The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 11, November, 1889

Various

The American Missionary – Volume 43, No. 11, November, 1889

FREE ONCE MORE

At the close of our fiscal year in 1887, we were enabled to utter the joyful word "Free," no debt darkening our balance sheet. Last year (1888) we were compelled to moderate our tone and say "Not quite free," for a balance of $5,641.21 stood on the wrong side of our ledger. But now, in the good providence of God, we can say "Free once more."

Our receipts from all sources were $376,216.88; payments, including debt of last year, $371,745.21, leaving a credit balance of $4,471.67. For this good result we are in some measure indebted to legacies. But, under all circumstances, we rejoice in the past and look forward with hope to the future. The work we have in hand, with its grand results, as will be seen in the "General Survey" published in this number of the MISSIONARY, will encourage our friends, and the call there made for growth and enlargement, will, we are sure, stimulate them to increased contributions and more earnest prayer. The "Survey" will also contain a statement of the income and expenditure of the Hand Fund.

THE NATIONAL COUNCIL

The gathering of this representative body of the Congregational churches of this country was the largest ever held. It grappled more fully than any of its predecessors had done with great questions touching the missionary and benevolent societies in their relations to the churches and to each other, and the consolidation of the missionary magazines. The most exciting topic discussed was that of the Georgia Congregational Churches, white and colored. The result reached on this point was that the representatives of two District Conferences were enrolled, and that the representative of the United Congregational Conference of Georgia was given a seat as an honorary member.

THE COLORED DELEGATES

The Southern Associations were represented by six colored delegates in the National Council. Their bearing and ability won the respect and admiration of the whole Council. They were modest and manly in their deportment, prudent in their counsels and very eloquent in their speech. They showed themselves to be the peers of their white brethren, and demonstrated beyond a question the capacity of the colored man for the highest intellectual and moral training. They were a credit to the American Missionary Association, whose pupils they have been, and were a living and triumphant vindication of its work at the South.

THE MOHONK CONFERENCE

The seventh annual gathering of this Conference, Oct. 2-5, was the largest ever assembled. Among those present for the first time were Ex-President Hayes, Gen. O.O. Howard, Gen. John Eaton, Prof. Wayland and Dr. Wayland. The newspaper press, religious and secular, was very fully represented; Abbott, Buckley, Dunning, Gilbert, Ward and Wayland are perhaps best known. The venerable Judge Strong well represented the law, while the absence of Senator Dawes was sincerely regretted.

A marked feature of the Conference was the presence of Gen. Morgan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs. For weeks prior to the meeting of the Conference, rumors had gone abroad that he intended to abolish the "contract schools"—that is, schools of the missionary societies which the Government by a "contract" agrees to assist. Articles had appeared in the newspapers remonstrating against this course, and it was believed that this topic would be one of most practical interest in the Conference. The Commissioner early in the meetings read a paper outlining his plan for the establishment of Government schools for all Indian children—the attendance to be compulsory. The omission of all mention of the "contract schools" in this paper confirmed the impression to which rumor had given currency. An animated discussion followed the reading of his paper, in which the Commissioner freely participated. It appeared that he had been misunderstood—at least in so far as any immediate curtailment of the "contract schools" is concerned, and he impressed the Conference warmly in his favor as a Christian man with broad views, impartial and progressive. He will meet, we feel sure, with the cordial support of all the societies engaged in Indian educational work.

The final action of the Conference was embodied in a platform substantially repeating the utterances of last year, urging national education for all Indian children and approving the continuance of "contract schools." Other planks of the platform related to lands in severalty, to the legal rights of the Indians, etc.—all of which were unanimously approved, and thus once more this remarkable Conference followed its predecessors in free and frank debate, consummated by entire harmony in the result.

The varied and unique scenery of Lake Mohonk was shown at its best by three days of bright and bracing weather. The welcome of Mr. and Mrs. Smiley to their increased number of guests, who taxed to the utmost limits the accommodations of the large establishment, was as cordial and genial as ever. The hearty and enthusiastic vote of thanks, the only compensation permitted, was a far less reward than the gratification of their own benevolent feelings in doing good; and that gratification is probably to be enhanced by the calling together of another Conference in the early summer in behalf of a still larger class of our needy fellow-citizens than the Indians.

NOTES FROM NEW ENGLAND

A good friend of the American Missionary Association in a New England village recently greatly stirred up the interest of the people in behalf of our work, through a missionary society which she organized among the children. They had meetings for sewing, preparing articles for a box, and then a fair, in which they sold other articles that they had made, out of which they gathered a considerable sum of money. The interest went far beyond the children. A gentleman, not a member of the church, who had never been interested in missionary work, was stirred up by the solicitation of the children, and gave both time and money to their effort. He afterwards said to a good lady who inaugurated the movement, "I am glad I have given to this cause; it makes me feel good, and I want to keep right on giving." That is the way it affects every one when the heart and pocket-book are open to these missionary objects. It makes them feel good, and stirs up a desire to continue the process.

The Christian Endeavor Societies of New England are assisting nobly in the work of the American Missionary Association. One society pledges itself to support a missionary in our field for a year. Another makes one of its number a Life Member of our Association, contributing thirty dollars. Still another brings in a handsome collection recently taken, and still another devotes the prayer meeting evening to thorough study upon the work that is being done through the A.M.A., in the needy and destitute portions of our country. One young man who spoke at the last meeting spent a portion of his vacation in studying up the work among the Highlanders of the South, and gave the results of his study at their meeting. And why should not this active society of earnest young people be interested in the great work that is being accomplished among other young people, painfully in want of the advantages which those here enjoy? A prayer meeting pledge of the Y.P.S.C.E., printed in the Sioux language by Indian boys at a Santee school, is a most interesting evidence that this society is not confined in its usefulness to any locality or race. A vigorous Society is one of the elements of work in this Indian school, and a most useful element. In a letter written by an Indian boy is the following: "We have a Christian Endeavor Society here. I joined that society not very long ago, and we have nice meetings on Saturday night. It does make me feel good in those meetings. There are about thirty members now." And so these Societies of New England in their prayers for, and contributions to, the work of the American Missionary Association, are clasping hands with the same societies among the Negroes, Mountain people and Indians.

The "King's Daughters" are also a useful agency in the field work of our Association. A little Indian girl writes interestingly of the "King's Daughters" of whom she is one.

DEATH OF SUPERINTENDENT HALL

Just as we are going to press, (October 18th), we are startled by the telegraphic announcement of the sudden death from typhoid fever of Prof. Edward S. Hall, one of our Field Superintendents. Mr. Hall had been one year in the service of the Association, and had already shown himself to be a man of varied and remarkable capabilities—not only skilled in the management of schools, but familiar in an unusual degree with the practical work of building and repairing school and church edifices. His services have been invaluable to the Association, and it will be difficult to supply his place. As a man of noble Christian character and consecration to the work entrusted to him, he had won our highest esteem.

DEATH OF LARMON B. LANE, M.D

Rev. Larmon B. Lane, M.D., died at his home in St. Charles, Ill., Sept. 15, 1889. He was born in Tallmadge, Ohio, June 21, 1821. He studied medicine at Cleveland Medical College, and afterward attended Oberlin College and Theological Seminary, graduating in 1848. The following year he was sent by the American Missionary Association as missionary physician to Siam, where he labored faithfully, ministering to soul and body six years. In 1855 a severe hemorrhage compelled him to give up the missionary work. After a short rest he began his work of preaching the gospel. He had successful pastorates in Illinois and Ohio; afterwards he practiced medicine in Geneva and St. Charles, Ill., at which latter place he died. He was successful as a physician and continued to the end a loyal servant of Christ, was deacon, treasurer and Sunday-school Superintendent, besides being always ready to do with his might what his hands found to do.

S.

FORTY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE,

For The Year Ending September 30th, 1889

GENERAL SURVEY

The American Missionary Association finds its commission in the words of the Master, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."

It does not choose its fields of labor because the people in them are black, or red, or yellow, or white; but because they are those for whom Christ died and to whom he commanded the glad tidings of salvation to be preached. In the fields to which it providentially has been called, it seeks to bring the gospel to every human being who has it not in its purity as an uplifting power.

In nineteen States and Territories we are laboring—six in the West and thirteen in the South. In ninety-four schools and one hundred and forty-two churches we have been directly teaching and preaching the gospel during the past year. In them have 456 missionaries wrought with holy purpose. 12,132 pupils have been taught in our schools; more than seventeen thousand have received instruction in Bible truth in our Sunday-schools; 782 conversions have been reported. $3,160.14 have been reported as given in our mission churches for benevolence, and $21,658.57 for their own expenses—again over last year of $660.03 in benevolence and $2,322.62 in church expenses. Besides all this and all that in various ways has failed to be reported to us, have been the vacation work of our students, the large work of our previous graduates, the indirect results of many kinds, and the unknown results and influences of great power and far-reaching importance which have gone forth from our institutions and missionaries whose only possible record is in God's Book of Remembrance.

THE SOUTH

In the South, we are directly reaching three classes—the colored people, the mountain whites, and the new settlers from the North and from the old countries. Indirectly we are reaching many more. The schools we plant often incite others to plant schools; the houses of worship we aid in erecting cause others to be erected. A single neat, but inexpensive building for a country church of colored people has been known to occasion the building or repairing of at least nine church buildings of neighboring white people. The incontestably good results of our work among the colored people are slowly but surely undermining race prejudice. In spite of all the race trouble during the past year and the increasingly bitter utterances of some papers and some public speakers, during no other year in the history of our country have so many manly words in favor of the Negro been printed in Southern papers, and sounded from the pulpits and platforms of the South. It was in a Southern University and before a Southern audience that a Southern man, a Bishop of a Southern church which took the name Southern when it declared for slavery, this year uttered these words:

"It is a travesty on religion, this disposition to canonize missionaries who go to the Dark Continent, while we have nothing but social ostracism for the white teacher who is doing a work no less noble at home. The solution to the race problem rests with the white people who live among the blacks, and who are willing to become their teachers in a missionary spirit."

Cruel and unreasoning is prejudice, but when the public platforms, and especially the pulpits, begin to yield in their utterances to the sway of logic and humanity, by and by public opinion will feel their force. Our institutions and our missionaries have compelled the respect of the Southern people. This year many expressions of it have been heard.

EDUCATIONAL WORK

CHARTERED INSTITUTIONS

During the past year we have directly sustained five chartered institutions in the South—Fisk University, Talladega College, Tougaloo University, Straight University and Tillotson Institute. Every year that passes emphasizes anew that these are most wisely located, so that each is a center of far-reaching power, and supplements the work of all the others.

Fisk University at Nashville, Tenn., with its 503 students, has had a year of great prosperity, and solid, telling work. Its buildings have been full, the quality of the work done has been excellent. A graduate of Fisk recently took his diploma from an Eastern school of medicine, with a rank two per cent. higher than any other man in his class. Another graduate of Fisk is a missionary in Africa under the American Board, and is not only declared by the Secretaries to be one of its best missionaries, but has shown such business capacity that he has been chosen treasurer of his mission. His wife, a worthy helpmeet, is also a graduate of this institution. Fisk has high ideals—few institutions in the South have higher ones, or come nearer reaching them.

Talladega College, in Talladega, Ala., has had 427 students in all departments. Its year's work has shown most satisfactory results. Talladega is closely connected with the church work of the State. All the pastors in the Congregational State Association but four are from its theological department and several other States have found pastors there. The last State Association, with its fine body of young men, educated, dignified and earnest, was a most emphatic demonstration of the good work done in this institution. The students of Talladega have carried forward during the past year, under direction of a member of the Faculty, a systematic mission work in the surrounding neighborhoods, which has yielded large results, both in the good done in the neighborhoods and in the training received by the workers for future usefulness.

Tougaloo University has been filled to overflowing with 343 students, and after the last inch of room had been filled, scores had to be turned away. This school is situated almost in the center of the State, and reaches a far larger region not limited by State lines. It is near the border of the Yazoo country, which has begun to be so wondrously developed, and is so rapidly filling with colored people. The evangelization and enlightenment of this new Africa must largely come through Tougaloo. Here must be trained preachers, teachers and other leaders of character for this new region, as well as for the older portions of the State. Good, solid work has been done here all through the year, and preparation has been made for even better results in the future.

Straight University, in New Orleans, La., is peculiarly situated for an important and far-reaching work. It draws its students not only from the States, but also from Mexico and the West Indies—484 last year. With the enlarged accommodations for the primary and intermediate work which have been planned, this institution will be better prepared to meet the demands of higher education.

Tillotson Institute, at Austin, Texas, the youngest of our chartered institutions, has had a prosperous year with 230 students, in the Primary, Intermediate, Grammar, Normal, College Preparatory and College departments. Situated at the capital of the great empire of Texas, it is destined to be an educational, religious and evangelistic centre, a power for the building up of the kingdom of Christ. It greatly needs enlarged accommodations. Where is the Lord's steward who is ready to give it at once the imperatively needed Girls' Hall?

NORMAL AND GRADED SCHOOLS

Next to our chartered institutions come our normal schools. These have the same course of study up to the college department as the chartered institutions have. These normal schools are eighteen in number, and are situated at Lexington and Williamsburg, Ky.; Memphis, Jonesboro, Grand View and Pleasant Hill, Tenn.; Wilmington and Beaufort, N.C.; Charleston and Greenwood, S.C.; Atlanta, Macon, Savannah, Thomasville and McIntosh, Ga.; Athens, Mobile and Marion, Ala. Adding to these the normal departments of our five chartered institutions, gives us twenty-three normal schools in the South.

Besides these, we have in the South thirty-seven which we class as common schools. Eight of these are graded, with two or three teachers each. Nearly all are parochial schools. The teachers are in both the day schools and the Sunday-schools, and are not only school teachers, but church missionaries. They train the young of our congregations for greater usefulness, encourage many of the most promising to go to higher institutions, teach the parents better ideas of home life, and lead all ages to a more intelligent and spiritual worship.

INDUSTRIAL WORK

Nearly all our schools—chartered, normal and even common—give some industrial training.

At Fisk, the young men are taught wood-working and printing; the young women, nursing, cooking, dress-making and house-keeping.

At Talladega, the young men learn farming, carpentry, painting, glazing, tinning, blacksmithing and printing; the young women, cooking, house-keeping, plain sewing and other needle-work.

At Tougaloo, the young men learn farming, carpentry, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, painting, turning and tinning; the young women, sewing, dressmaking, cooking and housekeeping.

At Straight, the young men receive instruction in printing, carpentry, and floriculture; the young women, needlework, cooking and housekeeping.

At Tillotson, carpentry is taught the young men; needlework, cooking and housekeeping, the young women.

Our normal schools at Memphis, Tenn., Macon, Ga., and Williamsburg, Ky., have carpentry, printing, and other industrial training for the young men, and training in the various arts of home life for the young women.

At Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Macon, Thomasville, Athens, Ala., Marion, Mobile, Pleasant Hill, Sherwood, and other normal, graded and common schools, the young women are trained in the things which they will most need in making comfortable and pleasant homes. Indeed, we make it our special care that the girls shall everywhere in our work be taught these things, so essential to the uplifting of a people. In many places where we have no schools, the pastor's wife, or our special lady missionary, is doing this same kind of work.

THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS

At Fisk, Talladega, Tougaloo and Straight, there have been during the year theological classes. The Theological Department of Howard University, at Washington, has been supported by this Association. Even in some of our normal schools Biblical instruction has been given to some who are now preachers and some who intend to preach. But the number trained has not been sufficient to supply our pastorless churches. The need of a general theological seminary for our churches in the South is becoming imperative. The extensive enlargement of our church work, which ought to begin at once, can scarcely be made successful without this. Who is the one to seize this opportunity to establish an institution of untold possibilities in advancing the Kingdom of Christ on earth—a place where ministers shall be prepared for the work in the South and for foreign missions in Africa?

STATISTICS OF EDUCATIONAL WORK IN THE SOUTH

CHURCH WORK IN THE SOUTH

Our church work has necessarily been of slow growth. Churches might have been multiplied, had we thought it best to lower the standard near the level of the old churches, and acknowledge wild ravings as belonging in the worship of God. We have believed that our churches should mean new ideas and intelligent worship. We have knowingly lent our aid to nothing else.

These churches are gathered into Associations, and the fine bodies of pastors and delegates which come together in these, present a most emphatic testimony to the value of the work done in the past, and are an earnest of what the future will show.

Revivals—some of them of great power—have been reported to us from the Plymouth Church, Washington, D.C., Fisk University, Memphis, Jonesboro, Sherwood, Glen Mary, Oakdale, Athens and Pine Mountain, Tenn.; Montgomery and Florence, Ala.; Tougaloo and Jackson, Miss.; Straight University, New Orleans, and Corpus Christi, Texas. Many others of our churches have had a quiet work of grace, by which additions have been made to them.

We report new churches at Glen Mary and Athens, Tenn.; Roseland, La; Fort Payne and Alco, Ala. This makes the whole number of our churches in the South 136.

Besides these churches, there are our churches among the Indians and the work of gathering the Chinese into churches in California.

We are praying and laboring for the eternal salvation of millions, the establishment through the grace of God, the atoning blood of Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit, of character which shall meet the tests of the Judgment Day and the needs of eternal association with purity. In aiming at this ultimate result, our missionaries are doing a work of inestimable importance for the nation and the world. They are successfully working upon some of the great problems of this country, which armies and millions of money have failed, and of necessity must fail, to solve. Nothing but the "glorious gospel of the blessed God," taught from the pulpit and the teacher's desk, and illustrated in the eloquent lives of consecrated missionaries, can change the idol worshiper from heathen China, the wild-man of the West, the half-heathen Negro so recently in the cruel degradation of slavery, those of our own race in the bonds of ignorance and immorality—so that they shall have and manifest an intelligent and worthy manhood and womanhood. Nothing else can meet cruel prejudice, which would forever deny full manhood or womanhood to those called to it by God himself, and pour oil upon its angry waves until they shall be still.

Our plan of work in the South is often misunderstood and often misrepresented. It is not our plan to force the races together. It is not our plan to agitate questions which arouse the prejudices of the Southern people. We do not agitate. Quietly, steadily, patiently, lovingly, our missionaries seek to lift up the degraded, enlighten the ignorant, and bring them all to Christ, well knowing that bitter prejudice cannot forever stand opposed to an enlightened, cultivated, Christian people, whatever may be their color or their past condition. We have nothing to do with the question of social equality in the South any more than we have in the North. We are not even trying to force the races together in the churches. We have no principles which would prevent our aiding two churches in the same town—one with a membership of white, the other of colored people. We have done it. In our church work, we simply maintain that a Christian church should stand ready to fellowship any one whom Christ fellowships, that it should turn no one away because of his color, or because he, his father or his mother was a slave. We maintain that there is no Christian reason why there should be either State or local organizations of churches which will not fellowship churches whose memberships differ in race. We seek to establish churches and other institutions which dare interpret Christianity as Christ taught it, and which will not yield a Christian principle for enlarged statistics. There are caste churches enough in the South. No more are needed. If Congregationalism can go there true to its history, true to its real convictions, true to that gospel which successfully faced the bitter prejudices of Jew and Gentile with the broad invitation, "Whosoever will, may come," then it goes to become a mighty power and to win both a place for itself and other churches, in time, to accept the same broad interpretation of Christianity.