The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 04, April, 1889

The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 04, April, 1889
Various

Various

The American Missionary – Volume 43, No. 04, April, 1889

THE REMEDY—BUT WHO IS TO FURNISH IT?

President Harrison's Inaugural gives in a brief sentence the remedy for the great Southern difficulty, viz. EDUCATION.

"If, in any of the States, the public security is thought to be threatened by ignorance among the electors, the obvious remedy is education."

The Southern situation has been vigorously discussed in the last few months on the platform, and in the magazines and newspapers, and the conclusion to which the minds of thoughtful men is rapidly coming is that announced in the President's Message.

But the remedy will not apply itself, and the means for an adequate supply of educational facilities must be furnished promptly or the time will soon come when the case will be hopeless.

WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF THIS SUPPLY?

1. The public school funds of the States themselves. This must be the main source. We recognize the fact that the Southern States are comparatively poor, and the further fact, so greatly to their credit, that some of them are paying as large a per cent. on the assessed value of their property as do some of the Northern States. But all the same, the supply of school houses and teachers is utterly inadequate.

2. From the National Government. The Government has done something in this direction; in giving lands to the States for educational purposes and in establishing the Freedmen's Bureau. It is urged to do more by the passage of an Educational Bill. It has been said that there are objections to every possible way of planting a hill of corn. But a good deal of corn has been planted, and it grows. There are objections to any possible Educational Bill that can be framed. Some of the funds will be wasted, some will be expended in favoritism and some will be neglected and not expended at all. But yet a large share of the money will be spent and well spent, and the great good will over-balance the minor evils. But even the appropriation, under any Educational Bill that has been proposed, will be but a drop in the bucket.

3. Another source is from Northern charitable funds. The North owes an immeasurable debt to both races in the South. It emancipated the slave, and in so doing, assumed its share of the responsibility for the consequences. It cannot shrink from the duty under the plea that it is a Southern question, or even because some of the people at the South protest against its interference.

The duty of the North is two-fold—educational and religious. It is bound to aid in primary, industrial, normal and higher education. It has the teachers and it has the money. It has a special obligation to impart religious instruction. The public school funds of the South and the money of the National Government cannot be applied to distinctively religious education. But there is no such restriction on the Northern schools in the South; they can give religious instruction in all departments, and they can train up religious teachers and preachers. The North, too, has an urgent call to found pure and intelligent churches among the masses in the South.

The North has not been idle in these respects. The public in both sections of the country have, we believe, a faint conception of the amount of money already expended in the South by Northern charitable individuals and societies. For example, the American Missionary Association, including some institutions which it founded and for a time sustained, has expended $7,124,151.26; and including, also, books and clothing and the amount collected and spent in connection with its boarding departments, the total sum, as near as can be computed, would be not far from ten millions of dollars since 1862; and this money has been economically and wisely expended. It is due to the Association and to those who have supplied it with the funds, that the grandeur of its work should be recognized. But, if now, to all this is added the amount expended in the South by other religious bodies and by the Peabody and Slater and Hand funds, it will be seen that a mighty force is at work, unobtrusive as it is helpful, arousing no antagonism in the South, and blessing in its rebound the benevolent contributors at the North.

THE INADEQUACY OF THE SUPPLY

But, as the disciples said in regard to the five barley loaves and the two fishes, "What are these among so many?" The means in both cases are utterly inadequate, and the need of multiplying is as imperative here as it was on the shore of Galilee. We have a Negro population of eight millions, which has doubled in the last twenty years, and increases at the rate of six hundred per day—requiring, if adequately supplied, the founding of a new Fisk University or Talladega College every twenty-four hours. There are 1,500,000 illiterate voters in the South, and how can the North, while admitting with President Harrison, that if the public security is threatened by this ignorance the remedy is education, withhold its share of the necessary means?

How can the churches of the North, who know that the future destiny of these ignorant masses depends upon their religious far more than upon their secular education, refuse the needed gifts for that purpose? Here is where the miracle wrought on the shore of Galilee needs to be repeated. Our Lord and Master is not here now in bodily presence, and he entrusts to his church the duty of multiplying the bread of life for these vast perishing masses. The churches of the North must awake to this great duty. If done at all, it must be done promptly. Present means are wholly inadequate. Every individual Christian at the North should feel his personal responsibility and should respond by a great increase of his contributions for this purpose. It is not too much to say that the religious influences sent from the North in school, in industrial training, in the preparation of Christian ministers and teachers, and in the planting of Christian churches, will well-nigh constitute the pivotal point of the whole movement. A loss now can never be regained, but the achievements of the present should be a stimulus for the future. The North withheld neither treasure nor blood to save the Union and to free the slave. Treasure and toil will now save the South and the Nation.

SOME CURIOUS AND SUGGESTIVE FACTS

What proportion of the funds contributed by living donors to missionary societies comes directly from church collections? We presume the answer from a large majority of the contributors would be, three-fourths or four-fifths. But the curious fact is, that, for the three years, 1886, 1887 and 1888, the average contributions to the American Missionary Association from church collections are forty-seven per cent., from Sunday-schools seven per cent., from Woman's Missionary Societies five per cent., from individual donors forty-one per cent. It thus appears that less than one-half the total sum comes from collections in the churches. Another curious fact is, that these receipts directly from the churches are uniform, not differing to the extent of three per cent. in the past three years. So that, with all the importunity and pressure, the plate collections in the churches have not increased.

Another curious fact is, that one-third of the amount donated by individuals is for special objects, mainly for the increase of plant, and thus adds to the cost of running expenses, and is so far forth a burden and not a relief on regular appropriations for current expenses.

What, therefore, is the stable reliance of missionary societies on which to make annual appropriations? It cannot be on legacies. It cannot be on the special contributions of individuals. It ought to be based on church collections. These should carry current expenses, and the additional plant should come from outside sources. If this be so, and the societies are to increase their work at all from year to year; if, indeed, they are to meet the additional cost of the new plant given by individuals, then the church collections should be increased proportionately.

Are we not, therefore, making a legitimate appeal, when we urge upon every church member the duty of increasing his individual gift put into the plate when the collection is taken? A vote of the National Council or of the Annual Meeting of a missionary body, or of a State Conference, that a society should receive an increase of funds amounts to little, unless the individual donor in the church will increase his gifts.

A little increase here aggregates much. If every member will add five per cent. or ten per cent., it will be little to each, but will be great in the total. May we ask our readers to lay this to heart with the query of each to himself, "Is it not my duty to increase my individual contribution?"

PARAGRAPHS

We have many appeals by letter and in person from colored people in the South, for help from the Hand Fund, to aid in sustaining enterprises which these people are endeavoring to carry forward. Some of these schools are heavily in debt. Others are greatly lacking in necessary facilities, buildings, furniture and teachers. Others are crippled for want of means to meet current expenses. Many of these institutions are unwisely located, others have no adequate financial basis to warrant their existence, and some seem to lack the necessary provision for supervision and responsibility. Taken all together, they furnish additional warnings to the people of the North against contributing to individual or local enterprises in the South without most careful scrutiny into the facts in each individual instance.

A colored missionary teacher in one of the most desolate parts of North Carolina writes us as follows:

"In making out my bill, you will perhaps not understand what I mean by the amount to be 'deducted.' I desire to give one-tenth of all my earnings to God. Of course it is His by right. Our missionary has brought the matter plainly before me, so I desire that you will deduct $2.00 every month, which will be one-tenth of my entire salary, and put it where it will be used for the service of Christ."

Rev. Frank G. Woodworth writes from Tougaloo University.

The school is progressing well. If we have the necessary accommodations, I see no reason why the school should not enrol 500 pupils within the next two years. We have had nearly 340 thus far, and probably will reach 375 by the end of the year, and we have refused between 30 and 40 girls because we had no room for them.

In the last MISSIONARY we gave quite an account of special religious services held in connection with the Le Moyne Institute, Memphis, Tenn. In the brief extract below, from a letter of Prof. Steele's, we see some pleasant results:

"Our special meetings in connection with Mr. Wharton's stay of two weeks are closed. There have been some eighty or more conversions in church and school; over sixty are students in school. The work seems very genuine."

The announcement of the winners of the Tunis Quick prize for grammar and spelling has been made by the faculty of Rutgers College. The prize was equally divided between James E. Carr of New York City, and Milton Demarest of Oredell, N.J. Carr is colored. Last year he took the highest honor at the grammar school commencement, delivering the valedictory and winning a prize scholarship. He has only one eye.

We would continue to remind pastors and churches of our Leaflets, which we will be happy to furnish, on application, to those taking collections for our Association.

NOTES FROM NEW ENGLAND

I recently spoke in a manufacturing town in New England. In the forenoon service, a man, evidently an operative in one of the mills, sat in a front pew with a whole row of little children beside him, his wife at the end of the line with a baby in her lap. In the evening, the same man and family, minus the mother and baby, occupied the same pew. After the service, this man came to me, and with deep emotion said: "I am only a working man; you saw my large family of little children; every penny I can earn counts, but I feel that I must divide the living of my children with these poor people you have told us of to-day. We can get on with poorer food to give them the gospel."

This was said in the accent that told that this Christian nobleman came from old covenant-making and covenant-keeping Scotland! Not a very "dangerous foreigner!" Money given from such extreme sacrifice is sacred. Would this spirit were universal!

The close relation existing between the work of the American Missionary Association for the colored people in America, and that of the American Board for the colored people in Africa, is most interestingly illustrated by a contribution which has recently reached this New England office. Rev. B.F. Ousley of Kambini, East Africa, sends a contribution of ten dollars for the Theological Department in Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. Mr. Ousley and wife are graduates of Fisk University and went out as missionaries to Africa under the American Board, four years ago. After these years of experience they realize that Africa must be evangelized by colored people trained by A.M.A. schools, and they make this generous contribution to this grand work.

A suggestion made in the Boston "Ministers' Meeting," on the question, "How to conduct a prayer meeting," might be very appropriately applied to missionary concerts and addresses. This was the suggestion: "Keep the temperature warm, the atmosphere clear, and don't pommel the Christians!" Applied to missionary concerts and addresses, this sound advice would read: Keep the missionary temperature warm by telling incidents of missionary experience; keep the missionary atmosphere clear by presenting the grand hopefulness of the glorious work, and don't pommel those who attend these meetings and give to these causes!

Patriotism is all aglow among the boys and girls of New England just now! More than twelve hundred have enlisted recently in the army of the "True Blues." Pastors, Sunday-school superintendents and teachers, officers of Young People's Societies of Christian Endeavor, and other missionary societies have been the enthusiastic recruiting sergeants, and still there is demand for more recruits. Who will enlist next?

In the last "Notes from New England," we recorded the gift of an aged friend. Now comes this touching letter:

"Dear Sir:—Please find enclosed $5.00 for the A.M. Association, the Christmas present of a son to a father. The father is eighty-one years old to-day. He has been with the A.M.A. from its organization, and wishes its continued prosperity until its great work is accomplished.

    Yours truly,
    AN OLD-TIME FRIEND."

Is there any work, North or South, at home or abroad, that requires more versatile gifts or breadth of training than the work of this Association? Here are a few lines from the letter of a missionary in Alabama, which illustrate the many-sidedness of this work:

"I have organized a Woman's Missionary Society. I have an industrial class for girls, and give them instruction in sewing, in housework on the principle of the kitchen-garden system, without the practice, as I have not the articles to use for that purpose. Then a lesson from the Bible, also, comes in, and some amusement in the way of puzzles. The girls are pleased to belong to a society of King's Daughters. I have a class for instructing the women in darning, patching, button-hole making and so on. We have a Society of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in which I have the Department of Social Purity.

"You will be able to believe that my time is pretty fully occupied. I rejoice that I am able to be here, for I am never so happy as when I am engaged in this beloved work."

Is not here a splendid field for missionary work for the King's Daughters throughout the land? Why cannot the loyal daughters of the King, at the North, support such missionaries as this in their self-sacrificing work for the down-trodden daughters of this same Divine King in the South?

PROTESTANT AND PAPIST: AN OBJECT-LESSON

In the communication below, an esteemed friend finds in our Annual Meeting at Providence an object-lesson in the Christian recognition of the colored man, which he very properly sets over against a like example in the convention of colored Roman Catholics recently held in Washington, D.C. Our friend is right. The American Missionary Association stands square on that subject. We only wish that everybody else, even at the North, stood with us on that plank of our platform.

"In THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY for February, 1889, I read extracts and notices from Catholic sources with regard to the universality of that church organization that 'knows neither North, South, East or West, that knows neither Jew nor Gentile, Greek, Barbarian nor Scythian,' and emphasizing the fact that a colored priest had celebrated mass in company with two white clergymen.