The American Missionary. Volume 42, No. 10, October, 1888

In drafts, checks, registered letters, or post-office orders, may be sent to H.W. Hubbard, Treasurer, 56 Reade Street, New York, or, when more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., or 151 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.

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.

American Missionary Association

FINANCIAL—THE DEBT

Our receipts for the eleven months ending August 31st show an increase from collections of $14,452.76; a decrease in legacies of $5,195.52; with a net increase of $9,257.24 over the corresponding months of last year. On the other hand, the expenditures for these eleven months have been $31,835.70 more than those of last year, and hence a debt of over $22,000 is impending. The explanation is to be found in the fact that an unusually large per cent. of our collections this year is in specified gifts for special objects, and could not, therefore, be used to meet appropriations for current work; and the added expenditures have been absolutely required by the natural and healthful growth in our varied industrial, school and church work in all parts of our extended field.

As our friends have had occasion to know, we are making an earnest appeal for special help to avert this threatened debt. The responses thus far are encouraging, but not such as to leave the question beyond doubt. This magazine will reach most of our readers before the last Sunday of the month. We urgently appeal to our friends to make a grand rally on that day for our relief.

ANNUAL MEETING

The forty-second Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association will be held at Providence, R.I., Oct. 23-25. The meeting will open promptly at 3 o'clock, Tuesday P.M., Oct. 23. On Tuesday evening, the annual sermon will be preached by Rev. Arthur Little, D.D., of Chicago. Those purposing to be present and wishing entertainment are requested to write to Mr. G.E. Luther, Secretary of Committee of Entertainment, Providence, R.I. (See the last page of the cover.)

VOTING MEMBERS

By our Constitution it will be observed that the following persons are entitled to vote at the annual meetings of this Association: Members of evangelical churches who have been constituted life members by the payment of $30 into its treasury, with the written declaration at the time or times of payment that the sum is to be applied to constitute a designated person a life member, such membership beginning sixty days after the payment; delegates chosen to attend the annual meeting by evangelical churches which have within a year contributed to the funds of the Association, such churches being entitled to send two delegates each. Each State Conference or Association is also entitled to send two delegates. Such delegates are members of the Association for the year for which they were appointed.

We sincerely urge our patrons to avail themselves of the opportunity thus afforded to participate in the management of the trusts of this Association, hoping that by so doing they will share more fully in the responsibility of its work and become more helpful in furthering its development in years to come.

We are happy to announce the return of Rev. Dr. Beard. He attended the London Missionary Conference, as the delegate of the American Missionary Association, and presented a paper on "History of Missions among the North American Indians." He was called by a telegram to Florence to the sick bed of two of his children, one of them very severely ill. Both recovered and he now returns to America, himself and family in excellent health. During his absence, he preached in his former pulpit in the American Church in Paris, and met many of his former parishioners. He had become greatly attached to that church and much interested in the very successful McAll Mission, to which he was greatly helpful. We welcome him once more to his chosen field in the work of the A.M.A., where he will find ample room for the exertion of his best energies.

The executive committee of the American Missionary Association has unanimously appointed the Rev. Frank E. Jenkins a Field Superintendent, to examine and report upon the work of our schools and churches in our Southern field. Mr. Jenkins is a graduate of Williams College, Massachusetts, and has had some years' experience as a principal of advanced schools. He is a graduate of Hartford Theological Seminary, and has been engaged successfully in our work in the South. Some parts of the field are already well known to him, and with others he will make immediate acquaintance. We commend him to our missionary teachers and preachers in the field, as a beloved Christian brother whose heart is in full sympathy with our work. We trust that the relationships which will be established, will be fruitful in helpfulness. His residence will be in Chattanooga, Tenn.

The prevalence of yellow fever at Jacksonville, Fla., and the danger of its spreading into the towns and cities of the southeast, will make it wise for us to delay for a time the opening of a few of our schools in that region. In former years some of our teachers, while at their posts, were caught by this malignant scourge and they faced the danger bravely—some of them laying down their lives and others permanently impairing their healths, by taking care of the smitten ones. Such heroism is demanded when the danger comes, but it does not seem best to seek the danger. A little delay in some places, we hope, will be all that is necessary.

By the time these pages reach our readers, most of our workers will have resumed their labors in the South. Many of the ministers and a few of the teachers have remained at their posts all summer, but the schools have been closed. Work in the cotton fields has called for the younger pupils, the summer schools have given employment to the older ones, while rest and a change of climate have been required by the white teachers from the North. But now activities will be resumed, and we contemplate the work with joy and hope.

These workers, and others like them, are the hope of the South. They go not arrayed and armed for bloody battle-fields; they go not as commercial travelers to sell the wares of the North; they go not as capitalists to start the whirling spindles or to kindle the fires in the smelting furnaces; they go not as politicians to speak for or against tariffs, nor to build up or break down parties. Their work is quieter and deeper than all this. They reach the mind and heart. As Christ aimed not so much at once to tear down or build up the outer, but to reach the inner springs of the soul, so these workers aim to make character, intelligent, pure, active, and thus to impel to all that is noble and honest in life, that stimulates to industry, economy, thrift—to making the home pure and all outer things prosperous and right. But, as Christ was misunderstood and rejected, so are these laborers ostracized. We rejoice to find a growing recognition of their worth and work, and trust that the day is coming when they will be fully appreciated and welcomed. In the meantime they toil on uncomplainingly, and for their sakes and for the work's sake we invoke, not perfunctorily but earnestly, the prayers of God's ministers and people in their behalf.

On another page will be found a review of two books by the well-known author, Edmund Kirke (J.R. Gilmore), who has made a special study of the white people of the Mountain regions of the South. Mr. Kirke has at our invitation prepared a paper to be read at our Annual Meeting, in connection with the Report on our Mountain Work. We have been permitted to read it. It is replete with racy incidents and delineations of quaint yet noble characters. If the tears and smiles which the reading of the paper drew from us are any test, then we can promise a treat to those who may hear it at the meeting in Providence.

QUALIFICATIONS OF CANDIDATES FOR MISSION WORK

Many of our missionaries who are engaged in their devoted and self-denying labors in the South, have been compelled by the nature of our work to take their summer vacations. The educational work of the American Missionary Association is through and through a missionary work. It is begun with a missionary purpose and is carried on in the name of Christ to disciple the people, that they may know Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. All of our teachers are sent to be missionaries. Many are returning now to their fields of service with which they are well acquainted, and some are going for the first time. Among these, questions are raised as to the requirements needed in those who are to go. We have thought that a few suggestions given to the candidates for the China Inland Mission by Hudson Taylor, might be properly repeated here for those who are to take upon themselves these responsible Christian duties. He says:

First of all, it is absolutely essential that those desiring to be missionaries should have a deep love for Christ, a full grasp of His plan of salvation, and be wholly consecrated, in their inward lives, to Him. Mission work is not preaching grand sermons, or witnessing marvellous baptisms; it is a patient Christ-like life, day by day, far from external help, far from those we love; a quiet sowing of tiny seeds, which may take long years to show above the ground, combined with a steady bearing of loneliness, discomfort and petty persecution. The work demands of every worker very real and manifest self-sacrifice and acts of faith. It aims at, and ought to be satisfied with, nothing less than the conversion of the people to God. Not witness-bearing merely, but fruit-bearing is the end in view. Anything short of the salvation of souls is failure.

It is generally found that when people are of no use at home, they are of no use in the mission field. The bright, brave, earnest spirit, ready to face difficulties at home, is the right spirit for the work abroad. A patient, persevering, plodding spirit, attempting great things for God, and expecting great things from God, is absolutely essential to success in missionary efforts. Those will not make the best missionaries who are easily daunted by the first difficulty or opposition, but those whose strength is equal to waiting upon God, and who fight through all obstacles by prayer and faith. The spasmodic worker, frantic in zeal one month, and at freezing-point another, will be weary long before the station has been reached: while in the strength of Christ the weakest of us need not draw back, nor say, "I am not fit," yet nothing less than burning love to Christ, and in Him to perishing souls, will survive and overleap the difficulties and disappointments of the work.

These are royal words, and we believe that our teachers and missionaries engaged in this most glorious work of saving needy souls will take with them this spirit, and be blessed in the communication of their blessing to others.

IMMIGRANTS AND NEGROES

The Immigrant question challenges attention. Shall immigrants be welcomed, restricted or prohibited? In the early days of the Republic, when the revolutionary war had welded the people together and our boundless territory begged for occupancy, we welcomed the oppressed of all nations. Later, the welcome has been responded to by such a rushing, heterogeneous and even dangerous mass that we are compelled to pause. Restriction is talked of, but the line of discrimination is hard to be fixed. No committee at Castle Garden can detect anarchists, criminals, or even the poor, if that line should be chosen. Prohibition—exclusion is talked of—nay, is enacted stringently against the Chinese. If need be, it may extend to all. So there is a way of averting this evil.

But the Negro question cannot be put away. The Negroes are here. They outnumber the immigrants that have come to our shores in the last thirty years, and have a foothold upon the soil as valid as the Aryan race, whether we consider the date of their coming or the labor they have put upon the land.

There is a strange disposition to shrink from the Negro question. Some avoid it by flippantly denying the danger; others turn from it because they are appalled by it. Thus an able writer on Immigration in a recent number of the Century passes the topic with this awe-stricken remark: "This problem (of the Negro) cannot be touched practically; ancient wrongs bind the nation hand and foot, and its outcome must be awaited as we await the gathering of the tempest—powerless to avert, and trembling over the steady approach" (The italics are ours.) This is not wise; it is not manly. Why try to avert the evils of immigration, or any other, if we are meanwhile only to await tremblingly the doom that is to come on us from the conflict with the Negro?

There is a strong disposition to gather hope from the newly-developed manufacturing interests in the South. But this is delusive. The South is essentially a rural population; the new industries will necessarily be confined to a few localities, and will reach but slightly the wide agricultural region, and will scarcely touch the Negroes. And more than all this, these industries will only be importing into the South the struggle between labor and capital, which so vexes us at the North. Instead, therefore, of solving the old difficulties at the South, they will add a new one.

The danger of a war of races is scouted at the North; it is not at the South. This is natural. The North is not in immediate contact with the danger; the South is. When the war of the rebellion was impending, the North refused to believe in its coming; and when it came, one of the wisest statesmen of the North, Mr. Seward, predicted that it would "not last sixty days." No such delusion prevailed in the South. Many of the best men there, nay, nearly all the border States, dreaded its coming and held back as long as possible, but they were swept into the flood they foresaw and could not avert.

Thoughtful men at the South now have no rose-colored views about the Negro problem. They fear the impending conflict. With them the supremacy of the white race is the settled point, but they see in the growing numbers, intelligence and restlessness of the Negroes an increasing danger that will only be aggravated by delay. Why should not the North and South alike manfully face the question of a war of races? What will it mean? What will be its end? If the whites and the blacks of the South alone engage in it, the blacks will be exterminated. Nothing less will meet the case. If the North mingle in the struggle, it must be to help the whites or the blacks. If to help the whites, that will mean the more rapid defeat and slaughter of the blacks; if the North help the blacks and save them from destruction, then we shall be worse off than we are now, the two races will be together with enmities aroused a thousand fold!

But why not face the more hopeful question: Is there a remedy? There is! The teacher and the preacher, the spelling-book and the Bible, the saviours of men, the reformers of society, the uplifters of races, are spreading over the South. They go to the manufacturing towns—the Birminghams and the Annistons—they go to the large cities with their common and normal schools, their medical, law and theological seminaries. When the pupils become teachers, they go into the smaller towns, they go into the rural districts, on the small farms, everywhere instructing, encouraging and stimulating the people, leading them to more intelligent industries, to economy, to the purchase of land, the erection of better houses, to a higher aim in life, and to the formation of a right character. Of such stuff men are made, citizens, Christians; men who can use the ballot, who own property that must be protected by the ballot; men who have homes that must be refined and pure, churches where God is worshipped intelligently and where a practical morality is taught and attained. Such a people will be safe, for they will be bone and muscle of the South, they will be needed in its wide expanse of fertile soil, needed in its practical trades, needed for the accumulated wealth, intelligence and cultivated piety they will bring into all the walks and avocations of life.

But it will be some time before these educational and religious means reach all the blacks, and in the meantime much patience and toil will be needed. To the blacks we would say: You won the admiration of men and the blessing of God by your patience under the yoke of slavery when there seemed to be no hope; now win both again by bearing in like spirit your lesser present ills, while hope dawns and help is near.