Part 2

“Dominie,” said a good elder who had just introduced himself to me one day, “I have come in on behalf of our church at ---- to see if you would not come out and give us a missionary talk. We ought to have sent in a collection to the Foreign Board months ago, but we neglected it, and now we have been talking it over and have made up our minds to do something handsome if you will come out there and give us a talk.”

“Well,” said I, “I shall be very glad to come and tell you something of our work just as soon as I can edge a day in between other engagements. But if you have made up your minds to do something handsome for the Board, why not do it at once and relieve their present pressing need, and I will come as soon as I can and give you the talk all the same.”

“O, no,” said he. “We can’t do that. We have made up our minds that we must give liberally, but we can start it easier if you come there and give us the talk first. You need not fear. We will give a good sum. That is settled, and it is mostly pledged. But you must come and talk to us first.”

I smiled and said to myself, “There is my horse in its third stage of training. That church is bending down its ear and entreating me to twist it, for it has made up its mind to go, only it requires to be wound up first.”

“Dominie,” said one of our earnest ministers to me one Wednesday, “we raised $1,000 for the Board last Sunday morning. It is more than usual, and we are all happy over it. Now we want you to come over the first Sunday of next month and give us a missionary address.”

“Good,” said I, “that church has got one stage further than my horse ever did in his training, for they start and do the work first and bend down the ear to be twisted afterwards.” Did it not give me an earnest joy to go and tell that church what the Lord’s war in India was, and how much they had helped it?

A Sunday-school superintendent came to me one day with smiling countenance, saying, “Our Sunday-school has raised $175 during the past year for missions, and we have determined to give it to the work in India. The year closed three months ago, and it is all in the hands of the treasurer, but we want you to come and give us a speech, and then it will be formally voted and sent at once to the Board. We have been waiting all this time because they told us at the rooms that you were engaged up till now. When can you come? The money is lying idle and we are waiting, and we know the Board needs the funds. So come as soon as you can.”

“Ah,” said I, “everything is ready, and the family are in the carriage, but they have to sit there half an hour because the horse boy is busy elsewhere, and the horse is holding down his ear all this time waiting for that particular horse boy to come and twist it.”

I was both pained and irresistibly amused by an incident that occurred not two hundred miles from New York, when the horse was in the first stage of training, and stoutly resisted allowing its ear to be touched.

The missionary was announced to speak in the church on a given Sunday, when the annual collection would be taken up. A good member of the church--the pastor says a sincere Christian--was very much put out about it; had heard enough of these old missionaries, and was not going to hear any more; did not believe in foreign missions--we had heathen enough at home.

The appointed Sunday came. Mr. A. and his family stayed away from church because they would not countenance the missionary address. They, therefore, missed the announcement which the pastor made, viz., that a telegram had been received that it was impossible for the missionary to be there. He would come next Sunday, and the annual collection would be deferred until then.

The following Sunday Mr. A. and family all filed into their pew, serene and happy in the thought that they had avoided the old missionary. As the organ was playing the voluntary, the pastor entered the pulpit from the vestry and a stranger with him. The pastor took the opening exercises and the second hymn was sung, when the pastor rose and said that Mr.----, the missionary, as announced last Sunday, would now address them.

Mr. A. was thunderstruck. He did not like to go out in the middle of a service, and so determined to sit it through. The missionary told his simple tale. The plates came in. The collection was unprecedentedly large. Mr. A.’s plethoric pocket-book had disgorged itself upon the plates, and no heartier worker for foreign missions is now found in that church. Mr. A. had tried his best to keep his ear from being twisted. Now it needs no twisting. He has learned to go and loves to go.

There was a church in our fold at home whose pastor was determined that it should not be wound up for foreign missions. He had succeeded, as he himself told me, in keeping all missionaries and secretaries and agents out of his pulpit during all the years of his pastorate. When the day came for collections for any of our Boards the fact was stated, the plates were passed, and those gave who wished. The collection, as a matter of course, under such a chill, was a minimum.

It required some of the very best and most wary and skillful manœuvring to get hold of the ear of that church; but it was obtained and twisted, and off it started on the trot in the missionary work, and since then it has annually held down its ear and begged to have it twisted, as it wanted to go more.

Scores of incidents which occurred in my own experiences among the churches in America, and which recalled my “horse winding,” come crowding into my mind, but I forbear.

For I remember the phalanx of noble churches that needed no such winding up, who were all alive and always on the alert; who gave regularly, generously, nobly; who, from the pastor, the head, to the humblest member, prayed from the lips, from the heart, _from the pocket_, “Thy Kingdom come.” They are always glad to get hold of the recruiting watchman, and ask him, “Watchman, what of the night?” but they never have to be wound up to start them giving.

God give us more and more of such churches and more such Christians and church members, so that no missionary or secretary need come to _beg_, but can come with radiant countenance and say, “Brethren, with the funds you are continually sending us for the work, we have done for the Master thus and thus.” Then in looking over our churches and our benevolent work we shall no longer have occasion to remember “the horse that had to be wound up.”

REV. JACOB CHAMBERLAIN, D.D.

Mudnapilly, India, April 30, 1879.

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ITEMS FROM THE FIELD.

ATHENS, ALA.--The Rev. Horace J. Taylor writes to us: “Work has commenced for the new building. We have the yard prepared, and are now engaged in making brick. I am treasurer and chairman of the building committee, and the building will be finished without at any time being in debt one cent, if it takes three years to finish it.”

ANNISTON, ALA.--The pastor of this church had written us asking for an organ to help in its services. Before the request was made public, one of our old and faithful friends wrote us that his resources had been so much curtailed that he could send us no gift in money, but that he had a cabinet organ which he would be glad to send us, if we could make it of service in our work. The organ went to Anniston. Rev. Mr. McEntosh, the pastor, writes: “I wish you could have seen the bright eyes of the children in the Sunday-school, and the admiration and surprise of the adults, as they listened with solemn and pleasing quietness to the sweet tones of the new organ, as it gave the heart-cheering notes of ‘One there is above all others.’ I cannot arrange words to express our thanks to you and to the many friends of the descendants of Ham.”

CHILDERSBURG, ALA.--Rev. Alfred Jones writes: “I have had my series of meetings; eight came to Christ, and five joined my church--four young men and one girl,--and I think they bid fair for the future. They all belong to my Sunday-school. I am holding my fort, and expect to have a good church. I am doing all that I can, and feel that the Lord is with me.”

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GENERAL NOTES.

The Freedmen.

--At a meeting held by the influential Friends in Philadelphia this week, to consider the condition of the negro refugees in Kansas, some new facts were brought to light. It appears from the statements made to them that the negroes are not all so needy as is supposed; some of them have money to buy land, and have bought it. The Freedmen’s Relief Association has bought 5,000 acres at $2.65 per acre, has made the first payment, and put some of the refugees to work on it. The second payment is not due for four years, and before that time they hope the blacks will have got Northern legs under them, so to speak, enough to be able to pay it themselves. Many of the older men and women, however, are not self-supporting, and never will be. The facts stated of their immediate need were so well authenticated, and the methods suggested for their help so practicable, that the Friends have taken up the matter in earnest.

--The Exodus is attracting increased attention among colored people in Virginia and North Carolina, though they are acting with more deliberation than is shown in Louisiana and Mississippi. A colony has been formed in Lynchburg to proceed West as soon as requisite funds can be collected. A colony in North Carolina has sent one of its members West to prospect.

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The Indians.

--THE PONCA INDIANS.--The Ponca Indians have always been peaceful and friendly. It is not known that any of their number ever killed a white man. In 1858 they released to the United States all their land, except about twenty square miles. In response to a clamor from the whites to get this from them a new treaty was made in 1866, by which the Poncas ceded 30,000 acres to the United States, and the latter _ceded_ to the Poncas certain townships. On this land they built houses, raised crops, and lived happily and prosperously, but the white man would not let them alone. In 1877 Indian Agent James Lawrence, Indian Inspector E. C. Kemble, and Rev. S. D. Hinman, an Episcopal Missionary among the Indians, came and insisted that the United States wanted them to leave and go to the Indian Territory. This they refused to do. A paper purporting to be a contract was drawn up by these men; the signature of a half breed by the name of Lone Chief, who does not belong to the tribe, was attached to it. This paper was forwarded to Washington, placed on file without examination, I suppose, and the United States Army was ordered to see that the tribe was removed. I have seen and examined a copy of that so-called contract, and it is simply infamous to call it a contract. It is nothing more than a record of what was said at a council, and has internal marks that the speeches from which it quotes were never made. Yet on the strength of that paper, with all the chiefs of the tribe protesting against the outrage, these people, 715 in number, were taken and carried to the Indian Territory, and left in a malarial country, without money and without shelter, to get along as best they might.

Since that time, about 300 of them have died. But that is not all of this unspeakable villainy. The household and farm effects, horses and ponies and cattle, the whole not worth less than $200,000, were taken and sold, and the proceeds put into the pockets of nobody knows whom. The Indians got none of it. One of the chiefs, Standing Bear, escaped from the Indian Territory and travelled back into Northern Nebraska, that he might find exemption from death. Here he was arrested for being off his reservation, and started as a prisoner for the Indian Territory. On his way through Omaha, Mr. T. H. Tibbles, of one of the Omaha papers, interviewed him, and so thoroughly were that gentleman’s sympathies stirred by the recital of the old man’s wrongs, that he made an effort to secure his release by a writ of habeas corpus. In this he succeeded, and Standing Bear was released.

There were two points in law, either one of which would release him. First, the Indian is a _person_, and the Constitution prohibits any distinction being made against any person born in this country, on account of race, color or previous condition; and, second, if we regard the Indian as a foreigner, still the right of expatriation is a principle recognized by our Government, and under the operation of that principle the prisoner could not be restrained from his liberty. The judge, therefore, ordered his discharge. This is the first instance in the history of the country where an Indian has secured standing in a United States court. It is proposed now to bring suit for the recovery of the Ponca reservation. In the opinion of lawyers who have carefully examined into the case, the suit can be successfully carried; and if this is done, the heaviest blow ever yet dealt against the unholy treatment the Indians have received from wicked men will be given, and the way opened by which justice may at length be done these terribly abused people. There is need that the friends of justice and humanity throughout the country take hold of this matter vigorously. The Indian ring, with millions of dollars to back them, will fight to the bitter end. It will cost money to put this thing through. Not less than four thousand dollars should be in the treasury at the start. Col. C. G. Hammond was appointed treasurer at a recent meeting in Chicago, and is already receiving remittances. A committee was appointed to raise funds in the city. Let Boston take hold of this matter, and all New England follow. Able lawyers are ready to give their services free. Let money be forthcoming to raise the issue at once and carry it forward from step to step till victory crown the effort.--SCROOBY, in the _Congregationalist_.

--The Interior Department has official information that white men have stolen about seven hundred horses from the Indians at the Red Cloud Agency, and run them across the Nebraska line, during the past few weeks. The State authorities are doing nothing to prevent similar raids upon the property of the Indians, and the military authorities, on account of the _posse comitatus_ law of last year, stand by without intercepting or pursuing the marauders, although the stolen horses are driven right past Camp Sheridan and Camp Robinson, on the way to market, or to the horse thieves’ corrals. The Indian Agent, having no armed force at his command, is powerless to stop the depredations. The Indians, notwithstanding their keen sense of injury, manifest no symptoms of insubordination, but remain entirely peaceable, and are beginning to devote themselves to farming. The Spotted Tail Indians, within the past two years, have lost several thousand horses in the same way. These facts reinforce our plea for extending the jurisdiction of the United States courts over the reservations. But, as it is, the Department must be impotent indeed to rest supinely without bringing this matter before the Cabinet, and ascertaining whether there be not power somewhere in this Government to secure justice to peaceable Indians when robbed and plundered.--_Advance._

--A report from Fort Ellis says that there are 400 Indians there starving, and their number is being daily added to. A band of 300 are reported within a few days’ march of Port Ellis, unable to proceed farther on account of weakness.

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THE FREEDMEN.

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

FIELD SUPERINTENDENT, ATLANTA, GA.

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WINNING BY PASSIVE VIRTUE.

Virtue, etymologically, has a masculine element, that of bravery, energy. Those qualities had a grand exhibition on both sides of our late civil contest. In the process of moral construction now following there is occasion for the exercise of the passive virtue of patient endurance. In the long run this courageous standing by moral convictions will come to a victory more resplendent than that of physical valor. He that ruleth his spirit is stronger than he that taketh a city.

Our missionary teachers and preachers have gone down South from year to year armed not with carnal weapons, but with spiritual--not under the impulse of martial prowess, but of high moral courage. This one thing they do: they give themselves exclusively to their work of lifting up the lowly and despised by the influences of education and of the Gospel. They do not go to engage in the political conflicts of that part of our country, thinking that a training in the higher elements of character and of citizenship will be the most effectual way of doing good to the body politic.

It is not necessary now, nor is it to our purpose, to detail the persecutions, the hardships, the social ostracism through which those cultivated and consecrated people, in this period, have had to pass. We, rather, take the more pleasant task of reporting how by their patient endurance in well-doing they have been winning the confidence, the favor, of the best people of the South. Each of our leading institutions in that region has the habit of holding an experience meeting upon the return of the students from their vacation work. Last year Fisk and Atlanta Universities sent out each one hundred and fifty young folks as teachers. These come into contact with a great number and a great variety of the white people. At those reunions they have reported from year to year an increasing amount of good feeling toward them and their work in behalf of their people. This is gratefully noted by their teachers. From our own observations the past year we are satisfied that there is a good deal of such latent approval which has not yet given itself expression in public. Our teachers and preachers for a long time have had complete immunity from personal violence, and largely from personal insult. As the quality of their work has become known in developing intelligence, industry, honesty, Christian character, they have received for it the highest approbation from an increasing number, especially from the Christian and the more substantial portion of the community. This has been accomplished by faithful service and quiet waiting.

In the matter of social recognition they still wait to win that fair recompense. In business and other relations on the street, and even, as in some places, at public gatherings, our gentlemen workers are receiving that meed of consideration. In one city, under the lead of one noble-hearted Christian man, that thin barrier has been broken down, and some of the best ladies of the place are on social terms with our teachers and the pastor’s wife. We are sorry to say that this is the only place where this social recognition has gone so far. At one other city, where some of our workers live in homes outside of the institutions, these have been treated with a measure of delicate and highly appreciated attention. The wife of one of our college presidents waited seven years for her first call from a citizen lady. Some of our elect lady teachers have been engaged ten or twelve years, at the same place, in their arduous and self-denying labor, without having had a single sisterly greeting. It seems pretty hard to hear these godly women, of the best that our churches can furnish, saying: “For so and so many years I have not been spoken to by a white Southern lady.” Our “Homes,” where these Christian people dwell, are avoided as though they were pest-houses. If the same people had been missionaries to Africa, they would be received with all deferential courtesy. If they were to go as missionaries to Natal or Calcutta or Constantinople, they would have for society the elite of foreign residents and their company would be courted.

But we will not complain. Our brethren and sisters, who are in these situations, make no ado about it. They bear this neglect meekly and hopefully, expecting that purity of life and devotion to their humane mission will yet win the tokens of regard which belong to them. One lady says that she expects that it will yet be counted an honor to her that she was the wife of the President of a Freedman’s College.

We grant that it may be hard to break the ice after so long delay. In a few cases there has been a disposition to make atonement by showing attention to the newly arrived workers, while the old ones are still overlooked. One fine, old Christian gentleman, who was prominent as a Methodist minister, broke his embarrassment, when calling late upon some of our missionaries, by stating thus: “I have heard that in some parts of the world the social custom prevails that whenever a new-comer arrives in a community, it is his prerogative to select from the citizens such as he and his would like to take into relations of social acquaintance, and to make the first call upon them.” The pleasantry served well in removing a barrier from between those who proved to be real friends.

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GEORGIA.

Dying Scenes--Pressing Work.

REV. J. H. H. SENGSTACKE, WOODVILLE.

A great deal of sickness is all around us and death has been very busy reaping. A few days ago we buried one of our faithful members. Sister Williams sent for me quite early last Monday morning. As soon as I arrived she took hold of my hand and said to her cousin, “Tell him what I have been saying, for I am too weak to converse.” She had spoken the following words: “I want to go and see Jesus. Come, Master, please come quickly. I am willing to go,” etc. As it was some time before I spoke, she said, “Tell Brother Sengstacke to speak quickly. I want to hear his voice once more.” I read and commented on the 22d chapter of Revelation, and offered prayer, after which I folded her hands and laid them on her breast, as I exclaimed with a loud voice, “Sister Williams, I hope we shall meet in heaven!” She tried to speak as she bowed her head, and with a smile upon her face, her spirit took its everlasting flight, “not as the quarry slave at night, scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust.” Tuesday her funeral took place from our little church, the procession being over a mile long. Wednesday morning an old Baptist woman sent for me quite early to “come quickly.” Arriving at her house I found her in a very low condition. She took hold of my hand as I knelt by her on the floor, and said: “Brother Sengstacke, I want you to take me in your charge. Do look after me and not let me want for prayers and the word of God. I know that my Redeemer lives,” etc. After singing, reading and prayer, I left her in the hands of Jesus. To-day we buried Sister Williams’ baby. This sleeping infant will rest upon a mother’s bosom, as they both lie in one grave.

On account of our growing school I fear that very little pastoral work and preaching can be done this winter, and yet two services a day are necessary: one in the morning for the young converts and members living several miles away, and the other at night for a large body of Christians of other denominations and unconverted people who do not come to us during the day. I am not gifted with words to picture to you the great need of this field and its bright promises of a successful future, provided that it be not neglected. I feel that the American Missionary Association has done a great deal for us, and this encourages me to sacrifice for the good cause. Yet how happy I should be if I had some help, or at least enough salary to employ one of the most advanced scholars to assist me in the day-school.

Our promising mission and Sunday-school at the Five Mile had to be given up, because it was impossible for me to look after so much work. Another denomination has started a mission at that place.