Book: The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1889
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Various >> The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1889
THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY.
SEPTEMBER, 1889.
VOL. XLIII. NO. 9.
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL.
ANNUAL MEETING
THE TREASURY
AS TO "METHODS"
FIVE QUESTIONS
A MID-SUMMER LEAF OF THE A.M.A. CATECHISM
THE CARS, THE CHURCH, THE COURTS
THE WORK OF THE A.M.A. AND FOREIGN MISSIONS
ROME AND THE NEGRO
NOTES BY THE WAY, _Dist. Sec'y C.J. Ryder_
THE SOUTH.
HAND FUND
HOWARD UNIVERSITY
TILLOTSON INSTITUTE
EXTRACT
MISSIONARY VISITS
A CALL FROM AUNT MARY
THE INDIANS.
LETTER FROM OAHE SCHOOL
THE CHINESE.
EVANGELISTIC WORK AT PETALUMA
BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK.
STATE ORGANIZATIONS
PARAGRAPHS
VISIT TO A MISSIONARY SUNDAY-SCHOOL
OUR YOUNG FOLKS.
THE FRESH DRINK.
LETTER FROM AN INDIAN BOY.
RECEIPTS.
* * * * *
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
Rooms, 56 Reade Street.
* * * * *
Price, 50 Cents a Year, in Advance.
Entered at the Post Office at New York, N.Y., as second-class matter.
* * * * *
American Missionary Association.
PRESIDENT, Rev. WM. M. TAYLOR, D.D., LL.D., N.Y.
_Vice-Presidents._
Rev. A.J.F. BEHRENDS, D.D., N.Y.
Rev. ALEX. McKENZIE, D.D., Mass.
Rev. F.A. NOBLE, D.D., Ill.
Rev. D.O. MEARS, D.D., Mass.
Rev. HENRY HOPKINS, D.D., Mo.
_Corresponding Secretaries._
Rev. M.E. STRIEBY, D.D., _56 Reade Street, N.Y._
Rev. A.F. BEARD, D.D., _56 Reade Street, N.Y._
_Recording Secretary._
Rev. M.E. STRIEBY, D.D., _56 Reade Street, N.Y._
_Treasurer._
H.W. HUBBARD, Esq., _56 Reade Street, N.Y._
_Auditors._
PETER McCARTEE.
CHAS. P. PEIRCE.
_Executive Committee._
JOHN H. WASHBURN, Chairman.
ADDISON P. FOSTER, Secretary.
_For Three Years._
J.E. RANKIN,
WM. H. WARD,
J.W. COOPER,
JOHN H. WASHBURN,
EDMUND L. CHAMPLIN.
_For Two years._
LYMAN ABBOTT,
CHAS. A. HULL,
CLINTON B. FISK,
ADDISON P. FOSTER
ALBERT J. LYMAN.
_For One Year._
S.B. HALLIDAY,
SAMUEL HOLMES,
SAMUEL S. MARPLES,
CHARLES L. MEAD,
ELBERT B. MONROE.
_District Secretaries._
Rev. C.J. RYDER, _21 Cong'l House, Boston._
Rev. J.E. ROY, D.D., _151 Washington Sheet, Chicago._
Rev. C.W. HIATT, _64 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio._
_Financial Secretary for Indian Missions._
Rev. CHAS. W. SHELTON.
_Field Superintendents._
Rev. FRANK E. JENKINS.
Prof. EDWARD S. HALL.
_Secretary of Woman's Bureau._
Miss D.E. EMERSON, _56 Reade St., N.Y._
COMMUNICATIONS
Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the
Corresponding Secretaries; letters for "THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY," to the
Editor, at the New York Office; letters relating to the finances, to the
Treasurer.
DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
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.
NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS.--The date on the "address label," indicates the
time to which the subscription is paid. Changes are made in date on
label to the 10th of each month. If payment of subscription be made
afterward, the change on the label will appear a month later. Please
send early notice of change in post-office address, giving the former
address and the new address, in order that our periodicals and
occasional papers may be correctly mailed.
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.
* * * * *
THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY.
* * * * *
VOL. XLIII. SEPTEMBER, 1889. NO. 9.
* * * * *
American Missionary Association.
* * * * *
The next annual meeting of the American Missionary Association will be
held at Chicago, Ill., in the New England Church, commencing at three
o'clock Tuesday afternoon, October 29. Rev. R.R. Meredith, D.D., of
Brooklyn, N.Y., will preach the sermon. On the last page of the cover
will be found directions as to membership and other items of interest.
Fuller details regarding the reception of delegates and their
entertainment, together with rates at hotels, and railroad and steamboat
reductions, will be given in the religious press and in the next number
of the MISSIONARY.
A meeting of exceptional interest is expected, and we trust our friends
will be present in large force.
* * * * *
THE TREASURY.
It will encourage the contributors to the great work entrusted to us, to
know that the friends of the A.M.A. are enabling us to make a very
hopeful report up to this date.
If those who have not shared in the work of the Association as yet, this
year, will make a corresponding effort with those who have done so, we
shall have reason to hope that we can go to our Annual Meeting in
Chicago, owing no man anything but love and good will.
But those who have waited are many, and we are waiting and depending on
these. Those who have not taken their contributions have the power to
convert our hopes into realities.
We appeal, therefore, to the pastors whose collections for this fiscal
year have not been taken to take their collections and forward them to
our treasury before the close of September.
* * * * *
AS TO "METHODS".
We have been thinking that the methods of Christ were divine as well as
his truth, and that when the Christian world will use Christ's methods
in the propagation of truth there will be a great advance upon some
features of the present. Dr. Parkhurst has some very suggestive
sentences in this line of thought in a sermon on "The Regenerative Force
of the Gospel." His words are: "Christ never patches. The Gospel is not
here to mend people. Regeneration is not a scheme of moral tinkering and
ethical cobbling. In the Gospel, we move into a new world and under a
new scheme. The Gospel does not classify with other schemes of
amelioration."
This accords with our thought of the methods of Christ. The way to meet
that which is wrong, is to meet it as a wrong. We shall not do well to
ameliorate it. If we may not expect those who have been "raised" amid
prejudices and ignorance to be leaders for the absolute rectitude of
things, those who have not lived where this excuse is available should
be the leaders. If some do not lead, none will follow. Where principles
were at stake, Christ never gave way to prejudices. He never yielded to
that which was in itself wrong. If those to whom he ministered could not
come up to his standard, then he waited, but he never compromised. That
which is right should not yield to that which is wrong.
It may take a right hand. It may take an eye. But "If thy right hand
offend thee, cut it off," and "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it
out." He would not "cut it off" by amputating the finger and gradually
disjointing it up to the mark; and plucking out the offending eye is not
to bandage it so that it temporarily does not see the evil to which it
is attracted. No, the Gospel is not a system of repairs. It is not here
to temporize, but to make all things new, and it strikes at the heart of
evil and not at its surface.
It was not Christ's method to ignore an evil which confronted him. He
did not evade or get around issues. He met them. He answered them. He
was an "incarnate conscience" in the land. He knew what was in man. His
followers cannot fail when they walk closely with him in the path which
he has made plain.
* * * * *
FIVE QUESTIONS.
1.--If the Georgia Association had been without any colored members in
it, would the Georgia Conference ever have been formed?
2.--If the Georgia Association had been without any colored members,
would the Georgia Conference have declined to unite with it, on some one
of the terms submitted by the Georgia Association?
3.--If the Georgia Association had been without any colored members,
would this curious and ingenious scheme of "co-ordinate and equal
bodies," "to elect delegates" to visit each other now and then ever have
been concocted?
4.--Is it worth while to "darken counsel with words" as to methods, when
it is evident that the purpose is, not to form any union which would be
other than humiliating to a colored man, and contrary to the heretofore
held principles of the Congregational Churches?
5.--Why these arguments to show "how not to do it," when to do it would
be so simple and so evidently Christian?
_N.Y. Independent._
* * * * *
A MID-SUMMER LEAF OF THE A.M.A. CATECHISM.
Q. _When are Home Missions properly so called?_
A. When they are ordained to save the unevangelized people of the land
in which they dwell.
Q. _When are missions properly called Foreign Missions?_
A. When they are missions to foreigners in a foreign country.
Q. _Are missions among the Indians in this country, Foreign Missions?_
A. They are not, though the Indians have been treated as foreigners,
which has been the source of great wrongs and many sorrows.
Q. _Are missions to the Chinese in this country, Foreign Missions?_
A. They are not, though the Chinese are refused the privileges accorded
other foreigners. The missions of the A.M.A. on the Pacific Coast are
most fruitful and hopeful, and, since these foreigners return to China,
there is an interblending of Home and Foreign Missions here, that is
full of promise.
Q. _Are the missions of the A.M.A. in the South, Foreign Missions?_
A. They are not, though they have been successful in exciting interest
for Africa among the students of their schools. Some of these are now
foreign missionaries; others are preparing to go; but the missions of
the A.M.A. in the broadest sense are Home Missions, for they minister to
white and black as to citizens of a common country, who alike need the
Gospel. The A.M.A. is planting white churches (so called) every year,
and has added several this year, though none of them would refuse
membership to a man because he is black, and is planting colored
churches (so called), none of which should be excluded from State
Associations merely because of color.
Q. _Should the missions of the A.M.A. be called Foreign Missions because
its schools and churches cannot win the co-operation of the Christians
among whom they live?_
A. They did not at once win the co-operation of Christians among whom
they went, but confidence has been growing with the years until the
cases are exceptional where they do not have the co-operation of
enlightened and broad-minded Christians. In most cases, the schools and
churches of the A.M.A. have won both confidence and gratitude throughout
the South. Southern men are among the trustees of its institutions, and
everywhere its Field Superintendents and Secretaries are greeted with
cordiality. A prominent editor of a Southern political paper--white and
democratic--testifies this month: "_Yours is the most practical
missionary work ever undertaken by a Christian body, and should have the
hearty and unstinted support of all Christians._" The cases are few
where good will does not exist between its teachers and ministers and
the white people among whom they live.
Q. _Does not social ostracism show that the white teacher is engaged in
a Foreign Mission?_
A. Social ostracism is gradually giving way among the more intelligent
Christian people. Nothing, however, dies so hard as prejudice, and
nothing is so cruel; but missions do not cease to be Home Missions,
because they may be where there is sinful prejudice and dense ignorance.
Q. _What would be Foreign Missions in the South?_
A. Missions in the South which would treat an entire race as foreigners
and aliens because in God's wisdom he has seen fit to make them black,
would be foreign to the spirit of the Gospel: "For He is our peace who
hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition
between us. Through Him, we both have access by one Spirit unto the
Father. Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but
fellow citizens with the saints and of the general household of God, and
built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ
himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building, fitly
framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord." Missions in
the South which exclude pastors and delegates from Associations and
Conferences, would be foreign to the Gospel. Missions in the South
founded upon an aristocracy of skin, would be foreign to the spirit of
the Gospel. Missions which would preach against caste in India, and
perpetuate it in America, would be foreign to the methods of Christ, and
to Christian methods in foreign lands.
Q. _Does the A.M.A. believe in mixed churches of white and black
people?_
A. The A.M.A. does not regard it as at all probable that such churches
will exist to any great extent. Race tastes and race affiliations will
make for churches essentially white and essentially black. "But to close
the door on any Christian is in so far to make it an unchristian church.
To go into the South and establish white churches from which, whether by
a formal law or by an unwritten but self-forcing edict, men are excluded
because God made them black, is to deny one of the fundamental tenets of
Christ. There is no need to attempt to corral all men of all races in
one enclosure, but for any church, especially a church of the Puritans,
to enter upon a missionary work in the South and initiate it by refusing
to fellowship a black man because he is black, is to apostatize from the
faith in order to get a chance to preach the faith." The doors of every
Christian church ought to stand wide open to men of every race and
color, and in all representative bodies these churches should be one.
Q. _Is this the position of the Roman Catholic Church in its Southern
work?_
A. It is: The Roman Catholic Church would not for a moment recognize any
color-line in its assemblies or priesthood.
Q. _Does the A.M.A. believe in the social equality of the races?_
A. The A.M.A. has never seen any social equality anywhere, and believes
and teaches nothing about it. It believes in the Fatherhood of God and
the brotherhood of man.
Q. _Is the A.M.A. agitating the color-line question?_
A. It is not. It always has proclaimed its principles for the interests
of the oppressed, and always has championed the cause of God's poor,
pleading for the right because it is right.
Q. _Why is the A.M.A. in the South doing its work in schools and
churches among white and black?_
A. Because the Lord has said; "Behold, I have set before thee an open
door, and no man can shut it."
* * * * *
THE CARS, THE CHURCH, THE COURTS.
Our esteemed brother, Rev. G.C. Rowe, pastor of the Plymouth
Congregational Church, Charleston, S.C., and his associates, on their
return from the meeting of the Joint Committee on the union of the
Georgia Association and the Georgia Conference, were forcibly
transferred to an inferior car on the Georgia Railroad. They were not
driven from the train, they were allowed to ride, and the car in which
they rode was connected with the cars containing the white passengers.
They were simply separated from the others and that only because they
were colored persons.
The reception these honored ministers of Christ met in the Joint
Committee was very much of the same sort. The white brethren did not
deny them their place in the church--nay, the two bodies, white and
colored, were to be connected together, but these colored brethren were
to be kept separate and that only because they were colored persons.
An appeal will be made to the courts, but the interesting question is:
which will be first to recognize the equal manhood of the colored man--
the cars, the courts or the church? Would it not be a shame to the
church and a dishonor to the Christian name if the church should be the
last?
* * * * *
Speaking of the race problem, in his baccalaureate sermon at Vanderbilt
University, recently, Bishop Galloway, of Mississippi, of the Methodist
Church, South, startled his hearers by the following vigorous
declaration: "It is a travesty on religion, this disposition to canonize
missionaries who go to the dark continent, while we have nothing but
social ostracism for the white teacher who is doing a work no less noble
at home. The solution to the race problem rests with the white people
who live among the blacks, and who are willing to become their teachers
in a missionary spirit."
* * * * *
THE WORK OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION AND FOREIGN MISSIONS.
BY REV. FRANK B. JENKINS.
The American Missionary Association has done both home and foreign
missionary work. There is nothing in its constitution or traditions to
prevent its doing the same again.
Providence, however, seems to indicate clearly that its work at present
be within the United States. While in this sense it does home missionary
work, the peculiar conditions of the people among whom it mostly labors
require largely the methods of foreign missions. It must supply the
school, as well as the church; industrial training as well as that which
is intellectual and moral. It must create a native ministry and develop
native workers of all kinds. In fact, it would be hard to find on
foreign mission fields a single kind of activity which is not duplicated
in the fields of the American Missionary Association.
Home missions aid foreign missions by creating the conditions of more
income and more missionaries for foreign fields. The work of this
Association has done this already to some extent; without doubt it is to
do it to a far greater extent in the future.
In taking people from the ignorance and poverty of slavery and savagery,
it could not be expected to form them at once into large givers or
efficient workers for foreign fields; but who can say, after the marvels
of the past twenty-four years, what the future shall show, when the
coming millions shall arise and, out of gratitude for what they have
received, give of their increasing means and send forth their sons and
daughters to tell the glad story of freedom, truth and love.
It has been a favorite idea of many that the Negroes of America should
evangelize Africa. Perhaps some have been disappointed that so few of
them have gone to Africa as missionaries; but such, I am sure, have
failed fully to consider the facts. A people who had received only the
degrading tuition of slavery could not produce at once many who should
have the reliable qualities and the intellectual and moral training
needed for the responsible and, to a large extent, the unsuperintended
work of a foreign missionary. Then, every capable preacher, teacher and
leader has been needed in a hundred places at home. They could scarcely
be justified in leaving their own brothers and sisters in heathenism and
without the truth within their reach, to go to the heathen abroad.
Yet a few have gone forth and proved themselves capable, faithful and
successful. A former slave of Jefferson Davis is not only a successful
missionary in Africa, but has proved himself such a level-headed man
that he has been chosen treasurer of one of the missions of the American
Board. Such as he are an earnest of what shall be, when the colored
people shall be more fully evangelized and the appeal for Africa can be
made strong to their hearts and consciences. Then there will be such a
going forth as will astonish the Christian Church.
The bearing of the work for the one hundred thousand Chinese in this
country on foreign missions can be clearly seen. Christian work for them
is missionary work for China--it sends them back to become missionaries
to their native land. The fruitfulness of this work for foreign missions
has been fully demonstrated.
The possibilities of the influence of the evangelization of the Indians
on foreign missions is a topic which I do not remember having seen or
heard mentioned. Yet it seems to me worth thinking about.
Mexico has four million Indians; Central America, one million five
hundred thousand, and South America seven million. Here is a foreign
mission field of twelve and a half million souls. How can it be
otherwise than that, when once the Indians of our land shall come to
have and appreciate the blessings of a Christian civilization, their
hearts shall be stirred by the needs of their brethren according to the
flesh, and that they will go to them with the gospel story?
There remains one other field--the whites of the South and especially
the "Mountain Whites." As a class, they are poor, ignorant and needy in
every way--materially, intellectually, morally and spiritually, but
_they are not the "poor, white trash" of the South_. As good blood flows
in their veins as in the veins of the Northern people. A wrong start and
their surroundings have made them what they are. Give them schools and
pure and enlightened churches and they will awake into new life as fast
as any people ever did. They will show in years what missionary work can
usually show only in decades. In Williamsburg Academy, Ky., nearly every
boy in the higher classes is expecting to prepare for the ministry, and
that school is only a little over half a dozen years old and is the
first one opened in our mountain work.
Give these mountain boys and girls a chance, and the people who gave the
nation a Lincoln will give it ministers and missionaries, not only for
the seven mountain States, but also for other home mission fields and
for foreign lands.
If the Congregational churches will listen to the call of Christ and
appreciate the opportunity which he has placed before them, there may be
in these mountains, filled with their marvellous mineral wealth,
Congregational churches which shall be not only self-supporting, but
give generously for the advancement of Christ's kingdom throughout the
earth. The most generous giver I know, is a native of the mountains and
a member of one of our missionary churches.
* * * * *
ROME AND THE NEGRO.
One of our most interesting exchanges is an "_Illustrated Roman Catholic
Quarterly_ edited and published by the Fathers of St. Joseph's
Missionary Society of the Sacred Heart," its "Record of Missions among
the Colored People of the United States."
We need not say that we have no sympathy with Romanism and its errors,
nor with the "Missionary Society of the Sacred Heart," and its efforts
to plant Romanism among the colored people of the South.
We can, however, but admire the fidelity of the church to its doctrines,
and the Christian example it gives to all missionary societies in its
recognition of man as man. The quotations which we make from the Roman
Catholic Quarterly will account for the strong hold that Romanism is
beginning to secure upon the negro race.
The following, for example, is a Roman Catholic tribute to John Brown:
On the 2nd of December next, thirty years will have passed
since John Brown, in his sixtieth winter, ascended the scaffold
and gave his life for the colored race.
Connecticut gave the hero birth--from heroes; New York, in her
Adirondack recesses, developed in him that spirit of liberty
which Ohio had nurtured, and is forever honored by his grave;
while Virginia, "building better than she knew," bestowed the
martyr's crown. It was necessary that one man should die for the
people (John xviii, 14), and God arranged that he who is likewise
one of the great benefactors of the human race as well as of his
native land should crimson and beautify with his blood the soil
that gave a cradle and a tomb to the Father of his Country.
Grand indeed is the greatness of the rock-ribbed Adirondacks
where John Brown lived, prayed, thought out his great
life-thought, and made his first trials in the work of emancipation,
but grander is the stone there that marks the grave of him whose
mighty spirit is still "marching on;" for the greatness of that
soul invests the tomb with moral grandeur, and calls "all the
astonishing magnificence of unintelligent creation poor."
Fair indeed are the banks of the Shenandoah, and beautiful the
landscape on which the dying eyes of the hero rested, but more
lovely far the death of him and of his sons and comrades,--"even
in death they were not divided" (2nd Kings i, 19), because the
most beautiful thing in the world or out of it is love, and he
and they died of love for their brethren, God's children. It is
truly fitting, therefore, that they who were rescued by him from
bondage should love and honor his glorious name, and that we all
should chant the praises of the man who was the chosen instrument
of Providence in destroying out of our country the inhuman custom
of human slavery.