A Jubilee Fund of $100,000 in Shares of $50 Each.
We have come to our Year of Jubilee. Fifty years ago the American
Missionary Association had a darker outlook than it has to-day. It saw
4,000,000 of people, children of a common Father, who were born under the
skies of our common country, in a land of churches and Bibles, and saw
them, not only with no legal rights, but not even the rights of persons,
chattels under the law, bought and sold as things, in sin and degradation,
and without hope in the world. That was a dark outlook.
But God’s providence came, and now the country, which the Association
could not so much as enter, is dotted with our schools, and with ten
thousand other schools, and with churches, which stand for the truths
which the Congregational churches of our land believe in and teach. Has
anything more wonderful occurred in the wonderful fifty years, now gone
by, than this change of conditions in the South, or any more demanding
duty come to our churches than the work which has grown out of these
changed conditions?
It belonged to no man fifty years ago to foresee the magnitude of our work
in the South. Add to this that among twenty tribes of Indians, and our
missions in the highlands of the South among the whites, and that which
has been so greatly blessed of God on the Pacific Coast, and who could
have foretold it all fifty years ago?
In all this we are not engaged in a merely philanthropic work; we are
doing more than to educate people in industries, _though we are doing
this_. We are building on a foundation which no other can lay than is
laid, Jesus Christ. In the schoolroom, in the teachings of agriculture and
mechanics, the various trades and industries, as well as in our churches,
this is our foundation. We are bringing salvation to the peoples who need
it, knowing well that salvation includes this life, as well as that which
is to come. Our supreme thought is to hasten on the time when there shall
be a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. This has been, and this is,
our work. Now we need to meet our indebtedness. It is a distressing load
to carry. We are seeking to pay our obligations this Jubilee Year. We have
not pressed our grievous burden upon the churches as urgently as we would
have done, because our sister societies, in like distress, were in the
field with their special appeals. Our hearts are now gladdened by the
gracious providences that have come to them. Now, will not the churches
generally engage in a special effort to lift the burden of our debt and
restore prosperity to this work, which the churches and our individual
givers have been, and are, doing through this Association?
In view of these facts, we most earnestly urge as the call of this Jubilee
Year:
First. That measures be taken in each church to make full and regular
contributions to sustain our _current_ work. It has been sadly reduced.
During the last three years the receipts of the Association have been less
than in the previous three years by about $93,000 a year, and but for our
retrenchments this would have made a debt three times as great as it is
now. If this reduction of receipts is to continue it will mean a ruinous
increase of debt or an equally ruinous retrenchment of the work.
Second. So great is our sense of the need of sustaining our present work
that if regular contributions are not adequate we urgently appeal that the
effort be made to secure it by largely increased contributions or by a
special collection.
Third. That our friends and all interested in this work now so imperiled
_will take shares in the Jubilee Fund of $100,000_. _This fund is divided
into 2,000 shares of $50._ We would have each of these fifty years in the
Association’s history stand for a special contribution of a dollar, the
whole fifty years being signalized by a Jubilee subscription of $50 and
the semi-centennial made memorial by raising the money for the Jubilee
Fund.
Only six months are left of the present fiscal year. We come to all who
believe in our work to help the Association and to help it now, so that we
may at the great convocation at the Jubilee convention in Boston next
October celebrate not only the heroic faith of the fathers, but the
steadfast zeal and purpose of their children.