Part 2

The preparation at Stamford was complete. ALL, from the excellent pastor up to the oldest deacon, and down to the youngest child, took part. The able and enthusiastic superintendent, Mr. Junius Smith, is a born missionary, and he led his Sunday-school host into the work with great earnestness. The church was filled at an early hour of the evening, and when the great throng sung that sweetest of all Jubilee Songs, and one which has stirred the hearts of the best people on two continents, “Steal away to Jesus,” that wonderful, weird, plaintive melody fell upon my ears with _almost_ the effect with which the Jubilee Singers have a thousand times rendered it with their matchless voices and marvellous power. Hon. Oliver Hoyt, one of Connecticut’s wisest and best senators, impressively invoked the Divine blessing. The facts in relation to the organization, successful progress and grand achievements for the Master of the American Missionary Association were admirably brought out by the tersely-prepared exercises. The pastor, superintendent, teachers and scholars all had their part and _did well._ Rev. G. D. Pike, whose head and heart are crammed full of well-devised plans for the up-lifting of the Freedmen, and through the uplifted Freedmen of America the redemption of Africa, made one of his most forcible pleas in behalf of the Association. The writer of this imperfect sketch followed with an exhortation in his Methodist way. The collection was taken and a happy day closed.

The Sunday-school Jubilee Concert exercise, if generally used, will be instrumental in _fixing facts_ in the minds of young and old. I bespeak for it the examination of Sunday-school superintendents, and I most heartily bespeak the generous consideration of all good people in behalf of the American Missionary Association.

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THE WILDERNESS AND THE SOUTH COUNTRY.

A Discourse on the Duty of the American Churches to the Despised and Outcast Races.

PREACHED IN THE INTEREST OF THE A. M. A. TO THE 1ST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, JACKSONVILLE, ILL., BY THE PASTOR, REV. E. CORWIN, D. D., DEC. 22, 1878.

Joshua xii. 8: “In the mountains and in the valleys, and in the plains and in the springs, and in the wilderness and in the south country.”

We owe nobody an apology for following the example of the Great Teacher in the latitude and longitude he allowed to himself in the use of Old Testament texts. I honor by following a Divine example when I use this passage from Hebrew history as marvellously suggestive of our broader heritage and of our responsibilities as a people coming into fuller possession of a goodly land; in the mountains and valleys of the Atlantic and Pacific seaboard; in the vast plains of the interior; in the springs and great river sources of the lake region; in the wide reaches of wilderness, comparatively worthless but for their exhaustless resources of mineral wealth; and last, but not least, in the sunny south country.

If, with emotions of patriotic pride, Joshua, the great captain, could speak of the wide extent and the varied resources of that goodly land, into the possession of which he was leading the descendants of a whole nation of fugitive slaves, how much more, with devout gratitude and patriotic pride, may we dwell upon _the wonderful resources and the wide reaches_ of a free empire in which there are forty million sovereigns, and on whose territory you might place, in patch-work, three hundred and twenty-eight states as large as Palestine, and have scraps enough left over to cover the two dwarf sisters of the Union—Delaware and Rhode Island! Corresponding most nearly in area with Maryland, five Palestines might find comfortable quarters in the single State of Illinois; yet so wonderful was the fertility of that land, now comparatively barren and desolate, that it at one time sustained a population so dense that if the vast territory of the United States were thus thickly settled, it should have not merely forty millions of inhabitants, but one thousand one hundred and forty millions. Who doubts that such a population might be sustained on the fat valleys of the interior and the plantations of the south country, even though the waste places of the wilderness were left out of the account as utterly unfit for the dwelling-places of men? And, as though this vast heritage of ours were not enough for a free and industrious people, God has over many portions of the land practically doubled its area; piling its resources of wealth layer upon layer; rivaling and redoubling the riches of the surface soil by the exhaustless stores of coal, iron and copper, lead, silver and gold, treasured up for the use of many generations; for there is the hiding of His power who is the bountiful God of Providence.

But my purpose is only so far to hint at the resources of this most favored of lands, as to make the marvellous facts a basis for the proposition that ability is one measure of our responsibility for the hearty and liberal doing of what we can for the highest development of this whole land. And let us never forget that a great, civilized and Christian State is made and measured, not by its physical resources merely, not by its accumulated material wealth, but chiefly by the mental and moral stature of its inhabitants. _The best products and the richest resources of any State are in its crop of men._ If these, even on a sterile soil and under frowning skies, are liberal, large-hearted, industrious, patriotic and pious, they make of the desert a paradise, and amid the clefts of the rocks there may be rootage for great ideas. If everywhere, for a single generation, such a populace could have and hold possession of this planet, the old alien orb would shine so that the shortest-sighted angel could see it without a telescope, and the inhabitants of other worlds might intelligently covet it as a dwelling-place for the society which it would afford. But wealth without good society is worthless. That city might be a hell upon earth in which there were no churches and schools, though every man had a gold mine in one corner of his cellar and a diamond mine in another. Mexico, with its mountains streaked with silver, has but few attractions as the family residence of a man who cares to live out more than half his days, or who esteems it no luxury to live among an ignorant, bigoted and revengeful people. California to-day, with all its discovered treasures, could not be so safe or so attractive a place of residence as it was before those discoveries, but for the better class of enterprising, intelligent, honest, law-abiding citizens, who have come into possession of that land. Nor are political institutions, however desirable, of much practical worth, except as they are worked by men of moral principle, not for the selfish advantage of the few, but for the protection and enriching of all.

In considering _the claims of the American Missionary Association_ to our prayerful interest and our liberal benefactions, these preliminary thoughts have practical force as applied to moral science; for it is distinctively the aim of this Association to lift society as a whole by lifting at the lower stratum. Its work is confessedly not with the most promising material, out of which the most may be made in the shortest time, but with the most degraded, unpromising and despised of the outcast races. _This is the great alchemist among our charities; seeking to transmute the baser metals into gold._ For the transmuting of character the mission of Christ was a witness to the universe that the last might be first, and that the lowest might be lifted to the highest position of honor and glory, as the result of the Divine condescension, the deep down-reaching love of the Son of God. He came not to honor the lordly, but to lift up the lowly. For gaining influence and establishing his kingdom he sought out not the ruling classes; but, himself despised and rejected of men, he knew how to condescend to men of low estate. He dispensed his largest blessings to the despised and the outcasts, who, conscious of their vileness, felt their need of salvation. Not unfaithful to the self-satisfied Scribes and Pharisees, he came especially to seek and to save those who felt themselves to be lost sheep of the house of Israel. Read the record anew, with this thought in mind, and see if his special aim was not to seek and save the lost, in the sense of the despised and abandoned, who were, perhaps, without hope for themselves, and whose case might have been regarded as desperate by others.

We are not the true followers of Christ if we are wanting in the Christ-like spirit, and seek not to save the despised and outcast races who dwelt in the wilderness and in the south country. Do you tell me, _as an excuse for neglecting_ them, that the Indians, instead of being the noble red men, such as the sickly sentimental fancy of the poet and the moralist too often paint them, are, for the most part, ignorant and vile, dirty and degraded, lazy, mean, treacherous and revengeful? My familiarity with the better class of frontiersmen prepares me candidly to admit it all as a statement of fact. But I draw from those facts a very different conclusion than that they are not worth saving. All the more do they need to be saved. I might, without encroaching upon the regions of romance, tell, by the hour, tales of horror, as they have been related to me by reliable witnesses, that would make the blood fairly curdle in your veins. And if I had the gift of eloquence I might so vividly depict those horrors that you would find yourselves, right here in the house of God, clenching your fist and threatening vengeance upon wretches so base, upon savages so merciless, upon mockeries of manhood so gross and beastly.

But let me remind you that an intelligent Indian might with more eloquent tongue inveigh against the crimes of those who profess to be better than savages. He might truthfully speak of the perfidy of those who break the faith of treaties almost before the ink is dry in which the plausible yet one-sided contract is written. He might with indignant sneer point to the great army of vagrants claiming better blood, as filthy and vile, as dangerous and degraded as the worst savages were ever charged with being. But in saying all this he has not made out his case. No criminal can make even a plausible defence in any court by the plea that he is no worse than the worst men he can find in society; though, somehow, quite respectable sinners do seem to gain some comfort from this sort of scavenger’s logic.

It is absurd to suppose that ignorant and brutal savages should be so much better than civilized men that there should not be found in every tribe, as there are with us in every community, a dangerous class, selfish enough to plunder and murder those who have never wronged them, and desperate enough to take any risk and to commit any crime. It were most surprising if it were not so. All the more, then, I insist upon their need of saving. With all the stronger emphasis I urge that this nation cannot afford, on its undefended borders, any more than it can afford in its strong centres of population and of well organized police, to be indifferent to the needless multiplying of such a class. Has our civilization much to boast of if it admits that there is no better way for forty millions of people to deal with four hundred thousand Indians than to exterminate them? If it were not true, as it is, that it costs more to kill them than to civilize, convert and by moral forces control them, what less than savages are we if we adopt the creed of the worst class of frontiersmen as the creed of the churches; that the best thing we can do with the savage is to kill him; and that there are no good Indians but dead ones?

Let us be intelligent enough to know, and candid enough to confess, that in estimating their possibilities of social, industrial and moral development, we have taken too much account of the exceptional cases in which they have made trouble, and not enough of the many tribes that, for long years, have lived in peace, grown thrifty, maintained self-control, cared for the education of their children, and honored their profession of religion. What this and kindred associations have successfully achieved among the Indians alone, entitles them to the gratitude of the nation, and the liberal support of all who have faith in the Christ-like work of saving the lost.

I have not time to speak at length of the work of the Association among the Asiatic immigrants upon the Pacific coast. Many of you know how honestly and earnestly I contend that in many respects this serf population that is sweeping in upon our Western border is a most undesirable element, morally, socially and politically. But by as much as they are, in the mass, vile and degraded, the worst sort of stuff out of which to make American citizens, by so much the more are we bound not to outdo them in violence that would dishonor a savage, and in intolerance and prejudice that is worse than heathenish. Here, too, the argument of this discourse finds its fullest illustration. It is the strongest proof of the bounty of our religion that its brightest trophies are secured and its grandest victories achieved upon the most hopeless fields, and in saving the very chief of sinners.

But the work of the Association among the Aborigines of the wilderness is as nothing to their more important mission, and their more signal success among _the colored people of the south country_. Here is a population vastly more numerous and more dangerous if left in ignorance; for, wisely or unwisely, they have been invested with the right, and in some places they freely exercise the power to vote. Admit, now, all that may be said of the utter unfitness of the great majority of them to exercise this privilege of freemen. Yet since, beyond recall, they have the right, and in some way must be counted as a very important factor in the forces that are to shape our destiny, we can no more afford to let them remain in ignorance, than we can afford to let the same class grow up in ignorance and vice among us, with so little sense of their responsibilities, and with so little self-respect as citizens, that they can be bought like cattle by the highest bidder. The more debased, indolent and ignorant they are, the greater the danger to our free institutions, and the stronger the motive for seeking to elevate, educate and save them. They constitute more than one-tenth of our population. If directly or indirectly we were accessory to the placing of so dangerous a weapon in their hands—a weapon, as respects their own interests, liable to kick back—we are bound to help fit them so to exercise the right that they shall not be the ignorant tools of corrupt and crafty men in either party as ignorant and unprincipled as themselves. This the A. M. A. is striving wisely to do in accord with the sentiments and sympathies of many of the former slave-owners, who in good faith accept the situation, and sincerely desire the temporal and spiritual well-being of the colored people.

But its highest aim and ours is such a spiritual elevation of the colored people as shall carry all the most salutary influences into their social, political and domestic life. Our honest and intelligent aim is to lift them out of their degradation by bringing them to Christ. Our work among them is with no sectarian, as it is with no partisan political purpose. We propose to help make them intelligent and worthy Christian people. There our responsibility ceases. As to parties and sects, they must learn wisely to choose for themselves.

Whatever the shading of their creed, we do care that they should be sincere in their love to God, close in their following of Christ, and honest in all their dealings with their fellow-men. We do care that their moral training shall be such that their religion shall mean not emotion merely, but character; not noise and bodily exercise, which profiteth little, but practical godliness, which leads one to earn an honest living for himself and his household, and suffers the neighbor’s chickens unmolested to roost low; not a religion of the lips and the tongue alone, but of the head and the heart controlling the life.

Nowhere is a mere profession of godliness of much account, if virtues tried and true are not the proofs of an intelligent love and a sincere devotion. No creed can be accepted as a substitute for character. Christ must be wrought into the life or we are not true Christians, and the more completely self-deceived we are, the greater will be our surprise, when, by and by, he who is infallible in his judgment shall say, “I never knew you.” The cross worn upon the neck, or perched upon the steeple-tops, or set up at every crossing, is at best a mocking reminder of our impiety; if ever so loudly we profess to be saints, and yet live as though our religion were a polite theory with which to compliment our Maker, and to befool our fellow men, and not a thing of practical worth, to help one stand fire in the conflicts of temptation and in the furnace of affliction. Such a genuine religion, warranted to keep in any climate, is wanted everywhere alike; in the East and the West, the North and the South country. The lofty and the lowly, the honored and the despised, the respectable and the degraded, we and everybody, need it. It is the only kind worth propagating. For it, and it alone, of all the world’s religions, has vital force and saving power enfolded in every root-fibre of doctrine, and in every seed-germ of truth.

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ITEMS FROM THE FIELD.

GREENWOOD, S. C.—School fuller than ever before; boarding-school overcrowded. Mr. Backenstose is compelled to make arrangements in neighboring families for students.

ORANGEBURG, S. C.—“Our school has 196 pupils enrolled. We have a large normal class. Six are teachers now. We have some who have begun in music, and this week we have resolved to form a choir. Can you help us with a musical instrument? _We greatly need_ one for the church. Our organ has been injured by taking it back and forth to church.”

MACON, GA.—Pastor Lathrop has printed on his “Gospel Press,” (given him while a Home Missionary in Wisconsin by a lady at the East), a stirring pastoral address. It includes a warm greeting, notice of services and invitations thereto; also of the Lewis High School and the Sunday-school, enforced by appropriate Scripture. We quote one paragraph:

“No sectarian gospel will be taught from this pulpit. The pastor heartily believes, and endeavors to preach, the broad, liberal, helpful Gospel of ‘peace on earth, good-will toward men,’ through our Lord Jesus Christ. This gospel of the ‘Prince of Peace’ does not agree with quarreling among Christians, or strifes between churches. ‘If My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight,’ said the Master. Our great aim will be to show how this glorious gospel and this blessed Jesus will help _every_ needy heart to bear _all_ its burdens; how every soul may be freed from the bondage of sin, and filled with love, meekness, temperance, patience, purity, righteousness, and joy, ‘which the world knows not, neither can give nor take away.’”

TALLADEGA, ALA.—Some recent conversions and cases of special interest in religious things are reported in the college. One student, at least, has declared his desire to go to Africa some day, if the Lord shall open the way.

SELMA, ALA.—A happy work of grace is reported from the Burrell school, resulting in a considerable number of conversions.

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GENERAL NOTES.

The Freedmen.

—Senator Windom has introduced a bill providing for the colonization and distribution of the colored people of the Southern States in new States and Territories as they may select. Some interest and sympathy with the project has been expressed by prominent colored men, though we think the great majority of the most intelligent of them are persuaded that by patience and industry they can conquer peace and a place for themselves anywhere.

—Henry M. Stanley, the explorer, was present at the recent meeting of the Conference on the Civilization of Africa, and said that he would lead the Belgian Exploring Expedition, which is soon to start for Africa.

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The Indians.

—The Board of Indian Commissioners held its regular yearly meeting for the preparation of its annual report in Washington last week. Besides the members of the Board there were representatives of the religious bodies interested in the management of Indian affairs through their missionary operations among the different tribes, and also because many of the Indian agents are appointed on their recommendation. From the tenth annual report of the Board to the President, it appears that more than one-half of the Indians have discarded the blanket and donned a civilized garb; that about one-half have moved out of their lodges and wigwams into houses, the number of which has increased nearly threefold in ten years; that the number of pupils in Indian schools has more than doubled; that nearly one-sixth of the Indian population can read; that the number of acres of land cultivated by the Indians is about five times as great as ten years ago; that the production of wheat has increased nearly fivefold, of oats and barley nearly fourfold, and of hay nearly ninefold; and that the Indians own about three times as many horses and mules, six times at many cattle, seven times as many swine and about seventy-five times as many sheep as they did ten years ago. The Board remarks: “This exhibit of results is certainly encouraging, and presents a strong argument against any radical change of policy.” The Conference urge three measures upon the President and Congress: 1. That courts of law be established on Indian reservations, with jurisdiction in all cases where both parties are Indians. 2. That common schools be provided for Indians the same as for white children, under some regular system. 3. That the homestead law be so modified that an Indian may select his homestead within the limits of the reservation to which he belongs.

—The joint committee, consisting of three Senators and five Representatives, to whom the question of the transfer of the Indians to the War Department was submitted, being equally divided, have made two reports. Congressional experts have been trying to decide which of the two should have precedence as a _quasi_ majority report.

Senator McCreery and Representatives Scales, Hooker and Boone favor the transfer. Their report claims that the present system actually prevailed even before (in 1848) the Indians were given in care of the Interior Department, as the War Department neither appointed nor supervised the agents, but only received their reports. All past evils are therefore traceable to this system. The peace policy in 1868 was a confession of its failure. The army control will be better, because of the high character of army officers, and the system of accountability to which they are subject, because it will cost less money and avoid wars.