THE
American Missionary.

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THE
AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

American Missionary Association.

The Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association will be held in Worcester, Mass., commencing November 1st, at 3 p. m. For particulars see fourth page of cover and the religious press.

Our readers have already been informed of the death of Rev. K. M. Kemp of the Mendi Mission, and it now becomes our painful duty to chronicle the death of his beloved wife. The latest advices inform us that their deaths were neither of them due wholly to the climate. Mrs. Kemp was a brave, true woman, whose life and example will not soon be forgotten in the field where so many had already learned to love her.

By the time this reaches our readers, Superintendent Ladd and Dr. Snow will be well on their way toward the Arthington Mission. It is their purpose to push directly for the region of the Sobat in the heart of Central Africa, with the view of locating the new mission. It will give us pleasure to keep the public informed of the movements of their expedition in this interesting portion of Africa. Two missionaries are under appointment to occupy this field at the call of the Superintendent.

We take pleasure in announcing the safe arrival of Rev. O. H. White, D. D., from England. After a continuous service of over six years of earnest labor in the mother country, he well deserves the rest which he now seeks. As Secretary of “The Freedmen’s Missions Aid Society,” he has ably represented this Association in its great work for the Negro, and has been enabled, we trust, to insure the success of the Arthington Mission, by so far interesting our British friends in this new and promising missionary enterprise, as to call forth many generous contributions toward its support.

As this number of the Missionary will be in the hands of our readers a few days before the close of our fiscal year, September 30th, we make this reminder to the churches and friends who have not yet made their annual offering to our treasury.

We wish to pay every obligation, and report the year closed without debt. If the gifts we have reason to hope for are promptly forwarded, we shall be able to do this.

One obstacle in the way of establishing missions in the interior of Africa is illustrated by the difficulties experienced by the missionaries of the American Board destined for Bihé. Messrs. Bagster, Sanders and Miller landed at Benguela on the coast, 250 miles from Bihé, November 13, 1880; May 1st, they had only reached Bailunda, 200 miles on their way, where they were still encamped awaiting the arrival of supplies. Five months and seventeen days had been exhausted by preparations and delays, and the end had not come at last reports. Possibly, however, the knowledge gained meanwhile of the peculiarities of the country and the language and habits of the people will quite compensate for loss of time, and enable them to lay the foundations for their future work far more wisely in consequence of the difficulties thus experienced.

The Le Moyne Institute, Memphis, Tenn., has established an industrial department for the purpose of teaching the girls the art of cookery. A kitchen has been furnished with all needful appliances. Lectures are given on housekeeping and household economy, which are followed by instruction in various methods of cooking different foods. The girls all take turns in doing the work, and in this way get the full advantage of the practice. The following list of questions on which a class in cooking was examined at the last anniversary, illustrates the scope of the work that is being done:

The work among the refugees in Kansas by the different agencies has been carried forward with energy and success. According to the best estimates there are upwards of 50,000 colored people in that State, and the number is steadily increasing. The reports from our missionaries are favorable,[Pg 291] and indicate that much is to be done and that the refugees are eager for the needed assistance. The interest taken in behalf of the exodites by the English people is worthy of the imitation of American philanthropists. During the last few months, friends in Great Britain have sent to Mrs. Comstock for the Freedmen’s Relief Association, $25,000 worth of supplies, consisting of wearing apparel, household goods and kitchen utensils. There has also been received from England during the last fifteen months $13,000 in money, making a total amount of $80,000 for the treasury of the Relief Association; two-thirds of this is said to have been given by the English people. Our appeal, published some months since, for $2,500 to provide for the work we have recently inaugurated in Kansas, has not yet met with such response as we hoped to receive. When so much is being done by friends abroad for this needy class of colored people, we believe the patrons of the American Missionary Association would not have us do less for the Kansas field than we have already undertaken. Will they not contribute so liberally for this special object that we shall be able to do a great deal more?

We clip from the New York Tribune a paragraph relating to the work of the American Missionary Association in the South. It comes from the pen of a special correspondent, who, as the editorial in the Tribune says, “has already written with great intelligence and fairness of the South and the Southern people.”

SUCCESS OF COLORED TEACHERS.

“The educational work in the South of the American Missionary Association is of the highest character, and deserves all possible recognition and assistance. The leading Southern people everywhere speak of it gratefully and enthusiastically. At the Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, Va., at Talladega College, in Alabama, Tougaloo University, Mississippi, Tillotson Normal School, Austin, Texas, and in several other colleges and normal schools which I have visited, though the money endowment of the schools is scanty compared with the amounts which are needed, the endowments in personal qualities and character, as represented by the teachers, are of a remarkably high order. This is indispensable indeed, for the peculiar nature of the work of educating the colored people of the South requires the best teachers that can be obtained. In many of these institutions the boys learn something of various trades or mechanical occupations, and of farming; and the girls are taught sewing, cooking and the care of a house. I have visited a great number of the negro common and high schools, which are taught by graduates and students of the colleges and normal schools which I have named, and I think it very wonderful that so many of these negro teachers are successful. They generally have to struggle against many disadvantages, but nearly all whom I have seen have the confidence and respect of the leading white citizens where they are at work. I have found a few fools among them, of course, but a great majority appear to be sensible, earnest young men and women.”

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TALLADEGA COLLEGE.

PRESIDENT HENRY S. DE FOREST.

This issue of the Missionary contains a view of Stone Hall, built of Alabama bricks at Talladega. Its completion, it is believed, marks an era in the history of the College. With better equipments than ever before, with a field as large as it can wish, the College, backed by the history of half of one generation, looks forward with hope to the growing and unfolding future. From what has been we may attempt to previse something of what may be.

In 1867, only fourteen years ago, when the Freedmen’s Bureau was acting as Interex between past bloodshed and coming chaos, the building now known as Swayne Hall, with ample and beautiful grounds, was purchased, and the future College begun with spelling book and Bible primer. A few wise men of the East were there at its birth. They wore blue and carried swords, though in the scabbard. But many black men, who had been waiting through a long and starless night, thought they heard an angel chorus and forthwith were praising God. A white male high school building, reared by the unrequited labor of the slave, was bought at a mortgage sale and opened for the Christian training of all, without respect to color or sex. Men, black either in pigment or in figment, began to come, and the reconstructed building gave shelter to school and church. But a home was needed, and two years later, in 1869, Foster Hall was built, affording rooms for the girls and teachers, and also table accommodations for the entire family. From the beginning, Talladega has united the three great forces in shaping character, namely, the school, the church and the home. The foundations of the second building, Foster Hall, were laid while the Ku Klux Klan was brandishing its weapons and grating its teeth. The Nehemiahs of that time carried their weapons in one hand and wielded the trowel with the other. But they built, and the God of Heaven prospered them. From that time forward the quadrennial period has been observed. The year following a Presidential election, Talladega College has inaugurated some new thing. In 1873, Graves Hall with additional land was secured for the theological department. In 1877, when President Hayes was holding out the olive branch, we attempted more of the peaceful pursuit of agriculture, and Winsted farm was bought. And now in the beginning of President Garfield’s administration, the third brick building is reared, and Stone Hall opens its door to eighty young men.

Surely this is rapid progress. Not half of one generation has passed, and the spelling book is supplemented by normal, college preparatory, to some extent college, and theological studies. Some of those first primary students are preachers now. The babes of those recent days have become the leaders of their race. Figures are not juicy; but it is noteworthy that one hundred and sixteen of our students were teaching during the last summer vacation; that three hundred and eighteen who had pursued[Pg 294] something of Normal studies have gone thence as pedagogues; that of our forty-two Theological students, fifteen are pastors of A. M. A. churches; as many more are ministering in other fields, and the remainder are still in training. Such facts are inspiriting and full of hope. These results, let it be remembered, have been realized with meagre resources and poor appliances. If now our means could be made more commensurate with our necessities, if our resources could compare with our opportunities, what a grand work of patriotism and Christianity might not the College attempt and expect in the near future. As regards the higher branches of learning, the College has an unrivaled place in a great State, half of whose population is black. It has in Alabama more than 600,000 colored people from whom to draw its students. It cares for muscle as well as mind, and for heart most of all. It teaches industry and thrift and economy. It emphasizes the fundamentals, and believes that the foundations of learning should be laid before the superstructure is attempted. Still in its care for the masses, it is seeking for wise leaders, and wishes to take certain elect souls through as long and as thorough a course of study as the circumstances will allow. It aims especially to furnish men well equipped for the Gospel ministry, and thinks it has found a place for uplifting not only America, but Africa, and that by laboring there among the foot-hills of our own Blue Ridge, it may help beautify the Dark Continent with salvation. As long as cotton grows on those black bottoms, or those hills yield their treasures of iron and coal, so long will Talladega College be needed, and so long it hopes to stay. It desires to grow with the generations and increase with the ages. Already it feels its need of permanent investments, and is asking for the beginning of an endowment. It calls for the personal service of some, and asks for the gifts of others who cannot offer themselves. In both cases it gives an opportunity for usefulness as large and as lasting as can be desired.

Rev. A. D. Mayo, D. D., writes in The Christian Register of Talladega College as follows:

“This year the institution numbers two hundred young men, women and children, of whom eleven are in the theological, eleven in the preparatory college, forty-eight in the normal, fifty-nine in the intermediate, and seventy-two in the primary department. Rev. Henry S. De Forest is president, and Rev. George W. Andrews pastor and instructor in theology. Three men and six women teachers in addition make up the teaching force; and an abler, more devoted, and more attractive people we have never met in any seminary of learning in any part of the country. They are all white, and represent every section of the Union and the Dominion of Canada. Talladega may congratulate itself on its “negro college,” for probably no institution in the State represents more thoroughly the best modern ideas of education.”

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THE STRONG AND THE WEAK.

BY PROF. G. N. MARDEN, COLORADO SPRINGS, COL.

Injustice seems never more flagrant than when committed by the prosperous and powerful against the poor and weak. If the moral test of civilization, as of society, is its care for its weakest members, we hardly dare to measure our country by the history of its treatment of the Negro, the Indian and the Chinaman.

The diagram above is designed to illustrate the numerical strength of the white element of the United States, as compared with three other elements of the population. The large bordered square (whose side is ten centimeters) represents our country’s total population—a round fifty millions. The colored population—not less than six and a half millions—is signified by the square in the lower right hand corner. Close beside it is the little square which stands for the size of the Indian—about three hundred thousand souls; the shaded portion of the square means the wild Indians—about fifty thousand. The dreaded Chinese element of our population can be seen by looking for the minute square, which represents one hundred thousand.

This diagram, in enlarged form, can be effectively used in the Missionary Concert. To a large square of stout paper, smaller squares of different colored[Pg 296] paper may be pinned. Correct proportions for paper or for blackboard illustrations would be, following the order of the size of the population, 50, 18, 3.87 and 2.23 centimeters respectively; or, in inches, about 19²/₃, 7¹/₁₀, 1¹/₂ and ⁷/₈. These figures denote the base lines of the respective squares.

How the powerful white man looms up and looms over the little group of the three ill-treated races huddled in the corner!

The black block makes no insignificant figure, after all, and its rapid growth suggests that to have, through neglect, a dense body of such dimensions depressed by ignorance were a blunder matched only by the wickedness of oppression. The size of the Indian and the Chinaman suggests strongly the outrageous meanness of ill-using them; it makes more striking the absurdity of a war policy against the red man, and of the demagogue’s appeal to fear on account of the presence of the Chinaman.

What an opportunity, on our own shores, for strength to help weakness, for knowledge to help ignorance, for wealth to help poverty, and so to fulfil the law of a Christian civilization!

Surely it is high time for us to heed the weighty saying of John Milton: “A nation ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth or stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body; for look, what the ground and causes of single happiness to one man, the same we shall find them to a whole state.”

GIVING, VIEWED FROM A COMMONPLACE STAND-POINT.

REV. SAM’L SCOVILLE.

We think this whole matter of giving is put so high sometimes that it gets clear out of sight of common people. We love now and then to put it down upon the basis of common virtues and moralities and see how it looks.

Motives, springing from the highest spiritual insight and experience, are good and always in order, but they are not essential to a fair judgment nor to proper action in this matter. A man may have much less than John’s spirituality or Paul’s experience to decide that there is a glaring inconsistency in praying for the building up of God’s kingdom on the earth, and then withholding the means necessary to that end; in praying that the Gospel may fly to earth’s remotest bound, and then refusing to contribute to the amount of a single wing feather to help its flight.

It does not take a great deal of spiritual insight to see that we cannot serve God and mammon at the same time in our churches with advantage, any more than we can in our own hearts, and that if the Judas of worldliness carries the bag, there is going to be a betrayal of the Master some day. The most common of common sense judgment is all that is needed for so simple a conclusion.

And it is not necessarily any high revelation required, but only an appreciation and approval of square dealing, to convince us that a church must so raise its money, and to such amounts, that it will be able to do its share towards carrying on the great work of evangelizing the world.

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In these days of missionary spirit every church is to broaden out its parish lines until they meet only at the antipodes. All the dark places of the earth belong to us to do something for, to do what we can for, and we are not to raise our money nor use it so that this part of the work is neglected. To cheat the heathen out of his portion of the Gospel is an immorality. To help carry the Gospel to the heathen in the uttermost parts of the earth must be accepted by every church as a part of its moral obligation. This may make it necessary to put less expense into church choirs, into adornments and improvements—that the minister and the sexton shall receive smaller salaries. So be it; let the whole field be looked over, and let each receive the share adapted to him. This is good morals in this matter.

BENEFACTIONS.

—Hamilton College receives $5,000 from Lemuel Brooks, of Churchville, N. Y.

—Henry Villiard has given to the Oregon State University $70,000 to relieve its indebtedness.

—D. O. Mills has given to the University of California $75,000 to endow a chair of intellectual and moral philosophy.

—William H. Vanderbilt proposes to add to his previous gifts one-half or two-thirds enough to erect and equip suitable buildings for the Nashville Female College.

—Mr. George B. Babcock, of Plainfield, N. J., has recently given $30,000 to Alfred University, and still later $10,000 to Wilson College at Wilson, Wisconsin.

—The will of the widow of the late ex-President Millard Fillmore leaves public bequests to the amount of $50,000, among which is one of $20,000 to the University of Rochester.

—Matthew Vassar, following in the good work of his uncle, bequeathed to the college which bears the family name the handsome sum of $130,000; to the Vassar Brothers Home for Aged Men, $15,000; and to the Vassar Brothers Hospital, $85,000. These contributions are to be largely increased by some residuary legacies.

—The following table shows the increase of endowments of the New England colleges during the past year: Harvard, $500,000; Yale, $250,000; Amherst, $75,000; Tufts, $120,000; Smith, $43,000; Dartmouth, $110,000; University of Vermont, $50,000; Wesleyan, $100,000; Colby, $30,000; total, $1,278,000.

—Talladega College, Talladega, Ala., is erecting Stone Hall, by the gift of Mrs. Stone—the fourth College building. Endowments now are the great necessity. $25,000 will provide for a Professorship, and there are four such needing endowment, one of these a Theological Professorship.

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GENERAL NOTES.

AFRICA.

—Forty light-houses of great range have been established in the Red Sea, to render navigation less dangerous during the night.

—Dr. Schweinfurth has returned to Suez after a month’s exploration in the Island of Socotora, where he found a very abundant flora. The forests constitute the principal riches of the isle.

—Following the massacre of the expedition Giulietti, two Italian vessels have been sent to Assab, to be stationed there during the inquest that the Egyptian Government has ordered, with a view of discovering the murderers and punishing them. They will be supported by an English vessel.

—Dr. Southern, of the London Missionary Society, has been laboring for more than a year at Urambo, the capital of the noted chief Mirambo. He has been received with much cordiality, and is able to report results of his work in terms which are suggestive of a bright future for that station.

—The Governor of the Gold Coast has placed, as a condition to the conclusion of a treaty with the King of Achantis, the abolition of human sacrifices in the states of the latter. The king having demanded that a representative of the Governor should visit him, M. Maloney, the Colonial Secretary, has accompanied Prince Buaki, who has returned to Coomassie.

—The necessary materials for the construction of the railroad of the Senegal have been transported over the upper river, the King of Foutah guaranteeing the security of the passage. There is still some difficulty with the King of Cayor on the subject of the passage of the road over his territory, but they hope for a satisfactory solution.

—A business house in Hamburg has sent out an agent to attempt the culture of coffee in the region of the Ogove. A clearing has been made near Corisco bay, where several thousand coffee trees have been planted, promising an abundant harvest this year. The American Presbyterians have a mission some hundreds of miles up the Ogove river, and the project is on foot to open a route this way to Stanley Pool on the Congo.

—The Universities Mission to Central Africa, which was first undertaken in 1860 through the influence of Dr. Livingstone, and afterwards suspended, has recently entered upon a very hopeful career. Bishop Steere has now a well equipped staff of thirty-one European missionaries, of whom seven are ladies. He already understands the language of the tribes among whom he labors. The present work of the mission is threefold: First, that on the island of Zanzibar, which is now of a comprehensive character, including many agencies; secondly, the work at Magila and its[Pg 299] surroundings, some forty miles from Pangani, on the main land to the north of Zanzibar; and thirdly, the missions on the main land to the south in the Rovuma district.

—The Missionary Herald for August, the organ of the Baptist Missionary Society of London, contains an admirable map of the Congo from its mouth to Stanley Pool. This Society already has a mission at San Salvador, south of the Congo, between one hundred and two hundred miles from the coast. It recently sent two of its missionaries, Mr. H. E. Crudgington and Mr. W. H. Bentley, on an exploring tour to Stanley Pool for the purpose of fixing a site for a mission at the latter point. The report of their exploration is given almost entire in the Herald, and constitutes one of the most interesting and profitable narratives of perseverance and heroism that has been given to the public in the annals of missions.

—The C. M. S. of London has established a new mission at Uyui, a collection of villages under the control of a governor appointed by the Sultan of Zanzibar. It is described as a very large town for Africa. Mr. Copplestone, one of the early missionaries for Mtesa’s kingdom, took up his abode at Uyui in 1879, and in June 1880 was joined by Mr. Litchfield, who came south from Uganda for the benefit of his health. Mr. Copplestone, who has learned the Unyamnezi language, has built a school-room where he teaches the natives. He is assisted by one of the Frere Town African Christians.

THE INDIANS.

—The Baptist Home Missionary Society has established at Tahiequah, Indian Territory, the “Indian University,” and at present conducts a school in their mission buildings. The society is out with an appeal for buildings and endowments.

—The Board of Publication of the Presbyterian Church supports a Book, Tract and Sunday-school missionary in the Indian Territory. Meetings are held, families visited, and a large amount of religious literature is scattered broadcast. The work is reported to be quite encouraging.

—Mr. Townsend, Special Agent of the Indian Department, has organized an Indian police force among the Pimas. His squad consists of fifteen men under the command of Captain Maichu, a very competent and trustworthy Indian. The primary object of the force is to maintain order in a quiet way, and to educate the tribe in the principles and practices of civilization.

—Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D. D., to whom the country is so much indebted for his admirable work on Alaska, is now on a visit to that territory, superintending the building of two mission chapels, besides attending to other duties. A recent gift of $1,000 from a lady in Zanesville, Ohio, in aid of the one at Chileat, is mentioned as an important factor in the movement.

THE CHINESE.

—The chief official at the custom house near Bangkok, Siam, is a negro. The position is a very responsible one, and was given to him on account of his education, honesty and capacity. He is said to discharge his duties with much efficiency and satisfaction to the government.

—Mr. S. A. Butler, a pure negro, at one time a protégé of Anson Burlingame, is in charge of one of the most important departments of the Chinese Steamship Company. He is a natural organizer, and when employed by the company, systematized the business, brought order out of chaos, introduced economy, enforced discipline, and rivaled the Europeans in their steamship service. The result is that after two years’ work this Chinese Steamship Company, instead of running at a loss, has earned over $1,000,000 net profit.

—Some gentlemanly Chinese laborers in Chicago gave a banquet to about two hundred of their American Christian friends, not long since, in the rooms of the Young Men’s Christian Association. The sons of the Flowery Kingdom were in full bloom, quiet, radiant and attentive. The tables were beautifully adorned and sumptuously loaded. Speeches were made by Rev. James Powell, Franklin Fisk and Ah Sing Get. The entertainment was enlivened by the singing of a number of “Moody and Sankey” songs, which lost nothing by the slight Chinese brogue with which they were so earnestly rendered.

ITEMS FROM THE FIELD.

Woodbridge, N. C.—Rev. W. H. Ellis reports a very interesting and precious revival among the children growing out of the Band of Hope temperance work.

Beaufort, N. C.—One of the colored bishops testified to a brother that the church at Beaufort, though small, was a power for good that could not be estimated.

McIntosh, Liberty Co., Ga.—We feel especially thankful for the beautiful organ presented to us by the Smith American Organ Company; also for articles of clothing sent by the Ladies’ Benevolent Society, 2d Church, Keene, N. H., and the ladies of Framingham, Mass., to distribute among the needy ones around us. A blind father, who has a one-armed wife and seven children to care for, is just leaving us with his quota.

Woodville, Ga.—Pilgrim church was crowded last night to witness the reception of nine persons to the church. During the revival, still going on, seven persons professed conversion, and two backsliders returned home. Next Sunday night a thanksgiving service will be held and a collection will be taken up to help rebuild three churches that were blown down by the recent storm.

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Savannah, Ga.—Special meetings were held in this church in the summer. Rev. S. N. Brown, temporary supply, was aided by Rev. John McLean, of Miller’s Station. More than a score of souls were hopefully joined to Christ.

Helena, Texas.—Rev. M. Thompson, pastor, rejoices over a revival in his church. Nearly every unconverted person in the community was moved, and not a few to a final reconciliation.

Memphis, Tenn.—Pastor Imes had his people come in upon him by way of a surprise party, August 30th, to celebrate his wife’s birthday. Many useful presents, of no small value, were the tokens of love.

THE FREEDMEN.

REV. JOSEPH E. ROY, D. D., Field Superintendent, Atlanta, Ga.

KENTUCKY.

THE WORK AT BEREA.

Nestling in a charming “glade,” overshadowed by the North-western foot-hills of the mighty Appalachian mountain world, is Berea College. It is not exclusively a school for teachers, but includes the entire organization of popular education from an effective primary school up to a solid university class of twenty-five, with a normal course for instruction in methods of teaching. Its pupils are of both sexes and colors, and another year may possibly witness the white, negro and Indian quietly at work in the same class-rooms, with no rivalry except the honest pride to excel in good scholarship and manly or womanly character. But in this, for the South, exceptional feature, there comes in the most interesting peculiarity of this most “peculiar institution.” With a few exceptions from the North and the blue-grass region of Kentucky, the white students come from the great mountain country that overlooks the college campus. This region, in Kentucky, includes a country as extensive as the whole State of New Hampshire, and not unlike it in shape. Here, in a mountain world, divided into thirty counties, out of hearing of the railroad whistle, in many parts traversed only on horseback, with no village containing five thousand and very few one thousand people, dwells a population of nearly two hundred thousand, more thoroughly isolated from the New America than the settlers in Oregon or the latest hamlet in Dakota. Living almost entirely from the land, in the narrowest way, on narrow means, with few tolerable schools and a good deal of intolerable preaching, with an almost total destitution of books, newspapers and ordinary means of cultivation, completely shut off from social contact with the ruling class of the State, this people is peculiar in many ways.

Out from this interesting region come the majority of the white students of Berea. Few of them are able even to meet the yearly sum of seventy-five dollars, for which their education is given them. Many of them, even the girls, walk from their homes, and come in with nothing but a stout suit of clothes, a good head and a brave heart, paying their way as they go by such work as turns up, and the small wages of mountain school-keeping in the long summer vacations. They have no leisure to discuss the vexed topic of co-education that worries grave professors and doubting students at Yale and Harvard; indeed,[Pg 302] the young fellow not unfrequently brings in his sister, cousin and prospective “annex” to sit down at the same table of knowledge. He is more anxious to lift his own end of a problem than to quarrel with the colored boy who is tugging at the other end. Indeed, at Berea one seems to be in that ideal university where an overpowering desire for study lifts the entire body of students above a whole class of questions that even yet convulse politicians and people, schoolmen and churches, South and North. They live together; the girls, of course, under careful supervision; study, work, recite, play and worship together; students and teachers, children and grown men and women, in one family. Probably no American school of three hundred and seventy students goes through the year with so little disturbance, is so easily governed, or so generally absorbed in the work in hand. This year the faculty consists of thirteen professors and teachers under President E. H. Fairchild, and three hundred and sixty-nine students, of whom nine are in the college classical and twenty-five in the literary course, forty-five in the normal, and the remainder in the preparatory department. The average age is sixteen. Two hundred and forty-nine are colored and one hundred and twenty are white; two hundred and six males and one hundred and sixty-three females.

The instruction is excellent, probably equal in quality to any school in the State; and the proficiency of the pupils remarkable, considering their previous estate. The primary school-room contains twenty stout fellows ranging from eighteen to twenty-five years of age; but it is not uncommon for one of these boys to go forth as a tolerable school-master among the colored people after two years’ hard work at Berea. Indeed, if one were to look for signs of mental power, he need not go outside the beautiful campus of this school. We positively never witnessed such progress in learning as is the common talk among these teachers. These stalwart young men and resolute maidens from the mountains buckle to their books with a will that knows no discouragement. They go back to their homes to become the pride of their friends and the hope of their neighborhood. Nearly every student is a member of the church and the temperance society, and the carrying of arms is cause of expulsion. All classes of the Southern people are good listeners. We never addressed an audience of three hundred people that put us more decisively on our mettle than the crowd of students and villagers that did us the favor to crowd the chapel on four unpleasant nights to listen to our talks on education.

We do not propose to defend Berea against any objector. A school with such tough Kentucky roots as Fee, Hanson, and their compeers; with a history so romantic in its heroic past and so startling in its recent growth; with a foundation on three hundred acres of “sacred soil,” two hundred thousand dollars worth of excellent buildings, in a situation unrivaled in beauty; a faculty representing the best culture and character of the North-west, with the rising ability of the South; and a population of five hundred friendly people within sound of chapel bells; can be trusted to plead its own cause against all comers. It is already commending itself to many of the best people of Kentucky, receiving students from families of highest respectability in the neighborhood, and on commencement days the great tabernacle is crammed with three thousand people, from the humblest to the highest in the proud old State. Berea is a great American fact, comprehensible only to a man who has read, pondered and inwardly digested the Sermon on the Mount and its corollary, the Constitution of the United States. If no similar college should ever exist, this will live[Pg 303] in its own place in American history, a splendid evidence of the power of a consecrated education to bind together all sorts and conditions of good women and earnest men.—Dr. Mayo in Journal of Education.

SOWING IN TEARS AND REAPING IN JOY—BEREA COLLEGE.

REV. J. A. R. ROGERS.

The rule is that a long time must elapse between the sowing and the reaping. Abraham’s patience in Canaan for long years seemed destined to be fruitless in those things which God had promised him; not a foot of Canaan did he own, and he was still childless; his faith was tried to the uttermost, and only by a great struggle was he kept from despair. After centuries, that sowing began to produce a harvest, not yet but partially reaped. The recent addition of $50,000 to the endowment of Berea College calls to mind the long, weary days of struggle and almost despair in its early history. The apparent success for a time, to be followed by every sort of discouragement, was not the least of the trials of those whose labors were the occasion for Berea College. Churches were formed, and many seemed heartily in favor of the Gospel of Christ, which commands and secures love; and then persecutions would arise, and such a perfect torrent of public opinion against the “abolitionists,” that large numbers would succumb to the adverse influences, and the love of many would wax cold. Again, such persecutions would arise, that for a time only women were regarded as safe in attending the preaching services of Mr. Fee and others. After the school was started in 1858, which culminated in Berea College, there were still those great alternations of prosperity and apparent defeat which are so hard to bear. One term, large numbers of students would come, including the children of slaveholders, and the next, only those would apply for admission who could endure the reproach of being called “nigger lovers.” Even after the war, when two or three colored children entered the primary department, there was such a stampede from every department, that the principal, in sorrow, said to the few that timidly remained, “Will ye also go away?”

Those years from ’55 to ’66 were years of sowing in great sorrow. The missionaries of the A. M. A. were very poor; their salaries were $400 per year, and some of that sum must be expended for those still poorer. They lived in almost constant terror of their lives. If for any cause they were north of the Ohio River for a few weeks, they breathed such a free atmosphere that it seemed almost like getting into Heaven. By many they were regarded with suspicion and contempt. The writer remembers what cringing of the nerves he often had to endure, in walking the streets of one of the central towns of Kentucky. People would stare at him as if he were a hyena let loose. It is not easy to describe what were the sorrows of those years, the greatest of which was that so many professed friends fell away in time of danger, and that so many bearing the name of Christ at those times were ready to deny their faith.

But this sowing has in some respects given way to reaping, even in the lifetime of those who watered the ground with their tears. Now at Berea is a college in some respects unlike any other in the land. Here, three hundred in all, are seen white and colored students in about equal numbers. Here is a sort of Mecca for the colored people of the State, and a door of hope for many in the mountain region, who, though white, have had but few religious and educational privileges. Here is a college ably manned, with the confidence of the North, and growing in the regard of the South, sending forth its streams of blessing in every direction.[Pg 304] If the tears of sorrow were many, the tears of joy and thanksgiving to God have been much more abundant.

TENNESSEE.

MISS ALICE E. CARTER, NASHVILLE.

Among the men of Tennessee, the great and crying need seems to be the very practical knowledge of some trade; the range of their individual usefulness is so often limited to gardening, grooming, rock-beating and shoveling.

The talent for gardening is a dormant one in winter; rock-beating cannot be followed in the coldest weather, and it is easy to see that the other ranks may at times be filled to overflowing, and those not fortunate enough to get in, are out of employment.

What a noble enterprise for someone to found an industrial school for colored boys, which shall draw in the bright-eyed ragged boys, now lounging on the street corners or quarreling in the alleys, learning nothing except evil, daily!

To help a few such boys, though temporarily, I hold in my room, one evening in the week, a little reception. Good stories, earnest conversation, plenty of books and papers to look over while here, are the means put forth to help those who come. When they go away they carry with them text-cards and old numbers of St. Nicholas from my very primitive “circulating library.”

My cottage Sunday-school is a very interesting undertaking. Compassion for the pitiful little street waifs, too small to find their way to the remote city Sunday-schools, led me to try to make a bright spot in their day. It was a simple thing to gain permission of a woman, with four tiny girls, to hold Sunday-school in her cottage, and the simplest matter to fill the small room with children. To walk through the alley and say “Come” to any ragged, deformed or dirty little child was all that was necessary. How well our Lord understood the willingness of the people of the “highways and hedges!”

Each Sunday the little ones come with ludicrously solemn faces and decorous manners; and sitting on the beds, or a board between two chairs, and on the hearth before the fire-place, are as happy as can be.

Not one can read; not one knew the name of Jesus, except one boy whose father’s oaths made him know it; yet all know and love the story now. The teaching is necessarily by dictation, and my great wonder is that the little minds remember so much.

Their singing they do with faces all smiles, and when the moment comes for distributing the text-cards and child papers full of beautiful pictures, their joy knows no bounds. These may be loaves and fishes for which the children come, and yet, like the multitude of old, they perhaps carry away with them something better.

ALABAMA.

MRS. M. V. CURTIS, SELMA.

Have I ever written for the Missionary? Well, no; but then why not? since I have something very particular to say to my friends in the North; and I have neither head nor hand for all the letters I want to write; for there is the concert for August 30, (proceeds to be put into the winter’s supply of coal, this being the month when prices are down); and the “Harvest Home” (a literary entertainment to be given by our “Young People’s Guild” some time in October), to be arranged for; also some appropriate music to be prepared for the evening when our two “political refugees” are to lecture on Arkansas, where they have been teaching and traveling during the past two years.

Why won’t it be a stroke of policy to let that press away off in New York do the work for me, for manifolding letters is not easy, and the inspiration is lost after the first recital? I wonder if my correspondents[Pg 305] will not count this as an individual letter and send me letters in return.

How I do wish that you all could have been of the number that gathered in our pretty church a week ago Sabbath night—our pretty church, with its white walls, its wood-work of rich yellow pine, exquisite with God’s own graining, and the crimson carpet for the two platforms, the walnut table, vase and bracket, all the gift of the ladies of the church.

The night was matchless, and at an early hour a good audience had gathered (A. M. A. pastors have not always the encouragement of numbers). We had reached out into the homes through the Sunday-school children, and the result showed the wisdom of our course.

After the opening exercises, Mr. C. read to an attentive audience, Mr. De Forest’s racy letter of his experiences in the theatres of Tottori, Japan. A quartet then besought us in song to “Tell it out,” this story of Christ, to the heathen, a sermon indeed in song. One of our young teachers read of the two mice the little Sunday-school scholar brought as her two mites, for so she understood it. Another gave a crumb for the boys, found in the Missionary; and when a sweet soprano and alto pled for Burmah, and Burmah herself seemed to speak in the plaintive strains, that were borne to our ears through an open window, the effect was impressive, and the surprise and pleasure of the audience was manifest. The “Little Zulu Band” sang a sweet song of the needs of Zululand.

And now I have come to the crowning exercise of the evening; for surely that patient little group on the front seat, conscious of a secret hidden behind the white cards they wore, was not there for nothing. They knew that the reason they were bidden to wait till the last was just because theirs was to be the best of all, and so it proved.

Quietly they filed up the opposite aisles, making a semicircle in the alcove back of the pulpit (which, by the way, had been removed). Above their heads, on the white walls of the alcove, was the reminder of our Conference, two years ago, the motto, “Praise ye the Lord.” Then those pretty evergreen letters, that did duty at Burlington, Wis., were employed again to spell out the sweet motto, “All for Jesus.” The recitations, concert exercises, questions and answers that followed, were well given, and were a little sermon in themselves. How we prayed that God would bless them to each one present! But the climax was reached when one of our young men came forward, and taking up a large globe that had been standing upon the table, said: “To-night we will unite and extend the motto to ‘All the world for Jesus.’” His manner was dignified and his words impressive, as he went on to tell of the needs of the whole world. Then came from each of the eleven, in answer to his question, “From what countries they should come who before Jesus in white should stand?” the names of country after country, the wide world over.

Turning to the audience the speaker told us not to say that time was too far off, and surprised most of us by saying that if each one now living, who had taken “All for Jesus” for his life motto, should bring one soul to Jesus each year, the whole world would soon be converted.

The same young girls who had sung “Zulu Band,” came forward and sang sweetly, “All for Jesus,” the others joining in the chorus. The groups remained in their places while the audience arose and joined in the doxology, and with reverent heads received the benediction.

Our W. M. A. gathered for its second “Missionary Tea Party” on Friday of the same week. The reading of letters from our absent sisters and from “The Morning Star,” together with the singing[Pg 306] of missionary songs, occupied an hour, and while we discussed our tea, we chatted of what we could do for our Selma boys at Tougaloo, and decided to call our September meeting a “Missionary Quilting,” and put on and off two quilts. The ladies say it can be done.

GEORGIA.

Extract from a fraternal letter of Rev. T. L. Day, in behalf of the National Council to the General Conference of the Congregational Methodists, in session at Fredonia, Ga.:

“We feel that you agree with us when we express the hope that the time will come when there will be no distinction of North and South, but when our whole people will understand and trust and love each other. Political parties pass away and new ones take their places; but, God helping us, the Congregational method of church government shall never pass away, but it shall be (as long as grass grows and streamlets flow) a firm bond of union and brotherly love between us and you and all other Christians who accept it in its purity. The spirit of the Congregationalism we honor laments both the bigotry of sect and the bitterness of sectional politics. It teaches us, both as citizens and Christians, to love each other. In this spirit of love some of the ablest and most devoted ministers and educators of our denomination have been giving their best strength to our missionary institutions of education in the South. This work is supported by the self-sacrificing contributions of our churches. They believe (what your leading men have told us) that the race for which they do this missionary work must have a training and education in morality and in religious principle, or they will be the greatest source of danger and evil to the South. We know that these brethren are striving to work wholly in the spirit of Christ; and that every noble-minded Southerner, if he could only see their hearts and their devotion to the future of your fair land, would wish them God-speed. And if any of you, who are our brethren in the faith, should ever come to see good results from their efforts, and should be moved to speak the word of sympathy to those engaged in this lonely and difficult work, it will surely be reckoned to you by our Lord and Master as the ‘cup of cold water,’ given in the name of a disciple.”

TEXAS.

DEATH OF S. B. WHITE.

REV. J. W. ROBERTS, PARIS.

Our faithful missionary, S. B. White, died about three o’clock yesterday, of congestive chills and fever.

He closed a very successful school session here the first of July. He went out north of Paris, on Red River, to teach. The water and climate did not agree with him. He made out to teach one month and a few days by hard struggle, and came up Friday before last, looking like the very shadow of death, conducted Sunday-school on Sunday, and was here to preaching that night. Two o’clock Sunday night he started back to his school, notwithstanding he was warned not to return. He reached there through hard struggle, and was there from Tuesday to Friday, trying to get some conveyance to bring him home. On Friday, August 19, he heard of a wagon that was coming in, so he walked two miles from the place where he was boarding, to take passage, which walk was too exhausting for his already diseased frame. Thus he had to come in a rough wagon in all of Friday’s scorching sun, a distance of some twenty-one or twenty-two miles, with frequent fainting spells. He reached here Friday afternoon at 6 o’clock, where he had the best attention shown him both by his friends and physician. He was not confined to the bed until Monday night.

[Pg 307]

He had not the least fear of dying. He said: “Don’t fret for me; but I want you all to meet me in Heaven. I am going to that beautiful land of rest to live with Jesus. ‘There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins,’” etc. He described the kind of coffin he wished to be buried in. He was the most faithful Christian I ever saw. We have lost a noble Christian worker.

AFRICA.

We have the following information relating to the death of Mr. Kemp at the Mendi Mission, from Rev. J. M. Williams, missionary at Kaw Mendi. Mr. Williams’ long experience in Africa has qualified his heart and mind to sympathize most fully with the afflicted. He is a colored man, born in British Guiana, South America, and has rendered much good service to the cause of missions during the past sixteen years.

Mr. Williams writes:—Of the dangerous illness of Mrs. Kemp and of the death of Mr. Kemp, I had not heard a word till I arrived at Good Hope on Saturday. I knocked at the door of the mission house with the fullest expectation of enjoying the company of Mr. and Mrs. Kemp. The closed doors and windows might have awakened apprehension that all was not well, but they did not. The death-like silence that was within, after my repeated knocking at the door, created not the slightest suspicion or foreboding that sickness and death had preceded me, and forever removed my beloved and esteemed friend. After the third rapping at the door, the watchman came to the foot of the stairs and said: “No pusson there, sir;” and in reply to my questions, he further said: “Missis done gone to town. The new massa that came t’other day, he done died.” I could not, and did not, believe the man till after he replied three times to my half-frantic interrogations, “Massa Kemp done died.” Words are inadequate to express my feelings then and now. During my sixteen years’ residence in Africa no event has so sadly affected me as the death of Mr. Kemp, except the death of my two children. I feel it keenly. I deeply sympathize with Mrs. Kemp and with the Association. It is a severe blow to us all, and especially to this station and mission. Although the residence of the Kemps here was short, yet they were much respected and beloved by the inhabitants of Bonthe. By the Europeans, from the Commandant downward, and by the colored people, I have heard them spoken of in the most flattering terms.

While still suffering from the intensity of grief produced by such sudden and unexpected intelligence, Mr. Jowett came and confirmed what I had heard from the watchman. I was informed by Mr. Jowett that Brother Kemp left Good Hope Station for Avery to see Mr. Jackson on the 11th of May, and returned on the 13th. On the way home he was exposed to several heavy showers of rain. About two days after his return he was attacked with intermittent fever. Mrs. Kemp was also dangerously ill and not expected to recover. This kept him up when he ought to have been in bed. Under the combined weight of a disordered mind and body, he sank rapidly until life departed. He had a strong presentiment, two days before his death, that his end was near and his work on earth done, and informed Mrs. Kemp of his convictions. He said: “The doctor has done all he can do. I am ready to die. I commend you to[Pg 308] God.” During his illness he was attended by Brother Jowett, Mrs. During, and other kind friends.

He died on Sunday morning, May 29th, at 10 o’clock, without a struggle or groan. He fell asleep in Jesus, and his disembodied spirit took its happy flight to join the great congregation in Heaven. His remains were moved to the chapel at 4 p. m., and from thence to the mission cemetery, followed by a large concourse of every color, rank and station in the community. According to his request, his body now lies at the entrance of the grave-yard under the shade of a large mango tree. I shall do my best to get a few iron-tree posts, and to have the grave enclosed as soon as possible after I return to Kaw Mendi, and I cherish the hope that the friends of the mission will procure a desirable tombstone to be erected over the grave, and send from the States a marble inscription to be put into the chapel.

Mr. Jowett is now taking charge of the Station, and Mr. Goodman is teaching the school at Debia. I sincerely wish you could find a dozen such men as Mr. Kemp to send to Africa; only be sure that they come with sound livers, and be entirely free from heart disease. The climate, I think, is more favorable to lung disease than America. I believe men of any color will live as long in health in Africa as elsewhere, provided they visit America or Europe, for a change, once in every two or three years.

THE INDIANS.

WORK ON A SHORT TOUR.

REV. MYRON EELLS, SKOKOMISH, WASH. TER.

We have been made sad by the death of one of our most prominent church members, John F. Palmer. He was at the time of his death working at a saw-mill, when he was accidentally knocked off from a platform, about ten feet below.

He was the first Indian to join this church. He lived, however, to see his wife and her two sisters, whom he brought up, members of the church; the oldest one married, and her daughter the first Indian child who received the rite of infant baptism. He was far ahead in many respects of any other of the Indians, especially in regard to old religious superstitions. While many of the Indians seem willing to give up their old ideas as a religion, they find it very difficult to get rid of a superstitious fear. He, however, seemed to have overcome this entirely. This was partly due to his early life. When he was about ten years old he went to live with a white family in this Territory. He afterwards spent several years on board a sailing vessel, and about twelve years ago he came to this reservation, where he served as interpreter ten years. He understood the Twana, Nisqually, Clallam, Russian and English languages, and could read and write the latter, though he never went to school more than about three weeks. Kind persons in the family in which he lived and on the ship taught him, and he had a library at the time of his death worth fifty or sixty dollars, and took several papers and magazines, both eastern and western, and even wrote a few articles for the papers.

“Jack at all trades and good at some,” was the pleasant way in which Dr. Schaff put it, when some of the students in the Theological Seminary at Hartford had done up some furniture for him to send to New Haven. I have often been reminded of this expression, and especially during a short tour I lately made to Dunginess. We missionaries have to be[Pg 309] the first part of the sentence, and we console ourselves with the hope that the latter part may sometimes be true. When three miles from home, the first duty was to stop and attend the funeral of a white man who had recently died. Forty-five miles on, the evening of the next day until late at night was spent in assisting one of the Government employees in holding court over four Indians who had been drunk; a fifth had escaped to the British side, and was free from the trial. This kind of business occasionally comes in as an aid to the agent. I seldom have anything to do with it on the reservation, as the agent can attend to it; but when among Indians, off from the reservation, where neither of us can be more than once in six months or thereabouts, it sometimes saves him much trouble and expense, and seems to do as much good as a sermon. It is of but little use to preach to drunken Indians, and a little law sometimes helps the Gospel. The agent reciprocates by talking Gospel to them on the Sabbath on his trips.

On reaching Dunginess the afternoon was spent in introducing an Indian from British Columbia, who had taken me there in his canoe, to the Clallam Indians and the school, and in comforting two parents, Christian Indians, whose youngest child lay at the point of death. The next morning she died, and as no minister had ever been among these Indians at any previous funeral, they needed some instruction; so it was my duty to help dig the grave and make the coffin, comfort them, and attend the funeral in a snow-storm.

The Sabbath was spent in holding two services with them, one mainly a service of song; and as there was a part of the day not occupied, at the request of the whites near by, I gave them a sermon. The next day I found that “blue Monday” had to be adjourned. Years ago the Indians purchased their land, but owing to a mistake of the surveyor, it was necessary that the deeds should be made out again; so, in order to get all the Indians together who were needed, and the proper officer, I walked fourteen miles and rode six in a canoe, and then saw that nineteen deeds were properly signed, which required sixty-two signatures, besides the witnessing, acknowledging and filing of them, which required seventy-six names more. The plat of their town, Jamestown, was also filed and recorded, and all after half-past three o’clock. When this was done, I assisted the Indians to get two marriage licenses, when we went to the church, where I addressed them on two different subjects, after which the two weddings took place, and by nine o’clock we were done. The monotony of the next day was varied by a visit to the school, helping the chief to select a burying ground (for their dead had been buried in various places), a walk of ten miles, and a wedding of a white couple, who had been very kind to me in my work there, one of them being a member of our church.

On my way home, while waiting for the steamers to connect, I took a trip of about fifty miles to help in regard to the finishing of the Indian census of last year for General Walker and Major Powell, and then on my way home, by the kindness of the captain of the steamer, who waited half an hour for me, I was able to catch and take to the reservation the fifth Indian at Port Gamble who had been drunk, and had returned from the British side.

I have never had a vacation since I have been here, almost seven years, unless such things as these may be called vacations. They are recreation, work, and vacation, all at once.

While at Dunginess I learned one thing which somewhat pleased me. A few weeks before, a medicine man made a feast on Sabbath evening, and invited all the Indians to it. In connection with it there was also a large amount[Pg 310] of their incantations. The feast was a bait, and the Indians went, the members of the church as well as the others leaving the evening service for it. Mr. Blakeslee, the school-teacher there, wrote me, as he felt very sad about it. On reaching the place, I found that on the same Sabbath evening, before the feast was over, those Christian Indians, feeling that they were doing wrong, left the place and went to one of their houses, where they confessed their sin and held a prayer meeting over it, and on the following Thursday evening, at the general prayer meeting, made a public statement of it. We could ask for nothing more, but could thank the Holy Spirit for inclining them thus to do, before any white person had spoken to them on the subject.

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., Robert B. Forman, Rev. T. K. Noble, Hon F. F. Low, Rev. I. E. Dwinell, D. D., Hon. Samuel Cross, Rev. S. H. Willey, D. D., Jacob S. Taber.

Directors: Rev. George Mooar, D. D., Hon. E. D. Sawyer, Rev. E. P. Baker, James M. Haven, Esq., Rev. Joseph Rowell, Rev. John Kimball, A. L. Van Blarcon, Esq., George Harris, Esq., and the Secretary ex officio.

Secretary: Rev. W. C. Pond. Treasurer: E. Palache, Esq.

“STEADFAST, IMMOVABLE.”

BY REV. WM. C. POND.

It was in the last week in July that one of our Chinese brethren at Marysville, a lad of only 13 years—Ng Gan Don by name—called on one of his cousins to inquire whether money which he had deposited with this cousin to be sent to his father in China, had yet gone forward. The cousin declined to satisfy him upon this point, but wished himself to be satisfied upon another. So, taking Gan Don with yet another cousin into an inner apartment, they inquired into his religious views and practices. They had been specially commissioned, so they said, by Gan Don’s mother, to see to it that what he might hear and see in the land of the Golden Mountains should work no detriment to the religious ideas she had instilled in his mind. Gan Don acknowledged that he had exchanged those views and practices for some which he saw to be wiser and more true; that he no longer worshipped idols or ancestors, but that he believed in Jesus and was going to worship Him. They argued with him, but found him more than a match for them on that arena; and so, being two against one, and that one but a boy, they were easily emboldened to see what virtue there might be in blows. The blows fell fast and hard, and the poor lad’s head on which they fell was suffering sorely, but he maintained his integrity, and told them that he would never worship idols, even if they should undertake to kill him. At length he was released, and went, battered and bleeding, to the mission house. Our brethren, thinking that a little insight into Christian laws might do these persecutors good, entered a complaint against them, and they were fined $30 each.

EXCITEMENT IN SACRAMENTO.

The Record-Union, of Sacramento, tells the story under this heading:—“Chinatown Preaching. Chinese Missionaries Ku-Kluxed, but not Terrified.” I wish you had space for the entire article, but it would cover too many pages. Suffice it to say, that in connection with other Chinese Christians,[Pg 311] our helper, Lem Chung, maintains a regular street-preaching service each Sabbath afternoon, in the very heart of the Sacramento Chinatown. Last Sabbath (August 14), as he and his companions approached the place, they found themselves confronted by a large white poster covered with Chinese characters. White is the emblem of mourning among the Chinese, and gave to the poster much the same significance that black, emblazoned with skull and crossbones, would have done to the colored voters of the South some years ago. Many of the heathen Chinese had gathered to watch the effect of this woful paper on the advocates of the American heresy; and mingled surprise and horror seized them when Lem Chung proceeded coolly to take it down from the wall and read it aloud to them all. I give you his translation of its contents;—“It is claimed by the Christian preachers that Christ is the Lord of heaven and earth and the Creator. They only preach to make money, and it is useless to dispute with them; but something must be said to inform the people against this new false religion. It is learned from Christianity that Jesus was born only 1,881 years ago, which proves that it is false that he made the world; and telling a falsehood about this, they cannot be believed about anything else. Or, if Jesus was born before the world was made, then there was no world to hold Him when He was first born, or for Him to be upon, and His parents would have starved to death. How is it that you fellows keep so happy when you preach such news as this to us? Notice is hereby given that such of the Chinese people as have been converted to Christianity must not follow that way any more. Moreover, this religion must not be preached any more on the street, and if any shall do so they shall be arrested by the Six Companies and punished for preaching false doctrines and deceiving the people. They shall be given eighty lashes, and then dragged to the grave-yard and buried alive; their bones shall not be taken back to China, but shall remain foreign ghosts forever; and then they can believe in Jesus all they are a mind to. Whoever shall dare to take this white notice down shall be the son of no father.”

The effect of the placard was simply to secure a larger audience and a closer attention at the preaching service, to demonstrate the futility of gods that men could make and men destroy, and to give our helper and his friends the best possible opportunity to do two things: 1st, to show that Confucius urges all men to study and seek for the truth wherever they can find it, and those who propose to beat and kill and doom men for doing this, are no followers of that great master; and, 2d, to illustrate the Christian spirit by inviting those who had “put up the white poster to come to the mission-house, where they would be kindly treated,” and find themselves in the midst of good friends.

FONG GET LOY IN CHINA.

Fong Get Loy was one of our earliest converts, and though only a house servant, has long been a pillar in our Sacramento mission work. Somewhat more than a year ago he returned to China and spent several months. I have been greatly interested in his account of his experiences there, and at my request he has written them out, as follows, (the original in Chinese; the translation by Lem Chung):

Dear Brother in Christ: According to your request, I will at this time send you account of my late visit in China; and what I doing while there. When I sailed from San Francisco, two of our Sacramento mission boys go with me on the ship. Every day we prayed together and talk about Jesus. We take thirty-three days sailing to Hong Kong. Before we landed,[Pg 312] just as we casting anchor, we three gathered to hold prayer meeting, that God keep us from evil and temptation in China, and help us to work for Him. At the same time our heathen countrymen sacrificed to the goddess of the sea. I met our Christian brother, Fung Affoo, in Hong Kong; stayed there one day and two nights. Then I take Chinese schooner, sail hundred fifty miles to my own town, which took two days more before I get home. One year before I return to China I sent have house built. When I arrived home, I found idols in some of the rooms to worship: in the kitchen, to the god who takes care the cooking; at the front door, the one who looks and guards the door to let no evil spirits come in to trouble us; also, in the parlor I found the one who watches the whole house. I found blocks of wood with names of ancestors, carefully keep time of birth and death. All these they expect me to worship on my return. I told them: “My father dead—gone away. If he bad man when he live, God punish him now. He would be shut up in prison; can he come? They say ‘No.’ I say: ‘If my father good man, he happy now; he in a good place; he don’t want to come here, eat anything.’ I tell them: ‘You put up the god to take care the cooking; you sit down, do nothing; by-and-by you not have anything to cook. Somebody else have no god in the kitchen; they go to work; by and by they have something to eat!’ I say: ‘You place the idol by the front door; you leave the door open, not watch; you think no thief come? God made all things. He is the one to worship. Idols cannot help you.’ They say to me: ‘You no worship idol, by and by you have no house, no children, no money.’ I answer: ‘Other nations that not worship idols have more money and better houses than any we have in China. We go work for them to get money. We do not have to worship idols to get money.’ I say: ‘Whomsoever worship gods made by men’s hands, it is transgress to God.’ They say: ‘How is this our nation so great, so many wise men all worshipping idols; are they all transgress to Him? Is your experience higher than they?’ I say to them: ‘The idols and ancestors have no spirit nor power to help them any.’ Once in a while the people are crowded at my door. They shouted and said: ‘Well, if you dare to destroy your gods and ancestors, and nothing happen to your family, we will believe you.’ I then took a chair, got up in the parlor, took the goddess which my wife put there, and most all the family help her. I take a hatchet, chop it into pieces, and boil the tea with it. Oh! what astonishment to them! So they disperse. After that, my wife and my son both received the doctrine of the Bible, and every morning and evening we all would offer prayer, and at our meals asked God’s blessing. My wife more faithful than I. She willing to put away the idols, and like to go from house to house, when she have a chance, to tell the people about Jesus. My son attends school. All his school-mates laugh at him, but still he pray to God that He give him more faith, that he not care about the laughing. At the school they have a person’s name which they required to worship, that he may help them study and learn; but my son not want to worship him, after he believe in Jesus. He told them: ‘That’s nothing, only a piece of paper.’ The teacher compel him to do like the others. One day a woman in my town came to me, and asked me to pray for her son. He gone away from her. He send no money to support her. She said: ‘Pray for me that he thinks what he doing now, and may change his conduct, send something to help me.’ I knelt down with her, and pray God that He answer our prayer and bless this woman. Not many days after this God answered that[Pg 313] prayer, and sent the money, and, with it, a new heart, for she believe, and thank our Heavenly Father, and came to be a Christian. Now a few others with her and my family keep the holy Sabbath, and have a meeting together. Sometimes they go to the mission station a few miles off, to hear the Gospel. Before, when I went back to China [i.e., on his former visit to his home], no Christian or missionary at that part of the province of Canton, but last year I find several hundreds become Christians not far from my home. Many times I go to hear the missionary talk about Christ. Oh, how I thank the Lord that He sent the missionary over there to speak the Gospel to them, and take away the darkness, that they may, by and by, more and more come into the sheep-fold and glorify God! I stayed at home seven months. Every day I work for Jesus while I there. When the time come for me to say good-by, and return to California, I feel I like great deal better to stay and work there for Christ. I promise myself, as soon as I can gain enough to live upon, I will return and give my whole time to work for my countrymen, and bring all I can to bow down to the true God.”

When will the American Missionary Association be ready to keep such men at work in their native land, preaching Jesus?

GLEANINGS.

—A friend has anonymously contributed the entire cost of the new steel boat required for the Baptist expedition on the African Lakes, and it is to be named the Plymouth.

—A Virginia negro has recently taken out a patent for a fire escape, which is composed of lattice work that can be shut up into very small space or extended into a safe ladder, and can also be used as a pike to throw in tottering walls.

—The following plan for the abolition of slavery in Egypt has been approved by Col. Gordon, and will probably be adopted by the Khedive’s Government:

1.—Registration of all existing slaves in the Mudiriehs of the Soudan, and of Cairo (Lower Egypt), by the Governors.

2.—Registers to be kept in each Government office of the names of slaves and their owners, with description of each.

3.—Every slave to be free if not registered after expiration of six months (the period given for registration). All slaves born after signature of this decree to be free.

4.—Register books to be closed forever after the expiration of six months.

5.—Owners of slaves thus registered to be bound to produce Government certificates corresponding with the register books, when required to do so by the Government of Egypt.

6.—The Governors of Egypt and of the Soudan to proclaim this throughout the land.

7.—All purchases or sales of slaves from family to family are to be endorsed on the registration papers and inscribed in the Government books of registry.—Anti-Slavery Reporter.

—One of the most successful and trustworthy farmers in Georgia is a negro named Harper, who has just paid $32,000 for 2,100 acres of land lying on Broad River, in Oglethorpe County. He is reported to be one of the best farmers in the country. He is economical; his family all work: most of his money was made by renting land and growing cotton.

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—Prof. Wm. S. Scarborough, formerly a pupil at Atlanta University, has published a neat volume of 150 pages, entitled “First Lessons in Greek.” The work was designed to be an imitation of Jones’ “First Lessons in Latin,” and to give a clear and concise statement of the rudimentary forms of the language, with copious notes and references to the grammars of Goodwin and Hadley. Under Part II. Mr. Scarborough gives a few selections taken from the Anabasis and Memorabilia of Xenophon. The work is a good indication of what may be expected from the colored people when they shall have had the advantages of a higher education.

—“Worship in Song,” edited by Jos. P. Holbrook, Mus. Doc., and published by A. S. Barnes & Co., contains 450 pages, and is handsomely bound and attractive. Those best acquainted with Dr. Holbrook recognize his excellent judgment and taste, and the great attractiveness of his compositions. The author and publishers invite a practical test of their book, and it appears to quite meet the expectations of those who may adopt it for public worship.

—Bishop Hurst, in the Quarterly Review, writes on this wise respecting the work of the Methodist Episcopal and the Congregational churches at the South:

The two churches which are pre-eminently American, which have grown out of the ideas, convictions and the religious wants of the people under the free institutions of this country, are the Methodist Episcopal and the Congregational. They have laid foundations in the north and west which will endure for all coming time, and both are now doing the same in the South. If considered as antagonistic, which it is not, but rather co-operative, the real rival of the Methodist Episcopal church in the South is the Congregational, with its institutions of learning sustained by the American Missionary Association. It moves upon those lines which will give it a future, while other and older denominations are sleeping, apparently unconscious of the mighty revolution that has taken place, and indifferent to those principles which will inevitably impress themselves upon the church of the next century. Intelligence and morality are everywhere seen in that communion. That it is gaining a foot-hold in the South is obvious to every observer—a fact for which we are thankful. It is not carrying New England ideas into the cabins of the colored people, but it is doing better by bringing them out of their cabins and squalor and ignorance into the New England atmosphere and society created among themselves and for their posterity. We do not entertain a doubt that this denomination will become strong in the South, and we shall rejoice to see the time when it will devote as much attention to the white people as it now does to the colored. Southern ecclesiastical bourbonism is sadly, if not hopelessly, fossilized, and it is very desirable that various churches unite in bringing new spiritual life to the masses in the South, both white and colored.

—Some have made a considerable ado about “Yankee school-teachers” in the negro schools in the South, and in some cases our heathen have acted much as the heathen of Canterbury Green (Ct.) acted in 1831. Perhaps some of them have not been altogether to our taste; perhaps some of them have mixed in with the “three R’s” some things not to our edification. But what else could be done? Would qualified Southern men and women have taken these places when the Northern teachers came? Would they do it now? Not generally, though some of the best would, as a very few of the[Pg 315] best have begun to do. Suppose these Northern teachers had not come—that nobody had taught the negroes, set free and citizens! The South would have been uninhabitable by this time. Some may resent this. Be it so; they resent the truth.—From “Our Brother in Black” by Atticus G. Haygood, D. D., Pres. of Emory College, Oxford, Ga.

CHILDREN’S PAGE.

A MISSIONARY POTATO.

The missionary concert at the Congregational church, last Sunday night, was interesting, and in some respects novel. There is a bit of history connected with it. Two little girls belonging to the Sunday-school some time ago became so inspired with missionary zeal that, after casting about for ways to get money for the purpose, they devised a doll show, and carried it through here last winter with considerable success, netting five dollars. That money they sent to Fisk University, with request for report concerning its use. A letter came back, enclosing a letter from a Fisk student, written from Mississippi, where the young man was teaching to earn money to continue his studies at the University. That letter told of a colored boy, one of the pupils in the student’s school, and made an appeal for him. The boy was the son of his mother’s former master, and since she was emancipated the mother had married. The step-father hired the boy to horse-racers and saloon-keepers, and in various ways kept him under bad influences and away from school. The boy and his mother were ambitious that he should be educated; and when, a short time previous, the step-father had sickened and died, one obstacle seemed removed.

Another obstacle was lack of means, and for that the student appealed, in a letter written in answer to one from our people here, and it was for that purpose that the concert of last Sunday night was given by the Young People’s Missionary Circle of the Congregational Sabbath-school, organized since the little girls’ doll show enterprise. But now the enterprise is shared with them by the other churches, for they all suspended their services on this occasion, and Messrs. Sanders, Walter and Monroe participated in the devotional exercises, and their people swelled the congregation. The exercises, recitations, essays and Jubilee Songs were creditable and entertaining.

A collection was taken for the benefit of Master Walter, the ambitious Mississippi boy, and then a novel feature was introduced. Mr. Dickinson stated that last spring one of the boys in the congregation had noticed for two Sundays, in one corner of the church, a potato, from some source unknown. The thought came to the boy that he would take it home and plant it, for the benefit of missionary interests. He had done so, and now brought the proceeds, some twenty or thirty potatoes, big and little, but mostly little, and desired them to be sold to separate persons who would, make the same use of them next year.

The potatoes were thereupon offered for sale, and bought up, mostly at ten cents apiece; and we may expect to hear more about that missionary potato next year. Potatoes, $2.25.

The proceeds of the evening amounted to $15.05, which is forwarded to the student at the University, where he has already taken the boy Walter, trusting that the needed help will come. The student’s name is McClellan.—Cambridge (Ill.) Chronicle.

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Constitution of the American Missionary Association.

INCORPORATED JANUARY 30, 1849.

Art. I. This Society shall be called “The American Missionary Association.”

Art. II. The object of this Association shall be to conduct Christian missionary and educational operations, and diffuse a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures in our own and other countries which are destitute of them, or which present open and urgent fields of effort.

Art. III. Any person of evangelical sentiments,[A] who professes faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is not a slaveholder, or in the practice of other immoralities, and who contributes to the funds, may become a member of the Society; and by the payment of thirty dollars, a life member; provided that children and others who have not professed their faith may be constituted life members without the privilege of voting.

Art. IV. This Society shall meet annually, in the month of September, October or November, for the election of officers and the transaction of other business, at such time and place as shall be designated by the Executive Committee.

Art. V. The annual meeting shall be constituted of the regular officers and members of the Society at the time of such meeting, and of delegates from churches, local missionary societies, and other co-operating bodies, each body being entitled to one representative.

Art. VI. The officers of the Society shall be a President, Vice-Presidents, a Recording Secretary, Corresponding Secretaries, Treasurer, two Auditors, and an Executive Committee of not less than twelve, of which the Corresponding Secretaries shall be advisory, and the Treasurer ex officio, members.

Art. VII. To the Executive Committee shall belong the collecting and disbursing of funds; the appointing, counseling, sustaining and dismissing (for just and sufficient reasons) missionaries and agents; the selection of missionary fields; and, in general, the transaction of all such business as usually appertains to the executive committees of missionary and other benevolent societies; the Committee to exercise no ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the missionaries; and its doings to be subject always to the revision of the annual meeting, which shall, by a reference mutually chosen, always entertain the complaints of any aggrieved agent or missionary; and the decision of such reference shall be final.

The Executive Committee shall have authority to fill all vacancies occurring among the officers between the regular annual meetings; to apply, if they see fit, to any State Legislature for acts of incorporation; to fix the compensation, where any is given, of all officers, agents, missionaries, or others in the employment of the Society; to make provision, if any, for disabled missionaries, and for the widows and children of such as are deceased; and to call, in all parts of the country, at their discretion, special and general conventions of the friends of missions, with a view to the diffusion of the missionary spirit, and the general and vigorous promotion of the missionary work.

Five members of the Committee shall constitute a quorum for transacting business.

Art. VIII. This society, in collecting funds, in appointing officers, agents and missionaries, and in selecting fields of labor and conducting the missionary work, will endeavor particularly to discountenance slavery, by refusing to receive the known fruits of unrequited labor, or to welcome to its employment those who hold their fellow-beings as slaves.

Art. IX. Missionary bodies, churches or individuals agreeing to the principles of this society, and wishing to appoint and sustain missionaries of their own, shall be entitled to do so through the agency of the Executive Committee, on terms mutually agreed upon.

Art. X. No amendment shall be made to this Constitution without the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present at a regular annual meeting; nor unless the proposed amendment has been submitted to a previous meeting, or to the Executive Committee in season to be published by them (as it shall be their duty to do, if so submitted) in the regular official notifications of the meeting.

FOOTNOTE:

The American Missionary Association.

AIM AND WORK.

To preach the Gospel to the poor. It originated in a sympathy with the almost friendless slaves. Since Emancipation it has devoted its main efforts to preparing the Freedmen for their duties as citizens and Christians in America, and as missionaries in Africa. As closely related to this, it seeks to benefit the caste-persecuted Chinese in America, and to co-operate with the Government in its humane and Christian policy toward the Indians. It has also a mission in Africa.

STATISTICS.

Churches: In the South—In Virginia, 1; North Carolina, 6; South Carolina, 2; Georgia, 13; Kentucky, 6; Tennessee, 4; Alabama, 14; Louisiana, 17; Mississippi, 4; Texas, 6. Africa, 2. Among the Indians, 1. Total, 76.

Institutions Founded, Fostered or Sustained in the South.—Chartered: Hampton, Va.; Berea, Ky.; Talladega, Ala.; Atlanta, Ga.; Nashville, Tenn.; Tougaloo, Miss.; New Orleans, La.; and Austin, Texas—8. Graded or Normal Schools: at Wilmington, Raleigh, N. C.; Charleston, Greenwood, S. C.; Savannah, Macon, Atlanta, Ga.; Montgomery, Mobile, Athens, Selma, Ala.; Memphis, Tenn.—12. Other Schools, 31. Total, 51.

Teachers, Missionaries and Assistants.—Among the Freedmen, 284; among the Chinese, 22; among the Indians, 11; in Africa, 13. Total, 330. Students—In Theology, 102; Law, 23; in College Course, 75; in other studies, 7,852. Total, 8,052. Scholars taught by former pupils of our schools, estimated at 150,000. Indians under the care of the Association, 13,000.

WANTS.

1. A steady increase of regular income to keep pace with the growing work. This increase can only be reached by regular and larger contributions from the churches, the feeble as well as the strong.

2. Additional Buildings for our higher educational institutions, to accommodate the increasing numbers of students; Meeting Houses for the new churches we are organizing; more Ministers, cultured and pious, for these churches.

3. Help for Young Men, to be educated as ministers here and missionaries to Africa—a pressing want.

Before sending boxes, always correspond with the nearest A. M. A. office as below:

MAGAZINE.

This Magazine will be sent gratuitously, if desired, to the Missionaries of the Association; to Life Members; to all Clergymen who take up collections for the Association; to Superintendents of Sabbath-schools; to College Libraries; to Theological Seminaries; to Societies of Inquiry on Missions; and to every donor who does not prefer to take it as a subscriber, and contributes in a year not less than five dollars.

Those who wish to remember the American Missionary Association in their last Will and Testament are earnestly requested to use the following

FORM OF BEQUEST.

“I bequeath to my executor (or executors) the sum of —— dollars, in trust, to pay the same in —— days after my decease to the person who, when the same is payable, shall act as Treasurer of the ‘American Missionary Association’ of New York City, to be applied, under the direction of the Executive Committee of the Association, to its charitable uses and purposes.”

The Will should be attested by three witnesses (in some States three are required, in other States only two), who should write against their names their places of residence (if in cities, their street and number). The following form of attestation will answer for every State in the Union: “Signed, sealed, published and declared by the said (A. B.) as his last Will and Testament, in presence of us, who, at the request of the said A. B., and in his presence, and in the presence of each other, have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses.” In some States it is required that the Will should be made at least two months before the death of the testator.

DAVID H. GILDERSLEEVE, PRINTER, 101 CHAMBERS STREET, NEW YORK.