CONTENTS.

American Missionary Association,

56 READE STREET, NEW YORK.

COMMUNICATIONS

relating To the work of the Association may be addressed to the Corresponding Secretary; those Relating To the collecting fields, to the District Secretaries; letters for the Editor of the “American Missionary,” to Rev. G. D. Pike, D.D., at the New York Office.

DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

may be sent to H. W. Hubbard, Treasurer, 56 Reade Street, New York, or, when more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, Rev. C. L. Woodworth, Dist. Sec., 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., or Rev. James Powell, Dist. Sec., 112 West Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member. Letters relating to boxes and barrels of clothing may be addressed to the persons above named.

FORM OF A 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.

The Annual Report of the A. M. A. contains the Constitution of the Association and By-Laws of the Executive Committee. A copy will be sent free on application.

The

American Missionary.

American Missionary Association.

The annual meeting of this Association was held in Plymouth Church, Cleveland, O., Oct. 24–26, and was one of great interest. In this number of the Missionary we have endeavored to give a glimpse of what was said and done. For want of space, almost nothing is published entire except the reports of the committees.

For Dr. Goodell’s sermon on “More Power from Christ for the World’s Larger Needs,” Dr. Ward’s paper on “Caste in Education,” Dr. Noble’s on “God’s Way of Vindicating Brotherhood” and Dr. Roy’s on “The New South,” we must for the present refer our readers to The Advance of November 2d.

The papers read before the Women’s Meeting by Mrs. Andrews, Miss Cahill and Miss Hamilton are reserved for mention in the January Missionary.

The addresses given by Dr. Gregory, Dr. Rust and Mr. Beard, representing the Baptist, the Methodist and the Society of Friends may be used in compiling a pamphlet relating to the work done among the freedmen. Other addresses or papers may also be given in pamphlet form.

THE FINANCIAL OUTLOOK.

That part of the report of the Committee on Finances at our Annual Meeting which says: “More ample facilities for church and educational work bring with them larger demands for funds, so that simply to preserve its efficiency in fields already occupied, the Association requires an annual increase in contributions,” will be readily appreciated by all who are accustomed to study the laws of growth. Every new building either for school or church purposes; every additional scholar, whether among the Negroes, Indians or Chinese; every church and school organized, calls for enlarged expenditures. The recommendation at Cleveland that $50,000 be added to the current income of the Association for general uses during the next fiscal year is based on sound business principles. It is not one dollar more than will be required to give the greatest efficiency[354] to our operations. As in the past, so in the future we must have, if we do what is pressing to be done, money for special purposes.

1. The church work, that has grown so steadily under our care, requires $10,000 for enlargement the coming year.

2. The work contemplated among the Indians, in addition to that carried on by us during the past year, will also require at least $20,000.

3. We have purchased fourteen acres of land at Little Rock, Ark., for a site for the Edward Smith college, and need $25,000 in addition to the amount pledged to provide the buildings needful.

4. We need a new dormitory at Austin, Tex. Allen Hall was crowded to its utmost the day the present school year was opened, and among the first duties of the teachers was the painful one of turning needy students away.

The committee at Cleveland, in urging that $375,000 be raised for the coming year, observes that, “While the receipts for the past two years have been more than $100,000 larger than in the two years next preceding them, the expense of raising and disbursing these funds and managing the affairs of the Association has increased less than $400 per annum, thus showing that the Association is fully equipped for a much larger work without additional cost for the machinery of administration.” We never were in such good condition to do the work we have in hand so economically, wisely and successfully as at present, and there never was a time when the welfare of the nation and the cause of Christ were more fruitful with promise. The voice of the whole people, North, South, East and West, is calling upon us to go forward with renewed strength. Shall we have the means needful?

ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS AT THE ANNUAL MEETING.

The thirty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association was held in Plymouth Church, Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, October 24th to 26th, 1882.

Promptly at three o’clock Tuesday afternoon, the meeting of the Association was called to order by the President, Hon. William B. Washburn, of Massachusetts. Devotional services were conducted by Prof. John Morgan, of Oberlin, after which Gov. Washburn, on assuming the chair for the first time, said:

“I appear before you on this occasion with feelings of a mixed character; partly painful, partly pleasing—painful when I reflect that your expectations in regard to the presiding officer whom you have lately selected probably never will be realized; pleasing—doubly pleasing—to remember that I have received the support of so distinguished an organization as has invited me to preside over its deliberations.

“Let me, then, first of all, thank you for the honor conferred, and assure you that no effort of mine shall be wanting to meet the demands of the occasion.

“I know full well the many trials and difficulties which this Society has been called upon to pass through in the past. Your labors have been for the most part among the neglected and despised races of our country. Society rests upon selfish principles. Men respect the honored and the elevated, not the despised[355] and the down-trodden. Hence a great portion of the labors of this organization has been unknown and uncared-for by the great majority of mankind; and yet it is in the midst of such degradation that we get the brightest glimpses of Christianity, the widest and broadest views of humanity. The aspect to-day which we witness of endeavoring to raise even the lowest masses of mankind into intellectual, moral and spiritual dignity, never was broader than at the present hour. Take courage, then, and feel that your labors have not been in vain. The success which has attended your efforts during the past year, the wonderful increase of the means which have been provided this organization by an enlarged constituency, the bright aspect of the future, ought to strengthen the hands and encourage the hearts of all who are interested in this organization to make greater sacrifices, if need be, in the future than have ever been made in the past.

“Every true citizen, every real patriot ought to feel to-day a special interest in the prosperity and the success of this Society.

“It has been well said that essential to the perpetuity of our republican institutions are two conditions: Popular intelligence and popular morality. In other words, in order that free institutions may be preserved, there must be general intelligence and sound morals. Hence, two institutions are essential—schools and Christian churches. Free institutions without intelligence can exist only in name. It is moral, not physical ills which we have to fear. While the people themselves remain pure no human force can prevail against them.

“When four millions of slaves were suddenly set free the great problem to solve was, what shall we do with them? To-day each vote of those individuals counts as much in the ballot-box as the vote of the most distinguished and intelligent citizen in the land. Would we preserve, therefore, and hand down to our children those institutions which were entrusted to our charge by our fathers, and which have been shedding on us blessings to which all other nations are perfect strangers, then we must educate and Christianize these millions of new-born citizens. I honor this organization especially to-day because it has done more than all other instrumentalities, perhaps, combined to bring about this grand result. Let no one, then, be discouraged or falter at the magnitude of the work; for, if we rise to the level of our opportunity, if we are true to ourselves, victory will sooner or later be ours.”

Rev. George R. Merrill, of Ohio, was then elected Secretary, and Rev. S. M. Newman, of Wisconsin, Assistant Secretary.

The Treasurer, H. W. Hubbard, Esq., then read his report, which was referred to the Committee on Finance.

The annual report of the Executive Committee of the Association was presented by Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., Corresponding Secretary of the Society, and its several portions were referred to appropriate committees.

After the appointment of the various committees, the remainder of the session was devoted to prayer and conference, led by Rev. C. L. Woodworth, District Secretary of the Association. This season of prayer derived special interest from the fact that the same hour was observed by the workers throughout the field.

Tuesday evening, after devotional services, led by Rev. Arthur Little, D.D., of Chicago, the annual sermon was preached by Rev. C. L. Goodell, D.D., of St. Louis, from the text, Matthew 28:18, the theme being “More Power from Christ for the World’s Larger Needs.”

After the sermon, Rev. J. E. Twichell, D.D., presented an address of welcome in behalf of the churches and people of Cleveland. The observance of the Lord’s Supper followed, at which Rev. T. M. Post, D.D., of St. Louis, and President J. H. Fairchild, D.D., of Oberlin, presided.

[356]

Wednesday morning the prayer meeting was conducted by Rev. H. L. Hubbell, of New York. At the opening of the regular session at nine o’clock, the report of the Committee on the Revision of the Constitution of the Association was presented by Rev. George M. Boynton, of Massachusetts. A general discussion followed, in which the speakers were limited to ten minutes each, and which was closed promptly at half-past ten o’clock. On motion, the report was made the order for two o’clock in the afternoon. Rev. F. L. Kenyon, of Iowa, read a paper on “The Relation of the A. M. A. to Civilization.” Gen. S. C. Armstrong, of Hampton, Va., read a paper on “The Indian Problem,” which was followed by a few remarks from Father Potter, of Ohio, formerly for about twenty years a missionary among the Cherokee Indians. Rev. W. H. Ward, D.D., of New York, read a paper on “Caste in Education.”

After the opening of the Wednesday afternoon session with prayer, the order of the day was taken up and the report of the Committee on the Constitution was referred to a special committee of thirteen, to reconsider the whole subject, and report at the next Annual Meeting, after having obtained an expression of opinion from each of the State Congregational organizations. An invitation was presented to the Association from Mr. and Mrs. D. P. Eells to visit Oakwood on Friday morning, which was received with an expression of thanks. Rev. F. A. Noble, D.D., of Illinois, read a paper on “God’s way of vindicating Brotherhood.” The report of the Committee on African Missions was presented by Rev. M. McG. Dana, D.D., of Minnesota. Rev. Henry M. Ladd, D.D., of New York, using a large map, gave an account of his recent extended missionary explorations on the Upper Nile. Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., Secretary of the Association, read a Paper in regard to the proposed exchange of Missions with the A. B. C. F. M., and a special committee was appointed to which the paper was referred. Rev. James Brand, D.D., of Ohio, presented the report of the Committee on Chinese Missions.

Wednesday evening, after opening with devotional exercises, Rev. A. G. Haygood, D.D., of Georgia, delivered an interesting address, followed by addresses from Gen. Clinton B. Fisk, of New York, and Rev. A. J. F. Behrends, D.D., of Rhode Island.

Thursday morning the prayer-meeting was led by Rev. Moses Smith, of Michigan. The business session was opened with prayer by Prof. A. H. Currier, of Oberlin, after which Rev. W. E. Brooks, President of Tillotson Institute, Texas, presented the claims of the work there. The report on Indian Missions was presented by Rev. A. H. Ross, D.D., of Michigan. Prof. G. F. Wright, of Ohio, next presented the report on the Educational Work at the South, and was followed by Mr. B. F. Ousley, a graduate of Fisk University, who spoke upon the report, and also by Prof. A. Salisbury, the recently appointed superintendent of the educational work of the Association. Rev. E. M. Cravath, President of Fisk University, read a paper on “Higher Education.” Rev. Arthur Little, D.D., of Chicago, presented the report of the Committee on Church Work, which was followed by addresses from Rev. C. O. Brown and Mr. Geo. W. Moore, a graduate of Fisk University.

The Woman’s Missionary Meeting was held at nine o’clock Thursday morning in the chapel of the church, when papers were read by Mrs. G. W. Andrews, of Talladega, Ala., Miss Annie Cahill, of Nashville, Tenn., and Miss Hamilton, of Memphis, Tenn.

Thursday afternoon the session was opened with devotional exercises. The Committee on the proposed transfer of missions reported, through Rev. M. McG. Dana, D.D., of Minnesota, favoring the general plan, but making it a condition that the interests of the work already in hand be not sacrificed, and with this condition referring the whole subject to the Executive Committee of the Association,[357] with power. The report was accepted and adopted. A petition was presented by President Ware, of Atlanta University, requesting the appointment of a committee to define the policy of the Association with reference to its work among the different races, which was referred to the Executive Committee. The officers of the Association were re-elected for the ensuing year. Addresses were then made by Rev. J. M. Gregory, D.D., of Washington, D.C., representing the work of the Baptists at the South, and by Rev. R. S. Rust, D.D., of Ohio, representing the Methodists, and by Elkanah Beard, representing the Friends in the same field. These brethren were received in a spirit of cordial fellowship and co-operation. Rev. J. E. Roy, D.D., Field Superintendent of the Association, read a paper on “The New South.” The concluding address of the session was made by Secretary Strieby, representing the work of the Congregational churches at the South. The report of the Finance Committee was presented by J. G. W. Cowles, Esq. Thursday evening a mass meeting was held in the Tabernacle. The music was furnished by a choir of seventy-five voices from Oberlin, under the leadership of Prof. F. B. Rice. After devotional exercises, addresses were made upon “The National Problem of Southern Education,” by ex-President R. B. Hayes, of Ohio: President A. D. White, of Cornell University, and by Hon. J. L. M. Curry, of Virginia. Rev. G. D. Pike, D.D., in behalf of the Association, tendered a resolution of thanks to the churches and people of Cleveland for their hospitality, and to the committees, pastors, choir and railroads for their kindness in contributing to the success of the meetings.

It was the prevailing feeling that the meeting at Cleveland was, on the whole, a great success. Although there were other attractions which drew many away, yet the attendance was large, and at the closing session there were over three thousand present. The weather was fine, the papers presented of a high order, and the interest from beginning to end unabated. Nothing was lacking in the way of preparation, and with the impetus of this meeting resting upon it, the Association takes courage and looks forward to another year of work with renewed faith and hope.

SUMMARY OF THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE TREASURER OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION FOR THE YEAR ENDING SEPT. 30th, 1882.

GENERAL SURVEY.

FREEDMEN.

These our fellow-citizens are proving the wisdom of the Government in putting upon them the responsibilities of the elective franchise as at once their defense and their process of education. Taking into account their own aspiration and the force put beneath them by the scheme of Christian schools, we should expect, as we find, a tremendous uplift among them. In this we have assurance as to the future, provided the appliances be worked with increasing vigor. There is in this matter no halting place for the nation. We must lift them up, or they will drag us down. As one of these helping forces, we come to our own

Educational Work.

Our system of schools during the year has been working with its full force, and its appliances have been materially extended. The large additions made to our accommodations provided the year before were at once taxed to their utmost, thus proving that our appreciation of the necessity was correct, and that our appeal for the extension had not been made too soon nor too strong. And the enlargement secured during this closing year is now met with the response, “we, too, are full to overflowing.” Of the buildings put up the year before, the two dormitories at Hampton, one for Indian and one for colored youth, have had no empty rooms; at the Atlanta University, the wing built to the Girls’ Hall by the Stone Fund did not have capacity enough for the overflow of the main structure; the Strieby Hall at Tougaloo, brought to completion and dedicated since the opening of the year, had to be supplemented in an extempore way; the Stone Hall at Talladega for boys was filled; the Stone Hall at New Orleans for girls, and for the family of teachers, was only opened to find the need of a boys’ hall; and the Tillotson Institute at Austin, turning the ends of halls into apartments, calls loudly for another building.

During this year, at the Fisk University, the Livingstone Missionary Hall has been brought to completion and furnished, providing dormitories for 121 male students, also a chapel, library and recitation rooms. The total cost, $60,000, came from the Stone Fund. This structure, which, in its name, embraces the highest idea of the greatest African explorer, is next Monday to come to its dedication, and some of our friends are to go hence to participate in that service—the address to be delivered by Professor Northrop, of Yale College. At the Atlanta University, the Stone Hall, as the central building of the group, has been erected at an expense of $40,000, and will soon be ready for occupancy. Greatly commodious, and comely enough to relieve the plainness of the halls on either side, it will furnish a chapel, library, reading room and recitation rooms. This structure, as well as the Stone Halls at Nashville, Talladega and New Orleans, has had the wise supervision of Prof. T. N. Chase, who has occupied, meantime, his favorite chair of Greek, and who, as a builder, has shown the rare gift of always keeping[360] within his appropriations. At Macon, Ga., to the Lewis High School we have built a two-room “annex,” to which also was added a wing for the library which is there growing up. At Athens, Ga., our Knox Institute has been renovated, and in it a chapel fitted up for the new church. At Mobile, Ala., our Emerson Institute, that had been burned the second time, has been rebuilt upon an enlarged scale, and at an expense not far beyond the insurance money. At Talladega, the President’s house has been finished, and two cottages on land adjoining our premises have been bought for the use of two of our mission families, one of them being named after Mr. Seth Wadhams, of Chicago, who gave the $1,500 for the purchase. At Marion, a house was built for a parish school. At Athens, the Trinity School Building to accommodate 150 scholars and the family of teachers, has been completed at a cost to the Association of $8,000. For this the colored people themselves made the needed two hundred thousand brick, mixing the clay by the tramp of their one small steer, and they have their proportionate interest in the property. At the laying of the corner stone, the local editor, the Postmaster and the Principal of the Ladies’ Seminary of the place, made appreciative addresses, and Miss Wells had her Jubilee. In Little Rock, Ark., at a cost of $5,500, we have bought and fenced a tract of 14 acres, overlooking that city, as a site for the Edward Smith College, which has been chartered by the State, being so named from a gentleman in Massachusetts who gave the money to buy the land, and who to a surplus now in hand intends to add enough to make his donation $19,000. This institution is greatly needed in that grandly opening State, where there is, as yet, no provision for the higher education of the colored people. This last planting will about complete our circle of State institutions. At Fayetteville, Ark., our Howard School Building has been overhauled, and in it we have re-opened our own school. So at Lexington, Ky., we have refitted our High School Building, and have resumed our own school, the city for the last six years having had the use of the house. At Camp Nelson, the trustees of the Academy are erecting a new three-story building under the lead of the Rev. John G. Fee.

At the South we count 8 chartered institutions, 11 high and normal schools, and 38 common schools—in all 57. During the year we have employed 241 teachers, an increase over the last year of 11. Of these, 13 have performed the duties of matrons and 15 have been engaged in the business departments. The number of students has been 9,608, a gain of 500 over last year. Of these, 72 have been in the theological department, 28 in the law, 104 in the collegiate, 139 in the preparatory, 2,542 in the normal, 1,103 in the grammar, 2,185 in the intermediate, and 3,481 in the primary.

The theological departments at Howard, Talladega and Straight have been doing their good work in training upon the ground just the sort of men who are needed for the peculiar work to be done. Fisk University has three of its graduates in the study of theology at Oberlin, and one in a divinity school at Yale. The law department of the Straight, with a faculty made up of five of the best lawyers in New Orleans, has had 20 students, who are of both races, and who, upon their diplomas, by the statute, are admitted to the bar of all the courts of the State. We are pushing more and more the lines of industrial training. The two farms at Talladega and Tougaloo have this year been put into better shape than ever before. Tougaloo raises fine fruits for the Chicago market and fine stock for the surrounding country. Both raise much of the beef and pork and vegetables for their own use. Atlanta University is pushing fine gardening, teaching the girls of the senior class cookery, and is planning to go into a school of carpentry. The Fisk, this year, under a trained hospital nurse, introduces hygienics and cookery. The Le Moyne, at Memphis, teaches cooking, nursing and sewing.[361] All of our boarding-schools require a certain amount of work. The Storrs school, in Atlanta, has opened this fall a genuine kindergarten under an expert teacher. The Avery Institute, at Charleston, is going into the same, with training also in the use of tools.

But to all intellectual and secular training there needs to be added moral and religious cultivation. This is kept as our steady aim. No teacher is sent out who is not in fellowship with some church, and who does not profess to be actuated in going by a missionary spirit. The large number of conversions, the frequent revivals in these institutions, and the developed fruit of good living, attest the fidelity of these missionary teachers. The judgment day alone can reveal the influence of these consecrated workers, the most of whom are women, upon the life and character of the multitude of youth who have been under their care. The pupils are watched over in the class-room, in the place of religious assembly, and out of school hours. They are invited to private conferences for the correction of habits and views, and there the concerns of the soul are considered; scholars are prayerfully followed up even into vacation by correspondence, until not a few in these ways are led to Christ and into His church. The most of our young men, who are examined for entering the ministry, in giving their religious history, trace it back to the time when they were led to the Saviour by some of their teachers, whose richest reward it must be to see these young men coming into the ministry with ample equipment largely through their own influence. Women’s work for women is the modern discovery of missions. Of those who go abroad, their work is largely that of teaching. Our lady workers, of whom we have 200, besides the 40 in Howard, Hampton and Berea, who are reckoned as teachers, are usually missionaries as really as those who go abroad, or go South under that title. Of this last class of workers, of whom we have twelve, there are some who are very apostles in the garb of womanly delicacy. They teach mothers and daughters things which belong to their sex; they lead to the tidiness and comfort of home; they gather the maternal meetings and lead in the same; they labor in revivals; they become assistant pastors, being often, as the young pastors testify, their own best teachers and guides. The soldiers of the Union are worthy of all the praise and the gratitude they have received, but here has been a small army of heroines, who, forgetful of the best chances, came after the pomp of war, to serve not for three years, but for ten, twelve, fifteen, seventeen years, growing gray by work and by the anxieties and privations of the field, breaking down in health and wearing out their lives, ostracised and despised by those about them, who ought to have given sympathy and succor, and not sustained as they should have been at home, of whom the world is not worthy, but who must have a large place in the heart of Him, who, in their isolation, has been the companion of each one, and who, at the last, shall say, “She hath done what she could, she hath chosen the good part.”

Before the war and since, the wealthy people at the South had a full supply of colleges and seminaries, besides the free use of the best institutions in the North, so that their children were well educated. But there was a class of white people who could avail themselves of no such advantages and for whom there were no free public schools. As a consequence they fell into a distressing state of ignorance and poverty; they lost aspiration; they felt themselves in a hopeless class; and they are just there now. From the beginning our institutions have been open to pupils of all races. As yet the colored youth have been almost alone in entering them. But it is thought that, as they shall be seen shooting ahead, as prejudice shall wear away, many of these worthy white young people will go where they can get an education, a better one, and at a less cost, than anywhere else. A Confederate Colonel says that this will come about in ten years. Already[362] in the medical department of the Howard University, of the 93 students two-thirds are white, while some of the Professors are colored, though accomplished in their profession. In the law department of the Straight at New Orleans there are more white than colored students. Some of the best teachers in the white public schools of Atlanta have visited the class-rooms of our University there, with the purpose frankly avowed of making improvement in the art of teaching. In the country white teachers have gone to those who had been trained at Atlanta to learn their normal methods of instruction and of management. May not such yet say we will go to that training school for ourselves, and get those improvements at first hand? We have one notable illustration of what may be done, and that is at Berea, Ky. This college, planted before the war by the Association, upon being opened after the war, allowed colored scholars to come. After some effervescence the institution settled into its color-blind method, until it has become a great power in the State with the colors in about equal proportion among the students and at the grand commencement convocations. Some of the young folks coming down from the mountains to Berea say they would rather go there than to endure the manners of the aristocratic colleges. The citizens of Cabin Creek, Ky., our old ante-bellum battle ground, are just now erecting an Academy with the money subscribed upon the condition of no caste. The influence of Berea College is felt up in all the mountain country. White youth come down there to get stores of knowledge to carry back. The Professors have gone through that region lecturing on education, holding teachers’ institutes and preaching. At Clover Bottom, 20 miles out, they have gotten up such a mixed school, which is a success, and is now under the patronage of this Association. The Committee have decided to offer those mountain people the aid of our system, if they will only allow the very few colored scholars to enter the schools. Up there the colored children in a whole county are scarcely numerous enough to call for more than one school, and so the law forbidding such mixed public schools is a virtual closing of the doors of knowledge to this class. The Committee have made an appropriation for this work and have already had their Field Superintendent upon a tour of exploration—his report being favorable to kind, patient, persevering endeavor to get the school-master abroad through a region wherein whole counties the few school-houses are cabins with scarcely a glass window in them.

In the growth of the educational department and in the purpose of the Committee to do the very best work in our institutions, it has been found needful to secure the service of an expert in school processes who should help to the most approved methods of organization, discipline, instruction and unification. Accordingly Mr. Albert Salisbury, who had been a Professor in the State Normal, at Whitewater, Wis., and a conductor of teachers’ institutes, has been appointed Superintendent of Education, and has already entered upon service, giving promise of great effectiveness in his line. Doctor Roy will continue in his position as Field Superintendent.

Church Work.

At the first some of our best friends thought that the Association was too slow in its church work; but all now, we think, agree that the wisdom of experience justifies the process which mainly through our schools grows its own timber, out of which to build its churches, taking the young people thus trained and the adults who are converted to the standard of Christian living and away from the superstitions and immoralities of the old time. At first view this would seem to be a tedious process. But it is surprising how soon the youth run up to maturity and[363] to become the leaders of churches, the best of which have come on by this nurture. Then there are some adult people, noble natures, of a childlike spirit, who gain by absorption and take on the ideas of the younger folks. In this way, through these seventeen years since the war, our churches have come on from two or three to number 83, which is an average of five a year. Nor are these merely skeleton churches. Every one of these 83 has a pastor, except one whose minister died a short time ago. Of the 73 ministers who serve these 83 churches, 22 are from the North, and 51 are native preachers. Every one of these churches except seven has its own house of worship, or chapel, and there are only four of these that depend upon the college chapels for their places of religious assembly. Some of these are rude in structure; the most are plain but comely; four or five are of brick and of commanding appearance; all are blessed sanctuaries. Many friends, in going through the South, are pleasantly disappointed in finding these churches so well housed. Nor, for young churches, are these deficient in encouraging numbers. They have a total of 5,641 members, an average of 68, while the average membership of the Congregational churches west of the Mississippi River is only 45, and of all west of Pennsylvania, 63. The additions on profession were 709; the Sunday-school scholars numbered 1,835; the amount raised for church purposes $9,306, and the benevolent contributions reached $1,496.50.

It is beautiful to see how readily these plain people take up the New Testament idea of church government, and how this natural process tends to their education and discipline of character. Herein we find confirmation that the Apostle made no mistake in setting up such churches among the Christians of his day who had not been trained in New England. These churches in the South are known everywhere as insisting upon a high standard of ethics. Their example, their methods, their influence, are greatly stimulating to the churches round about them, so that by quality they make up in part for want of quantity. These churches are organized into seven conferences. Many persons have smiled upon reading the reports of these convocations, and have wondered how such an ecclesiastical body would seem, whether its members were not simply playing at an ecclesiastical parliament. Our suggestion is, come and see. If you were to come, you would find a fulfillment of the Saviour’s words, “All ye are brethren,” the white and the colored being members of the same body. You would find a rigidity of parliamentary usage. You would find literary exercises, discussions, reports, Sunday-school assemblies, devotional services going on after the manner of those with which you are familiar. Some of our brethren testify that these meetings seemed to afford as much intellectual and spiritual stimulus as those which they were accustomed to attend before going South. An additional feature of these gatherings is the presence and participation of the lady missionaries and teachers, whose reports are greatly interesting. In Alabama the conference has associated with it a Ladies’ Missionary Society with auxiliaries in different parts of the State. The exercises of these women’s meetings are not only to cultivate the missionary spirit, but to help the wives, mothers and daughters of this people to be missionaries of sweetness and light, of order and comfort, in their own homes. These ecclesiastical assemblies become not only a representative of our work in its spirit and extent, but they become occasions for drawing out the fellowship of the pastors and churches, white and colored, where they meet. At first these bodies were ignored. Now it is a common thing for the local pastors to drop in upon them, to participate in the exercises and to offer their pulpits for supply. This has been done at Wilmington, Macon, Mobile, Marion and Selma.

During the last year, six new churches have been organized, those at Williamsburg, Ky.; Cedar Cliff, N.C.; Athens, Ga.; Meridian, Miss.; Eureka and Topeka,[364] Kan. All of these are supplied with pastors. Athens uses the assembly-room of our Knox Institute; Meridian for the present rents rooms for the church and school; Eureka and Topeka have both built houses of worship. New meeting-houses have also been built at Caledonia, Miss.; Fausse Point, La., and Luling, Tex. Paris, Tex., has replaced its big shanty by a fine church edifice. Childersburg, Ala., burnt out, has rebuilt with great self-denial on the part of the people. Mobile, burnt out, is to be accommodated for a time in the assembly-room of the Emerson Institute, rebuilt since the fire. The church at East Savannah, blown down, has been rebuilt. The suburban church at Louisville, Ga., also blown down, is still in its ruins. At Five Mile, out from the city, a mission house has been built. By the wonderful enterprise of their pastor, Rev. A. A. Myers, the people have put up a commodious house at Williamsburg, Ky., in the mountain country. The town is sixty years old, and this is the first church brought to completion, three others having rotted down during the process of building. The church at Clover Bottom, Ky., has been supplied with a school-house sanctuary through the aid secured by President Fairchild, of Berea. The great church at Midway, Ga., has been finished up. The church at Anniston, Ala., has been enlarged. So during the year ten churches have been erected.

The closing year has not been without its comforting measure of spiritual influence. The dew has been in the fleece of most of our churches and schools. In some of them individual cases of conversion have been the reward of large faith and zeal. In others, clusters of souls have been won to Christ. Distinctive revivals have been enjoyed at Chattanooga and Memphis, Tenn.; McIntosh and Macon, Ga.; Marion, Ala.; New Orleans, Talladega College, and in the Fisk, Atlanta and Tougaloo Universities. The total number of additions to our Southern churches on profession is 709. Those who in our missions have been led to Christ but who have gone to other churches would nearly double that number. The total number of members in all our Southern churches is 5,641.

AFRICA.

When our last annual meeting was in session we had two parties upon the ocean on their way to Africa. Mr. I. J. St. John and Rev. J. M. Hall were going to reinforce the Mendi Mission, and Superintendent Ladd and Dr. Snow were going to explore the Upper Nile with reference to locating the Arthington Mission if the project should prove feasible. Mr. St. John was to be the business manager and to have charge of the John Brown steamer which was to be built. Mr. Hall, from the theological department of the Howard University, was to take charge of the Good Hope Station. He readily got hold of the work and proved himself an acceptable and successful missionary. He has the church, and a native teacher has the school under his supervision. Mr. Hall, being of the sturdy mountain stock of East Tennessee, has endured the climate well, and we can but hope that an extended career of usefulness is before him. Mr. St. John, by his own unavoidable exposure on his voyages between Freetown and Mendi, and up the rivers to our stations, was himself made sick, and so was confirmed in the judgment that called for the steamer as a means of preserving the health of our missionaries. The English Governor-General of the West Coast agreed with Mr. St. John to give the steamer the carrying of the mail and of all Government freight between Freetown and Mendi, which is an English dependency. The transportation of supplies for the Mission and the marketing of the lumber of our mill, the only one on the West Coast, call for this steam craft. All views conspire to put down the “John Brown” as one of the most effective missionaries to be introduced to that region,[365] where there are no roads nor beasts of burden and where the water highway is the main reliance. It was thought best that Mr. St. John should not take the risk of the first wet season at the Mission, and so he returned to this country, coming over by a sailing vessel to save expense. He makes the gratifying report that in his intercourse along the coast he found many evidences of the good influence of the Mendi Mission in its training of men who have gone out into the ways of business, and who retain their integrity of character. He named the noble chief of a tribe where is located the vigorous Shengay Mission, who, with his son, had been educated at our Good Hope Station. Rev. A. E. Jackson has continued in charge of the Avery Station and boarding-school. During the year the Mission was afflicted in the death of Rev. J. M. Williams, of the Kaw Mendi Station, who, after having endured fifteen years of service in Africa, succumbed to the disease of diabetes. Rev. Mr. Jowett, one of the native preachers, is acceptably supplying Mr. Williams’ place at Kaw Mendi. Mr. Jowett has a son now in the Fisk University, who gives promise of making himself a useful man in his native land. The other three lads from the Mendi Mission at school at Hampton and at Atlanta, are doing well. The Debia Station is under the care of Mr. and Mrs. Goodman.

Dr. Ladd and Dr. Snow, having made their long and perilous tour, which took them up the Nile 2,500 miles, have returned. They report no sufficiently inviting location for a mission in the region of the Sobat. They recommend that Khartoum be occupied as a base of operations, and that a school be established on the east bank of the river opposite the city, which lies in the junction of the Blue and White Niles. That site is quite healthy. They would have a steamer by which to communicate with the Arthington district of the Upper Nile. The Executive Committee, of course, had to submit to the inevitable, as indicated by the double revolt, and voted to put the mission into complete abeyance for the time.

THE INDIANS.

Though the Indian once had the continent to himself, he yet seems to be “the man without a country.” And the Christian missions which have sought to identify him with his native land have with him been driven along before the advancing tide of the white man’s migration. So has it been from the days of Jonathan Edwards, John Eliot and David Brainard down to these times of the Riggses and Williamsons. The Indian missions of this Association have fared in the same way, those at Northfield, Mich., and those at Cass Lake and Red Lake, Minn., which were served by some fifteen missionaries, among them Revs. S. G. Wright, J. B. Bardwell and A. Barnard. Of these the venerable Mr. Wright still abides in the service, being now at Leech Lake. Returning this year to his field, he writes: “We were very happy to find the little company of earnest, devoted Christians, whom we left two years before, still faithfully pursuing their work for God. They are truly the salt of the earth, burning lights in this great darkness, the spiritual power in the place.” Again he says: “I wish I could attend the annual meeting. I should love to give the friends a short history of the conversion and rich Christian experience of numbers of those around us.” Our church at S’Kokomish, Washington Territory, Rev. Myron Eells, pastor, during the year has swarmed, seven of its members having taken letters to unite with four other Christians of the Clallam Indians to form a Congregational Church at Jamestown. One infant was baptized. A half-dozen white neighbors came in and communed with them. Mr. Eells says that the services were held in Chinook, Clallam, English, Chinook translated into Clallam, and English translated into Clallam, a Pentecostal gift of tongues. The work of the mother church has been[366] more encouraging this year than the last. Five have united with the church on profession of faith. The service of the agents at the S’Kokomish, Fort Berthold and Sisseton agencies has been about as usual in routine and outcome. The work that is now going on at the Hampton Institute in the educational and industrial training of 89 young Indians of both sexes is truly encouraging; not only as to its immediate accomplishment, but as to its future bearings upon the welfare of the Indians, and upon the Indian question itself. At the last commencement, the Indian classes claimed their full share of attention, and showed an improvement in the general character of the pupils over last year. One noted speech was made by an Indian youth. Rev. Dr. Bartend, referring to that speech in his address, said: “Two hundred and fifty years ago there came floating into this beautiful harbor vessels from the old country. What was their object? What was their hope? The prayer that arose from their decks was this: ‘God give us strength that we may educate and Christianize the Indian.’ William and Mary College, now almost ready to perish, is the monument of their endeavor. They did not see the answer to their prayer. God works in His own way, in His own time, with His own men. Could they see what we to-day behold, they would say, as do we, Speed on. God speed this glorious school.” Although the Association, which founded and developed the Hampton, has surrendered its control to a Board, yet besides aiding in the support of the pastor, who cares for the three races, associated in the one church of the place, it also makes a special appropriation toward the Indian department of the Institute. The Association will be ready to co-operate with the Government under its new appropriation, using some of its own institutions for the instruction and training of Indian youth. It has been proposed that the Association take up a new mission among a neglected tribe in the deep Northwest. Gen. Armstrong, by his recent tour among the several Indian tribes of that region, has been able to make judicious suggestions which will be duly considered.

THE CHINESE.

But a little while ago we were praying God to open the door of China; and now the Chinese are pressing in at our own back door, having a steam ferry between our shore and theirs. Even the building of our Chinese wall, while China has been tearing down hers, has had the immediate effect of hastening 25,000 of these people in at our Golden Gate before the law should go into effect, and this influx has been felt already in our schools, which for the last few months have had a total larger than that of any former months. Mr. Pond certifies that even the enforcement of the law will not for some time occasion any let up in the pressure upon our school accommodations. We have as stock on hand, as raw material, these 125,000 people whom we should work up in the Christianizing way, so that they may be prepared, some for their own mission work at home, and some to receive the masses who may come by-and-by when the embargo is lifted. So that while our government stands at the Golden Gate to warn off any Mayflower immigrants, it may be that this enforced quiet and isolation will become a mighty factor in the scheme for Christianizing China. But none the less is it a ludicrous object lesson that the nation which stands with its front door wide open to receive 90,000 Europeans a month, should yet shudder over the 125,000 Mongolians who in many years have sought admission at the back door. It is a humiliating confession that 50,000,000 of Christian people, compacted as a nation, should shrink from having their system come into contact with the effete superstitions of 125,000 sojourners. But the politicians’ law is only for ten years. The principle, the conscience[367] of the nation will be at work. The law may become a dead letter or be repealed. Before we are aware of it, the flood-gates may be raised and a great tide may set in. So, in any event, we have herein a grand opportunity, a mighty obligation.

Our last Annual Report mentioned a desire on the part of the converted Chinamen in California and their friends, that a mission be located at some well-chosen point in Southern China, from which their Christian brethren going back to fatherland might go forth to carry the Gospel to their countrymen. Further consideration has settled it that Hong Kong, the centre of the district from which most of our California Chinamen come, is the proper location. Such a mission would give a Christian greeting to the returning Christian Chinamen, would furnish an atmosphere and an instrumentality for keeping up their spiritual life, would be a training-school for those who should become missionaries, would be a rallying centre there, and would be the point of juncture between our work on the coast and that heathen empire. But, as it is the purpose of this Association not to extend its operations abroad, we made a distinctive proposition to the American Board that it take up the proposed mission at Hong Kong, and so work in harmony with us on this side the Pacific. We are glad to report that this overture has been cordially acceded to, and that that venerable missionary body accepts this “sacred trust.” Our brethren of the Chinese Christian Association out there have in hand already a fund of $700, which they intend to put into that mission as an offering of the first fruits.

In its work on the Pacific Coast, the Association is represented by its auxiliary, the California Chinese Mission, whose President is Rev. Dr. John K. McLean, and whose Secretary is Rev. Wm. C. Pond, who, in addition to the care of his city parish, has the supervision of our operations there. Taking up the work into his own mind and heart, he gives to it an amount of study, watch-care and service that is marvellous. With a Pauline spirit, he goes the round of the missions, cheering and directing the workers, healing divisions and laying new plans.

Our fifteen schools are located at Berkeley, Marysville, Oakland, Oroville, Petaluma, Point Pedro, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Stockton, and at San Francisco, where are the five missions, No. 1, No. 2, Barnes, Bethany, and West. The work of the year has been greatly encouraging. These schools have been taught by thirty-one teachers, of whom eleven are Christianized Chinamen.

The total number of scholars enrolled during the year was 2,567, a gain over the previous year of 935, while that year had a gain over the former one of 76. Of these during the past year 156 have ceased from idolatry and 106 have given evidence of conversion. Nor do these figures give the full number of those who are brought to the light in our schools, for many are scattered and cannot attend them. The whole number of those of whom we have hope that they are born of God in connection with our work from the first, Mr. Pond thinks cannot be less than 431, and wisely does he add: “The figures will cease to look dry and the statistical table will glow with even a celestial light, if we but reflect that every unit in these numbers stands for an undying soul, and every unit in some of them for such a soul brought out from the dark bondage of Chinese paganism into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.”

It is proposed now to re-establish our mission at Los Angeles, which, as the original, gave way for a time to another that came in but has turned out a failure. Chico, where there are many Chinese, and no one to care for them, is another place where the Superintendent could start a mission. So also the door seems to be opening for yet another school in San Francisco at the great Pioneer Wooden[368] Mills, where 600 Chinese are employed. And so the expanding work demands the additional appropriation which the Committee have already voted, making a total of $13,000 to be used.

FINANCES.

At our last annual meeting we reported a total of $243,795.23, which was a gain of $56,315.12, or 20 percent, over that of the previous year. One year ago the Committee felt constrained to ask that this sum should be carried up to $300,000 for the support and enlargement of the varied work in charge. We started out well. Then in the spring our chariot came to dragging heavily with a debt of $25,000 upon it. Then there was a rally, and the fiscal year came to its close, Sept. 30, with $297,584.45, which is a gain of $53,789.22 over the last year, or 22 per cent. Besides the current receipts we have received toward the endowment of the President’s chair in Talladega College, $15,000; and for scholarships in the same, $6,000; also a Scholarship note for $500, in behalf of Fisk University, which makes a total of $319,584.45 received into our treasury during the year. This leaves the treasury out of debt, with a balance in hand of $789.83, and an increase of endowment fund of $21,500. For this accomplishment we offer devout thanks to Almighty God.

The exigencies of the work, the enlargement of the expenditure made almost inevitable by the new buildings and increased facilities, will scarcely be met by $300,000 the coming year. An increase of that amount by 20 per cent, could be most economically and wisely expended without any attempt at undue enlargement. The legitimate and almost irresistible progress of the work demands that. But we are the servants of our constituents, and assume not to decide. We can most efficiently use the increase, but will faithfully work as best we can with the means entrusted to us. We can only add that the work will suffer if less than the $300,000 be secured.

As boys run backward that they may jump the further forward, so we may profitably compare the receipts of this Association in its earlier years with those of this last year. The nearly $300,000 just announced is equal to the total of contributions for the first ten years. And the total for the year, as given by the Treasurer, of the contributions from the same constituency for the general work in which the Association is engaged, more than $500,000, is equal to the receipts into our treasury for the first fourteen years.

Never have the affairs of this Association seemed more prosperous; never have its labors on the field yielded a more abundant and precious fruitage; never has it seemed more firmly established in the confidence of the people, both at the North and the South; never has it shared more fully the favor of God!

May we have grace to walk so humbly before God, and so honestly and faithfully before men, in the administration of our trust, that His favor and their confidence may abide upon us!

[369]

THE FREEDMEN.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON EDUCATIONAL WORK.

The Committee to whom has been referred the subject of the educational work of this Association, beg leave to report that we heartily approve the policy of the Association by which it has put its main efforts upon the Christian education of teachers for the colored people. Our Congregational churches, while it is important to plant them, are not the first need. They can enter but slowly. The people do not appreciate them nor ask for them. Education they beseech us for. The lower common-school education we can supply only here and there. We thank God, and we recognize it as a blessed evidence of the growth of healthy public sentiment, that every year more and more attention is paid in the States of the South to free public education, and that in this the colored people are having their part, and that the expense of supporting their schools is more and more cheerfully borne. But the States which are willing to educate children are not all ready as yet to educate their teachers. Whether the common schools of the South are good, depends on whether the schools for teachers are good. We believe there is no other agency which is doing so much to secure teachers for the colored youth of the South as the American Missionary Association. This is a task which does not carry with it ecclesiastical profit; but it carries the blessing of the Great Head of the Church, as it has the good will of good men in every communion.

Apprehending the paramount importance of this work, we would impress upon the officers of this Association, what they doubtless feel, the importance of raising their chartered institutions and normal schools to the very highest possible grade. Bricks and mortar are necessary, good buildings are noble, but the first demand is for good teaching, for the very best instruction which Northern culture can secure. A few extra hundreds paid to a competent principal may be of more real use than many thousands paid for a building. Our consecrated wealth will provide the buildings. That we do not fear for; but it needs great and rare executive wisdom to see that these buildings shall be put to their best use for the best instruction. Now is the molding time for the colored people, and they need to be molded aright. Good education in barracks is better than poor education in a palace. It has been the boast of our constituency that they have known how to educate. They have supported the best colleges in the North. They are now supporting the best schools in the South. We are glad that, apprehending these duties, the Association has just appointed a competent Superintendent of Education, whose special business it will be to see to it that the standard of education shall be raised to the highest possible grade. We would especially recommend that all our institutions be carefully examined, that we call nothing college or university whose course of instruction falls below the grade which belongs to the name, and that, if it be necessary in any case, inferior teachers be weeded out and their places supplied by such as are competent and earnest. This we urge, while knowing that our institutions, as a rule, are models in all the South, because we would not have the Association satisfied with that to which we have already attained, and because we believe that our schools can and should be made so superior to other institutions that they shall attract white pupils as well as black, or break down the walls of caste.

We see with satisfaction the progress made in Howard and Talladega in theological education, which has been followed by the organization of numerous prosperous[370] churches. We would urge that, as soon as possible, Fisk and Straight universities be supplied with similar active departments of theological instruction.

Industrial departments have been made very useful in Hampton and Tougaloo. These institutions are models in these as in other respects. The explanation rests in part in the great enthusiasm or ability of the gentlemen whom we are so fortunate as to have in charge of those institutions, and who have a special gift in developing these departments, and in part in the fortunate locality in which these institutes are placed. While we would be glad to have similar instruction given in Fisk, Atlanta, and elsewhere, we recognize the great difficulty of doing similar work in cities. Domestic labor should be encouraged, to relieve the expense of board; but experiments in establishing schools of carpentry, blacksmithing, nursing, etc., while excellent, need to be made with the greatest care, and under the supervision of such teachers as possess the requisite enthusiasm and faith.

We would especially urge, in this connection, on those who manage our institutions, that they impress on the pupils the virtues of thrift and self-support. The students who have come to us are no longer ex-slaves. They have all been reared in freedom. They should be required to pay a reasonable amount for tuition. This should be imposed as an educating influence. They should be made to understand that when education is given it represents a money value as well as does the food that goes into the stomach. More and more should they be required to pay their tuition, if it be but a dollar a month, that they may understand its value. The aggregate of this will be of considerable help, as it will elevate the educational notions of the people.

We are glad to see that our chartered institutions are making progress toward independence of the Association. For this they should work by the increase of their endowments for instruction. We express our great thanks to the generous friends who have so nobly given for these purposes, and especially to the wise and generous benevolence of Mrs. Stone, which has made this a marked year in the history of our institutions. May the Lord reward her, and may her example stir up many more.

Our work would not be complete without a more formal and a most cordial recognition of the thanks we owe to the self-denying teachers of our institutions. They are men and women of most admirable culture; they have made the greatest sacrifices; they have entered with the warmest enthusiasm into their work. We have been greatly pleased with the professional enthusiasm of those at the head of some of our excellent normal schools, to whom no words of praise can be extravagant. The progress in nearly all our institutions has been such as to merit our heartiest appreciation. We commend this, our great work, to the generous hearts of our Christian constituency.

G. F. Wright, Chairman.

THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO.

BY PRES. E. M. CRAVATH, FISK UNIVERSITY.

1. The negroes are citizens, and vested with all the rights, duties and responsibilities of American citizenship. The ballot is in their hands, and as a necessary consequence they will share the offices of trust and responsibility. There must and will be political leaders among them. It might be better for the country if the colored people would use the ballot purely, with an eye single to the best interests of society; if they should always vote for the wisest, most honest and most capable men, uninfluenced by personal prejudices, race distinction, or the popular excitement of heated political campaigns, and with no aspiration for[371] political distinction or the honors and spoils of office. It might be better for the country if the citizens of other races would do this. But how unlike the Anglo-Saxon or the Celt would be the African if he should do it. But, fortunately, or unfortunately, there is about as much genuine human nature in the American citizen of African descent as there is in those of European; and we must expect essentially the same results under like conditions. It will not prevent colored men from having political aspirations, and from being elected to offices of trust and responsibility, to confine education among them to public, normal and industrial schools. The safer and better way is to give to the young men who have aspirations for a higher education the opportunities and advantages they seek, just as they are provided for the youth of other races.

2. The six millions of colored people in the South are organized into distinct and separate churches, which are ministered to by persons of their own race. This is the result both of choice and necessity. The white churches are not open to them, and as a general thing they prefer to have their separate organizations. The influence and power of the minister among the colored people are exceedingly great. No people stand more in need of an intelligent, wise and educated ministry, and among no people can such a ministry do such a noble work for the proper training of the young men who are to constitute the religious teachers and guides of these six millions of colored American citizens just delivered from bondage, and now making trial before the world of freedom and citizenship. I urge the necessity of institutions for higher education.

The public schools of the South for colored children are in general taught by colored teachers. This is usually demanded by the parents. In these public schools there are hundreds of positions such as are filled in white schools by men who have had their training in the best colleges and universities of the South, and why should not colored young men be given the same training for the same responsibilities and duties? The same principles and necessities hold in the departments of law and medicine. Is there any reason, in the nature of the case, why a young colored man does not need to have as good an education to fit him for these professions as a young white man does? In all enlightened countries, institutions of higher education are regarded as indispensible; they accomplish a work in the interests of society, the Church and the State, which cannot be left out with safety to any race or any country. But there are weighty reasons why the colored youth of the South need the advantages of a higher education. They have received less by inheritance. Education, discipline, culture, the habits and surroundings of life through generations, to some extent, at least, determine the inherited intellectual and moral qualities of individuals, families and races. The colored youth begins life without the inherited qualities which can come only through generations of civilization.

Then, too, he has not had the advantages (and these are among the greatest children can possess) of a cultured home, refined and intellectual associations, a purified and stimulating social life, and the instruction of an educated ministry. These have largely been denied him in his earlier years. Thus, when young colored men or women set out to secure an education that shall put them on a high plane of intellectual life and give them a fair chance to work a career which shall entitle them to be honestly ranked among the educated and cultured of the white race in the higher departments of the world’s work, they find themselves at a great disadvantage.

How shall this be overcome, except by patient, long-continued and wisely-directed study? Aspiration must mature into purpose and purpose ripen and harden into character. Intellectual labor must be encouraged and even exacted until it[372] becomes comparatively easy and pleasurable. Habits of study and investigation must be formed and the judgment must be matured. Where shall the young men of the South get these advantages except in schools for higher education? But there is one more consideration which I wish to urge. These six millions are the representatives of a race 200,000,000 strong and of a continent. No equal body of Africans was ever before placed in a condition so favorable for the development of whatever possibilities there are in the race. Under slavery they have been disciplined to toil and have learned the lessons of work; they have come to like the ways of civilized life and have acquired a desire and taste for its comforts and luxuries. Pagan worship and heathen superstitions have been largely destroyed, and the people have accepted the Christian religion. They are widely scattered among their fellow citizens of other races, and they have intrusted to them the full duties, and have resting upon them all the responsibilities of citizenship. Whatever possibilities are in the race can here be developed in a shorter time and by a more direct way than in the case of any section of Africa. So the race is on trial, and every aid should be given in order that the best possible result may be reached. Who can properly estimate the power for good which colleges and universities, founded in the right spirit, strongly administered and wisely adapted to the wants and necessities of the people, can exert in determining the future of the negro in this country and the future of the great African race?

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON CHURCH WORK.

The church work of the Association during the year has been steady, growthful, and encouraging. Quite the average of progress has been attained. This will readily appear by reference to a few statistics. Six new churches have been added to the list, making in all eighty-three. Ten houses of worship have been erected. It is a remarkable fact that every one of the eighty-three churches, except one whose minister died a short time ago, has a pastor. And equally remarkable that fifty-one of these pastors are native preachers. As showing the value of theological seminaries established by the Association, and the ability and usefulness of trained colored men, the average membership of sixty-eight in each church exceeds the average of all the Congregational churches west of Pennsylvania. The addition of 709 on profession, and the conversion of about an equal number who have found other church homes, make an average of seventeen conversions to each church, an increase of 20 per cent. Where else can an equally good exhibition be made? Only about one to a church throughout the country. There are seven churches which have added from twenty-five to forty-five to their membership. There are only six that report no additions. So far as reported all but eleven churches contribute money for church purposes. Thirty-seven report benevolent contributions. One church reports $350, another church reports $158, another church reports $86, another church reports $83, another church reports $60, another church reports $50. Seventy-four Sunday-schools are reported. One Sunday-school has over 500 members, another 400 members, ten schools 200 members, and seven schools 100 members. These figures indicate vitality in the churches, for Sunday-schools do not thrive very well, excepting where there is activity in the churches with which they are associated. In nine localities precious revivals have been enjoyed. The local associations indicate growth in fellowship and power. When we remember that these results have been reached amid manifold hindrances and discouragements[373] arising from ignorance, prejudice, superstition and vice, we may well exclaim, “What hath God wrought?” “Thank the Lord and take courage.” But the best results of the year do not admit of tabulation. The unwritten history of these churches are the tears, the struggles, the sacrifices, the prayers, the burdens silently, uncomplainingly borne. This is their real history. God knows it all, and those who have been the patient workers in its making will be remembered in that day when he counts up his jewels. Then it must not be forgotten that these churches represent almost infinitely more in the South than their small number would indicate. They are tonic in their influence upon all the other churches around them. Their simple New Testament polity, which encourages self-government and self-development, their high standard of ethics, which is a constant rebuke to an emotional religion apart from morality, make them peculiarly lights shining in dark places, and invest them with that quiet, but inscrutable transforming power that belongs to good leaven.

In this has been vindicated the wisdom of the policy which has preferred quality to quantity, good character to great numbers, intelligent piety to ignorant devotion, a pure life to a noisy profession. Without doubt the Association might have doubled its present number of churches during these seventeen years. It has cost something to move slowly in this matter.

We have said that the past year has witnessed the average growth. The rate of progress during the last seventeen years has been uniformly very constant, about five churches a year. Ten years ago six new churches and ten houses of worship were reported. The question now comes whether it is not quite time to change the rate by doubling it, at least to quicken the pace. The church work is initial and fundamental. It underlies all else. The Association is in the South for no other purpose than to make Christian manhood and womanhood. For this glorious work the church of God is the divinely appointed agency. Others are auxiliary. There is but one opinion as to the sore need of more churches. The Macedonian cry is heard in many directions.

It has been demonstrated that Congregational churches can exist and thrive west of the Hudson and south of Mason and Dixon’s line.

The polity and faith of the Pilgrim Fathers is not for the elect few but the unsaved many. And if the methods, influence, and example of our churches in the South are greatly stimulating to the churches round about them, that is an additional argument for their multiplication.

It can hardly be doubted that the schools and universities, by their direct and indirect influence, have prepared sufficient material for more churches. What are eighty-three among the millions who sit in darkness? It must be kept distinctly in mind that educational facilities are multiplying in the South, and that to educate without Christianizing is possibly to augment the perils instead of the defenses of the Republic.

The sanctifying and consecrating forces must be held in close contact with the secular, so that education may be hallowed, or it will end in defeat. We must hold steadfastly to our fundamental principle that nothing but the gospel of Christ will uplift and save the South. And while our educational institutions are thoroughly Christian, yet the church must be the energizing and radiating centre of Christian influence and power. Brethren, does not the church work need and deserve a fresh impulse? Ought not the momentum gathered during the seventeen years to accelerate its progress very greatly now? Would not all hearts be gladdened, if the next annual report should bring tidings of twelve instead of six churches organized under the favoring auspices of this society? Opportunities are (I was about to say waiting, but they don’t wait) passing. Much has been[374] irrevocably lost. Much yet remains. Ideas are changing rapidly. We had feared that crystallization would occur earlier than this, and society become so incrusted with prejudice and hardened by vice that the helpful activities of this and kindred societies would be hindered or defeated. But God is mercifully holding the elements still in solution that churches and schools, like ours, may become the dominating centres of the new civilization. Let these blessed centres of light, healing, influence, be multiplied, surcharged with transforming energy, with assimilating power. The multiplicand already exists; men and money must furnish, under God, the multiplier.

Arthur Little, Chairman.

REMARKS OF REV. C. O. BROWN.

Within the past two years it has been my privilege to look in upon three or four of the churches contemplated in this report. One year ago last August I found myself on the Sabbath day in the city of Chattanooga, and I started out at an early hour to find the Congregational church. I made several inquiries of the white people whom I met, but none of them seemed to know. I sauntered along until I was in front of the white Baptist church of the place, and found an aged colored gentleman ringing the bell preparatory to service. I asked him if he knew where the Congregational church was. “Oh yes,” he said, “I’se a member of dat church myself.” Then, having an opportunity, I chatted with him a few minutes, and asked him why they wanted to sustain a Congregational church in Chattanooga. “Oh,” he said among many other things, “we doesn’t believe in dese yer incitements dat de old churches has.” And then I asked him what they proposed to do in the future. “Look a heah, brudder,” he said, “we’s come heah to stay.” Presently I found myself in that Congregational church. I found an ordinarily good little structure, comfortably furnished for church purposes. When the congregation came in I saw decently clad people with hymn books and Bibles in their hands. Presently from the study door came the pastor, and with all dignity and order, took his place in the pulpit, and he preached a sermon in which, if my eyes had been closed, I should have found no evidence that he was a colored man. He was a graduate of Atlanta University. There was every evidence of order and system, of calm and deliberative religion, which we should find in this church on the next Sabbath day.

In the evening of that same day I had an opportunity for comparisons and contrasts. I went over to one of the old colored churches which stands diagonally across an open square or common. The scene was that of one billowy sea of emotion and excitement, of hallooing and amen-ing. Now, I said to myself, here is this pure church established in this community as a standing testimony against that sort of thing. I said, as I sat beneath the spell of emotions which found vent in tears, here in this Congregational church and on this ground are both prophecy and fulfillment. The Congregational church stands not more than six rods from where my tent was at one time pitched when I was a soldier; where the shells from Lookout mountain used to drop in the days of Thomas and Hood. Here, I said, in this scarred ground, is a prophecy which was uttered eighteen years ago, in the thunder of artillery and the clash of battle. It was a prophecy of liberty; and this church for colored people, for free colored people, our brothers and sisters, is the fulfillment of that prophecy. It was my privilege, only a few days later, to be present in the Storrs Congregational church of Atlanta. And it was a pleasure to be permitted to speak to those people. I saw there the same evidence of Christian order and propriety; everything which bore testimony to a[375] high type of Christian life. I attended two of its prayer meetings. There was the calm, subdued temper which bore witness to the suppression of the animal nature and the development of the spiritual. And I want to say here, brethren, that if God in his providence should send me to Atlanta, I should cast in my lot with the Storrs Congregational church.

I wish to second what was said by Doctor Little with regard to the enlargement of our church work in the South. We feel that the time has come for broadening the boundaries of this distinctively religious work. Our churches are, and are to be, the conservators of the other work done in our educational institutions. None of our young people should be allowed, for want of a church home of our own polity, to escape from holy and pure influences. Nor should they be allowed to expend in other directions power and influence acquired in our schools which might be conserved in our churches. Let us not make the mistake south of the Ohio River which, thirty or forty years ago, was made west of the Hudson; but let us rather from this annual meeting look to the enlargement of this blessed part of our work, concerning which such glad harbingers are before us in the general survey presented by the Secretary.

AFRICA.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.

The Committee to whom was referred the general report on Africa would submit the following:

Little that is new or very noteworthy has occurred during the year past. The Mendi Mission, which has been so long, and at such sacrificial cost, maintained by the Association, was reinforced by a graduate of the theological department of Howard University, Rev. Mr. Hall, who took charge of the church at Good Hope station, and has brought to his work such qualifications as promise to make him a valuable worker in this growingly hopeful field. Mr. St. John, who went out to become the business manager of the missionary steamer John Brown, though obliged temporarily to return to this country, has accomplished some useful exploration, and demonstrated that the proposed steamer will become a most timely and invaluable assistant to the missionaries in the way of facilitating transportation and intercommunication. There are encouraging signs that the influence of the workers at this mission is extending to the interior, and that the representatives of its schools and churches who are engaged in secular callings are a credit to the same, and are advertising the value of Christian training and character to those who are as yet strangers to both. One faithful laborer has, during the last twelvemonth, fallen at his post, after a service of fifteen years, Rev. J. M. Williams. His name will go to swell that ever-increasing list of heroic workers, who sacrificed their lives for Africa’s redemption. A native preacher has taken the vacated place, and so the holy work goes on, though the brave workers here and there are summoned to leave their toil and go up to their exceeding great reward. It is a token at once significant and prophetic, that this successor of Mr. Williams, at the Kaw Mendi station, has a son now in Fisk University who will keep up the succession of workers in Africa, by in due time returning to the land of his fathers as a herald of the gospel of Christ. Three other youthful representatives of the Mendi Mission are at school at Hampton and Atlanta, their very presence here being fraught with good to fellow students from the colored people of this country and to the land from which they came as the first fruits in[376] the way of missionary consecration. At the last Annual Meeting, great interest was excited by the expedition of Superintendent Ladd and Dr. Snow, which had just been entered upon, to find on the upper Nile a suitable place for the proposed Arthington Mission. Much was hoped for from this resolute attempt to locate a new station in the region of the Sobat. These pioneers have safely returned, and bring their mature recommendations as to what is expedient to be done in the district, where that generous patron of African missions, Mr. Arthington, was so urgent something should be done. On the whole, this Association has made a noble record, in concert with other missionary societies in the dark continent. The chapter of what has been endured and achieved by its representatives will be one of imperishable glory in the annals of this body. Whatever changes the future may bring, for the good brave work of the past, we and all lovers of Africa will praise God. Never was its mission work in the far-away land more promiseful, and we can but believe that days of large ingathering and of immediate advance are before it, so that past sacrifices and toils will not have been in vain, and the speedier successes of coming days will justify a missionary policy of the boldest and broadest character.

M. McG. Dana, Chairman.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON THE PROPOSED EXCHANGE OF MISSIONS.

The Committee to whom was referred Secretary Strieby’s report, on recommending the simplification of the work of the American Missionary Association, by withdrawing from the foreign field, and assuming more fully the work among the Indians to which it is now providentially invited, approve in general of its proposals, but beg to recommend to the Executive Committee of the American Missionary Association, in considering and settling the questions involved, the following points which they suggest as conditions in effecting the changes contemplated:

1. That the entire Mendi Mission, with its long and checkered history, representing such heroic sufferings and achievements, and in the sustenance of which our British friends have so generously aided us, be continued by transferring it to the A. B. C. F. M. or to the United Brethren, who have a mission near by and who will entertain overtures for the same, and that to this end the churches, schools, and other property be made over to either party, with the interest of the Avery fund, in the one case at once and in the other for a limited time, as the Committee may arrange. That the steamer John Brown, to which the Sabbath-schools of our churches have contributed some $7,000, be built, and be given over to such parties as will use it for the purposes originally contemplated.

2. That the interest in, and funds for, the Arthington Mission be, so far as may be, transferred to the A. B. C. F. M., and that failing, to the United Presbyterians who are doing such excellent work in the Nile Valley.

3. That this Association will assume the Indian Mission in Dakota offered it by the A. B. C. F. M., and will withdraw from the foreign fields, and arrange ultimately for the transference of the interest of the Avery fund to the American Board.

And your Committee propose for your adoption the following resolution, covering the adjudication of this question.

Resolved, That the matter of accepting the Dakota Mission from the American Board, and of transferring our African Mission to that Board or some other[377] organization, be referred to the Executive Committee with power, provided that it be made certain that the Mendi Mission, so dear to the hearts of many of the Association, be in some way sustained hereafter.

M. McG. Dana, Chairman.

THE INDIANS.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.

The Committee on Indian Missions would report:

First. That the work of this Association among the Indians—a work so small that the expenditure for it is only about one-fifth that for the Chinese in America—has been prospered during the last year. The blessing of the Master rests upon it, and our thanksgiving and prayers should be stimulated thereby.

Second. We heartily approve of its plan to combine an industrial with a literary education, that the boys and girls may take the lead in Christian arts as in Christian culture. Yet the experiment of training them in schools far from home should be carefully watched, lest there be formed a gulf of separation between the tribe and its educated youth, a gulf so deep that those returning from Hampton shall, through social longings, lapse into the customs of their fathers, or else shall stand aloof from their people in cultured isolation. We should subordinate individual advancement to tribal advantage; the benefit of the few to that of the many; and for this purpose schools are being established nearer home. Hence we recommend the careful study of the results of the experiment.

Third. We would earnestly press the evangelistic work among the Indians. They are to stay with us. They are soon to be of us, citizens with us of this Republic. So much is written in the providence of God. To educate them is not enough. The federal government is increasingly engaged in this. But its Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the Hon. H. Price, in his forthcoming report says: “Civilization is a plant of exceeding slow growth unless supplemented by Christian teaching and influence.” “In no other manner and by no other means, in my judgment, can our Indian population be so speedily and permanently reclaimed from barbarism, idolatry, and savage life as by the educational and missionary operations of the Christian people of our country.” Christianized education is the watchword, the vitalizing of all the truth of God with the love and spirit of God. This means more than schools; it means Christian schools and Christian churches. For this very work this Association has been ordained of God, and it should enlarge its work to the demands of the hour. The proposed exchange with the American Board means, for this society, enlargement. The rapid progress of the Indian towards citizenship demands enlargement. God calls this Association to enlarge its Indian missions that it may prepare both the negro and the Indian for citizenship and God.

Fourth. We believe that the welfare of the Indian demands the abolition of both tribal and reservation relations, the allotment of their lands in severalty, their amenability to State and federal laws and courts. And while we recognize with gratitude the past attempts of our national government in these directions, we need to press upon Congress the duty of renewing its endeavors and enlarging its appropriations for schools, that it may speedily turn these wards into industrious citizens. And for this end we would recommend that a committee of nine be appointed by this Association to memorialize Congress to place the Indian by the side of the negro and other citizens in the right to buy, own, and sell property,[378] real and personal, to work at what he pleases, and live where he pleases, to have the same standing before the law, to vote and hold office, in short to possess all the rights and obligations of citizens of the Republic.

A. H. Ross, Chairman.

WORK AND DUTY IN THE EAST.

BY GEN. S. C. ARMSTRONG.

At Hampton there are ninety, and at Carlisle there are nearly three hundred Indians—boys and girls—who are learning civilization as an object lesson, and are themselves an object lesson to the centres of intelligence and wealth, where is the sentiment that inspires and the means that provide for the combined practical and spiritual teaching of the red man. They suffice, perhaps, for a tangible proof of the Indian’s capacity, of which the need was great; their effect upon public sentiment has been marked. The result with these Indians has, so far, proved satisfactory. Scattering these pupils among the farmers of Massachusetts and of Pennsylvania for a portion of the year, has had such a good effect mutually, that five hundred more might well be so placed in various States, under the care of special agents, with proper rendezvous where the sick or unsatisfactory might be kept with a view to returning home, say ten per cent, of the entire number.

The Negro institutions at Nashville, Tenn., at Talladega, Alabama, and elsewhere, could do excellent work for them. The aims and methods of most white schools render them unfit for Indians.

We have found the weak point of the race to be physical, not mental or moral. They can endure the hardships peculiar to the plains, but not steady work from day to day. They are tainted with inherited disease; the lungs are their weak point. They are sinewy but not muscular; however, as a race they hold their own with favorable surroundings, are not decreasing seriously, if at all, and will not settle the problem by dying out.

Mechanically they have proved apt to learn, but slow to execute. Our Hampton Indian work-shops have this year supplied the Indian Department with two thousand pairs of men’s brogan shoes, five hundred dozen articles of tinware, and seventy-five sets of double plow harness, which were pronounced by the inspectors well-made and satisfactory. Carlisle has done more.

Both girls and boys take quickly and kindly to neatness and to industrial pursuits, as well as to books. They are as eager as the Negroes for knowledge, and become more and more so as they advance. Want of ambition is the least of their troubles. Teaching them is hard work, but interesting and stimulating in the highest degree.

They resent injury, but are not revengeful; not a sign of treachery in nearly five years. Religiously, they are, I believe, the most hopeful of the heathen races. The vastness and the grandeur of the West has affected them as desert life has the Arabs; they are remarkably Oriental in customs and ideas. They worship no fetish, there are no idols to break, but they have a crude faith to be cleared, dim eyes to be opened.

Christian efforts, under the care of Archdeacon Kirby of the Episcopal Church, have evangelized ten thousand Indians of British America, in their simple natural life. The mixed, harassed condition of our own, makes the work far more difficult.

The mingling of races at Hampton has worked well; they are mutually helpful and stimulating. An Indian classmate is kindly, thoughtfully treated by his colored compeers. A race that has been led is leading another. The “House-Father,” chief of our sixty Sioux boys, is a negro. With perhaps finer mental[379] and moral texture, the red race does not produce half enough to feed itself; the rougher, stronger blacks have not thrown a pauper upon the country, and raise raw material for the mills of Christendom. With benevolent intentions we have diminished and weakened the one; using the other only for selfish purposes, it has multiplied and grown stronger. Bringing both races under the care of the American Missionary Association is most fitting and wise. Both are peculiarly the concern of the American people, are providentially committed to our care, and are a part of us. In doing for them we are doing for ourselves, our children, and our country.

On the Indian girl rests most heavily the weight of past and present influences. When, in October, 1881, I took 25 Indian boys and five girls back to their Dakota homes, after three years’ training at Hampton, the former were readily placed in rooms by themselves, away from the camp, employed in agency work-shops at the trades they had learned, and thus helped on greatly. The girls could not be so isolated; they had no trades, and though they could make their own garments and do housework, there were not suitable situations for them; they returned to their mothers and grandmothers, who might sell them to the brave who would pay the highest price in ponies for them.

One of the five, an earnest Christian, wrote: “Hard to be good woman out here.” She finally married a white man of good repute. Another is reported as a most satisfactory house servant in the family of a missionary; another keeps her father’s store and books. He is one of the best and most thrifty of Indians; but the family live in one room in a log house. Two others, younger, are waiting an opportunity to return to Hampton for two years’ more training, with a view to becoming teachers.

Teaching is the career for Indian girls, as it has been the one way for colored girls of the South to be more than drudges; there it is the only field for a womanly ambition. The increase of educational work for Indians creates some hope for their girls, on whom rests the future of their race.

There is a tendency to increase our Indians’ course of study to longer than three years. One set having returned, the Indians, whose parental feelings are tender and strong, are more trustful of us, and readily consent to a longer absence of their children. One boy has already returned at his own expense, and another is saving his money for the purpose, both to learn more and to perfect themselves in their trade of shoemaking. The sooner the Indian can stand without government aid, the better. Any boy can return who will pay his way back. This gives a motive to work, and creates appreciation of his opportunities.

For the practical necessities of Indian life their training should be practical.

We give half the day to study and half to labor. An education which does not fit them to take care of themselves may do them more harm than good.

I think that when charity and the government are linked together for Indian work, the former should erect the buildings and maintain the teachers, the latter supply the wants of the body. United States beef and flour and shoes are as good as any body’s, but government employés, as our civil service stands, are not the men to elevate the Indian. The telling factor in all work for men is the person who does it. Unless that shall be supplied from the pure fountains of our Christian civilization it will not, as a rule, be supplied at all. I refer to the educational work at the agencies; there the government day and boarding schools should be strictly responsible to the controlling power, and their moral value will be that of the agent in charge. Missionary institutions should stimulate these, and should be conducted by superior men and women directly responsible to their Eastern supporters. I call it sham missionary work to send out Christian teachers to be[380] supported on public pay. The churches who do that, and some do, are doing nothing. Let us first send our own teachers for the Indians, and then fit them to become their own teachers; to make the teachers is to make the people.

The free Negro schools in the South are vitalized by a number of strong central institutions under Northern men that train the picked growth of the race as teachers. This is, I think, the true relation of Eastern charity to the Indian. There should be an excellent boarding and industrial school at each important agency for this purpose. Getting fifteen dollars a month of government for food and clothing for each pupil need not in the least weaken the independence or morals of teachers. The friends of the Indian will do the rest.

The situation is critical, the opportunity is great; the rising tide of public sentiment, the movement at Washington, the eagerness as well as the exigency of the red man mean much.

But this work needs a leader; it will drag if thrown on an overloaded man. The man is as much as the money; the one will bring the other, both by wise appeals and good work that will commend itself to the country.

For more than a century Indians rejected our civilization; now their thinking men, for they are a race of thinkers, forecast the future and wish their children taught the white man’s way as their only hope.

They do not choose this; they are compelled to it. Hundreds, thousands, are waiting for an education. They beg for what they once refused.

THE CHINESE.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.

Your Committee on the Chinese Mission of the Association have agreed upon the following report:

There are three points which demand special thanksgiving to God.

First. The manifestly wise policy of the Association on the whole question of Christianizing the Chinese. This appears (1) in the noble stand it has taken and the work it is doing for education and Christianity on our Pacific coast, thus uttering a perpetual rebuke to the intolerable selfishness and barbarism of political parties in the passage of the anti-Chinese bill; (2) in the admirable disposition made of the proposed mission in China itself.

The desire of earnest Christian Chinamen in California that a mission be started in Southern China, which might be a “rallying centre” of Christian influence for converted men on their return home, and from which they could “go forth to carry the gospel to their countrymen,” is a desire which must commend itself to reason; and the readiness of these Christian Chinamen to aid such a movement with contributions of their own is worthy of the highest commendation. Moreover, that Hong Kong, that great gateway of Chinese emigration, that district wrenched away from the Chinese by English selfishness and rapacity forty years ago, in the ignominious struggle of the opium war, should be the place agreed upon for that mission, seemed peculiarly fitting. But that this Association should be the body to establish the mission there, thus distracting attention from its great peculiar work at home, and dividing the contributions of American Congregational churches between two foreign Congregational boards in China, could hardly seem wise to any. How gratifying then to learn that this Association, holding to the purpose of no more missions abroad, has successfully arranged with the American Board to accept and carry forward this movement at Hong[381] Kong. The principle of simplicity of arrangement and economical division of labor among our great benevolent societies is thus endorsed once for all.

Second. The second point calling for thanksgiving is the marked success of the work among the Chinese on the Pacific coast. There is no more promising work for China, as a whole, in all the world, than that now being done by the California Chinese Mission. Its fifteen schools, with thirty-one teachers, eleven of whom are converted Chinamen, twenty-five hundred scholars—an increase of almost a thousand over last year, and a hundred and six conversions to Christ, all show that it is no longer a mere experiment. The efficient Christian organization known as the Congregational Association of Christian Chinese, with its missionary spirit and liberal contributions, demonstrate the fact on our own soil that the Chinamen, like others, when touched by the spirit of Christ, are a power for righteousness.

Third. The recent influx of 25,000 Chinamen, hastening to reach our shores before the pagan bill of Congress should go into effect, has suddenly increased the demand for laborers and money.

The work on the Pacific coast ought not to receive less than $13,000 the coming year, that the 125,000 Chinese already in the country may, during the ten years of national disgrace, be quietly fitted to become a great Christian power for the elevation of their countrymen.

While the anti-Chinese outcry from California has filled the ears of the nation, your Committee wishes to recognize with thanksgiving the noble work which many of the Christians of that State have done and are doing for China and for Christ. The Chinese missions of the Association are at present restricted to the State of California. But your Committee are impressed with the importance to the Association, in this part of its work, of full and exact information as to the condition of the Chinese population throughout the country, and as to the work done in their behalf by various Christian agencies, and especially by the local churches of various denominations. And we recommend that a systematic inquiry be instituted on this subject, the result of which shall be reported at the next annual meeting.

James Brand, Chairman.

ADDRESS OF REV. JAMES BRAND, D.D.

Mr. President: At one of the former meetings of this Association, one speaker, in pleading for China, proposed that the audience go with him, in imagination, to the Chinese quarter in San Francisco, in order that from a personal inspection of the thrift, economy and order manifested there he might get an argument for Christian sympathy and support in Chinese education. They did so and the argument was good. At the same meeting, another speaker, pleading the same cause, proposed to the audience to go with him to a more sacred place than the Chinese quarter, namely, the battle-fields of the war, that he might gather from the memory and suggestions of those hallowed places an argument for the maintenance of the national and Christian principles contended for in that war, and hence an argument for the Christian treatment of the Chinese.

Now, in getting the purchase for another argument for the same unhappy people, I propose that you go for a few moments with me to a more sacred place still than either the Chinese quarter or the battle-fields of the war. I mean that upper room where, eighteen centuries ago, occurred that last, long interview between Christ and his disciples, before the crucifixion. Let us reverently step in there and stand behind that little circle of the eleven. Let us catch the spirit and the[382] suggestions of that tender and holy scene. The Divine One is speaking his last words to those men who are soon to go forth and undertake the conversion of the world. What is his most weighty thought? It is that which was expressed in his closing prayer: “As thou hast sent me into the world even so have I sent them into the world;” that is, the mission of Christian men in the world was to be the same as His own. It was to be a mission of vicarious suffering and service for all the world. Men were dying in their sins in all countries. The nations were sitting in the shadow of death. Generations were tramping on, each in the track of the others, to hopeless doom. They did not know God’s redeeming love. It is this spectacle of humanity rushing on to a hopeless eternity, that puts that solemn and intense tone into the Saviour’s voice as He talks and prays. They were to be men like Christ. They were to go into all the world, bearing the love of God.

This is what the world needs. This world of faith in force, and faith in diplomacy, and faith in partisan politics; this world of faith in intellectual skill; this world of brain power, elaborating expedients; this world of self-seeking refinement; these nations that are under the shadow of death are all sending up through the gloom of their moral miseries the inarticulate cry to God for just this Christlike mission of loving men, to the world. This, then, is the warrant; this is the groundwork of my plea for China. It is not that the Chinese are very worthy, or that our nation ought to be very consistent with its fundamental principles, but it is that 400,000,000 souls need a Saviour from sin, and we, whose mission is identical with Christ’s, have something to do in the case. This applies, of course, to all nations as well as the Chinese, but I plead for a special application of the principle to China on two grounds:

I. Because of the vastness and need of China and the peculiar relation it now sustains to ourselves. What have we done for her people? We have shut our door in their face. We have said no poor laboring man of China shall feed his children on our shore for ten years to come. Three hundred and thirty thousand of them will have gone into eternity before these ten black years shall have expired! Do we not hear the echo of that tender voice from that upper room, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto these, ye have done it unto me”?

II. I plead for China because of the wrongs she has suffered at nominally Christian hands, and especially at the hands of the United States Government.

The anti-Chinese bill is a violation of treaty, a violation of the spirit of impartial justice to foreigners, a violation of our own interest, because opposed to the spirit of Christ, which when resisted always reacts. It was carried through, like the opium trade, for present personal advantage on a small scale. It is the child of partisan politics, born out of a fear lest other foreign laborers, finding themselves underbidden by the more economical Chinese, might raise an outcry, and disturb the equilibrium of party power. Hence, to gain votes, one party will sacrifice national policy and Christian principle, and the other will do the same rather than lose votes. Thus China must be affronted, and Christianity dishonored before the world. It is not, however, the American people as such who have done this thing—thank God for that! Whenever the national conscience has spoken at all on the subject, it has spoken against it. This anti-Chinese legislation is the adoption, in America, of the old barbaric cast-off policy of exclusion, which China herself has pursued for centuries toward other nations. China is going forward: we have gone back.

Now what is to be the result in this case? It must be reaction. There must come reaction against American commerce, losing more than it gains, reaction against American integrity as to treaty stipulations, awakening Chinese distrust[383] and hate, casting a blight upon Western civilization and, worst of all, defeating American Christianity.

The great American nation has divided at the Chinese quarter. Say what you will, that Chinese quarter in San Francisco has become the great moral divortium or water-shed of America where Christian and anti-Christian sentiment divide. On one side the Chinese workman is mobbed, excluded; on the other he is educated and led to Christ. On the one side men act for party ends and call the Chinaman a “heathen dog;” on the other they recognize him with all his infirmities as a man for whom Christ died, and call him brother. This is a tremendous responsibility we assume when we thus prejudice a fifth part of the human family against the religion of Christ.

Now, then, if we make special pleas for the Indian because we have manifestly wronged him and ought to make amends; if we are under special obligation to the freedman because we have sinned against him, or because he may become an important link between our Christianity and perishing Africa, why is not the same argument good for the Chinese on the Pacific coast? Surely, in God’s sight, these ten black years ought to be ten very bright years for the Christian schools for Chinamen in California. China ought to have at the end of that time a larger force of native missionaries trained up on the Pacific slope than all the Christian workers employed in that great empire to-day. The truth is, we are all taking one side or the other of this question. In deciding which it shall be let us keep in mind the noble sentiment of Henry Richard. Speaking on the opium question in the House of Commons, he said, “I am not ashamed to say that I am one of those who believe that there is a God who ruleth in the kingdom of men, and that it is not safe for a community, any more than an individual, recklessly and habitually to affront those great principles of truth and justice and humanity, on which, I believe, He governs the world. And we may be quite sure of this, that, in spite of our pride of place and power, in spite of our vast possessions and enormous resources, in spite of our boasted force by land and sea, if we come into conflict with that Power we shall be crushed like an egg-shell against the granite rock.”

Better still, let us listen again for the serious tone of the Divine prayer in that upper room. “I pray for them; I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine. And now I am no more in the world but these are in the world. Holy Father, keep them!” While the shadow of to-morrow’s cross was already darkening his path, his thought was not for himself but for them. “These are in the world,” and to be in it, to work, to choose, to suffer in it—“in the world,” and so are tempted to use the world’s tactics, tempted to lose sight of their great commission and to become callous to the world’s needs—“in the world,” and so they have to settle momentous questions—“in the world,” having to meet its pains, its storms, its falsehood, its curse, its fascinations, and so, may lose sight of the claims of thy kingdom of love: Holy Father, keep them! Keep them!

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON FINANCE.

Your Committee on Finance beg leave to report that they have examined the Treasurer’s statements of receipts and expenditures and find them properly certified as correct by the auditors. Also the trial balance, and the list of trust funds, and the books of accounts are so certified.

The trust funds appear to be securely invested and wisely administered for the purposes for which they were created.

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We find that the accounts of the Treasurer are carefully kept and that the control and disbursement of the current funds of the Association are conducted in a thoroughly systematic and business-like manner, with ample safeguards against error and loss.

Your Committee take pleasure in commending the wisdom, fidelity and economy of the officers and Executive Committee in the financial administration of the great trusts confided to their care.

It is gratifying to find that the expenditures of the Association have been so carefully guarded and distributed that for six consecutive years last past they have not exceeded the annual income. During this period a large indebtedness previously incurred has been wholly paid and no new indebtedness created in any department of its work.

The balance in the treasury is $789.83, after paying all bills due to September 30.

There is every reason to expect that this satisfactory condition of things will be continued through the generosity of the churches to this cause.

At the last annual meeting, your Committee on Finance recommended that the churches increase their contributions from $243,000 to $300,000 for the then current year; and the reports submitted at this meeting show that this was done within $3,000. This additional sum of $54,000 has been used partly in completing the college buildings at Talladega, Ala., and Strieby Hall, at Tougaloo, Miss. It has also greatly helped in the support of needy students, besides materially increasing the working force and general church and school efficiency.

It is worthy of remark that almost every dollar of this increased contribution has done effective work in the mission fields, since, while the receipts for the past two years have been more than $100,000 larger than in the two years next preceding them, the expense of raising and disbursing these funds and managing the affairs of the Association has increased less than $400 per annum, thus showing that the Association is fully equipped for a much larger work without additional cost for the machinery of administration. This fact constitutes a strong appeal to the benevolent who wish their gifts applied without waste or diminution to the good ends for which they are bestowed.

These more ample facilities for church and educational work bring with them larger demands for funds, so that simply to preserve its efficiency in fields already occupied the Association requires an annual increase in contributions. Besides, new demands are continually made for new foundations in different places.

From the reports and papers submitted at this meeting, we gather that $5,000 more than last year will be needed to increase the work among the Chinese in California; $20,000 more for the enlargement of the work among the Indians; $25,000 more for the support of schools and churches among the Freedmen, and $25,000 more towards the building of Smith College at Little Rock, Ark.

In view of all these facts and reasons, the urgency of which all friends of the Association will readily appreciate, your Committee recommend that at least $50,000 be added to the current income of the Association for general uses during the next fiscal year, and express the earnest hope that the further sum of $25,000 may be obtained for special purposes, making a grand total for 1882–3 of $375,000.

J. G. W. Cowles, Chairman.

PETITION OF PRESIDENT E. A. WARE AND OTHERS.

REFERRED TO THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

We, the undersigned ministers and teachers, representing the work of the American Missionary Association, mainly in the State of Georgia, respectfully[385] petition the annual meeting of the Association about to assemble at Cleveland, Ohio, that they appoint a committee of five, more or less, who shall report at the annual meeting in 1883 with reference to the policy that should govern the Association and its representatives in matters suggested by the following questions:

First. Is it the mission of the Association to work solely among the three despised races, so called, or through its work for these races to labor for the upbuilding of other people without distinction of race as rapidly as they can be brought within the sphere of its influence?

Second. Should it or should it not be the policy of the Association to establish separate churches or schools for different races?

Third. What should be the relations of comity between the Association and our other benevolent societies when undertaking to do missionary work of the same nature in the same field?

Fourth. What light, if any, is shed upon the foregoing questions by the history of the foundation and early work of the Association?

We would suggest that the committee be instructed to invite correspondence from the officers of the Association, from the officers of our other missionary societies, from all workers in the field, and from others interested, and that the report be published in the religious press at least two months before the annual meeting of 1883.

EXCHANGE OF MISSIONS.

BY SECRETARY STRIEBY.

At the regular meeting of the Executive Committee of the American Missionary Association, held Sept. 11, 1882, the following resolution was adopted:

Resolved, That a committee of three be appointed to invite a conference with the Am. Board respecting the advisability of transferring our African work to the Board, and assuming the work among the Indians now carried on by the Board.

In accordance with this vote a delegation from our Executive Committee, consisting of Drs. Ward and Roy, Mr. Mead and Secretary Strieby held an interview with the Prudential Committee of the American Board in Boston, Sept. 14, at which the proposed exchange was fully and fraternally considered. The Prudential Committee of the Board subsequently passed a resolution recommending to the Board the approval of the transfer, if all legal and other difficulties could be obviated. In response, the Board, at its late meeting in Portland, Oct. 3, passed the following resolution:

Resolved, That further arrangements for the Dakota Mission be referred to the Prudential Committee with power, but with the earnest recommendation that the whole mission be transferred to the care of the American Missionary Association, unless the practical difficulties shall prove to be insuperable.

On the 13th of October, a meeting was held in New York, of a special committee of the Prudential Committee of the Board, and of a special committee of the Ex. Com. of the A. M. A., in which the principles and methods, as well as the difficulties in the way of the transfer, were again considered.

The spirit of that meeting was not that of sharp bargaining in commercial values, but of an earnest desire on the part of Christian brethren, representing affiliated missionary societies to consummate an arrangement that would facilitate the upbuilding of the Redeemer’s Kingdom. Yet commercial values were canvassed. The Board has in its Indian missions, buildings for churches and schools, and other property, estimated at $36,000. The value of the properly of the A. M. A. at the Mendi Mission can be stated with less definiteness, but the buildings[386] for churches, schools, and industrial work can hardly be worth as much as that of the Board in the Dakota Mission. But in addition to this property there is the fund from the estate of Rev. Charles Avery, for African missions. The points of difficulty suggested and discussed were: the legal authority of the Association to transfer this Avery fund; the continuance of the Mendi Mission by the Board; and its assumption of the Arthington Mission. On the first point—the transfer of the Avery fund—a legal opinion, very clear, and so far as could be judged, satisfactory, was obtained, of which the following is the decisive portion.

“Under the bequest thus given to the American Missionary Association, it cannot lawfully delegate to another the discretion which the testator has intrusted specifically to it. But it may delegate to others the execution of purposes which are approved by its discretion, and which are within the objects defined by the testator. It may employ the agency of its own officers and servants in the application of the income, or it may employ the agency of other organizations, as in its discretion may be most fit, useful and efficient in accomplishing the testator’s purposes.”

In regard to the second point, the Committee of the American Missionary Association expressed the wish that the Mendi Mission should be continued, while the representatives of the Board deemed it unadvisable, on account of the great enlargement of its African work recently entered upon; and on the third point, in like manner and for the same reasons, they thought the Board would be indisposed to assume the responsibilities of the Arthington Mission. No final settlement of these points was attempted, it being deemed necessary to wait until this annual meeting of the Association should, if it thought best, approve of the exchange of the missions, and, as the Board had done, remit to the Committee the authority to arrange details. With a view to securing such approval, I shall now proceed in behalf of the Executive Committee to give the reasons for the exchange of missions.

1. It is believed that the churches desire the exchange.

A living missionary society must have a vital connection with the churches. Thence mainly come its funds, and funds are as essential to it as to a bank or factory; yet if it get from them nothing but funds, it is no better than a bank or factory. It needs to be grounded in the confidence of the churches, and to be permeated in every branch and fibre by their piety and prayers. The wishes, therefore, of the churches as to methods as well as aims should be sought and heeded. Do the churches desire this change? That they do, I offer in evidence the effort made to that end in the National Council at New Haven. That effort was no sudden impulse originating in the mind of a single individual, and as suddenly laid aside by the Council. An elaborate report on the subject was presented and discussed at great length. It is true that the movement was not successful, yet it was full of significance, mainly from the character of those who pressed it. They were among the strongest and most influential men in the denomination. They were at the time outvoted, but their convictions were not changed, nor in so far as they were representative men is the weight of their testimony to be disregarded. Passing down to the present time, we come to the respectful resolution adopted by the Congregational Association of Ohio, asking for substantially this exchange. This resolution is not the work of foes, but of warmest friends, as our cordial invitation and reception here abundantly testify.

But the most convincing fact of all is the reception which has been given to the announcement of the proposed change. Almost unanimously comes to us the assurance that the exchange is heartily approved by the churches. I have said[387] “almost” unanimously, for there have come to us, from a few old and tried friends, words of regret that we should abandon our work in Africa, so cherished in precious memories.

There may be more of sentiment than of sound judgment in this plea, but I beg the privilege of expressing my personal sympathy with the feelings of these old friends. When I think of the toils and sufferings of the workers in the Mendi Mission, of the buried dead there, and of the survivors now in this country, with shattered health, and when I think of the friends in this country and across the ocean who have sustained this mission by their prayers and offerings, I am frank to admit that it has cost me sleepless hours and a sore heart to yield my consent to part with it—unimportant as that consent may be. But in spite of all these sympathies and of old associations, the reasons for the exchange seem to me so conclusive as to leave no room for hesitation; and one of these strong reasons is the one I have just presented—the wishes of the churches.

2. The division will simplify the appeals in behalf of the two Boards.

It is a surprise that so many people know so little about Missionary and Benevolent Societies. This is sometimes simply amusing, as when at the recent meeting of the American Board in Portland, it is said that an agent of a railroad centering in Portland asked if the Am. Board was an “Odd Fellows’ Society”; and an intelligent looking man was overheard instructing his friend that they were “Freethinkers.” But the matter becomes serious when it results in the improper designation of bequests in wills and legacies. People that leave legacies to missionary societies are certainly interested in them, and might be supposed to know about them, but mistakes are constantly made that invalidate legacies and cause perplexity to heirs and loss to missionary treasuries. But it must be admitted that the present distribution of work and the appeals in its behalf foster the mistakes into which so many fall. Sec. Humphrey, for example, appears before a Western conference and in eloquent and earnest words presents the broad claim of the American Board, dwelling with emphasis on the remarkable openings in Africa, an almost newly discovered continent, and then calls for sympathy for the Indians now lifting up their hands to welcome the white man’s Bible instead of his whisky. Then follows Sec. Powell in his vigorous and breezy way, telling not only of the colored man in the South but of the wonderful land of his fathers, and follows this with a stirring appeal for the Indians! Is it not too much to expect of the average Christian that he should be able to separate these tangled branches and make each tree stand out before him in its own proper individuality?

But now, if the Am. Board, with its history of nearly three-quarters of a century and its noble work in all parts of the foreign field, is recognized as the sole agency of the Congregational churches for foreign missions; if the Am. Home Miss. Society, with its record of more than half a century, and with its field stretching from Maine to California, dotted all over with the monuments of its beneficial labors and filled with a vast and ever-expanding population, shall be the channel for distinctively home mission work; and if the American Missionary Association, with its peculiar and diversified educational and religious methods, shall be set apart to the work among the colored people of the South and among the whites as far and as fast as the vanishing of caste prejudice will permit, and also among the Indians and the Chinamen on the Pacific Slope, then will the distinction between the several societies be made clear, and Benevolence, which, like commercial capital, is cautious, will see before it open and distinct channels, through which it may pour its benefactions.

3. Providential indications point to the change. Missionary Societies, if vital and effective, are born of the Spirit, but developed in outer form and methods of work[388] by providential events, and if their usefulness continues, they must not remain stagnant, but be obedient to the call of providential changes. The American Board once wisely embraced three denominations of Christians, Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Dutch Reformed. But the growth of those denominations and of the missionary zeal in them, made it clear that each would do more good if working separately, calling out the individual responsibility of the several denominations, and the result has abundantly verified the anticipation. So, too, has the Board modified its work. The changes in its Indian missions, once reaching far South and now confined to Dakota, may be cited as an illustration, not of the Board’s fickleness, but of its wisdom.

The A. M. A. has been guided to marked changes. Its original aim was to do mission work free from all possible complications with slavery. It did not, as I understand the matter, assume that all other Boards were in favor of slavery, while it alone was opposed to it, but its founders felt that the time had come when their consciences could be no longer satisfied unless their missionary contributions and labors constituted an active and public protest against slavery. The breadth of this principle included all forms of missionary efforts, and hence the constitution of the Association provided for both home and foreign work, and in its greatest enlargement on this basis, it had about 110 home missionaries in the field, and its foreign missions extended to West Africa, Jamaica, the Sandwich Islands, Siam, the Copts in Egypt, the Indians in the United States, and the refugees in Canada. But the war changed the whole aspect of affairs for the Association. It set free the millions of slaves and gave the opportunity for reaching them directly with schools and the Gospel. The Association at once concentrated its efforts upon these people, having shortly before or soon after the war abandoned or transferred all its missions—home and foreign—except the Mendi, and this was retailed as cognate to its work among the Freedmen in this country. But now as we look back on the history of that mission, so useful up to the date when we surrendered our other foreign missions, and so comparatively unsuccessful since, we are constrained to ask if it, too, should not then have been relinquished.

Let me detail the facts: At the annual meeting in 1861, the Mendi Mission reported four stations, three outstations and seven preaching places; thirteen white missionaries on the ground, two who had just returned to America, and one under appointment—sixteen in all. Up to that date its schools and churches were prosperous, converts were added, a theological class was formed and one young man licensed to preach. And in addition to this more direct evangelical work, it has exerted a marked and happy influence in averting war among the natives, in checking the slave trade and in developing industry and commerce among the people. I find this testimony concerning a single station of the mission, that on the Boom River: “The whole trade of this river has been developed within the last ten years. It is now worth more than $40,000 a year. The coast, or slave trade to the North, has been stopped. Natives, in their own canoes, carry their produce to market, which only four years ago was bartered away for half its value. The credit for this change is due to the mission. The industry of the people has increased ten-fold through that influence.” The mission at that date was the most conspicuous work of the Association, and the account of it stands at the head of the Annual Report, and occupies seven pages. But at the close of the war, only four years later, this mission took its place at the close of the Report, occupied only a page and a half, and the sadly significant lines on that page and a half were: “The increased expense (owing to the very high rate of exchange) combined with the great demand for missionary labors among the[389] freedmen and the absorption of young and middle-aged men in the armies of the country, has deprived the committee of the ability to reinforce the mission as it needs. For no inconsiderable portion of the year, Rev. Mr. Hinman and wife have been the only white missionaries at the mission.” For more than ten years the mission remained inadequately recruited. In 1876 we sent the loved and lamented Rev. E. P. Smith to explore the field with the view to enlargement, but, alas! he never returned to tell us the story, and his bones hallow the soil of West Africa. In 1877 we inaugurated the effort to supply the mission with the educated sons and daughters of the freedmen. From 1877 to 1881 we sent thither fourteen missionaries with five children—nineteen in all. To-day there is but one of these at the mission. Finally an effort was made to recruit the Mendi mission with well-trained colored men, but our efforts thus far have been unsuccessful. If twenty-one years ago we could have foreseen these results, could we have felt justified in going forward with the mission; and with the results now before us as history, can we hesitate to surrender it to another Board? Does not the Lord of missions seem to say to the Association: I have other work for you?

Before passing from this subject it should be stated that our experiment has been favorable as to the health of colored Americans in Africa. Of the nineteen colored missionaries sent thither since the year 1877, only three have died, one man and two women, and in none of these cases did death result directly from the effects of the climate. The retirement has in many cases been due to the ill-health of the wives. The result emphasizes the necessity of very close medical examination, especially of the women, and of maturity of judgment and character in the missionaries and of adequate preparation in study.

In 1879 Mr. Robert Arthington made to the Association the generous offer of $15,000, on condition that it would establish a mission within an area designated by him on the Upper Nile in tropical Africa. The Committee expressed gratitude to Mr. Arthington, yet feeling the responsibility of so great an undertaking, took suitable time for deliberation. Estimates were made as to the probable cost, and with all the light available, it was judged that $50,000 would equip and found the mission. The Committee then proposed to undertake the mission if our British friends would supplement Mr. Arthington’s gift with a like amount. By the efforts of the Freedmen’s Missions Aid Society this additional sum was secured, and in 1881 Rev. Mr. Ladd and Dr. Snow made a preliminary exploration, extending their trip 2,500 miles up the Nile, only to find, however, the rebellion of the fanatical Achmet in full career on the upper Nile, and barely escaping with their lives, descended the river to find the rebellion of Arabi Pasha just ready to break forth. The exploration was heroically and carefully made, and yet it showed clearly that nothing could then be done towards establishing the mission, nor can anything yet be attempted in the present disturbed condition of the Nile basin.

In the meantime the experience of the British missions, lately established in tropical Africa, shows us that a much larger sum than $50,000 would probably be needed to plant the mission; and, moreover, it has become more clear that the sud—a collection of soil and weeds—so impedes the navigation of the Nile above the mouth of the Sobat as to render access to the site specially designated for the Arthington Mission extremely difficult, uncertain, and, at times, impossible.

Under all circumstances it has become manifest that the farther prosecution of the effort to plant the Arthington Mission will involve the expenditure of greater sums of money, and the encountering of much more formidable difficulties than we had anticipated at the outset—and raises the question as to the wisdom of transferring the fund, with the possibilities of the mission, to another Board with larger resources and more experience, or of returning the money to the generous donors.

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Turning now from this foreign work which the Committee are disposed to transfer, let me invite attention to the work which will be left to us, and which, in consequence of the exchange, if made, we can enlarge and prosecute with more vigor.

I begin with the work among the Freedmen. That work has been remarkably, continuously and increasingly successful. It has gone beyond the stage of experiment. It is planted firmly on lands and in permanent buildings, and still more firmly in the confidence of the colored people and in the respect of the white citizens. It has been among the most important levers for the elevation of the colored people, one of the strong influences in the settlement of our national problem, and a most effective instrument in the spread of the pure Gospel in the South. It has reached a point where it ought to be greatly enlarged. If Congress shall pass the bill appropriating ten millions of dollars annually among the States on the basis of illiteracy, it will give such a stimulus to common-school education in the South as to make a demand for teachers by the thousand where we and all other agencies supply only hundreds; it will do the preliminary work in the education of a population that will call for a much larger number of educated ministers; and it will give an uplift to the masses that will render leaders in business and professional life a necessity to their further progress and security. The munificent gift of a million of dollars by Mr. Slater will impart a grand impulse to the education of the colored people. It will doubtless render important help to many societies; it will come far short of meeting the full wants of any; and it would be a sad mistake, deprecated by no one more than Mr. Slater himself, if this great gift should weaken the sense of responsibility in others. Its greatest ultimate value will probably be in awakening other generous hearts to the fact that the work needs millions as well as hundreds and thousands. This people are generations behind the Anglo-Saxons in preparation for the duties of life, and they and their children need not only as great, but for the time being greater facilities to enable them to catch up in the race and then to march forward at even pace in the responsibilities and privileges of citizens and Christians. The time has come to push this great undertaking. The nation is aroused to it, and the American Missionary Association, so well prepared for it, needs only to be stripped of outer and foreign garments, and to enter with disencumbered hands and redoubled energy and means into the great work to which it has been so plainly called.

Nor by this concentration will the Association lose sight of Africa. It believes as much as ever that God means that the Freedmen have not only a great duty and destiny here, but that they have also a special call and fitness to bear the Gospel to the land of their fathers. In its schools and churches it will direct their attention to this field, and endeavor to inspire them with the missionary spirit. The only change will be in the hands that shall lead them to Africa and guide and cheer them on in the work there. The Association and the Board will work harmoniously and more efficiently to this great end, the one on this continent, the other on that.

The A. M. A. is prepared to do an enlarged work among the Indians. Popular consent in the churches supporting the Association has assigned to it especially the care of the colored races in America. There is a fitness in putting these together; they are alike alien to European blood: they are alike the victims of caste prejudice, and they alike need schools as well as churches. The Association has been the strenuous opponent of race oppression and caste prejudice, and has devoted itself to the varied modes of industrial, educational and church work needed by these races. They should no longer be regarded as the subject of foreign mission efforts. The Indians, for example, are the original inhabitants of the land, and the[391] strenuous efforts of those most interested in their welfare are to induce the government to make no treaties with them as foreigners, but to bring them as rapidly as possible into the ranks of citizens, sharing the protection of law and holding lands in severalty. It is a hindrance to this desirable consummation if the Indians are treated ecclesiastically and religiously as foreigners. If the State makes them citizens the church ought certainly to regard them as “no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens.” On the other hand, no home mission board with its simple plan for aiding in the formation of churches and the support of ministers can adequately meet their wants. They need the school and the industrial training as well as the church, and these the A. M. A. is prepared to furnish and to carry forward under the light of its ample experience in the South.

The Association is no stranger to the Indian work. At one time it had twenty-one missionaries among them. It is true that its missions were abandoned in large measure and the efforts of the Association concentrated upon the South. But precious fruits are yet gathered from that neglected planting. The Association gave its hearty co-operation to the peace policy of Gen. Grant, rendering useful service to the Government and the Indians by the appointment of some good agents, a few of whom, notwithstanding all detractions and temptations, are alive and remain unto this present. It has aided in the education of Indian youth at Hampton, and the Committee had voted for the current year a much larger appropriation for Indian work. If the Board shall transfer to it the Dakota Mission, the responsibility and the call for funds may be larger than was anticipated, but if it be the call of Providence there will be no shrinking from duty.

Caste-prejudice is the curse of most of the nations yet unconverted to Christ, and a great hindrance to the Gospel. In this country it is the bitterest force left by Slavery—bitter in him who cherishes it, and in him who suffers from it. Christianity must conquer it as it did slavery—for the world. It can do this; its love can subdue the pride of the Caucasian, and its light and power uplift the negro, the Chinaman and the Indian. To the practical preaching of this love and light must the American Missionary Association devote its concentrated efforts, till all the people of this land shall come into the fellowship of the Gospel and into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

ADDRESSES AT THE ANNUAL MEETING.

PRESIDENT HAYES’ ADDRESS.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen.—Without preface I proceed at once to state the proposition to which I ask your considerate attention. The friends of popular education believe that the time has fully come when national aid should be given wherever such aid is needed, and to the extent that it is needed, for the free education of all the citizens of the United States. The grave necessity for national aid for education is in the Southern States, and especially for the colored people. But the white people of the South also need it. The people of New Mexico and the other Territories need it. It is not improbable that by reason of immigration from countries where popular education is neglected, some of the new States and some of the large cities may need it. The Indians did need it, but happily the large appropriations recently made for their education—amounting[392] to almost half a million of dollars for the next fiscal year, and the action of the government during the last few years in behalf of their education at Hampton, at Carlisle, in Oregon, at the Indian agencies, and at tribal schools, have at last fully committed the nation to the wise and beneficent policy of fitting the Indians, as far as practicable, and as fast as practicable, for the duties and privileges of American citizenship.

The bills pending in Congress on the subject of national aid for education are of two classes. One class seeks to establish a permanent fund by devoting to the purpose the receipts of the sales of the public lands, or from the taxes on spirituous liquors, or from other specified sources. By the other class of measures the money required is appropriated directly from the public treasury. The measure which perhaps meets with most favor is the latter class. It requires that ten or fifteen millions of dollars a year shall be distributed among the States—each State to have that proportion of this sum which its illiteracy bears to the total illiteracy of the whole country. This appropriation, it is contemplated, will be continued long enough to test the value of the measure, or until the States themselves shall become able to provide for the free education of all citizens.

And now, my friends, what are the grounds upon which these measures are supported? This question opens a wide field of discussion—a field so large that I do not hope to make even a hasty survey of the whole of it in the time limited by the proprieties of this occasion. Fortunately, it is not at all important that I should attempt it. The facts, the figures and the arguments bearing on the subject are all familiar. The embarrassment is that they have been repeated so often and presented so ably that one hesitates to spread them again before such an audience as this. But if the question is asked, why repeat what is already so familiar, the reply is cogent and near at hand. The evil we deplore and wish to remove still remains. In spite of the work of the religious denominations, and of benevolent associations and individuals, the number of ignorant men armed with ballots which control the Nation’s destiny grows larger and larger. Congress hesitates to act, has adopted no remedy, and has not even reached a test vote on the question. This leaves to the friends of free and universal education at the South no recourse, except further agitation. This is the American way to obtain from the government needed reforms. Senators and Representatives have made reports and speeches, which cover the whole ground. Voluminous and valuable writings leave nothing to be desired by the citizen who would conscientiously investigate this question.

There is another testimony in behalf of the right side of this important subject which must not be overlooked. More than seventeen years have passed since the close of the great war which consolidated the Union, gave liberty to the slaves and opened the way for free education at the South. During all of that time a stream of benevolent enterprises and efforts has been poured into the South in aid of this work by the various religious denominations and by missionary and charitable associations. Rich men have been glad to contribute to it generously out of their abundance. Many men and women from humble homes have nobly given their best years—their very lives—in the face of privations, hardships and unparalleled discouragements to uplift an obscure and injured people just released from the house of bondage. The history of these voluntary organizations and voluntary individual efforts is radiant with examples of self-sacrificing devotion in doing the work of the Divine Master, which are at once touching and sublime. If one could enumerate all that has been done, contributed, sacrificed and suffered by associations and individuals for the regeneration of the South, it would go far toward demonstrating to the satisfaction of all fair-minded people that God has[393] given to this generation of the prosperous citizens of the United States a duty and a privilege with respect to their countrymen of both races in the South of unexampled interest to the Nation and to the cause of human freedom throughout the world.

But admirable as their work has been, if we wisely consider the magnitude of the task that remains, we shall begin to apprehend that we have only picked up here and there a few pebbles on the shore, while the great ocean of ignorance stretches vast and untouched before us.

The following statistical tables are only too familiar:

Number of Males in the late Slave-holding States twenty-one Years of age and upward who could not Read and Write in 1870 and 1880:

From these tables it appears that the illiterate voters in each one of the eight Southern States having the largest proportion of emancipated slaves exceed in number the majority of votes ever cast even at the most important elections. In one of these States the ignorant voters constitute an absolute majority of the total voting population of the State. In more than one-third of the Union the ignorant voters are almost one-third of the total number of voters. Most seriously important of all, these tables show that the illiterate voters of the South have increased in the last ten years, from 1870 to 1880, almost two hundred thousand. This increase of ignorant voters in the last decade exceeds the number of votes cast in any one of more than twenty of the States of the Union at the last Presidential election. Adopting a phraseology that was very familiar in the political debates of a generation ago, it may be truly said that ignorance at the ballot box has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.

In the electoral colleges which choose the President, in both Houses of Congress, in all the departments of the national government, ignorance at the South is as efficient for evil—as mischievous and dangerous—as if it was in New England or New York, or here in the Western Reserve. It was settled by the war for the Union beyond recall that the United States constitute one people and have one national life, one interest and one destiny.

Recognizing this to be one of the legitimate results of the war, the people of the Nation by constitutional amendments entered into every State and defined and regulated those vital elements of free government—citizenship and suffrage. In pursuance of these amendments the lately-emancipated slaves by the most solemn expression of the national will became citizens and voters. In the presence of these facts, how can a statesman say that under this Constitution there is no duty and no power to give national aid to fit by education these freedmen for the responsible positions in which the Nation has placed them?

Under the Constitution as it was before these vital amendments were made, Washington, Adams, Jefferson and other great men of the early days of the Republic,[394] whom we are accustomed to call the “Fathers,” by significant and solemn enactments and recommendations fully affirmed the principle that the general government could and ought to give encouragement and aid to the education of the people. They placed in the ordinance of 1787 for the government of the Northwest Territory, as the corner stone of the institutions they wished to build, this article: “Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” Under every administration from the origin of the government to the present time, appropriations of money or land for education in the States and Territories have been made by the general government, and it is now too late to question the constitutional power of Congress to make such grants.

The exercise of this authority by Congress is in strict accordance with the distribution of the governmental powers, which is one of the distinguishing features of our American institutions. Whatever in civilized communities individual citizens can do better than any public authority is wisely left to individuals. Whatever local organizations, such as counties, towns and cities, can more efficiently accomplish than individuals, or the State, or national government, belongs to the local authorities. The extensive range of powers which State governments can most beneficially exercise should be confided to the States. The aim of the framers of the national Constitution, and of the people who have amended the original instrument, has been to confer on the national government those supreme powers which would enable it to secure to the people of the United States, “union,” “justice,” “tranquillity,” “the common defense,” “the general welfare,” and “the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity.”

The history of education in this country and in Europe abundantly proves that individuals and communities never have and never can provide universal education. Government alone is adequate to the task.

In the free States, in many cases, after a long and doubtful struggle, it has been settled that the State can and ought to provide free instruction for all its people. In almost all of the late slave-holding States, however, especially in those States in which the number of colored people is large, the efforts made since their reconstruction have conclusively shown that to establish and support an efficient system of free education without aid from the national government, in the existing condition of the South, is simply impossible. The situation of the South is so manifestly exceptional that it is needless to dwell upon it. Slavery and free schools would not dwell together. Slavery did not, could not, tolerate universal education. I do not pause to debate the question, who was responsible for slavery. It is perhaps enough to say that the Union and the Constitution breathed into this Nation the breath of life, and gave to it that glorious history of which we are so proud. To the Union and to the Constitution we are indebted for our present prosperity, power and prestige, and the still more inspiring future which lies before us. The Union and the Constitution, to which we owe all that we are, and have been, and shall be, contained and recognized slavery. All who took part in forming the Union or in framing the Constitution, all who maintained them down to the war which brought emancipation, are in some degree and in some sense responsible for slavery. The only American citizens who are in no way responsible for slavery are the sons of Africa. “They are here by the crimes of our ancestors and the misfortunes of theirs.” And it is especially these colored people who now eagerly and with uplifted hands implore the Nation for that light which education alone can give, and without which they cannot discharge the duties which the Constitution requires by making them citizens and voters.

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The slaveholders of the South had their full share of educational facilities. But when the war ended, their impoverishment was more complete and disastrous than ever before befell a wealthy and civilized community. Without capital, without credit, without a labor system, and burdened with debt, they were in no condition to establish free schools. Want of means was not the only difficulty. Neither white nor colored people at the South had any knowledge or experience which would help them in establishing popular education. The colored people were eager to learn. To them education was a badge of freedom. But encumbered with we know not how many centuries of barbarism behind them, and certainly with two or three centuries of bondage, they were utterly helpless to do anything which presupposes knowledge and experience in relation to the complex methods and organizations of social life in highly civilized communities.

We need not dwell on this aspect of the subject. It has plainly come to pass that the whole question of popular education at the South must be considered and dealt with by the great body of the whole people of the Nation. The appeal must be made to the popular judgment, conscience and patriotism. War measures and political measures are no longer required to settle the controversies of the past, or for reconstruction in the South. To finish the work of uplifting the slave, and to fuse into one harmonious whole our lately divided people, we must rely upon the healing influences of time, and upon the forces which religion, business and education can furnish. Of these forces, the government can usefully employ only one. The stream of time will flow on, “The designs of Providence to fulfill.” Religion, depending under God, upon individual conscience and sense of duty, unaided by government, wins its way by the voluntary contributions and efforts of Christian men and women. Business, an agency of vast and unmeasured power in promoting the peaceful progress of mankind, results from a deeply seated and universal principle of human nature—self interest—and will most efficiently do its work when government wisely lets it alone. To complete reconstruction and regeneration in the South, the only force now left to the government is popular education.

Let national aid to this good cause be withheld no longer. Let it be given by wise measures based on sound principles, and carefully guarded. But let it be given promptly, generously and without stint, to the end that the whole American people may be reared up to the full stature of mental and moral manhood required for intelligent self-government under our American institutions.

ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT A. D. WHITE.

Fellow Citizens: At that period to which our distinguished chairman has just referred at the close of the late civil war there were presented to this nation a number of great questions, appalling by their magnitude and by the dangers of a wrong decision. Among these I think one was in the hearts of all thinking men foremost: What shall be done with these millions formerly chattels, now citizens, the wards of the nation, the wards of humanity? Two answers were given to that question. Two paths were open to the triumphant nation. The first path laid out before us by many was simply confiscation. It was said: Don’t in Heaven’s name give to this country a great class of agricultural laborers divorced from the soil, with no property in the land upon which they stand, for if you do[396] this you will but have escaped from the black sea of bondage into the red sea of pauperism and of socialism. We were told that right favored such a course. It was declared that these freedmen had a right to the soil which for ages had obtained its only value from the unpaid labor of themselves and of their forefathers for many generations. We were also told that experience favored such a course. We were pointed to Russia, where by the ukase of the despot a vast body of serfs had been set free, and had been endowed from the lands of their former masters. But, thank God, nobler counsels prevailed. The better instincts of the Anglo-Saxon race predominated. May I not say that the rising, the reviving spirit of brotherhood between North and South averted such a catastrophe. Nay, may I not go farther and still more truthfully say that that same hand of the Almighty, which every reverent and thoughtful student of history sees displayed so clearly in the history of our nation from first to last, was never more evident than when we avoided this path to new and deeper wells of bitterness. But on the other hand there was pointed out another path—a path chosen by devoted women, by earnest men, and that path was simply education. It led us at first, no doubt, through thickets of dislike; it led over chasms of hatred; nay, still worse, it led through vast deserts of indifference—but at last it became better and broader. It became better footing; it became more and more paved with the noble deeds of self-sacrificing men and women. It became more and more shaded by noble growths of human self-sacrifice until all could see it as the appointed highway and a better and nobler future for the whole nation.

My distinguished friend who has preceded me has looked at this question from a lofty point of view—the point of view of a statesman—the point of view of one who has been able to survey this and the other questions which naturally connect themselves with it over this entire nation from the highest seat which any loyal son of this Republic recognizes—the Chief Magistracy of the United States. May I be permitted to survey it from a much humbler elevation—from that of a simple instructor of young men, whose duty for years has been to show to young men, and, indeed, I am happy now to say, young women also—to show to them the indications in human history of the great hand of God leading humanity on through all that blooms and decays, through all that struggles and suffers, through all that falters or stands fast, to the great goal which Divine Providence has appointed. And in that view and from that point I do not hesitate to reiterate the assertion that in all our history there is no greater proof of a Divine intelligence which takes an interest in the affairs of this world than in that Heaven-inspired choice of the path of education rather than the path of confiscation.

You will remember, doubtless, fellow citizens, that prophecy of Thomas Jefferson—the greatest political genius whom our country has yet seen—that prophecy which used to ring in the hearts of some of us before the civil war, even into the watches of the night—that famous prophecy which seems to have come from Divine inspiration, beginning with those terrible words: “I tremble when I remember that God is just.” Had Thomas Jefferson foreseen the fulfillment of his prophecy he would have been blasted with horror at the sight of the wrath of the Almighty poured forth over this land, North and South, for, as has so well been observed, whatever sin there was, rested at the doors of the North as at the doors of the South. But had that great political genius looked over and beyond this out-pouring of God’s wrath, he would have seen an out-pouring of mercy which would have led him to kneel humbly in adoration at the blessings lavished upon the future nation. He would have seen the nation welded together into one homogeneous whole as never before. He would have seen prosperity revived as it had never been dreamed of by the most sanguine. He would have seen an enlightenment[397] and civilization taking their roots, which he, with all his optimism, never dared dream of.

But, fellow-citizens, what is the especial question which confronts us at this moment? It has been most ably presented by the eminent gentleman who has just spoken, but you will permit a few words more upon some aspects of it which especially strike me. The question simply is, how shall this path which heaven has indicated to us, how shall this path of education be broadened into a great highway worthy of the nation, sure to bring it to a worthy future? Now, there are various agencies which will co-operate in this great work. The first to which I will allude is the munificence of public-spirited and devoted men and women. There seems to be no limit to that. The scene which some of us witnessed this morning, the giving over of an immense sum to the endowment of a college in this city, is but the token of a vast outpouring of munificence for advanced education such as this world never saw before. There is to be—mark the prophecy, fellow-citizens—great as has been the outpouring of wealth heretofore, and the statistics show in ten years, gifts to the amount of $60,000,000, we are told; there is to be in this time of revived prosperity an outpouring of wealth far greater, to which all this which we have seen is as nothing. That will go to build up the high schools and academies, the technical schools, the colleges, the universities, perhaps. We can rely on that. But there is another agency. All this mass of education must be permeated, must be informed by the spirit of morality, which is bedded in religion. That can only come from the great Christian sentiment of this country as voiced in the Christian Church, and if the Christian Church shall rise to the height of the great argument, if she shall recognize her great mission, and there are plentiful signs—many of them have been vouchsafed here within the last three days—there are plentiful signs that she is to do this; if she shall stand forth in the panoply of her Master, if she shall catch the spirit of the sermon on the mount, of the first great commandment and the second which is like unto it, of that definition of pure religion and undefiled, as given by St. James, all this mass of education can be permeated, can be informed by morality based upon religion. We hear alarm expressed in various quarters at new phases of thought, at what many, not understanding, have called the dangers of infidelity. Fellow citizens, there is never any danger of infidelity in any land where the Christian Church puts herself at the head of the great forces for right and justice and enlightenment acting upon the civilization of that country. Danger comes as it came in France, when the church forgot its mission and sided with despotism. Danger comes as it came in England two centuries ago and less when the church sided with a besotted monarchy and aristocracy. Danger comes as it came not so many years ago in our own country when the church was led, in some places at least, to make apologies for human slavery; but when she arrays herself at the head of great movements like this, and insists on doing works of self-sacrifice, of mercy, of justice, of right, tell me not of any fears of infidelity. Then I am sure will come the noblest and the grandest triumphs of Christianity. But is this sufficient? My friend has already shown you that it is not. Great as this outpouring of munificence has been and is to be, it requires even more than that for the great base part, the fundamental part of the work, and that is the work of bringing about a state of things under which every child, white and black, shall be educated suitably to his or her duties. How shall this be done? Can it be done by private munificence, great as it is? I say no. The State of New York alone pays for primary education, common school education, every year, more than ten millions of dollars. We cannot expect this steady outpouring for[398] this fundamental part of the system. As my friend has so ably shown, that can only be undertaken by humanity organized by States, and by the Nation. Can the States do it alone? Again I say no. It must be done by the Nation acting in concert with the States. The Nation must plant in every State which has not an educational system now, or which has not an adequate educational system, a nucleus of a system around which State endeavors may crystallize, which shall encourage these Southern States which have been so discouraged, which have been, as my distinguished friend has shown, so trodden down—so broken down I will say, not trodden down—so broken down by the events of the last twenty years. Now, how shall this be accomplished? There are two ways. The first is by direct appropriation. That has already been discussed before you. Fellow citizens, if it were to take twice or thrice the sum named it would not be felt by any tax-payer in this land. It would deprive not one man, woman or child in all this national domain of one single comfort. But suppose we cannot get Congress up to the mark of making an appropriation in money. There is another method. It was a method advocated perhaps more than fifty years ago, by that sainted friend of right and humanity, William Ellery Channing. That was the consecration—that was his word, and it was a most happy word—the consecration of the national domain, all of it that has not been given since by the homestead act and by various other acts for the promotion of various commercial enterprises, the consecration of the proceeds of the sales of the national domain, sacredly, to a fund for the education of the whole people to their great duties and their great destiny.

It seems to me that this movement can still be pressed. Congress can still be made to see that something must be done by the Government of the United States to open up this great path of education in the interest of the entire nation; but, fellow citizens, I am aware that some objections are made. Let me refer to them very briefly. The first is what may be called a political objection. It is said, leave this matter to time, leave it to the people, leave it to take care of itself. I have always noticed that when a political man wants to evade a question, wants to evade any trouble in the matter, he always says leave it to time, leave it to the natural forces, leave it to itself. Now, in addition to the argument that has already been so ably presented to you, let me say that the greatest apostle of the “laissez faire” system, the system under which everything is to be left to the natural course, John Stuart Mill, has expressly and in terms made an exception as regards popular education. This, he says, must be dealt with by organized humanity. This must be planned and carried out by the comparatively small number of men who see at the first the importance of it, and by that vast force which government alone can exercise. My friends, if it is left to time and chance, what is likely to follow? You can see as well as I. There comes first indifference. The great population concerned sinks back first into indifference and then into a sort of complacency, and finally into self-congratulation that somehow they are better than communities that are educated. There is nobody after all quite so conceited, I think you will find that the world over, as the man who is ignorant. He sees that educated men make certain mistakes. He makes no such. Therefore, he at last arrives at the point, he very often does, and especially when his ignorance is shared by a great population, that somehow he is superior to those who are educated. Then comes the greatest of all dangers. Then comes the danger of despotism, the despotism of an unenlightened mob of millions; and of all despotisms, fellow citizens, this, all history proves, is the very worst. Give me an autocrat, give me a despot the worst in history, and I will take him cheerfully rather than that many-headed[399] despot, an unenlightened, uneducated democracy. Ah! my friends, you can make one despot see that his interest lies in the interest of his country. You can bring home to a single despot a sense of shame, a sense of honor, a sense of responsibility. You can never bring that home to a mob. It was said that the old Bourbon despotism of France was a despotism tempered by epigrams; but what wit, what wisdom shall temper a mob of uneducated millions, extending over thousands and thousands of square miles of territory. There is also a not often stated, generally unavowed, but none the less strong on that account, there is what may be called a social objection. It is freely avowed in Europe; I have often heard it. It is sometimes sneakingly avowed in our own country, and that is this: Is it not after all better that this lower class should not know much? Is it not much better to keep it so that it will feel its dependence on the upper class? My friends, of all mistakes all history proves that is the most fatal, for when you pursue that policy which seems so easy at first you find that you have at last divided a nation into two strata—the upper a thin stratum of pride and arrogance sustained by terrorism, the lower a thick stratum of class ignorance which may at any moment be inflamed by fanaticism or exploded by unrest. No, fellow citizens, the only course is so to educate the whole mass that it will see that its interest is on the side of law and order, so that it will be able to understand the simple presentation of rudimentary political truths.

ADDRESS OF THE REV. A. G. HAYGOOD, D.D.

President of Emory College, Oxford, GA.

Mr. President: I never saw the day since Christ converted me that my heart did not warm toward any good cause that, in its plans and efforts, took in the whole human race. This American Missionary Association represents such a cause, and I am grateful for the privilege of taking some small part in this anniversary meeting. And I am the more glad because this meeting is held in the city where Garfield, our President, awaits the resurrection of the just. President Hayes did good work for the South, for which history will give him due credit. It was this: he let the South alone that the storm-rocked sea might calm itself. President Garfield—living, dying, and dead—awoke within the hearts of the masses of the Southern people the throbs of a profounder national sentiment than they had felt in twenty years.

It is becoming that I speak this evening of that part of your work which I understand best, your work in the Southern States; and of that part of it which I know best, your work for the negroes. Any work of importance, as to its extent, methods, or designs, done among the negroes must arouse interest in all thinking minds. The negro has been in America 260 years; there are not far from 7,000,000 of them here to-day; nearly all of them are in the Southern States. At the close of our war for independence there were in the United States about 700,000 negroes. Within a century they have multiplied ten times. How many will they be by 1982? To speak in round numbers, the increase of the total population of this country from 1870 to 1880, as the last census shows was 30 per cent; the increase of the white population, aided largely as it was by immigration, was 28 per cent.; the increase of the negro population, unaided by immigration, was 34 per cent. It is only very foolish people who can be indifferent to such facts; thoughtful men will consider them.

Visionaries and cranks may dream and declaim of solving the problem of our future and theirs by getting them somehow out of this country. But, if it were[400] desirable or practicable to transport them, they are born faster than whole navies can move them, and it is as undesirable as it is impracticable. They are here to stay, and so far as men can see, for the most part where they now are, in the Southern States of this Union.

They are now nearly one-seventh of our population, and by the providence of God they are free men and voters. The time has about passed, Mr. President, for the North to please itself with eloquent speech concerning their emancipation and for the South to fret itself with fervent denunciation concerning their enfranchisement. It were wiser and more profitable for the people of both sections to accept the facts of a difficult question, to discuss the issues of 1882, and in a business like way, to do our best to make the most of them. As to the now dominant sentiment in the South, nobody who has good sense wants them back in slavery, and the South, you may depend upon it, will never consent for the ballot to be taken from them.

Everybody knows that when they received the ballot en masse they were utterly unprepared for it. As a class they had just three ideas concerning the ballot when it was given to them. First. They looked upon it as a symbol of their freedom; this, I believe did them good. Second. They received it as a special mark of the love borne to them by the people of the North; this made them vain of it, and alienated them from their white neighbors. Third. Their predominant notion was that it was given them to “keep the old rebels down;” this spoiled them for fair-minded politics. But as a class they lacked conscience in the use of it.

You will pardon a single illustration of their capacity for enlightened politics. For nearly eight years I have had in my employment a colored man, Daniel Martin by name. He is about my own age. I trust him fully in all matters for which he has capacity. We are much attached to each other, and, the truth is, we have been taking care of each other for a good while. He gets better wages than ordinary colored men in our community, and is much above the average of his race in character and common sense. He can read “coarse print,” and can sign his name imperfectly. You will miss the point of my illustration unless you bear in mind that he had steadily voted the Republican ticket from the beginning of his citizenship to the date of my story. And he so votes till this day. The day before the Hayes and Tilden election he was plowing in a little field near my house. One of our students quizzed him about his views and intentions: “How are you going to vote to-morrow, Uncle Daniel?” It is a peculiarity of the Southern negro that he never delivers a solemn judgment on any subject without coming to a full halt in whatever engages him. One consequence is, he comes to a great many halts in his work. Another peculiarity of at least the Southern negro is, that he thinks in metaphor and speaks in parables. So Daniel, stopping his horse and sticking his plow deeper into the ground, delivered himself as follows: “Now, Mr. Longstreet, you see I is plowin dis furrow. If I only plow dis furrow I makes dis furrow too deep and I don’t plow de balance of de patch.” Mr. Longstreet admitted the force of the statement. Daniel continued in answer to the young man’s question: “I think things is ben gwine on in one way long enough; I think dere ought to be a change. Wherefore I is gwine to vote for Mr. Hayes to-morrow—git up, Bill.”

Next day he and I went to our county town; he voted for Hayes that there might be a change; I voted for Tilden that there might be a change; he killed my vote—or possibly one of yours—and we were “equal before the law.”

But few of them are now prepared to vote intelligently, and ballots, whether cast by fair or dark hands, in the hands of ignorance are dangerous to free institutions. Are not you of the North nearly as much concerned in the quality of the negro’s[401] ballot as we of the South are? Till recently, they voted “solid” for the Republican ticket. A few weeks ago, in Georgia, the majority of them voted for an ex-Confederate Brigadier General, who fought bravely at the first Manassas, and who ran for Governor as an Independent Democrat, receiving, however, the whole Republican vote; and thousands of them voted for the nominee of the Democratic party, the ex-Vice-President of the Confederacy. No white man running for any office in the South will refuse their votes, and, so far as I know, their votes are always sought when there is any chance to get them. I am not sure but that his ignorance makes him more dangerous as a voter when both parties seek his vote than when it is given solid to one. In your work in the South, Mr. President, I rejoice, for many reasons. The reason I now mention is this: That work is helping to prepare the negro for his duties as a citizen. I can well understand how the best and wisest people in the North feel most deeply and solemnly their obligation to do this work. For you gave him the ballot, and history will not justify that gift unless you do all that you can do to prepare him for its intelligent use. Not now, nor during the next generation, can the South do this work alone. Unless you continue to help, and to help mightily, it cannot be done. As to primary education, many in the South—and I, for one, agree with them—believe with our Senator Brown, of Georgia, that the national government should come to the rescue and help the States in this work—distributing its aid on the basis of illiteracy. This would give the South a large share of “appropriations under the old flag.” What if it does? The South is part of you, and you are part of the South—if this is a Union and a Nation. Slowly but surely, as it seems to me, we are beginning to understand our relations to each other. Some day we will, it is to be hoped, understand one another so well and agree so amicably that the phrases “the North” and “the South” shall have only geographical meaning. President Arthur, many thanks to him for this, made no allusion to “the South” in his first message to Congress.

If the general government gives this needed help, it will be in the interest of the whole country, although the Southern States may get, for once, the lion’s share. For we are a large part of this country; we are in the Union and intend to stay there—if we have to whip somebody in order to do it. But, in the nature of things, this sort of help must be temporary, and, as I suppose, should, like the educational work of the State governments, be carried on, for the most part, in the common schools. The thing that must be done, if our work is to stand, is to train up among the negroes, as well as among the whites, men and women who can teach the children of their race—teach them in homes, in school-houses and in churches. This cannot be done by the State as it should be done. For if, as one has said, the “negroes need educated Christianity,” it is also true that they must have Christianized education in order to get it. This the State does not and cannot give. To achieve this most desirable and necessary result the school-house and the church must work together. There must be Bibles in the schools that are to train teachers among this people, and there must be Christian men and women in them who both teach and practice religion.

This, as it appears to me, is what you and others like you are trying to do for the negroes. Your annual reports show that your Association is doing successfully, and on a very broad scale, this most necessary work. I do not particularize; your Secretaries have covered all that ground.

You are raising up in these schools men and women who, in the years to come, can, will and must teach the children of their people. Hundreds of them are doing it now. I say must; for Christianized education must, by its instinctive and divine impulses, perpetuate itself and diffuse itself. Christian education, whether in[402] Christian or heathen lands, is the most aggressive and formative influence that is now shaping the destiny of the human race. When you send out from Nashville, from Berea, from Atlanta and New Orleans young men and women who are both educated and religious, you send into the very masses of these untaught millions those who must teach what they have learned both from books and from Christ. Again I say must, for the spirit that is in an educated Christian man or woman is, as the old Methodist preacher used to say, “a fire in the bones,” and it will blaze out.

The author of the Declaration of Independence wrote, it is said, in 1782, this prediction: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.”

It does not surprise me that Mr. Jefferson made both of these predictions. As to the first, there was at that time in Virginia and other Southern States a strong party that favored the emancipation of the slaves. As to the second prediction, he had studied French philosophy more than he had studied Christianity. If this country were pagan Rome, or infidel France, the first prediction would have failed—they would not have been set free by the will of men. Had they been set free, the second prediction would have been fulfilled, for in a pagan or infidel country, the two races could not be equally free “and live in the same government.” They would not have been set free had this not been a Christian country; as it is a Christian country, the two races, equally free before the law, can live in the same government and the problem of their citizenship can be solved.

But this problem cannot be solved by legislation alone. Time has proved the truth of the weighty words delivered at your anniversary in 1875, by that venerable and great man who was taken to heaven last winter. At that time the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon wrote these words: “I come to this conclusion, legislation on the part of the national government is no longer to be invoked in aid of fundamental reconstruction. Attempts by Congress to employ force for the abolition of prejudices and antipathies in social intercourse do not help the cause in which the American Missionary Association is at work. I used the word force, because law enforced is force, and law not enforced is not law. The more completely our cause can be henceforth disentangled from all connection with political parties and agitators, the better for its progress. Doubtless there will be more legislation by the several States, especially in behalf of the great interest of public schools for all, before the consummation that we hope for shall have been attained; but the legislation, must be the effect and not the cause of that fundamental reconstruction which we desire to work for. It will exhibit and record, more than it can inspire or control, the progress of reformed opinions and better sentiments among the people.”

When the law gives equal opportunity and guarantees equal rights to all (and this it must do to be worthy of respect), it has done all it can do. Foundation work means character-building, and this goes on in individuals. Law has its educative force; but to lift up a race whether white, yellow, black, or red, there must be character-building in individual men and women, and to do this work right we must have the church and the school-house. And these two must work together and not against each other. This sort of foundation work you are trying to do and others are trying to do. It has not failed; it cannot fail; it has life in itself.

Mr. Jefferson’s second prediction will fail—it is failing now. These two races are both equally free, and they are living together in the same government with less and less difficulty and misunderstanding each year. Disturbances here and there, conflicts, acts of violence there have been, there are, and there will be for a time. The wonder is not that there was a period of disorder in the Southern States[403] after the war. The true wonder is that there is now so little of it, and that between 1865 and 1870 the South did not rush into final and utter chaos. There was never in any country such a state of things—so provocative of universal and remediless anarchy. What is it that saved us? Not the troops; not acts of Congress. Christian schools and the church of God. It was the Protestant religion that dominated the majority—both of the negroes and the Southern white people. I grant you that the conservative influences that the churches in the South brought out of the war have been greatly aided by the work done by your society and others like it; but it is also true that, but for the work the church in the South did before your coming, you could have done next to nothing, by this time, in the experiment. As to this whole subject, full of difficulties as those know best who have personal relations to it, there is just one platform on which Christian people can stand. Our problem with these millions of negroes in our midst can be happily solved—not by force of any sort from without the States where they live; no more can it be solved by repression within those States. It can be worked out only on the basis of the Ten Commandments and of the Sermon on the Mount. On this platform we can work out any problem whatsoever—whether personal, social, political, national or ethnical—that Providence brings before us. On any lower or narrower platform we will fail, and always fail. We have learned—you of the North and we of the South—many things in the last ten years. Among other valuable discoveries, we have learned that the people of neither section are either all good or bad. As to this race question, we of the South have learned, and we are learning, that we can’t manage our problem by any mere repressive system; you have learned, and are learning, that it can’t be solved by any sort of force from without, whether force of law, force of troops, or force of denunciation. Such knowledge is precious; alas! that it cost us so much.

May I quote at this place one other paragraph from the words of Dr. Leonard Bacon? It is at the close of a letter dated “New Haven, October 22, 1875,” and is in these words: “May I be allowed to say one word concerning the future of this society? That word is conciliation—conciliation by meekness, by love, by patient continuance in well-doing. The field is wide open for schools and for the preaching of the Gospel, two great forces operating as one for fundamental reconstruction. In both these lines of effort the work of the society must be more and more a work of conciliation—conciliation of the South to the North and to the restored and beneficent Union; conciliation of races to each other, white to black and black to white; conciliation of contending sects oppressed with traditional bigotries to the simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus.” Thomas Jefferson was not a prophet: Leonard Bacon was. And, thank God! so much has been done by this Association to incarnate the truth that was in his great thoughts and to fulfill his hopes and predictions as to its own future. But this work of “fundamental reconstruction” is a slow process, suggests the impatient one. That is true; character-building, whether in a man or in a nation or in a race, is always a slow process. And it must be slower in a nation or in a race than in a man. There was never any great work done in the uplifting or training of a race in a day or in a year. It takes generations. How slowly our own race has risen out of its original savagery; how unfit we still are to fulfill our mission to the world. We have small cause for boasting when white men’s votes—sometimes enough of them to turn the scale in great elections—can be bought cheap in the open streets. Lifting up a nation or a race is a slow process; wherefore the greatest necessity for zeal, for wisdom, and for patience in our work. Whenever a great and necessary work that requires a long time and much labor is to be done, we should begin at once and do our best.

[404]

You find more sympathy and more of the spirit of co-operation among Southern people than you found ten years ago. I rejoice in this change of feeling in the South, and it is easy to understand it. Time, the healer, has done his blessed work. Grace has overcome, and the grave has buried much of bitter feeling on both sides. You have learned your work better, and we have learned more perfectly its value. A good deal of your work I have seen; I believe it is good. I have looked into your school methods; they are yielding happy results. I have considered “examination papers” from some of your schools; they would have done credit to any school for any race. I have listened to speeches and essays from colored youth at your commencements; there was the evidence of sound culture and true religion in them. When I heard them I “thanked God and took courage.”

It is often asked, “Why don’t the South do more in this work of educating and lifting up the negroes?” Sometimes the question has been asked angrily—perhaps because ignorantly.

I believe the South can do more than it is doing—certainly more than it has done. But I think it likely that we have done as much as any other people in like circumstances would have done. History does not record of any people such vast, rapid and radical changes of opinion and sentiment on subjects that had been fiercely fought over on hundreds of bloody fields, as has taken place in the South during the last fifteen years on the questions that grow out of the negro’s emancipation and enfranchisement. But the Southern States have done more than most people suppose. There are nearly one million negro children in our public schools in the South.

In speaking of what the South has done and has not done in the work of educating the negroes, let it be remembered that the white people of the South have not been on beds of roses since 1865. The war and its consequences made the South poor beyond conception by those who have not had our experience. It left the North rich. The majority of our people have had a sharp struggle to live; most of them have been unable to educate their own children.

Let me tell you of a man I talked with last summer. I went with my family and a little party on what we might call a camp-fishing expedition. As we approached the place where we proposed to spend a few days in recreation, my attention was attracted by a white woman pulling fodder in a little field near a cabin. That night her husband came to our camp, offering such welcome as he could. We had a long talk together. He had been a Confederate soldier, and he had on his body the marks of seven bullet wounds. He never owned a slave, he had fought for what he had been taught to believe were the rights of the States. He is a laborer on the farm of the man who owned the land where he lived. He gets $140 a year, cabin rent, a few acres tended by his wife and little girls, and the privilege of his winter wood. He said his employer is one of the kindest of men, and does for him all he can do. The landlord himself has small margins of profit. The poor fellow has five children, the eldest a bright girl, aged fourteen. She looked dwarfed and older than her years; she had been nurse and drudge for the little ones. These children came to our camp by invitation, and the oldest promised to come one afternoon and show my own children how to fish. I had my heart set on her coming; I wanted my children to know more about such people. She did not come at the time appointed, but that night she came to tell us why. Her cotton dress was wet with the dew and her little hands were fodder-stained. She said to me: “I am sorry I could not come; mother and I had so much fodder to take up that we have just got through.” This child and I had much talk together. I asked her: “Daughter, can you read?” Her face[405] brightened as she said: “Yes, sir; a little.” “Can you write?” The brown eyes sought the ground as she answered: “No, sir.” “If I will send you some books, will you try to teach your little sisters to read?” The glad look in her eyes I shall never forget, as she answered: “Yes, sir; I will try.” We sent her a good supply and it made them all glad. They are not beggars; the father would not take money for a fine bunch of fish he sent, with his compliments, to my wife, and when he found that we had left some money for little services by the children he flushed and could hardly be persuaded to let them keep it.

Some people call these “white trash.” I declare to you I never heard a Southern white man or woman use the expression in speaking of such persons.

Mr. President, there are tens of thousands of white people in the South as poor as my friend of the fishing camp. If you can help them, in Christ’s name do it.

As to our higher schools, some of our best colleges have died since 1865; others are dying now. Such a death is a loss, not to the South only, but to the whole country. Yours have grown rich. I do not envy you; I rejoice in your strong and well-furnished institutions. But you should be patient toward us, and, I am not ashamed to say, you should help us as God gives you opportunity. Men and brethren, it is time to have done with 1860–65. Said a Brooklyn man to me last year who, unsolicited, had helped two Southern schools: “I think my friends here approve what I have done; but if any should ask, ‘Why did you not give this money to your own people?’ my answer is: ‘They also are my people—we are one people.’” On that platform we can become a Christian nation strong enough to bless the world.

Northern money has done much to “develop the South” during the last decade in pushing railroads and other great industrial enterprises. It is all welcome, and ten times as much. But I do not question that each $100 invested in Christian education in the South since the war has done more to develop it in every best sense than each $1,000 placed in railroads and factories. But enough on these lines of thought.

I must say a word or two as to the relations of your work to Africa. The first atlas I ever saw made a desert of sand cover all the wonderful lands that Livingstone, Stanley, and others have discovered, and they printed across the map of Africa 28,000,000, with an interrogation point to indicate a guess as to the population. Now we are studying the maps of interior Africa, and they tell us of great nations and a population that may reach 200,000,000! Can any man who believes in the Bible, or in God, doubt for one moment that Providence is in the history of the negroes in the United States? Can we doubt that these millions of negroes, now committed to us as the wards of the Christian church, must, some day, attempt and accomplish the evangelization of Africa?

I rejoice that your Association has its eye and heart upon Africa. I saw two photographs in the chapel of Fisk University last May that stirred my soul; they were the faces of two missionaries who had gone from that great Christian school to Africa. One Sunday evening I preached in the chapel. A youth from your Mendi Mission, a native of Africa, getting ready to be a missionary, sang for us in his home language a familiar Sunday-school song, “I Have a Father in the Promised Land.” Some day they will be singing Christian songs in every village of the Dark Continent. How the thought of the Divine fatherhood and of the brotherhood of the eternal Son has changed Europe and made America. Some day these thoughts will change Africa. What we call civilization can’t do it; the gospel of Jesus Christ can. The Christian negroes are getting ready for their work, and you and others working in the same fields, are helping them to get ready. The missionary fire is beginning to burn in their hearts. When they go forth, bearing the sacred[406] symbol of our Lord’s love to men, every Christian man and woman in our land should help them. That movement—and it is coming—will, at no distant day give your colonization and missionary societies all they can do. Was there ever a greater need or a more hopeful field, a greater duty or a brighter promise of success? Mr. President, you may be sure that from thousands of Christian hearts all over the South the prayer goes up, “God bless the work of the American Missionary Association, with all others who are preaching the gospel to the poor.”

FROM ADDRESS OF GENERAL CLINTON B. FISK.

The American Missionary Association is one of those societies that has long been near my heart, having a large place in it. From its very beginning I watched its growth, but had no idea in the years before that I should ever have such intimate relations with it. Being in the South at the close of the war with the care of two or three millions of colored people thrown on my hands, I naturally looked about to see what was being done for schools and what for Christian culture. I found the American Missionary Association on the skirmish line. They were gathering up the broken fetters of the slaves, selling them for old iron and putting the money into spelling-books and Bibles, building school-houses and sending self-sacrificing, earnest Christian men and women to the South to teach these people; and I naturally fell very much in love with them.

I got a letter a day or two since. It was written by the Mayor of one of the chief cities of the South to myself. I picked this out of a large bundle of correspondence of the same sort. He addresses me and says: “You will doubtless be surprised at receiving a letter from me. In 1865 I was Mayor of this city, which position I now occupy. In that memorable year 1865, through your instrumentality and by order of Major-General George H. Thomas, I was suspended from office. But that is a matter of the past, and for one I favor letting ‘bygones be bygones.’ The charge against me was using my official position for the oppression of the colored people and opposing their education. However true that might have been at the time, certainly such a charge cannot be made against me now. Immediately after the close of the war and upon the restoration of civil law, I was chosen one of the School Commissioners of this district, and gave active aid, amidst much opposition, in the establishment of Public Schools. I have labored earnestly in the cause ever since, and I am proud to inform you that my efforts have in a measure been crowned with success. We have now a splendid school system and a magnificent school building for the whites. We wish now to do as much for the colored people. There is much opposition in every locality in the city to the establishment of a colored school in their midst. Yet, notwithstanding this opposition, I have proffered to sell a lot of my own for the purpose on very reasonable terms.”

Now, that is a great change to come about in seventeen years. So I simply sat down and wrote him a letter which he could use as “substance of doctrine.” I said: “My dear Mr. Mayor, go on to perfection. Do the same thing for the colored people you do for the white people, and blot ‘colored’ and ‘white’ out of your memory. Make a school for the children. It is not easy to send them to the same school; I know all about that.” The colored boy is perhaps more opposed to associating with the white boy in the school than the white boy is to associating with the colored boy. It takes a long time to overcome those strong prejudices on the part of the colored people.

Just after the establishment of Fisk school, which commenced in such a halo of[407] glory under the auspices of this Association, there came into my headquarters in Nashville an old Irish woman, bringing her two little boys with her, and she said, “Misther Gineral Fisk, ’ave you heny hobjection to my sinding these little chaps to your nigger school?” I said, “Not at all, if the ‘niggers’ haven’t any objection.” But it will take a long time before they will drift into one school. I am glad that all of ours are open. How singular it would look to write over the portals of all our schools in the South, “White children admitted here!” Let us do all we can for the education of both races. That particular class to which my friend Haygood made such admirable reference, those poor white people of the South, appeals to us as scarcely any other interest in the South does to-day. Let us remember them. I am glad, sir [addressing Dr. Haygood], that you are going to be in a position to help a great many colored young men and women to become teachers.

Now, my friend Dr. Haygood is a wonderfully modest sort of a man. They chose him only a few weeks ago to be a bishop in his church. And they did a good thing. Nearly all that great conference of Southern Methodists voted for this man to take the highest place in their church, notwithstanding all his grand utterances, his earnest words, on many a Northern platform. They indorsed him and said, “Come up higher!” He took over night to think about it, and wrote them a letter declining to take such place as that. He said, “God has called me to be an educator, and an educator I will be.” To a man who turns his back upon a bishopric of the church and then accepts the Secretaryship of a fund to promote the education of the colored people, we can all give the right hand of fellowship. Now, let us all go out of this meeting with a new covenant of love and service for the Master.

It has well been said that the world itself is a musical instrument not yet fully strung; but when every coast shall be peopled by the lovers of our Lord Jesus Christ; when every mountain barrier shall be overcome; when every abyss shall be spanned, for the uninterrupted progress of the King’s highway of holiness, and the people of the earth shall flock together, as in the prophetic vision, to the mountain of the Lord’s house; then this world shall give its sound in harmony with the infinite intelligence, and angels and men shall shout together, “Hallelujah, the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.” Between that glad day and us there are years of toil and travail. But there shall come the triumph. Truth is marching on, steadily—slowly, sometimes, through the centuries, but ever marching on, as resistless as the tides, whose each succeeding billow washes further up the sands. It may be

Let us go forth, with our faces to the stars, and do something each day of our lives to bring the world nearer to Christ, who died for it.

FROM ADDRESS OF REV. A. J. F. BEHRENDS, D.D.

There are a few themes so great, so charged with living importance, that an earnest man never wearies of their study. Like the rays of the sun, they are invested with perpetual freshness and force. Of these themes, the very greatest is the conquest of the world to Christ by the preaching of the Gospel and by the[408] power of the Holy Ghost. But foreign missionary societies, whose special aim it is to carry the Gospel of Christ to the millions of heathenism, are not the exclusive guardians of this great trust. They are the advance guard of the army of conquest, clearing the way and widening the field, but their very presence as the scouts and scattered outposts of Christianity proclaims the presence of a greater army of occupation, pressing close upon their leadership. Back of your foreign work is that of home missions, the religious care of the ignorant, vicious, and neglected within our own borders; back of home missions is the manly culture of our professedly Christian constituency, the care and compact handling of our local churches; back of your local church life and work are those of your separate homes—influences secret, subtle, but all-pervasive, for in the Christian homes are the primary historic sources of all great inspirations and achievements, both for personal character and for social improvement. Far out on the world’s great battle-field, separated from each other by many a league, are the pickets of the army of the Lord; its great and growing supports are in the Christian nations, the Christian churches, the Christian homes.

Reinforcements at any point of the long line must increase the efficiency of the entire body. But the law of solid progress must be from the home, as the training school of personal devotion, through the church and the nation, to the broad world. I am afraid that we have not fairly estimated the importance of the third factor in the solution of the complicated problem of the world’s Christianization. We are not lacking in an appreciation of the value of domestic piety. We are not blind to the evangelistic vocation of the church, though the energetic revival of this conviction may be said to date from the close of the last century, and it has as yet only partially leavened the great body of nominal Christendom. But we are even farther from having mastered the thought that nations are born of a divine purpose, and summoned to missionary service.

God is marching on, not simply for the salvation of individual souls, and their preparation for a future heaven, but for the moral regeneration of nations, and the conversion of the world into a kingdom of righteousness and love. In this great task nations will yet be called to take an active part. Having ceased to be obstructive, having passed beyond the line of moral indifference, they are yet to prove themselves to be among the mightiest of positive forces for the world’s regeneration. And I confess that I have wholly misread the signs of the times if the Anglo-Saxon nationalities are not summoned and destined to bear a conspicuous part in the future of the world’s moral history. For you and for me there can be no call of greater urgency than that this youngest of the nations of the world, in which we are proud to claim our citizenship, whose birth is the marvel of history, whose development is the amazement of our time, whose guidance and discipline seem as clearly providential as were those of ancient Israel, shall be Christian, in order to the assimilation of all the heterogeneous elements of our population, and the consequent use of our united forces for the good of the race. No duty crowds us more closely than that we prove ourselves worthy of our ancestry, equal to our opportunities, building up on this new continent a compact commonwealth, whose glory it shall be that its streams of beneficence gladden all lands and enrich all peoples.

We cannot render the most effective Christian service to the world until we ourselves have become thoroughly leavened with the spirit of the Gospel, and any plan involving the Christianization of the American people must provide for the solution of that great problem with which this Association deals. You have not succeeded in making the white man the Christian he ought to be until he and the black man can clasp hands in the brotherhood of Christ. National unity must[409] remain incomplete until all antagonisms have vanished, and the reconciliation is complete; and our moral influence on the world cannot be what it may be and ought to be until we have amicably and finally settled our domestic difficulties. American patriotism and Christian philanthropy—these are the two great considerations by which the work of the American Missionary Association appeals to the prayerful and practical sympathies of the Christian public.

RELATION OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION TO CIVILIZATION.

BY REV. F. L. KENYON.

There are two civilizations in this nineteenth century that are striving for the mastery. They differ in their source; the one is from heaven, the other from earth. They differ in their objects. The one has for its object the elevation of the animal in man to the supreme place. The other has for its object the elevation of the intellectual and moral and spiritual in man to the dominant place. They differ also in their supports and instrumentalities. The superstructure of the one rests upon ignorance and vice. The other rests upon and is built up by and through the school, the church, and the home. Thus it will be seen that the higher civilization has a triangular foundation, and when we remember that the triangle represents the highest perfection, we may get a hint at least that this must be the final civilization. The school, where the mighty power of a true education dispels and destroys the threatening illiteracy of the world. The church, where the wonderful transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ incarnates itself in true manhood and womanhood. The home, where the love principle is dominant and all controlling.

The higher civilization, which is to be the ultimate civilization for humanity, must include within its bounds, as constituent factors, every portion of the human race. The defect of previous civilizations was in their omitting one or more of these great and necessary factors.

The first of these is the idea of God. And this, first, as a personal God. This is necessary so as to make God accessible to us. In the second place, the true idea of God must include righteousness. He must be a righteous God. This involves the ideas of justice and law, without which no civilization can be perfect. Eliminate these qualities from civilization and in the place of government will come anarchy, which always and naturally produces destruction. In the third place, the true idea of God includes the fact that he is a loving God. The Johannean conception on this line is the ultimate of all conceptions, viz.: God is love. It is very clear that the final civilization must have this idea of God in all the breadth which I have simply outlined.

The second great idea is the “equality of man,” an equality not of conditions but of rights. Equality before God’s law and love, before human law and institutions. From this equality of man comes the great doctrine of freedom for all. Slavery cannot exist in a final civilization, because this final civilization is built up in part on the idea of equality of man. From this equality of man comes that other great social doctrine of the brotherhood of man. Any civilization which ignores the equality of man, and these great included ideas, freedom and brotherhood of man, cannot, in the very nature of things, be the higher and the final civilization. All former civilizations failed to recognize this great fact, and this is one of the reasons why they became effete and passed away. I believe God has chosen this land, and has raised up this Association for the purpose of working out this problem.

The physical view is a low one, and really belongs to the lower civilization. In[410] comparison with the intellectual, and moral, and spiritual, the physical sinks into insignificance.

The third great idea of the permanent civilization is “the true idea of woman.” In the earlier civilizations woman was held as inferior to man, because perhaps she could not endure the fatigues of the chase or engage in wars, and such brutalizing pursuits. The very signs of her superiority were read as evidences of her inferiority. In some her position was hardly anything but that of a slave or a toy. In that civilization which had the highest culture of any of the old civilizations, an educated woman was classed in the common thought of the people as an impure woman. Thank God such a civilization as that was not the final one. In the final civilization woman has her place alongside of man—co-equal and co-ordinate.

The fourth great idea necessary to a permanent and final civilization, is the true idea of childhood—its worth and place in the elevating forces of humanity. That civilization which holds in cheap esteem the life of a child, is a low and vanishing one. There is probably among the secondary tests of nobility no truer one than man’s regard for children. All the ancient civilizations were very low in this respect. Think of such a thing occurring in this nineteenth century, of any ruler commanding the slaughter of the innocents. No, the final civilization holds, must hold, to the sacredness of child-life. Jesus is bringing that about. He brought heaven to earth through the auroral gates of childhood. Bethlehem’s manger gave to the world a new and potent civilizing idea in the sacredness of child-life. These four constitute the elemental ideas, the living, molding, working forces of the higher civilization. The relation of the American Missionary Association to this higher civilization is now to be noticed, and so transparent is this relation that only a few words are necessary to set it forth. First. It is related in its work, in a similar way, be it spoken reverently, in which Jesus, the Son of God, is related to the children of men. He came down into humanity to its very lowest. So the A. M. A. goes down with its thousand tender hands and its five hundred beating hearts to the very bottom of the lower civilization. This is both human and divine wisdom. It is related to the higher civilization in the second place because it carries into and permeates the lower civilization with these great ideas of the higher. “No fleet can outsail its slowest vessel.” So no civilization can advance higher than the lowest elements or parts of it advance. These people to whom this Association carries these ideas are elemental factors in our civilization, and I know of no other royal road by which they can be brought into the higher civilization; and unless so brought they will drag higher civilization down, and give the victory to the lower civilization, and this nation will fall into the long procession of nations that, failing to rise to their great opportunities, have gone down in dishonor and disgrace to eternal death. To prevent this dire catastrophe, I believe God, whose favors have been manifold to our land, has raised up and commissioned this great Association. It is virtually related, therefore, to the higher civilization as its saviour, and also as the purifier and perfector of the higher by bringing the lower up to its proper place in it on these high idea lines. Incarnate these great ideas of the higher civilization into the lower, which, as I understand it, is the work of the A. M. A., and you have given the victory to the higher civilization in this the leading nation of the world; moreover, you have hastened the coming of the day of the Son of Man.

DEDICATION OF LIVINGSTONE MISSIONARY HALL.

As a fitting sequel to the earnest and efficient annual meeting exercises in Cleveland, some of the officers of this Association and other friends proceeded to Nashville, Tenn., to attend the dedication of Livingstone Hall, Oct. 30.

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As we published in our last issue a cut of the Hall and a statement of its history, dimensions and uses, we refer the reader to the November Missionary for information relating to such matters. The dedicatory address was delivered by Professor Cyrus Northrop, of Yale College. Bishop McTyeire, President of the Vanderbilt University at Nashville, and Dr. A. G. Haygood, President of Emory College, Georgia, and Gen. C. B. Fisk, of New York, also made addresses. The dedicatory prayer was offered by Secretary Strieby, and music furnished by the Mozart Society and by Miss Sheppard and Miss Mabel Lewis, well-known members of the original Jubilee Singers Company. The address of Professor Northrop was masterly, timely and suggestive. It was welcomed and approved by the very respectable representation of Southern men on the platform, and published in full in the Nashville Daily American.

RECEIPTS FOR OCTOBER, 1882.