Read Ebook: The American Missionary — Volume 32 No. 07 July 1878 by Various

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EDITORIAL.

PARAGRAPHS 193 PERMANENT, INTEREST-BEARING INVESTMENTS.--THE CLAIM OF NEED 195 "THESE STUPID BLACKS."--AN AGED MINISTER'S ENTHUSIASM 197 THREE EXTRACTS 198 OBITUARY.--ITEMS FROM CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS 200 CHINESE ITEMS.--GENERAL NOTES 201

THE FREEDMEN.

COMMENCEMENT AT HAMPTON INSTITUTE 203 FISK UNIVERSITY COMMENCEMENT 205 KENTUCKY: Then and Now 206 GEORGIA: Religious Life in Atlanta University.--A Photograph with Lights and Shades 207 ALABAMA: Dedication of Emerson Institute.--The Church and the Literary Club.--Montgomery--Swayne School--A Year's Work--Closing Exercises.--A Surprise Party in a Southern Church--Another Female Missionary Needed.--A Blessed Work 210

THE CHINESE.

JEE GAM'S LETTER 215

THE CHILDREN'S PAGE 216

RECEIPTS 218

CONSTITUTION 221

WORK, STATISTICS, WANTS, &c. 222

NEW YORK:

Published by the American Missionary Association,

ROOMS, 56 READE STREET.

Price, 50 Cents a Year, in advance.

A. Anderson, Printer, 23 to 27 Vandewater St.

PRESIDENT.

HON. E. S. TOBEY, Boston.

VICE PRESIDENTS.

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY.

DISTRICT SECRETARIES.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

COMMUNICATIONS

relating to the business of the Association may be addressed to either of the Secretaries as above.

DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.

Correspondents are specially requested to place at the head of each letter the name of their Post Office, and the County and State in which it is located.

THE

AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

The question is frequently asked, especially at our Boston office, "What is the price of the Questions and Songs prepared for Sunday-school concerts?" We answer: They are furnished gratuitously, and gladly, to any pastor or superintendent who will use them as designed. Only send in your requests for them for this purpose, and you shall receive them free. The interest and the gifts which they incite pay us a hundred fold.

The season of the year has come again, when the schools are closing, and teachers returning North for the summer. The year's work being ended, the laborers must be paid. Just at this time the receipts grow less, and the income is not so well adapted as at other times to the unusual outgo. If the churches which have taken their collections recently will forward them promptly, and if those who are purposing to send us money soon will send it a few days sooner, we may be saved considerable embarrassment. We do not want to have a single teacher's or preacher's claim unpaid the day it becomes due and is presented.

We have referred recently more than once to special wants among our Southern institutions, especially at Tougaloo and Talladega. Both of these, and Straight University as well, are in pressing need of new dormitories, to accommodate the students from abroad, who come to them for instruction unless deterred by the well-known want of room. Several thousands of dollars have been pledged for the Tillotson Normal School in Texas, an eligible site for which has been already secured; and it is important that this stock should grow speedily to be a fruit-bearing tree. These special needs must be kept in mind, and if there should be, during the summer months, some special pleas for help in meeting them, we trust the friends of the freedmen will be ready to respond, if not waiting impatient to be asked. Some of these college presidents and professors will be in the North before very long, and may think it worth while to tell the things they know and the things they have not got, which are often harder to bear than the things they have. The pleasantest way of all would be for their friends to lay by in store something for them, that there be no gatherings when they come.

Special exigencies during the past year demanded of us that we should have a special agent in the field. It was necessary that the burned buildings at Macon, Mobile, New Orleans and Savannah should be replaced as speedily as it could be wisely and intelligently done. It was not merely to rebuild, but to build better, both as to location and adaptation for the work, with a constant view to economy and the limits of insurance money. The Executive Committee persuaded Prof. T. N. Chase to leave his chair, at Atlanta University, temporarily, and undertake the general supervision of the educational work, and, especially, the oversight of these important measures for replacing, improving and enlarging the school buildings. We have now gratefully to record the achievement of this latter work, in great part, and its forwardness so far as it is not yet fully done. Three of the locations have been changed, involving the sale and purchase of lands. Plans have been made, altered, adapted, in all cases, we believe, to the excellent accommodation of the schools and churches, and to the entire satisfaction of the teachers and missionary pastors.

As Prof. Chase returns to his chosen and preferred work at Atlanta, we desire to express our appreciation of the great value of his services in this special work. Nor has his usefulness been limited to the supervision of buildings alone. He has always had more interest in the schools themselves than in their mere habitations; and his suggestions in regard to them have been valuable and practical, while in many other ways he has rendered important service to the executive officers of the Association. The wider acquaintance which he has made during his journeyings and sojournings with the work at large, will, we doubt not, increase his usefulness to the institution with which he has been so long and honorably connected.

It may be remembered that we said, at the beginning of the year, that we should be glad to make the enlargement of the Southern church work the characteristic work of 1878. We have not done very much as yet in this direction, though the subject has constantly and increasingly received attention and earnest thought. And yet it is a matter which, for practical results, must be considered in detail, rather than at large; in the concrete, rather than in the abstract; and in the field, rather than in the office. This consideration, in part, as well as the frequent need of speedy communication with the various departments of our Southern work, have led us to be on the lookout for a man peculiarly qualified for the position of Field-Superintendent of the Southern work. Providentially, in the changes going on in the Home Missionary Society, the Rev. J. E. Roy, D. D., of Chicago, was at liberty to consider the claims of this position, which was tendered to him. And we are glad to announce, as the weekly press has already done, that Dr. Roy has accepted the position, and will enter speedily upon its duties, making his home at Atlanta, Ga., during the larger part of the year.

It must not be expected by our friends that there will follow this new appointment a rapid and spasmodic enlargement of the Church work, or that the first few months will add largely to the small list of Congregational churches in the South. The Doctor is too wise and experienced a field-marshal to design or desire any such sudden and apparent gain. Nor shall we estimate his efficiency by any such shallow measure. But we can assure the friends of the A. M. A. that the whole subject will receive a consideration careful, patient, and detailed, the results of which will appear in a policy which, we trust, may be consistent and approved. For fifteen years we have been laying foundations with care, in the education of the freedmen and their preparation for citizenship in the State. We believe that this same education is fitting them for a church in which all are most fully citizens. But, after these years of toil, efficient, as we think, and full of promise, we wish to build on these foundations--not wood, hay, stubble, transient and perishable things, deservedly short-lived and weak;--but the gold, the silver, and the precious stones of Christian character and Christian churches, which shall be able to stand all the tests of time and of temptation.

PERMANENT, INTEREST-BEARING INVESTMENTS.

Many persons, affected by financial disasters, have at least one consolation--what they have given for Jesus' sake is saved. More than this, it is bearing interest, and no human power can lessen or destroy it. It is not like a bond, payable in full at the option of the one who issues it. It draws interest throughout eternity. The grain sown will multiply, some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundred fold, and the sheaves will aggregate a much larger amount than the seed. Those who have sown bountifully, will reap also bountifully.

The only bags that wax not old are those woven by gifts. These are stored away in the heavenly garners, and will add to the exceeding weight of glory. Gifts do give relief to the recipients; they further the work for man's redemption. This fact is the objective reason for them; it lies upon the surface, and is soonest comprehended. There are times, however, when it is proper to consider how our charities may abound to our own account--how we may secure for ourselves enduring mansions, spotless robes, and imperishable crowns.

If we have been tempted to trust unduly to uncertain riches, which have made for themselves wings and used them, it is time to ask, what investments are safe--what are the treasures that never fail? Bountiful givers cannot be absolutely poor. They may be called to wait a little for their inheritance, but only for a little, for their Master's word is sure: "Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give to every man according as his work shall be."

THE CLAIM OF NEED.

What claim on us of the Caucasian race--us of the Christian Church--have the Negro, the Indian, and the Chinaman, the three despised races in the United States? We, who have the leaven, what do we owe to those who have it not? We, who are the leaven, what to that which is a foreign and corrupting mass, that we may transform it into not only that which is leavened, but, as all which is itself leavened becomes, into leaven itself?

What claim on us have they?

That is not the truest generosity which waits to be besieged with tears and cries for help, which lingers behind the closed door of its comfortable home, until it is called out by special application, and its sympathies are moved by loud appeals--as that is not the truest need which proclaims its wants most loudly--but that which goes and looks, and, knowing or suspecting want, seeks it out, patiently and lovingly, to relieve it.

So God has treated this sinful world. He looked from heaven, he saw, he bowed the heavens and came down. It was the need, and not the prayer, of the world which brought the Lord Jesus to its relief.

Once here, He sees a man lie in the porches of the pool Bethesda; He only sees him, and He asks at once, "Wilt thou be made whole?"

He sees the multitudes in the wilderness, and it is only bread they lack, and He has compassion on them, and from the storehouse of the Father's wealth, supplies their need.

He sees the sins of the world, in which the world is taking pleasure and rejoicing, and against their rejection, their blasphemy, and their persecution, dies by their hands to free them from their sins.

We need not tell you that the 5,000,000 of freed men in the South, the 300,000 Indians of the Northwest, and the, at least, 150,000 Chinamen on the Pacific Coast, are, by our standard, in this direst want. The negroes and the Indians, unlettered and unintelligent, given over by the habits of their lives, these to the vices which are found among the degraded classes which are domesticated, and those to the immoralities which attend a wild life, and in both cases, made worse by the neighborhood of those possessing greater knowledge and power, but who have used this knowledge and power only to depress them, and to make them serve the interests of intelligent greed and lust.

The negro, religious, but full of superstition and sensuousness, whose religion consists largely in seeing visions and dreaming dreams, and singing songs of a heaven they are unfit for--a religion, too, which has been almost utterly divorced from morality. As General Armstrong says: "The story of the devout old Auntie who would go to the communion service, and not let one poor old goose come between her and her blessed Lord, shows how little a broken commandment disturbs the peace of the unenlightened." The Indian, with a vague and dreamy notion of a Great Spirit, and a happy hunting ground, and a definite fear of the medicine men, who send evil spirits to possess them, and drive away disease with a dance. The Chinaman, with the remains of an ancient civilization, which has taught him to imitate and to worship his ancestors and to burn Josh-sticks to Confucius, and, though temperate as to the use of alcoholic liquors, has learned the worse drunkenness of the opium pipe, and to whom the thought of a Saviour from sin, and a life of doing good, is an unheard-of gospel. But we may not dwell longer here. This depth of need may only be hinted at. That it is real and pressing, no one can doubt.

It is a claim which these races have in common with all who are in want. We merely ask the question: Can you find needs more real, degradations more deep, and therefore claims more pressing, than these we need only not shut our eyes to see, for which we need not cross the ocean, nor even our own continent--the needs of the three despised, oppressed, and largely neglected races in these United States?

"THESE STUPID BLACKS."

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