This year has laid great emphasis on the fact that we have entered, in
the Southern mountains, a missionary field of vast importance,
pressing needs and unbounded hopefulness. We have in this region,
where a few years ago there was nothing, two normal schools, two
academies, five common schools, and twenty churches.
In a territory five hundred miles long, and more than two hundred
miles broad--twice the size of all New England--are at least between
three and four hundred counties with a population greater than that of
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut combined,
without schools worthy of the name, without Sunday-schools, without
prayer meetings, without an educated, spiritual, or even moral
ministry, without a weekly Sabbath religious service of any kind, or
any of the institutions of the gospel which really elevate them. They
have a religion which is not a pure Christianity and which does not
even involve morality.
The Christian work, lately introduced and already done among them,
demonstrates that they are capable of a rapid and radical change, when
once the vivifying touch of the gospel has reached their hearts.
Instead of twenty Congregational churches among them, there is room
for a thousand, and instead of nine Christian schools, if there were
twenty-five normal schools, it would be only one to each hundred
thousand people; and if there were a hundred common schools, there
would be one to each three or four counties for models. There should
be one good college. If there were Congregational churches in this
region in the same proportion as in New England there would be a full
thousand. If they were in the same proportion as Connecticut, there
would be twelve hundred churches; as New Hampshire, thirteen hundred;
as Vermont, sixteen hundred.
Congregationalism goes to these people as the representative of pure,
intelligent and progressive Christianity. We can gather them into
schools, Sunday-schools and churches, anywhere where we can put a
Christian worker. Our only limit is consecrated workers and the
support for them. The field is as ripe this very day for a thousand as
for a score. But the school and the church must go together.
This is one of the richest of the mineral regions of the world. Great
forests of black walnut, poplar, and other valuable timber, are
awaiting the woodman's ax and the lumberman's mill. Railroads are
either built, building or planned for every part to carry away its
wonderful natural resources. The people are poor, but the land is
rich, and a few years hence will see wealth in the place of poverty,
in the hands of either the natives, or those who will have displaced
them. All the motives which urge the establishment of the church and
the school for the incoming population of the West, press us to build
them in this great empire of the South; and they become doubly
imperative when we take into account the fact that a population of
between two and three millions is already in the land and needs to be
saved now. The motives for home and foreign missions are thus
combined, and impelling us for Christ's sake, for humanity's sake, and
for our country's sake, to give the gospel to this people.
We are not building pauper institutions in this mountain country to be
forever a dead weight for the Northern churches to carry, but
institutions which will very speedily take care of themselves, and
give to others as they have received.
This is a portion of the South where slavery scarcely existed. When
war came, it was loyal to the Union almost to a man. This fact shows
that they have a natural affiliation with "Northern ideas." The caste
spirit is among them--as it is indeed in the North to some extent--but
it much more readily yields to reason and loving teaching than in
other portions of the South. Vigorous and extensive missionary work
can and will mould the ideas and sentiments of this whole region, and
thus establish no-caste churches and schools, where they would
demonstrate to the South that they do not carry with them social
disorder and every baleful influence.
Amid the success, joy and hopefulness of the year's work, came the
affliction of the shooting of Prof. George Lawrence, while about his
duties in our school in Jellico, Tenn. It was the work of a miserable
creature whose brain was fired with whiskey, and who was urged on by
the saloon element as a retaliation for earnest temperance work. After
long and anxious weeks of intense suffering, a brave fight against
death proved successful, and we now hope that our missionary's life is
spared for many years of usefulness. Nearly a hundred men have been
shot already in this one place, and the place itself is not more than
six years old. Is it strange that these mountain people who have a
glimpse of better things, are appealing to us every week of the year
to plant institutions among them? Is it not the voice of Christ
clearly commanding us to possess and subdue this land, and to
transform it into a part of his peaceful and beneficent Kingdom, which
shall join hands with us to pass on the torch of Christ to others yet
in darkness?