General Survey.
The field of missions is the world which lieth in darkness. We have to
do with that part of it for which we are doubly responsible. It is in
darkness and it is our own.
We look upon our own land, with its States equal in extent and
capacity to foreign kingdoms. When we know that they hold the
certainty of a future influence of which their past power has been but
a prophecy, our fears press hard upon our hopes.
Nor are our work and our fears an intrusion. When the pestilence which
walks in darkness brings the destruction which wastes at noonday, it
is our call to feel deeply the distresses of those who are stricken.
But plagues consuming human lives are less grevious than those which
abide, and which, walking in the intellectual and moral darkness of a
people, waste the lives of men and the hopes of souls. This is our
call.
Remember that it is our own country where, in twelve great States,
like empires, forty per cent. of the population cannot read, where,
to-day, three-fourths of the illiteracy of the whole nation exists;
where the darkness is increasing more rapidly than it is being lighted
up; where much which passes for religion even among those who preach
it, is a travesty upon Christianity, openly divorced from relationship
with truth, purity, integrity and intelligence.
Our survey takes in questions that are painful; disturbing questions
that are not in the North, nor in the West. They are difficult to
meet. They are near, and the troubles which the questions hold are
near. They come close to the heart of Christianity. They are close to
the life of the churches. They are close to the first principles of
human rights. They are questions that can have only one final
solution, which may be so remote that fearful dangers will culminate
in terrible disasters before the only remedy can do its work. There
are now nearly eight millions of a Negro population, from four
millions twenty years ago. There are more than two millions of
mountain people in the South, one-half of whom cannot read. These
benighted people live where there has never been a public-school
system even for the more highly favored race, and where this more
highly favored race deliberately assigns those who are not of its
color to a permanent inferiority. The laws of caste are to be
inflexibly enforced against all people of color who would rise from
their low-down conditions. This is our Southern mission field, which
God has committed to us, according to our faith and opportunity.
Those of our own race in the South could not do this work, which is
upon our consciences and hearts, if they would. They do not see what
we see. They would not if they could. They do not feel what we feel.
We are sent, not as philanthropists who hear the cry of the poor and
needy, nor as patriots who realize the perils that overhang the State,
but as missionaries of Jesus Christ who believe that salvation takes
in the whole man, including philanthropy and statesmanship, and
whatever builds up man for time and for eternity.
We have, however, no other charter for our work than that of missions.
We have no other errand than that of the messengers of Christ. Only as
we go in his name and with his spirit do we ask the churches to listen
and hear with us, and with us to look and see.