that our readers have seen this caption at the head of my articles more
than once already. Be that as it may, I am sure that such persons as
read this Magazine cannot be weary of it. It is the motto of our
corporation adopted twelve or thirteen years ago. It then looked rather
magniloquent for a work so humble as ours; but there was promise in it,
and prophecy, and nothing less would satisfy either our Chinese brethren
or myself. This promise and prophecy begin to be fulfilled. We hoped
then, and now we are gladdened by oft-recurring confirmations of our
hope, that we were laboring not only for these sojourners in our own
land, but for a mighty multitude to be reached by their testimony, and
to be leavened by the influence of their example.
This will be illustrated for our readers by the following extract from
an address delivered by one of our brethren at the last anniversary of
our mission at Santa Cruz. His English will require a little
straightening, but for the most part, I will give it just as spoken:
_Dear Friends_: I am glad to see you all here this evening; and that you
have an interest in the Chinese work. I will tell you a few words about
myself, what experience I had in my native land. I left California to go
to China, July 15, 1887, and after thirty-one days, reached my home. I
found a piece of red paper on the wall above my cooking place, with the
name of the stove-god written on it. We call it "Doy Shin;" "Doy" means
"Stove," "Shin" means "god." Every family worships the stove-god at the
cooking place. The first of every month they burn some punk, and twice
every month make a fresh cup of tea, which is left standing on the
stove. I found that several thousands of punk had been burned during my
absence, and the ends of the sticks were left in the bowls. I felt very
sorry for it; so I tore up the paper and break the punk-sticks in pieces
and burn them up. My wife felt very indignant, and was afraid the
stove-god might be angry and make me sick, and punish me. I say:
"Nothing to be afraid of. But I am only afraid that the true God in
heaven will punish me if I do not tear up the paper and burn up the
punk-sticks." I say: "I must entirely abandon this superstition and must
give this testimony for Christ. For he is the only God that can preserve
my life, and the only one that can take it away."
In the mean time, a Chinese preacher who was supported by the Methodist
Mission was very sick. His children were very small and his wife cannot
walk. There was nobody to go after a doctor for him. So he sent for me
to call doctor and get medicine. He and myself were the only Christians
inside the walls of the city. Outside in the villages were a few
Christians, but fifteen or twenty miles away. My wife advised me not to
go to his house lest I get sick also, for my health was not very good. I
say to her, that only he and I are Christians in this place. I _have_ to
go to his house. I rather die than not go. In about twenty days he die.
We sent for the Christian friends, from different parts--some thirty to
fifty miles away--some nearer. So we bury him the Christian way. The men
carry the coffin. They charge four dollars to bury him, because he is
Christian. The others they charge only two dollars. We also hire music
for the funeral--different from the heathen funeral. Several hundred
people were standing on the way, watching us pass by. Some say: "How
funny the burying of the Yason dog,"--_i.e._, the Jesus boy.
After the funeral I was very sick, and my whole body trembling with
cold. Many blankets put upon me, but cannot make me warm. My wife begin
to cry. My cousins and all said it was because I went to the dead man's
house and catch the sickness. Some of them said it was because I tore up
the paper and burned the punk-sticks of the stove-god. But my wife,
sitting on the bed-side crying, suggested the medicine which I brought
from California; the name--sulphate of quinine. So she ask me to take
that; but I say: I never have been this way before, and never use that
medicine for this kind of sickness. But she ask me to try; so I take a
very little with a little water. Not more than three minutes my whole
body stop shaking, and I felt a great relief. I thank God for his help,
and soon I got all well.
Another Chinese preacher came from Canton to my district to take the
dead preacher's place; also, to live in his house. Next day, he and his
wife and boy all taken very sick. They grow worse and worse, every day
appointed to death. I felt very much dismayed because many people say,
"The Death Spirit make them very sick because they will not worship
him." But I pray to God to make him well. I say:--"Oh Lord, if you let
this family die also, all the people in this place will not like to hear
thy Gospel, and I also may be tempted by the superstition. I ask thee,
oh God, let thy mercy be upon them and not let this family going to die;
so let all this people of darkness see thy power, and thy glorious light
appear to their sight." I believe that God answered this prayer, for
they grew better and better every day, though they were so sick they
expected to die.
I will tell you of another trial which I encountered. I live inside the
wall, and all the people inside are divided into six societies. I belong
to No. 4. Once in three years we have what we call _festival_. So a man
who had charge asked me to sign my name to give twenty-five cents to buy
some pork and other things for offerings to the idols. The temples have
some property, but they use the temple money for other expenses. I
refuse to subscribe. So he advised me and said: "While you are in the
foreign country, imitate foreign customs, but now you are in China, you
have to obey Chinese customs." They try to compel me to give. I stand up
and say: "If these six societies could not have this festival to the
idols because I refuse, do the people depend on me? If so, then all the
people are without hope, and may despair of the blessing of the idols.
Is that what you believe? Because you worship the idols you give
offerings to them, and expect blessing from them. I do not worship the
idol, and he would not give me the blessing. I do not wish for the
idol's blessing. It is not because I am stingy that I will not give to
the offering of the idol, but because it is against the true God in
heaven, whom I trust, and whose blessing I do greatly desire." So they
could not compel me to give, and they let me alone, but they felt very
much indignation and were hostile to me. A Christian in China has
sometimes a very hard time. "But what things were gain to me, those I
counted loss for Christ." Yet more and more are believing the Gospel of
Christ every year in China.
A year has passed since, this brother returned to America; but is there
any hazard in affirming that those towns-people of his in China have
thought more or less, even to this day, of the stand he took and the God
in Christ to whom he testified?
* * * * *
BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK.
MISS D.E. EMERSON, SECRETARY.
MASS MEETING OF THE WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNIONS.
The first meeting of the Woman's Home Missionary Unions in connection
with the American Missionary Association was a genuine success. The
programme was put in the hands of Mrs. E.S. Williams of Minnesota by
vote of the ladies at Saratoga in June last, and the interested group
who filled the large and pleasant Sunday-school rooms of the New England
Church in Chicago, October 29th, rejoiced in their new and forward
movement for home and native land. Mrs. Lane of Michigan gave Mrs.
Williams genial help in presiding. Mrs. Palmer of Massachusetts led in
prayer. Mrs. Burke Leavitt, President of the Illinois Union, gave to the
ladies a felicitous welcome to the city and to the sympathy of the
workers of the great state of Illinois. Mrs. E.W. Blatchford greeted the
women in behalf of the New England Church and of their co-workers in the
W.B.M.I. If only all good women saw and felt, as this wise sister did,
that all Christ's work is one, and that all work for him outside of our
own home and church is mission service, their appeals to their sisters
would have more irresistible force, and the Saviour's prayer be nearer
answered, "That they all may be one." Miss Emerson, of the American
Missionary Association, spoke with her usual straightforward
effectiveness of the joy of the Association in their share of the work
of the Unions.
These greetings were followed by the roll-call of State Unions, with
brief responses. Mrs. Williams represented Minnesota; Mrs. Palmer,
Massachusetts and Rhode Island. She also read a letter from Miss
Nathalie Lord of Boston. Mrs. Grabill responded for Michigan, Mrs.
Cowles for Ohio, Mrs. Morgan for New York, Mrs. Miner for Wisconsin,
Mrs. Bronson for Missouri, Mrs. Taintor for Illinois, Mrs. Douglass for
Iowa, Mrs. Leavitt for Nebraska, and Miss Emerson for Mississippi,
Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina. A telegram was received from
Mrs. Gale of the Florida Union, letters from Mrs. Swift of Vermont and
Mrs. Andrews of Alabama, and a warm message from Louisiana came just too
late for public hearing. Greetings also came from Northern and Southern
California, Oregon and Colorado.
After prayer by Mrs. Douglass, of Iowa, Miss Hand gave a brief, but very
effective address on "What the New West needs from our Women--prayer,
consecrated effort, contributions."
In the afternoon, Mrs. Lane gave a complete summary of "Foreign Missions
at Home. What have we done? What have we left undone? What ought we to
do now?" No brief mention can give any adequate idea of the amount of
information which was crowded into this address, or the earnestness of
its presentation.
Mrs. Regal, of Oberlin, presented the report of the Bohemian Bible
Readers' Home, in Cleveland.
Mrs. E.M. Williams answered effectively the question, "How can we induce
women of wealth to give to Home Missions?" She thought lack of
information was the cause of most of the indifference from which the
work suffers, and recommended individual effort as likeliest to be
successful.
Mrs. Bailey, of Ogden, Utah, gave a stirring address on the "Need of
Pure Homes and True Churches in the West."
Elizabeth Winyan, a Christian Indian woman of the Dakotas, next
addressed the meeting in her native language, Rev. Mr. Riggs acting as
her interpreter. Elizabeth's manner is very calm and dignified, and her
gestures are graceful and forcible. Her language is eloquent even though
trammeled by the necessity of having an interpreter. When she "shakes
hands with us in her heart," we know she means it, and when she has
"said enough," we know she is done.
A Free Parliament for the discussion of practical questions was
conducted by Mrs. Regal, of Ohio. The subjects of Missionary Literature,
Life-Membership, Dangers threatening the Unions, Holding meetings in
connection with or separate from local and State Conferences, and
National Organization, were discussed, a large number of ladies
participating freely.
Mrs. Goodell, of St. Louis, conducted a "Sweet Hour of Prayer," which
closed the day's sessions, and the earnest group dissolved only to swell
the throngs at the best meeting the American Missionary Association ever
held.
* * * * *
WORDS FROM OUR ANNUAL MEETING,
OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO WOMEN.
Twenty-six Woman's State Organizations now co-operate with us in our
missionary work. Each year shows the increasing importance and
helpfulness of the Woman's Bureau. From it go counsel, help and
inspiration to the lady teachers in the field, and missionary news and
helpful suggestions to the ladies of the State Associations. Through it
pass the sympathy and the help of the earnest workers in the older
churches to the earnest workers in our mission churches and schools. The
people for whom we labor can not be saved either for this world or the
next unless the women who make the homes are lifted out of coarseness
and vice, and taught true womanhood and womanly duties and arts. The
Woman's Bureau is a most potent factor in the work of bringing the
gospel to the rescue of womanhood in our mission fields.--_Annual Report
of Executive Committee._
* * * * *
Our laborers are faced by all the serious problems of the foreign
land--problems unrelieved by a single romantic charm. When we send our
missionaries to Africa they go to labor among the Africans; and when we
send them down South they go to teach "niggers." I believe that the
American Missionary Association, in its calm and unimpassioned history,
is one grand and splendid eulogy of woman. Our sisters went South while
the sky was yet heavy with the clouds of war; they went to the rude
dwellings where those people sat in stupor and in darkness after the
first thrill of the new found liberty; they went from homes of
refinement and culture and wealth and religion; they bore to this
darkness light, to this dullness life; they carried down there in their
white hands the great tree of Calvary, the cross of Christ, and planted
it in the land of the magnolia and the palm. I say that the history of
this Association is a grand and glowing eulogy of woman because these
were willing to be called "teachers of niggers" for their love of
humanity.--_Rev. C.W. Hiatt._
* * * * *
It is one of the most astonishing signs of the times that really into
the feeble hand of womanhood is given the key of the situation. They
respect these educated girls, they reverence them and give them a place
of dignity in their hearts. That makes it possible for these women to do
a large and splendid work in the South.
Once let these girls that come under the influence of our Christian
Northern women who go there as teachers, and the graduates of these
various colleges and schools that we have planted, and are about to
plant in the South; once let common womanhood in the South that has been
so much under the heel of this oppression; once let girlhood feel the
power that has come to girlhood, that to them as young women in the
cradle of these hills, under this fair sky, is given the power to turn
over in not less than thirty or forty years this whole country for God
and humanity, for enlightenment and for Christian peace; once let that
idea get into the minds of those girls, and we have not the same problem
that we have to-day.--_Rev. D.M. Fisk._
* * * * *
There were deeds of valor by mountain heroines that shine as brightly as
those of a Molly Stark or Barbara Frietchie. Mrs. Edwards, of Campbell
County, marched 150 miles in inclement weather, over the mountains, to
carry information to Union troops. Immediately upon arriving at home,
having received some valuable information, she pushed her way through
the rain, on horseback, alone, and saved the Union General Spears from
capture. Again and again this same woman took perilous journeys to carry
information to Union officers. Nor was she the only heroine among the
mountain women. During the siege of Knoxville, General Grant desired to
send an important message to General Burnside. "So overrun was the
territory between Chattanooga and Knoxville by Confederate troops that
it could only be delivered, if at all, with great difficulty and hazard.
At length Miss Mary Love, of Kingston, Tenn., agreed to take the message
through the Confederate lines." She got as far as Louisville, Tenn., but
could get no farther. There she found but one person who was willing to
run the risk of taking the message through the lines, and he was a boy
only thirteen years of age, John T. Brown. He carried the dispatch
safely through the lines and delivered it to General Burnside.
Let us build school-houses and churches, where their better cabins have
risen from the ashes of the past. Let us invade their coves and press up
their mountain sides with an army of Christian teachers and preachers,
until the gray old forests that echoed with the shout of these loyal
Highlanders shall again echo with the sound of church bell and school
bell, and they who took from us the larger sacrifice of war, shall find
that we are ready to share with them the blessed fruits of
peace.--_Secretary C.J. Ryder._
* * * * *
There is, furthermore, a peaceful Christian invasion of this land. We
scarcely realize how much these gospel songs mean to those Southern
people, and how they listen with eagerness at once to the sweetness of
the tune and to the gospel that is within it. It is an entering wedge to
a new life there. A dear girl of my acquaintance taught from thirty to
fifty of these women; they listened eagerly, and the tears rolled down
their cheeks, and they said to her, "Oh, come and tell us more about
Jesus, for we want to be different kind of women, different kind of
mothers."
There was one girl who came out to one of our commencements and went
back with the arrow in her heart, saying, "I would give all the world if
I had it, if I could write a piece, and git up thar and read it like
them." She went home determined she would go to college. She was a large
girl, fifteen years old, yet did not know a single letter. She walked
fifty miles nearly, and came and said to the college president, that she
wanted to work for her board, so that she could enter the school. What
could she do? He found that really she was incapacitated for doing
anything; but she said; "I can hoe corn like a nigger." Finally she was
set at some sort of work, and that girl, after three or four years, went
out as a school teacher into a district where young men dared not go,
where her eyes were blistered with the sights she saw--men shot down
before her face and eyes by the whiskey distillers--and she was asked to
organize a Sunday-school there. When any one starts a Sunday-school he
is expected to preach, and so that girl had to become a preacher, and
to-day she is preaching the gospel of God and spreading the work there.
And yet she came from one of the very humblest classes.--_Rev. D.M.
Fisk._
* * * * *
There is another influence of which I would speak, the influence of the
home. Here in our happy homes we know but very little of what that means
to the Indian. An Indian has no home, in our sense of the word. There is
at Santee Agency a piece of limestone, perhaps three feet wide by five
feet long, which was the hearthstone of our Dakota mission home. It was
taken a few years ago by my brother, from Minnesota, where it had served
the purpose of a hearthstone in one of the original buildings of the
mission. He took it to Santee Agency, and every time I go to Santee, I
go out and look at that stone. There is the hole in the stone into which
we poured milk to feed the cat, and on another corner is the place where
we used to crack nuts. That stands for our boyhood home. The Indian has
nothing of the kind. The Dakota Indian lives in a region, not in a
place. The Christian home coming into the midst of a village carries
there an ideal of which the Indian knows nothing, and he is taught by
the power of example day after day. The Christian woman in that home
keeps her house clean, keeps her children clean, and stands here as a
persistent example of the power of the gospel of soap.--_Rev. T.L.
Riggs._
* * * * *
Carlyle tells the story of a woman in the North of Scotland in the old
days before charity was organized, who wanted help. She was poor and
sick, and they said to her, "You may look out for yourself." Finally
she was taken sick with typhus fever, and died, and because they didn't
take very good care of her in the place where she was sick, she killed
seventeen others with her poison. Carlyle says: "You said she was not
your sister and she said, 'I am, and I will prove it;' and she did,
though it cost seventeen good lives to prove it." There will be a typhus
fever in this land infinitely worse than any pestilence that kills the
body unless this deadly germ be killed by putting education where there
is ignorance, and putting honor and truth where there is degradation
to-day. "Look out for No. 1?" Aye, it is our business to look out for
ourselves. May God Almighty help us that we fail not to attend to it.
There is just one way to save ourselves. We learned that long ago at the
feet of Him who said: "He that loseth his life shall save it." That is
the only way. It is just as true for a nation as for an
individual.--_President George A. Gates._
* * * * *
WOMAN'S STATE ORGANIZATIONS.
CO-OPERATING WITH THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
MAINE.
WOMAN'S AID TO A.M.A.
Chairman of Committee--Mrs. C.A. Woodbury, Woodfords, Me.
VERMONT.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. A.E. Swift, 167 King St., Burlington.
Secretary--Mrs. E.C. Osgood, 14 First Ave., Montpelier.
Treasurer--Mrs. Wm. P. Fairbanks, St. Johnsbury.
MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND.
[1]WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
President--Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer, Cambridge, Mass.
Secretary--Miss Nathalie Lord, 32 Congregational House, Boston.
Treasurer--Miss Ella A. Leland, 32 Congregational House, Boston.
CONNECTICUT.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. Francis B. Cooley, Hartford.
Secretary--Mrs. S.M. Hotchkiss, 171 Capitol Aye., Hartford.
Treasurer--Mrs. W.W. Jacobs, 19 Spring St., Hartford.
NEW YORK.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. Wm. Kincaid, 483 Greene Ave., Brooklyn.
Secretary--Mrs. Wm. Spalding, 6 Salmon Block, Syracuse.
Treasurer--Mrs. L.H. Cobb, 59 Bible House, New York City.
OHIO.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. J.G.W. Cowles, 417 Sibley St., Cleveland.
Secretary--Mrs. Flora K. Regal, Oberlin.
Treasurer--Mrs. Phebe A. Crafts, 95 Monroe Ave., Columbus.
INDIANA.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. C.B. Safford, Elkhart.
Secretary--Mrs. W.E. Moseman, Fort Wayne.
Treasurer--Mrs. C. Evans, Indianapolis.
ILLINOIS.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. B.F. Leavitt, 409 Orchard St, Chicago.
Secretary--Mrs. C.H. Taintor, 151 Washington St., Chicago.
Treasurer--Mrs. C.E. Maltby, Champaign.
IOWA.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. T.O. Douglass, Grinnell.
Secretary--Miss Ella E. Marsh, Box 232, Grinnell.
Treasurer--Mrs. M.J. Nichoson, 1513 Main St., Dubuque.
MICHIGAN.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. George M. Lane, 47 Miami Ave., Detroit.
Secretary--Mrs. Leroy Warren, Lansing.
Treasurer--Mrs. E.F. Grabill, Greenville.
WISCONSIN.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. H.A. Miner, Madison.
Secretary--Mrs. C. Matter, Brodhead.
Treasurer--Mrs. C.C. Keeler, Beloit.
MINNESOTA.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
President--Mrs. E.S. Williams, Box 464, Minneapolis.
Secretary--Miss Gertrude A. Keith, 1350, Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis
Treasurer--Mrs. M.W. Skinner, Northfield.
NORTH DAKOTA.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
President--Mrs. A.J. Pike, Dwight.
Secretary--Mrs. Silas Daggett, Harwood.
Treasurer--Mrs. J.M. Fisher, Fargo.
SOUTH DAKOTA.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. A.H. Robbins, Bowdle.
Secretary--Mrs. T.M. Jeffris, Huron.
Treasurer--Mrs. S.E. Fifield, Lake Preston.
NEBRASKA.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. T.H. Leavitt, 3316 H. St., Lincoln.
Secretary--Mrs. L.F. Berry, 724 No. Broad St, Fremont.
Treasurer--Mrs. D.E. Perry, Crete.
MISSOURI.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. C.L. Goodell, 3006 Pine St., St. Louis.
Secretary--Mrs. E.P. Bronson, 3100 Chestnut St., St. Louis.
Treasurer--Mrs. A.E. Cook, 4145 Bell Ave., St. Louis.
KANSAS.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
President--Mrs. F.J. Storrs, Topeka.
Secretary--Mrs. George L. Epps, Topeka.
Treasurer--Mrs. J.G. Dougherty, Ottawa.
COLORADO AND WYOMING.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. J.W. Pickett, White Water, Colorado.
Secretary--Miss Mary L. Martin, 106 Platte Ave., Colorado Springs,
Colorado.
Treasurer--Mrs. S.A. Sawyer, Boulder, Colorado.
Treasurer--Mrs. C.T. Goodell, 24th and Eddy Sts., Cheyenne, Wyoming.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. Elijah Cash, 927 Temple St., Los Angeles.
Secretary--Mrs. H.K.W. Bent, Box 426, Pasadena.
Treasurer--Mrs. H.W. Mills, So. Olive St., Los Angeles.
CALIFORNIA.
WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
President--Mrs. H.L. Merritt, 686 34th St., Oakland.
Secretary--Miss Grace E. Barnard, 677 21st. St., Oakland.
Treasurer--Mrs. J.M. Havens, 1329 Harrison St., Oakland.
LOUISIANA.
WOMAN'S MISSIONARY UNION.
President--Mrs. R.D. Hitchcock, New Orleans.
Secretary--Miss Jennie Fyfe, 490 Canal St., New Orleans.
Treasurer--Mrs. C.S. Shattuck, Hammond.
MISSISSIPPI.
WOMAN'S MISSIONARY UNION.