Read Ebook: The American Missionary — Volume 38 No. 01 January 1884 by Various

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The valuable Paper on "Woman's Work in Modern Charity and Missions," read by Rev. A. H. Bradford at our Annual Meeting, not published elsewhere, has been put in pamphlet form, with a view to general distribution. We will be pleased to furnish copies gratuitously, in such numbers as may be desired, to those wishing it for the promotion of woman's work.

JOINT COMMITTEE.

The Joint Committee appointed by the American Home Missionary Society and the American Missionary Association for the consideration of the relation between the two societies, met by adjournment at Springfield, Mass., Dec. 11. The committee on the part of the A. H. M. S. consisted of Rev. J. E. Twitchell, D.D., Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D., Rev. Geo. L. Walker, D.D., Rev. C. L. Goodell, D.D., and A. S. Barnes, Esq. The Committee on the part of the A. M. A. consisted of Rev. J. L. Withrow, D.D., Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D., Rev. D. O. Mears, D.D., Prest. S. C. Bartlett, and Rev. W. H. Ward, D.D. All were present except Dr. Goodell, and his place was filled by Mr. S. B. Capen. A letter from Dr. Goodell was read. Dr. Barrows, representing the Home Missionary Society, and Dr. Strieby, representing the American Missionary Association, were also present by invitation.

It was manifest that the members of the Committee were equally friends of both societies and sought only their greatest efficiency. No partisan feeling found utterance. The members of the Committee are men of independent views and judgment, and examined the subject before them from different standpoints, and yet reached in the paper presented below a remarkable degree of unanimity--every item receiving a unanimous vote. The result will command and deserves the attention of the churches. The following is

THE ACTION OF THE COMMITTEE.

Consulting the principle of comity between the two societies--the A. H. M. S. and the A. M. A.--and that traditional policy of Congregationalists which ignores caste and color lines, and also in view of the present relative position and strength of the two societies, we, the Joint Committee, give as our judgment:

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS A DAY.

What can be done with it? We can sustain efficiently our current work of educating teachers and preachers and the planting of churches. In the progress of development, more requires more. If the Association did not need increased receipts it would be evidence of lack of growth. There is no such lack. New demands are springing up at every point, and it is wise economy to meet these demands. They are simply the healthy development of legitimate missionary work.

Just now there is urgent demand for the increase of facilities for promoting industrial education. The South is arising into a new life. New fields of labor are rapidly opening. Skilled workmen are wanted. The possibilities of agricultural prosperity are becoming better understood. The aspiring youth of both sexes are comprehending their opportunities, and the industrial departments in connection with our institutions are patronized as never before. We ought to make the most of them now.

We need more means for supplying the minds of those hungering for knowledge with good reading. The colored people have few, if any, books or periodicals. We ought to have the means at once for furnishing fifty libraries and reading-rooms at as many different points. Such help to those willing to help themselves to some extent should be provided.

The students leaving our schools to go forth as teachers may be numbered by thousands. These explore the dark places of the land. They open schools in such buildings as can be found, or, finding none, teach out of doors. We need means to aid many such with supplemental support, making it possible for them to continue their schools longer than the few months provided for by the limited State appropriations. Thousands of dollars could be used wisely in this way. The oppurtunity now for temperance work is more promising than ever. A temperance wave has been sweeping some portions of the South. Our students are thoroughly indoctrinated in the principles of total abstinence. They make the best advocates of the cause that can be had for many localities. It is a crucial period. The time to do this work is now--now, while the great questions at issue are being agitated and settled. We ought to have means for extending our efforts to the utmost in this direction.

Of more importance still is evangelistic work, supplemental to the labors of our pastors. This is coming into more than usual prominence. Our students have had thorough training for it, and no little experience in it during their course of study. A score of them in every Southern State could be set to work with profit, if we had the money for such outlay. Nothing could do more for immediate results in developing a pure Christianity among the untaught and unsaved poor of the South.

We might also, with a thousand dollars a day, do more than we have ever done to foster the growth of right and permanent institutions in all our fields of labor. This is the great and urgent necessity. Out of Christian churches and schools will flow all the benefits demanded by a Christian civilization. For this especially we emphasize our appeal. To what better use can the Christians and patriots of our country devote a thousand dollars a day?

A friend, noting the annual average addition of churches as five or six, raised the question whether the time had not come for doubling that rate. The Association is glad to recognize this worthy aspiration and itself to avow the spirit of it, and still further to remind the friends that the disposition of leaders on the field to magnify the work of each year is also in the same line. Nevertheless, we find that those who become in some sense responsible for the nurture and support of these ecclesiastical children born to us become conservative instead of becoming rash, as is sometimes averred. Yet we are able to give assurance that the Field Superintendent and his associates, with their eyes upon the whole field, watching the germs and their unfolding, are only anxious to set out these plants of the Lord's house as fast as is at all consistent. We also see, in no far-away future, a large church work for us as the fruitage of our school work.

WANTED!

--We need also a steam engine for the Industrial Department at Tougaloo, a portable engine of ten or twelve horse-power. Who will give it, or the money needful?

--We need twenty or more sets of carpenters' tools for schools of carpentry at Talladega and elsewhere. Who will give one or more sets?

BENEFACTIONS.

Rutgers College has received ,000 toward an endowment fund from Mr. R. H. Ballentine, Newark, N. J.

Mayor Low, of Brooklyn, has given the city of Salem, Mass., ,500, the income of which is to be applied in aid of needy students in college.

Illinois College has recently received a gift of ,000 from Mr. E. W. Blatchford, of Chicago, who was a member of the class of '65.

Mr. George W. Dixon, of Bethlehem, Pa., has given ,000 to Linden Hall Female Seminary, to build a Gothic chapel in memory of his daughter.

Mr. Roland Mather, of Hartford, Conn., has given ,000 to Olivet College, Mich.

Joseph Dean, of Minneapolis, has placed in the hands of the trustees of Hamlin University ,000 to increase the endowment of that institution.

Mrs. Robert L. Stuart has given 0,000 to Princeton College to endow the department of philosophy and pay the salaries of professors in logic, ethics and psychology.

GENERAL NOTES.

AFRICA.

--Among the Belgians no less than six commercial societies have been constituted to explore the Congo.

--The Livingstone Inland Mission has founded a new station at Ngoma's Town, one hundred kilometers up the river from Stanley Pool.

--The merchants of Lisbon have constituted a company for the navigation of the Quanza. They have constructed to this effect in England a steamer, the Serpa Pinto, which was to be delivered in September.

--The Scotch Presbyterian Church have decided to furnish a steamer for the use of the Old Calabar Mission. The young people throughout the church have been requested to take up the matter and secure the money by the time the steamer is ready.

--According to a dispatch from Sierra Leone the Queen of Massah, with the consent of the native chiefs, has authorized the annexation of the neighboring territory of Sherbro to the English possession, which will thus extend without interruption from Sierra Leone to Liberia.

--The fever of speculation reigns at Axim and in the districts of the Golden Coast. From the climate and the conditions of exploration, the working of the mines proceeds slowly. Commander Cameron, director of the West African Goldfields Company, has introduced upon his grant the hydraulic processes employed in California.

--Flegel has offered to the African German Society to make a new exploration in a region entirely unknown, which extends to the Congo; or, if they choose, to return toward the west to Mount Cameroon. The Government of the German Empire has granted a sum of 50,000 francs for this exploration. On the other hand, some private individuals of Lagos, where Flegel has resided since his last voyage, have furnished him funds with which to conduct an exploration to the basin of the Niger and to B?nou?, in the advancement of science and commerce.

--Mr. Petersen and Dr. Sims have founded at Stanley Pool a new station for the Livingstone Inland Mission. Dr. Sims very quickly commenced to heal the sick, which gained him the confidence of the natives. These latter do not labor hard enough to produce from their land the provisions necessary for the number of Europeans established at Stanley Pool, and the price of provisions has greatly increased. The steamer, Henry Reed, destined for the Upper Congo was to start out the first of August.

THE INDIANS.

--Of the 6,000 Pi-Utes it is said that there are never more than 600 on their reservation at one time. Not more than fifty attend the agency school.

--The National Indian Association, an organization composed exclusively of ladies, has for its object to obtain for the Indians the rights of citizens, and to induce the Government to allow them to own farms.

--The General Council of the Choctaw Nation, recently closed, appropriated 0,000 for the erection of a new council house, the old one to be used as a manual-labor school for the education and training in industrial pursuits of fifty orphan boys.

--The ceremony of receiving Sitting-Bull into the Catholic Church at Fort Yates has been indefinitely postponed because Sitting-Bull cannot make up his mind which of his two wives he will let go. Bishop Marty has had him under his care for several months, and his instructions were being rapidly absorbed by the Chief; but separation from his wives proved too much, and he will probably return to heathenism.

THE CHINESE.

--The missionaries in China, to the number of 231, have presented another petition to the House of Commons against the infamous opium traffic.

--There is a Chinaman at work in Tahiti, in the South Sea Islands, who is said to be a whole Bible society in himself, expending twenty dollars a month out of a salary of twenty-five dollars, for Bibles to distribute among his countrymen there.

--The largest bell in the world is in Kiota, Japan. It is 24 feet high and 16 inches thick at the rim. It is sounded by a suspended piece of wood, like a battering ram, which strikes it on the outside, and its booming can be heard for miles. Nobody knows when or by whom it was cast, and though its surface is covered with characters, no scholar has yet been able to translate them.

BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK.

MISS D. E. EMERSON, SECRETARY.

PAPERS READ AT THE WOMAN'S MEETING IN BROOKLYN.

THE INDIAN WOMAN.

BY MRS. A. L. RIGGS.

To describe an Indian woman is no easy task for one who lives among them, for every peculiarity becomes so familiar, and so interwoven with our common everyday experience, that we forget how strange and unlike white women she appeared to us at first. But she is a woman, even though she wears her shawl over her head and carries her baby on her back.

Her aspirations for herself are limited, but she wants her child to grow up in the white people's way. Yet how small her conception of how this is to be accomplished!

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