bright and cheering history of African missions yet to be written.
The five millions of reserve force, now drilling in America for the
final victory, are yet to be called out, and they will come to the
rescue. They are already on the move. These educated freemen have
developed already many of the proper qualifications for the work.
We must expect failures and disappointments at first from those so
recently in the degradation of slavery, but we believe theirs is
the work, and they will yet do it, and do it grandly, too. With a
holy enthusiasm they are coming by degrees more fully to appreciate
the fact that Africa is their true field of labor—even as this
excellent colored brother and his wife, who are going out with me,
say they would rather die for their degraded brethren in Africa,
than live in Christian America. As, therefore, we approach the
shores of Africa, to enlarge and carry forward this work, I feel
that we are now moving in the line of God’s appointment, and that
success must ultimately crown our efforts. In this very steamer are
those going out in Her Majesty’s service to conquer the rebellious
tribes along this same west coast. Shall we, who are the soldiers
of the Lord of Hosts, the King of kings, have less enthusiasm and
courage in conquering these same tribes with the sword of the
Spirit and in the bonds of peace?
TENERIFFE, March 15th.
I am happy to report our safe arrival at this point on our
journey. We have had a very pleasant voyage thus far, and have
been remarkably well. Mr. and Mrs. Kemp are in excellent health
and spirits. I think we may hope much from them. I have learned to
esteem them very highly. Last Sabbath we touched at Madeira, and
were met on board by Mr. Smart, agent for the “Missions to Seamen
Society,” who very kindly invited us to his house to breakfast and
dinner. There we met Mrs. Godman, of the Wesleyan Mission at Sierra
Leone, who was much broken down in health. These kind friends
showed us every attention possible, and we came away feeling that
we had had a day of great spiritual as well as physical refreshing.
I was much pleased with what little I saw of the place. I have had
many pleasant talks with the Kemps regarding their work, and only
wish we had a dozen such men to send out to Africa.
* * * * *
THE CHINESE.
* * * * *
“CALIFORNIA CHINESE MISSION.”
Auxiliary to the American Missionary Association.
PRESIDENT: Rev. J. K. McLean, D.D. VICE-PRESIDENTS: Rev. A. L.
Stone, D.D., Thomas C. Wedderspoon, Esq., Rev. T. K. Noble, Hon.
F. F. Low, Rev. I. E. Dwinell, D.D., Hon. Samuel Cross, Rev S. H.
Wiley, D.D., Edward P. Flint, Esq., Rev. J. W. Hough, D.D., Jacob
S. Taber, Esq.
DIRECTORS: Rev. George Mooar, D.D., Hon. E. D. Sawyer, Rev. E. P.
Baker, James M. Haven, Esq., Rev. Joseph Rowell, Rev. John Kimball.
SECRETARY: Rev. W. C. Pond. TREASURER: E. Palache, Esq.
* * * * *
A GENTLE GROWL.
I love to look over the columns of religious intelligence in the
_Congregationalist_, the _Advance_, the _Pacific_. I say to myself:
“How well the churches are doing! How happy all these ministers
must be! How little they have to annoy, to worry, to depress! How
much to make them glad and even jubilant!” Yet, a few days pass, and
possibly one of these very ministers knocks at my study door, to
talk over, confidentially, the pains, the difficulties, the heavy
burdens of his work; a root of bitterness which he has tried in
vain to remove, now springing up to trouble him; finances going all
awry; sad cases calling for discipline,—the duty imperative, and
the church, though stung to the quick with a sense of its dishonor,
too timid to come up to its task. Of course, such things ought not
to go into the papers nor any other but the good and glad things.
We can make others sharers of our joys, but we shrink from asking
them to bear, with us, our pains.
“Well, that is all right,” I say to myself, and so it is. And yet
those who sustain a missionary work have a _right_ to see it on
_all_ sides. God be thanked that I have had so much to report that
was cheery, stimulating, hopeful; so little that was otherwise. I
wonder if our friends and helpers—readers of the _Missionary_—think
that, like the harvest fields of California, so our Gospel work
is bathed in perpetual sunshine? or do they know that here, too,
we have our darkened skies, our tempests untimely, our frosts
premature?
“Well, it won’t hurt them if they don’t see the shady side,” I say
to myself again.
“Yes, but am I _truthful_ in the matter?” I reply, and so even
conscience puts me up to make a gentle growl. There is nothing
very bad to growl about; no more probably than I need; far less
than I deserve; but there is something, almost always, on which if
one allowed himself to brood, he could soon get up steam to scold
hard. And I am not thinking just here of the greater trials of our
work, as when some riotous outburst of anti-Chinese prejudice sends
these people at sunset to their several retreats, and seems, for
the time, to knock our schools prostrate; nor of the sore trials
from false brethren among our Chinese Christians—starting discords
in the little flocks—or by their vile conduct bringing reproach on
the Gospel that they have proclaimed. Those things, I am grateful
to say, belong to years past; and, besides, we don’t growl at the
great trials—it is the comparatively little things that put us in a
scolding mood.
For instance: here is a teacher who has done well—been faithful,
skilful and successful; has won the intense affection—almost the
reverence of her pupils. But her heart is young, and somebody
else’s heart is young also, and these two have grown together,
till, in an hour of general congratulation, their hands are joined,
and they start off upon life’s journey no longer twain. Then the
same zeal, the same concentration of interest and effort which made
her so successful a teacher, is developed touching home cares and
a husband’s comfort; and weeks grow to months and months to years,
and her face is not seen, even for an hour, in the school-room
where she served so well. She did not mean it so to be; but so it
was, and the shrewd heathen Chinese, that was almost persuaded in
view of her zeal and self-denial to become a Christian, thinks now
that he sees through it all: “Good pay, good teach; no pay, no
teach.”
Here is another teacher who took up the work with zeal and loved
it—so she said and so she thought; better and better the longer she
wrought. But she is cumbered with much serving all day long, and
brings a weak flesh, and, consequently, a not very willing spirit
to her evening’s service at the mission. The pupils note it. It is
indeed unmistakable, for the head nods and the eyes close, time
and again, before the last school hour is half expired. They don’t
like to burden her, and one by one they drop out of the school. The
Superintendent intervenes as gently as he can; but he finds that it
is very difficult to dismiss a teacher and not lose a friend.
Here is a field where the opportunity is evidently large, and the
gate to it seems wide open. You enter it hopefully. Plans seem to
form themselves almost without your thinking. Arrangements are made
and the work begins. Then it appears the arrangements were _not_
made; that you “reckoned without your host;” his plans and yours
do not exactly dovetail, and in this case a miss is as good, and
as ill, as a mile. Delays ensue; disappointment and failure seem
inevitable. The very elements seem to have conspired against you.
And yet that opportunity must not be lost, for there are golden
harvests possible in that wide-open field, and, somehow, you must
reap them.
It is getting past the middle of your fiscal year. We have
tried hard to make one dollar do the work of two, and yet the
appropriation is well nigh exhausted. Contributions come in slowly.
The churches, you fancy, have forgotten this work; or, possibly
they dare not propose it among their charities. You sally forth,
subscription book in hand. You take the easy ones first, the men
that you “_know_” will give. But they respond to your “know”
with a different “No.” and you draw back to your retirement, you
enter into your closet, and learn to go forth the next time in
the use of a coinage and a wisdom not your own and prayer, or the
prayer-hearing Master, pulls you through, so that when the year
ends the year’s bills are all paid and you take a fresh start for
the next twelve-months’ campaign.
But a truce to all this. Who expects to make a voyage and encounter
no storms? Who can hope to win a battle without finding that there
are blows to take as well as blows to give? Our Master never
promised us that just now the currents should float in either to
the fulfilment of our task or the attainment of a full salvation;
but forewarning us that in the world we should have great trials
and tribulation, he adds, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the
world.”
I conclude with this little extract from a letter just received
from a new helper, Jue Lee, whom we have sent to Oroville: “Now
the school is here first-rate getting on. We have almost thirty
scholars every night, but Mr. Ostrom, [Pastor of the church, W. C.
P.], read the Bible also. I explain China to them. Now I hope God
open their ears to hear; find out this true light soon, and come to
worship same God. But Christ is a faithful Saviour, and will not
forsake those who put their trust in Him. But I, at first, dislike
here; it seem everything so strange to me. Now that I remember what
the Bible says: ‘But the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head’
[I am content]. Now I hope God give me power to preach and soon
they will be all converted.”
* * * * *
WOMAN’S HOME MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
Room 20, Congregational House, Beacon St., Boston.
MISS NATHALIE LORD, _Secretary_. MISS ABBY W. PEARSON, _Treasurer_.
* * * * *
MONTHLY REPORT.
This Association has now become a corporate body. A meeting of the
Association to complete the business of incorporation by adopting
the Charter and By-Laws, was held in the chapel of Mt. Vernon
church, on March 30. In spite of the stormy weather the meeting was
a large one. Upon a motion to adopt the Charter, the opposition (to
the so-called “restriction” policy) at once offered an amendment,
to postpone the whole matter of incorporation for a few weeks. A
lively and somewhat lengthy discussion followed, which resulted
in the loss of the amendment and the adoption of the Charter by a
large majority. The debate was renewed over the obnoxious “9th
Article,” and an amendment to strike out the word “Home,” as
defining the work of auxiliaries, was proposed; but this was lost
by a vote of 87 to 30, and the original Article adopted by a vote
of 97 to 15.
The Association feel that they have reason to rejoice, not only in
the result, but in the whole course of the meeting. It was evident
that the opposition steadily lost ground, while the sentiment that
the policy of the Association thus far has been a wise and fitting
one, made a constant gain. We hope and believe that this is an omen
of the increasing good-will and confidence of Christian people
towards the Association. While we are thankful for the steady
growth of interest and the expressions of that interest in material
aid, we pray and long always for more; and we beg that none of
the friends of the work will remit, or intermit their interest,
but that they will rather redouble their efforts as they see how
the field opens before us, and how good a thing it is to help our
neighbors in this way, and to serve our country and God.
We give an extract or two from a letter lately received from
Miss Carter, at Nashville, telling us something of how she has
used the contents of her last barrel, and of the working of her
sewing-school.
“Wednesday evening,” she writes, “I had a reception in my room. The
guests were dirty, ragged, pitiful boys; some of them can read,
some cannot, but all of them are spell-bound by the wonderful
stories of _St. Nicholas_ and _The Youth’s Companion_. If the
children who sent these papers and magazines sacrificed anything
in so doing, may they be blessed for it; they would be could
they see the happy, wondering faces of the children, who almost
reverently turn the pages and spell out the stories.” * * * “I
wish it were possible for you to come into my sewing-school of a
Tuesday evening. At two o’clock the girls assemble—noisy, rough
girls,—racing and laughing they burst into the room where I wait
for them: a room where a family of father, mother and five children
live, one of many, in some old barracks that were used in the
war. We begin with reading of Scripture and a short prayer, and
sometimes the girls sing with their rich, full voices; then we
are all ready for the work, which is sometimes sewing, sometimes
cutting. There is a great deal of commendable rivalry among the
girls as to which shall sew best and fastest, so their tongues run
fast until I silence them with a proposal to read or tell a story.
They are deeply interested in ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and beside we
are having ten minute talks on Physiology, and the care of the
body. The immorality among the women and young girls is something
to make one’s heart ache, and my daily prayer is that I may do
something to turn them to better, purer lives.
“When a garment is finished, the maker buys it for a trifling sum,
within the means of the poorest. My other school meets Thursdays,
in a school-house, and is conducted on nearly the same plan.
“Pure hearted Northern girls, with homes where every comfort and
luxury abound, you cannot picture to yourselves the poverty and
degradation of some of these homes where I go daily. Perhaps you
read Dickens and Thackeray with moist eyes, and then, laying
aside the book, comfort yourselves with the thought, ‘Well, after
all there is no Nancy or Bill Sykes. There was never any one so
miserable as ‘little Nell’ or ‘poor Jo;’ never any such frightful
creature as one of these great hearts has wept over and the other
has laughed over.’ But believe me, there _are_ just such; no
novelist’s pen has ever colored too highly possible poverty and
degradation. What would you say, or rather what would you _do_,
were you to enter a cabin where I have been many times? The
first time I ever saw —— she was standing in her door-way on a
snowy, cold day, _her only article of clothing a calico wrapper_.
Within, the one room was as cheerless as a place well could be. In
one corner stood a bedstead with only a dirty husk bed on it, in
another, a table; there were two chairs, neither boasting a seat;
on the table were a few broken dishes, and this list enumerates all
there was in the room, absolutely _all_. This woman lives with a
man many years older than she; he is a brute, and in his drunken
passions beats her; she with one paralyzed and utterly powerless
arm can do nothing to defend herself. Perhaps it is no wonder if
she too, drinks at times, to forget her misery, yet no amount of
persuasion or entreaty will induce her to separate from this man.
“How can other girls and women be saved? Certainly not by the
efforts of one woman working single-handed among them, not by the
efforts of many such, perhaps; yet possibly by the earnest prayers
of pure hearts, that send help while they still pray.”
Receipts of the Association from March 1 to March 28, 1881:
From Auxiliaries $377.63
Donations 90.95
Life Members 245.00
Annual Members 33.00
———————
$746.58
DONATIONS.
Through Cong. Pub. Society, from Hoosac S. S., Hymn books, papers,
&c., for Miss Julia A. Wilson, Baxter Springs, Kansas, $15.88.
Bible Society, New York, 60 Bibles for Mrs. Amelia S. Steele,
Almeda, S.C., $24.
From Park St. S. S., Boston, for land for church, to Mrs. A. S.
Steele, Almeda, $30. From friends, for Mrs. Steele, new clothing,
etc., $25.
Barrel valued at $37, sent to Mrs. Steele, from Ladies’ Benevolent
Society, Piedmont Church, Worcester, Mass.
Two cases, valued at $100 each, to Western Missionaries, from
Shawmut Av. Church, Boston.
* * * * *
CHILDREN’S PAGE.
* * * * *
CLAUDIE’S COLOR LINE.
MISS MARY L. SAWYER.
“I never, _never_ can bring myself to do it, Auntie; I know I never
can!” and Claudie’s blue eyes grew so very cloudy that Auntie
thought the rain drops would surely fall.
“Very well, my darling, you may do as you please,” she said,
cheerily; “but now run out into the sunshine, for I shall be very
busy this morning and you must amuse yourself.”
That did not seem a hard thing to the little girl, as she wanted to
explore the new home into which she had come for the first time the
night before. How strange everything looked; the blue mountains in
the distance, the cotton fields where women were picking the white
balls into baskets, the little log cabins with their queer mud
chimneys, and the mules shaking their long ears as they drew the
great wagons piled high with snowy cotton bales along the road to
town. From the open window of the great brick building opposite she
could hear the hum of voices, for this was a colored college, and
Claudie’s uncle was one of its Professors. Her mamma had gone to
Heaven a little time before, and this was why she was playing alone
in the Southern sunshine at Auntie Faith’s home.
But why was she alone? Out under the cedar trees were Pink and
Chloe and little Midge “playing supper” with persimmons and
chincapins, and breaking out now and then into song as naturally
as the mocking-birds themselves. They had viewed Claudie from
afar with round, admiring eyes, reserved the biggest chincapins
for her use, and Pink had even ventured to say “Howdy?” but the
little stranger stood aloof. Not a cross word or a naughty one had
any of the children spoken, and they looked as clean and neat as
Claudie herself would have looked had she been eating very ripe
persimmons as freely as they. Pink’s black eyes were as full of fun
and sparkle as Claudie’s blue ones, and her face as bright, and yet
playing with these children was the very thing Claudie had said she
could never, never do!
I really don’t like to tell you her reason, she would be so ashamed
of it now. It was just because their merry little faces were
colored _black_ instead of _white_!
Now Claudie would never have been so foolish if she had not heard
some grown-up people talking after this fashion just before she
left the North:
“I really don’t see how dear Mrs. Faith, with her refined tastes,
can _live_ among the blacks,” said one.
“Think of eating at the same table, and actually touching them!
It fairly makes me shiver,” echoed another, who sat with one arm
around a big Newfoundland dog while she fed him with candy.
And after Mrs. Faith, with tears in her eyes, had told the story
of her work and described her love and respect for her colored
friends, another lady smilingly said:
“I have enjoyed your talk _so_ much, Mrs. Faith; but I don’t envy
you in the least. I know I couldn’t _endure_ the negroes.”
Claudie was not old enough to understand that people who talk in
this way are not the best or the wisest or the most refined people,
and so their words influenced her. She was a very sociable little
body, however, and playing alone soon grew dull. It was hot on the
veranda, and, too, indeed, that shady nook under the cedars seemed
the only cool spot in the yard just then, and how cunning little
Midge did look!
“No second-class on board the train,
No difference in the fare,”
piped Pink, gleefully, as she set her table with gouber shells for
plates.
Claudie started. Why, Auntie sung that song once, and she said it
meant that Jesus and the angels loved black people just as well
as white ones, and thought them quite as beautiful. How funny to
forget that! If the little angels would be willing to play with
colored children of course she could, and then those persimmons
were vanishing _so_ fast!
The next minute a little white-robed maiden was flying through the
rose-garden toward the cedars.
“Oh, Pink!” she cried, breathlessly, “I never ate a persimmon in
all my life.”
“We is saving some for you,” answered Pink, as graciously as if her
polite advances had been received at first, “an’ Chloe got some
‘simmon bread an’ Midge brought some goubers.”
What these new delights were Claudie had no idea, and the
children’s tongues ran faster than ever as they explained. After
the feast came an exploring trip, and under Pink’s guidance the
yard and the adjoining field proved a perfect storehouse of
treasures.
“’Clare, I done forgot,” she cried, suddenly producing a long
necklace of chincapins, and presenting it shyly to Claudie; “I made
it on purpose for you.”
“Oh, you splendid Pink!” cried Claudie; “you are the very nicest
little girl I know!” and throwing her arms around her new friend’s
neck she kissed her rapturously.
Then of course they must play house, with Claudie as the
well-dressed mamma, and then came school and church and everything
else they could think of, till at last, tired out with play, they
threw themselves down in the shade to tell stories.
“I wonder if Heaven is over yonder by the mountains,” said Claudie,
dreamily; “my mamma is in Heaven, and she has a beautiful white
robe, and a golden crown and a harp!”
“An’ my mamma is in Hebben, too, an’ she wears a collarette,”
chimed in Chloe with much importance; “but Hebben isn’t on the
mountains; it’s in England!”
Claudie had just opened her mouth to dispute this remarkable
statement, when Pink took up the argument:
“Chloe doesn’t know nuffin ’bout it,” she laughed. “She just
thinks that ’cause cousin Emma went to England in a big ship with
a heap of colored people to sing, an’ she said ev’rybody was so
good it seemed just like Heaven, and nobody seemed to notice that
they weren’t as white as anybody, an’ she saw the queen, an’ she
went to dinner with white folks in splendid big houses, an’ a white
gen’leman took her out to dinner hisself, an’ treated her ’zactly
like a white lady; an’ she says, ‘’magine me in Washington an’
Gene’l Sherman taking me out to dinner!’”
Pink stopped breathless.
“But she did say it were sure ’nuff Hebben dere! You didn’t tell it
all, Pink Symond,” persisted Chloe, indignantly.
“Yes,” said Pink, more soberly, “she _did_ say that when they came
home an’ she had to ride in smoking cars, an’ couldn’t go to table
with white folks at hotels, an’ was treated just like we all are,
she thought England must be Heaven sure enough, ’cause everybody
says this is the freest country outside of Heaven!”
Just then this theological discussion was ended by the sound of the
dinner-bells, and Pink and Claudie, with arms lovingly around each
other, walked slowly toward the house.
“Of such is the kingdom of Heaven,” murmured Uncle Faith as he
watched them from his study window, and the tired look on his
face faded away and something came instead that made Claudie say
wonderingly—
“Oh, Uncle Faith, you look like—like the apostle John!”
“I think Pink is perfectly beautiful, Auntie,” whispered Claudie at
her bedtime talk that night, “and I do wish those ladies at home
could see her. You know, Auntie”—the fair face flushing—“I was so
ignorant ’bout the colored people this morning, and I didn’t know
any better, and I s’pose that’s just the way with those ladies.
Isn’t there some way we could tell them, Auntie, that the colored
people are just like us, and that they don’t seem so very colored
after all?”
* * * * *
RECEIPTS
FOR MARCH, 1881.
* * * * *
MAINE, $131.43.
Augusta. South Cong. Soc., ($30 of which from
BARRETT E. POTTER, to const. DEA. GEO. F.
HAWES, L. M.) $51; Mrs. A. M. C., 50c.; Mrs.
D. A. F., 50c. $52.00
Farmington. H. P. K., _for Student Aid, Fisk
U._ 1.00
Falmouth. Second Cong. Ch. and Soc. 6.40
Garland. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 5.00
Hermon. Mrs. M. A. Peabody 1.00
Hiram. Ladies of Cong. Ch., by Mrs. L. W.
Hubbard, Bbl. of C., _for Selma, Ala._,
$2.50 _for freight_ 2.50
Kennebunk. Union Cong. Ch. 15.53
Machias. Centre St. Ch. and Soc. 14.50
Sweden. Members Cong. Ch. 5.00
Windham. Cong. Ch. 7.00
Windham Centre. J. T., 50c.; Mrs. B. F. D., 50c 1.00
Woolwich. J. C. S. 0.50
—————————
$111.43
LEGACY.
Bethel. Estate of Sarah J. Chapman, by A. W.
Valentine, Ex. 20.00
—————————
$131.43
NEW HAMPSHIRE, $306.42.