Part 4

1. The negroes are citizens, and vested with all the rights, duties and responsibilities of American citizenship. The ballot is in their hands, and as a necessary consequence they will share the offices of trust and responsibility. There must and will be political leaders among them. It might be better for the country if the colored people would use the ballot purely, with an eye single to the best interests of society; if they should always vote for the wisest, most honest and most capable men, uninfluenced by personal prejudices, race distinction, or the popular excitement of heated political campaigns, and with no aspiration for political distinction or the honors and spoils of office. It might be better for the country if the citizens of other races would do this. But how unlike the Anglo-Saxon or the Celt would be the African if _he_ should do it. But, fortunately, or unfortunately, there is about as much genuine human nature in the American citizen of African descent as there is in those of European; and we must expect essentially the same results under like conditions. It will not prevent colored men from having political aspirations, and from being elected to offices of trust and responsibility, to confine education among them to public, normal and industrial schools. The safer and better way is to give to the young men who have aspirations for a higher education the opportunities and advantages they seek, just as they are provided for the youth of other races.

2. The six millions of colored people in the South are organized into distinct and separate churches, which are ministered to by persons of their own race. This is the result both of choice and necessity. The white churches are not open to them, and as a general thing they prefer to have their separate organizations. The influence and power of the minister among the colored people are exceedingly great. No people stand more in need of an intelligent, wise and educated ministry, and among no people can such a ministry do such a noble work for the proper training of the young men who are to constitute the religious teachers and guides of these six millions of colored American citizens just delivered from bondage, and now making trial before the world of freedom and citizenship. I urge the necessity of institutions for higher education.

The public schools of the South for colored children are in general taught by colored teachers. This is usually demanded by the parents. In these public schools there are hundreds of positions such as are filled in white schools by men who have had their training in the best colleges and universities of the South, and why should not colored young men be given the same training for the same responsibilities and duties? The same principles and necessities hold in the departments of law and medicine. Is there any reason, in the nature of the case, why a young colored man does not need to have as good an education to fit him for these professions as a young white man does? In all enlightened countries, institutions of higher education are regarded as indispensible; they accomplish a work in the interests of society, the Church and the State, which cannot be left out with safety to any race or any country. But there are weighty reasons why the colored youth of the South need the advantages of a higher education. They have received less by inheritance. Education, discipline, culture, the habits and surroundings of life through generations, to some extent, at least, determine the inherited intellectual and moral qualities of individuals, families and races. The colored youth begins life without the inherited qualities which can come only through generations of civilization.

Then, too, he has not had the advantages (and these are among the greatest children can possess) of a cultured home, refined and intellectual associations, a purified and stimulating social life, and the instruction of an educated ministry. These have largely been denied him in his earlier years. Thus, when young colored men or women set out to secure an education that shall put them on a high plane of intellectual life and give them a fair chance to work a career which shall entitle them to be honestly ranked among the educated and cultured of the white race in the higher departments of the world’s work, they find themselves at a great disadvantage.

How shall this be overcome, except by patient, long-continued and wisely-directed study? Aspiration must mature into purpose and purpose ripen and harden into character. Intellectual labor must be encouraged and even exacted until it becomes comparatively easy and pleasurable. Habits of study and investigation must be formed and the judgment must be matured. Where shall the young men of the South get these advantages except in schools for higher education? But there is one more consideration which I wish to urge. These six millions are the representatives of a race 200,000,000 strong and of a continent. No equal body of Africans was ever before placed in a condition so favorable for the development of whatever possibilities there are in the race. Under slavery they have been disciplined to toil and have learned the lessons of work; they have come to like the ways of civilized life and have acquired a desire and taste for its comforts and luxuries. Pagan worship and heathen superstitions have been largely destroyed, and the people have accepted the Christian religion. They are widely scattered among their fellow citizens of other races, and they have intrusted to them the full duties, and have resting upon them all the responsibilities of citizenship. Whatever possibilities are in the race can here be developed in a shorter time and by a more direct way than in the case of any section of Africa. So the race is on trial, and every aid should be given in order that the best possible result may be reached. Who can properly estimate the power for good which colleges and universities, founded in the right spirit, strongly administered and wisely adapted to the wants and necessities of the people, can exert in determining the future of the negro in this country and the future of the great African race?

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REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON CHURCH WORK.

The church work of the Association during the year has been steady, growthful, and encouraging. Quite the average of progress has been attained. This will readily appear by reference to a few statistics. Six new churches have been added to the list, making in all eighty-three. Ten houses of worship have been erected. It is a remarkable fact that every one of the eighty-three churches, except one whose minister died a short time ago, has a pastor. And equally remarkable that fifty-one of these pastors are native preachers. As showing the value of theological seminaries established by the Association, and the ability and usefulness of trained colored men, the average membership of sixty-eight in each church exceeds the average of all the Congregational churches west of Pennsylvania. The addition of 709 on profession, and the conversion of about an equal number who have found other church homes, make an average of seventeen conversions to each church, an increase of 20 per cent. Where else can an equally good exhibition be made? Only about one to a church throughout the country. There are seven churches which have added from twenty-five to forty-five to their membership. There are only six that report no additions. So far as reported all but eleven churches contribute money for church purposes. Thirty-seven report benevolent contributions. One church reports $350, another church reports $158, another church reports $86, another church reports $83, another church reports $60, another church reports $50. Seventy-four Sunday-schools are reported. One Sunday-school has over 500 members, another 400 members, ten schools 200 members, and seven schools 100 members. These figures indicate vitality in the churches, for Sunday-schools do not thrive very well, excepting where there is activity in the churches with which they are associated. In nine localities precious revivals have been enjoyed. The local associations indicate growth in fellowship and power. When we remember that these results have been reached amid manifold hindrances and discouragements arising from ignorance, prejudice, superstition and vice, we may well exclaim, “What hath God wrought?” “Thank the Lord and take courage.” But the best results of the year do not admit of tabulation. The unwritten history of these churches are the tears, the struggles, the sacrifices, the prayers, the burdens silently, uncomplainingly borne. This is their real history. God knows it all, and those who have been the patient workers in its making will be remembered in that day when he counts up his jewels. Then it must not be forgotten that these churches represent almost infinitely more in the South than their small number would indicate. They are tonic in their influence upon all the other churches around them. Their simple New Testament polity, which encourages self-government and self-development, their high standard of ethics, which is a constant rebuke to an emotional religion apart from morality, make them peculiarly lights shining in dark places, and invest them with that quiet, but inscrutable transforming power that belongs to good leaven.

In this has been vindicated the wisdom of the policy which has preferred quality to quantity, good character to great numbers, intelligent piety to ignorant devotion, a pure life to a noisy profession. Without doubt the Association might have doubled its present number of churches during these seventeen years. It has cost something to move slowly in this matter.

We have said that the past year has witnessed the average growth. The rate of progress during the last seventeen years has been uniformly very constant, about five churches a year. Ten years ago six new churches and ten houses of worship were reported. The question now comes whether it is not quite time to change the rate by doubling it, at least to quicken the pace. The church work is initial and fundamental. It underlies all else. The Association is in the South for no other purpose than to make Christian manhood and womanhood. For this glorious work the church of God is the divinely appointed agency. Others are auxiliary. There is but one opinion as to the sore need of more churches. The Macedonian cry is heard in many directions.

It has been demonstrated that Congregational churches can exist and thrive west of the Hudson and south of Mason and Dixon’s line.

The polity and faith of the Pilgrim Fathers is not for the elect few but the unsaved many. And if the methods, influence, and example of our churches in the South are greatly stimulating to the churches round about them, that is an additional argument for their multiplication.

It can hardly be doubted that the schools and universities, by their direct and indirect influence, have prepared sufficient material for more churches. What are eighty-three among the millions who sit in darkness? It must be kept distinctly in mind that educational facilities are multiplying in the South, and that to educate without Christianizing is possibly to augment the perils instead of the defenses of the Republic.

The sanctifying and consecrating forces must be held in close contact with the secular, so that education may be hallowed, or it will end in defeat. We must hold steadfastly to our fundamental principle that nothing but the gospel of Christ will uplift and save the South. And while our educational institutions are thoroughly Christian, yet the church must be the energizing and radiating centre of Christian influence and power. Brethren, does not the church work need and deserve a fresh impulse? Ought not the momentum gathered during the seventeen years to accelerate its progress very greatly now? Would not all hearts be gladdened, if the next annual report should bring tidings of twelve instead of six churches organized under the favoring auspices of this society? Opportunities are (I was about to say waiting, but they don’t wait) passing. Much has been irrevocably lost. Much yet remains. Ideas are changing rapidly. We had feared that crystallization would occur earlier than this, and society become so incrusted with prejudice and hardened by vice that the helpful activities of this and kindred societies would be hindered or defeated. But God is mercifully holding the elements still in solution that churches and schools, like ours, may become the dominating centres of the new civilization. Let these blessed centres of light, healing, influence, be multiplied, surcharged with transforming energy, with assimilating power. The multiplicand already exists; men and money must furnish, under God, the multiplier.

ARTHUR LITTLE, _Chairman_.

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REMARKS OF REV. C. O. BROWN.

Within the past two years it has been my privilege to look in upon three or four of the churches contemplated in this report. One year ago last August I found myself on the Sabbath day in the city of Chattanooga, and I started out at an early hour to find the Congregational church. I made several inquiries of the white people whom I met, but none of them seemed to know. I sauntered along until I was in front of the white Baptist church of the place, and found an aged colored gentleman ringing the bell preparatory to service. I asked him if he knew where the Congregational church was. “Oh yes,” he said, “I’se a member of dat church myself.” Then, having an opportunity, I chatted with him a few minutes, and asked him why they wanted to sustain a Congregational church in Chattanooga. “Oh,” he said among many other things, “we doesn’t believe in dese yer incitements dat de old churches has.” And then I asked him what they proposed to do in the future. “Look a heah, brudder,” he said, “we’s come heah to stay.” Presently I found myself in that Congregational church. I found an ordinarily good little structure, comfortably furnished for church purposes. When the congregation came in I saw decently clad people with hymn books and Bibles in their hands. Presently from the study door came the pastor, and with all dignity and order, took his place in the pulpit, and he preached a sermon in which, if my eyes had been closed, I should have found no evidence that he was a colored man. He was a graduate of Atlanta University. There was every evidence of order and system, of calm and deliberative religion, which we should find in this church on the next Sabbath day.

In the evening of that same day I had an opportunity for comparisons and contrasts. I went over to one of the old colored churches which stands diagonally across an open square or common. The scene was that of one billowy sea of emotion and excitement, of hallooing and amen-ing. Now, I said to myself, here is this pure church established in this community as a standing testimony against that sort of thing. I said, as I sat beneath the spell of emotions which found vent in tears, here in this Congregational church and on this ground are both prophecy and fulfillment. The Congregational church stands not more than six rods from where my tent was at one time pitched when I was a soldier; where the shells from Lookout mountain used to drop in the days of Thomas and Hood. Here, I said, in this scarred ground, is a prophecy which was uttered eighteen years ago, in the thunder of artillery and the clash of battle. It was a prophecy of liberty; and this church for colored people, for _free_ colored people, our brothers and sisters, is the fulfillment of that prophecy. It was my privilege, only a few days later, to be present in the Storrs Congregational church of Atlanta. And it was a pleasure to be permitted to speak to those people. I saw there the same evidence of Christian order and propriety; everything which bore testimony to a high type of Christian life. I attended two of its prayer meetings. There was the calm, subdued temper which bore witness to the suppression of the animal nature and the development of the spiritual. And I want to say here, brethren, that if God in his providence should send me to Atlanta, I should cast in my lot with the Storrs Congregational church.

I wish to second what was said by Doctor Little with regard to the enlargement of our church work in the South. We feel that the time has come for broadening the boundaries of this distinctively religious work. Our churches are, and are to be, the conservators of the other work done in our educational institutions. None of our young people should be allowed, for want of a church home of our own polity, to escape from holy and pure influences. Nor should they be allowed to expend in other directions power and influence acquired in our schools which might be conserved in our churches. Let us not make the mistake south of the Ohio River which, thirty or forty years ago, was made west of the Hudson; but let us rather from this annual meeting look to the enlargement of this blessed part of our work, concerning which such glad harbingers are before us in the general survey presented by the Secretary.

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AFRICA.

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REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.

The Committee to whom was referred the general report on Africa would submit the following:

Little that is new or very noteworthy has occurred during the year past. The Mendi Mission, which has been so long, and at such sacrificial cost, maintained by the Association, was reinforced by a graduate of the theological department of Howard University, Rev. Mr. Hall, who took charge of the church at Good Hope station, and has brought to his work such qualifications as promise to make him a valuable worker in this growingly hopeful field. Mr. St. John, who went out to become the business manager of the missionary steamer John Brown, though obliged temporarily to return to this country, has accomplished some useful exploration, and demonstrated that the proposed steamer will become a most timely and invaluable assistant to the missionaries in the way of facilitating transportation and intercommunication. There are encouraging signs that the influence of the workers at this mission is extending to the interior, and that the representatives of its schools and churches who are engaged in secular callings are a credit to the same, and are advertising the value of Christian training and character to those who are as yet strangers to both. One faithful laborer has, during the last twelvemonth, fallen at his post, after a service of fifteen years, Rev. J. M. Williams. His name will go to swell that ever-increasing list of heroic workers, who sacrificed their lives for Africa’s redemption. A native preacher has taken the vacated place, and so the holy work goes on, though the brave workers here and there are summoned to leave their toil and go up to their exceeding great reward. It is a token at once significant and prophetic, that this successor of Mr. Williams, at the Kaw Mendi station, has a son now in Fisk University who will keep up the succession of workers in Africa, by in due time returning to the land of his fathers as a herald of the gospel of Christ. Three other youthful representatives of the Mendi Mission are at school at Hampton and Atlanta, their very presence here being fraught with good to fellow students from the colored people of this country and to the land from which they came as the first fruits in the way of missionary consecration. At the last Annual Meeting, great interest was excited by the expedition of Superintendent Ladd and Dr. Snow, which had just been entered upon, to find on the upper Nile a suitable place for the proposed Arthington Mission. Much was hoped for from this resolute attempt to locate a new station in the region of the Sobat. These pioneers have safely returned, and bring their mature recommendations as to what is expedient to be done in the district, where that generous patron of African missions, Mr. Arthington, was so urgent something should be done. On the whole, this Association has made a noble record, in concert with other missionary societies in the dark continent. The chapter of what has been endured and achieved by its representatives will be one of imperishable glory in the annals of this body. Whatever changes the future may bring, for the good brave work of the past, we and all lovers of Africa will praise God. Never was its mission work in the far-away land more promiseful, and we can but believe that days of large ingathering and of immediate advance are before it, so that past sacrifices and toils will not have been in vain, and the speedier successes of coming days will justify a missionary policy of the boldest and broadest character.

M. MCG. DANA, _Chairman_.

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REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON THE PROPOSED EXCHANGE OF MISSIONS.

The Committee to whom was referred Secretary Strieby’s report, on recommending the simplification of the work of the American Missionary Association, by withdrawing from the foreign field, and assuming more fully the work among the Indians to which it is now providentially invited, approve in general of its proposals, but beg to recommend to the Executive Committee of the American Missionary Association, in considering and settling the questions involved, the following points which they suggest as conditions in effecting the changes contemplated:

1. That the entire Mendi Mission, with its long and checkered history, representing such heroic sufferings and achievements, and in the sustenance of which our British friends have so generously aided us, be continued by transferring it to the A. B. C. F. M. or to the United Brethren, who have a mission near by and who will entertain overtures for the same, and that to this end the churches, schools, and other property be made over to either party, with the interest of the Avery fund, in the one case at once and in the other for a limited time, as the Committee may arrange. That the steamer John Brown, to which the Sabbath-schools of our churches have contributed some $7,000, be built, and be given over to such parties as will use it for the purposes originally contemplated.

2. That the interest in, and funds for, the Arthington Mission be, so far as may be, transferred to the A. B. C. F. M., and that failing, to the United Presbyterians who are doing such excellent work in the Nile Valley.

3. That this Association will assume the Indian Mission in Dakota offered it by the A. B. C. F. M., and will withdraw from the foreign fields, and arrange ultimately for the transference of the interest of the Avery fund to the American Board.

And your Committee propose for your adoption the following resolution, covering the adjudication of this question.

Resolved, That the matter of accepting the Dakota Mission from the American Board, and of transferring our African Mission to that Board or some other organization, be referred to the Executive Committee with power, provided that it be made certain that the Mendi Mission, so dear to the hearts of many of the Association, be in some way sustained hereafter.

M. MCG. DANA, _Chairman_.

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THE INDIANS.

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REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.

The Committee on Indian Missions would report:

First. That the work of this Association among the Indians—a work so small that the expenditure for it is only about one-fifth that for the Chinese in America—has been prospered during the last year. The blessing of the Master rests upon it, and our thanksgiving and prayers should be stimulated thereby.