The American Missionary Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896
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Various >> The American Missionary Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896
by Various
Edition 1, (December 12, 2006)
CONTENTS
Editorial
Jubilee Year Fund.
Our Industrial Work.
The School and Church.
The Year of Jubilee.
A Jubilee Fund of $100,000 in Shares of $50 Each.
The South.
Notes by the Way.
A Home Mission Work Little Understood.
Talladega College, Ala.
Lincoln Academy, All Healing, N.C.
A Gracious Revival
Obituary.
HON. SEYMOUR STRAIGHT.
MISS EVELYN E. STARR.
Bureau of Woman's Work.
COLORED WOMEN'S WORK.
WORK AT McLEANSVILLE, N. C.
RECEIPTS FOR FEBRUARY, 1896.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION,
Bible House, Ninth St. and Fourth Ave., New York.
Price, 50 Cents a Year in advance.
Entered at the Post Office at New York N. Y., as second-class mail matter.
AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
PRESIDENT, MERRILL E. GATES, LL.D., MASS.
_Vice-presidents._
REV. F. A. NOBLE, D.D., Ill.
REV. HENRY HOPKINS, D.D., Mo.
REV. ALEX. MCKENZIE, D.D., Mass.
REV. HENRY A. STIMSON, D.D., N. Y.
REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D., Ohio.
_Honorary Secretary and Editor._
REV. M. E. STRIEBY, D.D., _Bible House, N. Y._
_Corresponding Secretaries._
REV. A. F. BEARD, D.D., REV. F. P. WOODBURY, D.D., _Bible House, N. Y._
REV. C. J. RYDER, D.D., _Bible House, N. Y._
_Recording Secretary._
REV. M. E. STRIEBY, D.D., _Bible House, N. Y._
_Treasurer._
H. W. HUBBARD, Esq., _Bible House, N. Y._
_Auditors._
GEORGE S. HICKOK.
JAMES H. OLIPHANT.
_Executive Committee._
CHARLES L. MEAD, Chairman.
CHARLES A. HULL, Secretary.
_For Three Years._
SAMUEL HOLMES
SAMUEL S. MARPLES,
CHARLES L. MEAD,
WILLIAM H. STRONG,
ELIJAH HORR.
_For Two Years._
WILLIAM HAYES WARD,
JAMES W. COOPER,
LUCIEN C. WARNER,
JOSEPH H. TWICHELL,
CHARLES P. PIERCE.
_For One Year._
CHARLES A. HULL,
ADDISON P. FOSTER,
ALBERT J. LYMAN,
NEHEMIAH BOYNTON,
A. J. F. BEHRENDS.
_District Secretaries._
REV. GEO. H. GUTTERSON, _21 Cong'l House, Boston, Mass._
REV. JOS. E. ROY, D.D., _153 La Salle Street, Chicago, Ill._
_Secretary of Woman's Bureau._
MISS D. E. EMERSON, _Bible House, N. Y._
COMMUNICATIONS
Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the
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Treasurer; letters relating to woman's work, to the Secretary of the
Woman's Bureau.
DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
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NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS.--The date on the "address label" indicates the time
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FORM OF A BEQUEST.
"I give and bequeath the sum of ---- dollars to the 'American Missionary
Association,' incorporated by act of the Legislature of the State of New
York." The will should be attested by three witnesses.
THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY
VOL. L.
APRIL, 1896.
No. 4.
Jubilee Year Fund.
of the American Missionary Association
*It is now fifty years since the **AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION** was
organized. Its work and history are before the churches. We have reason to
rejoice in the accomplishment of the past. We are grateful to God for this
ministry of grace to His needy ones. We have come now to the
semi-centennial year of the Association. We propose to celebrate the
Fiftieth Year, and to acknowledge the goodness of God to us in the past.*
*But we find ourselves in this present time in distress. Our work has been
severely affected by the adverse times. Our mission schools and churches
are suffering. For the last three years our average current receipts have
been $93,000 less per year than during the previous three years. The work
has been cut $184,000 during these three years. If it had been fully
maintained the debt would have been three times as great as it is.*
*We are now confronted with the question of further and more disastrous
reductions, for our obligations must be met. The $100,000 borrowed for
mission work must be paid. We do not believe that the churches wish this
to be done by closing more schools and church doors against the poorest of
our countrymen throughout the Southern lowlands and mountains, amid the
Dakotas and Montana, from California to Florida.*
*The Association has come to the last half of its fiscal year. Up to this
time it has made no special plea for help. It has waited fraternally until
kindred organizations have received the aid they** so greatly needed. This
vast Christian service in the most necessitous fields of the continent is
as distinctively the trust of the churches as any of their enterprises
are. Shall it not now have the same equitable relief as has been given to
others? Has not the time now come for helping this suffering work? Will
not those who have charged the Association with this burden of service now
consecrate anew their benevolence to its relief and make this a Year of
Jubilee, to wipe out the last vestige of debt?*
*It is proposed to raise during the next six months a special Jubilee Year
Fund of $100,000 in shares of $50 each, with the hope and expectation that
these shares will be taken by the friends of missions without lessening
those regular contributions which must be depended upon to sustain the
current work.*
*The plea is urgent because the need is urgent. Will not all friends of
this great work, pastor and people, now heartily unite in one special
Christian endeavor to raise this American Missionary Association Jubilee
Year Fund?*
*Charles L. Mead,*
* Samuel Holmes,*
* Samuel S. Marples,*
* William H. Strong,*
* Elijah Horr,*
* William Hayes Ward,*
* Lucien C. Warner,*
* James W. Cooper,*
* Joseph H. Twichell,*
* Charles P. Peirce,*
* Charles A. Hull,*
* Albert J. Lyman,*
* Addison P. Foster,*
* Nehemiah Boynton,*
* A. J. F. Behrends*
*Executive Committee of the*
* AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.*
Our Industrial Work.
We publish in this number of THE MISSIONARY an article copied from _The
Talladega College Record_, giving a detailed account of the industrial
work carried on in that institution. We invite attention to it as showing
the wide range of those industries, and of their thorough and systematic
arrangement.
The School and Church.
As is the school and church in any nation or community, so are the people.
The Chinese for ages with universal education, such as it is, and the
religion of Confucius, are a superstitious, stagnant, and an unheroic
race. Europe in the middle ages, with no schools and an ambitious
hierarchy, became ignorant and war-like, oppressed in Church and State. In
these United States, their abundant educational facilities and a free
church have developed largely the most intelligent and free people on the
earth. But we said "largely," for there are millions of people in this
nation that are still in the lowest grades of ignorance and superstition.
There are four millions of colored people who can neither read nor write,
and have not yet escaped from the degrading effects of centuries of
slavery. There are among the mountaineers of the South two millions of
people, descendants of a noble race, who have for more than a hundred
years been largely without schools or intelligent churches, and they have
fallen far below the intelligence and enterprise of their fathers. Our
American Indians, though comparatively a handful, still need our care.
More than half their school population is without education or industrial
habits.
It is among these unfortunate races that the American Missionary
Association is doing its great work. It comes to them with its schools and
churches--its schools religious and its churches intelligent--and
throughout the wide range of its work, lifting them up in knowledge and
the industries of life, and in all these directions it has accomplished
great results, planting wisely with good seed, and is beginning already to
reap large and continually enlarging harvests.
We print in this number of the MISSIONARY two articles written by
Secretaries of the Association, which give reliable statements touching
the deplorable needs of some of these people, and yet of the cheering
transformations made in their condition by our schools and churches. We
invite attention to these two articles.
The Year of Jubilee.
APPEAL FOR RELEASE FROM DEBT AND LIMITATIONS.
A Jubilee Fund of $100,000 in Shares of $50 Each.
We have come to our Year of Jubilee. Fifty years ago the American
Missionary Association had a darker outlook than it has to-day. It saw
4,000,000 of people, children of a common Father, who were born under the
skies of our common country, in a land of churches and Bibles, and saw
them, not only with no legal rights, but not even the rights of persons,
chattels under the law, bought and sold as things, in sin and degradation,
and without hope in the world. That was a dark outlook.
But God's providence came, and now the country, which the Association
could not so much as enter, is dotted with our schools, and with ten
thousand other schools, and with churches, which stand for the truths
which the Congregational churches of our land believe in and teach. Has
anything more wonderful occurred in the wonderful fifty years, now gone
by, than this change of conditions in the South, or any more demanding
duty come to our churches than the work which has grown out of these
changed conditions?
It belonged to no man fifty years ago to foresee the magnitude of our work
in the South. Add to this that among twenty tribes of Indians, and our
missions in the highlands of the South among the whites, and that which
has been so greatly blessed of God on the Pacific Coast, and who could
have foretold it all fifty years ago?
In all this we are not engaged in a merely philanthropic work; we are
doing more than to educate people in industries, _though we are doing
this_. We are building on a foundation which no other can lay than is
laid, Jesus Christ. In the schoolroom, in the teachings of agriculture and
mechanics, the various trades and industries, as well as in our churches,
this is our foundation. We are bringing salvation to the peoples who need
it, knowing well that salvation includes this life, as well as that which
is to come. Our supreme thought is to hasten on the time when there shall
be a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. This has been, and this is,
our work. Now we need to meet our indebtedness. It is a distressing load
to carry. We are seeking to pay our obligations this Jubilee Year. We have
not pressed our grievous burden upon the churches as urgently as we would
have done, because our sister societies, in like distress, were in the
field with their special appeals. Our hearts are now gladdened by the
gracious providences that have come to them. Now, will not the churches
generally engage in a special effort to lift the burden of our debt and
restore prosperity to this work, which the churches and our individual
givers have been, and are, doing through this Association?
In view of these facts, we most earnestly urge as the call of this Jubilee
Year:
First. That measures be taken in each church to make full and regular
contributions to sustain our _current_ work. It has been sadly reduced.
During the last three years the receipts of the Association have been less
than in the previous three years by about $93,000 a year, and but for our
retrenchments this would have made a debt three times as great as it is
now. If this reduction of receipts is to continue it will mean a ruinous
increase of debt or an equally ruinous retrenchment of the work.
Second. So great is our sense of the need of sustaining our present work
that if regular contributions are not adequate we urgently appeal that the
effort be made to secure it by largely increased contributions or by a
special collection.
Third. That our friends and all interested in this work now so imperiled
_will take shares in the Jubilee Fund of $100,000_. _This fund is divided
into 2,000 shares of $50._ We would have each of these fifty years in the
Association's history stand for a special contribution of a dollar, the
whole fifty years being signalized by a Jubilee subscription of $50 and
the semi-centennial made memorial by raising the money for the Jubilee
Fund.
Only six months are left of the present fiscal year. We come to all who
believe in our work to help the Association and to help it now, so that we
may at the great convocation at the Jubilee convention in Boston next
October celebrate not only the heroic faith of the fathers, but the
steadfast zeal and purpose of their children.
THE SOUTH.
Notes by the Way.
Secretary A.F. Beard.
In making my rounds among the schools of the Association and of the
churches I find new experiences in old paths and new incidents by the way.
Within the limitations of "an article" I cannot recall them, but I invite
my readers to visit with me some of the places _en route_.
[[Illustration: FARM BUILDINGS, ENFIELD, N. C.]]
FARM BUILDINGS, ENFIELD, N. C.
It is not a long journey from New York to Enfield, N. C. We will not find
a New England village there when we leave the Weldon and Wilmington
Railway. It is quite another part of the world. A ride of four miles among
plantations and cotton fields brings us to the latest-born school of the
Association. Here are a thousand acres of arable land, which ought to be a
fortune to its owner and has been in years gone by. Now, however, cotton
and corn have ceased to be kings, oftentimes they are more like beggars.
Thus it came to pass that this noble plantation became the property of a
benevolent lady in Brooklyn, N. Y., who made it a splendid gift to the
Association, with sufficient money to build the fine brick building which
stands in the center of this great farm, the beginning of the "Joseph K.
Brick Normal, Agricultural, and Industrial School."
Is it needed? We will say it is when we have acquainted ourselves with the
condition of the colored people in these parts. I know not what could have
been their condition in slavery. Except for the buying and the selling, it
could not have been worse than we find it here to-day. Rags, ignorance,
poverty, and degradation indescribable are in the cabins. Have the
children been taught in any school? No. Can the parents read? No. Shall we
find a Bible in the cabins? No. Weak, wicked, and absolutely poor, in dumb
and stolid content with animalism and dirt, here families are herding like
cattle, in windowless and miserable cabins of one room. The children who
fail to receive the benignity of death grow up here and exist and suffer
in this dreadful life. Yet we can ride by this plantation and in sight of
it any day on our way to Florida, and never see what is so near.
Nevertheless, here it is a reality much worse than it reads, for ten times
one are ten and ten times ten are one hundred.
In such environment and conditions is our "Agricultural and Industrial
School" now half way through its first year.
[[Illustration: PRINCIPAL T. S. INBORDEN.]]
PRINCIPAL T. S. INBORDEN.
If the principal of it should tell the story of his life, how he walked
eight miles every day for three months of the year to learn to read and
write; how he worked for 20 cents a day to raise enough money to get away
from his limitations for an education; how he became bell-boy at a hotel
until he earned enough to buy a grammar, an arithmetic, and a dictionary;
how he found himself at last at Fisk University with $1.25 with which to
continue his studies for eight years before he could graduate; how he
worked his patient way along teaching in vacation, pulling himself up hand
over hand, it would pay one to stay over a day for it. There were only a
few times during the eight years in Fisk when he had money enough to stamp
a half dozen letters at once. This story, however, differs only in its
incidents from that of other students at all of our colleges. The story of
their struggles is the story of their strength.
"Shock and strain and struggle are
Friendlier than the smiling days."
All of the teachers at Enfield are graduates of Fisk University, and they
each have their own story how heavy-weighted with poverty, they kept
"inching along" with a resolute faith that had divinity in it. Are they
not the very ones to help upward the poor boys and girls about them who,
until this year of grace, never had one chance in life, and never dreamed
of one? We will keep our eyes on the school at Enfield.
[[Illustration: YOUNG MEN'S HALL, ENFIELD, N.C.]]
YOUNG MEN'S HALL, ENFIELD, N.C.
Next accompany me to Beaufort, N. C.. It is a place to visit. After we
have gone as far as the land holds out, we set sail for a queer little
town as far into the sea as it could get; but when once we have arrived
there we are repaid for any temporary discomfort on the waters. We find at
Beaufort, "Washburn Seminary" with its excellent industrial plant--a
school of much merit--and a church that gives us who are watching and
caring for churches through their weaknesses and doubtful times, much
encouragement. A few years ago it was a question if the church would
survive. Now it lives and stands for not a little and has strength of its
own. Here, at the time of our visit, a young man, whose only educational
privileges had been those of "Washburn Seminary," preached his first
sermon to a congregation which crowded the church. It was a most
creditable discourse in method, matter, and manner. The best of it is
that, among those who have always known him, there is the common testimony
that the young preacher lives his faith. Such incidents as this are not
singular in the history of our schools and churches, but they are
significant. They represent the evolution that is going on.
Of our visits at Wilmington, Greenwood, Athens and Marietta, Atlanta and
Anniston, we make no record.
We will come to Talladega. President DeForest, with his hearty grip and
whole-souled voice, gave me good welcome to Talladega. We were in old
times classmates and friends at Yale, when we called ourselves boys. "You
must not stop in the Hall this time, but come to my home and we will talk
over what Talladega is doing and what we ought to do," he insisted.
Precious days were those, as I now recall them, with this scholarly man,
so instinct with faith, so earnest and hopeful in his work, so happy in
his family, and so full of plans for the time to come. We talked together
of the interests of the institution which, within seventeen years, he had
led on from a normal school to a college. Together we went through the
various classrooms and heard the recitations; the mathematics cultivating
the reasoning powers, the geography giving correct views of the world, the
history widening the vision of it, the astronomy unfolding God's love of
order and truth. We heard together the lessons in language, in ethics, in
mental philosophy, and saw the students taking on strength and character,
whom he had watched from grade to grade, from year to year. Not only in
the theological department, where students were intent upon their calling,
but in the farm work, in the industrial classes, everywhere, and on
everything, was the stamp of earnest Christianity. So, through president
and teachers, the highest ideals had been constantly held before the
students. It was inspiration to me to meet once more the devoted teachers
of the College, and the students, greedy for knowledge and willing to work
for it, on the farm, in the industries, and in whatever way they could
earn enough to help themselves through the year. When the time came for
the "Goodbye," with the hearty invitation "come again," he did not know,
nor I, that before a month should pass I should "come again" to look my
farewell upon my silent friend who could no more welcome me. He had no
word for me but I heard a word, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,
for they rest from their labors and their works do follow them." Surely
the works of this man of God will follow him. The slow procession on that
funeral day moved out of sight, and the next day the usual College work
went on, but the days for Talladega have been sad.
I would that I might extend the invitation to continue and visit a score
of places with schools and churches on this journey, each of which gave to
me its own suggestions. There is the unique and fruitful school at Cotton
Valley, with its record of transformations; there are Selma and Tougaloo,
Jackson, New Orleans, Mobile, Thomasville, Albany, Marshallville,
Andersonville, Macon, Savannah, Charleston, Knoxville, Jonesboro, and
others, where schools and churches, hand in hand, are saving the needy
peoples. I can only say that as I visited these and other places I was
constantly cheered both by the fidelity of the workers and by the
efficiency of their work. The story of these workers together with God
will never be fully told.
In many places I found deepest poverty. The greatest luxury of the poor
people is the "schooling" of their children. Parents will go hungry for
this. Many of the children trudged along barefooted for miles when ice was
on the pools by the roadside. I found, as I have before, churches and
schools leavening their communities with more intelligent manhood and
womanhood, with better homes, with wiser industries and economies, with
stronger and truer characters. Many times I said: "If the good people who
have ordained and sustained this work until now could only see it and know
it as it actually is, our distressing debt would vanish within half a
year. Our Jubilee would come, and we should 'arise and shine and give God
the glory.'"
A Home Mission Work Little Understood.
Secretary Frank P. Woodbury.
Those who have visited only the cities and towns of the South have not
seen the black South. In the six Southern states containing what has been
called the Black Belt there are four millions of negro people. Less than
half a million of these live in the cities, towns, and villages, while
more than three millions and a half of them dwell on the plantations of
the country. Mr. Bryce in his work on America has called attention to the
enormous difference between the colored churches of the cities and those
of the poor negro districts, in some of which not merely have the old
superstitions been retained but there has been a marked relapse into the
Obeah rites and serpent worship of African heathenism. The rank
superstitions, the beliefs in necromancy and witchcraft, the wild orgies
of excitement, the utter divorce between the moral virtues and what is
called religion, which obtain among the millions of the plantation negroes
of the South, are but little understood. By one who knows it, the Black
Belt has been called the great Dismal Swamp, the vast black malarial
slough of the American republic.
Gladstone has frequently emphasized an ancient saying, "The corruption of
the best thing is the very worst thing." This is emphatically true of much
which has been called Christianity in the plantation churches of the
South. The testimony which comes to us of the moral and religious
condition of many communities in the Black Belt, is startling. One negro
witness who has been in direct association for many years with ministers
in this part of the South, says, "three-fourths of those who are now
acting as preachers in all this region, are absolutely unfit to preach the
gospel. It is rare that one can find in the country districts where the
masses of the people dwell, a minister who is both intelligent and morally
upright."
It is not long since the "Wilderness-Worshiper" excitement swept through a
region of the South like a prairie fire. The excitement of expectancy for
the immediate coming of Christ added fire to the hearts of the people.
Hugh pyres of pine logs were rolled together and lit into flame as the
darkness of night came on. These great fires were to light the way for the
Saviour when He should come. Men rolled their bodies through the forests
in a kind of pagan ecstasy of self-sacrifice to meet Him. So credulous are
the negroes of the Black Belt, says a resident white lawyer, that if a
fellow with a wig of long hair and a glib tongue should appear among them
and say he is the Christ, inside of a week the turmoil of the
Wilderness-Worship would be outdone.