Part 4

Not being acquainted with the technical term of “covenant,” they bind themselves by five articles of “Church Fellowship.” The first requires evidence of a Christian experience; not stopping with the fact, of which they were not aware, that Congregationalism was, at first, a protest against receiving unregenerate members into the church, they go back to Acts xx., 20, 21. The third reads: “That, trusting in the promised grace of God, we will not indulge in our hearts, nor practice, any of these manifest works of the flesh” (see Gal. v., 20, 21); example: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, etc. The fourth binds them to cultivate the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. v., 22, 23). In the fifth they bind themselves to obey the Scriptures (1 Thess. v., 11, 12), “by studying to be quiet in doing our own business, working with our own hands, walking honestly toward them that are without;” and also to discharge faithfully their Christian duties as subjects of civil law and authority in obedience to God (Rom. xii., 1, 2).

Here is the way by which, for lack of a council (of which they knew nothing), and for lack of authority this side of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom they had taken as the Head of their Church, they ordained their first presiding pastor:

“_Resolved_, That we, the members of this church, in conference assembled, do call, set apart, and ordain our well-beloved brother, John McAdams, as the pastor of the church, to minister to us in spiritual things as the minister of the Gospel; that we hereby authorize our said well-beloved brother to administer the ordinances of baptism and the holy sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and to solemnize the rite of matrimony in accordance with the laws of this State; and that our well-beloved brother be furnished with a certified copy of this resolution.”

Four years later the church called to its aid Rev. Warren Norton, a Congregational minister then at Brenham, Texas, in ordaining brothers Albert Gray and Wm. Hamilton as their ministers in the Lord. And this last fall I was permitted to participate in a regular council for the ordination of Mr. J. W. Roberts as pastor in that same church, and of Mr. J. W. Strong as a pastor for the church in Corpus Christi. We had a sermon and all the other parts, including the solemn laying on of hands in prayer; but still we were only helping the church in a function which, in the first place, it exercised alone with a beautiful simplicity and all legitimate _authority_.

How has the church gotten along? Why, it ran up to a large membership. It paid $115 in gold for a lot, and built a church. It branched out into the Shiloh, the New Hope, and the Pattonville African Congregational churches, in neighborhoods about, and these four became associated in a quarterly conference. But, as the propagandists came along, they found in the walls of the mother church stones with old inscriptions. Baptists, African M. E., Campbellite, Northern M. E., and each pulled out his own and set up churches of those several sorts, so that now the original church building is the shabbiest of the lot, and the membership is only an average. But still, with a high standing for character, with an educated minister, and an educated teacher, Prof. S. W. White, with a new and more respectable site, purchased, with the old acre and a half to be sold, and with some members of property (two of them large farmers) and of influence in the community, they give promise of great usefulness, promise of realizing the expectations of the martyr founder.

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THE INDIANS.

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COMMUNION SUNDAY AT HAMPTON.

MISS ISABEL D. EUSTIS.

Many warm friends of Hampton have come to see her on her gala days; have crowded into the hall decorated with flags and flowers, while the band played a welcome, and her graduates waited to give to the audience the fruit of their three years’ study and experience. Perhaps some of these would like to go with the quiet company who are walking to the little church in the Soldiers’ Cemetery, near the close of a bright day that has fallen in the midst of weeks of rain and storm, and join in the simple communion service of the first Sunday in the New Year.

The afternoon sunlight slants in through the windows upon the plain walls and benches, and lights up the dusky faces of the colored and Indian students who fill the seats. The simple service upon the communion table is the gift of the strong and loving woman, who gave the best of her heart and brain to Hampton at its start, and who kept her connection with the church she helped to organize until she was called to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. In the seats nearest the table are six colored and eight Indian students who begin the New Year by confessing Christ as their Saviour. We ask ourselves, as we notice their quiet and decorous manner, if these can be some of the strange and uncouth people who came knocking at our doors two years ago, and as we watch the sweet, softening expressions stealing over their faces, telling of reverent and gentle thoughts within, we wonder still more if these are the very faces from which once it seemed impossible to win an answering smile.

The congregation rise and sing together in full, sweet chorus, as only a colored audience can, “My faith looks up to thee.” The minister reads the creed and covenant, and then the Indian scholars, whose parents had, perhaps, hardly heard the name of Christ, come one by one to receive the rite of baptism. As they kneel beside the font the minister says to each, separately and calling him by name, “Do you promise to take Jesus Christ as your Saviour, to love him and serve him? Do you _promise_?” and the emphatic Indian assent and little Annie’s timid “Yes, sir,” are heard through the still church, and those who wait to hear know that the heart’s promise has gone with the lips.

Ahuka (White Wolf) comes first for baptism. As he stands there quiet and reverent, a sudden memory of the first time we saw and knew him flashes across our minds. We see again the school-room, the day after the arrival of the new pupils. They are seated in a semi-circle around a teacher, who stands by a black-board on which some easy English words have been written: “Stand up; Walk; Stop; Look up;” which she has been teaching the scholars to illustrate. On the front seat at one end sits Ahuka, a somewhat alarming-looking pupil. His thick, shaggy, black hair bangs down to his waist over the blanket which he holds wrapped tight about him, while he casts now and then stealthy but keen glances from under his heavy eyebrows.

Teacher debates for a few seconds whether to call on him for a recitation; but concludes not to shirk, and he comes to the board. Teacher points to the first word on the blackboard, on the pronunciation of which she has been drilling the class, and looks at the brave for a response. Brave looks at her, then at the word, back again, more sharply at her, says nothing. Teacher mustn’t expect a response in a hurry, keeps her pointer on the word and her eye on the brave. Brave continues to transfer his glance from the word to the teacher, till suddenly, whether in despair or rage she cannot tell, he throws his head back, bends forward and utters a prolonged howl. Teacher with difficulty restrains herself from a flight down the corridor, and doesn’t question why he is called “the Wolf.” It is no difficult task to picture him back in the wilds of Dakota.

We think of him now: his quiet and reverent manner; the pleading look we have learned to know in the once defiant, savage eyes, and we pray that as he is laying aside all that was the pride and pleasure of his savage strength he may grow (slowly he must, but certainly he shall) into the beauty and power and glory of a Christian manhood.

Harry Brown, Chief White Horse’s manly little son, stands by the font now. We came near making a bad mistake about Harry. The day that the minister had appointed to talk to the scholars who were to unite with the church was a crisp winter one, and the creek was covered with glittering ice. Harry went skating; almost the first chance he’d had since he left Dakota. There was no way to tell the time; he was having splendid fun. He stayed too long; when he came back it was too late for the meeting. The next day, when the minister kindly made an appointment for him by himself, one of the first questions he asked was, “Harry, do you pray?” “No.” “Not pray?” “No.” “Did you ever pray?” “Yes.” “And you don’t pray now?” “No.” “Why not?” And then Harry shut himself behind his Indian reserve and his inability to talk English, and didn’t say anything more. It certainly didn’t look as if he was far on the road to saint-ship. And yet if there was a boy in the school who was commending himself by his faithful, kind and manly conduct it was Harry Brown. What did it mean? The minister asked one of the teachers, with whom the boy might not be so shy, to try and find out. She dismissed the interpreter, who seemed to embarrass him, and all her questions were answered with thoughtfulness and earnestness till the old one came up, “Harry, the minister says you don’t pray?” Then came the same emphatic “_No_.” “Well, Harry, this isn’t a little thing you want to do. You are going to give yourself to God to be His child all your life, and you say you don’t pray to Him. It seems as if you didn’t care much about it. We think you had better wait till the next Communion Sunday, and be sure you mean what you are going to do.” “How long?” said Harry. “Two months.” “Too long. Can’t wait. Must come now,” said Harry decidedly. “How long have you been trying to do right, Harry?” “Two years.” Then I think Harry’s good angel put a thought into the teacher’s mind. “Harry, have you changed your room lately? Do you stay now with those seven boys up-stairs?” “Yes.” “Is that the reason you don’t pray? Are you ashamed?” “Yes.” “Doesn’t any boy in that room pray?” “Just one.” “Well, if you are going to be Christ’s soldier you have got to fight for Him sometimes when it’s hard. Will you pray to-night?” “Yes.” And knowing that older Christians had wavered before the same temptations, and not been more honest and brave in acknowledging it, we forebore to shut the boy away from the patient guidance and long suffering love which leads us all. A few weeks afterward we asked Harry one day when the interpreter was by, “Harry, do you pray now?” The little interpreter himself looked up with a quick, bright smile, “All we boys in that room pray now every night.” It was a good victory, surely, for the first one. God grant that each of those who are now confessing Christ be kept by Him in the temptations which will crowd them in the life to which they must go.

The service is almost over. The bread and wine have been passed. To each waiting heart down through its darkness to its weakness has come the touch of the Divine Soul which is light and power.

Once more the sweet strong chorus rises, “Jesus, Lover of my Soul.” We go out into the twilight. The young crescent and the star of love hang in the Western sky whose glowing sunset lights are reflected in the lovely waters, and through the heavens falls a voice with the old word, at once reproof and inspiration, “Say not ye, There are yet four months and then cometh the harvest. Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest, and he that reapeth receiveth wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal.”

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WOMAN’S HOME MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.

Room 20, Congregational House, Beacon St., Boston.

MISS NATHALIE LORD, _Secretary_. MISS ABBY W. PEARSON, _Treasurer_.

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The Executive Committee of the W. H. M. A. are happy to announce that with this number of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY and of the _Home Missionary_, they begin a series of monthly reports of their work, which they know will be welcomed by many. The American Missionary Association and the American Home Missionary Society have each generously given us the opportunity of reporting in its monthly publication the work undertaken by us in its field. Our friends will therefore find in the AMERICAN MISSIONARY, accounts from our missionaries among the negroes; and in the _Home Missionary_, reports from the West. For the courtesy which has given as this opportunity we desire to express, thus publicly, our thanks.

Recent statements show that the present condition of our work is not known. Five ladies are now at work in the South and West, and two more teachers will soon go to Utah. Those already in the field are: Miss Mary Snyder, Assistant Principal of the Academy at Albuquerque, New Mexico; Miss Julia A. Wilson, who is working among the colored refugees in Kansas; Miss Alice E. Carter, acting as city missionary in Nashville, Tenn.; Mrs. Clara B. Babcock, who is doing missionary work in connection with the colored church recently formed in Washington, D. C.; Mrs. Almira S. Steele, who teaches a day and Sunday-school at Almeda, S. C. Detailed accounts of the work of each of these will be given from time to time. But, that more work may be undertaken, we ask for larger contributions and a wider support, for annual subscriptions and donations as well as for auxiliary societies.

Some suggestions as to organization and management of auxiliaries are here made in the hope that they may be helpful. In many places the sewing society, devoted to parish work, may take in addition the Home Mission work, if it is as agreeable to the members as it has been found to be in many cases already. At each meeting, some one previously appointed may communicate intelligence of Home Mission work, while others sew.

In other places the old cent society to which our grandmothers belonged is available as the channel for contributions.

In other places still, a wholly separate organization may be most advisable, in which the filling of Home Mission boxes, the collection of money for the W. H. M. A., and the communication of intelligence as to Home Mission work may be the only objects of the society.

The regular Woman’s Prayer Meeting might well set apart one meeting each month where they are held weekly, or a meeting at longer intervals when they occur less frequently; this monthly or quarterly meeting to be devoted to prayer and conversation about the spread of the Gospel in our own country. At these meetings a collection may be taken and there may be a treasurer to receive this, and an officer, either secretary or president, to preside at the meeting. It is not necessary that these officers should serve no other organizations, since the same person not infrequently acts as an officer in one or more societies and keeps the business of each by itself. It seems wise, however, whenever a sufficient number of persons can be obtained, to have separate officers for different organizations. The end to be attained is that there be a definite, separate time given to praying and working for the cause of the evangelization of our own country, and a definite, separate contribution arranged so that each woman of the church may have just the channel at hand by which to send her own offering for this cause direct to its destination.

And further, may we not ask those churches that have adopted the system of weekly offerings, known as the “Harris plan,” to put this Association also on their list, to make this one of the channels of distribution through which individual members of the church show their desire and accomplish their purpose of co-operating in Christ’s work of saving men? It is no longer—if it ever ought to have been—the age in which Christian men and women should wait to be stirred, to be urged, even to be invited, to give. Does it not become each of us to find out by calculation, careful, generous calculation, how much we can afford to the specific work of spreading the Gospel; and then through what channels we can best effect our object? And if this is done by all will there not be some who will wish to send part of their funds through this society, whose work is, directly, for the women and children of our country?

New opportunities for work are presenting themselves almost every week, in the new West, the South, for Indian girls, for colored women and children. There is no quarter to which we can look that we do not see those, dear to us by nature, and by what Christ has done for us, waiting to be helped and to be taught; nor, as yet, have we had any lack of those who were well fitted for the work of teaching and helping, and anxious to go into it.

We, therefore, ask the Christian women in our churches whether, in addition to the interest, money and prayer they are giving to kindred societies, they do not wish to give also to this particular work which seems at once so urgent and so promising. It requires but small individual sums, regularly and prayerfully given, to enable the church to pursue a vigorous and effective work in this direction for the kingdom of Christ.

Receipts from Oct. 15, 1880, to Jan. 1, 1881:

From auxiliaries $761.00 From donations 155.08 From life members 100.00 From annual members 81.00 ———————— Total $1,097.08

The committee also acknowledge with thanks, the following donations: From the Congregational Publishing Society, $19 worth of papers and maps, and from Mr. J. L. Hommett, three large wall maps, and from S. M. H. a movable black-board, all for the use of Mrs. Steele at Almeda, S. C. A barrel has been sent to Miss Carter containing new material for use in her Industrial school, and clothing for distribution.

CHILDREN’S PAGE.

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6 WASHINGTON PLACE,} TROY, N. Y., Dec. 31, 1880.}

Dear Mr. Hubbard: I remember your showing us the place where you put our contributions, in the great safe on Reade St., and your deciding where you met Aunty Lizzie before.

I will send a share of the money which we earned, for the American Missionary Association.

This Summer I devoted one of my broods to your society. The hen’s name was Nano: she had eight chickens. Two of them died, four were given to Papa for the hen’s feed, and the rest were sold for fifty-three cents.

This was this hen’s second brood.

Margaret had also a hen named Goldy, and her second brood was devoted to your society. She stole her nest in the bushes and hatched thirteen little, beautiful chickens;—five died, two are kept, and the three remaining ones were sold for eighty-eight cents. We earned money in other ways, so we each add the necessary sum to make it two dollars.

I send much love to you, and Miss Dodge. Your Loving Little Friend,

MARY F. CUSHMAN.

A CRUMB FOR THE BOYS.

A clergyman on his way to a missionary meeting overtook a boy, and asked him about the road, and where he was going.

“Oh!” he said, “I’m going to the meeting to hear about the missionaries.”

“Missionaries!” said the minister. “What do you know about missionaries?”

“Why,” said the boy, “I’m part of the concern. I’ve got a missionary-box, and I always go to the missionary meeting. I belong.”

Now that is what we want. Every child should feel that he is “part of the concern,” and that his work is just as important as that of any one else. Linch-pins are little things; but, if they drop out, the wagon is very likely to come to a stand-still. Every pin and screw should be in working order, and every child should be able to say, “I always go to the missionary meeting. Why, I’m part of the concern!”—_Exchange._

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RECEIPTS

FOR JANUARY, 1881.

MAINE, $696.91.

Alfred. Mrs. Charlotte Dane, _for Student Aid, Atlanta U._ $20.00 Alfred. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 15.54 Bangor. Central Cong. Ch. and Soc., $150; First Cong. Sab. Sch., $14.67 164.67 Bethel. T. and M. E. B. 1.00 Biddeford. Second Cong. Ch. and Soc. 23.65 Blanchard. “A Friend” 5.00 Brunswick. Cong. Ch. and Soc., $11.38; Marshall Cram, $10 21.38 Brunswick. Box of C., _for Wilmington, N. C._ Calais. John Barker, _for Student Aid, Talladega C._ 25.00 Castine. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 5.00 Cumberland Centre. J. W. 1.00 Cumberland Mills. Warren Ch. to const. JAMES GRAHAM, L. M. 45.00 Dennysville. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 48.00 Foxcroft and Dover. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 10.00 Gilead. I. B. 0.51 Hallowell. Correction.—Fannie A. Davis, $25, ack. in Dec. number, should read “Friends” by F. A. D. Machias. Cong. Sab. Sch., $5.36; Prayer Meeting Coll., $5.14; E. G. L., 50c.; U. M. Penniman, $5 16.00 Norway. Mrs. Mary K. Frost 5.00 North Yarmouth. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 5.00 Orland. S. E. Buck to const. MISS HANNAH T. BUCK, L. M. 30.00 Portland. High St. Cong. Ch., $100; State St. Ch., $84.66; Mrs. L. D., $1 185.66 Richmond. Ladies of Cong. Parish, _for Freight_, $1; Cong. Ch., half Bbl. of C. 1.00 Scarborough. “A Thank Offering” 38.00 Skowhegan. Mrs. F. A. M., $1; M. D. P., $1 2.00 South Berwick. Ladies, Bbl. of C. _for Wilmington, N. C._ Thomaston. Infant Class in Cong. Sab. Sch., $6; Mrs. J. H., 50c. 6.50 Weld. Rev. D. D. Tappan 2.00 Wells. B. Maxwell 20.00

NEW HAMPSHIRE, $440.42.