The American Missionary. Volume 44, No. 03, March, 1890

At midnight a hush fell upon all, and the pastor's prayer told us a new year had begun. Then all started up an old-time plantation song, the only words being "A Happy New Year" in all its changes, and we found we were expected to shake hands with everyone, and not any ordinary shaking hands was it, but the tighter our hands were clasped, the better did it show the individual's religious zeal. Before this, it had seemed as though some of our teachers would get struck by the mourning ones as they threw their arms around in their frenzy, but when the hand-shaking began and each one danced up to us, keeping time with the music and shook our hands in time, until the measure changed and they passed on to the next, we realized that we had, indeed, been taken right in. Thus the meeting closed, and many left—two, rigid in their spasms, lying on the benches.

But we found that the more devoted ones were to stay longer still, and as one of the sisters came up and asked me to stay and see them get real happy shouting, we did so. And now commenced a religious dance, perfectly indescribable, and as long as I have been in the South it was perfectly new to me. The leader started down one of the aisles chanting a weird plantation song, and every joint in his body moving in time with the measure; the sisters took it up and followed two by two until there was a complete circle all around the church, all dancing in time with the music. We were told that they would keep that up until morning.

It is rarely that we attend anything of this kind, but I think we had enough of the old-time religion to last us through 1890 at least. We have a number of scholars from this church, and it makes my heart sad when I think how hard it will be for them to put what they are taught in school with the example of their parents in this church. We have had many inquiring ones in school lately, and it is difficult for them to see how simple is the entrance to the narrow way contrasted with all the excitement in their church religion.

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A Different "Watch Night" Meeting

Since the foregoing article was in type, we have received the following sketch of a "Watch Night" meeting in one of the churches of our Association.

It is quite a custom among the colored people to hold "Watch Night" meetings. These meetings are largely attended and are full of fervor and interest. Our "Watch-Night" was a very precious one—it was held from 10 to 12 o'clock: it was divided into four half-hour services, viz: 1—Prayer and praise; 2—Bible reading; 3—Address by pastor, and 4—A testimony meeting. The last five minutes was spent in silent prayer, and at 12 o'clock, when the New Year was announced by booming of cannon and the ringing of bells throughout the city, we united in singing our song of New Year greeting, "What a Happy New Year," while extending to one another the right hand of fellowship. At the close of the service all present pledged themselves, by standing, to abstain from the use of intoxicating liquors as a beverage during 1890.

The Indians

The Ramona School

By Dist. Sec. J.E. Roy.

I had the pleasure, in Santa Fé, January 13th, of attending an entertainment given by the Ramona pupils in honor of Miss Platt, one of their teachers. Gov. Prince and his wife, and several of the citizens, were present as invited guests. After the singing of several songs, and a statement made by Prof. Elmore Chase, the Principal, fourteen of the scholars rendered, in the action of nature and the speaking of English, Mrs. Bentley's dialogue, "The Old Year's Vision and the New Year's Message," as found in the January number of The Youth's Temperance Banner. One of the large boys first came in as an old man, clad in a mantle and trembling on a staff, to repeat the "Old Year's Vision." Then came in, one after another, a dozen boys and girls, to recite the greeting of the several months. It was a temperance exhibit, and so each one had a testimony for that cause. January, bearing a New Year's card in hand, declared: "I've promised that not a drop of wine shall touch these temperance lips of mine." February bore a fancy valentine, with an appropriate motto. March lifted aloft a new kite, with "Kites may sail far up in the sky, but on strong drink I'll never get high." July, bearing a flag and a bunch of fire-crackers, declares: "I tell you I mean to celebrate, with something that won't intoxicate:" while December resolves: "No brandy fumes in my Christmas pie; no wine-sauce in my pudding, say I."

Then comes in a beautiful maiden, clad in white and crowned with flowers, to be greeted by a chorus of voices: "The king is dead; long live the queen!" and then to recite the "Message of the New Year."

Then comes another song in English, and then the second unloading of the Christmas tree, which has kept its place in the chapel since its proper day of Christmas cheer. Then the whole occasion is honored by an address from the Governor, in simple words, with smiling face and transparent good feeling. It is not every children's holiday that has a Governor at hand to grace the occasion. As the President of the Board of Trustees which, under the A.M.A. fosters the Ramona, and as Governor of a territory which has nineteen Pueblo villages and the reservations of the Navajoes and the Mescalero and Jicarilla Apaches, he is a faithful friend of the Indians. This is apparent from his first report just made to the Secretary of the Interior. The 21,000 of the Navajoes he reports as possessing 250,000 horses, 500 mules, 1,000 burros, 5,000 cattle, 700,000 sheep and 200,000 goats. Their wool-clip the last year reached 2,100,000 pounds. Here is a grand field for a mission.

The Chinese

"The Unbelieving Wife Sanctified In The Brother."

I Cor. vii: 14. (Revision.)

Our Chinese brethren have their full share in the family feeling which for ages has been nurtured in their race. This feeling is even intensified by their new life in Christ. They long for what they hope to make a Christian home, and greatly desire to perpetuate themselves in children who may follow them in following Christ. But what are they to do for wives? Many live in a virtual celibacy that is hopeless, because enforced by the betrothals made for them in China by their parents or elder brothers. These are accounted sacred, and are honored by our brethren with an oblivion of their own fancies or affinities that will be adjudged to be either stolid or heroic, according as the person judging is disposed to think kindly or unkindly of this people. Many have returned to China for the express purpose of consummating this betrothal in marriage. They remain a few months with their wives, and then return to California to find work and provide for them. Such persons are obliged by their principles to live in virtual celibacy.

Some greatly desire to send for their wives, but not only does the Restriction Law bar the entrance, but the father in China will probably raise effectual objection. A son is as much the property of his father at sixty as at six, and all he has, not only in property, but in wife and children as well, is under the father's control. The daughter-in-law, if strong and willing, is a very serviceable person about the old homestead in China, and the appeals of the son for the enjoyment of his wife's society in California are answered with the advice to get him another wife here. One in China and one in America seems to them a very safe arrangement. Eight thousand miles of ocean intervene and assure against domestic broils.

Some, however, of our brethren have in one way or another been set free from these early betrothals, and are at liberty to seek wives for themselves. Such are very glad if among the inmates of the mission-homes for Chinese women they can find a Christian for a help-meet. But this is often impossible. There are not enough Chinese Christian women to meet the demand. And therefore it has seemed to me not to be my duty strenuously to insist on the restriction placed on union with unbelievers, but rather when such a union has been arranged for, and is to be consummated, to hold out a hope that the unbelieving wife may be, not only in form and in her relation to the church—which seems to be the sense of the text cited—but in truth and fact sanctified in the brother.

This hope was fulfilled some years ago in the home of our oldest missionary helper, Jee Gam. His father having at last yielded to the son's entreaties and sent his wife to him, the narrow quarters in our Central Mission House to which the bride was brought became at once a sanctuary, and the Family Altar was established and the Family Saviour recognized and worshiped. When a son was born to them, he was brought in due time to our Bethany to be baptized, the heathen mother consenting and attending. It was not long after that the mother herself stood with us to enter into covenant and be baptized, and since then,—though preferring to live in her home in a seclusion which American ladies would regard as imprisonment and torture,—she has sought there to do service to her Master in bringing up her children in the nurture of the Lord. In her husband's absence from home she takes his place at the family altar, and many an American mother might well pattern after her fidelity in teaching her children the good and right way.

Several years ago, one of our steadfast Chinese brethren in Sacramento requested me to come and conduct his marriage service. He had procured the bride in Marysville, purchasing her (I suppose) of her parents after the Chinese custom. I obeyed the summons; obtained for him the necessary license, and then at the Mission House awaited the coming of the bride. That which at length arrived resembled more a moving package of rich and brilliant dry-goods of Chinese manufacture than a bright and blushing bride. Something could be seen of the shoes she wore, and when at length, in the course of the service, I somewhat firmly insisted on a joining of hands a hand was made to appear, but there was no bridal kiss, nor any sight or semblance of a face beneath the quadrupled or quintupled veils. However, the marriage was effected in a Christian way, and the next morning there came to me an invitation to call upon the bride. I found her to be the most beautiful Chinese girl I had ever seen, with manners all the more pleasing because so very shy. Her husband had prepared quarters for her which, as compared with the average Chinese home, were almost palatial, and everything seemed to promise a future peaceful and joyous.

After a few months the mother-in-law made her daughter a visit as she passed through Sacramento on her way back to her native land. What passed between mother and daughter we do not know, but a few days after her departure, Fong Bow returning to his home was shocked to find his little wife suspended by the neck in an attempt at suicide. He rescued her, and when she was restored asked for the reason. She acknowledged that she had a good home and a kind and generous husband, but there was no shrine in the house, no ancestral tablet, no Joss, and she was convinced that some great evil must be impending from spirits thus neglected and provoked. She preferred to sacrifice her present comfort rather than incur the woes approaching,—all the more dreadful in her apprehension because utterly unknown. Whereupon Fong Bow told her that while he himself could not worship such things, and knew that an idol was "nothing in the world," he did not and would not forbid her to do what she thought right, and thus she provided herself with a shrine and gods and was comforted.

Meanwhile, the husband lived a Christian life before her, and she herself was willing to receive instruction from Mrs. Carrington and others. It is not improbable that she saw the difference between a home even half Christian, like her own, and those where heathen customs made of a husband less a protector than a lord. Doubtless she thought much in silence before coming to the decision which changed the current of her life. It is singular that the crisis came in consequence of her observing at a marriage of Chinese persons making no profession of Christian faith, the absence of the rites which had been, in her view, the only safeguards against evil. This brought her to decision. With her own hands she removed the shrine she had erected, and then declared her purpose to worship her husband's God. Those who know her—both Chinese and Americans—see in her the tokens of a real and radical change; and it was with great joy that I heard, some weeks ago, that she had been baptized and welcomed to the Congregational Church in Sacramento, to which her husband has belonged these many years.

    WM. C. POND.

The Future Of The Negro In Our Country

Address at the Annual Meeting in Chicago,

By The Rev. C.H. Richards, D.D.

Deeper than the question, what shall we do with the Negro, lies the more fundamental question: What does God mean to do with the Negro in our country? Many a so-called solution of the "race problem" has been a foredoomed failure, because it ran counter to the Providential plan. Some have hoped that time would settle the burning question; if people would only stop talking about it, especially meddlesome people far away from the real pinch of the trouble, they fancy that somehow the mere flight of years would adjust differences and secure to all their rights. Others think the short way to peace is by force, keeping the Negro down with a strong hand, and keeping the Anglo Saxon on top by any vigorous means that may be needed. Others, again, think there never can be any solution of the problem so long as the two races occupy the same territory, and they propose some mammoth scheme of colonization to take the blacks away to some quarter of the world where they can be by themselves. But these and other remedies are utterly futile, because they are in collision with God's plan, as indicated by certain manifest facts. Meantime, while men are so busy trying to get around the difficulty instead of solving it in a straightforward way, the problem gets a little bigger every year. The caste question agitates our great religious assemblies. The spoliation of the civil rights of the Negro is one of the most menacing features in our politics. Bitter race prejudices keep Southern cities in a ferment, and even break out in dreadful massacres. This race problem will continue to be one of the most momentous and disturbing questions in American public life, until somehow we learn how to get into line with Providence, and find some solution that harmonizes with the great movements that have the hand of God in them.

It is time to ask then, with searching inquiry, What is the divine plan with regard to the Negro here, or, in other words, What is to be the future of the Negro in America? In certain significant facts and tendencies of his past and present, we may see the finger of Providence pointing on to that future. Let us look at some of these facts and their bearings.

First of all, the Negro is here, and that not of his own consent. He has not forced himself upon the country; he has been forced to make this his home against his will. We of the white race are responsible for his presence. We invited him here in the most pressing manner, and would not take "no" for an answer.

And he is here to stay. All the ingenious schemes for settling this troublesome question by taking up the black race bodily and dropping it in some roomy region far away from all possible contact with white people, are utterly delusive. The Negro does not want to go elsewhere. Having been compelled to make his home here for two centuries, he is domesticated here, and has as good a right to remain as the white man. Moreover, he can see as well as any one that this is the best country in the world to live in—the land offering greatest opportunity for advancement, the poor man's Paradise. Brought by force, he will not relinquish his rightful hold here except by force. And we may be sure that our National Government will never undertake the chimerical experiment of deporting him to some other land, and pay the enormous expense of it out of the National Treasury. Having been brought by the providence of God to expiate its former wrongs to the black man at such immense cost of treasure and blood, the Nation will be slow to tax itself enormously to do him another wrong.

Moreover, it is not necessary that the races should be separated in order to settle the difficulty that now disturbs us. All the Negro asks is to be treated with justice and equity, and to be given a fair chance in life. We have simply to apply the elementary principles of our common Christianity to the problem and deal with the Negro in the spirit of the Golden Rule and the whole difficulty vanishes. It looks as though God had made this a polychromatic country—red, black, white and yellow—on purpose that we might give a gospel illustration of the essential unity of all races, and show how these rainbow tints are to be blended in the white light of Christian brotherhood.

Nor is it desirable that the black man should leave us, even if he wanted to. It would impoverish us in no small degree and cripple us in our advancement. He is the natural laborer of the South, and has added, as we shall see, immensely to its prosperity since the war, and he is to be one of the chief factors in securing the future wealth of the country. These reasons combine with overwhelming force to show that an exodus is undesirable and impossible, and that the Negro is here to stay.

And he is to be here in greatly increased numbers. The fecundity of the race is remarkable. The 4,000,000 blacks that were freed by the emancipation proclamation are 8,000,000 now. They multiply by births alone 7 per cent. faster than the whites by births and immigration combined. It is estimated that they are increasing at the rate of 500 a day and that their numbers are now doubling every twenty years. This may be a little exaggerated, but it is not far out of the way. If they are increasing and continue to increase at this rate, in twenty years they will be 16,000,000 strong, or nearly as many as the entire population of the whole country in 1840; by 1930, they will number 32,000,000, or more than we had of all races here at the outbreak of our Civil War; by the middle of the next century they will number 64,000,000, or more than our present population within the borders of the Republic. Discount this estimate as much as you please, the increase in the colored race is sure to be tremendous, and it is plain that the race problem will increase in difficulty and in momentous consequences to the Nation until it is settled on Christian principles. And the work of settling it admits of no delay.

The Negro is to be a very important factor in promoting the future prosperity of the country. Already it is manifest that his value to the South as a freed man is far greater than the price formerly set upon him as a chattel. The unrequited toil of the slave is seen in the light of history to be the dearest kind of labor. It was frequently said after the war that the emancipated Negro would be worthless as a laborer; that he was naturally lazy, shiftless, and a shirk, and that he would relapse into a vagabond. But, as a matter of fact, far more good work has been done in the South since the war than before, and for the most part the Negro has done it. Great crops of cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, corn, and other staples have been raised and marketed; mines have been developed, railroads built, manufactories established, and hundreds of other industries opened and pushed in the new era of prosperity which has dawned in the South; and while the capital and brains for this have been furnished by the whites, and largely from the North, the manual labor has been done mainly by the blacks. They have made the New South possible. Take the single item of the cotton they have raised: The twenty-one cotton crops from 1841 to 1861, raised by slave labor, amounted to 58,500,000 bales; the twenty-one cotton crops from 1865 to 1885, raised by free labor, amounted to 93,500,000 bales. There was a gain, with free labor, of nearly 35,000,000 bales, worth $2,000,000,000, or about the full estimated value of all the slaves set free by the war. These facts show the value of the Negro to the South simply as a common laborer.

But his importance as a factor in securing a National prosperity is much enhanced when we note his remarkable capacity for improvement. Grant that the great bulk of these eight millions are still in a pitiable condition, poor, ignorant, sometimes vicious, the victims often of barbaric superstitions, living often in hovels rather than houses, without thrift or cleanliness, in crying need of kindly hands to help uplift them to a better life. Yet, granting all this physical and moral destitution among them, it must be said that history gives no record of a race, stripped and stranded so completely as these freedmen were in 1865, that has shown such marvelous progress in a quarter of a century. They have responded wonderfully to every effort made to elevate them, and have shown in themselves such versatility and vigor of intellect as give high promise for their future.

Their own advancement in material prosperity is an indication of this. Never was there a people left in worse plight than they were at the close of the war. In a country ravaged and denuded by a long and destructive conflict, themselves penniless, with none of the knowledge and training that would fit them for competition with shrewder and abler classes, there seemed small hope of their getting more than a bare livelihood. But ambition, mother wit, and a rare aptitude for learning have helped them on till the gains they have made for themselves are quite astonishing. Not long ago the New York Independent made extensive inquiries through the Southern States with regard to this matter, and the replies showed that the disposition to accumulate property was very strong among the colored people, and that industry and economy and forecast for this purpose were virtues rapidly developing among them. A large proportion of them are owners of their own homes, the proportions differing widely in different localities, ranging from 10 per cent. in North Carolina, to 20 per cent. in Virginia, 50 and 60 per cent. in some parts of Georgia, and 75 per cent. in some parts of Florida. A writer from Montgomery, Ala., even claimed 90 per cent. of home-owners among his acquaintances.

Many, also, are coming into the ownership of land. Mr. Morris stated four years ago that colored people owned 680,000 acres of land in Georgia, and 5,000,000 acres in the whole South. Dr. Haygood estimates that they own about $10,000,000 worth of taxable property in Georgia, and it is stated that "within twenty-five years the colored people of sixteen Southern States have accumulated real and personal property estimated at more than $200,000,000." This, certainly, is a most remarkable showing for a people of whom it was freely prophesied that they would never be more than an indolent race of beggars. It shows that if they can only be given "a white man's chance" they will be as thrifty and prosperous as their Caucasian brothers, and that the wealth which this rapidly increasing race will produce in the next half century will much of it be their own property. Poverty is no more an essential characteristic of the African than of the white American, and it looks as though the Negro was likely to win his fair share of our prosperity in the years to come.

The capacity for improvement is also indicated by the large variety of occupations which the Negro is successfully pursuing. It has been imagined by some that the work he could do is exceedingly limited in its range, and that he must needs be a barber, a waiter, or a small farmer. But at the New Orleans Exposition not long ago, an entire gallery across one end of the building was assigned to the colored people, and they more than filled it with an astonishing array of their products in all sorts of work. There were exhibits of mechanical, agricultural and artistic skill; specimens of millinery, tailoring, painting, photography, sculpture; many useful inventions; models of engines, steamboats, rail-cars; specimens of all kinds of tools, pianos, organs, pottery, tinware, and so on. It was made manifest that the Negro can succeed in any trade or occupation that the white man follows. They are diversifying their labor more and more. They are physicians, lawyers, master-mechanics, bridge-builders. They edit, own and manage a hundred newspapers.

The avidity with which they receive education, and profit by it, is another indication of their capacity for advancement. True, there is still an appalling illiteracy among them, some 70 per cent. of them in the South being unable to write. But we must remember that hardly a quarter of a century ago it was a crime to teach one of them to read; they were sedulously kept in compulsory ignorance, and since the ban was removed, poverty, lack of schools and teachers, and other causes have prevented their advancement as rapidly as we may expect in future. But much has been done for them in this particular. Dr. Haygood estimates that about $50,000,000 has been spent for the education of the Negro since the war, nearly half of which has come from the benevolence of the North. Through the American Missionary Association alone some $10,000,000 has gone into the school and church work for the Negro, both alike educational. There are some 200 schools carried on in the South by different benevolent organizations, having over 28,000 colored youth in them. Of these, ninety are colleges or high schools, and furnish teachers and educated leaders for this race. Three-quarters of a million dollars a year flows southward from Northern generosity to this work. And besides this, is the work being done by the South itself for the colored youth in its public schools. A million Negroes are in the 15,000 colored schools of the South to-day, being taught by 15,000 teachers of their own color, the best of whom have been educated in these schools nurtured by Northern benevolence. And what is the result? The illiteracy in this race diminished 10 per cent. between 1870 and 1880, showing the eagerness of the people for improvement. It is estimated that two millions of the blacks can now read the Bible for themselves. And the universities for higher education find the Negro as susceptible to the best culture, as capable of receiving thorough discipline and of being highly educated as the white boys and girls in our Northern colleges. The time is not far distant when colored college graduates, instead of being reckoned by hundreds as now, will be numbered by thousands, and when we shall see some Mark Hopkins in ebony.

The time has gone by when intelligent men can talk about the inferiority of this race. When representative Southern men declare that they were mistaken in their former view, when such men as ex-Governor Brown, of Georgia, convinced by the examinations of our Atlanta University, publicly declares, "I was wrong; I am converted," that ought to be enough. But if not, the men of recognized ability and success among the blacks refute the old misrepresentation, now being revived in some quarters. When our Government sends its ministers abroad, Frederick Douglass and John M. Langston; when Senator Bruce and Representative Lynch are regarded as peers of their white brethren in the political arena; when college chairs are ably filled by such men as Professor Gregory, of Howard University; when colored delegates captivate a National council by their eloquence and ability; when Harvard University and Cornell University, by the choice of the students themselves, elect colored men to be their representative orators, surely it is much too late in the day to talk of the inferiority of the colored race. They are as well endowed by the Creator as any people in the world, and with training, culture, and a fair chance they will play their part in the world as well as any. It is such a people that we may predict will have a large share in adding to our National prosperity in the future.

Our first duty is to aid the Negro to attain more of moral power. Whatever he wins in the future he must secure because he deserves to. It will not come to him by favoritism nor by chance, but because he conquers the situation, and by his own ability and resolute endeavor fairly captures the prize of success. This the weak, degraded, untutored, semi-barbarous Negro can never do. He must develop a strong, clean manhood, equipped with the virtues to which success is fore-ordained, if he would be master of the future in a large way. Providence is helping him by the discipline of present exigences, making even the wrongs and hardships he is suffering a gymnastic to eliminate weakness and develop moral power. His ambition is chastened, his indolence is rebuked, his patience, courage, and persistence are being trained. But Providence waits for us to give him more direct assistance in this matter. We can re-enforce him in certain directions where he is now in great need of help. There are certain vices against which he needs to be armed and aided. In answer to the inquiry, What is the greatest hindrance to the advancement of the colored race? the answer comes promptly from several sources, "Drink." This is one of the new perils of his freedom, for in the old days of bondage it was a penal offense to sell liquor to a slave; but since the war, drunkenness has been a widespread curse among them, and to-day hangs like a mill-stone to the neck of many a Negro to prevent his rising. The sin of licentiousness prevails also to an alarming degree in many quarters. And wherever intemperance and social immorality abound, you find also the kindred vices of dishonesty, lying and laziness. No people can possibly have a great future in whose life these iniquities burn like a consuming fire. The manhood will be utterly burnt out of them before it can bear fruit in a large success. We need to send apostles of reform among them to turn them from their vices. We need to erect barriers of defense to protect them from temptation. Above all, we need to teach them a religion indissolubly joined with morality, a religion that means character and virtue, whose daily experience will mean the constant increase of moral power. The Negroes, like the Athenians of Paul's day, are very religious. They revel in camp meetings and fairly wallow in revivals. But too often their piety is the mere gush of emotion, and in hideous conjunction with gross evils. They need an intelligent piety and an educated ministry. As Dr. Powell said, they ought to have 7,000 educated ministers, when now in our sense of the word educated, they have hardly 500. The church work of this Association is a powerful aid to their moral upliftment.

Our next duty is to furnish the Negro plentifully with opportunities for education. An ignorant race can have no future, save one of degradation for themselves, and of increasing danger for the nation of which it is a part. The ignorant Negro must be abolished by the school-house. Training for the mind, training for the hand, the development and drill of all the powers of life are necessary to make the Negro no more a peril, but a factor of immense value in securing the future prosperity of this country. We must do far more in this direction than has ever yet been done. The South is still poor and cannot furnish adequately the means for doing this work as it should be done. The benevolence of the North must furnish still larger sums for education, that the colored race may be made safe for us and for themselves.

And, last but not least, we must secure to the Negro the full enjoyment of all his rights and privileges in church and State. He cannot attain the measure of success and usefulness toward which Providence points, if he is to be kept in a state of peonage. A black man is no better for being black, but he is none the less a man on that account. The simple thing to be insisted on is that he shall be treated as a man, entitled to the same rights as other men, and protected in his enjoyment of them. This is no time to relax our emphasis on this point, when the bitterness of the caste spirit is venting itself in violence, and in assertion that white supremacy must be maintained by illegal means if it cannot be by legal. We maintain that the only safety for the South, and the only way to its large prosperity, is by securing fair play to every man within its borders. There must not be one law for the white man and another for the black. There must not be one standard of legal protection in the North and another in the South. Anarchy in Chicago is not a whit worse nor more dangerous than anarchy in the South, that defies law and rules by the mob in order to gratify race prejudice. Conspiracy to murder in Chicago is not more outrageous and perilous than the conspiracy of men of one color in the South to get rid of obnoxious men of another color by the shot-gun. Injustice and wrong will always bring forth a harvest of disaster in any part of the country. Fair play for every man must be our motto. We must have no color-line in politics, no color-line in the church; but equal rights for all before the law, and in the church equal privileges of Christian brotherhood.

It is for us to clear the way thus for Providence to carry out its wise designs for this race. And if we fulfill our part of the work faithfully, what may not this people, educated and regenerated, add of blessing and benefit to our common country. If out of a race of slaves God in the old time could raise up a Moses, if out of a rude race of sea pirates and robber chiefs, who drank their mead from the skulls of their enemies, He could raise up a Shakespeare, what may He not develop out of this long despised and defrauded people? Let us furnish freely the channels through which God may work, that in His providence "the weak things of the world may become mighty" for good to our land.

Bureau Of Woman's Work

Miss D.E. Emerson, Secretary.

The Iowa Woman's Union is working nobly toward the support of our school at Savannah, Ga., and the sympathetic bond between helpers North and helpers South shows that the money contributions open the way to warmer missionary impulse and more efficient service—the influence acting and re-acting, adding blessings both to him that gives and him that takes. One of their teachers writes:

"Never have we had a more prosperous year, if we are to take numbers into account. Every seat in school is taken, and we are obliged to dispose of about sixty more the best way we can. But these added numbers bring to us heavier cares and responsibilities, and as never before do we turn to you this year for the help of your praying and trustful workers. So many have come in who are professing Christians, and still it seems as though we had before us to teach them the rudiments of Christian living; and there are so many older ones with no knowledge of the Way, that the heart almost grows faint at the outlook. The work is before us, but we are longing for the baptism of fire. Will you not cheer us with some assurance that you with us are uniting in this petition?"

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