Part 2

This new organization held its first public meeting in Boston, March 18th. The ladies assembled at eleven o’clock in the lecture room of the Park Street Church, which was crowded. Mrs. C. A. Richardson, of Chelsea, presided; Mrs. J. F. Hunnewell, of Charlestown, acted as Secretary. By-laws were read and adopted. An address on the general subject was made by Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton; and Mrs. Steele, of Revere, gave a very interesting account of her labors in Maryland for eight years among the poor whites.

A more public meeting was held in the afternoon in the audience-room of the church, which was also well filled. Rev. Dr. Webb presided, and made a very appropriate and encouraging introductory address, sketching the new range of work opened for women in the missionary world, and assuring the new organization of the welcome it would receive by the officers and friends of the American Board and the Woman’s Board. By invitation, representatives of the American Missionary Association and of the American Home Missionary Society addressed the audience; Rev. C. L. Woodworth and Rev. M. E. Strieby, D. D., appearing for the former, and Rev. Robert West and Rev. H. M. Storrs, D. D., for the latter. These gentlemen confined themselves, as was expected, to presenting a view of the wide fields occupied by their respective societies, and the great need and remarkable hopefulness which they furnished for the labor of woman in the elevation and Christianization of the more destitute women and children of the great West and South.

This new organization originated entirely with the ladies themselves, and, as far as we can judge, has been inaugurated and will be carried forward with great wisdom and efficiency, and with no spirit of rivalry, but with the utmost Christian consideration and love towards other similar boards. It is hard to predict the future of a new benevolent organization. Who could have conjectured in 1810 the grand reach of Christian labor achieved by the ever-to-be-honored American Board? And who, ten years ago, could have foreseen the remarkable energy and wonderful success--then latent, but now active--displayed by the Christian women of this land in the several denominations in co-operation with the great Missionary Boards? But while we cannot prophesy of the future of this new society, yet the success of those we have mentioned encourages us to anticipate for it a glorious career. There certainly is room in this our land, among the women and children of less favored portions and races, for the widest and most hopeful endeavors that can be put forth; and while the degraded of distant lands should not be neglected, certainly those in our own should not be passed by. This new Board has our warmest sympathies.

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EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA.

In a letter from Rev. J. Edwards, of Grantville, Mass., he adds his testimony to the many that reach us from all directions, that the South is experiencing a gradual, and to one who visits it after several years’ absence, marked uplifting. He also comes back full of the assurance, as do all others who study the “problem of the South,” that the A. M. A. is doing good work just where it is needed. We thank him for his letter, and second his suggestion that our work presents a magnificent opportunity to the Christian and patriot. We have room for a few extracts:

“Enter the train of the Seaboard & Roanoke Railroad and you will be carried very comfortably through a country as monotonous and unexciting as you will often find. You can bear to watch, for once, the scenery that looks so painfully uninviting it is positively entertaining: light land, scattered pines, and here and there, the so-called villages, of which you might say, ‘enough of them--such as they are.’ No bright green sward; and as for houses, homes--where are they? Surely not very near the line of the railroad, unless you can by courtesy give the name to the scanty cabins, with the tow-headed children, and the wan women, and the man scratching the top of the earth with a plow drawn by one decrepit steer or sorry mule.

“The railroad on to which you pass at Weldon, would carry you to Wilmington, famed throughout the old North State for its delightful social life. But we stop one hundred miles short of this, in the heart of the State. Your desolate ride has hardly prepared you for the pleasing aspect of the town that greets you. Comfortable houses, some of them tasteful, with abundant flower-yards, and, now and then, the familiar green turf, preserved with a good deal of pains; the county buildings, numerous and large stores, some of them doing a business of two or three hundred thousand a year, assure you that here, too, are homes and American enterprise. You are in the midst of the cotton belt--a dry, light, almost sandy soil, level like the bottom of a lake, showing signs (in beds of marl, with shells not yet absorbed) of having been once under the sea, easily tilled; large amounts of chemical fertilizers in use; plenty of work for both whites and blacks; and, although some of both races are do-nothings, numbers of both are industrious and reap the reward. The relations between the two races here appear to the casual eye entirely peaceful. Some blacks are leaving for Indiana, and a few are returning; and the departure of those who go from this particular section only gives more room and occupation for those who stay.

“A fragment of the conversation of two negroes I overheard on the street sounded true and sensible: ‘My ’pinion is, one dat’s willin’ to work, kin make a livin’ most anywhar; as fur ---- he allus was too lazy to live; he’s too lazy to die. I don’t b’lieve nuffin sech as he ses.’ They were talking of a bright but indolent mulatto, well known in the place, who had lately exodusized and come back.

“The churches are Baptist, Episcopal, and Methodist, with ‘Hard-shells,’ Campbellites, etc. The colored people have churches and preachers of their own, and will never rise very high till they have schools and better churches.

“The lack of schools is a great evil, felt and deplored by some of the best people. There are private schools for the whites who can pay for them, but no public schools for them, and none of any kind for the blacks here yet. But times move forward and grow better.”

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LE MOYNE INSTITUTE, MEMPHIS, TENN.

Training Nurses--Needle-Work--Preparation of Food, etc.

In the MISSIONARY for March, 1879, Miss Milton gave some account of the industrial department of the school at Le Moyne, and also announced the purpose of giving attention to the training of nurses.

Prof. Steele writes that their plans have been more fully developed with most gratifying results. During the year, about an hour each day has been devoted to such work, without interfering with regular studies, and with the effect of stimulating the students in all other directions. The list of questions on the care of the sick, which constituted a part of their examination at the close of the winter term, indicates a varied and minute training, which must fit these pupils to be angels of mercy, and most blessed ministers of comfort and health in many cabins of the South.

Professor Steele reports a death-rate among the negroes of Memphis that is simply appalling. He says in other cities of the South it is about double that among the whites; in Memphis it is three times as great. We are confident that this disproportion does not prevail through the country. The blacks are gregarious, and crowding into the cities, as they do, in ignorance and poverty, disease is fearfully fatal among the children; but we do not believe the forthcoming census will establish such a death-rate as the above among the colored population at large.

Our teachers, wise and Christ-like in their spirit, are directing their efforts to whatever affects the welfare of these poor people, and their condition will constantly improve.

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ANGLO-TURKISH CONVENTION FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF THE SLAVE-TRADE.

The Queen of England announced at the opening of the last session of Parliament, Feb. 5th, “That a convention for the suppression of the slave-trade has been concluded between my Government and that of his Imperial Majesty the Sultan.” This was very gratifying to all who had so long waited the signing of the oft-promised and oft-delayed treaty with Turkey. On the 9th of February, it was said by the Under-Secretary of State that the treaty had been signed but not ratified, and would soon be laid upon the table of the House of Commons. In the meantime, what purports to be a copy of the treaty has been published.

An examination of its several articles creates grave fears that astute Turkish diplomacy has been too much for Sir Henry Layard in this matter. It is all very well for English cruisers to have the right to search suspected ships, sailing under the Turkish flag, for slaves; but their officers cannot touch African _slave_ seamen, and it will be easy to so make out a ship’s papers that she can carry many more men than she needs, and she can change her crew every voyage. All slaves seized, another article provides, shall be turned over to _Ottoman authorities for the purpose of proclaiming them free_, which, we fear, will prove as effectual in accomplishing that result, as throwing the turtle into the water by the simpleton was effectual in drowning it.

When England made treaties with other slave-holding nations for the suppression of the slave-trade, she provided that captured slaves should be tried before a mixed Commission in which British officers sat. In this treaty they take their chances for freedom before an Ottoman Court.

In this connection we regret to announce that Pacha Gordon has resigned, and his resignation has been accepted; and thus Central Africa loses its noble Christian ruler. He went out in 1874 as Governor General of Soudan, “to establish a regular government, to create facilities for commerce, and to destroy the slave-trade in the province entrusted to him,” and his resignation will bring dismay to all who have the cause of humanity at heart. It was at first reported that Ismail Eyoub Pacha had been appointed to take his place, who, while not Gordon Pacha, was, it is said, as good a man for the post as could be found in Egypt. But the _Anti-Slavery Reporter_ now says, “it is officially announced that the actual successor is one Raouf Bey, of evil memory.”

This Raouf Bey is spoken of by Sir Samuel Baker in his “Ismailia” as the bosom friend of Abou Saood, whom he describes “as the _incarnation of the slave-trade_, and the greatest slave-dealer on the White Nile.” Colonel Gordon thinks it certain that the slave-dealers will at once resume their operations, and will be unmolested by the new Governor. He estimates that at least 30,000 slaves have annually, for the past twelve years, been brought down from the Bahr Gazelle and Darfur; and Vice-Consul Wylde believes that not less than 50,000 annually cross the Red Sea, who are taken to Egypt, Turkey, and other Mohammedan countries. And now, it seems, the Anglo-Turkish Convention provides that slaves captured by the English shall be handed over to the _Ottoman_ authorities to be by them declared free, and a noted slave-hunter displaces the Christian suppressor of that hellish traffic in the governorship of the slave-hunting grounds.

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MR. H. M. STANLEY ON THE CONGO.

[From the Field, March 12.]

As the recent movements of this well known African explorer have not been given in detail, the following translation of a letter written by Father Carrie, head of the Congo Mission, dated Landana, December 3, 1879, and published in _Les Missions Catholiques_ (No. 559), may not be without interest.

Father Carrie says: “Having just returned from a voyage through the whole navigable portion of the Lower Congo, I take the first opportunity of sending you the following particulars concerning Mr. Stanley and his explorations. The party of the great explorer is somewhat numerous. It consists, besides the leader, of a superintendent, an engineer, a sea captain, several mechanics, carpenters, etc., in all, twenty whites of different nationalities--Belgians, Americans, English, Italians, and Danes. A French naturalist, M. Protche, just come to Landana from Paris, and an old member of the German expedition to Chinchoxo, near Landana, are also about to join The ‘Society for the Investigation of the Upper Congo,’ as this expedition terms itself.

“The blacks of the party consist of about one hundred men, Arabs and natives from Sierra Leone and the Congo. The stores are very considerable, comprising especially five small steamers and some auxiliary craft, engines and trucks for land carriage, wooden houses ready for erection, &c.

“Mr. Stanley, as I am informed by Mr. Greshoff, proposes to go up the Congo to the Lualaba, where he hopes to meet his Arab friend Tibu-tin. He will then explore the Western part of the Congo as well as the countries near both of its banks, and will endeavor at the same time to bring the ivory-trade to Emboma. When we arrived at Vivi (four or five miles below the first cataract of the Yellala Falls), Mr. Stanley was on his way across the mountains in the direction of the great village of the same name, doubtless studying the start for his route to the interior. M. Van Schandel, chief engineer of the expedition, told us that the celebrated traveller habitually started on such excursions without warning any one of his going or returning. Soon, however, Mr. Stanley himself was announced; he returned tired to death and covered with dust and perspiration.

“While waiting for the end of the rainy season, he is engaged in firmly establishing his first station--the base of all his future operations--and in maturing his plans for overcoming the gigantic difficulties in his way.

“It is, indeed, a startling enterprise to traverse some two hundred miles of precipitous, rocky mountains, piled up--so to speak--one on the other, and almost without any intermediate passage, not only with a numerous party, but a considerable weight of baggage, wooden houses, trucks and steam vessels, which must be hoisted over heights of from 1,000 to 1,300 feet, with extremely abrupt rises; and this not once, or twenty, or a hundred times, but on thousands of occasions.

“Happen what may, it will require some years’ work to reach the end of this terrible chain of mountains at Stanley Pool, where the second station is to be established.”

Making every allowance for the fears of the worthy ecclesiastic whose letter we have here given, it is sufficiently evident that Mr. Stanley has his work cut out in executing the Belgian international programme. He will, apparently, have a land journey of three hundred miles before he can make use of the river, and he himself considers that it will take three years to carry out the project successfully. -----File: 013.png---

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JESUS SAT OVER AGAINST THE TREASURY!

It is an assurance full of sweet comfort, especially to the poor, that One sits over against the treasury who estimates at its full value the widow’s mite, knowing as He does out of what love and self-denial it comes. With a check for the last instalment of $100 from the estate of a poor widow, comes a brief sketch of a life that was beautiful and touching; a life that was full of struggle, and sorrow, and benefaction; which closed in blindness after 88 years. After a brief married life, she was left a widow with one child, in great poverty. She won a home with her needle, in which she lived for forty-two years, the last twenty-six of these entirely alone, as her daughter had been taken from her by death.

She lived her brave, self-forgetful, helpful life; active in all good words and works in church and neighborhood, economizing where her own wants were concerned, keeping guard even over the use of matches; liberal to the limit, not only of what she _had_, but of what she _could earn_, where the needs of others were known. Intelligently acquainted with the work of the Church, at home and abroad, from a wide reading of all our home and foreign missionary journals, she accepted it as the highest duty and most honored privilege of life to fill up, according to her measure in her own body, what remains behind of the sufferings of the divine Redeemer. Such gifts are as precious ointment poured upon the head of the Master, and He accepts them with the pledge that they shall not be lost. It were almost a sacrilege to write a name upon our pages by way of eulogy which the Master himself has pronounced with honor before His angels: “Thou hast been faithful over a very little.” “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

And He still sits over against the treasury, noting not alone the widow’s mite, but the larger gifts of those who give, if not abundantly, yet out, of their abundance.

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GRADATIONS, NATURAL AND HELPFUL.

Can civilization reach the state of nature, that state which God meant for it, until men know how to divide society equally, from top to bottom? I do not mean by this that there will ever come a time when two will not be more than one, when four will not be more than two, and when eight will not be more than four; I do not mean that we shall ever see the time when there will not be gradations in society from the top to the bottom--gradations of power, gradations of intelligence, gradations of wealth, gradations of refinement; but there is to be in society just that which exists in households--namely, a disposition, that runs from the top to the bottom, of love and sympathy; and when you have so stratified society, and organized it, and made every member of it, from the lowest to the highest, feel, “My brother above me is pulling me up higher,” we shall begin to realize our true relation, and fulfil our appointed duty one to another. When in society it is as it is on the sides of mountains, where men, being helped by those who are above them, turn round and help those who are below them, and go on a few steps and again are helped by those that are above them, and again help those that are below them, and so on until they reach the top, then gradation will not be an evil. Gradation is now an evil because there is a stratum of prosperity, and a thick slice of selfishness; then another stratum of prosperity, and a thicker slice of selfishness; and so on, selfishness growing thicker and thicker as you go toward the bottom. It has got to be broken up. The low places, the valleys, have got to be exalted, the mountains have got to be brought down, and men have got to mix and coalesce. In other words, the day has got to come when that simple sentence, a million times repeated, and a million times not understood, shall be fulfilled, and love to God and love to man shall be the law of the universe, and of universal conditions. We have got to come to it first or last.--_Christian Union._

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ITEMS FROM THE FIELD.

N. C., LASSITER’S MILLS.--“The church is greatly revived; six converts this week, and many more seeking the Lord.”

N. C., RALEIGH.--“The revival still goes on. There have been over 200 conversions since Mr. Brown left us, and many are still anxious. There are revival meetings in every colored church in the city every night without the least rivalry. We have twenty-two converts in our church already.”

S. C., CHARLESTON.--“Miss Wells has organized a Band of Hope with forty members, and there seems to be a good deal of enthusiasm. The church has fixed on the 3d Sunday in April as the day for a renewal of the covenant. The officers are now visiting every member, urging them to come forward to renew their church pledge.”

GA., MCINTOSH, LIBERTY CO.--Mr. Snelson writes: “Our communion season held yesterday was highly enjoyed by all. Six persons united with the church. Four were promising young men. Two of the candidates came out from Baptist families and were baptized by immersion.”

GA., WOODVILLE.--Mr. Sengstacke writes: “I have been preaching every night for six weeks. Our Sunday night meetings are crowded, and the unconverted people are becoming alarmed. I am now reaching the very class I have been longing after for some time--the young people. In February I baptized two young people, in March three, and last night one young woman professed conversion. Our Sunday night contributions are increasing. We are having the church repainted on the inside, and are trying to raise money for additional seats. We cannot seat the people. Last Sunday night many turned away, because we had no room.”

ALA., FLORENCE.--Easter-Sunday was observed in an impressive manner. The new church was full.

KY., BEREA.--Some persons have here recently professed faith in Christ, and others are inquiring.

THE FREEDMEN.

REV. JOS. E. ROY, D. D.,

FIELD SUPERINTENDENT, ATLANTA, GA.

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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

Lincoln Mission.

REV. SIMON P. SMITH, WASHINGTON.

A great deal has been said recently about the Lincoln Mission in the District of Columbia, and probably many would like to hear how the work is progressing.

There is a very large Sunday-school at this mission, and has been for several years. The teachers come from Dr. Rankin’s church, more than fifty of them, and manifest great enthusiasm. The school averages about three hundred scholars, and on some occasions, during the cold weather, we had more than four hundred.

The majority of these children come from the poorest and most illiterate colored families in the city. They have good training in the day-schools, but bad home influences. Their parents do not bring them up as they should, hence they are very rude. There is much need of a lady missionary here to teach the mothers of these children how to make homes happy.

It is said that there are about sixty thousand colored people in the city, and from the appearance of loiterers standing on the streets, there must be twenty thousand out of employment. Idleness is the mother of mischief, and what an opportunity such people have to enter into temptation! Some of the parents of the children who come to the Lincoln Mission are among these idlers.

These children are very poorly dressed; they scarcely have sufficient clothing to keep them warm. We hold prayer-meeting with them every Wednesday evening, and we find it very difficult to keep them away from the stove. This seems to indicate that they have but little fire at home. We are always glad to have it cold on Wednesday evenings, for, then, we are sure of a good audience; and we can tell them about the words of eternal life. Many desire to be prayed for, and we believe that some of them love the Lord Jesus.

General O. O. Howard was with us recently, and addressed the children. While he was speaking, his words were so full of sympathy and love that he held the attention of the rudest class of boys in the city for more than an hour. The sheep know the shepherd’s voice--even the lambs. We know that he loves our nation, because he built us this synagogue, and we love him because he loves us. He is, indeed, a true philanthropist.

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NORTH CAROLINA.

Wilmington.

In place of a report from our teachers at this place, we are happy to substitute a letter from a visitor from the North who happened to reach Wilmington in time for the examinations. We have yet to hear of the first visitor who has not become an enthusiastic friend of our work. We do not wish a general decline in health among our friends, but we do wish that all visitors to the South would make themselves acquainted with this work.

REPORT BY A VISITOR.