The American missionary — volume 42, no. 9, September, 1888

VOLUME 42, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER, 1888 ***

[Illustration: SEPTEMBER, 1888.

The American Missionary

VOL. XLII.

NO. 9.]

[Illustration: CONTENTS]

EDITORIAL.

ANNUAL MEETING—FINANCIAL, 237 A CREED—PARAGRAPHS, 238 MR. MOODY—AFRICA—SIOUX BILL, 239 MOUNTAIN WORK AND THE COLORED PEOPLE, 240 EMANCIPATION IN BRAZIL, 241 INTER-BLENDING OF MISSIONARY WORK, 242 SCHOOL ECHOES—EXTRACT, 244 DEATH OF MRS. L. A. ORR, 245 ON TO JESUS; ON TO GOD, 246

THE SOUTH.

NOTES IN THE SADDLE. By District Secretary Ryder, 246 THE BUSY WORKERS, 248 TALLADEGA COLLEGE, 249 TRINITY SCHOOL, ATHENS, ALA., 251

STUDENT’S LETTER.

HOW I WON MY SCHOOL, 252

THE INDIANS.

SPEECH OF AN INDIAN CHIEF, 255 FORT YATES, DAKOTA, 255

THE CHINESE.

CHRISTIAN CHINESE EN ROUTE TO CHINA, 256

BUREAU OF WOMAN’S WORK.

LETTER FROM SAN FRANCISCO, 259

OUR YOUNG FOLKS.

LITTLE INDIANS, 260

RECEIPTS, 261

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NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION,

Rooms, 56 Reade Street.

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Price, 50 Cents a Year, in Advance.

Entered at the Post Office at New York, N.Y., as second-class matter.

American Missionary Association.

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PRESIDENT, REV. WM. M. TAYLOR, D.D., LL.D., N.Y.

_Vice-Presidents._

Rev. A. J. F. BEHRENDS, D.D., N.Y. Rev. F. A. NOBLE, D.D., Ill. Rev. ALEX. MCKENZIE, D.D., Mass. 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._

_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._

LYMAN ABBOTT, CHARLES A. HULL, J. R. DANFORTH, CLINTON B. FISK, ADDISON P. FOSTER,

_For Two Years._

S. B. HALLIDAY, SAMUEL HOLMES, SAMUEL S. MARPLES, CHARLES L. MEAD, ELBERT B. MONROE,

_For One Year._

J. E. RANKIN, WM. H. WARD, J. W. COOPER, JOHN H. WASHBURN, EDMUND L. CHAMPLIN.

_District Secretaries._

Rev. C. J. RYDER, _21 Cong’l House, Boston_. Rev. J. E. ROY, D.D., _151 Washington Street, Chicago_.

_Financial Secretary for Indian Missions._

Rev. CHAS. W. SHELTON.

_Secretary of Woman’s Bureau._

Miss D. E. EMERSON, _56 Reade St., N.Y._

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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.

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.

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.

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THE

AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

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VOL. XLII. SEPTEMBER, 1888. NO. 9.

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American Missionary Association.

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The next Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association will be held at Providence, R.I., commencing at three o’clock Tuesday afternoon, October 23d. Rev. Arthur Little, D.D., of Chicago, 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 great interest is expected, and we trust our friends will make their preparations in due time to be present.

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OUR RECEIPTS for the ten months ending July 31st are $235,884.73, an increase of $6,377.40 as compared with the corresponding months of last year. The increase from collections is $12,628.92, and the decrease from legacies is $6,251.52, leaving the net increase as stated. This increase from collections is gratifying; but our expenditures during the last ten months have been $27,079.89 greater than for the same months last year.

This increase has been due not only to the imperative demands for the enlargement of the work, but to the added facilities afforded by the contributions of friends who have realized these needs and have provided the necessary buildings and improvements.

The patrons of the Association have been wont to rally in the month of September to save us from debt. Our average receipts from _collections_ for that month for the past three years have been $38,000, which is nearly double the average of our monthly collections for the past year. We hope our friends have not lost their zeal in our work, and that their hearts are as warm and their hands as liberal as ever.

We ask their attention to the two items that follow:

_A Practical, Thoughtful Man._

A gentleman once said to a Secretary of this Association: “I contribute regularly to all our Congregational societies, and in addition to that I lay aside $100 for the society that stands in the greatest need. I notice that one or the other of these societies comes to the close of its fiscal year threatened with debt, and this year I think the American Missionary Association must have the $100.”

Thanks were duly expressed.

_A Creed._

We believe that there are many such practical, thoughtful men in our churches who lay by money, some more, some less, for this good purpose.

We believe there are many more Christian people, who, while they do not plan so definitely, yet keep watch of the benevolent societies, and come to the rescue in time of need.

We believe that some give out of their abundance, and others, feeling themselves somewhat straitened yet realizing the difficulties of a benevolent society in like circumstances, decide, in the spirit of Christian self-sacrifice, to aid with their mite the embarrassed society.

We believe there are pastors, devoted and efficient in their parish work, who yet are broad-minded and large-hearted enough to keep a watchful eye on the interests of the great missionary societies, and, at the appropriate time, to urge upon their churches liberal contributions for the hour of need.

We believe that, at this time, the American Missionary Association is the society needing special help at the close of its financial year, and we earnestly exhort practical, thoughtful Christians and churches to make special remembrance of our wants by prompt and liberal contributions during the month of September.

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WE begin this month the publication of a series of letters received from students or graduates of our various institutions in the South. They will be found very readable. Those of our friends who begin the one we publish in this number will read it through, we are very sure, and will be glad to read the others as they come in successive numbers.

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HOW BRIEF the passage from life to death. This number of THE MISSIONARY contains a very interesting sketch of the Commencement exercises at Talladega College, written by Mrs. L. A. Orr; and yet, on another page, will be found the record of her death. Happy are they who are toiling in the Master’s vineyard when the summons comes.

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WE had the pleasure of an intimate acquaintance with Rev. G. D. Pike, D.D., for nearly twenty years. We knew that his studies ran beyond the range of official work, but we never suspected that he indulged in writing verses. Since his death, several hymns have been found, written by him, and, on another page, we present one of these. It was written during his absence for his health and when he regarded the end of life as not far off, and indicates his faith and hope. The many friends of Dr. Pike will be glad to read this.

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MR. MOODY.

Mr. Moody as a lay evangelist has made a marvellous, a unique, record in modern Christian labors. No layman, and few clergymen, have surpassed him in this peculiar work. But Mr. Moody’s efforts in another line are attracting the attention and admiration of Christians in all parts of the world. We venture the prediction that one hundred years hence Mr. Moody will be better known by the schools he has founded than by the evangelistic work he has done. There is something about a permanent institution, like the opening of a living spring on the hillside, that is refreshing and perennial. John Harvard and Elihu Yale opened such fountains. Other men of to-day are doing the same thing in the South, either by the consecration of permanent funds or the founding of permanent institutions. May their number be multiplied.

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AFRICA.

Alas for poor Africa! The day of her redemption lingereth. The rebellion of the Mahdi hindered the progress of civilization in the vast regions of the Upper Nile. It occurred precisely at the time that Rev. Dr. Ladd was making his explorations near the mouth of the Sobat, with a view to the establishment of the Arthington Mission. The hope that was entertained that this sudden and disastrous outbreak would soon be quelled has been disappointed. The Mahdi is dead, but he has a successor, Khalifa Abdullah, who, if he does not inherit the Mahdi’s remarkable powers, yet can suffice to keep the Soudan in turmoil. Emin Bey has not been rescued and Stanley’s whereabouts and safety are uncertain. Is it not time that the duty of the American of African descent to the land of his fathers should be pressed upon him, and that the Christian church should help to prepare him for that duty?

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THE SIOUX BILL.

The friends of the Indians have sought earnestly and successfully to secure proper legislation looking to the civilization of the Indians. The Dawes Bill and the Sioux Bill have been hailed with joy as important steps in this direction.

But Senator Dawes himself and other intelligent friends of the Indians have foreseen the possible difficulties in the way. The refusal of the Indians to sign the treaty at the recent council at Standing Rock, and the indication at this writing that the same refusal will meet the Commissioners at the Cheyenne, Rosebud and Pine Ridge Agencies, present the picket lines of these difficulties. But beyond all these lie the stronger hindrances. The great trouble is that the Indian is still an Indian, in his ignorance, his want of training for civilized life, his dislike of work, and his incompetency to make profitable use of the lands and teams and implements proffered to him. Of what use to any man, white or Indian, is 160 acres of land if he doesn’t want it, if he doesn’t know how to use it, and can’t make a living on it? After all that has been said and done, the thing that the Indian needs is a _Christian education_. If he has that, he will know how to work and will be inclined to work, and will become a good and self-supporting citizen. Christian friends of the Indian! rally to the great work of Christianing these Indians. The primer and the New Testament are their great want.

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THE MOUNTAIN WORK AND THE COLORED PEOPLE.

There are three things which give special emphasis to the importance of pushing forward the “Mountain Work.”

1. The great material, intellectual and spiritual destitution of the more than two million people of our Southern mountains—a people of good natural endowments, who respond readily to the life-giving impulses of a pure gospel—is the thing which appeals most directly to our sympathy.

2. Many well-informed business men are confidently declaring that this is the richest mineral region of the world. Already they are either building or planning railroads through every part of the mountains, which are made profitable not only by the wonderful mines which open at their approach, but also by the great forests of black walnut, poplar, and other valuable timber. This, of course, means that the present primitive condition of things cannot long remain. It must give way to something else. Whether it shall be to godlessness and wickedness of every form, or whether the natural religiousness of the people shall be met with pure and uplifting gospel influences—with the Church and the Christian school—depends in a large measure on what our churches and individual Christians say through the treasury of this Association. What will take years of work and thousands of dollars in the future can now be done in months and with hundreds.

3. But this work has a connection with our other Southern work which has been little noted. These mountains extend down into the very heart of the South, in a territory 200 miles broad and 500 miles long. In the late war, the people were loyal to the Union almost to a man, and thousands of them fought for its preservation. Slaves were few among them, and colored people are now scarcely more numerous than they are in the North, though the proportion is increasing. The result is a natural affiliation with what are known as “Northern Ideas.” The feeling against a Christian treatment of the colored people is neither so bitter nor so deep-rooted as elsewhere in the South. It has been demonstrated that no-caste churches and schools can be established and maintained, and the general sentiment of the whole region can, by vigorous missionary work, be moulded to the Christian view.

The people of this region—vivified and developed, intellectually and spiritually, on the broad basis of Congregational Christianity; believing in, and practicing, the doctrine that all men were created free and equal and should have equal rights in all public matters; and, in their new and fast-increasing commercial importance, in constant contact with other portions of the South—would furnish an unanswerable argument against the fears of the Southern white people with reference to the amalgamation of the races, and other direful results, which would follow a just treatment of the colored man. “And seeing the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it.”

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EMANCIPATION IN BRAZIL—WHAT IS TO FOLLOW?

It is a curious fact that, in precisely the last fifty years, slavery has been abolished by the four great nations holding the greatest number of slaves and representing the three great forms of the Christian religion—the Protestant, the Greek and the Roman Catholic.

Thus England, a Protestant power, emancipated her slaves in the West Indies in 1838; Russia, of the Greek Church, freed her serfs in 1861; the United States, a Protestant nation, emancipated her slaves in 1863; and now, Brazil, a Roman Catholic empire, completes the circle by emancipating her slaves in 1888.

While these facts are remarkable, and present cause for profound gratitude to God, there is yet a lesson of vital importance to be learned which Brazil needs to understand, and which, indeed, the other nations are not fully practicing.

In the British West Indies, very few white people remained after emancipation, and the blacks lacked their guidance and example; and besides this, it was years afterwards before the British Government made any adequate provision for the education of the ex-slaves. From these two causes have come nearly all the evils that have grown out of the emancipation.

Russia presents a still more striking lesson. In 1861, as the result of a great national movement towards constitutional liberty, her fifty millions of serfs were emancipated. The next year, she celebrated the thousandth anniversary of her national existence, and the enthusiasm for a free government was intensified. But all these hopes were dashed—no new constitution was given, the Czar ruled autocratically as before, the serfs were not educated or enfranchised, and largely sunk into ignorance and intemperance. The result of all has been nihilism, and the Czar lives in hourly fear of death, and rules his people by terror, the prison and Siberia.

The United States has done far better. It enfranchised the slave and made him a citizen; the National Government, through the Freedmen’s Bureau, expended several millions of dollars for his education; the States organized public school systems, and the benevolent people of the North rendered still more effective service, being the first to introduce the work, acting always, when permitted, in co-operation with the Bureau and with the States, and continuing its work, blending the educational largely with the religious. But in spite of all this, a dark cloud gathers on our horizon—the blacks are not allowed the free enjoyment of their guaranteed rights, and the facilities for educational and religious enlightenment are entirely inadequate. Three millions of the blacks of ten years of age and upward, in 1880, could not write. America needs not only to ponder these facts, but to act upon them promptly, if it would avert the impending danger.

In these facts Brazil should read her warning. If her ex-slaves are left in ignorance and vice, she has her work only begun, and the last end may be worse than the beginning. The laws of Brazil have favored gradual emancipation. It was the work of a woman that completed it. In the absence of the Emperor, who was sick in Italy, his daughter, as Regent, issued the final decree.

May we not hope that the womanly wisdom and philanthropy which dictated the initial act may prompt to the persevering use of the means of the last great duty? And may we not hope that, as thousands of the educated women of the North devoted themselves to the uplifting of the blacks in the Southern States, so their sisters in Brazil may give the crowning glory to emancipation in Brazil?

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INTER-BLENDING OF MISSIONARY WORK.

The great London Missionary Conference, recently held, awakened much enthusiasm on the spot in behalf of foreign missions, and we believe that the published records and addresses will intensify and perpetuate that salutary influence. The Christian world needs arousing to the great work of the church in heathen lands.