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Title: The American Missionary — Volume 41, No. 12, December, 1887
Author: Various
Language: English
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[Illustration: DECEMBER, 1887.
The American Missionary
VOL. XLI.
NO. 12.]
[Illustration: CONTENTS]
* * * * *
EDITORIAL.
THIS NUMBER PORTLAND MEETING, 335
SUBSCRIBERS FOR THE “MISSIONARY,” 336
PARAGRAPHS, 337
STUDENT AID, 338
MORE ABOUT THE JOHN BROWN SONG, 339
MISSISSIPPI CONVICT SYSTEM, 341
ANNUAL MEETING.
PROCEEDINGS OF ANNUAL MEETING, 343
SUMMARY OF TREASURER’S REPORT, 352
REPORTS OF COMMITTEES, 354
DR. BUCKINGHAM’S MEMORIAL ADDRESS, 361
THE MISSIONARY INFLUENCE OF A LIFE,
AND THE LIFE OF A MISSIONARY INFLUENCE. By
Secretary Beard, 365
THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. By Secretary Strieby, 372
NEED OF INTELLIGENCE IN BENEVOLENCE. By Secretary
Powell, 379
BUREAU OF WOMAN’S WORK.
REPORT OF SECRETARY, 387
RECEIPTS, 390
* * * * *
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, —— ——
_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. JAMES POWELL, D.D., 56 _Reade Street, N.Y._
Rev. A. F. BEARD, D.D., 56 _Reade Street, N.Y._
_Treasurer._
H. W. HUBBARD, Esq., 56 _Reade Street, N.Y._
_Auditors._
PETER MCCARTEE.
CHAS. P. PEIRCE.
_Executive Committee._
JOHN H. WASHBURN, Chairman.
A. P. FOSTER, Secretary.
_For Three Years._
LYMAN ABBOTT,
A. S. BARNES,
J. R. DANFORTH,
CLINTON B. FISK,
A. P. FOSTER,
_For Two Years._
S. B. HALLIDAY,
SAMUEL HOLMES,
SAMUEL S. MARPLES,
CHARLES L. MEAD,
ELBERT B. MONROE,
_For One Year._
J. E. RANKIN,
WM. H. WARD,
J. W. COOPER,
JOHN H. WASHBURN,
EDMUND L. CHAMPLIN.
_District Secretaries._
Rev. C. L. WOODWORTH, D.D., 21 _Cong’l House, Boston_.
Rev. J. E. ROY, D.D., 151 _Washington Street, Chicago_.
_Financial Secretary for Indian Missions._
Rev. CHAS. W. SHELTON.
_Field Superintendent._
Rev. C. J. RYDER.
_Bureau of Woman’s Work._
_Secretary_, Miss D. E. EMERSON, 56 _Reade Street, N.Y._
* * * * *
COMMUNICATIONS
Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the
Corresponding Secretaries; those relating to the collecting fields,
to Rev. James Powell, D.D., or to the District 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.
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. XLI. DECEMBER, 1887. No. 12.
* * * * *
American Missionary Association.
* * * * *
This is the Annual Meeting number of THE MISSIONARY. It is twice
the usual size, and more than twice the usual value. Addresses
omitted for lack of space will appear in subsequent numbers. Dr.
Behrends’s sermon will be printed in the Annual Report.
* * * * *
THE PORTLAND MEETING was one of the best in the history of the
Association. The intellectual and spiritual power of all the
sessions was marked and sustained throughout. The attendance was
large. The churches provided right royally for those who attended.
The ministers and those associated with them worked night and day.
They anticipated every want. They made themselves the servants of
all. We cannot thank them as we ought. We cannot reward them as
they deserve. They have done the cause a noble service.
* * * * *
An enthusiastic, profitable, inspiring meeting was anticipated,
and that expectation was more than fulfilled. There was no debt to
mourn over, and no question of administration to dispute about.
The one object in coming together was to get a bird’s-eye view of
the field, and to crystalize the aroused enthusiasm in the form of
increased contributions, exertions and prayers for the society’s
work.
Never did the magnitude of its field and the complex character
of its labors appear in such startling lines. Either one of the
four principal departments of labor demands the money and the
force which is distributed among all. But, in the providence of
God, this society is called upon to prosecute this fourfold work.
It cannot abandon a single field, and it must not be asked to.
It can do in the next five years a work for Christianity and for
Congregationalism in the South and West which will tell on the
coming century. As Christians, and as Congregational Christians,
we must see that it be not obliged to pinch its workers, and to
turn away from promising openings in order to keep free from debt
the coming year.
In two respects the deliberations are likely to issue in action
which will affect the other societies as well. The strong sentiment
in favor of a consolidation of the missionary publications will
probably take form in some definite action ere long, and the
frequent and prolonged laments over the scanty gifts of Christians
for missionary operations indicate a determined effort on the part
of pastors and leaders to induce a revival of giving.
The American Missionary Association has a united constituency at
its back, and a boundless field before its face. In the solving of
the problems which confront American Christianity, it is to have a
glorious share.
_The Congregationalist._
* * * * *
REV. DR. ROY, our Western District Secretary, has secured a
number of stereopticon-views illustrative of our work in all its
departments. By aid of the stereopticon he tells his story in a way
that keeps both eyes and ears of his audience engaged. The venture
is highly praised. The overflow meeting, Wednesday evening, in
Portland, were treated to a part of the lecture and exhibition.
People who say missionary meetings are dull, make themselves
conspicuously scarce when Dr. Roy comes round.
* * * * *
Now is a good time to induce our friends, not subscribers, to
subscribe for THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY. With January a new volume of
the magazine begins. The price is only 50 cents. The reading matter
will be found interesting and profitable. There is a prejudice
against missionary literature. It is unjust. Will our friends aid
us by trying to destroy that prejudice? We cannot offer premiums
to induce formation of clubs. It is a _missionary_ magazine that
we publish. We invite _missionary_ effort to enlarge its paying
circulation.
* * * * *
That word paying makes us think. We have a large number of life
members, to all of whom we send THE MISSIONARY free. We also send
it to pastors and Sunday-school superintendents of contributing
churches free. By so doing we do not mean to debar them from the
privilege of paying. Many of these, knowing that they will receive
the magazine anyway, put their subscription into their annual
donations. Better send the subscriptions separately. It would
enable us, by entering the subscriptions upon our books where
they belong, to lower the expense of publication. Of course, in
the result it is as broad as it is long. We have so much receipts
and so much expenses, but it is well to give credit where credit
is due, and our magazine should have its credits acknowledged.
Where subscriptions are put in with the general contribution, they
go into the general treasury. They do not appear in the specific
magazine account, and we have no means of knowing exactly what the
magazine costs the general treasury. It is very certain it costs
_no where near_ what we are obliged to report. We respectfully ask
the attention of our friends to this point.
* * * * *
A PASTOR writes us: “If pastors would take a little pains to have
THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY sent to carefully selected persons in their
communities, it would bring large returns, I am sure.” This is a
very important statement, if true. We believe it is true. What
have pastors to say about it? They are most earnestly requested to
express their opinions. The question is open.
* * * * *
This is the way the editor of a colored religious paper in the
South puts it to the ministers:
“If the Lord called you to preach, he also calls you to subscribe
for our paper, so that you may be cut and qualified to preach. It
is just so, and you had better believe it. Send in your money.”
And then he goes for delinquents after this fashion:
“How can you call yourself honest while you are indebted for your
paper? The Lord will not hold you guiltless unless you pay what you
owe. Pay up! Pay up!! Pay up!!!”
We hasten to add, we were not thinking of subscriptions for THE
AMERICAN MISSIONARY when we made the above clippings.
* * * * *
The special attention of pastors is called to the resolution
presented by the Committee on Secretary Powell’s paper and
adopted by the Annual Meeting. Will they please see to it that
this resolution is brought to the notice of the local conferences
with which they are connected. Nothing goes in this world unless
there are earnest souls behind it pushing. If that resolution is
translated into action by all the local conferences, it will bring
thousands of dollars into our treasury.
* * * * *
The Georgia Legislature has adjourned and gone home. The Chain-Gang
Bill of the House was too barbarous for the Senate to follow. The
more refined, though not less cruel Bill of the Senate, the House
would not accept. A Committee of Conference failed to find ground
for common standing. Thus it was at the time of adjournment.
Pending, however, these considerations, another Bill was passed
which has taken from Atlanta University the State appropriation of
$8,000, and this is all the legislation enacted on the subject.
* * * * *
GOVERNOR GORDON, of Georgia, has been making political speeches in
Ohio. Of course he had a good deal to say about the colored people,
and as might be expected he told his Northern audiences that the
charges about their being oppressed at the South were all false.
In this opinion the colored people do not agree with the Governor.
They assert the opposite with vehemence and persistence. The man
who lays on the lash affirms that the strokes do not hurt. The poor
victim cries out in pain; but we must not believe the victim. Oh,
no! He is merely crying for political effect. Indeed, he is not
being whipped at all. He only imagines it, or he has been worked
up by Northern emissaries to make all this outcry about nothing!
The testimony of the colored people is against the Governor. The
Legislation of his own State, with its story of colored code laws,
political disability laws, and Glenn Bills, is against him. The
inexpressibly infamous Penitentiary system of his State, which,
if the victims of its inhuman cruelties were white as they are
colored people, would not be tolerated for a moment, is against
him. Northern people read and think. Up this way, assertions do not
stand against facts.
* * * * *
STUDENT AID.
To help a needy and worthy student is a delightful way of doing
good. Men eminent for usefulness in all parts of the land
acknowledge their indebtedness to aid given them when in want and
discouraged. Without such aid they never would have gained the
training which now is bearing blessed and abundant fruit. The
experiences of the past are repeated in the South, and promising
youths, weighted by the entailments of slavery, must have help or
they will never reach their greatest possibilities and largest
usefulness.
In this beneficence, however, there is need of abundant wisdom;
for there is a risk, lest in helping, self-help may be repressed
and thus harm be done rather than good. It is one thing to carry
a child till he is grown and then lay down at the highway of life
one large enough and old enough to be a man, but still a baby; and
another, to so hold the hand in difficult places as to develop the
ankle bones and finally send into the world a man who can not only
stand alone, but also help others. The wolf’s milk seems still
necessary to make a Roman, but the modern Romulus does not cry for
it. Indeed, he often cries when it is given him. There are risks in
helping, just as surely as it is wrong not to help at all. Tramps
are numerous where warm breakfasts are given to any who come to
the door; and aid too easily or too abundantly obtained lessens
self-reliance, makes muscle flabby, bone cartilage, and heart
pusillanimous. Where, however, aid received is earned by work, when
it is given so sparingly as to allow no surplus for jewelry, or for
clothing other than the plainest, the results of its bestowal are
good, and only good. Such giving is always to be encouraged.
But it should be remembered that a semi-tropical climate has its
liabilities, and that where the north wind seldom cuts, men dread
the storm and love to be coddled. “Excelsior” is oftenest found on
banners planted amid snow and ice. Besides, slavery pricked the
ham-strings of endeavor, and naturally the young among the freed
people are not inclined to say, “I will either find a way or make
one.” Hence the need of tonics, and tonics are proverbially bitter.
In general, it is better to give plain cloth to a girl and teach
her to make her clothing, than to send her stitched and embroidered
apparel; better to equip a workshop than to pay a student’s board
bill; better, for instance, to give a plough to our Talladega farm
and put a boy at the handle, than to set before him cooked rations.
It is a wiser benevolence to furnish industrial appliances, or to
support a self-denying teacher, hardened in adversity and skilled
to harden others, than to profusely aid the student whom only work
and self-denial can make heroic. The petted are apt to be spoiled,
and those helped the most are usually foremost in fault-finding.
H. S. DE FOREST.
* * * * *
MORE ABOUT THE JOHN BROWN SONG.
When at my house, and talking over Mr. Jerome’s account of the
origin of the John Brown song (printed since in your July number
of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY), you intimated that it might be of
interest to your readers to know of my own relation to it. Since
that conversation I have received letters on the same subject, and
have had an interview with a reporter for the Chicago _Tribune_,
who called to make inquiries. After the latter had left, I
instituted a search among my papers, and found some additional
memoranda on the matter, made at the time, which enables me to give
the account a little more minutely and with a slight correction on
one point.
On the 23d of October, 1861, I started on a visit to our army, in
behalf of the Chicago Sanitary Commission, of which I was a member.
Taking the train at Chicago for Cairo, Ill., I meditated, during
the long hours, on the bearing of the war upon the emancipation
of the slaves, and was saddened by the indisposition of the
Government, the army, and the leading politicians to connect
that object with the preservation of the Federal Union. I had
been preaching and writing on that point with great earnestness,
and was inwardly inquiring what else I could do in behalf of the
slave. Just then the John Brown song, which had recently become
somewhat popular, and the tune of which—apparently taken from
the revival melody, “Say, brothers, will you meet us?”—pleased me
much as admirably effective for use among the people, occurred
to my mind. It was sung to a ridiculous string of words about
“We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree,” etc., but had a good
chorus: “Glory, hallelujah! His soul is marching on.” Why not have
some better stanzas, with a proper rhythmical swing and a good
anti-slavery moral, yet based on John Brown’s history? The more I
meditated on it, the stronger grew the impulse to do something of
the kind, till, to while away the tedium of the journey, I pulled
out the back of a letter or something similar, and wrote a set of
rhymes. When I saw the Chicago _Tribune_ reporter, I thought that
this occurred on my return journey, and so stated to him. But my
original memorandum showed that it was on the day of starting, as
given above. I went to Paducah, Ky., to inspect certain camps, and
found there an Illinois regiment, under command of Col. McArthur.
The chaplain was my old friend, Rev. Joel Grant, to whom I read
my rhymes. He was so struck with their adaptedness to convey
anti-slavery sentiment, that he insisted on my giving him a copy,
that he might set the soldiers to singing them, which I did. On my
return home to Chicago, I concluded to insert them in the Chicago
_Tribune_, as Mr. Medill’s family attended my church, and I knew
his sympathy with the anti-slavery cause. But as I did not claim
to be a poet, and felt shy of seeming to appear as one, I used the
signature of “Plebs” for that and for two other pieces of rhyme,
called “The Old Fogy’s Lament,” and “The Warning,” both also on the
slavery question. I gave the title as “The New John Brown Song,”
retaining the first line and the chorus of the early version. There
were six stanzas, which were as follows, adding a single omitted
word:
I.
Old John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave,
While weep the sons of bondage, whom he ventured all to save;
But though he lost his life in struggling for the slave,
His soul is marching on! O Glory! Hallelujah!
II.
John Brown he was a hero, undaunted, true and brave,
And Kansas knew his valor, where he fought, her rights to save,
And now, though the grass grows green above his grave,
His soul is marching on! O Glory! Hallelujah!
III.
He captured Harper’s Ferry with his nineteen men, so few,
And he frightened “Old Virginny,” till she trembled through and
through;
They hung him for a traitor, themselves a traitor crew,
But his soul is marching on! O Glory! Hallelujah!
IV.
John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see—
Christ who of the bondman shall the Liberator be;
And soon throughout the sunny South the slaves shall all be free,
For his soul is marching on! O Glory! Hallelujah!
V.
The conflict that he heralded, he looks from heaven to view—
On the army of the Union, with its flag, red, white and blue;
And Heaven shall ring with anthems o’er the deed they mean to do,
For his soul is marching on! O Glory! Hallelujah!
VI.
Ye soldiers brave of freedom, then strike, while strike ye may,
The death-blow of oppression, in a better time and way,
For the dawn of Old John Brown has brightened into day,
And his soul is marching on! O Glory! Hallelujah!
These stanzas were published in the Chicago _Tribune_ of Nov. 16th,
1861, and were at once issued also in sheet music by Root & Cady,
the principal music firm of the West at that time. It thus went all
over the West and into the army at the South. When the “Jubilee
Singers” prepared a version of “John Brown” to sing, they adopted
the second and third stanzas of my song, and perhaps others, and
carried them still more widely. Wendell Phillips used to quote the
third stanza with great effect at times.
WM. W. PATTON.
* * * * *
MISSISSIPPI CONVICT SYSTEM.
The horrid barbarity of the State convict-system in Georgia is
paralleled by Mississippi. The moral sense of the people in these
States is waking up and public attention is being called to the
cruelty and inhumanity on the part of those who have prisoners
in charge. It seems incredible that such things can be so. What
a disgrace to our country and our civilization! Here is a report
recently made by the Grand Jury of Hinds County, Mississippi:
_To the Hon. T. J. Wharton, Judge_:
After a most arduous session of eleven days we, the Grand Jury
of the First District of Hinds County for this the June term
of the court, having completed our labors, beg to submit our
final report. We have examined 220 witnesses and have found and
returned into court thirty-eight true bills, of which six have
been for murder, eight for grand larceny, and the remainder for
minor offenses.
We find, with the exception of murder, there is very little
crime in this district; but we are compelled to deplore the
fact that homicide seems to be on the increase. We feel we have
discharged our duty toward the suppression of this crime as
best we were able, leaving the court to carry on the work.
We have examined the public officers’ accounts and settlements
and find everything in good shape. We have examined the
jail, and find the roof and floors in bad condition and the
bedding and covering of the prisoners insufficient and in a
bad condition. We recommend that proper and clean bedding
be furnished the prisoners and that the roof be repaired or
replaced by a new one.
We felt it our duty to inspect the penitentiary, and we report
the result of our inspection as follows: We find comparatively
few prisoners in the walls of the penitentiary, most of them
being out on the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad and elsewhere.
We found nothing to complain of in the walls. The yard seemed
to be clean, and the building, so far as we could judge, in a
safe and cleanly condition, and those immediately in charge
polite and accommodating in showing us around. But we feel
constrained by a sense of public duty to call attention to
the hospital there, the manner in which it is kept and the
condition of its occupants. _We found twenty-six inmates, all
of whom have been lately brought there off_ the farms and
railroads, many of them with _consumption and other incurable
diseases_, and _all bearing on their persons marks of the most
inhuman and brutal treatment_; most of them have their backs
_cut in great wales, scars and blisters_, some _with the skin
peeling off in pieces as the result of severe beatings_.
_Their feet and hands in some instances show signs of
frost-bite_, and _all of them with_ the _stamp of manhood
almost blotted out of their faces, which show that they have
been treated more cruelly and brutally than a nation of
savages ought to permit inflicted upon its convicts. They are
lying there dying, some of them on bare boards, so poor and
emaciated that their bones almost come through their skin, many
complaining for the want of food._
We believe they are fed improperly. Sick people ought to have
light diet and these poor creatures get their beef water
and meal for soup, as we are informed, with coarse meat and
cabbage—such diet as they cannot eat. One _poor fellow burst
out crying and said he was literally starving to death. We
actually saw live vermin crawling over their faces, and the
little bedding and clothing they have is in tatters and stiff
with filth_.
We call the attention of the Board of Control to these matters,
but under the law we know they can do but little to remedy
these evils. We believe they will do the best they can. We
are not to be understood as condemning the lessees in person
for these things, but we do inveigh against the principle and
system of this great State taking a poor creature’s liberty and
turning him over to one whose interest it is to coin his blood
into money.
As a fair sample of this system, on January 6, 1887, two
hundred and four convicts were leased to McDonald up to June
6, 1887, and during this six months twenty died, nineteen
were discharged and escaped and twenty-three returned to the
walls disabled and sick, many of whom have since died. God
will never smile upon a State that treats its convicts as
Mississippi does. After a full examination and conference with
the kind-hearted prison physician, Dr. Johnston, we find the
following persons in the hospital almost in a dying state,
some of them with hopelessly incurable diseases and others
badly afflicted, and all of them confined for minor offenses,
comparatively speaking, and who have long since suffered
the full penalty of the law in being beaten and so cruelly
mis-treated, and whom we here earnestly beg the Governor to
pardon immediately, so that they may at least die free.
Then follow the names of twelve persons, all colored, who, in
consequence of the abuse to which they were subjected in prison,
are now suffering from incurable diseases. Oh, for some John Howard
to arise in the South and become in God’s hand the instrument of
wiping this terrible evil out of existence.
* * * * *
FORTY-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING
of the
AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
* * * * *
The Forty-first Annual Meeting of the American Missionary
Association convened in the Second Parish Church at Portland,
Maine, on Tuesday, October 25th, at 3 o’clock P. M.
Owing to the recent death of its President, Hon. Wm. B. Washburn,
of Massachusetts, the Association was called to order by one of the
Vice-Presidents, Alexander McKenzie, D.D., of the same State, who,
after the singing of “Coronation,” read the Scriptures—Mark vi,
30–56—and led in prayer.
Rev. Henry A. Hazen, of Massachusetts, was elected Secretary, and
Rev. Edgar M. Cousins, of Maine, Assistant Secretary.
In the unavoidable absence of W. H. Fenn, D.D., Rev. Charles H.
Daniels welcomed the Association in behalf of the churches and the
city of Portland.
Response was made by Vice-President McKenzie.
The following committees were nominated and elected:
_Committee on Nominations._—A. S. Walker, D.D., of Massachusetts;
Rev. Rufus K. Harlow, of Massachusetts; W. L. Gage, D.D., of
Connecticut; Rev. Arthur Shirley, of Maine; Charles Peck, Esq., of
Connecticut.
_Committee of Arrangements._—Rev. Charles H. Daniels, Rev. Leavitt
H. Hallock, Rev. Frank T. Bayley, William H. Fenn, D.D., Dea. E. F.
Duren, all of Maine.
_Business Committee._—Rev. Geo. M. Howe, of Maine; J. D. Kingsbury,
D.D., of Massachusetts; Rev. Geo. E. Hall, of New Hampshire;
Rev. Geo. E. Street, of New Hampshire; Dr. Luther B. Morse, of
Massachusetts; James G. Buttrick, Esq., of Massachusetts.
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._
James Bell, N.J.; Ruel P. Cowles, Ct.; Rev. T. M. Davies, Me.; Miss
Anne E. Farrington, N.C.
_Local Conferences._
Rev. G. W. Christie, Me.; Elnathan F. Duren, Me.; Rev. Wm. A.
Houghton, Mass.; Rev. C. G. McCully, Me.; Rev. Wm. G. Mann, Me.;
Charles Morse, Mass.; Rev. B. G. Northrup, Ct.; Miss L. L. Phelps,
Me.; Rev. Lauriston Reynolds, Me.; E. N. Smith, Me.; Rev. N. J.
Squires, Ct.; Edward A. Williams, Ct.; Rev. Alexander Wiswall, Me.
_Delegates from the Churches._
Rev. Jonathan E. Adams, Me.; Rev. Myron W. Adams, N.H.; Mrs.
Elizabeth B. Allen, Me.; Rev. T. M. Beadenkoff, Me.; Mary Q. Brown,
Mass.; Susan M. Brown, Mass.; Mary S. Burge, N.H.; J. W. Burgess,
Mass.; Mrs. Caroline A. S. Burgess, Mass.; G. W. Catlin, Ct.;
S. H. Chandler, Me.; Rev. G. E. Chapin, Me.; Rev. C. D. Crane,
Me.; Albert Currier, Mass.; Mrs. Minnie A. Dickinson, Mass.; E.
W. Douglass, N.C.; Mrs. Ruth Eastman, Me.; Rev. F. F. Emerson,
R.I.; Rev. John D. Emerson, Me.; Edward H. Emery, Me.; Franklin
Fairbanks, Vt.; Miss M. B. Fairbanks, Me.; B. Freeman, Me.; Rev.
W. L. Gage, Ct.; Rev. Joshua S. Gay, Mass.; A. Gaylord, N.Y.; C.
W. Goodnow, Me.; Mrs. C. W. Goodnow, Me.; J. M. Gould, Me.; Jas.
Graham, Me.; Abbie Greene, Me.; Mrs. S. J. Hall, Mass.; Wolcott
Hamlin, Mass.; Horace F. Hanson, M.D., Me.; Rev. D. W. Hardy, Me.;
Rev. Henry A. Hazen, Mass.; Minnie E. Holt, Me.; Alonzo H. Libby,
Me.; Rev. H. S. Loring, Me.; Rev. D. D. Marsh, Mass.; Mrs. D. D.
Marsh, Mass.; Mrs. Eliza W. Merrill, N.H.; Rev. W. A. Merrill, Me.;
Mrs. Martha N. Merrill, Me.; Charles W. Morton, Me.; M. A. Perry,
Mass.; Rev. J. S. Richards, Me.; Rev. C. F. Ropes, N.H.; Alice M.
Russell, Me.; Rev. Charles L. Skinner, Me.; Rev. B. P. Snow, Me.;
Joel Spaulding, Me.; Mrs. Caroline Spencer, Me.; John M. Stearns,
N.Y.; Rev. Edward G. Stone, N.H.; Rev. P. B. Thayer, Me.; Rev. M.
Van Horn, R.I.; Rev. Wm. G. Wade, Me.; Rev. Albert Watson, N.H.;
Frank Wood, Mass.; Clinton A. Woodbury, Me.; Rev. D. E. Adams,
Mass.; Rev. Joseph Anderson, Ct.; Rev. Samuel H. Barnum, N.H.; Rev.
E. Bean, Me.; Mrs. Philo Bevin, Ct.; Rev. Samuel Bowker, Mass.;
Mrs. A. H. Burbank, Me.; Rev. Wm. T. Briggs, Mass.; Rev. Geo. P.
Byington, Vt.; Rev. Edward L. Chute, Mass.; J. H. Clark, Me.; Dea.
M. Collister, Mass.; Lucius C. Curtis, Me.; Mrs. E. C. Drisko,
Me.; Rev. Omar W. Folsom, Me.; Rev. H. A. Freeman, Me.; Rev. A. K.
Gleason, Me.; Lydia L. Hawkes, Me.; Dea. J. E. Henry, Mass.; Sarah
P. Hill, Me.; Rev. John W. Hird, Mass.; Mrs. N. H. Holbrook, Mass.;
Mrs. L. M. Holt, Me.; Rev. G. M. Howe, Me.; Rev. Frank E. Jenkins,
Ky.; Rev. R. W. Jenkins, Me.; Rev. E. S. Jordan, Me.; J. R. Libby,
Me.; Jas. M. Linsley, Ct.; Dea. Geo. W. Littlefield, Me.; Rev. C.
W. Longren, Me.; Rev. Henry S. Loring, Me.; Rev. George E. Lovejoy,
Mass.; Chas. E. Miller, Me.; Dr. Luther B. Morse, Mass.; Dea. B. A.
Nourse, Mass.; Rev. C. H. Oliphant, Mass.; Dea. H. W. Otis, Mass.;
Rev. Henry J. Patrick, Mass.; Mrs. Sarah Payne, Me.; Dea. Charles
Peck, Ct.; Rev. L. Phelps, Mass.; Dea. H. M. Plumer, N.H.; J. G.
Proctor, N.H.; Mrs. Proctor, N.H.; Rev. A. H. Quint, Mass.; Rev.
Cyrus Richardson, N.H.; H. H. Ricker, Me.; D. B. Robinson, Me.;
Rev. Arthur Smith, Me.; Rev. H. A. Stevens, R.I.; Joseph Stover,
Me.; Mrs. Joseph Stover, Me.; Rev. Geo. A. Tewkesbury, Mass.; Rev.
A. H. Tyler, Me.; Rev. Jos. N. Walker, Vt.; Mrs. Eben Webster,
Mass.; Gorham N. Weymouth, Mass.
_Life Members._
Rev. A. F. Beard, N.Y.; James Bell, N.J.; Mrs. Matilda Burleigh,
Me.; Timothy H. Chapman, Me.; E. L. Champlin, N.Y.; Rev. Samuel W.
Clarke, Mass.; Rev. James W. Cooper, Ct.; Rev. C. H. Daniels, Me.;
Rev. Oliver S. Dean, Mass.; Rev. G. S. Dickerman, Mass.; Rev. W.
R. Eastman, Mass.; Miss D. E. Emerson, N.Y.; Mrs. Jacob Fullerton,
Mass.; Rev. Geo. L. Gleason, Mass.; Mrs. Geo. L. Gleason, Mass.; D.
C. Hawes, Me.; Samuel Harrison, Mass.; Esther P. Hayes, Me.; Rev.
A. Hazen, Mass.; Alma J. Herbert, N.H.; Mrs. B. J. Holbrook, Mass.;
H. W. Hubbard, N.Y.; Rev. Geo. Lewis, Me.; Mrs. K. B. Lewis, Me.;
Rev. Nehemiah Lincoln, Me.; Charles L. Mead, N.Y.; Gyles Merrill,
N.H.; Rev. C. P. Mills, Mass.; John W. Munger, Me.; Rev. C. L.
Nichols, Me.; Mrs. Augusta F. Odlin, N.H.; Rev. James Powell, N.Y.;
S. M. Rideout, Me.; Rev. J. E. Rankin, N.J.; Rev. Joseph E. Roy,
Ill.; Mary Sawyer, Mass.; Rev. Charles W. Shelton, Ct.; Rev. Arthur
Shirley, Me.; Rev. A. F. Skeele, Me.; Rev. W. F. Slocum, Md.; S. A.
Spooner, Mass.; Rev. Calvin Terry, Mass.; Rev. E. P. Thwing, N.Y.;
Rev. A. S. Walker, Mass.; Mrs. Mary E. Walker, Me.; Rev. I. P.
Warren, Me.; Mrs. Juliet M. S. Warren, Me.; Mrs. C. L. Woodworth,
Mass.; Rev. Henry C. Alford, Mass.; Rev. Edward E. Bacon, Me.; Rev.
Smith Baker, Mass.; G. A. Bodge, Ct.; Charles E. Boothby, Me.;
Clara R. Boynton, Mass.; Sadie H. Bragdon, Me.; Dea. T. H. Chapman,
Me.; Joseph B. Drury, Mass.; Mrs. Joseph B. Drury, Mass.; Rev. John
D. Emerson, Me.; Rev. L. H. Fellows, Ct.; Rev. Stacy Fowler, Mass.;
Mrs. R. C. Gurney, Mass.; Rev. Henry L. Hammond, Ill.; Rev. Josiah
T. Hawes, Me.; Rev. Rowland B. Howard, Mass.; Charles M. Lamson,
Vt.; Rev. John H. McIlvaine, R.I.; T. A. McMaster, Mass.; Rev. Geo.
N. Marden, Colo.; Barak Maxwell, Me.; Lucia G. Merrill, Mass.;
Elisha Newcomb, Me.; Mrs. Annie F. Nichols, Me.; Robert L. Perkins,
Mass.; Mrs. Maria S. Perry, Me.; Mrs. A. A. Phelps, Me.; Charles A.
Richardson, Mass.; Miss C. M. Scales, Me.; Mrs. A. F. Skeele, Me.;
Mary B. Spalding, Me.; Rev. Geo. F. Stanton, Mass.; Rev. Geo. E.
Street, N.H.; Thomas H. L. Tallcott, Ct.; Mrs. M. E. Tenney, N.H.;
Rev. L. J. Thomas, Me.; Eben Webster, Mass.
_Visitors._
Rev. W. H. S. Aubrey, England; Geo. B. Barrows, Me.; Rev. E. Bean,
Me.; Rev. John B. Carruthers, Me.; Rev. R. C. Drisko, Vt.; Rev. C.
H. Gates, Me.; Rev. W. H. Haskell, Me.; Rev. H. C. McKnight, Me.;
J. L. Perkins, Mass.; H. Porter Smith, Mass.; Rev. J. W. Strong,
Minn.; Rev. T. J. Valentine, Mass.; George L. Bunster, N.H.; Rev.
Edgar M. Cousins, Me.; Rev. John Dinsmore, Me.; Rev. Henry Farrar,
N.H.; Rev. D. E. French, Me.; Oliver H. Hay, Kans.; Charles Heath,
Mass.; R. N. Holman, Mass.; Rev. Charles G. Holyoke, Me.; Dea. A.
Kingsbury, Ct.; Ira L. McClary, Vt.; A. R. Mitchell, Me.; A. T.
Muzzy, Me.; Rev. E. S. Palmer, Me.; Rev. H. F. A. Patterson, Me.;
Rev. Augustus Root, Mass.; A. H. Siegfried, N.J.; Dea. Richard
Smith, Mass.; Rev. Prof. Richard C. Stanley, Me.; Rev. David D.
Tappan, Mass.; Joseph Walker, Me.
The Treasurer, H. W. Hubbard, Esq., presented his annual report,
which was accepted and referred to the Committee on Finance to be
appointed.
The report of the Executive Committee was read by the Field
Superintendent, Rev. Charles J. Ryder, and the various portions of
the report relating to different departments of work 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 programme prepared by the Committee of Arrangements was adopted
as the programme of the meeting, unless otherwise directed.
Adjourned to 7.30 P. M.
TUESDAY EVENING.
The meeting was called to order at 7.30 P. M. The devotional
services were conducted by Pres. James W. Strong, D.D., of
Minnesota.
The annual sermon was preached by A. J. F. Behrends, D.D., of
New York, from the third verse of Jude, according to the Revised
Version.
The sermon was followed by the administration of the Lord’s Supper.
The following named persons officiated at the service: Ministers—W.
L. Gage, D.D., of Connecticut; Rev. George S. Dickerman, of
Massachusetts. Deacons—E. F. Duren, R. H. Hinkley, S. W. Larrabee,
Horatio Staples, John M. Gould, of Maine; Augustus Gaylord, H. W.
Hubbard, of New York; Elbert B. Munroe, of Connecticut.
At the close of the communion, adjournment was taken to Wednesday
at 9 o’clock A. M.
WEDNESDAY MORNING.
The prayer meeting from 8 to 9 o’clock was led by Joseph Anderson,
D.D., of Connecticut.
At 9 o’clock the Association was called to order by the
Vice-President presiding, who read the Scriptures. Prayer was
offered by Rev. Henry S. Loring, of Maine.
The records of the previous day were read and approved.
The Committee on Nominations reported the following committees to
act for the Association, and the report was adopted:
Committee on Educational Work: Rev. Wm. F. Slocum, Jr., Md.;
Elbridge Mix, D.D., Mass.; Rev. Oliver S. Dean, Mass.; Rev. Forrest
F. Emerson, R.I.; Rev. Omar W. Folsom, Me.; Rev. George H. Scott,
Mass.; Charles Heath, Esq., Mass.; Mr. W. A. Crosthwait, Tenn.
On Mountain Work: Alonzo H. Quint, D.D., Mass.; Geo. W. Phillips,
D.D., Vt.; Rev. Geo. W. Grover, N.H.; Rev. Charles C. McIntire,
Vt.; Rev. Henry M. Grant, Mass.; Rev. Henry J. Patrick, Mass.; Rev.
John A. MacColl, Vt.
On Indian Work: Frank Wood, Esq., Mass.; Elijah Horr, D.D., Mass.;
Rev. George A. Tewksbury, Mass.; Rev. Frank A. Warfield, Mass.;
Galen C. Moses, Esq., Me.; A. L. Williston, Esq., Mass.; Carlos
Montezuma, Ill.
On Chinese Missions: Rev. S. Lewis B. Speare, Mass.; Rev. Henry
L. Griffin, Me.; Rev. George S. Dickerman, Mass.; Rev. Charles
H. Pope, Me.; Rev. Charles P. Mills, Mass.; Dea. Horace W. Otis,
Mass.; Mr. Yan Phou Lee, Ct.
On Church Work: Rev. Cyrus Richardson, N.H.; Rev. Joseph F.
Lovering, Mass.; Rev. Mahlon Van Horne, R.I.; Rev. George F.
Stanton, Mass.; Rev. Arthur F. Skeele, Me.; Frederick E. Sturgis,
D.D., Mass.
On Finance: Charles A. Hull, Esq., N.Y.; Rev. Smith Baker, Mass.;
Edward S. Atwood, D.D., Mass.; J. Hall McIlvaine, D.D., R.I.; Col.
Franklin Fairbanks, Vt.; Augustus Gaylord, Esq., N.Y.
A paper on “The Influence of a Life and the Life of an Influence,”
was presented by Associate Corresponding Secretary Augustus F.
Beard, D.D.
A paper on “The Brotherhood of Man; or, The Three Brothers who
Settled America,” was read by Corresponding Secretary M. E.
Strieby, D.D.
A paper on “Need of Intelligence in Giving,” was read by Associate
Corresponding Secretary James Powell, D.D.
The Committee on Nominations reported the following special
committees upon the papers read:
1. Upon Secretary Strieby’s paper: C. M. Lamson, D.D., Vt.; Rev. J.
W. Hird, Mass.; E. L. Champlin, Esq., N.Y.
2. Upon Secretary Beard’s paper: Rev. W. A. McGinley, N.H.; Rev. T.
E. Babb, Mass.; Joseph W. Burgess, Esq., Mass.
3. Upon Secretary Powell’s paper: Joseph Anderson, D.D., Ct.; Rev.
W. R. Eastman, Mass.; Timothy H. Chapman, Esq., Me.
Rev. Dr. Behrends, of New York, spoke upon the subject of
Missionary Literature as presented in Secretary Powell’s paper.
Rev. G. S. Dickerman and Rev. O. S. Dean, both of Massachusetts,
spoke upon the same paper.
The Association listened to addresses in memory of its late
President, the Hon. William B. Washburn, of Massachusetts.
These addresses were given by Rev. S. G. Buckingham, D.D., of
Massachusetts, and Secretary Strieby, of the Association. The
latter presented a minute which had been adopted by the Executive
Committee at their first meeting after learning of the death of
Governor Washburn, and which they recommended for adoption at this
meeting, and to be forwarded to the family of the late President.
The minute, which follows, was unanimously adopted by a rising vote:
“We recognize the hand of God in the recent and sudden death of
Hon. William B. Washburn, the President of this Association.
We mourn the loss of one whose name and influence have been
so helpful to it; whose many private virtues have endeared
him to so wide a circle of friends; whose public services in
the Church and State have been so honored and valued; and we
tender to his family our profound sympathy in their irreparable
bereavement.
“Yet we are grateful to our Heavenly Father that he called our
brother to himself by so painless a death and while in the
discharge of his duty as a member of the American Board. We
rejoice that in him we can point to one whose loving heart made
his home happy, whose integrity and honorable dealing were a
noble example in business life, whose honors and offices in the
service of the State were unsought and were discharged with
fidelity and ability, and whose life and work in the church
were an honor to his profession and to the cause of Christ.
“In the suddenness of his departure we are reminded that we,
too, may be called in an hour that we think not, and yet that
it is the privilege of the Christian to be always ready to die
with the armor on and in the active service of the Captain of
our Salvation.”
Adjourned.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON.
The Association was called to order at 2 o’clock. Rev. George E.
Street, of New Hampshire, offered prayer.
The report of the Committee on Educational Work, with an address,
was presented by Rev. Wm. F. Slocum, Jr., of Maryland. Further
addresses were made by Rev. Forrest F. Emerson, of Rhode Island;
Mr. W. A. Crosthwait, of Tennessee, and Rev. Mahlon Van Horne, of
Rhode Island.
The report of the Committee on Mountain Work was presented by Rev.
Henry J. Patrick, of Massachusetts. Addresses in connection with
the report were given by A. H. Quint, D.D., of Massachusetts,
chairman of the committee; Rev. Frank E. Jenkins, of Kentucky;
G. W. Phillips, D.D., of Vermont, and Rev. A. A. Myers, General
Missionary of the Association, of Tennessee.
J. E. Rankin, D.D., led in closing prayer.
Adjourned to 7.30 P. M.
WEDNESDAY EVENING.
The Association was called to order at 7.30. Devotional exercises
were conducted by James W. Cooper, D.D., of Connecticut.
An address on “The Nerve of Missions” was delivered by Pres. Wm. De
Witt Hyde, D.D., of Bowdoin College, Maine.
Hon. Nelson Dingley, of Maine, gave an address upon “Some of the
changed conditions in this country that demand increased missionary
effort.”
The Association then listened to an address upon “The conversion of
the Chinese in this country,” by Mr. Yan Phou Lee, of Connecticut.
W. H. S. Aubrey, D.D., of England, addressed the meeting upon “Some
Phases of American Civilization.”
A brief closing address was made by the Vice President presiding.
Closed with singing the doxology and with the benediction.
THURSDAY MORNING.
The prayer meeting from 8 to 9 o’clock was led by Rev. J. E. Adams,
of Maine. The Association was called to order by Vice-President A.
J. F. Behrends, D.D., of New York, and led in prayer by Rev. R. B.
Howard, of Massachusetts.
The minutes of Wednesday were read and approved.
The report of the Committee on Indian Work was presented by Frank
Wood, Esq., of Massachusetts, who also addressed the Association,
and was followed by Rev. George A. Tewksbury, of Massachusetts,
Carlos Montezuma, of Illinois, a representative of the Apache
Indians of Arizona, and President Joseph Ward, D.D., of Dakota.
The report was accepted and the recommendation adopted that a
committee be appointed to co-operate with the Financial Secretary
for Indian Missions.
The report of the Committee on Chinese Missions was presented
by Rev. S. Lewis B. Speare, of Massachusetts, who addressed
the Association, and was followed by Rev. Charles P. Mills, of
Massachusetts; Gen. Augustus Gaylord, of New York, and Mr. Yan Phou
Lee, of Connecticut.
The report was accepted and adopted, together with the following
resolution:
_Resolved_, That the Association, holding its annual meeting in
the State of Maine, sends its greetings to Rev. W. C. Pond, a
son of Maine, with sympathy in his labors and rejoicing in his
success among the Chinamen on the Pacific coast.
The report of the Committee on Church Work was presented by Rev.
Cyrus Richardson, of New Hampshire, who addressed the Association,
and was followed by Rev. George F. Stanton, of Massachusetts, and
Mr. W. A. Crosthwait, of Tennessee.
The report was accepted and adopted.
The Committee on Nominations reported the following persons as a
committee to co-operate with the Financial Secretary on Indian
Missions: Frank Wood, Esq., Massachusetts; Franklin Fairbanks,
Esq., Vermont; Elbert B. Munroe, Esq., New York; Joseph Ward,
D.D., Dakota; Rev. Charles B. Mills, Massachusetts. And they were
appointed.
Adjourned to 2 P. M.
THURSDAY AFTERNOON.
The Association was called to order at 2 P. M. Prayer was offered
by Rev. Edward Payson Thwing, M.D., of New York.
The report of the Committee on Finance was presented by Charles A.
Hull, Esq., who also addressed the Association, and was followed
by J. Hall McIlvaine, D.D., of Rhode Island; Smith Baker, D.D., of
Massachusetts; Rev. Charles W. Shelton, of the Association, and
Rev. Oliver S. Dean, of Massachusetts. The report was accepted.
At this hour—3.30 o’clock—the Association adjourned to the
First Baptist Church for a business session, leaving the Second
Parish Church to a meeting of the Woman’s Bureau of the American
Missionary Association.
The business meeting was called to order by Col. Franklin
Fairbanks, of Vermont, who presided. Prayer was offered by Allen
Hazen, D.D., of Massachusetts.
The Committee on Nominations reported as follows: First, as
regards the office of President—No nomination had been made, but
a recommendation that the matter be left in the hands of the
Executive Committee, who have power to fill such a vacancy at any
time. Second, as regards the remaining offices, the following
nominations were made:
VICE-PRESIDENTS.
A. J. F. BEHRENDS, D.D., N.Y.
F. A. NOBLE, D.D., Ill.
ALEXANDER MCKENZIE, D.D., Mass.
D. O. MEARS, D.D., Mass.
HENRY HOPKINS, D.D., Mo.
CORRESPONDING SECRETARIES.
M. E. STRIEBY, D.D.
JAMES POWELL, D.D.
A. F. BEARD, D.D., all of New York.
TREASURER.
H. W. HUBBARD, Esq., N.Y.
AUDITORS.
PETER MCCARTEE, N.Y.
CHARLES P. PIERCE, N.Y.
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
(_For Three Years._)
LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D., N.Y.;
J. R. DANFORTH, D.D., Penn.;
A. S. BARNES, Esq., N.Y.;
Gen. CLINTON B. FISK, N.Y.;
A. P. FOSTER, D.D., Mass.
(_For One Year._)
JAMES W. COOPER, D.D., Ct.
The report was accepted, and a ballot being taken, the persons
named were elected.
The meeting listened to reports of the committees appointed upon
the papers read on Wednesday by the Secretaries.
Rev. W. A. McGinley, of New Hampshire, presented the report upon
Secretary Beard’s paper. The report was accepted.
C. M. Lamson, D.D., of Vermont, presented the report upon Secretary
Strieby’s paper, which was accepted.
Joseph Anderson, D.D., of Connecticut, presented the report upon
Secretary Powell’s paper, together with two resolutions. The report
was accepted. The first resolution was adopted, as follows:
_Resolved_, That we submit to the Congregational churches, in
local conferences assembled, for careful consideration, the
question whether it is not desirable that such conferences
establish special committees, whose duty it shall be to
secure for this Association, along with the other benevolent
societies of the denomination, a hearing from time to time in
our churches, especially in those churches which are without
pastors, and which for this, or other reasons, are liable to
fail in their duty toward our great missionary and benevolent
organizations.
And it was voted that the Secretaries print this resolution and
send a copy to the clerk of each local conference, requesting him
to bring it to the attention of the body.
After discussion, the second resolution relating to a Union
Missionary Magazine was laid upon the table.
Adjourned to 7.30 P. M.
THURSDAY EVENING.
The meeting was called to order at 7.30 by Elbert B. Munroe, Esq.,
of New York. Rev. Frank A. Warfield, of Massachusetts, conducted
devotional services.
The minutes of the day were read and approved, and the Secretaries
were authorized to complete the minutes to the end of the meeting,
and the Executive Committee to print at their discretion.
Secretary Powell, in behalf of Rev. Dr. McIlvaine, of Rhode Island,
who had been called away, extended the invitation of the churches
of Providence, R.I., that the annual meeting of this Association
for 1888 be held in that city. The invitation was accepted.
The Association listened to an address by Hon. William P. Frye, of
Maine.
Secretary Beard, of the Association, presented an address of thanks.
A response was made by W. H. Fenn, D.D.
Voted to adopt Dr. Beard’s statement as a minute, to go upon the
records. The minute is as follows:
A year ago when the American Missionary Association was reaching
out in its thought for a place where the churches and Christians
who are interested in its work could assemble to hear its reports
and to consider the great causes which have been committed to it, a
most cordial invitation was received from the churches of Portland
to accept their Christian hospitality.
Those of us who have had occasion to know how much solid heartiness
and sincere good will is extended in the outstretched right hand
of this people had no question as to the pleasure which would be
experienced by those who should be recipients of it. We answered
that it was in our hearts to come, and we have done our best all
this year to bring to these churches cheerful faces and glad hearts.
We came grateful to God in that we could look the world in the
face with our debts cancelled, owing no man anything but love;
with no gloomy shadows over us, happy in the glorious experience
of knowing that we possessed money enough in our treasury to carry
on our work two whole days. We have met with the characteristic
greeting of a people “given to hospitality.” We have come to a
land of steady habits, and when some of you have taken us by the
hand in the closeness of your grip we have sometimes been led
to think that this is the greatest vice (_vise_) you have. And
now, with our gratitude to God for His smiles in these beautiful
clear days and bright skies, as if in harmony with the delightful
Christian atmosphere of these meetings—symbolizing the spirit of
our gatherings—it is not in accordance with a custom of form merely
that we desire to express to these churches and pastors, and to
all our kind friends here, our high appreciation of their service
to this cause of missions, and to us so far as we represent this
cause. You have given us strength and courage for our work another
year.
It is not a small thing to arrange for a series of services like
this. It means forethought and much care, many steps and much
fatigue. It is not a small thing for people to open their homes
freely to strangers and to so receive them that they are no more
strangers.
Permit us then to thank the pastor, the officers and members of
this church and society within whose walls we have studied and
reviewed our work together. This is an ancient church, historic
over the land. You have done no injustice to its history in your
interest for the kingdom of God. Let us also thank the churches and
pastors who have kindly shared in this abundant hospitality.
We should do that to which our hearts are foreign should we fail to
remember those who have led us in Christian praise and those who
in their labor of love have in many ways of service assisted the
objects of this Missionary Association.
We recognize the courtesy of those railway and steamboat lines
which have facilitated our travel here. Nor do we forget the
enterprise of your public press and the kindness which has been
extended to us in their full and accurate reports.
If any of you in this free-hearted welcome have entertained angels
awares or unawares, we are glad of it. Most of us have left our
particular angels at our homes. Some of us have not failed to
discover that there are angels here in yours.
Therefore, brethren, in the name of our great Mission, of the
schools and institutes which we have brought before you, of the
churches which have prayed for us while we have been assembled, and
in the name of the people to whom we are sent in Christ’s stead and
in your stead, accept our sincere thanks.
As we take up our farewell to go, we can appreciate your hearty
services not only, but also your ability to successfully conceal
any gratification which you may have that these three long days are
over.
Voted that after singing, and a benediction by Rev. Dr. Walker, of
Connecticut, this meeting stands adjourned _sine die_.
HENRY A. HAZEN, Secretary.
EDGAR M. COUSINS, Assistant Secretary.
* * * * *
SUMMARY OF TREASURER’S REPORT.
RECEIPTS.
From Churches, Sabbath-schools,
Missionary Societies and Individuals $189,483.39
From Estates and Legacies 52,266.73
From Income, Sundry Funds 10,561.07
From Tuition and Public Funds 28,964.81
From Rents 478.10
From United States Government, for
Education of Indians 17,357.21
From Slater Fund, paid to Institutions 7,650.00
—————————— $306,761.31
===========
EXPENDITURES.
THE SOUTH.
For Church and Educational Work, Land,
Buildings, etc. $197,768.68
THE CHINESE.
For Superintendent, Teachers, Rent, etc. 7,564.95
THE INDIANS.
For Church and Educational Work, Buildings,
etc. 47,920.71
FOREIGN MISSIONS.
For Superintendent, Missionaries, etc.,
for Mendi Mission, Income paid to the
Society of the United Brethren in Christ 4,870.10
For Support of Aged Missionary, Jamaica, W.I. 250.00
PUBLICATIONS.
For “American Missionary,” (22,600 monthly,
including cost of copies sent gratuitously
to pastors, S. S. superintendents, life
members, donors, etc.) Annual Reports,
Clerk Hire, Postage, etc. 7,080.00
AGENCIES.
NEW YORK.—Associate Corresponding Secretary,
Traveling Expenses, Circulars, etc. 4,159.93
NEW YORK.—Woman’s Bureau, Secretary,
Traveling Expenses, Circulars, etc. 1,434.33
FOR EASTERN DISTRICT.—District Secretary,
Clerk Hire, Traveling Expenses, Printing,
Rent, Postage, Stationery, etc. 4,389.77
FOR WESTERN DISTRICT.—District Secretary,
Clerk Hire, Traveling Expenses, etc. 4,603.67
ADMINISTRATION.
For Corresponding Secretary, Associate
Corresponding Secretary, Treasurer and
Clerk Hire 11,931.81
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. 5,073.40
Annual Meeting 379.35
Wills and Estates 271.32
Annuity Account 899.77
Amounts refunded, sent to Treasurer by
mistake 186.01
———————— $298,783.80
Debt, September 30th, 1886 5,783.71
——————————
$304,567.51
Balance on hand September 30th, 1887 2,193.80
——————————
$306,761.31
==========
THEOLOGICAL ENDOWMENT FUND.
North Bloomfield, Ohio, “A Friend,” for Talladega
College $709.25
ARTHINGTON MISSION FUND.
Hillsdale, Mich., Estate of Mrs. T. F. Douglass $100.00
The receipts of Berea College, Hampton N. and A. 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 General
Fund $306,761.31
American Missionary Association Theolog’l
Endowment Fund, Talladega College 709.25
American Missionary Association Arthington
Fund 100.00
—————————— $307,570.56
Berea College, Donations 11,131.51
Berea College, for New Building 15,000.00
—————————— 26,131.51
Hampton N. and A. Institute 82,715.26
Atlanta University (add’l to A. M. A.) 10,171.69
——————————
$426,589.02
==========
H. W. HUBBARD, Treasurer,
56 Reade Street, New York.
* * * * *
REPORTS OF COMMITTEES.
* * * * *
REPORT ON EDUCATIONAL WORK, SOUTH.
BY REV. W. F. SLOCUM, CHAIRMAN.
Your committee, to which the report of the executive committee on
educational work in the South was referred, would express at the
outset their profound gratitude for the success that has followed
the efforts that have been put forth in this large and important
department of the work of the American Missionary Association.
While they deplore with all those who have the interests of this
work at heart, the political attempts to limit the usefulness
of the Association, that has grown out of unworthy partisan
prejudices, yet they perceive with thankfulness that there is an
element growing stronger every year at the South that appreciates
the place, the importance and the value of these schools. Notably
is this shown in Mississippi, where the State appropriation for the
Tougaloo University was the only one not reduced. They would speak
with appreciation of the Christian spirit that infuses all these
schools, and the deeply religious character that is given to the
work, and of the strong personal influences which are brought to
bear upon the students.
Your committee feel that the time has come to push with greatest
vigor a work that shall meet the demand for teachers in the public
schools of the South, and to avail ourselves of the opportunity to
reach the children and the homes of colored people through these;
that every effort needs to be put forth to send out these teachers
established in Christian ethics and feeling that the moralities of
life are the basis of all true education.
Great pleasure is taken in the advance that is made each year in
the matter of industrial and agricultural training; and every
effort which tends to transform this people into an intelligent,
upright Christian yeomanry, will be a profound blessing. Our
constant aim should be to establish the true dignity of labor and
the healthful desire to possess property and an intelligence that
secures the best condition as property holders. Your committee are
of the opinion that the opportunity for good through these schools
was never larger than at present, and that the need of enlargement
in many is imperative, and also that the time has come to push the
work of special endowment for the larger institutions, that they
may become independent of any financial pressure and may be put
upon a permanent basis. And therefore of the three alternatives
suggested by the claims of the work at present which they suggest
in their report, can endorse one only, and do therefore most
heartily recommend that instead of sacrificing the character of the
work, instead of reducing the amount of work done, the Association
shall have more money.
* * * * *
REPORT ON CHURCH WORK, SOUTH.
BY REV. CYRUS RICHARDSON, CHAIRMAN.
Your committee into whose hands has been placed the report of the
church work in the South desire to state their impressions by
calling attention to three or four important points.
First, to the marked increase in the membership of the
Sunday-schools—an increase during the year of 2,000 pupils, or 15
per cent., bringing the present membership up to 15,109.
Comparing this with the entire enrollment in 1882, we find that
during the five years there has been a growth of 100 per cent.
This is specially gratifying because it is understood that
Sunday-schools or missions started at new stations look to
the speedy establishment of churches at those stations; while
well-organized schools in churches already established result in
the careful study of God’s word, with a constant application of
inspired doctrine to practical life, looking both to the permanence
of the churches and the personal purity of their members.
Another important item noticed in the report appears in the
statement touching the amount of money which these churches have
given.
Beside the $16,000 contributed for their own religious work, $2,300
have been devoted to pure benevolence. If this should seem a small
sum as a contribution of 127 churches, it must be remembered
that it is the gift of poverty, and not of wealth. The free-will
offerings of almost any one of these congregations, when compared
with the contributions of not a few New England churches, suggest
the words of the Master: “She hath cast in more than they all.”
Their spirit of sacrifice has often won for the colored people
hearty commendation. To those of us who live amid multiplied
temporal and spiritual privileges, and who easily lose sight of the
goodly heritage for which we are to give an account, it is a spur,
if not an inspiration, to read the story of the sacrifices which
some of these brethren make in the giving of their scant substance
for the more destitute members of the human family.
Their offerings for pure benevolence were above $600 more than the
previous year, and are double what they were four years ago.
Your committee are glad to find that this feature of denominational
work is strongly emphasized by the Executive Board, and that these
churches, poor though they be, are taught that _giving_ as well as
_receiving_ is a necessary factor in their growth, and that in true
worship alms as well as prayers rise before God as a memorial.
Another noticeable item in the report is the building of
meeting-houses. Indeed, the report characterizes the past year
in its Southern work as one of “building activity.” Every church
that is to become permanent must have its house dedicated to God.
The sanctuary helps to hold the people together and attach them
to forms of worship that demand a reverential attitude. Perhaps
no people have greater need than our colored brethren of those
religious forms and ceremonies which secure quiet and order in the
public devotions of the assembled multitudes.
We therefore rejoice in every new meeting-house that this society
helps the struggling churches of the South to build.
Another item in the report to which we call attention is the
organization of seven new churches during the year, about the
average number, if you take a series of a dozen or more years, but
not the average if you take simply the last five years.
Since 1882 the average rate of increase has been eleven per year.
It would undoubtedly be a joy to us all if the rate of increase
could be more rapid. We must not, however, forget that we are at
work “among a people who have no congregational trend or training.”
It is undoubtedly wise to proceed with care, planting churches
at the right centres and only where they will give promise of
permanence.
After all the caution that has been exercised it has been necessary
recently to drop four or five from the list. The aim should be at
stability and worth rather than numbers. A single church organized
on the right basis, watched over with painstaking care, so that her
members shall adorn the doctrines they profess, will do more for
the prosperity of Congregationalism in this part of the country
than would a score of churches hastily organized and unsuitably
located. We think the officers of this society have been wise in
their movements thus far; nearly all the churches organized having
made a history that deserves the admiration of Christian people
everywhere.
But when we think of the constantly increasing number of graduates
from the Christian schools and colleges under the patronage of this
society; and the greater familiarity of the Secretaries with the
localities suited to become strategic points for Congregationalism
in the South; and the marked success of those churches whose
permanence is beyond question, are we not warranted in expressing
the hope that in the near future we shall see a radical advance all
along this important line of denominational work? We know that this
is what our Secretaries long for as well as pray for, and what with
our contributions cheerfully made, they will hope to accomplish.
They heartily agree with us in believing that the uplifting
influences of schools and colleges would be readily dissipated
or turned into channels for evil if they are not gathered up and
multiplied in rightly constituted bodies which shall prove the
germs around which the forces of the community shall organize for
good. Working together, therefore, as contributors and directors,
we may expect to be cheered from year to year with the rapid growth
in the numbers of these organized Christian forces which have
in themselves vitalizing and transforming power which works for
righteousness both in character and conduct.
* * * * *
REPORT ON MOUNTAIN WORK.
BY REV. A. H. QUINT, D.D., CHAIRMAN.
The committee on so much of the Annual Report as relates to
mountain work, particularly in Tennessee and Kentucky, respectfully
reports as follows:
The few details given in the report are of such an interesting
character as to suggest the earnest wish that far more extended
accounts of facts and incidents had been spread before the
Association.
Want of space in the narration of the vast work of this body was
of course the constraining reason for brevity in the report. But
the comprehensive statement which is made exhibits conclusively the
opportunity for a new and peculiar work, namely, that of giving the
Gospel, its character and its schools, to a class hitherto scarcely
touched by beneficent Christian agencies.
This is a class of white population, a class which felt of
course in some degree the blighting influence of slavery, which
contaminated everything within the reach of its malaria; but this
class, from its circumstances, was not a slave-holding class. It
is a class of sturdy blood and mountain habits, and is capable
of great development. Two considerations urge the necessity of
covering this field.
One is, the ordinary obligation to preach the gospel to those who
do not have the gospel.
The other is, the evident capacity of this peculiar people to
become a power in the development of that section of our land.
While the field and the number of persons are both limited in
comparison with the great work among the freedmen, their importance
appeals to this Association with steadily increasing force.
The opportunity is at hand, and it is in a line which old friends
of our regenerating work could scarcely have hoped for. Devout
praise is due to Almighty God for this open door to a vast success.
It is worthy of notice in this respect how, in the history of this
Association, God has steadily placed before it successive duties
and successive privileges. From the first dawning of its Foreign
and Home work, freed from complicity with the great sin of our
country, new specialties have been added as fast as older ones were
ripened into practical efficacy. This comparatively new work seems
to be in a direct line of Divine development. Your Committee feels
that the sanction of this Association should be emphatically given
to the work of its administration in this department, a work in
which no spirit of caste shall be in any way tolerated, and that
the call for a large increase of laborers to be located at all
suitable points, should be met as rapidly as possible.
The Committee has no doubt of the wisdom and judicious care which
characterizes your Executive Committee, and believes that that
committee needs only the hearty approval of this body to encourage
it to go on in this direction.
* * * * *
REPORT ON INDIAN WORK.
BY MR. FRANK WOOD, CHAIRMAN.
The first great work of this Association was due to a crisis in
the history of one oppressed race on this continent, who after
more than one hundred years of slavery and oppression, had, in the
providence of God, freedom and citizenship suddenly thrust upon
them. Four millions of souls—a large majority poor, ignorant and
degraded—to these came the A. M. A. as God’s own messenger to lead
the way to education, usefulness and Christianity.
A similar emergency has now arisen in the history of another
oppressed and wronged race for whom this Association has always
done good work—the North American Indian.
Since the last annual meeting of this Association, the Dawes Bill,
which has been called the emancipation proclamation of the Indian,
has passed both houses of Congress, and is now the law of the land.
Public attention, as never before, has been turned to the wrongs
and the needs of the Indian. The new conditions have developed
new necessities, new opportunities, and new dangers. Numerous
societies, in thirty-two different States, have been organized to
assist them. All this gives new importance to the work of the A.
M. A. among the Indians. The summary for the year is encouraging.
The conversions and additions to church membership tell a story
of faithful, unselfish work for the Master, in one of the hardest
possible fields of missionary labor, with little of the romance
or pleasure of travel sometimes afforded by missions in foreign
lands; among a people whom a Judge of the Supreme Court called “a
despised and rejected class of persons;” handicapped and hindered
in all their efforts by the suspicions and hatreds developed by
centuries of injustice, robbery and cruelty from a Government that
claimed to be civilized and Christian, and also by the Reservation
System, which puts the missionary and the teacher under the
absolute control of the Indian Agent, who may be a mere political
tool and a man of no character, yet has despotic authority on the
reservation, with power to expel or imprison the missionary, or
break up his school or congregation. Yet in spite of all obstacles,
through love of Him who was also “despised and rejected of men,”
they remained faithful amid dangers and difficulties, till, through
their labor and that of their companions and predecessors, there
are now nearly 29,000 Indian church members.
None have done better or more faithful work than the missionaries
of the A. M. A. None are doing better work than Mr. Riggs and his
associates. Yet, when compared with the extent of the field and
the number and spiritual needs of those not yet reached by the
influences of the gospel, and the opportunities and perils incident
to their new and changing conditions of life, how very small is
the work that the Christian Church is doing in this great field.
Think of it—two hundred and forty-eight thousand Indians in the
midst of a Christian land, and after the labor of 200 years only
29,000 professed Christians among them, and only 143 missionaries,
of all denominations, to carry the gospel to this great multitude;
and these few are hampered and hindered in their work by the
intercourse laws, the opposition of agents and the orders of the
Commissioner. When for the first time legislation, based on justice
and humanity, is opening up vistas of usefulness and progress to
the Indian; when the need of Christian teaching, guidance and care
is greater than ever before, the Indian Bureau has issued orders
that paralyzes missionary operations, by prohibiting the use of the
vernacular in teaching English or the truths of the gospel. The
Indians all know the vernacular. They have been carefully shut away
from any other language by the Government restraints that surround
all reservations, shutting out everything that would educate or
civilize. The vernacular is used in the mission schools to teach
English and the truths of the gospel to those who understand no
other language. With this use we should submit to no interference.
In a contest for religious liberty against the official tyranny
that has for the last hundred years tried to usurp the place of
Divine Providence to the Indian, we may be sure of the support of
the freedom-loving American people. The intercourse laws should
be repealed, so far as they relate to the operation of missionary
societies. We should insist that all obstructions to the preaching
of the gospel should be swept away. Then bring before all the
churches the pressing and immediate needs of these neighbors who
have fallen among thieves, who are pagans in a Christian land.
While we are waiting they are passing into eternity. Shall we
remain in selfish indifference till we are aroused by the dreadful
sentence, “If thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way,
that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I
require at thy hand.” This Association is only the servant of the
churches. The means and the men must come from the churches. If
the churches were awake to their duty in this matter, and realized
their responsibility for the Christianizing of the Indian, they
could send missionaries to every part of this field within a year.
There are 348,000 Indians in the country, excluding Alaska. From
this number we should deduct 65,000 in the five civilized tribes.
This leaves 183,000. Of this number 28,600 are already church
members. This leaves a population not greatly more than three times
the size of this city of Portland. Would we dare to say to our
Master that we cannot occupy this field?
There never has been a time so propitious as the present; there
never has been a time when the wrongs and the needs of the Indian
have received so much attention from the Christian, the legislator
and the philanthropist.
Therefore your committee would recommend that a committee of five
be chosen to co-operate with the Financial Secretary for Indian
Missions in devising and carrying out measures to bring the needs
and opportunities of the Indian field before the churches, other
missionary societies doing Indian work, and the numerous Indian Aid
societies now organized throughout the country.
This committee should make an effort to secure the co-operation of
all Christians and friends of the Indian in a greatly enlarged,
thorough, systematic mission work. They should also labor to create
a public sentiment that should demand the repeal of the intercourse
laws, so far as they hinder mission work; the order in relation to
the use of the vernacular in the mission schools, and the removal
of every other obstruction of the Indian Bureau to the civil and
religious liberty of the missionary and teacher on the one hand,
and the Indian on the other.
The gospel of Christ offers the only solution to the Indian
problem. It must precede and prepare the way for civilization.
Through it alone can we save the Indian, and atone for the century
of dishonor in which our Government’s system of dealing with the
red men has made them paupers and kept them barbarians and pagans.
This is the work of the Christian church, and if we shrink from or
avoid the duty of the hour, God will not hold us guiltless.
* * * * *
REPORT ON CHINESE WORK.
BY REV. S. L. B. SPEARE, CHAIRMAN.
Your committee note with special satisfaction the following
indications of progress in the work of our Association for the
Chinese. Willing subjects of missionary labor are more numerous
and more accessible. Past years of foundation work, dealing with
Asiatic inertia and colossal prejudice and just resentment under
wrong, are bearing fruit unusual in amount and assured genuineness.
Our faithful missionary superintendent on the Pacific coast
does not abate his courage or enthusiasm. Faithful teachers and
co-workers can be found. The Lord of the vineyard has set his
seal of approbation by granting harvests which, in the light of
difficulties in the field and their promise for the future, are
truly great. That Foreign Missionary Society, spontaneously formed
by Chinese converts, thoroughly equipped and liberally supported in
proportion to their means, and which aims, finally, at nothing less
than the conversion of China’s millions, should silence any and all
cavil or uncertainty as to their motives in embracing Christianity.
Japan, also, hears tidings of Christian sympathy as her wandering
sons are met with helpful counsels and religious enlightenment on
these far western shores—the land of their ideal civilization.
We rejoice that those in charge of the field see their way clear
for “tentative evangelistic work” and have entered upon it. This
betokens firm conviction and resolute purpose that the field shall
be taken for Christ. Difficulties and embarrassments only multiply
their zeal and methods. Like the great missionary to the Gentiles,
these heralds of the gospel look upon “many adversaries” and “an
open door” as equivalents. The statistics of recent progress
emphasize our golden opportunity to reach the “hermit natives”
through their representatives within our borders.
Your committee note with profound regret the serious falling off in
the money appropriations for their work. Native helpers, skilled
and consecrated, are the chief preaching agency of all missionary
fields, and of China preëminently. Ours is the opportunity to
multiply such helpers. California is in the foreground to-day as
never before, not excepting the old mining days. The church should
occupy that field with a zeal and wisdom that shall emulate the
enterprise of railroads and real estate projectors. The church
must not contradict all her traditions and working principles
when Christ’s poor come to her borders by the thousand and under
conditions specially favorable to Christ-like approach. Her own
life will be impoverished by so doing. The priest and Levite
wronged and degraded their own souls by passing on the other side
from the wounded sufferer, as much as the good Samaritan enriched
his by pouring oil into his wounds and sheltering the victim of
robbers.
Your committee hope that measures can be taken to bring the
attention of our beloved churches to this their phenomenal
opportunity and duty—to give the gospel at short range and nominal
cost, to Asia’s millions and support that message with all possible
sympathy and aid.
* * * * *
REPORT OF FINANCE COMMITTEE.
BY MR. CHAS. A. HULL, CHAIRMAN.
In presenting their report upon the financial condition and
management of the business of the American Missionary Association,
your committee on Finance desire to commend the clear and thorough
manner in which the accounts are kept, so that any needed
information may be had regarding any one of the numerous items of
investment or expense at the numerous places where the work of the
Association is carried on. The schedule of the property owned by
the Association shows it to be possessed of buildings and land for
the carrying on of educational and church work, the aggregate cost
of which stands at $576,540.15. In addition to this plant, the
Endowment funds amount to $229,375.78 which are securely invested,
and yield an annual income of about $10,000. The Association also
holds conditional trust funds amounting to $69,726.95. The good
judgment shown in the purchase of land, the erection of buildings,
and the investment of the permanent funds speaks well for the
thorough care of the officers and the Executive Committee.
The committee desire to congratulate you and the Congregational
churches of our land upon the extinction of the debt which for
several years has been a burden to the Association. The treasurer’s
report shows a balance on hand of $2,193.80, after paying every
liability of the Association up to October 1, 1887, including the
debt of $5,783.71, which remained at the end of the previous year.
In order to accomplish this, however, it has been necessary to
defer until the receipts should warrant it, much work which presses
with importunity upon the Association in the various fields.
We find that the treasurer’s accounts are regularly and faithfully
examined each month by the financial committee of your executive
board; and at the end of the year by two auditors chosen by the
Association who attach their certificate to the report, and who
are thoroughly reliable business men. The accuracy and economy
of the work are thus as fully secured as in any merely business
establishment. The by-laws of the executive committee provide a
system of checks upon the officers similar to those in use in great
corporations; and while of old it was said that “the children of
this world are wiser in their generation than the children of
light,” we are glad to note that in the administration of the
American Missionary Association so great a degree of worldly wisdom
or common sense has been employed.
The duties of the treasurer are responsible, and have been
performed with exactitude and fidelity. The receipts for current
work of the year from all sources have been $306,761.31; and the
expenditures therefor, $298,783.80.
These items of expenditure have been carefully examined in detail
by your committee, and they report that in each department the most
careful economy has been used, and no curtailment which would not
materially cripple the effective force of the Association seems
possible.
Your committee have taken some pains to compare the expenses of
the Association with those of other missionary societies, and we
find that it does not suffer in the comparison. The committee note
with regret that the expenditures for work among the Indians
and Chinese have been cut down materially as compared with the
previous fiscal year; but we believe that the policy of the
executive committee in refusing to incur liabilities which the
Congregationalists of the country would not meet is the right one.
They must keep the Association so economically and so safely
managed that no reproach may justly fall upon it; and the fact that
they are able to come before you at this meeting, and to report the
absolute extinction of the load of debt which has been upon them
and you for several years, and have yet developed and prosecuted
with vigor the grand labor for the oppressed, appeals in the
strongest possible way to you for the most generous increase of the
sums to be intrusted to their management in the year to come.
All departments need enlarging. The Southern work ought to have
not less than $275,000; $15,000 is a small sum to spend upon the
Chinese on our western coast, while $60,000 would hardly give
the much needed development to the Indian Mission. Shall not the
$350,000 thus plainly needed and earnestly recommended by the last
National Council of Congregational churches be forthcoming? From
us to whom much has been given, much will surely be required. If
we cannot in person go with these Christian men and women who are
devoting their lives to the direct work of this Association, into
the cabin of the Negro, the abode of the mountaineer, the opium den
of the Chinese, or the wigwam of the Indian, let us at least say
to those who do,—“We will uphold your hands, we will abundantly
support your work, we will, as far as we can, share your burdens
and be your fellow laborers.”
* * * * *
DR. BUCKINGHAM’S MEMORIAL ADDRESS.
The recent and lamented death of Governor Washburn, the
President of this Association, calls vividly to mind his worth
and usefulness; and it will be of interest to you to know the
estimation in which he was held, and the respect felt for his
character and influence in our Connecticut valley. Like Governor
Strong before him, he was one of the “River-gods,” influential and
commanding in all that region, though ruling more by his personal
character than by any official station.
He was born at Winchendon, Mass., in 1820, and had lived all
his life either near, or in, Greenfield. His father died in his
infancy, leaving him in straitened circumstances, but he managed
to obtain a good preparatory education at Lawrence Academy,
Groton, and was graduated at Yale College in 1844. He purposed
to devote himself to the Christian ministry, but the death of an
uncle leaving a large manufacturing business heavily embarrassed
compelled him to take the management of it, which he did with such
ability and success that he not only rescued the business from
insolvency, but made it the basis of his own life-long prosperity
and the source of his ample benevolence.
The same qualities which made him successful in business carried
him into public life and secured him equal respect and influence
there. His sound judgment, fidelity to duty, scrupulous integrity
and Christian principle, made him sought after for public offices
and corporate trusts, as few men are. He had been a member of the
State Senate and of the House of Representatives, and when we were
in the midst of the Civil War, and strong and reliable men were
needed in Congress, he was sent to the House of Representatives
without opposition, receiving, what was almost unprecedented in
politics, the unanimous vote of his district. He was kept there for
ten years by successive elections, where his ability and sterling
integrity soon placed him upon the important Committee of Claims,
and also of Revolutionary pensions, and where he remained until he
was called home to become the Governor of the Commonwealth. This
office he held until he was sent to the United States Senate, to
succeed Senator Sumner, and here his well-known services in the
House secured him at once an honorable position which was well
maintained by his valuable services and noble character.
Indeed, the best tribute to his worth was, that when he retired
from public life he had received, unsolicited, every public honor
which it was in the power of his constituents to bestow.
The same was also true of his appointment to the management of so
many business corporations, educational institutions, trust funds,
missionary associations, benevolent and Christian societies. He was
the President of the First National Bank of Greenfield, a director
of the Connecticut River Railroad Company, one of the Corporation
of Yale College, a trustee of the Mass. Agricultural College, of
Smith College, of Mr. Moody’s School at Mt. Hermon, a corporate
member of the American Board of Foreign Missions, President of
this American Missionary Association, a pillar in the Second
Congregational Church of Greenfield, and the first President and a
vigorous supporter of the Connecticut Valley Congregational Club.
The wonder was, how he could take upon himself so many trusts,
when, with his ideas of duty, they must each receive his careful
attention and he must hold himself personally responsible for their
best management.
Fidelity to his trusts was one of his most marked characteristics,
and in this respect he possessed the spirit of his Lord, “who was
faithful to Him that appointed him,” and as Moses was “faithful in
all his house,” so our friend possessed this crowning virtue of a
noble and useful life. * *
It is true that many have excelled him in particular abilities,
especially in those that are most striking and brilliant, such as
poetic sense and successful oratory, which are most frequently
denominated genius. But these have often been combined with defects
of judgment, or temper, or principle, so that their influence has
been sadly marred or used for mischief. As in our civil war it was
not every eloquent orator or able editor who was the best adviser
or steadiest supporter of the policy that preserved the Union; but
some of them would have let the nation be divided, or compromised
the questions at issue, only to be reopened without hope of right
settlement. But here was a man for all times and all places. In the
halls of legislation, in the Governor’s chair, before a board of
selectmen, arranging bounties for volunteers and for the support
of their families, or among his own workmen, advising them as to
what they might or might not properly do in such a crisis—he is
the same wise counsellor and faithful helper everywhere, doing the
work assigned to him as well as, if not better than, most poets or
orators.
And when war was over, and such work no longer needed, when peace
was to be restored and amicable relations cultivated between those
who had been deadly foes; when business prosperity was to be
brought about again and banks were to be well managed, and trust
funds made secure, and the increasing wealth and enterprise of the
country to be turned into benevolent and Christian channels, here
he found his fields of delight, and his abilities and character
shone out in new beauty and strength. Here was Governor Washburn’s
real genius—the completeness and best use of all his abilities,
combined with principles that directed them all to the noblest ends.
This seems to be the divine method of training men for their best
work. They are placed in stations of responsibility, which they are
not properly qualified to fill; but if they are conscientious and
faithful, and especially where they put themselves under divine
guidance and are controlled by religious motives—the most powerful
of all—they become qualified for almost any station in life, and
for the highest and most responsible duties.
It was in this way that our friend secured his best development.
The great secret of it was his piety. He was taught of God. He was
trained in the school of Christ. He was devoted to the Saviour’s
cause. In his own estimation he was not his own, but belonged to
Him who had redeemed him at such cost. All that he was, and all
that he possessed and all that he was capable of becoming, were the
Lord’s. His talents were his trust, to be improved for his Master,
like his property. His intelligence, his sound judgment, his
capacity for business, were cultivated for Christian use. When they
brought him honor and position, he was not elated by them. Position
was only another name for opportunity and influence, which brought
with them increased responsibilities. Honors only sobered him and
made him pray to God that he might prove worthy of them.
In the spirit also of his Master, who came to “seek and to save
that which was lost,” he would bless and benefit all for whom
Christ died. He was not only desirous of dealing justly with his
fellow men, but he must do them good as he had opportunity, and
to all men, Negroes, Indians, Chinese, as well as to his own
countrymen. He sought to secure wise legislation for them, and a
faithful administration of the Government. He would educate the
ignorant, reform the vicious and remove the disabilities under
which so many labor. He would improve their worldly condition
and make his business profitable to those in his employ as well
as to himself. But above all, he would bless men spiritually and
eternally with the blessings which only the gospel of Christ
can bestow. This was the secret of his interest in your work
and in all kindred works, and in everything that could improve
the character and condition of men. This is the reason that he
devoted time and thought and assistance to so many Christian and
philanthropic enterprises which are accomplishing these objects.
This is why he gave to this Association so much of his attention
and best counsel, his generous contributions and fervent prayers,
and why he left such large bequests to this and kindred societies.
As an Association we owe too much to our late President and devoted
friend not to make mention of his many and invaluable services, and
always hold in loving and grateful remembrance the name of William
Barrett Washburn. Few causes have such helpers, and not often are
better men raised up for their time and work. We shall miss him in
our deliberations, while we need more than ever, as our fields for
Christian enterprise are enlarging, his sound judgment, untiring
energy and steadfast Christian faith.
When such men as Governor Washburn, Alpheus Hardy and President
Hopkins are taken from us, we can only pray that He who has the
whole work in charge will inspire others with similar devotion and
bestow upon us all more of his grace and blessing.
The circumstances of Governor Washburn’s death were peculiar and
startling to those about him, though not wholly unexpected to
his family. It was known to them that he had a serious affection
of the heart, but they were encouraged to hope that by care, and
the avoidance of all undue excitement and exertion, he might
have comfortable health for some years. The morning meeting of
the Board found him a little late from the cars, and climbing
the stairs to the hall, he had scarcely seated himself upon the
platform and spoken to his friends about him, when he fell forward
unconscious into their arms; and though a physician was immediately
at his side, and his wife soon there also, there was no return of
consciousness, and almost as quickly as the scene can be described,
he had left us, and his spirit had gone home to God. A sudden
departure, and a startling one to those of us who were trying to
detain him; but his Lord called him, and he must have said:
“I hear a voice ye cannot hear,
That says I must not stay;
I see a hand ye cannot see,
That beckons me away.”
As we saw the light of life fade out from that benignant face, as
when the glory of the day becomes the gloom of the night, we heard
it coming down out of Heaven: “He that believeth in me, though he
were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in
me shall never die.” Christ’s saints never perish. They only begin
to live in the truest and highest sense when they seem to die; and
with our Christian faith and immortal hopes, we love to think of
him as having entered upon that higher life and commenced a nobler
service. It was an unexpected summons, but we cannot think that he
was ever unprepared for it. Like that Connecticut Puritan, who,
when the “Dark Day” came and it was proposed that the Legislature
should adjourn because the end of the world had come, replied that
“this might be, but if it was, he chose to be found at his post,
doing his duty.” “Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he
cometh shall find so doing. And if He shall come in the second
watch or in the third watch and find them so, blessed are those
servants.”
* * * * *
THE MISSIONARY INFLUENCE OF A LIFE, AND THE LIFE OF A MISSIONARY
INFLUENCE.
BY REV. A. F. BEARD, D.D.
In the missionary influence of a Life it is my purpose to trace the
life of a missionary influence.
This special life is selected as a significant illustration of
certain specific features and forms of the missionary work which we
are called here to consider.
It was a remote and inconspicuous consecration to certain radical
ideas of human brotherhood, and to new and not popular methods of
saving people who are low down in life by variations from the then
accepted ideas.
As a study of sympathy with people in low conditions, of faith
in the possibilities of those who have been degraded, of the
application of Christianity to the prejudices of caste, of fidelity
in witnessing to profound convictions, of prophetic insight as
to the trends of God’s providences, of heroic self-denials among
the oppressed and ignorant, together with the continuity and
cumulative power of these far-reaching influences, this may stand
for a concrete exhibition of the kind of work which we here are
trying to do, and possibly may bring some new hope and courage to
ourselves and some fresh sympathy to our devoted Christian workers
who, removed from the world’s observation and sometimes from due
Christian appreciation, are consecrating their lives to the same
uses.
In the time when George III was King of England and our
great-grandfathers were opposing the Stamp Acts, there lived in
a house which still stands in Strasbourg, in Alsatia, a wise
father and a mother of remarkable endowments, who trained their
son to habits of conscientious economy, self-reliance, to the
sense of responsibility to God and to man, and of the obligations
which possession has towards human necessities, and to habitual
benevolence.
Led on through youth to aspire to a learned profession, at the age
of fifteen years he signed his name, John Frederick Oberlin, as a
student of the University of Strasbourg. Three years later he was
a Bachelor of Arts, and five years later, a Doctor in Philosophy.
Ordained as a minister of the Gospel in 1760, seven succeeding
years were held sacred to the conviction that large usefulness
means large preparedness; so that he was still in his study at the
age of twenty-seven years, when a missionary who had been trying to
save needy souls in the mountains of the Vosges, ministering to the
spiritual necessities of a people passed by in the movements of a
world’s life and remote from civilization, came into Oberlin’s room
and urged him to take up this service.
He confessed his own lack of success, and that he had made no
impression upon them. He told Oberlin of the people, descendants
of the Huguenots, who had fled from fiery persecutions in France
to this wild and sterile mountain country. As the years had gone
on for more than seven generations of men, their teachers had
died, their preachers had died, until they, exiled and outcast,
had declined into heathenish ignorance. He had found as a distant
memory of what once had been, a single school in a mountain hamlet.
It was in a miserable hovel in one corner of which lay a helpless
old man on a rude truckle-bed, surrounded by a crowd of ragged,
noisy, wild-looking children. He asked: “Are you the schoolmaster?”
“Yes.” “What do you teach the children?” “Nothing.” “You teach them
nothing, how is that?” “Because I know nothing.” “Why then are you
the schoolmaster?” “Well, sir, I was taking care of the Waldbach
pigs, but the people thought me too old for that, and so I was
appointed to take care of the children.”
The missionary did not conceal the facts of the case, that the
people living in these remote and solitary places were not only
frightfully ignorant, but were rebellious against improvement. The
region had six months of winter, with bitter icy winds sweeping
over the mountains. There was not a single practicable road in the
entire district. Deep mud holes were before the cabin doors and the
huts in which the people were sheltered. In the short summer season
they gathered enough food to sustain an impoverished life through
the winter, in which winter they often herded for warmth in the
stables with their cattle. So far had they sunk into material and
moral desolation.
To such a ministry was invited this young man of large ambitions
and large reasons for them; to minister to this wretchedness, to
go to a people who were without sense of their needs, without
aspirations, without appreciation of the services to be done
for them. One prepared for the Professor’s chair in the great
University where it was pleasant to live, was invited to bury
himself among those who would not give him even the reward of
gratitude.
It was not a pleasant call. The words of it struck the young man’s
heart like the blows of a hammer. But seven years before, he had
written in his own hand his consecration to God, that with all
sincerity of heart and in a fidelity which should not sleep he
would walk in the ways of Christ as God should reveal them to him.
And now what had this ardent student, with splendid talents and
high education, rich in special studies, who had in mind a great
sphere of usefulness, to do with this call but to take it to Him to
whom he had once for all consecrated himself, “with all sincerity
of heart”? In that little room, Oberlin, on bended knee, lifted up
his voice and prayed, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth,” and
in agony he listened for the still, small voice. He could not wish
to go, but he could not refuse to hear. And a great battle went on
in his soul.
There have been many battles in Strasbourg. The Roman armies fought
there; the Germans triumphed there; the tri-colors of France have
waved in the glory of victory there, but never a greater conflict,
perhaps, or a more glorious conquering, than this between faith and
sight, the issues of which God and the centuries were awaiting—a
great soul meeting the questions of this world and the questions of
eternity. When he arose from his prayer, he said: “I will go.”
Conviction was action. Soon among them, his quick eye perceived
that preaching to them in their condition would fall far short of
their needs. He must save souls, but he must also save men and
women. And here developed his missionary idea. It was not new, for
Christ taught it and lived it, but it was new, for Christians had
forgotten it. Christ was divinity in humanity, and the people must
realize the divinity in the humanity. He must save their souls,
but their souls are in their bodies. So he would not deal with
them as if they were disembodied spirits, but seeing them in all
their ignorance and material poverty, he would teach them how to
meet their physical destitutions and their mental destitutions,
and would go to them as persons who have a life in this world as
well as in the world to come. Salvation for this people was not to
rescue here and there merely a vacant mind, nor out of multitudes
of shipwrecked souls to save here and there one from the wreck; but
to him the Kingdom of God was like unto seed which a man put in his
ground and which should grow—he knoweth not how—by all kinds of
help, but which might call for long watching and long waiting.
Therefore he said, “Education is indispensable to the uplifting
of such a people,” and schools were planted. Home life must be
redeemed, and home industries were taught. They need the industrial
arts; hence he began to instruct them in carpentry, in masonry, in
smithing and in agriculture. He introduced the planting of trees;
societies of agriculture; instituted arbor days; taught them how to
drain their lands, how to irrigate them, how to enrich them, how
to make roads, and how to construct bridges across their mountain
streams.
There he went to stay, and among them built his own house
and brought into it a like-minded, large-minded, cultivated,
earnest-spirited wife, who with him taught the lessons of home
life, its divinity, its sacredness and its glory.
Remember, this was more than a century ago, when the world had not
the missionary thoughts of to-day. None, so far as I know, had as
yet such a missionary idea enunciated and systematized.
While thus he was laying the foundations for the regeneration of a
despised people, a still greater sacrifice presented itself. It was
to leave this missionary work for another in one of the Southern
colonies of far-off America, to live among a people more needy than
these despised ones, and more despised; to live among those who by
law were being robbed of the very rights of being, and for whose
degradation the forces of law were now operating.
Accepting the mission, he was ready to depart, when suddenly the
war for American Independence was declared, and his life was saved.
He could not then have lived a year in the South possessing his
ideas, much less to apply and expand them.
His path blocked by Providence, nothing remained but for him to
develop those ideas where he was, and to lift his voice from those
out-of-the-way hills against the sin of slavery. He would not
use sugar in his coffee, “for,” said he, “every granule of it is
tainted with the blood of the unhappy slave.” No article wrung out
of involuntary servitude should come into his house. No product
of slave labor would he touch. He was a prophet, for at this
date people in New England had not ceased to buy and sell their
fellow-creatures, and scores of years after this, ministers of the
gospel in this country were diligently searching the Scriptures to
discover and establish the divine foundations for human servitude.
Meanwhile the churches increase, the school-houses multiply, the
industries prove their value, and the mountain people are led
along, and led up from their abject poverty and misery to the
experience of comfort and prosperity. Then he worked and waited
for three-score years save one, and lived to see a rude and vulgar
and despised people regenerated and transformed, saved from the
dominion of vice to good morals and gentle manners, and many of
them converted to a personal experience of the grace that is in
Christ.
You may easily now examine the results of this life and service
after the long years have tested them.
Should you go with me to his house you would cross the _pont de
la charité_ by the way of his well-constructed road. When Oberlin
proposed to make this road, to blast the rocks along the mountain
side, the people did not see how it would look as we now do. If he
had suggested a step-ladder to the moon they would not have been
more amazed. They applied to him all the deprecatory adjectives
in their possession. It was impossible, and unreasonable, and
visionary. Assuredly he had lost his mind. Much learning had made
him mad. They positively refused to sustain him. He was altogether
out of his sphere. This would have been a good time for him to have
tendered his resignation, but the great soldier did not run away,
because he was needed. They could not starve him out, for he knew
how to starve.
But if the road were made it would be useless, they said, for
“how could we get across the stream?” He replied: “We will take
the rocks which we blast for the road and build a bridge.” This
confirmed them that the pastor’s mind was clean gone forever.
Such a departure from the old paths showed not only the danger of
theological studies, but also a capacity for speculative views
that would halt at nothing. Nevertheless, he led the way in
this enterprise, and the people looked on amazed when they saw
him picking and shoveling with his own hands. Then one came and
followed him, and another came and followed him; then a score who
soon were fifty, and next a hundred, until by the time they had
reached the bridge they all believed in it and always had! The
last man who was converted over to the majority undoubtedly went
home and told his wife that the original idea of the improvement
was his own; that he had it in mind long before Oberlin came, and
he himself would have proposed it to their leader but for the
conviction that ministers ought simply to preach the gospel and
leave the labor question alone. Perhaps the trusting soul believed
him.
As you enter the home where he was a father to this people who
were as children to him and brethren to each other, you feel his
protest against caste, and his teaching that if God is a universal
father this destroys caste and makes brotherhood a reality. In his
study in his own plain hand, you may find his missionary idea fully
expanded, and from that study you will no longer look out upon the
wilderness and the solitary place, because they have been made glad
by him. You will find happy children in good schools and happy
parents in good Christian homes.
Let me turn now from the influence of the life, to the life of
the influence. It is not always easy to trace the pedigree of an
idea or to track an influence. Sometimes we can in part, for they
all have their parentage, and their evolution has been so direct
that we can tell where and when they were born. Seven years after
the sorrowing people had gathered about the missionary’s grave,
two young men in this country—themselves having something of the
prophetic instinct—in acquainting themselves with the work of
this missionary prophet caught his spirit, and set themselves to
incarnate his ideas and his methods, in consecrating themselves
to the work of education in order to salvation. The influence
which Oberlin never thought to send so far, had winged itself from
his mountain tops across the wide sea to a little village in the
new State of Ohio. Then these young men who found themselves in
sympathy with his ideas of brotherhood, its obligations and its
needs, with his feeling towards the slave and to all who might be
uplifted, took upon themselves this moral and spiritual inheritance
and began the foundations of a school which should bear the name
of Oberlin and become the reproductive center of like ideas and
influences. I do not say that there were no other influences, only
that there was this one, dominant in spirit as well as in name. The
young college took on this stamp, a missionary character, sympathy
with people in low conditions, radical ideas of human brotherhood,
profound convictions of duty towards the oppressed and ignorant.
From the atmosphere of this influence, soon from the Professor’s
chair in this College there came forth a strong man girded for a
great sacrificial work.
A little Missionary Society, the embodiment of the idea which
Oberlin three-score and ten years before had proclaimed upon
the mountains, “No complicity with slavery,” consciously or
unconsciously, having adopted the same faith and spirit, needed
a leader. From the influences of Oberlin College came Rev. Dr.
Whipple to sound the bugle blast which went echoing through the
land: “We will not use the revenues of unrighteousness to do the
work of righteousness.” Was it anything more than a coincidence or
was it a providence, that with thirty years of singular sacrifice
this strong man in obedience to his mind and heart was working out
the same ideas which the great missionary prophet had so clearly
held forth?
I am not now attempting to assert heredity of ideas, or to decide
the precise degree of historic continuity that there may be in an
influence. I have the easier task of following a distinct stream
of influence, one among many which flow into the great river of
life. With no purpose to measure it I see the providence. Another
evolution from the same atmosphere of the same institution brings
to the American Missionary Association kindred ideas, kindred faith
and kindred spirit, in the second Corresponding Secretary, thus
connecting the history, and expanding and deepening the influence.
Yesterday’s Annual Survey exhibited, as well as figures may, the
work of the Society now after more than two-score years of history.
It is interesting as a fact, independent of any weighing of
influences, to note that in church work and in Sunday-school work,
in educational instruction and industrial training, in teaching
those who have not had the chances for life, how to think, how
to work, how to aspire and how to rise, we find ourselves, as if
working by a chart in the expansion of the missionary methods
of this prophet who gave his life to rescuing the despised,
teaching them how to live in the world that now is, while they are
taught the lessons that shall fit them for the world to come. The
education of the schools, the lessons in the establishment of good
homes, the industries, the churches, are pressing on in the plain
paths of providence until this day.
Already our eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord.
Its aforetime degraded people are rapidly learning to work out
the decrees of God in the blessings of a Christian civilization.
Among the dark millions of the South, in the long passed-by cabins
of impoverished and ignorant mountain people in the heart of our
land, of our own race, among the long-wronged red men and the
despised Mongolians, the evolution of this missionary idea, and
the developments of this missionary influence are proving their
reproductive and fruitful energy in the sacrificial lives of noble
missionaries, men and women who are themselves often despised while
they are ministering to the ignorant and to those who are lowly.
They also are powers for other lives, while they are sustained
by a like devotion to the things that are eternal. As from this
unlikeliest mission, a hundred years ago the light of life shone
out, the influence of fidelity to convictions coursing down the
centuries, showing what enlightened consecration can achieve; so
now those who are working together with God for the same divine
ideas, though they may be hidden from the world’s praises, may be
confident that God will not forget them, nor fail to speed their
labors of love in the Lord.
As we gather here in the interests of a work so near to the heart
of Christ, like Him we may safely appeal to the confirmations
of history in the evolutions of providence for courage now, and
confidence for the future. How often when our Lord was testifying
to the reality and power of the kingdom of God on the earth, and
the faith which souls might have and hold in working in it and in
waiting for it, did He send the minds of people back to the days
of the prophets and righteous men that they might see how the work
goes on when the workers die, and how the influences of their lives
continue and enlarge in other lives, so that assurance might take
fresh courage to discover itself in the historic current of an
unmistakable divine purpose and in the evolution of the decrees
of grace. The constancy and compassion of God in the past are
cheering us, in that we have only to hold fast the beginning of our
confidence, steadfast unto the end. We shall not fail, and we need
not be discouraged.
Thus putting on strength, as we recall the care of God and power of
His truth, may we not from this high place of Christian convocation
send out our sympathies to those who have consecrated themselves to
this same prophetic work of bringing in the cast-out, of raising
up the cast-down, and of saving those who are out of the way. Much
of their work is very kindred in form and feature to this work
of Oberlin’s. It is remote, in conditions of rudeness, and in
separation from kindred society. They are living the truth of human
brotherhood. They are holding forth that which is not popular. They
are standing with and for the despised.
They may remember that we bear them in our hearts and in our
prayers; that they have the grateful recognition of the churches
in their self-denials and heroisms. God has accounted them worthy
to live lives that may well rebuke the selfishness and sinful
ambitions of those who live for themselves and those who seek only
high places. The greatness of Christian service is theirs. They can
never know where their influences may go, nor how far. Nor until
the roll-call of Eternity is made will it be revealed what great
lives they have lived, and what Christian deeds have been wrought
by these men and women, who from us have gone out and away from
the world’s vision in self-abnegation, and often in the world’s
scorn are like the prophet of the mountains, patiently laying
deep and broad the foundations of a new earth wherein shall dwell
righteousness.
And so long as our churches can produce this sacrificial spirit,
the work cannot do other than move forward, and the will of God
shall be done.
* * * * *
THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN; OR, THE THREE BROTHERS WHO SETTLED AMERICA.
BY SECRETARY STRIEBY.
This country was settled by Three Brothers. The first that came was
an Englishman, a Cavalier, who located himself at Jamestown; the
second was also an Englishman, a Puritan, who landed on Plymouth
Rock; the third was an African, and was consigned to the First
Brother.
These families multiplied exceedingly and at length came to be
numbered by millions. To them was committed a great duty—the
founding of an empire, and the taking of three grand steps in
the march of human progress, (1) the establishing of civil and
religious liberty, (2) the securing of personal freedom for all and
(3) the exemplifying of the Brotherhood of Man. The last step only
remains to be taken.
The parts of this great duty were unfolded in the due order
of development, and sprang naturally out of the heredity and
environment of the Brothers. The men and their surroundings given,
the results were inevitable. It seems singular that just these men
should have been selected by Providence, especially the black man,
but the result shows that they were wisely chosen. The black was
in the end found to be an essential factor.
I. Let me sketch these Three Brothers.
1. The First, the Cavalier, had been, in the old country, loyal
to king and church, a supporter of the House of Stuart and of
Archbishop Land. He was a representative of the rural population of
England, men who loved broad acres and field sports. In his home in
the new world his great ambition was to own a large plantation and
multiply the number of his slaves, and thus imitate the baronial
life of the mother country. He cared nothing for popular education,
and thanked God that there was neither a school-house nor a
printing-press in his domain.
2. The Second Brother, the Puritan, had become more accustomed
to city life, and was addicted to trade and commerce as well as
to farming. His zeal as a reformer in church and State brought
him into collision with the House of Stuart, and indeed he was an
exile in his new home on account of his religious and political
principles. He desired to have “a church without a bishop and a
State without a king.” He was earnest in promoting education as
well as religion, and his identifying mark everywhere was the
meeting-house and the school-house.
3. The Third Brother, the African, was not voluntary in coming to
his new home nor in the choice of his occupation. He was a slave.
He was strong in body, amiable in disposition, but at length became
the innocent cause of much ill blood between the other brothers.
II. The duties assigned to these men.
1. The founding of a great empire.
Never was there a more inviting opportunity—a continent almost
unoccupied, coast lined by two great oceans, with climate varied
and healthy, and with boundless resources in fertile lands, rivers,
lakes and mines; and never was an opportunity better improved—in
less than three hundred years the new empire has nearly double the
population of the mother country.
2. The second duty was to lead in three great steps in human
progress. (1), The first step was to secure and maintain civil and
religious liberty. This step was inevitable for the two English
brothers. They had planted colonies and organized States. They
had secured charters guaranteeing the rights of Englishmen. They
had thus a training in the arts of government and had learned to
value the blessings of constitutional liberty. In an evil hour the
British Government began to invade these chartered rights. The Two
Brothers were aroused. The Puritan was by inheritance and principle
a foe of arbitrary power. He, of course, was deeply stirred. The
Cavalier had indeed been a friend of the Stuarts. He could see no
objection to arbitrary power when it was practised by himself and
his party on others, but he naturally and suddenly came to see it
in an entirely different light when he and his party were the
victims; and for once the two brothers were in accord.
A contest was imminent. The British Government could settle
it peacefully, if righteously; if not, in blood. It _would
not_ restore chartered rights. Then came the Declaration of
Independence, the _Revolutionary War_, the new Republic, with the
truest definition and guarantee of civil and religions liberty
the world had ever seen. The first of the great steps in human
progress, to which these men were called, was taken.
(2.) The second step—the securing of personal freedom for all—was
plainly demanded by the taking of the first. The elements of the
new contest were embodied in the Declaration of Independence on
the one hand and Negro slavery on the other—a great principle
and a great fact at war with the principle. The antagonism was
seen from the outset. Expediency shut men’s eyes to it, but God
and conscience opened them. How skillful for a time were the
devices to escape the dilemma. It was said that the Declaration of
Independence was only for white men; that it was a mere glittering
generality; that the North had nothing to do with slavery, and
finally that slavery was right, justified both by law and the
Bible. But all in vain. God and conscience would not be silent.
Again a contest was imminent. The South could settle it peacefully,
if righteously; if not, in blood. The South _would not_ abolish
slavery, and hence the _Civil War_ and the overthrow of slavery.
The second step was taken.
(3.) The third step is to exemplify the Brotherhood of Man. This in
like manner is demanded by the results of the one preceding—by the
two great and opposing facts: Emancipation, and the Negro as he is.
On the one hand, every slave was emancipated; in the zeal of the
hour he was made a citizen, enfranchised and guaranteed “the equal
protection of law.” On the other hand, twenty years have shown that
these guarantees are in form and not in fact.
In other respects, too, his condition is seen to be deplorable,
full of discouragement to himself and of danger to the nation.
Let me point out some of the facts in regard to his condition:
(1.) He does not enjoy his guaranteed rights.
I wish to give due credit to the extent and to the localities in
which he does enjoy these rights, but speaking broadly they are
largely denied to him. He was deprived of the ballot at one time by
violence, and is now by fraud; in all cases where his vote would be
decisive in State or National politics, it is not counted—in other
words, the race is practically disfranchised. In the courts he
seldom finds a standing as a lawyer or a juror; in the chain-gang
only does he enjoy a monopoly. In the church, the school, the shop,
he does not, as a rule, have equal rights; he cannot join any
church he pleases, cannot choose the school to which he will send
his children, cannot enter the shop to learn a trade or to work
as a journeyman. He cannot, everywhere, ride in the street car, on
the railroad or steamboat with the white man, though he may buy
the same first-class ticket; he cannot, in many places, attend the
theatre, concert or lecture with the white man, nor with him eat a
lunch at the restaurant, nor lodge in the hotel. He is confronted,
hindered and insulted at every step he takes towards enjoyment
or improvement—a flaming sword guards the avenues of knowledge,
industry and virtue against him. His guarantees of equal rights are
a mockery.
2. He is left in ignorance and vice.
Here again I wish not only to admit but to rejoice in the progress
made. More than a million of the colored people, of ten years
old and upward, can write; but, alas! more than _three millions_
cannot! It is these that awaken our fears, for they are in
danger themselves and are a danger to the nation. Owing to their
illiteracy they cannot keep the accounts of their earnings in the
lowest kinds of employment; they cannot enter upon the higher
and more profitable avocations; and they cannot rise to the
intellectual dignity of a true manhood. Then, too, they are in
bondage to their vices. When they escaped from slavery, many of
them did not escape from lying, stealing and licentiousness; when
they entered freedom many were captured by idleness, improvidence
and intemperance. These are the victims of designing men who take
advantage of their ignorance to defraud them, and of their vices
to enrich themselves or to gratify their lusts. The danger to the
nation is from the contagion of vice which spreads beyond race or
locality, and from the schemes of political demagogues who can sway
to their own ends the millions of these ignorant voters, who have
no property to be taxed and no character to maintain.
3. He is under the ban of caste prejudice.
This lies at the bottom of the whole difficulty. This refuses to
see his good qualities, denies his capacity for improvement, shuts
to him the doors of knowledge, cheats him at the polls, wrongs him
in the courts, and consigns him perpetually to the position of
a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, thus enstamping the race
distinction broad and permanent, and awakening in his heart either
utter discouragement or implacable hatred.
In these three facts—the withholding of the negro’s equal rights,
his ignorance and vice, and this caste prejudice—are the elements
of a race warfare; they foreshadow another “Impending Crisis”—the
next “Irrepressible Conflict.” This becomes the more obvious,
because the negro, having been recognized as a _man_ before the
law, there is no alternative but to withdraw the recognition or
to make it real. There is no middle ground—he must be a slave or
a freeman; the equal of his white peers. The “Impending Crisis”
is the more imminent from the growth of the blacks in number. In
spite of all denials, the time is hastening on when the blacks
in the Southern States will outnumber the whites; and when they
feel their strength in brawn and muscle—and when especially there
arise among them men of education and talent, with ambition aroused
and with passion stimulated by a sense of injustice—then will the
“Irrepressible Conflict” become as certain as, and, we fear, more
implacable than, the last great struggle.
But there is a higher stand-point from which to view this great
question—the providential. When the negro ceased to be a slave
he became invested with a new significance. Then for the first
time began to be seen the meaning of his presence in America—the
reason why the black man from Africa—the most degraded part of
the world—was selected by Divine Providence as one of the Three
Brothers to settle this continent. He was the one by whom God could
test the nation and call upon it to exemplify before the world the
_Brotherhood of Man_. The full test could only be made when the
highest should recognize the lowest.
The nation cannot shirk this test. Justice to the negro demands it;
God, who made of one blood all nations, demands it; Christ, who
died for all men, demands it; he cares for the poor and repudiates
caste; he was born in poverty and toiled for his living; his
mission was announced and attested by miracles of help for the
needy and the preaching of the gospel to the poor; he touched the
leper when he healed him; he ate with publicans and sinners; in his
church there is neither bond nor free, but all are one in him; and
in the final judgment his award will depend upon how he himself
was treated in the person of one of the least of his brethren.
His voice must be heard. To all that call him Lord, and mean to
obey his word and follow his example, this whole question must
be lifted out of the realm of prejudice into the higher plane of
Christian duty, and when placed there, who can doubt the issue? The
Brotherhood of Man must be recognized and exemplified.
But the question remains, How shall this next great step in human
progress be taken? The question will be settled and the step will
be taken in righteousness, for no question is ever settled till it
is settled right. As we have seen before, the issue between the
American Colonies and the British Government, and that between the
North and the South in regard to slavery, might both have been
settled peacefully, if righteously; and so the question now before
the nation may be settled peacefully, if righteously, by giving
the negro his guaranteed rights, lifting him out of his ignorance
and vice, and especially by taking him from under the ban of caste
prejudice. But it is to be feared that these concessions will not
be made, and then the question will be settled by a bloody war of
races, involving the North as well as the South.
But this conclusion is too startling to contemplate without
instinctively turning to the possibility of a peaceful solution of
the problem. Let me suggest:
1. The Northern Brother has a great responsibility in this matter.
He, too, enslaved the Black Brother for a time, and gave his
consent to the virtual recognition of slavery in the Constitution;
and when at length he saw his error and demanded the emancipation
of the slave, the South resisted him to the utmost in the terrible
war; and when the slave was freed and the North insisted on
making him a citizen and on giving him the ballot, the Southern
Brother, though he could no longer resist, yet entered his most
earnest protest. He said: “I know these negroes; they are not
fit for the ballot and will ruin the country if they have it.”
But the Northern Brother had the power, and like General Jackson
he “took the responsibility.” He cannot now shrink from that
responsibility. He cannot, with any better success than Pilate,
wash his hands and thus be made guiltless. He brought his innocent
Brother into his present trouble and it will be both cowardly and
criminal to leave him to his fate. No! if this great problem is
ever solved peacefully and righteously, the North must awake fully
to its special duty, and perform it at whatever cost of money and
self-sacrifice.
2. The Southern Brother has a still deeper interest in this matter.
In the first place he owes something to the Black Brother, who
always helped and never hindered him, who tilled his land and made
his wealth, who, during the war, cared for the plantation and
protected the family—though he knew that the master fought to rivet
his fetters all the tighter. Then again, the Southern Brother has
and must have the Black Brother with him, near him, his immediate
neighbor, and whatever discomforts or dangers may arise, he must be
the first, and for a time, the only one to suffer. He cannot remand
the negro back to slavery, nor even to serfdom—the nineteenth
century cannot tolerate the one more than the other—even in Russia,
much less in America. Nor can the present anomalous position of the
negro long be maintained. It is full of vexations and of dangers;
the negro will soon be strong enough to resist it, and the North,
as in the contest about slavery, must take sides with the Black man.
Why should the South fight against the inevitable? In a recent
number of the _Century_, a Confederate officer, Col. Alexander,
in giving a racy sketch of Pickett’s famous charge at Gettysburg,
incidentally refers, in a humorous way, to one of their chaplains
who was accustomed to pray that “Providence would consent at last
to come down and take a _proper_ view of the situation.” The
Colonel, at one auspicious juncture in the preliminary fight, was
inclined to believe that the prayer of the good chaplain was about
to be answered. But when all was over and the battle was lost, he
dryly admits that “Providence had evidently not yet taken a proper
view of the situation.” The same admission was equally pertinent
at Appomattox—and has been ever since—indeed, is it not time for
the South to see that the trouble is not with Providence but with
itself—that _it_ should “consent at last to take a proper view of
the situation”? Providence did not take its view during the war to
sustain slavery, and will not in the struggle to maintain caste,
which is now the great issue, as slavery then was. That issue the
South is pushing to the front with new energy. For example, the
great churches, Methodist and Presbyterian, that had been rent
asunder by the anti-slavery agitation before the war, had seemed
for a time since to be happily coming together once more, but
recently that fair prospect has become darkened, and mainly by the
strong exactions in regard to caste-separation demanded by the
South. Then as to schools, the South has always been understood
to be opposed to the co-education of the races, but the recent
demonstrations in one of the States are almost amusingly violent.
We stolid Northern people are tempted to smile at the fear that the
white young gentlemen and ladies of the South are so eager to marry
negroes that they dare not be trusted in the same school together,
and that such stringent measures as fines, imprisonment and the
chain-gang are deemed necessary to prevent it! But we are glad to
find that these severe measures were planned by over-zealous young
politicians, and that “the sober second thought of the people” has
substituted less barbarous methods, and that other Southern States
do not follow the bad example.
But more seriously, the South has never enforced laws against the
criminal mingling of the races that has almost bleached the negroes
white. Is lawful marriage more criminal than concubinage? But who
wants the intermarriage of the races to take place? Not the North,
certainly. The Southern whites ought to be able to resist the
temptation. Every step in the advancement of the blacks contradicts
the charge that they desire it. No! the charge is fictitious, and
is only paraded to give force to the plea for caste-distinction and
exclusion, which is now the main hindrance to the incoming of the
Brotherhood of Man.
But the Southerner pleads strongly against recognizing the
_political_ equality of the races. He says, The negro is not my
equal in intelligence, property or character. Why should he cast a
ballot he cannot read, elect men to make laws which they themselves
cannot read, to impose taxes of which he pays almost nothing,
and to squander the money for the benefit of demagogues? A most
estimable Christian gentleman from South Carolina said to me not
long since: “On one point the people of our State are agreed. We
will not again be ruled by the negroes. We have tried it and we
will not permit it to be repeated.” To all this the ready answer
is: It was one thing for ignorant, degraded and unscrupulous
negroes at that time to rule—nay, I may say, ruin—the State, and
another and very different thing, to permit negroes that are
educated, possessed of property and of established character to
take their proper share in the administration of the affairs of
the State; and this brings me to my final point.
3. It is the duty of the hour and of all concerned to unite in
aiding the negro to acquire knowledge, property and character. In
the Revolutionary struggle, the two White Brothers stood shoulder
to shoulder for one object; in the last sad conflict they fought
against each other to the bitter end. It is time that the enmity
of the last struggle should be laid aside and the amity of the
first should be imitated. Let the two White Brothers unite in
directing the general government to make ample provisions on terms
satisfactory to both to promote popular education in the South; let
the State governments in the South vote means to second the effort.
Let the North, as individuals and churches, multiply greatly its
generous offerings and increase the number of its consecrated men
and women to carry forward the work, and let the South respond in
its measure in personal contributions and labors, and especially
let its people welcome these Northern teachers, not with suspicion
and ostracism, but with co-operation and the respect due to their
Christian characters. Let the large religious denominations bury
dead issues and unite in lifting up the negro. On what nobler or
more Christian platform could they stand? Let them come to him
not as the priest and the Levite, but as the Samaritan; and let
the Black Brother show more alacrity than ever in responding to
these efforts in his behalf. When all this is done, there will be
realized the great mission of these Three Brothers in America—the
founding of a great empire, the establishing of civil and religious
liberty, the granting of personal freedom to all, and last and
greatest of all, the crowning glory of illustrating the Brotherhood
of Man!
* * * * *
NEED OF INTELLIGENCE IN BENEVOLENCE.
BY SECRETARY POWELL.
_What should be done to increase the number of those who
intelligently contribute to the support of the American Missionary
Association?_
Among the reasons for raising this question are the following:
1. A large number of the churches give us no contribution. Last
year only 1,698, out of 4,277 total, contributed to our treasury.
The State Associations every year, and the National Council every
three years, recommend the Association to the churches for their
support. Sixty-one per cent. of those churches reply: “We do
not accept your advice.” A high estimate they must put upon the
reasons which governed their representatives! Yet resolutions of
commendation are necessary. The cause that cannot obtain them
is doomed. But, though necessary, they are not enough. “Good
words butter no parsnips.” Those who say not and do are more to
be commended than those who say and do not. The resolutions of
National Councils and State Associations need to be translated into
the benevolent activities of all the churches. Otherwise they are
dead letters.
2. Only a small proportion of those who contribute through the
churches do so intelligently. Some give from impulse. When the
impulse dies, the contribution dies with it. Some give only when
roused by a special appeal. If no appeal is made they give nothing.
Some give merely because the contribution box is passed—they are
ashamed not to go through the motions of putting something in,
and they would be even more ashamed to have the congregation
know just what they put in. Look at the contents of the average
contribution box as it returns from its excursion among the pews.
Notice the exceedingly large number of pennies and nickels and
quarters (given probably by as many individuals) in comparison with
the gifts of larger denomination! It is often the case, even in
large congregations, that one, two, three or four contributors—and
they not always the most able to give—contribute more than all
the rest put together. It is not forgotten that many of the small
gifts are the widows’ mites—the offerings of the poor, that, in
the arithmetic of heaven, count more than they all. Nevertheless,
it remains true a very large proportion of those who put money
into the contribution box as it is passed do not know anything
about what they are giving for, care still less, and who, if not
in church when the contribution is taken, give nothing. Woe to the
cause whose annual contribution comes on a rainy Sunday.
3. The total contributions from the churches and individuals
represent a sadly low average for the total church membership. The
receipts last year from churches and individuals, exclusive of
legacies, were $189,483.39. Divided among the church membership of
the country it represents an average contribution of only 44 cents
per member; and if the contributions of those who give annually
all the way from $1.00 up to $1,000 were subtracted, the average
would fall from 50 to 75 per cent. below this. Surely the spirit
of Christian benevolence abroad in the churches is not what it
ought to be. Did Christians give as they pray, their benevolence
would reach a higher mark. They are apt to be more honest in the
expression of their views of duty at the throne of grace than they
are through the expression of their conduct.
The pride of consistency, as we remember the confessed doctrines of
the churches, should make us all intensely dissatisfied with this
record of unfaithfulness on the part of so many church members.
4. The increase in contributions does not keep pace with the growth
of the churches in membership and wealth. The total wealth of
the United States, as officially reported for the year 1870, was
$30,068,518,507. In 1880 it was $43,642,000,000. Since 1880 the
gain has been in all probability even in larger ratio; and in this
gain the Congregational churches have had undoubtedly their full
share. Ten years ago the membership of the churches was 365,595.
Last year it was 436,379. Ten years ago the church contributions
and individual donations to our treasury, exclusive of legacies,
were $186,166.62. Last year, from the same sources, they were
$189,483.39. That is to say: During the past ten years the churches
have increased in wealth 31 per cent., and over; in membership, 19
per cent., and over; but in their contributions they have increased
only a little less than 2 per cent. Had the gain kept pace with
the increase in church membership, our receipts last year would
have been $32,055.67 more than they were. Had they kept pace with
the presumable increase of wealth they would have been $54,394.69
more than they were. “Freely ye have received, freely give,” was
the emphatic command of our Lord to his disciples as he sent them
out on errands of mercy among the sick and suffering and sorrowing
poor. “Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay
by him in store as God hath prospered him,” was the explicit
injunction of Paul to the churches concerning their collections
for the poor. And here are our churches organized on purpose to
carry out the teachings of Christ and his apostles; increasing in
numbers and increasing in wealth year by year; yet relatively to
that increase falling behind in their contributions to a society
whose chief and crowning distinction is that it labors among the
poor and the despised and the neglected. Will a man rob God? was a
question asked in ancient times. Modern times have not outgrown the
pertinency of its asking.
5. The Association should be relieved from a perpetual struggle to
get out of debt. From a business standpoint the struggle is not
healthy. From a religious standpoint it is not right. Thank God
we come to this annual meeting free from debt. It is four years
since we enjoyed that privilege before. We would like, if it please
the churches, to indulge in the luxury of singing the doxology
at shorter intervals. Well, then, _don’t get into debt_. Easily
said. Had we a fixed and certain income; had we the authority to
levy upon the churches a specified tax and the power to collect
it; had we the ability to foresee just how much was coming from
legacies, we could then show a clean balance every year. But in all
these respects we are in a field of limitless uncertainties. The
gifts to our treasury are purely voluntary. No certain dependence
can be placed on legacies. One year it may be deluge; the next it
may be drought. What are we to do? What can we do? We can only
calculate probabilities and trust our friends. What? Can you not
trust God? Yes—blessed trust—we _can_ trust Him. But trust must
be intelligent. God’s ordination is that missionary work shall be
carried on by his children, and that they shall pay the bills. We
have no right to expect that He will work miracles in one direction
to defeat what He has ordained in another. Presumption is not
piety. Fanaticism is not faith. We have a vast work committed to
our care. We have a great number of missionaries to support. We
have large money investments in church and school property to
guard. We must plan to conserve all these interests. A sentimental
trust in God will not pay taxes and missionaries’ salaries,
nor save religion from being dishonored by broken pledges. The
churches, whose servant the Association is, should save its
officers from the worry and anxiety of constant fear lest through
lack of funds the work shall be endangered and the interests of
Christ’s kingdom made to suffer.
The above are some of the reasons for raising the question, What
should be done to increase the number of those who intelligently
contribute to the support of the American Missionary Association?
Now for the answer.
1. Our theological seminaries should provide for a course of
lectures in which the history and claims of the American Missionary
Association, together with those of the other six missionary
societies, should be presented and discussed. Systematic theology,
church polity, homiletics and ecclesiastical history would lose
nothing, but on the contrary they would gain much in interest and
power by the inspiration of such lectures. To train the churches in
support of these societies is a part of ministerial life, and they
need to be trained. The initial letters by which these societies
are recognized by the few who are acquainted with them would be as
mysterious and puzzling to the great majority of our congregations
as the hieroglyphics of an Egyptian tomb!
Now this is all wrong. These societies are the organized assertions
of great truths. They are the expressions of great principles.
They represent the heart of the gospel reaching out through the
churches for the world’s salvation! The people should be instructed
in reference to their duty toward them, and not left in ignorance
as to their names and meaning. If our theological seminaries have
been established to train men for the work of the gospel ministry,
they should train them for its work _all round_ and not merely for
its work on a few sides. James was an Apostle as well as Paul. You
would scarcely dream it from the teaching of some theologies. The
preaching that trains the people to clear intellectual conceptions
of truth is good; but the preaching that in addition to this trains
them to go out and put their belief into practice is better, and
that because it is more Christian. The roundness and fullness of
truth demand it. Theory—practice. Sympathy—benevolence. Let them
not be divorced either in the teaching of our seminaries or in the
preaching of our pulpits.
2. There should be an annual presentation of the Association’s
claims in every church. This may seem like a wild proposition in
view of the large number of non-contributing churches. But duty
should be affirmed even if no one performs it. For some reason or
other a large number of our ministers do not bring the claims of
the American Missionary Association before their congregations.
It cannot be that they are ignorant of the Society and its work.
They have the Year Book. They must know of the resolutions of the
National Council and the State Associations. They are presumably
readers of the denominational papers, and I know they all have
their pure minds stirred up periodically by way of remembrance by
circulars and other agencies. Are their churches small and poor?
There is no church so small and so poor, if it have any right to
be in existence, but that it can do a little and in doing that
little receive in return for itself and minister, both spiritual
and temporal blessing. If there is a church so small and so poor
that it cannot do this then it had better make haste to glorify
God by its death than continue to dishonor him by its life. Are
there so many objects asking help that they cannot respond? There
are only seven societies in our denominational family claiming
their support. Can it be that any minister of the gospel feels
that seven contributions for benevolent objects during the twelve
months of the year are too many for his church to make?—are more
than his church ought to make? And if he allow outside objects to
come in, however worthy they may be, and thereby crowd out any of
the National Societies, is that quite just to those societies?
Generosity is indeed a virtue, but exercised at the expense of
those who have a prior claim, it can hardly be called a Christian
virtue. An Apostle has written it: “If any provide not for his own
and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith
and is worse than an infidel.” The American Missionary Association
is an adopted child of the Congregational churches of the United
States. It is a lawful member of our denominational household. It
is there by virtue of every law which governs in the fellowship of
the churches. It is not a beggar asking alms—it is not a stranger
crowding for hospitality—it is a child having all the rights and
privileges of a child in its own home, and if beggars and strangers
are allowed to enter and rob it of that which is its legitimate
portion it has a right to be heard in earnest protest against the
wrong it suffers. As the accredited agent of the churches for the
prosecution of missionary work in the field it occupies it has
rightful claim to their unanimous support.
3. A committee should be appointed in each local conference to
see to it that during the year every church in the conference has
the cause presented and a contribution taken. A committee thus
appointed can write to each church, reminding it of its duty to
make an annual offering to the American Missionary Association
as one of our national societies. Where there are pastors who do
not care to present the cause themselves every year, and where
there are churches that have no pastors, certain brethren can be
requested to prepare a presentation, and by a system of exchanges
secure its delivery in all the churches, so that not one of them
shall be allowed to go a single year uninstructed in regard to
this duty. All that is needed is for some one man to take hold
of this matter with earnestness and place it clearly before the
local conference, and it will be done. Has this language the sound
of authority about it—a flavor of presbyterial or prelatic law?
It is only a sound and a flavor; nothing more. There is nothing
legislative about it. It is simply the churches themselves through
their own chosen representatives in conference devising the most
effective method for carrying out a work in which, by the very
genius of their church polity, they are all equally interested.
The only law that there is about it is the foundation principle on
which they were organized and recognized as churches, and on which
they have established their local conference.
4. There should be an assigned place in every missionary concert
for a paper or a report on some branch of the Association’s
work, prepared by some one previously designated to do it. It is
to be deplored that some churches take little interest in the
missionary concert. It is a mistake, in its effects injurious to
the church as well as to the cause of missions. The missionary
concert by a little care and painstaking can be made one of the
most interesting and profitable meetings that the church holds.
Its influence as an educational power transcends measurement. The
geography, government, history, social life and customs of the
country where missions are located, are more or less brought out
in the consideration of what the missionaries are doing. If our
eyes are only sharp enough to read it the story of missions is rich
in everything that interests the human mind. Romance, tragedy,
heroism, sacrifice, pathos, wit and humor, are all intermingled in
that wonderful story. If our ears are only sensitive enough to hear
them there come appeals from missionary experiences that stir to
their profoundest depths everything that is noble and good within
us. The American Missionary Association is peculiarly affluent in
topic and incident for use in the missionary concert. A summary
of the contents of the current number of the _Missionary_ will
always be in order as a report; while for papers and addresses and
discussions, there is no assignable limit to the topics furnished
by the history and development of the Association and its work.
Its lines reach out in their relations to all the ends of the
earth. In its anti-slavery agitations it joined hands with the
great emancipation advocates of Europe. By its labors in behalf
of the Chinese on the Pacific slope it has become a factor in
the great movement of Christian missions for the evangelization
of Asia. Through its special championship and heroic efforts in
behalf of the negro its records have already become a part of that
which shall be written when the history of redeemed Africa is
completed; and in what it has done for the North American Indian
and is doing; in what it has done for human rights and liberty,
and in defense of a pure Christianity, and is doing, it has become
an integral part of those mighty forces that will one day redeem
America from the dominance of false principles and bring in the
reign of justice, equity and truth throughout the length and
breadth of the land. Within the vast circle surrounding all these
racial questions that this Association touches in its work of the
past and in its outlook for the future there lie subjects and
topics for thought and discussion absolutely inexhaustible! There
is no need of any missionary concert’s being dull or uninteresting,
and certainly there is no need of its being unprofitable while such
a missionary society as this is in the field. It should have a
place and a hearing in every missionary concert.
5. The circulation of the _American Missionary_ should be greatly
increased and the people urged to read it. Among the 436,379
members of the Congregational churches in the country there are
sent every month 19,463 magazines; that is on an average _one_
magazine to twenty-two readers. If this one magazine were passed
round so that all had a chance to read it there are enough of them
to answer the purpose. One subscriber wrote us that she made her
_American Missionary_ to be so much of an Episcopalian, that it
“_kept lent_” all the year round. But the evidence is not very
overwhelming that this _is_ done to any great extent. The evidence
is, however, quite convincing that the magazines are not all read
by their subscribers, and that the waste basket is not altogether
unacquainted with their presence. After Dr. Ellinwood, Secretary
of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, had once made an
earnest appeal for money in the Presbytery, the Moderator, a
distinguished Doctor of Divinity, asked him if he would not confer
a favor on the brethren by printing the facts that he had just
stated in the _Missionary_ magazine next month, adding that he
had been trying for a long time to obtain those figures. “Why,”
responded Dr. Ellinwood “That magazine, for the last two months,
has contained just what I have been telling you to-day.” Missionary
literature is despised. If this despite were shown on the merits
of the case there would be nothing to say, but that is not so. It
is despised without examination and in perfect ignorance of its
contents. Like the Saviour, of the progress of whose kingdom it
tells the story, it is despised and rejected of men. Not on its
merits. There are those who read it, and who read it regularly,
ready to testify to the exceeding value and interest of its matter.
One of the great literary monthlies recently contained an article
in which were assertions bearing upon a question of literature
which two months before were utterly destroyed by statements of
facts that appeared in the _American Missionary_. When historians
undertake to write the history of countries into which missionaries
have gone, they are sure to consult the missionary literature;
and they do not often find it necessary to question either the
accuracy or the value of the information they there obtain. This
prejudice against missionary literature, which in the main is both
unfounded and unjust, ought to be abandoned. Its worth and value
ought to be recognized. Its wide dissemination and reading ought to
be advocated; and that, too, on its merits. If there are reasons
why the _American Missionary_ should be read by one of our church
members, the same reasons hold good why it should be read by all
of them; if there are reasons why it should go into one of our
families, for the same reasons it should go into them all. There
is a wide field here for cultivation. Only one magazine for every
twenty-two readers; only one magazine for every four families
among our constituents, and all of these not read by those who
take them! No wonder there is ignorance among the churches about
our work, and there being ignorance no wonder that there is a lack
of interest and meagreness of contributions! But I hear some one
say: “Our church members will not take the _American Missionary_.
They would not read it were you to give it to them.” Well then,
they are not interested in our work, that is all. They don’t care
whether the gospel is preached to the poor or not; they don’t care
whether illiteracy is allowed to run rampant all over the country
and destroy our free institutions or not; they don’t care whether
justice shall be done to those who have been most cruelly defrauded
or not; they don’t care whether the honor of the nation by meeting
the involved obligations of slavery’s abolition shall be preserved
or not; they don’t care whether the issues of the war for the
maintenance of the Union, secured by sufferings and sacrifices
transcending the power of the human mind to portray, shall be made
secure or not. They don’t care? Then somebody is to blame. They
do care? Then why are they not willing—even eager to read about
the work that has all these sacred objects in view, and is helping
to solve the stupendous problems they contain? They do care. Yes,
I believe it. Their lack of interest in the American Missionary
Association and their unwillingness to read its monthly magazine is
because of their ignorance of its work, and therefore it is that
there is here a wide field, hopeful and promising, for cultivation
by all those who wish to aid in the advancement of the cause.
The reasons assigned for raising the question to which the above
answers have been given are most grave and weighty. They are
significant indications of peril that threatens the cause committed
to our care. Shall we heed the lessons which the signals flash?
* * * * *
Do not forget that this month of December is an excellent time
to increase the number of those who subscribe for THE AMERICAN
MISSIONARY. A word fitly spoken by our friends will secure the
desired result.
* * * * *
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.
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. C. C. Creegan,
Syracuse, N.Y.
OHIO.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. Flora K. Regal,
Oberlin, Ohio.
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, Mrs. H. L. Chase,
2,750 Second Ave., South, Minneapolis, Minn.
IOWA.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Miss Ella E. Marsh,
Grinnell, Iowa.
KANSAS.—Woman’s Home Miss. Society, Secretary, Mrs. Addison
Blanchard, Topeka, Kan.
SOUTH DAKOTA.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. W. H.
Thrall, Amour, Dak.
* * * * *
REPORT OF SECRETARY.
In inviting the women of the North, and particularly those of the
Congregational churches to help establish and sustain its missions,
the American Missionary Association has felt that woman’s work in
the churches at home is as important as woman’s work in the mission
field, in order to secure the greatest efficiency, the best results
of the labor expended.
Nor have we been disappointed. As the hearts of those at home have
opened pityingly toward the needs of women suffering from the
effects of oppression, abuse and paganism, right here in our own
country, and the hearts of our missionaries have been burdened with
the same woes, the helping hand has been mutually extended; and it
has been the mission of the Bureau of Woman’s Work to join these
hands in strong and loving ministry.
Our woman’s work in the field can be only briefly referred to here.
It is embodied in the full report which the Association gives of
all its missions. Of the sixteen Normal and graded schools reported
by the Association, seven are in the charge of lady teachers alone.
One of these is a boarding school especially for girls, and is
similar in plan to the Mt. Holyoke and Auburndale schools. But
in all our boarding schools like methods are introduced, indeed
the best that can be culled from Northern experience is put into
practice.
Some slight changes in our plan of work should be noted, as
indicating the new demands upon us in woman’s work. We no longer
select our special missionaries mainly for house-to-house visiting
and Bible reading, but combine this with more effective organized
work. To concentrate effort upon the training of the young for
usefulness, is conceded by all our workers as most essential. This
is well accomplished in our boarding schools, but where we have
only day schools or churches we have felt the need of reaching
the home life more effectually than could be done by a missionary
visitor. We therefore bring the young people to our special
missionary for practical instruction, connecting this with the
Christian training.
Sewing-schools are established in which girls are taught not
merely how to sew well, but how to cut and make garments for
themselves and fathers and brothers. Kitchen-garden has been quite
generally introduced for teaching all kinds of laundry, kitchen and
dining-room work, care of bed-rooms and bedding, polite attention
to guests, with all amenities of home life. Thus a transformation
has been made in many homes through the new life opened up to the
children.
White Shield and White Cross Societies are sustained in the
interests of purity. Missionary societies are formed and the young
people are taught how to manage them. Through these societies the
sympathy and interest of colored and Indian women have been so
moved as to lead to self-denial that would put us to shame, so
eager are they to give to others the light they have received.
Temperance work has a prominent place in all our missions. As
illustrative of the influence exerted in this direction we note one
instance. The principal of our colored school in Jonesboro, Tenn.,
organized her temperance society ten years ago, and for years
it was the only one in the place. Thus the colored people were
organized and ready for action long before the white ladies. Our
Northern missionary bought materials for colors, sat up nights and
lettered the banners, and at the late election in Tennessee took
her school to the polls, nearly every child carrying a suggestive
motto, such as “Protect Our Homes,” “Lead us not into Temptation.”
Through her persistence and energy the white ladies of the Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union joined in the movement. It is true, the
amendment was lost in the State, but in Jonesboro every colored
man except two voted for prohibition. Noble efforts may sometimes
fail—noble lives, never.
But even could our woman’s work in the field be written in minute
detail it would give but an imperfect review of what is undertaken.
You hear of overflowing schools, of many forms of Christian
work, of the numbers added to our churches from ranks in day and
Sunday-schools, but the wrestling prayers of earnest women, the
watchful admonitions, the unremitting toil which has entered into
what we call success, who shall record? Over two hundred such
missionaries the American Missionary Association has upon its
rolls, and it is for these, and that we may add to the number, that
we ask your united support.
We have much to encourage us in the results of the past year.
There has been an earnest reaching out by ladies’ societies,
Sunday-schools and mission bands, for some special work which would
tell for good in direct influence toward the enlightenment of those
in darkness and need, and contributions have been so applied as
to be at once helpful to our treasury and yet assigned to some
specific object interesting to contributors. Christian Endeavor
Societies have begun to come forward with their help. These
societies, which include lads and misses, find a most useful and
attractive work in our Indian Missions. It has been quite a problem
how to win and hold the interest of boys in missions, but we have
found the magic word—Indian—and that if our boys’ thoughts are
given proper direction in the study of Indian history and missions,
they will not fail to be on the right side in their convictions
and eager to help educate an Indian youth, the longer and more
unpronounceable his name the more eager.
Sewing societies have been encouraged to contribute their service
in a way that is valuable to us. Our item of house furnishing alone
is a large one, for in connection with our eighty-nine schools are
about thirty mission homes and boarding halls to be kept supplied
with bedding, table linen, etc., for families of from fifteen
to two hundred and fifty. These needs are indicated in a sewing
leaflet which is sent to those who will assist us to set an example
of good housekeeping where we plant our missions.
The most important help, however, being money contributions from
all these societies, we have sought by our system of missionary
letters to encourage the ladies and young people to annual
contributions. The amounts thus received have varied from $10 to
$100, according to the ability of the church, but every society
thus contributing to the A. M. A. may work for some definite object
and receive the field letters.
To the Woman’s State organizations we offer specific work on
a larger scale. Of such we name the following as co-operating
directly with us: Maine and Vermont each by a “Woman’s Aid to
the A. M. A.” Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan,
Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, each by a Woman’s Home Missionary
Union, and Minnesota and Kansas by their Woman’s Home Missionary
Societies.
The State organizations have some of them undertaken the support
of a single school, and others of missionaries selected from
different departments of our work. In every State the appeal of
the A. M. A. is made through its Woman’s Bureau to the ladies of
all the churches and to all the ladies of the churches, and the
contributions are in part through the State organizations and in
part direct, all working to the same end.
Other States also, not yet organized, are assisting us in definite
lines, as Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Any society of old or young people, whether Missionary,
Ladies’ Aid, Benevolent Society, Sewing Circle or Christian
Endeavor—whatever involves combined interests and united work—we
cordially welcome to share with us in the grand opportunities of
our field.
In this way the ladies of the Congregational churches are helping
in the support of seventeen of the established missions of the
American Missionary Association—among the colored people, poor
whites, Indians and Chinese, according to their choice.
Public meetings in behalf of missions have been provided with lady
speakers, and in many instances the monthly missionary concerts
of the churches having the American Missionary Association for a
subject, have been furnished with fresh letters from different
parts of the field, thus giving vividness to the facts gathered
from the A. M. A. literature.
We all know that it is not by doing any great thing that the
home is made beautiful and strong, but by the many acts of
thoughtfulness, the light and skillful touches which singly appear
so small, but together and often repeated become essential. So in
our connection with these great mission boards, let us make our
work valuable by our constancy and skill in doing what we can,
giving an aureola to the cause of missions by the well directed
rays of womanly, consecrated service.
* * * * *
A WORD FROM BULGARIA.
“For a long time I have not had an opportunity to read THE AMERICAN
MISSIONARY, and chancing to see it lying on the table at the house
of one of my associates, it instantly awakened a host of memories
of the past when I was a teacher of the Freedmen during the war
of the Rebellion. My interest in the work of the Association has
always been great, and I should have given my life to its service
had I not felt that God called me elsewhere. My prayer is that God
may bless the labors of the faithful missionaries in my own dear
native land more and more abundantly.”
* * * * *
RECEIPTS FOR OCTOBER, 1887.
* * * * *
MAINE, $216.78.
Alfred. Cong. Ch. and Soc. $18.39
Augusta. Miss K. Carpenter’s Sab. Sch. Class,
_for Student Aid, Talladega C._ 5.00
Bangor. First Cong. Ch. and Soc., add’l, to
const. REV. CHARLES H. CUTLER, MRS. HELEN M.
QUIMBY and JOHN F. COLBY L. M’s. 30.00
Castine. Sab. Sch. Class, by Prof. Fred. W.
Foster, _for Student Aid, Tougaloo U._ 1.60
Freeport. First Cong. Ch., 16.94; Rev. Daniel
Lane, 1 17.94
Gorham. “Helping Hand Soc.,” by Miss Mary E.
Tolford 25.00
Gray. Sab. Sch. Classes, by Mrs. Julia Doughty
and sister, _for Selma, Ala._ 3.35
Kennebunk Port. South Cong. Ch. 5.00
Norridgewock. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 33.25
Phillips. Cong. Ch. 4.00
Portland. Williston Ch., 46; Wm. W. Mitchell,
25 71.00
Topsham. Mrs. M. P. Sewall 2.00
——. “An Aged Lady” 0.25
NEW HAMPSHIRE, $257.35.
Bennington. Cong. Ch. 11.17
Boscawen. Mrs. J. McClure, _for Student Aid,
Talladega C._ 1.00
Candia. “A Friend.” 1.00
Epping. Cong. Ch. 2.00
Exeter. S. C. E., First Cong. Ch., _for
Atlanta U._ 4.35
Hanover. Dartmouth College Cong. Ch. 15.00
Hinsdale. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 20.00
Hudson. J. G. Proctor, to const. MRS. J. G.
PROCTOR, L. M. 30.00
Keene. Ira J. Prouty, M.D. 5.00
Nashua. First Cong. Ch. and Soc. 20.00
New Ipswich. Children’s 25th Annual Fair (2 of
which _for Indian M._) 19.32
New Ipswich. Cong. Ch. 3.71
North Hampton. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 23.50
Pelham. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 37.00
Penacook. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch. 20.00
Peterboro. Union Evan. Ch. 44.30
VERMONT, $460.20.
Barnet. Ladies, _for McIntosh, Ga._, by Mrs.
Henry Fairbanks 12.52
Burlington. First Ch., 128.05; Third Cong.
Ch., 74.56 203.61
Chester. Cong. Ch. 33.50
East Fairfield. Cong. Ch. 4.35
Enosburg. First Cong. Ch., add’l. 5.00
Fairfield. Cong. Ch. 2.88
Hartford. E. Morris 100.00
Middlebury. Miss E. Starr 5.00
Orange. Cong. Ch. 15.00
Quechee. Ladies, _for McIntosh, Ga._, by Mrs.
E. D. Wild 5.00
Quechee. Mrs. H. Thomas, _for Student Aid,
Talladega C._ 2.00
Rupert. Miss Cora Guild 2.00
Saint Albans. First Cong. Ch., add’l. 1.00
Vergennes. Cong. Ch., 13.38, and Sab. Sch.,
1.62 15.00
Wallingford. Bbl. of C., _for McIntosh, Ga._
Waterbury. Cong. Ch. 5.34
West Brattleboro. Miss Annie L. Grout, Box of
C., 1 _for freight, for McIntosh, Ga._ 1.00
West Randolph. First Cong. Ch. (6 of which
_for McIntosh, Ga._) to const DEA. J. O.
FOWLER L. M. 30.00
Williamstown. Mrs. E. E. Cheney 1.00
Williston. Cong. Ch. 27.00
MASSACHUSETTS, $4,941.44.
Amherst. C. G. Noyes, 10; Second Cong. Ch.,
8.80 18.80
Andover. Ladies’ Union Home Miss’y Soc. by
Charlotte H. Swift, Treas. 91.00
Ashby. Cong. Ch. 13.26
Boston. “Friends,” 500;
Individuals, by J. W. Davis,
400; _for Hospital among the
Sioux Indians_ 900.00
Boston. Park St. Ch. and Soc. 31.67
Boston. J. H. Farrar 20.00
Boston. Miss Robinson, _for
Talladega C._ 2.00
Boston. “A Friend in Central Ch.” 2.00
Dorchester. Collected by Miss Mary
A. Tuttle, _for Marie Adlof
Sch’p Fund_ add’l. 2.50
Jamaica Plain. Mrs. Lydia M. Story,
_for Indian M._ 10.00
Roxbury. Sab. Sch. of Immanuel Ch.,
_for Aid of Indian Student_ 60.00
Roxbury. Mrs. Livermore 10.00
West Roxbury. Evan. Cong. Ch. 19.65
————— 1,057.82
Bridgewater. Central Sq. Cong. Ch., to const.
WM. F. LEONARD L. M. 34.98
Brimfield. Mrs. P. C Browning, 15; Mrs. J. S.
Webber, 3 18.00
Brookline. Harvard Ch. and Soc. 53.34
Cambridge. North Av. Cong. Ch., add’l. 1.00
Campello. South Cong. Ch. 100.00
Chelsea. Dr. Horatio N. Page 5.00
Clinton. Mrs. R. N. Ingalls, 20; Mrs. Wm.
Fairbanks, 10; Mrs. G. Carter, 5; Mrs. Emily
Bigelow, 5; Mrs. Greely, 5; Mrs. Dakin, 3;
“Friends,” 1.05, _for Talladega C._ 49.05
Dedham. Sab. Sch. of First Cong. Ch., _for
Student Aid, Straight U._ 25.00
Deerfield. Ortho. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 22.53
Easthampton. Sab. Sch. of Payson Ch., _for
Student Aid, Fisk U._ 30.00
Easthampton. Mrs. Samuel Skinner, _for Student
Aid, Talladega C._ 5.00
Enfield. Cong. Ch. 50.00
Essex. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 55.00
Fitchburg. Sab. Sch. of Rollstone Ch., _for
Student Aid, Straight U._ 50.00
Framingham. Sab. Sch. of Plym. Ch., _for
Indian M._ 20.31
Framingham. Mrs. C. M. Clark’s mite-box 6.00
Freetown. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 8.37
Gardner. Woman’s Miss’y Soc., _for Indian
Sch’p._ 50.00
Goshen. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 12.00
Greenfield. M. O. Farrand 10.00
Greenwich. Cong. Ch. 11.20
Harvard. Cong. Ch. 18.50
Holland. Cong. Ch. 4.00
Holliston. “Bible Christians of Dist. No. 4” 30.00
Holliston. “Friends,” _for Student Aid,
Talladega C._ 16.46
Holyoke. “Friends,” by E. B. Reed, _for Indian
Sch’p._ 17.50
Hubbardston. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 8.00
Ipswich. South Cong. Ch. 25.00
Lawrence. Y. P. S. of Christian Service,
Trinity Cong. Ch. 5.00
Leominster. Cong. Ch., _for Indian M._ 42.00
Lexington. Hancock Ch. and Soc. 15.00
Lincoln. Sab. Sch. of First Cong. Ch., _for
Student Aid, Atlanta U._ 20.00
Lowell. Mrs. O. C. Moore, _for Freight_ 2.00
Lynn. Sab Sch. of First Cong. Ch., add’l _for
Student Aid, Atlanta U._ 20.00
Marshfield. Sab. Sch. of First Cong. Ch., _for
Student Aid, Atlanta U._ 20.00
Merrimac. Cong. Ch. 100.00
Milford. Ladies of Cong. Soc., _for Student
Aid, Talladega C._ 6.07
Monson. Mrs. C. O. Chapin 5.00
New Bedford. Trin. Cong. Ch. 18.78
Newton Center. First Cong. Ch. 75.69
Newton Highlands. Cong. Ch., add’l. 1.00
North Adams. First Cong. Ch. 31.48
North Brookfield. Sab. Sch. of First Cong.
Ch., _for Student Aid, Fisk U._ 35.00
Orleans. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch. 20.00
Pittsfield. “A Friend,” _for Student Aid,
Talladega C._ 7.10
Raynham. First Cong. Ch. and Soc. 21.06
Reading. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 17.50
Reading. Mrs. Z. M. Hazleton, _for Freight_ 4.00
Rockland. Ladies of Cong. Ch. 7.00
Royalston. First Cong. Ch. and Soc. 55.00
Rutland. Cong. Ch. 6.50
Salem. Crombie St. Cong. Ch., _for Indian M._ 25.00
Somerville. Sab. Sch. of Franklin St. Ch.,
_for aid of Indian student_ 40.00
Southampton. Cong. Ch. 31.77
South Dennis. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 15.00
South Egremont. Cong. Ch. 30.30
South Hadley. First Cong. Ch., 26; “A Friend,”
2 28.00
South Hadley Falls. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch. 14.79
South Weymouth. Miss Sadie B. Tirrell’s S. S.
Class Second Cong. Ch., _for aid of Indian
student_ 3.50
Stoneham. Cong. Ch. and Soc., to const. REV.
D. A. NEWTON L. M. 39.08
Sunderland. Cong. Ch. and Soc. (6 of which
_for Student Aid, Sherwood Acad., Tenn._) 34.87
Wakefield. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch., _for Indian
M._ 27.70
Ware. “A Friend” 5.00
Watertown. “A Friend” 0.75
Westhampton. Cong. Ch., add’l. 28.34
Westford. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 11.00
West Medford. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 12.75
West Medway. “Friends,” _for Student Aid,
Talladega C._ 2.00
West Medway. Mrs. E. C. T. Robbins 0.50
West Newton. Sab. Sch. of Second Cong. Ch. 50.00
West Springfield. Ladies’ Mission Circle of
Park St. Ch., 100 _for Pleasant Hill,
Tenn._, and 100 _for Tougaloo U._ 200.00
Whitinsville. Mrs. J. J. Abbott, 10; Miss
Helen L. Abbott, 2; “A Friend,” 10, _for
Indian M._ 22.00
Winchendon. First Cong. Ch. and Soc., 19, and
Sab. Sch. 21.57 40.57
Woods Holl. Case of Books
Worcester. Wm. Woodward, 100; Sab. Sch. of
Central Ch., 5 105.00
Worcester. Sab. Sch. of Central Ch., _for
Student Aid, Atlanta U._ 38.02
Worcester. Geo. F. Orr, 10; Mrs. Orr, 6; Mrs.
Laird, 2, _for Talladega C._ 18.00
Yarmouth. Cong. Ch. 50.00
——. “A Friend.” 30.00
——. “For the Indians,” 5.00
By Charles Marsh, Treas. Hampden Benev. Ass’n.
Agawam. 19.05
Chicopee. First 19.50
Palmer. First 5.36
Palmer. Second 36.00
Palmer. Second 35.00
Springfield. First 25.00
Springfield. South 42.97
Springfield. Memorial 43.00
Springfield. North 53.80
Westfield. Second 71.52
West Springfield. First 29.00
————— 380.20
————————
$3,741.44
LEGACIES.
Medfield. Estate of Mrs. Abigail Cummings, by
Executor, _for Atlanta U._ 1,000.00
Worcester. Estate of Benj. W. Fletcher, by
Geo. Swan, Ex. 200.00
————————
$4,941.44
RHODE ISLAND, $37.70.
Kingston. Cong. Ch. 12.70
Providence. N. W. Williams 15.00
Providence. Cent. Cong. Ch., _for Indian M._ 10.00
CONNECTICUT, $1,007.51.
Bristol. Cong. Ch., _for Student Aid, Atlanta
U._ 9.00
Chester. “I. O.” 5.00
Clinton. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch. 8.30
Eastford. Cong. Ch. 7.77
East Hampton. First Cong. Ch. and Soc. 36.00
Ellington. Cong. Ch., add’l 0.50
Farmington. Cong. Ch., 20; H. D. Hawley, 20,
_for Mechan’l building_, Austin, Texas 40.00
Gilead. “A Friend” 8.00
Harwinton. Cong. Ch. (5 of which from Mrs.
Hilpah Watson, _for Indian M._) 41.05
Higganum. Mrs. Susan Gladwin 4.00
Lisbon. Cong. Ch., 6; “A Friend,” 1, _for
Conn. Ind’l Sch., Ga._ 7.00
Mansfield. Second Cong. Ch. and Soc. 7.00
Meriden. Sab. Sch. of First Cong. Ch., _for
Student Aid, Fisk U._, and to const. D. M.
LYMAN L. M. 50.00
New Britain. South Cong. Ch. 179.56
New Canaan. Woman’s H. M. Soc. of Cong. Ch.,
_for Conn. Ind’l Sch., Ga._ 26.00
New Haven. Davenport Cong. Ch., 41.34; Young
Ladies’ Mission Circle of Humphrey St. Ch.,
24.79 66.13
North Branford. Cong. Ch. 11.69
North Madison. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 7.00
Old Lyme. First Cong. Ch. 20.00
Plainfield. First Cong. Ch. 23.92
Plantsville. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch., _for
Atlanta U._ 32.58
Poquonock. Cong. Ch. 38.54
Preston. Long Soc. Sab. Sch. 3.60
Preston City. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 22.00
Putnam. Second Cong. Ch. 21.90
Putnam. “A Friend,” _for Atlanta U._ 20.00
Reynolds Bridge. Eagle Rock Cong. Ch., bal. to
const. REV. J. S. BURGESS L. M. 24.00
Rockville. Sab. Sch. of First Cong. Ch., box
papers, etc., _for Sherwood, Tenn._
Seymour. Cong. Ch. 12.05
Scitico. Mrs. Chas. E. Stowe 5.50
South Canaan. “A Friend.” 1.00
South Windsor. First Cong. Ch. 8.00
Terryville. Cong. Ch. 43.00
Terryville. “Soldier of Christ” (10 of which
_for Indian M._) 15.00
Terryville. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch., _for aid
of Indian student_ 17.50
Waterbury. Sunshine Circle, by Jessie B.
Brooks, _for Woman’s Work_ 5.00
Watertown. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 40.88
West Avon. Cong. Ch., 7.50; Rev. R. Scoles, 10 17.50
Westbrook. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 54.54
Westford. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch., _for Indian
M._ 5.00
West Hartford. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 14.00
Windsorville. Jane Bancroft and Parents 25.00
Woodbury. North Cong. Ch. 23.00
NEW YORK, $858.89.
Amsterdam. Mrs. Chandler Bartlett 2.00
Bergen. First Cong. Ch. 14.25
Brasher Falls. Mrs. Eliza A. Bell, to const.
WILLIE J. BELL L. M. 30.00
Brooklyn. G. H. Nichols, _for Talladega C._ 100.00
Brooklyn. Sab. Sch. of Central Cong. Ch.,
37.50; Puritan Ch., 11.53, _for Indian M._ 49.03
Brooklyn. H. W. Brinkerhoff, _for Atlanta U._ 10.00
Brooklyn. Puritan Cong. Ch., 72.56; Rev. E. P.
Thwing, 5; Rev. S. B. Halliday, Pkg. Books 77.56
Columbus. Aunt Sally Williams, by Rev. J. W.
Keeler 20.00
Fredonia. JEANNIE E. KINSMAN, to const.
herself L. M., and _for Student Aid, Athens,
Ala._ 30.00
Hudson. Mrs. D. A. Jones 15.00
Lima. Sab. Sch. of Presb. Ch., bal. of C.,
etc., 5.17, _for Freight, for Sherwood,
Tenn._ 5.17
Livonia. Mrs. Wm. Calvert 5.00
Madison. Cong. Ch. 4.25
Millville. Cong. Ch. 8.50
Newark Valley. Cong. Ch. 21.06
New Lebanon. Cong. Ch., 16.45; Sab. Sch. of
Cong. Ch., 5 21.45
New York. Rev. D. Stuart Dodge, _for Talladega
C._ 100.00
Norwich. “Ten Friends,” 7.75; “Seven Young
Men,” 1.75; Miss Gibson, _for Beach Inst_.,
1; by Miss M. M. Foote 10.50
Norwood. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch. 5.71
Owego. Cong. Ch., _for Indian M._, add’l to
const. MRS. D. H. BLOODGOOD and DEA. JAMES
M. HASTINGS L. M’s 25.00
Rushville. First Cong. Ch. 3.81
Schenectady. Cong. Ch. and Soc. to const. REV.
JOHN H. MUNSELL L. M. 40.00
Seneca Falls. Sab. Sch. of First Cong. Ch. 8.00
Sherburne. Joshua Pratt, 50; Mrs. H. De Forest
Fuller, 25; “A Friend,” 25; “Kin and Kind,”
20; Rev. Charles C. Johnson, _for Student
Aid_, 5—_for Talladega C._ 125.00
Volney. Cong. Ch. and Sab. Sch. 5.60
West Groton. Cong. Ch., 13.70; Birthday Box,
2.30 16.00
Woman’s Home Missionary Union of N.Y., by Mrs.
L. H. Cobb, Treas., _for Woman’s Work_:
Fairport. Aux., by Mrs. G. Brooks 100.00
Cambria Center. Ladies’ Aux. 6.00
————— 106.00
NEW JERSEY, $406.88.
Montclair. Sab. Sch. Class, _for Student Aid,
Talladega C._ 5.00
Orange. Trinity Cong. Ch. 152.19
Paterson. P. Van Houten 5.00
Upper Montclair. Christian Union Cong. Ch. 219.69
Westfield. “Mission Band,” by M. C. Alpers,
_for Indian M._ 25.00
PENNSYLVANIA, $26.00.
Farmers Valley. Mrs. E. C. Olds 1.00
Guy’s Mills. Cong. Ch. 18.00
New Castle. John Burgess 2.00
Ridgway. Young People’s Bible Class, by Minnie
Kline, _for Oaks, N.C._ 5.00
OHIO, $458.15.
Akron. Mrs. A. A. Conger 1.00
Cleveland. Euclid Av. Cong. Ch. 82.00
Cleveland. W. M. S. of First Cong. Ch., _for
Indian M._ 7.78
Columbus. “L. M. S.” of Eastwood Cong. Ch.
(thank offering), _for Indian M._ 26.00
Conneaut. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch., _for Student
Aid, Fisk U._ 20.00
Conneaut. W. M. S., _for Indian M._ 2.50
Conneaut. May A. Kneeland, _for Student Aid
and Mountain Work_ 2.00
Garrettsville. Cong. Ch. 8.00
Geneva. First Cong. Ch. 3.32
Hudson. W. M. S., _for Indian M._ 7.00
Medina. W. M. S., 10; Primary S. S. Class, 1;
Girls’ Mission Band, 20c., _for Indian M._ 11.20
Painesville. “A Lady,” _for Indian M._ 5.00
Peninsula. Erastus Jackson, 1; James Scobie, 1 2.00
Richfield. Cong. Ch. 8.63
Tallmadge. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch., 31.64; Y.
L. H. M. Soc., 12, _for Student Aid, Fisk U._ 43.64
Toledo. First Cong. Ch., 120; Ladies’ Miss’y
Union of Central Cong. Ch., 12 132.00
Toledo. Young People’s Miss’y Soc., _for
Woman’s Work_ 20.00
Youngstown. “Old Life Member” 5.00
——. “A Friend” 10.00
——————
$397.12
LEGACY.
Elyria. Estate of Lurania Tyler, by Lester
McLean, Adm. 61.03
——————
$458.15
INDIANA, $7.41.
Terre Haute. Cong. Sab. Sch., Birthday
Offerings 7.41
ILLINOIS, $407.05.
Champaign. “Three Friends” 5.00
Chicago. First Cong. Ch., 100; Grace Cong.
Ch., 20 120.00
Chicago. U. P. Cong. Ch., _for Indian M._ 25.00
Chicago. Rev. J. Porter, D.D., Box of Books,
_for Library, Sherwood, Tenn._
Earlville. “J. A. D.” 50.00
Highland. Ladies’ Missionary Soc., _for
Woman’s Work_ 5.00
Lee Center. Cong. Ch. 4.05
Moline. Cong. Ch., add’l 5.00
Oneida. Cong. Ch. 10.00
Park Ridge. Cong. Ch. 11.00
Payson. Cong. Ch. 7.50
Rantoul. L. M. S. of Cong. Ch. 5.00
Ridge Prairie. St. John Ch., by Rev. A. Kerr 10.00
Roseville. Miss S. J. Axtell and Friends, box
of C, etc., _for Sherwood, Tenn._
Sannemin. Mrs. M. E Knowlton 1.00
Sheffield. Cong. Ch., add’l 2.00
Streator. Bridge St. Cong. Ch. 11.88
Washington Heights. Bethany Union Cong. Ch. 10.00
Winnebago. Cong. Ch. 9.00
Woman’s Home Missionary Union of Ill., by Mrs.
B. F. Leavitt, Treas., _for Woman’s Work._
Ashkum. Ladies’ Miss’y Soc. 3.15
Chicago. L. M. S. of Lincoln Park
Ch. 26.00
Chicago. L. M. S. of Leavitt St. Ch. 1.47
Elgin. Ladies of First Cong. Ch. 50.00
Milburn. L. M. Soc. 25.00
Oak Park. L. B. Soc. 10.00
————— 115.62
——————
MICHIGAN, $351.49.
Alpena. First Cong. Ch. 50.00
Chelsea. First Cong. Ch. 20.73
Church’s Corners. Cong. Ch., 34.37; Sab. Sch.,
5.63; Dea. N. R. Rowley, 10 50.00
Farmington. Mary Erwin 5.00
Hancock. Ladies’ Missionary Soc. of Cong. Ch.,
_for Student Aid, Talladega C._ 25.00
Ludington. Mrs. S. A. B. Carrier 1.00
Manistee. First Cong. Ch. 29.18
Middleville. Cong. Ch. 2.33
Olivet. Cong. Ch. 143.55
Union City. Ladies’ Missionary Soc. of Cong.
Ch., _for Athens, Ala._ 10.00
Vernon. Cong. Ch. 3.70
Woman’s Home Missionary Union of Michigan, by
Mrs. E. F. Grabill, Treas., _for Woman’s
Work_:
Alma. L.M.S. 11.00
WISCONSIN, $171.56.
Cooksville. Edward Gilley 5.00
Janesville. First Cong. Ch. 66.00
Koshkonong. P. T. Gunnison 10.00
La Crosse. First Cong. Ch. 60.00
Ripon. Mrs. C. T. Tracy 5.00
Woman’s Home Missionary Union of Wisconsin,
_for Woman’s Work_:
Appleton. W. H. M. S. 8.25
Green Bay. W. H. M. S. 5.00
Madison. W. H. M. S. 10.31
Whitewater. W. H. M. S. 2.00
————— 25.56
IOWA, $190.43.
Alden. Sarah B. Rogers 2.00
Almoral. Cong. Ch. 3.00
Atlantic. Mrs. O. C. Warne 8.00
Cherokee. First Cong. Ch. 15.33
Council Bluffs. Cong. Ch. 24.60
Grinnell. Cong. Ch. 14.85
Lake City. E. P. Longhead 0.50
Marcus. Mary Bosworth 1.00
Muscatine. German Cong. Ch. 3.00
Pleasant Prairie. Cong. Ch., _for Student Aid,
Talladega C._ 4.00
Tabor. Mrs. Sarah J. Spees, deceased, by Prof
E. B. Geer 50.00
Tabor. Miss May Matthews 0.90
Tipton. Cong. Ch. 8.00
Woman’s Home Missionary Union of Iowa, _for
Woman’s Work._
Alden. L. M. S. 2.70
Algona. L. M. S. 5.00
Cedar Falls. L. M. S. 6.05
Central City. L. M. S. 5.00
Grinnell. W. H. M. U. 7.08
Le Mars. L. M. S. 6.50
Mason City. L. M. S. 9.17
McGregor. L. M. S. 6.20
New Hampton. L. M. S. 5.05
Ogden. Mrs. E. S. Lord 2.50
————— 55.25
MINNESOTA, $182.88.
Brownton. Cong. Ch. 1.14
Minneapolis. Plymouth Ch., 28.46; First Cong.
Ch., 14.10; Lyndale Cong. Ch., 8; Silver
Lake Ch., 5; Miss Mary C. Noyes, 1 56.56
Monticello. Cong. Ch. 2.00
Morris. “Friends,” by Miss Nellie S. Ruddock 23.40
Northfield. Cong. Ch. 97.78
Three Lakes. Sab. Sch. of Cong. Ch., 1; Miss
Emma Leonard’s Class, 1 2.00
MISSOURI, $85.46.
Saint Joseph. Tabernacle Cong. Ch., to const.
HENRY KIRK WHITE L. M. 32.60
Saint Louis. Pilgrim Cong. Ch. 40.00
Springfield. Sab. Sch. of First Cong. Ch. 12.86
KANSAS, $4.08.
Fairview. Cong. Ch. 4.08
DAKOTA, $5.00.
Sioux Falls. W. M. A., by Mrs. Sue Fifield,
Ter. Treas. 5.00
NEBRASKA, $54.53.
Bradshaw. Cong. Ch. 4.08
Cortland. Melinda Bowen 10.00
Hay Springs. Cong. Ch. 2.00
Indianola. Cong. Ch. 14.20
McCook. Cong. Ch. 2.25
Stratton. Cong. Ch. 3.00
York. First Cong. Ch. 19.00
OREGON, $3.64.
East Providence. Cong. Ch. 3.64
WYOMING, $15.90.
Cheyenne. First Cong. Ch. 15.90
NEW MEXICO, $5.00.
White Oaks. Rev. R. E. Lund 5.00
COLORADO, $3.00.
Julesburg. Cong. Ch. 3.00
CALIFORNIA, $1,478.90.
Lugonia. First Cong. Ch. 32.00
San Francisco. Receipts of the California
Chinese Mission 1,444.90
Santa Barbara. Milo Sawyer 2.00
KENTUCKY, $157.55.
Lexington. Tuition 157.55
TENNESSEE, $297.42.
Crossville. “Friends” 0.75
Grand View. Tuition 15.00
Jonesboro. Tuition, 5.50; Rent, 50c. 6.00
Knoxville. Cong. Ch., _for Student Aid, Fisk
U._ 5.12
Nashville. Tuition 266.55
Sherwood. Union Ch. 4.00
NORTH CAROLINA, $9.35.
Troy. Cong. Ch. 0.50
Wilmington. Primary Sab. Sch.: Miss Hyde’s
Class, 4.85; Miss Farrington’s, 4, _for
Rosebud Indian M._ 8.85
GEORGIA, $437.27.
Atlanta. Storrs Sch. Tuition 333.45
Atlanta. First Cong. Ch. 2.02
Macon. Tuition 101.80
ALABAMA, 75c.
Pleasant Ridge. Ch. and Sab. Sch., by Rev. E.
Tapley 0.75
MISSISSIPPI, $9.40.
Tougaloo. Y.P. Miss’y Soc. 7.40
Tougaloo. Rent 2.00
TEXAS, $4.00.
Helena. Children’s Miss’y Soc., by Rev. M.
Thompson 4.00
——, 25c.
——. “A Friend,” 0.25
CANADA, $5.00.
Montreal. Charles Alexander 5.00
CHINA, $5.00.
Taiku. Rev. J. B. Thompson 5.00
==========
Donations $10,419.84
Legacies 1,261.03
Tuition 879.85
Rents 2.50
—————————
Total for October $12,563.22
==========
FOR THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY.
Subscriptions for October $37.17
Receipts of the California Chinese Mission,
from May 11th, 1887, to September 30th,
1887. E. Palache, Treas.:
FROM AUXILIARY MISSIONS.—Alameda, Mon. Off’s,
4.—Alturas, Mon. Off’s, 15.—Marysville, Mon.
Off’s, 17.—Ann. Mem. (of which from Mar
Fook, 4; Mar Tin Bow, 5), 29.50.—Oakland,
Japanese, Mon. Off’s, 28.75; M. E. Gospel
Soc., 2.50.—Oroville, Mon. Off’s 11.95; Ann.
Mem’s, 34; “American Friends,” 2.—Petaluma,
Mon. Off’s, 4.75; Ann. Mem’s,
16.—Sacramento, Mon. Off’s, 26; Ann. Mem’s,
8.—San Diego, Mon. Off’s, 2.50.—Santa
Barbara, Mon. Off’s, 14.95; Mrs. E. M.
Shattuck, 10.—Santa Cruz, Mon. Off’s, 16.75;
Ann. Mem’s, 46.—Stockton, Mon. Off’s, 1.95;
Ann. Mem’s, 46; James Jackson,5 342.60
FROM CHURCHES.—Crockett, Cong. Ch.,
2.50.—Lorin, Park Ch., 2.—Los Angeles, First
Cong. Ch. (4 of which from W. R. Blackman,
for A. M.), 145.—Lugonia, Cong. Ch., Edson
D. Hale, 5; Chinese Sab. Sch.,
5.30.—Oakland, First Cong. Ch. (100 of which
from Miss M. L. Newcomb, _for Evan._ Work,
20 from Rev. J. K. McLean, D.D., 5 for
Japanese M., From E. M. Noyes),
205.—Oakland, Plym. Av. Ch. (of which Rev.
J. A. Benton, D.D., 5; Mrs. C. Richards, 5;
Rev. H. E. Jewett, 4; Mrs. M. L. Merritt, 2;
Rev. I. E. Dwinell, D.D., 1; L. M., 75c.),
32.75.—Oakland, Golden Gate Ch., Rev. W. H.
Cooke, 5.—Pomona, First Cong. Ch., “A
Friend,” 5.—Redwood, Cong. Ch., Rev. W. H.
Pascoe, 1.—Rio Vista, Mrs. Thurber and Mrs.
Gardner, Ann. Mem’s, 4; Coll., 15.25.—San
Francisco, Bethany Ch., of which from
American members, J. M. Stockman, 5; Miss
Julia Pickard, 5; Mrs. S. C. Hazelton, 5;
Dr. H. H. Lamont and family, 10.50; Mrs. M.
A. Wilson, 5; L. S. Sherman, 5; Dr. H. C.
French, 2.50; W. J., 2.50; W. D. F. Wiggin,
6; Ann. Mem’s, etc., 35.—Chinese members,
Central Mission, Mon. Off’s, 3; Ann. Mem’s,
etc., 94.50.—Barnes’ Mission Mon. Off’s,
5.65; Ann. Mem’s, 10.—West Mission, Mon.
Off’s, 13.15; Ann. Mem’s, 28.—Saratoga,
Cong. Ch., 35.75.—Sonoma. Cong. Ch.,
10.—Westminster, Cong. Ch., 6 715.35
FROM INDIVIDUALS.—James M. Haven, 25; Hon. F.
F. Low, 25; J. J. Felt, 25; Rev. E. N. Dyer,
25; Hawley Bros., 25; Gen. W. H. Dimond, 10;
Geo. W. Hazelton, 10; Messrs. Redington &
Co., 10; J. J. Vasconcellos, 5; Rev. A. J.
Wells, 5; Rev. Philip Coombe, 5; Mrs. A.
Cognard, 2 172.00
FROM EASTERN FRIENDS.—Bangor, Me., Hon. E. R.
Burpee, 100.—Amherst, Mass., Mrs. Rhoda A.
Lester, 100.—Albany, N.Y., Mission Sab.
Sch., by J. C. Hughson, Supt., 14.—Chicago,
Ill., Mission Sab. Sch., one Class, by I. H.
Morse, 1.55 215.55
————————
Total $1,444.90
========
H. W. HUBBARD, Treasurer.
56 Reade St., N.Y.
* * * * *
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=_Our Country_=: ITS POSSIBLE FUTURE AND PRESENT CRISIS. By
Rev. Josiah Strong, D.D. 12mo; paper, 25 cents; cloth, 50 cents.
“It seems to me the most important book which has been issued in
this decade”.—_Rev. Charles F. Deems, D.D._
=_Evangelistic Work_=, IN PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE. By Rev.
Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. 16mo; cloth, $1.25.
This book will sooner or later find its way into the hands of every
clergyman in the country.
_=Modern Cities=_, AND THEIR RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS. By Rev. Samuel
Lane Loomis. 12mo; cloth, $1.00.
An important and practical work on that most important subject—city
evangelization.
The above books will be sent postpaid on receipt of the price by
THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO., Publishers,
9 Bond Street, New York.
* * * * *
BEST BOOKS FOR
CHRISTIAN WORKERS.
=1888.= _NOW READY._ =1888.=
On the Old and New Testament Lessons.
DR. PENTECOST’S BIBLE STUDIES:
The new Sunday-school Commentary for 1888, by REV. GEO. F.
PENTECOST. D.D.; 344 pages, 12mo. Paper, 50cts.; cloth, $1.00.
This will be found an invaluable help to the study of the
lessons for 1888, and besides has a permanent value to all who
read it. Dr. Pentecost’s work as an evangelist has led him to
closely study every portion of the Bible.
On the New Testament.
LYMAN ABBOTT ON MATTHEW:
An Illustrated Commentary on Matthew for Christian Workers. By
REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D. 8vo, cloth. Price, $1.75.
For sale by booksellers generally, or sent postpaid on receipt of
price.
N. B. Special rates to clubs of 5 to 100. Send for returnable
samples.
A. S. BARNES & CO., Publishers,
111 & 113 William St., New York.
263 & 265 Wabash Avenue, Chicago.
* * * * *
_The Cheapest and Most
Popular Illustrated
Family Religious Paper
Published._
_An Illustrated
Sixteen-page Journal,
Evangelical
and Undenominational.
Issued Every Week._
THE
CHRISTIAN HERALD
AND SIGNS OF OUR TIMES.
Sent One Month
on Trial on Receipt of
Ten Cents.
[Illustration]
A Verbatim Report of the sermon preached by
Dr. TALMAGE
on Sunday morning, invariably appears the following Thursday.
In every issue there is also a portrait of some prominent person,
with biography and pictures; an article on the Prophecies now being
fulfilled; notes on the Sunday-school lesson, by Mrs. M. Baxter; a
summary of the week’s news from all parts of the world.
[Illustration]
Contains also the latest Sunday morning sermon by
Rev. C.H. SPURGEON,
of London, and part of a new and original serial story of thrilling
interest, written specially for this journal, a number of pictures,
short stories, anecdotes, etc.
Single copies, three cents; sold by all newsdealers. If not on
sale, can be ordered. Special terms to Agents and Ministers.
Annual subscription, $1.50. Sample copy free.
(Below is a reduced fac-simile of a card from Dr. Talmage.)
[Illustration]
Address, THE MANAGER, 63 Bible House, New York.
* * * * *
[Illustration:
USE
“Our constant
aim is to make them
the Finest in the World.”]
* * * * *
_Horsford’s_
ACID PHOSPHATE,
[LIQUID]
A preparation of the phosphates that is readily assimilated by the
system.
Especially recommended for Dyspepsia, Mental and Physical
Exhaustion, Indigestion, Headache, Nervousness, Wakefulness,
Impaired Vitality, Etc.
Prescribed and endorsed by physicians of all schools.
It combines well with such stimulants as are necessary to take.
It makes a delicious drink with water and sugar only.
RUMFORD CHEMICAL WORKS, PROVIDENCE, R.I.
For sale by all druggists. Pamphlet free. =_Beware of Imitations._=
* * * * *
PRESS OF HOLT BROTHERS. 119–121 NASSAU ST., N.Y.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious printer’s punctuation errors and omissions have been
corrected. Ditto marks have been replaced with the text they
represent to facilitate eBook alignment. Inconsistent hyphenation
has been retained due to the multiplicity of authors. Period
spellings have been retained.
Changed “larcency” to “larceny” on page 341. (eight for grand
larceny)
Changed “stragetic” to “strategic” on page 356. (suited to become
strategic)
Changed “anuual” to “annual” on page 360. (yield an annual income)
The advertisement for the Christian Herald has been significantly
re-arranged to retain the connection between the portraits of
Dr. Talmage and Rev. Spurgeon and the text describing their
contributions, regardless of screen shape and size.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The American Missionary — Volume 41, No. 12, December, 1887" ***
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