Part 1

VOL. XXXII. NO. 8.

THE

AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

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“To the Poor the Gospel is Preached.”

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AUGUST, 1878.

_CONTENTS_:

EDITORIAL.

OUR GRADUATES 225 PARAGRAPHS 225, 226 THE LAW OF RESTITUTION 226 S. S. AND M. M. CONCERT 227 ADDRESS AT THE BOSTON ANNIVERSARY 228 ITEMS FROM CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS 230 GENERAL NOTES: The Freedmen, Africa, The Indian 232, 233

THE FREEDMEN.

VIRGINIA—Religious Interest at Hampton: Rev. Richard Tolman 235

NORTH CAROLINA—Contrasts and Progress: Rev. D. D. Dodge 235

SOUTH CAROLINA—Brewer Normal School: J. D. Backenstose 237

GEORGIA—Atlanta University, by a Georgia Editor.—Lewis High School at Macon: Miss Annette Lynch.—A Bright Day in Athens: Mr. John McIntosh.—The Religious Work in Georgia: Rev. F. Markham 237-241

ALABAMA—Two Ordinations at Talladega: Rev. Geo. E. Hill.—Closing Days of Emerson Institute: Miss S. J. Irwin 242

MISSISSIPPI—The Year at Tougaloo University: Rev. G. Stanley Pope 243

LOUISIANA: “Here am I: Send Me, Send Me.”—From New Orleans to New York: Rev. W. S. Alexander 244

AFRICA.

THE MENDI MISSION—Converts Added to the New Church; Death of Mrs. Dr. James: Rev. Floyd Snelson 246

THE CHINESE.

ITEMS AND INCIDENTS: Rev. W. C. Pond 247

THE CHILDREN’S PAGE 249

RECEIPTS 250

CONSTITUTION 253

WORK, STATISTICS, WANTS, &c. 254

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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.

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A. Anderson, Printer, 23 to 27 Vandewater St.

_American Missionary Association_,

56 READE STREET, N. Y.

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PRESIDENT.

HON. E. S. TOBEY, Boston.

VICE PRESIDENTS.

Hon. F. D. PARISH, Ohio. Rev. JONATHAN BLANCHARD, Ill. Hon. E. D. HOLTON, Wis. Hon. WILLIAM CLAFLIN, Mass. Rev. STEPHEN THURSTON, D. D., Me. Rev. SAMUEL HARRIS, D. D., Ct. Rev. SILAS MCKEEN, D. D., Vt. WM. C. CHAPIN, Esq., R. I. Rev. W. T. EUSTIS, Mass. Hon. A. C. BARSTOW, R. I. Rev. THATCHER THAYER, D. D., R. I. Rev. RAY PALMER, D. D., N. Y. Rev. J. M. STURTEVANT, D. D., Ill. Rev. W. W. PATTON, D. D., D. C. Hon. SEYMOUR STRAIGHT, La. Rev. D. M. GRAHAM, D. D., Mich. HORACE HALLOCK, Esq., Mich. Rev. CYRUS W. WALLACE, D. D., N. H. Rev. EDWARD HAWES, Ct. DOUGLAS PUTNAM, Esq., Ohio. Hon. THADDEUS FAIRBANKS, Vt. SAMUEL D. PORTER, Esq., N. Y. Rev. M. M. G. DANA, D. D., Ct. Rev. H. W. BEECHER, N. Y. Gen. O. O. HOWARD, Oregon. Rev. EDWARD L. CLARK, N. Y. Rev. G. F. MAGOUN, D. D., Iowa. Col. C. G. HAMMOND, Ill. EDWARD SPAULDING, M. D., N. H. DAVID RIPLEY, Esq., N. J. Rev. WM. M. BARBOUR, D. D., Ct. Rev. W. L. GAGE, Ct. A. S. HATCH, Esq., N. Y. Rev. J. H. FAIRCHILD, D. D., Ohio Rev. H. A. STIMSON, Minn. Rev. J. W. STRONG, D. D., Minn. Rev. GEORGE THACHER, LL. D., Iowa. Rev. A. L. STONE, D. D., California. Rev. G. H. ATKINSON, D. D., Oregon. Rev. J. E. RANKIN, D. D., D. C. Rev. A. L. CHAPIN, D. D., Wis. S. D. SMITH, Esq., Mass. Rev. H. M. PARSONS, N. Y. PETER SMITH, Esq., Mass. Dea. JOHN WHITING, Mass. Rev. WM. PATTON, D. D., Ct. Hon. J. B. GRINNELL, Iowa. Rev. WM. T. CARR, Ct. Rev. HORACE WINSLOW, Ct. Sir PETER COATS, Scotland. Rev. HENRY ALLON, D. D., London, Eng. WM. E. WHITING, Esq., N. Y. J. M. PINKERTON, Esq., Mass.

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY.

REV. M. E. STRIEBY, _56 Reade Street, N. Y._

DISTRICT SECRETARIES.

REV. C. L. WOODWORTH, _Boston_. REV. G. D. PIKE, _New York_. REV. JAS. POWELL, _Chicago, Ill._

EDGAR KETCHUM, ESQ., _Treasurer, N. Y._ H. W. HUBBARD, ESQ., _Assistant Treasurer, N. Y._ REV. M. E. STRIEBY, _Recording Secretary_.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

ALONZO S. BALL, A. S. BARNES, EDWARD BEECHER, GEO. M. BOYNTON, WM. B. BROWN, CLINTON B. FISK, A. P. FOSTER, E. A. GRAVES, S. B. HALLIDAY, SAM’L HOLMES, S. S. JOCELYN, ANDREW LESTER, CHAS. L. MEAD, JOHN H. WASHBURN, G. B. WILLCOX.

COMMUNICATIONS

relating to the business of the Association may be addressed to either of the Secretaries as above.

DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

may be sent to H. W. Hubbard, 56 Reade Street, New York, or, when more convenient, to either of the branch offices, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., 112 West Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. Drafts or checks sent to Mr. Hubbard should be made payable to his order as _Assistant Treasurer_.

A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.

Correspondents are specially requested to place at the head of each letter the name of their Post Office, and the County and State in which it is located.

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THE

AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

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VOL. XXXII. AUGUST, 1878. No. 8.

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_American Missionary Association._

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OUR GRADUATES.

The colleges of the land have just now been sending forth their classes of graduates, equipped for further study and for new work. The young men and women have passed their examinations and taken their degrees and made their speeches in hundreds of academic halls. Parents and patrons have gathered—these to see the gain and growth of their children, and those to rejoice in the good which their generous benefactions have accomplished. It is the harvest time in the collegiate year; though the crops are not gathered into garners, but scattered and sown at once for other growths.

Our schools and colleges, too, have come to the end of another year. Examination and commencement times come to all impartially under the fifteenth amendment. We do not profess that the graduates of our seven colleges go out equipped, for depth and breadth of culture, on an equality with the sons of Yale or Harvard, but we do believe that they are fitted, and fitted well, for the work that is before them, and to be the leaders first of their own people. We do know that the religious impression made upon them is more general and more deep than in most Northern colleges, and that the influences under which they work and study foster and develop seriousness of purpose and that highest of all ambitions—the ambition to be useful. And so, in this our humbler work, we rejoice and take pride.

Our Normal-school work is still the largest and perhaps the most important that we have to do. And when we follow in imagination, and occasionally by visitation, and frequently by communication, the pupils of our schools out into the little hamlets and cross-roads all over the Southern States, where they are teaching the mysteries of the A, B, C, to the little children, and the larger ones, who come from humblest homes, where the dark-skinned father and mother look with wondering admiration at the child—their child—who can tell “round O” from “crooked S,” we are filled with the sense of the magnitude and importance of this work of laying foundations on which are to be built the towers of intelligence and virtue. And we pray devoutly that God may bless each one of those who are going forth this year to teach the children of a long neglected race.

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We see that Stanley’s story of his journey, “_Through the Dark Continent_,” is published by Sampson, Low & Co., London. We have not yet examined it, but are sure that it will be of great interest and instructiveness even to those who have read his vivid letters in the _Herald_ from time to time.

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It is with deep regret that we record the death of Mrs. Dr. JAMES of the Mendi Mission, of which the tidings is given in another column. The other members of the mission are all well, and the work progresses both materially and spiritually; and the brave band who went back to carry the light of life to the dark land of their fathers, have not lost heart or hope because one of their number has gone up higher.

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We made a very full and frank statement three months ago in regard to our finances. We recognized the fact that the receipts up to that time had been better than for the corresponding months of the previous year. It gave us peculiar pleasure to make that statement. And now, having spoken so, we wish to be heard on the other side. For it is equally true now, that the receipts have been diminishing, and for two months have been less than in the same months of the previous year. Friends, do not leave us in the lurch now, or spoil in the last two months of our fiscal year the improving record of the first ten. Our needs as your agents are very far beyond the means you furnish us.

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THE LAW OF RESTITUTION.

The law of restitution is one which the religion of the Old Testament enforces, and which the New Testament does not relax. It applies, as all laws do, most pressingly to individuals, but it reaches out, as all laws do, to nations and to races.

We have wronged the Negro, the Indian and the Chinaman—all three—and they therefore call on us, on our American nation, and on our English-speaking people, for redress, and for all that we can do to atone for past neglect—not only for past neglect, but injustice. Need I recite?

It was in 1620 that the first slave ship landed her human freight upon the shores of Virginia, and, from that time for more than two centuries the deadly traffic was continued, and men, women and children were bought and sold like animals. We need not say, “But this was a Southern crime; we and our fathers were not guilty.” For two-thirds of that time, the whole nation were alike in it. Northern ships and Northern capital carried on the importation later than that. Our Northern fathers gave it up largely, it is true, as it is charged, because what was for the time profitable in South Carolina and in Georgia, did not pay in Massachusetts and Vermont. It was not until 1825 that the slaves were set free in the State of New Jersey. We do not propose to depict the evils and the sins of slavery. Thank God, they are in the past, save as the consequences are upon us still.

I grant that good may have been done; that, in the end, it may be shown that elevation and enlightenment have followed from even this contact with a superior civilization and religion. God causes the wrath of man to praise Him; and even the sinful and the selfish acts of men are made the servants of His will. But that is hardly to be put to the credit of the thus indirect instruments of good. Rather, by what this good lacks of that which Christian motive and effort might have accomplished, we are guilty before God.

The horrors enacted and still enacting on the dark continent of Africa—for the slave trade still continues—the enforced ignorance and enforced vice of two centuries and a half, the engrafting of the vices of civilization upon those of heathendom, are the charges which this nation has to meet before the bar of God. It is a debt which never can be paid. Is there no claim on us from the American Negro?

How is it with the Indian? The original occupants of the territory now covered by these United States, and its possessors, as much as wandering hunters can be the owners of the soil, our fathers found them. What have they gained from us? The greed of the white man has pursued them from that day to this. From place to place they have been driven. Bargains have been broken and treaties violated, in almost every instance, first by the white man. The true history of almost every Indian war (so called) has been begun by the violence or provoked by the faithlessness of the white man. It was true of the Modoc, the Sitting Bull and the Nez Percès wars, and that evidently.

What have we given the red man? Whisky and powder; the vices of civilization, and the means of war. A few missionaries have been among them, devoting themselves, with heroic self-denial, to the work of educating and elevating them, and, wherever the tribes among which they have labored have been far enough away to escape the too frequent trader and the settler, they have been teachable, have come to occupy farms, and learned to labor and to pray.

Perhaps the halting and uncertain policy of the government has been its worst crime toward them for these last thirty years. And now, even under the peace policy, which has done very much for them, their disabilities are of the greatest.

How can you expect to rouse ambitions for industry and intelligence among men who are not allowed to hold a title to the farms they have cleared, or the houses they have built, and who may be ordered, at the will of the government (which is often only the will of envious neighbors), to a new Reservation? How can you expect to Christianize a man, whose wrongs are unavenged, and who is hunted by an army if he avenges them himself? And yet, of the less than 300,000 Indians, over 40,000 can read, 12,000 attended school last year, 27,000 are church members. The government spent about one dollar a head in their education last year. It has cost, for forty years, about forty dollars a head—$12,000,000 annually—to fight them. Do we owe them anything?

And the Chinaman? He is not a very large factor yet in our population. He owes the opium habit in some degree, at least, to the exigencies of English commerce. His account with this country has not been running very long yet. But it will be all we can do, if we do our utmost to Christianize him, to keep the account current balanced.

He is met on the Pacific Coast (where his industry has already been of great value) with the cry, “Away with him back to China!” It has just been decided that he, being neither white nor black, cannot become a citizen in California.

A few Christian men and women have opened schools to teach John the English alphabet; the New Testament has been his reading book. Already some 300 are converted men, and members of the churches, and have formed Christian associations, in which they live in Christian ways.

And the question is: Shall we run in debt to the Chinaman, as we have to the Negro and the Indian? Would it not be well to keep in mind the Scripture saying now—“Owe no man anything, but to love one another”?

If wrongs emphasize claims, surely the three races of men in our own land have a most convincing claim upon the people of the United States. Who will respond to it, if the Christian people fail to hear and heed it?

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S. S. AND M. M. CONCERT.

REV. J. W. CHICKERING, D. D., BOSTON, MASS.

These numerous initials form the shortest mode of designating an interesting, if not unique, meeting I had the pleasure of attending yesterday, in the Congregational Church at Amesbury, Mass., Rev. Pliny S. Boyd, pastor.

They stand for “Sabbath-school and Missionary Monthly Concert”; the plan being to let the scholars do the reporting and the singing, with prayers from several teachers, and remarks from the superintendent, pastor and a visiting brother.

The triple work of the American Missionary Association was assigned for this occasion; and it was encouraging for the future of benevolent effort in the church, to see how promptly class after class repeated the answers allotted them.

Each will probably remember through life his or her part in the programme; and, from the whole, a very clear outline was furnished to the assembly of the numbers, needs, and capabilities of the Indians, Mongolians and Negroes within our borders.

I was happy to be able to confirm and illustrate some of those statements, and to urge upon that intelligent church, and the flourishing Sabbath-school, from which seventy were received into communion last year, the pressing, may we not say paramount? importance of that department of missionary effort.

If the “four millions” are suffered to live in vice and ignorance, and the superstition which is already seeking to overshadow them like the old fetichism of their ancestors, the American Church—yes, the nation—will find too late what a mistake they have made.

Ten thousand such “Monthly Concerts” as this would go far in the direction of instructing the children and awaking their parents, respecting one of the great duties of the hour. Why not let it be tried?

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ADDRESS AT THE BOSTON ANNIVERSARY.

BY REV. GEORGE R. MERRILL, BIDDEFORD, ME.

I am to suggest three considerations which give _permanent_ importance to our work among the despised races. The evangelization of six millions of people, one-seventh of our entire population, cannot be safely left to the enthusiasm aroused by special pleas, but must be grounded in such truth as shall make its prosecution a Christian and patriotic duty of supreme and abiding urgency.

I.—The Test of our Christianity.

If you please, let us call upon this platform four representative men. The first shall be of Anglo-Saxon lineage, the inheritor by birth of our ripe Christian civilization, and bearing upon him the marks of our characteristic civilized vices,—a man self sufficient, profane, intemperate and dishonest. Next him place an Indian, in all the brutality, sottishness and despair to which our guardianship of two centuries has brought him. The next is a Freedman, touched with his ancient race-superstitions, and possessed by the usual vices of a subject people. Last in the group set a Chinaman, just from the Joss House and the opium den.

Now, do you, who represent the Christianity of the nineteenth century, stand before them with the gospel in your hands. Man of God, look upon these slaves of sin! Nations and languages, look on this man of God! and do you tell us what Christianity can do for these. What can it do for this white man? Triumphantly, you answer, “It can save him; can break down his self-sufficiency and pride, redeem him from his cups, make him an honest man, and, if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” What can it do for the Indian? “It can save him; make him sober and industrious, a servant of God.” What for this Negro? “It can save him, lift him out of his race-corruptions, and save him to God and man.” And what for this Chinaman? “The same. It can make him a man, reverent and devout to God, and useful to his fellows. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to Mongol, Negro and Caucasian, and no barriers of race avail to hinder it.” Is this all? Has your gospel nothing more that it can do for this company? Then is it not the true and full gospel! That full gospel at the first gained wondrous victories. The proud pharisee and the despised publican, they of Cæsar’s household and the bond-slave—Jew and Gentile alike—came under its power. The Christianity of that day, the full gospel, not only saved them as individuals, made each one an heir of eternal life, but also fused and bound them into a true brotherhood.

The Christianity of the nineteenth century is on trial as to whether it can do this. Its power to redeem the individual has been grandly illustrated before our eyes, and now the other question comes forward. Its answer will have many forms indeed. One of them is the attitude that Christian capital and Christian labor take to each other. But its marked test, the most illustrious triumph or conspicuous failure, is to be here among the despised races, whose representatives are before us. God has reserved for American Christianity this grand opportunity to show the world, that after eighteen centuries the gospel is shorn of none of its honor—that under its inspirations we are able to bind these despised races, regenerated and lifted up, into a true fellowship with ourselves. The American Missionary Association is your representative and servant to this end, and worthy such support as the gospel itself should receive.

II.—The Test of our National Life.

Mr. Matthew Arnold, in a recent essay, uses these words: “When we talk of man’s advance towards his full humanity, we think of an advance not along one line only, but several. The Hebrew race was pre-eminent on one great line. The Hellenic race was pre-eminent on another line.”

Taking for truth the conception involved in these words, but with a Christian interpretation, it follows that a true Christian patriotism will not have respect to the permanence of party or the development of resources; these are means to its nobler ends.

It will see in all history the developing thought of God, and in its own history a particular increment of that thought.

These eighteen centuries, and those that are to follow, are the development of Christianity, and that development covers three zones, which circle and complete the globe—God’s relation to man, man’s relation to God, and man’s relation to man. During the five centuries nearest Christ, about the centres of Alexandria and Constantinople, influences rose and were moulded whose resultant was that view of God in his relation to man which is the common property of Christendom. For eleven centuries following, Divine Providence was shaping especially under the impulse of the Reformation, the confession of the scriptural relation of man to God. Then, with the seventeenth century, history passed into the third zone, in which is to be illustrated the Divine idea of man’s relation to man, which is, that the race is an organic brotherhood, because having one father, God, and one elder brother, Jesus Christ.

From the first planting at Plymouth, God has been shaping our national experiences to draw the confession from us. Little by little the problem has grown upon us, as we were able to meet it. Two centuries and more were required to illustrate, through us, how the sublime socialism of the New Testament, could blend together in one brotherhood, representatives of all the white and dominant races of the world. And it is done, though not perfectly, indeed. English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dane, German and Russ—all over our land—are companies of them cemented into the equal brotherhood of a Christian Church and a Christian State. And now the deeper conditions of the problem are upon us. Within our borders are three races, neither white nor dominant. They are men; the Saviour died for them; the Holy Spirit calls them, one by one, into membership in the kingdom of God; they are our brothers by New Testament law. We are to make them organically one with us in a Christian state. Here, in the despised races, is the _test of our national life_.

The American Missionary Association appeals to you, not only as Christian men in the name of the Christianity that is on trial as to its social power, but as American men in the name of God’s thought for the land, which it is working out as to the Negro, the Chinaman and the Indian. It says, “One is our Master, even Christ, and all we are brethren.”