The receipts published this month bring us to the end of
one-third of our fiscal year. They are $17,712 less than
one-third of $350,000, the total amount recommended by the
National Council and the Annual Meeting. Our payments have been
in excess of receipts $9,130. Add this excess to the $5,000 debt
with which we began the year, and you have the condition of our
treasury. We have borrowed the money to meet the deficit. Our
missionaries are all paid, our work is being pushed and sustained
at every point. It is evident that there must be a large increase
in contributions from churches and individuals. The contributions
are voluntary. As a generous contributor to our treasury says
in a letter just received, “Resolutions of annual meetings are
not collectable taxes.” Our work is entirely dependent upon the
free-will offerings of our supporters. We appeal to them with
this understanding. We invite their thoughtful attention to all
the facts in the case. The next few months are the best in the
year to collect money. People are all at home and about their
business. Pastors are all in their pulpits. All the machinery
of church and Sunday-school activities are in operation. We
earnestly beseech pastors and church officers, and all friends,
not to let this harvest-time pass without making special effort
to put the finances of the A. M. A. on an assured foundation,
before the summer months with their vacations and interruptions
of church work come.
This little missive shows the way in which one pastor works the
cause of benevolence in his parish:
“Dear Friends:
The American Missionary Association is the Hand we have extended
toward the seven million of colored people in the South, toward
the two hundred and seventy-five thousand Indians in the West,
and to the one hundred thousand Chinese on the Pacific Slope, to
help lift them to Christian character and citizenship.
The accompanying leaflet shows us what the Association is doing,
while the envelope is to receive the annual offering which we are
to make the coming Sabbath, ——.
Shall we send a prayer with our gifts?
Faithfully yours.”
We have a supply of leaflets, collecting cards and envelopes
which we will furnish gratis on order to any who request them for
use in taking up contributions.
The Annual Report for 1885-’86 is now ready, and on application
will be mailed to any one who wishes it.
A precious revival of religion has been enjoyed in the Atlanta
University, of which a full report will be given next month.
SELECTED FROM NUMEROUS LETTERS RECENTLY RECEIVED.
“Our contributions, though not large, are larger than they would
be were it not for the copies of the magazine read by the people.”
“We are doing better for you than ever before, though not half
what we ought to. Hope you will get your $350,000 and $150,000
more added to it.”
“The magazine is of interest, and is enjoyed always. It is doing
a noble and appreciated work.”
“We are glad to be able to send this year the largest collection
the church has ever taken for the work of the Association. We
shall hope even to improve on this next time.”
“I will see that the matter of looking up subscribers for your
magazine is placed in proper hands. I am much interested in your
work.”
“The magazine does good. We love the Association, and do not fail
to give our little.”
“I will do what I can to increase interest in our work, and, if
possible, extend the circulation of your magazine.”
“The information furnished by the magazine is used freely in
our monthly meetings by those who receive it. We regard the A.
M. A. as one of the most useful and sacred of the benevolent
organizations to which we contribute.”
“I do wish that more of our people would take your magazine. I
shall recommend it to their notice.”
“The last number of The American Missionary is worth
its weight in gold. I wish it could be found in every one of our
families.”
“We are thoroughly interested in your work, and will give you a
better collection this year than we did last. I can say so much
with confidence.”
“That your magazine is a power in your behalf is evident from
a glance at our record, as our little country church averages
nearly $200 a year in support of your work. As long as I remain
pastor of the church, it will not be my fault if this good record
is not continued.”
“The copies of The Missionary which come here are all
used, and profitably so. Our parish is thoroughly interested in
your work, and we have one of our best reporters to represent
your field at our monthly concerts.”
To those who will help in extending the circulation of The
American Missionary, we will, on order, send sample copies.
The subscription price is 50 cents. Send orders to H. W. Hubbard,
Treasurer, 56 Reade street, New York city.
We do not desire to have the money that rightfully belongs to
other missionary boards find its way into our treasury; yet we do
rejoice that there are many noble men and women in the different
denominations who were among the constituents of the Association
in its early days, and who have remained its constituents down to
the present time. One of them attended our last annual meeting,
and enclosing $30 to make a Life Membership, which makes the
thirty-first Life Member that he has constituted, writes in
regard to that meeting as follows:
“The meeting at New Haven was the best I ever attended;
everything moved so easily, and there seemed to be such a
good spirit. But of all the papers read, there was none that
interested me so much as Rev. Dr. Strieby’s, from the fact that
it carried me back to those dark days when I, as an Abolitionist
and a Presbyterian, united with the Society. He brought all the
historical facts of those days out so clearly that I had to say
amen, and amen, and thank God that I had lived to see the great
change in our beloved America. I have never left a stone unturned
for the A. M. A., for I have always found it true to humanity and
working for the interest of the Master. Therefore I have stood
by it, and at the same time never have forsaken the Board of my
own church. I am sure that meeting brought me a little nearer to
Heaven, and I rejoice that I was spared to enjoy its blessings.
Push on until all men of all nations of the world are brought to
the knowledge of the truth as it is in our blessed Jesus.”
When we offer the prayer, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
in earth as it is in heaven,” it is simply a petition that the
kingdom of heaven become the kingdom of earth. The kingdom of
heaven, in so far as it is in the earth, is in the hearts of
men. When it shall be in the hearts of all men and call forth
their loyal service, the prayer will be answered. As Christians
we are bound not only to pray but to help answer our prayers.
Into what a field for self-culture membership in Christ’s church
introduces the believer! Large thoughts tend to make large
souls. It is not merely the local church or community in which
one happens to be, for whose interests he prays and plans and
works; it is the kingdom of God in the earth. The local church
may be small and limited in the opportunities that it offers for
soul-growth, but the kingdom of God has no limit. In its reach
it is wide as humanity. “Christ sees in every man, even in the
poorest and most miserable, a human being whose privilege it is
to become a member of the kingdom of God.” The vision of the
disciple should be like that of the Master. High and low, rich
and poor, ignorant and learned, are words that mark degrees and
conditions in human society, but in the Divine sight all are low
and poor and ignorant and lost who have not by the regenerating
power of the Holy Ghost, through faith in Jesus Christ, been born
into the kingdom of God. The Gospel is to be preached to every
creature. If we cannot go in person we can in purse and prayer.
Representatively we can preach in the ends of the earth, heal
the sick, feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Obligations to
the particular home field that the individual church to which we
belong cultivates, absolve us not from the obligations we owe
to the world-field into which the kingdom of God is coming by
the extension of the church universal. This large view of our
personal relation to Christ’s kingdom as a whole, this faith that
sees in every man a brother for whom Christ died, compel us to
an interest in missions. The triumphs of the gospel in the South
and at the West and in foreign lands, will be just as precious to
us as the triumphs of the gospel in our own community. We shall
desire to have a part in winning them, for wherever the scenes
are laid the triumphs are Christ’s, and therefore ours.
President Cleveland not only believes that the Indian can be
civilized, but that it is the duty of the Government to help.
He says the Indians “are a portion of our people, are under the
authority of our Government, and have a peculiar claim upon, and
are entitled to, the fostering care and protection of the Nation.
The Government cannot relieve itself of this responsibility
until they are so far trained and civilized as to be able wholly
to manage and care for themselves. The paths in which they should
walk must be clearly marked out for them, and they must be led
or guided until they are familiar with the way, and competent to
assume the duties and responsibilities of our citizenship.”
Let Congress make these sentiments the basis of Indian
legislation, and let all the servants of the Government who have
to do with the Indians work with these truths in view, and in a
very few years the wisdom and economy of the policy will appear
in such a light that all will be compelled to approve it. And yet
all this will fail unless the Gospel be brought to the Indians at
the same time. The particular value of this Government movement
in behalf of the Indian is, that it will not only prepare the way
for the coming of the Gospel, but will also protect the effects
of the Gospel from the evil influences of wicked men. Had the
hindrances which have shut out Christianity from the Indians been
removed, as they could and ought to have been by the Government,
the Gospel long ago would have solved the Indian problem, and the
Gospel must solve it now.
BY MRS. A. McDOUGALL.
From the day when we come to Him for rest, taking His yoke upon
us, we give assent to the oneness of God’s people in Christ,
and to the oneness of the work given them to do. We sing of the
sacred tie that binds our hearts into one, we preach about it, we
pray over it, in a theoretic way we believe it; but it seems as
if it requires something like the fountains of the great deep to
be broken up to make us practically realize all that the singing,
preaching, praying and believing involve. Our loyalty to the
Union slumbered and slept, as securely as the ten virgins, till
the trumpet blew all over the land. Who then felt his life too
dear to offer it for the Union? What lady’s hand was too delicate
to scrape lint, make bandages, or pack boxes of home comforts
for the boys at the front? How many timid hearts made themselves
brave to endure the sight of horrible suffering, that they
might minister and so help; but now we have grown careless and
secure, as if we had no part in the work which the war left for
us to do. In travelling through the southern part of this great
commonwealth, along the highways and byways, over long reaches of
dark country, the between places, outside and beyond the centres
where mission and educational work is being done, we see the
vast crowds of people “who have not come to their own;” people
who have a triple hunger consuming them, the hunger of poverty,
the hunger for knowledge and the hunger after righteousness.
We are compelled to see ignorance, helplessness and consequent
shiftlessness, contending hopelessly with the might and
meanness of greed. This great need in a professedly Christian
land—people perishing for lack of knowledge, where knowledge is
a birthright—causes our hearts to burn within us, and we say,
how long until the whole body of Christ feels this pain? Oh, if
they only knew! And we take the task willingly of telling of it.
Alas, they are so busy, the farm, the merchandise, the different
enterprises of ecclesiastical masonry and millinery, and we find
that the need is too far away for general sympathy.
I am reminded of an incident in the lumber country. One of the
workmen, an exceedingly tall man, cut his foot with an axe,
literally splitting his great toe. A sympathetic little one
inquired anxiously, “Will it be long till you feel it? It is so
far away from your head, you know,” she added apologetically. The
pain in the Southern limb of the body politic has not reached all
the members yet. If it had, the fair hands that erstwhile scraped
lint would do as much as the women of Brittany did for the ransom
of Bertrand Des Guesclin, spin one day’s spinning; the men, who
gave themselves, would give a crumb of their cake to preserve
the fought-for Union. On the Church of the living God this work
must fall, by the people of God it must be done, if it is done at
all. There are people who have given themselves, who are in the
forefront of this battle. We do not all recognize that we, who
hold the Head and are all members one of another, live under the
rule of the Beloved, our New Testament David. “The part of those
who go forth to battle and they who tarry by the stuff shall be
alike”—alike in the cost, the danger and the glory of triumph.
Then, when we restore that which we took not away, the blessing
that multiplies falls upon us until we have not room enough to
receive it.
We must have our eyes touched with His eye-salve to see clearly
the Christ in these helpless ones whose hands are stretched out
to touch our hearts. Human nature, even renewed human nature,
has some queer inconsistencies. The way in which we fulfill
Scripture by turning everyone to his own way is wonderful. One
of our own ways is how much readier we are to give charity than
to pay debt. One of the best men I ever knew paid the new hands
in his establishment less than they could hire their board for,
and subscribed liberally to a home where boys could get plain
board at half price. Now, God’s way is: “The worker is worthy of
his meat.” This dear, good man believed he was doing something
religious when he gave the part he kept back from wages in
charity. This is an instance of a widely-spreading delusion.
Give, and give liberally, for the conversion of the polished
Japanese, the philosophical Brahmin, the filially-trained
Chinese, the monotheistic Mohammedan, the heathen of distant
Africa and the isles of the sea. You are right. The marching
orders of the Grand Army are: “Go ye into all the world and
preach the Gospel to every creature.” “All” and “every” cover
every inch of ground. Go on and prosper and the Lord magnify thy
work.
But, stay, there is here a debt to be paid, restitution to be
made. “Leave there thy gift before the altar, go thy way, first
be reconciled to thy brother, then come and offer thy gift.”
Thy brother in black has a controversy with thee. And his
Advocate is thy Judge. Listen to the plea: “All the fields
cleared and tilled in this broad south land, we cleared and
tilled them. The roads that are made we made them, the bridges
built we built them. We have been like Joseph in Egypt, whatever
has been done here we have been the doers of it. We are American
citizens. We have bought our citizenship dear with the sweat of
our bodies and the blood of our backs. We have waded the red
sea to freedom. The hands that reaped your fields for nought
are held out to you for knowledge. We ask for our share of your
civilization and your Christianity.” Fellow Christians, the back
pay must be made up.
BY PRESIDENT H. S. DE FOREST, D.D.
It was once believed that a little learning was a dangerous
thing, but it is now held that much learning is perilous to the
negro. His risk is in over-education. Manual training is good for
him, of course. He has a natural talent for that which came down
from inheritance and has been worked in with both care and pains.
He also needs moral training, though this is not an ancient
heir-loom in his family. But for his mental development, the
fundamental branches, few and simple, are thought to be enough.
The higher range of study, even if he be capable of reaching it,
would only harm him and unfit him for his place. This opinion,
held by not a few, has been stated by Bishop Pierce as follows:
“The negroes are entitled to elementary education the same as
the whites from the hands of the State. It is the duty of the
church to improve the colored ministry, but by theological
training rather than by literary education. In my judgment,
higher education, so-called, would be a positive calamity to
the negroes. It would increase the friction between the races,
producing endless strifes, elevate negro aspirations far above
the station he was created to fill, and resolve the whole into
a political faction, full of strife, mischief and turbulence.
Negroes ought to be taught that the respect of the white race can
only be obtained by good character and conduct. My conviction
is that negroes have no right in juries, legislatures, or in
public office. Right involves character and qualification. The
appointment of any colored man to office by the Government is
an insult to the Southern people, and provokes conflict and
dissatisfaction, when if left as they ought to be, in their
natural sphere, there would be quiet and good order.”
The argument then is briefly this: The negro is a low order of
man, fit only for a low place, and therefore best trained by a
low order of studies. The error is two-fold, embracing both a
falsehood and a fallacy: a falsehood, for as far as inherent
nature is concerned, the negro is no lower than the rest of the
human race; and a fallacy, for if he were, or so far as he has
become so from the force of circumstances, the more urgent the
demand for superior training. The negro is a man, and, like any
other man, is profited by choice mental culture. Furthermore,
the disabilities of the past make his higher education specially
necessary, and as fast as possible the most promising of the
black race should attain the best and choicest culture. In bare
outline some of the reasons for this opinion may be thus stated:
(1.) The negro has ability for the highest range of studies,
and to debar him therefrom is to sin both against the man and
his Maker. Many, especially those who cannot spell his name
without putting in one “g” too many, doubt the intellectual
power of the negro. It is true that heredity holds with him as
with other men. A race scarce one and twenty years removed from
enforced ignorance does not climb the hill of science as nimbly
as those who inherit the brain, will and spiritual forces which
generations and centuries have accumulated. But twenty-one years,
and of wretched environment too, have sufficed to show that souls
clad in the blackest African setting are capable of the highest
thought and most difficult studies. The evidence on this point
is abundant and conclusive. To deny the negro this ability is
only to advertise one’s ignorance or prejudice. And since God
has written his truth both in his word and works, and also given
to the black man aptitude and thirst for the highest and most
hidden, it does not become a race longer out of darkness and
further removed from heathenism to say “thus far and no farther”
in the culture of immortality. The negro should receive the
higher education because God has made him capable of it, and he
is profited thereby as much as any other man.
(2.) The higher range of studies is necessary to supplant
self-conceit with self-reliance. Measuring themselves by
themselves, an ignorant people are always inflated by the merest
modicum of knowledge. Broad scholarship gives modesty, but the
sciolist everywhere is a braggart. None are so satisfied with
their acquisitions as the valedictorians of very poor schools.
Where gold is scarce, a little metal, and chiefly alloy, will
serve for many a big spangle, and the greater the darkness the
brighter it shines. The serene satisfaction with which the
African novice will misapply and mispronounce grandiloquent
speech can only be cured by the presence of some scholarly men
who have climbed far enough to see the heights and to know that
the low-land is a bog.
But wise self-reliance is as rare among an ignorant people as
conceit and folly are abundant. One part of the problem before
us is to develop manly courage. Slavery cut the hamstrings of
independence and sapped very manhood. As a rule the negro is
not certain of his rights nor is he heroic in maintaining them.
He has long been habituated to wrong, and the passive virtues
have become disproportionate. From the days of the Cyrenian
he has ever borne the cross, and naturally his back is bent
and his knees are weak. Probably there is no other man in this
country who can be wronged with such impunity and success as the
negro. He is outraged in business, in society and in politics.
He knows his wrong, but he does not know of his power to repel
it. He needs a manly self-reliance, and that he must have or he
will always be victimized. As Franklin said, “If we make sheep
of ourselves the wolves will have us.” It is true the virtue
needed is largely moral. Scholarship alone cannot give it, but
scholarship is a prime ingredient. The step of one walking
in darkness is of necessity halting and hesitant. The higher
education is essential to that higher courage without which right
and privilege are insecure.
(3.) The negro needs well-trained leaders and they must come from
his own people. Race prejudice is an uncomfortable fact, and
there are two sides to the color line. The Moses of the future
cannot, in general, be an Egyptian, whether teacher, preacher or
politician. But the future Moses will need all the learning of
Egypt. A task is before him. The Red Sea indeed has been passed
and God is going before. But the wilderness is simply terrible,
and many are falling by the way. Leaders must be trained, and to
do this is now our chief work. Every regiment certainly needs a
competent colonel, and among every one thousand men there surely
ought to be one well bred and well read, broad and thoughtful and
scholarly, trained to thought, enriched with varied knowledge,
and able either to cope with men or to grapple with difficulties.
By this meager percentage, seven thousand liberally trained men
are needed for the nearly seven million Africans in our country.
We conclude then, that while all should have the lower education,
a great many should receive the higher. Every man may need
silver, but the best commerce of the world requires that some
should also have gold, and a good deal of it.
We publish the following as evidence of the necessity for
Congregational Churches among the colored people. There are some
kinds of religion from which intelligent people wish to get
away. Of these kinds it can be truthfully said that a “special
religious interest” is not a blessing.—ED.
“The church here was organized in April, 1882. From the beginning
we have held worship in one room of the Knox school building,
which is owned by the A. M. A. This room is not large enough
to accommodate the people when there is anything like a good
interest, as we cannot seat, comfortably, more than one hundred
persons. We are, therefore, put to great inconvenience at times.
Again, there is not the air of sacredness in worshiping in a
school-house as there is in an out-and-out church edifice. At
least it is so among the people here.
“Great as these reasons are for a church building, yet there is
another still greater. It is this; we are holding our services
not farther away than thirty steps from a colored Baptist church
whose congregation is immense. Moreover, our meetings are held at
the same hour as theirs. Their great demonstrations and shoutings
are destructive to the solemnity and comfort of our quiet and
orderly congregations. When there is special religious interest
among that people—and it is almost a perpetual thing—the good
effect of our services is almost as good as none.
“Now, to carry out our building plan we need fifteen hundred or
two thousand dollars. We hope our Northern friends will give us
at least one thousand dollars of this amount. Please respond as
soon as possible, as we are very anxious to complete our church
by next April when our fifth anniversary will be held. We wish to
hold that service in the new edifice.
“The future good of the work here will depend very much upon our
ability to build within the year 1887.”
And the following is an evidence of the necessity for
Congregational ministers:
“Dear Sir: I hav been infome buy Some of you brothren.
As I wished to Change my Relation Ship with the Church to Some
other branch of Church. I. hav. come. to. the. conclusion to
Join. with. you. Church. as. a. Colord. Missionarie. in you
church with. my. peopl. I. Am. in. the. best of. Good. Standing.
in. the. Church. And if. you. Dought. this frase. you. can.
Rite to the Rit Rev Bishop in Regard. to. my. Standing in the.
Church, but Dont. Say to him what. I. say. to. you a bout. Joinen
you Church. if. you. please. not as. I. am tring. to Run. off
but. I Like to. no what. I Am Going. to. Do. first I hav been a
Elder in the Church for. 9 years and for five years I. hav. not.
Got. 3000. Dollars, for. my Laber. not as. I. Dezier riches of
this Earth. but. a Enought. to Live. with. in this. Life. I. Am
thinking to tak. up. a home Stide, on Goverment. Land. in Kansas.
or. in Alabama. or Some plase where Grate meny of our people is
but if. I. am Blesst. to Join. with you Church. I. will Do. as
you. Law Says. I. m. familey. wife. and one. neace. And. I Expect
my. neace will. not. be. with. us. Long please be So Kine. as. to
answer this Soon as. you. Get. it.”
The two sections began life together and formed a government.
The South had the advantage of soil, climate, and wealth. At the
end of eighty-four years the two grappled and fought. The Yankee
section came to the fight richer and stronger than our Southern
section, and beat us into the earth while we did our best.
To-day these Yankees are rich in everything, and we are poor in
everything but manhood and womanhood, and have less than we began
with one hundred years back. These same Yankees furnish the bulk
of the capital we use, the food we eat, the clothes we wear,
the books we read and study, and the high-grade teaching in the
normal schools of the Southern States. Almost every convenience
of life and invention of art and science we know, came from these
same people, who have in ten years done more for Florida than
the Florida natives have done in fifty. Almost any one of their
large communities could buy the whole South for a park if they
liked it for that purpose. In a fight they could crush us like
eggshells. In politics they are masters, and we have to hold
our breath in every big campaign to avoid offending them. Their
percentage of ignorance is one-tenth of ours. When trouble comes
on us we depend on them for most of the help, and get it. The
world knows them as America, and us as outlying and unconsidered
provinces.—Greenville, (S. C.) News.
George W. Monisty was a slave, and was sold from his
parents in 1853, being taken to Mississippi. He subsequently
served as a Union soldier all through the war, and finally
settled at Lafayette, Ind. While at the Wabash depot recently,
George fancied he recognized two colored women who were passing,
en route to Iowa. The recognition was mutual, and with tears,
cries of joy, and embraces, the mother, brother and sister came
together after a separation of thirty-three years.
Rev. W. W. Weir, pastor of the 2d Congregational Church
in Eureka, Kansas, died Nov. 21st, in his fifty-first year. He
had been sick some time with consumption, and his death was
not unexpected. He began his ministry in the African Methodist
Church, and was ordained as a Congregational minister in Eureka
in 1881. In an obituary in a local paper it is said of him:
“Considering the limited privileges which he had in his youth, he
was a man of superior qualifications, and each year has increased
the esteem in which he was held by the community.”
