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  VOL. XXXIV.                                            NO. 11.

                                THE
                       AMERICAN MISSIONARY.


                 *       *       *       *       *

               “To the Poor the Gospel is Preached.”

                 *       *       *       *       *


                          NOVEMBER, 1880.

                          ANNUAL MEETING.




                            _CONTENTS_:


  EDITORIAL.

    PARAGRAPHS                                                 321
    FINANCIAL—PROCEEDINGS AT ANNUAL MEETING                    322
    HEROISM AND STATESMANSHIP: Rev. Alex. Hannay, D. D.        325
    GENERAL SURVEY                                             326
    SUMMARY OF TREASURER’S REPORT                              334
    REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND ENLARGEMENT             335
    WHY WE SHOULD ENLARGE: Rev. L. T. Chamberlain, D.D.        336
    SACRIFICIAL LIVING AND GIVING: Rev. A. F. Beard, D.D.      340
    WORKING OUT THE EQUATION: District Secretary Powell        342


  THE FREEDMEN.

    REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON EDUCATIONAL WORK                    344
    CHRISTIAN EDUCATION: Rev. Addison P. Foster                345
    A SAMPLE STATE: Pres. H. S. Deforest                       347
    REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON CHURCH WORK                         350
    OUR DISADVANTAGES AND ADVANTAGES: Field Sup’t
      J. E. Roy, D.D.                                          351
    THE NEED AND THE OPPORTUNITY: Prof. Wm. J.
      Tucker, D.D.                                             354


  AFRICA.

    REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE                                    357
    THE MENDI MISSION: Prof. T. N. Chase                       359
    THE CALL TO THE ASSOCIATION: Rev. H. M. Ladd               363


  THE INDIANS.

    REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE                                    364
    CAUSES OF THE MISMANAGEMENT OF INDIAN AFFAIRS:
      Rev. A. H. Bradford.                                     365
    LETTER FROM GENERAL FISK                                   370


  THE CHINESE.

    REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE                                    372
    THE TWO METHODS: Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.                   372
    OUR GROUNDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT: Rev. Samuel Scoville         375


  RECEIPTS                                                     379


  CONSTITUTION                                                 383


  AIM, STATISTICS, WANTS                                       384


[Illustration]

This number of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY is sent to some persons
whose names are not among our subscribers, with the hope that they
will read it, become interested in the work it represents, and
subscribe for it. Terms, 50 cents per annum. Subscriptions may be
sent to H. W. Hubbard, Esq., Treasurer, 56 Reade Street, New York.


Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., as second-class
matter.




                 American Missionary Association,

                      56 READE STREET, N. Y.

                 *       *       *       *       *


  PRESIDENT.

    HON. E. S. TOBEY, Boston.


  VICE-PRESIDENTS.

    Hon. F. D. PARISH, Ohio.
    Hon. E. D. HOLTON, Wis.
    Hon. WILLIAM CLAFLIN, Mass.
    Rev. STEPHEN THURSTON, D. D., Me.
    Rev. SAMUEL HARRIS, D. D., Ct.
    WM. C. CHAPIN, Esq., R. I.
    Rev. W. T. EUSTIS, D. D., Mass.
    Hon. A. C. BARSTOW, R. I.
    Rev. THATCHER THAYER, D. D., R. I.
    Rev. RAY PALMER, D. D., N. J.
    Rev. EDWARD BEECHER, D. D., N. Y.
    Rev. J. M. STURTEVANT, D. D., Ill.
    Rev. W. W. PATTON, D. D., D. C.
    Hon. SEYMOUR STRAIGHT, La.
    Rev. CYRUS W. WALLACE, D. D., N. H.
    Rev. EDWARD HAWES, D. D., Ct.
    DOUGLAS PUTNAM, Esq., Ohio.
    Hon. THADDEUS FAIRBANKS, Vt.
    Rev. M. M. G. DANA, D. D., Minn.
    Rev. H. W. BEECHER, N. Y.
    Gen. O. O. HOWARD, Washington Ter.
    Rev. G. F. MAGOUN, D. D., Iowa.
    Col. C. G. HAMMOND, Ill.
    EDWARD SPAULDING, M. D., N. H.
    Rev. WM. M. BARBOUR, D. D., Ct.
    Rev. W. L. GAGE, D. D., Ct.
    A. S. HATCH, Esq., N. Y.
    Rev. J. H. FAIRCHILD, D. D., Ohio.
    Rev. H. A. STIMSON, Mass.
    Rev. A. L. STONE, D. D., California.
    Rev. G. H. ATKINSON, D. D., Oregon.
    Rev. J. E. RANKIN, D. D., D. C.
    Rev. A. L. CHAPIN, D. D., Wis.
    S. D. SMITH, Esq., Mass.
    Dea. JOHN C. WHITIN, Mass.
    Hon. J. B. GRINNELL, Iowa.
    Rev. HORACE WINSLOW, Ct.
    Sir PETER COATS, Scotland.
    Rev. HENRY ALLON, D. D., London, Eng.
    WM. E. WHITING, Esq., N. Y.
    J. M. PINKERTON, Esq., Mass.
    E. A. GRAVES, Esq., N. J.
    Rev. F. A. NOBLE, D. D., Ill.
    DANIEL HAND, Esq., Ct.
    A. L. WILLISTON, Esq., Mass.
    Rev. A. F. BEARD, D. D., N. Y.
    FREDERICK BILLINGS, Esq., Vt.
    JOSEPH CARPENTER, Esq., R. I.
    Rev. E. P. GOODWIN, D. D., Ill.
    Rev. C. L. GOODELL, D. D., Mo.
    J. W. SCOVILLE, Esq., Ill.
    E. W. BLATCHFORD, Esq., Ill.
    C. D. TALCOTT, Esq., Ct.
    Rev. JOHN K. MCLEAN, D. D., Cal.
    Rev. RICHARD CORDLEY, D. D., Kansas.
    Rev. W. H. WILLCOX, D. D., Mass.
    Rev. G. B. WILLCOX, D. D., Ill.
    Rev. WM. M. TAYLOR, D. D., N. Y.
    Rev. GEO. M. BOYNTON, Mass.
    Rev. E. B. WEBB, D. D., Mass.
    Hon. C. J. WALKER, Mich.
    Rev. A. H. ROSS, Mich.


  CORRESPONDING SECRETARY.

    REV. M. E. STRIEBY, D. D., _56 Reade Street, N. Y._


  DISTRICT SECRETARIES.

    REV. C. L. WOODWORTH, _Boston_.
    REV. G. D. PIKE, D. D., _New York_.
    REV. JAS. POWELL, _Chicago_.

    H. W. HUBBARD, ESQ., _Treasurer, N. Y._
    REV. M. E. STRIEBY, _Recording Secretary_.


  EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

    ALONZO S. BALL,
    A. S. BARNES,
    C. T. CHRISTENSEN,
    H. L. CLAPP,
    CLINTON B. FISK,
    ADDISON P. FOSTER,
    S. B. HALLIDAY,
    A. J. HAMILTON,
    SAMUEL HOLMES,
    CHARLES A. HULL,
    EDGAR KETCHUM,
    CHAS. L. MEAD,
    SAMUEL S. MARPLES,
    WM. T. PRATT,
    J. A. SHOUDY,
    JOHN H. WASHBURN.


COMMUNICATIONS

relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the
Corresponding Secretary; those relating to the collecting fields to
the District Secretaries; letters for the Editor of the “American
Missionary,” to Rev. C. C. PAINTER, at the New York Office.


DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

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 112 West Washington Street,
Chicago, Ill. A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a
Life Member.




                                THE

                       AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

                 *       *       *       *       *

           VOL. XXXIV.      NOVEMBER, 1880.      NO. 11.

                 *       *       *       *       *




American Missionary Association.

       *       *       *       *       *


This MISSIONARY, as will be seen, is an Annual Meeting number. We
have endeavored to give a glimpse at the things which were said
and done at Norwich. We have been able to give almost nothing
entire, except the briefer of the reports of the Committees. For
Dr. McKenzie’s sermon we must refer to the _Advance_ of Oct. 28;
for Dr. Taylor’s paper, to the _Congregationalist_ Supplement of
Oct. 20; for Mr. Carroll’s review of missions, to the _Independent_
of Oct. 28. For the rest, we have crowded what we could into this
double number of the MISSIONARY.

       *       *       *       *       *

We are under renewed obligations to our denominational newspapers
for their editorial representation at our anniversary, and their
full and discriminating reports of our proceedings.

       *       *       *       *       *

Our Annual Meeting in the Broadway Church, Norwich, awakened, in
the minds of many, encouraging comparison with the Anniversary of
this Association held in the same place 19 years ago. It was in
the fall of 1861. Our country was just settling into the heavy
tug of war. And yet one of the headings of the Annual Report
was: “Enlargement demanded.” See how God has fulfilled that
aspiration in the enlargement of our finances, of our constituency,
of our field, of our work. The $51,819 of that year, upon the
recommendation of the Boston Council in 1865, came up to $250,000
and $3,000 more, and the average of these fifteen years has been
that same sum, $253,000. All the work we then had at the South,
the very first of the kind that was done, was that of the one
missionary and one teacher among the 1,800 “contrabands,” who
at that point had pressed through our lines. But the men of
that meeting, believing that the day of freedom was at hand,
and praying,—in the words of one of Governor Buckingham’s State
papers—that “the country might be carried through the crisis in
such a manner as should forever check the spirit of anarchy,
bring peace to a distracted people, and preserve, strengthen
and perpetuate our National Union,” did solemnly and grandly
resolve “to follow the armies of the United States with faithful
missionaries and teachers”. You know how this Association did
follow those armies across the sunny South, and how it turned its
own forces into an army of occupation, until its field became
identical with the realm of our national flag.

Now this marvelous enlargement, attained within less than two
decades, has brought us to “the cross of our success.” Shall we
take up that cross? Shall we consecrate ourselves to bear the
burden of obligation which this extension of our work lays upon us?
May we discern this call of God for enlargement, even as did the
good men of that day?

The chief officers of this Association, the President, Rev. David
Thurston, the Treasurer, Lewis Tappan, with his brother Arthur, the
Secretaries, George Whipple and S. S. Jocelyn, now on high, were
all here on this platform, bearing up against the discouragements
of the way, and by their great faith inciting the people to “go
forward.” “The workers die, but God carries on the work.”

       *       *       *       *       *


A SUGGESTION—FINANCIAL.

We have passed another milestone in our work. The reports and
extracts from addresses made at the recent annual meeting, and
placed before our constituents in this double number of the
MISSIONARY, tell how far we have progressed, and indicate something
of the demands that the journey beyond is already making upon us.

A perusal of these papers will show that the enthusiasm of earnest
conviction characterized the Norwich meeting. The success of
the past, no less than the present exigent needs of the field
in every department, focused the thought of the meeting on one
thing—enlargement of the work.

But the spirit that pervaded the annual meeting must in some way
or other be carried over to the churches. Enlargement of the work
means necessarily enlargement of resources. There must be at least
an increase of twenty-five per cent. over the contributions of last
year. It is a good time now to lay plans to secure this. We would
suggest to pastors and others having charge of missionary meetings,
that, as far as possible, the next monthly concert be made the
occasion of bringing before the churches the interesting facts
regarding the work of the American Missionary Association presented
at the Norwich meeting. By possessing the minds of the people with
intelligence, and their hearts with interest regarding the work,
the needed increase in contributions, we believe, will be easily
secured.

       *       *       *       *       *


PROCEEDINGS AT THE ANNUAL MEETING.

The thirty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Association had for its
meeting place the commodious Broadway Church in the beautiful
city of Norwich, Conn. It was favored with perfect autumnal days,
bountiful and beautiful hospitality, and a large and sustained
attendance at all its sessions.

President Tobey being detained from attendance, the chair was
occupied by Vice-Presidents Dr. Wm. L. Gage, of Hartford, and Dr.
Wm. W. Patton, of Howard University, and at the closing session by
Dr. L. T. Chamberlain, pastor of the church in which the meetings
were held. Rev. Geo. M. Boynton was elected Secretary, and Revs.
C. P. Osborne and J. H. Isham, Assistant Secretaries of the
meeting. Dr. Langworthy, of Massachusetts, conducted the opening
devotional services. The Treasurer read his report. The report of
the Executive Committee was read by Secretary Strieby, after which
an hour was spent in prayer, reminiscence and thanksgiving.

Dr. Alex. McKenzie, of Cambridge, Mass., preached the Annual
Sermon, his text being Ex. ii.:9—“Take this child away and nurse it
for me.” The thought elaborated with great force and beauty was the
claim of the child, the African race, upon the King’s daughter, the
Church of God.

Wednesday morning the prayer meeting was led by Rev. R. B.
Howard, of Massachusetts. Part of the morning was devoted to
presentations of missionary work outside of the special limits
of the Association. A paper, valuable for its clearness and
comprehensiveness, on “Recent Progress of Protestant Missions,” was
read by Mr. H. K. Carroll, one of the editors of the _Independent_,
in whose care is their excellent missionary column. Mr. Eugene
Reveillaud then addressed the Association, through Rev. Mr. Dodds,
who acted as his interpreter, on the recent remarkable religious
movements in France. Mr. Dodds and Rev. L. W. Bacon spoke briefly
on the same subject.

The Committees to which had been assigned the various departments
of the work as represented in the official papers, then in order
reported, and addresses were made on the subjects of which they
treated.

1. The church work. The report was presented by Prof. Wm. J.
Tucker, D. D., of Andover Theological Seminary, and was sustained
by him in an able and suggestive address, showing the kind of
religion needed by the negro and the progress already made. Dr. Roy
followed with a statement of the disadvantages under which this
department of our work was compelled to labor, and, on the other
hand, of the favorable circumstances by which it was assisted.

2. The Indian report was read by Rev. A. H. Bradford, of New
Jersey, after which General Armstrong spoke of the educational
experiment at Hampton, its success and its needs. A company of the
Indian pupils on their way from their summer homes in Berkshire
County, Mass., added, by their presence on the platform and by
simple exercises, to the impressiveness of the plea. Mr. Bradford
sustained the report made by him in a forcible address, showing the
evils of the treaty and reservation systems, and the need of still
further reform in our civil service.

3. The educational work (South) was reported on Wednesday
evening by Rev. Addison P. Foster, of New Jersey, Chairman of
the Committee. Dr. Wm. M. Taylor, of New York, followed with a
strong plea. Its leading illustration was drawn from the feeding
of the five thousand; when the disciples came to the Master and
said, “Send the multitudes away;” to whom he replied, “They need
not depart, give ye them to eat.” Mr. Foster also sustained the
report read by him. He demonstrated the greatness of the need and
the religious character of the education demanded and sought to be
supplied by our schools.

Thursday morning, after the prayer meeting, which was led by Rev.
F. Williams of Connecticut, Rev. H. S. De Forest, President of
Talladega College, spoke in continuation of the discussion of the
report on education, setting forth the wants of Alabama and the
condition and needs of Talladega. Rev. Wm. E. Brooks, just elected
to the Presidency of Tillotson Institute, in Texas, gave his creed
in regard to the work before him, in a brief address full of
animation and hopefulness. He was followed by Professor Fairchild,
of Berea College, who spoke of the influence of that Institution in
doing away the prejudices of the whole community in which it was
located. Dr. I. P. Warren, of Maine, also spoke briefly. District
Secretary Powell, of Chicago, closed the discussion of this largest
department of the work of the Association.

4. The African Missions were reported on by Rev H. M. Ladd, of
Walton, New York, who followed the report with a brief address.
Professor T. N. Chase, of Atlanta, Georgia, who recently has
returned from a visit of inspection to the Mendi Mission, gave an
account of the field, of the location of the mission, with its
drawbacks and hopeful signs frankly and fully contrasted. Rev.
Lewis Grant followed briefly. Dr. Patton also spoke on this topic.

5. The Finance Committee reported through its Chairman, Rev.
Wm. H. Willcox, D.D., commending the business management of the
Association, and making it clear that the $150,000 recently
received for buildings in no wise lessened the demands upon the
treasury or the dependence of the treasury upon the churches.
Secretary Strieby followed, urging the need of the enlargement of
the work. Dr. A. F. Beard, of New York, read a most suggestive
paper on Giving as an important part of the sacrificial life to
which the Christian is called. He was followed by Dr. Chamberlain
in an earnest plea for justice and restitution to the races which
our race has so deeply wronged, and briefly by President Magoun of
Iowa College.

6. The Chinese report was read on Thursday evening by Dr. Lyman
Abbott, of New York, and supported by him. In his address he
stated fully and frankly the possible dangers arising from
Chinese immigration, and the two methods by which they might be
averted. Rev. Samuel Scoville, of Stamford, Connecticut, followed
in a fervid plea based on the importance of the work, and the
encouragements to its prosecution. Rev. R. B. Howard briefly
followed.

It would not do to omit the witty and eloquent address of Rev. Dr.
Hannay, Secretary of the Congregational Union of England and Wales,
in which he spoke of the heroism of modern missionary effort and
the statesmanship needed and shown in the discussions of the work
of the Association.

The Lord’s Supper was celebrated on Wednesday afternoon, Rev. J.
O. Barrows of Turkey, and Rev. Jonathan Edwards of Massachusetts
officiating.

At the close, resolutions of thanks to the churches and citizens
of Norwich, to the choir, the Committee and the railroads, were
adopted, and responded to by Rev. Wm. S. Palmer, D.D., of Norwich,
chairman of the Committee of Arrangements. The benediction
was pronounced by Rev. Dr. Chamberlain. Thus ended one of the
best attended and best sustained anniversaries of the American
Missionary Association. For changes in the list of Vice-Presidents
and Executive Committee we refer to the first inside page of the
cover.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Second Church was filled below and
above with a congregation of nearly a thousand women. Mrs. Dr. John
A. Rockwell, of Stamford, Conn., presided, and, after the opening
prayer by Mrs. Phipps, read a brief paper on woman’s responsibility
in the nineteenth century.

Miss Stevenson, Miss Sawyer, Mrs. Hickok and Miss Emery, all
familiar with the condition and needs of the colored women of the
South, addressed the meeting, the interest of which was so great
and so well sustained that it re-assembled the next morning. At
that time Miss Douglass, who had labored in Georgia among the
negroes, and Miss Ludlow, of Hampton Institute, Miss Lord and
others spoke, keeping up the interest which had attended the
previous session.

Resolutions expressing hearty sympathy with the work of the A.
M. A., and urging an organization for home mission work in every
church in New England, were adopted at the close of this full and
earnest woman’s meeting.

       *       *       *       *       *


HEROISM AND STATESMANSHIP.

FROM THE ADDRESS OF REV. ALEXANDER HANNAY, D.D., SECRETARY OF THE
CONGREGATIONAL UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES.

We sometimes talk—and I think in a very superficial and wild
way—about heroic ages of certain nationalities, heroic ages of
the church; and there are men who will say it was a heroic age
in which foreign missions were projected, whether in England or
here; that then the men were of great stature, and that they rose
to the opportunities the great living Head of the Church offered
them, and went out and did a giant’s work; and they look down on
this time, and perhaps complain that it is not a heroic age, and
that we cannot have a giant’s test put to us. Now that is all very
flimsy and superficial talk in my judgment. There are epochs in
the history of nations and of churches when great opportunities
occur, the record of which becomes historical, and it seems that
the men who take the prominent part then are men of Alpine bulk
and grandeur of nature—true heroes; and then there comes a time
of equable, dogged, plodding, unhistorical work, and it is said
“The age of heroism and the age of heroes has passed away.”
Brethren, the work of these quiet and plodding ages cannot be done
well, except in the very spirit of the heroic age; and I take
it there is a test of individual character, there is a test of
strength and firmness in men, a strength of heroism demanded for
the quiet, ordinary, fruitful work of times like these, equal, at
least, to that which was needed to originate the new epoch. And I
congratulate the representatives of the American churches assembled
at the meetings of these great societies on the evidence which
has appeared to me, (and I would use no words of mere courtesy in
this, but a simple and unaffected expression of the feeling which
has taken possession of me while I have attended these meetings),
that here they are in the very spirit of their fathers, now gone to
their rest, who said, “We must redeem the pagan nations and bring
them to Christ.”

Another thing that has struck me is this: in listening to what
we have heard here to-day, I have seemed to find not merely a
fulness and vitality of the missionary sentiment, but associated
with that, a keen, political outlook, the statesman’s thought
about the demand of the hour and the special adaptations that are
necessary in service for the carrying out of the great work that
these societies have in view. It is especially encouraging in view
of this, to which no one can be blind, that God is calling America
to a singularly honorable, because singularly difficult, vocation,
in dealing with the races with which her life of intelligence and
faith is here being brought into contact.

It is quite true, sir, that the Head of the Church, as has been
proclaimed from this platform, and from that at Lowell, again and
again, is imposing on you the discipleship of the world, the duty
of carrying the Gospel to all the nations of the earth. It thus
lies upon the Christian nations so honored to stretch out their
hands to lift the other nations up to the plane on which they are
themselves living. But there has been brought to America, it seems
to me, a specially difficult task. She has had thrust within her
national boundary at least three separate races, that are on a
different stage of intellectual development and civilization from
that which she has reached; or if it be too much to say that these
races have been thrust within her boundaries, then that the high
and laudable ambition, which has moved you as a people to keep this
great continent to yourselves, and to take as much more as you
can get, has brought upon you this obligation in connection with
the great races which are to be found on your soil. We are aware
that the spirit and the policy of the world is hounded on, perhaps
now more than ever, by that proud and insolent dictum of science,
falsely so called, ready to be applied to the affairs of races as
to other things—“the survival of the fittest.” No doubt there are
men among you who are ready to take up the spirit of this maxim and
to apply it all around, and to feel, as has been said here about
the dead Indian, that it is the province of the stronger people
simply to overrun, and press out, and hustle over the frontiers, or
over the shores of your continent, the weaker races. Now, sir, as
I understand it, you have been called to this vocation of bringing
up these weaker races, of incorporating them into your own national
life, of clothing them with all the honors and responsibilities
of citizenship, of giving them a full status in the Church and in
the township, of making them what you are yourselves, gradually
scattering their darkness by the light of your intelligence, and
vitalizing their enfeebled and degraded manhood by the overflow of
the surplus energy of your own manhood. There has been given to
you this great task to perform, to show the nations a better way
of dealing with the weaker races than any nation has yet reached;
and if the spirit of the American Missionary Association can but be
breathed into the American people as a whole; if you can control
your political action, if you can determine the issues in your
Congress by that spirit, and control all your dealings with those
peoples by it, one of the very brightest of the many crowns which
will sit on the brow of the American nation will be the crown which
you will win in that service. This is the work to which you are
called.

I have been asked since I came here how I could explain the fact
that the citizens of America seem to meddle so much in politics. I
do not think we of England meddle enough with them. The existence
of a political church among us forces a certain political
contention upon us with which you here have nothing to do. But I
take it that it is one of the highest, most urgent vocations of the
Church of Christ, in this and in all lands, to see to it, that,
so far as her influence shall go, by teaching and by testimony,
by debate, by criticism, by all kinds of fair mental conflict to
penetrate the political life of the nation with the spirit of
Christ. It will not be well with you in America, any more than
with us in England, whether with regard to your work for the black
man and the Indian and the Chinese, or with regard to your own
national stability and progress, until this work has been gone
earnestly about. We can afford to rise above party politics, but we
are bound to preach that righteousness, that truth, that spirit of
self sacrifice, without which neither church nor nation can be made
great and stable.

       *       *       *       *       *


GENERAL SURVEY.

The battle cry of the American Missionary Association now is
ENLARGEMENT. We are called to this by recent encouragements, and by
the demands of the future.


THE ENCOURAGEMENTS OF THE PRESENT.

FINANCES.

We present our _financial_ situation as one of these
encouragements, and first in order, as being special, we mention
the receipt of $150,000, the donation of Mrs. Valeria G. Stone,
of Malden, Mass. This munificent gift has been so confidently
anticipated, that Prof. T. N. Chase has for some time been occupied
in maturing plans for the buildings to be erected by it, so that
the work at all points will be pushed forward with rapidity and
economy. We hope, therefore, at our next Annual Meeting, to
announce that buildings have been erected at several points in
the South that shall afford much needed facilities to overcrowded
schools, and that shall serve as monuments to the liberality and
wisdom of the donor, more fitting, because more useful, than the
most costly shaft or obelisk.

Next in order, but not least in significance, we refer to the
_financial exhibit_ of our Treasurer, with its favorable balance
sheet. The receipts for the year, aside from Mrs. Stone’s donation,
have been $187,480.02, which together with the amount on hand
Sept. 30, 1879 ($1,475.90), makes a total of $188,955.92; and the
expenditures, $188,172.19; thus giving a credit balance of $783.73.

As a part of the gratifying results of the year’s expenditures,
as we had no debt to pay, we can point to _four_ school buildings
newly erected or greatly improved; to _six_ church edifices
completed; to _two_ in the process of erection; to _five_ repaired
and improved; and to _three_ parsonages repaired, one in process
of erection, and one built by the people. Among these new school
buildings we are glad to number the large and commodious edifice
for Tillotson Institute, Austin, Texas, a permanent outpost, we
hope, in the rapidly increasing population of the great South-west.

Such a balance sheet, carrying on the one side our regular work
and these new and greatly needed buildings, yet held in even
poise by the generous donations of our friends, is an argument
for enlargement at other points calling for it with increased
importunity. We dare not be presumptuous, but may we not trust
still further to the God of the poor, and will not his people
sustain us in the trust?


FREEDMEN.

Our _Educational_ work among the Freedmen furnishes the next source
of encouragement.

The _increasing appreciation_ of our schools by both the white
and colored people of the South, is manifest. Georgia continues
to give the substantial assistance of her annual appropriation
of $8,000 to the Atlanta University. A large majority of the
State Board of Examiners attended the anniversary exercises this
year. Their examinations were close, their report to the Governor
wholly favorable, and their recommendation of the continuance of
the appropriation unhesitating, the closing words of their report
being: “Who can doubt the wisdom of continuing the appropriation?”

The State of Mississippi was represented at the Commencement
exercises at Tougaloo by her Superintendent of Education and other
influential citizens, who, after careful inspection, gave public
assurance of State aid. The first instalment, we are confident,
will reach us this fall. Soon after the war, when this State was
under Republican rule, it granted aid to Tougaloo. Under changed
political control, this grant was for a time withheld, but now
while overwhelming Democratic majorities are regularly reported,
the proffer of aid is renewed. The significance of the fact is that
both political parties, much as they may differ on other points,
are agreed in sustaining the Tougaloo University.

Another evidence of such appreciation is found in the attendance
at our school anniversaries, of persons who represent public
sentiment. At Hampton, President Hayes, Secretary Schurz, the
Governor and an ex-Governor of Massachusetts were present; at
Berea, the audience numbered probably 1,800 or 2,000 persons,
two-thirds being of the white race; at Fisk, there was reported “a
crowded house;” at Atlanta, the audience was packed; at Straight
University, New Orleans, it is reported that “the audience, both
in numbers and intelligent appreciation, was one of the best ever
gathered for the purpose in the city.” Our work is not now done in
a corner, nor under the ban of good people, North or South.

The colored people show their appreciation of the schools by an
increased attendance. The roll is larger than last year in the
aggregate, and in nearly all the departments. The total number of
pupils reported this year is 8,052 against 7,207 last year. The
largest proportionate increase is in the theological, grammar and
normal grades.

Our schools are meant to be _religious_. If not, they are as
nothing to us. We watch, therefore, with great jealousy, the
developments in this direction, and we are gratified to be able
to report interesting revivals at Fisk, Tougaloo and Woodbridge,
with conversions and a quiet spiritual work at other schools. The
usefulness and activity of our students as they go out in vacation
or at graduation may be illustrated by facts like these: “One
pupil who is a minister reports over forty hopeful conversions in
connection with his labors during the summer vacation.” Another
writes: “I was assigned to a place where there was no school-house
or church. The people had their meeting under an arbor. I worked
with the patrons until they built me a school-house.” From
Memphis the report is: “Sixteen of our young people have, during
the summer, taught 1,035 day pupils, and very nearly as many
Sunday-school scholars.” The returning pupils at Tougaloo reported
that “the Sunday-school and Temperance work had been vigorously
pushed with excellent results, one of which was over 1,300 signers
to the Temperance pledge.”

Our _Theological Departments_ are the flower of our schools, and
the germinating seed for our church work. They have this year, as
we have seen, increased in the number of their students and in
their efficiency. Talladega reports that “eight young men will
graduate from the Theological Department, all of whom will enter
the Congregational ministry in the South. They are now warmly
welcomed to the pulpits of all denominations.” From New Orleans:
“The Theological Department is larger than in any previous year.
Four of the class are ordained ministers, of whom two are pastors
of churches in New Orleans.” The Theological Department of Howard
University reports that “sixteen students were sent forth to
preach, all of whom go to the South to the Freedmen.”

With such a record before us, a work so useful and that needs
almost indefinite expansion, invites to that expansion by its very
success.

Our _Church Work_ shows a steady and healthful growth. The number
of churches in the South is 73 as against 67 last year; of church
members, 4,961—last year, 4,600.

In the four new churches organized, and in the six new edifices
erected, and two in the process, five repaired, and in the
parsonages improved and built, we see the additions to the outward
scaffolding, within which is going forward the spiritual work
of preparing the polished stones of the sanctuary; and we see
the added force of workmen ascending this scaffolding, in the
ordination of four young men to the Gospel ministry, and in the
reports from our Theological Departments of well trained young men
graduating and entering the service.

That spiritual work is indicated in part by the reports of
precious revivals and ingatherings into the churches. The pastor
at New Orleans writes: “It is my happiness to record one of the
most precious revivals in the history of the Central Church.”
From Shelby Iron Works, Ala: “The meetings closed with twenty-one
conversions reported. Last Sunday fifteen came forward, entered
into covenant with the church, and were baptized on profession
of their faith. Some eight or ten are to unite by letter the
first opportunity, who were not ready to join last Sunday.” From
Savannah, Ga,: “There has been an unusual work of grace among this
people, and the meetings have been quiet and orderly as with a New
England congregation.”

We have been impressed this year with the unusual mention in the
reports from the churches of the attendance and interest _in the
prayer meetings_. If the prayer meeting is the pulse of the church,
we should infer that the life blood flows warmly from the heart in
our churches in the South.

The disposition for _self help_ is a plant of slow growth among
a people marvelous for their faith and passive endurance, but
little used to forethought and activity. We have felt the need of
developing “this grace also,” and have, therefore, taken unusual
pains to induce the churches to aid more fully in the support of
their pastors. The responses have exceeded our expectations; in
almost every instance the additional sum we have named has been
given, and in some instances more.

Other facts of the same purport are seen in such extracts as
these, culled from the “Detailed Report.” The pastor of the church
in Atlanta proposed that the _church debt_ should be paid off.
With a little help from the North, and from the professors of the
University, it was done, making about $563 raised by the church,
aside from current expenses, in six months. They have also aided in
securing a fine bell of 800 lbs. The young church at Marietta, Ga.,
raised $300 for their new church edifice. In a church collection
for the American Missionary Association in Marion, one man put in
$5, being one-tenth of his crop—a bale of cotton. A man and his
wife are sustaining their daughter in the school at Tougaloo with
the money saved on snuff and tobacco since they signed the pledge.
The church at Wilmington, N. C., claims to be the banner church
among the constituents of the American Board, having given more
than any other, according to number and means, as judged by the
report of Dr. Alden.

The _Sunday-Schools_, as reported, show a slight increase in
numbers, but the reports are not full, and hence the figures do
not properly represent the strength of this arm of the service.
Revivals have occurred in some of the schools. The _Temperance
cause_ holds its place in the hearts and efforts of our workers in
the South. In the churches, schools, mission schools, and by the
teachers who go out in vacation, is the good work pushed forward.

The _Conferences_ in the South have held their meetings, and Dr.
Roy, who was enabled to attend several of them, was delighted with
the excellence of the sermons and papers and the ability of the
discussions, as well as with the fervor of spiritual life. Some
of the Conferences appointed delegates to the National Council.
A marked feature at one of these meetings—that of the Alabama
Conference at Selma—was the social and religious welcome it
received from the white families and churches. Dr. Roy thus reports
it:

“You have been told of the new era in our work, marked by the
opening of half a dozen of the homes of the first families in
Selma, Alabama, for the entertainment of the white members of the
Conference. It was not merely the offer of their houses as eating
and sleeping places, but it was a delicate and attentive Christian
hospitality, which invited the guests around from home to home in
order to the extension of acquaintance. When grateful words were
said to Major Joseph Hardie for having led the way, he answered
that that gave him too much credit; that the places had all been
opened cheerfully, and that, after the sessions were over, other
families had said: ‘Why didn’t you give us a chance? We would
like to have had some of those folks.’ Another host, referring
to the mutual satisfaction, said: ‘It is just because we are
getting better acquainted.’ In the same line was the opening of
the Presbyterian pulpit, morning and night. The exercises of the
Conference were of a high order and well sustained throughout. It
was much like one of the Western General Associations.”


THE INDIANS.

The experiment of educating Indian youth at Hampton and Carlisle
is a confirmed success. We have in the office two pictures—one
representing a company of these young Indians as they came to
Hampton, in their blankets and with their stolid countenances, and
the other taken after they had spent a year in the school. The
change in dress is less significant than the bright and intelligent
look of the faces in the last picture. A visit among them, as
they are engaged in the school-room and at various mechanical
employments, accounts for the change. The joint education of the
two races, the black and the red, seems helpful to both.

Four agencies, the same number as last year, are under our
nomination, and we have favorable reports from each. At the Lake
Superior Agency some years ago, the Indians wanted blankets, beads
and trinkets; now they want a boarding school. At Fort Berthold,
40 new houses were built this season; at the Sisseton Agency,
the Indians dress entirely in citizen’s clothing, live in log
houses and cultivate 4,025 acres of land, and the scholars in the
boarding and day schools show marked improvement; at the S’Kokomish
Agency, the morals, manners, health and homes of the Indians are
improving—most of the houses have been ceiled and furnished with
good, tight floors. More land has been cleared, and 1,000 fruit
trees have been set out.


CHINESE IN AMERICA.

Of our mission on the Pacific coast, the efficient Superintendent,
Rev. W. C. Pond, says that not only more, but better work has been
done this year than ever before. The total enrolment of pupils is
67 greater than last year, but the most marked gains are in those
reported as having ceased from idol-worship, and as giving evidence
of conversion; in the former, 180 against 137 last year, and in the
latter, 127 against 84.


AFRICA.

The aspect of our _Mendi Mission_, in a surface survey, seems
discouraging. A deeper view discloses one great element of success,
and moreover reveals lessons of wisdom that will be of much more
value than any transient success.

After maintaining this mission for 30 years with white
missionaries, with a rapid death-rate and meagre results,
Providence seemed to open to us a plan for using the Freedmen of
America, trained in our schools, as missionaries to Africa. Three
years since a company was sent out, with Rev. Floyd Snelson as
a leader. His age and experience guided the mission well, and
the next year new recruits were added. But the failure of Mrs.
Snelson’s health compelled him to return with her to this country.
The management fell into younger and less experienced hands, and
dissensions and complaints ensued. Prof. T. N. Chase, of Atlanta
University, accepted our invitation to visit and inspect the
mission. Accompanied by Rev. Jos. E. Smith, the pastor of our
church in Chattanooga, he spent two months at the mission, making
most careful examinations, the result of which he embodies in an
extended report. It may suffice here to say that Mr. Chase found
many things in an unsatisfactory condition, chargeable in some
degree to moral delinquency, but more largely to immaturity of
experience and of judgment.

From Mr. Chase’s report and our own knowledge of the affairs of the
mission, we reach these results:

1. The colored man of America _can_ endure the climate of western
tropical Africa. We have sent to the Mendi Mission 17 persons of
that race—seven men, five women and five children. Of this number
_not one man has died_, and _but one_ has been compelled to leave
on account of ill-health; nor have any of these, with this one
exception, suffered from the African fever so as to hinder their
work, except temporarily. The children were not sick; of the women,
one died, the wife of Dr. James. Mrs. Miller has been compelled
to return as far as England for the recovery of health. In the
single case of death and in the three of failure in health, the
cause can be traced to the germs of disease in the constitution,
existing there prior to leaving America; but in every case of a
sound constitution, good health has been maintained. In this we see
hopeful evidence that, with careful previous medical examination,
the _colored people of America can furnish missionaries for
tropical Africa capable of enduring the climate and of rendering
active service as missionaries_—a result full of encouragement.

2. Due allowance must be made for the inadequate training of the
young colored missionary. The Anglo-Saxon race has behind it 17
centuries of culture; the negro race in America, 17 years. This
should make a difference as to the races. The white candidate for
the post of missionary was born in a Christian home, reared in a
Christian community, educated in early days with the best culture
of school and church, enjoyed afterwards the training of the best
college and seminary, with their full corps of highly educated
professors, with all the advantages of large libraries, apparatus
and lectures; and above all, that unconscious education that comes
from constant contact with practical men and cultured society. The
colored candidate was born a slave, lived in the slave quarters
with no refinements of home or surroundings; his education was in
our young and imperfectly equipped schools and colleges, and his
knowledge of the world is bounded by this limited horizon. This
should make much difference with the individual. Perhaps these
facts on both sides have not been duly considered. They will
hereafter be fully recognized by us, and will lead us to place the
management of our African mission for a time in charge of a white
superintendent. They will also dictate a great deal of caution in
selecting candidates for that field. We may send fewer at first; we
will try to send those that are best prepared.

3. Our experiment with colored missionaries in West Africa has
not been discouraging when compared with our former efforts there
with white missionaries, or with those of other societies in other
parts of Africa. A new impulse has been given to African Missions
by the startling discoveries of Stanley and others, and if the
Christian world expects these new missions to be crowned with
immediate success, it will soon be undeceived. There, as elsewhere,
missions must furnish heroes and martyrs, must fight battles,
suffer defeats, win victories and endure hardness. Leviathan in the
African jungle is not easily tamed, and the efforts which would
overcome the barbarism which has for ages defied civilization, and
even discovery, will test the “perseverance of the saints.”

In the missions growing out of the new impulse for Tropical Africa
discouragement and trial have been nearly everywhere encountered.
Of the sixteen missionaries sent so promptly by the Church
Missionary Society to establish the mission in Mtesa’s kingdom,
some have died, some have returned on account of sickness, and the
whole work is now in abeyance. The mission of the London Missionary
Society at Ujiji is still pushed forward, yet with much sickness
and several deaths, among which is numbered that of the lamented
Secretary Mullens. The Livingstonia Mission on Lake Nyassa is
compelled to abandon its first station on account of the tsetse
fly. The Scotch Blantyre Mission has had the sad experience of
wrongs practiced by the missionaries upon the natives, attracting
the attention and stirring the sorrow of Great Britain.

We are not alone, then, in the trials of our African Mission,
nor must we, more than others, be discouraged. Africa was not
forgotten in the Redeemer’s plan. His people must meet and overcome
difficulties. The assurance that the colored American can endure
the African climate is worth all the effort we have made.


THE DEMANDS OF THE FUTURE.

1. Enlargement in the work already in hand among the _Freedmen_.

The noble gift of Mrs. Stone, while supplying some of the great
and most pressing wants in certain directions, creates new ones
in others. It gives additional buildings, but these mean more
students, more teachers, more student aid, more libraries, and more
apparatus.

Buildings are needed where the gift of Mrs. Stone, great as it
is, does not reach—needed as imperiously as where it does. At
Talladega, the original building erected before the war at a cost
of $30,000, bought by us after the war, used and oft repaired,
is thus described by President DeForest: “The walls are staunch,
but the roof leaks, and within and without, from foundation to
bell-tower, it needs repair. It is estimated that $3,000 are
required for this purpose.” A house is also needed as a home for
the President, to save room for teachers and pupils in the main
buildings. In addition to the $15,000 from the Stone donation,
Talladega needs for these buildings and repairs, $10,000. The
wants of Tougaloo are even more pressing. The crowd of students
defies all means of accommodation. Temporary barracks have been
erected, out-buildings and garrets have been used as lodging
places, and yet students have been turned away for want of room.
The buildings now on the ground need extensive repairs to save them
from decay, and additions should be made to the farm buildings to
give adequate shelter to the stock and products of the 500 acres of
land connected with the school. But what shall we more say? for the
time would fail us to tell of the needs of Wilmington, N. C., of
Greenwood and Orangeburg, S. C., Mobile, Montgomery and Athens, Ala.

Besides all this we ought to establish, at some eligible point
in North Carolina, a chartered institution of higher grade, with
a boarding department. We have for a long while felt the need of
this, and have only been deterred by the lack of means. We ought
also to found an institution in Arkansas, similar to that in
Austin, Texas. We are just beginning efforts among the Refugees
in Kansas, and these should be greatly increased, and include
churches, schools and lady missionaries.

_Endowments_ are an absolute necessity for our institutions at the
South. Here are eight institutions, carefully managed, efficient in
work, and furnished with buildings equal in number and size with
some at the West of much greater age. These Western schools have
in most instances the nucleus of an endowment, if not a complete
one. Those in the South need endowments much more, and have almost
nothing of the sort.

2. But enlargement should far transcend the limits of the work
already in hand among the Freedmen. We take it for granted that
every portion of the population of this country must have equal
facilities open to it for education and advancement. No part of
that population is so inadequately supplied as the four and a half
millions of colored people in the South. There were in 1875, in
this country, 1,932 schools of grades above the primary. Of this
whole number, the four and a half millions of colored people have
access to but 91! It must be borne in mind that in this number
of schools (1,932) Harvard, Yale and Oberlin are but units, with
their ample endowments, teachers of finest culture, libraries and
apparatus of the best and largest; and to balance them the colored
people can only point to a few new and inadequately furnished
schools, of which those of this Association are among the best.

There were in 1875 in this country, 3,647 libraries, numbering 300
volumes and upwards in each. Of that number, the colored people of
the South have access to 25! The same disparity is found here in
regard to the size and quality of the libraries open to them as in
regard to the schools and colleges.

It will not do to say that these people need only primary schools.
No race can rise unless it has leaders who can teach and encourage
the masses; nor will it suffice to say that the few seeking
special advantages can go to colleges at the North. The people of
the West cannot send their sons to Eastern colleges in adequate
numbers. The West has, and must have, its own colleges. How can the
poor ex-slaves of the South send their children to the North for
education, when most of them have a life struggle with the wolf at
the door?

Here, then, are glimpses at the great duty that this nation owes
to the Freedmen for its own sake as well as theirs. But that duty
involves enlargement, fifty-fold, of what is now done for them.

3. The work of the A.M.A. _beyond the South_ needs enlarging.

The Chinese schools in California need the permanency of having
buildings under their own control, and Bro. Pond earnestly desires
the means to reach the “Chinese in the mines.”

The work of educating Indians at the East should be extended.
It is not a substitute for schooling among the tribes; it helps
it. Capt. Pratt, who inaugurated this movement in Hampton, and
who now conducts the large Government school for Indian youth at
Carlisle, is very earnest that more—much more—should be done in
this direction. The power of the movement, in his opinion, will
be measured by its extent. He is anxious that every school of the
American Missionary Association in the South should be prepared to
receive Indians. This broad plan deserves the careful thought of
the Association, but if adopted, it will necessitate not a little
enlargement of accommodations and of the teaching force.

But Africa! what does the future ask at our hands in her behalf?
When we recall the struggles of the past for her enslaved children
in this country, when we think of the graves of our missionaries
in the Mendi country, and when we hear her children in our schools
asking to be sent thither, we feel called to a new and strong
effort to equip completely the mission on the West coast. The East
coast calls to us also. The Arthington Mission, though we have
moved cautiously, is neither forgotten nor abandoned. The generous
offer of Mr. Arthington still remains; considerable sums have been
collected in this country and in Great Britain, and as soon as the
adequate amount ($50,000) can be secured, we shall feel called to
go forward.

From all these considerations, we ask for a new and wide
enlargement of our work. The duty to America and to Africa demands
it. Especially do we urge that America owes it to its own safety
and honor that it shall adequately care for the Freedmen. But who
will take the lead in the movement to enlarge? The Pilgrims and
Puritans of New England were the first to plant liberty, education
and religion on these shores; they were on the crest of the wave
that carried these blessings across the continent to the Pacific
slope; they were foremost in the great anti-slavery struggle; they
were in the van of the armies that fought for the unity of the
nation and the freedom of the slave; they were the first, through
this Association, to take the school and the Gospel to the Freedmen
at Fortress Monroe; and who but they should see the great need of
the hour, and step forth to meet it?

       *       *       *       *       *


SUMMARY OF THE TREASURER’S REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDING SEPT. 30TH,
1880.


                               RECEIPTS.

  From Churches, Sabbath Schools and
    Individuals for General Fund           $99,860.26
  Churches, S. Schs. and Ind’v’ls,
    for Institutions and Missions           27,790.30
  Estates for General Fund       24,599.44
  Estates for Institutions          862.50——25,461.94
  Income of Sundry Funds                     9,070.26
  Tuition and Public School Fund            15,119.59
  Rent                                         664.08
  Sales                                        378.18
                                           ——————————$178,344.61
  Donations for Tillotson C. and N. Institute
    Building                                            7,594.65
  Donations for Athens School Building, Ala.            1,096.01
  Donations for Colored Refugees, Kansas                  444.75
                                                      ——————————
                                                      187,480.02
      Balance on hand. Sept. 30th, 1879                 1,475.90
                                                      ——————————$188,955.92
                                                                ———————————

                               EXPENSES.

  THE FREEDMEN.—For Church and Educational Work      $130,929.82
  THE CHINESE.—Supt., Teachers and School Expenses      8,020.35
  THE INDIANS.—Missionaries and Teachers and
    Student Aid                                         1,953.32
  FOREIGN MISSIONS.—Mendi Mission           11,802.78
                    Jamaica Mission            450.00
                                            —————————  12,252.78
  PUBLICATIONS.—American Missionary, Annual
    Report, &c.                                         9,063.30
  COST OF COLLECTING FUNDS.—Boston Office    5,586.66
                            Chicago Office   3,612.47
                            Other Agencies   4,193.56
                                           ——————————  13,392.69
  COST OF ADMINISTRATION.—
             Department of Correspondence    6,401.54
             Department of Treasury          4,127.73
                                           ——————————  10,529.27
  MISCELLANEOUS.—Estates and Legacies           99.11
             Annual Meeting                  1,023.96
             Amounts paid Annuitants—balance   852.67
             Donations returned                 54.92
                                           ——————————   2,030.66
                                                      ——————————
                                                      188,172.19
            Balance on hand, Sept. 30, 1880               783.73
                                                      ——————————
                                                      188,955.92
                                                      ==========
  STONE FUND.—Amount received from Mrs. Valeria
    G. Stone at the hands of Trustees     $150,000.00
  ARTHINGTON MISSION.—Donations received
    from Oct. 1st to Sept. 30th,             6,576.48
  AVERY FUND.—Amount received from Executor    408.92

         *       *       *       *       *

The receipts of Berea College, Hampton N. and A. Institute, and
Atlanta University, are added below, as presenting at one view the
contributions of the same constituency for the general work in
which the Association is engaged.

  Receipts of the A. M. A.                           $187,480.02
  Hampton N. & A. Inst.                                57,014.73
  Atlanta University, State Appropriation               8,000.00
  Berea College                                        37,607.06
                                                   —————————————$290,101.81

       *       *       *       *       *


REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND ENLARGEMENT.

Your Committee on Finance and Enlargement, to whom was referred the
financial exhibit of the Association for the fiscal year ending
Sept. 30, 1880, as presented by the Treasurer, beg leave to report
that they have examined the accounts and found them duly audited.
These accounts include a minute and detailed statement of receipts
and expenditures, a list of the endowments, and also a full account
of the property owned by the Association, and were accompanied by
the account books of the Treasurer.

We are unanimous in vouching for the faithfulness and economy which
characterize all branches of the financial administration. Nor
can we refrain from a word of most emphatic commendation of the
thorough explicitness of the Association’s financial statement.

But passing from this to the substance of the Report, we notice
three points suggested by it which seem to call for special mention.

In the first place, it is ground for gratitude and thanksgiving
that the year closes without leaving us burdened with a debt. On
the contrary, there is a balance in the treasury of nearly eight
hundred dollars. Not a very large surplus, surely, but the fact
that the year’s work has been done and left us anything besides a
disheartening deficiency, is itself occasion for thankfulness and
cheer.

In the second place, there is ground for anxiety, lest the
financial condition of the Association should be misunderstood. It
is well known that a gift of $150,000 has recently come into its
treasury. This fact, it is to be feared, has given, or may give,
the impression that the Association is, for the present at least,
in no further need of funds. We have already heard of one generous
friend who has withheld an intended gift through such an entire
misapprehension. And lest others should be similarly misled, it
seems to us important not only to state, but to emphasize the fact,
that this large gift _brings no relief whatever to the usual wants
of the Association_. It is not designed to do the work which the
Association is doing. This money is wholly appropriated to the
erection of new buildings for the increasing numbers of colored
students. It is to do nothing whatever towards meeting the ordinary
expenses of the Association’s work; nothing whatever towards
diminishing the necessity of aid which the Association is compelled
to seek from the Christian and the philanthropist. It cannot be
too clearly seen or too widely known, that so far as any augmented
power for doing its proper work is concerned, the Association is
not one whit better off for this gift of $150,000 than it would be
if not a dollar of it had been given. But,

In the third place, this gift is itself a trumpet call for the
enlargement of the Association’s resources and work. It is simply
to erect new buildings for Fisk and Atlanta, at Talladega, New
Orleans and Tougaloo. These buildings will soon be filled with
students. That means the necessity for more teachers and more
pecuniary aid to those who need it. It means increased work for
the Association, and the necessity of increased funds with which
to do the work. In one word, it means _expansion_, _enlargement_.
God, Himself, is opening before us new furrows in hitherto untilled
fields. That is His own call upon us for more seed-corn, and more
labor for the enlarging harvest. He is building for us new homes
for the development of mental culture and Christian character among
the colored people of the South. Each one of these is a Divine
summons for such co-operation on our part as is necessary for the
best accomplishment of His designs.

In conclusion, therefore, your Committee respectfully suggest the
adoption of the following resolution:

“_Resolved_, While most gratefully acknowledging the prosperity
that has crowned our work through another year, we recognize and
accept that prosperity as itself a call from God for still larger
and more earnest work.”

                                      W. H. WILLCOX, _Chairman_.

       *       *       *       *       *


WHY WE SHOULD ENLARGE.

REV. L. T. CHAMBERLAIN, D.D., NORWICH, CONN.

I have been invited to the privilege of additionally sustaining
the report of your Committee in their recommendation of an
enlargement of the work of this Association; and, as a member of
that Committee, I may say that we could not possibly have reported
otherwise than we did. I could not have read the record of this
last year, and have seen its events as our honored Secretary has
presented them, without feeling that the movement must be toward an
increase in every department.

Sir, you were entirely right in drawing your inspiration in part
from the wonderful past. I, too, have recalled the years gone by,
and they seem to say, as with one voice, that the time has come for
the yet greater effort. My brethren, what a history sweeps back
from this thirty-fourth anniversary, to the day when, in this same
Commonwealth, the Amistad captives were bravely released, and an
additional impulse was given to the anti-slavery sentiment of the
participants! At that hour, the men who afterwards founded this
Association, looked out on a tumultuous sea of discouragements.
Themselves only a handful; the press absolutely unfriendly; the
market-place contemptuous; the State frowning; the Church in
general incredulous and silent; scarcely anything anywhere that
did not wear a hostile front. And then, at last, one missionary
commissioned and one teacher sent out; one paper persuaded into
partial support; a few dollars given into the treasury; and a few
steadfast souls pledging themselves to maintain the cause. But,
to-day, what a different record! A great, honored organization,
with an annual income approaching the fifth of a million;
three hundred and thirty ministers, missionaries and teachers;
seventy-six mission, and yet, for the most part, self-sustaining
churches; more than five thousand intelligent church members, and
nearly ten thousand pupils in the Sunday-schools; seventy-one
common schools, normal schools, colleges and theological
seminaries, with more than ten thousand eager and advancing
students. An organization that takes effective hold on four
millions of Freedmen, and then enlarges its bounds to take in the
resident and emigrant Chinese, and the tribes of original Indians.
An organization able to inspire the churches with missionary zeal,
and making even our national Government respect its requests and
its advice.

What a review is that, and almost within the space of a single
generation. The success that has already been accomplished is
reason why, at the very outset, we may call you to a hopeful and an
enlarged interest in this work; for history is telling us to-day,
if she tells us anything, that it is not a hopeless thing to
attempt to provide efficiently for all the despised of our land.
And, let me say, I should not hesitate to make that hopeful appeal,
if there were no such glowing record to present. I would not change
the tone of it, though the years rolled back, and you and I stood
to-day where those men stood thirty and four years ago; for Christ
has said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” and has said
distinctly that our neighbors are pre-eminently those who have
fallen among thieves and are lying wounded by the way. That simple
command is enough to assure us that our labor shall not be in vain.
You and I know whom we have believed, and we know that whatever He
commands is commanded in infinite wisdom and infinite love. We know
that what He says we are to do, it is possible to do, and that in
some way it shall be done. The stars in their courses, and earth,
and hell, may fight against Christ, but sooner or later He is to
reign.

Therefore, when the Master calls us, his requirement is enough to
warrant us in our advance. On that simple requirement, backed by,
and reflected in, the impulse of every regenerate soul, you may
ground your missionary motive. That is the corner-stone on which,
with abiding cheer and infinite courage, the missionary, and every
friend of missions, may build forever. Therefore, while we have
this firm foundation, and all the more that we have it, it is for
us to note the actual progress that has been made. While we recur
to these absolute considerations, let us not, through any attempt
at unnecessary heroism, forget the fulfillment that has already
been vouchsafed to the promise and to the command of Christ.

And now that I am speaking of motives, let me say that I cannot
conceal my feeling that, with special and peculiarly appealing
considerations, God is binding upon us the work for the so-called
alien races of this country. Let me illustrate. Here, for
example, are four millions of _Freedmen_—strange designation for
the inhabitants of a Republic that has already celebrated its
centennial! Suppose that a stranger to our history should ask us
the meaning of it, what must be our confession? Why this, and
nothing else: that the ancestors of those Freedmen, by fraud, and
violence were wrested from their distant and native land; that
for two centuries they were held in sheer and open bondage; that
they were denied the commonest rights of humanity; bought and
sold like beasts of the field; debarred from the privileges of
education and true Christian instruction; that, while their toil
went to build the colleges and schools and churches of the dominant
race, they were left without any reward but the desolation of
their bondage; that, when they piteously plead, their appeal was
met with derision; that, when they respectfully protested, the
protest was crushed back with blows and curses; that when they
ventured to resist, the resistance was answered unto death, with
lashes and bullets and the fangs of pursuing hounds; that manhood
was deliberately degraded among them; womanhood was well-nigh
obliterated; truthfulness was made dangerous for them, and chastity
absolutely impossible; and then at last, that to keep them in such
a bondage, the whole power of the National Government was pledged
and put forth; that, by Constitution interpreted and special laws
enacted, by military might and civic decree, by private volition
and public compulsion, it came to pass that there was not one
spot of safety for them in all the land over which floated the
flag of their country; that, in their effort to escape from their
bondage, not a single door might lawfully be opened to them, nor
any hearth-stone give them shelter; but, taking the pole-star for
their guide, they must flee from the Republic to the land of a king
or queen.

Pardon me that I have opened the record. I confess it makes me
sick at heart. With you I wish it had never been enacted; with you
I wish it might be buried to-day in the deepest depths of oblivion.
But I tell you, when we stand, as we do practically to-day, in the
face of those men, and in the face of God who made us and them
of one image and of one blood, we have no right to forget that
guilty past. It is one of the mighty motives that are still to be
invoked in their behalf. Like the blood of Abel, it cries to us
for atonement. It says to us to-day, “In your nation, aided and
abetted by you or your fathers, under your flag, that wrong was
inflicted; and until that wrong is thoroughly righted, neither the
remembrance nor the cry can be allowed to pass.” It says that you
owe them every reparation in your power; that they have a valid
lien on every dollar of your property, and on every possible degree
of your culture. It is not enough that you have made them free—to
have denied that would have been to perpetuate the wrong itself.
It is not enough that you have given them the franchise—that in
itself were a barren gift. Give them the rather that manhood that
was their birth-right withheld. Lift them up, if you can, into
truthfulness and purity, intelligence and industry; make them free
with the freedom of the Gospel of Christ, and then that past may be
forgotten.

And brethren, I make an appeal of that same sort to-day for the
Indian and the Chinese;—the Indian, abused, deceived, made a fool
of; a nominally Christian civilization degrading him beyond even
his original degradation. And the Chinese, in that part of the land
where they have chosen to dwell, despised, defrauded, spit upon.
My claim is that whatever appeal you propose to disregard, it is
not becoming for you to turn a deaf ear to those whom you have so
foully wronged.

Moreover,—and I beg you to ponder this also,—you owe a debt of
gratitude, in the case of the Freedmen at least,—with whom this
Association is chiefly concerned,—that has not yet been discharged.
And now, is it imagined that I am speaking of something far-fetched
and fanciful? Does any body suppose that I am about to summon you
by a visionary and distant appeal? Or, if anyone guess wherein
it is claimed that that debt consists, is it supposed that time
has made that claim no longer valid? Some may so reflect; I
cannot share the feeling, for I cannot so easily forget the days
and the months when the scales of our national destiny hung in
equipoise, or seemed to vibrate towards the nation’s overthrow. It
seems incredible, I know, but such was the fact. We had put forth
what appeared to us well-nigh the last resource for the national
defense; on every side the prospect was dark; it seemed sometimes
as if we should be driven to question whether we were not doomed
to overthrow—the heavens black above us, the billows rolling, and
the very earth beneath our feet trembling and being moved. For the
enemy smote us in the field and the traitor betrayed us at home.
And you remember with what unspeakable thankfulness we then saw
those who had suffered so much at the nation’s hands coming to our
rescue, forgetting their personal wrongs, and fighting for the flag
that had hitherto been to them an object of dread. You remember
with what eagerness we offered them at last their freedom, lest
the enemy should offer it to them before us. Why, what were we
not willing to pledge, and to do, for the Freedmen in those days?
We felt that they were helping us to save this Republic, and that
the balance of power was in their hands; and did we mistake? Does
history say that in the excitement we misread the facts? No, the
after events proved the correctness of our thought; and it stands
written in simple, imperishable lines to-day, that among the
saviors of the country, there were none more deserving than those
of darker skin, who forgot their wrongs and stood in the breach for
you and me.

       *       *       *       *       *

And so it comes to pass that, not only in obedience to the command
of Christ but by _the threefold consideration_ of _repairing a
wrong_, and _paying a debt_, and _averting a danger_, we are
called to the continuance and the enlargement of the work of this
Association.

I have suggested two lines of action, parallel and coincident; the
one educational, and the other strictly religious. I want to say
to you now, that the inspiration for those movements must come
in large measure from the Christian North; for, if you ask the
South to be wholly responsible for her own improvement, then you
ask reformation to precede itself, and a disordered and perverse
sentiment to be its own awakener and its own corrective. Should
you suppose that a nation of Freedmen, after two centuries of
bondage, would have the sufficient desire for improvement, not to
say the means adequate for its accomplishment? I deem it to be
perfectly clear that this Association is right in thinking that one
great part of its work is in laying the foundations, and affording
the facilities, for increased instruction among the Freedmen.
It is undoubted good sense, I take it, to establish here and
there a common school, and here and there a normal school, and a
moderate number of colleges, to the end that in them, during this
formative period of the Freedman’s life, you may train his future
teachers,—not attempting to make the way of mental improvement
over-easy; not attempting any pampering plan of encouragement;
but simply affording opportunity to those who will struggle and
practice self-denial. God bless the institutions at Hampton, and
Carlisle, and Berea, and Nashville, and Atlanta, and Talladega,
and New Orleans, and Tougaloo, and that institution that has the
good fortune, sir, to have you for its presiding officer (Howard
University). For, do you know it? the former students of those very
institutions are to-day teaching one hundred thousand of their own
countrymen.

And then the religious work, the saving of souls—what a call for
enlargement in that work! for that underlies even the educational
work. Every teacher I know is an ardent and an earnest worker for
Christ, and all your attempt is to make the way to education,
the way to the cross of Christ; but, besides that, there is the
preaching of the Gospel, and the gathering of churches, and the
opening of Sunday-schools. I used to wonder why you asked us to
preach to the Freedmen. Were they not already religious? Were they
not gathered in churches? But I came to know the terrible fact
that religion among the Freedmen, was not the religion of the
understanding mind and the consecrated heart, but, rather, in the
olden time, of uninstructed impulse and uncontrollable passion; and
to-day the prevailing testimony concerning those old-time churches
is, that in them religion is not founded on a regenerate, or even a
moral, life.

What a task then, to lift up those millions—more difficult, I
sometimes think, than the conversion of the original heathen! And
yet it must be done—done for the sake of the souls who else will
perish in their sins; done for the sake of this country that we
love; done, first and last and always, by thoroughly Christian
instrumentalities; and yet done under motives that take hold on the
concerns of our national welfare. Therefore, my friends, count all
the past progress in this direction only the signal and the token
of your future success and triumph. If to-day the doors are opened
wide, let us, in the Master’s name, go up and possess this land for
Him, and for the future of our united and Christian Republic.

So much for this land. And what shall I say of Africa, that dark
continent beyond the seas? I think of Africa, and the longing burns
in my soul, that out of the uplifted negroes there may speedily be
trained those who shall carry Divine light into the very depths
of her darkness. Is not Africa actually reaching out her hands to
this Association, and to us who have in our care so many of her
children? You say, ‘the last to be enlightened.’ I grant it; but,
I assure you, God has a great future for that continent. Who shall
say that there, there will not yet be developed a civilization
and a manifestation of Christianity, the most bountiful, the most
beautiful, of them all?

Ah, my friends, the cry comes to us not merely from Africa! This
call for enlargement is wider still; it is from the four quarters
of the globe. For the work is all one; and you will find, if you
think of it, that the solidarity of the race, the oneness of the
kingdom of Christ, is in the appeal that is made through this
Association. The considerations of an illimitable future join with
those of the present. The new heavens and the new earth await our
preparation for their advent. Christ, in His kingly glory, is
summoning us to the conflict and the conquest. Let us advance in
His name. With unlimited devotion let us give, let us pray, let us
work. For once hath God spoken, yea, twice have I heard it, to God
belongs the power, even as to Him shall be the glory forever.

       *       *       *       *       *


SACRIFICIAL LIVING AND GIVING.

REV. AUGUSTUS F. BEARD, D.D., SYRACUSE, N. Y.

The kingdom of Heaven, in its ways, has many similitudes in the
kingdom of nature. The law of the universe is, the giving of the
lower for the sake of the higher. The worlds are built on the
principle of sacrifice. At the bottom of the scale, we have, for
example, lifeless matter. But this is put under contribution to
force, and simple matter is organized into systems. And this giving
comes under a law; we call it gravitation. Then this in turn comes
under contribution to what is called a law of chemical affinity,
and matter is diversified, and enters into many combinations
in advance of what was. The forces, of which light and heat,
electricity and magnetism, are different forms, also expend
themselves. Then there is a step up by the contribution of what
was, to this end, and we have the first organic process, vegetable
life and its forces. The soil under these influences gives
vegetable life, giving up a part of itself for a higher end. The
vegetable, in turn, gives itself for the animal, and the human soul
finds these all in sacrificial contribution to itself, every one
giving for that which is higher, to lead up to the highest. Nature
is packed through and through with illustrations of this. Thus
the worlds are built upon this law. By the law of sacrifice, the
lower rises into that which is higher. So Christ taught us it is,
and is to be, in the realm of the soul. He taught us by word, by
deed, by example, that sacrifice is not only the highest, the most
satisfying, the most exhaustive expression of love, but is God’s
way for man to reach up to God. It was the climax of this law that
found expression in the gift of Christ, and we but follow God’s
law in Christ’s way, when we are ready to sacrifice lower good for
higher good, to bring into contribution lesser things for greater
things. And life rises to its highest when it is sacrificial in its
self-abnegations; in its renunciations, when souls are uplifted
into heroic sufferings and self denials. In wives for husbands, in
husbands for wives, in parents for children, in patriotic soldiers,
in Christian philanthropists. Men who incarnate their love in
sacrifice rise by their giving. They reach to nobleness upon the
“stepping-stone of their dead selves.” They put off earthiness and
put on heavenliness. It is God’s law from lowest to highest. That
which thou sowest is not quickened except it _die_. To give is to
live.

So we come to the Christian’s highest doctrine. It is that of the
cross. We sing “In the cross of Christ we glory.” We accept it as
the chief doctrine of our religion. We see the grandest exhibition
of it when Christ gave himself for the sake of a greater good than
could be if he did not give himself; and we teach that it is the
personal reception of this which is _the_ mark of one who has a
right to wear the name of Christ. To this doctrine the churches
hold. Christians subscribe to it. We stoutly contend for it.

But now for our interpretations of this doctrine. When the
exigencies of the world and the demands of a spreading Gospel
call for willing hearts, to what degree do we find the principle
in cordial and worthy practice? How many are the reasons for self
indulgence! How ready to hide out of sight the great central
doctrine when appeals come for its practical application! How
arrangements are made in churches to cajole out of Christians
what they will not give on principle! Who does not know many a
church that squeezes out its charities,—if not a good part of
its miserable support,—by fairs and festivals, by some wretched
subterfuge in which one shall seem to get value received and make
no sacrifice, to replenish its exchequer by tricks which appeal
to no Christian principle. And how often churches come before the
world, which they should be dying to save, as objects themselves of
the world’s charities, dying to be saved. That which is ordained to
be a dispenser of Christ-like benevolence and to develop the spirit
of sacrifice, cannot rise into anything higher if it ignores the
_only law by which it can rise_. The call for enlargement is the
call for sacrifice. It is a call that religion shall not alone be a
theory to be preached, but a life to be manifested.

* * * * * The call for enlargement of Christian work from every
portion of the world, is a call to _all_. There appears to be
no great lack of Christian men and women to go anywhere, to do
anything for Christ. But how shall they go except they be sent? And
here comes with emphatic intensiveness the appeal of Providence
(and I hope with it may be heard the appeal of the Holy Spirit),
that those who are engaged in other departments of life shall not
forget _their_ service. Let me say it plainly, what is needed
now more than men, is _money_, the consecration of property, the
sacrificial life in men who accumulate property. I do not think
that there is a more universally unpopular theme to discourse about
than money. If we preach about the giving of men, the church weeps
and prays, and says “Amen.” But when we preach about the giving
of money, how many meet this at least with a mental shrug, and do
not love to have the Lord’s days made common and unclean with the
money question? That which they have been seeking for all the week
should not be dragged in too often on the day set apart for _rest_.
But if we pause a moment, we shall remember how full the Bible is
of directions about giving, and how much of the Lord’s teaching
had reference to a right use of money. The unprofitable servant
“dug in the earth and hid his Lord’s money.” Ruskin, I think,
somewhere says that we, in the spiritual application of this, say
that, of course, this doesn’t mean _money_. It means wit, it means
intellect, it means influence in high quarters, it means everything
in the world except itself. And a very pleasant come-off there is
for the most of us in this spiritual application. Of course, if we
had wit, we would use it for the benefit of our fellow creatures.
But we haven’t wit. If we had influence, we would use _that_. But
we are without political power. It is true we have a little money;
but the parable can’t possibly mean anything so vulgar as money.

And yet it does mean what it says, plain money, good, hard, honest
money. We are not to “hide the Lord’s money.” So also the parable
of the talents means money, and we are to accept the meaning on its
own terms, and not to dodge away under a metaphor.

If one man is richer than others, he has more “talents” to
account for; and to use another’s words, “what he has acquired
is the measure of what he owes.” Why is one man richer than
another; that he may higher arch his own gates, pave better his
own threshold, enrich more gorgeously his own chambers with all
manner of costliness? No doubt, as a steward he may rejoice in his
stewardship, but do we remember in just what catalogue inspiration
places covetousness? Has any Christian a right to live for self, to
cling to riches for self-aggrandizement, to consume riches upon his
own lusts or set at naught the infinite urgency _of the world’s_
wants? No, friends. There is a kind of justice in a certain
thought of communism. God’s law of life is a law of service. No
man has a right under Christ’s law of life to heap up riches in
order to lord it over men, only to serve them. Ye have heard, said
Christ, how, among the Gentiles, they that will be great exercise
authority; they use their strength to exact from others, but it
shall not be so among you. He that will be great among you, let him
serve others, and be ye ministers even as Christ came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister. And no one has a right to hoard
for self-aggrandizement, or to use wealth to exact from others,
and communism with all its wrongs has a truth here, but when those
who have, use to bless those who have not, then that is the way
of Christ. When causes like this before us call for enlargement,
there is money enough which should be in the Lord’s treasury. It is
there. It is the Lord’s. He gave the quickness of apprehension, the
clearness of judgment, the strength of will which secures it.

       *       *       *       *       *


WORKING OUT THE EQUATION.

DISTRICT SECRETARY POWELL.

It is the dictate of economy that we push the Southern work of
this Association. It is cheaper to fight ignorance and crime with
Christian education, than to fight their certain outcome with
military and police force. It is vastly cheaper to settle the
bills for the services of the Christian teacher now, than to meet
the settlement of accumulated wrongs in the outbreak of a war or
rebellion by and by. And this is a kind of settlement that must
be met. There is in the universe a law of recompense; God in the
government of the world is always working out equations. He may
require centuries to bring about the result; if so, he takes them.
Men are not far-sighted enough to see the outcome. The wicked grow
bold and defiant and boastful because of punishment delayed, while
the righteous for the same reason are led to cry out, “How long, oh
Lord! how long shall wickedness be allowed to go unrebuked?” but
all the while the law of recompense is filling out the equation.
The eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth principle is rolling up
the answer. Only give it time, and right shall have triumphant,
though it may be terrible, vindication. In the case of individuals,
the working of this law is not so evident, because retribution
follows them beyond the grave, but in the case of nations, since
they have no other life than in this world, settlement must take
place here; and it never fails. The sins of the fathers are visited
upon the children even to the third and fourth generations, and
there is no escaping the visitations.

I might appeal to the history of nations, the record of whose
career has been completed, in illustration of this, but a pertinent
illustration can be found nearer home, even in our own country.
This nation cherished and protected by law the institution
of slavery. With an open Bible in the land, with Protestant
Christianity in the ascendancy, with the light of a free Gospel
shining upon all questions of morals, with the sentiment of
enlightened Christendom smiting heavily the iniquity of the sin;
nay, with a constitution for its government, a preamble which
declared that all men were created free and equal; right in the
face of all this, and despite all this, the giant iniquity and
monstrous contradiction was fostered and protected by the law of
the land. But the equation was working out. The day of reckoning at
length came, and, in the settlement, justice exacted full payment.

In his second inaugural address, President Lincoln expressed the
sentiment, that, if it were God’s will for the war to continue
“till the wealth piled up by two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil of the bondmen be sunk, and every drop of blood
drawn by the lash be repaid by another drawn by the sword, as it
was said three thousand years ago, so must it still be said, ‘The
judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” This
sentiment was prophetic, and ere the war ended the prophecy had
been more than realized by literal fulfillment. Just see how it
was fulfilled. Henry Clay once said that taking the slaves as they
were—old and young, sick and disabled—the average value was about
five hundred dollars per slave. The money value, at this estimate,
of the four and a half million emancipated, would be two billion,
two hundred and fifty million dollars. This amount, at ten per
cent. interest for thirty years, or one generation, would yield,
as value created by slave labor, six billion seven hundred and
fifty million dollars, which amount, added to the market value of
the slaves, makes the enormous sum of nine billion dollars, as
representing the wealth “piled up by the unrequited toil of the
bondmen,” and held by the oppressors in utter defiance of justice
and right.

Nine billion dollars! Can it be that amount was sunk in the war?
The answer is yes, and at least six hundred and fifty million
dollars more! I take the figures from a responsible source, and
they are these: To put down the rebellion it cost the North four
billion seven hundred million dollars. To sustain the rebellion it
cost the South two billion seven hundred million dollars; add now
to this the market value of the slaves emancipated, two billion two
hundred and fifty million dollars, and we have, as the total, nine
billion six hundred and fifty million dollars, which this nation
spent in order to rid itself of the curse of slavery. That was the
equation in dollars. As to the equation in blood, justice was even
more severe in the exaction. Every drop of blood drawn by the lash,
it is no exaggeration to say, exacted for its canceling, not a drop
merely, but a stream. A million graves moistened by the blood of
those who fell on the field of battle, to say nothing of the blood
that ran from the bodies of the wounded millions who survived, gave
fearful emphasis to the divine equation. The wealth piled up by the
bondmen’s unrequited toil was sunk, and much more in addition; the
blood drawn by the lash was more than canceled by the blood drawn
by the sword, and still, even in the presence of these awful facts,
we are compelled to say, “The judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether.”

It would have been vastly cheaper, we can now see, for this nation
to have paid every dollar of the money valuation of the slaves,
and set them free before the war; it would have been better still
had the iniquity been stamped out at the very formation of the
Government, and this because right demanded it. But unfortunately,
the standard of our national legislation has been expediency, not
right, and under this cover slavery unwisely admitted within the
defenses of our constitution, has proved to be the Trojan horse
whence has issued so large a part of our national woes. And now,
shall we heed the lesson this dearly bought experience teaches?
The negro problem is by no means yet solved. There are questions
pertaining to his social and political rights not yet answered.
Let this nation try to answer them on any other ground than a full
recognition of the negro’s rights as a man, and it will again come
into controversy with Jehovah, and again be called sooner or later
to pay the penalty of disobedience, dollar for dollar, blood for
blood, over and over and over again. It pays for the nation to
do right every time, and it does not pay for it to do anything
else. Having made these people free, justice and self-interest say
“educate them,” and it will prove as a matter of mere economy, far
cheaper to do this now than to meet the bills that by and by must
be paid in blood and money when God shall take the matter in hand
to fill out the equation.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE FREEDMEN.

REV. JOS. E. ROY, D.D.,

FIELD SUPERINTENDENT, ATLANTA, GA.

       *       *       *       *       *


REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON EDUCATIONAL WORK.

* * * * We note with pleasure the growing interest in our schools,
and approval of them, by the best people of the South and the
public men of the North; the recent erection of a fine building
for Tillotson Institute, at Austin, Texas; the munificent gift of
$150,000 by Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, to be expended in putting up
additional buildings, greatly needed for institutions which have
outgrown their present accommodations; the recent acceptance by
Christian workers of high standing and rare fitness, of positions
in our Southern field; the successful development of industrial
methods in many of our best schools, notably at Hampton, Tougaloo,
and Memphis; the influence of our institutions on the colored
people, as seen in their interest in education, their willingness
to endure self-denial as teachers, their hopeful, dispassionate
and sensible utterances on their prospects and duties, and their
courageous self-support; and once again, and most of all, do we
note rejoicingly the prevailing religious sentiment that fills our
schools and the colored communities which they reach, with its
deep, quiet, but melodious undertone. Surely there is reason, in
all these considerations, for profound thankfulness to God.

We are impressed with the call in the Secretary’s Annual Report for
enlargement. With the added facilities now providentially given and
soon to be enjoyed, in the shape of new buildings at Austin, New
Orleans, Nashville, Tougaloo, and Atlanta, there is a necessity for
larger contributions for the education of the increased numbers
to be accommodated. Similar facilities are loudly called for by
the growth of schools at other points, and the Report suggests
the need of new schools in Kansas and Arkansas. We cannot forget
that the second grade of education will not be complete till these
institutions are properly endowed, and the students, coming out of
poverty-stricken homes, receive annually, either from scholarships
or personal gifts, the small sums necessary to supplement their own
earnings, and so to make their education possible.

Especially do we recognize the need at this juncture, of more
efficient theological training. Our church work cannot prosper
unless educated colored men are raised up to act as missionaries
and pastors. The theological training now given, is, from the want
of proper facilities,—with the exception, perhaps, of the work at
Howard University, where the Presbyterians share in the support of
the department,—of the most meagre and unsatisfactory character. We
greatly wish that some large-hearted Christian givers might find it
their privilege suitably to endow the theological schools already
existing, that they might become, in all respects, for the colored
students of the South, what Andover, Chicago and other similar
schools are for the white students of the North.

Respectfully submitted by your Committee.

                                     ADDISON P. FOSTER, _Chairman_.

       *       *       *       *       *


CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.

REV. ADDISON P. FOSTER, JERSEY CITY, N. J.

We have all noticed that of late public attention has been much
drawn to the need of universal education in this land as a means of
national safety. That book to which reference has been made several
times in this meeting, and which every thoughtful man must read if
he would inform himself in regard to the trend of popular thought
to-day, “A Fool’s Errand,” by Judge Tourgee, concludes with an
argument for the need of national education in these words:

“The remedy for darkness is light; for ignorance, knowledge; for
wrong, righteousness. * * * Make the spelling-book the sceptre of
national power. Let the nation educate the colored man and the
poor white man, because the nation held them in bondage and is
responsible for their education. Educate the voter because the
nation cannot afford that he should be ignorant. * * * Honest
ignorance in the masses is more to be dreaded than malevolent
intelligence in the few.”

To the same effect are the words of our honored President Hayes, in
his speech at Canton, Ohio, on the 1st of September last: “Ignorant
voters are powder and balls for the demagogues. In the present
condition of our country, universal education requires the aid of
the General Government.” * * * * * *

Education, then, is called for. But the danger that specially
attacks us is in the South. * * * There is more than twenty per
cent. of illiteracy all through the Southern portion of our land.
* * * But this illiteracy is largest, unquestionably, among those
who are black. It has been stated that in one of our Southern
States ninety per cent. of the colored people are illiterate; in
another, ninety-one per cent.; in another, ninety-three per cent.;
in another, ninety-five per cent.; and in Mississippi and Texas
ninety-six per cent. Eighty-eight per cent. of the entire colored
people in the South are illiterate—or were in 1870; undoubtedly it
has changed somewhat since.

We are to labor, then, in our desire to secure popular education,
especially among the blacks, and through the blacks we are to reach
the whites. * * * But, as we educate the blacks, we ask ourselves,
What sort of education shall it be? And I would say, it must be a
Christian education. It can be nothing else if it is to accomplish
its work. Public men, speaking on political subjects, refer only
to a secular education. It is well that they should enforce that
and insist upon it; but were we to content ourselves with secular
education alone, we should make the most grievous mistake of the
century. It is impossible to rely upon secular education for the
saving of the nation; we must make it a Christian education as well.

Look at the influences of a merely secular education as seen in
biography and history. What has the highest secular education done
for men? It has made them simply one-sided, imperfect specimens
of manhood, deformed and dwarfed in some of those most essential
characteristics that give a man influence here, and happiness
hereafter. A man like Hume could defend suicide. Highly-trained
intellects like those of Voltaire and Rousseau could advocate
licentiousness, both by word and by life. Men and women like J.
S. Mill, George H. Lewes, George Eliot, and that gifted but vile
woman, Sara Bernhardt, have traduced the idea of marriage, and
put a stigma upon the purest relationship that God has given to
earth. Education, mere intellectual training, has done nothing
for the morals of these people. There was a prisoner executed
a few years since in the State of New York, whose great grief
before his execution for the terrible crime of murder, was that he
could not live long enough to complete a very learned work which
he was preparing on some science. And even the honored State of
Massachusetts has on its criminal record the name of a professor in
one of its highest institutions of learning who committed murder in
a moment of passion.

Look at history, if you will, and is not the record the same? Take
such nations as Greece, for example,—that wonderful land that
reached the highest perfection in culture, in history, in song and
in eloquence. Yet that land was sunk in the depths of impurity,
and some of the crimes that were prevalent in those days I would
not dare to mention in your presence. Take Rome,—that wonderful
city, that ennobled the idea of law, that produced such marvelous
intellects in the Augustan age. Yet in the very triumph of its
intellect, as the capstone of intellectual pride went on to that
magnificent temple of literature, the foundations of national
virtue were rotten to the core and began to tremble, and presently
the whole structure fell in ruins.

I tell you, my friends, there is no safety in mere secular
education; it must be Christian as well. We need to put education
into the control of principle; otherwise our education may simply
give us a certain evil power over other men, and eventually bring
ruin upon us. We need to put principle in control in order that
whatever we may know shall be turned in the direction of purity, of
uprightness and of helpfulness to our fellow-men. And so here, if
we are to have an education for the blacks, or an education for the
land, we must not content ourselves with what has been called for
by these public men.

I say, then, that just here the work of this Association comes
in. However much may be done by others, however much a secular
education may attempt to accomplish, it can never cover the ground
that is absolutely necessary. We have a secular education in the
North, and it is doing much, but it has never done a religious
work; nor will it ever do such in the future. We cannot expect
that it should; and we feel a peculiar sensitiveness in this
matter,—perhaps a sensitiveness that is not too great. We cannot
trust the State to educate our young religiously. I, for one,
confess a profound distrust of all State universities. I too often
have seen those universities, in their attempt to be non-sectarian,
ministering to the interests of that intensest of sectaries—the
infidel. I will go even further than this, although I may carry but
few of you with me in this conviction. I fear the methods of higher
education in our high schools are not always what they should be.
I have too often seen those who were the disciples of Huxley and
Tyndall in science, and of Spencer and of Taine in sociology,
literature and history, teaching their pupils doctrines that were
insidious in their religious influence. I should be glad for one to
see a return to the old-time academy system of New England, under
which students who valued education enough to pay for it, were
taught all branches of a higher learning on a Christian foundation,
and trained first of all and most of all in character building.

But whatever you may say in regard to this matter, I am sure that
I shall carry you with me in this conviction, that in the South,
in our labor among the blacks, our institutions must be of this
character and can be of no other. We must have institutions that
shall furnish Christian homes. Those who come to our institutions,
come from places where they have no such Christian training as
have most of those who are in public schools in this more favored
portion of the land; and those in the South, if they are to have
a Christian training at all, must have it in schools that are
under the management of Christian men, in chartered and endowed
institutions, cared for by Christian boards of trustees. It is this
Association that is doing precisely this kind of work; and this
Association and others like it will, I firmly believe, be called on
by God for years to come to labor with the same devotedness as they
have in the past for the salvation of the land.

My friends, our land is in danger. I am profoundly moved with an
anxiety for a land which should be dearer to us than life. It has
seemed to me, as I have looked over this broad extent of country,
that there were flames of fraud and violence springing up here and
there, that were working disaster to our republic, and that would
in time—if we may judge by the history of other republics that have
been similarly controlled by evil influences, as France in the last
century and Spain in this, and Greece and Rome in the centuries
gone by—bring this our beloved land to wreck and ruin. And yet
we have a God above, and He has given us methods of fighting the
flames.

This summer the woods of New Jersey were all ablaze, and the
farmers went out into the forests to fight the fire that they might
save their homes and their property from desolation; and the method
they pursued was this: to build against those fires a back fire
that should rage more furiously and destroy the other flame as it
advanced. It is your business and mine to

    “Take up the torch of truth
    And wave it wide,”

to take up this blessed Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and carry
it all through the South, and touch points here and there until at
length we have the fires blazing all over the land, and ignorance
is dispersed in the light of the Gospel. Already, in almost
every Southern State, these fires are lighted and the work goes
gloriously on. Let us not lose heart, but thank God that He has
given us the privilege of joining in this grand work.

       *       *       *       *       *


A SAMPLE STATE.

PRES. H. S. DE FOREST, TALLADEGA, ALA.

Our Southern States are so much alike, our work, its difficulties,
its successes, its necessities are so similar, that a view of one
part of the Southern Field will stand for all. Burke’s study motto,
“From one learn all,” I think is applicable to the question before
us. If, therefore, for the few minutes I am before you, I shall
speak of one State only, and of the work of the Association in that
State, it is not because it is more important than in neighboring
States, nor because the work is more hopeful, but because for a few
months I have been learning something there of our need and of our
opportunities.

On that map, you see Georgia facing east to the sunrise, and
northward toward New England. Behind Georgia, with its back close
to Mississippi, where flows the Yazoo river, is the State of
Alabama, in which about half of the population is colored. Ten
years ago there were 475,510 colored men there, when our entire
population was not quite one million. If we now look at the field,
its condition is, perhaps, what you might expect. Bear in mind that
there were no free schools there until after the reconstruction;
that our New England ideas are exotics and grow there with
difficulty; that twenty years ago, these colored men were all
slaves and it was a crime to teach them; and you are prepared to
believe such facts as these. Of our black population of nearly
500,000 there are 168,000 of school age; and now you ask how many
after seventeen years of freedom are cared for. Recent statistics
show that of this number there were 54,000 enrolled as pupils and
40,000 in actual attendance. You see a company of black youth on
the street, and there is about one in three of them on the road
to school, and about one in four who will enter the school-house.
School-houses with us are not as numerous as at the West. On
that grand and growing frontier, the white painted school-house
anticipates the coming of the settler, and often the first building
put up is a hall for learning. You may go through that dark
State of Alabama, and travel far and wide, and not see a public
school-house. Alphabetically Alabama leads the van of the States.
She does not, however, in letters. The entire school year is about
eighty-two days, and the teachers are paid upon an average $22.65 a
month. We have never come to the taxing of property for education.
Nothing but the poll tax of our State goes for our free schools,
and the black man’s head-tax goes for the colored schools, and the
white man’s head-tax for the white schools. You are prepared to
believe, then, that our appropriation for each pupil is only $1.06.
That is about two cents a week per pupil.

It is evident, then, that education is at a low ebb in that dark
State of Alabama; and such as we have, bear in mind, is the growth
of the last twenty years. It is an infusion of Northern ideas and
Northern civilization; and these first friends of learning must
be its friends still. Just now I remember calling but a few weeks
since at an important point where two railroads cross each other,
where iron and coal lie side by side, where different forms of
industry,—blast furnaces and machine shops—are going up, and it is
a place of great prospective importance that we ought at once to
occupy. I called upon the county superintendent of education, a
rebel colonel, I think six feet and more in height. He seemed to
look down upon me. I am sure he did when I announced myself from
Talladega. He at once branded me with “N.T.”—that means a Negro
Teacher, with two g’s in the word Negro. I asked him concerning the
education of the black man in that growing town. He said he knew
very little of it; he paid out ninety dollars of public money for
a teacher, but he knew nothing more. Said he, “We don’t think much
of nigger education here.” It almost took my breath away. I said
to him there might be others in the town who had different views
of negro education, and asked him if there was not some friend of
liberty with whom I might speak; and he replied, “We have not much
of the nigger about us;” and I went out. Now it is very evident, my
friends, that the work of education, so imperative, must be carried
forward by Northern consecration still.

Well, if you now turn from our intellectual need to our industrial
wants, I can show you a State whose mines and hills are full of
treasure, where forest trees grow in rank luxuriance, where our
cotton fields are sufficient to wrap half America in their folds.
And yet our homes are mean and miserable, and dark and dirty, and
there is physical want and physical poverty and physical distress.
You tell me the black man is indolent. I say yes, but he is among
a lazy generation. You tell me the black man is thriftless, and
I say yes, but he is among a shiftless race. It is true that the
industrial idea of those Southern States must be carried forward,
and we must do it.

But the wants that I have referred to thus far are not our most
serious need. We come to manhood, to morality, to Christian virtue,
and there, brethren, we are just where you might suspect. Bear
in mind, it is but a few years since slavery, the sum and the
mother of villainies, was sustained by the law and defended by the
pulpit. The piety and the morality of the colored people have been
strangely divorced. As was said here yesterday, we are not opposed
by skepticism. I grant it; we can subscribe to the whole catechism
and take it in bodily, with one exception, and that exception is
the Ten Commandments.

Now, “from one,” as Burke said, “learn all.” Let me tell you
two or three facts that in my mind stand for a great deal.
Recently a Doctor of Divinity, a foremost man in the Southern
Presbyterian church, told me that near the city where he lives he
has a plantation where he often spends a few days at a time, and
preaches. That minister, like others, wants his Aaron and Hur about
him. There is a church established there, and on his right hand was
a colored minister, and on the left a deacon. That minister had
three living wives. That deacon was a butcher, and lately there
were dug up out of his barnyard the skins of fifteen cattle that he
had stolen.

The facts concerning Southern churches are not well recognized, I
suspect, at the North. A recent letter from one of our most trusted
young men, told me that where he was working this summer as a
teacher there are two colored churches, and that a woman, excluded
from one of them on the Lord’s day because of her gross immorality,
was on the next Sabbath received into the other church without a
letter; and this represents the type of Southern black piety.

Brethren, I have come to believe that the seventy-three
Congregational churches that you have planted there stand like
light-houses in the midst of surrounding darkness. And another fact
means much to my mind. When the census agents were with us, and our
young men were arranged in the parlor for convenience, the officers
asked them their fathers’ names. Some of the young men blushed as
they gave them, and others handed them in on bits of paper. Young
men of high character, students in our theological seminary, were
born out of wedlock. They blushed at the infamy, and their blushing
was because of Anglo-Saxon blood that was wickedly in their veins.
I tell you, brethren, if you should reverse the course of the
Queen of the South, and instead of going to the North you should
go to the South, you would say with her, though in a different
sense, that the half had not been told. It is fair to believe,
then, that the Christian work of the South is most imperative, and
I am glad to turn from the wants of the field to something of our
undertakings. * * * * * *

Is it strange, then, that those of us who are allowed once more
to face the front, and go personally into the conflict hand to
hand, are looking Northward for supplies? I can remember, when
we stood there in hours of need, how the Northern people did not
withhold munitions of war or what was necessary for our comfort.
We are engaged in the same warfare, and we need a large supply of
munitions.

It is not seven days since, at New Haven, under the elms that
shade Yale College, I saw light-bearers in martial array passing
through the streets, and, when the band struck up the music that I
heard once on the tented field at the South, my heart grew large.
When I saw the marshaling of soldiers as in battle array, I thought
of what I had seen at Cold Harbor, at Drury’s Bluff, at Richmond,
and at Petersburg. They went on in the mimicry of war with mounted
men, and my heart was full. But soon came a noble battalion of
black men, side by side, step by step with their brethren, looking
as grand as any of them, with their lighted torches going on
towards the front. I saw there a parable. There is Alabama and the
South, there is the Dark Continent with a sixth of the population
of the globe, 186,000,000 waiting for the Gospel. Now, then, shall
we fill those torches with oil and light them? We have men ready to
be trained to go there, and, believe me, they will not only bless
Africa, but do a large part in saving America.

Do you remember, my friends, that the oldest monuments we have,
the most ancient coins that come down to us, represent the negro
kneeling before his captor, with his hands clasped in petition, yet
wearing shackles, and there kneeling in prayer to an enemy? That is
the old picture of Africa that has come down through the sun-burnt
ages. How is it to-day? Thank God, in our country the scene has
changed. The black man is not kneeling before his captor. He stands
erect with us, and with us he stands close to the ballot box. Those
shackles are broken—do I say broken? No, they were cut asunder by
the red sword of war, but still they lie at his feet. Those hands
are not clasped now, but open, and they are extended, not to his
captor, but to his old-time friends and liberators, to Christian
men and women of the North. He holds in one hand a spelling-book
and a Bible, and he stretches it out to us and says, “Come and
teach me.” Brethren, it is blessed to hear that call. It is blessed
to have a share in that work.

       *       *       *       *       *


REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON CHURCH WORK.

The Committee upon Church Work would emphasize the fact that
the religious work among the Freedmen is essentially that of
reformation. The churches of this Association are the Reformed
Churches of the South. Incidentally, they are Congregational. The
reason which called them into existence, and which justifies their
separate organization, is the demand for a pure, intelligent,
progressive Christianity. The Association steadily refuses to
multiply churches, or to increase their membership, except as the
true type of personal piety can be established and maintained.
And, acting upon this principle, the growth of the church is made
to depend upon the material which can be prepared for it; in other
words, the church is essentially the product of the school. There
only can the foundations be laid for an intelligent faith and a
pure morality.

Your Committee desire to commend the patient adherence, not only of
the Association, but of the churches themselves, to this principle.
They would also acknowledge with gratitude the prosperous condition
of the churches, as set forth in the more detailed reports
submitted. With hardly an exception, they are provided with houses
of worship, they are substantially free from debt, discipline has
been thoroughly maintained, mission work has been earnestly carried
on, benevolence has been largely increased, the pulpit has been
well supplied, and in many cases there have been most gracious
proofs of the special work of the Spirit of God.

The present number of churches is 73, an increase the last year of
5, with a present membership of nearly 5,000, an increase of 635.

The question of greatest urgency connected with the department of
Church Work, is that of education for the ministry.

Three of the schools have a theological department—Fisk,
Talladega, and Straight. There is also a theological department
connected with Howard University, partly under the care of the
Association. But no one of these has any endowment. No permanent
provision whatever has been made for the instruction or support
of those studying for the ministry. The work is carried on under
every possible disadvantage. Meanwhile, the demand for an educated
ministry is steadily and rapidly increasing. The work of education
has now reached the point where the ratio of increase will soon be
enormous. Over 150,000 children have been under instruction the
past year. The material for churches will soon be abundant. The
only question will be, can it be used?

Other denominations, too, are looking largely to the schools of the
Association for ministers. And England, in her missions for Africa,
naturally turns to the Freedmen of America for missionaries.

Your Committee would call the attention of the churches to the
growing prominence of the religious question at the South, and
would most earnestly advise the patrons of this Association to make
fit provision and endowment for the permanent work of educating men
for the ministry.

                                         WM. J. TUCKER, _Chairman_.

       *       *       *       *       *


OUR DISADVANTAGES AND ADVANTAGES.

FIELD SUP’T J. E. ROY, D.D.

Our church work at the South has its disadvantages, its advantages,
its obligations, its encouragements.


I.—ITS DISADVANTAGES.

1. One is that our church system is entirely unknown among the
Freedmen. It is a singular fact that they should know absolutely
nothing of the churches which had led in the anti-slavery reform,
and which, through this Association, are now, as is confessed on
all hands, doing more for the lifting up of these lowly poor than
any other. The occasion of this ignorance is at hand. The doctrine
of equality in Christ’s house, as based on his own words—“All ye
are brethren”—precluded the setting up of this order of church
life among a people, where master and slave should vote, side by
side, upon all church business. I know that it will be said at once
that the Baptists, with their congregational polity, did prevail
all over the South. But theirs was, after all, not a Christian
democracy, but an aristocracy of the white members. All right of
voting was denied the colored. Even those two much-praised ancient
Congregational churches at the South, the Circular in Charleston,
and the Dorchester in Liberty County, Georgia, which took root in
that soil, did so only by denying suffrage to the colored members.
When one of the pastors of the latter, with the Bible in one hand
and a whip in the other, drove his brethren as his slaves to their
tasks, if that had been a genuine Congregational church, an appeal
would have been taken to the brotherhood for an application of
that Scripture: “Masters, give unto your servants that which is
just and equal.” One of the colored members of that church, now
a worthy deacon, told me this bit of experience. His master, a
fellow church member, had found him with a Webster’s spelling book
in hand, trying to learn to read. For this crime he was tied down,
with his face to the ground, his hands and feet made fast to four
stakes, and then upon his bare back he received such a flagellation
that, under the torture, he cried out: “Oh, massa, do stop, and
I’ll never again look into a book as long as I live.” With a fine
turn he said to me, “I GRADULATED THEN.” Now, if that brother had
had the right of telling that trespass to the church, and if all
the members had had the privilege of voting upon the case, that
would have been a piece of pure Congregationalism. Evidently such
a church system could not obtain in a slaveholding community. So
it is entirely unknown in that region; and this fact becomes a
disadvantage in introducing it now.

2. Another disadvantage is that the Freedmen are so largely wedded
to other denominations. It is popular to belong to the church. The
mass, although they may not be members, will call themselves either
Baptists or Methodists. One of them on being asked, “Are you a
Christian?” responded: “No, Sah, I’se a Baptist.” The spectacular
element of immersion afforded by this church order, and the scope
given by the other to the emotional nature, have proven a great
attraction to these rude and simple souls. Then it is easy for
their zeal to rise into sectarianism and superstition, bitter and
hostile, such as leads them to denounce the new church as having
no religion, because it has no dreams and visions, no physical
contortions—such as lead them to sneer at our members as only
“Bible Christians,” while they have, instead, direct manifestations
of the Spirit. It is a surprising revelation to our teachers and
preachers who go to the South with nothing but love in their
hearts, and their hands full of the best things they could take, to
find such heat of sectarian opposition as soon as it is proposed
to set up the church life, which represents the educational effort
that is so highly prized.

3. Another disadvantage for the time in setting up our churches,
is the standard of intelligence and of morality to which we seek
to bring them. The colored man who confessed that he had broken
every one of the commandments, but blessed God that he had kept his
religion, stood in part, at least, for a good many of his people.
It is hard for us who come in contact with that state of things
to accept the facts. Even then we would not wish to take the risk
of making them public, only so far as is sustained by their own
newspapers and official reports. The saddest part of it is the
impropriety of the leaders, ministers, and official members. If
the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch. Each,
in self-protection, condones the other’s guilt. We know that the
system of slaveholding is largely responsible for this divorce of
religion from morality. But the fact, as we have to confront it,
is all the same. If you propose to set up a church that shall be
clean and be kept clean, in pulpit and pew, you have undertaken a
difficult task. The gravity of depravity is against you.


II. ITS ADVANTAGES.

1. One is that our church system had not previously prevailed at
the South, to become modified by the influences of slaveholding,
and identified with it in the associations of the colored people.
As individuals become intelligent enough to rise above the
prevailing sectarianism; as they learn the anti-slavery history
of our churches; and as they learn that the nature of our polity
prevented it from coming South in the days of slavery, they turn
to the Puritan way with avidity. It is to them a new discovery
of friends, who had stood by them when they knew it not. Indeed,
these people, whose ancestors were landed upon these shores the
same year the Pilgrims came, appear to be the Yankees of the South.
They fall naturally into the observance of Thanksgiving, and on
that day they love to hear over and over the story of the Pilgrims
and Puritans, their exile, their hardships, their poverty, their
simplicity of life, their struggle for liberty. They soon learn
that the Puritan ideas have taken possession of the North, are
now penetrating the South, and are rising to a supremacy over the
nation. As they advance in understanding they take in these ideas;
and, more and more, will they be disposed to seek the church form
which represents them.

2. Another advantage is the adaptation of this church system as an
educating process for the colored people. Any one who considers the
untutored quality of the communities in which the Apostles planted
their self-governing churches, must give up the notion that they
were New England people. Indeed, as one becomes acquainted with
the qualities of mind and elements of character in these sable
Christians, he can see that the Epistles of the New Testament
were addressed to much the same sort of people. These can govern
themselves as well as those. And, coming forth from the house of
bondage, much more do they desire their largest liberty in Christ
Jesus. The working of this autonomy of the churches is to them an
educating process. It puts responsibility upon them. They must
study its principles in order to exercise its function. Even such
men as Senators Lamar, and Hampton, and Hendricks, in the _North
American_, have argued that the elective franchise is not only the
means of defense, but of education, among these new-made citizens.
Precisely so does it work in church relations. Some of us, who
have observed the process, have been surprised and delighted to
see with what decorum and parliamentary skill they will handle a
deliberative assembly. As, in the days of bondage, the only outlet
for their native talent was the pulpit; and as their church was
about their only arena for organic efficiency, so now they love
most of all to handle their church affairs. And so does their
self-governing fellowship become a means of education.

3. Another advantage comes from our preliminary educational work.
At the first, it was thought by some that the Association was too
tardy in advancing the church process. Soon it was learned that
the right policy had been pursued in developing the educational
interest, which was itself really missionary work, and which
was the necessary preparation for a more organic way of Gospel
propagandism. In connection with all our high schools and colleges,
churches have been organized. These have been immediate sources of
power and influence. They have also served as models and stimulus
for others that have grown up around them. In almost every case our
churches have been an outgrowth from these educational centres, or
have been developed by the teachers and preachers who have been
trained in them. Thus far, in the main, we have been preparing our
machinery. I remember that our Elgin Watch Company spent its first
two and a half years in erecting the factory and in manufacturing
its own machinery. Now it is in competition even with London and
Switzerland for the trade of Europe. We have been building up our
Elgins—the Fisk, the Howard, the Straight, Atlanta, Talladega,
Tougaloo, and Berea. They are furnishing us their approved
mechanism. This correlation of the school work to the church work
is after the wisdom of all successful missionary enterprise in
foreign lands. In India the American Board tried the experiment of
dispensing with the school process, only to put the mission back
for years.

4. Another advantage is that by their slower growth, we can the
more completely assimilate and mold the material of our churches.
Drawn together by affinities of character, the more readily do they
receive instruction and take over the ideas and the style of our
system; the more certainly can discipline be maintained, purity and
sobriety secured. Heterogeneous masses would swamp church order.
At one of our Conferences, some of the brethren were bemoaning the
slow growth of our churches. A Baptist minister being present,
turned the tide by asserting that, for the present, there were
advantages in that state of things, and that his denomination had
suffered somewhat from the embarrassment of numbers. He said that
when as a farmer’s boy he stood at the tail end of a steam thresher
for shoving away the straw, if left alone, he found himself unable
to keep up, and was soon covered down with the accumulation. So
they were sometimes bothered in handling their great numbers in the
way of discipline, and of effort at moral elevation.

       *       *       *       *       *


THE NEED AND THE OPPORTUNITY.

PROF. WM. J. TUCKER, D. D., ANDOVER, MASS.

In the midst of the struggle and the difficulties attending work
among the Freedmen, there has been one point about which we have
allowed our minds to be at rest. As we have been vexed with the
problems of education and with the problems of citizenship, we
have said to ourselves, one thing is sure: the colored race is
religious. And so we have allowed the religious question to remain
comparatively in abeyance; we have said, this can wait; we have
work in hand which we must attend to; by and by we will look after
this.

But in that strange haste with which God has been forcing questions
upon the American people as touching the Freedmen, we have come,
sooner than we thought, upon the religious question at the South.
I think we have made a mistake in that we have not given it more
prominence heretofore. I think we shall make a grievous mistake if
we do not carefully look this subject in the face now.

In what sense is it true that the colored race is religious? How
far does the religion of the negro of the South fit him for the
essential work which his race has now before it? His religion, it
seems to me, has been peculiarly, by God’s providence, the religion
of the slave, and now the religion demanded is the religion of the
man. The most beautiful illustration in all history has been given
us by the negro, of the words of Scripture touching God’s gift to
his people: “He giveth songs in the night.” The great, happy heart
of that people has been singing through all these dark years, while
the great heart of the North has been heavy in its shame. The negro
of the South has been living for half the century in another world
than this. It his been literally true—“his citizenship was in
Heaven.” He had no citizenship anywhere else. Now he is a citizen
of this world, and the religion that fits a citizen of this world
must be his, or he will fail religiously in the problem which is
now working out in this country.

I think the question is very much, to-day, with reference to the
Freedmen of the South, as it would be if the Christian of the
second century could have been taken out from his persecution,
from his sense of that other world, from his prayer for the speedy
coming of Christ, and plunged into the hard, practical uses of
this nineteenth century. We have taken the Freedman out of his
Heaven where he was living with something of joy; we have brought
him before the great duties of this world and this century. How
is his religion fitting him for the change? I have said that
his religion has been a religion of joy, fitting him to bear,
fitting him to endure; but life has become something more serious
than suffering—life has become to him a practical work. What De
Tocqueville said to Charles Sumner in his youth, may be said to
the young Freedman to-day: “Life is neither a pain nor a pleasure,
but a most serious business, to be taken up with courage, to be
laid down, if need be, in self-sacrifice.” The nation has made a
change necessary in the type of his religion. He must be refitted
religiously to the work which attends citizenship, its rights and
its duties. How is he fitted for it? If we do not answer this
question practically, ten years will show us how he is unfitted for
it.

Meanwhile, too, we, as an Association, through our educational
work, have been robbing him of his past religion. We have been
letting in the light upon his superstitions; we have dissolved his
dreams; we have put his Heaven a little farther off—he cannot fly
into it so quickly as before; we have let in the strong, hard light
of this world. We must give him something. If we simply give him
education, even though it be so much of religious education as may
be given in the schools, we are doing no more than sowing the seeds
of scepticism—as when the Romanists of the old country lose their
faith, it were better for them to stay in their faith with its
tinge of superstition, than simply to be sceptics. We cannot afford
to have this pure, tender, loving, spiritual life, developed during
these last years, caught up by the scepticism of this century and
hurried on into ruin. We have sceptics enough at the North; we
have sceptics enough through the South; the nation is drifting
fast enough into that way. Let us keep what religious sense there
is in this race trained of God, pure, by making it strong, hard,
substantial enough to stand the difficulties and the trials of
their present condition.

The question then comes up, Can the Freedman be made a pure,
honest, reasoning, intelligent Christian man? Can the type of piety
be changed? Still his music if you will; take away something of
the glow of his faith; push his Heaven a little further off—can
he be made a man fit to live, and act, and do his work, in this
our century, and assume the great duties of Christian discipleship
here and now? Can he be made sufficiently moral, can he be made
sufficiently intelligent, to do practically the work which all
Christians must do, with clean hands and with pure hearts?

Well, Mr. President, there have been a great many theories on the
matter, and very many men are ready to say, “You can do nothing
with the Freedmen at this point.” I think it is the simple office
of this Association to fly in the face of the theories of men
in this century, to take one race after another, treat it for
ten years, and then say to men, “There are your theories; here
is the _fact_.” Men have said of the Indian, “He won’t work.”
This Association takes men who say that, and quietly shows them
the Indian at work. Men have said of the Chinaman, “You cannot
change the type of his religion and give him any sense of faith in
Christ,” and this Association is quietly showing souls won to the
Redeemer. Men used to say, “The negro won’t fight; put him before
the eye of his master and he will quail.” The negro saw his master
in battle, he never quailed, he fell at his feet only in death.

A friend told me yesterday coming on the cars, that when the
question was agitated as to whether a steamship could carry coal
enough to cross the Atlantic, one of the scientific men of the
day addressing a large audience in New York, made this statement,
“If you load a steamship when it shall leave Liverpool with coal
sufficient to last over the voyage, as you withdraw the coal,
gradually the ship will lighten and lift, and by the time the ship
is half over the sea the wheels will be out of the water.” Six
days after he made that statement, the first steamer came plowing
steadily up the Narrows into New York harbor. Men say of the negro,
“He can’t do this, he won’t do that.” Meanwhile, the American
Missionary Association is doing its strong work with him, and he
is just plowing his way steadily into public notice and disproving
everything flung in his face.

There are signs—and some of them very manifest—of the capacity
of the Freedmen for great moral strength. Have you read Judge
Tourgee’s reference to the fact that when the opportunity was
given, after the war, for the negroes to register themselves for
marriage—to be married by the laws of the State in wholesale—how
eagerly they availed themselves of that opportunity, that they
might have the form and reality of marriage, and the stamp of
legitimacy upon their children? The negro knows what a home means;
he has been wanting it; now he will have in time as clean a home as
you or I may have. What do you think I discovered a few days ago
in one of the historic towns of New England? A friend looking over
the records of that old town, came upon the list of baptisms, and
this fact came out: in early Puritan days in a town not twenty-five
miles from Boston more children were born out of wedlock than in
wedlock; and the Puritan says to the negro, “You don’t know what a
home is.” Wait;—give him a chance.

You see how it is with regard to his industries. Men say he is
lazy: why does he go to work as soon as he leaves the land which
induces laziness? The reports come from Kansas that he is thrifty,
that he is putting his hand to the plow, that he is doing the work
he is given there to do. Individuals taken as types of the race are
declaring their capacity for strong industrial development. You
know his record in matters of education; you know he is beginning
to make himself, so far as he has the chance anywhere, a power in
citizenship. I believe that this question of morality will settle
itself, that the negro can at least show, under right training, an
average development in the morals of religion.

One question then remains: What is the true way of approach to
this religious question of the South? Something has already been
done through the strong, patient work, known as the _church work_
of this Association—taking the products of the school, young men
and women as trained in the schools, and organizing them into
churches, for the churches are merely the outgrowth of the schools.
The old churches of the South are not fit to be transferred into
the churches of this Association. We are all the weaker for any
church that might be allowed to come in in that way. The greater
approach—and that which I believe the Association, so soon as it
has the means, will endeavor to carry out—is in the larger training
of leaders, to meet what will be within ten or twenty years the
enormous demand for Christian leadership through the South. In
other words, give to the millions of the colored race at the South
a sufficient number of trained, educated, common-sense ministers,
and they will make that people in half a century the joy and the
pride of our land.

We need to do this to save the bright, strong men among the
negroes from going elsewhere. A young man of good parts came to
his church five years ago, and said to them, “Take my name off the
church-roll; I am going into politics.” His brethren said to him,
“Wait a little; you do not want your name off the church-roll if
you are going into politics. But must you go there?” They showed
him the more excellent way, and to-day he is one of the most
effective ministers in the South. We want to lay our hands, while
we can, while we have the material, on the very pride of the youth
of the colored race, and secure them to the ministry. We want
hundreds of men—the best men, who have the instinct of leadership
about them—men who have that strong, organizing, executive force,
as well as the sympathetic power, by which they can build up
churches in the name of the Redeemer throughout that country.

What is the furnishing for this at present? Here are four schools:
Howard commands the north-eastern section, situated at Washington;
Fisk, in Tennessee; Talladega, in Alabama; and Straight in New
Orleans; and nearly a hundred men from these departments are in the
process of studying for the Christian ministry. We want to enlarge,
and that speedily; for, as I have suggested, the ratio of increase
through the educational work within ten years will be enormous. We
want to enlarge greatly this productive power for the ministry;
and to that end I believe, as the report has stated, we need
substantial endowment for permanent work of this nature. It has
been suggested in the report that we need men for more than home
affairs. England, with generous look, is ready to enter into Africa
and do large work there for Christ. What she wants is men. Fisk
University has consecrated itself largely to the work of supplying
Africa with missionaries. We want to respond to England, with her
generous means, by the gift of men, sending out worthy men, by
which the two nations shall go hand in hand in bringing light into
the dark continent.

Meanwhile, I say as I sit down, that, with regard to this whole
question touching the South, there seems to me to be two aspects of
it; the one of which will give us at present only discouragement,
the other giving us the largest hope and joy.

When Henry J. Raymond was editor of the _New York Times_, some of
you may remember, after one of his stirring editorials, some one
at the South sent him this laconic letter: “Henry J. Raymond. Sir:
Come down South, and we will tar and feather you.” To which Mr.
Raymond replied in equally laconic fashion: “Sir: I think I will
wait; the inducements are not sufficient.” Capital, looking South,
says, “The inducements are not yet sufficient.” Society, looking
South, says, seeing the ostracism there, “I think I will wait; the
inducements are not sufficient.” The North, ready to pour in its
own civilization there so far as it might be accepted, has come
to say to itself, “I will wait; time on this continent is on the
side of the Puritan.” But the American Missionary Association,
touching the conscience and the heart of many strong souls at the
North, said, long ago, “I wait no longer; the inducements _are_
sufficient.” Knowing the ostracism, knowing the persecution,
knowing the difficulties, the inducements for Christian work,
for education, prevailed upon that heart; and to-day we have the
result of what that spirit has been that has looked the South
in the face, that has taken the Freedman by the hand, that is
pushing the glorious work of reformation and reconstruction; not
in the name of a party, hardly in the name of the country, but in
that ever-blessed name above party—even greater than country—the
Crucified.

       *       *       *       *       *




AFRICA.

       *       *       *       *       *


REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.

The Committee, to whom was referred those portions of the Report of
the Executive Committee relating to the work of the Association in
Africa, beg leave to submit the following report:

We stand at the opening of a new era in the history of African
missions. No real cause for discouragement in the present aspect
of affairs presents itself. There is, on the contrary, abundant
reason for gratitude to God, that through the darker experiences
of the past, in which He has revealed to us more clearly what are
His plans, He is leading us to the brighter issues of the future.
The logic of events is irresistible. We, of this Association, are
driven to certain hopeful conclusions.

1st. Africans for Africa. This is the evident teaching of God’s
providence. It is the great lesson of the Mendi mission. The
long list of the heroic dead, martyrs for the Gospel in Africa;
the vast expenditure of resources necessary in supporting white
missionaries; the peculiar dealings of God’s providence with the
negro in this country, especially fitting him for this work—all
point in this direction. This is the fact which gives peculiar
significance to the work of this Association, both in this land
and in Africa, and we hail it with encouragement and hope as one
element of the new and happier era of lasting success, which we
believe will, in the future, attend, under God, the missionary work
of that waiting continent.

2d. Need of careful supervision. In view of the facts laid before
us, and in view, also, of the important enlargement of the work
contemplated, we most heartily commend the determination of the
Executive Committee to appoint a general superintendent of the
work of this Association in Africa. Such a superintendent appears
to us to be a necessity. We believe that he would have more than
he could conveniently do in devoting himself to systematizing the
work in its various phases, providing a suitable literature for the
people, supervising educational and industrial enterprises, keeping
account of the financial matters of the missions, giving character
and direction to the counsels of the missionaries, studying new
regions for advance movements, reporting needs and plans, and thus
enlisting interest at home and abroad. We urgently hope, therefore,
that the appointment of such a superintendent, residing at some
healthful point, easily accessible to the missions, will be made at
the earliest practicable moment.

3d. The subject of the Arthington Mission is no longer an open
question. You have already determined, upon conditions believed
to be practicable, that you will occupy that land for Christ. The
money, we have some reason to hope, is coming, the men are coming,
the Association is only waiting to begin wisely. In an enterprise
of such vast moment to all concerned, care is better than cure.
Your Committee believe that they only give voice to the earnest
desire of the churches, when they express the hope that, as soon
as the necessary funds are received, you will go forward with the
same judicious care as in the past, and take the proper steps to
ascertain more fully the best ways of entering this open door for
enlarged work and greater results.

4th. In view of the events of the year, so full of sadness in the
history of many African missions, your Committee recognize the fact
more clearly than ever before, that the call of God rests, in an
especial manner, upon this Association, to maintain and enlarge
this African work in the way of His own appointment. The great
results it is achieving for the negro of the South have received a
new meaning and impetus in the light of African missions. The whole
problem of the negro in America is finding its solution slowly but
surely. In the providence of God this Association, in the two-fold
relation which it holds to the Freedmen of America on the one hand,
and to the pagans of their fatherland on the other, more truly
than any other, we believe, holds the key to the evangelization of
Africa.

Your Committee, therefore, feel warranted in suggesting that
the true attitude of this Association, in view of the report of
its missions in Africa, should be one of thankfulness for the
experience of the past, encouragement in the work of the present,
and earnest expectation for the future.

                                        HENRY M. LADD, _Chairman_.

       *       *       *       *       *


THE MENDI MISSION.

PROF. T. N. CHASE, ATLANTA, GA.

In November last, I received a letter from Secretary Strieby,
asking me to visit the Mendi Mission in West Africa, which
invitation, after consultation with my family, from whom I was
separated, was accepted, and on the 6th of December I sailed for
that land.

My instructions required me to make such changes in the force of
missionaries and their respective duties as seemed best, and to
obtain information, and report, upon the following topics, viz.:
The health of the missionaries; the church, school, and industrial
work; finances and accounts; the removal or retention of Good Hope
station; extension of the work into the interior, and the use of
the Mendi language.

Upon all these topics, and some others, I reported as well as I
could to the Executive Committee of the A. M. A., and some extracts
have been embodied in their Annual Report of the work of the
Association. Most of the information and reflections in this paper
will be supplementary to that report.

Between Liverpool and Freetown, Sierra Leone, is a weekly line of
steamers, one of which we took; and, after touching at Madeira,
Teneriffe, Grand Canary, Goree, and Bathurst, we landed, on the
twenty-second day of our voyage, at Freetown. Thence a small
steamer conveyed us to Bonthe, where is the Good Hope station of
the Mendi mission. The Sherbro river runs between the main land
and Sherbro Island, being quite like Long Island Sound; and into
it flow several branches that penetrate the Mendi country. On the
inside of Sherbro Island, about fifty miles from its northern
extremity, where is the mouth of the river, and ten miles from its
southern point, is Good Hope, with its church, school and home. The
buildings are on the bank of the stream, and the peaceful river,
several miles in width, studded with green islands, presents a
beautiful view. On the Sherbro Island a few miles south of Good
Hope, is Debia, and thirty or forty miles up the Small Boom, a
branch of the Sherbro, is Kaw Mendi, which has been described in a
recent number of the _Missionary_.

Starting from Good Hope, and sailing north, down the Sherbro twenty
miles, and then east up the Bahgroo twenty miles more, we come to
Avery. For most of the way the banks of the river are lined with
mangrove trees—appearing at high tide to stand in the water—whose
trunks rest, at several feet above the ground, upon pyramids of
stems or roots, and whose outspread branches send down to the earth
numberless rope-like twigs of various sizes, altogether forming an
almost impenetrable jungle. But about a mile below Avery the scene
changes. The mangroves disappear, the low banks give way to quite
high bluffs, and for a long distance stretches a rolling surface,
with a soil of partially decomposed iron-stone. In a bend of the
river, on a conspicuous bluff, stand the buildings of Avery, the
component parts of the station being a home, a church, a school, a
saw-mill, a garden, a coffee-farm, and a fakir.

The home is beautiful for situation, being so nicely located as to
command a view of both banks of the river for half a mile in each
direction; water, rocks and foliage being blended most charmingly.
In this home dwell the pastor of the church with his wife, the
superintendent of industrial work, and ten little native boys and
girls, whose voices cheer the heart of one who loves children, as
the little fellows nearly exhaust their stock of English words in
saying “amen,” and the end of grace at meals, repeating the Lord’s
Prayer, and saying, “Good night, sir,” at their hour for retiring.
Some of these buds of promise have such illustrious names as Robt.
Arthington, Wm. E. Gladstone, A. K. Spence, Jennie Pike and M. E.
Strieby.

It was our privilege to attend church twice, and prayer meeting
several times. The dress of the congregation, so far as it went,
was novel, these people having never submitted to the cruel tyranny
of fashion, but in most cases the amount of apparel met the
requirements of decency. Milliners, however, would have a dry time
in this region, for I noticed but one hat or bonnet, and I could
not tell which. In other cases the head was bare, or surmounted
by a turban made from a handkerchief ingeniously twisted and
tied. Some of the men had full suits, others only a country cloth
wrapped about them, and a few seemed satisfied with simply a large
handkerchief about their loins. But, notwithstanding their lack
in style and quantity of clothing, they were good listeners, and
doubtless carried away much that was said; at least, the writer
of this paper found great pleasure in preaching a lay sermon
from the text, “God so loved the world,” &c. The tithing master,
who paces up and down the aisles, has as little to do in keeping
drowsy persons awake as he would in many New England churches. Some
entries in the agent’s ledger seem to indicate that attendance upon
church and other religious services is not altogether voluntary.
One entry reads, “Cut (docked) for staying away from church,
one shilling;” and another, “Being late to morning prayers, one
shilling.” And in estimating the rigor of this discipline, one need
to know that a shilling pays the wages of a common hand a day and a
half. They have no trade-unions there.

The school at Avery is taught by Mr. Jowett, a native, who speaks
English correctly and fluently. The pupils appeared very much like
other children. Some read and spelled well, and some had to “get
their lessons over.” Little John Bull showed that he had some
surplus energy by thrusting his fist into the mouth of his drowsy
neighbor.

The sawmill is said to have been erected by Mr. D. W. Burton,
with the assistance of natives alone, and is a monument to his
ingenuity, energy and perseverance. Small logs are sawed by a
circular, but most of the work is done by an up-and-down, which
allows the logs to drag their slow length along sufficiently
fast to make the mill pay its way under careful management, with
sawyers at fifteen dollars a month, and lumber at forty-five
dollars a thousand. Other entries in the ledger show a high state
of discipline in _this_ department of mission work. “Neglecting to
tie a canoe, one shilling.” “Smoking in the mill, four shillings.”
“Neglect of duty, one shilling.” “Not obeying, two shillings.”

The chief productions of the garden are cassada, sweet-potatoes
and pineapples. The cassada is a root of milk-white color, and is
the leading article of food. It is usually boiled, but sometimes
baked, or eaten raw. The sweet-potato flourishes well and is
very palatable. The pineapple grows on bushes or shrubs two or
three feet high, the fruit standing up in the midst of long,
narrow, serrated leaves. The yard has cocoanut, banana, orange and
cinnamon trees. In reading lists and descriptions of the African
productions, one might conclude that this is the land for an
epicure; but the fact is that none of these things take the place
of the beef, wheat, vegetables and fruit of the United States, and
a person who has lived in the tropics for a little while, longs for
a Fulton or Quincy market.

The coffee farm consists of 1,500 trees from two to six feet high,
set in rows eight feet apart and just beginning to bear. The coffee
grows in pods about the size of a robin’s egg, in each of which are
two kernels enveloped in a skin or husk. To keep down the rapid and
rank growth of grass with the hoe alone, requires a vast amount
of labor. I find that these industries are highly appreciated by
travelers and traders, and have made the name of Mr. Burton well
known on the coast. The natives have felt their influence already,
and will be more and more inspired by them to habits of industry
and enterprise.

The remaining element of the station is the fakir, or native
village. Most of the houses have mud walls, with bamboo or thatched
roofs. They are built without much system, and are huddled
together, because, probably, where wars prevail, it is necessary
to wall in the towns and villages for defence, and so the houses
must not occupy too much ground. Such is Avery, with its material,
mental, and religious machinery, all tending to produce an
intelligent and stable Christianity.

And now those who have become interested in the experiment of
manning the Mendi mission with graduates of A. M. A. schools, are
asking whether the plan is successful, and I am supposed to have
some information upon this point. It is not quite three years since
the first party of these colored missionaries sailed for Africa,
two of whom have returned, and the others have had a shorter term
of service. So it is too soon to say whether the experiment has
been a success or a failure. If the work had been carried on by
them in the most approved manner, it would be premature to say that
the problem of African evangelization had been successfully solved.
And, on the other hand, if the experiment thus far had been an
utter failure, it would be unjust to the colored race to conclude,
from this one brief trial, that they are incapable of carrying on
mission work by themselves in Africa. Those who are most ready
to embark in an enterprise of this kind are not always the best
qualified. Zeal is needed, and in no leas degree, sound judgment
also.

Fisk University graduated its first college class in 1875, and
Atlanta hers in 1876, so that from these Institutions have come
only five or six small classes that have completed a collegiate
education, and the first one of these students to graduate from a
full theological course has just received his diploma. And then
the officers of the Association have not had their pick from the
graduates of their schools. Some of those best qualified for
mission work abroad are fully persuaded in their own minds that
their field of labor is at home.

So the experiment at the Mendi mission has not been tried under the
most favorable circumstances. The officers of the Association have
not had, like those of the American Board for _its_ work, a large
number of fully educated, mature and consecrated men and women from
which to select candidates for their African mission.

But what is the actual outcome of this brief experiment? The
colored missionaries have kept alive the churches and schools, have
well cared for the buildings and grounds of the stations, have
cultivated the coffee-farm, have bought logs, manufactured and sold
lumber, have organized a new church of considerable promise, and
all but one of them have kept unbroken the brittle thread of life.

[After granting that the mission has as a whole met with serious
drawbacks, and suffered from the lack of character and wisdom on
the part of some of those to whom it was entrusted, Mr. Chase
refers at some length to the following as reasons why mission work
in Africa is, and must be, slow: 1. Polygamy; 2. Mohammedanism;
3. The superstitions of the people; 4. The rum trade; 5. The
unhealthfulness of the climate; 6. The pernicious influence of
traders; 7. The inability of the natives to procure the equipments
of Christian civilization. The paper concludes as follows]:

Now, in view of this rather gloomy presentation, does any one say,
“Let us abandon the Mendi Mission; money enough has been spent,
lives enough have been sacrificed”? I have not written with any
such object in view. My purpose has been to state plain facts as
they exist, for the consideration of wise men, believing that if
there is any lack of tangible results, it is not all the fault
of management or workers, and that great things ought not to be
expected in the immediate future.

But there are grounds for hope as well as for despondency. The
mission has a good name. The labors of Raymond, Thompson and
others, are fragrant in the memories of natives and foreigners, so
that even the British colonists in Sierra Leone are loud in their
praise. The industrial work, instituted and carried on by the
wonderful ingenuity and energy of Mr. Burton, has secured the good
will of traders and foreign residents. I heard many encomiums upon
the mission, especially upon its early history.

The Mendians are a numerous people, occupying a belt of territory
of some hundred miles upon the sea, and reaching far back into the
interior, all of which region is drained by the Sherbro river,
near the mouth of which is located our Good Hope station. Our
mission was established among them many years before those of other
societies, and its work is far ahead of that of the Wesleyans and
Church of England, and if these should greatly increase their
efforts there would still be room for us.

By the assiduous labor of Mr. Claflin, the language of the Mendi
people has been reduced to writing, an elementary grammar and small
vocabulary have been published, and portions of the New Testament
translated, so that the acquisition of the native tongue is
comparatively easy.

The land and buildings of the mission constitute a valuable
property; the Good Hope station, with its regular steamboat
communication with Freetown, furnishes a needed base of operations,
and the sawmill at Avery will provide lumber for future buildings.

The fact that this mission is right in the heart of the old slave
grounds, ought to furnish inspiration for its support. Between
it and Freetown on the Bomana Islands were the old slave pens of
the infamous and afterward illustrious John Newton. Kaw Mendi is
supposed to be the centre of the region from which the Amistad
captives were dragged from their homes to be sold into slavery,
and is the point at which they settled after their return from
these Connecticut shores, through what might be called a series of
special providences. At Kaw Mendi it was my privilege to see and
converse with two surviving members of that slave cargo. Special
interest in such a field as this is something more than mere
sentiment. It is the breath of the God of Love sweeping across the
chords of the soul.

Then too, in addition to the name and history of the mission, its
valuable property, its large field, its written language, and its
providential beginning, it has living material that can be utilized
in its future extension. The station at Debia, where the lamented
Barnabas Root labored for a time, is well carried on by a native
educated at the mission; and another efficient helper of the same
training is employed at Good Hope. And there are several traders
and carpenters, mission-educated, who could render good service in
penetrating the interior.

The great call at present is for two or three men of ability
and culture, of broad views, of practical sense, of considerable
business experience, and of deep consecration, who are ready to
enlist for a long term of service, and take the lead in this
enterprise.

The foundations have been laid, the material for the structure is
at hand and the work is waiting for a wise master-builder.

Let a disciple of the Lord see those people there in their
degradation, superstition, and poverty, and then let him visit some
of our communities in the South, and see those of the same color,
features, and form, living in comfortable houses, clad in decent
garments, cultivating large fields of their own, and supporting
the school and the church, and let him realize that these pictures
present the same race and perhaps the same tribe of people, and
that he can be instrumental under Providence, even in an ordinary
life-time, in bringing about a repetition of this wonderful
transformation, and he ought to need no stronger inspiration.

       *       *       *       *       *


THE CALL TO THE ASSOCIATION.

REV. H. M. LADD, WALTON, N. Y.

One need not be a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, to be able
to predict that the world’s great enterprises of the next century
will take hold upon Africa. Already the earnest gaze of the
civilized world is fixed upon that opening continent. The spirit
of discovery and of commerce have pushed their way into the very
heart of its mysterious jungles. Its borders are all alive with
the enterprise of nations. Vast preparations are making to open up
its wonderful resources, and to find a mart for the products of
civilized industry. Truly, as the great French poet has said, “In
the nineteenth century the white has made a man out of the black.
In the twentieth century Europe will make a world out of Africa.”

The great question is, Shall Christianity keep abreast of this
advancing host? Shall the seeds of the Gospel of light be sown
broadcast through this dark continent, before the tramping feet of
commerce have trodden down its soil into the hardened footpaths
of sin? The call of God is emphatic. He has opened a door which
no man can shut. That call rests in a peculiar manner upon this
Association. It has not been optional with you whether you
should enter Africa. The hand of God, manifested in the peculiar
circumstances attending the Amistad capture, sent you to Africa.
That hand has kept you there; and to-day you are not seeking for
yourselves a way up the Nile and into the heart of Central Africa;
you are invited there, you are urged there, you are sent there. It
will be a great undertaking to go, but it will be a greater mistake
not to go. The generous offer of Mr. Arthington, the importance
of the field, its unoccupied condition, its easy accessibility,
the pledge of needed funds, the fact that it lies right in the
very heart of that region cursed by the slave-trade not yet
abolished, make it obligatory upon this Association to accept the
responsibility and speed forward the work.

But this is not all. Not only do we hear the call of God resting
in a peculiar manner upon this Association, heard especially in
its earlier and later history, but this Association is peculiarly
fitted for the work. It holds in its hands, as the gift of God,
a peculiar power. We in this country are just beginning to spell
out the true lessons, the real meaning of slavery on our soil.
This Association, more than any other under God, has been our
teacher. It has shown us what the educated black man, with even
his limited facilities, can do; and now it has grasped, and
proposes to carry out, a distinctive idea—negroes for negro land.
Mr. President, is it too much to say, that, in this distinctive
idea, so satisfactorily demonstrated already in the history of
African missions, we recognize the star of hope for Africa? Is
it not the solution of many a difficulty? We need not refer here
to the stimulating reflex influence of this new policy upon the
Christian colored people of the South. That it will be great, no
one can doubt. But what is to be the future of Africa, as it is
dotted over here and there where no white man can live, with these
abiding centres of a Christian civilization? What is to prevent the
establishment of these points of light throughout that benighted
region, until, like the stars of Heaven, they shall flood the dark
continent with a galaxy of light, growing brighter and brighter
until the day dawn and the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing
in his wings?

To this end we are called of God to sacrifice, to labor and to
pray. The wise plans which this Association have devised give every
assurance of success. Not at once, perhaps. We must not expect too
much at once, but in the fullness of time. To say that there are
not great obstacles in the way, would be to close our eyes to the
truth. There are obstacles; but what are obstacles when God is with
us? He has not forgotten Africa. That continent, which holds nearly
one-sixth of the human race and is equal in area to all Europe
and North America combined, was surely included in that great
command, “Go ye into all the world and disciple all nations.” The
promises—are they not ours? Will He not be with us alway, yes, even
unto the end of the world? Is not the final victory assured, even
that victory that overcometh the world—our faith? Are we not taught
to pray, “Thy kingdom come”? Surely God’s will is yet to be done
on earth as it is in Heaven, and these nations are yet to become
the nations whose God is the Lord. The day shall come. It may be
ages from this time—but to the thought of God, and to the life of
humanity, ages are but days—when Ethiopia shall not stretch out her
hands in vain.

Let us, then, go confidently forward in the line which God has
marked out for us. Let us help the Freedman of the South to fulfil
his destiny. His bondage over, having safely passed through the Red
Sea of blood, and been brought forward by the pillars of cloud and
of fire, let us now open to him the land of his fathers, and bid
him enter it to drive out the strange gods, and to proclaim the
unsearchable love of our God.

Oh, then, speak unto this children of Israel that they go forward,
and songs of thanksgiving shall arise from the groaning heart of
Africa.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE INDIANS.

       *       *       *       *       *


REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.

Your Committee, to whom has been referred that part of the Report
of the Executive Committee which concerns the American Indians, beg
leave to report as follows:

We recognize with gratitude the work which has been accomplished by
the American Missionary Association, in behalf of the Indians, in
its missionary and educational departments.

We especially recognize and commend the success of the experiment
of bringing youth from the tribes, and educating them at Hampton
Normal and Agricultural Institute and at Carlisle Barracks; and,
at the same time, we record our decided opinion that the schools
on the reservations, while the reservations are continued, must be
relied upon as among the most efficient agencies for improving the
condition of the Indians.

We believe that the possibility of civilizing the Indians is no
longer an open question, as is proven by what has already been
realized at the Fort Berthold, Lake Superior, S’Kokomish, and all
the agencies.

But your Committee desire emphatically to express the opinion
that all attempts to civilize and Christianize the Indians must
be slow and unsatisfactory until there is a radical change in the
relation between the Indians and the United States Government. The
Committee, therefore, desire to reaffirm two resolutions adopted at
the last Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association, as
follows:

Res. 1. That the aim of this Association shall be, as far as
possible, and as rapidly as possible, to secure for the Indians—

(1.) A legalized standing in the courts of the United States.

(2.) Ownership of land in severalty.

(3.) The full rights of American citizenship.

These three things, we believe, are essential, if the Indian is to
be either civilized or made a Christian.

Res. 2. That to this end the members of this Association will do
all in their power to make the Indian question a pressing question,
until the attention of Congress is so secured, and held to it, that
the legislative enactment necessary to bring about these changes be
completely accomplished.

                                     AMORY H. BRADFORD, _Chairman_.

       *       *       *       *       *


CAUSES OF THE MISMANAGEMENT OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.

REV. A. H. BRADFORD, MONTCLAIR, N. J.

In the management of Indian affairs there has been little, if any,
progress since colonial days.

I. The New World was supposed to belong to its discoverers, and
the Indians also, because they belonged to the land. When England
transferred her colonies to the new Republic, it was without any
mention of the aboriginal inhabitants, or their rights. Trees and
stones could not have been more completely ignored. With the single
exception of the Treaty of 1803, by which Louisiana was obtained,
all the Indian population was unconditionally transferred with
the land. “In our first treaty of peace with Great Britain, by
which the latter yielded all claims to the country as far as the
Mississippi River, not a single stipulation appears in regard to
the aboriginal inhabitants, and when they were received they were
considered to be in the same situation,—as far as their legal
status was concerned,—as the nation by which they were surrendered
had placed them.” (The Indian Question, Otis, p. 51.) What was
that status? The Indians were many; the colonists were weak. The
stronger compelled the weaker to treat with them as sovereign
tribes. The weaker became stronger. The same method was pursued
then because of jealousy of the French. Treaties were made, and
what the colonists could not compel by force they accomplished
by intrigue. In the wars between England, Spain and France, the
aborigines held the balance of power, and thus compelled their own
recognition. When the war for independence came, the same was true.
Both British and colonists sought their friendship, and paid for
it. Thus, in a word, grew up the recognition of the sovereignty
of the tribal and national organizations. Thus commenced the
atrocious policy of quietly, by treaty and gifts, removing the
Indians westward, as lands were required for settlement. Since the
revolution, until 1871, when the treaty system was abolished, the
same general plan has been followed.

In everything else, there has been progress. In the management
of our Indian affairs, we are hardly a step in advance of those
who, in 1753, in forming a unity of action against the savages,
organized the germ of our Union of States.

II. The Reservation system seems to have had its birth in the
administration of Jefferson. The object was to make conflict
impossible until the natives could be civilized by isolating
them. Education was to be provided, missionaries sent, protection
guaranteed until they should become new men. Did the plan succeed?
It had hardly been commenced before its failure was recognized. It
has been continued, and the longer it has lasted the worse it has
failed.

The removal to reservations was commenced in earnest under
President Jackson, who advised Congress to set apart an ample
district west of the Mississippi, and without the limits of any
state or territory, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long
as they should occupy it; each tribe having the management of its
own portion of the district, and being “subject to no other control
from the United States than such as may be necessary to preserve
peace on the frontier, and between the several tribes. There the
benevolent may teach, and an interesting commonwealth may be raised
up, destined to perpetuate the race and attest the humanity and
justice of this Government.” (Otis, p. 96.) President Van Buren was
not less sanguine than President Jackson. Never were golden dreams
more ruthlessly shattered. As well might our representatives have
attempted to tame a herd of buffaloes by corraling them at the base
of Mt. Hood, as to attempt to civilize the Indians by separating
them from all civilizing influences. As well might you plant a
keg of nails and expect it to come up a piano, as to seclude such
wild natures on the prairies, or between mountains, and expect
peace and harmony to result. The policy of removal did not benefit
the Indian, and has brought but temporary relief to the country,
by “the elimination of a troublesome element in society.” It has
not been pursued to any great extent during the last twenty-five
years, but still the massing of the Indians in two or three great
reservations seems to be the ideal of our legislators, an ideal
which has not a single support either in reason or experience.

Then the reservations have been such only in name. The Black
Hills territory belonged to the Dakotas only a few years ago. You
remember the story. Reports of mineral wealth reached the outside
world. Emigration commenced. But that country had been set apart
by treaty to the Dakotas. “Yet,” say Felix R. Brunot, “every
step from the moment of making that peace with the Indians, has
been in the direction of depriving them of the very land which
the Peace Commission gave them.” Though there were wealth in
the Black Hills, our nation should have said, and stood by the
declaration—“Gentlemen, that Black Hills country belongs to the
Indians. If those mountains were built of solid gold, and those
river beds were paved with diamonds, not one of you should be
allowed there, unless in honorable trade you had purchased the
right.” But adventurers crowded in, and, because they had white
skins, the sacred covenants of the nation were broken. What wonder
that when the land was assigned them they eagerly asked, “How long
will it be that the President will keep his promise?” Why should
they be loyal to the Government? The Rev. Mr. Sherrill, of Omaha,
writing in the _Advance_, says, “The commonly accepted report is,
that when Commissioner Hayt visited Spotted Tail on the Upper
Missouri, and attempted to misinterpret his promise to the tribe,
Spot shook the written document with Mr. Hayt’s name at the foot of
it in the Commissioner’s face, called him a ‘bald-headed liar,’ and
walked out of the tent indignantly refusing to have anything more
to do with such a forked tongue.”

The reservation system has not secured to the Indians permanent
homes; it has not preserved them from molestation; it has not
improved them either morally or physically; it has not relieved the
Government of care or expense; from beginning to end, it has been a
stupendous fraud and failure.

III. I turn now to the Indian treaty system of the United States,
one of the most fearfully and wonderfully concocted systems that
human stupidity ever devised. It was in operation until 1871.
More than three hundred and sixty-six treaties with native tribes
are recorded in the statute books since the adoption of the
Constitution. If it is remembered that in many of these covenants
several tribes were united, the actual number of treaties is
multiplied to nearly one thousand. It would puzzle a philosopher
to get at the true inwardness of this system. The fact is, that in
colonial days, and almost ever since, the Indians have been treated
with as if they were independent and sovereign States. As such,
they were distinct from United States subjects, and could only be
reached under the forms of international law. In the language of
Justice McLean of the Supreme Bench, “The President and Senate,
except under the treaty-making power, cannot enter into compacts
with the Indians or with foreign nations.” That is plain; and if
the Indians had always been treated according to that decision,
there would have been less trouble. But Congress has claimed
jurisdiction over them, and while the President and Senate were
making treaties, has held each member of the tribes individually
amenable to such laws as it might choose to enact. The Court
decides that they are to be treated with as independent tribes,
and Congress proceeds to manage them as a portion of our dependent
population.

Two illustrations. The Wyandotte Treaty of 1855 declared the
Indians of that band to be citizens of the United States. The
treaty with the Pottawatomies in 1862 placed it in the power of the
President to confer citizenship upon the members of that tribe.
Now, if the Indians were foreigners, they could become citizens
only by naturalization, according to rules prescribed by Congress.
The treaties with them imply that they are foreigners; but the
courts have decided that naturalization laws do not apply to them;
therefore it is evident that it is competent for Congress, and no
other power, to confer upon them political rights. Yet, in the
instances cited, the treaty-making power assumed these rights.
The Executive and Senate abandoned, at length, the process of
making citizens by simple declaration. In 1866, they compelled
the Delawares who wished to become citizens, to appear in the
United States District Court, and take out naturalization papers
the same as aliens. They first made them foreigners in order to
make them citizens. But that was of doubtful legal validity.
Then, to crown this wonderful achievement, it was decided that
the children of those thus naturalized were still foreigners, and
must choose for themselves whether they would enter the tribal
relation, or seek citizenship by naturalization. A white man who
could unravel this snarl would be a genius; to an Indian, it must
have been transparent as the waters of the Missouri. I give this
instance to illustrate the utter confusion which has characterized
the administration of our Indian affairs, and the absolute
impossibility for any one to be elevated by such stupidity.

My second illustration is the Indian Territory itself. A civil
government exists there, subject to Congressional dictation. Yet
Congress never had anything to do with it, and never authorized it.
Its powers have never been defined or controlled by statute. It
was a scheme of the treaty-making power of government alone. It is
an organization devised between tribes, recognized as independent,
and is to take cognizance of matters “relating to the intercourse
and relations of the Indian tribes and nations resident in said
territory and represented, but can pass no act inconsistent with
the Constitution of the United States, the laws of Congress, or
existing treaties; or any act affecting the tribal organizations,
laws, or usages.” Each tribe is independent of this so-called
legislature in all its own affairs. Each tribe has its own laws;
and its own courts, both civil and criminal, are the last resort;
and by treaty, Congress is denied the right to interfere with, or
annul, their present tribal organizations, rights, laws, privileges
and customs. Thus, if an Indian commits murder in his own tribe, he
can be brought to justice only by his own tribe. “The non-treaty
Indians can freely rob, murder, trade with each other, without
incurring responsibility to United States authority.” (Otis, page
115.) If a white man joins an Indian tribe and commits murder, who
tries him, the United States courts or the tribal? Exactly that
issue has arisen. A United States marshal was condemned because he
attempted to take forcible possession of a United States citizen,
who was also a citizen of the Cherokee nation, and who was accused
of the murder of a Cherokee squaw. Other inconsistencies might be
enumerated. Treaties have guaranteed privileges that only Congress
had the right to grant. When the United States court comes in
conflict with the treaty, then confusion and bloodshed follow, and
the absurd clumsiness of official action is hidden beneath the cry
of shocking cruelties by Indians, when they are only defending
rights guaranteed by solemn covenant.

Two other facts may be barely mentioned. Treaties have been
repeatedly solemnized which both parties knew perfectly well could
not be kept; as in the case of the covenant with the Mississippi
and other bands of Chippewas in 1855, when the treaty included a
thousand little details of moral conduct; or the treaties of 1855
and 1865 with the Indians of Oregon and Washington Territory, where
all sacredly promised to take a temperance pledge.

The other fact is that, when Congress has ratified Indian treaties,
the prerogative has been repeatedly asserted of changing the treaty
without consultation with the Indians. In the Cheyenne Treaty
of 1861, the Senate struck out article eleven, one of the most
important articles, and then held the tribe to the treaty as it
chose to amend it.

IV. Two changes must be wrought in our Government before these
wrongs can be permanently righted.

1. The people must be aroused. In 1862, Secretary Stanton said to
a committee who went to him demanding justice for the Indians: “If
you come to Washington to tell us that our Indian system is a sink
of iniquity, and a disgrace to the nation, we all know it. This
Government never reforms an evil until the people demand it. When
the hearts of the people are touched, these evils will be reformed,
and the Indians will be saved.” When the people demand justice to
the Indian, and officers know that swift retribution will be meted
to those who longer trifle with his interests, Indian Commissioners
will no longer dare to condone corruption, and Interior Secretaries
will cease to stand in the way of righteousness.

2. There must be a reform in our system of civil service. In
British Columbia, for the last hundred years, there has been spent
not one dollar for Indian wars, and not one life has been lost. In
the United States, thousands of lives have been lost, and more than
$500,000,000 expended. What do these facts signify? That in British
Columbia they have had able and honest men in the civil service;
and in this Republic, imbecile and corrupt men. Contrast parts of
the two systems. With us the Indians are under the control of the
Secretary of the Interior, and the Indian Department is but one of
numerous important and complex departments under the supervision
of that officer—each one enough to tax to the full the ability
of a trained statesman. With us, the Indian Department must take
its chances with others, and he who ought to give it his entire
attention is “Jack-of-all-trades and master of none.” In British
Columbia, the Minister of the Interior is the actual superintendent
of Indian affairs, and directly responsible for them as the most
important part of his official duties. With us, in our Indian, as
in our civil, service, which is as vicious as any system can be,
officers are continued only during party supremacy.

In the Dominion, officers are continued for life or good behavior,
with the obvious benefit, in matters requiring special skill and
experience, produced by a civil service well established, on a
correct system of selection, which with us has only recently been
attempted.

The trouble with us has been, we have not chosen our best men to do
our most difficult work. We have had two vast problems to solve in
our history—the problem of Reconstruction and this Indian problem.
“In both cases, where France, England, Russia, would have used the
flower of their educated youth, their most honored soldiers, their
wisest lawyers and scientific men, we collected a large horde of
broken-down men of all trades and callings, and men of none, the
riff-raff of caucuses and nominating conventions, in fact, the very
refuse of our busy and prosperous society,” and gave to them to
solve, the most difficult and delicate questions of public policy
which statesmen have ever faced on this continent. The failure was
inevitable in the one case as in the other.

V. In the light of the experience of the last century, I think we
may safely make the following affirmations.

All tribal distinctions ought, as soon as possible, to be abolished
by the Government, and the Indian treated the same as any other man.

The Reservation system should be given up, and Indians be allowed
to go and come whenever and wherever they may choose. Land should
be allotted in severalty. If the Indian has a hard time, the
discipline will probably educate him.

Education should be compulsory, and for a reasonable time, under
patronage of the Government.

All the rights and penalties of citizenship should be accorded to
the Indian, as to the Italian, Irishman, and Negro.

The Indian should understand that this is a final settlement of
his case, and that now he must shift for himself as other citizens
have to do. With justice, and the protection and penalties of law
awarded to him, let the Indian take his chances in the struggle of
life. The germ of civilization is obedience to law. Put him under
state and national law. The fittest will probably survive, Darwin
or no Darwin.

So much for the Government. Then let Christianity, through its
voluntary agencies, do the rest, as it well knows how to do, and is
so grandly doing through the American Missionary Association. There
are difficulties attending the execution of these suggestions. This
consideration would require time that I have not at my disposal.
They are not insuperable to a wise statesmanship.

When Dr. Riggs was visiting and preaching in the Indian Territory,
one day there sat before him an old chief, nearly a hundred years
of age, listening attentively. It was the missionary’s last sermon
before leaving. When the service was over, the old man went up to
Dr. Riggs, and reaching out his scrawny hand to the missionary’s
snow-white beard, grasped it firmly, and turning him to the full
sun-light gazed intently into his face for a long time. “What
do you do that for?” at length said the Doctor. “Because I want
to know you in the resurrection,” the old chief slowly replied.
His people had been scattered, his children killed, his horses
stolen, he had been driven from the home of his childhood to a
strange land. While he waited to die, this noble old apostle, in
whom Christ dwelt, crossed his pathway. The speech and tenderness
were so strange, coming from a white man, that he wanted to be
sure of recognizing him after death. “I want to know you in the
resurrection.” How many white men will the Indians want to meet in
the resurrection? It is time these awful wrongs were righted. It
is time we learned with the wise fool in _A Fool’s Errand_, “The
remedy for darkness is light; for ignorance, knowledge; for wrong,
righteousness.” It is time the people were roused. It is time a
tide of public opinion, demanding justice for the Indian, was
rolled in upon our rulers, too strong to be longer resisted. If the
Government never reforms until the people demand it, let us be sure
that we voice our part of that demand, loud and clear, at once and
unmistakably.

       *       *       *       *       *


LETTER FROM GENERAL FISK.

[It was anticipated up to a late day by the committee of
arrangements that General Fisk would be present at the meeting and
would make an address upon the Indian Report. In his unexpected and
compelled absence he kindly sent the following letter:]

It is almost two hundred and fifty years since Captain John Mason,
at the head of ninety men, more than half of the fighting force of
the Connecticut Colony, marched against Sassacus, and almost within
bow-shot of where your Annual Meeting is to be held, fought the
Pequods. It was the first Indian war in New England. Thomas Hooker,
“the light of the Western Churches,” famed as “a son of thunder,”
delivered to Mason the staff of command. The very learned and
godly Stone spent nearly the whole night in importunate prayer for
success to crown the expedition, which on the morrow sailed past
the Thames, hoping by strategy to reach the Pequod fort unobserved.
Under cover of night, the soldiers of Connecticut made the attack
upon the Indians. “We must burn them,” shouted Mason, who himself
cast a firebrand to the windward among the light mats of their
cabins. The helpless natives climbed the palisades as their blazing
encampment assisted the English marksmen in taking good aim. Six
hundred Indians, men, women and children, perished, most of them in
the hideous conflagration. Capt. Miles Standish had twenty years
earlier slaughtered Witawamo and others of the Massachusetts tribe,
the knowledge of which, as it reached the gentle spirited Robinson
in Leyden, caused the pastor to write to Bradford, “concerning the
killing of those poor Indians, of which we heard at first by report
and since by more certain relation. Oh, how happy a thing had it
been if you had converted some before you killed any.”

“The principle and foundation of the charter of Massachusetts,”
wrote Charles II. at a time when he had Clarendon for his adviser,
“was the freedom of liberty and conscience, not only for the
Puritan but for the natives, whom the ministers might win to the
Christian faith.” The instructions to Endicott as to the rights
of the Indians on the far-away Atlantic coast, and their duty to
them, were clear and emphatic. “If any of the savages pretend right
of inheritance to all or any part of the lands granted in our
patent, endeavor to purchase their title, that we may avoid the
least scruple of intrusion. Particularly publish that no wrong or
injury be offered to the natives.” The colony seal was a wandering
Indian with arrows in his right hand, with the motto, “Come and
help me.” For more than two hundred and fifty years, from our
Indian tribes, as they have been steadily driven before the surging
tide of civilization from the Atlantic to the Pacific, has there
been the constant cry of the weaker to the stronger forces of the
continent, “come and help me.” Many who will be in attendance upon
your Annual Meeting have seen “Standing Bear” of the Poncas, who
was wantonly and wickedly driven from his home on the banks of the
Missouri by the Government, and heard him tell his simple story
of wrong endured, and heard his appeal, “Come and help me.” With
sublime faith that God intended all men to be free and equal, all
men without restriction, without qualification, without limit, let
us listen to their appeal, and respond with the best help in our
power to contribute.

Never before in the history of this country has there been such
an awakening in behalf of the Indian. Never before such healthy
sentiment for justice and fair play for the original owners of the
soil over which our fifty millions of prosperous people unfurl the
flag of the free. The Indian question, like the Ghost of Banquo,
is at every banquet. It will not down until “Birnam wood do come
to Dunsinane.” Hundreds of years of broken faith, during which
ambuscades, massacres, fired Indian camps, blazing wigwams and
smouldering embers of burned villages, have strewn the pathway of
our march of empire, until now upon every lip is the interrogatory,
What shall be done with the Indian? All the Indian asks, all his
friends ask for him, is a _fair chance_.

It has been well said that in good faith and good feeling we must
take up this work of Indian civilization, and at whatever cost
do our whole duty in the premises. We owe them protection of the
property they own, endowments of money, forbearance, patience,
care, education, _citizenship_.

Let not another Indian be removed from his home, except as he
removes himself by his own volition.

Let every acre of land now occupied under treaty, or by any other
document by which the United States have “ceded and relinquished”
the same, be held sacredly theirs forever, unless the citizen
Indian chooses to sell it.

Let there be no more the policy of seclusion, but rather that of
absorption.

Let all covenants between the Government and the Indian be executed
as promptly and faithfully as with any other person.

Let the Indian citizen have his own home with all the protection of
National and State Governments.

Let the Indian citizen have the same protection of law, and require
from him the same obedience to law as governs in the case of the
white man and the black man, and then the Indian will work out his
own destiny.

Let us say with that quaint philosopher, Hosea Bigelow, that

    “This is the one great American idee,
    To make a man _a man_, and then to let him be.”

Trusting that the American Missionary Association will keep its
standard on the Indian question “full high and advancing,” I remain,

  With very great respect,
  Your obedient servant,

                                                   CLINTON B. FISK.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE CHINESE.

       *       *       *       *       *


“CALIFORNIA CHINESE MISSION.”

Auxiliary to the American Missionary Association.

  PRESIDENT: Rev. J. K. McLean, D.D. VICE-PRESIDENTS: Rev. A. L.
  Stone, D.D., Thomas C. Wedderspoon, Esq., Rev. T. K. Noble, Hon.
  F. F. Low, Rev. J. E. Dwinell, D.D., Hon. Samuel Cross, Rev. S.
  H. Willey, D.D., Edward P. Flint, Esq., Rev. J. W. Hough, D.D.,
  Jacob S. Tabor, Esq.

  DIRECTORS: Rev. George Mooar, D.D., Hon. E. D. Sawyer, Rev. E.
  P. Baker, James M. Haven, Esq., Rev. Joseph Rowell, Rev. John
  Kimball.

  SECRETARY: Rev. W. C. Pond. TREASURER: E. Palache, Esq.

       *       *       *       *       *


REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.

Your Committee, to whom was referred that part of the Report of the
Executive Committee which concerns the Chinese, beg leave to report
as follows:

1. That in estimating the success of their work, the difficulties
under which it has been prosecuted must be borne in mind; the fact
that it has been carried on in the face of an intense hostility
to the presence of Chinese upon our shores, extending not only to
the lower classes, but also, in not a few localities, including
influential clergymen and laymen, and became so far a dominant
sentiment, that both the great political parties have yielded to it
by inserting anti-Chinese planks in their platforms.

2. That this work ought to be not only generously supported and
vigorously maintained, but, so far as practicable, extended,
especially by the establishment of schools and mission work among
the Chinese in the mines.

3. That while your Committee recognize the difficulties in the way
of establishing a mission in China, they also see that there would
be great advantage, both direct and indirect, in thus connecting
a foreign with the home work, and they recommend the Board to
give serious consideration to the proposition, and to carry it
into execution, if, on a more thorough inquiry, it shall be found
practicable to do so without interfering with the other work of the
society, or with the work of other Evangelical missions in China.

                                         LYMAN ABBOTT, _Chairman_.

       *       *       *       *       *


THE TWO METHODS.

REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D., NEW YORK.

* * * Let us recognize, then, that there is a possibility of
danger to us, religious danger from the influx of a godless and
atheistic people, political danger from the influx of a vast amount
of cheap labor, danger from a deluge coming from an ocean almost
unfathomable and immeasurable. How shall we meet that danger?
Looking down the vista of the years, how shall we prepare ourselves
for it and protect ourselves from it?

There are two methods; and I wish simply to set these two methods
before you as clearly and as distinctly as I can.

The one method is that of self-protection by force; the method of
building a Chinese wall and saying, “You shall not come upon our
shores;” the method of the brick-bat; the method of the mob; the
method which has been succinctly put in Dennis Kearney’s platform,
“The Chinese must go,” and more genteelly and courteously put in
the Democratic and Republican platforms, which mean the same thing;
the method which declares, “We will not allow this people upon our
shores to live among us, to work with us, to share our benefits;”
the method of a prohibitory legislation.

In respect to that method, _first, we have no right to adopt it_.
“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Go through
the first five books of the Bible and find how it is iterated and
reiterated again and again, that the soil of this earth belongs to
God. No people have a right to set themselves down upon a territory
and say to their brother people, “You shall not come.” We have a
right to say that if they come they shall come subordinate to the
laws and the institutions that have been established here; that
they shall behave themselves; that they shall obey the system of
laws which we have found good for ourselves and for our children;
but we have no right to build a wall of adamant around the land and
say, “Keep out.” By what right do the children of the immigrants of
1620 say to the immigrants of 1880, “You shall not set foot upon
this soil”? By what right do the sons of the Pilgrim Fathers say
to the pilgrims of this generation, “You shall keep off”? When did
that right come to us? Could we have said it in 1700, in 1750, in
1800? At what epoch in our national history accrued to us the right
of drawing the line, building the wall, closing the gates, and
saying, “Thou shalt come no more?”

I shall not enter in detail into the argument on this subject. I
know what is the reply: “If I have a farm of a hundred acres, may I
not keep tramps off?” No nation has found itself without difficulty
and threatened danger, that has attempted to keep the laborer off
of land which was not being worked. To-day Ireland is wrestling
with the labor problem, and England is wrestling with the labor
problem, because there are vast tracts of unoccupied, untilled,
uncultivated land from which the laborer is excluded. So long as
our mines lie undug; so long as our prairies lie uncultivated; so
long as our streams run their course and no music of the mills
sings along their lines, so long industry has a right to its home
under our flag and within our borders.

And _we have not the power_ if we had the right. Congress does not
make laws; Congress only declares and interprets them. There is but
one law-giver—God Almighty; and all that judges and governors and
law-makers and Congresses and Parliaments can do, is to ascertain
what are God’s laws and interpret them. And God’s law is the law
of liberty, and all His laws are to conserve liberty. Never in
the history of the world has a nation succeeded in stopping one
of these great migratory movements. Out of four hundred million
people, in one year almost as many corpses lie upon the ground in
China as were strewed on all our battle-fields, and over every
one a grave-stone might be erected with the inscription, “Died
of hunger!” Why, you might better expect to stop the charge of a
herd of buffaloes rushing madly along with the prairie on fire
behind them, by means of a Virginia rail fence, than to stop the
immigration of a great nation, driven from its home by pursuing
famine, with an act of Congress. You could easier dam up the waters
of the Gulf Stream with bulrushes.

In the year 250 the Goths and Vandals won their first victory
over Roman arms on the Roman boundary. The Roman empire adopted
Dennis Kearney’s platform; it said, “We will not have the Goths
and Vandals on our territory.” The Roman empire was clad in mail
from its head to its foot; it was an army of soldiers; it put forth
the greatest military power the world has seen to stop the great
migration. For a hundred and fifty years the conflict went on,
but year by year the valiant warrior was beaten back, and it was
ended at last with the sack of Rome. But 250 years before these
immigrants made their first appearance on the border line, a little
decrepit Jew made his appearance in Rome as a prisoner. He lived
there two years, bound, chained to the soldier that guarded him,
and he brought there the story that God had shown himself in Jesus
Christ, His Son, who had lived, suffered, died, risen, and ever
lived for them. In those 250 years, Christianity under various
persecutions, had grown little by little, until, when the Goths and
Vandals made their appearance, it comprised one-twentieth of the
population of Rome—fifty thousand out of a million. It sent Bishop
Ulfilas with his Gothic Bible, to the north; it sent Augustine
into England; it sent St. Patrick—Protestant before the time of
Protestantism—to preach a pure gospel in Ireland. One and another
and another went forth, bearing the cross; and when at last the
Goths and Vandals had conquered the armed Romans, so thoroughly
had that Christian church done its work, that, says Lecky, the
Christian church conquered the barbarian world almost in the same
hour in which the barbarian world conquered Rome.

We are told that we cannot convert the Chinese. Why, Christianity,
while it was yet in its cradle, without churches, without schools,
without a printing press, without literature, Christianity
infantile vanquished the serpents that had strangled the military
Hercules. If we cannot, with the Christianity that we possess
to-day, vanquish the semi-civilized paganism of China, we had
better get a new Christianity, for we sorely need it.

Let us look, then, at the other method of protecting our nation
from the incursion of the Chinese. The one is the barbaric method,
the method of military Rome; the other is the Christian method,
the method of the successors and followers of the Apostles and of
the Lord Jesus Christ. What is this method? What does it involve?
It involves welcoming the Chinese to our shores; throwing open
the gates; recognizing the truth that the earth is the Lord’s,
and that all peoples are entitled to make their home here if they
will; welcoming them to all the protection—I do not say to all
the powers—of citizenship; holding over them the shield of the
Declaration of Independence, and declaring for them the right to
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It involves bringing
them into our schools and into our churches; teaching them that
which we teach ourselves and our children; teaching them those
things upon which our own intelligence and prosperity and our own
national life are based. Above all, it involves teaching them those
great principles of Christianity which are the very conservation of
national force and the saviours of the nation. It involves teaching
them that there is one God; that we are all one family, brethren in
the Lord Jesus Christ, doubly brethren—born of God and redeemed by
Christ; it involves teaching them immortality, and all the glorious
hopes and liberations that come from the faith of immortality; it
involves all the assimilating and unifying force and power that
come from teaching the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of the
human race.

And, observe, you cannot carry on these two methods
simultaneously. You cannot say, “We will exclude the Chinese, but
if they do come here we will convert them.” You cannot ask the
Chinaman to kneel down with you and say, “Our Father which art in
Heaven,” and then, when he has finished, take him by the throat
and toss him into the Pacific. You cannot say to a Chinaman, “You
are my brother, get out of here!” You cannot be both Christian and
Pagan; you must take your choice.

It is said that the Chinese cannot be converted, that they are
impervious to Christian influences, and that they repudiate and
reject all such. What have been the Christian influences that have
been showered upon them? They have been impervious to the guns of
England when they flamed out, “You shall take opium!” they have
been impervious to the influence of Dennis Kearney’s brick-bats
when they have been flung at them in the street. I do not wonder
that they were impervious to that kind of Christianity. Cannot be
converted? Men call this an age of scepticism; but the unbelief
that doubts the first chapter of Genesis, that thinks the story
of the Fall is a parable, that is uncertain whether the whale did
really swallow Jonah or not, that doubts whether those three men
went into the fiery furnace unconsumed, is as nothing compared with
the unbelief that lurks sometimes in our pulpits and oftener in
our pews, that doubts the declaration that the Gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation to every man that
believeth—not to every Anglo-Saxon man, not to every white man,
not to every cultured man, but to every black man, and red-skinned
man, and copper-colored man, and Indian man, and Chinaman,—to
_humanity_. It is as nothing compared with the infidelity that puts
under its foot the obligation: “I am debtor to the Jew, and to the
Greek, to the bond and to the free, to the white, to the black, to
the Indian, to _every_ man, because for every man my Christ died.”

We cannot convert the Chinese? Really it does not lie in us to say
they are beyond hope. Let me read you the features of a portrait:

“Huge, white bodies, cool-blooded, with fierce blue eyes and
reddish flaxen hair; ravenous stomachs, filled with meat and
cheese, heated by strong drinks; of a cold temperament, slow
to love, home stayers, prone to drunkenness! * * pirates at
first; * * sea-faring, war, and pillage, their only idea of a
freeman’s work; * * of all barbarians the strongest of body
and heart, the most formidable, the most cruelly ferocious;
* * torture and carnage, greed of danger, fury of destruction,
obstinate and frenzied bravery of an over-strong temperament, the
unchaining of the butcherly instincts; * * with a great and coarse
appetite.”—[Compiled from Taine’s English Literature, vol. I pp.
30–33.] Do you recognize it? It is the portrait of your ancestors
and mine; and if Christianity can make out of that picture such an
audience as I see before me to-night, what may it not make out of
China?

To-night again we see in the heavens, brighter and clearer by
far than ever Constantine saw in his fabled vision, that flaming
cross, and under it the motto, “By this sign I will conquer.” That
motto, enforced by the history of eighteen centuries of triumph,
I set before you; the Roman spear on the one hand and the flaming
cross on the other: choose you by which sign you will vanquish the
Chinese.

       *       *       *       *       *


OUR GROUNDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT.

REV. SAMUEL SCOVILLE, STAMFORD, CONN.

[Mr. Scoville compared the work of the Association to the
river which went out of Eden and became into four heads, the
Pishon, flowing to the land of gold and the Havilah of the East,
representing its Chinese work. After forcibly depicting the
importance of the work as involving the regeneration of China, the
good name of the Christian Church, the honor of Christ, and the
perpetuity of our political institutions, the address closed with a
statement of the grounds for encouragement that this work can and
shall be done. It is this latter part only for which we have room,
as follows]:—

I turn now to the grounds we have for encouragement that this work
can and shall be done.

1. The first is found in God’s word. We ask ourselves, Is it His
purpose that this work shall be done, that those heathen on our
Western coast and in China shall be converted, or must they be
given over to destruction? And we read the promise of God to His
dear Son: “I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance,” and
that means the people of California, a large part of them, “and the
uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession,” and that means
China.

Is there anything special about the Chinese nature that puts them
outside the recuperating, renewing forces that exist in Jesus
Christ? And I read: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,”
and again, “that He by the grace of God should taste death for
every man.” And I know that in that humanity and in that provision
the Chinese are included. I hear Him say, “Come unto me all ye that
labor and are heavy laden,” and I know that the wretched millions
of China are meant.

But may it not be true that the Chinese are so lost to spirituality
that this whole power of renewing forces will be lost upon them? I
read: “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” And I
know there is a sweet attractiveness in the Saviour of men dying
for them, that is able to break up the dull apathy of Chinamen as
well as others.

But is there power enough to wake up the Christian churches as
well as the Chinese from their apathy? And I read that prayer for
us, “that ye may know what is the exceeding greatness of His power
toward us who believe according to the working of His mighty power
which He wrought in Christ when he raised Him from the dead, and
set Him at His own right hand in the Heavenly places,” and I know
that individuals and churches, even the whole Christian land, can
be breathed upon and quickened by that resurrection life. And then
the Divine Commission breaks in upon all our delay, saying, “Go ye
into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,” and I
know that that means us, and that the time is now. I am confident
that we have God’s word for it that this work can be done, and that
we are to set about it without delay; and having this foundation I
care for little else. But we have more if we require it.

2. We have God’s providence. His providence that has pushed the
column of progress forward from the moment the Life came forth from
the tomb in the garden, and began to be preached to the nations,
until now its head occupies the slopes of the mountains that
overhang that distant continent, and looks upon it inevitably as
its next field of conquest. That providence that has pushed this
advance forward upon two parallel lines, that of spiritual and of
political liberty, and has made them converge and come together for
the first time in history upon this broad domain; that has brought
along in the slow conflict and march, institutions and rights, the
spoil of nineteen centuries of conflict, and planted them upon this
continent, and opened the door of invitation to the East through
a sea-coast line of twelve thousand miles, and another to the
far West of four thousand. These providences of God, making our
duty clear, are endorsed by those others that have broken up the
seclusive habits of that people, and have turned the thoughts of
her educated men, and the hopes of her commerce, and the needs of
her industrious poor, toward our shores.

This writing of God’s providence seen in the majestic progress
of events from the East and West meeting here, seen in the
configuration of the continent, seen in the harsh language of war
breaking open closed doors, and in the voice of peace, endorses
that other word which God has given us, and proves that our
interpretation was correct, and that we have an especial duty to
this people, both at home and abroad.

3. Another ground for encouragement is the character of the Chinese
that are now in California. They have the mind and disposition of
the mother country; nothing less, not much more. And what kind
is that? We answer, it is that which created and still keeps the
most ancient literature in existence. It is that which worked out
for itself most of the inventions that made the fifteenth century
remarkable in Europe, but more than a thousand years before. It is
a mind and spirit that has obeyed, and does now obey, the fifth
commandment more thoroughly than any nation upon the earth; that
educates formally but more widely than any other people. It has
had the tenacity and recuperative power to hold on to its ancient
seats while Babylon was rising and falling; while Greece was coming
to the zenith and sinking behind the Western horizon; while Rome
was growing and dying; while mediæval Europe was going through
its changes, and modern nations were being born and attaining
their growth. All this time it has held on. What think you of
the natural capacity of a soil that has produced such results,
that has such staying power? It has lain long fallow, but let the
process of breaking up their exclusiveness go forward; let the
Gospel, not as a destructive force, illustrated by brick-bats and
cannon-balls, but as a quickening power made beautiful to their
eyes by the kindness and sympathy of those who profess its truths,
be brought to bear upon them like the sun-light; and what harvests
of righteousness shall not that great field bear for enriching the
Redeemer’s kingdom!

The soil here or at home has not lost its native force nor its
receptive power. Yung Wing, picked up by a missionary in the
streets of Canton, converted by the faithfulness of one of the
mothers of New England, sent to Yale College, where he stood
among the first in his class, especially in English composition,
returning to his own land to reach one of the highest places in
the government, and now leading one of the greatest educational
enterprises in the world, and Jee Gam as a disciple and a preacher,
are but illustrations of what this soil, found among the common
ranks of the Chinese, is capable of producing.

The twelve thousand dollars saved by the Chinese of California out
of their hard-earned wages, and sent to the sufferers from the
yellow fever in the South, proves that the common sentiments of our
humanity are still surpassingly strong in them. The numbers and
faithfulness of those who have joined the churches prove that they
are susceptible to the influences of the Gospel, while the very
tenacity with which they cling to their old faith but proves the
toughness of the fibre that may some day be employed to conserve
the interests of the Redeemer’s Kingdom.

4. Again, we may gather courage from the experience we have
already had in conquering difficulties. If this was the first
difficult matter the American Christian people had ever faced, we
might expect them to be puzzled by its intricacy or appalled by its
magnitude; but it is not, for from the moment our fathers planted
their feet upon these shores, we as a people have had to face
obstacles and to overcome them. A color-line, black as night, lay
in the way of citizenship, education, and Christian labor, but we
have crossed it, and we can cross the yellow line as well.

5. Again we may take courage from the very strait and necessity to
which we are brought. When God brings His people down to the sea,
and all ways are shut up, and still His voice and command are to
go forward, we know that the waters of the sea will be divided,
and we shall go over dry-shod and singing songs of victory beyond.
We cannot shut out the one hundred thousand Chinamen now here,
nor prevent others coming. We cannot go back to the old Chinese
policy of exclusiveness, neither can we permit them to remain as
a foreign element, unsubdued by our institutions or our religion.
Only one thing remains, and that is to subdue them by the power of
the living Saviour brought to them by patient, loving, faithful
Christian hearts and bands. Brethren all, _shall this be done_?

6. And last of all, I mention the moving forward of Christian
thought and Christian feeling in this direction.

When the plan was devised to exclude the Chinese, and the President
vetoed the bill, the Christian public upon the Atlantic coast waked
up to the importance of the matter. They opposed his action, they
began to look at this immigration in its true light, to see in it
a grand opportunity, and to lay their plans to avail themselves of
its advantages for the cause of Christ. The greatness of the work
is touching the imagination; its difficulty is awaking a spirit
of heroism, and it is believed by many that we stand upon the
threshold of one of the grandest missionary movements, one of the
grandest crusades that the world has ever seen. Asia, that once
responded to the call from the West, “Come over and help us,” is
now herself uttering the cry, and the Christian world will not long
be insensible to her voice.

In view of the importance of this work in California among the
Chinese, involving the interests of that great nation beyond the
Pacific, involving the good name of Church and Redeemer, involving
as we believe the perpetuity of our institutions: in view of the
encouragements afforded in God’s word, endorsed by His providences,
by the excellent elements found in the Chinese character, and
by the trophies already gathered; in view of the very necessity
that is laid upon us, and the quickened attention of the churches
toward that people, what is your answer, Christian brethren,
to the practical questions: “Can the Chinese of California be
conquered for Christ? Can the waters of that wide-spreading river
flow to them here, and beyond to the continent of Asia, and shall
they do it? Can the work be done? Will you do it?” These are the
questions for this time, made solemn as the closing hour of your
deliberations, councilings, and prayers.

I look along the ages, and all is changed. We no longer sit here
in the darkness, the dust, and the noise of the conflict, but stand
upon the Heavenly heights above. The world, in alternate shade and
sunshine, rolls at our feet, and its song, the song of salvation,
pulses up to our listening ears. Both the question that is here
asked, “Will you do it?” and the answer, which I see in your looks
you are giving, “By God’s grace we will!” are mingled with the
sounds of the far past, and in their place rises the word, half
song, half benediction, “Glory to God! we have done it.” To those
high seats we are moving; for that good word we are working and
waiting.




RECEIPTS

FOR SEPTEMBER, 1880.

       *       *       *       *       *


  MAINE, $152.54.

    Augusta. John Dorr, $15; Deacon Joel Spaulding, $5       $20.00
    Bangor. Hammond St. Cong. Ch.                            100.00
    Hampden. Cong. Ch.                                         6.86
    Hallowell. M. E. W. 0.50 North Bridgton. Cong. Ch.
      and Soc.                                                 7.00
    Norway. Second Cong. Ch.                                  18.18


  NEW HAMPSHIRE, $894.39.

    Acworth. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                               14.85
    Atkinson. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                               6.00
    Bristol. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                                3.22
    Brookline. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                             10.00
    Concord. “A Friend,”                                       1.00
    Derry. First Cong. Sab. Sch., $20, _for
      Student Aid, Talladega C._;—First Cong. Ch.
      and Soc., $15                                           35.00
    Durham. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                                 8.00
    Fitzwilliam. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                           28.50
    Gilmanton Iron Works. Cent. Charitable Soc. of
      Cong. Ch.                                                7.50
    Goffstown. Mrs. Mary A. Stinson                            5.00
    Haverhill. Eliza Cross                                     2.00
    Hillsborough Centre. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                    3.00
    Keene. First Cong. Ch. and Soc.                           79.86
    Mason. Ladies, _for Wilmington, N. C._                     7.50
    Meredith Village. Cong. Ch. to const. MRS.
      IRENE SMITH, L. M.                                      30.00
    Merrimack. Cong. Ch.                                      17.65
    Milford. ESTATE of Mrs. Rhoda B. Hutchinson,
      by Rev. E. H. Greeley                                  400.00
    Mount Vernon. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                          12.24
    Nelson. Dea. A. E. W.                                      1.00
    New Boston. Levi Hooper                                  100.00
    Pelham. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                                32.37
    Pittsfield. “A Friend,”                                    3.00
    Reed’s Ferry. Miss H. McM.                                 0.50
    Rindge. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                                 1.75
    Swanzey. Miss M. W.                                        1.00
    Thornton’s Ferry. Mrs. E. R. and Mrs. H. N.
      E., 50c. ea.                                             1.00
    Warner. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                                23.12
    Westmoreland. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                           7.33
    Wilton. Second Cong. Ch.                                  52.00


  VERMONT, $1,844.55.

    Burlington. Sarah Parker                                   2.00
    Chester. “A Friend”                                       15.00
    Cornwall. Mrs. C. Ellsworth                                2.00
    Bridport. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                              18.00
    Coventry. Moses C. Pearson                                 5.00
    Danville. Cong. Sab. Sch.                                 10.00
    Dummerston. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                             4.06
    East St. Johnsbury. Cong. Ch. and Soc.,
      $22.50; Mrs. S. L., 25c.                                22.75
    Enosburgh. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                             17.00
    Grafton. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                               12.00
    Jamaica. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                                5.00
    Montgomery Centre. Heman Hopkins                           3.00
    Morrisville. Mrs. Hannah E. Bailey                         2.00
    North Craftsbury. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                      23.00
    Pittsfield. Cong. Ch.                                     12.00
    Ripton. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                                 4.42
    Royalton. A. W. Kenney                                    10.00
    Saint Johnsbury. “Friends of Missions”                 1,000.00
    Saint Johnsbury. North Cong. Ch.                         230.00
    Saint Johnsbury Centr. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                  2.25
    Sheldon. Cong. Ch.                                         5.07
    Springfield. “A Friend,” $200; Mrs. F. Parks,
      $100; Cong;. Ch. and Soc., $28                         328.00
    West Dover. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                             5.00
    Westminster. “A Thank Offering”                            1.00
    West Salisbury. Mrs. Esther Spencer                        5.00
    West Wardsborough. Mrs. T. W.                              1.00
    Woodstock. Hon. Frederick Billings                       100.00


  MASSACHUSETTS, $3,469.30.

    Amherst. Mrs. R. A. Lester                                50.00
    Amesbury. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                              12.00
    Ayer. Mrs. C. A. Spaulding                                50.00
    Barre. Cong. Ch. and Soc., $24.07, and Sab.
      Sch., $29.54; Evan. Cong. Sab. Sch., $21.26             74.87
    Bernardston. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                            4.50
    Boston. Miss E. P.                                         0.50
    Boston Highlands. Highlands Cong. Ch. and Soc.            76.24
    Brimfield. Ladies’ Charitable Soc. Bbl. of C.
      and $2 _for freight, for Savannah, Ga._                  2.00
    Brocton. Porter Evan. Ch. and Soc.                        21.70
    Brookfield. Evan. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                      60.00
    Brookline. Harvard Cong. Ch., $84.84; Wm. H.
      White, $10                                              94.84
    Cambridge. Geo. F. Wade                                   25.00
    Cambridgeport. Pilgrim Cong. Ch., Mon. Con.
      Coll.                                                    8.06
    Charlton. Cong. Ch. and Soc., $14; Clarissa
      Case, $5                                                19.00
    Chelsea. Anna F. Page, $5; Mrs. A. E. P., 50c.             5.50
    Dorchester. Second Cong. Ch. and Soc.                  1,112.94
    Douglass. Rev. W. W. Dow                                   5.00
    East Hawley. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                            7.25
    East Wareham. M. F. & J. H. Martin                        10.00
    Enfield. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                               45.00
    Georgetown. “A Friend”                                    10.00
    Grantville. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                            69.29
    Great Barrington. A. C. T.                                 1.00
    Greenfield. Jeanette Thompson                              5.00
    Holland. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                                9.00
    Holliston. H. B.                                           1.00
    Lancaster. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                             46.32
    Lexington. Hancock Cong. Ch.                               2.59
    Malden. First Cong. Ch. and Soc.                          38.02
    Marlborough. Union Cong. Ch. and Soc.                     56.00
    Medford. Mrs. E. L. Cummings, Bbl. of C. and
      $2, _for freight, for Talladega, Ala._                   2.00
    Melrose. Orth. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                         40.31
    Middleborough. First Cong. Ch. and Soc.                    8.41
    Milford. First Cong. Ch. and Soc.                         38.40
    Monson. E. F. Morris                                      50.00
    Newbury. First Cong. Sab. Sch.                            10.75
    North Andover. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                         60.00
    North Brookfield. First Cong. Ch. and Soc.
      ad’l to const. REV. S. P. WILDER and MRS.
      JENNIE WATSON WILDER, L. M’s                            50.00
    North Chelmsford. Second Cong. Ch. and Soc.               29.00
    North Hadley. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                           4.56
    North Reading. Cong. Ch. and Soc., Mon. Con.
      Coll.                                                    4.00
    Norton. Trin. Ch., by “E. B. W.,” $100; Cong.
      Ch. and Soc., $5.50                                    105.50
    Orange. Mrs. E. W. M.                                      1.00
    Petersham. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                              3.20
    Reading. Bethesda Cong. Ch. and Soc., $151.42
      ($100 of which _for Student Aid, Atlanta,
      Ga._,) Bethesda Cong. Sab. Sch., $25                   176.42
    Rockland. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                              75.00
    Rockport. Cong. Ch. and Sab. Sch., _for
      Student Aid, Talladega C._                              40.00
    Salem. Tabernacle Sab. Sch., $20, and Infant
      Class, $14, _for Student Aid, Talladega C._             34.00
    Sandwich. Mrs. Joseph French                               5.00
    Sherborn. “A Friend”                                       3.00
    South Hadley Falls. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                    20.00
    South Weymouth. Second Cong. Sab. Sch., Miss
      Grover’s Class, _for Student Aid, Atlanta U._            7.00
    Springfield. Mrs. A. C. Hunt                               5.00
    Sudbury. Ladies Miss. Soc., B. of C. and $2.50
      _for freight, Atlanta, Ga._                              2.50
    Taunton. Winslow Ch.                                      29.00
    Templeton. Trin. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                        8.22
    Topsfield. Charles Herrick                                20.00
    Upton. Miss M. E. C.                                       1.00
    Walpole. Mrs. C. F. M.                                     1.00
    Waltham. R. C.                                             1.00
    Wayland. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                                5.00
    Worcester. David Whitcomb, $600, G. Henry
      Whitcomb, $100                                         700.00
    Worcester. Salem St. Cong. Ch.                             6.41


  RHODE ISLAND, $45.56.

    East Providence. Cong. Ch.                                20.56
    Providence. Dea. W. S. King, $20, G. H. Dart,
      $5, _for Talladega C._                                  25.00


  CONNECTICUT, $2,414.86.

    Berlin. Second Cong. Ch.                                  20.95
    Cheshire. “A Friend,” $20; Cong. Ch., $18.94              38.94
    Chester. Cong. Ch.                                        50.57
    Eastford. Cong. Ch.                                       10.00
    East Hartford. First Ch.                                  20.00
    East Windsor. First Cong. Ch. and Soc.                     9.00
    Ellington. Cong. Ch.                                      51.55
    Farmington. Cong. Ch. Quar. Coll. ($50, of
      which from H. D. Hawley, and $3 _for Woman’s
      Work for Woman_)                                       112.04
    Franklin. Cong. Ch.                                       14.18
    Griswold. Cong. Ch.                                       40.00
    Gurleyville. Second Cong. Ch. and Soc.                     5.74
    Hanover. Cong. Ch.                                        17.98
    Hartford. Newton Case, $100, _for Talladega,
      C._;—Dr. John R. Lee, $45                              145.00
    Lisbon. Cong. Ch.                                          2.81
    Mansfield Centre. Mrs. S. M. Dewey, $25; Mrs.
      B. Swift, $10; Mon. Conn. Coll., $4; _for
      Talladega C._;—H. D. R., $1                             40.00
    Meriden Centre. Cong. Ch.                                 18.00
    Monroe. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                                 6.00
    New Haven. E. Pendleton                                   15.00
    New London. First Ch.                                     83.94
    North Woodstock. Rev. F. V. Tenney                         5.00
    Norwich. ESTATE of Samuel C. Morgan, by Lewis
      A. Hyde, Ex.                                            73.71
    Norwich. Park Cong. Ch. and Soc., Weekly
      Offering (bal.)                                        186.99
    Plainfield. Cong. Ch. and Soc. to const.
      MARGARET E. KINNIE, L. M.                               33.75
    Preston City. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                          31.00
    Salisbury. Mrs. M. M. B.                                   1.00
    Saybrook. Cong. Ch.                                       10.11
    Scotland. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                              10.00
    South Glastonbury. Cong. Ch.                               5.26
    Southport. “A Friend”                                     50.00
    Thomaston. Cong. Soc.                                     19.92
    Vernon. Mrs. E. P. Hammond                                10.00
    Wallingford. Cong. Ch.                                    45.35
    Watertown. ESTATE of Jeremiah Barnes, by A. M.
      Hungerford, M. D., Ex.                                 100.00
    Wauregan. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                              13.00
    West Hartford. Charles Boswell                           250.00
    West Winsted. Second Cong. Ch. and Soc.                   18.07
    Winsted. “Friends”                                        50.00
    —— “A Friend,” _for Talladega C._                        500.00
    —— “A Friend”                                            200.00
    —— “A Connecticut Friend,” _for Talladega C._             50.00
    —— “A Friend”                                             50.00


  NEW YORK, $709.61.

    Amsterdam. S. Louise Bell                                  5.00
    Brooklyn. Miss M. E. Horton, $5, Rev. S. B.
      Halliday, bundle of books and newspapers                 5.00
    Cortland. Mrs. E. B. Dean                                  5.00
    Ellington. Mrs. H. B. Rice                                10.00
    Gerry. Mrs. M. A. Sears                                  128.36
    Gloversville. Mrs. L. H.                                   1.00
    Granby Centre. J. C. Harrington                           10.00
    Hamilton. Mrs. S. K. Bardin                                5.00
    Harlem. “J. D.”                                          300.00
    Morrisville. Dea. A. B. DeForest, _for
      Talladega C._                                           26.00
    New York. C. T. Christensen, $25, Robbins
      Battell, $20, _for repairs Talladega
      C._;—“A. P. D.” $10                                     55.00
    Orient. Miss H. M. W.                                      1.00
    Owego. Rev. E. B. Turner, two packages of
      religious newspapers
    Seneca Falls. Cong. Ch. “A Friend,”                       50.00
    Sherburne. Homer C. Newton, $11, Mrs. Fanny
      Rexford, $10, _for Talladega C._                        21.00
    South Edmeston. “Three Friends,” _for
      Talladega C._                                            3.00
    Syracuse. M. W. Hanchett, $25; Rev. J. C.
      Holbrook, D. D., $10                                    35.00
    Union Valley. Wm. C. Angel                                10.00
    Westmoreland. First Cong. Ch.                              4.25
    ——. “A Friend”                                            25.00
    ——. “A Friend”                                            10.00


  NEW JERSEY, $35.60.

    Chester. First Cong. Ch.                                  19.60
    East Orange. G. A. T.                                      1.00
    Elizabeth. First Cong. Ch.                                 5.00
    Newark. Mrs. Abby White                                    5.00
    Paterson. P. Van Houten                                    5.00


  PENNSYLVANIA, $176.89.

    Hulton. Coll. U. P. Ch., $20, W. W. Grier,
      $10.77, _for Student Aid_                               30.77
    Philadelphia. Central Cong. Ch.                          143.72
    Sewickly. “E. H. T.”, _for Woman’s Work for
      Woman_                                                   0.40
    Worth. John Burgess                                        2.00


  OHIO, $458.24.

    Andover. O. B. Case                                       10.00
    Beloit. J. S. and M. H. 50c. ea.                           1.00
    Berea. Cong. Ch.                                           4.36
    Cincinnati. G. W. F.                                       1.00
    Cleveland. Euclid Ave. Cong. Ch., $15.58,
      First Cong. Ch., $14                                    29.58
    Fredericktown. A. H. Royce                                10.00
    Garretsville. HARVEY PIKE, to const. himself
      L. M.                                                   30.00
    Gomer. Welsh Cong. Ch.                                    50.31
    Jersey. Mrs. Lucinda Sinnett                              12.00
    Lafayette. Cong. Ch.                                       5.34
    Lenox. A. J. Holman                                       10.00
    Mecca. Cong. Ch.                                           6.00
    Medina. First Cong. Ch., to const. C. J.
      RYDER, L. M.                                            37.45
    Newark. Welsh Cong. Ch.                                   12.81
    New Richland. Elizabeth Johnston                           2.00
    Norwalk. “A Friend”                                        5.00
    Oberlin. Ladies of Second Cong. Ch., by Mrs.
      Dr. Allen, _for Lady Missionary, Atlanta,
      Ga._, $75;—Second Cong. Ch., $20.48                     95.48
    Plainsville. C. O. H.                                      0.50
    Plain. Cong. Ch., $10, Woman’s Miss. Soc. of
      Cong. Ch., $14.50                                       24.50
    Saint Clairsville. Wm. Lee, Sr.                            2.00
    Saybrook. Cong. Ch. (in part), $20, by Rev. A.
      D. Barber;—District No. 3, $10, _for Student
      Aid_; “A Friend,” $1.25, _for new building,
      Tougaloo Inst._, by Miss E. A. Johnson                  31.25
    Sheffield. By Wm. A. Day                                   8.00
    Steuben. Mrs. M. M. A.                                     1.00
    Twinsburgh. L. W. and R. F. Green                          5.00
    Wellington. Cong. Ch. and Soc.                            50.00
    York. Cong. Ch.                                           12.66
    Youngstown. “A Friend”                                     1.00


  INDIANA, $25.38.

    Bloomfield. “Friends” _for McLeansville, N. C._            0.30
    Cincinnati. “Friends” _for McLeansville, N. C._            0.30
    Solsberry. “Friends” _for McLeansville, N. C._             8.72
    South Bend. R. Burroughs                                  10.00
    Stanford. “Friends” _for McLeansville, N. C._              6.06


  ILLINOIS, $730.51.

    Amboy. Cong. Ch.                                          23.40
    Avon. Mrs. Celinda Wood and “Friend,” $2.50 ea.            5.00
    Bunker Hill. Cong. Ch.                                    27.80
    Chicago. Dr. Wm. Converse, $10; Lincoln Park
      Ch. (ad’l) $6; Mrs. Willard Cook, $5; Mrs.
      M. C. S., $1                                            22.00
    Collinsville. Mrs. J. S. Peers, $10; J. A.
      Wadsworth and wife, $10                                 20.00
    Concord. J. J. T.                                          0.50
    Danville. Cong. Ch. (ad’l)                                 6.00
    Deer Park. A. W. Day                                       5.00
    Elgin. Cong. Ch., $61.17; W. G. Hubbard, $40             101.17
    Farmington. Phineas Chapman                               60.00
    Geneseo. Henry Nourse, $50, _for Talladega
      C._; Mrs. Lucy B. Perry, $5                             55.00
    Gridley. Cong. Ch.                                        10.00
    Jacksonville. Thomas W. and Malvina C. Melendy            15.00
    Joliet. WILLIAM C. STEVENS, bal. to const.
      himself L. M.                                           10.00
    Kewanee. Woman’s Miss. Soc., by Mrs. C. C.
      Cully, _for Lady Missionary, Liberty Co.,
      Ga._                                                    26.73
    Lake Forest. Mrs. S. A. Nichols                            5.00
    Lyndon. Cong. Ch.                                          5.00
    Oak Park. Cong. Ch. (in part)                             35.85
    Peoria. Cong. Ch.                                        118.58
    Plainfield. Cong. Ch.                                     16.75
    Plymouth. Cong. Ch.                                       10.30
    Princeton. Mrs. A. R. Clapp                               30.00
    Prospect Park. Mrs. Emma Lloyd                             5.00
    Ridgefield. Rev. J. O.                                     1.00
    Rockton. Cong. Ch.                                         5.20
    Saint Charles. Ladies’ Miss. Soc.                          5.00
    Shabbona. Cong. Ch., to const. MRS. ELIZABETH
      GREENFIELD, L. M.                                       34.45
    Sheffield. First Cong. Ch. ($20 of which _for
      Lady Missionary, Liberty Co., Ga._)                     30.00
    Springfield. First Cong. Ch., to const. WALTER
      SANDERS, L. M.                                          30.00
    Stillman Valley. Cong. Ch.                                 9.78
    Toulon. Miss E. M.                                         1.00


  MICHIGAN, $1,359.95.

    Alpena. “S. D. H.” (of which $100, _for ed. of
      Indian girls and boys, and_ $100 _for
      Woman’s Work for Woman_)                               500.00
    Benzonia. First Cong. Ch.                                 27.69
    Chelsea. Cong. Ch.                                        21.50
    Detroit. First Cong. Ch., $249.12; Rev. F. T.
      Bayley, $20                                            269.12
    Galesburgh. P. H. Whitford                                75.00
    Hopkins. First Cong. Ch.                                   8.00
    Kalamazoo. Cong. Ch.                                      11.30
    Laingsburg. Rev. Fayette Hurd                              5.00
    Milford. Mrs. E. G.                                        1.00
    Olivet. Samuel F. Drury, _for Straight U._                10.00
    Pent Water. Cong. Ch.                                      7.00
    South Haven. Cong. Ch., $8.75; C. Pierce, $5              13.75
    Summit. Cong. Ch.                                          6.59
    Union City. “A Friend”                                   400.00
    Vassar. Mrs. O. W. Selden                                  2.00
    Warren. Rev. J. L. Beebe                                   2.00


  WISCONSIN, $128.91.

    Alderley. Mrs. E. Hubbard                                  8.50
    Beloit. Second Cong. Ch.                                  20.00
    Boscobel. First Cong. Ch.                                 10.00
    Bristol and Paris. Cong. Ch.                              25.00
    Fort Howard. Cong. Ch.                                    24.00
    Geneva Lake. Presb. Ch.                                   30.91
    Ripon. Mrs. A. E. U.                                       0.50
    Shopierre. John H. Cooper                                  5.00
    Union Grove. Rev. James A. Chamberlain                     5.00


  IOWA, $336.93.

    Amity. Cong. Ch.                                          10.00
    Atlantic. Mrs. Milo Whiting, $10, Cong. Sab.
      Sch., $6                                                16.00
    Burlington. Mrs. J. B. N. and Mrs. J. W. G.,
      50c. ea.                                                 1.00
    Chester. Cong. Ch.                                        21.00
    Clinton. W. R.                                             1.00
    Columbus City. Mrs. Sarah E. Evans                         3.56
    Davenport. Edwards Cong. Ch.                             100.00
    Des Moines. “Friends,” _for Talladega C._                 32.60
    De Witt. Cong. Ch., $22.23, Cong. Sab. Sch.,
      $4.79                                                   27.02
    Grinnell. “Friends” $55, Collected by Miss
      Mary Magoun, _for Le Moyne Ind. Sch._—Miss
      S. Whitcomb’s S. S. Class, $1, _for
      Talladega C._                                           56.00
    Iowa City. D. W. C. Clapp, $25.00, J. S.
      Turner, $5, _for Talladega C._                          30.00
    Keokuk. F. N. French                                      10.00
    Postville. Cong. Ch.                                       6.75
    Red Oak. Cong. Ch.                                        15.00
    Tabor. “A Friend”                                          1.00
    Tipton. Cong. Ch.                                          6.00


  MISSOURI, $9.10.

    Amity. Cong. Ch. (ad’l)                                    2.60
    Kahoka. Dea. Moses Allen                                   1.50
    Laclede. “E. D. S. and S. A. S.”                           5.00


  KANSAS, $10.00.

    Osawatomie. Cong. Ch.                                     10.00


  MINNESOTA, $69.83.

    Cannon Falls. First Cong. Ch.                              7.88
    Medford. Cong. Ch.                                         4.00
    Minneapolis. Plymouth Ch., $42.67; First Cong.
      Ch., $11.78                                             54.45
    Rushford. Wm. W. Snell                                     1.50
    Saint Paul. Anna Baker                                     2.00


  NEBRASKA, $19.00.

    Beatrice. Mrs. B. F. Hotchkiss                             5.00
    Columbus. Cong. Ch., $3.50; Mrs. J. T. C., 50c.            4.00
    Exeter. Mission Band, “Cheerful Givers,” Cong.
      Ch., by Florence Dean                                    5.00
    Omaha. Mrs. Nancy M. Tracy                                 5.00


  ARKANSAS, 50c.

    Washington. Miss J. R. M.                                  0.50


  DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, $38.00.

    Washington. “M. S. C.,” $20; First Cong. Ch.,
      $18                                                     38.00


  MARYLAND, $10.00.

    Federalsburg. Sarah A. Beals                              10.00


  TENNESSEE, $2.00.

    Nashville. Individuals, by H. C. Gray                      2.00


  ALABAMA, $153.70.

    Montgomery. Cong. Ch.                                    144.00
    Selma. Cong. Ch.                                           9.70


  NORTH CAROLINA, $2.50.

    Raleigh. Tuition                                           2.50


  SOUTH CAROLINA, $77.65.

    Charleston. Cong. Ch., $46.65; “Friends,” by
      Rev. Temple Cutler, $31                                 77.65


  TEXAS, $1.00.

    Paris. Sab. Sch., by Rev. J. W. Roberts, _for
      Mendi M._                                                1.00


  INCOME FUND, $4,198.00.

    Avery Fund, _for Mendi M._                             3,138.00
    Le Moyne Fund                                            660.00
    C. F. Hammond Fund                                       300.00
    C. F. Dike Fund, _for Straight U._                        50.00
    General Fund                                              50.00
                                                           ————————
    ——                                                         0.50
                                                           ————————
    Total for Sept.                                       17,375.00
    Total from Oct. 1st to Sept. 30th                    $178,344.61

       *       *       *       *       *

  FOR TILLOTSON COLLEGIATE AND NORMAL INST., AUSTIN, TEXAS.

    Exeter, N. H. Mrs. A. F. Odlin and Miss E.
      Bell, Box of Bedding and $2 _for Freight_               $2.00
    Hampton, N. H. Woman’s Missionary Soc., by
      Mrs. L. E. Dow, $13 and Box of Bedding,
      value $19.50                                            13.00
    Andover, Mass. John Smith                                250.00
    Florence, Mass. A. L. Williston                          500.00
    Holliston, Mass. Ladies’ Benev. Society of
      Cong. Ch., by Mrs. J. A. Johnson, Sec.                  12.00
    Hopkinton, Mass. Ladies, by Mrs. Sarah B.
      Crooks, $25; and Bbl. of Bedding, val. $25              25.00
    Northampton, Mass. Ladies of First Church, by
      Miss Wright                                             25.00
    Hartford, Conn. Mrs. L. C. Dewing                         25.00
    Jewett City, Conn. Ladies’ Sewing Soc., $12.25
      and Box of Bedding; “Friends,” 80 vols. _for
      Library_                                                12.25
    Norwich, Conn. “A Friend”                                400.00
    Plantsville, Conn. Ladies’ Industrial Soc.,
      Bundle of Bedding.
    Putnam, Conn. Ladies of Second Cong. Ch., by
      Mrs. Geo. Buck, $37.40, and Box of Bedding,
      with 30 vols. _for Library_                             37.40
    Round Hill, Conn. Mrs. Charles Knapp                       2.00
    Wethersfield, Conn. Ladies, by Mrs. E. John,
      $28 and Box of Bedding, value $17.50; Rev.
      A. C. Adams, 50 vols. _for Library_                     28.00
    Sag Harbor, N. Y. “A few Ladies,” by Mrs. A.
      E. Westfall                                             25.00
                                                          —————————
    Total                                                  1,356.65
    Previously acknowledged in August receipts             6,238.00
                                                          —————————
    Total                                                 $7,594.65

       *       *       *       *       *

  FOR SCHOOL BUILDING, ATHENS, ALA.

    Fredonia, N. Y. “Friends”                                 30.00
    Jamestown, N. Y. Mrs. Bly’s S. S. Class                   10.00
    Mansfield, Ohio. Cong. Ch.                                25.00
    New Albany, Ind. Mrs. Sarah Conner                         5.00
    Detroit, Mich. Mrs. Z. Eddy, $3; Mrs. Warner,
      $5                                                       8.00
    Memphis, Mich. Cong. Sab. Sch.                             5.00
    Portland, Mich. Rev. J. L. Maile                           6.00
    Vermontville, Mich. Mrs. H., $1, Mrs. S. C., $1            2.00
    Selma, Ala. Cong. Sab. Sch.                               25.00
                                                            ———————
    Total                                                    116.00
    Previously acknowledged in August receipts               980.01
                                                          —————————
    Total                                                 $1,096.01

       *       *       *       *       *

  FOR NEGRO REFUGEES.

    Received from Oct. 1st to Sept. 30th                     444.75
                                                        ———————————
    Total amount from Oct. 1st to Sept. 30th, 1880      $187,480.02

       *       *       *       *       *

  FOR MISSIONS IN AFRICA.

    Received from Oct. 1st to Sept. 30th                   6,576.48

       *       *       *       *       *

  STONE FUND.

    Received from Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, Malden,
      Mass., at the hands of Messrs. P. S. Page,
      I. M. Cutler, and W. H. Wilcox, Trustees,
      for the benefit of the Educational
      Institutions under the care of the
      Association                                        150,000.00

       *       *       *       *       *

  AVERY FUND.

    Amount received from Executor                            408.92
                                                            ———————

                                      H. W. HUBBARD, _Treas._
                                                 56 Reade St., N. Y.




Constitution of the American Missionary Association.

INCORPORATED JANUARY 30, 1849.

       *       *       *       *       *


ART. I. This Society shall be called “THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY
ASSOCIATION.”


ART. II. The object of this Association shall be to conduct
Christian missionary and educational operations, and diffuse a
knowledge of the Holy Scriptures in our own and other countries
which are destitute of them, or which present open and urgent
fields of effort.


ART. III. Any person of evangelical sentiments,[A] who professes
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is not a slaveholder, or in the
practice of other immoralities, and who contributes to the funds,
may become a member of the Society; and by the payment of thirty
dollars, a life member; provided that children and others who have
not professed their faith may be constituted life members without
the privilege of voting.


ART. IV. This Society shall meet annually, in the month of
September, October or November, for the election of officers and
the transaction of other business, at such time and place as shall
be designated by the Executive Committee.


ART. V. The annual meeting shall be constituted of the regular
officers and members of the Society at the time of such meeting,
and of delegates from churches, local missionary societies,
and other co-operating bodies, each body being entitled to one
representative.


ART. VI. The officers of the Society shall be a President,
Vice-Presidents, a Recording Secretary, Corresponding Secretaries,
Treasurer, two Auditors, and an Executive Committee of not less
than twelve, of which the Corresponding Secretaries shall be
advisory, and the Treasurer ex-officio, members.


ART. VII. To the Executive Committee shall belong the collecting
and disbursing of funds; the appointing, counselling, sustaining
and dismissing (for just and sufficient reasons) missionaries and
agents; the selection of missionary fields; and, in general, the
transaction of all such business as usually appertains to the
executive committees of missionary and other benevolent societies;
the Committee to exercise no ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the
missionaries; and its doings to be subject always to the revision
of the annual meeting, which shall, by a reference mutually
chosen, always entertain the complaints of any aggrieved agent or
missionary; and the decision of such reference shall be final.

The Executive Committee shall have authority to fill all vacancies
occurring among the officers between the regular annual meetings;
to apply, if they see fit, to any State Legislature for acts of
incorporation; to fix the compensation, where any is given, of all
officers, agents, missionaries, or others in the employment of the
Society; to make provision, if any, for disabled missionaries, and
for the widows and children of such as are deceased; and to call,
in all parts of the country, at their discretion, special and
general conventions of the friends of missions, with a view to the
diffusion of the missionary spirit, and the general and vigorous
promotion of the missionary work.

Five members of the Committee shall constitute a quorum for
transacting business.


ART. VIII. This society, in collecting funds, in appointing
officers, agents and missionaries, and in selecting fields
of labor, and conducting the missionary work, will endeavor
particularly to discountenance slavery, by refusing to receive the
known fruits of unrequited labor, or to welcome to its employment
those who hold their fellow-beings as slaves.


ART. IX. Missionary bodies, churches or individuals agreeing to
the principles of this Society, and wishing to appoint and sustain
missionaries of their own, shall be entitled to do so through the
agency of the Executive Committee, on terms mutually agreed upon.


ART. X. No amendment shall be made to this Constitution without
the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present at a regular
annual meeting; nor unless the proposed amendment has been
submitted to a previous meeting, or to the Executive Committee in
season to be published by them (as it shall be their duty to do, if
so submitted) in the regular official notifications of the meeting.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] By evangelical sentiments, we understand, among others, a
belief in the guilty and lost condition of all men without a
Saviour; the Supreme Deity, Incarnation and Atoning Sacrifice
of Jesus Christ, the only Saviour of the world; the necessity
of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, repentance, faith and holy
obedience in order to salvation; the immortality of the soul; and
the retributions of the judgment in the eternal punishment of the
wicked, and salvation of the righteous.




The American Missionary Association.

       *       *       *       *       *


AIM AND WORK.

To preach the Gospel to the poor. It originated in a sympathy with
the almost friendless slaves. Since Emancipation it has devoted its
main efforts to preparing the FREEDMEN for their duties as citizens
and Christians in America and as missionaries in Africa. As closely
related to this, it seeks to benefit the caste-persecuted CHINESE
in America, and to co-operate with the Government in its humane
and Christian policy towards the INDIANS. It has also a mission in
AFRICA.


STATISTICS.

CHURCHES: _In the South_—in Va., 1; N. C., 6; S. C., 2; Ga., 13;
Ky., 6; Tenn., 4; Ala., 14; La., 17; Miss., 4; Texas, 6. _Africa_,
2. _Among the Indians_, 1. Total 76.

INSTITUTIONS FOUNDED, FOSTERED OR SUSTAINED IN THE
SOUTH.—_Chartered_: Hampton, Va.; Berea, Ky.; Talladega, Ala.,
Atlanta, Ga.; Nashville, Tenn.; Tougaloo, Miss., New Orleans, La.;
and Austin, Texas, 8. _Graded or Normal Schools_: at Wilmington,
Raleigh, N. C.; Charleston, Greenwood, S. C.; Savannah, Macon,
Atlanta, Ga.; Montgomery, Mobile, Athens, Selma, Ala.; Memphis,
Tenn., 12. _Other Schools_, 24. Total 44.

TEACHERS, MISSIONARIES AND ASSISTANTS.—Among the Freedmen, 284;
among the Chinese, 22; among the Indians, 11; in Africa, 13. Total,
330. STUDENTS—In Theology, 102; Law, 23; in College Course, 75;
in other studies, 7,852. Total, 8,052. Scholars taught by former
pupils of our schools, estimated at 150,000. INDIANS under the care
of the Association, 13,000.


WANTS.

1. A steady INCREASE of regular income to keep pace with the
growing work. This increase can only be reached by _regular_ and
_larger_ contributions from the churches—the feeble as well as the
strong.

2. ADDITIONAL BUILDINGS for our higher educational institutions, to
accommodate the increasing numbers of students; MEETING HOUSES for
the new churches we are organizing; MORE MINISTERS, cultured and
pious, for these churches.

3. HELP FOR YOUNG MEN, to be educated as ministers here and
missionaries to Africa—a pressing want.

Before sending boxes, always correspond with the nearest A. M. A.
office, as below:

  NEW YORK      H. W. Hubbard, Esq., 56 Reade Street.
  BOSTON        Rev. C. L. Woodworth, Room 21 Congregational House.
  CHICAGO       Rev. Jas. Powell, 112 West Washington Street.


MAGAZINE.

This Magazine will be sent, gratuitously, if desired, to the
Missionaries of the Association; to Life Members; to all clergymen
who take up collections for the Association; to Superintendents of
Sabbath Schools; to College Libraries; to Theological Seminaries;
to Societies of Inquiry on Missions; and to every donor who does
not prefer to take it as a subscriber, and contributes in a year
not less than five dollars.

Those who wish to remember the AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION in
their last Will and Testament, are earnestly requested to use the
following


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 [in some States
three are required—in other States only two], who should write
against their names, their places of residence [if in cities,
their street and number]. The following form of attestation will
answer for every State in the Union: “Signed, sealed, published
and declared by the said [A. B.] as his last Will and Testament,
in presence of us, who, at the request of the said A. B., and in
his presence, and in the presence of each other, have hereunto
subscribed our names as witnesses.” In some States it is required
that the Will should be made at least two months before the death
of the testator.

       *       *       *       *       *




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                 *       *       *       *       *


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                 *       *       *       *       *


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                 *       *       *       *       *


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                             NEW YORK.

=Buy and Sell Bills of Exchange= on Great Britain and Ireland,
France, Germany, Belgium and Holland, =Issue Commercial and
Travelers’ Credits, in Sterling=, available in any part of the
world, and in =Francs= for use in Martinique and Guadeloupe.

                Make Telegraphic Transfers of Money

         Between this and other countries, through London
                            and Paris.

=Make Collection of Drafts drawn abroad= in all parts of the United
States and Canada, and of =Drafts drawn in the United States= on
Foreign Countries.

=Travelers’ Credits= issued either against cash deposited or
satisfactory guarantee of repayment: In Dollars for use in the
United States and adjacent countries; or in Pounds Sterling for use
in any part of the World. Applications for credits may be addressed
as above direct, or through any first-class Bank or Banker.

                       BROWN, SHIPLEY & CO.,
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                 *       *       *       *       *


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                 *       *       *       *       *


                     THE THIRTY-FOURTH VOLUME

                              OF THE

                       AMERICAN MISSIONARY,

                               1880.

                 *       *       *       *       *


We have been gratified with the constant tokens of the increasing
appreciation of the MISSIONARY during the past year, and purpose to
spare no effort to make its pages of still greater value to those
interested in the work which it records.

A little effort on the part of our friends, when making their own
remittances, to induce their neighbors to unite in forming Clubs,
will easily double our list, and thus widen the influence of our
Magazine, and aid in the enlargement of our work.

Under the editorial supervision of Rev. C. C. PAINTER, aided by the
steady contributions of our intelligent Missionaries and teachers
in all parts of the field, and with occasional communications from
careful observers and thinkers elsewhere, the AMERICAN MISSIONARY
furnishes a vivid and reliable picture of the work going forward
among the Indians, the Chinamen on the Pacific Coast, and the
Freedmen as citizens in the South and as Missionaries in Africa.

It will be the vehicle of important views on all matters affecting
the races among which it labors, and will give a monthly summary of
current events relating to their welfare and progress.

Patriots and Christians interested in the education and
Christianizing of these despised races are asked to read it, and
assist in its circulation.

The Magazine will be sent gratuitously, if preferred, to the
persons indicated on page 384.

Donations and subscriptions should be sent to

                               H. W. HUBBARD, Treasurer,
                                       56 Reade Street, New York.

                 *       *       *       *       *


                          TO ADVERTISERS.

Special attention is invited to the advertising department of the
AMERICAN MISSIONARY. Among its regular readers are thousands of
Ministers of the Gospel, Presidents, Professors and Teachers in
Colleges, Theological Seminaries and Schools; it is, therefore,
a specially valuable medium for advertising Books, Periodicals,
Newspapers, Maps, Charts, Institutions of Learning, Church
Furniture, Bells, Household Goods, &c.

Advertisers are requested to note the moderate price charged for
space in its columns, considering the extent and character of its
circulation.

Advertisements must be received by the TENTH of the month, in order
to secure insertion in the following number. All communications in
relation to advertising should be addressed to

          THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT,
                                        56 Reade Street, New York.

                 *       *       *       *       *

☞ Our friends who are interested in the Advertising Department of
the “American Missionary” can aid us in this respect by mentioning,
when ordering goods, that they saw them advertised in our Magazine.


DAVID H. GILDERSLEEVE, PRINTER, 101 CHAMBERS STREET, NEW YORK.




Transcriber’s Notes:

Obvious printer’s punctuation errors have been corrected. Letters
missing from printing, where an empty space had been left for the
letter, were inserted. Inconsistent hyphenation retained due to
multiple authors.