Part 6

These are sharp words, and their rebuke is doubtless needed. It is probably not important to stop the Negro exodus. For both the Negro and the white race it is needful that large numbers be removed from the scenes of their old servitude. The Negro will rise faster and will more readily be the connecting and reconciling link between two antagonistic forms of civilization. This is but a stage in those wilderness wanderings by which he is being fitted to perform his part in the drama of the world’s renewing. In Kansas and everywhere he must have chance to develop according to what is in him, and there need be no fear that he will not act his part well.

This theme suggests many practical matters concerning the importance and the methods of home evangelization. These cannot be discussed in this paper; but I wish to raise again the question asked by large numbers of our most sagacious men, viz.: whether, in view of what seem to be vast providential designs concerning the inhabitants of this continent, our home work is not suffering comparative neglect? This is my deliberate conviction. For the colored man, at least, we are doing but a fraction of what it would be profitable to do. He is very far as yet from entering into his rest, and for long years yet we are to share with him “the pangs of transformation.”

“Before the joy of peace must come The pains of purifying. God give us grace, Each in his place, To bear his lot, And murmuring not, Endure, and wait, and labor.”

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CHURCH WORK IN THE SOUTH.

BY REV. C. L. WOODWORTH.

The subject before us is “Church Work in the South.” This work, though it seems to be fundamental to every missionary organization, has yet been sharply challenged both as to its propriety and expediency. Put thus on the defensive, it may be well to recur to first principles, in order to satisfy ourselves that the church is the _unit idea_ in all Christian labor. And to unfold that idea in the conversion of men, and to make it potential in society, through the preaching of the Gospel and the sanctified lives of believers, is the end of the family, of the school, and of all the forces which go to civilize and uplift communities. That work which does not aim at the church as its end, however refining and ennobling it may be in itself, fails, utterly and infinitely, to realize the ideal of the New Testament, or the ideals of history as seen in the progress of Christ’s kingdom in the earth. When, therefore, a society like the one whose anniversary we are now celebrating presents itself for our suffrage and our support, it becomes our privilege, and perhaps our duty, to question its mission and its right to live. Should it appear that secular education is the object mainly aimed at, then we would say it has just as much right to live as there is reason for the work it is doing. But if, on the other hand, it should appear that the regeneration of men, and the founding of pure and intelligent churches, is its central thought and aim, and that all other instruments in its hands are but tributary to this, then we would say it has just as much right to live as there is force and authority in the last command of our ascended Lord. This will become evident if we examine:

(1.) The _Commission_ under which a society like this does its work. The warrant for a missionary society, as for all missionary effort, is found in the words of our Saviour to his disciples, just before he went up on high: “All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth; go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Analyze these words, as repeated by three evangelists, and, we submit, they leave upon the mind the single, distinct impression that the work he commissioned his disciples to do was to teach or to preach Christ; was to call to repentance, and show how sin could be atoned and remitted through the blood of the Crucified. That message is given to this society—the most important ever committed to men; and to proclaim it freely and fully, all its resources of men and of money, of learning and of influence, should be put under contribution. This is the work than which nothing greater nor grander can be conceived.

(2.) This will further appear if we study the _model_ of missionary work, which is presented to us in apostolic labor and example. If the _words_ of our Saviour define the work to be done, the example of the Apostles defines and illustrates the _manner_ in which it should be done. And beginning at Jerusalem, we find that the Apostles and the company of the believers gave themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. When the endowment of power had come, they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. They were now divinely empowered and set apart for their work. The Holy Ghost is now their inspirer and guide, and when the multitude came running together to see what this strange thing could mean, Peter, with the eleven, stood up and delivered that searching discourse which went with convincing and converting power to the hearts of 3,000 men.

Indeed, what is the Acts of the Apostles but a record of missionary operations conducted by inspired men, who were specially empowered and guided by the Holy Ghost, in which the preaching of Christ was the all-absorbing theme? Peter and James among the Apostles, and Philip and Stephen among the deacons, were illustrious preachers in their day, and models of devotion to the single purpose of winning men to Christ. Converts were multiplied, churches organized, and believers made to feel that the _one supreme_ work was to teach or to preach Christ. The movement began on the day of Pentecost by preaching Christ, and on that line it continued its triumphant way while the Apostles lived. They neither sought nor asked for anything more. They were content to wield the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. And so they preached Christ, “to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which were saved, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

(3.) If we needed other evidence that this line of work is the true one, we have it in the historical _examples of other successful missionary work_ since the time of the Apostles. We only need to examine those great religious movements in history which not only lifted the Church, but started the human race forward on higher courses of thought and life, to satisfy ourselves that the Gospel was the quickening power, and furnished the motive and impulse to the astonishing results which followed. A single text ringing in the ear of the monk as he slowly and wearily climbed Pilate’s stairs at Rome, on his knees, “The just shall live by faith,” explains the Reformation. That was the key-note to all the preaching and writing of Luther and the Reformers. That truth lifted and saved men; that truth organized the free thought and the Protestant churches of Germany, and made the Reformation a success.

The Puritan movement in England, to some extent contemporaneous with that in Germany, proceeded on the same principles. Men mighty in the Scriptures were raised up to preach the word. They relied on nothing but the simple Gospel of Christ. All the might of king and council and Parliament could not crush a movement having its sources in the word of God. It crystallized into dissenting churches; it flowed beyond the British Islands on to the continent of Europe and to the continent of America, taking possession of a new empire and a new world.

The Methodist movement, under Whitefield and the Wesleys, was still another uprising and following of the human mind after the simple truths of the Gospel. Though educated men themselves, they had almost a contempt for human learning and the wordly appliances on which other churches so much relied. The preaching of the word accompanied by the power of the Holy Ghost was their _sole_ reliance. On that principle they organized their churches, literally preaching the Gospel to the poor, and, at the end of a century, had a membership outnumbering any Protestant church in Christendom. It would be easy to show that modern missions, at home and abroad, have been most successful as they have relied most fully on the simple preaching of the word, and that the building up of churches has been the saving power of communities _intellectually_, _morally_ and even _materially_.

(4.) Applying now the facts and principles barely glanced at in this review to the subject in hand, we shall find that, so far as the South is concerned, pure and intelligent churches are at this moment more a necessity even than schools are. The education of the intellect is vitally important; but for its own security it should rest on the broader education of the moral nature. The former will make keen, sharp men, shrewd in business and other transactions, but only the latter can be trusted to make honest, faithful, conscientious men. While we insist that _Christian schools_ are the true handmaid of religion, we must not be tempted to substitute science and culture for piety, nor to make schools stand for more than churches. The church alone is fundamental, but for the best results they belong together and should go together. Schools _can_ be made and _should_ be made helps to religion; but we mistake their nature entirely when we imagine that there is anything in the ordinary studies of the class-room—the classics, the mathematics, or the natural sciences—to sanctify the heart or subdue the will to God. The colored race is vastly more run down on its moral side than on its intellectual side. This is true of all degraded, barbarous races. The direct effects of slavery on the colored race were its moral effects. To be sure, it left the race poor and uncultivated; but _that_ might have been borne and easily repaired had it left the moral integrity of the race intact and pure. The school of slavery perverted the moral nature, and until _that_ is rectified, no process of intellectual education can lift the race on to the high level of a true manhood and a great future.

Men and nations are lifted and made truly great through their moral qualities rather than through their intellectual. At any rate, if history teaches any lesson it is, that no nation has long exhibited great intellectual qualities which has not been sustained by greater moral qualities; and that no nation, ancient or modern, has become intellectually great that was not first morally great. The age of Pericles in Greece, and the Augustinian age in Rome, when the human mind in each of those countries reached its climacteric, was preceded by those great moral virtues among the people which made them severely simple, honest, brave and true. Greece had her Homer, her Solon, her Æschylus, her Euripides, her Sappho, before she had her Pericles. Rome had her Romulus, her Numa, her Cato, her Scipios, and for mothers, her Cornelia, her Marcia and her Portia, before she had her Augustus. England had her Alfred, her Bede, her Wickliffe, her Knox and her Reformers, before she had her Bacon, her Shakespeare and her Milton. Germany had her Luther, her Melanethon, her Calvin, her Zwingle, and her long line of Protestant confessors and defenders, before she had her Goethe, her Schiller, her Humboldt, her Herder and her Beethoven. The ancient nations, whose masterpieces in literature and art are still the models on which we form our taste, declined intellectually precisely as they declined morally. The great age of English literature was a greater age of moral heroism; and Germany’s highest intellectual development is but the consummate flowering of the moral forces which have come down from the Reformation. Both will decline as the moral supports on which they rest are weakened or undermined.

In the light of the past, it would seem clear that if we merely sought the highest intellectual development of the colored race, we would educate most assiduously their moral nature—their weakest and most neglected part. But this can be done effectually only through a pure and intelligent ministry of the word. In pure churches alone can moral instruction, based on Divine authority, find its highest sanctions. The secular teacher, indeed, may instruct in morals and religion, but his words do not carry the sanctity nor the authority of him who ministers at God’s altar in holy things. It is in the Church, where men speak in the name of God, and where the soul is brought face to face with the claims of God, that the highest moral motives are pressed and felt. And hence we say, the Church _foremost_, and everything tributary to the Church, because the Church deals supremely with the moral nature, through which degraded races can alone be lifted.

(5.) There is a farther necessity for such churches, in order that we may save the present and coming generation of educated young colored men and women from skepticism and infidelity. The moment we educate a young man or a young woman to read intelligently, or to speak and write the English language grammatically, we have educated them out of the old colored churches. They will not listen to men whose vocabulary has more sound than meaning, and who violate with every sentence every law of correct speech. The white churches are not open to them in any such sense that they feel at liberty to enter them on any footing of Christian equality. Unless we provide for them something which is more pure and rational than their own churches, free from the clamors and excitements of mere animal passion, we send them into the streets and away from the house of God. After a young man or a young woman has remained in school long enough to see the ignorance of the colored preachers, and has gained sufficient intelligence to make moral distinctions, it is inevitable that he should turn from such teachers, and revolt from such moral and religious guides.

If they are compelled to judge religion only by the specimens of it which they see around them, why should not a common intelligence reject it altogether? Our education, therefore, must either lead our students out of the old churches into infidelity, or it must lead them into churches where an intelligent ministry and a pure worship will satisfy both intellect and heart. I can conceive no greater wrong we can do that race than to destroy their faith in the religion taught and practiced in their churches, if we do not supply them with a better. A race without a religious faith is lost; and, while our education destroys the old, let us be careful to put in the place of it the _new_ and the _true_.

(6.) And, finally, pure and intelligent churches are a necessity in order to create a reservoir of piety and ability sufficient to nurture and bring forward the young men and women needed for the work of redeeming Africa. If the colored race in this country is ever to be broadened to the full conception of saving Africa—is ever to be made capable of laying broad and deep the foundations of Christian States on that dark continent—if it is ever to be inspired to the effort of such an undertaking—the movement must begin at the foundations of character, in the moral sensibilities and convictions of the soul. And a movement that is wide enough and strong enough to sustain such an attempt must begin at the house of God, must have its roots in Christian homes, must be fed in the closet, at the family altar, with the word of God and the breath of prayer. The movement which saves Africa will be a race movement; will be the light and pressure of Divine truth upon the minds and consciences of the people, and a baptism of Pentecostal fire consecrating them to the work. But to what agencies shall we look for such mighty spiritual energies as are needed for the recovery of a race to Jesus Christ? The Church is the vast reservoir of spiritual forces, and she utilizes other instruments as they are needed to accomplish her work. But if it should happen that we should mistake instruments or methods for power, even schools for the Church of the living God, we should soon find that the body without the spirit is dead.

It would avail little if here and there one in our schools might be persuaded to enter the African field. What could he do without the prayers, the sympathies, as well as the moral and pecuniary support of his race behind him? And what certainly would there be of a supply or of a succession of laborers, unless the churches were holding their members to the work and were pushing forward their children to offer themselves in its behalf? The churches alone can create a race sentiment broad and deep and potent enough to bear up an enterprise aiming at the Christianization of Africa. It is the Gospel, ministered by holy men, which unifies and exalts communities. It is the Church, as the centre and representative of divine power, which stands for God, and the word and the ordinances entrusted to her keeping are his only visible hold upon the world. If we would have Christian scholars in training for Africa—as teachers, as preachers, or as statesmen—they should come from homes and churches in which the spirit of Christ, the spirit of humanity, and the spirit of missions was as the breath of life. On the one hand, we want the churches as the inspiring and sustaining power both for men and money, and on the other, as the motive and model for the work we are called to do. Our missionaries need to live and move in an atmosphere of holy self-denial and charity, to be empowered by the prayers and godly zeal of the great brotherhood of the saints, in order to a full consecration. We can expect men and money for the work in sufficient number and amount only as the churches, like mighty reservoirs, gather and hold all their forces of brain, of heart, of will, of wealth and of learning, of piety and of power, for Christ.

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AFRICA.

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REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.

The report on the Association’s work in Africa, submitted to your committee, shows that the Mendi Mission has reached once more a degree of prosperity and promise. In its church, school and industrial work it has been prospered, and in the plan of preparing and using native helpers do we find the great principle of all successful schemes for disseminating the Gospel wisely adopted. Furthermore, the signal fact seems now already permanently established that the Freedmen are the providential missionaries for the dark continent. They endure the climate as Europeans cannot, and, as trained for their work in the seminaries of this society, they evince a capacity which fits them for a rare evangelical service in the land of their ancestors.

But the matter to which it is especially fitting that your attention be directed with unwonted seriousness is the conditional decision recently arrived at by the Executive Committee of this Association to accept Mr. Arlington’s offer of £3,000, and open in Eastern Africa a new mission station. That indicates what all interested in the great problem of Africa’s Christianization should welcome with thanksgiving and prayer, viz., that this Association is to take a new and advanced part in this latest missionary crusade. Now its work will have a higher significance and a wider reach; for under God does it more and more seem that to this Association is to fall the high part of preparing the needed missionaries for Africa. The relation of the educational work of the Association to this grand enterprise becomes impressively apparent. There is a compensation in God’s providence, and in this instance it is inspiring to believe that our Freedmen, as the best fitted agents, are to become the preachers of Christianity to the land from which their ancestors were cruelly carried away as slaves. Here, now, is something proposed which will tax our faith and test our courage and consecration.

The field for the proposed mission seems to be wisely chosen, and in the Nile basin, making one more in a chain of mission stations recently opened, will this Association have its place and do its share in redeeming the continent to which the entire church now is turning with a yearning heart. It is somewhat significant that the proposed field for this mission is in a portion of the continent most desolated by the slave trade. Pre-eminently appropriate is it that this society, so long the friend and advocate of the slave, should carry the tidings of “the liberty wherewith Christ makes men free” into the midst of tribes which have suffered from this terrible traffic.

The full and studied report of the Foreign Committee, in the April number of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY, on the character and promise of the special field designated by Mr. Arthington, makes it unnecessary for your committee to add anything touching upon this point. The careful investigation made in the first instance confirms the wisdom of Mr. Arthington in naming to this Association the field he has. His own letter, published in the March number, shows that he had conferred with the best authorities as to the location of the mission, and that he has chosen a district that offers unusual attractions for such a station as this Association should establish.

We believe your committee but voice the feeling of all friends of this Association when expressing the hope that the conditions on which this missionary advance depends will be promptly met, so that without delay measures can be adopted to enter this open door, and improve this latest and greatest opportunity of doing for the millions of the long-forgotten and long-despised continent. It is very evident that the foreign work of the Association is to become of increasing importance and magnitude, for to it has providentially fallen the high privilege of preparing the workers especially required in African evangelization. With its old mission on the West Coast rising now into fresh usefulness, on its new basis of depending upon Freedmen missionaries and native helpers, and the projected station south and west of Gondokoro, in a field full of promise, it will become a great evangelistic power in Africa. The springs and feeders of its work will be in those noble educational institutions established in our Southern land, for from these will go forth the colored men and women who will show of what holy sacrifice and achievements they are capable.

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We should not forget that to this Association belongs the honor of inaugurating in this country the more recent phase of African evangelization. At the annual meeting in Clinton, Iowa, in 1874, was the first note sounded for a missionary advance into the heart of the dark continent, and in the annual gathering of 1875 and every year since has it been a prominent subject for consideration. Mr. Arthington was induced to make his offer to the Association because of its early and pronounced sympathy with this plan of interior missions in Africa, and we, of our own belief, would be disloyal to the flag we first gave to the winds of heaven if we did not gird ourselves for this new venture. This Association cannot afford to be absent from the Christian forces now entering the far land, for by Providence and the signal history of past years, and its peculiar relation to the African race, it is called to take its place, highest of all, in the lustrous belt of missions that now extend from the Zambesi along the chain of lakes to the region in the Nile basin which we are to man under the name of the Arthington Mission.