Part 1

VOL. XXXIV. NO. 12.

THE

AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

“To the Poor the Gospel is Preached.”

DECEMBER, 1880.

_CONTENTS_:

EDITORIAL.

PARAGRAPHS 385 DR. MCKENZIE’S SERMON--POWER OF RIGHT PRINCIPLES 386 THE CALL FOR ENLARGEMENT--SHALL IT BE HEEDED? 387 HOLIDAY GIFTS 388 REVIEW AND OUTLOOK: Rev. M. E. Strieby, D. D. 389 WHAT OUR AFRICAN METHODIST FRIENDS THINK 395 GENERAL NOTES--Africa, Indians, Chinese 396 CENTRAL SOUTH CONFERENCE 398 ITEMS FROM THE FIELD 399

THE FREEDMEN.

GLEANINGS 400 GEORGIA--Atlanta University--Extract from Report of Board of Visitors 400 ALABAMA, ATHENS--Church, School, and Brick-making 401 MISSISSIPPI, TOUGALOO--Patient Work 402 LOUISIANA, NEW ORLEANS--Revival Meetings 403 TENNESSEE, NASHVILLE--Fisk University 404 MEMORIAL SERVICES 405

THE INDIANS.

INDIAN EDUCATION IN THE EAST: Gen. S. C. Armstrong 406

THE CHINESE.

CHAPTER OF GOOD THINGS: Rev. W. C. Pond 408

CHILDREN’S PAGE.

A SLAVE-GIRL’S FAITH 410

RECEIPTS 412

CONSTITUTION 415

AIM, STATISTICS, WANTS, ETC. 416

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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.

Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., as second-class matter.

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. Hon. E. D. HOLTON, Wis. Hon. WILLIAM CLAFLIN, Mass. Rev. STEPHEN THURSTON, D. D., Me. Rev. SAMUEL HARRIS, D. D., Ct. WM. C. CHAPIN, Esq., R. I. Rev. W. T. EUSTIS, D. D., Mass. Hon. A. C. BARSTOW, R. I. Rev. THATCHER THAYER, D. D., R. I. Rev. RAY PALMER, D. D., N. J. Rev. EDWARD BEECHER, D. D., N. Y. Rev. J. M. STURTEVANT, D. D., Ill. Rev. W. W. PATTON, D. D., D. C. Hon. SEYMOUR STRAIGHT, La. Rev. CYRUS W. WALLACE, D. D., N. H. Rev. EDWARD HAWES, D. D., Ct. DOUGLAS PUTNAM, Esq., Ohio. Hon. THADDEUS FAIRBANKS, Vt. Rev. M. M. G. DANA, D. D., Minn. Rev. H. W. BEECHER, N. Y. Gen. O. O. HOWARD, Washington Ter. Rev. G. F. MAGOUN, D. D., Iowa. Col. C. G. HAMMOND, Ill. EDWARD SPAULDING, M. D., N. H. Rev. WM. M. BARBOUR, D. D., Ct. Rev. W. L. GAGE, D. D., Ct. A. S. HATCH, Esq., N. Y. Rev. J. H. FAIRCHILD, D. D., Ohio. Rev. H. A. STIMSON, Mass. 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. Dea. JOHN C. WHITIN, Mass. Hon. J. B. GRINNELL, Iowa. 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. E. A. GRAVES, Esq., N. J. Rev. F. A. NOBLE, D. D., Ill. DANIEL HAND, Esq., Ct. A. L. WILLISTON, Esq., Mass. Rev. A. F. BEARD, D. D., N. Y. FREDERICK BILLINGS, Esq., Vt. JOSEPH CARPENTER, Esq., R. I. Rev. E. P. GOODWIN, D. D., Ill. Rev. C. L. GOODELL, D. D., Mo. J. W. SCOVILLE, Esq., Ill. J. W. BLATCHFORD, Esq., Ill. C. D. TALCOTT, Esq., Ct. Rev. JOHN K. MCLEAN, D. D., Cal. Rev. RICHARD CORDLEY, D. D., Kansas. Rev. W. H. WILLCOX, D. D., Mass. Rev. G. B. WILLCOX, D. D., Ill. Rev. WM. M. TAYLOR, D. D., N. Y. Rev. GEO. M. BOYNTON, Mass. Rev. E. B. WEBB, D. D., Mass. Hon. C. I. WALKER, Mich. Rev. A. H. ROSS, Mich.

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY.

REV. M. E. STRIEBY, D. D., 56 _Reade Street, N. Y._

DISTRICT SECRETARIES.

REV. C. L. WOODWORTH, _Boston_. REV. G. D. PIKE, D. D., _New York_. REV. JAS. POWELL, _Chicago_.

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

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

ALONZO S. BALL, A. S. BARNES, C. T. CHRISTENSEN, H. L. CLAPP, CLINTON B. FISK, ADDISON P. FOSTER, S. B. HALLIDAY, A. J. HAMILTON, SAMUEL HOLMES, CHARLES A. HULL, EDGAR KETCHUM, CHAS. L. MEAD, SAMUEL S. MARPLES, WM. T. PRATT, J. A. SHOUDY, JOHN H. WASHBURN.

COMMUNICATIONS

relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the Corresponding Secretary; those relating to the collecting fields to the District Secretaries; letters for the Editor of the “American Missionary,” to Rev. C. C. PAINTER, at the New York Office.

DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

may be sent to H. W. Hubbard, Treasurer, 56 Reade Street, New York, or when more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., or 112 West Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.

THE

AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

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VOL. XXXIV. DECEMBER, 1880. No. 12.

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American Missionary Association.

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The publications provided for a household do much to mould the character of its inmates. If a right proportion of these are religious and missionary, good results are sure to follow. As at this season many determine what periodicals they will take for the coming year, we beg leave to suggest the wisdom of families subscribing for and perusing the AMERICAN MISSIONARY. By this means foundations for right thinking and right doing will be laid, and the way prepared for the exercise of Christian patriotism and philanthropy, so needful in the present condition of our country.

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We have word from Hampton that the tide of negro students never set in so promptly and strongly as since October 1st of this year. For the second time in the history of the school, tents have been erected on the campus and occupied by the colored boys.

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Dr. Alexander, President of Straight University, is much encouraged by the fact that white students are ready to avail themselves of the advantages of the Law Department of the University. This department is entirely self-sustaining, and conducted with rare ability, one of the professors having served on the Supreme Bench of the State. Of twenty-three students, nineteen are white.

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The number of students in attendance at Fisk University for the first two months of this year is much greater than that of any previous year since Jubilee Hall was occupied. A communication from Pres. Cravath, published elsewhere, states at length some of the unusually hopeful aspects of the work, and indicates that the University is entering upon a larger career of usefulness than it has ever experienced.

The American Bible Society offers to its Life Members an annual grant of one dollar’s worth of Bibles or Testaments; its benevolent intention being to supply them with the means of distributing the word of God among the needy. This perquisite is transferable at the written request of the Life Members. A lady, once a teacher in our schools at the South, and who has a great interest in the welfare of the colored children, suggests that in this way the pupils of our day and Sunday-schools may be supplied with the sacred Scriptures. We cordially second the suggestion, and will be glad to receive the written authorization of any of the Life Members of the Bible Society for the use of their current gift for the purpose above indicated. The officers of the Bible Society, as we understand, acquiesce in this plan so far as it may seem wise to the Life Members to co-operate with us.

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DR. McKENZIE’S SERMON.

The sermon preached at our Annual Meeting by Dr. McKenzie, related to our duty to Africa, and was one of rare excellence and beauty. It was printed in the _Advance_, Oct. 28th, and a limited number can be supplied to persons sending us a postal requesting it, with their address. The closing words of the sermon, which we append, not only sound a note of cheer, but are fitted to awaken the hope and courage of earnest Christian workers everywhere.

“The day of the Lord is coming. The light is on the hills and along the coast of all the lands. The nations are coming to the King. The continents and the islands begin to hear His voice. The tongues of men shall be filled with praise. It is not long; a few days more of work and prayer; a few more deeds of sacrifice and love; a few more lives given; a few more men gilded with the towel and with the basin in their hands; a few more repetitions of that strange and sacred deed, Jesus washing the feet of Judas. Then the glory and the rejoicing. A little while and the day shall dawn. We may see the hastening light as we face the East,

“Where, faint and far, Along the tingling desert of the sky, Beyond the circle of the conscious hills, Were laid in jasper-stone as clear as glass The first foundations of that new, near Day Which should be builded out of heaven to God.”

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POWER OF RIGHT PRINCIPLES.

From the beginning this Association was wedded to right principles. It recognized their latent power. It took it for granted that right was expedient--that right would triumph. It did not ask if right thinking and right doing was the way of the multitude, even of the multitude of professing Christians. Its inquiry was simply for the way of righteousness. That way it strove to tread. It was called narrow--captious. Its leaders were sometimes stigmatized as men of one idea--disturbers of the people--fanatics. They were not time-servers, however. They had the martyr spirit and toiled on, waiting for the morning; and the morning came. What was once questioned if not ridiculed, is now accepted and honored.

The elements that entered into their early labors are needful still. They had courage. They dared to do right in the face of opposition. If mobbed and mobbed again, the oppression only served to fill the country with the fragrance of their good deeds. It was but the torch that kindled the incense. They were never drawn from a righteous purpose. God was present in the shadows, keeping watch above his own. They had the spirit of sacrifice. They were ready to go to the lost sheep--to the despised. They passed not by him who fell among thieves. They achieved distinction by their readiness to endure hardness--to submit to insult--to be counted among the few--to toil with but little appreciation and for meagre rewards. They also bore about with them a rich and beautiful charity, first pure, then peaceable, full of mercy and good fruits. It was the combination of these elements in active operation for a score of years that served largely to revolutionize public sentiment, and especially the sentiment in our churches, until the principles of this Association are accepted and acceptable. The change was wrought by the power of pure motives applied to aggressive religious work in behalf of a needy and wronged people.

This change is sure to come in every quarter of our land, by sufficient application of the power of right principles. Every mission station of this Association is a centre from which a pure light radiates. Every graduate from our schools is a torch-bearer flaming this light over the land. It is a question of time--of a score of years perhaps--and there will be no ostracism experienced by our teachers South. If they can be sustained in the field, toiling in righteousness; if their numbers can be multiplied to meet the demand; if the churches will make it possible to continue the work; the victory of right principles South will be as certain and speedy as it was at the North, and much more may be hoped for. North and South will clap their hands together in hearty co-operation, shouting their choruses in one grand anthem, and entering in company upon the enlarged work of carrying right principles to the domain of final victory--the Freedmen’s fatherland. To gird ourselves for that to-day is the duty which calls the servants of the Master, East, West, North and South.

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THE CALL FOR ENLARGEMENT--SHALL IT BE HEEDED?

At no time has the call for enlargement been more urgent. It is strikingly providential also. The political, moral and religious atmosphere is charged with forces, prophetic of unparalleled progress in our Southern work. Questions relative to the policy of government are measurably settled for four years. We can lay our plans with encouraging assurances. Sound and practical views on all that pertains to permanent prosperity are dominant. It is not likely they will be materially modified, save for the better. Our statesmen and philanthropists are coming to prize more and more those forces in man which are developed by a Christian education. The _want_ that is looming up before them, is good schools for the masses in every section of the country. They voice this want in their public utterances, and the sound thereof is echoing and re-echoing over the land. It has in it the promise of expansion and universal application. Its adoption and elaboration mean increase of every laudable industry, the development of commerce, art, science, literature, wealth, beauty, happiness. They mean the leveling up of humanity heavenward. The tone and temper of our best men was never more auspicious than now--never more favorable to the work of this Association.

There never was so strong conviction in the South as now of the wisdom of Christian education for the Freedmen. The worth of it cannot be hidden. It is as evident as the sheen of an electric light. There is a capacity in the heart of man, by which he is able to recognize it. He comes to do so gradually, inevitably, as the flower unfolds from the bud, and as the fruit matures from the blossom. Many of the best in the world started wrong, but turned about and out-stripped their fellows in well doing. The South has been wrong, but pour in sufficient light and it will turn about. We have a right to hope and pray for such consummation. The aim of our work is to hasten it. When the South turns, it will not be by halves,--that is not her method. She is already rising for the emergency. The signs of it are apparent. It is but a question of time, and the time is at hand.

Legislatures have appropriated money for our work, and are doing so heartily still. They act as statesmen, with a view to the best interests of the State. In Texas, there is a tidal wave setting strongly in favor of popular education, impelled by the far-sightedness which discerns that the flow of emigration of the best sort trends away from territory, however rich and inviting, where free schools for all classes are not abundant. The value of inaugurating school work through the agency of Christian teachers, need not be argued. The call for these teachers is sure to be more urgent than ever. Shall we provide for the immediate and coming want? God seems to have said so. We have received $150,000 for new buildings, in which to train teachers. New buildings mean enlargement--enlargement means more missionaries, more prayer, more money. Will not the friends of Christ heed this call prayerfully, promptly, efficiently?

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HOLIDAY GIFTS.

In December, 1869, the late Henry P. Haven, of New London, Ct., proposed to his Sunday-school that instead of receiving gifts they remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

The proposition met with favor, and a Christmas service of worship with a Christmas offering to some deserving cause became incorporated in the annual school plans. It occurs to us that such holiday gifts by Sabbath-schools and households have the following advantages:

One is, they afford the young people more real pleasure. The happiness from rejoicing over the good of others is an exercise of the purest affection and the finest feeling of the human heart. It is akin to the blessedness and happiness of God himself. However gratifying a gift may be to the receiver, nevertheless it puts him to a disadvantage. The gift-taker becomes under obligation to the gift-maker. The receiver’s joy in a gift terminates in himself. It has a mixture of dependence and submission in it. But the giver is placed under no obligation to the receiver. Moreover, he inevitably ministers to his own well-being, though it may be unconsciously. “Every man is a friend to him that giveth gifts.”

Another advantage is that there is more virtue in giving than in receiving. The virtue of receiving consists in regard for one’s self; the virtue of giving in a proper regard for others. There is also more self-denial in giving than in receiving, and self-denial is the essence of virtue. The receiver has no natural habit or inclination to counteract, but the giver must overcome many obstacles which require superior virtue. The more young people do to develop the attribute of virtue, the more real pleasure they are sure to experience.

And then again, God promises to reward the giver but not the receiver. This is a great consideration, and may well be taken into account by all teachers and parents. It is a good thing to make the holidays memorable and happy by giving tokens to young people, but not so blessed as to bring them into an attitude where they will be sure of Heavenly rewards. Of the few things which God has promised to reward men for in this life, giving is one. “Blessed is he that considereth the poor * * * he shall be blessed upon the earth.” “He that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he,” and best of all, God means to reward the liberal giver more fully at the resurrection of the just.

By the favor of Providence we have ample opportunity to give to humane and missionary enterprises.

At this season, when plans for celebrating the holidays are being matured, would it not be wise for those having responsibility for training the young, to embrace the time to teach them in their abundance of gift-taking and gift-making to provide for themselves “bags that wax not old, a treasure in the Heavens that faileth not.”

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REVIEW AND OUTLOOK.

A Paper read at the National Council at St. Louis, Nov. 13th.

BY REV. M. E. STRIEBY, D. D.

I intend, without preface, to review the work of the American Missionary Association for the last three years, and to give an outlook on its future duties.

I. The Review.

1. We have paid our great debt. This had clung to us for years, like the shirt of Nessus, scorching while it clung. At the last Council we were enabled to announce that we had rent away about one third of the hateful garment, during the next two years we tore off the remainder, and since then we have walked forth, financially, “Clad in raiment pure and white,” as becometh saints who should “Owe no man anything.” It may happen to us in the future that our books will sometimes show a balance on the wrong side; but we hope never again to be beguiled into putting on one of the large, iron-clad garments we had so long and sadly worn.

2. We have received the munificent gift of $150,000 from Mrs. Stone. Not long since, our elder and honored sister, the American Board, had laid on her table a loaf so large that there was danger that it might be like the “Cake of barley bread” which the Midianite saw in his dream, that “tumbled into the host and came unto a tent and smote it that it fell, and overturned it that the tent lay along.” But with the whole church, we rejoice that the loaf has been to the Board, by its great wisdom and God’s blessing, not as the cake of the Midianite, but as his dream, an augury of victory and enlargement! Our gift, great as it was, is only as one of “the crumbs that fall from the Master’s table,” most gratefully received and all needed at once, with no danger of surfeit. Our children are not only hungry--they are crowded into close quarters, and some of them have to be turned out of doors. At the Atlanta University, with accommodations for only 40 girls, 62 are packed in. At Tougaloo, barracks of slabs are erected, and outbuildings and garrets are turned into dormitories, and still the pupils come, so that the teachers inquire if they may put three in a bed and twelve in one large room. Our reply is: “Take all that you can accommodate consistently with good health and morals, and send the rest away.” These are specimens, perhaps the most striking, but from nearly every school comes the call for more room. Never before have we had such overcrowding; never before have we been obliged to turn away so many. Mrs. Stone’s great gift will meet the want in five of our larger institutions and no more; and that only for shelter, while the increased number will make an enlarged call for bread. Mrs. Stone provides the homes: who will furnish the endowments for more teachers and the scholarships for more pupils?

3. We are just completing the Tillotson Institute, Austin, Texas, with its large and commodious building and beautiful campus of eight acres, near the capitol--an outpost in that vast State of the Southwest; thus extending our permanent institutions from Hampton Roads, Va., to the banks of the Colorado, Texas, and supplying eight of the largest Southern States with schools of higher grade, each of which sends out annually its score or fifty well-trained teachers.

4. It is a matter of much gratification to us that while we have been paying our debt and extending our lines, we have been able to maintain, and even to enlarge, the work already in hand among the Freedmen. Three years ago our teaching force in the South numbered 150; now there are 200. Then our pupils were 5,404; now 8,052.

One illustration of the usefulness of these schools is seen in the great army of scholars taught in them and by their pupils. We believe, from a safe estimate, that _half a million_ of names have been enrolled, in the aggregate, in our schools and the schools of our pupils, since this Council last met, and still the cry is for more teachers. This roll-call of the school-room gives no idea of the added work in the Sunday-school, the temperance cause, the prayer meeting and in the homes of the people. As to the kind of work done in our schools, and Theological departments, I point to the modest and gentlemanly Second Assistant Moderator of this National Council.