American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 1, January, 1890 by Various
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Various >> American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 1, January, 1890
The American Missionary
JANUARY, 1890.
VOL. XLIV. NO. 1.
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CONTENTS
EDITORIAL.
NEW YEAR'S GREETINGS
"NOW, CONCERNING THE COLLECTION"--THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH
AFRICA--ITS SHADOW AND SUNSHINE
CONVENTIONS OF COLORED PEOPLE--SCHOOL ECHOES
ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT EATON
THE SOUTH.
FIELD NOTES, BY REV. F.E. JENKINS
REVIVAL AT WASHINGTON, D.C.
A GLAD THANKSGIVING
STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY, NEW ORLEANS
TILLOTSON INSTITUTE
THE INDIANS.
MISSIONARY LIFE AMONG THE DAKOTA INDIANS
NEW CHURCH AT FORT YATES, DAKOTA
THE CHINESE.
CHINA FOR CHRIST
BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK.
MASS MEETING OF THE WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNIONS
WORDS FROM OUR ANNUAL MEETING
WOMAN'S STATE ORGANIZATIONS
RECEIPTS
* * * * *
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
Rooms, 56 Reade Street.
* * * * *
Price, 50 Cents a Year, in Advance.
Entered at the Post Office at New York, N.Y., as second-class matter.
American Missionary Association.
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PRESIDENT, Rev. WM. M. TAYLOR, D.D., LL.D., N.Y.
_Vice-Presidents._
Rev. A.J.F. BEHRENDS, D.D., N.Y.
Rev. ALEX. McKENZIE, D.D., Mass.
Rev. F.A. NOLLE, D.D., Ill.
Rev. D.O. MEARS, D.D., Mass.
Rev. HENRY HOPKINS, D.D., Mo.
_Corresponding Secretaries._
Rev. M.E. STRIEBY, D.D., _56 Reade Street, N.Y._
Rev. A.F. BEARD, D.D., _56 Reade Street, N.Y._
_Recording Secretary._
Rev. M.E. STRIEBY, D.D., _56 Reade Street, N.Y._
_Treasurer._
H.W. HUBBARD, Esq., _56 Reade Street, N.Y._
_Auditors._
PETER McCARTEE.
CHAS. P. PEIRCE.
_Executive Committee._
JOHN H. WASHBURN, Chairman.
ADDISON P. FOSTER, Secretary.
_For Three Years._
S.B. HALLIDAY,
SAMUEL HOLMES,
SAMUEL S. MARPLES,
CHARLES L. MEAD,
ELBERT B. MONROE.
_For Two Years._
J.E. RANKIN,
WM. H. WARD,
J.W. COOPER,
JOHN H. WASHBURN,
EDMUND L. CHAMPLIN.
_For One Year._
LYMAN ABBOTT,
CHAS. A. HULL,
CLINTON B. FISK,
ADDISON P. FOSTER,
ALBERT J. LYMAN.
_District Secretaries._
Rev. C.J. RYDER, _21 Cong'l House, Boston._
Rev. J.E. ROY, D.D., _151 Washington Street, Chicago._
Rev. C.W. HIATT, _64 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, Ohio._
_Financial Secretary for Indian Missions. Field Superintendent._
Rev. CHAS. W. SHELTON.
Rev. FRANK E. JENKINS.
_Secretary of Woman's Bureau._
Miss D.E. EMERSON, _56 Reade St., N.Y._
COMMUNICATIONS
Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the
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Editor, at the New York Office; letters relating to the finances, to the
Treasurer.
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NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS.--The date on the "address label," indicates the
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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 AMERICAN MISSIONARY.
VOL. XLIV. JANUARY, 1890. NO. 1.
AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
* * * * *
NEW YEAR'S GREETINGS.
The New Year opens upon this Association auspiciously. The setting sun
of our old year went down in a bright sky. Revivals of religion and an
increased membership was the joyful record of our churches; by the
generous aid of the Daniel Hand Fund, our schools showed a greatly
enlarged attendance, and the faithful work of the teachers brought forth
most satisfactory results; the threatened debt that darkened several
months of the year was happily averted by good showing on the right side
of the ledger.
It is from this bright setting sun of the last year that we turn with
faith and hope to the opening of the new year. We believe, the work is
the Lord's and that he will provide. But our faith alone will not save
us. It is our duty to inform and arouse our constituents as to the needs
and urgency of our work. We will specify in a few particulars:
1. As to funds. Our last year's favorable showing was due in large part
to legacies. These are variable, and we must rely on the gifts of
_living donors_. Unless, therefore, the churches and individuals make
larger contributions than last year, we have no assurance of an escape
from debt, even if the work be maintained merely as at present. We wish
most earnestly to press this fact upon the friends of the Association.
2. But this is not all. Growth is imperative. The people at the North
are alarmed by the disturbed condition of the South, and are awakening
afresh, as they were at the close of the war, to a sense of
responsibility to the colored people. The aroused feeling at that time
took a practical turn, and money, men and women were sent without stint
to enlighten and elevate. Shall it be so now, or will mere sympathy or
useless regret suffice? No! Something, the _right thing_, can be done.
Fair-minded men, both North and South, realize that all schemes
involving fraud, violence, disfranchisement or deportation, are
impracticable, but all are agreed as to the value of Christian
enlightenment, enabling the Negro to earn property and to become an
intelligent and virtuous citizen. This is the line on which the
Association has perseveringly toiled since it opened its first school at
Fortress Monroe in 1861, and it is not too much to say that nothing more
effective has been done in all these years. Can anything of a better
sort be done in the future? Amid all the jarring discords at the South,
the people there, both white and black, welcome the efforts of the
Association. They feel that we are not disturbers, that we have a single
honest aim, and are working at the only true solution of the great
problem. We ask the people of the North, therefore, to come to the
rescue once more by practical, self-denying liberality.
3. But this is not all. A work so vital to the interests of the nation
and of the cause of Christ needs to be uplifted by the prayers of God's
people. Deliverance cannot come from political parties, governmental
authority or theories of industrial reform. The power of God must be in
it. We therefore respectfully but earnestly ask our brethren in the
ministry to remember this work in their prayers in the great
congregation, and we ask our fellow Christians to remember it in the
prayer-meeting, at the family altar and in the closet.
* * * * *
"Now, concerning the collection." These are not the words of a begging
agent, but of Paul the Apostle, and they come from his pen just after he
had closed that wonderful fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians on the
glorious resurrection and the victory over death and the grave. These
words are fit, therefore, in any assembly and at the close of any
discourse however exalted. Brethren remember the "collection."
* * * * *
The Corinthian church seems, like some churches in recent times, to have
been remiss in sending on the "collections," and hence we find Paul, a
year later, to be "After Money Again." He writes so nobly, so kindly,
that we are tempted to quote a few sentences:
"For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich,
yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be
rich. And herein I give my advice: for this is expedient for you who
have begun before not only to do but also to be forward a year ago. Now
therefore perform the doing of it. As it is written, He that had
gathered much had nothing over; and he that gathered little had no
lack."
* * * * *
The National Council has appointed Committees to take into consideration
the consolidation of the missionary magazines and the re-adjustment of
the work of the several Congregational missionary societies. We are
happy to furnish these committees with all the facts in our possession
on these subjects, and this Association will, in accordance with its
fundamental theory, cheerfully acquiesce in what shall be found to be
the deliberate and ultimate decision of the churches. In the meantime,
it may not be out of place for us to say that missionary periodicals and
missionary societies are growths and not manufactured articles, and that
plans for modification should be very carefully considered. We venture,
therefore, to suggest that counsel be taken of the Town Clerk of
Ephesus, "to do nothing rashly."
* * * * *
AFRICA.--ITS SHADOW AND SUNSHINE.
The shadow is still broad and dense, well nigh covering the continent.
The heroic Stanley has found that shadow as dark as when he first
traveled beneath it. The malarial climate and the bitter hostility of
the natives are there yet. The accursed slave trade is as extensive as
ever, embittering the lives of its victims, instigating wars among the
tribes and obstructing agriculture, commerce and civilization. The
failures to suppress it are discouraging. Sir Samuel Baker's
well-equipped military force, Col. Gordon's intrepid courage, and Emin
Pacha's brave endurance have all succumbed before it. Its flow, pushed
back for a time, now returns with its old-time flood. Then, too, the
Mahdi uprising, seemingly suppressed, still lives and is likely to hold
the Soudan if not to harass Egypt. When Emin Pacha, under the protection
of the heroic Stanley, abandoned his little sovereignty, it was a
farewell, humanly speaking, to a speedy establishment of missions in
that territory.
But there is a bright lining around all this darkness. For one thing the
eyes of the civilized world are turned toward Africa with increasing
intensity. The rainbow fringe of missions around the coasts is still
sustained by the gifts and prayers of Christians, and by the blessing of
God. The multiplied efforts of the European States to colonize the dark
continent are facts full of encouragement. The motive may be selfish;
the method sometimes unwise and cruel, and the conflict of contending
interests may be hindrances, but the results will be good. All these
movements aim at commerce, and commerce can only flourish on the ruins
of the slave-trade, and among peaceful tribes with growing industries,
intelligence and civilization. The Congo Free State, with its railroad
in construction, its steamboats on the rivers and its civilized
settlements, is a bright omen of the future.
Surely God's people should pray for Africa, moved by pity and by hope.
Christians in America can do more than pray--they can help to answer
their own prayers. They can raise up the sons and daughters of Africa,
trained in our schools, to go forth as missionaries and colonists to the
land of their fathers. The experiment has been tried with success.
Missionaries of African descent can endure the climate better, and can
more readily reach the people than those of the white race. There is a
call in these facts for the means to give special instruction in
Biblical truth to those who can thus be prepared for this great mission
work.
* * * * *
CONVENTIONS OF COLORED PEOPLE.
The proposed National Conventions of colored people to be held in
Chicago and Washington are significant facts. They indicate that the
colored people are suffering wrongs, and that they feel a call to seek
redress. Their right to hold such conventions is unquestioned; the
wisdom of holding them will be vindicated, we hope, by their just and
reasonable utterances and plans. Intemperate language and rash and
impracticable measures will not help, and we have so much confidence in
the discretion of our colored friends that we believe none such will be
said or proposed.
Our colored brethren must not forget that much is being done for them
and that they are doing much for themselves. It would be unwise to
overlook this in any attempt to reach something less tangible.
Their appeal to the justice of the Nation, to the Constitution and the
laws can be made invincible, but it will be well to keep in touch with
the sympathy of the North and with the conscience of the South, for in
spite of all the wrongs inflicted on the colored people in the South, we
believe there is a large and growing number of Southern people who look
upon this whole question conscientiously, and although perplexed desire
that the right shall be done.
For the colored people themselves, while conventions are good, yet the
accumulation of property, growth in intelligence, and character are
better.
* * * * *
SCHOOL ECHOES.
A boy in one of the arithmetic classes was given an example which began
with the statement, that a man deposited a certain sum of money in a
bank. He was asked if he knew what a bank was. He replied; "Yes, it is a
place where you dig coal."
"What is the shape of the earth?"
"The earth is square. Pap says so, and he says the Book says so too. He
says if there warn't four corners, how could the four angels stand on
'em."
"I hear you'uns have taken your children out of school. What did you do
that for?"
"I'll tell ye. I yaint goin' to send my child to any such fool-teacher
as that ar. Why, he tole 'em that the world was roun', an' any fool
knows better."
A Methodist minister in North Carolina, preaching from the passage about
standing at the corners of the streets to pray, told his people that if
they wanted to see a "first class hypocrite," see anybody who would
stand up to pray. The _standing up_ was what he thought Jesus reproved.
A man in the South writes to us as follows, making an unusual inquiry:
"I write you this to ask you do you take married ladies in your school,
and if so I want to send my wife at once. Please send me the terms of
the school and what she will need. My wife wants an education and my
desire is to give it to her. You will greatly oblige me to answer this
on return mail."
* * * * *
ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT EATON,
AT THE ANNUAL MEETING IN CHICAGO.
God, who writes his thoughts in the development of a nation, not less
than in the grouping of constellations or in the drama of the physical
world, has spoken in the birth and history of our land with startling
distinctness. In every people we may see an ideal of God embodied,
however imperfectly realized by human achievement. Happy is that people
who can see God's ideal for them, and those statesmen who have it in
their hearts to lead the people along the line of God's thought. To get
at something of God's thought for us, we must go back even into those
dark Teutonic forests into which the Roman world peered with so much
fear and awe, and out of which came those freemen who knew how to leap
upon that Roman world in its pride and its weakness and re-assert human
liberty.
Those old ancestors of ours knew what freedom was; but as they came
against that Roman world, they themselves were in part conquered by it,
and they lost something of that freedom. But God set apart one corner of
the European world for them, and called over the English Channel in the
fifth century those forefathers of ours, there to watch for a century
and a half that tremendous conflict in which the very plow-share of the
Teutons went through the roots of the Roman life in Britain and left
nothing but Teutonic fields remaining. And then God brought into this
Britain, thus set apart, the gospel of Christ, and our forefathers
became Christians--not Christians such as there were in other parts of
Europe, but having that free and independent Christian life that shone
forth in men like Wyckliffe, denying the power of the keys to Rome
except where Rome spoke with Christ's voice, and in men like Latimer,
before whom the proud Henry trembled.
All over England were sown these seeds of a free Christian faith; so
that when Luther came, it was in England as in our country when the
forest fires have ceased, and suddenly there spring up from the sod a
new forest because the seeds lie in the prairie from age to age. So in
our English soil there were those seeds of Christian freedom that sprung
forth and gave us a free and Protestant England. And then, in the
reaction, when Mary was on the throne, and the fire at Smithfield was
kindled, the Christian men of England went to Geneva and there met John
Calvin, whose system of Christian thought set the soul of man forth, in
his awful agony of sin, and in God's redemption for him--set him forth
independent of kings and rulers, and in whose sight a king was but God's
vassal. When Englishmen had to come in contact with John Calvin, the
iron of his free spirit became steel, and then Puritanism was born, and
at that time God raised the curtain that hung over a whole hemisphere,
and gave that hemisphere to these free Teutonic English people. We know
how they conquered the country for this free spirit, and how the
Revolutionary War came on, and Samuel Adams, awakening to the sound of
those cannon at Concord on that spring morning, said, in spite of all
the forebodings of a long and deadly struggle, "How glorious is this
morning," because he foresaw what God could work here in a free
Christian land. And so on that following Fourth of July those men
assembled in Philadelphia and put forth the Declaration of Independence.
There is no better commentary on it than Lincoln's words when he said,
in those dark days just before the war: "In their enlightened view
nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness was sent into the
world to be trodden on or degraded or imbruted by its fellows."
They set up a beacon for their children and their children's children.
Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to
breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths,
that when at some remote time some man, or faction, or interest should
arise, and say that none but rich men, or none but white men, or none
but Anglo-Saxon white men were entitled to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, their children's children should look back to the
Declaration of Independence, and should take heart to begin again the
battles their forefathers fought, that thus truth and liberty and
righteousness and justice and all the Christian virtues might not be
lost in the land; and none might dare limit and circumscribe the
principles on which the temple of liberty was being built. Thus, by
these centuries of growth and life God said to our people, "I have given
you this key to your history, the union of liberty and an enlightened
faith--faith and freedom. Be true to these. This do and thou shalt
live." It seems plain enough. And yet, in this garden of liberty there
were sown tares. In the bosom of this free land the deadly foe of
freedom, slavery, was here. In slavery was the evident and necessary foe
of all that God had foreplanned for our Nation, because slavery denies
the rights of men. Men tried to deal with this problem; they tried to
circumscribe it; they said it was a local question, and Webster stood in
the Senate and boasted that he had never spoken of slavery on that
floor. How the way of liberty was choked, how the tree of liberty
withered! And then God spoke in the earthquake, and the fire, the war
came on, and the slave was set free; and it seemed as if again we had
come into sight of God's plan for the race, that liberty and Christian
faith should be the watchword of our national life.
Now again, at last, it seems as if that which we are accomplishing and
that which God has spoken in all these ages is again jeopardized, and as
if this human right shall be denied in the South. Men doubt whether
there is in the Negro more than the capacity of a subordinate race, and
say that to educate him is to lift him out of his sphere. Brethren and
friends, there is manhood in the Negro race. There was humanity in those
slaves who toiled their way over mountains and through swamps before the
war, with their eyes focussed upon the North star of freedom. And there
was humanity in those mothers who clasped their babes to their breast
and fled before the bloodhounds that they might escape the enslavers of
men. There was manhood in those one hundred and seventy-eight thousand
Negro soldiers who seized their muskets and went to the front and fought
for us, and with us, in those dark days of 1864, when the draft was
failing and when volunteering had failed, that there might be soldiers
to stand in the front and to dig in the trenches, and of whom eighty
thousand gave their lives for us. There was manhood in those cabins in
which all over the South, our fleeing soldiers, escaping from prison,
never failed to find support, help, and guidance. Oh! how disastrous a
business it is that that manhood, which all those years of slavery could
not extinguish, should now be extinguished by the priests of a proud,
arrogant, and selfish aristocracy.
But, my friends, as we felt in those days, and feel to-night, there is
still no help for us but in the Christian solution of this problem and
in the Christian destiny God has given to us. Liberty and faith, the two
elements, must be conjoined. For us to deny the rights of the Negro now
is to say that God did not make man in his image. It is to say that
liberty is not a sacred right, but a selfish acquisition; that
government does not exist to establish rights, but to protect
privileges, and that mankind are not brothers, but foes. It is to turn
the shadow upon the dial of human progress backward toward the ages of
oppression and chaos.
And just there is the problem that confronts us, South and North
together. What shall be done in this dire extremity? I remember years
ago hearing of a fire in Charleston in which that beautiful spire of St.
Michael's took fire and some one had to be found to go up beyond the
reach of the hose to put out the flame kindling and flickering there. No
one was found until a Negro stepped forth and climbed that tower, taking
his life in his hands, and put out that flame. And when he came down
again, one man said, "Name your reward," and he replied, "Let me but be
counted a man." And that we have got to do, or God will shake down our
civilization and our Nation as he shook down that spire of St. Michael's
in the earthquake three years ago. It is certain to come unless we
follow the line of God's appointing that this must be a free Nation,
absolutely free, free everywhere. As yet, emancipation is but an outward
and formal thing. What we wait for now, is the emancipation of a true
and an elevated will in the South, and Christian citizenship. Into that,
this Association pours its strength, its money, and its life. It took
half a million lives to emancipate the slaves outwardly, and it may yet
take hundreds and thousands of lives--our lives--our children's
lives--poured in upon this problem, that so we may lift the Negro to
that point where he feels himself, and where we feel him to be, a
man--taught to labor, protected in the enjoyment of the fruits of his
labor, without which the strongest arm grows palsied, trained in a
strong, self-reliant Christian manhood, holding the reins firmly on the
neck of all passion--a man. And that we will do; and the very greatness
of the problem, I believe, is our redemption. It was the greatness of
the crisis that thrilled the Nation's heart when the war burst upon us.
It is the very greatness of our present problem that calls in trumpet
tones to men and women and children all over the land; "Come and help
solve this problem for Christ."
A few weeks ago, in one of the beautiful towns of Northern Illinois, a
young man, the only son of his father and mother, hearing at Sabbath
evening the alarm of fire, sprung forth and took his place upon the
burning building and there did the work of a fireman. In the attempt to
put out the fire he was hurled headlong and in one moment his life had
gone hence. A few weeks afterward, as a friend was talking with his
mother about it, she said, "Our son was always so swift to heed any call
of need or duty, it seems to me as if he heard suddenly some call from
God from some farther clime and sprung forth and was gone from our
sight." Blessed, heroic faith! But, brethren and friends, fathers and
mothers, we need that same faith for our living sons and living
daughters, to send them forth into this work of God. When the Christ
child was on the back of the giant Christophorus crossing the stream,
how heavy he grew as the giant plunged his way through the waters. God
weighs heavily upon this Nation this greatest of all national problems,
what to do with these despised ones. But bear the burden we must, and
bear it through we must to the farther shore of a Christian solution, or
we and it will go down the flood together. There is no help for us
except in this solution which makes brothers of these men.