The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889
Play Sample
ADDRESSES ON THE PRECEDING REPORTS.
ADDRESS OF REV.WM.BURNET WRIGHT, D.D.
When that Egyptian King, of whom we all know, was carving those memorials of his greatness which, even as brought to us by the magazines of late, have interested us all so much, and when Egypt was the most superb power in the world, slave women, of whom the mother of Moses was one, were lamenting by the Nile.But the people then to be pitied were not the Hebrews, but the Egyptians.
As I think of the future of my country, my anxiety is not for the black race.
The two nations which seem destined to exert in the near future the most intense and wide influence are Russia and the United States.Before each of them God has set essentially the same task and appears to have conditioned largely their prosperity upon the way in which they do it.That task is to develop into full-orbed free men a vast number of citizens who have been dwarfed and twisted by slavery.How to do this most thoroughly and speedily is the superlatively important question for each nation to decide.In Russia, there is no more acute observer than Count Tolstoi: and Count Tolstoi has said to his countrymen, "What we in Russia need supremely is three things; they are schools and schools and schools."The American Missionary Association, in view of all that has been said here these two days, seems to me to be repeating, with the emphasis of an adequate experience, those same words; and I think Mr. Hand has shown a judgment equal to his generosity in so wording the conditions of his gift that it repeats the same thing.The Association, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is telling us that what we need in the South supremely is "schools and schools and schools."
By schools I certainly do not mean institutions which train only the mind or the body, or both. I am perfectly familiar with the picture which Mr. Maturin Ballou has drawn of the Alaska Indian using the knowledge gained in missionary schools to raise a check. I know that education which does not rightly train the will may be giving tools to a burglar or weapons to a mad man. The anarchism in Chicago, but for the education it controls, would have been like Bunyan's giants—able only to gnaw its nails in malice and have fits in sunshiny weather. But the American Missionary Association understands this thoroughly. In that copy of the year's review which Dr. Strieby sent me, the report of the school work was marked with a red pencil, that of the church work with a blue one; but the two marks overlapped, the red and the blue, so completely that all attempts to separate them were hopeless. Dr. Strieby himself could not distinguish between the church work and the school work of the Association.No man can.They are indistinguishable because they have been inseparable.This is as it should be.This is essential to their real success.This is New Testament preaching—discipling; and that is what the Master told us to do.The danger of Count Tolstoi's leadership in Russia is great, and it is solely this: that he does not know that fact.The safety of your guidance, gentlemen, who conduct the policy of this Association, is that you do.The education given by the State and by the Federal Government has been and must necessarily be, almost wholly secular.But the education given by this Association is distinctly, not technically, religious.It is rooted and grounded in the Bible.And if what I am saying appears to you trite, I am glad of it, because it shows that on the substantial facts we are at one and need no argument.
There are, however, two facts which sharply distinguish between the work we have to do among our emancipated slaves and that set before Russia among her emancipated serfs, and which make it more conspicuously obvious than it can be in Russia that we need schools.We have, first of all, to contend with the prejudice of color.We have been told how great that is.I need spend no time in repeating this while the debates at Worcester and in the Episcopal Convention at New York ring in our ears; while Harvard seniors can not elect for class orator the ablest and fittest man they have if he happens to be colored, without eliciting from New York newspapers two-column editorials of amazement; and while writers as wise, as informed, and as calm as George Cable, are unable to write without showing their quivering apprehension of a race war.The wickedness of this class feeling is conceded by all good men, and I need not dwell upon it.
The cause of it has been largely overlooked, and therefore the remedies so often advocated have proved futile. Until the cause is distinctly recognized and acknowledged and remedied, the prejudice will remain. The cause is this: All freeborn people in every age and clime have had a contempt for slaves. That is very near the feeling—mark my words—they ought to have. It was stronger in Athens than it has ever been in Charleston. It is partly, and has always been largely, caused by the wicked pride of mastership, but it has also been largely inspired by the perception of those vices and inferiorities which his condition breeds in the slave. Ignorance, deceit, cowardice, are contemptible; and therefore men who know better fall into the way of despising those who are ignorant and cowardly instead of trying to help them become the reverse of all these things. In nearly every other nation—there are two exceptions that will readily occur to you—save our own, as soon as the slave's chains have been broken and the slave's vices eradicated, the emancipated man has been absorbed among the class of freemen. There was nothing left to suggest that he had ever been a slave. The people forgot it. But the black man bears an ineffaceable mark that he belongs to a race which has been enslaved; and it is, therefore, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred unconsciously but instinctively assumed that his is still the servile character.There is no natural antipathy between the white and the black races; if there were there could be no mulattoes.The sole reason of the persistence of this caste feeling is that the black man bears the mark saying to every one that sees him, "I belong to a race that has been enslaved:" and unconsciously men assume, "Therefore your character is still a servile character."The prejudice is deep; it is almost universal; and so long as there is a God in heaven who led forth the Hebrews and overthrew the Pharaohs, there will be no safety for this Nation of ours until the prejudice is obliterated, as completely as that which once existed and was more intense between the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman.If, as has been the case in many another land, there should arise an emergency threatening the existence of our Nation, and there were one man, and only one, capable of steering us through the storm into safety—some Lincoln or Washington—and if every voter in our country knew that this man were the only one who could do it, that man, if he were black, could not be elected President.Were such an emergency to arise to-morrow, we should perish.We should perish by suicide, and richly deserve all that we got.There is no safety for our land until this prejudice of caste is gone.It never came by argument; it can never be argued away.It can not be smothered under legislation nor uprooted by resolutions nor effaced by tears.While good men feel it they will fight it, but the majority will yield to it and it can be decided in only one way.That way was well outlined by a colored student in Hampton Institute in the debating club of that institution.The subject for discussion was, "How Shall We Black Men Secure Our Rights?"The last speaker was black as ebony, and had been bred in his early years a slave.When he arose I expected to hear him repeat the familiar complaints and suggest the familiar remedies.He did neither.He simply said: "My friends, I do not agree with all that you have said.I think, as you do, that the way white people treat us in the street cars and hotels"—and he might have added, in churches, but he did not—"is wrong, unchristian, and cruel."And when he said that, there was a pathos in his voice which made me ashamed to be a white man."But," he added, "while I think as you do that it is cruel, I do not think that the white people will ever stop treating us as inferiors so long as we are inferiors, and I think that they will despise us as long as they can.But when we get enough character in our hearts, enough brains in our head, and enough money in our pockets, they will stop calling us niggers!"
He was right—a thousand times right. We must face the facts and steer by them, and not attempt to be guided by sentiment and emotions. So long as the sight of a black face instinctively suggests to us rags and ignorance, and servility and menial employments, just so long this prejudice of caste will endure, and no amount of individual genius, culture, or character will be able to brush the mildew of caste from any individual black man's brow.That lady may be a Florence Nightingale, but if I whisper, and whisper truly, that she came from the slums, that her sisters are in the penitentiary, and her brothers are thieves, society will never forgive her for not being in the penitentiary herself.Society will pity her in ostentatious magniloquence, which is far worse than contempt or neglect; perhaps it will clothe her with silk and diamonds; but it will never treat her as it would not dare not to treat any lady whom it felt its equal.As has been well said, what is needed is not patronage nor pity, but fact—the recognition of fact.When the sight of a black face shall no longer remind men that it belongs to a race of which the immense majority close at hand are still showing what we have driven into them by the lash and bound in them by chains; when the black face shall have clothed itself in associations as full of comfort and culture and Christian worth as a white man wears, "Negro" will be as honorable as "Caucasian."And for this, through its churches which are schools, and its schools which are churches, the American Missionary Association is laboring and praying with splendid success.
I would like to remind you of the second point, which is emphasized by the statement in the report that a graduate, of Fisk University, with his wife, another graduate, has gone to Africa under commission of the American Board, and has there shown eminent abilities.Africa is the only continent on the planet that has never had a history.For millenniums it has been a locked closet.But in the providence of God the gaze of Christendom is now concentrated upon it.All the passions, good and bad, which push men are impelling the most adventurous and energetic of our race to look or to go thither.Love of money, love of adventure, love of power, love of man and love of God, are leading men to look into the 200,000,000 dusky faces there from which the veil has at last been thrown back.Meanwhile 8,000,000 of that race whose Christianizing means the regeneration of a continent vaster than Europe and the inauguration of a history perhaps to be more splendid than that which Europe has wrought out in two millenniums, are here for you and me to educate.Do you believe these facts are accidents?Do you believe that He who maketh the wrath of man to praise Him and restraineth the remainder of wrath has not ordained them according to the counsels of his own will?There never can be a Christian education which does not plant and foster the missionary spirit.Is it a dream?If so, let me die before I wake.Is it a dream that among 8,000,000 of our fellow citizens each of whom, as Dr. Strieby told us at New York, is qualified to live, perhaps to thrive, in the climate which has proved a grave to Anglo-Saxons, each of whom is qualified to visit Africa with a fair hope of making himself received as a child returning unto his own household?Is it too much to hope that, under the Christian education we may give them if we will, enough will desire to preach Christ to the dark continent to gem it with life and light as the sky is gemmed with stars?
I am too old to do it, but so complete is my conviction that the future of the race in the coming century shall move toward Africa as in the ages following Paul it moved toward the North and West of Europe, that were I a young man, loyal and devoted to my Master, and trying as he told his followers by Gennesaret to read in the morning and evening red the signs of the times, I should not go to Africa, perhaps; I would go to Tougaloo University, I think, and there devote all my energies and powers to instructing black men in the meaning and scope and inspiration and promise of the Master's words, "Go ye."
ADDRESS OF REV.F.P.WOODBURY, D.D.
I feel that I have learned a great deal to-day; and as the last speaker spoke concerning Africa, an idea has come into my mind which I may express.Here we have on one side of the great ocean, Africa; on the other side, America.We have here a race conflict; on the one side eight millions of blacks, we will say, and perhaps eight millions of irreconcilable whites on the other.And these dominant eight millions of white men maintain, with the utmost pertinacity—and they have the power in their right hand so far as we can see—that they propose to rule and keep down those eight millions of black men.I have seen the title of a book recently published, "An Appeal to Pharoah," which is vouched for as a calm and temperate discussion of the question whether, after all, we are not going to get by this race difficulty by a great deportation to Africa.It is a good deal to raise the question of eight millions of men leaving one country and going across the ocean and settling in another continent.But isn't there something in it after all?Might it not compose the differences?I know that the cost would be very large, but careful estimates go to show that the cost is not anywhere near the amount we spent in our civil war.On the one side, we have these eight millions of black men—ignorant, very largely superstitious, still somewhat above those of the same color in Africa, and plunged here into an antagonism which is deep, and bitter, and hopeless.On the other side, we have these eight millions of white people who do not accept the results of the war.Isn't it better that eight millions shall go?I don't know.I think it deserves serious consideration.
But when the question arises for practical consideration, I think there is another and a little deeper question that we ought to remember, and that is this: Which eight millions ought to go? Is it these who have been faithful to the American flag, who are straight in the line of progress that this republic proposes to maintain, who are in the line of the development of all the ages, who are looking upward? Or is it the eight millions who are hopelessly side-tracked by the purposes of infinite God, and who are standing here in this republic, undertaking to maintain a conflict that is necessarily one of despair, as sure as God is at the head of the universe?Expatriation if you please, deportation if you will; but consider the question whether it shall be eight millions of American patriots who are to be sent over to Africa or eight millions who have come out of a rebellion and maintain their seditious and rebellious attitude to-day.
My friends, we all know that we are going to live together.There is no more baseless theory on God's earth than that we are going to take eight millions of men and send them out of this country, because they want to learn something, because they want to live like men and be men and citizens, and because God has put them here for our work and our education.I tell you, my friends, the immediate problem seems to me only one form of a larger problem.What is the problem of the planet to-day?Is it not the problem as to which of two theories shall maintain itself concerning the masses which are at the base of society?Isn't that the problem in every nation?Isn't it the problem here concerning white and black, red and yellow alike?There is no possible doubt about it.The labor problem, do you call it?Here is one theory which holds that the masses shall be kept down.Here is the other system which maintains that they shall be elevated.We have got to live with them in the world, for I imagine there is nobody talking about sending them to the moon.Don't you know, and I know that the world is growing smaller every year?Talk about neighborhood—look over this continent.Germany is here; Ireland is here; France is here; China is here; Africa is here.We are neighbors to everybody.We are touching elbows across the ocean all the time.If you send anybody to Africa, why, he is only next door; and by and by we shall have air ships that will float up over there in a few hours!How are you going to manage this thing?We have got to live together in this world, and nearer and nearer to one another with every generation; and this country may just as well be the field in which to try the experiment out as any other country on the face of the globe.I think we are going to try it out to the end.There are symptoms of it all around.
But the conflict is here; it is in the air. It is not a conflict by sword. You know they tell the legend among the old mediæval stories that in one of the great battles on one of the plains of Europe, after the quiet darkness of the night had settled over the scene, the field strewn all over with the forms of the mangled and the dead, there were seen in the shuddering midnight air to rise spirit forms maintaining the deadly conflict there, and carrying on the battle of the day. It seems to me, in some sense, true of us. The sword has done what the sword could do; it can do no more. But the conflict is here in the air, pronouncing itself with every event that drifts across our horizon. Harvard sets its seal on the brow of Clement Morgan, and the Memphis Avalanche has no other word for him than to call him "that dusky steer with the crumpled forelock."
My friends, we are going right forward in the field of conflict, which is the field of victory.One with God is a majority, and we are thousands with God.And we have on our side the weak and the helpless, too.I don't want any better aid than that.You know that Burke in that magnificent invective against Warren Hastings, when he rose to the very climax of it and told the story of those atrocious tortures to which the poor and ignorant and misguided peasants of India had been put, how they had had their fingers tied together and mashed with hammers, and other unmentionable things had been done to them, appealed to the parliament and said that if they should refuse justice those mashed and disabled hands, lifted high to Heaven in prayer, would call down the power of God for their deliverance.Is it not worse to mash and disable a mind and a soul than a hand?I tell you the prayers of the poor are on our side; and if we had nothing of all this magnificent achievement of this Association to look upon, we could look on those hands raised and those souls crying out from the social bondage of to-day, as they did from the physical bondage of a few years ago, and know that if God be for us we need not care who or what is against us.
ADDRESS OF PROFESSOR GRAHAM TAYLOR.
I have but a very few words to add to this report.The facts speak louder than any statement of them can.When skirting the Asiatic shore of the inner sea, that lonely traveler, Paul, heard a voice, he looked across to the shores of Europe, and there in the night stood a great colossal form, not of a naked savage, but a form clad perhaps, in the panoply of the Macedonian phalanx, the representative of the Europe that then was and was yet to be, the precursor, it may be, to the classically informed mind of the missionary to the Gentiles, of that long procession of great world conquerors.It was the Man of Macedon who stood there in the might of his strength and cried, like the crying of an infant in the night, the crying of an infant for the light, "Come: come over into Macedonia and help us."
Now, my brethren, this was the cry of the strong for help. This was the cry of the peoples that were following the westward course of the star of empire. And yet, in their strength, they cried as though they were the weakest of woman born. And when that missionary, in response to that call, crossed the sea, though he came to that Macedonian city which had been the battle-scene of the contending forces of the Roman empire, he found access for the gospel into Europe through the open heart of one woman—Lydia, a seller of purple. And there, sitting down by the water course, where prayer was wont to be made, he just grouped those individuals into that unit of God's operations on the face of the earth, the local church. And this church was distinguished among the apostolic churches for its family traits, for the infusion of feminine grace and masculine strength, for the most domestic hospitality and the very faults of the close attritions of human life.There he planted the seed which has grown into our European and American civilization and Christianity.
And so ever at the cry of the strong for help the gospel has had just these three great prime factors to present for the solution of the problems of every age: first, the home, with its priesthood of the father and mother, the sanctuary of the house and the ministrations of family life; secondly, the school; and thirdly, between the home and the school, the church.When our Lord himself, from all possible sources, made selection of the first among the many means he has chosen for the redemption of this world, he chose a trained personality.As the medium for the transmission of truth, no improvement, no change has been found in all the progress of the gospel.By this trained personality—the heart that has been led to live with Christ awhile, and then go forth in his name and filled with his love to the hearts that have place for that love and rootage for that life—this wonderful product of our Christian civilization has everywhere been produced.
And I take it that in no one of the Christian agencies known to us are these three methods so wonderfully unified, so inseparably united, as the home and the church and the school are in the work of the American Missionary Association.They are one and the same.They are indissoluble.The long experience of this Association through this half century of specialized work does fit it, as the report has said, to give an almost commanding opinion in regard to the method of the work to be pursued among these very distinct classes.From the field as well as from the office, and from the experience of those longest at work, we learn that the school finds its ultimate aim only in the church; that, as a Christian agency, we are to work with the school only as a means to the end of building up that body of Christ on the face of the earth which is known by the name of his church.I do not see how the separation to any extent of school and church work can fail to break the unity of administration and hinder the progress of this gloriously on-going work.
I have just one word to add in regard to the reflex influence of this church work upon the home churches. My brethren, there has been a great dearth in candidates for the ministry until very recently. It strikes me that there is no such object-lesson in all our land, inviting men to consecrate themselves to the noblest of purposes, as the heroic ministry of this Association. It needs the heroic element to attract young men. It needs something which is very plainly worth their while to live for and to work for and to consecrate their energies toward, in order to attract them from the allurements of business and material progress to-day. The Indian service of the British Government, and even the service of the great commercial companies, have that element of heroism in it them which has attracted the very best brain and brawn of the English race to India.So it seems to me we will have to hold up these great organizations, which reach down to the hard places of the land, which occupy places that require men to man them, in order to recruit the ranks of our ministers.A man needs to know that he will have to be all the more a man to be anything of a minister now-a-days, to attract him into this great work.And this heroic type of Christian ministry and of Christian manhood and womanhood, shown in the half century of this society's work and existence, is to my mind one of the great attractions upon the best, the strongest, and the most consecrated of those men and women who devote their lives to the service of the church.
Its reflex influence upon every other branch of missionary activity in the church is very plain. It is to-day—I do not hesitate to say it—the hero of our organizations. It takes far less stamina, far less consecration, I believe, to go to India, or China, or Japan than it does to come out at the call of God and of this agency of His divine Providence and enter many a field manned by this Association. In the personnel of our theological seminaries I have long noticed that the choicest spirits, the men with the stamp of courage upon them, those who are not working for place, but for Christ, and him alone, are the men who take up this work. They are the men who, when they come back to the schools of the prophets, thrill our hearts as no other men do with the story of the conquests of Christ in their own hearts as well as out in the hard fields which they cultivate for his sake; and there will be no more glowing missionary meeting of the seminary with which I have the honor to be connected than when the reports of this meeting shall be carried back to the brethren. The prayers of the class-rooms, the prayers of the missionary meetings, the yearnings of the hearts of the men who are preparing to follow in the footsteps of those who have heroically led the way, are the wires for these unseen and yet never unused electric currents which unite the North with the South, the frontier with the citadels of our common Christianity.
We know very well the danger of a false education, of a school without A church, education without evangelization, a university without the heart of Christ beating in it.Great are the joy and confidence felt in the hearts of the constituency of this body that school and church are so inextricably interwoven with each other that if you plant a school it will develop into a church, and if the church comes it will eventually and inevitably re-act, and in a most blessed way in spiritual and often in material resources upon the school.We give largely to the school because there is a home beneath it and a church around it.
I regard these churches of the American Missionary Association with their evangelistic and nurturing agencies, prime sociological factors for bringing in Christ's dear kingdom in this land of ours. It is their mission not only to remedy evils, not only to restore rights, but to be great constructive agencies of a new Christian civilization.For when Christ came, he came preaching, not the gospel of the individual, not a gospel simply to save that man, that woman, that child, but the gospel of the Kingdom, the gospel which this great Association so effectually preaches and not only preaches but applies and administers as well.And the time will not be far hence when this whole subject of the environment of the spiritual life will force itself so imperatively upon the study of the churches at home that they will take the type of their work and the inspiration for their new developments from the leadership of this and kindred missionary organizations which have set them these most brilliant examples of being ahead of the thought and the feeling of their day.
ADDRESS OF REV.C.W.HIATT.
More than fifty years ago De Tocqueville gave utterance to these prophetic words: "The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future existence of the United States arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory." I think that that prophecy has been iterated and reiterated before this convention until we ought finally to let it rest as an established fact. I believe we are menaced by these eight millions of people, who are twice as great in number as were the people of the United Colonies when they broke from the mightiest naval and military power in history; but I believe that the peril that we are menaced by in the presence of this black man arises from his perils. There is a peril from the black man, but it is a peril secondary to the peril of the black man upon this soil. I do not apprehend any uprising by Uncle Tom; but Uncle Tom is dead, and his son is here and his friends of a younger generation. These men are being gnarled and corrupted and imbruted, and are massing themselves, touching elbows one with another; and under the influences of the age in which we live are becoming a factor in our civilization which, unless we modify and change it under our Christian teaching, will render our Southland like that island on the north of the Caribbean Sea where to-day it is said that the name of Toussaint l'Ouverture, the original defender and liberator, is a hissing and a reproach.
It was a fine augury of the future when the work for the ex-slave began at Fortress Monroe in the atmosphere of religion.Mary Peake, meeting the advancing multitudes of refugees, gospel in heart and primer in hand, as by divine suggestion, laid the pattern of all our succeeding toil.Side by side of mutual helpfulness God has placed the alphabet and decalogue, the teacher and the preacher, the school-house and the church."What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder."
The largest, grandest word in the title of this organization is "Missionary." When that word drops out its work will be done, for its call will have ceased.Our ultimate end and present purpose is, and always should be, simply this—to save.We cannot lift our fallen brother without the leverage of the cross.
No field is wider, none more difficult, than that to which our eyes are turned, embracing as it does four of the five families of mankind.They huddle together in the lap of Christendom, but feel no warmth.They are a demonstration of the fact that civilization never touches barbarism without polluting it.The Indian, finding his highest ideal in the rude and tipsy defender of our flag; the Chinaman, taking home more heathenism than he brings; the Negro, bound tighter by the vices of the whites than ever he was by their iron chains—these three, ignorant of the Christ and grasping the satanic weaponry of our sinful land and age, together form the most discouraging of mission fields.Our laborers are faced by all the serious problems of the foreign land—problems unrelieved by a single romantic charm.When we send our missionaries to Africa they go to labor among the Africans; and when we send them down South they go to teach "niggers."
Notice, then, what the report of this committee signifies in the presence of the fact that our laborers not only grapple with foreign languages, conceptions, idolatries, habits of benighted peoples, but all the time are hindered and assailed on every hand by these Bedouin Arabs of our land—the minions of mammon and the slaves of caste.To gather and hold and save in such a field as this, is task enough for the finest corps in the army of the Lord.
In the presence of these well-known facts, the report of the committee adds another chapter to the Book of Acts.It gladdens our hearts with thrilling music—the music of ringing sickle and reaper's song.From all over this mighty field, from mountain, and savannah, and shore, and plain, we hear the resonant footsteps of advancing troops—a solid regiment of converts marching in the army of our Christ and into the fellowship of his Congregational Church.I want you to notice that this church which we have planted in the South is just the kind of a church to take these people and assimilate them, to save them and to preserve them to their highest usefulness.And why?In the first place, because it is a church that will take them in.I saw the other day this inscription over a great arch erected in honor of our Pan-American guests in the city of Cleveland, "Welcome All Americans."Well, the Congregational Church has put three talismanic letters over the portal of every church that it has planted in the South and in the West, "A.M.A.—All mankind acceptable."
Every convert in our work has cosmopolitan views respecting the brotherhood of man. This means that one thousand people have seated themselves before an apostolic communion table. White, black, red and yellow, side by side in harmony before the broken memorials of the life of love. The spirit of color-caste is a post-apostolic devil. The most eminent convert of the evangelist Philip was as black as a middle vein of Massilon coal.Perhaps that is why they met in the desert and the spirit compassionately caught Philip away.The purest church and the purest ray of sunshine are alike—they absorb the seven colors of the spectrum.When the Creator flung the rainbow like a silken scarf over the shoulder of the summer cloud, he drew his color-line.Pentecostal blessings fell at Jerusalem, and have fallen ever since on the cosmopolitan church.
The second feature of this church that adapts it to ours field is the open Bible.Every convert is armed with the shining sword—the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, like the sword in the hand of the angel at Eden's gate, turning every way at once.
You do not hear of immorality, gross and fearful, within the precincts of our Congregational churches.You do not hear of our people walking up the hills of the beatitudes over the broken tables of the law.The written word, like the Incarnate, goes into our congregations and drives out all the sellers of oxen and of doves.The Word, also, is the protection of these people against their greatest foe of this day—the encroaching power of the Church of Rome.Do you know that that ancient foe of liberty is stalking all across the twelve States of the South?Do you know what it means to have the Church of Rome take in hand these people of lowly and of feeble intelligence?We do not have to crossover to Austria or Italy in order to discern her aims, for the Nun of Kenmare has alighted upon our shores, and her alarming words are running through the land.Rome knows no color prejudice, and the foot of that great despotic power can rest just as easily upon a skin that is black as upon a neck that is of the purest alabaster.And the Congregational Church down South is the only champion against this papal see, for she has an aisle wide enough for five races of mankind to march up to her communion table, while the sword of the Spirit guards her portals.
Again, I wish you to notice this fact: That this Church which we are planting is not only hiding a multitude of sins by saving these lowly people, but it is serving the interests of the State as well.When we remember that the polity of our church is a polity of liberty, that it teaches that rights and duties go hand in hand, that it takes just as much wisdom to elect the pastor of a church as the President of the United States, we can see that the moral influence of this polity of ours is serving the interests of our commonwealth.The Congregational Church is carrying the Pilgrim idea into the soil of the Cavalier.Straight University, Tillotson Institute, and these other schools, are but the outcropping of that old stone down in an Eastern harbor that we call Plymouth Rock.Down South are being planted those two principles upon which the great superstructure of our liberty rests firm—a church without a bishop and a state without a king.This is what Congregationalism is carrying into that land long ruled by aristocracies.It is giving these people who possess liberty the knowledge of how to use it aright.
Finally we not only hide a multitude of sins, we not only serve the State, but we reach forth a long arm to save the world.Awhile ago I was in the study of Dr. Ladd.There, spread before us, were relics of his well remembered cruise along the Nile.There were implements for rude tillage of the soil, there were swords and spears beaten into shape by barbaric artisans, there were the cats and lizards and toads, objects of worship by unnumbered millions.Thus were displayed in object lesson the savagery and idolatry of one of the largest families of man.The Doctor placed his finger on the map at Mendi Mission."There," said he, "I saw a row of missionaries graves.Their headstones sadly told the tale of the pestilential land.Two months, three months, nine months they survived, and then fell to rise no more.No white man can endure the clime."
Another time I was at a commencement of Fisk University.I saw Professor Spence take two photographs, and hold them up before the gaze of five hundred intelligent colored youths, whose faces fairly glowed as they looked upon the well-remembered features of two of their alumni, who in Western Africa, if I mistake not, are teaching the gospel of Christ and enduring the rigors of the climate.And in the glowing features of these five hundred folk, I saw the prophecy of a splendid recruiting of our feeble forces in that continent which by and by shall not be dark.Ah, this work is grand!We are putting the cross of Jesus into the dusky hands that shall carry it not only to the land of the pyramids, not only to the land of the ancient wall; but, as I believe, there will come a day when some child now in our schools of the West, some Apache or Dakotan, will rise with apostolic fervor, and going southward along the isthmus and over the mountains will put this transfigured cross of Christ into the pampas and the llanos through which the Amazon and the Orinoco pour their majestic streams.
ADDRESS OF REV.D.M.FISK, D.D.
It may be fitting to add a few supplementary words corroborative of the hopeful view taken in this report on the Mountain Work.At first glance it does seem that this is a discouraging field.I need not recapitulate what has been said in the report already before you.It is sufficiently discouraging; the ignorance and poverty are not the worst features.The position of the clergy in many sections—I am happy to say not in all—is full of discouragement.The worst thing we have to face is the apathy of the people.Their phrase, "We-uns never asked you-uns to come here," is certainly most pathetic.
What do we propose to do about it? What do we propose to do with more than two millions for whom Christ died, American citizens, in the very heart of our Nation, around whom the currents of commerce and industry swirl every day?Shall the greatest tidal wave of all time pass them by, and they not feel it for a moment?More than all, shall the great gospel of God, which is life, and hope, and peace, and home, for us, be nothing for them?
I am happy to say that it is not all dark by any manner of means.Your committee is hopeful, the members of this Association are hopeful, our brethren on the frontier are hopeful.There are very many favorable things, and one of the most favorable is their increasing numbers.Do we stop to estimate what two millions of souls means?More than thirty thousand cradles filled in a single year.
These men respect the Bible.They feel a superstitious regard for it; they are not infidel people.They have a simple, childlike faith, and the Bible word is to them final.Many things that many of us have to contend with, the brethren there do not meet I mean in the field of infidelity.
They have great respect for woman if she respects herself.I have the statement of one of our workers in the South that a woman can go even among these men when they are drunk, and if she respects herself and has maintained her character she is perfectly safe in their midst.
This same writer tells me of a young man who went out from one of their schools, and kept school in a certain place during the winter, When he returned, he said: "Nothing would tempt me to go back there again."Not so with the young ladies.It is one of the most astonishing signs of the times that really into the feeble hand of womanhood is given the key of the situation.They respect these girls, they reverence them and give them a place of dignity in their hearts.That makes it possible for these women to do a large and splendid work in the South.
Once let these girls that come under the influence of our Christian Northern women who go there as teachers, and the graduates of these various colleges and schools that we have planted, and are about to plant in the South; once let common womanhood in the South that has been so much under the heel of this oppression; once let girlhood feel the power that has come go girlhood, that to them as young women in the cradle of these hills, under this fair sky is given the power to turn over in not less than thirty or forty years this whole country for God and humanity, for enlightenment and for Christian peace;—once let that idea get into the minds of these girls, and we have not the same problem that we have to-day.
There is good blood there as well.There is a man in Congress to-day, honoring himself and his district and his nation, who went to school there, and I know not for how many years wore but one garment.I call that pretty good blood when from such circumstances a man can come up to such a large place.
There is a transition time with this whole section. New conditions are being put upon them. They feel the outside movement of the world. A friend of mine is now in the South who has brought up a large quantity of lumber in a certain district, and when he finds the right man he will plant a school there.Coal and iron are being extensively worked.My brother here (the Rev.S.E.Lathrop) tells me that near Cumberland Gap four hundred houses have gone up within a very brief time, and over two thousand workmen are pushing into a section not before opened.It will not come in an hour or in a day; but by and by, when these men face the new life of our times, when they have once felt its pressure, and the tremendous disparity between their manner of living and the high kind of life of Northern homes and Northern hearthstones, they will move, and a change will come over the spirit of their dreams. Even now, the native preachers, who have been so hostile to our work, are coming to these, our pastors, and asking for light on the Bible.Furthermore, our pupils are going out and organizing county institutes, and the work is going on everywhere.
There is a dark side to it, but I praise God there is a bright side.It is like a dam.When the dam begins to go, it will go all at once.Youth is on our side.In thirty years we shall not have the same problem we have now—no, not in twenty years.Wealth is coming in.A large tract of eleven thousand acres, containing some of the finest coal that the world knows, is being developed.This means a great influx of population, and this wealth is to be developed, and new material power is coming as an auxiliary to our spiritual power.This wealth is being converted.A man who five years ago was a godless man, and who owns to-day one-seventh of these eleven thousand acres of coal lands, was converted.He was made a Sunday-school Superintendent, but he could not say the Lord's Prayer; yet he was determined that the Lord's Prayer should be repeated in that school, and he hired a large number of small boys and gave them a dime apiece and told them to learn the Lord's Prayer that week.They did so; and when Sunday came, with a chorus to back him, he came on as a solo performer.
A dear girl of my own acquaintance dressed, in one morning, fifteen or sixteen women and children.They came around her and felt her all over, and wondered at the complexity of her garments.I speak of this thing because it indicates that that old apathy is breaking up, and they are coming to look at new things and feel a new interest in the life outside of themselves.And as this same dear girl taught from thirty to fifty of these women, they listened eagerly, and the tears rolled down their cheeks, and they said to her, "Oh, come and tell us more about Jesus, for we want to be different kind of women, different kind of mothers."
There was one girl, coarse enough in fiber, heavy enough in build, gross enough in appearance, who came out to one of our commencements, and went back with the arrow in her heart, saying, "I would give all the world if I had it, if I could write a piece and git up thar and read it like them." She went home determined she would go to college. She was a large girl, fifteen years old, yet did not know a single letter. She walked fifty miles nearly, and came and said to the college president that she wanted to work for her board, so that she could enter the school. What could she do? He found that really she was incapacitated for doing anything; but she said, "I can hoe corn like a nigger."Finally she was set at some sort of work, and that girl, after three or four years, went out as a school teacher into a district where young men dared not go, where her eyes were blistered with the sights she saw—men shot down before her face and eyes by the whisky distillers—and she was asked to organize a Sunday-school there.When any one starts a Sunday-school he is expected to preach, and so that girl had to become a preacher, and to-day she is preaching the gospel of God and spreading the work there.And yet she came from one of the very humblest classes.
There is a peaceful invasion of this people by themselves.This mission of the people to themselves is one of the most hopeful things about this work.And when they realize that they have a mission, Pauline in spirit, unto their own people, then victory shall come to us.
ADDRESS OF REV.ADDISON P.FOSTER, D.D.
This Indian problem has been largely settled on its civil side.For many years the friends of the Indians have been consulting together, and have done their utmost to influence public opinion.And the Government has heeded the call—as it always does—of a widely extended and wise public sentiment; and, in consequence, our policy with regard to the Indian has been very largely re-shaped.To-day, by reason of the Dawes Bill, land is open to the Indians in severalty.There is a fair degree of law secured for the Indians.The great questions pertaining to their outward circumstances are under happy prospect of adjustment.
But, this being the fact, it simply increases the necessity laid upon us to meet the requirements of the present day.The door is open for the Indian to become a citizen; and in this land, whenever any man receives the privileges of citizenship, it is incumbent upon us to see to it that he is fitted for that sacred obligation by the church and by the school.
This is a necessity of our republic which we have recognized from our earliest day.When our fathers came to this land, they located side by side the school house and the church; and, wherever we have sought to open the privileges of the suffrage, and the dignities, and honors, and joys of citizenship, to any class of people among us, we have always felt it to be an imperative necessity to see to it that they had both these sacred training schools, the educational institution and the religious institution, side by side.
Now to-day we have unusual opportunities. Everything seems to be coming to a focus in regard to our work for the Indians. Never has the time been so auspicious as it is to-day. Never have there been so many things combining to show to us that if we are to improve the opportunity God gives us to care for the Indian—this man who held this land before we came to it and from whom we have taken our possession—we must do it to-day.There are other great needs about us, other races and other classes and other conditions; but there is no other class appealing so intensely to the sympathies of all our people to-day, as is the Indian.This is one great explanation of the remarkable increase of the work of this Association among the Indians.How did it ever spring from an expenditure of $11,000 annually to $52,000, as it is to-day?Partly because the Government has been willing to aid, but still more because our people throughout the land have been intensely interested in the Indian and have been glad to help him.They have said by their gifts that now is the time, and we must leap to improve this opportunity or else it will slip away from us forever.
It is the conviction of your committee—and I can voice it most perfectly—that we must improve this opportunity before it is gone, and that this people who have long suffered at the hands of their white brethren have a claim to our earnest Christian sympathy and to our heartiest effort to put them upon their feet.They are more than ready, they are anxious for our aid, they are crying to us for help.
Now, let me say that the American Missionary Association has always felt the importance of working in evangelistic lines.It would be nothing if it had not the church before it as an incentive.It works primarily through the school; but always with the thought that the school is secondary, and that the church is the one great aim before it.And unless this incentive were before it, unless it recognized that its work was to bring men to Christ, and to bind them together in Christian churches, there would be but little to call for the great self-denials of Christian workers in the field and many Christian givers in the country at large.It is this thought that has ever been held up before it—the thought that the church and the school go together, and that the school is simply the handmaid of the church.We recognize the fact that in Congregationalism especially, out of all forms of religious belief, we cannot hope to make men earnest, effective Christians, caring for themselves, managing their own affairs independently, and having in them the heart to go out and work, unless we cultivate their minds as well.And so this Association has sought, and this body of Christians that represent the Association has sought, by gifts and by teaching, to develop the thought that there always should be an educational work going forward that there may be something to build upon.Christianity needs education in order to give it its largest power.
ADDRESS OF REV.THOMAS L.RIGGS.
It was said of Dr. Williamson by an old Indian that he had an Indian heart. I, too, have an Indian heart, and I can lay claim to that possession as but few can. It would take but a very little while to go from here into the very midst of our present Indian field. It took my father and Dr. Williamson, when they first entered the field, some six months to reach it.I could start to-morrow morning, and taking the cars in this city, and reaching Pierre by the following night, could be farther off by Saturday, farther from the border of the mission field, than my father and Dr. Williamson could after they had travelled six months.
I would like to invite you to go with me on a tour of inspection of the mission field itself.I would take my two ponies and drive out to the Cheyenne River, and take you to one of our out-stations, and show you something of the influences at work in the field to-day.As we went up the valley, we would see the Indian village located there, and in the midst, on a rising piece of ground, the mission station.Over some of the houses we would see a red flag flying.That is a prayer, a votive offering; there are sick in that house, and that is a prayer to the gods that healing may come, and that death may be kept from them.Over on the right we would see the dance-house—a great octagonal house with an open roof, in which the Indians gather night after night to dance to the monotonous beating of the drum.That is a very common sound out in the Indian villages, bringing to us always that thought of slavery to evil.As we go up to the station itself, we would see something more of the work than you have as yet been able to see.If it be on the Sabbath, as we go in we would see a young man there, with his audience before him, not a very large audience—old men, old women, boys and girls—gathered on the rough benches, and very much as they are in their own homes.Some of the old women have their hair down over their faces, the boys with dirty hands, old men with their dirty blankets, and yet they are gathered around there to hear the word of life.The preacher, as he stands before them, tells them of God's wonderful love, and takes as his text that most wonderful verse in the Bible, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son."
Then, as you look at the man who is preaching there, you would hardly recognize in him one who thirteen years ago was a savage, a painted Indian.As I look at him it seems a most wonderful thing that such a change has taken place.I knew him as a savage; a splendid fellow he was, and he is now a more splendid man than ever he was a savage; and he is teaching the gospel of Christ to his own people.I have been out there seventeen years, and if there were not another result to show for those seventeen years of work than the lifting up of this Clarence Ward, and making of him a man in Christ Jesus, I should be abundantly satisfied.
There is another influence of which I would speak, the influence of the home. Here in our happy homes we know but very little of what that means to the Indian. An Indian has no home, in our sense of the word. Some years ago I went with a party of Indians 175 miles west of the Missouri River in the middle of winter. We climbed a mountain and looked away to the east. We could see, I should think, 150 miles, and the Indian as he sat there on the edge of a rock, covered his head up in a blanket and cried.Said he: "This is my country, and we have had to leave it."That was his idea of home—such a barren stretch as that, the snow glistening in the sunlight.The Dakota Indian lives in a region, not in a place.The Christian home coming into the midst of a village carries there an ideal of which the Indian knows nothing, and he is taught by the power of example day after day.The Christian woman in that home keeps her house clean, keeps her children clean, and stands there as a persistent example of the power of the gospel of soap, just as the man himself there who has become a Christian no longer steals horses.A party going out into an enemy's country would go as often for the sake of bringing back stolen horses, as they would for scalps.The man who has become a Christian is recognized at once as shut out from that privilege.
Reference has been made to the opening up of the reservation, and the crisis is now upon us in connection with our Indian work.We have eleven million acres of land there just west of the Missouri River to be thrown open for settlement.Do you know what that means?Were any of you down at Oklahoma this last season?It means the rush of a swarm of people, good, bad and indifferent—chiefly bad and indifferent—and these settlers will crowd themselves in as a wedge between the two divisions of the Indian reservation, and we shall have Indians both to the north and to the south.They will be exposed to influences from which they have been kept as yet; influences which will tend to uplift in the outcome, as well as to degrade.I thank God for it.I thank God that he is bringing the white man into the midst of the Indian country.It may seem that this is a heroic remedy.So it is, but it is time for heroic remedies.We need to meet the question as it comes to us to-day.There is a ranchman out on Bad River, who tells me that there is no such thing as an Indian question."Why," said I, "what are you talking about?""There is no such thing," said he.I asked him how he explained it."The simple thing to do is just to treat them as men, and that will be all there is to it.That will settle it, and there will be no such thing as an Indian question."Treat them as men and make Christians of them, and we will settle the whole thing.
ADDRESS OF REV.HENRY A.STIMSON, D.D.
Referring to Dr. Goodwin's powerful address, I find myself transported again to China; but the fact recurs to my mind that this is not a foreign missionary society, but a home missionary one, and what we have to do is to open our minds to the conviction that it is possible to do at home plenty of work for the Chinaman. I am glad to give a little personal testimony because what we need most of all is to be convinced of the necessity to give time and strength and labor to win the individual Chinaman to Christ. Not very long ago there came to my knowledge in St. Louis an ordinary Chinaman, comparatively a young man. He joined our church and I knew he desired to be recognized as a Christian man.About a year before, he had been a member of a Sunday-school where ladies were teaching Chinese.Before that our newspapers had created great outcry about a case of leprosy in the city.This Chinaman appeared at my house in great trepidation.He had been two or three years in this country, and had been saving his money in order to go back and see his mother's face before she would die, and he hoped to be able to return to China in the following fall.He had learned that there was a Chinaman, unknown to him, lying ill in a little laundry, of a disease of which nothing was known, without friends and without care.He took care of this man, leaving his own work for the purpose, and at length he came to me asking where he could get a physician to attend the patient.I gave him a note to one of the best physicians in my own church, who went at once and saw the man, and he seeing it was a strange form of disease, went to a specialist of skin diseases, who had the man brought to a hospital in order to watch his disease.Rumors of this reaching the newspapers, the reporters thought it a good opportunity to make a story about leprosy, giving the number and street of an imaginary laundry in the heart of the city.Instantly the patronage of the Chinese laundries stopped.My Chinese friend was in the greatest distress about it, and particularly about me, lest I should think he had brought the contagious disease to my house.I could hardly persuade him to enter, and then he told me there was no truth in the story of the newspapers, and asked what he should do.What was the result of the story?The Chinaman took care of his friend in the house and in the hospital, paying considerable for his care, and when he recovered sent him to San Francisco—in fact, spent about $180 on him, the whole sum he had saved to take himself home to his mother, and he did this for a man who was as utterly unknown to him as to you or me.He also came to me with a $10 bill to pay the doctor, saying it was not enough, but it was all the money he had, and he would add to it by and by.All we want is testimony as to the character of the Chinese.Here was a man not converted by Moody or by any service, but by the ministry of an unknown Sunday-school teacher; as the result of that simple agency he found a charity so Christ-like as to do work like this.That little Chinaman brought to me some of his companions, asking me to do something to help them to be Christians, and as the result of his work a large Sunday-school is to-day in operation.There is abundance of such testimony, I believe, to be furnished throughout our land, which we should have before our heart as an answer to the anti-Chinese mania which now and then sweeps over this country.Help us to carry the gospel to these men of unmeasured possibilities, whom God in his mercy has brought across the seas to plead at our doors.
This audience can help the Chinese in a better way than giving them money. That Chinaman was asked in my house the other day how many hours he slept, and he said, "Two or three.""Are you ever troubled by hoodlums?""Yes, every day.They break the windows.Last week they broke into my laundry and stole five bundles of clothes, for which I had to pay customers $20.""Do you get no protection from the police?"I asked him.He shook his head—yes, sometimes, but they were no good.The Chinese have the same right to life and liberty that we have, and if we get them that, they'll get the money fast enough themselves.We owe it to the Chinese that they get protection.
ADDRESS OF REV.E.P.GOODWIN, D.D.
I rejoice that I can lift my voice at least in a word of commendation, if such a word seem in any sense to be needed, in the furtherance of this particular kind of work.I remind myself sometimes that this very tone of apology is a tone that ought to set some of us, as ministers and as brethren, to reconsidering our conception of the gospel.Why, beloved, suppose it were an admitted fact that for the next hundred years not a solitary Chinaman would be converted.What then?Do you imagine that that fact would absolve us from allegiance to the commands of the Lord Jesus Christ?You will remind yourselves—I am sure I remind myself often—that in respect to our Christian work, the breadth of it and the particular departments of it, we have absolutely no option whatsoever: that when our Master said to his disciples, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," he made no exception of those that might have almond eyes and yellow faces, nor of those that might have black skins and woolly hair; that he took in, in that wide sweep of his omniscient vision, every nation and kindred under the whole sky, and that should exist until the kingdom itself should come.
If it could be demonstrated that it required ten times as much work and ten times as much money to convert the Chinaman as anybody else, then all the more because of degradation and superstition and idolatry and hardness of heart—all the more must I storm the Gibraltar of that paganism. The Master's principle seemed to be, "Give ye them to eat." The fact of hunger is what lays the law upon the hearts of the disciples; and by so much as men are more hungered—if there be one nation more so than another—by so much as they are nearer to starving for the bread of life, by so much the more are your heart and my heart called upon in the name and in the sympathy of Jesus Christ, to respond to that cause. Those disciples of that early day might just as well have said, "Master, we can not feed all these ten thousand. We will pick out those around us, the nearest at hand. We won't touch that set of lepers just over there from Capernaum; we won't have anything to do with that other set of outcasts and vagabonds drifted in here, some of them from Samaria; we will have nothing whatever to do with these wretches from Chorazin—gamblers and abandoned people of every sort."
What do you think would have been his response to that sort of argument?I think if Peter had given him any such plea as that it would have cut him off hopelessly from any apostleship.There would have been a new band of apostles that would have been instituted then and there that were willing to take the Master's command, take Him as responsible for the authority and for the result.They knew better; they knew Him better; and though they had their little scant loaves that would not give a quarter of a crumb apiece to the great multitude, they said: "That is not our responsibility; ours is to obey.It is His to furnish when the resources fail."Brethren, that is my theory of missions.
Do you remember the little anecdote about Francis Xavier, that before he went abroad as a missionary to China, while he was sleeping with his room-mate one night, he startled him by rising in his sleep and throwing out his arms with great urgency, as he said, "Yet more, oh, my God, yet more!"His comrade wakened him and asked him what he meant."Why," said he, "I was having a vision of things in the East.I was seeing missionaries tortured; some of them were being burned, some of them were having their flesh torn from their bodies, and in many ways they seemed to be suffering in their testimony for Christ's sake.And as I looked, the tears came to my eyes, and a voice said to me, 'That is what it will cost you if you go on this missionary tour.Are you willing to take the cost?'And I said, 'Oh, Lord Jesus; yet more, yet more, if I may win these perishing souls.'"
Brethren, it is the call of the hour.These people may become, in my judgment, pre-eminently the missionary people.They have been called the Yankees of the Orient.They are scattered every whither, in every quarter of the world.I think it ought to shame us to have less enthusiasm for these for whom Christ died than they of the Romish church in the palmiest days of its missionary zeal.God help us that we may stand true upon the Pacific coast and all through our land, and that for every missionary church abroad there may be a score and a hundred.Dr. Williams said, after thirty years' knowledge of the Chinese, that we might evangelize China from one end of the empire to the other in half a century if we were in earnest.God help us that we may labor and pray for the coming of such a day.
Now I believe this: That, so far as the facts go, there is just as large a percentage of results to be shown for work among the Chinese as for work anywhere. Take it in our city, among some of the Chinese schools; take it in San Francisco, take it in China itself. I received on Saturday last a letter from Mr. Gray, of Hong-Kong, speaking of a young man who had gone out from our church as his assistant in the work there. Said he to me: "He is one of the most valuable helpers I could have. He not only stands fast by his work, but he also seems to have spiritual discernment to meet the peculiar difficulties we have to encounter, and there are plenty of them.Here is a man, for instance, who says he would whip his wife to death if he should hear of her accepting Christ.There is another, a mother, who would let her child starve if she thought it was being taught the gospel of Jesus Christ.But among this people there is no more successful laborer that I know of than Sui Chung."I knew him well.He came into our Chinese Sunday-school, which is held every Sunday afternoon.I remember him distinctly, as giving, so far as I could see, clear evidence of being born of the Spirit.And I bear testimony to these young men now in my church—there are ten or a dozen of them—that, so far as I know them and so far as I have been able to talk with them in imperfect English or through Chinese interpreters, their Christian experience is as satisfactory as that of any others.Nay, I will say more than that.I will venture to say that the Chinese brethren in my church are more earnest.They sustain a Chinese prayer-meeting regularly every Sunday of their own accord in their own language, and have kept it up ever since there were enough of them to be united together.I frequently look in and talk with them; and there is one thing about these Chinese that I greatly respect—I never saw them pull out their watches while I was speaking to them.I never saw any of them going to sleep; I never saw a look in the face of one of them which indicated that he was not profoundly interested.I was in their meeting last Sunday, and I told them about Sui Chung.Most of these Chinese can read.Some of them are very fluent talkers, and some are very intelligent.I suppose we have a thousand or fifteen hundred in this city, and a very large proportion of them, they tell me, can read the Chinese Bible.
Now, I have great respect for this people, if for nothing more than for their history.We have a petty hundred years of history.How many hundred have they?Any nation that can hold itself together for 4,000 years—or shall I say for more?—and that to-day constitutes nearly one-quarter of the population of the earth, certainly deserves our respect.Any people that can take our own handicrafts and beat us at them—and they will do it in a good many directions, and make money, even though you may disapprove of their way of living—deserve our respect.Any people that can furnish diplomates fitted to stand side by side with Bismarck and Gladstone, and our own embassadors say that they can, certainly deserve our respect.
One thing more they desire of the Christian church, if it were only a debt to be paid.I insist upon it, brethren, that at least Christian England and Christian America ought to pay back to them in missionary moneys at least an amount equal to that of which we have robbed them by the infamous opium traffic, and to-day it is people from Christian lands, more than anything else, who are furnishing the difficulties in the way of the introduction of the gospel abroad.
ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ALBERT SALISBURY.
There are values even in this world for which we have no expression, for which we have no definite standard, and of which we have no very clear comprehension.They are values, none the less.But there is one standard of value of which I think it may be safely said the American people have come into a very clear comprehension, that is, of the weight of the working power of a dollar.
Most of us know it by pretty thorough experience.We know what a dollar costs, how hard it is to get, how hard it is to keep, how little we are liable to receive for it when it goes.And, let me say it, I believe there are no people on this Western Continent who have any more exact, definite, clearly defined comprehension of what a dollar is, what it will do, and what it will not do, than the managers of our missionary enterprises.
Then, it is sometimes thought and sometimes said that these men who conduct church work and missionary work do not know much about dollars; that a dollar, a thousand dollars, or a million dollars, is a very indefinite thing; and that they ask for a million dollars, or half a million dollars, with a great deal of nonchalance, as if it were merely a matter of asking. It is not so. When this Finance Committee indorse the recommendation of the National Council that half a million of dollars be raised for the work of this Association during the coming year, they do it from a business point of view, and when the officers and managers of this Association second this demand, they know what it means. They know better than anybody else in the world knows how hard it is to get half a million of dollars. For some years I went up and down through the South and West in the service of this Association. I went in and out of the rooms at No. 56 Reade Street, New York, and I must have been very dull not to know pretty well the inside workings of this Association. I have been among workers on the field. I know how closely everything is reckoned, how carefully every penny is spent; and I know how the demands of the work and the needs press upon the workers in the field, so that they look back to those rooms in New York with the feeling that somehow there is not a very great deal of liberality there, that those officers pare very closely. But these workers in the field have no such experience after all as the officers there at the centre of things. Those members of the Executive Committee, those Secretaries and the Treasurer, sitting there together, and facing the demands of the old work and the new, have rolled upon them every day a sense of the value of money and of the need of economy such as even the workers in the field can not comprehend. I have been there, I am now outside, and I am free to say whatever I please; and I make bold to say to you here that the work which is alive and growing must have the most money. Increased demands must cost. It is a law of nature. Now, then, when this Finance Committee come forward to indorse this recommendation that $500,000 instead of $375,000 be raised for the coming year, they do not at all reach the measure of the need.
There is only one thing necessary to get this money and more.It is a pretty comprehensive thing.If upon the members of our churches in this land as clear a sense of the need of what ought to be done and can be done could be brought as comes to those in contact with the work, the money would be forthcoming.How to make our people realize the facts in this matter is the problem.Money will come when our people know how much it is needed, how profitably it is spent, and how grandly it pays dividends.
ADDRESS OF REV.WM.M.TAYLOR, D.D.
Last Wednesday evening at the Prayer and Conference Meeting of the Broadway Tabernacle, one of the office-bearers of the church put this question to me: "Can we hope to be instrumental in the conversion of the Jews, so long as the present prejudice against God's ancient people exists among us?"And that inquiry, taken in connection with the fact that the Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association was to be held here this week, led me to examine the Word of God, that I might discover what incidental light is thrown on the subject of pride of race by its histories and other contents, and I mean to-night to put the result of my examination before you.
The first and most striking instance of its manifestation which we come upon in Scripture is the treatment given by the Egyptians to the Israelites."Every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians," so they counted themselves superior to the Hebrews, and subjected them to the greatest indignities, grinding them under the harshest oppression, and exacting from them, by the lash of the task-master, the most arduous labor.But mark how their pride was rebuked and their cruelty punished, under the moral and retributive government of God.Their land was desolated by a series of plagues culminating in the death of the first-born, and the people whom they had oppressed made their escape from the most powerful empire then existing in the world, without themselves striking a single blow.The Lord fought for them.Each of these ten plagues was a Divine protest against that national pride which arrogated to itself the exclusive right to power, privilege, immunity and possession, and which met its merited punishment that day, when "the Lord saved Israel out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore."
But the mention of the Hebrews in this connection may seem to some to be most inappropriate. Were not they, it may be asked, virtually created into a separate and exclusive nation, and taught to look upon themselves as God's peculiar people? Did not they become proverbial for their pride of race, and for saying on every occasion, "We have Abraham to our father," and were they not especially the Pharisees among the nations?Now it must be confessed that all these questions must be answered in the affirmative, but when we widen our view and take into consideration the great purpose of God in the formation and conservation of the Hebrew commonwealth, we may see reason somewhat to modify our opinion.For the settlement of the Jews in Canaan and their restriction within its limits were not ends in themselves, but only means for the attainment of higher ends which were to affect the moral and spiritual condition of "all people that on earth do dwell."The promise made to Abraham was in this wise: "In thee and in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed;" and it was for the purpose of securing the fulfilment of the latter part of that promise that a special and peculiar hedge was planted around the vine which God had brought out of Egypt.It was not meant to be a permanent arrangement, but was designed merely for a temporary emergency, until, as Paul has said, "the Seed should come" to bless the world with his great salvation.It cannot, therefore, be quoted as furnishing a universal example, or as giving any divine approval to that pride of race of which we have been speaking.Moreover, even when the Hebrews were selected by God for this purpose, they were told over and over again that they were not chosen for anything in themselves, and that they had no reason to plume themselves on the fact that they were chosen.And when they degenerated into self-conceit on the ground of their having been so highly privileged, they were finally cast out of the land of promise.Nor is this all.In the system under which they were placed by Moses, they were taught to look with kindliness on those who came to sojourn among them, of whatever race they might be.They were not, indeed, to be a missionary people, or to seek to induce others to settle among them, but if others came to dwell beside them, hear how they were to treat them: "Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.""And if a stranger sojourn with thee in the land, ye shall not vex him.But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.I am the Lord your God.Love ye therefore the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."(Exodus xxii.21; Levit.xix.33; xxv.35; Deut.x.19).Lay these commands alongside of recent legislation among ourselves with reference to the Chinese, and then see what God must think of that blot upon our statute book in this age of our boasted enlightenment.
Take, again, the account of the singular retribution that came upon the people in the days of David because of Saul's treatment of the Gibeonites. These aborigines belonged to the ancient Canaanitish tribes, and were so astute as to impose even upon Joshua, and to obtain from him a treaty on false pretenses. Still an agreement was made with them on the terms that they should be permitted to live in the land, but that they should be "hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of the Lord." This contract was faithfully observed on both sides until the days of Saul, who sought to slay them "in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah."And what was the result?A famine lasting for three years, which was only removed at last by the giving up, according to the ancient practices of the Gibeonites, of seven of Saul's sons for execution.Now there is much in that old history that is difficult for us at this distance of time, and ignorant as we are of the customs that prevailed among these tribes, to understand.But no one of us can read it without being reminded of our treatment of the Indian tribes that linger among us still.Have we not broken almost every treaty that we ever made with them?Have we not said, unpityingly regarding them, that their destruction before the advance of civilization is inevitable?And have we not forgotten that the God of the Gibeonites lives to be the avenger of the Indians?If the hewers of wood and drawers of water were not beneath his notice long ago, think you he does not see and chronicle the wrongs of the Indians to-day, and shall not he render to every man according to his works?
Before passing from the Old Testament to the New, I merely mention the fact that among the ancestors of the Lord Jesus Christ we find two belonging to alien races, namely, Rahab of Jericho, and Ruth the Moabitess, whose very presence in that noble line is a prophecy of the glorious truth that the Son of David was to be also the Son of man, the Saviour of sinners of every name and nation, the kinsman of all races, the brother of humanity, and that as he represents them all in his priestly intercession yonder, so in each of them we may see a representative of him here and now upon the earth.
But now what may we learn from Christ himself in the New Testament? It is true that his personal ministry in the world was almost entirely confined to the Jews. It had to be so limited at first, if his gospel was to gather force for its triumphant march over the world at a later day; but even during his life in the world he came repeatedly in contact with men and women of races other than that of the Jews, and always in such a way as to show his sympathy with them and love toward them. I remind you of his long and earnest conversation with the woman of Samaria, at the well of Sychar, and of the fact that she was a descendant of that mixed nationality which sprung from the amalgam of those heathen colonists that were sent by the King of Assyria to take the places left vacant by the ten tribes whom he had carried away captive. I recall to your recollection, too, his eulogy on the Roman centurion, and his constant exposure of the contemptuousness of the Pharisees in their attitude not only toward the publicans and sinners of their own nation, but also toward Gentiles of every description. Think of his dealing with the Syrophœnician woman. She was a Canaanite of the old race, and, though at first he seemed to turn her away, yet ultimately he gave her all she asked and more: and even his apparently abrupt treatment of her in the beginning, if I read the history aright, was meant to be an exposure and condemnation of the feelings commonly cherished toward those of her nation by the Jews of his day.No doubt it tested and strengthened her own faith.But we must not forget that the whole conversation with her was meant to teach a lesson to his disciples also.It was part of their training for their future life work.It was a portion of their preparation for carrying his gospel to all nations.And so he spoke out their own thoughts about the women, holding up a mirror before them in which they might see themselves, when he said, "It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs;" and he ultimately showed them that she was better far than many who would have spurned her from their presence.So from the kindness showed to aliens by the Lord himself, we may learn not only to beware of this leaven of the Pharisees, but also to deal kindly and truly with men of every race, and make them sharers with us in the blessings of the gospel.
But thus far we have not come upon any case where the difference was one not only of race but of color. Even here, however, we are not without scriptural instances to guide us. You remember that of Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian. Jeremiah was, by the cruelty of his enemies, imprisoned in a dungeon or water tank, and was sunk in the mire at the bottom. Ebed-melech, learning his condition, went and informed King Zedekiah of the real state of the case, and obtained a command to take an escort of thirty men with him and deliver him from the dungeon lest he should die. So with great tenderness the Ethiopian threw down rags to put under the ropes which he let down, and by which he was to soften the pressures of the cords under his arms as they drew him up therewith from his filthy prison; and after they had thus delivered him there came to the prophet this message of God concerning him; "Go and speak to Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring my words upon this city for evil, and not for good; and they shall be accomplished in that day before thee. But I will deliver thee in that day, saith the Lord; and thou shalt not be given into the hand of the men of whom thou art afraid. For I will surely deliver thee, and thou shalt not fall by the sword, but thy life shall be for a prey unto thee; because thou hast put thy trust in me, saith the Lord." Here we have a kindness done by a colored man to Jeremiah, and a message sent from God to the colored man acknowledging and rewarding that kindness; but O! how many debts of that sort owed by men among ourselves to the colored people have been forgotten or repudiated! In the agony of the war, colored people fought in the ranks of the Northern armies; and I have heard those who have belonged to the Confederate side declare with tears in their eyes that the faithful watch kept by their colored servants over their wives and families while they were absent with the troops was beyond all praise. And yet in these days we read every now and then of colored people shot down like dogs on the slightest provocation, and prevented on the merest pretext from exercising the rights of citizens of this free Republic, and men look on and do nothing.But God may say something by and by, and when he speaks men's ears shall tingle!We have another illustration of God's treatment of a colored man in the case of the Ethiopian treasurer.He was returning from Jerusalem, where he had been at one of the great annual Jewish feasts, and as he was riding in his chariot he was reading aloud to himself the book of the prophet Isaiah, when the evangelist Philip, specially sent thither for the purpose by God's Spirit, addressed him, and on being asked to come into the carriage with him expounded to him the meaning of the passage which he was reading, and preached the gospel from it unto him with such good effect that he was forthwith baptized on the confession of his faith, and afterward went on his way rejoicing to found that Ethiopian church which claims to this day to be one of the most ancient Christian churches in the world.He was a man, for he was moved by the truth as you and I have been, and he became a Christian—"the highest style of man"—to show us that, as Peter said, "In every nation they that fear God and work righteousness are accepted of him."That which is highest in any man is his appreciation and acceptance of the gospel!of Christ, and wherever we see that appreciation we have not only a fellow man but a brother Christian, to be treated by us as Paul requested Philemon to treat Onesimus—as "a brother beloved."Nor let any one suppose that there is a single race upon the earth that can not be so transformed and gladdened as this Ethiopian was.Even Charles Darwin declared that after the Patagonians it could not be said that any race is too degraded for the gospel to elevate, and so he gave new emphasis, unwittingly, perhaps, but, if so, all the more strongly, to the words addressed to Peter on the housetop: "What God hath cleansed that call not thou common;" or those of Paul in one of his epistles: "For there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
This topic is at present greatly occupying the attention of the Christian churches in our land. It was before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in May last, and has been again discussed at the meeting of the Council of Congregational churches in Worcester three weeks ago, and in the Triennial Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, which has just closed its sessions in New York. I will not seek to criticise or to characterize the decisions at which these bodies have arrived, save to say that in my judgment the Presbyterian Assembly faced the difficulty more thoroughly, and disposed of it more courageously, than either of the others. But I will say that there is only one solution of a question of this sort. Every Christian, when he comes to think on it seriously, must feel that to be the case. No compromise will satisfy either party to it or will please God, and any settlement to be permanent must be in harmony with the inspired statement that "God hath made of one blood all the nations that dwell upon the face of the earth." But such a result can not be brought about either in the state or in the churches merely by legislation.You can not compel either by physical or moral constraint the different races to meet on terms of social equality.No doubt you can, and you ought to see to it, that men of all races stand precisely on the same platform before the law and have the same protection from the law.But to get rid of a prejudice you must take a different method.You can not uproot that all at once.The removal of that must be the result of education and of spiritual growth.But when I speak of education I must add that it is not the colored people alone that need to be educated here.The white people of all our cities, whether North or South, require education as well.They need to be taught that the Negro is a man, for at bottom that is not more than half believed by multitudes.They need to be taught that the Negro may become a Christian, and that there are possibilities of Christian missionary enterprise in his race that are absolutely incalculable.They need to be taught to look upon the different races of Indians, Chinese and Africans among us as dignified and ennobled by Christ's incarnation, and as purchased by his sacrificial blood equally with themselves.They need to look upon the Christianized among them as brethren in Christ, and then the rest will come of itself.
There has been great progress in these recent years toward the result of which I speak.The present agitation concerning the color-line, as it is called, is itself an indication of progress, and the day assuredly will dawn when men of all nationalities and names shall come from the East and from the West, from the North and from the South, and sit down with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob in the kingdom of our Father.But if we as a Nation cultivate the spirit of the Pharisees, and continue to despise those who are "guilty of a skin not colored like our own," we may be sure that he who visited the Hebrew nation for their treatment of the Gibeonites will send also some nemesis on us.
I can not but feel, beloved brethren, that in these meetings which to-night come to a close, something has been done to help forward that result which under the guidance of the Scriptures we all believe to be the right one.We have had a series of most delightful conferences.Now let us go back to our homes determined to take the seminal truths which have been presented to us here, and scatter them wherever we are called to labor.The seed may seem to be but a handful, and the soil may seem unpromising as the rocky mountain tops—but be sure the result will be a harvest that will shake like the cedars of Lebanon.And though it may seem a little incongruous to quote from the Scottish poet—would that everything he wrote were of as pure and lofty an inspiration—I will venture to conclude with his well-known lines:
As come it will for a' that,
That man to man the world over
Shall brithers be for a' that."
BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK
MISS D.E.EMERSON, SECRETARY.
The Annual Meeting of the Bureau of Woman's Work of the American Missionary Association, held on Thursday afternoon in the church during the session of the business meeting in the chapel, was one of unusual interest.Following the Report of the Secretary, there were interesting addresses by missionaries, and a very effective address by Mrs. Geo.M.Lane, of Detroit, Michigan, who presided.
The Report and some of the addresses will be published in separate leaflets, and may be had by application to Miss Emerson at 56 Reade St.
REPORT OF SECRETARY.
A look backward over the twelve months since our last annual gathering reveals much of interest and encouragement, that should fill our hearts with gratitude that our woman's work has had such an influence in bringing light and gladness to thousands of women and children, whose lives have been cast in the dark portions of our Christian land.So large an element of Woman's Work enters into the plan upon which the field of the American Missionary Association is operated, and it is so interwoven with the entire structure of its missions, that any report of it as separate and distinct can be only partial.And yet with the more systematic organization of woman's work in the raising of funds, we have been able to assign special woman's work on mission ground, with most satisfactory results, for to have a particular school or missionary has stimulated the givers, and has brought courage and comfort to the missionaries who have been thus sustained.
Our Woman's Work.What is it?Whom is it for?Who should do it?
What is it? It is to take to heathen mothers and sisters here in our own country the glorious news of salvation for them; to bring the light and truth of the Gospel to those who are groping in the fog of superstition and a wrong conception of Bible truth; to plant the Christian school; to establish the Christian home as an object lesson; to show mothers how to train their children to honor and obedience, to mingle with the needy and helpless, and by sympathy and tact secure such changes in the homes as will lead to their permanent improvement; in a word, to follow the example of our Lord Jesus, by living and teaching the blessings of intelligence and godliness among those in our home-land for whose improvement and well-being we are peculiarly responsible. The American Missionary Association has ninety-four schools, and in most of these more women than men are engaged. It is the duty of the missionary teacher to avail herself of every opportunity which her relation with her scholars affords, either in day or boarding school, to inculcate Christian truth, to warn against the evils which she finds common among the people, to teach by example and precept the living Word, as manifested in the life of Christ.The wonderful change wrought in those who are brought under the influence of such consecrated missionaries, testifies to the value of woman's work in missions.
But who are these for whom we are peculiarly responsible, and why is there so especial need of woman's work?
They are our eight millions of negroes, of whom probably not more than one-fourth may be said to have felt the corrective influence of the Gospel upon their lives. Perhaps only those who have come in contact with these people for the sole purpose of helping them to manhood and womanhood, can comprehend the tremendous incubus of bad habits, stunted growth, blunted susceptibilities, with which they struggle. It is painful to note the limitations of those even who have had the best advantages. Yet they are ever reaching upward, and the struggle is bringing out noble qualities of character, showing the possibilities of the race. We have had a goodly recompense for Christian labor among them, and does not this increase our responsibility for the three-fourths that are yet to be helped to a good understanding of themselves and their duty toward man and God? And no one will question that in the development of the best womanhood there rests the surest hope of the elevation of this wronged, and even now, greatly oppressed people.
But our woman's work finds also its mission among the needy whites of the South. It seems almost incredible that there should be found, within thirty-six hours' ride of our Northern towns, so dotted with schools and churches and Christian homes, a section of our country where there have been in hiding, in the ravines and on the mountain sides, two or more millions of our American people, in gross ignorance and superstition. But such is the case, and as always, the women are the greatest sufferers. Doubtless the Negroes have the largest claim upon us, because of their past history, their present wrongs, and their great numbers, which have become so startling as to make it imperative that we yield no jot of advantage gained, but rather increase our efforts every year for their intellectual and moral improvement. Yet the work for the mountain whites is just now especially urgent. A missionary of much experience expresses the view, that if we can bring the forces of Christian education to bear mightily upon these mountain people for the next ten years, they will themselves become a power as our allies in the great battles of the future against immorality and false doctrines. A few weeks since I met in North Carolina near the Great Smoky Mountains a mother and daughter, the latter about eighteen years old. A school for mountain girls had been opened there, and the daughter had attended the last year. On entering she could not read a word, but now was in the Fourth Reader, and studying arithmetic and geography. The rich, soft color that came to her cheeks, and the kindling light of her eyes, told of the brightness this school had brought into her life; this Christian school, for here too, she had learned the way of eternal life.Even the mother's eyes sparkled like stars as she looked with admiration upon her "learned" daughter.
But our door stands wide open also towards the Indians and Chinese, and all the arguments that appeal to us so strongly for the disenthrallment of women in heathen lands, appeal with equal, yea greater force for the heathen in our own land, whom the Gospel only can make free.
Such is our great and urgent call for work for woman in the field of the American Missionary Association.Who should do it, and how?Who but the Christian women of our churches, either directly or by substitutes?Some can go, of those who have prepared themselves for the highest and best quality of Christian service.They should be thoroughly trained and disciplined teachers, but not this alone.Every teacher should be a careful and intelligent Bible student, able to instruct from the word of God, practical and earnest, self-sacrificing and co-operative, ready to do what seems most necessary, even though it should not call into action her finest mental qualities.Let those who cannot go, send a substitute, but let none fail to seize the opportunity for a part in this blessed work, for the salvation of our country, and its protection as a Christian land.
There are now twenty-six State organizations for Woman's Work in our own country through our Congregational Churches, which co-operate in the work of the American Missionary Association.Some have increased their contributions during the past year; others have not fallen below the standard they had fixed for this field, but have not made any annual advance.With a very few, co-operation has not yet extended beyond a study of our work.But a study of the field is encouraging, for a knowledge of the need brings responsibility to do all possible to meet it, and soon we trust these also will be contributing Unions.To facilitate the study of our field, our monthly magazine has been sent free to many ladies' societies, our literature has been distributed, and more than sixteen thousand copies of missionary letters have been circulated among the ladies.Would not the value of organization be shown in the larger flow of funds annually for a work of such pressing necessity as this?We rejoice that some have already demonstrated this value of united effort.More than one State Missionary Union, recognizing the importance of this work and remembering that in drawing upon the benevolence of all the Congregational Ladies' Societies in the State, it should not do a small thing, has raised the support of four or more missionary teachers for an entire school.And the officers of the Union have taken pains to stir up the pure minds of the ladies in each auxiliary by way of remembrance of this particular field.
But there are those not in the State organizations, whose help we record, as Sunday-schools and Christian Endeavor Societies. Many such have during the year asked for a special object for their contributions. What can the Secretary do?The particular things that can be accomplished with forty or fifty or seventy dollars are indeed few, but these sums combined may sustain a missionary for a year.So each such contribution is made a share of the four hundred dollars necessary for the purpose, and something definite is accomplished.What is it?This.A faithful Christian woman is sent to the field, where, in a neat cottage, she makes her home life an object lesson to the colored people or the mountain whites or the Indians for many miles around.Their homes begin to improve.Her day school, held in the little church near by, attracts not only children, but young men and women, and even young married people.A Christian Endeavor Society is formed.The Sunday-school and church take a new start under her teachings.Other Sunday-schools and Christian societies are maintained through her influence, and so the small contributions accomplish a large work.
Private individuals also have aided us.What a blessed privilege to be able out of one's own income to put worthy missionaries into such a field.
There has been an increase in aid rendered in sewing, a form of help that is very valuable in keeping our boarding schools and mission homes furnished, our sewing schools provided with basted work, and clothing ready for worthy but needy students.As with money, so with sewing, we could use wisely very much more than has been received.
We acknowledge also the kindness of ladies in furnishing books and papers adapted to the need.The young people, especially among the Negroes, are acquiring a taste for reading, and with their emotional and excitable natures, they take readily to sensational literature, with its startling illustrations.A neighborhood or society collection of books and papers will usually contain some of such a stamp, and you maybe sure they will not always discriminate in favor of the most instructive reading.Therefore select for them as you would for your own sons and daughters, what is attractive and healthful, and withhold all else.
And now we are just starting upon a new year. Four hundred and seventy-six laborers have been called into the missionary ranks of the American Missionary Association. One hundred and ninety missions are in operation, with their widening influence and ever growing needs. Of our one hundred and forty-two churches there are fifty-seven which have not at present any Northern missionary associated with them. The difference in the development of these churches, as contrasted with those which have the influence and help of Northern teachers, is so marked, as to constitute a most urgent appeal for more missionaries—faithful women—to gather in the young people, interest and instruct them, to live among them, an example of economy and thrift in housekeeping, of neighborly kindness, of faithfulness in church obligations and of consistent Christian life. I do not hesitate to affirm that in the field of the American Missionary Association such provision is next in importance to the preached word. Neither can take the place of the other. Either is at a disadvantage without the other. And yet there are fifty-seven of these mission stations this year, now, without such beneficent woman's ministry, waiting only for additional funds, the new money necessary to provide reinforcements.
I appeal to you, Christian women, in your organized capacity as State Unions; and as individuals—stewards to whom perchance our Lord has entrusted a goodly inheritance—for help to the American Missionary Association in this almost overwhelming responsibility.Send us the missionaries for these needy fields.
I appeal to you in behalf especially of the wronged and helpless women and girls of these ten millions of our own countrymen, American born, whose only hope is in the sympathy and the help of the Christian people of our own land.We do not live in the day of small things, but of great needs and large opportunities.Surely now, if ever, is the time to "enlarge the place of thy tent and stretch forth the curtains of thy habitation.Spare not, lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes, that thou mayest spread abroad on the right hand and on the left, and possess the nations of our land."
WOMAN'S STATE ORGANIZATIONS.
CO-OPERATING WITH THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
| MAINE. |
| WOMAN'S AID TO A.M.A. |
| Chairman of Committee—Mrs. C.A.Woodbury, Woodfords, Me. |
VERMONT. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. A.B.Swift, 167 King St., Burlington. |
| Secretary—Mrs. E.C.Osgood, 14 First Ave., Montpelier. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. Wm.P.Fairbanks, St.Johnsbury. |
MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.[1] |
| President—Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer, Cambridge, Mass. |
| Secretary—Miss Nathalie Lord, 32 Congregational House, Boston. |
| Treasurer—Miss Ella A.Leland, 32 Congregational House, Boston. |
CONNECTICUT. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. Francis B.Cooley, Hartford. |
| Secretary—Mrs. S.M.Hotchkiss, 171 Capitol Ave., Hartford. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. W.W.Jacobs, 19 Spring St., Hartford. |
NEW YORK. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. Wm.Kincaid, 483 Greene Ave., Brooklyn. |
| Secretary—Mrs. Wm.Spalding, 6 Salmon Block, Syracuse. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. L.H.Cobb, 59 Bible House, New York City. |
OHIO. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. J.G.W.Cowles, 417 Sibley St., Cleveland. |
| Secretary—Mrs. Flora K.Regal, Oberlin. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. Phebe A.Crafts, 95 Monroe Ave., Columbus. |
INDIANA. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. C.B.Safford, Elkhart. |
| Secretary—Mrs. W.E.Mossman, Fort Wayne. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. C.Evans, Indianapolis. |
ILLINOIS. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. B.F.Leavitt, 409 Orchard St., Chicago. |
| Secretary—Mrs. C.H.Taintor, 151 Washington St., Chicago. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. C.E.Maltby, Champaign. |
IOWA. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. T.O.Douglass, Grinnell. |
| Secretary—Miss Ella E.Marsh, Box 232, Grinnell. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. M.J.Nichoson, 1513 Main St., Dubuque. |
MICHIGAN. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. George M.Lane, 47 Miami Ave., Detroit. |
| Secretary—Mrs. Leroy Warren, Lansing. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. E.F.Grabill, Greenville. |
WISCONSIN. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. H.A.Miner, Madison. |
| Secretary—Mrs. C.Matter, Brodhead. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. C.C.Keeler, Beloit. |
MINNESOTA. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY. |
| President—Mrs. E.S.Williams, Box 464, Minneapolis. |
| Secretary—Miss Gertude A.Keith, 1350 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. M.W.Skinner, Northfield. |
NORTH DAKOTA. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY. |
| President—Mrs. A.J.Pike, Dwight. |
| Secretary—Mrs. Silas Daggett, Harwood. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. J.M.Fisher, Fargo. |
SOUTH DAKOTA. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. A.H.Robbins, Bowdle. |
| Secretary—Mrs. T.M.Jeffris, Huron. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. S.E.Fifield, Lake Preston. |
NEBRASKA. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. T.H.Leavitt, 1216 H.St., Lincoln. |
| Secretary—Mrs. L.F.Berry, 724 No.Broad St, Fremont. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. D.E.Perry, Crete. |
MISSOURI. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. C.L.Goodell, 3006 Pine St., St.Louis. |
| Secretary—Mrs. E.P.Bronson, 3100 Chestnut St., St.Louis. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. A.E.Cook, 4145 Bell Ave., St.Louis. |
KANSAS. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY. |
| President—Mrs. F.J.Storrs, Topeka. |
| Secretary—Mrs. George L.Epps, Topeka. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. J.G.Dougherty, Ottawa. |
COLORADO AND WYOMING. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. J.W.Pickett, White Water, Colorado. |
| Secretary—Miss Mary L.Martin, 106 Platte Ave., Colorado Springs, Colorado. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. S.A.Sawyer.Boulder, Colorado. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. C.T.Goodell, 24th and Eddy Sts., Cheyenne, Wyoming. |
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. Elijah Cash, 927 Temple St., Los Angeles. |
| Secretary—Mrs. H.K.W.Bent, Box 426, Pasadena. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. H.W.Mills, So.Olive St., Los Angeles. |
CALIFORNIA. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY. |
| President—Mrs. H.L.Merritt, 686 34th St., Oakland. |
| Secretary—Miss Grace E.Barnard, 677 21st.St., Oakland. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. J.M.Havens, 3329 Harrison St., Oakland. |
LOUISIANA. |
| WOMAN'S MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. R.D.Hitchcock, New Orleans. |
| Secretary—Miss Jennie Fyfe, 490 Canal St., New Orleans. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. C.S.Shattuck, Hammond. |
MISSISSIPPI. |
| WOMAN'S MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. A.F.Whiting, Tougaloo. |
| Secretary—Miss Sarah J.Humphrey, Tougaloo. |
| Treasurer—Miss S.L.Emerson, Tougaloo. |
ALABAMA. |
| WOMAN'S MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. H.W.Andrews, Talladega. |
| Secretary—Miss S.S.Evans, 2612 Fifth Ave., Birmingham. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. G.Baker, Selma. |
FLORIDA. |
| WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Mrs. S.F.Gale, Jacksonville. |
| Secretary—Mrs. Nathan Barrows, Winter Park. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. L.C.Partridge, Longwood. |
TENNESSEE AND ARKANSAS. |
| WOMAN'S MISSIONARY UNION OF THE CENTRAL SOUTH ASSOCIATION. |
| President—Miss M.F.Wells, Athens, Tenn. |
| Secretary—Miss A.M.Cahill, Nashville, Tenn. |
| Treasurer—Mrs. G.S.Pope, Grand View, Tenn. |
NORTH CAROLINA. |
| WOMAN'S MISSIONARY UNION. |
| President—Miss E.Plimpton, Chapel Hill. |
| Secretary—Miss A.E.Farrington, Raleigh. |
| Treasurer—Miss Lovey Mayo, Raleigh. |
[1] For the purpose of exact information, we note that while the W. H. M. A. appears in this list as a State body for Mass. and R. I. , it has certain auxiliaries elsewhere.
We would suggest to all ladies connected with the auxiliaries of State Missionary Unions, that funds for the American Missionary Association be sent to us through the treasurers of the Union. Care, however, should be taken to designate the money as for the American Missionary Association, since undesignated funds will not reach us
RECEIPTS FOR OCTOBER, 1889.
THE DANIEL HAND FUND. | |
| For the Education of Colored People. | |
| FROM | |
| MR. DANIEL HAND, GUILFORD, CONN. | |
| Income from October, 1889, | $960.00 |
| ======= | |
CURRENT RECEIPTS.
MAINE, $165.76. | |
| Alfred.Cong.Ch. | 11.56 |
| Bangor. Corelli W. Simpson. Engravings for Hospital, Fort Yates, Dak. | |
| Ellsworth. Mrs. Phelps, for Teachers' Home, Lexington, Ky. | 1.00 |
| Fryeburg.Cong.Ch. | 10.54 |
| Greenville.Cong.Ch., 15.55, and Sab.Sch., 12 | 27.55 |
| Island Falls.Cong.Ch. | 10.00 |
| Litchfield Corners.Cong.Ch. | 12.00 |
| New Castle.Second Cong.Ch., to const.S.D.WYMAN and MRS. AURANUS MILLEE L.M's | 60.00 |
| Patten.Cong.Ch. | 15.00 |
| Portland. George C. Frye, Chemist, Medicines, val. 15.06, for Hospital, Fort Yates, Dak. | |
| South Bridgton.Cong.Ch.and Sab.Sch. | 17.11 |
| Wells."A Friend." | 1.00 |
NEW HAMPSHIRE, $274.05. | |
| Alstead.Cong.Ch. | 9.00 |
| Canaan.Mary A.George | 5.00 |
| Franklin.Cong.Ch.and Soc. | 20.00 |
| Great Falls.Ladies' Home Miss'y Soc. | 10.00 |
| Hanover.Dartmouth College Cong.Ch. | 67.20 |
| Mason.Cong.Ch. | 5.30 |
| Nashua.First Cong.Ch. | 20.00 |
| New Ipswich. Proceeds of Children's Fair (2 of which for Indian M.) | 10.80 |
| Pelham.Cong.Ch. | 35.00 |
| Pembroke.First Cong.Soc. | 18.25 |
| Peterboro.Union Evan.Ch. | 31.50 |
| Portsmouth. "In as much Circle" of King's Daughters of North Ch. , for furnishing room, Girl's Hall, Pleasant Hill, Tenn. | 30.00 |
| Raymond.Cong.Ch.and Soc. | 12.00 |
VERMONT, $217.20. | |
| Benson.Cong.Ch. | 16.80 |
| Bethel.Cong.Ch. | 2.56 |
| Brandon.Cong.Ch.and Soc. | 6.00 |
| Brattleboro.Center Cong.Ch. | 81.00 |
| Essex Junction.Cong.Ch.and Soc. | 16.00 |
| Guildhall.Cong.Ch. | 3.50 |
| Hubbardton.D.J.Flagg | 5.00 |
| Newport.Cong.Ch.and Soc. | 8.50 |
| Sharon.A Friend, 1; "X.", 1 | 2.00 |
| Sharon. Communion Service, for Jonesboro, Tenn. | |
| Springfield.F.V.A.Townsend, to const MRS. ISABELLA WATERMAN L.M. | 30.00 |
| Townsend.Mrs. H.Holbrook | 1.00 |
| West Brattleboro.Cong.Ch. | 14.84 |
| Westminster.Cong.Ch.and Soc. | 14.00 |
| Westminster. West. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch. , for McIntosh, Ga. | 16.00 |
RHODE ISLAND, $730.96. | |
| Little Compton.Mrs. Antrace Pierce | 5.00 |
| Newport.United Cong.Ch. | 30.00 |
| Providence. Central Cong. Ch. (25 of which for Girls' Hall, Pleasant Hill, Tenn.and 10. for Talladega C.) | 625.00 |
| Providence.North Cong.Ch. | 44.71 |
| Providence. Sab. Sch. of Beneficent Cong. Ch. , 25, Miss Burrows' Class, 1.25, for Pleasant Hill, Tenn. | 26.25 |