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The American Missionary,
OCTOBER, 1885.
VOL. XXXIX
No. 10.
* * * * *
CONTENTS
* * * * *
EDITORIAL PAGE.
THE FIGURES--FINANCIAL 269
ANNUAL MEETING 270
THE SILENT SOUTH 271
SALE OF BULLETS 272
THE NEW EDUCATION IN THE NEW SOUTH 273
PHILADELPHIA INSTITUTE 274
OBITUARY NOTICE OF PROF. W. L. GORDON 275
MISSIONARY STEAMER 276
ADDRESS BY DR. E. S. ATWOOD 277
EXTRACT FROM GEORGIA PAPER 283
THE SOUTH.
ONE OF THE DEACONS 284
JELLICO, TENN.--AMONG THE CHURCHES IN MAINE 286
THE REASON WHY 287
THE CHINESE.
HOW WE TRAIN THE CHINESE FOR PREACHING 288
CHINESE VIEW OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY 290
BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK.
ILLINOIS WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION 291
CHILDREN'S PAGE.
SHOEBLACK JIM 292
RECEIPTS 292
* * * * *
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
Rooms, 56 Reade Street.
* * * * *
Price 50 Cents a Year, in Advance.
Entered at the Post-Office at New York, N. Y., as second-class matter.
* * * * *
American Missionary Association.
* * * * *
PRESIDENT, Hon. WM. B. WASHBURN, LL. D., Mass.
_Vice-Presidents._
Rev. C. L. GOODELL, D. D., Mo.
Rev. F. A. NOBLE, D. D., Ill.
Rev. A. J. F. BEHRENDS, D. D., N. Y.
Rev. ALEX. McKENZIE, D. D., Mass.
Rev. D. O. MEARS, D. D., Mass.
_Corresponding Secretary._
Rev. M. E. STRIEBY, D. D., _56 Reade Street, N. Y._
_Assistant Corresponding Secretary._
Rev. JAMES POWELL, D. D., _56 Reade Street, N. Y._
_Treasurer._
H. W. HUBBARD, Esq., _56 Reade Street, N. Y._
_Auditors._
W. H. ROGERS,
PETER McCARTEE.
_Executive Committee._
JOHN H. WASHBURN, Chairman.
A. P. FOSTER, Secretary.
_For Three Years._
LYMAN ABBOTT,
A. S. BARNES,
J. R. DANFORTH,
CLINTON B. FISK,
A. P. FOSTER.
_For Two Years._
S. B. HALLIDAY,
SAMUEL HOLMES,
SAMUEL S. MARPLES,
CHARLES L. MEAD,
ELBERT B. MONROE.
_For One Year._
J. E. RANKIN,
WM. H. WARD,
J. L. WITHROW,
JOHN H. WASHBURN,
EDMUND L. CHAMPLIN.
_District Secretaries._
Rev. C. L. WOODWORTH, D. D., _21 Cong'l House, Boston_.
Rev. J. E. ROY, D. D., _151 Washington Street, Chicago_.
Rev. CHARLES W. SHELTON, _Financial Secretary for Indian Missions_.
Rev. C. J. RYDER, _Field Superintendent_.
_Bureau of Woman's Work._
_Secretary_, Miss D. E. EMERSON, _56 Reade Street, N. Y._
* * * * *
ANNUAL MEETING OF THE A. M. A.
The Thirty-ninth Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association
will be held with the First Congregational Church, Madison, Wis.,
beginning Tuesday, Oct. 27, and closing Thursday evening, Oct. 29.
The sermon will be preached by the Rev. Reuen Thomas, Ph. D., of
Brookline, Mass., on Tuesday evening, at 7:30 o'clock, to be followed by
the Communion service. George W. Cable, Esq., of New Orleans, and Gen.
Joshua L. Chamberlain, of Maine, have promised to be present and address
the meeting.
The people of Madison will cordially welcome to their homes the
officers, members, delegates and friends of the Association who may
attend this meeting. Applications for hospitality should be sent to _F.
J. Lamb_, Esq., Madison, Wis., before Oct. 10. Applicants will receive
cards of introduction to families in which they will be entertained.
Persons who have notified the Committee of their intention to attend the
meeting, but who afterward decide not to attend, will please notify the
Committee at once of the change of purpose.
Negotiations are in progress to secure reduced railroad fare for those
attending the meeting, due notice of which will be given in the
religious papers.
* * * * *
THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY.
VOL. XXXIX. OCTOBER, 1885. NO. 10.
* * * * *
American Missionary Association.
* * * * *
$365,000
NEEDED FOR THE CURRENT YEAR.
* * * * *
Your Committee are convinced, that not less than a THOUSAND DOLLARS a
day are imperatively demanded, to perfect the admirably organized, plans
of the Association, even for the present, to say nothing of the pressing
needs of the early future.--
[FINANCE COMMITTEE'S REPORT ADOPTED BY ANNUAL MEETING AT SALEM.]
* * * * *
THE FIGURES.
Donations. Legacies. Totals.
Oct. 1, 1884, to Aug. 31, 1885-$183,654.91 $37,651.83 $221,306.74
Oct. 1, 1883, to Aug. 31, 1884- 177,382.21 40,558.18 217,940.39
---------- ---------- -----------
Inc. $6,272.70 Dec.$2,906.35 Inc.$3,366.35
* * * * *
The published receipts in this MISSIONARY bring us to the end of August.
There was a slight gain as compared with last year, but not enough to
materially alter the threatening aspects of a heavy debt. With the
receipts of September our Treasurer will close his books for the year.
As we are obliged to have the matter for our magazine in the hands of
the printer before the middle of the month, we are not able at this
writing to forecast what the result of the rally to obviate a debt may
be. We remain firm in the conviction that our friends have the ability
to prevent the debt, and that if they are roused to a sense of the
necessity of its prevention, they will do it. We have endeavored to be
faithful in keeping them informed of our needs. Many of them have
responded with great liberality and some of them at great sacrifice. We
thank them with all our heart. We wish we could spare them the pain of
reading our continuous appeals, because we know it leads them to ask if
they ought not to do more. This they ought not to do, but the fact that
there are so many who have done nothing and so many who have done
little, who might do more, and that if we are compelled to have a debt,
and so to see our work suffer injury, it will be because of failure on
the part of those who ought to help us--it is this fact that urges us,
with a pressure we cannot resist, to keep on crying out for relief.
By the time this number of the MISSIONARY is in the hands of its
readers, there will still be left a few days of the month of September.
In those few days what is lacking can be supplied. Let next Sunday be a
red-letter day in the number of churches that wheel into line, and place
themselves upon record as having during the year made a contribution to
the American Missionary Association. We also request that church
treasurers and executors will promptly forward to our Treasurer, H. W.
Hubbard, Esq., such money as they may have on hand, and that individuals
who prefer to send their gifts directly to the treasury will remit at
their earliest convenience. If all will lend a hand, deliverance will
come. God grant that our faith may not be in vain!
* * * * *
It would be wildly unreasonable to expect that all who attend the
Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the American Board at Boston should also
come to the Thirty-ninth Anniversary of the American Missionary
Association at Madison. It is not unreasonable, however, for us to ask
that all will come who can. There are two weeks between the meetings. It
will cost in time and money, but the good to be reaped and wrought far
surpasses the cost. The Jubilee Anniversary of the dear old Mother of us
all cannot fail to be a meeting of great spiritual power. A spirit of
consecration will surely pervade it, and out of the consecration there
must be born an enthusiasm that will tell for all missionary work both
at home and abroad. Let the anniversary at Madison be an adjourned
meeting of the anniversary at Boston. Why not? They are both to be held
with a view to the same end--the Extension of Christ's Kingdom in the
World.
* * * * *
It is important that those who purpose being at Madison should be on
hand at the opening and remain to the close of all the sessions. An
annual meeting of a great missionary society is of significance and
value not only on account of the facts it brings out, but also on
account of the inspiration it awakens. You may learn the facts by
reading the reports, though even then you will not get them all, but you
cannot catch the inspiration. To reap the full benefit of a meeting you
must be in it and become a part of it. The mysterious power that God has
put into the voice and gesture of a speaker, and into the movement of
feeling that is present in an audience when, with one heart and mind, it
sits in contemplation of some great theme, cannot be reported. That
unreportable power is of priceless value in the strengthening and
development of Christian character. Go to the anniversary. Be there at
the beginning. Remain to the end. It will pay.
* * * * *
Racy and interesting, as well as strong and convincing, is the address
of Rev. Dr. E. S. Atwood, which we print elsewhere. Dr. Atwood, at our
request, represented the A. M. A. this year at the May Anniversaries in
Boston. The experiment of having the different causes presented on
Sunday in the churches, instead of during the week as heretofore, is the
explanation of the time and the occasion of this address. Those who
begin to read it will not be likely to stop until they have finished.
Its perusal will prove an excellent appetizer for the Madison meeting.
* * * * *
When George W. Cable's now famous article, "The Freedman's Case in
Equity," made its appearance in the _Century_ magazine, it proved to be
a veritable bomb-shell in the camp of the enemy. It exploded, and
immediately there went up a cry from the wounded both long and loud, and
far-extended as well, showing that the gun which threw it had been well
aimed, and that the shot was an effective one. The newspapers of the
South, with few exceptions, did not pretend to answer. They made feeble
attempts at ridicule. Mr. Cable's shot must have carried away the heads
of many of the editors, for they had surely lost them some way when they
assailed Mr. Cable so fiercely in utter disregard of what his article
really contained. If the editorials that appeared in the Southern
papers, big and little, in annihilation of Mr. Cable and his pestiferous
article could be gathered up and published, they would afford very
amusing reading.
There were, however, a few who took up "The Freedman's Case in Equity"
and set themselves to a serious and manly discussion of its positions.
Meantime, Mr. Cable has been, laughingly, no doubt, looking at "the
tempest in a teapot" which the small fry have created by their foamings
and chokings from passion, while he has also been respectfully listening
to those who have tried to meet him on the plane of fair discussion. He
has been biding his time, waiting for the fury to boil itself out and
for those who are really "foemen worthy of his steel" to speak their
minds. His time has come to be heard from again, and in the September
number of _The Century_, under the title, "The Silent South," he reviews
his reviewers in a manner most masterful, in a style most luminous and
in a spirit most kind, Christian and courteous.
We said at the time that his critics, while dealing vigorous blows, did
not have reach enough to find him. They were simply beating the air. A
perusal of "The Silent South" confirms what we said. There is actually
no need for Mr. Cable to re-argue a single point that he made in his
first paper. He is able to quote the words of his opponents in
vindication of every claim he made. He drives them back with their own
weapons. He has no occasion to defend. He is able to show at the very
start that his assailants, instead of touching him, had only gotten
themselves into trouble. To get themselves out is more than they are
likely to be able to do, for their own words and the facts are against
them.
With strange unanimity, these writers all cried out in respect to the
equities for which Mr. Cable had been pleading, "Neither race wants
them." Well, Mr. Cable retorts, where is the evidence? Bring on the
witnesses. There are two parties interested here. What right has one
party to affirm what the other party wants? Let the other party be heard
from. White men say in the press, _Neither_ race wants them, and the
very mail that brings Mr. Cable the printed statement of white men
brings him scores of letters from intelligent colored men, thanking him
over and over again for the words he had written and the stand he had
taken! The old habit of white men thinking for the slave, and planning
for the slave and speaking for the slave has not yet been broken off.
That was a civil right white men once had, but they should remember that
it is a right which has departed from them for ever. The freedman has
that right now to himself, and when white men say respecting "the
equities," "Neither race wants them," the colored man respectfully
answers back, "Gentlemen, we do our own thinking now; you are mistaken;
your old habits blind your eyes and warp your judgment; we deny that you
have any right to tell the world what we want and what we think. Mr.
Cable is right, you are wrong."
Was ever a position in controversy more triumphantly carried?
We have not space to copy this splendid article. We wish that all the
readers of the MISSIONARY might secure it. Our friends down South will
find, sooner or later, that truth and right are hard things to fight.
They had better give it up. This striking out and hitting nothing, only
to get a good, sound pummeling in return doesn't pay. It is a losing
business that were well abandoned.
* * * * *
Our readers who study the receipts of the A. M. A. as they appear every
month in the MISSIONARY, will notice this month a frequent item, "Sale
of Bullets." A good moral is pointed by what that phrase means.
Atlanta, Ga., was, during the war, a fortified city. Sherman's army in
its triumphant march to the sea occupied it. Some fighting was done in
and around the city. The leaden missiles sunk into the earth-works and
fell into the clayey soil, where they still remain in great numbers. Our
Storrs school at Atlanta needed a kindergarten attachment. We had no
money to appropriate for this worthy object, and so we said to the
missionaries, We cannot help you, but perhaps you can interest friends
to come to your relief. The plan of digging up these bullets and selling
them was hit upon. An appeal was quietly made, and as a result there
have been received $621.46. These bullets were once used by Uncle Sam's
soldiers to help save the country; resurrected from the earth, they have
been used a second time for the same purpose. When first used they
represented the gospel of force; as now used they represent the gospel
of love. Love will conquer, and in its conquest there will be neither
pain nor death. We congratulate our Atlanta workers in so successfully
turning these instruments of war into messengers of peace.
* * * * *
THE NEW EDUCATION IN THE NEW SOUTH.
Hon. A. D. Mayo, that sterling friend of education, has prepared a paper
with the above heading, embodying the results of his observations and
experiences during the past five years, as he has journeyed through
fifteen of the Southern States. He was most profoundly impressed with
the dense ignorance of the region. Of the four million white and two
million colored children and youth of school age, "not one-third can be
said to be in any effective school."
But he finds many things to encourage a hopeful outlook for the future.
The people of the South are roused to see that the children must be
educated. The native Southern stock of white people is good. The colored
people show by the advancement made that they "are in nowise a
discouraging material for the schoolmaster." Southern young women,
daughters of the best families, are becoming school teachers. He sees in
these facts omens of good.
But he feels that the problem is too great for the South to solve alone.
The North must help, and now more than ever is the time. He says:
I have no words to waste on any man or party holding off in
this emergency, on the pitiful plea that the Southern people
should be left to do this work alone. It was one thing for the
old States of the North to gradually develop their systems of
popular instruction, through a century in which they, with all
their imperfections, led the world in the general intelligence
of their people. It was a much easier problem for the new West,
out of munificent public endowments of land and a constant
stream of private beneficence from the East, with a flood of
the most vigorous young people setting in from the whole world,
to establish, in one generation, the splendid arrangements for
schooling the masses of which they are so justly proud. But,
surely, the man who demands of the Southern people, in their
present condition, the effort necessary to establish a good
country district school of six months in the year, with
suitable free elementary graded schools in the towns, and
normal instruction for teachers, in addition to the support of
the secondary, higher, professional and industrial education,
in a way to overcome the terrible illiteracy of the country in
a reasonable time, and aid in the development of intelligent
industry and the solution of the most embarrassing of race
problems, must either have a very inadequate notion of the work
to be done, or a desire to visit the offenses of the fathers on
the children.
He points out four ways in which the North can help: (1.) National aid
to elementary education. (2.) Generous donations like those of Peabody,
Slater and others. (3.) Encouragement by our best Northern educators,
and (4.) establishment of industrial schools. Speaking of donations in
money, he marks a very important condition to be observed. We wish to
give it special emphasis, because it touches a vital point and one that
the supporters of the A. M. A. need to bear in mind; it is this: "_It is
better to strengthen a good institution already on the ground than
experiment on new enterprises._ Especially should our benevolent
Northern people refuse to encourage the persistent effort of a large
portion of the Southern colored clergy and a corresponding class among
the white people to build up a church system of elementary schooling.
Already thousands of dollars are virtually thrown away in the South by
kindly people who give carelessly or yield to opportunity. Our
philanthropic people owe it to themselves and the country not only to
give, but to exercise the greatest discretion in their giving. An
endowment to any school that has really succeeded and can show the right
to exist, is always in order."
There are many peripatetic representatives, white and black, of schools
for colored people going round among our churches, pleading for money to
sustain enterprises that are simply personal ventures, and some of them
actual frauds. They tell a pitiful story. Individual gifts and church
contributions are given them, and when the time comes for the annual
contributions to sustain the long-planted and successfully-operating
schools of the A. M. A., either nothing or but little is given, on the
ground that a contribution has already been made to help a colored
school somewhere. This is a very serious matter. The money thus paid, in
the majority of instances, is worse than wasted, and legitimate and
well-attested work is made to suffer in consequence.
We regard this paper as a valuable contribution to the discussion of the
great question that now presses, and for many years to come will press,
the duty of the North to help the South, as the latter section of our
beloved country emerging from the war-shattered old tries to adjust
itself to the peace-unfolding new.
* * * * *
Away back in 1837, Richard Humphreys, a Philadelphia Friend, left a
bequest to establish a school for the purpose of "instructing the
descendants of the African race in school learning, in the various
branches of the mechanics, arts and trades, and in agriculture, in order
to prepare and fit and qualify them to act as teachers." The
Philadelphia Institute for Colored Youth was founded by that bequest,
and has been for years offering the advantages of "school learning." The
managers feel that the time has come when the full idea of the founder
should be carried out. An industrial department is to be added "for
teaching the boys the trades of carpenter, bricklayer, plumber, etc.,
giving instruction in the use of tools to those who are to become
teachers, and also giving instruction to the girls in useful
employments, including cooking, sewing and other household duties."
This is a step in the right direction, though the managers have been a
little slow in moving. It was frequently said that the old abolitionists
were ahead of their times. We have an evidence of it here. Forty-eight
years after the good man has passed away those in trust of his bequest
awake to the power of his ideas. Educators in other parts of the country
have already felt this necessity and tried to meet it. Industrial
education is now provided for in nearly all the important colored
schools of the South; and judging from the industrial exhibit of the
schools at the New Orleans Exposition, considerable progress has been
made. The friends of the colored people rejoice in the opening up of
every new channel through which the colored youth can have a better
chance to rise and get on in the world.
* * * * *
OBITUARY.
Prof. Wm. L. Gordon died August 28th at the residence of his
father-in-law, Rev. W. I. Hunt, of Columbus, Mich., at the age of
thirty-four years. Mr. Gordon became connected with the A. M. A., as
Principal of the Avery Institute at Charleston, S. C., in 1880, which
position he held until 1882, when he was transferred to Tillotson
Institute, Austin, Texas, to become its Principal and Treasurer, where
he remained until the time of his death. He became a Christian in his
boyhood, although he did not connect himself with any church until he
arrived at manhood. Rev. J. H. Parr, who was associated with Prof.
Gordon during the past year at Tillotson, sends us the following
estimate of Mr. Gordon's character: "To know him was to love him. No
sounder advice than his was ever offered to young Christians. No one
ever felt a deeper solicitude in behalf of the wayward and thoughtless.
We cannot adequately speak of the loss which the bereaved wife and
children sustain. We only venture to say that the school to which Mr.
Gordon gave the last and best years of his life has lost its wisest
counselor and truest friend. The American Missionary Association has
lost a most faithful worker, and those who knew him well have lost the
visible presence of one they loved, but they cherish a memory which
shall be fragrant and inspiring forever." His Christian faith never
wavered in all his sufferings. Only a few minutes before he died, he
said: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, for all His kindness and goodness to
me."
* * * * *
Another Missionary steamer has been set afloat. The London Missionary
Society, after anxious and weary waiting, announces that its iron
steamer the _Good News_ has been successfully launched on Lake
Tanganyika, in Central Africa. To make an iron steamer in England,
transport it in pieces across the ocean, have it carried, piece by
piece, on men's shoulders, through jungle and forest, into the very
heart of the Dark Continent, have it set up and launched upon the great
lake whose waters and shores and inhabitants the story of Stanley and
Livingstone has made of such thrilling interest to the Christian world,
is surely an achievement that challenges our admiration. An Herculean
task! But it has been done. In the name of Christ and in the interest of
His kingdom, it has been done!
The natives were greatly puzzled to know how the steamer was ever to be
gotten into the water, or how, if in the water, she could ever float.
Mr. Roxbury, the Society's engineer, who had the matter in charge, thus
describes their perplexity:
"As we came near to a finish with the hull of the boat, and began to
prepare for launching, this seemed a greater wonder to the natives than
the boat itself. They were all along very doubtful whether the boat
would float or not, when they had seen us day after day putting on so
many plates of iron, but these wonders seemed to disappear when the
question of how were we to get her put into the water arose. This they
seemed to think would be impossible; for, as they said, all the men in
the villages around here could not carry her to the water. I tried to
explain to them that we should be able to put her into the water with a
few men, as the boat would go in herself on the wood, or ways, we were
then very busy laying down. My saying this only increased their
amazement, and they laughed at me, and went away discussing the subject
among themselves in their own way. However, these doubts are now all
cleared up, and I do not think words could properly describe the
excitement there was for a time among them as they stood and saw the
_Good News_ glide beautifully down the ways 145 feet without a single
hitch, then run out into the river about 100 feet, when Mr. Swann, who
was on board standing by the anchor, let it drop, and this brought her
to a stand. For some time after this the noise of the excited natives
shouting and dancing, and the firing of guns, would baffle description,
and during the whole day they kept up singing and going through their
war-dances."
* * * * *
ADDRESS.
DELIVERED IN THE UNION AND MT. VERNON CHURCHES, BOSTON, IN BEHALF OF THE
AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
BY REV. E. S. ATWOOD, D. D.
I am here, by official request, to make some statements in the interest
of the American Missionary Association, and under special injunction to
be as little tedious as possible. There are two difficulties in the way.
The modern Athenian, like his elder brother of Scriptural fame, delights
in nothing so much as "either to tell or to hear some new thing," and
this congregation is, or ought to be, already sufficiently familiar with
the work which solicits a hearing. It is not an obscure enterprise
thrust into the background by its unimportance, or hiding itself because
of some questioning as to whether it has a right to be, and neither is
it a project that has not yet passed the experimental stage, the
conclusion as to its worth or worthlessness to be reached further on. An
organization rooted in such prolific soil, and cultured with such
husbandry, and so full of vital sap, that in less than forty years its
growths branch so widely that millions refresh themselves in their
shade, whose vigor is so forth-putting that it has flowered into
colleges and universities and institutes whose names and fame are known
wherever English speech has gone; that organization has passed out of
and beyond the realm of criticism as to its value, and needs no runners
to advertise it to the people among whom it is planted. It would be an
insult to the Christian intelligence of this congregation to assume that
the work required commendation to them, and equally a vain thing to
attempt to tell the assembled Athenians any new thing about it.
There is another difficulty. Centuries ago, a wise man referring to the
conditions of his time, wrote: "Of making many books there is no end;
and much study is a weariness of the flesh." If he had lived long
enough, or late enough; certainly if he had lived in our day, he would
have changed or enlarged his epigram and made it read, "Of the
contriving of a multitude of philanthropic schemes there is no end; and
the constant solicitations in their interest is a weariness of the
flesh, and of the patience and purse as well." It is our lot to live in
the noonday and the tropic of professedly beneficent and charitable
enterprises. Many well-meaning men and women spend the larger part of
their time in voyages of exploration, hoping to discover some new
continent of want, needing settlement and cultivation. The Columbus of
philanthropy is not an exceptional or an obscure personage in modern
society. The consequence is, our offered opportunities are more than our
ability or our disposition to make use of them. Our accredited
benevolences are in growing excess of our benevolence. The further
consequence is, that intelligent Christian expenditure is forced to
adopt some principle of selection among enterprises that clamor for a
hearing and a helping. An open hand is not all that is needed; it would
be emptied before it had passed half round the circle of importunate
applicants. The vigor and amount of the demands made upon the Christian
Church necessitate a balancing and weighing of the comparative
importance of claims that are so persistently and so enthusiastically
pressed, with the acknowledgment and answer of those which are evidently
broad and just and the refusal of those which are petty and
professional. And the final consequence is, that any cause, however
good, is at a disadvantage, especially if it has outworn its novelty.
The temper of the age is not judicial, and in the hurry of our current
life it is easier to give or withhold the dollar than it is to stop and
consider whether the dollar ought to be given or withheld. So it comes
about that enterprises which ought to be their own sufficient
commendation and appeal, are forced to enter the lists with a host of
competitors, and compelled to spend time and strength which might be
better employed, in justifying their right to be and live.
It is not wholly a misfortune for me that you stand in little need of
information. If it were a thing essential, the limitations of the
occasion would require that it be given either in the form of incidents
or statistics, or both. There would be no poverty of material. Perhaps
no other of the Christian crusades of the century could furnish so many
occurrences which are a mixture of the tragic, the dramatic and the
pathetic. The condition of the people among whom the work has been done,
the methods of the work and the character of the workers have made the
history of the enterprise anything but a common-place story. A panoramic
view of it would show us the dingy hovels where men herded like beasts,
forms and depths of degradation that shame a Christian land, scenes of
outrage and terror, examples of wonderful courage and self-sacrifice,
and show us also sudden and almost incredible transformations, the swift
transition from mere animalism to manhood and womanhood; the rise among
the most unlikely surroundings of well-equipped industrial and
educational institutions; the kindled or quickened fever for knowledge
in a race that had hardly an ambition higher than physical or emotional
gratification, and the first swelling of a tide of regenerating
influences, at whose bright flood an untold and immeasurable mass of
want and woe and wickedness is to be buried forever out of sight. But
incidents, while significant, are not conclusive, for, obliged to omit
many, the advocate is likely to select for use those which have the most
flame and color and so give the impression of over-statement, and
prejudice the cause in whose interest he pleads. Of statistics also
there is no lack, statistics that set forth millions of souls crying for
light and knowledge, millions of dollars spent in their interest, and
other millions needing to be spent. But an array of figures makes little
impression upon anybody but professional accountants. Numerals are for
the most part bloodless and powerless to arouse emotion and carry
conviction, and the table of statistics that lumbers the page of the
Annual Report, to any but the accustomed eye, is like old chaos,
"without form and void, and darkness on the face of the deep," and so
while incidents and items and sum totals are at our disposal in
abundance, it is a matter of congratulation that we need to make only
scant use of them to-day.
It certainly is not a misfortune that this Association is forced to
measure itself with other benevolent enterprises in making its appeal
for sympathy and support. It can afford to do so, for it risks nothing
by the contrast. Without disparagement to any other form of Christian
endeavor, it is not exaggeration to say that considering the work
accomplished, or the largeness and importance of the work remaining to
be done, and which it proposes to do, this organization is easily peer
of the foremost. It is a Zion that will bear and courts inspection, not
only such as may be made by a leisurely "walk round about it," but exact
and minute scrutiny in which "judgment is laid to the line and
righteousness to the plummet." In some near future, when the history of
the continent for the last half of this century comes to be written, it
will be seen that the American Missionary Association was one of the
most influential factors in the solution of great national problems, in
removing sectional differences, in obliterating race distinctions, in
harmonizing conflicting policies, and, better and more marvelous than
all else, in building up out of African and Indian, and Mongolian and
Caucasian a kingdom of God in whose unity all diversities blend and all
separating lines are effaced, and righteousness is the sole and
sufficient foundation, and sanctified manhood and womanhood the walls of
strength and splendor.
Do you realize, good friends, the contrast between America at the date
of the founding of this society and the America of this year of grace?
The interval of time is short, but we have been making history at a
prodigious rate, a rate so rapid that in the rush of it the advance of
to-day dims the recollection of the position of yesterday. Forty years
ago this nominally free government was a tyranny. It posed before the
world in the white fleece of liberty, but the covering was too scant to
hide the ravening wolf underneath. The world held no such infernal riot
of iniquity as American slavery. High treason against God and man, it
bred unnumbered crimes. Generations were born in the darkness of
captivity, moaned and struggled awhile for light, and died. In its greed
for gain the nation coined the bodies and souls of men into money. Many
a millionaire built his mansion on outrage and wrong. The timbers of his
house were the bones of innocent victims. For every adorning some
brother man had groaned and smarted under the lash. And yet how few
dared or cared to protest against this hell upon earth. The Government
said, "Hands off!" The churches were afraid to meddle with the matter or
talked piously about "the patriarchal institution." Great publishing
societies emasculated the tracts which they issued for the purpose of
saving the souls of men, and tore out of them all reference to the
iniquity which was destroying both soul and body. Foremost organizations
that clamored for laborers and money to preach the glad tidings of
deliverance to the swarthy dwellers on the banks of the Ganges, could
not see as far as the banks of the Mississippi. Only one Christian
organization in the broad land--this Association, dared to say, Slavery
is an accursed thing. Riddance from it was only a dim hope, the remotest
of possibilities. And all that less than forty years ago. To-day no foot
of a slave presses the soil of the continent; to-day ancient
irresponsible ownership of the souls and bodies of men is a nightmare of
the past, and the haughtiness of unquestioned authority is changing to
conciliation and growing respect for human rights; to-day an emancipated
race has not only cast off the fetters from its limbs but is seeking and
finding the larger liberty of completed manhood and womanhood. Wonderful
and blessed change; you search history in vain to find its parallel.
In our review of these forty years it is natural that we should inquire
as to what forces have been efficient in producing such large results,
and quite as natural also that we should credit overweight to influences
that have been dramatic and measurable, and overlook or depreciate
subtler agencies that make little stir, and work below the surface. We
say in a large way, that civil war was the procuring cause of the change
that has been wrought, but as the war was not carried on for that
purpose, it is more exact to say that incidentally and unintentionally
it made the change possible. We assert more specifically that the
Emancipation Proclamation was the one supreme factor in inaugurating the
new order of things, and no smallest leaf should be plucked from the
wreath of honor which crowns the heroic Lincoln. The scratch of the
President's pen in that quiet room, writing the new and greater Magna
Charta, will be heard for ever. History, like a vast whispering gallery,
will reduplicate the sound and pass it on to the ages to come. It was
heard at once the breadth of the continent and across the sea. It outran
the tramp of armies, and distanced the roar of cannon. It went down
through the valleys of Virginia, through the pine barrens and rice
swamps of the Carolinas. It rang along the everglades of Florida; it
reached to the cane brakes and cotton fields of Louisiana; the
Alleghanies echoed it to the Sierras; the Father of Waters caught up the
sound, and rolled it like sweetest music to the Gulf, and in the
hearing of it, millions woke to freedom. And yet the calm judicial
estimate must take into account that the Proclamation was primarily, if
not solely, a war expedient, not righteousness for righteousness' sake;
and must take into account also that it effected nothing beyond a change
in legal relations, voiding of power certain State statutes that
legitimatized slavery. The mere shift of status under the law from
bondage to freedom, provided the opportunity, but it did not and could
not supply the force adequate to effect those industrial and
intellectual and moral transformations which are the most conspicuous
evidences of progress. The stalwart element which had been slowly
developed in public sentiment had far more efficiency than the official
edict, but the influence of public sentiment was atmospheric and vague,
rather than direct and intelligent.
A few years ago it would have been considered absurd; even to-day it may
seem to some an exaggeration to attribute a large part and the better
part of the changes which have been wrought, to the work of the American
Missionary Association; but as the historic judgment clears with time,
that fact is becoming more and more apparent. Long before the
President's Proclamation had been dreamed of as a possibility, while
statesmen and members of the Cabinet were busy with their fine jugglery
of explanation, endeavoring to persuade the rebellious South that in
fighting them they intended no harm to their favorite institution; while
army officers, with an eye single to their constitutional obligations,
were returning fugitive slaves to their masters in arms, while Northern
churches shivered if they heard the word emancipation spoken in their
pulpits--even then this Association was busy at Hampton with
missionaries and teachers among the hundreds gathered there, whom
General Butler had set free cutting the Gordian knot of difficulty with
a legal phrase, flinging over them the protection of the flag as
"contraband of war." It was a strange, exciting, pathetic scene, that at
Hampton; who that saw it will ever forget it? That sleepy village,
drowsing in the heat, in full sight of the picket lines of the Southern
army; the sunrise and the sunset announced by cannon answering cannon
from the opposing hosts. That dingy brick building, swarming in all its
rooms and stairways and window seats with a motley crowd of all ages and
both sexes, mostly in rags, holding in their hands tattered books of
various titles and dates, the very roadsides lined with children and
gray-haired men and women puzzling over the alphabet, some of them with
no better helps than bark or chips on which the letters were rudely
scrawled; the delicate cultured women from Northern homes moving about
from group to group, full of enthusiasm and ready with helpful
directions; the noisy shout of reciting voices every now and then
interrupted by the blast of the bugle, or the hoof beats of a troop of
cavalry sweeping past--that, and there was the primary school of the new
order, the experimental beginning, which since then has been manifolded
in every State once cursed with slavery, and to the benign influences of
those efforts is chiefly due the advance which has been made in
intelligence, and healthy ambition and domestic comfort, and religious
growth, and manhood and womanhood, among the servile and despised race
on this continent. The story of the hardships and self-sacrifice, and
heroism of this Society, is a story that can never be told. Later on,
similar enterprises and efforts were undertaken, but with all due credit
to their importance, they were all copied after "the pattern shown them
in the mount." In this world of short memories, we cannot too often
review the record which constitutes the claim of this Association to
signal affection and honor.
The fact of splendid accomplishment in the past is freely and generally
admitted, but within recent years the question has been frequently
raised whether the Association has not fulfilled its mission, and
whether the logic of events does not justify the cessation of its
special work? That is a fair question and has a right to an intelligent
and definite answer. It might be a sufficient reply to say that the
collateral work of the Society among the other alien races on the
continent is of sufficient importance to demand the continuance of the
organization and constitute a claim for generous support, but we may
leave that out of account and consider that line of effort in which it
is best known and with which it will always be specially identified in
the common thought, and narrow the inquiry down to the question whether
the condition and prospects of the Freedmen of the South are such that
the discontinuance of this work could be safely allowed or result in
anything but lamentable disaster.
And in answering that question emphatically in the negative, there is
not necessarily any imputation cast upon the honest intentions of the
white population of the South. But they labor under special
difficulties. Trained for generations to regard the African as a servile
and inferior race, it is not easy for them to rid themselves of the
traditions and beliefs of centuries. In the nature of things they cannot
all at once rise to the level of enthusiasm in the matter of the
education and elevation of their former serfs. With their old
conviction, not yet wholly changed, of the divine right of slavery,
every freedman in the streets represents so much property of which they
have been despoiled by governmental authority. Unfamiliar with the
adjustments of labor and capital in a free State, it is hard to suit
themselves to the new order of things. Even the better class in society
have a secret feeling that somehow they have been wronged, and that
better class is fringed with a large and lawless class who vent their
bitterness in outrage and violence, and so keep alive old animosities.
Under all the circumstances, simple justice on the part of the people of
the South means more than large generosity on the part of the people of
the North, and simple justice is far from being a universal thing. The
African must demonstrate his right to manhood and civil equality before
either will be allowed him, except under the compulsion of the law, and
allowance of that limited and enforced nature counts for but very
little. There never was a time when not righteousness alone, but the
prosperity of the nation as well, demanded more earnest, persistent,
well-considered endeavor for the instruction and uplifting and complete
regeneration of the millions of the African race on this continent.
But men say that is the business of the government. Government has
emancipated them and enfranchised them, and now it must do the rest.
Yes, if it could; but it is simply impossible. It is an utter
misconception of the functions of government which would lay that burden
on its shoulders. You cannot legislate righteousness. You cannot compel
morality and religion by reenacting the Ten Commandments and the Golden
Rule at each session of Congress. The Fourteenth Amendment fourteen
times amended and improved would secure nothing beyond the form of civil
liberty and equality. Where alien races occupy the same soil, even
justice and mutual consideration can only be established by working the
temper of justice and the spirit of consideration into the very fibre of
the popular feeling, and that is to be done, and it only _can_ be done
through the good offices of unselfish and impartial friends, by the
elevation of the lower race to the level of the higher, by the agency of
wise instruction and helpful sympathy and the culture of those moral and
spiritual capacities which, when in full flower in either African or
Caucasian, make a man confessedly a man, and the equal of any other of
any race or blood.
And no existing organization can do that work better, not to say as
well, as this Association. It has the advantage of acknowledged
position. It is widely and affectionately known among the people for
whom it labors. In the earlier days, when the wondering Negroes asked
who sent these teachers and preachers among them, they were answered,
"The Congregational churches;" but the lengthy adjective choked them,
and they invented a title of their own, and called them "God's people,"
which, if we only deserved it, I submit, would be a more pleasing
appellation even here in New England than our six-syllabled
denominational name, "God's people." It is a significant and suggestive
phrase. It voices the unquestioning faith and affection of the needy
race in those who have hitherto helped them, and while other agencies
can render efficient aid in completing the unfinished task, none so well
as "God's people" can carry on the good work unto perfection.
Neither are we to leave out of account the fact that this Association
has the advantage of experience. Its work at first was necessarily
tentative. It had no pioneers and no precedents to guide it. It was
compelled to originate methods and prove them by the test of time. It is
high testimony to the wisdom of the fathers that they made so few and
such slight mistakes. But slight and few as they were, they will not be
repeated. There is no occasion for further experiment. The work, and how
best to do it, are both things which are fully known. The management of
this Association understands the Southern question better than the
Administration at Washington. It would be a fool's policy in either
patriot or Christian to dismiss from service, or limit in efficiency by
shrinkage of funds or lessening of interest, an organization with such
an illustrious record, which has been so honored of God and man, and
which has such capacity for manifolding its successes and pushing on the
growth already reached to consummate blossom and needful and opulent
fruitage. No, no, brethren, the time has not yet come to remand the
Association to inaction, and neither has the time come for the American
church to omit one dollar of its givings, or one utterance of its
prayers, or one impulse of its enthusiasm for the right and complete and
final solution of the most immediate and pressing problem with which we
are set face to face.