea!” etc. etc. Suddenly Moses’ face brightens. “Just what I remarked at first,” he says pleasantly, “In the present state of society we must conform a little to the world. We’ll have a Bazaar!”
Isn’t it a pretty picture—far superior to: “And they came both men and women as many as were willing-hearted, and brought bracelets and earrings and tablets and jewels of gold, and every man that offered, offered an offering of gold unto the Lord.”1 Three things we may notice:
1st as many as were willing-hearted
2nd brought their own possessions
3rd unto the Lord.
Now we give unto Mrs. So and So who wrote us a begging letter, or Miss So and So who called the other day with a collecting card and unfortunately we were in and could not get off without giving her something. . . . May there not be some clue to the money mystery in these thoughts, taking as our keynote three sentences, not very much believed in nowadays:
“The silver and the gold is Mine.”
“Ask, and ye shall receive.”
“My God shall supply all your need.”
1. Is the work for which we want the money God’s chosen work for us, or our chosen work for Him? If the former, will not He see after the money necessary? If the latter, then how can we expect anything better than we have?
2. Can we expect a blessing to follow money given grudgingly?
3. Should we not see that our Root is right, before expecting flowers and fruit?
These principles, discovered when Amy was alone with her Bible and her God, written down only for the small circle of readers of Scraps, were never laid aside. Years later their influence was felt by thousands.
1. Exodus 35:22.