The American Missionary

THE

American Missionary.

American Missionary Association.

This is the Annual Meeting number of The Missionary. It is twice the usual size, and more than twice the usual value. Addresses omitted for lack of space will appear in subsequent numbers. Dr. Behrends’s sermon will be printed in the Annual Report.

The Portland Meeting was one of the best in the history of the Association. The intellectual and spiritual power of all the sessions was marked and sustained throughout. The attendance was large. The churches provided right royally for those who attended. The ministers and those associated with them worked night and day. They anticipated every want. They made themselves the servants of all. We cannot thank them as we ought. We cannot reward them as they deserve. They have done the cause a noble service.

An enthusiastic, profitable, inspiring meeting was anticipated, and that expectation was more than fulfilled. There was no debt to mourn over, and no question of administration to dispute about. The one object in coming together was to get a bird’s-eye view of the field, and to crystalize the aroused enthusiasm in the form of increased contributions, exertions and prayers for the society’s work.

Never did the magnitude of its field and the complex character of its labors appear in such startling lines. Either one of the four principal departments of labor demands the money and the force which is distributed among all. But, in the providence of God, this society is called upon to prosecute this fourfold work. It cannot abandon a single field, and it must not be asked to. It can do in the next five years a work for Christianity and for Congregationalism in the South and West which will tell on the coming century. As Christians, and as Congregational Christians, we[336] must see that it be not obliged to pinch its workers, and to turn away from promising openings in order to keep free from debt the coming year.

In two respects the deliberations are likely to issue in action which will affect the other societies as well. The strong sentiment in favor of a consolidation of the missionary publications will probably take form in some definite action ere long, and the frequent and prolonged laments over the scanty gifts of Christians for missionary operations indicate a determined effort on the part of pastors and leaders to induce a revival of giving.

The American Missionary Association has a united constituency at its back, and a boundless field before its face. In the solving of the problems which confront American Christianity, it is to have a glorious share.

The Congregationalist.

Rev. Dr. Roy, our Western District Secretary, has secured a number of stereopticon-views illustrative of our work in all its departments. By aid of the stereopticon he tells his story in a way that keeps both eyes and ears of his audience engaged. The venture is highly praised. The overflow meeting, Wednesday evening, in Portland, were treated to a part of the lecture and exhibition. People who say missionary meetings are dull, make themselves conspicuously scarce when Dr. Roy comes round.

Now is a good time to induce our friends, not subscribers, to subscribe for The American Missionary. With January a new volume of the magazine begins. The price is only 50 cents. The reading matter will be found interesting and profitable. There is a prejudice against missionary literature. It is unjust. Will our friends aid us by trying to destroy that prejudice? We cannot offer premiums to induce formation of clubs. It is a missionary magazine that we publish. We invite missionary effort to enlarge its paying circulation.

That word paying makes us think. We have a large number of life members, to all of whom we send The Missionary free. We also send it to pastors and Sunday-school superintendents of contributing churches free. By so doing we do not mean to debar them from the privilege of paying. Many of these, knowing that they will receive the magazine anyway, put their subscription into their annual donations. Better send the subscriptions separately. It would enable us, by entering the subscriptions upon our books where they belong, to lower the expense of publication. Of course, in the result it is as broad as it is long. We have so much receipts and so much expenses, but it is well to give credit where credit is due, and our magazine should have its credits acknowledged.[Pg 337] Where subscriptions are put in with the general contribution, they go into the general treasury. They do not appear in the specific magazine account, and we have no means of knowing exactly what the magazine costs the general treasury. It is very certain it costs no where near what we are obliged to report. We respectfully ask the attention of our friends to this point.

A pastor writes us: “If pastors would take a little pains to have The American Missionary sent to carefully selected persons in their communities, it would bring large returns, I am sure.” This is a very important statement, if true. We believe it is true. What have pastors to say about it? They are most earnestly requested to express their opinions. The question is open.

This is the way the editor of a colored religious paper in the South puts it to the ministers:

“If the Lord called you to preach, he also calls you to subscribe for our paper, so that you may be cut and qualified to preach. It is just so, and you had better believe it. Send in your money.”

And then he goes for delinquents after this fashion:

“How can you call yourself honest while you are indebted for your paper? The Lord will not hold you guiltless unless you pay what you owe. Pay up! Pay up!! Pay up!!!”

We hasten to add, we were not thinking of subscriptions for The American Missionary when we made the above clippings.

The special attention of pastors is called to the resolution presented by the Committee on Secretary Powell’s paper and adopted by the Annual Meeting. Will they please see to it that this resolution is brought to the notice of the local conferences with which they are connected. Nothing goes in this world unless there are earnest souls behind it pushing. If that resolution is translated into action by all the local conferences, it will bring thousands of dollars into our treasury.

The Georgia Legislature has adjourned and gone home. The Chain-Gang Bill of the House was too barbarous for the Senate to follow. The more refined, though not less cruel Bill of the Senate, the House would not accept. A Committee of Conference failed to find ground for common standing. Thus it was at the time of adjournment. Pending, however, these considerations, another Bill was passed which has taken from Atlanta[338] University the State appropriation of $8,000, and this is all the legislation enacted on the subject.

Governor Gordon, of Georgia, has been making political speeches in Ohio. Of course he had a good deal to say about the colored people, and as might be expected he told his Northern audiences that the charges about their being oppressed at the South were all false. In this opinion the colored people do not agree with the Governor. They assert the opposite with vehemence and persistence. The man who lays on the lash affirms that the strokes do not hurt. The poor victim cries out in pain; but we must not believe the victim. Oh, no! He is merely crying for political effect. Indeed, he is not being whipped at all. He only imagines it, or he has been worked up by Northern emissaries to make all this outcry about nothing! The testimony of the colored people is against the Governor. The Legislation of his own State, with its story of colored code laws, political disability laws, and Glenn Bills, is against him. The inexpressibly infamous Penitentiary system of his State, which, if the victims of its inhuman cruelties were white as they are colored people, would not be tolerated for a moment, is against him. Northern people read and think. Up this way, assertions do not stand against facts.

STUDENT AID.

To help a needy and worthy student is a delightful way of doing good. Men eminent for usefulness in all parts of the land acknowledge their indebtedness to aid given them when in want and discouraged. Without such aid they never would have gained the training which now is bearing blessed and abundant fruit. The experiences of the past are repeated in the South, and promising youths, weighted by the entailments of slavery, must have help or they will never reach their greatest possibilities and largest usefulness.

In this beneficence, however, there is need of abundant wisdom; for there is a risk, lest in helping, self-help may be repressed and thus harm be done rather than good. It is one thing to carry a child till he is grown and then lay down at the highway of life one large enough and old enough to be a man, but still a baby; and another, to so hold the hand in difficult places as to develop the ankle bones and finally send into the world a man who can not only stand alone, but also help others. The wolf’s milk seems still necessary to make a Roman, but the modern Romulus does not cry for it. Indeed, he often cries when it is given him. There are risks in helping, just as surely as it is wrong not to help at all. Tramps are numerous where warm breakfasts are given to any who come to the door;[339] and aid too easily or too abundantly obtained lessens self-reliance, makes muscle flabby, bone cartilage, and heart pusillanimous. Where, however, aid received is earned by work, when it is given so sparingly as to allow no surplus for jewelry, or for clothing other than the plainest, the results of its bestowal are good, and only good. Such giving is always to be encouraged.

But it should be remembered that a semi-tropical climate has its liabilities, and that where the north wind seldom cuts, men dread the storm and love to be coddled. “Excelsior” is oftenest found on banners planted amid snow and ice. Besides, slavery pricked the ham-strings of endeavor, and naturally the young among the freed people are not inclined to say, “I will either find a way or make one.” Hence the need of tonics, and tonics are proverbially bitter. In general, it is better to give plain cloth to a girl and teach her to make her clothing, than to send her stitched and embroidered apparel; better to equip a workshop than to pay a student’s board bill; better, for instance, to give a plough to our Talladega farm and put a boy at the handle, than to set before him cooked rations. It is a wiser benevolence to furnish industrial appliances, or to support a self-denying teacher, hardened in adversity and skilled to harden others, than to profusely aid the student whom only work and self-denial can make heroic. The petted are apt to be spoiled, and those helped the most are usually foremost in fault-finding.

H. S. DE FOREST.

MORE ABOUT THE JOHN BROWN SONG.

When at my house, and talking over Mr. Jerome’s account of the origin of the John Brown song (printed since in your July number of the American Missionary), you intimated that it might be of interest to your readers to know of my own relation to it. Since that conversation I have received letters on the same subject, and have had an interview with a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, who called to make inquiries. After the latter had left, I instituted a search among my papers, and found some additional memoranda on the matter, made at the time, which enables me to give the account a little more minutely and with a slight correction on one point.

On the 23d of October, 1861, I started on a visit to our army, in behalf of the Chicago Sanitary Commission, of which I was a member. Taking the train at Chicago for Cairo, Ill., I meditated, during the long hours, on the bearing of the war upon the emancipation of the slaves, and was saddened by the indisposition of the Government, the army, and the leading politicians to connect that object with the preservation of the Federal Union. I had been preaching and writing on that point with great earnestness, and was inwardly inquiring what else I could do in behalf of the slave. Just then the John Brown song, which had recently become somewhat[340] popular, and the tune of which—apparently taken from the revival melody, “Say, brothers, will you meet us?”—pleased me much as admirably effective for use among the people, occurred to my mind. It was sung to a ridiculous string of words about “We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree,” etc., but had a good chorus: “Glory, hallelujah! His soul is marching on.” Why not have some better stanzas, with a proper rhythmical swing and a good anti-slavery moral, yet based on John Brown’s history? The more I meditated on it, the stronger grew the impulse to do something of the kind, till, to while away the tedium of the journey, I pulled out the back of a letter or something similar, and wrote a set of rhymes. When I saw the Chicago Tribune reporter, I thought that this occurred on my return journey, and so stated to him. But my original memorandum showed that it was on the day of starting, as given above. I went to Paducah, Ky., to inspect certain camps, and found there an Illinois regiment, under command of Col. McArthur. The chaplain was my old friend, Rev. Joel Grant, to whom I read my rhymes. He was so struck with their adaptedness to convey anti-slavery sentiment, that he insisted on my giving him a copy, that he might set the soldiers to singing them, which I did. On my return home to Chicago, I concluded to insert them in the Chicago Tribune, as Mr. Medill’s family attended my church, and I knew his sympathy with the anti-slavery cause. But as I did not claim to be a poet, and felt shy of seeming to appear as one, I used the signature of “Plebs” for that and for two other pieces of rhyme, called “The Old Fogy’s Lament,” and “The Warning,” both also on the slavery question. I gave the title as “The New John Brown Song,” retaining the first line and the chorus of the early version. There were six stanzas, which were as follows, adding a single omitted word:

I.

II.

III.

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IV.

V.

VI.

These stanzas were published in the Chicago Tribune of Nov. 16th, 1861, and were at once issued also in sheet music by Root & Cady, the principal music firm of the West at that time. It thus went all over the West and into the army at the South. When the “Jubilee Singers” prepared a version of “John Brown” to sing, they adopted the second and third stanzas of my song, and perhaps others, and carried them still more widely. Wendell Phillips used to quote the third stanza with great effect at times.

WM. W. PATTON.

MISSISSIPPI CONVICT SYSTEM.

The horrid barbarity of the State convict-system in Georgia is paralleled by Mississippi. The moral sense of the people in these States is waking up and public attention is being called to the cruelty and inhumanity on the part of those who have prisoners in charge. It seems incredible that such things can be so. What a disgrace to our country and our civilization! Here is a report recently made by the Grand Jury of Hinds County, Mississippi:

To the Hon. T. J. Wharton, Judge:

After a most arduous session of eleven days we, the Grand Jury of the First District of Hinds County for this the June term of the court, having completed our labors, beg to submit our final report. We have examined 220 witnesses and have found and returned into court thirty-eight true bills, of which six have been for murder, eight for grand larceny, and the remainder for minor offenses.

We find, with the exception of murder, there is very little crime in this district; but we are compelled to deplore the fact that homicide seems to be on the increase. We feel we have discharged our duty toward the suppression of this crime as best we were able, leaving the court to carry on the work.

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We have examined the public officers’ accounts and settlements and find everything in good shape. We have examined the jail, and find the roof and floors in bad condition and the bedding and covering of the prisoners insufficient and in a bad condition. We recommend that proper and clean bedding be furnished the prisoners and that the roof be repaired or replaced by a new one.

We felt it our duty to inspect the penitentiary, and we report the result of our inspection as follows: We find comparatively few prisoners in the walls of the penitentiary, most of them being out on the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad and elsewhere. We found nothing to complain of in the walls. The yard seemed to be clean, and the building, so far as we could judge, in a safe and cleanly condition, and those immediately in charge polite and accommodating in showing us around. But we feel constrained by a sense of public duty to call attention to the hospital there, the manner in which it is kept and the condition of its occupants. We found twenty-six inmates, all of whom have been lately brought there off the farms and railroads, many of them with consumption and other incurable diseases, and all bearing on their persons marks of the most inhuman and brutal treatment; most of them have their backs cut in great wales, scars and blisters, some with the skin peeling off in pieces as the result of severe beatings.

Their feet and hands in some instances show signs of frost-bite, and all of them with the stamp of manhood almost blotted out of their faces, which show that they have been treated more cruelly and brutally than a nation of savages ought to permit inflicted upon its convicts. They are lying there dying, some of them on bare boards, so poor and emaciated that their bones almost come through their skin, many complaining for the want of food.

We believe they are fed improperly. Sick people ought to have light diet and these poor creatures get their beef water and meal for soup, as we are informed, with coarse meat and cabbage—such diet as they cannot eat. One poor fellow burst out crying and said he was literally starving to death. We actually saw live vermin crawling over their faces, and the little bedding and clothing they have is in tatters and stiff with filth.

We call the attention of the Board of Control to these matters, but under the law we know they can do but little to remedy these evils. We believe they will do the best they can. We are not to be understood as condemning the lessees in person for these things, but we do inveigh against the principle and system of this great State taking a poor creature’s liberty and turning him over to one whose interest it is to coin his blood into money.

As a fair sample of this system, on January 6, 1887, two hundred and four convicts were leased to McDonald up to June 6, 1887, and during this six months twenty died, nineteen were discharged and escaped and twenty-three returned to the walls disabled and sick, many of whom have since died. God will never smile upon a State that treats its convicts as Mississippi does. After a full examination and conference with the kind-hearted prison physician, Dr. Johnston, we find the following persons in the hospital almost in a dying state, some of them with hopelessly incurable diseases and others badly afflicted, and all of them confined for minor offenses, comparatively speaking, and who have long since suffered the full penalty of the law in being beaten and so cruelly mis-treated, and whom we here earnestly beg the Governor to pardon immediately, so that they may at least die free.

Then follow the names of twelve persons, all colored, who, in consequence of the abuse to which they were subjected in prison, are now suffering from incurable diseases. Oh, for some John Howard to arise in the South and become in God’s hand the instrument of wiping this terrible evil out of existence.

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FORTY-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING
of the
American Missionary Association.

The Forty-first Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association convened in the Second Parish Church at Portland, Maine, on Tuesday, October 25th, at 3 o’clock P. M.

Owing to the recent death of its President, Hon. Wm. B. Washburn, of Massachusetts, the Association was called to order by one of the Vice-Presidents, Alexander McKenzie, D.D., of the same State, who, after the singing of “Coronation,” read the Scriptures—Mark vi, 30–56—and led in prayer.

Rev. Henry A. Hazen, of Massachusetts, was elected Secretary, and Rev. Edgar M. Cousins, of Maine, Assistant Secretary.

In the unavoidable absence of W. H. Fenn, D.D., Rev. Charles H. Daniels welcomed the Association in behalf of the churches and the city of Portland.

Response was made by Vice-President McKenzie.

The following committees were nominated and elected:

Committee on Nominations.—A. S. Walker, D.D., of Massachusetts; Rev. Rufus K. Harlow, of Massachusetts; W. L. Gage, D.D., of Connecticut; Rev. Arthur Shirley, of Maine; Charles Peck, Esq., of Connecticut.

Committee of Arrangements.—Rev. Charles H. Daniels, Rev. Leavitt H. Hallock, Rev. Frank T. Bayley, William H. Fenn, D.D., Dea. E. F. Duren, all of Maine.

Business Committee.—Rev. Geo. M. Howe, of Maine; J. D. Kingsbury, D.D., of Massachusetts; Rev. Geo. E. Hall, of New Hampshire; Rev. Geo. E. Street, of New Hampshire; Dr. Luther B. Morse, of Massachusetts; James G. Buttrick, Esq., of Massachusetts.

Secretary Beard read the portion of the Constitution relating to life membership and delegates, and the roll of the Association and Visitors was prepared, as follows;

ROLL.

State Associations.

James Bell, N.J.; Ruel P. Cowles, Ct.; Rev. T. M. Davies, Me.; Miss Anne E. Farrington, N.C.

Local Conferences.

Rev. G. W. Christie, Me.; Elnathan F. Duren, Me.; Rev. Wm. A. Houghton, Mass.; Rev. C. G. McCully, Me.; Rev. Wm. G. Mann, Me.; Charles Morse, Mass.; Rev. B. G. Northrup, Ct.; Miss L. L. Phelps, Me.; Rev. Lauriston Reynolds, Me.;[344] E. N. Smith, Me.; Rev. N. J. Squires, Ct.; Edward A. Williams, Ct.; Rev. Alexander Wiswall, Me.

Delegates from the Churches.

Rev. Jonathan E. Adams, Me.; Rev. Myron W. Adams, N.H.; Mrs. Elizabeth B. Allen, Me.; Rev. T. M. Beadenkoff, Me.; Mary Q. Brown, Mass.; Susan M. Brown, Mass.; Mary S. Burge, N.H.; J. W. Burgess, Mass.; Mrs. Caroline A. S. Burgess, Mass.; G. W. Catlin, Ct.; S. H. Chandler, Me.; Rev. G. E. Chapin, Me.; Rev. C. D. Crane, Me.; Albert Currier, Mass.; Mrs. Minnie A. Dickinson, Mass.; E. W. Douglass, N.C.; Mrs. Ruth Eastman, Me.; Rev. F. F. Emerson, R.I.; Rev. John D. Emerson, Me.; Edward H. Emery, Me.; Franklin Fairbanks, Vt.; Miss M. B. Fairbanks, Me.; B. Freeman, Me.; Rev. W. L. Gage, Ct.; Rev. Joshua S. Gay, Mass.; A. Gaylord, N.Y.; C. W. Goodnow, Me.; Mrs. C. W. Goodnow, Me.; J. M. Gould, Me.; Jas. Graham, Me.; Abbie Greene, Me.; Mrs. S. J. Hall, Mass.; Wolcott Hamlin, Mass.; Horace F. Hanson, M.D., Me.; Rev. D. W. Hardy, Me.; Rev. Henry A. Hazen, Mass.; Minnie E. Holt, Me.; Alonzo H. Libby, Me.; Rev. H. S. Loring, Me.; Rev. D. D. Marsh, Mass.; Mrs. D. D. Marsh, Mass.; Mrs. Eliza W. Merrill, N.H.; Rev. W. A. Merrill, Me.; Mrs. Martha N. Merrill, Me.; Charles W. Morton, Me.; M. A. Perry, Mass.; Rev. J. S. Richards, Me.; Rev. C. F. Ropes, N.H.; Alice M. Russell, Me.; Rev. Charles L. Skinner, Me.; Rev. B. P. Snow, Me.; Joel Spaulding, Me.; Mrs. Caroline Spencer, Me.; John M. Stearns, N.Y.; Rev. Edward G. Stone, N.H.; Rev. P. B. Thayer, Me.; Rev. M. Van Horn, R.I.; Rev. Wm. G. Wade, Me.; Rev. Albert Watson, N.H.; Frank Wood, Mass.; Clinton A. Woodbury, Me.; Rev. D. E. Adams, Mass.; Rev. Joseph Anderson, Ct.; Rev. Samuel H. Barnum, N.H.; Rev. E. Bean, Me.; Mrs. Philo Bevin, Ct.; Rev. Samuel Bowker, Mass.; Mrs. A. H. Burbank, Me.; Rev. Wm. T. Briggs, Mass.; Rev. Geo. P. Byington, Vt.; Rev. Edward L. Chute, Mass.; J. H. Clark, Me.; Dea. M. Collister, Mass.; Lucius C. Curtis, Me.; Mrs. E. C. Drisko, Me.; Rev. Omar W. Folsom, Me.; Rev. H. A. Freeman, Me.; Rev. A. K. Gleason, Me.; Lydia L. Hawkes, Me.; Dea. J. E. Henry, Mass.; Sarah P. Hill, Me.; Rev. John W. Hird, Mass.; Mrs. N. H. Holbrook, Mass.; Mrs. L. M. Holt, Me.; Rev. G. M. Howe, Me.; Rev. Frank E. Jenkins, Ky.; Rev. R. W. Jenkins, Me.; Rev. E. S. Jordan, Me.; J. R. Libby, Me.; Jas. M. Linsley, Ct.; Dea. Geo. W. Littlefield, Me.; Rev. C. W. Longren, Me.; Rev. Henry S. Loring, Me.; Rev. George E. Lovejoy, Mass.; Chas. E. Miller, Me.; Dr. Luther B. Morse, Mass.; Dea. B. A. Nourse, Mass.; Rev. C. H. Oliphant, Mass.; Dea. H. W. Otis, Mass.; Rev. Henry J. Patrick, Mass.; Mrs. Sarah Payne, Me.; Dea. Charles Peck, Ct.; Rev. L. Phelps, Mass.; Dea. H. M. Plumer, N.H.; J. G. Proctor, N.H.; Mrs. Proctor, N.H.; Rev. A. H. Quint, Mass.; Rev. Cyrus Richardson, N.H.; H. H. Ricker, Me.; D. B. Robinson, Me.; Rev. Arthur Smith, Me.; Rev. H. A. Stevens, R.I.; Joseph Stover, Me.; Mrs. Joseph Stover, Me.; Rev. Geo. A. Tewkesbury, Mass.; Rev. A. H. Tyler, Me.; Rev. Jos. N. Walker, Vt.; Mrs. Eben Webster, Mass.; Gorham N. Weymouth, Mass.

Life Members.

Rev. A. F. Beard, N.Y.; James Bell, N.J.; Mrs. Matilda Burleigh, Me.; Timothy H. Chapman, Me.; E. L. Champlin, N.Y.; Rev. Samuel W. Clarke, Mass.; Rev. James W. Cooper, Ct.; Rev. C. H. Daniels, Me.; Rev. Oliver S. Dean, Mass.; Rev. G. S. Dickerman, Mass.; Rev. W. R. Eastman, Mass.; Miss D. E. Emerson, N.Y.; Mrs. Jacob Fullerton, Mass.; Rev. Geo. L. Gleason, Mass.; Mrs. Geo. L. Gleason, Mass.; D. C. Hawes, Me.; Samuel Harrison, Mass.; Esther P. Hayes, Me.; Rev. A. Hazen, Mass.; Alma J. Herbert, N.H.; Mrs. B. J. Holbrook, Mass.; H. W. Hubbard, N.Y.; Rev. Geo. Lewis, Me.; Mrs. K. B. Lewis, Me.; Rev. Nehemiah Lincoln, Me.; Charles L. Mead, N.Y.; Gyles Merrill, N.H.; Rev. C. P. Mills, Mass.;[345] John W. Munger, Me.; Rev. C. L. Nichols, Me.; Mrs. Augusta F. Odlin, N.H.; Rev. James Powell, N.Y.; S. M. Rideout, Me.; Rev. J. E. Rankin, N.J.; Rev. Joseph E. Roy, Ill.; Mary Sawyer, Mass.; Rev. Charles W. Shelton, Ct.; Rev. Arthur Shirley, Me.; Rev. A. F. Skeele, Me.; Rev. W. F. Slocum, Md.; S. A. Spooner, Mass.; Rev. Calvin Terry, Mass.; Rev. E. P. Thwing, N.Y.; Rev. A. S. Walker, Mass.; Mrs. Mary E. Walker, Me.; Rev. I. P. Warren, Me.; Mrs. Juliet M. S. Warren, Me.; Mrs. C. L. Woodworth, Mass.; Rev. Henry C. Alford, Mass.; Rev. Edward E. Bacon, Me.; Rev. Smith Baker, Mass.; G. A. Bodge, Ct.; Charles E. Boothby, Me.; Clara R. Boynton, Mass.; Sadie H. Bragdon, Me.; Dea. T. H. Chapman, Me.; Joseph B. Drury, Mass.; Mrs. Joseph B. Drury, Mass.; Rev. John D. Emerson, Me.; Rev. L. H. Fellows, Ct.; Rev. Stacy Fowler, Mass.; Mrs. R. C. Gurney, Mass.; Rev. Henry L. Hammond, Ill.; Rev. Josiah T. Hawes, Me.; Rev. Rowland B. Howard, Mass.; Charles M. Lamson, Vt.; Rev. John H. McIlvaine, R.I.; T. A. McMaster, Mass.; Rev. Geo. N. Marden, Colo.; Barak Maxwell, Me.; Lucia G. Merrill, Mass.; Elisha Newcomb, Me.; Mrs. Annie F. Nichols, Me.; Robert L. Perkins, Mass.; Mrs. Maria S. Perry, Me.; Mrs. A. A. Phelps, Me.; Charles A. Richardson, Mass.; Miss C. M. Scales, Me.; Mrs. A. F. Skeele, Me.; Mary B. Spalding, Me.; Rev. Geo. F. Stanton, Mass.; Rev. Geo. E. Street, N.H.; Thomas H. L. Tallcott, Ct.; Mrs. M. E. Tenney, N.H.; Rev. L. J. Thomas, Me.; Eben Webster, Mass.

Visitors.

Rev. W. H. S. Aubrey, England; Geo. B. Barrows, Me.; Rev. E. Bean, Me.; Rev. John B. Carruthers, Me.; Rev. R. C. Drisko, Vt.; Rev. C. H. Gates, Me.; Rev. W. H. Haskell, Me.; Rev. H. C. McKnight, Me.; J. L. Perkins, Mass.; H. Porter Smith, Mass.; Rev. J. W. Strong, Minn.; Rev. T. J. Valentine, Mass.; George L. Bunster, N.H.; Rev. Edgar M. Cousins, Me.; Rev. John Dinsmore, Me.; Rev. Henry Farrar, N.H.; Rev. D. E. French, Me.; Oliver H. Hay, Kans.; Charles Heath, Mass.; R. N. Holman, Mass.; Rev. Charles G. Holyoke, Me.; Dea. A. Kingsbury, Ct.; Ira L. McClary, Vt.; A. R. Mitchell, Me.; A. T. Muzzy, Me.; Rev. E. S. Palmer, Me.; Rev. H. F. A. Patterson, Me.; Rev. Augustus Root, Mass.; A. H. Siegfried, N.J.; Dea. Richard Smith, Mass.; Rev. Prof. Richard C. Stanley, Me.; Rev. David D. Tappan, Mass.; Joseph Walker, Me.

The Treasurer, H. W. Hubbard, Esq., presented his annual report, which was accepted and referred to the Committee on Finance to be appointed.

The report of the Executive Committee was read by the Field Superintendent, Rev. Charles J. Ryder, and the various portions of the report relating to different departments of work were referred to the special committees to be appointed.

The Association, led by Secretary Strieby, united in a concert of prayer with workers in the field.

The programme prepared by the Committee of Arrangements was adopted as the programme of the meeting, unless otherwise directed.

Adjourned to 7.30 P. M.

TUESDAY EVENING.

The meeting was called to order at 7.30 P. M. The devotional services were conducted by Pres. James W. Strong, D.D., of Minnesota.

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The annual sermon was preached by A. J. F. Behrends, D.D., of New York, from the third verse of Jude, according to the Revised Version.

The sermon was followed by the administration of the Lord’s Supper. The following named persons officiated at the service: Ministers—W. L. Gage, D.D., of Connecticut; Rev. George S. Dickerman, of Massachusetts. Deacons—E. F. Duren, R. H. Hinkley, S. W. Larrabee, Horatio Staples, John M. Gould, of Maine; Augustus Gaylord, H. W. Hubbard, of New York; Elbert B. Munroe, of Connecticut.

At the close of the communion, adjournment was taken to Wednesday at 9 o’clock A. M.

WEDNESDAY MORNING.

The prayer meeting from 8 to 9 o’clock was led by Joseph Anderson, D.D., of Connecticut.

At 9 o’clock the Association was called to order by the Vice-President presiding, who read the Scriptures. Prayer was offered by Rev. Henry S. Loring, of Maine.

The records of the previous day were read and approved.

The Committee on Nominations reported the following committees to act for the Association, and the report was adopted:

Committee on Educational Work: Rev. Wm. F. Slocum, Jr., Md.; Elbridge Mix, D.D., Mass.; Rev. Oliver S. Dean, Mass.; Rev. Forrest F. Emerson, R.I.; Rev. Omar W. Folsom, Me.; Rev. George H. Scott, Mass.; Charles Heath, Esq., Mass.; Mr. W. A. Crosthwait, Tenn.

On Mountain Work: Alonzo H. Quint, D.D., Mass.; Geo. W. Phillips, D.D., Vt.; Rev. Geo. W. Grover, N.H.; Rev. Charles C. McIntire, Vt.; Rev. Henry M. Grant, Mass.; Rev. Henry J. Patrick, Mass.; Rev. John A. MacColl, Vt.

On Indian Work: Frank Wood, Esq., Mass.; Elijah Horr, D.D., Mass.; Rev. George A. Tewksbury, Mass.; Rev. Frank A. Warfield, Mass.; Galen C. Moses, Esq., Me.; A. L. Williston, Esq., Mass.; Carlos Montezuma, Ill.

On Chinese Missions: Rev. S. Lewis B. Speare, Mass.; Rev. Henry L. Griffin, Me.; Rev. George S. Dickerman, Mass.; Rev. Charles H. Pope, Me.; Rev. Charles P. Mills, Mass.; Dea. Horace W. Otis, Mass.; Mr. Yan Phou Lee, Ct.

On Church Work: Rev. Cyrus Richardson, N.H.; Rev. Joseph F. Lovering, Mass.; Rev. Mahlon Van Horne, R.I.; Rev. George F. Stanton, Mass.; Rev. Arthur F. Skeele, Me.; Frederick E. Sturgis, D.D., Mass.

On Finance: Charles A. Hull, Esq., N.Y.; Rev. Smith Baker, Mass.; Edward S. Atwood, D.D., Mass.; J. Hall McIlvaine, D.D., R.I.; Col. Franklin Fairbanks, Vt.; Augustus Gaylord, Esq., N.Y.

A paper on “The Influence of a Life and the Life of an Influence,”[347] was presented by Associate Corresponding Secretary Augustus F. Beard, D.D.

A paper on “The Brotherhood of Man; or, The Three Brothers who Settled America,” was read by Corresponding Secretary M. E. Strieby, D.D.

A paper on “Need of Intelligence in Giving,” was read by Associate Corresponding Secretary James Powell, D.D.

The Committee on Nominations reported the following special committees upon the papers read:

1. Upon Secretary Strieby’s paper: C. M. Lamson, D.D., Vt.; Rev. J. W. Hird, Mass.; E. L. Champlin, Esq., N.Y.

2. Upon Secretary Beard’s paper: Rev. W. A. McGinley, N.H.; Rev. T. E. Babb, Mass.; Joseph W. Burgess, Esq., Mass.

3. Upon Secretary Powell’s paper: Joseph Anderson, D.D., Ct.; Rev. W. R. Eastman, Mass.; Timothy H. Chapman, Esq., Me.

Rev. Dr. Behrends, of New York, spoke upon the subject of Missionary Literature as presented in Secretary Powell’s paper. Rev. G. S. Dickerman and Rev. O. S. Dean, both of Massachusetts, spoke upon the same paper.

The Association listened to addresses in memory of its late President, the Hon. William B. Washburn, of Massachusetts. These addresses were given by Rev. S. G. Buckingham, D.D., of Massachusetts, and Secretary Strieby, of the Association. The latter presented a minute which had been adopted by the Executive Committee at their first meeting after learning of the death of Governor Washburn, and which they recommended for adoption at this meeting, and to be forwarded to the family of the late President.

The minute, which follows, was unanimously adopted by a rising vote:

“We recognize the hand of God in the recent and sudden death of Hon. William B. Washburn, the President of this Association. We mourn the loss of one whose name and influence have been so helpful to it; whose many private virtues have endeared him to so wide a circle of friends; whose public services in the Church and State have been so honored and valued; and we tender to his family our profound sympathy in their irreparable bereavement.

“Yet we are grateful to our Heavenly Father that he called our brother to himself by so painless a death and while in the discharge of his duty as a member of the American Board. We rejoice that in him we can point to one whose loving heart made his home happy, whose integrity and honorable dealing were a noble example in business life, whose honors and offices in the service of the State were unsought and were discharged with fidelity and ability, and whose life and work in the church were an honor to his profession and to the cause of Christ.

“In the suddenness of his departure we are reminded that we, too, may be called in an hour that we think not, and yet that it is the privilege of the Christian to be always ready to die with the armor on and in the active service of the Captain of our Salvation.”

Adjourned.

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WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON.

The Association was called to order at 2 o’clock. Rev. George E. Street, of New Hampshire, offered prayer.

The report of the Committee on Educational Work, with an address, was presented by Rev. Wm. F. Slocum, Jr., of Maryland. Further addresses were made by Rev. Forrest F. Emerson, of Rhode Island; Mr. W. A. Crosthwait, of Tennessee, and Rev. Mahlon Van Horne, of Rhode Island.

The report of the Committee on Mountain Work was presented by Rev. Henry J. Patrick, of Massachusetts. Addresses in connection with the report were given by A. H. Quint, D.D., of Massachusetts, chairman of the committee; Rev. Frank E. Jenkins, of Kentucky; G. W. Phillips, D.D., of Vermont, and Rev. A. A. Myers, General Missionary of the Association, of Tennessee.

J. E. Rankin, D.D., led in closing prayer.

Adjourned to 7.30 P. M.

WEDNESDAY EVENING.

The Association was called to order at 7.30. Devotional exercises were conducted by James W. Cooper, D.D., of Connecticut.

An address on “The Nerve of Missions” was delivered by Pres. Wm. De Witt Hyde, D.D., of Bowdoin College, Maine.

Hon. Nelson Dingley, of Maine, gave an address upon “Some of the changed conditions in this country that demand increased missionary effort.”

The Association then listened to an address upon “The conversion of the Chinese in this country,” by Mr. Yan Phou Lee, of Connecticut.

W. H. S. Aubrey, D.D., of England, addressed the meeting upon “Some Phases of American Civilization.”

A brief closing address was made by the Vice President presiding.

Closed with singing the doxology and with the benediction.

THURSDAY MORNING.

The prayer meeting from 8 to 9 o’clock was led by Rev. J. E. Adams, of Maine. The Association was called to order by Vice-President A. J. F. Behrends, D.D., of New York, and led in prayer by Rev. R. B. Howard, of Massachusetts.

The minutes of Wednesday were read and approved.

The report of the Committee on Indian Work was presented by Frank Wood, Esq., of Massachusetts, who also addressed the Association, and was followed by Rev. George A. Tewksbury, of Massachusetts, Carlos Montezuma, of Illinois, a representative of the Apache Indians of Arizona, and President Joseph Ward, D.D., of Dakota.

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The report was accepted and the recommendation adopted that a committee be appointed to co-operate with the Financial Secretary for Indian Missions.

The report of the Committee on Chinese Missions was presented by Rev. S. Lewis B. Speare, of Massachusetts, who addressed the Association, and was followed by Rev. Charles P. Mills, of Massachusetts; Gen. Augustus Gaylord, of New York, and Mr. Yan Phou Lee, of Connecticut.

The report was accepted and adopted, together with the following resolution:

Resolved, That the Association, holding its annual meeting in the State of Maine, sends its greetings to Rev. W. C. Pond, a son of Maine, with sympathy in his labors and rejoicing in his success among the Chinamen on the Pacific coast.

The report of the Committee on Church Work was presented by Rev. Cyrus Richardson, of New Hampshire, who addressed the Association, and was followed by Rev. George F. Stanton, of Massachusetts, and Mr. W. A. Crosthwait, of Tennessee.

The report was accepted and adopted.

The Committee on Nominations reported the following persons as a committee to co-operate with the Financial Secretary on Indian Missions: Frank Wood, Esq., Massachusetts; Franklin Fairbanks, Esq., Vermont; Elbert B. Munroe, Esq., New York; Joseph Ward, D.D., Dakota; Rev. Charles B. Mills, Massachusetts. And they were appointed.

Adjourned to 2 P. M.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON.

The Association was called to order at 2 P. M. Prayer was offered by Rev. Edward Payson Thwing, M.D., of New York.

The report of the Committee on Finance was presented by Charles A. Hull, Esq., who also addressed the Association, and was followed by J. Hall McIlvaine, D.D., of Rhode Island; Smith Baker, D.D., of Massachusetts; Rev. Charles W. Shelton, of the Association, and Rev. Oliver S. Dean, of Massachusetts. The report was accepted.

At this hour—3.30 o’clock—the Association adjourned to the First Baptist Church for a business session, leaving the Second Parish Church to a meeting of the Woman’s Bureau of the American Missionary Association.

The business meeting was called to order by Col. Franklin Fairbanks, of Vermont, who presided. Prayer was offered by Allen Hazen, D.D., of Massachusetts.

The Committee on Nominations reported as follows: First, as regards the office of President—No nomination had been made, but a recommendation that the matter be left in the hands of the Executive Committee, who have power to fill such a vacancy at any time. Second, as regards the remaining offices, the following nominations were made:

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VICE-PRESIDENTS.

CORRESPONDING SECRETARIES.

TREASURER.

H. W. Hubbard, Esq., N.Y.

AUDITORS.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

(For Three Years.)

Lyman Abbott, D.D., N.Y.; J. R. Danforth, D.D., Penn.; A. S. Barnes, Esq., N.Y.; Gen. Clinton B. Fisk, N.Y.; A. P. Foster, D.D., Mass.

(For One Year.)

James W. Cooper, D.D., Ct.

The report was accepted, and a ballot being taken, the persons named were elected.

The meeting listened to reports of the committees appointed upon the papers read on Wednesday by the Secretaries.

Rev. W. A. McGinley, of New Hampshire, presented the report upon Secretary Beard’s paper. The report was accepted.

C. M. Lamson, D.D., of Vermont, presented the report upon Secretary Strieby’s paper, which was accepted.

Joseph Anderson, D.D., of Connecticut, presented the report upon Secretary Powell’s paper, together with two resolutions. The report was accepted. The first resolution was adopted, as follows:

Resolved, That we submit to the Congregational churches, in local conferences assembled, for careful consideration, the question whether it is not desirable that such conferences establish special committees, whose duty it shall be to secure for this Association, along with the other benevolent societies of the denomination, a hearing from time to time in our churches, especially in those churches which are without pastors, and which for this, or other reasons, are liable to fail in their duty toward our great missionary and benevolent organizations.

And it was voted that the Secretaries print this resolution and send a copy to the clerk of each local conference, requesting him to bring it to the attention of the body.

After discussion, the second resolution relating to a Union Missionary Magazine was laid upon the table.

Adjourned to 7.30 P. M.

THURSDAY EVENING.

The meeting was called to order at 7.30 by Elbert B. Munroe, Esq., of New York. Rev. Frank A. Warfield, of Massachusetts, conducted devotional services.

The minutes of the day were read and approved, and the Secretaries[351] were authorized to complete the minutes to the end of the meeting, and the Executive Committee to print at their discretion.

Secretary Powell, in behalf of Rev. Dr. McIlvaine, of Rhode Island, who had been called away, extended the invitation of the churches of Providence, R.I., that the annual meeting of this Association for 1888 be held in that city. The invitation was accepted.

The Association listened to an address by Hon. William P. Frye, of Maine.

Secretary Beard, of the Association, presented an address of thanks.

A response was made by W. H. Fenn, D.D.

Voted to adopt Dr. Beard’s statement as a minute, to go upon the records. The minute is as follows:

A year ago when the American Missionary Association was reaching out in its thought for a place where the churches and Christians who are interested in its work could assemble to hear its reports and to consider the great causes which have been committed to it, a most cordial invitation was received from the churches of Portland to accept their Christian hospitality.

Those of us who have had occasion to know how much solid heartiness and sincere good will is extended in the outstretched right hand of this people had no question as to the pleasure which would be experienced by those who should be recipients of it. We answered that it was in our hearts to come, and we have done our best all this year to bring to these churches cheerful faces and glad hearts.

We came grateful to God in that we could look the world in the face with our debts cancelled, owing no man anything but love; with no gloomy shadows over us, happy in the glorious experience of knowing that we possessed money enough in our treasury to carry on our work two whole days. We have met with the characteristic greeting of a people “given to hospitality.” We have come to a land of steady habits, and when some of you have taken us by the hand in the closeness of your grip we have sometimes been led to think that this is the greatest vice (vise) you have. And now, with our gratitude to God for His smiles in these beautiful clear days and bright skies, as if in harmony with the delightful Christian atmosphere of these meetings—symbolizing the spirit of our gatherings—it is not in accordance with a custom of form merely that we desire to express to these churches and pastors, and to all our kind friends here, our high appreciation of their service to this cause of missions, and to us so far as we represent this cause. You have given us strength and courage for our work another year.

It is not a small thing to arrange for a series of services like this. It means forethought and much care, many steps and much fatigue. It is not a small thing for people to open their homes freely to strangers and to so receive them that they are no more strangers.

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Permit us then to thank the pastor, the officers and members of this church and society within whose walls we have studied and reviewed our work together. This is an ancient church, historic over the land. You have done no injustice to its history in your interest for the kingdom of God. Let us also thank the churches and pastors who have kindly shared in this abundant hospitality.

We should do that to which our hearts are foreign should we fail to remember those who have led us in Christian praise and those who in their labor of love have in many ways of service assisted the objects of this Missionary Association.

We recognize the courtesy of those railway and steamboat lines which have facilitated our travel here. Nor do we forget the enterprise of your public press and the kindness which has been extended to us in their full and accurate reports.

If any of you in this free-hearted welcome have entertained angels awares or unawares, we are glad of it. Most of us have left our particular angels at our homes. Some of us have not failed to discover that there are angels here in yours.

Therefore, brethren, in the name of our great Mission, of the schools and institutes which we have brought before you, of the churches which have prayed for us while we have been assembled, and in the name of the people to whom we are sent in Christ’s stead and in your stead, accept our sincere thanks.

As we take up our farewell to go, we can appreciate your hearty services not only, but also your ability to successfully conceal any gratification which you may have that these three long days are over.

Voted that after singing, and a benediction by Rev. Dr. Walker, of Connecticut, this meeting stands adjourned sine die.

Henry A. Hazen, Secretary.

Edgar M. Cousins, Assistant Secretary.

SUMMARY OF TREASURER’S REPORT.

REPORTS OF COMMITTEES.

REPORT ON EDUCATIONAL WORK, SOUTH.

BY REV. W. F. SLOCUM, CHAIRMAN.

Your committee, to which the report of the executive committee on educational work in the South was referred, would express at the outset their profound gratitude for the success that has followed the efforts that have been put forth in this large and important department of the work of the American Missionary Association.

While they deplore with all those who have the interests of this work at heart, the political attempts to limit the usefulness of the Association, that has grown out of unworthy partisan prejudices, yet they perceive with thankfulness that there is an element growing stronger every year at the South that appreciates the place, the importance and the value of these schools. Notably is this shown in Mississippi, where the State appropriation for the Tougaloo University was the only one not reduced. They would speak with appreciation of the Christian spirit that infuses all these schools, and the deeply religious character that is given to the work, and of the strong personal influences which are brought to bear upon the students.

Your committee feel that the time has come to push with greatest vigor a work that shall meet the demand for teachers in the public schools of the South, and to avail ourselves of the opportunity to reach the children and the homes of colored people through these; that every effort needs to be put forth to send out these teachers established in Christian ethics and feeling that the moralities of life are the basis of all true education.

Great pleasure is taken in the advance that is made each year in the matter of industrial and agricultural training; and every effort which tends to transform this people into an intelligent, upright Christian yeomanry, will be a profound blessing. Our constant aim should be to establish the true dignity of labor and the healthful desire to possess property and an intelligence that secures the best condition as property holders.[355] Your committee are of the opinion that the opportunity for good through these schools was never larger than at present, and that the need of enlargement in many is imperative, and also that the time has come to push the work of special endowment for the larger institutions, that they may become independent of any financial pressure and may be put upon a permanent basis. And therefore of the three alternatives suggested by the claims of the work at present which they suggest in their report, can endorse one only, and do therefore most heartily recommend that instead of sacrificing the character of the work, instead of reducing the amount of work done, the Association shall have more money.

REPORT ON CHURCH WORK, SOUTH.

BY REV. CYRUS RICHARDSON, CHAIRMAN.

Your committee into whose hands has been placed the report of the church work in the South desire to state their impressions by calling attention to three or four important points.

First, to the marked increase in the membership of the Sunday-schools—an increase during the year of 2,000 pupils, or 15 per cent., bringing the present membership up to 15,109.

Comparing this with the entire enrollment in 1882, we find that during the five years there has been a growth of 100 per cent.

This is specially gratifying because it is understood that Sunday-schools or missions started at new stations look to the speedy establishment of churches at those stations; while well-organized schools in churches already established result in the careful study of God’s word, with a constant application of inspired doctrine to practical life, looking both to the permanence of the churches and the personal purity of their members.

Another important item noticed in the report appears in the statement touching the amount of money which these churches have given.

Beside the $16,000 contributed for their own religious work, $2,300 have been devoted to pure benevolence. If this should seem a small sum as a contribution of 127 churches, it must be remembered that it is the gift of poverty, and not of wealth. The free-will offerings of almost any one of these congregations, when compared with the contributions of not a few New England churches, suggest the words of the Master: “She hath cast in more than they all.”

Their spirit of sacrifice has often won for the colored people hearty commendation. To those of us who live amid multiplied temporal and spiritual privileges, and who easily lose sight of the goodly heritage for which we are to give an account, it is a spur, if not an inspiration, to read the story of the sacrifices which some of these brethren make in the giving of their scant substance for the more destitute members of the human family.

Their offerings for pure benevolence were above $600 more than the previous year, and are double what they were four years ago.

Your committee are glad to find that this feature of denominational work is strongly emphasized by the Executive Board, and that these churches, poor though they be, are taught that giving as well as receiving is a necessary factor in their growth, and that in true worship alms as well as prayers rise before God as a memorial.

Another noticeable item in the report is the building of meeting-houses. Indeed, the report characterizes the past year in its Southern work as one of “building activity.” Every church that is to become permanent must have its house dedicated to God. The sanctuary helps to hold the people together and attach them to forms of worship that demand a reverential attitude. Perhaps no people have greater need than our colored[356] brethren of those religious forms and ceremonies which secure quiet and order in the public devotions of the assembled multitudes.

We therefore rejoice in every new meeting-house that this society helps the struggling churches of the South to build.

Another item in the report to which we call attention is the organization of seven new churches during the year, about the average number, if you take a series of a dozen or more years, but not the average if you take simply the last five years.

Since 1882 the average rate of increase has been eleven per year.

It would undoubtedly be a joy to us all if the rate of increase could be more rapid. We must not, however, forget that we are at work “among a people who have no congregational trend or training.” It is undoubtedly wise to proceed with care, planting churches at the right centres and only where they will give promise of permanence.

After all the caution that has been exercised it has been necessary recently to drop four or five from the list. The aim should be at stability and worth rather than numbers. A single church organized on the right basis, watched over with painstaking care, so that her members shall adorn the doctrines they profess, will do more for the prosperity of Congregationalism in this part of the country than would a score of churches hastily organized and unsuitably located. We think the officers of this society have been wise in their movements thus far; nearly all the churches organized having made a history that deserves the admiration of Christian people everywhere.

But when we think of the constantly increasing number of graduates from the Christian schools and colleges under the patronage of this society; and the greater familiarity of the Secretaries with the localities suited to become strategic points for Congregationalism in the South; and the marked success of those churches whose permanence is beyond question, are we not warranted in expressing the hope that in the near future we shall see a radical advance all along this important line of denominational work? We know that this is what our Secretaries long for as well as pray for, and what with our contributions cheerfully made, they will hope to accomplish.

They heartily agree with us in believing that the uplifting influences of schools and colleges would be readily dissipated or turned into channels for evil if they are not gathered up and multiplied in rightly constituted bodies which shall prove the germs around which the forces of the community shall organize for good. Working together, therefore, as contributors and directors, we may expect to be cheered from year to year with the rapid growth in the numbers of these organized Christian forces which have in themselves vitalizing and transforming power which works for righteousness both in character and conduct.

REPORT ON MOUNTAIN WORK.

BY REV. A. H. QUINT, D.D., CHAIRMAN.

The committee on so much of the Annual Report as relates to mountain work, particularly in Tennessee and Kentucky, respectfully reports as follows:

The few details given in the report are of such an interesting character as to suggest the earnest wish that far more extended accounts of facts and incidents had been spread before the Association.

Want of space in the narration of the vast work of this body was of course the constraining reason for brevity in the report. But the comprehensive statement which is made exhibits conclusively the opportunity for a new and peculiar work, namely, that of giving the Gospel, its character and its schools, to a class hitherto scarcely touched by beneficent Christian agencies.

This is a class of white population, a class which felt of course in some degree the[357] blighting influence of slavery, which contaminated everything within the reach of its malaria; but this class, from its circumstances, was not a slave-holding class. It is a class of sturdy blood and mountain habits, and is capable of great development. Two considerations urge the necessity of covering this field.

One is, the ordinary obligation to preach the gospel to those who do not have the gospel.

The other is, the evident capacity of this peculiar people to become a power in the development of that section of our land.

While the field and the number of persons are both limited in comparison with the great work among the freedmen, their importance appeals to this Association with steadily increasing force.

The opportunity is at hand, and it is in a line which old friends of our regenerating work could scarcely have hoped for. Devout praise is due to Almighty God for this open door to a vast success.

It is worthy of notice in this respect how, in the history of this Association, God has steadily placed before it successive duties and successive privileges. From the first dawning of its Foreign and Home work, freed from complicity with the great sin of our country, new specialties have been added as fast as older ones were ripened into practical efficacy. This comparatively new work seems to be in a direct line of Divine development. Your Committee feels that the sanction of this Association should be emphatically given to the work of its administration in this department, a work in which no spirit of caste shall be in any way tolerated, and that the call for a large increase of laborers to be located at all suitable points, should be met as rapidly as possible.

The Committee has no doubt of the wisdom and judicious care which characterizes your Executive Committee, and believes that that committee needs only the hearty approval of this body to encourage it to go on in this direction.

REPORT ON INDIAN WORK.

BY MR. FRANK WOOD, CHAIRMAN.

The first great work of this Association was due to a crisis in the history of one oppressed race on this continent, who after more than one hundred years of slavery and oppression, had, in the providence of God, freedom and citizenship suddenly thrust upon them. Four millions of souls—a large majority poor, ignorant and degraded—to these came the A. M. A. as God’s own messenger to lead the way to education, usefulness and Christianity.

A similar emergency has now arisen in the history of another oppressed and wronged race for whom this Association has always done good work—the North American Indian.

Since the last annual meeting of this Association, the Dawes Bill, which has been called the emancipation proclamation of the Indian, has passed both houses of Congress, and is now the law of the land. Public attention, as never before, has been turned to the wrongs and the needs of the Indian. The new conditions have developed new necessities, new opportunities, and new dangers. Numerous societies, in thirty-two different States, have been organized to assist them. All this gives new importance to the work of the A. M. A. among the Indians. The summary for the year is encouraging. The conversions and additions to church membership tell a story of faithful, unselfish work for the Master, in one of the hardest possible fields of missionary labor, with little of the romance or pleasure of travel sometimes afforded by missions in foreign lands; among a people whom a Judge of the Supreme Court called “a despised and rejected [358]class of persons;” handicapped and hindered in all their efforts by the suspicions and hatreds developed by centuries of injustice, robbery and cruelty from a Government that claimed to be civilized and Christian, and also by the Reservation System, which puts the missionary and the teacher under the absolute control of the Indian Agent, who may be a mere political tool and a man of no character, yet has despotic authority on the reservation, with power to expel or imprison the missionary, or break up his school or congregation. Yet in spite of all obstacles, through love of Him who was also “despised and rejected of men,” they remained faithful amid dangers and difficulties, till, through their labor and that of their companions and predecessors, there are now nearly 29,000 Indian church members.

None have done better or more faithful work than the missionaries of the A. M. A. None are doing better work than Mr. Riggs and his associates. Yet, when compared with the extent of the field and the number and spiritual needs of those not yet reached by the influences of the gospel, and the opportunities and perils incident to their new and changing conditions of life, how very small is the work that the Christian Church is doing in this great field. Think of it—two hundred and forty-eight thousand Indians in the midst of a Christian land, and after the labor of 200 years only 29,000 professed Christians among them, and only 143 missionaries, of all denominations, to carry the gospel to this great multitude; and these few are hampered and hindered in their work by the intercourse laws, the opposition of agents and the orders of the Commissioner. When for the first time legislation, based on justice and humanity, is opening up vistas of usefulness and progress to the Indian; when the need of Christian teaching, guidance and care is greater than ever before, the Indian Bureau has issued orders that paralyzes missionary operations, by prohibiting the use of the vernacular in teaching English or the truths of the gospel. The Indians all know the vernacular. They have been carefully shut away from any other language by the Government restraints that surround all reservations, shutting out everything that would educate or civilize. The vernacular is used in the mission schools to teach English and the truths of the gospel to those who understand no other language. With this use we should submit to no interference. In a contest for religious liberty against the official tyranny that has for the last hundred years tried to usurp the place of Divine Providence to the Indian, we may be sure of the support of the freedom-loving American people. The intercourse laws should be repealed, so far as they relate to the operation of missionary societies. We should insist that all obstructions to the preaching of the gospel should be swept away. Then bring before all the churches the pressing and immediate needs of these neighbors who have fallen among thieves, who are pagans in a Christian land. While we are waiting they are passing into eternity. Shall we remain in selfish indifference till we are aroused by the dreadful sentence, “If thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thy hand.” This Association is only the servant of the churches. The means and the men must come from the churches. If the churches were awake to their duty in this matter, and realized their responsibility for the Christianizing of the Indian, they could send missionaries to every part of this field within a year. There are 348,000 Indians in the country, excluding Alaska. From this number we should deduct 65,000 in the five civilized tribes. This leaves 183,000. Of this number 28,600 are already church members. This leaves a population not greatly more than three times the size of this city of Portland. Would we dare to say to our Master that we cannot occupy this field?

There never has been a time so propitious as the present; there never has been a time when the wrongs and the needs of the Indian have received so much attention from the Christian, the legislator and the philanthropist.

Therefore your committee would recommend that a committee of five be chosen to co-operate with the Financial Secretary for Indian Missions in devising and carrying out[359] measures to bring the needs and opportunities of the Indian field before the churches, other missionary societies doing Indian work, and the numerous Indian Aid societies now organized throughout the country.

This committee should make an effort to secure the co-operation of all Christians and friends of the Indian in a greatly enlarged, thorough, systematic mission work. They should also labor to create a public sentiment that should demand the repeal of the intercourse laws, so far as they hinder mission work; the order in relation to the use of the vernacular in the mission schools, and the removal of every other obstruction of the Indian Bureau to the civil and religious liberty of the missionary and teacher on the one hand, and the Indian on the other.

The gospel of Christ offers the only solution to the Indian problem. It must precede and prepare the way for civilization. Through it alone can we save the Indian, and atone for the century of dishonor in which our Government’s system of dealing with the red men has made them paupers and kept them barbarians and pagans. This is the work of the Christian church, and if we shrink from or avoid the duty of the hour, God will not hold us guiltless.

REPORT ON CHINESE WORK.

BY REV. S. L. B. SPEARE, CHAIRMAN.

Your committee note with special satisfaction the following indications of progress in the work of our Association for the Chinese. Willing subjects of missionary labor are more numerous and more accessible. Past years of foundation work, dealing with Asiatic inertia and colossal prejudice and just resentment under wrong, are bearing fruit unusual in amount and assured genuineness. Our faithful missionary superintendent on the Pacific coast does not abate his courage or enthusiasm. Faithful teachers and co-workers can be found. The Lord of the vineyard has set his seal of approbation by granting harvests which, in the light of difficulties in the field and their promise for the future, are truly great. That Foreign Missionary Society, spontaneously formed by Chinese converts, thoroughly equipped and liberally supported in proportion to their means, and which aims, finally, at nothing less than the conversion of China’s millions, should silence any and all cavil or uncertainty as to their motives in embracing Christianity. Japan, also, hears tidings of Christian sympathy as her wandering sons are met with helpful counsels and religious enlightenment on these far western shores—the land of their ideal civilization. We rejoice that those in charge of the field see their way clear for “tentative evangelistic work” and have entered upon it. This betokens firm conviction and resolute purpose that the field shall be taken for Christ. Difficulties and embarrassments only multiply their zeal and methods. Like the great missionary to the Gentiles, these heralds of the gospel look upon “many adversaries” and “an open door” as equivalents. The statistics of recent progress emphasize our golden opportunity to reach the “hermit natives” through their representatives within our borders.

Your committee note with profound regret the serious falling off in the money appropriations for their work. Native helpers, skilled and consecrated, are the chief preaching agency of all missionary fields, and of China preëminently. Ours is the opportunity to multiply such helpers. California is in the foreground to-day as never before, not excepting the old mining days. The church should occupy that field with a zeal and wisdom that shall emulate the enterprise of railroads and real estate projectors. The church must not contradict all her traditions and working principles when Christ’s poor come to her borders by the thousand and under conditions specially favorable to Christ-like approach. Her own life will be impoverished by so doing. The priest and Levite wronged and degraded their own souls by passing on the other side from the wounded[360] sufferer, as much as the good Samaritan enriched his by pouring oil into his wounds and sheltering the victim of robbers.

Your committee hope that measures can be taken to bring the attention of our beloved churches to this their phenomenal opportunity and duty—to give the gospel at short range and nominal cost, to Asia’s millions and support that message with all possible sympathy and aid.

REPORT OF FINANCE COMMITTEE.

BY MR. CHAS. A. HULL, CHAIRMAN.

In presenting their report upon the financial condition and management of the business of the American Missionary Association, your committee on Finance desire to commend the clear and thorough manner in which the accounts are kept, so that any needed information may be had regarding any one of the numerous items of investment or expense at the numerous places where the work of the Association is carried on. The schedule of the property owned by the Association shows it to be possessed of buildings and land for the carrying on of educational and church work, the aggregate cost of which stands at $576,540.15. In addition to this plant, the Endowment funds amount to $229,375.78 which are securely invested, and yield an annual income of about $10,000. The Association also holds conditional trust funds amounting to $69,726.95. The good judgment shown in the purchase of land, the erection of buildings, and the investment of the permanent funds speaks well for the thorough care of the officers and the Executive Committee.

The committee desire to congratulate you and the Congregational churches of our land upon the extinction of the debt which for several years has been a burden to the Association. The treasurer’s report shows a balance on hand of $2,193.80, after paying every liability of the Association up to October 1, 1887, including the debt of $5,783.71, which remained at the end of the previous year.

In order to accomplish this, however, it has been necessary to defer until the receipts should warrant it, much work which presses with importunity upon the Association in the various fields.

We find that the treasurer’s accounts are regularly and faithfully examined each month by the financial committee of your executive board; and at the end of the year by two auditors chosen by the Association who attach their certificate to the report, and who are thoroughly reliable business men. The accuracy and economy of the work are thus as fully secured as in any merely business establishment. The by-laws of the executive committee provide a system of checks upon the officers similar to those in use in great corporations; and while of old it was said that “the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light,” we are glad to note that in the administration of the American Missionary Association so great a degree of worldly wisdom or common sense has been employed.

The duties of the treasurer are responsible, and have been performed with exactitude and fidelity. The receipts for current work of the year from all sources have been $306,761.31; and the expenditures therefor, $298,783.80.

These items of expenditure have been carefully examined in detail by your committee, and they report that in each department the most careful economy has been used, and no curtailment which would not materially cripple the effective force of the Association seems possible.

Your committee have taken some pains to compare the expenses of the Association with those of other missionary societies, and we find that it does not suffer in the comparison. The committee note with regret that the expenditures for work among the[361] Indians and Chinese have been cut down materially as compared with the previous fiscal year; but we believe that the policy of the executive committee in refusing to incur liabilities which the Congregationalists of the country would not meet is the right one.

They must keep the Association so economically and so safely managed that no reproach may justly fall upon it; and the fact that they are able to come before you at this meeting, and to report the absolute extinction of the load of debt which has been upon them and you for several years, and have yet developed and prosecuted with vigor the grand labor for the oppressed, appeals in the strongest possible way to you for the most generous increase of the sums to be intrusted to their management in the year to come.

All departments need enlarging. The Southern work ought to have not less than $275,000; $15,000 is a small sum to spend upon the Chinese on our western coast, while $60,000 would hardly give the much needed development to the Indian Mission. Shall not the $350,000 thus plainly needed and earnestly recommended by the last National Council of Congregational churches be forthcoming? From us to whom much has been given, much will surely be required. If we cannot in person go with these Christian men and women who are devoting their lives to the direct work of this Association, into the cabin of the Negro, the abode of the mountaineer, the opium den of the Chinese, or the wigwam of the Indian, let us at least say to those who do,—“We will uphold your hands, we will abundantly support your work, we will, as far as we can, share your burdens and be your fellow laborers.”

DR. BUCKINGHAM’S MEMORIAL ADDRESS.

The recent and lamented death of Governor Washburn, the President of this Association, calls vividly to mind his worth and usefulness; and it will be of interest to you to know the estimation in which he was held, and the respect felt for his character and influence in our Connecticut valley. Like Governor Strong before him, he was one of the “River-gods,” influential and commanding in all that region, though ruling more by his personal character than by any official station.

He was born at Winchendon, Mass., in 1820, and had lived all his life either near, or in, Greenfield. His father died in his infancy, leaving him in straitened circumstances, but he managed to obtain a good preparatory education at Lawrence Academy, Groton, and was graduated at Yale College in 1844. He purposed to devote himself to the Christian ministry, but the death of an uncle leaving a large manufacturing business heavily embarrassed compelled him to take the management of it, which he did with such ability and success that he not only rescued the business from insolvency, but made it the basis of his own life-long prosperity and the source of his ample benevolence.

The same qualities which made him successful in business carried him into public life and secured him equal respect and influence there. His sound judgment, fidelity to duty, scrupulous integrity and Christian principle, made him sought after for public offices and corporate trusts, as few men are. He had been a member of the State Senate and of the House of Representatives, and when we were in the midst of the Civil War, and[362] strong and reliable men were needed in Congress, he was sent to the House of Representatives without opposition, receiving, what was almost unprecedented in politics, the unanimous vote of his district. He was kept there for ten years by successive elections, where his ability and sterling integrity soon placed him upon the important Committee of Claims, and also of Revolutionary pensions, and where he remained until he was called home to become the Governor of the Commonwealth. This office he held until he was sent to the United States Senate, to succeed Senator Sumner, and here his well-known services in the House secured him at once an honorable position which was well maintained by his valuable services and noble character.

Indeed, the best tribute to his worth was, that when he retired from public life he had received, unsolicited, every public honor which it was in the power of his constituents to bestow.

The same was also true of his appointment to the management of so many business corporations, educational institutions, trust funds, missionary associations, benevolent and Christian societies. He was the President of the First National Bank of Greenfield, a director of the Connecticut River Railroad Company, one of the Corporation of Yale College, a trustee of the Mass. Agricultural College, of Smith College, of Mr. Moody’s School at Mt. Hermon, a corporate member of the American Board of Foreign Missions, President of this American Missionary Association, a pillar in the Second Congregational Church of Greenfield, and the first President and a vigorous supporter of the Connecticut Valley Congregational Club. The wonder was, how he could take upon himself so many trusts, when, with his ideas of duty, they must each receive his careful attention and he must hold himself personally responsible for their best management.

Fidelity to his trusts was one of his most marked characteristics, and in this respect he possessed the spirit of his Lord, “who was faithful to Him that appointed him,” and as Moses was “faithful in all his house,” so our friend possessed this crowning virtue of a noble and useful life. * *

It is true that many have excelled him in particular abilities, especially in those that are most striking and brilliant, such as poetic sense and successful oratory, which are most frequently denominated genius. But these have often been combined with defects of judgment, or temper, or principle, so that their influence has been sadly marred or used for mischief. As in our civil war it was not every eloquent orator or able editor who was the best adviser or steadiest supporter of the policy that preserved the Union; but some of them would have let the nation be divided, or compromised the questions at issue, only to be reopened without hope of right settlement. But here was a man for all times and all places. In the halls of legislation, in the Governor’s chair, before a board of selectmen, arranging bounties for volunteers and for the support of their families, or among his own workmen, advising them as to what they might or might not properly[363] do in such a crisis—he is the same wise counsellor and faithful helper everywhere, doing the work assigned to him as well as, if not better than, most poets or orators.

And when war was over, and such work no longer needed, when peace was to be restored and amicable relations cultivated between those who had been deadly foes; when business prosperity was to be brought about again and banks were to be well managed, and trust funds made secure, and the increasing wealth and enterprise of the country to be turned into benevolent and Christian channels, here he found his fields of delight, and his abilities and character shone out in new beauty and strength. Here was Governor Washburn’s real genius—the completeness and best use of all his abilities, combined with principles that directed them all to the noblest ends.

This seems to be the divine method of training men for their best work. They are placed in stations of responsibility, which they are not properly qualified to fill; but if they are conscientious and faithful, and especially where they put themselves under divine guidance and are controlled by religious motives—the most powerful of all—they become qualified for almost any station in life, and for the highest and most responsible duties.

It was in this way that our friend secured his best development. The great secret of it was his piety. He was taught of God. He was trained in the school of Christ. He was devoted to the Saviour’s cause. In his own estimation he was not his own, but belonged to Him who had redeemed him at such cost. All that he was, and all that he possessed and all that he was capable of becoming, were the Lord’s. His talents were his trust, to be improved for his Master, like his property. His intelligence, his sound judgment, his capacity for business, were cultivated for Christian use. When they brought him honor and position, he was not elated by them. Position was only another name for opportunity and influence, which brought with them increased responsibilities. Honors only sobered him and made him pray to God that he might prove worthy of them.

In the spirit also of his Master, who came to “seek and to save that which was lost,” he would bless and benefit all for whom Christ died. He was not only desirous of dealing justly with his fellow men, but he must do them good as he had opportunity, and to all men, Negroes, Indians, Chinese, as well as to his own countrymen. He sought to secure wise legislation for them, and a faithful administration of the Government. He would educate the ignorant, reform the vicious and remove the disabilities under which so many labor. He would improve their worldly condition and make his business profitable to those in his employ as well as to himself. But above all, he would bless men spiritually and eternally with the blessings which only the gospel of Christ can bestow. This was the secret[364] of his interest in your work and in all kindred works, and in everything that could improve the character and condition of men. This is the reason that he devoted time and thought and assistance to so many Christian and philanthropic enterprises which are accomplishing these objects. This is why he gave to this Association so much of his attention and best counsel, his generous contributions and fervent prayers, and why he left such large bequests to this and kindred societies.

As an Association we owe too much to our late President and devoted friend not to make mention of his many and invaluable services, and always hold in loving and grateful remembrance the name of William Barrett Washburn. Few causes have such helpers, and not often are better men raised up for their time and work. We shall miss him in our deliberations, while we need more than ever, as our fields for Christian enterprise are enlarging, his sound judgment, untiring energy and steadfast Christian faith.

When such men as Governor Washburn, Alpheus Hardy and President Hopkins are taken from us, we can only pray that He who has the whole work in charge will inspire others with similar devotion and bestow upon us all more of his grace and blessing.

The circumstances of Governor Washburn’s death were peculiar and startling to those about him, though not wholly unexpected to his family. It was known to them that he had a serious affection of the heart, but they were encouraged to hope that by care, and the avoidance of all undue excitement and exertion, he might have comfortable health for some years. The morning meeting of the Board found him a little late from the cars, and climbing the stairs to the hall, he had scarcely seated himself upon the platform and spoken to his friends about him, when he fell forward unconscious into their arms; and though a physician was immediately at his side, and his wife soon there also, there was no return of consciousness, and almost as quickly as the scene can be described, he had left us, and his spirit had gone home to God. A sudden departure, and a startling one to those of us who were trying to detain him; but his Lord called him, and he must have said:

As we saw the light of life fade out from that benignant face, as when the glory of the day becomes the gloom of the night, we heard it coming down out of Heaven: “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” Christ’s saints never perish. They only begin to live in the truest and highest sense when they seem to die; and with our Christian faith and[365] immortal hopes, we love to think of him as having entered upon that higher life and commenced a nobler service. It was an unexpected summons, but we cannot think that he was ever unprepared for it. Like that Connecticut Puritan, who, when the “Dark Day” came and it was proposed that the Legislature should adjourn because the end of the world had come, replied that “this might be, but if it was, he chose to be found at his post, doing his duty.” “Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he cometh shall find so doing. And if He shall come in the second watch or in the third watch and find them so, blessed are those servants.”

THE MISSIONARY INFLUENCE OF A LIFE, AND THE LIFE OF A MISSIONARY INFLUENCE.

BY REV. A. F. BEARD, D.D.

In the missionary influence of a Life it is my purpose to trace the life of a missionary influence.

This special life is selected as a significant illustration of certain specific features and forms of the missionary work which we are called here to consider.

It was a remote and inconspicuous consecration to certain radical ideas of human brotherhood, and to new and not popular methods of saving people who are low down in life by variations from the then accepted ideas.

As a study of sympathy with people in low conditions, of faith in the possibilities of those who have been degraded, of the application of Christianity to the prejudices of caste, of fidelity in witnessing to profound convictions, of prophetic insight as to the trends of God’s providences, of heroic self-denials among the oppressed and ignorant, together with the continuity and cumulative power of these far-reaching influences, this may stand for a concrete exhibition of the kind of work which we here are trying to do, and possibly may bring some new hope and courage to ourselves and some fresh sympathy to our devoted Christian workers who, removed from the world’s observation and sometimes from due Christian appreciation, are consecrating their lives to the same uses.

In the time when George III was King of England and our great-grandfathers were opposing the Stamp Acts, there lived in a house which still stands in Strasbourg, in Alsatia, a wise father and a mother of remarkable endowments, who trained their son to habits of conscientious economy, self-reliance, to the sense of responsibility to God and to man, and of the obligations which possession has towards human necessities, and to habitual benevolence.

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Led on through youth to aspire to a learned profession, at the age of fifteen years he signed his name, John Frederick Oberlin, as a student of the University of Strasbourg. Three years later he was a Bachelor of Arts, and five years later, a Doctor in Philosophy. Ordained as a minister of the Gospel in 1760, seven succeeding years were held sacred to the conviction that large usefulness means large preparedness; so that he was still in his study at the age of twenty-seven years, when a missionary who had been trying to save needy souls in the mountains of the Vosges, ministering to the spiritual necessities of a people passed by in the movements of a world’s life and remote from civilization, came into Oberlin’s room and urged him to take up this service.

He confessed his own lack of success, and that he had made no impression upon them. He told Oberlin of the people, descendants of the Huguenots, who had fled from fiery persecutions in France to this wild and sterile mountain country. As the years had gone on for more than seven generations of men, their teachers had died, their preachers had died, until they, exiled and outcast, had declined into heathenish ignorance. He had found as a distant memory of what once had been, a single school in a mountain hamlet. It was in a miserable hovel in one corner of which lay a helpless old man on a rude truckle-bed, surrounded by a crowd of ragged, noisy, wild-looking children. He asked: “Are you the schoolmaster?” “Yes.” “What do you teach the children?” “Nothing.” “You teach them nothing, how is that?” “Because I know nothing.” “Why then are you the schoolmaster?” “Well, sir, I was taking care of the Waldbach pigs, but the people thought me too old for that, and so I was appointed to take care of the children.”

The missionary did not conceal the facts of the case, that the people living in these remote and solitary places were not only frightfully ignorant, but were rebellious against improvement. The region had six months of winter, with bitter icy winds sweeping over the mountains. There was not a single practicable road in the entire district. Deep mud holes were before the cabin doors and the huts in which the people were sheltered. In the short summer season they gathered enough food to sustain an impoverished life through the winter, in which winter they often herded for warmth in the stables with their cattle. So far had they sunk into material and moral desolation.

To such a ministry was invited this young man of large ambitions and large reasons for them; to minister to this wretchedness, to go to a people who were without sense of their needs, without aspirations, without appreciation of the services to be done for them. One prepared for the Professor’s chair in the great University where it was pleasant to live, was invited to bury himself among those who would not give him even the reward of gratitude.

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It was not a pleasant call. The words of it struck the young man’s heart like the blows of a hammer. But seven years before, he had written in his own hand his consecration to God, that with all sincerity of heart and in a fidelity which should not sleep he would walk in the ways of Christ as God should reveal them to him.

And now what had this ardent student, with splendid talents and high education, rich in special studies, who had in mind a great sphere of usefulness, to do with this call but to take it to Him to whom he had once for all consecrated himself, “with all sincerity of heart”? In that little room, Oberlin, on bended knee, lifted up his voice and prayed, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth,” and in agony he listened for the still, small voice. He could not wish to go, but he could not refuse to hear. And a great battle went on in his soul.

There have been many battles in Strasbourg. The Roman armies fought there; the Germans triumphed there; the tri-colors of France have waved in the glory of victory there, but never a greater conflict, perhaps, or a more glorious conquering, than this between faith and sight, the issues of which God and the centuries were awaiting—a great soul meeting the questions of this world and the questions of eternity. When he arose from his prayer, he said: “I will go.”

Conviction was action. Soon among them, his quick eye perceived that preaching to them in their condition would fall far short of their needs. He must save souls, but he must also save men and women. And here developed his missionary idea. It was not new, for Christ taught it and lived it, but it was new, for Christians had forgotten it. Christ was divinity in humanity, and the people must realize the divinity in the humanity. He must save their souls, but their souls are in their bodies. So he would not deal with them as if they were disembodied spirits, but seeing them in all their ignorance and material poverty, he would teach them how to meet their physical destitutions and their mental destitutions, and would go to them as persons who have a life in this world as well as in the world to come. Salvation for this people was not to rescue here and there merely a vacant mind, nor out of multitudes of shipwrecked souls to save here and there one from the wreck; but to him the Kingdom of God was like unto seed which a man put in his ground and which should grow—he knoweth not how—by all kinds of help, but which might call for long watching and long waiting.

Therefore he said, “Education is indispensable to the uplifting of such a people,” and schools were planted. Home life must be redeemed, and home industries were taught. They need the industrial arts; hence he began to instruct them in carpentry, in masonry, in smithing and in agriculture. He introduced the planting of trees; societies of agriculture; instituted arbor days; taught them how to drain their lands, how[368] to irrigate them, how to enrich them, how to make roads, and how to construct bridges across their mountain streams.

There he went to stay, and among them built his own house and brought into it a like-minded, large-minded, cultivated, earnest-spirited wife, who with him taught the lessons of home life, its divinity, its sacredness and its glory.

Remember, this was more than a century ago, when the world had not the missionary thoughts of to-day. None, so far as I know, had as yet such a missionary idea enunciated and systematized.

While thus he was laying the foundations for the regeneration of a despised people, a still greater sacrifice presented itself. It was to leave this missionary work for another in one of the Southern colonies of far-off America, to live among a people more needy than these despised ones, and more despised; to live among those who by law were being robbed of the very rights of being, and for whose degradation the forces of law were now operating.

Accepting the mission, he was ready to depart, when suddenly the war for American Independence was declared, and his life was saved. He could not then have lived a year in the South possessing his ideas, much less to apply and expand them.

His path blocked by Providence, nothing remained but for him to develop those ideas where he was, and to lift his voice from those out-of-the-way hills against the sin of slavery. He would not use sugar in his coffee, “for,” said he, “every granule of it is tainted with the blood of the unhappy slave.” No article wrung out of involuntary servitude should come into his house. No product of slave labor would he touch. He was a prophet, for at this date people in New England had not ceased to buy and sell their fellow-creatures, and scores of years after this, ministers of the gospel in this country were diligently searching the Scriptures to discover and establish the divine foundations for human servitude.

Meanwhile the churches increase, the school-houses multiply, the industries prove their value, and the mountain people are led along, and led up from their abject poverty and misery to the experience of comfort and prosperity. Then he worked and waited for three-score years save one, and lived to see a rude and vulgar and despised people regenerated and transformed, saved from the dominion of vice to good morals and gentle manners, and many of them converted to a personal experience of the grace that is in Christ.

You may easily now examine the results of this life and service after the long years have tested them.

Should you go with me to his house you would cross the pont de la charité by the way of his well-constructed road. When Oberlin proposed to make this road, to blast the rocks along the mountain side, the[369] people did not see how it would look as we now do. If he had suggested a step-ladder to the moon they would not have been more amazed. They applied to him all the deprecatory adjectives in their possession. It was impossible, and unreasonable, and visionary. Assuredly he had lost his mind. Much learning had made him mad. They positively refused to sustain him. He was altogether out of his sphere. This would have been a good time for him to have tendered his resignation, but the great soldier did not run away, because he was needed. They could not starve him out, for he knew how to starve.

But if the road were made it would be useless, they said, for “how could we get across the stream?” He replied: “We will take the rocks which we blast for the road and build a bridge.” This confirmed them that the pastor’s mind was clean gone forever. Such a departure from the old paths showed not only the danger of theological studies, but also a capacity for speculative views that would halt at nothing. Nevertheless, he led the way in this enterprise, and the people looked on amazed when they saw him picking and shoveling with his own hands. Then one came and followed him, and another came and followed him; then a score who soon were fifty, and next a hundred, until by the time they had reached the bridge they all believed in it and always had! The last man who was converted over to the majority undoubtedly went home and told his wife that the original idea of the improvement was his own; that he had it in mind long before Oberlin came, and he himself would have proposed it to their leader but for the conviction that ministers ought simply to preach the gospel and leave the labor question alone. Perhaps the trusting soul believed him.

As you enter the home where he was a father to this people who were as children to him and brethren to each other, you feel his protest against caste, and his teaching that if God is a universal father this destroys caste and makes brotherhood a reality. In his study in his own plain hand, you may find his missionary idea fully expanded, and from that study you will no longer look out upon the wilderness and the solitary place, because they have been made glad by him. You will find happy children in good schools and happy parents in good Christian homes.

Let me turn now from the influence of the life, to the life of the influence. It is not always easy to trace the pedigree of an idea or to track an influence. Sometimes we can in part, for they all have their parentage, and their evolution has been so direct that we can tell where and when they were born. Seven years after the sorrowing people had gathered about the missionary’s grave, two young men in this country—themselves having something of the prophetic instinct—in acquainting themselves with the work of this missionary prophet caught his spirit, and set themselves to incarnate his ideas and his methods, in consecrating[370] themselves to the work of education in order to salvation. The influence which Oberlin never thought to send so far, had winged itself from his mountain tops across the wide sea to a little village in the new State of Ohio. Then these young men who found themselves in sympathy with his ideas of brotherhood, its obligations and its needs, with his feeling towards the slave and to all who might be uplifted, took upon themselves this moral and spiritual inheritance and began the foundations of a school which should bear the name of Oberlin and become the reproductive center of like ideas and influences. I do not say that there were no other influences, only that there was this one, dominant in spirit as well as in name. The young college took on this stamp, a missionary character, sympathy with people in low conditions, radical ideas of human brotherhood, profound convictions of duty towards the oppressed and ignorant. From the atmosphere of this influence, soon from the Professor’s chair in this College there came forth a strong man girded for a great sacrificial work.

A little Missionary Society, the embodiment of the idea which Oberlin three-score and ten years before had proclaimed upon the mountains, “No complicity with slavery,” consciously or unconsciously, having adopted the same faith and spirit, needed a leader. From the influences of Oberlin College came Rev. Dr. Whipple to sound the bugle blast which went echoing through the land: “We will not use the revenues of unrighteousness to do the work of righteousness.” Was it anything more than a coincidence or was it a providence, that with thirty years of singular sacrifice this strong man in obedience to his mind and heart was working out the same ideas which the great missionary prophet had so clearly held forth?

I am not now attempting to assert heredity of ideas, or to decide the precise degree of historic continuity that there may be in an influence. I have the easier task of following a distinct stream of influence, one among many which flow into the great river of life. With no purpose to measure it I see the providence. Another evolution from the same atmosphere of the same institution brings to the American Missionary Association kindred ideas, kindred faith and kindred spirit, in the second Corresponding Secretary, thus connecting the history, and expanding and deepening the influence.

Yesterday’s Annual Survey exhibited, as well as figures may, the work of the Society now after more than two-score years of history. It is interesting as a fact, independent of any weighing of influences, to note that in church work and in Sunday-school work, in educational instruction and industrial training, in teaching those who have not had the chances for life, how to think, how to work, how to aspire and how to rise, we find ourselves, as if working by a chart in the expansion of the[371] missionary methods of this prophet who gave his life to rescuing the despised, teaching them how to live in the world that now is, while they are taught the lessons that shall fit them for the world to come. The education of the schools, the lessons in the establishment of good homes, the industries, the churches, are pressing on in the plain paths of providence until this day.

Already our eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord. Its aforetime degraded people are rapidly learning to work out the decrees of God in the blessings of a Christian civilization. Among the dark millions of the South, in the long passed-by cabins of impoverished and ignorant mountain people in the heart of our land, of our own race, among the long-wronged red men and the despised Mongolians, the evolution of this missionary idea, and the developments of this missionary influence are proving their reproductive and fruitful energy in the sacrificial lives of noble missionaries, men and women who are themselves often despised while they are ministering to the ignorant and to those who are lowly. They also are powers for other lives, while they are sustained by a like devotion to the things that are eternal. As from this unlikeliest mission, a hundred years ago the light of life shone out, the influence of fidelity to convictions coursing down the centuries, showing what enlightened consecration can achieve; so now those who are working together with God for the same divine ideas, though they may be hidden from the world’s praises, may be confident that God will not forget them, nor fail to speed their labors of love in the Lord.

As we gather here in the interests of a work so near to the heart of Christ, like Him we may safely appeal to the confirmations of history in the evolutions of providence for courage now, and confidence for the future. How often when our Lord was testifying to the reality and power of the kingdom of God on the earth, and the faith which souls might have and hold in working in it and in waiting for it, did He send the minds of people back to the days of the prophets and righteous men that they might see how the work goes on when the workers die, and how the influences of their lives continue and enlarge in other lives, so that assurance might take fresh courage to discover itself in the historic current of an unmistakable divine purpose and in the evolution of the decrees of grace. The constancy and compassion of God in the past are cheering us, in that we have only to hold fast the beginning of our confidence, steadfast unto the end. We shall not fail, and we need not be discouraged.

Thus putting on strength, as we recall the care of God and power of His truth, may we not from this high place of Christian convocation send out our sympathies to those who have consecrated themselves to this same prophetic work of bringing in the cast-out, of raising up the cast-down, and of saving those who are out of the way. Much of their[372] work is very kindred in form and feature to this work of Oberlin’s. It is remote, in conditions of rudeness, and in separation from kindred society. They are living the truth of human brotherhood. They are holding forth that which is not popular. They are standing with and for the despised.

They may remember that we bear them in our hearts and in our prayers; that they have the grateful recognition of the churches in their self-denials and heroisms. God has accounted them worthy to live lives that may well rebuke the selfishness and sinful ambitions of those who live for themselves and those who seek only high places. The greatness of Christian service is theirs. They can never know where their influences may go, nor how far. Nor until the roll-call of Eternity is made will it be revealed what great lives they have lived, and what Christian deeds have been wrought by these men and women, who from us have gone out and away from the world’s vision in self-abnegation, and often in the world’s scorn are like the prophet of the mountains, patiently laying deep and broad the foundations of a new earth wherein shall dwell righteousness.

And so long as our churches can produce this sacrificial spirit, the work cannot do other than move forward, and the will of God shall be done.

THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN; OR, THE THREE BROTHERS WHO SETTLED AMERICA.

BY SECRETARY STRIEBY.

This country was settled by Three Brothers. The first that came was an Englishman, a Cavalier, who located himself at Jamestown; the second was also an Englishman, a Puritan, who landed on Plymouth Rock; the third was an African, and was consigned to the First Brother.

These families multiplied exceedingly and at length came to be numbered by millions. To them was committed a great duty—the founding of an empire, and the taking of three grand steps in the march of human progress, (1) the establishing of civil and religious liberty, (2) the securing of personal freedom for all and (3) the exemplifying of the Brotherhood of Man. The last step only remains to be taken.

The parts of this great duty were unfolded in the due order of development, and sprang naturally out of the heredity and environment of the Brothers. The men and their surroundings given, the results were inevitable. It seems singular that just these men should have been selected by Providence, especially the black man, but the result shows[373] that they were wisely chosen. The black was in the end found to be an essential factor.

I. Let me sketch these Three Brothers.

1. The First, the Cavalier, had been, in the old country, loyal to king and church, a supporter of the House of Stuart and of Archbishop Land. He was a representative of the rural population of England, men who loved broad acres and field sports. In his home in the new world his great ambition was to own a large plantation and multiply the number of his slaves, and thus imitate the baronial life of the mother country. He cared nothing for popular education, and thanked God that there was neither a school-house nor a printing-press in his domain.

2. The Second Brother, the Puritan, had become more accustomed to city life, and was addicted to trade and commerce as well as to farming. His zeal as a reformer in church and State brought him into collision with the House of Stuart, and indeed he was an exile in his new home on account of his religious and political principles. He desired to have “a church without a bishop and a State without a king.” He was earnest in promoting education as well as religion, and his identifying mark everywhere was the meeting-house and the school-house.

3. The Third Brother, the African, was not voluntary in coming to his new home nor in the choice of his occupation. He was a slave. He was strong in body, amiable in disposition, but at length became the innocent cause of much ill blood between the other brothers.

II. The duties assigned to these men.

1. The founding of a great empire.

Never was there a more inviting opportunity—a continent almost unoccupied, coast lined by two great oceans, with climate varied and healthy, and with boundless resources in fertile lands, rivers, lakes and mines; and never was an opportunity better improved—in less than three hundred years the new empire has nearly double the population of the mother country.

2. The second duty was to lead in three great steps in human progress. (1), The first step was to secure and maintain civil and religious liberty. This step was inevitable for the two English brothers. They had planted colonies and organized States. They had secured charters guaranteeing the rights of Englishmen. They had thus a training in the arts of government and had learned to value the blessings of constitutional liberty. In an evil hour the British Government began to invade these chartered rights. The Two Brothers were aroused. The Puritan was by inheritance and principle a foe of arbitrary power. He, of course, was deeply stirred. The Cavalier had indeed been a friend of the Stuarts. He could see no objection to arbitrary power when it was practised by himself and his party on others, but he naturally and suddenly came to see it in an entirely different light when he and his[374] party were the victims; and for once the two brothers were in accord.

A contest was imminent. The British Government could settle it peacefully, if righteously; if not, in blood. It would not restore chartered rights. Then came the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, the new Republic, with the truest definition and guarantee of civil and religions liberty the world had ever seen. The first of the great steps in human progress, to which these men were called, was taken.

(2.) The second step—the securing of personal freedom for all—was plainly demanded by the taking of the first. The elements of the new contest were embodied in the Declaration of Independence on the one hand and Negro slavery on the other—a great principle and a great fact at war with the principle. The antagonism was seen from the outset. Expediency shut men’s eyes to it, but God and conscience opened them. How skillful for a time were the devices to escape the dilemma. It was said that the Declaration of Independence was only for white men; that it was a mere glittering generality; that the North had nothing to do with slavery, and finally that slavery was right, justified both by law and the Bible. But all in vain. God and conscience would not be silent.

Again a contest was imminent. The South could settle it peacefully, if righteously; if not, in blood. The South would not abolish slavery, and hence the Civil War and the overthrow of slavery. The second step was taken.

(3.) The third step is to exemplify the Brotherhood of Man. This in like manner is demanded by the results of the one preceding—by the two great and opposing facts: Emancipation, and the Negro as he is. On the one hand, every slave was emancipated; in the zeal of the hour he was made a citizen, enfranchised and guaranteed “the equal protection of law.” On the other hand, twenty years have shown that these guarantees are in form and not in fact.

In other respects, too, his condition is seen to be deplorable, full of discouragement to himself and of danger to the nation.

Let me point out some of the facts in regard to his condition:

(1.) He does not enjoy his guaranteed rights.

I wish to give due credit to the extent and to the localities in which he does enjoy these rights, but speaking broadly they are largely denied to him. He was deprived of the ballot at one time by violence, and is now by fraud; in all cases where his vote would be decisive in State or National politics, it is not counted—in other words, the race is practically disfranchised. In the courts he seldom finds a standing as a lawyer or a juror; in the chain-gang only does he enjoy a monopoly. In the church, the school, the shop, he does not, as a rule, have equal rights; he cannot join any church he pleases, cannot choose the school to which he will send his children, cannot enter the shop to learn a trade or to[375] work as a journeyman. He cannot, everywhere, ride in the street car, on the railroad or steamboat with the white man, though he may buy the same first-class ticket; he cannot, in many places, attend the theatre, concert or lecture with the white man, nor with him eat a lunch at the restaurant, nor lodge in the hotel. He is confronted, hindered and insulted at every step he takes towards enjoyment or improvement—a flaming sword guards the avenues of knowledge, industry and virtue against him. His guarantees of equal rights are a mockery.

2. He is left in ignorance and vice.

Here again I wish not only to admit but to rejoice in the progress made. More than a million of the colored people, of ten years old and upward, can write; but, alas! more than three millions cannot! It is these that awaken our fears, for they are in danger themselves and are a danger to the nation. Owing to their illiteracy they cannot keep the accounts of their earnings in the lowest kinds of employment; they cannot enter upon the higher and more profitable avocations; and they cannot rise to the intellectual dignity of a true manhood. Then, too, they are in bondage to their vices. When they escaped from slavery, many of them did not escape from lying, stealing and licentiousness; when they entered freedom many were captured by idleness, improvidence and intemperance. These are the victims of designing men who take advantage of their ignorance to defraud them, and of their vices to enrich themselves or to gratify their lusts. The danger to the nation is from the contagion of vice which spreads beyond race or locality, and from the schemes of political demagogues who can sway to their own ends the millions of these ignorant voters, who have no property to be taxed and no character to maintain.

3. He is under the ban of caste prejudice.

This lies at the bottom of the whole difficulty. This refuses to see his good qualities, denies his capacity for improvement, shuts to him the doors of knowledge, cheats him at the polls, wrongs him in the courts, and consigns him perpetually to the position of a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, thus enstamping the race distinction broad and permanent, and awakening in his heart either utter discouragement or implacable hatred.

In these three facts—the withholding of the negro’s equal rights, his ignorance and vice, and this caste prejudice—are the elements of a race warfare; they foreshadow another “Impending Crisis”—the next “Irrepressible Conflict.” This becomes the more obvious, because the negro, having been recognized as a man before the law, there is no alternative but to withdraw the recognition or to make it real. There is no middle ground—he must be a slave or a freeman; the equal of his white peers. The “Impending Crisis” is the more imminent from the growth of the blacks in number. In spite of all denials, the time[376] is hastening on when the blacks in the Southern States will outnumber the whites; and when they feel their strength in brawn and muscle—and when especially there arise among them men of education and talent, with ambition aroused and with passion stimulated by a sense of injustice—then will the “Irrepressible Conflict” become as certain as, and, we fear, more implacable than, the last great struggle.

But there is a higher stand-point from which to view this great question—the providential. When the negro ceased to be a slave he became invested with a new significance. Then for the first time began to be seen the meaning of his presence in America—the reason why the black man from Africa—the most degraded part of the world—was selected by Divine Providence as one of the Three Brothers to settle this continent. He was the one by whom God could test the nation and call upon it to exemplify before the world the Brotherhood of Man. The full test could only be made when the highest should recognize the lowest.

The nation cannot shirk this test. Justice to the negro demands it; God, who made of one blood all nations, demands it; Christ, who died for all men, demands it; he cares for the poor and repudiates caste; he was born in poverty and toiled for his living; his mission was announced and attested by miracles of help for the needy and the preaching of the gospel to the poor; he touched the leper when he healed him; he ate with publicans and sinners; in his church there is neither bond nor free, but all are one in him; and in the final judgment his award will depend upon how he himself was treated in the person of one of the least of his brethren. His voice must be heard. To all that call him Lord, and mean to obey his word and follow his example, this whole question must be lifted out of the realm of prejudice into the higher plane of Christian duty, and when placed there, who can doubt the issue? The Brotherhood of Man must be recognized and exemplified.

But the question remains, How shall this next great step in human progress be taken? The question will be settled and the step will be taken in righteousness, for no question is ever settled till it is settled right. As we have seen before, the issue between the American Colonies and the British Government, and that between the North and the South in regard to slavery, might both have been settled peacefully, if righteously; and so the question now before the nation may be settled peacefully, if righteously, by giving the negro his guaranteed rights, lifting him out of his ignorance and vice, and especially by taking him from under the ban of caste prejudice. But it is to be feared that these concessions will not be made, and then the question will be settled by a bloody war of races, involving the North as well as the South.

But this conclusion is too startling to contemplate without instinctively turning to the possibility of a peaceful solution of the problem. Let me suggest:

[377]

1. The Northern Brother has a great responsibility in this matter. He, too, enslaved the Black Brother for a time, and gave his consent to the virtual recognition of slavery in the Constitution; and when at length he saw his error and demanded the emancipation of the slave, the South resisted him to the utmost in the terrible war; and when the slave was freed and the North insisted on making him a citizen and on giving him the ballot, the Southern Brother, though he could no longer resist, yet entered his most earnest protest. He said: “I know these negroes; they are not fit for the ballot and will ruin the country if they have it.” But the Northern Brother had the power, and like General Jackson he “took the responsibility.” He cannot now shrink from that responsibility. He cannot, with any better success than Pilate, wash his hands and thus be made guiltless. He brought his innocent Brother into his present trouble and it will be both cowardly and criminal to leave him to his fate. No! if this great problem is ever solved peacefully and righteously, the North must awake fully to its special duty, and perform it at whatever cost of money and self-sacrifice.

2. The Southern Brother has a still deeper interest in this matter. In the first place he owes something to the Black Brother, who always helped and never hindered him, who tilled his land and made his wealth, who, during the war, cared for the plantation and protected the family—though he knew that the master fought to rivet his fetters all the tighter. Then again, the Southern Brother has and must have the Black Brother with him, near him, his immediate neighbor, and whatever discomforts or dangers may arise, he must be the first, and for a time, the only one to suffer. He cannot remand the negro back to slavery, nor even to serfdom—the nineteenth century cannot tolerate the one more than the other—even in Russia, much less in America. Nor can the present anomalous position of the negro long be maintained. It is full of vexations and of dangers; the negro will soon be strong enough to resist it, and the North, as in the contest about slavery, must take sides with the Black man.

Why should the South fight against the inevitable? In a recent number of the Century, a Confederate officer, Col. Alexander, in giving a racy sketch of Pickett’s famous charge at Gettysburg, incidentally refers, in a humorous way, to one of their chaplains who was accustomed to pray that “Providence would consent at last to come down and take a proper view of the situation.” The Colonel, at one auspicious juncture in the preliminary fight, was inclined to believe that the prayer of the good chaplain was about to be answered. But when all was over and the battle was lost, he dryly admits that “Providence had evidently not yet taken a proper view of the situation.” The same admission was equally pertinent at Appomattox—and has been ever since—indeed, is it not time for the South to see that the trouble is not with Providence[378] but with itself—that it should “consent at last to take a proper view of the situation”? Providence did not take its view during the war to sustain slavery, and will not in the struggle to maintain caste, which is now the great issue, as slavery then was. That issue the South is pushing to the front with new energy. For example, the great churches, Methodist and Presbyterian, that had been rent asunder by the anti-slavery agitation before the war, had seemed for a time since to be happily coming together once more, but recently that fair prospect has become darkened, and mainly by the strong exactions in regard to caste-separation demanded by the South. Then as to schools, the South has always been understood to be opposed to the co-education of the races, but the recent demonstrations in one of the States are almost amusingly violent. We stolid Northern people are tempted to smile at the fear that the white young gentlemen and ladies of the South are so eager to marry negroes that they dare not be trusted in the same school together, and that such stringent measures as fines, imprisonment and the chain-gang are deemed necessary to prevent it! But we are glad to find that these severe measures were planned by over-zealous young politicians, and that “the sober second thought of the people” has substituted less barbarous methods, and that other Southern States do not follow the bad example.

But more seriously, the South has never enforced laws against the criminal mingling of the races that has almost bleached the negroes white. Is lawful marriage more criminal than concubinage? But who wants the intermarriage of the races to take place? Not the North, certainly. The Southern whites ought to be able to resist the temptation. Every step in the advancement of the blacks contradicts the charge that they desire it. No! the charge is fictitious, and is only paraded to give force to the plea for caste-distinction and exclusion, which is now the main hindrance to the incoming of the Brotherhood of Man.

But the Southerner pleads strongly against recognizing the political equality of the races. He says, The negro is not my equal in intelligence, property or character. Why should he cast a ballot he cannot read, elect men to make laws which they themselves cannot read, to impose taxes of which he pays almost nothing, and to squander the money for the benefit of demagogues? A most estimable Christian gentleman from South Carolina said to me not long since: “On one point the people of our State are agreed. We will not again be ruled by the negroes. We have tried it and we will not permit it to be repeated.” To all this the ready answer is: It was one thing for ignorant, degraded and unscrupulous negroes at that time to rule—nay, I may say, ruin—the State, and another and very different thing, to permit negroes that are educated, possessed of property and of established character to take[379] their proper share in the administration of the affairs of the State; and this brings me to my final point.

3. It is the duty of the hour and of all concerned to unite in aiding the negro to acquire knowledge, property and character. In the Revolutionary struggle, the two White Brothers stood shoulder to shoulder for one object; in the last sad conflict they fought against each other to the bitter end. It is time that the enmity of the last struggle should be laid aside and the amity of the first should be imitated. Let the two White Brothers unite in directing the general government to make ample provisions on terms satisfactory to both to promote popular education in the South; let the State governments in the South vote means to second the effort. Let the North, as individuals and churches, multiply greatly its generous offerings and increase the number of its consecrated men and women to carry forward the work, and let the South respond in its measure in personal contributions and labors, and especially let its people welcome these Northern teachers, not with suspicion and ostracism, but with co-operation and the respect due to their Christian characters. Let the large religious denominations bury dead issues and unite in lifting up the negro. On what nobler or more Christian platform could they stand? Let them come to him not as the priest and the Levite, but as the Samaritan; and let the Black Brother show more alacrity than ever in responding to these efforts in his behalf. When all this is done, there will be realized the great mission of these Three Brothers in America—the founding of a great empire, the establishing of civil and religious liberty, the granting of personal freedom to all, and last and greatest of all, the crowning glory of illustrating the Brotherhood of Man!

NEED OF INTELLIGENCE IN BENEVOLENCE.

BY SECRETARY POWELL.

What should be done to increase the number of those who intelligently contribute to the support of the American Missionary Association?

Among the reasons for raising this question are the following:

1. A large number of the churches give us no contribution. Last year only 1,698, out of 4,277 total, contributed to our treasury. The State Associations every year, and the National Council every three years, recommend the Association to the churches for their support. Sixty-one per cent. of those churches reply: “We do not accept your advice.” A high estimate they must put upon the reasons which governed their representatives! Yet resolutions of commendation are necessary. The cause that cannot obtain them is doomed. But, though necessary, they are not enough. “Good words butter no parsnips.” [380]Those who say not and do are more to be commended than those who say and do not. The resolutions of National Councils and State Associations need to be translated into the benevolent activities of all the churches. Otherwise they are dead letters.

2. Only a small proportion of those who contribute through the churches do so intelligently. Some give from impulse. When the impulse dies, the contribution dies with it. Some give only when roused by a special appeal. If no appeal is made they give nothing. Some give merely because the contribution box is passed—they are ashamed not to go through the motions of putting something in, and they would be even more ashamed to have the congregation know just what they put in. Look at the contents of the average contribution box as it returns from its excursion among the pews. Notice the exceedingly large number of pennies and nickels and quarters (given probably by as many individuals) in comparison with the gifts of larger denomination! It is often the case, even in large congregations, that one, two, three or four contributors—and they not always the most able to give—contribute more than all the rest put together. It is not forgotten that many of the small gifts are the widows’ mites—the offerings of the poor, that, in the arithmetic of heaven, count more than they all. Nevertheless, it remains true a very large proportion of those who put money into the contribution box as it is passed do not know anything about what they are giving for, care still less, and who, if not in church when the contribution is taken, give nothing. Woe to the cause whose annual contribution comes on a rainy Sunday.

3. The total contributions from the churches and individuals represent a sadly low average for the total church membership. The receipts last year from churches and individuals, exclusive of legacies, were $189,483.39. Divided among the church membership of the country it represents an average contribution of only 44 cents per member; and if the contributions of those who give annually all the way from $1.00 up to $1,000 were subtracted, the average would fall from 50 to 75 per cent. below this. Surely the spirit of Christian benevolence abroad in the churches is not what it ought to be. Did Christians give as they pray, their benevolence would reach a higher mark. They are apt to be more honest in the expression of their views of duty at the throne of grace than they are through the expression of their conduct.

The pride of consistency, as we remember the confessed doctrines of the churches, should make us all intensely dissatisfied with this record of unfaithfulness on the part of so many church members.

4. The increase in contributions does not keep pace with the growth of the churches in membership and wealth. The total wealth of the United States, as officially reported for the year 1870, was $30,068,518,507. In 1880 it was $43,642,000,000. Since 1880 the gain has[381] been in all probability even in larger ratio; and in this gain the Congregational churches have had undoubtedly their full share. Ten years ago the membership of the churches was 365,595. Last year it was 436,379. Ten years ago the church contributions and individual donations to our treasury, exclusive of legacies, were $186,166.62. Last year, from the same sources, they were $189,483.39. That is to say: During the past ten years the churches have increased in wealth 31 per cent., and over; in membership, 19 per cent., and over; but in their contributions they have increased only a little less than 2 per cent. Had the gain kept pace with the increase in church membership, our receipts last year would have been $32,055.67 more than they were. Had they kept pace with the presumable increase of wealth they would have been $54,394.69 more than they were. “Freely ye have received, freely give,” was the emphatic command of our Lord to his disciples as he sent them out on errands of mercy among the sick and suffering and sorrowing poor. “Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him,” was the explicit injunction of Paul to the churches concerning their collections for the poor. And here are our churches organized on purpose to carry out the teachings of Christ and his apostles; increasing in numbers and increasing in wealth year by year; yet relatively to that increase falling behind in their contributions to a society whose chief and crowning distinction is that it labors among the poor and the despised and the neglected. Will a man rob God? was a question asked in ancient times. Modern times have not outgrown the pertinency of its asking.

5. The Association should be relieved from a perpetual struggle to get out of debt. From a business standpoint the struggle is not healthy. From a religious standpoint it is not right. Thank God we come to this annual meeting free from debt. It is four years since we enjoyed that privilege before. We would like, if it please the churches, to indulge in the luxury of singing the doxology at shorter intervals. Well, then, don’t get into debt. Easily said. Had we a fixed and certain income; had we the authority to levy upon the churches a specified tax and the power to collect it; had we the ability to foresee just how much was coming from legacies, we could then show a clean balance every year. But in all these respects we are in a field of limitless uncertainties. The gifts to our treasury are purely voluntary. No certain dependence can be placed on legacies. One year it may be deluge; the next it may be drought. What are we to do? What can we do? We can only calculate probabilities and trust our friends. What? Can you not trust God? Yes—blessed trust—we can trust Him. But trust must be intelligent. God’s ordination is that missionary work shall be carried on by his children, and that they shall pay the bills. We have no right to expect that He will work miracles in one direction to defeat[382] what He has ordained in another. Presumption is not piety. Fanaticism is not faith. We have a vast work committed to our care. We have a great number of missionaries to support. We have large money investments in church and school property to guard. We must plan to conserve all these interests. A sentimental trust in God will not pay taxes and missionaries’ salaries, nor save religion from being dishonored by broken pledges. The churches, whose servant the Association is, should save its officers from the worry and anxiety of constant fear lest through lack of funds the work shall be endangered and the interests of Christ’s kingdom made to suffer.

The above are some of the reasons for raising the question, What should be done to increase the number of those who intelligently contribute to the support of the American Missionary Association?

Now for the answer.

1. Our theological seminaries should provide for a course of lectures in which the history and claims of the American Missionary Association, together with those of the other six missionary societies, should be presented and discussed. Systematic theology, church polity, homiletics and ecclesiastical history would lose nothing, but on the contrary they would gain much in interest and power by the inspiration of such lectures. To train the churches in support of these societies is a part of ministerial life, and they need to be trained. The initial letters by which these societies are recognized by the few who are acquainted with them would be as mysterious and puzzling to the great majority of our congregations as the hieroglyphics of an Egyptian tomb!

Now this is all wrong. These societies are the organized assertions of great truths. They are the expressions of great principles. They represent the heart of the gospel reaching out through the churches for the world’s salvation! The people should be instructed in reference to their duty toward them, and not left in ignorance as to their names and meaning. If our theological seminaries have been established to train men for the work of the gospel ministry, they should train them for its work all round and not merely for its work on a few sides. James was an Apostle as well as Paul. You would scarcely dream it from the teaching of some theologies. The preaching that trains the people to clear intellectual conceptions of truth is good; but the preaching that in addition to this trains them to go out and put their belief into practice is better, and that because it is more Christian. The roundness and fullness of truth demand it. Theory—practice. Sympathy—benevolence. Let them not be divorced either in the teaching of our seminaries or in the preaching of our pulpits.

2. There should be an annual presentation of the Association’s claims in every church. This may seem like a wild proposition in view of the large number of non-contributing churches. But duty should be[383] affirmed even if no one performs it. For some reason or other a large number of our ministers do not bring the claims of the American Missionary Association before their congregations. It cannot be that they are ignorant of the Society and its work. They have the Year Book. They must know of the resolutions of the National Council and the State Associations. They are presumably readers of the denominational papers, and I know they all have their pure minds stirred up periodically by way of remembrance by circulars and other agencies. Are their churches small and poor? There is no church so small and so poor, if it have any right to be in existence, but that it can do a little and in doing that little receive in return for itself and minister, both spiritual and temporal blessing. If there is a church so small and so poor that it cannot do this then it had better make haste to glorify God by its death than continue to dishonor him by its life. Are there so many objects asking help that they cannot respond? There are only seven societies in our denominational family claiming their support. Can it be that any minister of the gospel feels that seven contributions for benevolent objects during the twelve months of the year are too many for his church to make?—are more than his church ought to make? And if he allow outside objects to come in, however worthy they may be, and thereby crowd out any of the National Societies, is that quite just to those societies? Generosity is indeed a virtue, but exercised at the expense of those who have a prior claim, it can hardly be called a Christian virtue. An Apostle has written it: “If any provide not for his own and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.” The American Missionary Association is an adopted child of the Congregational churches of the United States. It is a lawful member of our denominational household. It is there by virtue of every law which governs in the fellowship of the churches. It is not a beggar asking alms—it is not a stranger crowding for hospitality—it is a child having all the rights and privileges of a child in its own home, and if beggars and strangers are allowed to enter and rob it of that which is its legitimate portion it has a right to be heard in earnest protest against the wrong it suffers. As the accredited agent of the churches for the prosecution of missionary work in the field it occupies it has rightful claim to their unanimous support.

3. A committee should be appointed in each local conference to see to it that during the year every church in the conference has the cause presented and a contribution taken. A committee thus appointed can write to each church, reminding it of its duty to make an annual offering to the American Missionary Association as one of our national societies. Where there are pastors who do not care to present the cause themselves every year, and where there are churches that have no pastors,[384] certain brethren can be requested to prepare a presentation, and by a system of exchanges secure its delivery in all the churches, so that not one of them shall be allowed to go a single year uninstructed in regard to this duty. All that is needed is for some one man to take hold of this matter with earnestness and place it clearly before the local conference, and it will be done. Has this language the sound of authority about it—a flavor of presbyterial or prelatic law? It is only a sound and a flavor; nothing more. There is nothing legislative about it. It is simply the churches themselves through their own chosen representatives in conference devising the most effective method for carrying out a work in which, by the very genius of their church polity, they are all equally interested. The only law that there is about it is the foundation principle on which they were organized and recognized as churches, and on which they have established their local conference.

4. There should be an assigned place in every missionary concert for a paper or a report on some branch of the Association’s work, prepared by some one previously designated to do it. It is to be deplored that some churches take little interest in the missionary concert. It is a mistake, in its effects injurious to the church as well as to the cause of missions. The missionary concert by a little care and painstaking can be made one of the most interesting and profitable meetings that the church holds. Its influence as an educational power transcends measurement. The geography, government, history, social life and customs of the country where missions are located, are more or less brought out in the consideration of what the missionaries are doing. If our eyes are only sharp enough to read it the story of missions is rich in everything that interests the human mind. Romance, tragedy, heroism, sacrifice, pathos, wit and humor, are all intermingled in that wonderful story. If our ears are only sensitive enough to hear them there come appeals from missionary experiences that stir to their profoundest depths everything that is noble and good within us. The American Missionary Association is peculiarly affluent in topic and incident for use in the missionary concert. A summary of the contents of the current number of the Missionary will always be in order as a report; while for papers and addresses and discussions, there is no assignable limit to the topics furnished by the history and development of the Association and its work. Its lines reach out in their relations to all the ends of the earth. In its anti-slavery agitations it joined hands with the great emancipation advocates of Europe. By its labors in behalf of the Chinese on the Pacific slope it has become a factor in the great movement of Christian missions for the evangelization of Asia. Through its special championship and heroic efforts in behalf of the negro its records have already become a part of that which shall be written when the history of redeemed Africa is completed; and in what it has done for the North[385] American Indian and is doing; in what it has done for human rights and liberty, and in defense of a pure Christianity, and is doing, it has become an integral part of those mighty forces that will one day redeem America from the dominance of false principles and bring in the reign of justice, equity and truth throughout the length and breadth of the land. Within the vast circle surrounding all these racial questions that this Association touches in its work of the past and in its outlook for the future there lie subjects and topics for thought and discussion absolutely inexhaustible! There is no need of any missionary concert’s being dull or uninteresting, and certainly there is no need of its being unprofitable while such a missionary society as this is in the field. It should have a place and a hearing in every missionary concert.

5. The circulation of the American Missionary should be greatly increased and the people urged to read it. Among the 436,379 members of the Congregational churches in the country there are sent every month 19,463 magazines; that is on an average one magazine to twenty-two readers. If this one magazine were passed round so that all had a chance to read it there are enough of them to answer the purpose. One subscriber wrote us that she made her American Missionary to be so much of an Episcopalian, that it “kept lent” all the year round. But the evidence is not very overwhelming that this is done to any great extent. The evidence is, however, quite convincing that the magazines are not all read by their subscribers, and that the waste basket is not altogether unacquainted with their presence. After Dr. Ellinwood, Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, had once made an earnest appeal for money in the Presbytery, the Moderator, a distinguished Doctor of Divinity, asked him if he would not confer a favor on the brethren by printing the facts that he had just stated in the Missionary magazine next month, adding that he had been trying for a long time to obtain those figures. “Why,” responded Dr. Ellinwood “That magazine, for the last two months, has contained just what I have been telling you to-day.” Missionary literature is despised. If this despite were shown on the merits of the case there would be nothing to say, but that is not so. It is despised without examination and in perfect ignorance of its contents. Like the Saviour, of the progress of whose kingdom it tells the story, it is despised and rejected of men. Not on its merits. There are those who read it, and who read it regularly, ready to testify to the exceeding value and interest of its matter. One of the great literary monthlies recently contained an article in which were assertions bearing upon a question of literature which two months before were utterly destroyed by statements of facts that appeared in the American Missionary. When historians undertake to write the history of countries into which missionaries have gone, they are sure to consult the missionary literature; and they do not often find[386] it necessary to question either the accuracy or the value of the information they there obtain. This prejudice against missionary literature, which in the main is both unfounded and unjust, ought to be abandoned. Its worth and value ought to be recognized. Its wide dissemination and reading ought to be advocated; and that, too, on its merits. If there are reasons why the American Missionary should be read by one of our church members, the same reasons hold good why it should be read by all of them; if there are reasons why it should go into one of our families, for the same reasons it should go into them all. There is a wide field here for cultivation. Only one magazine for every twenty-two readers; only one magazine for every four families among our constituents, and all of these not read by those who take them! No wonder there is ignorance among the churches about our work, and there being ignorance no wonder that there is a lack of interest and meagreness of contributions! But I hear some one say: “Our church members will not take the American Missionary. They would not read it were you to give it to them.” Well then, they are not interested in our work, that is all. They don’t care whether the gospel is preached to the poor or not; they don’t care whether illiteracy is allowed to run rampant all over the country and destroy our free institutions or not; they don’t care whether justice shall be done to those who have been most cruelly defrauded or not; they don’t care whether the honor of the nation by meeting the involved obligations of slavery’s abolition shall be preserved or not; they don’t care whether the issues of the war for the maintenance of the Union, secured by sufferings and sacrifices transcending the power of the human mind to portray, shall be made secure or not. They don’t care? Then somebody is to blame. They do care? Then why are they not willing—even eager to read about the work that has all these sacred objects in view, and is helping to solve the stupendous problems they contain? They do care. Yes, I believe it. Their lack of interest in the American Missionary Association and their unwillingness to read its monthly magazine is because of their ignorance of its work, and therefore it is that there is here a wide field, hopeful and promising, for cultivation by all those who wish to aid in the advancement of the cause.

The reasons assigned for raising the question to which the above answers have been given are most grave and weighty. They are significant indications of peril that threatens the cause committed to our care. Shall we heed the lessons which the signals flash?

Do not forget that this month of December is an excellent time to increase the number of those who subscribe for The American Missionary. A word fitly spoken by our friends will secure the desired result.

[387]

BUREAU OF WOMAN’S WORK.

MISS D. E. EMERSON, SECRETARY.

WOMAN’S STATE ORGANIZATIONS.

Co-operating with the American Missionary Association.

REPORT OF SECRETARY.

In inviting the women of the North, and particularly those of the Congregational churches to help establish and sustain its missions, the American Missionary Association has felt that woman’s work in the churches at home is as important as woman’s work in the mission field, in order to secure the greatest efficiency, the best results of the labor expended.

Nor have we been disappointed. As the hearts of those at home have opened pityingly toward the needs of women suffering from the effects of oppression, abuse and paganism, right here in our own country, and the hearts of our missionaries have been burdened with the same woes, the helping hand has been mutually extended; and it has been the mission of the Bureau of Woman’s Work to join these hands in strong and loving ministry.

Our woman’s work in the field can be only briefly referred to here. It is embodied in the full report which the Association gives of all its missions. Of the sixteen Normal and graded schools reported by the Association, seven are in the charge of lady teachers alone. One of these is a boarding school especially for girls, and is similar in plan to the Mt. Holyoke and Auburndale schools. But in all our boarding schools like methods are introduced, indeed the best that can be culled from Northern experience is put into practice.

Some slight changes in our plan of work should be noted, as indicating the new demands upon us in woman’s work. We no longer select our special missionaries mainly for house-to-house visiting and Bible reading, but combine this with more effective organized work. To concentrate effort upon the training of the young for usefulness, is conceded by all our workers as most essential. This is well accomplished in our boarding[388] schools, but where we have only day schools or churches we have felt the need of reaching the home life more effectually than could be done by a missionary visitor. We therefore bring the young people to our special missionary for practical instruction, connecting this with the Christian training.

Sewing-schools are established in which girls are taught not merely how to sew well, but how to cut and make garments for themselves and fathers and brothers. Kitchen-garden has been quite generally introduced for teaching all kinds of laundry, kitchen and dining-room work, care of bed-rooms and bedding, polite attention to guests, with all amenities of home life. Thus a transformation has been made in many homes through the new life opened up to the children.

White Shield and White Cross Societies are sustained in the interests of purity. Missionary societies are formed and the young people are taught how to manage them. Through these societies the sympathy and interest of colored and Indian women have been so moved as to lead to self-denial that would put us to shame, so eager are they to give to others the light they have received. Temperance work has a prominent place in all our missions. As illustrative of the influence exerted in this direction we note one instance. The principal of our colored school in Jonesboro, Tenn., organized her temperance society ten years ago, and for years it was the only one in the place. Thus the colored people were organized and ready for action long before the white ladies. Our Northern missionary bought materials for colors, sat up nights and lettered the banners, and at the late election in Tennessee took her school to the polls, nearly every child carrying a suggestive motto, such as “Protect Our Homes,” “Lead us not into Temptation.” Through her persistence and energy the white ladies of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union joined in the movement. It is true, the amendment was lost in the State, but in Jonesboro every colored man except two voted for prohibition. Noble efforts may sometimes fail—noble lives, never.

But even could our woman’s work in the field be written in minute detail it would give but an imperfect review of what is undertaken. You hear of overflowing schools, of many forms of Christian work, of the numbers added to our churches from ranks in day and Sunday-schools, but the wrestling prayers of earnest women, the watchful admonitions, the unremitting toil which has entered into what we call success, who shall record? Over two hundred such missionaries the American Missionary Association has upon its rolls, and it is for these, and that we may add to the number, that we ask your united support.

We have much to encourage us in the results of the past year. There has been an earnest reaching out by ladies’ societies, Sunday-schools and mission bands, for some special work which would tell for good in direct influence toward the enlightenment of those in darkness and need, and[389] contributions have been so applied as to be at once helpful to our treasury and yet assigned to some specific object interesting to contributors. Christian Endeavor Societies have begun to come forward with their help. These societies, which include lads and misses, find a most useful and attractive work in our Indian Missions. It has been quite a problem how to win and hold the interest of boys in missions, but we have found the magic word—Indian—and that if our boys’ thoughts are given proper direction in the study of Indian history and missions, they will not fail to be on the right side in their convictions and eager to help educate an Indian youth, the longer and more unpronounceable his name the more eager.

Sewing societies have been encouraged to contribute their service in a way that is valuable to us. Our item of house furnishing alone is a large one, for in connection with our eighty-nine schools are about thirty mission homes and boarding halls to be kept supplied with bedding, table linen, etc., for families of from fifteen to two hundred and fifty. These needs are indicated in a sewing leaflet which is sent to those who will assist us to set an example of good housekeeping where we plant our missions.

The most important help, however, being money contributions from all these societies, we have sought by our system of missionary letters to encourage the ladies and young people to annual contributions. The amounts thus received have varied from $10 to $100, according to the ability of the church, but every society thus contributing to the A. M. A. may work for some definite object and receive the field letters.

To the Woman’s State organizations we offer specific work on a larger scale. Of such we name the following as co-operating directly with us: Maine and Vermont each by a “Woman’s Aid to the A. M. A.” Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, each by a Woman’s Home Missionary Union, and Minnesota and Kansas by their Woman’s Home Missionary Societies.

The State organizations have some of them undertaken the support of a single school, and others of missionaries selected from different departments of our work. In every State the appeal of the A. M. A. is made through its Woman’s Bureau to the ladies of all the churches and to all the ladies of the churches, and the contributions are in part through the State organizations and in part direct, all working to the same end.

Other States also, not yet organized, are assisting us in definite lines, as Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Any society of old or young people, whether Missionary, Ladies’ Aid, Benevolent Society, Sewing Circle or Christian Endeavor—whatever involves combined interests and united work—we cordially welcome to share with us in the grand opportunities of our field.

In this way the ladies of the Congregational churches are helping in the support of seventeen of the established missions of the American[390] Missionary Association—among the colored people, poor whites, Indians and Chinese, according to their choice.

Public meetings in behalf of missions have been provided with lady speakers, and in many instances the monthly missionary concerts of the churches having the American Missionary Association for a subject, have been furnished with fresh letters from different parts of the field, thus giving vividness to the facts gathered from the A. M. A. literature.

We all know that it is not by doing any great thing that the home is made beautiful and strong, but by the many acts of thoughtfulness, the light and skillful touches which singly appear so small, but together and often repeated become essential. So in our connection with these great mission boards, let us make our work valuable by our constancy and skill in doing what we can, giving an aureola to the cause of missions by the well directed rays of womanly, consecrated service.

A WORD FROM BULGARIA.

“For a long time I have not had an opportunity to read The American Missionary, and chancing to see it lying on the table at the house of one of my associates, it instantly awakened a host of memories of the past when I was a teacher of the Freedmen during the war of the Rebellion. My interest in the work of the Association has always been great, and I should have given my life to its service had I not felt that God called me elsewhere. My prayer is that God may bless the labors of the faithful missionaries in my own dear native land more and more abundantly.”

RECEIPTS FOR OCTOBER, 1887.