Read Ebook: The American Missionary — Volume 43 No. 11 November 1889 by Various

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GENERAL SURVEY.

The American Missionary Association finds its commission in the words of the Master, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."

It does not choose its fields of labor because the people in them are black, or red, or yellow, or white; but because they are those for whom Christ died and to whom he commanded the glad tidings of salvation to be preached. In the fields to which it providentially has been called, it seeks to bring the gospel to every human being who has it not in its purity as an uplifting power.

In nineteen States and Territories we are laboring--six in the West and thirteen in the South. In ninety-four schools and one hundred and forty-two churches we have been directly teaching and preaching the gospel during the past year. In them have 456 missionaries wrought with holy purpose. 12,132 pupils have been taught in our schools; more than seventeen thousand have received instruction in Bible truth in our Sunday-schools; 782 conversions have been reported. ,160.14 have been reported as given in our mission churches for benevolence, and ,658.57 for their own expenses--again over last year of 0.03 in benevolence and ,322.62 in church expenses. Besides all this and all that in various ways has failed to be reported to us, have been the vacation work of our students, the large work of our previous graduates, the indirect results of many kinds, and the unknown results and influences of great power and far-reaching importance which have gone forth from our institutions and missionaries whose only possible record is in God's Book of Remembrance.

THE SOUTH.

In the South, we are directly reaching three classes--the colored people, the mountain whites, and the new settlers from the North and from the old countries. Indirectly we are reaching many more. The schools we plant often incite others to plant schools; the houses of worship we aid in erecting cause others to be erected. A single neat, but inexpensive building for a country church of colored people has been known to occasion the building or repairing of at least nine church buildings of neighboring white people. The incontestably good results of our work among the colored people are slowly but surely undermining race prejudice. In spite of all the race trouble during the past year and the increasingly bitter utterances of some papers and some public speakers, during no other year in the history of our country have so many manly words in favor of the Negro been printed in Southern papers, and sounded from the pulpits and platforms of the South. It was in a Southern University and before a Southern audience that a Southern man, a Bishop of a Southern church which took the name Southern when it declared for slavery, this year uttered these words:

"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."

Cruel and unreasoning is prejudice, but when the public platforms, and especially the pulpits, begin to yield in their utterances to the sway of logic and humanity, by and by public opinion will feel their force. Our institutions and our missionaries have compelled the respect of the Southern people. This year many expressions of it have been heard.

CHARTERED INSTITUTIONS.

During the past year we have directly sustained five chartered institutions in the South--Fisk University, Talladega College, Tougaloo University, Straight University and Tillotson Institute. Every year that passes emphasizes anew that these are most wisely located, so that each is a center of far-reaching power, and supplements the work of all the others.

Fisk University at Nashville, Tenn., with its 503 students, has had a year of great prosperity, and solid, telling work. Its buildings have been full, the quality of the work done has been excellent. A graduate of Fisk recently took his diploma from an Eastern school of medicine, with a rank two per cent. higher than any other man in his class. Another graduate of Fisk is a missionary in Africa under the American Board, and is not only declared by the Secretaries to be one of its best missionaries, but has shown such business capacity that he has been chosen treasurer of his mission. His wife, a worthy helpmeet, is also a graduate of this institution. Fisk has high ideals--few institutions in the South have higher ones, or come nearer reaching them.

Talladega College, in Talladega, Ala., has had 427 students in all departments. Its year's work has shown most satisfactory results. Talladega is closely connected with the church work of the State. All the pastors in the Congregational State Association but four are from its theological department and several other States have found pastors there. The last State Association, with its fine body of young men, educated, dignified and earnest, was a most emphatic demonstration of the good work done in this institution. The students of Talladega have carried forward during the past year, under direction of a member of the Faculty, a systematic mission work in the surrounding neighborhoods, which has yielded large results, both in the good done in the neighborhoods and in the training received by the workers for future usefulness.

Tougaloo University has been filled to overflowing with 343 students, and after the last inch of room had been filled, scores had to be turned away. This school is situated almost in the center of the State, and reaches a far larger region not limited by State lines. It is near the border of the Yazoo country, which has begun to be so wondrously developed, and is so rapidly filling with colored people. The evangelization and enlightenment of this new Africa must largely come through Tougaloo. Here must be trained preachers, teachers and other leaders of character for this new region, as well as for the older portions of the State. Good, solid work has been done here all through the year, and preparation has been made for even better results in the future.

Straight University, in New Orleans, La., is peculiarly situated for an important and far-reaching work. It draws its students not only from the States, but also from Mexico and the West Indies--484 last year. With the enlarged accommodations for the primary and intermediate work which have been planned, this institution will be better prepared to meet the demands of higher education.

Tillotson Institute, at Austin, Texas, the youngest of our chartered institutions, has had a prosperous year with 230 students, in the Primary, Intermediate, Grammar, Normal, College Preparatory and College departments. Situated at the capital of the great empire of Texas, it is destined to be an educational, religious and evangelistic centre, a power for the building up of the kingdom of Christ. It greatly needs enlarged accommodations. Where is the Lord's steward who is ready to give it at once the imperatively needed Girls' Hall?

NORMAL AND GRADED SCHOOLS.

Next to our chartered institutions come our normal schools. These have the same course of study up to the college department as the chartered institutions have. These normal schools are eighteen in number, and are situated at Lexington and Williamsburg, Ky.; Memphis, Jonesboro, Grand View and Pleasant Hill, Tenn.; Wilmington and Beaufort, N.C.; Charleston and Greenwood, S.C.; Atlanta, Macon, Savannah, Thomasville and McIntosh, Ga.; Athens, Mobile and Marion, Ala. Adding to these the normal departments of our five chartered institutions, gives us twenty-three normal schools in the South.

Besides these, we have in the South thirty-seven which we class as common schools. Eight of these are graded, with two or three teachers each. Nearly all are parochial schools. The teachers are in both the day schools and the Sunday-schools, and are not only school teachers, but church missionaries. They train the young of our congregations for greater usefulness, encourage many of the most promising to go to higher institutions, teach the parents better ideas of home life, and lead all ages to a more intelligent and spiritual worship.

INDUSTRIAL WORK.

Nearly all our schools--chartered, normal and even common--give some industrial training.

At Fisk, the young men are taught wood-working and printing; the young women, nursing, cooking, dress-making and house-keeping.

At Talladega, the young men learn farming, carpentry, painting, glazing, tinning, blacksmithing and printing; the young women, cooking, house-keeping, plain sewing and other needle-work.

At Tougaloo, the young men learn farming, carpentry, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, painting, turning and tinning; the young women, sewing, dressmaking, cooking and housekeeping.

At Straight, the young men receive instruction in printing, carpentry, and floriculture; the young women, needlework, cooking and housekeeping.

At Tillotson, carpentry is taught the young men; needlework, cooking and housekeeping, the young women.

Our normal schools at Memphis, Tenn., Macon, Ga., and Williamsburg, Ky., have carpentry, printing, and other industrial training for the young men, and training in the various arts of home life for the young women.

At Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Macon, Thomasville, Athens, Ala., Marion, Mobile, Pleasant Hill, Sherwood, and other normal, graded and common schools, the young women are trained in the things which they will most need in making comfortable and pleasant homes. Indeed, we make it our special care that the girls shall everywhere in our work be taught these things, so essential to the uplifting of a people. In many places where we have no schools, the pastor's wife, or our special lady missionary, is doing this same kind of work.

THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS.

At Fisk, Talladega, Tougaloo and Straight, there have been during the year theological classes. The Theological Department of Howard University, at Washington, has been supported by this Association. Even in some of our normal schools Biblical instruction has been given to some who are now preachers and some who intend to preach. But the number trained has not been sufficient to supply our pastorless churches. The need of a general theological seminary for our churches in the South is becoming imperative. The extensive enlargement of our church work, which ought to begin at once, can scarcely be made successful without this. Who is the one to seize this opportunity to establish an institution of untold possibilities in advancing the Kingdom of Christ on earth--a place where ministers shall be prepared for the work in the South and for foreign missions in Africa?

STATISTICS OF EDUCATIONAL WORK IN THE SOUTH.

Total number of Schools 60 Total number of Instructors 260 Total number of Pupils 10,094 Theological Students 82 Law Students 10 College Students 51 College Preparatory Students 103 Normal Students 784 Grammar Grades 2,127 Intermediate Grades 3,181 Primary Grades 3,773 In two grades 17

Our church work has necessarily been of slow growth. Churches might have been multiplied, had we thought it best to lower the standard near the level of the old churches, and acknowledge wild ravings as belonging in the worship of God. We have believed that our churches should mean new ideas and intelligent worship. We have knowingly lent our aid to nothing else.

These churches are gathered into Associations, and the fine bodies of pastors and delegates which come together in these, present a most emphatic testimony to the value of the work done in the past, and are an earnest of what the future will show.

Revivals--some of them of great power--have been reported to us from the Plymouth Church, Washington, D.C., Fisk University, Memphis, Jonesboro, Sherwood, Glen Mary, Oakdale, Athens and Pine Mountain, Tenn.; Montgomery and Florence, Ala.; Tougaloo and Jackson, Miss.; Straight University, New Orleans, and Corpus Christi, Texas. Many others of our churches have had a quiet work of grace, by which additions have been made to them.

We report new churches at Glen Mary and Athens, Tenn.; Roseland, La; Fort Payne and Alco, Ala. This makes the whole number of our churches in the South 136.

Besides these churches, there are our churches among the Indians and the work of gathering the Chinese into churches in California.

We are praying and laboring for the eternal salvation of millions, the establishment through the grace of God, the atoning blood of Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit, of character which shall meet the tests of the Judgment Day and the needs of eternal association with purity. In aiming at this ultimate result, our missionaries are doing a work of inestimable importance for the nation and the world. They are successfully working upon some of the great problems of this country, which armies and millions of money have failed, and of necessity must fail, to solve. Nothing but the "glorious gospel of the blessed God," taught from the pulpit and the teacher's desk, and illustrated in the eloquent lives of consecrated missionaries, can change the idol worshiper from heathen China, the wild-man of the West, the half-heathen Negro so recently in the cruel degradation of slavery, those of our own race in the bonds of ignorance and immorality--so that they shall have and manifest an intelligent and worthy manhood and womanhood. Nothing else can meet cruel prejudice, which would forever deny full manhood or womanhood to those called to it by God himself, and pour oil upon its angry waves until they shall be still.

Our plan of work in the South is often misunderstood and often misrepresented. It is not our plan to force the races together. It is not our plan to agitate questions which arouse the prejudices of the Southern people. We do not agitate. Quietly, steadily, patiently, lovingly, our missionaries seek to lift up the degraded, enlighten the ignorant, and bring them all to Christ, well knowing that bitter prejudice cannot forever stand opposed to an enlightened, cultivated, Christian people, whatever may be their color or their past condition. We have nothing to do with the question of social equality in the South any more than we have in the North. We are not even trying to force the races together in the churches. We have no principles which would prevent our aiding two churches in the same town--one with a membership of white, the other of colored people. We have done it. In our church work, we simply maintain that a Christian church should stand ready to fellowship any one whom Christ fellowships, that it should turn no one away because of his color, or because he, his father or his mother was a slave. We maintain that there is no Christian reason why there should be either State or local organizations of churches which will not fellowship churches whose memberships differ in race. We seek to establish churches and other institutions which dare interpret Christianity as Christ taught it, and which will not yield a Christian principle for enlarged statistics. There are caste churches enough in the South. No more are needed. If Congregationalism can go there true to its history, true to its real convictions, true to that gospel which successfully faced the bitter prejudices of Jew and Gentile with the broad invitation, "Whosoever will, may come," then it goes to become a mighty power and to win both a place for itself and other churches, in time, to accept the same broad interpretation of Christianity.

This Association has faith in the power of the gospel, and, under the reign of God, of the final triumph of the right. It is willing to enter the doors now so wide open for missionary work, and to wait, if need be, for that glory of the denomination, which is better than long tables of statistics, the glory of adhering to the right.

The time has now come when our church work can be greatly enlarged. Our schools have been doing their work, and scattering all through the South those who have learned what pure religion and spiritual worship mean, and they are ready and longing for something better than they find within their reach. We can now push our work as fast as the churches of the North will furnish the money. We most earnestly appeal for the means to enable us to greatly develop, during the coming year, this department of the work.

CHURCH WORK AMONG NEW SETTLERS IN THE SOUTH.

Wonderful and more wonderful tales are now reaching the world of the unlimited resources of the South. They are a new discovery even to the South itself. These stories of lumber and mineral wealth are turning the tide thitherward. Towns and cities are beginning to spring up as they have in the West, and both great need and rich opportunity call for immediate missionary work. This new population is mostly, as yet, from the North, though many from Wales, especially miners, and from other countries of the old world are beginning to come in. In the new towns they find no churches, in the old towns few whose ideas and customs can satisfy their minds and hearts. Here is a great opportunity. We can aid these people to establish churches which will emphasize that interpretation of the Gospel which we believe to be Christian.

STATISTICS OF CHURCH WORK IN THE SOUTH.

Number of Churches 136 Number of Missionaries 113 Number of Church Members 8,438 Added during the year 989 Added by profession of faith 734 Scholars in Sunday-school 14,735

Notwithstanding all the interest that has been manifested in our mountain work, we feel sure that the churches do not realize the magnitude of this field, the pressing needs of this people in the heart of our country, the wonderful opportunities before us, and the heart-stirring results already secured.

We have here in two States eleven schools and twenty-two churches. Earnest calls have come to us to begin work in North Carolina and Alabama. We feel sure that if the churches could hear these appeals they would bid us respond. We have promised to begin work the coming year in these States, and we must look to the churches to furnish us the means. New lumbering and mining towns are springing up in this mountain country, and immediate missionary work is their only hope. A single one of these new towns, scarcely half-a-dozen years old, has had already more than a hundred men shot in it, and this awful work still goes on. This marvelously rich mineral region is sure to be filled in the near future with these mining towns, and unless the Christian work keeps pace with this kind of growth, this large territory will become notorious for bloody scenes as no portion of our land has ever been. Now is the time to preempt the country for Christ, by planting at strategic points the church and the Christian school, and through them to send forth to every part the pure, restraining and elevating influences of the gospel. God's call to us to do this work is loud and clear. Can we be faithful to Him and refuse to obey?

THE INDIANS.

There are 260,000 Indians in this country. Compared with our great fields in the South, this is small. But there is an emphasis on this work which is not made by figures. Those who were native to this land have been made foreigners. Those who were the first to receive missionary work here, and who responded as readily as any heathen people ever did, are still largely pagans. While one Christian has been telling the Indians the story of the gospel, another calling himself a Christian has been shooting them. They have not yet had a full chance to learn what Christianity is. From place to place they have been pushed so that they have not had time to build their altars to the true God. We have wronged them and we owe them more than we shall pay. We shall meet our obligations but in part, when we do all we can to save them.

We have in bur Indian work eighteen schools and six churches, one new church having been added this year. In these, 68 missionaries have been doing noble service for the Indian and for the country. Shall the Indian problem forever perplex and shame both the country and the Church? Will not the churches enable us to send all the workers and do all the work needed to be done, and thus hasten the day when it can be joyfully proclaimed that the Indians are evangelized--no longer pagans and foreigners, but our fellow Christians and our fellow citizens?

STATISTICS OF INDIAN WORK.

Churches 6 Church Members 401 Schools 18 Missionaries and Teachers 68 Theological Students 24 Normal Students 11 Grammar Grades 32 Intermediate Grades 120 Primary 495 Total Pupils 658 Sunday-school Scholars 1,332

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