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Title: The American Missionary — Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888
Author: Various
Language: English
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42, NO. 12, DECEMBER, 1888***
generously provided by Cornell University
THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY
DECEMBER, 1888
VOL. XLII. NO. 12
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL
THE ANNUAL MEETING
THE DANIEL HAND EDUCATIONAL FUND
FOR COLORED PEOPLE
THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE GIFT
SKETCH OF MR. HAND'S LIFE
THE DEED OF TRUST
SUGGESTIONS
PILGRIM'S LETTERS
PARAGRAPHS
ANNUAL MEETING.
PROCEEDINGS OF ANNUAL MEETING
SUMMARY OF TREASURER'S REPORT
REPORTS OF COMMITTEES
MEMORIAL SERVICE
THE AMERICAN FREEDMEN AS FACTORS
IN AFRICAN EVANGELIZATION, BY
SECRETARY STRIEBY
THE HOPEFULNESS OF INDIAN MISSIONS
AS SEEN IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY.
BY SECRETARY BEARD
BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK.
REPORT OF SECRETARY
RECEIPTS.
* * * * *
NEW YORK:
Published by the American Missionary Association.
Rooms, 56 Reade Street.
* * * * *
Price, 50 Cents a Year, in Advance.
Entered at the Post Office at New York, N.Y., as second-class matter.
* * * * *
American Missionary Association.
* * * * *
PRESIDENT, REV. WM. M. TAYLOR, D.D., LL.D., N.Y.
Vice-Presidents.
Rev. A.J.F. BEHRENDS, D.D., N.Y.
Rev. F.A. NOBLE, D.D., Ill.
Rev. ALEX. McKENZIE, D.D., Mass.
Rev. D.O. MEARS, D.D., Mass.
REV. HENRY HOPKINS, D.D., MO.
Corresponding Secretaries.
Rev. M.E. STRIEBY, D.D., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.
Rev. A.F. BEARD, D.D., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.
Recording Secretary. REV. M.E. STRIEBY, D.D.
Treasurer.
H.W. HUBBARD, Esq., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.
Auditors.
PETER McCARTEE.
CHAS. P. PEIRCE.
Executive Committee.
JOHN H. WASHBURN, Chairman.
ADDISON P. FOSTER, Secretary.
For Three Years.
J.E. RANKIN,
WM. H. WARD,
J.W. COOPER,
JOHN H. WASHBURN,
EDMUND L. CHAMPLIN.
For Two Years.
LYMAN ABBOTT,
CHARLES A. HULL,
J.R. DANFORTH,
CLINTON B. FISK,
ADDISON P. FOSTER.
For One Year.
S.B. HALLIDAY,
SAMUEL HOLMES,
SAMUEL S. MARPLES,
CHARLES L. MEAD,
ELBERT B. MONROE.
District Secretaries.
Rev. C.J. RYDER, 21 Cong'l House, Boston.
Rev. J.E. ROY, D.D., 151 Washington Street, Chicago.
Financial Secretary for Indian Missions.
Rev. CHAS. W. SHELTON.
Secretary of Woman's Bureau.
Miss D.E. EMERSON, 56 Reade St., N.Y.
* * * * *
COMMUNICATIONS
Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the
Corresponding Secretaries; letters for "THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY," to
the Editor, at the New York Office.
DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
In drafts, checks, registered letters, or post-office orders, may be
sent to H.W. Hubbard, Treasurer, 56 Reade Street, New York, or, when
more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, 21 Congregational
House, Boston, Mass, or 151 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. A payment
of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.
NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS.--The date on the "address label," indicates the
time to which the subscription is paid. Changes are made in date on label
to the 10th of each month. If payment of subscription be made afterward,
the change on the label will appear a month later. Please send early
notice of change in post-office address, giving the former address and
the new address, in order that our periodicals and occasional papers may
be correctly mailed.
FORM OF A BEQUEST
"I BEQUEATH to my executor (or executors) the sum of ---- dollars, in
trust, to pay the same in ---- days after my decease to the person who,
when the same is payable, shall act as Treasurer of the 'American
Missionary Association,' of New York City, to be applied, under the
direction of the Executive Committee of the Association, to its
charitable uses and purposes." The Will should be attested by three
witnesses.
* * * * *
THE
AMERICAN MISSIONARY.
* * * * *
VOL. XLII. DECEMBER, 1888. No. 12.
* * * * *
American Missionary Association.
* * * * *
OUR ANNUAL MEETING.
The Annual Meeting at Providence, R.I., will long be remembered in the
annals of this Association. Its general characteristics were
earnestness and enthusiasm. The interest did not flag from the
beginning to the end. We were glad to welcome our newly-elected
President, Rev. Wm. M. Taylor, D.D., who, by his dignity and facility
as a presiding officer, as well as by his able addresses, added largely
to the interest of the meeting. The sermon of Dr. Little was an uplift
at the outset; the Memorial Service for Dr. Powell was a loving tribute
to his memory; the papers read were of a high order, and dealt in a
practical way with living themes bearing on the work of the
Association; the reports on the several departments of that work were
discriminating, and showed a mastery of the subjects reviewed; and the
addresses of Drs. Mears, Behrends and Taylor, on the last evening were,
by their fervor, their broad range of thought and spiritual power, a
fitting close for the whole series of meetings.
But the marked and peculiar feature of the occasion was the
announcement of the munificent gift of Mr. Daniel Hand, of more than a
million of dollars, to aid the Association in its efforts for the
colored people of the South. This event, so inspiring in its immediate
effect, and so far-reaching and permanent in its beneficial results,
deserves full and special mention.
* * * * *
THE DANIEL HAND EDUCATIONAL FUND FOR COLORED PEOPLE.
The gift of more than a million of dollars by Mr. Hand for the
education of the colored people of the South, was a noble deed--alike
patriotic, philanthropic and Christian. The gift was wisely made. It
was after mature deliberation; it was during his lifetime, and thus
avoids the possibility of future litigation; it is bestowed upon a race
with whose wants Mr. Hand had become thoroughly familiar; it was given
to a Society that from the first, amid obloquy and danger, has been
true to the colored man; and it is made a permanent fund, the income
only to be used, thus securing its perpetual usefulness.
The conditions of the grant are simple, easily applicable, practical
and not liable to render the fund inoperative by any change of
circumstances. It aims simply to give to the colored people a training
that will fit them for every day life, or to become teachers of their
race. Hence it will be confined to primary, industrial and normal
education. We have no doubt that Mr. Hand values the missionary future
of the African in his native land; that he realizes the importance of
his religious training in this country, and that he appreciates the
need of the higher education of a portion of the race; but his gift,
large as it is, cannot cover everything, and he has, therefore, wisely
chosen the definite sphere in which his money shall accomplish its
work. Opportunity is thus given others equally liberal to provide for
other parts of the great work to be done for the negro race.
Mr. Hand may not live long enough to see for many years the practical
working of his far-reaching gift, but generation after generation of
the Negroes of the South will rise up to call him blessed.
* * * * *
THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE GIFT.
[Abridged from the _Providence Journal_.]
The Address of Secretary Strieby.
It is my privilege, and I esteem it a great honor, to be called upon to
announce one of the most surprising and gratifying facts, financially
considered at least, that has ever occurred in the history of this
Association. The American Missionary Association has this week received
the largest gift ever made in this country by a living donor to a
benevolent society. Daniel Hand, an aged resident of Guilford, Conn.,
formerly a merchant in the South, has given to the Association
$1,000,894.25, in interest-bearing securities, to be held in trust and
known as "THE DANIEL HAND EDUCATIONAL FUND FOR COLORED PEOPLE," the
income only to be used for the education of colored people in the
Southern States. Mr. Hand, having made his money in the South, and
having seen the ignorance and consequent disadvantages of the colored
people there, felt that he could not use it better than in providing
for their education, and has chosen to entrust to the American
Missionary Association, whose work is so largely devoted to the
elevation of that people, the care of this magnificent gift, and the
disbursement of its income in accordance with the provisions of the
trust.
* * * * *
This announcement was received with great enthusiasm, which was
prolonged for several minutes, and the most intense excitement
prevailed. An address was then given by John H. Washburn, Esq.,
Chairman of the Executive Committee, after which Rev. Dr. Mears made an
address, which was followed by the singing of the Doxology with great
fervor and emphasis.
* * * * *
Remarks by Mr. John H. Washburn.
Mr. President.--The last few years have been remarkable in gifts and
legacies. Some have endowed colleges and universities; some, as in this
case, have been for the benefit of a peculiar race, but no one in his
own lifetime has ever selected a benevolent association as beneficiary,
and endowed it with such a munificent gift as Daniel Hand has bestowed
upon the American Missionary Association. He was, it seems to me, wise
in choosing this course. Others have seen fit to put their funds in the
hands of trustees organized and incorporated to hold the trust. He
might have done that, but what would have been the gain over the
present plan? Those trustees must have availed themselves, as the
trustees of the Peabody Fund and the trustees of the Slater Fund are
compelled to do, of existing organizations for knowing the needs of the
people; where and how the money can be used to the best advantage. Mr.
Hand availed himself of an organization ready to his hand, one whose
agents are better qualified to judge of the needs of the people, the
plans to be pursued, the work to be done, than any other organization
in this country.
Now the first thought of the executive officers and committee in
receiving this magnificent gift is gratitude to God, who put it into
the heart of this man to entrust to us such great means of usefulness
for the people for which we labor. But there is a second thought; is
this gift to be a blessing to us or a curse? That depends upon our
constituents, the men and women personally, and on the churches, not on
the officers of the Association. How do you, the individual givers to
this Association, regard this gift? Every special gift to such
organizations as this, whether it be for special endowment or to
establish special schools, implies more money, an increase of
contribution. Gifts for new buildings, gifts for establishing new plant
are apt to be an embarrassment unless the individuals will respond with
increased donations. Now this fund which is given us, while the terms
are liberal, is limited in its scope,--it is strictly for the education
of the colored youth in the Southern States of America. Not one dollar
of this can be used for general work, not one dollar for the Indian, or
for our Mountain Work; strictly limited in its use, we need in
consequence even more money than before. We are endowed with this great
gift, but we may not be able to use it efficiently if there is a lack
of supplementary contributions, and for that reason we make a new and
strong appeal for them.
You pay your money where you have your interest. That man who, in
building a mission church in a rough, uncouth neighborhood, called on
the hoodlums in the vicinity to make a contribution of a brick apiece
for the new church, was a wise man. Every bootblack, every newsboy,
every garbage gatherer in it who put a brick in that church had an
interest in it. It was "Our Church," and at once the interest of the
neighborhood was secured for this mission church, as it could have been
done in no other way. So we ask you to withhold not your bricks; with
the bricks will come the interest, the heart, the prayers.
Remarks by Dr. Mears.
Rev. Dr. Mears, who occupied the chair temporarily, followed the
address of Mr. Washburn, voicing the gratitude of the Association. He
spoke of the feelings almost of depression after the great wants of the
work had been so evident from the various reports and addresses of the
meeting. The words of reply to the prophet in the famine stricken city
of Samaria had been often repeated as to the possibility of relief for
those despised; "Behold if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might
this thing be?" This munificent gift of a million dollars seems like a
gift dropped from the pierced hand into the lap of this Association. It
seems a seal of the divine favor upon this organization, whose sole
care is for those races that are poor and despised. The speaker
referred to the suggestion of Mr. Washburn, that the gift must be
either a blessing or a curse. It would be a curse if the benefactions
of the churches should be withheld because of Mr. Hand's munificence.
The divineness of the gift, however, precluded such a fear. There is
too much consecration in the hearts of God's children to keep back a
single offering for those for whom Christ died. The great promise of
the Master will prove itself true; "To him that hath shall be given."
Turning to the members of the Executive Committee, the suggestion was
made that the manner in which they should guard this great gift would
be a potent factor in urging greater gifts from the churches. In such
hands was left the burden of showing that only a blessing and not a
curse was possible. Be true to your great trust. His closing words were
in recognition of the blessings sure to rest upon the venerable giver
whose last days have been so near heaven as to catch the beams of holy
light.
* * * * *
SKETCH OF MR. HAND'S LIFE.
Daniel Hand was born in Madison, Conn., July 16, 1801, and was
therefore in the eighty-eighth year of his age when he made his gift
for the education of the colored people at the South. His ancestors
have resided in that town for several generations and were always
landholders, industrious, quiet and respectable. To this ancestry Mr.
Hand is probably indebted under God for his physical vigor, long life,
strength of character and success in business. He was the fourth son of
seven, and was on the farm under his father's direction until he was
sixteen years of age, when he was put in charge of his second brother,
Augustus F. Hand, who was then a merchant at Augusta, Ga., and whom he
succeeded in business. In 1854 Mr. Hand went to New York in connection
with his Southern business, and remained there in that capacity until
the beginning of the war in 1861. He resided in some portion of the
Southern Confederacy during the entire war, and was never treated with
violence in any way, and no Confederate officer ever offered him
indignity or even an unkind word.
Mr. G.W. Williams, a native Georgian, was, at about the age of sixteen,
employed by Mr. Hand as a clerk in Augusta, and in a few years was
taken in as partner. Mr. Williams suggested a branch of the business in
Charleston, and conducted it successfully. When the war came on Mr.
Hand's capital was largely employed in the Charleston business, which
Mr. Williams as a Southern man continued, having the use of Mr. Hand's
capital, which the Confederate Government vainly endeavored to
confiscate by legal proceedings against Mr. Hand, as a Northern man of
pronounced anti-slavery sentiments. After the war Mr. Hand came North
and left it to his old partner, Mr. Williams, to adjust the business
and make up the accounts, allowing him almost unlimited time for so
doing. When this was accomplished, Mr. Williams came North and paid
over to Mr. Hand his portion of the long-invested capital and its
accumulations, as an honest and honorable merchant and trusted partner
should do.
Many years ago Mr. Hand was bereaved of wife and children, and he has
since remained unmarried. This fact, together with his benevolent
impulses, led him to form plans to use his property for the benefit of
mankind. He thought at first of devoting a part of it to some Northern
colleges, but his attention being turned to the needed and successful
work done among the colored people of the South, his purpose was soon
formed to aid them. He said he knew them, and the disadvantages arising
out of their ignorance, their inability to keep accounts, to secure
their rights in making settlements, and consequently the hindrances
they encountered in their industries and in the acquisition of lands
and homes. As it was known that he had money and benevolent intentions
in regard to the use of it, many methods were suggested to him for that
purpose. Some of these he investigated with care, but he never saw
occasion to change the purpose which he formed more than ten years ago,
to make the colored people his beneficiaries through the American
Missionary Association, which he found was doing so large and
successful a work among the very people whom he wished to benefit, and
in methods in accordance with his own views. More than ten years ago he
had incorporated in his will a legacy of $100,000 for the Association.
It was suggested to him at that time that he should become his own
executor, but he felt that his securities were safe and productive, and
at last it became a cherished purpose with him to make the gift a
million of dollars as soon as he could do so with due regard to other
objects he had in view.
The consummation of this great purpose was finally closed by the
transfer (October 22nd) of the securities to the Association by the
Hon. Luzon B. Morris, who has been throughout his trusted and honored
legal and financial adviser. This gift enrolls Mr. Hand among the
honored names of wealthy men who have devoted their fortunes, not to
mere display or personal gratification, but to elevate and bless the
ignorant and needy.
Mr. Hand is a man of tall, commanding presence, and still at the age of
eighty-seven writes with a firm and bold hand, and expresses himself in
brief and vigorous language.
* * * * *
THE DEED OF TRUST.
The purposes and conditions of this great trust are as follows:
"The said Daniel Hand, desiring to establish a permanent fund, the
income of which shall be used for the purpose of educating needy and
indigent colored people of African descent, residing, or who may
hereafter reside in the recent slave States of the United States of
America, sometimes called the Southern States; meaning those States
wherein slavery was recognized by law in the year A.D. 1861, and in
consideration of the promises and undertakings of the said American
Missionary Association, hereinafter set forth, does hereby give,
transfer and deliver unto the said American Missionary Association the
following bonds and property in trust, viz.: (Here follows a list of
the property transferred, amounting at par value to $1,000,894.25. The
market value is more than that sum.) Said bonds and property to be
received and held by said American Missionary Association, _upon
trust_, and for the following purposes, viz.: To safely manage the said
trust fund, to change investments whenever said Association may deem it
necessary or advisable to reinvest the principal of said trust fund in
such securities, property and investments as said Association may deem
best, and to use the _income thereof only_ for the education of colored
people of African descent residing in the recent slave States of the
United States of America hereinbefore specified.
"Such income to be applied for the education of such colored people as
are needy and indigent and such as by their health, strength and vigor
of body and mind give indications of efficiency and usefulness in after
life.
"Said American Missionary Association and the proper officers thereof,
shall have the right, while acting in good faith, to select from time
to time such persons from the above described class as are to receive
aid from the income of said trust fund, hereby confiding to said
Association the selection of such persons as it shall deem most worthy
and deserving of such aid, but I would limit the sum of $100 as the
largest sum to be expended for any person in any one year from this
fund. I impose no restrictions upon said Association as to the manner
in which they shall use such income for the education of such colored
people, whether by establishing schools for that purpose, and
maintaining the same, or by furnishing individual aid; trusting to said
Association and the officers thereof the use of such means in the
execution of said trust as in their judgment will be most for the
advantage of that class of people.
"Said trust fund shall be set apart and at all times known as the
'Daniel Hand Educational Fund for Colored People.' And the said
Association shall keep separate accounts of the investment of this
fund, and of the income derived therefrom, and of the use to which such
income is applied, and shall publish monthly statements of the receipts
from said fund, specifying its source, object and intention."
* * * * *
SUGGESTIONS.
Something to Remember.
Our first thought is for the pastors and churches to whom these words
may come. It is this: Remember that the American Missionary Association
has not a million of dollars to expend in its work.
It has the yearly income of this great gift as a Trust Fund to be used,
not for the work which our churches have taken on, but to do a specific
work which would not otherwise be undertaken. The American Missionary
Association will carry out the wishes of this large giver in their
trust, and the Hand Fund will not be used to supplement the other work
committed to the Association.
Do not say then, that we have a million and need nothing. Our execution
of a trust to do additional work to the extent of $50,000 a year or
more, in no way changes our dependence upon the constituency of the
A.M.A. We have no balance whatever at the bank to supplement any lack
from the churches. The Hand Fund stands out distinctly committed to its
appropriate work. This it will do.
It will, however, make the work to which we are already committed more
imperative. We do not believe that the churches will in any degree
defeat the purposes of Mr. Hand by devoting less than before to their
own work, but that they will rather encourage larger gifts than ever,
by an emulation of a like spirit, to be used for the redemption of a
race. This is not a Trust Fund to relieve the churches. It is to make
their work greater and more effective.
The reports of the several committees at Providence all called for an
enlargement of our work. It was recommended that $375,000 be raised and
used in the fiscal year 1888-1889. This means something more than
$30,000 a month. The receipts for October were $16,416.07, being but a
little more than half of that which is needed. Our dependence must be
where it has been; first of all upon God, and then upon those who are
his stewards. We do not believe that God's stewards will be willing to
use this signal illustration of fidelity to stewardship as a reason why
they should do less rather than more in their working together with
him. The American Missionary Association begins its year with a debt of
$5,000 and needs $30,000 a month to carry on its regular work.
Large Gifts no Substitute for Small Ones.
A Pope of Rome in the midst of his great wealth once said, "I cannot
say as Peter did: 'Silver and gold have I none!'" To which the reply
was made: "Neither can you say, 'In the name of Jesus Christ, rise up
and walk.'" Peter and the Pope are types of two conditions of the
church of Christ. When it is dependent on Christ, it can bless the
bodies and souls of men; when it relies on its wealth, it can do
neither. A missionary society that should be so thoroughly endowed as
to feel itself to be independent of God and man for funds would soon be
thoroughly dead. Its power is in proportion to the faith it uplifts to
God, and to the constant sense of dependence with which it rests down
upon the sympathy and support of the churches. It can never flourish
except as it is refreshed by the little rills of benevolence that flow
from praying Christians; that treasury is poor, indeed, that does not
receive the widow's two mites. The American Missionary Association can
come with blessings to the neglected races of our land only as it lays
hold with one hand upon the arm of the Lord and with the other grasps
the hands of the pastors and members of the churches--as it enables
them to feel that it is their society doing God's work for them.
But does not the magnificent gift of Mr. Hand lift the Association
above such dependence on the churches? Is it not at least so well
provided for that the churches need not be so regular and liberal in
their contributions? We answer emphatically that if this should be the
result of that gift, we should esteem it no blessing; and in this we
are sure Mr. Hand himself would unite with us. We are told that he was
accustomed to read the "Receipts" acknowledged in the AMERICAN
MISSIONARY, and was greatly delighted that so many small donations were
reported. He said that one thing that confirmed him in the choice of
the Association as the almoner of his bounty was the hold it seemed to
have upon the mass of intelligent and praying members of the New
England churches, No! the gift of Mr. Hand, generous and large as it
is, provides for only a part of our great work. It does not touch the
Church, Mountain, Indian, Chinese or Higher Educational Departments. It
is wisely appropriated; it goes directly and practically to a point
where help is much needed. But it is limited to that and does not cover
even all of that. Let the churches do neither themselves, the
Association nor Mr. Hand the great wrong of withholding because he
gives; rather let them take this gift as God and the generous donor
meant it to be--a help in lifting the heavy load, to be responded to by
heartier co-operation and larger contributions.
A Helping Hand Extended to the South.
How strange are the links that sometimes bind events together, and how
obvious are often the compensations that Providence renders to faithful
work.
In 1846 a society was formed in the North distinguished mainly by its
sympathy for the slave. But slavery then ruled the North as well as the
South, and this society was made to feel the rod of its power. Some of
its founders learned that rewards had been offered for their abduction;
others suffered from the violence of mobs; and its missionaries in the
South were imprisoned or banished. When the slaves were freed, the
society went swiftly and energetically to their help, and has sent to
them thousands of consecrated teachers and has spent millions of money
for their relief. Its work is now so manifestly beneficial that it is
welcomed by both the blacks and the whites in the South.
At the date of the founding of this society, a Northern man in the
prime of life was carrying on a prosperous mercantile business in a
Southern city. He had already been in that city nearly thirty years and
was honored and trusted. When the war came his property was
jeopardized, but was afterwards returned to him in full. And now comes
the Providential compensation. That wealth earned in the South, lost
and then restored, is given back to the South to educate and assist the
emancipated slaves. The giver, now in the 88th year of his age, finds
it the joy and crown of his life to be thus not only a benefactor to
the poor blacks, but to furnish a marked illustration of the fraternal
feeling which the North cherishes towards the South. And may we not add
that Providence in guiding this noble man to select this once
persecuted society as the almoner of his bounty, is giving it a token
of the Divine approbation for its faithfulness to the oppressed slave.
A Message to the Colored People.
It is due to Mr. Hand to say that he is much more interested in the
good that shall be done to the colored people by his gift, than he is
in any public notices of himself. His letters to us discourage such
notices, but he writes most warmly urging us to press upon the colored
people the all-controlling thought, that they must be the chief and
most efficient agents in the great work of their own advancement in
industry, temperance and civilization; that they should not become
office seekers, and should abandon at once and forever, the expectation
of aid for them as colored people, and that above all, that which is
most vital to them for this world and the next, is love to God and man,
and that the Bible is the best source of light and the foundation of
their surest hopes.
These are wise counsels and we shall endeavor to press them upon all,
and especially upon those whom we shall aid out of this fund. We
believe that Mr. Hand would deplore it as the greatest calamity that
could befall his gift, if it should in any way pauperize the colored
people or take from them their sense of the need--the essential need of
self-reliance and self-help--if it should tempt them to an idle life,
to seeking after office or to become beggars for help from Government
or from any other source. This gift, in the intention of the donor, and
in that of the Association that is to administer it, is that it may be
a stimulus and encouragement to personal energy and enterprise.
* * * * *
PILGRIM'S LETTERS.
Bits of History.
Rev. Joseph E. Roy, D.D., author of the neatly printed volume bearing
this title, is a man of quick and accurate observation. In the days
when "Missionary Campaigns" were in vogue, and the representatives of
the several Congregational Societies held missionary meetings from town
to town, Dr. Roy, in an hour or two after our arrival at a place, would
contrive to pick up so many facts about the history of the town, its
distinguished men of the past, its ancient church edifices, etc., etc.,
as to surprise and perhaps enlighten the pastor and some of the people,
as he skillfully introduced these facts into the opening of his
address. Dr. Roy had an equal facility in writing down his observations
in graphic and vigorous English. What some other men would labor in
penning with frequent hesitation and erasures, he would dash off
_currente calamo_. It has fallen to the lot of Dr. Roy to have had
another advantage. He has been a pastor for several years, and
subsequently a Secretary alternately of the A.M.A. and the A.H.M.S. for
nearly thirty years. His duties have called him into all parts of the
United States, and especially into the West and South. In all his
journeys he has jotted down his rapid and yet careful observations, and
the Letters of Pilgrim in the _Congregationalist_, the _Independent_
and the _Advance_, have become as familiar as household words in the
pastor's study, and the homes of Congregationalists throughout the
land. The thoughtful care and deft fingers of Pilgrim's wife have
clipped out these letters and pasted them into suitable blank books
until they became almost a library. The topics covered by these letters
are as varied as the place in which they were written. They begin as
far back as 1857, and describe events in the Border war of Kansas, the
great Rebellion, the steps of Reconstruction as well as the more
peaceful but no less interesting proceedings of National Councils,
great Missionary Anniversaries and the quiet, yet lifelike scenes
gathered from pastors' lives, and the homes of the people settling in
the far West, or of the negroes in their new life as Freedmen.
This volume contains the gems gathered out of this great casket. The
reader must not expect to find in it consecutive history or full
details on every topic, but he will be surprised, we think, at finding
so much and such accurate information on so many interesting items in
regard to the events that have transpired in the Nation, and especially
in the Congregational Churches, during the last thirty years. It is, as
the second title indicates, bits of history.
Dr. Roy was very much beloved in the South, by preachers, teachers, and
the people. No Superintendent or other worker of the A.M.A., from the
North, ever had so many negro children named for him. Indeed we are
told that one family were so ardent in their attachment that they had
their boy christened with the names and titles in full--_Reverend
Joseph E. Roy, D.D._
By the generous gifts of a few gentlemen who appreciate Dr. Roy's
life-long work we are enabled to send 100 copies of the volume to some
of these friends, who would greatly value the book, but are not able to
pay for it.
* * * * *
The executive committee of the American Missionary Association has
unanimously appointed Prof. Edward S. Hall a Field Superintendent, to
examine and report upon the work of our schools and churches in our
Southern field. Prof. Hall is a graduate of Amherst College, has had
several years' experience as a principal of High Schools, and of late
years has been a successful Superintendent of Schools in one of the
cities of Connecticut. He brings to this work a large and immediate
acquaintance with educational methods, and a personal practical
experience.
We commend him to our missionary workers in the field as a Christian
brother, prepared in sympathy and in experience to assist them in the
various phases of their work.
* * * * *
We have received 350 copies of a volume, very neatly printed and bound,
entitled, "The 'Come' and 'Go' Family Text Book, containing 'Come' and
'Go' Texts for every day in the year." And accompanying the generous
gift is this note: "A friend of the colored race takes pleasure in
furnishing these books for the workers and advanced pupils in the
schools under the care of the American Missionary Association." We
thank the donor in behalf of those who will gladly welcome and
diligently use the gift.
* * * * *
Back numbers of the "American Missionary."--During the last ten years
we have had frequent applications from public libraries and from
colleges for back numbers of our Magazine to make up complete sets. Our
supply has been exhausted and we have been obliged to decline. An
appeal now comes from the Professor of Church History in Oberlin
Theological Seminary, in these words: "As the Association is closely
connected with the history of Oberlin, I wish to put my classes in
American Church History on the history of the Association." The Oberlin
library contains nothing complete till 1880.
Can any of our subscribers supply the want to a college so long and so
closely identified with the early struggles of the Association? If so,
please address Prof. F.H. Foster, Oberlin, Ohio.
* * * * *
FORTY-SECOND ANNUAL MEETING
OF THE
AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
* * * * *
The Forty-second Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association
convened in the Union Congregational Church, Providence, R.I., on
Tuesday, October 23d, 1888, at 3 P.M.
In the absence of the President, the Association was called to order by
the Senior Secretary, who invited E.B. Monroe, Esq., of New York, to
take the chair until the arrival of the President, Rev. William M.
Taylor, D.D., of New York.
Rev. M. McG. Dana, D.D., of Massachusetts, read the Scriptures and led
in prayers.
Rev. Henry A. Hazen, of Massachusetts, was elected Secretary and Rev.
James H. Ross, of Massachusetts, Assistant Secretary.
Secretary Beard read the portion of the Constitution relating to life
membership and delegates, and the roll of the Association and Visitors
was prepared, as follows:
ROLL.
State Associations.
Rev. C.B. Curtis, Ala.; Rev. Horace C. Hovey, Conn.; Rev. B.A. Imes,
Tenn.; Rev. S.M. Newman, D.C.
Local Conferences.
Rev. A.K. Gleason, Mass.; William P. Hubbard, Me.; Rev. D.E. Jones,
Conn.; Rev. H.G. Marshall, Conn.; Rev. B.G. Northrop, Conn.; Miss L.L.
Phelps, Me.; Rev. M.C. Stebbins, Vt.; Rev. Lewis Williams, N.Y.; Mrs.
Lewis Williams, N.Y.
Delegates from the Churches.
Rev. F.D. Austin, N.H.; Dea. Edward Autz, R.I.; Horatio Bailey, Mass.;
Rev. John Barstow, Mass.; Edward D. Beach, Conn.; Rev. Wm. H. Beard,
Conn.; Dea. George T. Beach, Conn.; Rev. Quincy Blakely, N.H.; N.C.
Boutelle, Mass.; Mrs. Juliet H. Brand, O.; Rev. H.S. Brown, Conn.; Rev.
Wm. T. Briggs, Mass.; M.A.H. Brigham, R.I.; Rev. F.L. Bristol, Mass.;
Frank E. Bundy, Mass.; Mrs. J.I.W. Burgess, Mass.; Rev. Wolcott
Calkins, Mass.; A.A. Carr, Mass.; Mrs. Robert Chapman, Conn.; Mrs. Mary
W. Claflin, Ill.; Rev. and Mrs. S.W. Clarke, Mass.; Rev. Bernard
Copping, Mass.; Leyrand S. Carpenter, Conn.; Rev. Zenas Crowell, Mass.;
Mr. and Mrs. Joshua W. Davis, Mass.; Dea. Levi S. Deming, Conn.; Rev.
John W. Dodge, Mass.; Rev. R.C. Drisko, Vt.; Rev. and Mrs. A.J. Dyer,
Mass.; Rev. Edward O. Dyer, Mass.; Rev. John Elderkin, Conn.; Miss Mary
E.P. Elderkin, Conn.; Mr. and Mrs. J.D. Eldredge, Mass.; Rev. F.F.
Emerson, R.I.; Rev. Thomas A. Emerson, Conn.; Rev. F.L. Ferguson,
Conn.; Rev. R.H. Gidman, Conn.; Mrs. N.M. Goodale, Mass.; Mrs. L.M.
Gurney, Mass.; Arthur H. Hale, N.H.; Mr. and Mrs. J.S. Hall, Conn.;
Mrs. S.I. Hall, Mass.; Rev. Henry E. Hart, Conn.; Rev. J.P. Harvey,
Mass.; Rev. Wm. H. Haskell, Me.; Rev. and Mrs. R.W. Haskins, Mass.;
Rev. Henry A. Hazen, Mass.; Miss Helen E. Haynes, Mass.; C.F. Haywood,
Mass.; Rev. James L. Hill, Mass.; Dea. Farrington Holbrook, Mass.;
Silas R. Holmes, Conn.; Rev. and Mrs. Palmer S. Hulbert, Mass.; Joseph
W. Hungerford, Conn.; Charles Jewett, Tenn.; Miss Mary K. Keith, Mass.;
L.B. Kendall, R.I.; Rev. G.N. Killogg, Conn.; Rev. H.L. Kelsey, Conn.;
Rev. George S. Kemp, Mass.; James O. Kendall, Mass.; Dea. A. Kingsbury,
Conn.; Edmund F. Leland, Mass.; Rev. J.R. McLean, Texas; Russel
Manchester, R.I.; Dea. George T. Meech, Conn.; Rev. and Mrs. George A.
Miller, Conn.; L.A. Morgan, Conn.; James A. Morse, N.H.; Rev. Chas. S.
Murkland, N.H.; Dea. and Mrs. B.A. Nourse, Mass.; Rev. Bernard Paine,
Conn.; Mrs. C.M. Palmer, Mass.; Rev. C.W. Park, Conn.; Rev. H.J.
Patrick, Mass.;. Mrs. Abner C. Paul, Mass.; Dea. Charles Peck, Conn.;
Mrs. Kathleen M. Phipps, Mass.; Rev. Charles M. Pierce, Mass.; George
W. Pike, Conn.; Herbert W. Pillsbury, Mass.; Rev. E.S. Potter, Mass.;
Samuel Prentice and wife, Conn.; Rev. and Mrs. A.J. Quick, Conn.; Rev.
George W. Reynolds, Me.; George E. Richards, Mass.; Elisha F.
Richardson, Mass.; Rev. C.B Riggs, Tenn.; Mrs. George H. Rugg, Mass.;
Rev. Moses T. Runnels, N.H.; Lawson A. Seagrave, Mass.; Rev. John
Scott, Conn.; J.H. Shedd, Mass.; George W. Shelton, Conn.; Rev. Thomas
Simms, Conn.; Dea. P. Skinner, Jr., R.I.; Rev. J.D. Smiley, R.I.; Miss
Augusta Smith, Mass.; Arthur M. Stone, Mass.; Rev. Chas. B. Strong,
Conn.; Rev. George W. Stearns, Mass.; Alexander Storer, Mass.; J.W.
Stickney, Mass.; Mrs. E.M. Strong, Conn.; Mrs. Wm. H. Swett, Mass.;
Caleb T. Symmes, Mass.; Rev. Wm. M. Thayer, Mass.; Miss M. Estelle
Vance, Mass.; Rev. M. Van Horne, R.I.; Rev. R.W. Wallace, Mass.; Mr.
and Mrs. Henry S. Walter, Conn.; Dea. Francis J. Ward, Mass.; Mrs.
Francis J. Ward, Mass.; Dr. Lucien C. Warner, N. Y.; Rev. James Wells,
Mass.; Rev. C.A. White, Mass.; Rev. John E. Wildey, R.I.; Rev. Preston
B. Wing, Mass.; Chas. P. Wood, Mass.; Dea. Franklin Wood, N.Y.; Mr. and
Mrs. Clinton A. Woodbury, Me.; Rev. W. Woodbury, Mass.; Rev. J.J.
Woolley, R.I.; Rev. Wm. H. Woodwell, Mass.
Life Members.
H.N. Ackerman, Mass.; Rev. F.H. Adams, R.I.; Rev. W.S. Alexander,
Mass.; J.H. Bailey, Conn.; Rev. F.W. Baldwin, Mass.; Rev. John W.
Ballantine, Mass.; Rev. Luther H. Barber, Conn.; Dea. H.W. Barrows,
Mass.; A.C. Barstow, R.I.; Miss Mattie R. Barstow, Conn.; Rev. A.F.
Beard, KY.; Rev. Edwin S. Beard, Conn.; Mrs. E.H. Beckwith, N.J.; Miss
L. Beckwith, Conn.; David Birge, Conn.; Rev. J.T. Blades, Mass.; George
Booth, R.I.; Rev. James Brand, O.; Chas. N. Brown, N.Y.; Mrs. Chas. N.
Brown, N.Y.; Dea. T.F. Buckingham, Conn.; Mrs. Delia E. Bucklin, Mass.;
Mr. J.I.W. Burgess, Mass.; Miss Anna M. Cahill, Tenn.; Dea. Samuel B.,
Capen, Mass.; Rev. DeWitt S. Clark, Mass.; Walter C. Clark, Conn.; John
H. Cleveland, Conn.; Rev. J.W. Cooper, Conn.; Robert Cushman, R.I.;
Rev. M.M.G. Dana, Mass.; George P. Davis, Mass.; Rev. and Mrs. E.
Dawes, Mass.; Rev. P.B. Davis, Mass.; Mr. and Mrs. R.L. Day, Mass.;
Rev. Oliver S. Dean, Mass.; Rev. Morton Dexter, Mass.; Rev. Samuel W.
Dike, Mass.; John B. Doolittle, Neb.; Charles Duncan, Mass.; Rev. W.R.
Eastman, Mass.; Miss D.E. Emerson, N.Y.; Rev. John L. Ewell, Mass.; Mr.
and Mrs. Franklin Fairbanks, Vt.; Rev. S.H. Fellows, Conn.; Rev. L.Z.
Ferris, R.I.; Milton M. Fisher, Mass.; Miss M.M. Fitch, Mass.; Rev.
Edward T. Fleming, Ga.; Rev. Addison P. Foster, Mass.; Mrs. Jacob
Fullarton, Mass.; Mrs. E.A.H. Grosvenor, Mass.; Rev. Alexander Hall,
Conn.; Mrs. Mortimer Hall, Mass.; Rev. George E. Hall, N.H.; Rev. C.H.
Hamlin, Mass.; Samuel R. Heywood, Mass.; Miss Lucy J. Harrison, Conn.;
Rev. W.D. Hart, R.I.; Rev. Allen Hazen, Mass.; Miss Alma J. Herbert,
N.H.; Rev. John W. Hird, Mass.; Elisha Holbrook, Mass.; Mrs. Farrington
Holbrook, Mass.; Dea. Henry T. Holt, N.Y.; Rev. Rowland B. Howard,
Mass.; H.W. Hubbard, N.Y.; Rev. and Mrs. W.T. Hutchins, Conn.; Rev.
A.H. Johnson, Mass.; Rev. H.E. Johnson, R.I.; Mrs. Loring Johnson,
Mass.; Rev. Samuel Johnson, N.Y,; Rev. R.R. Kendall, Mass.; Rev. Arthur
Little, Ill.; Rev. G.E. Lovejoy, Mass.; Rev. J.H. Lyon, R.I.; Rev. P.W.
Lyman, Mass.; Rev. A.P. Marion, Mass.; Roland Mather, Conn.; Chas. L.
Mead, N.Y.; Rev. D.O. Mears, Mass.; Rev. and Mrs. C.E. Milliken, N.H.;
Rev. Eldridge Mix, Mass.; Elbert B. Monroe, Conn.; Rev. George W.
Moore, D.C.; Mrs. Woodbridge Odlin, Mass.; Rev. Henry A. Osgood, Mass.;
Rev. Wm. S. Palmer, Conn.; Rev. Leonard S. Parker, Mass.; Mrs. H.P.
Parsons, Conn.; Rev. Charles H. Peck, Conn.; Rev. A.B. Peffers, Mass.;
George F. Platt, Conn.; Mrs. Willard Pettee, Mass.; Rev. and Mrs. S.W.
Powell, Mass.; Dea. Augustus Pratt, Mass.; Rev. Lewellyn Pratt, Conn.;
Samuel A. Pratt, Mass.; Rev. George H. Reed, Mass.; Rev. A.M. Rice,
Mass.; Mrs. E.B. Rice, Mass.; A.H. Richardson, Mass.; Mr. and Mrs. C.A.
Richardson, Mass.; Rev. N. Richardson, R.I.; Mrs. M.E. Richardson,
Mass.; Rev. James Richmond, Mass.; Mrs. R.B. Risk, Mass.; Rev. Edward
P. Root, Conn.; Rev. Jos. E. Roy, Ill.; Dea. E.A. Russell, Conn.; Rev.
C.J. Ryder, Mass.; Rev. G.S.F. Savage, Ill.; Rev. George H. Scott,
Mass.; Rev. Charles W. Shelton, Conn.; F.C. Sherman, Conn.; Rev. J.E.
Smith, Tenn.; L.B. Smith, R.I.; Rev. C.M. Southgate, Mass.; Rev.
Wayland Spaulding, N.Y.; Albert Spooner, Mass.; S.A. Spooner, Mass.;
Miss Mary N. Shaw, Mass.; Mrs. A.S. Steele, Tenn.; Rev. Geo. E. Street,
N.H.; Rev. M.E. Strieby, N.Y.; Rev. J.M. Sturtevant, O.; Rev. and Mrs.
R.M. Taft, Mass.; Dea. and Mrs. Edwin Talcott, Conn.; E.O. Taylor,
Mass.; Rev. Geo. A. Tewksbury, Mass.; J.C. Thorn, R.I.; Rev. L.
Thompson, Mass.; Rev. John R. Thurston, Mass.; Rev. John E. Tuttle,
Mass.; Dea. Peter E. Vose, Me.: Mrs. Caroline L. Ward, Mass.; Rev.
William Hayes Ward, N.J.; Mrs. L.C. Warner, N.Y.; John H. Washburn,
N.Y.; John Watrous, Conn.; Rev. Albert Watson, N.H.; Mrs. Elizabeth H.
Watson, R.I.; Dea. Eben Webster, Mass.; Mrs. L.A. Weld, Conn.; Rev.
Isaac C. White, Mass.; Dea. Jonas White, Mass.; Edward A. Williams,
Conn.; Mrs. Mary H. Williams, Mass.; Miss S. Maria Williams, Conn.;
S.H. Williams, Mass.; Rev. Clarence H. Wilson, N.Y.; Mark H. Wood,
R.I.; Dea. Frank Wood, R.I.; George M. Woodward, Mass.; Mrs. George M.
Woodward, Mass.; Rev. Henry D. Woodworth, Mass.; Rev. Walter E.C.
Wright, Ky.
Visitors.
H.T. Aborn, Mass.; Rev. E.W. Allen, Mass.; John G. Allen, Mass.; Miss
Mary E. Averill, Conn.; Miss Maria Bachellor, Mass.; Miss C.A.K.
Bancroft, Mass.; Miss A.B. Barrows, Conn.; Miss S.F. Batchelder, N.H.;
Mrs. Abby S. Bates, R.I.; John R. Beecroft, N.Y.; Rev. Howard Billman,
Conn.; Mrs. G.N. Bird, Mass.; Miss Clara B. Blackinton, Mass.; Rev.
Charles H. Bliss, Ill.; Mrs. H. P. Bliss, R.I.; Miss Rebecca Bliss,
R.I.; Mrs. George Booth, R.I.; E.P. Borden, Mass.; Mrs. S.C. Bourne,
Mass.; Mrs. E.P. Boynton, Mass.; A.G. Brewer, Mass.; Mr. and Mrs. Wm.
P. Buffum, R.I.; Miss R. Bullard, Mass.; Mrs. Charles F. Burgess,
Conn.; Mrs. E.H. Cady, Conn.; Miss Mary J. Capron, Mass.; Mr. and Mrs.
E.W. Cain, Mass.; Rev. J.H. Childs, Mass.; Miss Mary C. Collins, Dak.;
Mrs. A.B. Cook, R.I.; Miss Katie A. Craig, Mass.; Rev. A.W. Curtis,
Ala.; William L. Curtis, O.; Miss Anne Cushman, Mass.; Mrs. P.B. Davis,
Mass.; Mrs. O.L. Dean, Mass.; T.R. Dennison, Mass.; Edward W.
Doolittle, Neb.; Mrs. Charles Duncan, Mass.; Joseph R. Dunham, R.I.;
Miss Anna M. Dyer, Mass.; Miss S.S. Evans, Ala.; Mrs. Addison P.
Foster, Mass.; Mrs. A. Fearing, Mass.; Mrs. L.L. Ferris, R.I.; Rev.
J.L. Fowle, Mass.; Miss Emma R. Freeman, R.I.; P.H. Gardner, R.I.; Miss
Mary A. George, N.H.; Rev. Simeon Gilbert, Ill.; Joshua H. Given, Pa.;
Miss Charlotte L. Gleason, Mass.; Mrs. J.R. Goodale, R.I.; Mrs. C.L.
Greene, Mass.; Rev. David Gregg, Mass.; Mrs. M.F. Hardy, Mass.; Rev.
Elijah Harmon, Mass.; Dea. G.E. Herrick and wife, Mass.; Mrs. S.R.
Heywood, Mass.; George Wm. Hill, R.I.; Rev. H.R. Hoisington, Conn.;
Dea. E. Francis Holt, Mass.; Mrs. Henry T. Holt, N.Y.; Mrs. George M.
Howe, Me.; Miss B.A. Howe, Mass.; Mrs. W.P. Hubbard, Me.; Miss. A.
Hunt, Mass.; Rev. Henry S. Huntington, Me.; Mrs. H.M. Hurd, Mass.; O.M.
Hyde, Conn.; Rev. Frank E. Jenkins, N.Y.; Loring Johnson, Mass.; Mrs.
Samuel Johnson, N.Y.; Mrs. Charlotte Johnson, Mass.; Miss Olive M.
Johnson, Mass.; Miss Hannah N. Johnson, Mass.; Mrs. D.E. Jones, Conn.;
Mrs. Mary A. Jones, Mass.; Mrs. George S. Kemp, Mass.; Mrs. Jane Kerr,
Mass.; Rev. Evarts Kent, Ga.; Mrs. A.E. Kingman, Minn.; Mrs. A.
Kingsbury, Conn.; Chas. H. Leonard, M.D., R.I.; Rev. Edwin Leonard,
Conn.; Mr. and Mrs. Jas. M. Linsley, Conn.; E.C. Marsh, Maas.; Mr. and
Mrs. C.H. May, Mass.; Mrs. C.M. Merriam, Mass.; William Merrill, Mass.;
Miss Anna Metcalf, Mass.; Mrs. Ella S. Moore, D.C.; Miss E. Morrison,
Mass.; Mrs. P.H. Nichols, Mass.; Rev. and Mrs. A.F. Newton, Mass.; Mrs.
Henry B. Noyes, Conn.; Mrs. C.P. Paige, Mass.; Miss Sarah M. Paine,
R.I.; Mrs. C.M. Palmer, Mass.; Mrs. S.E. Parker, Mass.; Rev. R.M.
Peacock, Mass.; Mrs. Charles H. Peck, Conn.; Miss C.E. Perkins, Mass.;
Rev. George A. Perkins, Mass.; Miss Elizabeth B. Pierce, Mass.; Miss E.
Plimpton, Ga.; Miss M. Ella Porter, Conn.; Mrs. Daniel Potter, Mass.;
Harriett R. Pratt, Mass.; Mrs. Samuel A. Pratt, Mass.; Mrs. Maria B.
Prescott, Mass.; Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Rice, Conn.; Mrs. Robert
Richmond, Mass.; Rev. Augustine Root, Mass.; I.H. Rowland, Conn.; Mrs.
M.M. Russegue, Mass.; Mrs. S.H. Ryder, Mass.; Mr. and Mrs. H.W. Sadd,
Conn.; Mrs. F.A. Sadd, Conn.; Mrs. G.S.F. Savage, Ill.; Mrs. C.W.
Shelton, Conn.; O.L. Slader, R.I.; Henry D. Smith, Conn.; Rev. Stephen
Smith, Mass.; Eliza Smith, Mass.; Albert K. Smiley, N.Y.; Miss M.W.
Staples, Mass.; Miss Angelina Stebbins, Mass.; Mrs. E.P. Stetson,
Mass.; Rev. Edward G. Stone, N.H.; H.A. Street, Conn.; Mr. and Mrs.
William Swift, Conn.; Rev. C. Terry, Mass.; Rev. G.H. Tilton, Mass.;
Miss C.E. Warren, Mass.; Tyler Waters, Mass.; Mrs. Eben Webster, Mass.;
D.W. Whittlesey, Conn.; Mrs. C.R. Wilcox, R.I.; Mrs. Randale, Mass.;
Mrs. Winslow, Mass.; Miss C.L. Wood, Mass.; Charles P. Wood, Mass.;
Rev. F.G. Woodworth, Miss.
The Nominating Committee was appointed as follows: Rev. James G. Vose,
D.D., of Massachusetts; Rev. S.L. Blake, D.D., of Connecticut; Hon.
Franklin Fairbanks, of Vermont; Rev. Henry J. Patrick, of
Massachusetts; C.L. Mead, Esq., of New York.
The Treasurer, H.W. Hubbard, Esq., presented his annual report, with
schedules and the certificates of the auditors, which was accepted and
referred to the Committee on Finance.
Rev. James G. Vose, D.D., of Providence, made an address of welcome,
which was responded to by the President.
The Survey of the Field by the Executive Committee was read by
Secretary A.F. Beard, D.D., and was accepted, and the parts were
referred to the special committees to be appointed.
The Association, led by Secretary Strieby, united in a concert of
prayer with workers in the field.
The Nominating Committee reported the following committees, which were
appointed:
Committee on Business.--Rev. M. McG. Dana, D.D., of Massachusetts;
E.B. Monroe, Esq., of Connecticut; Rev. F.F. Emerson, D.D., of Rhode
Island; Rev. P.B. Davis, of Massachusetts; Rev. John Barstow, of
Massachusetts.
Committee on Finance.--A.L. Williston, Esq., of Massachusetts; L.C.
Warner, M.D., of New York; Roland Mather, Esq., of Connecticut; S.S.
Marples, Esq., of New York; F.W. Carpenter, Esq., of Rhode Island.
Committee of Arrangements.--Rev. J.H. McIlvaine, D.D., of Rhode
Island; G.E. Luther, Esq., of Rhode Island; John McAuslan, Esq., of
Rhode Island; J. G. Parkhurst, Esq., of Rhode Island; Asa Lyman, Esq.,
of Rhode Island; Z. Williams, Esq., of Rhode Island.
Benediction by the President.
TUESDAY EVENING.
The meeting was called to order at 7,30 P.M. It was voted that the
programme as printed be adopted. The devotional exercises were
conducted by Rev. James L. Hill, of Massachusetts.
The annual sermon was preached by Rev. Arthur Little, D.D., of
Illinois; from Isaiah vi: 1-8.
The sermon was followed by the administration of the Lord's Supper. The
following named persons officiated at the service; Ministers:--Rev.
Robert W. Wallace, of Massachusetts, and Rev. George F.S. Savage, D.D.,
of Illinois; Deacons:--McAuslan, Pabodie, Olney, Spicer, Barrows and
Fuller of Rhode Island, Hubbard of Maine, and Fairbanks of Vermont.
At the close of the Communion, adjournment was taken to Wednesday at 9
A.M.
WEDNESDAY MORNING.
The prayer-meeting from 8 to 9 o'clock, was led by Rev. Rowland B.
Howard, of Massachusetts. At 9 o'clock the Association was called to
order by the President, who conducted the devotional exercises.
The records of the previous day were read and approved,
A paper, on "American Freedmen and African Evangelization," was read by
Secretary M.E. Strieby, D.D.
A paper, on "The Hopefulness of Indian Missions as Seen in the Light of
History," was read by Secretary A.F. Beard, D.D.
Voted that the papers read by the Secretaries be referred to the
appropriate committees.
The Nominating Committee reported the following special committees who
were appointed:
Committee on the Chinese.--Rev. S. Gilbert, D.D., of Illinois; Rev.
M.M.G. Dana. D.D., of Massachusetts; Rev. Geo. A. Tewksbury, of
Massachusetts; Rev. F.L. Ferguson, of Connecticut; Rev. R.W. Wallace,
of Massachusetts.
Committee on the Indians.--S.B. Capen, Esq., of Massachusetts; Rev.
A.P. Foster, D.D., of Massachusetts; Rev. John L. Ewell, of
Massachusetts, Rev. John E. Tuttle, of Massachusetts.
Committee on Educational Work.--Rev. Llewellyn Pratt, D.D., of
Connecticut; Rev. Julian M. Sturtevant, D.D., of Ohio; Rev. George E.
Hall, of New Hampshire; H.D. Smith, Esq., of Connecticut; Stephen
Ballard, Esq., of New York.
A Memorial Service for Rev. James Powell, D.D., late Secretary of the
Association, was held. Addresses were made by Rev. Simeon Gilbert,
D.D., of Illinois, Rev. Geo. H. Ide, D.D., of Wisconsin; Secretary M.E.
Strieby, D.D., and President Wm. M. Taylor, D.D. Rev. A.P. Foster,
D.D., of Massachusetts, led in prayer.
The report of the Committee on Chinese Work, Rev. Simeon Gilbert, D.D.,
Chairman, was presented, and an address was delivered by Rev. M. McG.
Dana, D.D., of Massachusetts.
An address on "The relations of the A.M.A. to Young People," was
delivered by Rev. J.L. Hill, of Massachusetts.
Recess was taken to 2 P.M.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON.
The Association was called to order at 2 P.M. by the President. Rev. P.W.
Lyman, of Massachusetts, offered prayer.
A Paper on "Systematic Spending," was read by District Secretary C.J.
Ryder.
A report and address on the Indian Work, were made by S.B. Capen, Esq.,
of Massachusetts. Addresses were also made by Rev. A.P. Foster, D.D., of
Massachusetts, and by Rev. C.W. Shelton, Financial Secretary for Indian
Missions.
The Nominating Committee nominated the following special committees, who
were appointed:
Committee on Mountain Work.--Rev. G.S. Burroughs, D.D., of
Massachusetts; Rev. C.B. Riggs, of Tennessee; J.R. Gilmore, Esq., of
Connecticut; Rev. Morton Dexter, of Massachusetts; Chas. Coffin, Esq.,
of Massachusetts.
Committee on Church Work.--Rev. David Gregg, D.D., of Massachusetts,
Rev, Stephen M. Newman, D.D., of the District of Columbia; Rev. Wm.
Hayes Ward, D.D., of New Jersey; Frank Wood, Esq., of Massachusetts;
R.L. Day, Esq., of Ohio.
The Committee on Educational Work reported, and addresses were
delivered in connection with the report, by the Chairman, Rev.
Llewellyn Pratt, D.D., of Connecticut, and by Rev. Julian M.
Sturtevant, D.D., of Ohio.
An address on "The Church and the Color Line," was delivered by Rev.
James Brand, D.D., of Ohio.
Benediction by the President, and recess taken to 7:30 P.M.
WEDNESDAY EVENING.
The Association was called to order by the President, and Rev. George
A. Tewksbury, D.D., of Massachusetts, offered prayer.
An address was delivered by Mr. Joshua Given, an Indian theological
student, giving the story of his own life; by Rev. Joseph E. Smith, of
Tennessee, on "The Evils of Caste to the Colored Race"; by Rev. B.A.
Imes, of Tennessee, on "The Evils of Secret Societies to the Colored
Race"; by Rev, J.R. McLean of Texas, on "The Evils of Intemperance to
the Colored Race."
Adjourned to Thursday morning, at 9 o'clock.
THURSDAY MORNING.
The Prayer Meeting from 8 to 9 o'clock was led by Rev. James L. Fowle,
Missionary of the American Board.
The Association was called to order at 9 o'clock, and led in prayer by
Rev. Wm. H. Ward, D.D., of New Jersey.
The Rev. J.H. Ross, Assistant Recording Secretary, being called away,
Rev. Frank E. Jenkins was appointed.
The minutes of Wednesday were read and approved.
A paper on "Our Indebtedness to the Negro During the War," was read by
District Secretary J.E. Roy, D.D., of Chicago.
Rev. George S. Burroughs, D.D., of Massachusetts, presented the report
of the Committee on Mountain Work, following it with an address; Rev.
C.B. Riggs of Tennessee, and James R. Gilmore of Connecticut, also
addressed the Association on the same subject.
Committees were appointed--on Secretary Strieby's paper, Wolcott
Calkins, D.D., and Rev. O.S. Dean, of Massachusetts, and Hon. A.C.
Barstow of Rhode Island; and on Secretary Beard's paper, Rev. Morton
Dexter, Frank Wood, Esq., and Rev. John E. Tuttle, all of
Massachusetts.
Rev. Arthur Little, D.D., of Illinois, invited the Association to hold
its next Annual Meeting with the New England Church in Chicago. The
invitation was accepted by the President in behalf of the Executive
Committee.
The report of the Committee on Church Work, and an address, were made
by Rev. David Gregg, D.D., of Massachusetts.
Rev. Wm. Hayne Leavell, of Mississippi, made an address on "The Present
Necessities of the Negro."
Recess was taken until 2 P.M.
THURSDAY AFTERNOON.
The Association was called to order by Rev. D.O. Mears, D.D., a
Vice-president, and prayer was offered by Rev. P.B. Davis, of
Massachusetts.
L.C. Warner, M.D., of New York, presented the report of the Finance
Committee.
Secretary Strieby then made the announcement of the gift to the
Association of the largest donation ever made to a benevolent society
by a living donor, $1,000,894.25, from Mr. Daniel Hand, of Guilford,
Ct. Further statements were made by John H. Washburn, Esq., Chairman of
the Executive Committee; and by Rev. D.O. Mears, D.D.
The doxology was sung, and the following resolution was offered by
Samuel Holmes, Esq., Chairman of the Finance Committee, and was adopted
by a rising vote.
_Resolved._--That we recognize the goodness of Almighty God in
putting it into the heart of Mr. Daniel Hand to make the
munificent gift of more than one million dollars for the
education of the colored youth of the South, to be expended under
the direction of the American Missionary Association.
We rejoice in the flood of beneficent influence which will flow
through all the years from this noble source.
We gratefully accept the trust put upon us, promising to use it
as a stimulus for increased activity on the part of the Christian
Church, and we offer our prayer to the Divine Father, that he may
abundantly bless the remaining years of our honored friend with
the grace of His Spirit and the joy that follows the
accomplishment of the desires of a heart burdened with the love
of our suffering and ignorant fellow men.
Prayer was offered by Rev. Thomas A. Emerson, of Clinton, Conn.
The Association then adjourned to the chapel.
The Nominating Committee reported the following list of officers for the
ensuing year, and they were unanimously elected.
President, REV. WM. M. TAYLOR, D.D., LL.D., N.Y.
Vice-Presidents:
REV. A.J.F. BEHRENDS, D.D., N.Y.
REV. ALEX. MCKENZIE, D.D., Mass.
REV. F.A. NOBLE, D.D., Ill.
REV. D.O. MEARS, D.D., Mass.
REV. HENRY HOPKINS, D.D., Mo.
Corresponding Secretaries.
REV. M.E. STRIEBY, D.D., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.
REV. A.F. BEARD, D.D., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.
Recording Secretary:
Rev. M.E. STRIEBY, D.D., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.
Treasurer:
H.W. HUBBARD, Esq., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.
Auditors:
PETER McCARTEE,
CHAS. P. PEIRECE.
Executive Committee.
For Three Years.
J.E. RANKIN,
J.W. COOPER,
EDMUND L. CHAMPLIN,
WM. H. WARD,
JOHN H. WASHBURN,
For Two Years.--CHARLES A. HULL.
The report of the Committee on Secretary Strieby's paper was presented
by Rev. W. Calkins, D.D., of Massachusetts, and adopted.
The report of the Committee on Secretary Beard's paper was presented by
Rev. Morton Dexter, of Massachusetts, and adopted.
Recess was then taken to 7.30 P.M.
THURSDAY EVENING.
The Association was called to order at 7:30 P.M., and prayer was
offered by Rev. Thomas Laurie, D.D., of Providence.
The minutes for the day were read and approved, and the Secretary was
authorized to complete them at the close of this service and to publish
them under the direction of the Executive Committee.
Rev. David O. Mears, D.D., of Massachusetts, addressed the Association,
and was followed by Rev. A.J.F. Behrends, D.D., of New York, and the
closing address was made by the President.
The following vote of thanks was unanimously passed after appropriate
remarks by District Secretary C.J. Ryder.
We approach the conclusion of this Annual Convention of the
American Missionary Association with grateful hearts for all
the way by which God has led it from the day when it crossed the
brook with its staff of testimony to this time of extended
influence and usefulness, with humble rejoicing both in the
intellectual and spiritual fellowship of this meeting, and also
with a special sense of responsibility under the burden of
obligation which God has placed upon us by this unprecedented
enlargement of our stewardship. We wish to express our devout
thanksgiving for the grace of hospitality which has been
bestowed in such abounding measure upon the churches of Christ
and the good people of this city of Providence, with whose name
in its divine significance we are to associate this peculiarly
impressive anniversary.
We recall the delightful welcome which greeted us at the
opening of these services, only to be impressed with the
assurance that this Union Congregational Society and the other
churches of the city were not at all forgetful to "entertain
strangers." Their love indeed, made us at once to feel at home
in their households, and in the midst of their delightful
families.
_Resolved_, That to the local committees, especially the
indefatigable Secretary, to the pastors of all the churches,
to the choir and leaders of the services of song in the house
of the Lord, to the local and metropolitan press for its
generous reporting of these meetings to the large congregation
outside by its multiform and winged processes, and to the lines
of transportation which have made us the recipients of their
courtesy, we express our great indebtedness with sincere thanks.
And so, in behalf of the members, officers and missionaries and
friends of this great Association, we say once more: We thank
you for your generous entertainment and crave for you the
recompense for such ministering in the name of our Divine
Master.
Rev. J.H. McIlvaine, D.D., of Providence, pastor of the church,
responded.
The Doxology was then sung, and, after the benediction by the
President, the Association adjourned.
HENRY A. HAZEN, Secretary.
FRANK E. JENKINS, Ass't Secretary.
* * * * *
SUMMARY OF TREASURER'S REPORT.
EXPENDITURES.
THE SOUTH.
For Church and Educational Work, Land,
Buildings, etc. ...$226,345.95
THE CHINESE.
For Superintendent, Teachers, Rent, etc. ...8,920.90
THE INDIANS.
For Church and Educational Work, Buildings, etc.
...48,967.08
FOREIGN MISSIONS.
For Superintendent, Missionaries, etc., for
Mendi Mission, income paid to the Society of
the United Brethren in Christ ...4,746.68
For Support of Aged Missionary, Jamaica, W.I. ...250.00
PUBLICATIONS
For American Missionary, (23,400 monthly),
Annual Reports, Clerk Hire, Postage, etc. ...6,511.21
AGENCIES
NEW YORK.--Corresponding Secretary, Traveling
Expenses, Circulars, etc. ...2,543.93
NEW YORK.--Woman's Bureau, Secretary,
Traveling Expenses, Circulars, etc. ...1,350.75
FOR EASTERN DISTRICT.--District Secretary,
Clerk Hire, Traveling Expenses, Printing,
Rent, Postage, Stationery, etc. ...4,845.68
FOR WESTERN DISTRICT.--District Secretary,
Agent, Clerk Hire, Traveling Expenses, etc. ...5,999.02
ADMINISTRATION.
For Corresponding Secretaries, Treasurer and
Clerk Hire ...11,720.00
MISCELLANEOUS.
For Rent, Care of Rooms, Furniture, Repairs, Fuel
and Light, Books and Stationery, Rent of Safe
Deposit Box, Clerk Hire, Postage, Traveling
Expenses, Expressage, Telegrams, etc. ...4,985.84
Annual Meeting ...770.28
Wills and Estates ...171.82
Annuity Account ...630.94
Amounts refunded, sent to Treasurer by mistake ...28.35
-----------
$328,788.43
===========
RECEIPTS.
Balance on hand September 30, 1887 2,193.80
From Churches, Sabbath Schools, Missionary
Societies and Individuals ...$202,266.76
Estates and Legacies ...47,636.20
Income, Sundry Funds ...10,936.46
Tuition and Public Funds ...33,180.86
Rents ...496.40
United States Government for Subsistence for
Indians ...18,186.74
Slater Fund ...8,300.00
-----------
$320,953.42
-----------
323,147.22
Debt Balance September 30, 1888 5,641.21
-----------
328,788.43
===========
ENDOWMENT FUNDS.
Estate of Rev. Benjamin Foltz, late of Rockford,
Ill., in part ...$500.00
Howard Carter, of Baldwinsville, N.Y., for
Education of Students for the Ministry ...500.00
--------- 1,000.00
* * * * *
The receipts of Berea College, Hampton Normal and
Agricultural Institute, and Atlanta University,
are added below, as presenting at one view the
contributions for the general work in which the
Association is engaged:
American Missionary Association ...$320,953.42
Endowment Funds ...1,000.00
------------- $321,953.42
Berea College ...13,908.30
Hampton N. and A. Institute ...70,379.44
Atlanta University, (not acknowledged in
above account) ...7,955.00
-----------
Grand Total, $414,196.16
===========
H.W. HUBBARD, Treasurer,
59 Reade Street, New York.
* * * * *
REPORTS OF COMMITTEES.
* * * * *
REPORT ON EDUCATIONAL WORK.
BY REV. LEWELLYN PRATT, D.D., CHAIRMAN.
The report of the Educational Work of this Association shows steady
advance, in spite of straitened means. New responsibilities have been
assumed in consequence of gifts of school buildings, and of the
appeals from the people themselves, taxing--beyond the receipts from
the churches--the resources of the Association.
An important feature of the Educational Work is represented in the
twenty Normal Schools, from which have gone out seven thousand young
men and women now engaged in teaching at the South. It is probable
that nearly half a million of scholars have been under their care.
These, together with the Normal Departments in our chartered
institutions, Talladega College, Atlanta University, Straight
University, Tillotson Institute, Tougaloo University and Fisk
University, (with Hampton Institute, Berea College and Howard
University, formerly under the care of the Association) are doing a
great work in training teachers, as well as leaders in industrial
pursuits and in the professions of the law and the ministry.
In all these, the fact, now so generally received in mission work, is
fully recognized, that the leaders and teachers of a people must be
found among themselves. They have abundantly proved their eagerness
for education, their capacity for scholarship and leadership, and
their ability to meet the problems resting upon the future of their
race and of the nation. This is true, also, of the schools among the
Indians and the Chinese.
Still, the work done by the Society and by all other agencies--State
and denominational--has not kept pace with the growth of population,
and official statistics in some portions of the South show that the
percentage of illiteracy is steadily increasing. In Louisiana, for
instance, in the last eight years--_i.e._, from 1880 to 1888--the
number of illiterate voters increased from 102,933 to 126,938,
changing the relative percentage from 52.3 per cent. who could read
and write, and 47.7 per cent. who could not read and write--in
1880--to 49.2 per cent. who can read and write and 50.8 per cent. who
cannot read and write in 1888. During that period, of the new white
voters a majority were illiterate (7.502 : 7.609); of the new negro
voters ten out of eleven were illiterate (1.588 : 16.387). Facts such
as these call for great enlargement in the direction of common school
education, and the number of teachers; make imperative demands upon
State Governments; and lead many to appeal to the National Government
for relief. They certainly justify the efforts of this Association
and necessitate a great increase of the yearly contributions from
churches and individuals. Measures should be taken to supplant the
notion that by moderate annual contributions to ordinary schools for
a few years the great task can be accomplished of lifting up a race
that had been held in bondage for centuries, that started in its
career of freedom in absolute destitution and that pursues its course
here under many disabilities; and preparing liberators, missionaries,
guides and saviours for the Dark Continent.
At the same time, it is the belief of your committee that the
pressing need of the hour is the fuller development of the leading
institutions already established and larger equipment for the arduous
work set before the American people in our Southern States. For this
end, steps should be taken towards securing their permanent
endowment. While in every way the general work of reaching the masses
and saving them from their illiteracy is to be pressed, the time has
come to place these leading schools upon a firmer foundation and to
make them more conspicuous as centres. For this they need to be amply
endowed and maintained with steadily advancing educational courses,
suited to giving those who are to become the leaders of a great
people a broad and comprehensive education, abreast with the best in
the times in which they are to do their work.
It is time to take comprehensive views and to plan for years to come.
Neither this generation nor the next is to see the end of the special
work to be done to fit the freedmen successfully to meet the
conditions of their freedom. It has required centuries to qualify the
Anglo-Saxon people for freedom; and we must expect that generation
after generation will pass, even with the benefits of our
experiments, experience and methods, before this people, upon whom
the duties of free men have been thrust, can successfully discharge
them. There is call for great patience, for far-reaching plans, for
large beneficence. This question of the training of these eight
millions of people is one of the most difficult set before the
American people, and is worthy of the best thought of statesmen,
patriots, philanthropists and Christians.
For our encouragement is the ardor of the people themselves; their
readiness to receive an education; their position in a republic now
far advanced; the progress already made; the growing interest in the
States where they are most numerous to provide for them the means of
a common school education; the army of teachers already in the field.
Believing in a wise Providence over-ruling the present and the
future, we regard the problems before us, though great, not insoluble
to faithful, wise and patient Christian effort along the lines upon
which this Association has wrought.
We commend the wisdom and the foresight of this Association in the
planting of these institutions of learning in favorable positions,
its judicious economy in their management and its great skill in
steadily advancing their scope and capability with insufficient
resources and equipment. Upon these foundations the work should be
carried on, and large and permanent universities should be reared;
and we commend these to the Christian people for increased annual
gifts and larger permanent endowments that the great undertaking fail
not.
* * * * *
REPORT ON CHURCH WORK.
BY REV. DAVID GREGG, D.D., CHAIRMAN.
The report of your Executive Committee on church work submitted for
our review is very brief. There is a statement or two and a few
figures. It puts things in the very best light, and uses figures in
the most telling way. Its very brevity should act as a call to the
churches for more means, and more men, and more prayer, and more
enterprise. If the churches had done more there would have been more
to tabulate.
The report reads: Four new churches organized; 972 added to Christian
fellowship; 2 church edifices built; 1 church edifice enlarged; 2
parsonages built; a one-year-old church the centre of four
Sunday-schools filled with scholars who never before attended
religious instruction, and ten churches blessed with a revival of
religion.
Four new churches organized! Only four? And yet the territory
awaiting churches holds twelve States, and each State is an empire.
Only four? And yet the darkest spot in the republic is crying for the
light of the Gospel. Only four? And yet three-fourths of the
illiteracy of the whole nation must be grappled with. Four new
churches versus ten millions of immortal souls! What are these among
so many? This is the question which the report of the American
Missionary Association for 1888 sends through the length and breadth
of American Congregationalism.
To keep us in cheer the Executive Committee puts these facts by the
side of the four new churches:
First--"In each school" (and there are seventy-six schools) "we have
an incipient church." This predicts a golden future. "Each school is
a torch of Christ in a dark place." This means advancing
illumination.
Second--There are one hundred and thirty-two old churches fully
organized and completely vitalized. All of these are centred at
strategic points.
Third--There is a living army of 8,452 adults, and of 17,114 children
carrying the banner of the Lord. These give themselves, and give
their substance, to the cause of Christ, and to the good of their
fellowmen, in a way worthy of emulation.
Fourth--These churches and this army are under, and are led by
pastors who are for the most part the children of this Association.
This means thorough equipment, and discipline, and effectiveness, and
aggressive work.
When we look at what has been done in the line of church work in our
vast field, and compare it with our limited resources, we are
satisfied and speak the praises of the noble men and women in the
field and in the office. We have garnered fruit grandly
proportionated to the planting. But when we look at the work which
has been done and contrast it with what remains to be done, we are
far from being satisfied. Instinctively we are impelled to repeat the
call of the prophet in the hearing of the Church of Christ: "Arise,
shine, for thy light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen
upon thee." Proportioning the means used to the products reaped, we
look forward with hope, expecting a future that shall correspond with
the promises of God. The statistics in this department of the
Association's labors may look like "Holy Trifles;" and comparatively
they are "Holy Trifles;" but so is the "handful of corn" in the
Messianic psalm, which depicts the future growth of Christendom. The
things tabulated in these statistics are the "handful of corn" in our
Southland, but as we contemplate them, we may use the old, old song
of the church and sing ourselves into an ecstasy: "There shall be an
handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit
thereof shall shake like the cedars on Lebanon; and they of the city
shall flourish like the grass of the earth. His name shall endure for
ever; his name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall
be blessed in him and all nations shall call him blessed. Blessed be
the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And
blessed be his glorious name forever; and let the whole earth be
filled with his glory. Amen and amen."
* * * * *
REPORT ON MOUNTAIN WORK.
BY REV. G.S. BURROUGHS, CHAIRMAN.
Your committee, to whom those portions of the General Survey relating
to the work of the Association among the mountain whites has been
referred, are strongly convinced that this work is one of great and
growing importance. We rejoice in the evidence that such is also the
conviction of the management of the Association.
The territory occupied by these mountain people, consisting of
between three and four hundred counties, covers an area twice the
size of New England. Its population is equal to that of New England,
excepting Massachusetts. Its resources, in mineral deposits and in
valuable timber, are varied and rich. It is being rapidly opened up
to trade, and thus indirectly to civilization. Its inhabitants are
ready to welcome outside influences, and they are in large degree
susceptible of those that are good. These facts, we believe, cannot
receive too careful attention.
We are deeply impressed with the great destitution of these people as
regards intellectual, moral and spiritual things. Poor in the extreme
as far as their physical wants are concerned, they are still poorer
in reference to the wants of their minds and souls. So great is their
poverty in these particulars, that, in large measure, they do not,
until approached in Christian kindness, realize it. They are without
education, and without true religion; without schools and without
churches. Practically, they do not know the Sabbath; they are in
utter want and ignorance of those ordinary means of grace which are
as familiar to us as the sunshine and the rain. The violence and
social confusion which are to be expected under these circumstances
are prevalent.
Your committee rejoice that the day of small things, in our work in
this field, is already becoming the day of larger things, with a wide
outlook into a permanent and brighter future. In two normal schools,
two academies, five common schools and twenty churches the few loaves
and fishes seem to be at hand. "But what are they among so many?" We
are grateful for the enlargement which the past year has disclosed,
for the new church and school building, find the rapidly advancing
dormitory and boarding hall at Pleasant Hill, Tenn., and for the
slightly increased accommodations in the Grand View Normal Institute,
but we see clearly that enlargement only necessitates greater
enlargement. The meagreness of the supply renders the destitution
more manifest. The little which has been done, and well done, only
gives louder voice to the demand _to do_.
One of the most encouraging features of the work, and one which we
believe should be particularly emphasized, is the possibility of its
comparatively speedy self-support, if it be pushed forward rapidly.
It is a work which must be done to-day, and it can be done because
these people, even in their poverty, will do their part. This is
abundantly shown, not only by their disposition regarding it, but
also by their deeds in its behalf.
The influence of the work among the mountain whites upon the general
Southern work of the Association should be carefully recognized. Here
is a vantage point which can be carried, and which must be carried
for the success of our great campaign in the South. To neglect this
present duty is to be culpable regarding the future of the
Association's activity. Problems of caste and questions bound up with
them, can, at least in part, be settled in this field. Those needed
concrete illustrations, which will tend most powerfully toward their
general settlement, can here be furnished. We do not believe that the
conquest of the West is of more importance to our Home Mission work
than is the conquest of these Southern highlands to that of the
A.M.A. It is our opinion, therefore, that there should be in this
department steady and rapid advance, and that it should no longer be
tided along.
We fear that the facts regarding the peculiar character of this
mountain work are not sufficiently known, and that its bearing upon
the general work of the Association is not adequately realized.
We feel that a special examination of this field may wisely be
commended to those who would devise liberal things with a view to
special gifts for institutions of learning. The church and the
school, the missionary and the teacher must go together into this
territory. Who will place a Christian college among the mountain
whites?
We give thanks for the spared life of a trusty and consecrated worker
in this field. With the earnest prayer for means to send and employ
them, let there be joined the petition for many workers possessed of
a like spirit of earnestness and fidelity.
* * * * *
REPORT ON INDIAN WORK.
BY S.B. CAPEN, ESQ., CHAIRMAN.
It is not the intention of your committee to spend more than a moment
of the time allotted to it in speaking of the details of the work of
this Association among the Indian tribes.
It is a pleasure to note in the Executive Committee's report that it
is in the fullest sympathy with the increased and increasing interest
in the solution of our Indian problem. It has more scholars under its
care than ever before, and is steadily increasing its buildings and
its facilities for doing its work. The four new stations provided for
at the Northfield gathering call especially for our gratitude. But
why enlarge upon these particulars?
The work of this Association has been spread before the Christian
world in so many reports that all know of its great success. Its
preachers and teachers, who have given their lives to this work with
such courage and devotion, are also known, and it only needs to be
said in a word, that the year that has closed and whose review is now
being taken, has been one of great blessing and power. We approve of
what it has done and we commend it for the future without reserve.
We would rather occupy our time, if we may, in looking at this whole
Indian question, hoping that we may arouse a more universal interest,
and cause, thereby, to flow into the treasury of this Society the
funds which shall enable it to enlarge and broaden its work and
hasten the complete Christianizing of our Indian tribes.
For let it be said while I have your freshest attention, that it is
the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ, and not education or
civilization, that is to solve this problem; and all I have to say is
to lead up to this thought. Wherever modern civilization without
religion has touched the barbarian it has been to curse him.
The blood of every American ought to tingle at the thought of the
foul stain upon our national honor because of the treatment the
Indian has received.
General Sherman has told us that we have made more than one thousand
treaties with him, but the United States Government has never kept
one of these treaties, if there was anything to be made by breaking
it; and the Indian has never broken one, unless he has first had an
excuse in some cruel wrong from the white man. No wonder that the
Sioux have hesitated to sign their treaty. Do you not blush at one of
the reasons for this hesitation? Because they doubt whether we can be
trusted. This boasted American Republic is to them a nation of liars.
I am glad to speak for these men who have been, so cruelly wronged.
Here before we had any rights, they have been steadily driven back
before our civilization as it has advanced from the Atlantic and
Pacific shores. While our ears have ever been open to the cry of
distress the world over, the silent Indian moan has passed, too often
unheeded. We have made him a prisoner upon the reservation, and when
we have wanted his land we have taken it and put him on some we did
not want just then. His appeal, when in suffering and distress, has
been stifled by those who can make the most money out of him as he
is; and if hungry and in desperation he leaves his reservation, we
shoot him. We have put him in the control of an agent, whose
authority is as absolute as the Czar's. We have kept from him the
motive to be different and he has been literally a man without a
country and without a hope. Multitudes of people say, "Oh, yes, the
Indian has been wronged," but it makes very little impression upon
them. It is much the same feeling that the worldly man has who
acknowledges, in a general way, that he is a sinner, but it does not
touch him sufficiently to lead him to act. Will you bear with me in
giving some facts, with the hope that all may feel that this is not a
merely sentimental, indefinite sort of a subject for philanthropists
and "cranks," and a few women, but one in which each of us has some
personal responsibility. He is your brother and mine, in need, and we
owe him a duty. Some years ago Bishop Whipple went to Washington
pleading in vain for the Indians in Minnesota. After some days' delay
the Secretary of War said to a friend, "What does the Bishop want? If
he comes to tell us that our Indian system is a sink of iniquity,
tell him we all know it. Tell him also--and this is why I recall this
fact, more true than when it was first spoken--tell him also that the
United States never cures a wrong until the people demand it; and
when the hearts of the people are reached the Indian will be saved."
Then let us try to arouse the people to demand it.
And I beg you to notice, that the wrongs are not of the past, but of
the present. Those who say otherwise have either not examined the
facts or else they are deceived. While there has been much progress
made since General Grant's administration, the machinery of our
Indian affairs in its last analysis seems to be largely yet a scheme
to plunder the Indian at every point. Its mechanism is so complicated
that there are comparatively few who understand the wrong, and these
seem almost powerless. While there are many men in the Government
employ of the best intentions, there is always a "wicked partner" who
contrives, somehow, to rob the Indian.
He is wronged: (1) In his person. Let me illustrate. Go with me to
Nebraska. An Indian, upon one of our reservations, injured his knee
slightly. There was a physician who was paid a good salary by the
Government, but when asked to visit this man he refused to go. The
poor sufferer grew worse and worse, till the limb became rotten and
decayed: his cries could be heard far and near in the still air, yet
the physician heeded not. A friend was asked to take a hatchet and
chop off the limb. In agony he died, the physician never having once
visited him. That was a brother of yours in America. A short time
ago, in Southern California, lived an Indian in comfort, upon a lot
of ten acres upon which he had paid taxes for years. The land about
him was sold, but no mention was made of his lot, as his lawyers told
him it was not necessary and the purchasers promised he should never
be disturbed. Within a few months, however, a suit was brought for
his ejectment, and in the midst of the rainy season, this old man of
80, his wife and another woman of nearly the same age, were put out
of their home. They were thrust with great cruelty into a wagon, left
by the roadside without shelter and without any food, except parched
corn, for eight days. The wife died of pneumonia, and the old man is
a homeless wanderer. Why this cruelty? Because there was a spring of
water on his land which the white man wanted. This was in America.
2. In his property. Let me illustrate again. In North Dakota one of
the tribes asked that they might have some barns. The request was
granted: the lumber, valued at $3,000, was bought in Minneapolis, and
the freight charges, which ought to be about $1,500, were $23,000. A
little clerk in Washington that belongs to the "ring" "fixed it" in
this way.
In the Indian Territory an Indian worked hard all summer, and in the
fall carried his grain to market, delivered it to an elevator, and
than the owner turned around and refused to pay him, and the poor man
had to go home without one cent. It was the worst kind of robbery. If
that man had been a German, or Swede, or a howling Anarchist of any
nation under the heavens, we would have protected him, but an Indian
has no rights in America.
A man who has been the private clerk of one of our highest Government
officials was appointed an Indian Agent. The Indians on that
reservation were having their lumber taken from them at a price much
less than its value, and notwithstanding their protests, it went on,
the Agent refusing to listen. They complained then at Washington, and
the Government appointed one of the most corrupt of men as an
inspector. When he visited the reservation he asked for the witnesses
at once. They asked for a reasonable time to get them together. This
was refused and they asked for two days, and when this was denied
they asked for one. In their dilemma and haste they got one Indian
near-by to testify. The Agent himself broke down this man's
testimony, because he had been at fault two or three years before, in
a way which did not affect, in the slightest degree, his statement
now, and the inspector at once returned to Washington and decided
against the Indians! It was a fraud and a farce.
3. In the helpless condition in which we have left him, he has a new
wrong now, because when he votes he is of political importance. If
you will read "Lend A Hand," you will find an illustration where the
Indians in North Carolina had become citizens and had votes, and
because those votes were cast against the powers that be, they were
willing to go all lengths, even to closing the schools, in order to
accomplish their purposes.
And this is to be more and more a vital question, as more and more
they are becoming citizens. We talk about "dirty politics!" Is it not
a proper name, when, in order to get votes, schools are to be closed
and children left in ignorance?
4. There is no earnestness of purpose in a majority of the Government
officials to protect him from wrong. To show exactly what I mean;
recently, in Southern California a lot of land grabbers took from the
Indians their land. When private individuals ascertained the facts,
complaint was made and an order was issued for their removal. The
time fixed was March 1st. On July 1st inquiry was made, and the agent
said the order had been carried out. But individual examination
showed the settlers to be there still, and five saloons open in
defiance of law.
In a similar way recently, the representative of one of our
philanthropic societies had arrested an agent who had committed a
crime. It was so clear a case that he was found guilty at once. Let
us hear this travesty of justice. The law required a fine and
imprisonment both. The fine was placed by the Judge at twenty-five
cents, which the Judge paid himself. The term of the imprisonment he
made one day, and told the Sheriff to allow the jail, in this case,
to be the agent's own comfortable home. Shall we be obliged to
constitute Law and Order Leagues to see that the laws of the United
States are executed?
This is the awful background as the starting point for this
discussion. Some people question whether or not there is a personal
devil. If any man would study the Indian question he would be
convinced there was not one only, but a whole legion of them.
But, friends, so long as these are facts, there is an Indian
question, and there is going to be one until these things are
settled. There is nothing ever settled in this world till it is
settled right. In the progress that has been made in opening up the
possibility to the Indian, of civil rights, we may be inclined to
relax our efforts in his behalf. The passage of the Dawes Land in
Severalty Bill was, indeed, a great day for the Indian. It opens the
door by which he can have a home on land of his own and become a
citizen, with all the privileges thereof. Here, at last, is solid
ground upon which he can stand. But we must not forget that that bill
is but the commencement of what is needed. He is but a child with new
rights truly, but in his ignorance he does not know what they are. He
is surrounded by enemies as before. While he has the law and the
courts, the nearest Judge may be one hundred to three hundred miles
away. He must be brought more under the care of the judiciary.
The Indian Bureau, as at present constituted, cannot do for him what
he needs. This is a part of the political machine, and its appointees
are selected because they have done good service as ward politicians.
It has been well said that such a Bureau is no more fitted to lead
these people aright than Pharaoh was to lead the Israelites out of
their house of bondage.
To show how even some good men fail to comprehend the situation is
evidenced by the proposed "Morgan Bill," which in its practical
working would give the Indian Agent--already a despot--even more
power than before. By that bill he is made chief Judge, with two
Indians as associate Judges; and the agent is given power to select
the jurors when a jury is demanded. What a travesty of justice, to
make the present agent a judge and give him power to select the jury.
With such a bill the friend of the Indian may well say: Oh Lord, how
long! We must demand that all Indians, whether on the reservations or
not, shall be given full protection of righteous laws, and that the
tyrannical methods of the past shall forever cease.
But, with the solid ground of the Dawes bill beneath, and the further
protection of the judiciary certain to be given at no distant day, he
needs, more than all else besides, the Christian school and the
Christian church. He now has "Land." If we are earnest and persistent
he will soon have "Law." But, most of all, does he need "Light," and
that light which is from above. All the laws we may enact the next
hundred years will not change the character of a single Indian. To a
considerable extent he is a superstitious pagan still. He needs Jesus
Christ. He needs to learn the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood
of man. As it is a part of the Indian man's religious belief that his
god does not want him to work and he will be punished if he does, it
is especially necessary to touch his religious nature first. When he
accepts the Christian's God, then he will be ready to go to work for
himself. The taking up of the hoe and the spade is his first
confession of faith. What has already been accomplished through the
new laws giving him his civil rights, puts an added responsibility
upon the church. It is the Indian's last chance. Our further neglect
is his certain death. Shall we leave him with his "Land and Law"
without God? Do we realize that we have lived with these original
owners of our soil for more than two and one-half centuries, and yet,
today, there are sixty tribes who have no knowledge of Jesus the
Christ? Shall we allow longer such a stain? I know well the pressure
of various claims in religious work at home and abroad, but in the
light of what has been said, is not the duty of Christianizing the
Indians a debt of honor, a "preferred claim," which should take
precedence over others? In this way only can we partially atone for
our "century of dishonor."
The history of the past few months, and the famous order with regard
to the use of the vernacular, ought to arouse the church to new
efforts. The probable instigators of it are known to friends of the
Indian, and it shows the necessity of increased activity on our part.
The order was despotism itself, and would have done credit to a
Russian Czar. It was a blow aimed at the Indian's highest religious
interests, and the President of the United States, instead of
explaining and translating it, should have recalled it as an act
unworthy of Christian civilization in the nineteenth century.
Everything is still done to hamper the Protestant missionary work.
The A.M.A. has a theological school, and the Government allows (?) it
to teach a theological class; but, when the students are chosen and
ready to come, the Government agents prohibit their coming. We have a
young man who has been waiting for a year for a permit from
Washington. The same obstructive policy meets us when we try to get
pupils under the Government school contracts. And even after we have
obtained the order from the Government to procure the pupils from a
given agency, the Government will, at the same time, instruct the
Agent to let no pupils go till the Government schools are full. In
this way the Christian Indian parent has taken from him the right to
send his child where he desires, for the Government stops his rations
and annuities if he refuses to send to the Government school. The
vote recently passed at the General Association of Congregational
Churches in South Dakota ought to be taken up and echoed through the
land, protesting against the assumption, by the Administration, of
the right to control our missionary operations, dictating what pupils
may attend our schools, or what language may be used in them.
In conclusion, let us gird ourselves anew for the struggle that is
before us, to fight the enemies of Protestant Christianity,
entrenched as they are in our Government, the Indian ring, the cattle
kings, the land grabbers and the thousands whose selfish interest it
is to keep the Indian ignorant. This is no holiday affair; it means
earnest, determined work. We must give the Indian the Gospel of the
Son of God as his only safeguard for the life that now is as well as
that which is to come. Civilization, education alone can never lift
the Indian to his true position. You may take a rough block of marble
and chisel it never so skillfully into some matchless human form, and
it is marble still, cold and lifeless. Take the rude Indian and
educate him, and he is still an Indian. He must be quickened by the
breath of the Almighty before he will live. It is religion alone
which can lead him to the truest manhood, which will quicken his
slumbering intellectual faculties and prevent him from being an easy
prey to the selfishness and sinfulness of men. Let us support this
society in its grand work, by our money, our sympathy and our
prayers. Let us join in the fight, and by-and-by we will share in the
triumph. Dr. Strieby, you can remember just before this society was
formed, that it was a disgrace to be an abolitionist. It is a glory
now. The day is not far distant, yea, its light is already breaking
in the western sky, when it will be considered equally glorious to
have helped save our Indian brother, by leading him back again to
God. And while we are doing it, and as a means to this end, we must
try to get this Indian ring by the throat and strangle its life. It
has lived long enough on the blood of the Indian; let it die, and we
will never say "the Lord have mercy on its soul," for it has none. If
you have never been interested in the matter before, begin to-day; if
you have never helped before, help now. Get in somewhere, get in
quick, get in all over; do not stand around the edges looking on and
criticising others; be sure you get your pocket book open, and send
the Treasurer of the Association double what you did last year; do
something, do anything. We have been playing at missions long enough.
With our great wealth it is a disgrace that this work was not
completed long ago. With an aroused and awakened Church the whole
problem will be solved, for there will be no more Indians, but only
brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.
Let us fear nothing, God is with us and we shall triumph.
"Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."
* * * * *
REPORT ON CHINESE WORK.
BY REV. SIMEON GILBERT, D.D., CHAIRMAN.
1. Is it worth while to attempt Christian missions among the Chinese
in our own country?
2. If so, of how much importance is it?
3. Who should do it?
4. If anything is to be done by us, how much should be done?
5. And is there any case of urgency about it?
To the first question we answer: Yes, verily! It is worth while.
There is no form of Christian missions within the circuits of the
earth more worthy of being done, and of being done with all possible
alacrity and vigor, than this. The American Missionary Association is
exactly the Society to do it. It is the glory of this Society to
hasten to the rescue of the despised and the exceptional races and
classes in our own land. It has already done grand things toward the
evangelization of the Chinese among us. It has set an example, most
conspicuous in the eyes of all the people, of definitely planning to
make known to this peculiar people the Gospel of Redemption; a Gospel
whose supreme peculiarity it is, that it is fitted to meet the inmost
necessities of all men, of all men alike.
The success in winning the disciples of Confucius to the cross and
the grace of Christ has been signal enough to show how completely
practicable the undertaking is.
If it were not worth while to press our missionary effort among the
Chinese right here in America, it would be absurd to talk of
missionary effort among the Chinese in China. The importance of this
work cannot be measured by its bulk. Nor is it to be estimated by any
census of countable immediate results. It is a kind of work, which,
according as it is done, or left undone; or as it is done with slack
and nerveless hand or with vim and vigor, will test the very
character of our churches; will touch the conscience and well-being
of the nation; and will, without a doubt, have vital and decisive
connection with the future of that most populous empire on the globe.
There is China, with its four hundred million souls, subject to a
single sovereign--a heathen empire. Here is America, Christian
America; the foremost republic among the nations, and soon to be the
leading power among the Governments of the earth. It holds already
the position of moral leadership in the far East. What shall be done
with this leadership? Right here in our midst are some two hundred
thousand representatives of that empire, every one of whom with
hardly an exception hopes some time to return to his native Orient.
What will the Christianity of America do for them?
There is an unmistakable providence of God in the presence, in the
country, at such a time as this, of so many representatives of the
great empire. Such providences are to be reverently heeded. They are
as the banners of the Almighty, meant to lead forth His loyal people
to the gracious conquest of the world. As for ourselves, what are we
disposed to do about it?
This conquest of the world for Christ is not to be achieved by
hap-hazard dashes. There is need of transcendent wisdom in the
strategic methods of the campaign. We have not wisdom enough for this
except as we have the wisdom to note which way the manifest hand of
God is pointing for us. Then is the time for assurance, for
obedience, and for enthusiasm in the fullest meaning of the term.
A few thousand Chinamen are here. The Chinese Empire is open to
us--and more too! To doubt the practicability of the Christianization
of the Chinese would be treason to the Gospel of Christ; would be
blindness to the facts of Christian history, as well as to the
foreshadowings of prophecy.
The success already in this department of the work of the American
Missionary Association has been signal enough to amount to a
demonstration. If suitably reinforced and pushed it might presently
be made vastly greater than it has as yet been.
It is the glory of this Society to do precisely this kind of work.
All its history and traditions, all the confidences and affection of
the people in our churches toward it, favor the most resolute pushing
forward of what has been undertaken.
The reactionary effect of this peculiar form of home-foreign mission
work upon the Christian character and culture of our own people is of
importance; of too much importance for it to be either safe or wise
for us to neglect it. Suppose this work were to be neglected, this
duty ignored, this clear providential summons slighted, what a
mockery it would be of our professed zeal for foreign missions. The
spectacle of what the Society is doing for the Chinese, especially of
what it ought to have the power and the commission given it to do, is
fitted to be peculiarly impressive, as an object lesson, to the
nation. The radical character of a nation comes out in no other way
so distinctively, as in the way it treats its weakest and most
helpless subjects.
A grand part of the good done by the American Missionary Association
has been in its influence, first on the conscience of the churches,
and then, through this, on the moral sense and the moral sentiments
of the nation itself. This has been the case as regards the nation's
treatment of the emancipated negroes. It was this Society which, so
promptly and gloriously, lifted up and bore aloft with something of a
divine intrepidity, God's own banner of human rights and the divine
sympathy. It is this Society which has done more than any other one
agency, to revolutionize and harmonize the national sentiment as
regards the rights of the Indian to civilization and to
Christianization. If now the churches of our country will hasten to
do their duty, as in sight of him who is Father of us all, towards
our Chinese neighbors, it will not be long before the National
Government will wake to its shame and wipe off the deep disgrace of
its recent demagogy and international perfidy.
Moreover, a more complete mistake could not be made than to imagine
that the Imperial Government of China is unobservant, whatever the
seeming invincibility of its pride and exclusiveness. China is
neither blind nor insensible. Japan has awakened; China is wakening.
Its hour is at hand; the dust of ages is stirring. The Chinese wall
is vanishing. The Supreme Government of the four hundred millions of
the Empire is at length getting in touch with the other great and
advancing Powers of the world. And the startling sublime fact of the
new _world sociability_, if we will but see it, is giving tremendous
urgency to every possible means of originating, multiplying,
communicating, and sending on and around from nation to nation, the
forces of the world-redeeming Gospel of Jesus Christ. We, therefore,
are most earnestly agreed in the conviction that, not only is the
noble work of missions among the Chinese in our country, now being
done by this Society, of inestimable value, but that it ought by all
means to be greatly and immediately enlarged and re-enforced.
That great missionary, St. Paul, once said--and he may have often
said it--that he gloried in his own infirmities; adding that the
power of Christ might rest on him. This is our glory--if we have any.
Here is this American Missionary Association; and over against it,
face to face, is China. What proportion is there between the two? How
preposterous, one may say, the thought which we are trying to frame
into actual purpose for the regeneration of this enormous part of the
human family? Most true. And yet, along with Paul's thought, how
infinitely inspiring this purpose should be. Just the thing for us to
do is to "build better than we know." It is not our eye, but His,
which sees the end from the beginning. And it is his
providence--sometimes as a pillar of fire, sometimes as a pillar of
cloud--which shows us the way. Then it is for us to follow close up.
When some fifteen years ago, that slender, forlorn-seeming Japanese
lad landed in Boston, with the strange, vague, resistless,
heaven-enkindled longing in his heart; what if there had been no
kindly hand to grasp his own, no heart to discern and respond to his?
How easily might young Neesima have been lost, and the fateful turn
in the destiny of Japan at the moment of its supreme opportunity for
regeneration been vastly, disastrously different! What Chinese
Neesimas to-day God's eye may have under His gracious watch and
merciful leading, we cannot know beforehand; but this is certain,
that we know enough to know that we do well to walk softly all the
day long as seeing things invisible, and that with these thousands of
Chinese among us, walking so noiselessly, so observantly in and out
beneath the very tree of life that grows beside the river of life
clear as crystal, and which proceeds direct from the throne of the
Lamb, there are doubtless God's hidden ones, whose lives, if we will
do our part; shall yet be woven in as shining and mighty threads into
the divine plan wider than any nation, larger than the world, sure
and strong as the word of Him who, at the first, said, "Let there be
light," and there was light.
* * * * *
REPORT OF FINANCE COMMITTEE.
BY DR. L.C. WARNER, CHAIRMAN.
Your Committee have made a careful examination of the books and
reports of the Treasurer, with special reference to the methods of
keeping the various accounts, the security of the invested funds and
the economy and prudence of the expenditures.
We find the system of bookkeeping as thorough and complete as that of
any business concern. Each item of receipts or expense appears in its
proper place, where it can be found without delay. The different
departments of the work are classified and separated so that a broad
and comprehensive knowledge of the work is always before the officers
and Executive Committee. All payments are made by checks, and each
check requires the signature of two officers of the Association; thus
reducing to a minimum the chances of error or loss in the
disbursement of the funds. At the end of each quarter the
disbursements of the Association are carefully examined by the
Auditors, two responsible business men, who go over and verify the
accounts item by item. The Treasurer and other officers of the
Association are to be especially commended for the thorough and
business-like methods which prevail in the conduct of their business.
The invested funds of the Association amount to $230,375.78, yielding
an income last year of $10,936.46. These funds are chiefly invested
in mortgages in the city and State of New York and in Government
bonds. In view of the forgeries of real estate mortgages recently
discovered in New York City, the mortgages of the Association in New
York and Brooklyn have, at the request of the attorney of the
Association, been personally examined by a member of the Finance
Committee and all found to be valid and correct. An examination of
the schedule of securities held by the Association shows that there
is not a single poor investment among them, or one on which the
interest is in default.
Besides the invested funds the Association owns real estate in
various Southern States and in the Northwest to the value of
$600,274. This is the working plant of the Association. The
buildings, apparatus and fixtures upon this property are protected by
insurance.
The expenditures of the Association during the past year have been
$328,788.43. This is an increase over the expenditure of last year.
The Association commenced the year with a balance of $2,193.80; it
closes the year with a debt of $5,641.20. It has therefore spent
$7,835.01 in excess of its receipts. This debt is to be greatly
regretted, for it should be the policy of the Association to plan its
work in accordance with the funds at its disposal. They are obliged,
however, to make their plans partly on faith, and it is not to be
expected that their faith will always exactly measure the benevolence
of the people.
The increase in expenditure has been entirely in the work done upon
the field; the cost of agencies and administration being less this
year than last. This increase has been mostly in the Southern field,
and has been imperatively demanded by the natural growth of the work.
Very little new work has been undertaken, four new schools only being
added during the year; but the schools already organized have grown
in size and therefore in expense. Eleven hundred and twenty more
pupils are in attendance than one year ago, an increase of over 12
per cent. This has required the employment of twenty additional
teachers.
Friends of the Association have added new buildings at some of the
schools, and these new buildings, greatly needed and greatly
increasing the effectiveness of the schools, also bring increased
expense. The churches and schools of the Association are doing all
they can for their own support. The spirit of self-help is constantly
encouraged among them, but they are too poor to bear any considerable
part of the expense.
The Association must therefore meet one of the three following
alternatives: First, the growth of its work must cease, and the
increasing number of pupils who apply to its schools year by year be
denied admittance; or second, some of the schools which have been
fostered by the Association for years must be abandoned, that funds
may be left to strengthen and develop the remainder; or third, the
churches and Christian givers of America must largely increase their
gifts to this Association to meet its increasing wants.
The work of the Association for the coming year cannot be efficiently
carried on without increased appropriations; $300,000 is the smallest
amount which should be expended in the South, and a much larger
amount could be wisely used. The mountain work among the poor whites
is full of promise, and calls loudly for our aid, and the Association
only waits for the necessary funds to greatly enlarge its efforts in
this field. In addition to the Southern field, the Indian work
requires at least $60,000, and the Chinese work $15,000. This makes
the total amount needed by the Association next year $375,000. This
we believe to be a moderate and conservative estimate.
This great work for the Negro, the Indian and the Chinese has been
laid upon the American Missionary Association, and upon our
denomination, as it has not been laid upon any other society or
denomination in this country. It is our duty, yea, rather, our great
opportunity. Shall we not then meet it as the stewards of God, whose
servants and disciples we are?
* * * * *
MEMORIAL SERVICE.
ADDRESSES IN EULOGY OF THE LATE DR. JAMES POWELL.
An interesting and impressive memorial service was that held in honor
of the loved and venerated Secretary, Dr. James Powell. Tender,
loving, graceful and eloquent eulogies upon his life and character
were pronounced by Rev. Dr. Gilbert, Rev. Dr. Ide, Secretary Strieby
and President Taylor, followed by an earnest prayer by Rev. Addison
P. Foster, Roxbury, Mass.
EULOGY BY REV. DR. GILBERT.
It would be impossible for the officers and friends of this Society
to convene on this occasion and not feel profoundly the absence of
one whose presence for so many years has done so much to fill these
occasions with the spirit of welcome, of lofty animation, joyance,
cheer and renewed courage.
Last Christmas the "sweet chariot" of God "swung low," and our
brother Powell was suddenly taken up from these great services here
to other and larger tasks and joys in the heavens. A life so radiant
and beneficent on earth, what must it be now that it has been
translated, and transfigured into the celestial?
Among the richest inheritances of any people is that of the living
names and ever living influence of its noblest men and women. Even
though they have joined "the choir invisible," they still remain, a
possession and a power for all time. For there are no influences more
real, if any that are stronger, than the silent-working influence of
personal ideas; and whoever it is that helps to ennoble our ideal
conceptions of character, and to make these clearer and more vivid,
does us a vital service for which we may fitly be thankful, both to
God and to them. This American Missionary Association is already rich
in its "inheritance in the saints."
It is no exaggeration to say, although it is very much to say, that
James Powell had come to be the most peculiarly and widely beloved
man in our denomination. That this was so was not owing to any one
quality, but must have been due to a singularly happy combination and
balance of qualities. Every one thought of him as a man having a
genius for popular eloquence. But he had also as truly unique gifts
and graces for personal friendship. Without a particle of cant, he
possessed profound religious faith and devotion. He walked with God
and had no gifts which were not consciously devoted to his service.
At the same time he was intensely human. He never affected to be
ethereal. He was a son of man, a child of nature. And he touched life
at many points. His sympathy was immensely more than mere pity. He
was instinctively, as well as religiously generous. Open hearted,
open minded, genuine to the core, quick, sensitive, responsive,
impulsive, enthusiastic; whatever he did, he did with a will and
noble zest. Happy in a certain "divine sense of victory and success,"
he also delighted keenly in the successes of others; and there was
that about him which made every one wish him to succeed, expect him
to succeed, and apt to tell him so when he had done well. And yet he
was, to a singular degree, free from any promptings of personal
vanity. He had pride but was not proud; least of all was he
conceited. He never did poorly; he almost always did brilliantly;
there was not an indolent fibre in his being. He did well because he
exerted himself to do his best. He was happy in the power God gave
him, and accepted joyously the opportunities which others eagerly
offered him for doing the things that were in line with the main
purpose of his life.
He had an exquisitely sure and alert sense of honor. He could not do
a mean thing. He won friends, and never lost any; because all felt
that he was not only so genuine and unselfish, so bright and full of
happy humor, so deep and exuberant in affection, but that he was so
perfectly to be trusted. No one knew better his own rights, or was
less wanting in any courage that might be needed to maintain them. He
was capable of high degrees of indignation, and his life work,
championing the rights of wronged and depressed classes and races,
furnished him with but too many occasions for holy anger. His soul
often burned with intensest indignation. When one night the people in
Quitman, Georgia, burned over their heads the seminary for colored
girls, or when the Georgia Legislature was enacting the infamy of the
Glenn Bill, his heart was hot as any Babylonian furnace, aflame with
indignation, as though touched with the divine wrath, the anger of
love. And yet not for a moment could one detect in him any spark of
bitterness or malice.
But chilled now is that heart of flame; stilled now are the mighty
pulsations of that better than chivalric spirit, which up and down
the land, all over the East and the West, during those fourteen
years, did so much to _educate the churches_, and to remind the
country of the "kindness and love of God our Saviour, which hath
appeared toward man," and which ought with all possible celerity to
be manifested by men, by men of all races and of all classes, toward
one another, and to promote which this American Missionary
Association finds supremely its reason to be.
The Society has had, has, and will have, other men in its service of
splendid personal characteristics and having peculiar fitness for the
signally providential parts assigned them in this great work, which
ought to fire the heart of every Christian in the land. One we have,
thank God, still among us, equally loved and revered, who has long
stood at the front in this mighty and benignant enterprise--may the
day be slow in coming when his great heart shall be missed from these
yearly councils! And still we may be sure that the resources neither
of our humanity nor of the grace of God are in any danger of being
exhausted.
James Powell's Welsh blood was in his favor. His American boyhood and
training helped fit him for what was to come. That whispered word of
a Christian lady to a young man whose conversion, in turn, led to the
conversion of young Powell, proved to be a word of destiny. And his
experience abroad with the Jubilee Singers, in whose tones was voiced
the pathos of three silent centuries, had, also, not a little to do
in fitting him for the work God had in store for him.
It is, therefore, easy to see how fortunate this society was in
having such a man for its personal representative; and, how fortunate
the churches also were in having the most characteristic spirit and
motive and aim of the cause he stood for so fittingly impersonated.
That fond mother of the famous English missionary who is reported to
have said, that "as for her son, the race of God could find but
little to do in him," did not speak for James Powell. God had given
him splendid gifts to begin with, but it was the grace of God in him
that first saved him from making shipwreck of those gifts, and then
taught him how to use them so exhaustively in his service.
This Society represents above all things an educational enterprise.
It has many schools, chartered and unchartered, throughout the South
and West. We can never admire too much this far-reaching educational
undertaking. But, the Society is itself, in certain most fundamental
respects, the very "head-master" in the school of the churches, in
the school of the nation. And how beautifully, how superbly, how
effectively did this brother of ours shine and burn among the
churches of our land, as one commissioned of heaven to help teach us
the reality of meaning there is in this word of our Lord, how he
said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me."
His memory we shall all, and always, affectionately cherish. For the
service which he rendered to the cause which we also love, we will be
devoutly thankful. If we have gotten any good from the life which he
lived before us, we can show it by the growing warmth and
completeness of our own enlistment in the same cause. Cries Mrs.
Browning at Cowper's grave:
O Poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing;
O Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging;
O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling
Groaned inly while he taught you peace and died while ye were
smiling.
But not in _that_ way was Powell the teacher of hope and of peace and
of joy to us. He showed the way of the cross and all the morning
light of hope, because he himself had found it! And how lustrous and
mighty and winning did his own way of life serve to make all this way
appear to be.
O face, all radiant with light of love;
O eyes, so laughing in their tenderness.
So quick to read the language of distress;
O lips, so touched with flame as from above--
We have seen that sweet vision, and all the way before us shall be
the clearer, and we the stronger, because of it. And the sweet memory
of our brother shall remain to us.
Like some clear large star, which pilgrims,
At their back leave, and see not always;
Yet wheresoever they list, may turn,
And with its glories gild their faces still!
For himself, he has ascended to the mountains of myrrh and the hill
of frankincense, and has seen the day break and the shadows flee
away. But, brothers, let us cherish no such idle notion as though
James Powell had now forgotten, or has ceased to be interested in the
Chinaman, the Indian and the Negro, in America.
EULOGY BY REV. DR. IDE.
If there is any special fitness in inviting me to speak on this
occasion, it lies in the fact that Dr. Powell was an intimate friend
of mine. Outside of the circle of my own home, there was no one with
whom I ever held such close and familiar relationship as with him.
Our acquaintance began in the early days of college life, when our
nation was in the throes of a civil war. We were not members of the
same class, but were brought together quite frequently through the
literary society to which we both belonged. During this period our
relations were simply cordial. Unconsciously the advice of that witty
old divine, Thomas Fuller, was being followed: "Let friendship creep
gently to a height; if it rush to it, it may soon run itself out of
breath."
Dr. Powell graduated from Dartmouth College in the class of 1866,
while my graduation took place the previous year, in the class of
1865. My first year out of college was spent in teaching in my native
town. When the decision was reached of entering the Theological
Seminary, it was mutually agreed that we should go to Andover and
room together. From that time on our intimacy grew apace. We passed
three years together as chums; but that relation did not cease when
we separated and each went his own way to the field of labor where
the Lord had appointed. The last letter that I received from him,
(and I have been informed that it was the last letter that he ever
wrote, which reached me only the day before the despatch that
apprised me of his death), began in that same old familiar fashion,
"My dear Chum." I have thus made reference to matters somewhat
personal, that the standpoint from which I speak may be more clearly
understood. I have "summered and wintered him;" I have been permitted
to know him within and without; I have been with him in season and
out of season; I have studied with him; I have prayed with him; I
have loved him as a brother.
It is more in accord with the promptings of my heart to speak a few
words suggested by intimacy and long acquaintance with Dr. Powell.
Many learned to respect and honor him through the abundance of his
labors in the broad field to which God in his providence called him
for service. But there is another side to that life, private,
personal, even more attractive and richly suggestive to those who
knew him best and were permitted to enjoy his friendship.
Our brother did not possess the conventional qualities which
sometimes are associated with the "cloth." He was without that
endless gravity which could almost fittingly grace a pedestal. That
pious deacon who had not "snickered" for above forty years, would
have found his moral sensitiveness somewhat disturbed by the free,
untrammelled way in which he spoke and acted. There was no monotony
in his make-up. He was natural--natural as devoid of all cant and
affected airs. When you met him, you had not come upon some person
trumped for the occasion; it was Powell, the very man you wanted to
see. He could not be anything but himself. Genuineness and unaffected
simplicity were revealed in him, as in few others. He could be as
serious as a country judge; but he was serious because the matter was
in him, and it was the hour for seriousness. He could be as playful
as a child, but it was because the play was in him and it was time
for play. When our brother was pastor of the North Church, in
Newburyport, it was our custom to meet every Monday morning in
Boston. On one occasion, a brother-in-law of mine, a boy in his
teens, accompanied me to Boston, where we were to meet Mr. Powell. We
soon found ourselves tramping about the city on errands. Mr. Powell
was effervescing with fun. At such seasons, and they were very
frequent, he took great pleasure in making me the victim of his
frolicsomeness. On this occasion, I found that Mr. Powell had
enlisted the boy in the scheme of hiding away from me every chance
they could get. Passing through a crowd, I would look around and
discover that they had absconded; and then it devolved on me to hunt
them up, I never shall forget how this manoeuvering interested that
boy. He came up to me and whispered the first opportunity he had, "He
is the funniest minister that I ever saw in my life." That was his
first visit with Mr. Powell, but it was not the last. On that day an
attachment was formed which has lasted through all these years. A
little boy, four years old, in Oak Park, where Mr. Powell resided for
some time, was asked by his father, what he wanted to do when he got
to be a man, and answered: "Be a minister and go hunting like Mr.
Powell." He was a man for the boys. He touched a responsive chord in
their nature. He could enjoy what they enjoyed with as keen a relish
as they themselves.
He was the very soul of friendship; he had a genius for it. The
friends that he made are only limited by the want of personal contact
with him. In the making of them it may be said "He came, he saw, he
conquered." How wide he opened his arms to receive us! There were no
partition walls to be levelled before we approached him. It required
no studied effort to get at him. The way was always clear; the door
was without a latch-string even; it was open. You never had to ask,
Is Mr. Powell in a proper mood to see his friends to-day? Why, it was
worth a journey of fifty miles just to meet that man and receive a
grasp of his hand! I remember going to a depot in Chicago to meet him
as he came in on the train. As soon as he singled me out from the
crowd, he rushed towards me, exclaiming in his bantering way: "Well,
well, well, this is the first sensible thing I ever knew you to do,
come on old fellow;" and he grasped my arm and hurried me away,
saying, "I am just glad to see you." When it is said, that he is the
"best beloved of all," is it not because he first loved us? The
generosity and friendliness of his soul captured our hearts. I
imagine that many thousands of dollars were poured into the treasury
of the A.M.A. evoked by the love kindled in hearts for our brother.
Men came to love the cause through him who loved them.
Mr. Powell was a man of enthusiasm; he worked at white heat. The
logic of his whole life seemed to be, "What I do I must do quickly."
He could not stop; he must hurry on. He could pass easily from one
thing to another. In all the years of my acquaintance with him I
never knew him to rest as other people rest. If his body was not
active his mind was. The river of his life had no sluggish intervals;
it was a torrent from first to last. His step was a bound; his
thought rushed in its movement. He could write a sermon in less time
than any other man in the seminary, so far as I know. Plans came to
him like an inspiration and were unfolded with a rapidity that seemed
to me wonderful. His scholarship was not technical. He always enjoyed
the larger sweep of things. He would have been the last man to devote
his life to the Greek preterite, and to question whether it would not
have been better to have confined himself to the dative case! Such
minutiae of erudition might be fascinating to others; it was not for
him. His large-heartedness, his sympathy, his wealthy and generous
spirit could not be condensed into a bookworm, or a recluse. They
rather equipped him to become a watchman, that he might declare what
he saw. He needed the whole Republic to range up and down in. His
ringing words might be heard on our Western frontier; but before
their echoes had scarcely died away, their wakening notes might be
taken up and reiterated on our New England coast. He was a voice
crying in the land. Like the Great Master, he was sent to "heal the
broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, to set at
liberty them that are bruised." It was the down-trodden races for
which he lived. Such a candle of the Lord would burn down to its
socket before the day was half spent. Such hot haste and burning zeal
must consume to ashes before the meridian is turned.
Oftentimes have I thought of our brother in connection with a remark
once made by Rufus Choate. Mr. Choate was an over-worked man, and in
his later years, the tension under which he was laboring was quite
apparent. He was met by a friend on the street one morning who
reminded him of his careworn appearance. Said his friend, "Your
labors are too unremitting, and what is worse, you are endangering
your constitution." "Ah!" said Mr. Choate, "my constitution was gone
long ago; I am living on the by-laws now." In the last years of his
life, it seemed to me that our brother was living on the by-laws of
his constitution.
He was aware that but a brittle thread kept his earthly moorings; but
this did not deter him; he must work while the day lasted; for the
night cometh when no man can work. While the vital spark remained, he
would not, indeed we may say, he could not stay his hand. And so in
the midst of his years God took him.
What a privilege to have walked with him in the fellowship of love,
and to have enjoyed the richness and fullness of his friendship! What
springs of tenderness in his nature ready to gush forth to refresh
and quicken the tendrils of a drooping heart. How the sorrows of
others found echo and response in his own soul. The grim messenger
death once entered my own home, and made all a desert and a
desolation. I never can forget the letter that I received from our
brother at that time. What melting tenderness and sympathy were
expressed in it! He was smitten and afflicted; he was wounded and
bruised for my sake. It was as if he was the stricken one and not
myself. But I could not account, however, at the moment, for the
blotted and blurred appearance of the writing. But it was all
explained in a postscript. "Please excuse the writing. I could not
keep the tears back; they fell so thick and fast as nearly to destroy
the legibility of my letter." How can we help loving such a man? He
took up the sorrows of others and made them his own; aye more, he
took up the woes of a race and made them his own. When did the
colored man have a better and more faithful friend than he? Who was
more completely and absolutely identified with his interests than he?
Burn down the colored man's school house through the malign influence
of caste feeling, and you had kindled in his soul the fires of an
indignation which quite eclipsed the original conflagration.
I have been permitted to observe the advancement and development of
his faith. As the years carried him forward in his course, that faith
assumed stronger as well as more graceful and beautiful outlines. He
was not one who never had doubts or questionings. The difficulties of
belief as well as unbelief, were not unknown to him. But when he took
up the mighty task to which he consecrated his life, and was left to
grapple with illiteracy, superstition and the needs of a benighted
and down-trodden people, knotty questions in theology no longer vexed
him, for he recognized that there was but one all-sufficient solvent
for the dark problems which thrust themselves into the foreground,
and that was the redemptive power of the Gospel of Christ. Men may be
puzzled and perplexed concerning the theory of sunshine, but there
are no questionings on the subject that can override the practical
effect of the sun. The sun shines in spite of our metaphysics! Our
brother advanced into the practical aspects of faith, and had the
assurance that Christ was the light of the world, in spite of our
theories of inspiration.
He had an unbounded faith in applied Christianity. There was nothing
it could not do in the way of recasting and uplifting the despised
peoples of the land. We had but to go forward in the name and power
of our great Leader to effect the national redemption. But I must not
detain you longer. He has gone out from us. His mission is ended
here. Those eloquent lips must remain forever sealed on earth. He
simply ceases to be seen of us. We follow his path of translation
with mingled tears and joy. The future life, whose place is beyond
the skies, was a matter of great concern to him. I recall the hour
when he returned to his room from a lecture on the immortality of the
soul. He was almost overcome by the discussion which was being
carried on in the class-room. He wanted the subject taken out of the
realm of probability, and brought to the test of certainty and
demonstration. "O, chum!" he exclaimed, "I wish I might die now; I
can hardly wait for the demonstration!" He did not wait long. The
bending heavens caught up his spirit, and he has gone into the holy
city through the beautiful gate which opens over all graves.
"Thus saints, that seem to die in earth's rude strife, only win
double life; they have but left our weary ways to live in memory
here, in Heaven by love and praise."
EULOGY BY DR. STRIEBY.
After what has been so eloquently and fittingly said I have very
great reluctance to appear before you to speak of Brother Powell. I
have on several occasions spoken of him, and it is only because I am
unwilling that the office and the office workers should not in some
way be recognized that I consent to say a few words to-day.
What I have to say relates not so much to his public life as to our
office relations with him. It has been my sad duty to go to the
graves or speak at these meetings in reference to the death of all
the officers associated with me when I came into this work; Lewis
Tappan, George Whipple, S.S. Jocelyn, G.D. Pike--all of these I have
followed to the grave. There is this one difference between Brother
Powell's death and that of the others in our memory--all the others
had a long, wasting sickness; we remember the darkened room, the pale
face, the parched lips, the night vigils. But we have no such thought
in regard to Brother Powell's death. The morning after the holiday of
Christmas I came to the office not to hear the statement that Brother
Powell was very sick, but the astounding announcement "Brother Powell
is dead." This was indeed terrible; but the memory of Brother Powell
has not been darkened with the thought of sickness, but remains with
us just as he was in health and vigor. We still think of the quick
step with which he came into the office, the hearty cheer with which
he greeted us, the pleasant face that shone not only at the door, but
through the whole day. He was a busy worker, as has been said, but
ever and always the same bright face, the same cheerful heart, the
same warm love, the same readiness to help bear everybody's load,
went through the long day. If you have ever spent a day in the
mountains, with its breezy temperature, and yet with the sun filling
the whole blue heavens and shining on all things--water, mountain,
valley, tree and grass--if that day has left its memory of brightness
and sweetness in your heart, such is the memory left on us in the
office by Brother Powell.
I must speak of his faithfulness as a worker. It has been referred to
in better language than I can give, but Brother Powell was
indefatigable; he knew no rest; when he toiled until the string
snapped he would go down into a sickness that lasted usually just six
days; then he would rise as quickly. This one instance will show how
he sacrificed himself. On one Sabbath he preached two or three times;
then on Monday he sank down in a six days' illness, but on the next
Sabbath morning he had agreed to preach in Mr. Beecher's church in
Brooklyn, and taking himself out of his bed, he did preach in that
church twice, and then sank down into another six days' illness. It
was in this way that the man burned out his life in the service. I
often urged him to rest, I urged his dear wife to persuade him to
rest, but I always had from him the assurance, "It is more wearisome
to spend the day in trying to rest than to work." He always worked at
a white heat or he was sick.
Brother Powell was a consecrated man, and with this I shall close.
His eloquence was appreciated. He had calls to go elsewhere, to
greater fields with larger salary, to apparently greater popularity,
but these he always and unhesitatingly declined. He stayed with us,
and I believe that it was Brother Powell's sympathy with the Lord
Jesus Christ in those poor, degraded races that led him to say, I
will give my life to them and let the honors and emoluments of the
world go. Such was the man we loved and honored in our hearts.
EULOGY BY PRESIDENT TAYLOR.
I knew Brother Powell, of whom the friends have spoken so
beautifully, touching our hearts so deeply.
I was most impressed by two things in Brother Powell--his radiant
joyousness and his delightful humor, and the ease with which he could
make the transition from the telling of a funny story to the uttering
of a devout prayer, thus leading others with him up to the very steps
of the throne of grace.
A while ago, in Scotland, there was an old Covenanter, William
Guthrie by name, who had a disposition very much like Brother
Powell's, full of joyousness and fun--let us call things by their
right names--and on one occasion a large number of brethren gathered
together in his manse, among whom was James Durham, better known as
the author of a book on Revelation, who was a popular minister in
Glasgow at the time. He was a very serious man, like the dog that
John Brown tells about, with a life so full of seriousness that there
wasn't anything of the joyous in his disposition, but on that day
Guthrie was bubbling over with fun, and while they were worshiping he
was called upon by a brother to pray, and he went just straight up to
the Hearer of prayer, and they were all moved to tears by his
devotion; and Durham said after they arose from their knees:
"William, I can't understand. If I had been as merry as you were a
little while ago, I could not have prayed for four and twenty hours;"
and Guthrie replied: "If I hadn't laughed so much I couldn't pray."
My model is Paul. Hear what he says: "Rejoice in the Lord always, and
again, I say, rejoice. Let your moderation be know unto all men. The
Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer
and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made know
unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,
shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."
You see how near the joy follows the serious.
The Lord knew that the Christian lives in the ray of sunshine of
Jesus, and we do dishonor to our Master, because we do not let our
joyousness speak for him. And I bless God that wherever James Powell
went he went with joy, the man he was. He did not keep it within. The
joy of his Lord was with him even on the day when men shall depart
because he is with them.
* * * * *
THE AMERICAN FREEDMEN AS FACTORS IN AFRICAN EVANGELIZATION.
BY REV. M.E. STRIEBY, D.D.
The presence of the Freedmen in America is an anomaly in the world's
history. European nations have gradually abolished serfdom, and the
master and the slave being of the same race, the line of separation
has soon broken down. In America, slavery is abolished, but the
master and ex-slave are as far apart as ever. America is a nation of
immigrants, mostly from Europe and Africa. The Europeans soon
assimilate, and only the tradition of the individual family tells of
the particular nation from which it came. But the African immigrants
are still, after nearly 300 years' residence in America, separated
from the white race by visible marks of color and features, and are
thus, at the same time, identified with the land of their fathers.
Are not these facts suggestive? Does not the persistent race-identity
of these people, linking them still with Africa, suggest a duty they
may owe to it; and do not their vigorous intellects and warm
religious characteristics indicate that duty to be a high and sacred
one?
On the other hand, Africa, the land of their fathers, is another
anomaly in the world's history. For a thousand years it was unknown
to the civilized world; its people are the most degraded upon earth,
and it is a shame and reproach to the church that it has done so
little to enlighten them,--yea, a double shame when, as is now well
known, Mohammedanism is spreading most rapidly over the whole
continent.
These added facts emphasize the question already asked, Are not these
freed Negroes peculiarly fitted and providentially called to carry
the gospel to their fatherland? Is there not here a Divine purpose
that the church should be quick to see and prompt to carry out? As
the Hebrews were taken to Egypt, disciplined by bondage, and made
familiar with the arts of the most enlightened nation then on earth,
and were thus prepared for their high destiny in developing the plan
of salvation, so are not these children of Africa, chastened by their
severe bondage, brought into contact with the civilization of
America, and fitted by their ardent religious impulses, destined to
bear a large share in the work of Africa's evangelization?
It is to the development of this thought that I invite attention. Let
me first revert to the slow progress of Christianity in Africa,
Christianity, soon after the apostolic age, made one of its brightest
triumphs in Northern Africa--in Egypt and Abyssinia. But ere long
that light went out there and never penetrated the great continent.
So far as is now known, darkness has ever hovered over it--ignorance,
superstition, degradation, cannibalism, slavery and war, have made
and perpetuated that darkness.
But I wish now to call attention to the efforts of the church in
modern times to preach the gospel in Africa. There are now, so far as
I can ascertain, forty-one societies engaged in missionary work
there. The number of missionaries employed by them in Africa, foreign
and native, is 1,086. These have endured the malaria of the climate
and the dangers from hostile people, and some of them have shown the
most heroic spirit of self-sacrifice. They have been preceded by
others, who have laid down their lives in the work, and the living
stand on the graves of the dead, expecting soon to follow. A measure
of success has attended and rewarded this zeal, and a few favored
examples can be found of men who have long endured the climate and
have seen the good work grow upon their hands. But the results, as a
whole, have been discouraging. Christianity has found a precarious
footing along the shores of the continent while, as yet, in the vast
interior the missionaries are compelled to follow at a tardy pace the
footsteps of the explorers. Africa is yet unevangelized.
The causes of this are not far to seek. The white missionaries from
Europe and America succumb under the fatal malaria, or are deterred
by the unreasoning and deadly hostility of the natives. The
missionaries are a foreign people, with different color, features and
habits. They are known to the natives as coming from nations that
have plundered and enslaved them. They come as a superior race,
unable to meet the natives on the basis of a common brotherhood. A
gulf yawns between them. The Christianization of Africa needs a new
impulse from some other quarter.
On the other hand, and in sharp contrast with all this, is the rapid
progress of Mohammedanism in Africa. This progress has been noted by
the modern explorers, but has been recently brought more distinctly
to the attention of Europe and America. Dean R. Bosworth Smith, in
the _Nineteenth Century_ for December, 1887, thus states the extent
to which Mohammedanism covers Africa: "It is hardly too much to say
that one-half of the whole of Africa is already dominated by Islam,
while, of the remaining half, one-quarter is leavened, and another is
threatened, by it. Such is the amazing, the portentous problem which
Christianity and civilization have to face in Africa, and to which
neither of them seems as yet half awake."
The causes of this rapid spread over Africa are easily discernible.
The Mohammedans, though they appeared at first as conquerors, became
at length Africans by their permanent residence on the soil, and they
went forth afterwards in propagating their faith, not as warriors,
but as fellow-citizens and brothers. They resembled the natives in
color, manners, and modes of thought, and readily assimilated with
them by marriage ties and the affinities of home life. Their converts
among the native races were even more naturally welcomed, as friends
and brothers. They, of course, found no difficulty with the climate,
for in it they were born.
While we repudiate emphatically the idea that Mohammedanism can be a
substitute for Christianity in civilizing Africa, yet it is only just
that we should admit that Islam brings with it some influences for
good into that benighted land--influences that strongly appeal to the
higher instincts and aspirations of the people, and are, therefore,
an elevating power. First of all, the One True God of Islam tends to
lift the African above his idols, his fetich, his witchcraft and his
cannibalism. Then, the prohibition of wine and strong drink snatches
the people from what threatens to be the vortex of their
ruin--intemperance; while Christian nations are now, to their shame
and infamy, swelling the floods and increasing the velocity of that
vortex by larger importations of intoxicating liquors. Then, too, the
followers of Mohammed are using the school of the prophets in the
preparation of their missionaries. The great training school, the Old
University of Cairo, is said to number at times as many as ten
thousand students of the Koran, a number which may well challenge a
comparison with the Protestant Theological Seminaries of Europe and
America, not only by their numbers, but by the astonishing success of
their pupils as missionaries. They run where we halt, they win where
we fail.
It is now in order to ask if the Freedmen of America can be fitted to
take a special part in the evangelization of Africa. There are strong
reasons for believing that they can be; they have race advantages
similar to the Mohammedans, and they can readily obtain the acquired
advantages of the white missionary. In the first place, they are
numerous--eight millions now, and increasing rapidly. In physical
proportions they are stalwart and vigorous, inured to toil and
capable of great exertion. Their mental powers are quick and
susceptible of wide culture. Their capacity to acquire learning, even
in the higher branches, has been abundantly proved in the schools
they have attended.
The religious characteristics of the race are very marked; faith,
hope and love are leading traits. They endured a bondage that would
have crushed other races; their faith and hope never deserted them.
Their bitter experience in those long and weary years drove them to
God as their only source of help, and the "Slave Songs," with the sad
history out of which they grew, are among the most pathetic
utterances of patience, trust and triumphant hope that human
literature presents. So it was during the war, which was long and
sometimes of doubtful result, but they never lost their faith in
their ultimate deliverance. The Jew in his journey from bondage to
Canaan, often became despondent and murmured; the Negro never did
either.
Hear the Jew:
"Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us to die in
the wilderness?"
"Let us make a Captain and let us return into Egypt."
Hear the Negro, in the Slave Songs:
"Way over in the Egypt land,
You shall gain the victory.
Way over in the Egypt land,
You shall gain the day.
_March on_, and you shall gain the victory,
_March on_, and you shall gain the day."
Such a people are surely destined to develop a rich and beautiful
Christian life. If they should be specially trained, and their warm
hearts inspired, for the work of missionaries to Africa, who can
doubt the success of their efforts? They would stand on a better
vantage ground there than the Mohammedan, for he is a foreigner
transplanted on the soil. They would come back to the home of their
fathers, and would meet the natives as brothers--long separated, yet
as brothers; their color and personal characteristics would attest
the kinship, their Christian love would kindle towards the degraded
of their race, and their holy ambition would be fired by the great
work to which they were called--the uplifting of the millions of
long-neglected Africa. It would be reasonable to expect that they
would endure the African climate better than the white man. They are
a tropical race, and, in America, they love and cling to the sunny
South, seldom migrating to the North; they do not suffer from the
malaria that is so fatal to the whites in the South.
These views and impressions are confirmed by actual experience. With
a view of learning the results of that experience, I addressed
letters to the Secretaries of all the larger societies in Europe and
America doing missionary work on that continent, and, in due time,
received courteous replies from nearly all of them, giving opinions
and facts with more or less fulness of detail. My inquiries mainly
centered around two points: first, the ability of the colored
missionary as compared with the white, to endure the climate; and
secondly, his relative success as a missionary. The opinions given in
those letters, as might be expected, are various, and the facts
themselves, gathered from widely different sources, and relating to
very different climates and local circumstances, point to somewhat
different conclusions.
The specific statements of these letters may be thus summed up:
1. No society reports that the colored man is _less_ healthy than the
white; one or two societies discern as yet no special difference; but
the larger number say that he endures the climate much better than
the white man.
2. On the second point--the comparative success of colored
missionaries--the testimony bears very decidedly, _as a rule_, and
_as yet_ against them; while a few and very favorable exceptions
indicate that the fault is with the individual and not with the race,
and hold out the hope that time and better training will remove the
difficulties.
The more full account may be thus given: Some of the societies charge
a want of carefulness, perhaps a want of integrity against the
colored missionaries--that "colored treasurers will not render
accounts, teachers will not make reports, missionaries desire to
control, and they seldom are sufficiently respected, especially when
of younger age." Now, these are manifestly the vices and infirmities
of an immature and imperfectly cultured race. We must recollect that
centuries of civilization and Christian influences are behind
Europeans and Americans, while the native African, converted and
trained in his own land, has behind him only the few years of his own
life separating him from the densest degradation of heathenism; the
African born and converted in the West Indies has been a freedman
only since 1840; and the American Negro was perhaps himself a slave,
and his race had the shackles struck from their bodies only in 1863,
while the fetters of ignorance and vice still manacle the minds and
hearts of the mass. We ought not, therefore, so much to wonder at the
failure of the many, as to rejoice and take courage at the success of
the few, especially as there is a bright side to the dark picture, to
which I now take pleasure in turning your attention.
There _have been_ some very successful colored missionaries in
Africa, whom the Christian world has known and honored, and the
letters I have received joyfully refer to them, and mention others
not yet widely known, but whose work attests their wisdom, piety and
usefulness. Thus one Secretary refers to a missionary, born a slave
in America and educated here, as "the most scholarly man in the whole
mission." Another society testifies, and our personal knowledge of
the man referred to confirms the testimony, to the remarkable success
of one of its colored missionaries as "a business manager, a preacher
and a teacher, showing himself fully equal to any emergency, and
remarkable in his influence with the heads of the tribes, and his
success in winning souls." The testimony in regard to two others of
its missionaries is almost equally emphatic.
The Secretary of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America writes:
"All ordained men on our missionary staff in Africa, from the Bishop
down, are colored men. I think we have concluded that, all things
considered, except for the work of higher education, colored
missionaries are more available in that field than white." He refers
with gratification to the career of Bishop Ferguson, the only colored
man who has a seat in the American House of Bishops, who was born in
America, educated in the mission schools, and has risen through the
positions of teacher, deacon, priest and rector, until he was
consecrated the Bishop of Cape Palmas in 1885, and has worthily
filled all these positions. The Church Missionary Society of London
refers to the remarkable career of Bishop Crowther, who was born in
Africa, put on board a slave ship, rescued, and landed at Freetown,
educated in Sierra Leone and in England, and at length entered his
chosen field on the Niger, reduced the language of the people to
writing, and preached the gospel to them in their native tongue. In
1861, there were reported to be 1,500 converts as the result of his
labors. He received the degree of D.D., from Oxford, England, and was
consecrated in 1864 African Bishop of the Niger. This society also
mentions others, one as possessing "special educational and
linguistic powers;" another as a "pastor and evangelist with
remarkable power and spiritual influence;" another as "a practical
organizer and administrator;" another as "very successful in
educational work," and it adds: "Many others have also shown
considerable power as educationists, pastors and evangelists."
From all these facts, the inferences are plain:
1. That Negroes have succeeded in this work, and that those in
America can be prepared for it. They can endure the climate, find
ready access to the hearts of the people, and be eminently successful
in preaching the Gospel. They should have the best training for the
purpose, and great care should be exercised in selecting and sending
forth only those of good education, mature character, sound judgment
and unquestioned piety.
2. America owes it as a debt to them and to Africa that they be
furnished with the means for this training. The guilt of man-stealing
and of slavery can have no better atonement than by sending back to
Africa the sons of those stolen from those benighted shores, who
shall bring with them the light and blessing of civilization and
Christianity. England, too, having had a share in introducing slavery
into America, should take its share in making this atonement.
3. The colored people of America should be aroused to this
providential call to this high mission in behalf of their fatherland.
We do not question nor minify their great duty and destiny in
America. Their warm affections, their easily kindled zeal, their gift
of song and eloquence, will yet add an enriching pathos to our piety,
and a wider range to our patriotism. But this call to Africa, while
not interfering with duty here, will broaden their vision and deepen
their piety. There will be a grand uplift to them in grasping and
endeavoring to realize this great work. It will raise them above
petty ambitions, it will give a practical turn to their religious
enthusiasm, and bring them into closer sympathy with Jesus Christ.
They have been in fellowship with Him in suffering, they may now be
co-workers with Him in redemption.
But Africa, so degraded! Why should her sons go back to her? The Scot
loves the hills and the glens whence his family came; the German
never forgets the Fatherland; but what is there to awaken the love of
the Negro for Africa? Gen. Garfield was born in a humble home, and
went thence as a canal driver, but when he became President of the
United States he did not despise that humble home, nor the mother
that bore him, lowly as both were, but at his inauguration he had his
mother placed in an honored seat on the platform, and his first act
after taking the oath of office was to step over, before that vast
assembly, and kiss that mother.
American descendant of Africa! The home of your fathers is humble and
degraded, and you are elevated and refined. Show that you are really
great and Christlike by giving the redeeming kiss to Africa!
* * * * *
THE HOPEFULNESS OF INDIAN MISSIONS, AS SEEN IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY.
BY REV. A.F. BEARD, D.D.
The contemplation of the past sometimes weakens the energies for
action in the present. But when the present is a consequence of the
past, we can scarcely do our work rightly if we neglect the lessons
of experience.
The history of missions among our Indian tribes has lessons in it
which may be wisely heeded.
When the first settlers of this country left their ships, which had
been freighted with the destinies of a continent, and faced the
perils of a wilderness, they met at the outset a strange people. No
one knew who they were, nor how many; they themselves did not know.
They had no history. They had become vain in their imaginations, and
their foolish heart was darkened. Ignorant as to the past, their
theory of the future was vague and shadowy. Their spirits would exist
after death. The heroic and brave and worthy would go to the happy
hunting-grounds, where would be pleasant climate and fair weather,
and where abundance would be exhaustless and satisfactions complete.
The unworthy would wander without in a state of misfortune and
restless discontent. For their religious ceremonies, a priesthood
existed, and those who composed this were devoted to it from their
childhood. The howling dervishes of Turkey and the pagan priests of
the South Sea Islands, may be compared with the pow-wows of the North
American Indians.
It is impossible to estimate the number of this aboriginal
population. Doubtless the popular impression is an exaggerated one.
It would be safe to say that, all told, there were never at any one
period, more than half a million of these people, occupying the
present territory of the United States from ocean to ocean. They were
widely scattered, so that there were great stretches of forest and
prairie lying between the different tribes.
There were many groups, distinct in their languages, which yet bore a
general resemblance to each other in construction, so that the
several tribes could at least easily learn to understand each other.
I think that the weight of authority is, that they belong to one
family of nations, and are derived from one stock, while they display
considerable diversities in language and customs.
The motive of the early settlers of New England, which took
precedence over all others--as they declared--was "_a desire to
advance the gospel in these remote parts of the world, even if they
should be but stepping-stones to those who were to follow them_."
Finding these barbarous tribes here, the Pilgrim Fathers bartered
with them for peaceable possession, which they did not always secure.
As civilization encroached upon barbarism, the colonists kept their
homes often only by the defences of war. But peace was in the hearts
and purposes of the early settlers.
As early as 1643, the Rev. John Eliot, who had been educated at the
University of Cambridge, England, and who had come to Boston,
Massachusetts, in 1630, wrote that he had "been through varieties of
intercourse with the Indians, and had many solemn discourses with all
sorts of nations of them." It was his theory that they were the
descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. He acquired their language.
It was an arduous undertaking, but he said "Prayer and pains through
faith in Christ Jesus will do anything."
In 1660, he had visited all the Indians in the Massachusetts and
Plymouth Colonies, and preached the gospel to them, and the first
Indian church was then formed.
In 1661, he had translated the New Testament into the Indian tongue,
and in 1663, the Old Testament. This Indian Bible was published at
Cambridge, and was the only Bible printed in America until a much
later period. Besides this, Eliot instituted schools, and induced
large numbers to give up their savage customs and habits, and to form
themselves into civilized communities.
The zeal of Eliot quickened that of others, and in 1674, there was a
missionary circuit of 14 villages and 1,100 praying Indians.
At this same date, through the sacrificial labors of Mr. Thomas
Mayhew and his son, there were 1,500 praying Indians in the Island of
Martha's Vineyard and vicinity. The next year came war--King Philip's
War. It meant extermination of the whites, or conquest of the red
men. Civilization was too strong to be resisted by barbarism, and
then began the long catalogue of organized Indian miseries. The
General Court ordered the removal of the conquered Indians, and they
were pushed away before the aggressive steps of a stronger race. In
1743, the Rev. David Brainerd was propagating missions among the
Indians with success in various places. Idolatrous sacrifices were
altogether abolished; many heathen customs lost their sanction, and
sincere converts were made whose pious lives and peaceful deaths
attested to the influence of the spirit of God in their hearts.
At this period of history the Moravian Church began missions in
Pennsylvania among the Delawares. Christian Rauch soon won the
confidence of the savages and excited their astonishment. And
observing him asleep in his hut, an Indian said: "This man cannot be
a bad man, he fears no evil, he does not fear us who are so fierce,
but he sleeps in peace and puts his life in our hands." There was a
remarkable acknowledgment of this mission in converted souls. The
Moravian Missions in various sections of the country, from the early
date of 1740 until now, have been characterized by courage, activity,
humility and devotion. In the midst of these scenes of devastation
and murder, the Moravian missionaries have wandered in deserts, in
mountains, in dens and caves of the earth, never relinquishing their
purposes, and they have obtained a good report through faith.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which began
its existence in 1812, adopted measures in 1815 for carrying the
gospel to the Indians. One hundred thousand of these people, as
untamed as when the Pilgrims met them at Plymouth, as ignorant in
most respects, and as truly heathen as were their fathers centuries
before them, were then supposed to be living east of the Mississippi
River. The first mission was among the Creeks and Cherokees. Three
missionaries and their wives began the work. In character it was a
compound of mission boarding school and agricultural college. In
eighteen months, the Indian boys could read the Bible, and nearly a
score of them could write; five converted heathen were members of the
church.
Next, in 1818, missions were begun among the Chickasaws and the
Choctaws. Here, also, the first work was that of the school. So eager
were the Choctaws for instruction, that eight children were brought
160 miles across the country before the missionaries were ready for
them, and in one year from that date the Choctaw Nation voted to
devote to the schools their entire annuity of _six thousand dollars_,
from the sale of their lands to the United States.
The missionaries were subject to unceasing hindrances from renegade
whites, who are always on the borders of civilization, and have
usually been the enemies of missionaries.
But among the Cherokees no year passed without conversions. Those who
appeared to the missionaries so wild and forbidding that they were
received with fear, came under the gospel power and were clothed and
in their right mind. In six years the Church had largely increased.
Indians traveled a score of miles to attend the services. As yet,
there was no Cherokee written language. This mission was eight years
old when the four gospels were translated into the Cherokee tongue,
and in three or four years more, one-half the nation could read.
There were now among the Cherokees and the Choctaws, eighteen
missionary stations.
In 1826, the Board began work among eight other tribes in different
parts of the country.
It next took charge of the Stockbridge tribe, whose ancestors had
enjoyed the ministry of the celebrated Dr. Jonathan Edwards. They
were originally in Massachusetts. They were pushed back hundreds of
miles to Central New York, then pushed further back hundreds of miles
to Indiana; then pushed still further back hundreds of miles to
Michigan, and finally pushed back once more and allowed to rest in
the remote West--in Minnesota. During all these cruel removals, they
had themselves kept alive a school, and had among them exemplary
Christians. Now, after one hundred years of such history, the
American Board put a mission among them. The church survived, and the
whole settlement took in the spirit of civilization and took on its
forms. A year later were added the missions to the Chickasaws, and
now, about the close of the year 1830, it seemed as if the fruitage
of this Indian missionary consecration were at hand. Half the
Cherokees in Georgia could read. Civilized life had taken firm hold
on them, and they were governing themselves with Christian laws.
Eight churches were in life and power among them. The Chickasaws had
their church in Arkansas, and the Cherokees there, another. The
churches of the Choctaws had received to their communions that year
two hundred and fifty members who were hopefully converted, and in
all the Indian Missions of the American Board there was a steady
increase of hopefulness, while the members in tribes were also
increasing.
"Everywhere the fruits of the missions among the Indians were
abundant. No more docile pagans were ever approached with the gospel
than some of these peoples."
Nevertheless, from this period of time, Indian missions cease to be
successful for a generation.
The mission to the Chickasaws was abandoned in 1834; to the Osages in
1836; to the Stockbridge tribe, in 1848; to the Choctaws, in 1859; to
the Tuscaroras, in 1860; and to the Cherokees, in 1860; until at last
but a single mission remained, that among the great Sioux tribes or
the Dakotas. Twelve missions and forty-five churches, which reached
about one hundred thousand Indians abandoned in twenty-six years!
The question now asks itself: "Why were not these hopeful missionary
efforts to these pagan tribes more permanent? What turned the tide of
success and left the missions stranded?" Here comes the story of
dishonor. The Indian was here when the white man came. The Christian
white men recognized the Indian's right of occupancy as a right. They
did _not_ hold that half a million savages had a right to dispute the
ultimate sovereignty of civilization, but they agreed that when
civilization should move forward and barbarism should retreat, the
Indian should have Christian justice and not un-Christian wrong. He
should not be oppressed. He should be treated equitably. His rights
should be acknowledged, and if the demands of the greater number and
the greater life asked for a surrender of his rights as original
occupant, then there should be fair consideration, compensation and
honesty. It may be the providence of God that barbarism shall be
crowded out by civilization, that the Indian's hunting-ground shall
yield to the railway and the marts of commerce. It may not be right
that a continent of eight millions of square miles, more than twice
the size of all Europe, fair and beautiful and rich in resources,
should be kept for game preserves for half a million savages. It is
right that the forest should fall to make room for New England
villages, with their churches and school-houses and industry. The
rude stage of existence must make way for a higher. But the higher
has no right to be wicked in its onward movement. It has no right to
rob or cheat. It has no right to make compacts and violate them. It
has no right to break its faith with the weak. It has no right to
outrage the principle of justice.
The history of Indian wrongs by the whites in the inevitable advances
of civilization, need not be recited here. Unscrupulous greed has
hovered about the Indian reservations as waiting buzzards hover near
the wounded creature upon whose flesh they would fatten. Lands
guaranteed to the Indians were encroached upon by white people. These
encroachments resisted led to wars. Savage nature, wrought up with a
sense of injustice and burning for revenge, swept down upon guilty
intruders and innocent settlers alike, with indiscriminate massacre.
Then the Government called out its soldiery, and Indian wars with
less than half a million savages have cost the United States
$500,000,000, enough to plant missions among all the heathen tribes
of the world.
Frontiersmen who have coveted the Indian reservations, when they
already had more land than they could use, without the possessions
which they desired to secure, have satisfied themselves that a
degraded race of savages had no rights which they were bound to
respect; and how could the missionaries prosper, when the ignorant
saw such exhibitions of character and life on the part of the people
from whom the missionaries came? These wars have led to cancellation
of treaties, because of inhuman violence, and then, the reservation
taken up, the savage is removed still further back. Thus the Indians
have been planted and uptorn, re-planted and uptorn, and re-planted,
until they are now removed, not hundreds of miles from the grounds of
their fathers, but thousands of miles. A tree will not grow if
uprooted and transplanted every few months, and this will in brief
tell us why the missions which began with the Moravians and the
American Board, and which were so hopeful, were one after another
abandoned. These constant removals were as disastrous to missions as
they were unjust to the Indians. It was remarkable that there should
be the degree of spiritual fruitage through all this period of Indian
removals and Indian wrongs, which characterizes the labors of those
who often, at peril of life, labored on for the red man's salvation.
The American Board began its work among the Dakotas in 1835. It was
one of the most powerful tribes on the continent, numbering over
40,000. Their hunting-grounds extended from the 43 degrees to the 49
degrees of latitude, and from the Mississippi River to the Black
Hills west of the Missouri. This was a territory equal in extent to
that of Scotland. The name Dakota means the "allied one," and
indicates the bands that united to form the tribe. The missionary
work, which was initiated under Rev. T.S. Williamson, Rev. J.D.
Stevens and Rev. S. Riggs, with their wives, and lady teachers, began
prosperously, and in six years forty-nine persons were formed into a
church. For some years the accessions were mostly women. The
acceptance of Christianity was more difficult to the men. The change
in the manner of life involved in it was greater. It meant entire
reconstruction of their ideas of life, and in the manner of it, the
abandonment of polygamy, the adoption of civilized dress, the spirit
of obedience and industry. These were the contradictions to centuries
of tradition and custom, and meant to an Indian brave the becoming
like a woman. At length, however, the gospel did take hold of the
warriors. The work and the faith of the missionaries were thoroughly
tested by the opposition this aroused, but the gospel won its way. At
last, when the rumors of the Civil War between the Northern and the
Southern States came to the Indians, it set their hearts aflame for
battle with their white neighbors, whose encroachment they resented.
Then broke out the dreadful Minnesota massacre, when the missionaries
were compelled to flee for their lives, and the missions were
abandoned. Twelve hundred United States troops at last scattered the
savages and took about five hundred prisoners. They were incarcerated
at the Mankato prison in Minnesota, where thirty-eight were hung in
one day. The remainder in prison were visited by the missionaries,
and the prison house became a chapel. Soon it was a Bethel, a great
revival began, which lasted all winter, and in the spring, two
hundred Dakotas were added to the church in one day, and when they
were transferred to the prison at Davenport, they went out in chains,
but singing the 51st Psalm to the tune of Old Hundred. They carried
the fire from heaven with them to the Davenport prison, and when, in
1886, the prisoners were released, more than four hundred were
hopefully converted, and when they joined their families in Nebraska,
these gathered together in one communion, and called it the Pilgrim
Church--about two hundred years after John Eliot, of the Pilgrims at
Boston, gave his life to the Indians of Massachusetts. A people as
remote from civilization as were the Indians of 1640 founded their
Pilgrim Church.
Now at length the Dakota missionaries began a new life among these
tribes. By the wonderful and strange providence of God, there had
been prepared in prison native teachers and preachers, and the way
was opened for expansive work.
After a period of ten years of this work, the American Board
transferred its Indian missions to the American Missionary
Association. This Association, thirty years previous to this, had
Indian missions in the northwest, with twenty-one missionaries.
Various causes had led to _their_ abandonment, the chief one being
the demands of the newly-emancipated slaves after the war.
Six years before the transfer of these missions to this Association,
it had an interest in Indian missions in Washington Territory and in
Minnesota. The transfer on the part of the American Board brought
under our care the mission at Santee, Nebraska, with its large school
and industrial departments; the Fort Sully mission, those on the
Cheyenne River, and at Fort Berthold, Dakota. These have since been
developed, until now, the facilities for missionary work and the
force of workers have been greatly increased.
There are at the present time in the United States, exclusive of
Alaska, 247,761 Indians. Our missions are chiefly among 40,000 of the
Sioux or Dakota tribe, in the great Dakota reservation; among the
Poncas in Nebraska, and the Gros Ventres and Mandans on the Northern
Missouri.
At the Santee Normal School, we are teaching about two hundred Indian
youth of both sexes. We are instructing them also in agriculture and
trades. There is a department for theological study, where
missionaries are prepared from the Indians for the Indians. Sixty-one
missionaries and teachers have caught the spirit of Eliot, Edwards
and Brainerd, and are earnestly serving Christ among these tribes.
A Christian civilization is wedging its way in until eighty thousand
Indians are now clothed in civilized dress. Forty thousand have
learned to read English, and nearly thirty thousand are living in
houses. There are forty thousand Indian children of school age, and
about fourteen thousand enrolled as pupils, leaving between twenty
and thirty thousand children for whom as yet there are no schools
provided. Sixty-eight tribes remain without a church, a school or a
missionary, absolutely destitute of Christian light.
It has been said that these heathen tribes are a vanishing people,
destined to decline and finally to disappear. Certainly their
condition for two hundred years has tended to decrease them, and yet,
when Columbus discovered America there were not double the number
that there are now. In happier conditions than formerly, there is a
decided increase in the Indian population, as there is betterment in
their customs and modes of life. Their missionary teachers find them
with the ancient characteristics unchanged--rude in thought, though
with a marked intellectual power. The open book of nature, the Indian
knows well. He will tell you the habits of bird and beast and tree
and plant. He will tell you the time of day by looking at a leaf. But
the life of civilization comes hard to him. He does not know the
value of time, nor the value of money. It is hard for him to measure
his days or to provide for the future, or to care for to-morrow. He
has not the heredity of civilization and Christianity, hence
missionary work sometimes seems slow in progress, but it is surely
gaining upon this almost dead past of half a century. Thirteen
Missionary Boards are now pressing forward to teach them the way and
the truth and the life.
The doors are wide open as never before. The hearts of the Indians
are friendly as never for two hundred years. If the majority of them
show as yet no deep desire for that which Christianity brings, they
are not, in this, dissimilar from other heathen. But this desire is
growing. The Government at last is seeking to redeem the past. It has
appropriated for the Indian tribes reservations larger, in square
miles, than the whole German Empire. The Republic of France must
re-annex considerable of its ancient possessions before it will own
as much land as is now the property of the Indians in the United
States. Under these conditions, the hopefulness of the past argues
for a more hopeful future of missionary work.
Our mission is to raise up teachers, preachers, interpreters and a
native agency that shall work for the regeneration of their own
people. It is a mission that is hopeful.
It means a good deal to teach those who come to us in moccasins and
blankets, arithmetic, algebra, the elements of geometry, physical
geography, natural philosophy and mental science. It means much to
give them an industrial training that shall show them how to live
rightly, and enable them to do it. But above all, in all and through
all, is the gospel of Christ, which is the power of God to their
salvation. Perhaps no missions to the heathen have been more blessed
than many of these to the wild, painted savages. Thousands who were
barbarian in heart and in deed are now true disciples of Christ.
Where heathenism held its revels, now the church-bell calls the red
man to prayer, and the war-whoop is being exchanged for songs of
Christian praise. Wigwams are being transformed into houses, and
coarse and cruel people are illustrating home piety and virtues. The
prayers of God's people have been well directed, and there is every
reason why they should be increased, the wilderness and the solitary
place being made glad for them. The missionaries among them behold
the time when God will make for them a way, even a highway, that
shall be the way of holiness, in which the redeemed shall walk and
the ransomed of the Lord shall come to Zion with joy and gladness.
* * * * *
BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK.
MISS D.E. EMERSON, SECRETARY
* * * * *
WOMAN'S STATE ORGANIZATIONS.
CO-OPERATING WITH THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
ME.--Woman's Aid to A.M.A., Chairman of Committee,
Mrs. C.A. Woodbury, Woodfords, Me.
VT.--Woman's Aid to A.M.A., Chairman of Committee,
Mrs. Henry Fairbanks, St. Johnsbury, Vt.
VT.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary,
Mrs. Ellen Osgood, Montpelier, Vt.
CONN.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary,
Mrs. S.M. Hotchkiss, 171 Capitol Ave., Hartford,
Conn.
N.Y.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary,
Mrs. William Spalding, Salmon Block, Syracuse,
N.Y.
ALA.--Woman's Missionary Association, Secretary,
Mrs. G.W. Andrews, Talladega, Ala.
OHIO.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary,
Mrs. Flora K. Regal, Oberlin, Ohio.
IND.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary,
Mrs. W.E. Mossman, Fort Wayne, Ind.
ILL.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs.
C.H. Taintor, 151 Washington St., Chicago, Ill.
MICH.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary,
Mrs. Mary B. Warren, Lansing, Mich.
WIS.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary,
Mrs. C. Matter, Brodhead, Wis.
MINN.--Woman's Home Miss. Society, Secretary,
Miss Katharine Plant, 2651 Portland Avenue,
Minneapolis, Minn.
IOWA.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary,
Miss Ella E. Marsh, Grinnell, Iowa.
KANSAS.--Woman's Home Miss. Society, Secretary,
Mrs. G.L. Epps, Topeka, Kan.
NEB.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, President,
Mrs. F.H. Leavitt, 1216 H St., Lincoln, Neb.
DAKOTA.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, President,
Mrs. T.M. Hills, Sioux Falls; Secretary, Mrs.
W.R. Dawes, Redfield; Treasurer, Mrs. S.E.
Fifield, Lake Preston.
* * * * *
REPORT OF SECRETARY.
It is fitting that woman should have a part in a work that finds its
centre of operations in Christian schools and homes for the training
of the exceptional classes reached by the American Missionary
Association.
Let us not forget that the Indians for whom we work have been
excluded from our civilized communities, until it is difficult to win
them to our customs, our language and our religion; that until only
about twenty-five years ago, generation after generation of our
colored people had been born to bondage, and had groaned its hopeless
life away in far greater misery than the same conditions brought in
uncivilized Africa--misery made deeper and keener by contrasts in
civilized America. Is it a wonder that the women of a slave race lost
their womanly instincts; that the moral nature was blunted and
marred; that the mind became impoverished, the heart a waste place
for poisonous weeds to grow?
Let us not forget that the mountain people have been passed by, until
shrinking farther and farther into the seclusion of their hills and
ravines, and living unto themselves, they have lost the sturdy
qualities of their ancestors.
What kind of homes do we find among these people, where the children
with their impressible minds are receiving their first instruction?
Our teacher is invited to visit the home of a Kentucky girl, one
somewhat above the average. Beautiful for situation, up a winding
road, past cascades and mountain waterfalls, upon a high plateau the
home is found--a box house, one room, no windows, two beds, four
chairs, a table, a few dishes, father, mother, seven children, dogs,
cats, and chickens. At retiring hour the teacher is pointed to the
corner and is told she is to sleep there. A pile of dirty, ragged
quilts are pulled out from under the beds, some bags and rags rolled
for pillows, and the family dispose of themselves for the night, with
no change of clothing, scarcely the removal of shoes. Change the box
house to a tent, put the fire in the centre, and with less furniture,
but no more smoke or dirt, you have the tepee home of the Indian.
Match the dilapidation and the dirt, the narrow quarters and the
large family, and you have the cabin home in the Georgia swamps and
the lowlands of Louisiana. The conditions in the main are the
same--an untutored father and mother, no books, no pictures, no
newspapers, no clean clothes, no Sunday, no God.
At first sight our sympathies are aroused by the lack of all ordinary
comforts and conveniences of home life, but transplant the family
into a neat cottage, suitably furnished for a home, explaining to
them its advantages and uses, and let us see if thus we have met the
need. What a disappointment! Their old habits still cling to them.
They do not know the names or use of the kitchen utensils; they have
no proper knowledge of cooking, no orderly habits; there is no family
or personal reserve. There are books and newspapers, but they cannot
read them, or cannot read intelligently because of their meagre
vocabulary. Evidently the real degradation of these people does not
lie wholly in the poor cabins or tents, the scant furniture, the
ragged clothing, the shiftlessness and poverty. It is deep in the
nature, and far harder to overcome than any outward conditions.
We want to help them: we ought to help them. For what were we
nurtured and shielded in Christian homes; why taught self-restraint,
self-reliance, the law of God as applied to our duty to ourselves and
our neighbors? Why have our hands been trained to skillful work, our
minds opened to knowledge, if not to make these our talents ten more
by their exercise in behalf of such needy ones? But how shall we
convey to them the blessings of intelligent, Christian home life? I
am sure every womanly heart gives the same response: through the
children.
That is our way--the foundation of the broad work of this
Association. We cannot expect the mothers to teach their children
what they do not know themselves, have never seen and cannot
understand. So we bring the youth out of these homes, cut off as far
as possible from their low surroundings, into our missionary schools,
where they are lifted into a purer atmosphere and are brought into
daily contact with refined Christian womanhood. Here mind and heart
and hand are trained. Not only do they learn habits of fore-thought
and industry, but by the blessing of the Holy Spirit very many of
them learn the saving power there is in Jesus Christ. Ten thousand
youth we have thus reached within the last year. Is it not a grand
work, worthy your heartiest support? There is encouragement in all
our fields, but especially now in what is accomplished for the girls
of the colored race. Their perils are peculiar. Your hearts would
ache could you know all the dangers that encompass them. They are
beset on every hand. Not a girl in our schools is safe. They, of all
others, are the ones that are tried, tempted, allured. Do they go out
to teach, they are watched, written to, harassed, and only as strong
in God's strength and deliverance can they escape. When you think of
the snares set for these girls, and that no father or brother may
even yet dare defend them, and when you know that there are
those--yes, very many--who, guided by Christian teachers stand firm
in the purity of their womanhood, clinging to the Everlasting Arm,
how plain it is that God has a plan, a purpose for this race, when we
shall have fulfilled our duty to them, and when their fiery furnace
of trial shall have done its work!
And these people are not in Asia, or Africa, or the Islands of the
Sea. They are within our own domain--ten millions of them--a constant
reminder of our duty, a threat of danger if duty is neglected. You
may say, what are ten thousand youth among ten millions? They are the
leaven, which, if a woman take and properly direct shall leaven the
whole mass. The American Missionary Association has these youth, and
through these, access to larger numbers. It has been no easy matter
to win the alienated Indian until he would give up his boys and girls
to our care; nor to break through the ignorant pride and reserve of
the mountaineers; or even to wisely direct the impulsive, selfishly
ambitious, undisciplined colored people. But it has been done. Our
school homes are there, upon the sure foundation of gospel, no caste
principles, and we need the help of every Christian woman in the land
to sustain what has been established at such painstaking and cost,
and to meet the demand for the new phases of help that can now be
given.
That some of our church woman in the North are interested, is shown
by the twenty-eight thousand dollars of contributions received from
them during the past year. That they are alive to the advantage of
reaching this field through the American Missionary Association and
thus keeping in sympathy with the work of the churches in their
annual contributions, is shown in the formation of State Unions, for
direct co-operation with us. We consider it especially favorable that
the purpose of these State organizations is to increase the flow of
money and other forms of helpfulness through the regular channels to
this part of the home field; that thus the young people and strangers
who are gathered into the church auxiliaries are being interested in
the history and work of the American Missionary Association and that
the children--the future church members--also are learning to give to
it, for the sake of the people to whom it ministers.
It has been a great help to us, that in the past year the Woman's Aid
of Maine sustained four teachers, that the Woman's Aid of Vermont
contributed so faithfully to their adopted school at McIntosh, Ga.,
and Connecticut ladies to the Industrial School for colored girls in
Thomasville. We cannot speak too highly of the efficiency of the New
York Woman's Union, which pledges us a definite sum, increasing the
amount annually, and keeping its pledge. The Ohio Union has sustained
Miss Collins' mission in Dakota and a teacher in the South. The
Minnesota Union met nearly two-thirds the cost of our school at
Jonesboro', Tenn., and the Iowa Union more than one-third the expense
of Beach Institute, Savannah, Ga. The ladies of other States have
helped in the girls' department of our school at Tougaloo, Miss., the
schools at Athens and Mobile, Ala., Austin, Tex., Williamsburg, Ky.
and Santee Agency, Neb. These friends have been in communication with
the schools they have aided, learning of the needs and economical
measures of help. They have been permitted to know for themselves the
hopeful results of patient Christian endeavor. For many of our
scholars are beginning quietly and persistently to do noble Christian
work in the locality in which they live, relieving the destitute,
reading, singing, praying with the sick and infirm and themselves
growing stronger and wiser in religious work every day. There are
many who appreciate and long for a better and purer life for their
own people, and they are doing much to elevate the tone of society.
They are the leaven. They can transform the home life--to some extent
the old homes--but in much larger degree the new, in giving
intelligent parentage to the little ones of their own households.
In order to make the work so well begun tell most for the future, the
woman's skill is required in its every phase. The homes must have
their visitors, schools their teachers; pastors urgently call for the
special missionary. There are those who are willing to go. Will the
ladies of the churches provide the means? Will you Christian
women--the women of our churches, come to the aid of the American
Missionary Association, in support of your sisters in the field? If
you will do this, we shall have no more debt. If you will do this,
there will be far less of heart-aching denial to those who plead with
us year by year to send them just one--only one Christian woman to
guide and teach.
It costs but four hundred dollars a missionary. Yet of those who have
been appointed for the new year--some already at work, others now on
the way--there are one hundred whose support is not yet provided; and
only four hundred dollars a missionary! What a glow would enter the
hearts of these noble, self-denying woman, if from the Woman's Bureau
word might go that the ladies of such churches have provided for you,
and you, and you! Weary with the constant drain upon mind and heart,
as they come in contact with the warped, barren lives of the people
whom they would help, how it would refresh them to feel that because
they are your missionaries you are working for, thinking of and
praying for them. One hundred woman missionaries unprovided for!
At the word of the Lord we put out into the deep and let down the
nets. The draught is great, our nets are breaking, and we beckon unto
you, our partners in the other boat to come and help us--to share in
the work and the reward.
* * * * *
RECEIPTS FOR OCTOBER, 1888.
MAINE. $261.51.
Alfred. Cong. Ch. and Soc. ...12.92
Bingham. Cong. Ch. ...2.00
Brewer. M. Hardy 50 to const. MRS.
ADDIE B. GARDNER L.M., Mrs. C.S.
Hardy 30, to const. MRS. SARAH L.
WING, L.M. ...80.00
Bridgton. First Cong. Ch. and
Soc. ...17.03
Brunswick. First Cong. Ch. ...54.25
Castine. Class of little girls.
No. 9. Trin. Ch. Sab. Sch., for
Student Aid, Tougaloo U. ...2.31
East Orrington. Cong. Ch. ...4.00
Gorham. "Young Ladies Helping Hand"
Cong. Ch. ...25.00
Lebanon Center. Mrs. Sophronia D. Lord ...1.00
Lewiston. Richard C. Stanley ...5.00
Norridgewock. Cong. Ch. and Soc. ...35.00
Oxford. Rev. Geo. F. Tewksbury ...2.00
Princeton. Cong. Ch. ...6.00
Richmond. Sab. Sen. of Cong. Ch. for
Student Aid, Talladega C. ...10.00
Sherman Mills. Washburn Memorial Ch. ...5.00
NEW HAMPSHIRE, $340.97.
Bennington. Cong. Ch. ...8.22
Candia. Mrs. A.E. Page ...1.00
Campton. Cong. Ch. ...16.22
Concord. By Mrs. Enoch Gerrish,
Freight for McLeansville, N.C. ...1.00
Deerfield. Cong. Ch. ...8.60
Milford. Cong. Ch. to const. WILLIAM C.
CLEAVES and ARTHUR M. WINSLOW L.M'S ...65.00
Nashua. Pilgrim Ch. (30 of which from
SUSAN P. PEARSON to const. herself L.M) ...150.08
New Ipswich. Childrens' 26th Annual Fair
for Benev. objects (4.67 of which
for Indian Schools) ...18.18
Peterboro. "Mother and daughter" ...5.00
Union. "Ladies and Band of Hope" by Mrs.
G.S. Butler, for Storrs Sch.
Atlanta, Ga. ...11.00
Warner. Cong. Ch. ...10.41
Winchester. Cong. Ch. and Soc. (24 of
which for Student Aid.
Gregory Inst., Wilmington, N.C.) ...40.41
Winchester. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch. ...5.85
VERMONT, $866.60.
Brattleboro. Central Cong. Ch. ...100.00
Brownington. Martha S. Stone ...10.00
Burlington. First Cong. Ch., adl. ...2.00
Derby. Cong. Ch. ...5.00
Derby. Ladies of Cong. Ch., by Mrs.
David Hopkinson, for McIntosh,
Ga. ...4.00
Essex Junction. Cong. Ch. ...20.00
Fair Haven. First Cong. Ch.
and Soc. ...10.21
Grandby and Victory. Cong. Ch.
and Soc. ...2.77
Grand Isle. Mrs. Martha Ladd,
for Indian M. ...3.00
Highgate. Cong. Ch. ...7.30
Jamaica. Cong. Ch. and Soc. ...10.27
Marshfield. Lyman Clark ...15.00
New Haven. "A Friend" ...15.00
Newport. Cong. Ch. and Soc. ...14.20
North Ferrisburg. Mrs Maria D.
Wicker (120 of which to const.
ROXA M. CHAMPLIN, ALMA M. WEBB,
Mrs. EMMA W. WICKER and ABBIE D.
WICKER L.M's) ...500.00
Orwell. Cong. Ch. and Soc. ...13.75
Saint Johnsbury. Mrs. T.M.
Howard and Mrs. E.D. Blodget,
for Student Aid, Fisk U. ...50.00
Salisbury. Cong. Ch. 15, bal.
to const. DEA. CYRUS BUMP L.M.,
"Friends in Cong. Ch." $1.50 ...16.50
Sharon. "Three Friends in Cong. Ch." ...2.00
Swanton. C.C. Long ...10.00
Vergennes. Cong. Ch. ...10.00
Vergennes. Eliza S. Stevens,
Freight for McIntosh, Ga. ...2.00
West Dover. Cong. Ch. ...3.00
West Randolph. Mrs. Laura Salisbury
Smith to const. H. PORTER SMITH, L.M. ...30.00
Wilmington. Cong. Ch. ...8.00
Vermont Woman's Home Missionary
Union, by Mrs. Wm. P. Fairbanks,
Treas. for McIntosh, Ga.:
Manchester. Miss Ellen
Tuttle in memory of her
brother 2.60
---- 2.60
MASSACHUSETTS, $4,089.39.
Amherst. First Cong. Ch., 35,
South Cong. Ch. 4.08,
Miss Mary H. Scott, Bbl. of C. etc. ...39.08
Andover. Ladies' Union Home M. Soc. ...92.59
Andover. West Cong. Ch., adl. ...23.00
Baldwinville. Memorial Sab. Sch., for
Student Aid, Gregory Inst.,
Wilmington, N.C. ...8.00
Beverly. Wm. O. Grover, for Talladega C. ...100.00
Beverly. Washington St. Ch. ...30.00
Boston. C.H. Bond, 250;
John N. Denison, 100;
H.O. Houghton, 50;
Dr. Wm. P. Wesselhoeff, 50;
F.L. Garrison. 5,
and Mrs. A.H Batcheller, 25,
for Talladega C. ...480.00
C.A. Hopkins,
for Boarding Hall,
Pleasant Hill, Tenn. ...100.00
S.D. Smith, American Organ,
for Sherwood, Tenn. ...75.00
Brighton. Evan Cong. Ch. and
Soc. ...153.73
Dorchester. Mrs. Ruth W.
Prouty ...5.00
Miss Mary A. Tuttle,
for Indian M. ...9.10
Roxbury. Immanuel Cong. Ch. ...96.65
Eliot Ch., adl. ...1.00
John H. Soren ...1.00
------ 921.48
Bridgewater. Central Sq. Cong. Ch., 48;
"E.F.H.," 1 ...49.00
Brookline. Harvard Ch. ...54.76
Cambridgeport. Pilgrim Ch. ...26.00
Chelsea. "A Friend in First Ch." ...5.00
Concord. Trin. Cong. Ch. ...25.58
Cummington. Mrs. H.M. Porter ...2.00
Danvers. Maple St. Ch. ...176.47
Deerfield. Orthodox Cong. Ch. ...30.32
Easthampton. First Cong. Ch., for Santee
Indian M. ...12.50
East Marshfield. Second Cong. Ch. ...5.00
East Wareham. Abby Bourne and Hannah
B. Cannon ...10.00
Everett. Cong. Ch. ...25.10
Fall River. Mrs. R.K. Remington, for
New Out Station, Indian M. ...700.00
Fall River. Leonard N. Slade ...5.00
Fitchburg. Rollstone Ch. 35;
Cal. Cong. Ch. 24.30 ...59.30
Gardner. Woman's Miss'y. Soc., by Mrs.
F.H. Whittemore, for Indian Sch'p. ...50.00
Haverhill. Chas. Coffin ...4.50
Harvard. Cong. Ch. ...14.75
Haydenville. Cong. Ch., adl., to const.
THOMAS S. PURRINGTON L.M. ...2.00
Holbrook. Winthrop Ch. ...44.85
Lakeville and Taunton. Precinct Cong.
Sab. Sch. ...11.05
Lowell. "Friend" ...14.00
Ludlow Center. Ladies of First Cong. Ch.
for Tougaloo U. ...10.00
Lynn. Chestnut St. Ch. ...5.00
Manchester. Cong. Ch. ...18.38
Medfield. Second Cong. Ch. ...92.36
Melrose. Orthodox Cong. Ch. and Soc. ...89.92
Melrose Highlands. Mrs. F.W. Lewis ...0.50
Methuen. First Parish Cong. Ch. ...23.42
Middleboro. Central Cong. Ch. ...36.00
New Salem. Cong. Ch. ...8.00
Newton. Sab. Sch. Class, North Evan Ch.
for Student Aid, Santee Indian Sch. ...37.50
Newton Center. First Cong. Ch. ...71.80
North Abington. Rev. Jesse H. Jones ...5.00
Northampton. Edwards Ch. Benev. Soc. ...185.06
Northboro. Evan. Cong. Ch. ...41.98
Northbridge. Rockdale Cong. Ch. ...4.00
North Leominster. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch.
for Rosebud Indian M. ...20.10
Norton. Trin. Cong. Ch. and Soc. ...10.00
North Wilbraham. Grace Union Ch. ...10.50
Saxonville. Edwards Cong. Ch. ...18.00
Shelburne. Cong. Ch., to const MISS
MARY E. FELLOWS L.M. ...42.00
Sherborn. "By a former Teacher." ...10.00
Somerville. Miss M.C. Sawyer, for
Tougaloo U. ...20.00
Southampton. Teachers and Pupils, Infant
Class, Cong. Ch. ...1.00
Southboro. Member of Pilgrim Ch., adl. ...8.00
South Byfield. By Mrs. Geo. L. Gleason,
Freight for Williamsburg, Ky. ...1.00
South Egremont. Cong. Ch. ...26.68
Southfield. Cong. Ch. ...15.00
South Framingham. South Cong. Ch. ...87.77
South Hadley. Cong. Ch. ...24.00
South Royalston. Amos Blanchard. ...10.00
Spencer. First Cong. Ch. ...85.00
Springfield. Sab. Sch. of South Cong. Ch.,
for Student Aid, Santee Indian Sch. ...70.00
Stockbridge. Miss Alice Byington, for
Indian M. ...30.00
Sudbury. Ladies of Cong. Ch., Freight for
Straight U. ...3.00
Oxford. Woman's Miss'y Soc. by Miss
L.D. Stockwell, for Tougaloo U. ...14.00
Oxford. Ladies' Miss'y Soc., Freight for
Kittrell N.C. ...2.50
Pittsfield. Mrs. Mary E. Sears ...5.00
Revere. First Cong. Ch. and Soc. ...13.50
Rockland. Cong. Ch., to const. FRANK
SHELDON L.M. ...30.00
Topsfield. Rev. Daniel D. Tappan ...2.20
Townsend. By Mrs. Ralph Ball, Freight
for Sherwood, Tenn. ...2.00
Ware. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch., for Santee
Home, Indian M. ...25.00
Warren. Mrs. J. Ramsdell, for Chinese M. ...5.00
Westford. Ladies' Soc. Bbl. of C. for Storrs
Sch., Atlanta, Ga.
West Granville. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch. ...5.00
Westhampton. Cong. Ch. ...28.20
West Newbury. First Cong. Ch. ...6.00
West Springfield. Ladles' Mission Circle of
Park St. Ch. for Pleasant Hill, Tenn. ...100.00
Worcester. Mrs. G.F. Orr, 10;
Mrs. Laird, 2; for Talladega C. ...12.00
Hampden Benevolent Association, by
Charles Marsh, Treas.
Agawam. ...15.00
Holyoke. Second. ...92.43
Springfield. South. ...57.62
Olivet. Ladies Praying Cir. ...2.18
Westfield. Second. ...14.46
------ ...181.69
CLOTHING, BOOKS, ETC. RECEIVED AT BOSTON OFFICE.
Concord. N.H. First Cong. Ch. 2 Bbls.
Val. 37.06
Saint Johnsbury, Vt. Juvenile Sew. Soc.
of North Ch., Box, for Grand View, Tenn.
Lanesville, Mass. W.L. Saunders, 2 Bundles
Ashmont. Mr. Hale, Bbl. and Box
Groton. By F.D. Lewis, Box for Lexington, Ky.
Oxford. Ladies' Miss'y Soc., Bbl. for Kittrel,
N.C.
South Byfield. By Mrs. George L. Gleason,
Bbl. for Williamsburg, Ky.
Sudbury. Ladies of Cong. Ch., Bbl.
Townsend. By Mrs. Ralph Ball, Bbl. for
Sherwood, Tenn.
West Newton. Henry O. Barker, Bbl.
RHODE ISLAND, $726.28.
Little Compton. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch.,
for Mountain White Work ...12.23
North Scituate. Cong. Ch. and Soc. ...3.00
Peace Dale. Cong. Ch. ...30.00
Providence. Central Cong. Ch., 630;
Free Evan. Cong. Ch., 25;
Plymouth Cong. Ch., 24.05;
Mrs. Ann Torry, 2 ...681.05
CONNECTICUT, $1,783.19.
Birmingham. J. Tomlinson, for Indian M. ...20.00
Birmingham. Cong. Ch., bal. to const.
REV. CHARLES W. PARK L.M. ...7.50
Bridgeport. Second Cong. Ch. ...60.27
Bristol. Cong. Ch. ...75.50
Chaplin. H.T. Crosby. 5;
Miss J.W. Crosby, 5 ...10.00
Cheshire. Cong. Ch. ...23.50
Cheshire. Mrs. Stoddard's S.S. Class, for
Rosebud Indian M. ...0.50
Cornwall. E.C. Starr, for Tougaloo U. ...10.00
Danielsonville. Westfield Cong. Ch. and
Soc. ...44.91
Ellington. Cong. Ch., for 4 Life
Memberships, 140.11; Incorrectly ack.
in Nov. number from Rockville
Gilead. "A Friend" ...5.00
Goshen. Mrs. Moses Lyman ...10.00
Hartford. ROLAND MATHER, to const.
himself L.M. ...30.00
Hockanum. Second Cong. Ch. (5 of which
from Mrs. E.M. Roberts) ...29.28
Lisbon. Cong. Ch., for Conn. Indl. Sch.,
Ga. ...6.00
Mansfield. Ind. Cong. Ch. ...14.00
Monroe. Rev. H.M. Hazeltine, Box of
Books for Talladega C.
New Britain. South Cong. Ch., 123.37;
Member So. Cong. Ch., 3. to const. H.
DAYTON HUMPHREY, PHILIP CORBIN,
MISS KATE M. BROWN and MISS JANE
M. CASE L.M's ...126.37
New Haven. Dwight Place Cong. Ch. 138.87;
"A Friend," 50 ...188.87
New London. First Cong. Ch. ...65.11
Norfolk. Robbins Bartell, for Tougaloo U. ...10.00
North Branford. J.A. Palmer ...2.00
Northford. Cong. Ch. ...12.00
North Madison. Cong. Ch. and Soc. ...14.00
Plymouth. Cong. Ch. ...56.50
Pomfret. Two S.S. Classes, by Miss
Mathewson, for Mountain White Work ...10.00
Poquonock. Cong. Ch. ...30.78
Poquonock. Sab. Sch. Cong. Ch., Bbl. of
Books, for Grand View, Tenn.
Rockville. Sab. Sch. Class of young ladies,
Union Cong. Ch., for Mountain White Work ...10.00
South Killingly. Cong. Ch. ...5.00
Southington. Y.P.S.C.E. of Cong. Ch. ...4.35
Stratford. "Old Abolitionist" ...5.00
Taftville. Cong. Ch. ...8.25
Torrington. Third Cong. Ch. ...10.17
Wallingford. Mrs. C.B. Darling, for
New Out Station, Indian M. ...700.00
Watertown. Cong. Ch., to const. DEA.
SAMUEL T. DAYTON L.M. ...37.76
Westville. Cong. Ch. ...39.00
Wethersfleld. Cong. Ch. (35 of which
from Ladies, for Conn. Indl. Sch., Ga.) ...60.10
Winchester. Cong. Ch. ...15.05
Woodbury. North Cong. Ch., 14.35;
First Cong. Ch., 12.07 ...26.42
NEW YORK, $3,888.36.
Albany. "A Friend" ...25.00
Amsterdam. Mrs. Chandler Bartlett ...2.00
Brooklyn. Stephen Ballard, for Ballard
Sch. Building, Macon, Ga. ...1950.00
Brooklyn. "A Friend." by Stephen Ballard,
for Macon, Ga., to purchase land ...1000.00
Brooklyn. Tompkins Av. Cong. Ch. ...400.00
Brooklyn. Sab. Sch. of Central Cong.
Ch., for Indian M. ...37.50
Brooklyn. Park Av. Prim. Meth. Sab. Sch., 20;
R.M. Raymond, 10;
Robert Burchell, 3, for
Williamsburg, Ky. ...33.00
Big Hollow. Nelson Hitchcock ...5.00
Canandaigua. First Cong. Ch. and Soc. ...67.50
Churchville. Cong. Ch., to const.
Z. WILLARD L.M. ...31.82
Coventryville. Cong. Ch. ...4.00
Ellington. Cong. Ch. ...7.00
Fort Covington. "A.B." ...2.00
Groton. Cong. Ch. ...29.00
Honeoye. Mrs. Gideon Pitts, to const.
MISS JENNIE W. PITTS L.M. ...30.00
Ovid. D.W. Kinne ...4.50
Lisle. R.C. Osborn ...10.00
Newark Valley. Cong. Ch. ...20.37
New Lebanon. Ellen C. Kendall ...5.00
New York. Member Tab. Ch., 5;
J.N. Washburn, package of C. ...5.00
Nunda. "A Friend" ...15.00
Nyack. John W. Towt ...50.00
Port Leyden. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch. ...3.00
Rodman. Cong. Ch. ...20.00
Schenectady. Cong. Ch. adl., to const.
HON. JOHN YOUNG and DEA. ALEX. F.
VEDDER L.M'S ...50.00
Syracuse. Plymouth Cong. Ch. ...35.17
West Groton. Cong. Ch. 13.65;
and Sab. Sch. Birthday Box, 1.85 ...15.50
Woman's Home Missionary Union of N.Y.,
by Mrs. L.H. Cobb., Treas., for Woman's
Work:
Fairport. Ladies' Aux. ...31.00
------ ...31.00
NEW JERSEY, $332.56.
Arlington. Mrs. George Overacre. ...1.50
East Orange. Trinity Cong. Ch. ...140.50
Montclair. Young Ladies' Miss'y Soc. of
First Cong. Ch., for Meridian, Miss. ...30.00
Montclair. Sab. Sch. Class Cong. Ch.
for Student Aid , Talladega, C. ...10.00
Roselle. "A Friend" ...50.00
Westfield. Cong. Ch. ...100.56
PENNSYLVANIA, $36.00.
Centerville. Mission Concert Cong. Ch. ...5.00
Philadelphia. Sab. Sch. of Central Cong.
Ch. 25; "E.F.B.," 1 ...26.00
Ridgeway. Bible Class, by Minnie J.
Kline, for Oaks, N.C. ...5.00
OHIO, $464.16.
Belden. Cong. Ch. ...2.25
Cincinnati. Columbia Cong. Cong. ...12.00
Cleveland. Member Jennings Av. Cong.
Ch. for Indian M. ...0.50
Conneaut. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch. 20;
H.E. Pond, 5; for Student Aid, Fisk U. ...25.00
Grafton. Cong. Ch. ...4.00
Hudson. Cong. Ch. ...9.00
Kelloggsville. Mrs. P.F. Kellogg 3;
Frankie C. Kellogg, 50 cts.,
for Indian M. ...3.50
Litchfield. Cong. Ch. ...3.62
Lorain. Cong. Ch., 7.30; "Soc. of Christian
Endeavor" 10; for Tougaloo U. ...17.30
Madison. Central Cong. Ch. Mrs. L.H. Roe ...10.00
Middlefield. Lois S. Buell, deceased, by
Celestia E. Wilcox, to const. LUCIUS J.
BUELL, L.M. ...30.00
New London. Cong. Ch. ...1.55
North Bloomfield. Cong. Ch., 5;
Wm. C. Savage, 5 ...10.00
North Ridgeville. Sab Sch. of Cong.
Ch., 6; Miss M.M. Lickarish, 3; for
Williamsburg, Ky. ...9.00
Oberlin. Rev. C.V. Spear, 50;
First Ch. 49.76 ...99.76
Oberlin. Y.L.M.S. by Mrs. J.P.
Atwater, for Woman's Work ...20.00
Strongville. Elijah Lyman ...10.00
Painesville. Mrs. Cornelia Green, Box
of C., for Tougaloo U.
Rockport. Cong. Ch. ...6.00
Toledo. First Cong. Ch. ...64.18
Wakeman. Cong. Ch. and Soc. ...5.00
Ohio Woman's Home Misisonary Union
by Mrs. Phebe A. Crafts, Treas. for
Woman's Work:
Ashtabula. Cong. Ch.,
L.M.S. ...1.00
Burton. L.M.S. ...26.00
Cleveland. Boys and Girls
Mission Band ...15.00
Lindenville. L.H.M.S. ...3.00
Medina. W.M.S. ...10.00
Oberlin. Second Cong. Ch.
L.S. ...41.50
------ ...96.50
-------
$439.00
ESTATE.
Canfield. Estate of P. Edwards. by G.R.
Edwards, Ex. ...25.00
-------
$464.16
ILLINOIS, $524.91.
Beecher. Cong. Ch. "A Friend" ...10.00
Chicago. Mrs. Edward Brush and Mrs.
N.A. Jones. for Student Aid, Fisk U. ...104.00
Chicago. Tab. Cong. Ch. ...5.00
Earlville. J.A. Dupee ...50.00
Elgin. Mrs. E.E.C. Borden. ...25.00
Evanston. Cong. Ch., 3.13;
bal. to const. M.J. DEAN L.M.
Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch. 60;
to const. MRS. LOUISE L. STANWOOD
and MRS. ANNIE L. MILLER L.M's. ...63.13
Jacksonville. Cong. Ch. by James M.
Longley ...5.00
La Prarie Center. "A Friend" ...50.00
Lawn Ridge. Cong. Ch. and Sab. Sch.
16.18; A. Crawford, 5 ...21.18
Lee Center. Cong. Ch. ...2.20
Lombard. First Ch. ...10.50
Malden. Cong. Ch. ...9.10
Marshall. Cong. Ch. ...4.75
Moline. First Cong. Ch. ...106.30
Odell. Ladies of Cong., Ch. for Woman's
Work ...5.00
Rantoul. Cong. Ch. ...8.00
Ridge Prarie. Evan St. John Ch. ...6.00
Sterling. Cong. Ch. ...39.75
MICHIGAN, $329.39.
Calumet. Robert Dobbie. ...50.00
Calumet. "Helping Hand Soc.," by
Grace Mc. Cullagh, for Woman's Work ...25.00
Coloma. Cong. Ch. ...2.32
Edwardsburg. S.A. Olmsted ...5.00
Lake Linden. Rev. J.W. Savage and
others, for Student Aid Talladega C. ...25.00
Lansing. Prof. R.C. Kedzie, to const.
MRS. HARRIET E. FAIRCHILD KEDZIE, L.M. ...30.00
Manistee. First Cong. Ch. ...12.00
Olivet. Cong. Ch. ...70.00
South Haven. Sab. Sch. Concert Cong. Ch. ...6.00
Traverse City. First Cong. Ch. ...22.90
Vermontville. Orlin P. Fay, to const.
MRS. LAURA B. FAY L.M. ...30.00
Watervliet. Plym. Cong. Ch. ...20.66
Woman's Home Missionary Union, of
Mich., by Mrs. E.F. Grabill, Treas. for
Woman's Work:
Ann Arbor. Bbl. of C.,
val. 36.30
Calumet. "Helping Hands"
for helpless people in the
South ...25.00
Detroit. Mt. Hope, Sab. Sch. ...5.51
----- ...30.51
IOWA, $250.45.
Bear Grove. Cong. Ch. ...11.62
Cedar Falls. Cong. Ch. ...22.60
Central City. Cong. Ch. ...10.00
Charles City. Cong. Ch., Dr. J.W. Smith ...5.00
Decorah. Cong. Ch. ...35.03
Ellsworth. Cong. Ch. ...2.69
Glenwood. Cong. Ch. ...7.00
Grinnell. Cong. Ch. ...11.81
Lewis. Cong. Ch. ...16.42
Manchester. Ladies Miss'y. Soc. 10;
by Eliza C. Day, Treas., Cong. Ch. 8.50 ...18.50
Nashua. Cong. Ch. ...2.63
Newell. Cong. Ch. ...4.60
Rochelle. Mrs. A.C. Francis ...1.00
Webster City. Cong. Ch. ...16.50
What Cheer. Mrs. Mary D. Hunter ...3.00
Iowa Woman's Home Missionary Union,
for Woman's Work:
Almoral. L.M.S. ...2.10
Central City. L.H.M.S. ...5.00
Clay. W.H.M.S ...1.00
Cedar Falls. ...7.39
Des Moines. W.M.S. Plym.
Ch. ...21.70
Grinnell. W.H.M.U. ...19.60
Harlan. W.M.S ...5.40
Lewis. ...5.00
McGregor. W.M.S. ...8.60
New Hampton. L.M.S. ...4.26
Norwich, Vt. Miss H.M.
Stuart ...2.00
------ ...82.05
WISCONSIN, $17.58.
Barneveld. Cong. Ch. ...3.52
Burlington. Cong. Ch. ...1.25
Depere. Cong. Ch. ...9.00
Paris and Bristol. Cong. Ch. ...1.81
West Salem. "M.L.C." ...2.00
MINNESOTA, $123.64.
Lake City. First Cong. Ch. ...20.50
Mankato. W.M.S. of Cong. Ch., for Womans'
Work, by Mrs. C.N. Cross ...10.16
Minneapolis. Plymouth Ch. 29;
Union Cong. Ch. 25.64;
Lyndale Cong. Ch. 17.77;
Silver Lake Mission Ch., 4;
Fifth Av. Cong. Ch., 3.50;
R. Laughlin, 1 ...80.91
Wabasha. Cong. Ch. ...12.07
MISSOURI, $40.00.
Saint Louis. Pilgrim Cong. Ch. ...40.00
KANSAS, $77.56.
Highland. Cong. Ch. ...5.00
Manhattan. Cong. Ch. ...11.16
Woman's Home Missionary Soc. of Kansas,
by Mrs. James G. Doughterty, for
Woman's Work ...61.40
DAKOTA, $179.44.
Lake Henry. Cong. Ch. ...2.75
Yankton. First Cong. Ch. (30 of which to
const. REV. DAN. F. BRADLEY L.M.) ...43.35
-----
...46.10
ESTATE.
Wahpeton. Estate of Mrs. L.H. Porter
by Rev. Saml. F. Porter ...133.34
-------
...179.44
NEBRASKA, $20.95.
Crete. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch. ...9.95
Nebraska City. Woman's Missionary
Soc. of First Cong. Ch. ...11.00
INDIAN TERR. $3.40.
Vinita. Cong. Ch. ...3.40
CALIFORNIA, $2,022.80.
East Los Angeles. J.E. Cushman ...25.00
Eureka. First Cong. Ch. ...36.75
Powelton. J.E. Lee ...10.00
San Francisco. Receipts of the California
Chinese Mission ...1951.05
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, $20.00.
Washington. Gen. E. Whittlesey ...20.00
KENTUCKY, $1.66.
Woodbine, Rev. E.H. Bullock ...1.66
NORTH CAROLINA, $22.74.
Wilmington. Cong. Ch. ...16.66
Wilmington. Miss Hyde's S.S. Class, 3;
Miss Denton's S.S. Class, 1.08;
Mr. Littleton's S.S. Class, 1,
for Rosebud Indian M. ...5.08
Troy. S.D. Leak ...1.00
GEORGIA, $2.53.
Woodville. Rev. J.H.H. Sengstacke ...2.53
CHINA, $20.00.
Taiku. "Friends" 20.00
JAPAN, $15.00.
Sendai. Rev. and Mrs. J.H. De Forrest
for Tougaloo U. ...15.00
-------
Donations $16,302.73
Estates ...158.34
----------
Total for October $16,461.07
==========
FOR THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY.
Subscriptions for October ...$20.25
* * * * *
RECEIPTS OF THE CALIFORNIA CHINESE MISSION,
from March 15th, to Sept. 20th, 1888.
E. Palache, Treas.
FROM LOCAL MISSIONS.--Los Angeles,
Chinese Mon. Off's, 48.30.--Marysville
Chinese Mon. Off's, 32, Chinese Ann.
Mem's, 16; American Ann. Mem's,
2.--Oakland, Chinese Ann. Mem's,
26--Oroville, Chinese Mon. Off's,
10.70. Chinese Ann. Mem's, 20.--Petaluma,
Chinese Mon. Off's, 10, Chinese Ann.
Mem's, 10, American Ann. Mem's.
8.--Sacramento, Chinese Mon. Off's, 27.50.
Ann. Mem's, 48, Anniversary Coll., 10.75.
In part to const. Rev. W.C. Merrill L.M.,
5. "A Friend," 1.--San Buenaventura,
Chinese Mon. Off's, 55.95.--San Diego,
Chinese Mon Off's, 49.20, Ann. Mem's,
6.--Santa Barbara, Chinese Mon. Off's,
26.55, Ann. Mem's, 36. "Gift" 6. N.C.
Pitcher, 5. Mrs. O.D. Metcalf, 1.--Santa
Cruz, Chinese Mon. Off's. 37.70, Ann.
Mem's, 62.60. Cong. Ch. 31.--Stockton,
Chinese Mon. Off's, 11.40.--Tucson
Chinese Mon. Off's, 33. Ann. Mem's,
30. "Friend," 2 668.65
FROM CHURCHES.--Berkeley, Cong. Ch.
30.10.--Crockett, 2.50.--Highlands, San
Bernardino, 6.10.--Lorin, 3.--Oakland,
Golden Gate, 5.--Pasadena, First,
22.45, Rio Vista, Church 10. Mrs. A.M.
Gardner, 2.--San Francisco, First,
Miss Mary Perkins, 5, Mrs. Carlton 2. San
Francisco Bethany Church.--AMERICANS.--Ann.
Mem's, 40.50.--F.J. Felt for L.M.
25,--"Friend" 1.--In part to const.
Rev. E.D. Havan, L.M., 18.75.
CHINESE--Central Mission, Ann.
Mem's, 70. Mon. Off's, 28.95.--Barnes
Mission, Ann. Mem's, 4, Mon. Off's.
7.60.--West Mission, Ann. Mem's,
18. Mon. Off's, 19.65. To const.
Miss. Minnie G. Worley. L.M.,
22.--San Mateo, 25.--Saratoga,
11.--Sonoma, 7.--Westminster,
10.--Woodland, 12.80 409.40
FROM INDIVIDUAL DONORS.--Messrs.
Balfour, Guthrie & Co, 500.--Hon. F.F.
Low, 25.--James M. Haven, 25--Hawley
Bros. Hardware Co. 25.--Charles
Heisen. 25,--Rev. W.N.
Meserve, 5.--Rev. and Mrs. P. Combe,
5 610.00
FROM EASTERN FRIENDS.--Bangor, Me.,
Hon. E.R. Burpee, 100.--Belfast,
Me., Miss. E.M. Pond. 5.--Amherst,
Mass., Mrs. R.A. Lester, 100.--Auburndale,
Mass., Julia Pickard, 5.--Stockbride,
Mass., Miss Alice Byington,
50.--Miss Adele Brewer, 3 262.00
--------
Total $1,951.05
=========
H.W. HUBBARD, Treasurer,
56 Reade St., N.Y.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The American Missionary — Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888" ***
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