Book: American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889

V >> Various >> American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889




It was a fine augury of the future when the work for the ex-slave began
at Fortress Monroe in the atmosphere of religion. Mary Peake, meeting
the advancing multitudes of refugees, gospel in heart and primer in
hand, as by divine suggestion, laid the pattern of all our succeeding
toil. Side by side of mutual helpfulness God has placed the alphabet and
decalogue, the teacher and the preacher, the school-house and the
church. "What therefore God hath joined together let not man put
asunder."

The largest, grandest word in the title of this organization is
"Missionary." When that word drops out its work will be done, for its
call will have ceased. Our ultimate end and present purpose is, and
always should be, simply this--to save. We cannot lift our fallen
brother without the leverage of the cross.

No field is wider, none more difficult, than that to which our eyes are
turned, embracing as it does four of the five families of mankind. They
huddle together in the lap of Christendom, but feel no warmth. They are
a demonstration of the fact that civilization never touches barbarism
without polluting it. The Indian, finding his highest ideal in the rude
and tipsy defender of our flag; the Chinaman, taking home more
heathenism than he brings; the Negro, bound tighter by the vices of the
whites than ever he was by their iron chains--these three, ignorant of
the Christ and grasping the satanic weaponry of our sinful land and age,
together form the most discouraging of mission fields. Our laborers are
faced by all the serious problems of the foreign land--problems
unrelieved by a single romantic charm. When we send our missionaries to
Africa they go to labor among the Africans; and when we send them down
South they go to teach "niggers."

Notice, then, what the report of this committee signifies in the
presence of the fact that our laborers not only grapple with foreign
languages, conceptions, idolatries, habits of benighted peoples, but all
the time are hindered and assailed on every hand by these Bedouin Arabs
of our land--the minions of mammon and the slaves of caste. To gather
and hold and save in such a field as this, is task enough for the finest
corps in the army of the Lord.

In the presence of these well-known facts, the report of the committee
adds another chapter to the Book of Acts. It gladdens our hearts with
thrilling music--the music of ringing sickle and reaper's song. From all
over this mighty field, from mountain, and savannah, and shore, and
plain, we hear the resonant footsteps of advancing troops--a solid
regiment of converts marching in the army of our Christ and into the
fellowship of his Congregational Church. I want you to notice that this
church which we have planted in the South is just the kind of a church
to take these people and assimilate them, to save them and to preserve
them to their highest usefulness. And why? In the first place, because
it is a church that will take them in. I saw the other day this
inscription over a great arch erected in honor of our Pan-American
guests in the city of Cleveland, "Welcome All Americans." Well, the
Congregational Church has put three talismanic letters over the portal
of every church that it has planted in the South and in the West,
"A.M.A.--All mankind acceptable."

Every convert in our work has cosmopolitan views respecting the
brotherhood of man. This means that one thousand people have seated
themselves before an apostolic communion table. White, black, red and
yellow, side by side in harmony before the broken memorials of the life
of love. The spirit of color-caste is a post-apostolic devil. The most
eminent convert of the evangelist Philip was as black as a middle vein
of Massilon coal. Perhaps that is why they met in the desert and the
spirit compassionately caught Philip away. The purest church and the
purest ray of sunshine are alike--they absorb the seven colors of the
spectrum. When the Creator flung the rainbow like a silken scarf over
the shoulder of the summer cloud, he drew his color-line. Pentecostal
blessings fell at Jerusalem, and have fallen ever since on the
cosmopolitan church.

The second feature of this church that adapts it to ours field is the
open Bible. Every convert is armed with the shining sword--the sword of
the spirit, which is the word of God, like the sword in the hand of the
angel at Eden's gate, turning every way at once.

You do not hear of immorality, gross and fearful, within the precincts
of our Congregational churches. You do not hear of our people walking up
the hills of the beatitudes over the broken tables of the law. The
written word, like the Incarnate, goes into our congregations and drives
out all the sellers of oxen and of doves. The Word, also, is the
protection of these people against their greatest foe of this day--the
encroaching power of the Church of Rome. Do you know that that ancient
foe of liberty is stalking all across the twelve States of the South? Do
you know what it means to have the Church of Rome take in hand these
people of lowly and of feeble intelligence? We do not have to crossover
to Austria or Italy in order to discern her aims, for the Nun of Kenmare
has alighted upon our shores, and her alarming words are running through
the land. Rome knows no color prejudice, and the foot of that great
despotic power can rest just as easily upon a skin that is black as upon
a neck that is of the purest alabaster. And the Congregational Church
down South is the only champion against this papal see, for she has an
aisle wide enough for five races of mankind to march up to her communion
table, while the sword of the Spirit guards her portals.

Again, I wish you to notice this fact: That this Church which we are
planting is not only hiding a multitude of sins by saving these lowly
people, but it is serving the interests of the State as well. When we
remember that the polity of our church is a polity of liberty, that it
teaches that rights and duties go hand in hand, that it takes just as
much wisdom to elect the pastor of a church as the President of the
United States, we can see that the moral influence of this polity of
ours is serving the interests of our commonwealth. The Congregational
Church is carrying the Pilgrim idea into the soil of the Cavalier.
Straight University, Tillotson Institute, and these other schools, are
but the outcropping of that old stone down in an Eastern harbor that we
call Plymouth Rock. Down South are being planted those two principles
upon which the great superstructure of our liberty rests firm--a church
without a bishop and a state without a king. This is what
Congregationalism is carrying into that land long ruled by
aristocracies. It is giving these people who possess liberty the
knowledge of how to use it aright.

Finally we not only hide a multitude of sins, we not only serve the
State, but we reach forth a long arm to save the world. Awhile ago I was
in the study of Dr. Ladd. There, spread before us, were relics of his
well remembered cruise along the Nile. There were implements for rude
tillage of the soil, there were swords and spears beaten into shape by
barbaric artisans, there were the cats and lizards and toads, objects of
worship by unnumbered millions. Thus were displayed in object lesson the
savagery and idolatry of one of the largest families of man. The Doctor
placed his finger on the map at Mendi Mission. "There," said he, "I saw
a row of missionaries graves. Their headstones sadly told the tale of
the pestilential land. Two months, three months, nine months they
survived, and then fell to rise no more. No white man can endure the
clime."

Another time I was at a commencement of Fisk University. I saw Professor
Spence take two photographs, and hold them up before the gaze of five
hundred intelligent colored youths, whose faces fairly glowed as they
looked upon the well-remembered features of two of their alumni, who in
Western Africa, if I mistake not, are teaching the gospel of Christ and
enduring the rigors of the climate. And in the glowing features of these
five hundred folk, I saw the prophecy of a splendid recruiting of our
feeble forces in that continent which by and by shall not be dark. Ah,
this work is grand! We are putting the cross of Jesus into the dusky
hands that shall carry it not only to the land of the pyramids, not only
to the land of the ancient wall; but, as I believe, there will come a
day when some child now in our schools of the West, some Apache or
Dakotan, will rise with apostolic fervor, and going southward along the
isthmus and over the mountains will put this transfigured cross of
Christ into the pampas and the llanos through which the Amazon and the
Orinoco pour their majestic streams.

* * * * *

ADDRESS OF REV. D.M. FISK, D.D.

It may be fitting to add a few supplementary words corroborative of
the hopeful view taken in this report on the Mountain Work. At first
glance it does seem that this is a discouraging field. I need not
recapitulate what has been said in the report already before you. It
is sufficiently discouraging; the ignorance and poverty are not the
worst features. The position of the clergy in many sections--I am
happy to say not in all--is full of discouragement. The worst thing we
have to face is the apathy of the people. Their phrase, "We-uns never
asked you-uns to come here," is certainly most pathetic.

What do we propose to do about it? What do we propose to do with more
than two millions for whom Christ died, American citizens, in the very
heart of our Nation, around whom the currents of commerce and industry
swirl every day? Shall the greatest tidal wave of all time pass them by,
and they not feel it for a moment? More than all, shall the great gospel
of God, which is life, and hope, and peace, and home, for us, be nothing
for them?

I am happy to say that it is not all dark by any manner of means. Your
committee is hopeful, the members of this Association are hopeful, our
brethren on the frontier are hopeful. There are very many favorable
things, and one of the most favorable is their increasing numbers. Do we
stop to estimate what two millions of souls means? More than thirty
thousand cradles filled in a single year.

These men respect the Bible. They feel a superstitious regard for it;
they are not infidel people. They have a simple, childlike faith, and
the Bible word is to them final. Many things that many of us have to
contend with, the brethren there do not meet I mean in the field of
infidelity.

They have great respect for woman if she respects herself. I have the
statement of one of our workers in the South that a woman can go even
among these men when they are drunk, and if she respects herself and has
maintained her character she is perfectly safe in their midst.

This same writer tells me of a young man who went out from one of their
schools, and kept school in a certain place during the winter, When he
returned, he said: "Nothing would tempt me to go back there again." Not
so with the young ladies. It is one of the most astonishing signs of the
times that really into the feeble hand of womanhood is given the key of
the situation. They respect these girls, they reverence them and give
them a place of dignity in their hearts. That makes it possible for
these women to do a large and splendid work in the South.

Once let these girls that come under the influence of our Christian
Northern women who go there as teachers, and the graduates of these
various colleges and schools that we have planted, and are about to
plant in the South; once let common womanhood in the South that has been
so much under the heel of this oppression; once let girlhood feel the
power that has come go girlhood, that to them as young women in the
cradle of these hills, under this fair sky is given the power to turn
over in not less than thirty or forty years this whole country for God
and humanity, for enlightenment and for Christian peace;--once let that
idea get into the minds of these girls, and we have not the same problem
that we have to-day.

There is good blood there as well. There is a man in Congress to-day,
honoring himself and his district and his nation, who went to school
there, and I know not for how many years wore but one garment. I call
that pretty good blood when from such circumstances a man can come up to
such a large place.

There is a transition time with this whole section. New conditions are
being put upon them. They feel the outside movement of the world. A
friend of mine is now in the South who has brought up a large quantity
of lumber in a certain district, and when he finds the right man he will
plant a school there. Coal and iron are being extensively worked. My
brother here (the Rev. S.E. Lathrop) tells me that near Cumberland Gap
four hundred houses have gone up within a very brief time, and over two
thousand workmen are pushing into a section not before opened. It will
not come in an hour or in a day; but by and by, when these men face the
new life of our times, when they have once felt its pressure, and the
tremendous disparity between their manner of living and the high kind of
life of Northern homes and Northern hearthstones, they will move, and a
change will come over the spirit of their dreams. Even now, the native
preachers, who have been so hostile to our work, are coming to these,
our pastors, and asking for light on the Bible. Furthermore, our pupils
are going out and organizing county institutes, and the work is going on
everywhere.

There is a dark side to it, but I praise God there is a bright side. It
is like a dam. When the dam begins to go, it will go all at once. Youth
is on our side. In thirty years we shall not have the same problem we
have now--no, not in twenty years. Wealth is coming in. A large tract of
eleven thousand acres, containing some of the finest coal that the world
knows, is being developed. This means a great influx of population, and
this wealth is to be developed, and new material power is coming as an
auxiliary to our spiritual power. This wealth is being converted. A man
who five years ago was a godless man, and who owns to-day one-seventh of
these eleven thousand acres of coal lands, was converted. He was made a
Sunday-school Superintendent, but he could not say the Lord's Prayer;
yet he was determined that the Lord's Prayer should be repeated in that
school, and he hired a large number of small boys and gave them a dime
apiece and told them to learn the Lord's Prayer that week. They did so;
and when Sunday came, with a chorus to back him, he came on as a solo
performer.

A dear girl of my own acquaintance dressed, in one morning, fifteen or
sixteen women and children. They came around her and felt her all over,
and wondered at the complexity of her garments. I speak of this thing
because it indicates that that old apathy is breaking up, and they are
coming to look at new things and feel a new interest in the life outside
of themselves. And as this same dear girl taught from thirty to fifty of
these women, they listened eagerly, and the tears rolled down their
cheeks, and they said to her, "Oh, come and tell us more about Jesus,
for we want to be different kind of women, different kind of mothers."

There was one girl, coarse enough in fiber, heavy enough in build, gross
enough in appearance, who came out to one of our commencements, and went
back with the arrow in her heart, saying, "I would give all the world if
I had it, if I could write a piece and git up thar and read it like
them." She went home determined she would go to college. She was a large
girl, fifteen years old, yet did not know a single letter. She walked
fifty miles nearly, and came and said to the college president that she
wanted to work for her board, so that she could enter the school. What
could she do? He found that really she was incapacitated for doing
anything; but she said, "I can hoe corn like a nigger." Finally she was
set at some sort of work, and that girl, after three or four years, went
out as a school teacher into a district where young men dared not go,
where her eyes were blistered with the sights she saw--men shot down
before her face and eyes by the whisky distillers--and she was asked to
organize a Sunday-school there. When any one starts a Sunday-school he
is expected to preach, and so that girl had to become a preacher, and
to-day she is preaching the gospel of God and spreading the work there.
And yet she came from one of the very humblest classes.

There is a peaceful invasion of this people by themselves. This mission
of the people to themselves is one of the most hopeful things about this
work. And when they realize that they have a mission, Pauline in spirit,
unto their own people, then victory shall come to us.

* * * * *

ADDRESS OF REV. ADDISON P. FOSTER, D.D.

This Indian problem has been largely settled on its civil side. For many
years the friends of the Indians have been consulting together, and have
done their utmost to influence public opinion. And the Government has
heeded the call--as it always does--of a widely extended and wise public
sentiment; and, in consequence, our policy with regard to the Indian has
been very largely re-shaped. To-day, by reason of the Dawes Bill, land
is open to the Indians in severalty. There is a fair degree of law
secured for the Indians. The great questions pertaining to their outward
circumstances are under happy prospect of adjustment.

But, this being the fact, it simply increases the necessity laid upon us
to meet the requirements of the present day. The door is open for the
Indian to become a citizen; and in this land, whenever any man receives
the privileges of citizenship, it is incumbent upon us to see to it that
he is fitted for that sacred obligation by the church and by the school.

This is a necessity of our republic which we have recognized from our
earliest day. When our fathers came to this land, they located side by
side the school house and the church; and, wherever we have sought to
open the privileges of the suffrage, and the dignities, and honors, and
joys of citizenship, to any class of people among us, we have always
felt it to be an imperative necessity to see to it that they had both
these sacred training schools, the educational institution and the
religious institution, side by side.

Now to-day we have unusual opportunities. Everything seems to be coming
to a focus in regard to our work for the Indians. Never has the time
been so auspicious as it is to-day. Never have there been so many things
combining to show to us that if we are to improve the opportunity God
gives us to care for the Indian--this man who held this land before we
came to it and from whom we have taken our possession--we must do it
to-day. There are other great needs about us, other races and other
classes and other conditions; but there is no other class appealing so
intensely to the sympathies of all our people to-day, as is the Indian.
This is one great explanation of the remarkable increase of the work of
this Association among the Indians. How did it ever spring from an
expenditure of $11,000 annually to $52,000, as it is to-day? Partly
because the Government has been willing to aid, but still more because
our people throughout the land have been intensely interested in the
Indian and have been glad to help him. They have said by their gifts
that now is the time, and we must leap to improve this opportunity or
else it will slip away from us forever.

It is the conviction of your committee--and I can voice it most
perfectly--that we must improve this opportunity before it is gone, and
that this people who have long suffered at the hands of their white
brethren have a claim to our earnest Christian sympathy and to our
heartiest effort to put them upon their feet. They are more than ready,
they are anxious for our aid, they are crying to us for help.

Now, let me say that the American Missionary Association has always felt
the importance of working in evangelistic lines. It would be nothing if
it had not the church before it as an incentive. It works primarily
through the school; but always with the thought that the school is
secondary, and that the church is the one great aim before it. And
unless this incentive were before it, unless it recognized that its work
was to bring men to Christ, and to bind them together in Christian
churches, there would be but little to call for the great self-denials
of Christian workers in the field and many Christian givers in the
country at large. It is this thought that has ever been held up before
it--the thought that the church and the school go together, and that the
school is simply the handmaid of the church. We recognize the fact that
in Congregationalism especially, out of all forms of religious belief,
we cannot hope to make men earnest, effective Christians, caring for
themselves, managing their own affairs independently, and having in them
the heart to go out and work, unless we cultivate their minds as well.
And so this Association has sought, and this body of Christians that
represent the Association has sought, by gifts and by teaching, to
develop the thought that there always should be an educational work
going forward that there may be something to build upon. Christianity
needs education in order to give it its largest power.

* * * * *

ADDRESS OF REV. THOMAS L. RIGGS.

It was said of Dr. Williamson by an old Indian that he had an Indian
heart. I, too, have an Indian heart, and I can lay claim to that
possession as but few can. It would take but a very little while to go
from here into the very midst of our present Indian field. It took my
father and Dr. Williamson, when they first entered the field, some six
months to reach it. I could start to-morrow morning, and taking the cars
in this city, and reaching Pierre by the following night, could be
farther off by Saturday, farther from the border of the mission field,
than my father and Dr. Williamson could after they had travelled six
months.

I would like to invite you to go with me on a tour of inspection of the
mission field itself. I would take my two ponies and drive out to the
Cheyenne River, and take you to one of our out-stations, and show you
something of the influences at work in the field to-day. As we went up
the valley, we would see the Indian village located there, and in the
midst, on a rising piece of ground, the mission station. Over some of
the houses we would see a red flag flying. That is a prayer, a votive
offering; there are sick in that house, and that is a prayer to the gods
that healing may come, and that death may be kept from them. Over on the
right we would see the dance-house--a great octagonal house with an open
roof, in which the Indians gather night after night to dance to the
monotonous beating of the drum. That is a very common sound out in the
Indian villages, bringing to us always that thought of slavery to evil.
As we go up to the station itself, we would see something more of the
work than you have as yet been able to see. If it be on the Sabbath, as
we go in we would see a young man there, with his audience before him,
not a very large audience--old men, old women, boys and girls--gathered
on the rough benches, and very much as they are in their own homes. Some
of the old women have their hair down over their faces, the boys with
dirty hands, old men with their dirty blankets, and yet they are
gathered around there to hear the word of life. The preacher, as he
stands before them, tells them of God's wonderful love, and takes as his
text that most wonderful verse in the Bible, "God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son."

Then, as you look at the man who is preaching there, you would hardly
recognize in him one who thirteen years ago was a savage, a painted
Indian. As I look at him it seems a most wonderful thing that such a
change has taken place. I knew him as a savage; a splendid fellow he
was, and he is now a more splendid man than ever he was a savage; and he
is teaching the gospel of Christ to his own people. I have been out
there seventeen years, and if there were not another result to show for
those seventeen years of work than the lifting up of this Clarence Ward,
and making of him a man in Christ Jesus, I should be abundantly
satisfied.

There is another influence of which I would speak, the influence of the
home. Here in our happy homes we know but very little of what that means
to the Indian. An Indian has no home, in our sense of the word. Some
years ago I went with a party of Indians 175 miles west of the Missouri
River in the middle of winter. We climbed a mountain and looked away to
the east. We could see, I should think, 150 miles, and the Indian as he
sat there on the edge of a rock, covered his head up in a blanket and
cried. Said he: "This is my country, and we have had to leave it." That
was his idea of home--such a barren stretch as that, the snow glistening
in the sunlight. The Dakota Indian lives in a region, not in a place.
The Christian home coming into the midst of a village carries there an
ideal of which the Indian knows nothing, and he is taught by the power
of example day after day. The Christian woman in that home keeps her
house clean, keeps her children clean, and stands there as a persistent
example of the power of the gospel of soap, just as the man himself
there who has become a Christian no longer steals horses. A party going
out into an enemy's country would go as often for the sake of bringing
back stolen horses, as they would for scalps. The man who has become a
Christian is recognized at once as shut out from that privilege.

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