Part 3

And no existing organization can do that work better, not to say as well, as this Association. It has the advantage of acknowledged position. It is widely and affectionately known among the people for whom it labors. In the earlier days, when the wondering Negroes asked who sent these teachers and preachers among them, they were answered, "The Congregational churches;" but the lengthy adjective choked them, and they invented a title of their own, and called them "God's people," which, if we only deserved it, I submit, would be a more pleasing appellation even here in New England than our six-syllabled denominational name, "God's people." It is a significant and suggestive phrase. It voices the unquestioning faith and affection of the needy race in those who have hitherto helped them, and while other agencies can render efficient aid in completing the unfinished task, none so well as "God's people" can carry on the good work unto perfection.

Neither are we to leave out of account the fact that this Association has the advantage of experience. Its work at first was necessarily tentative. It had no pioneers and no precedents to guide it. It was compelled to originate methods and prove them by the test of time. It is high testimony to the wisdom of the fathers that they made so few and such slight mistakes. But slight and few as they were, they will not be repeated. There is no occasion for further experiment. The work, and how best to do it, are both things which are fully known. The management of this Association understands the Southern question better than the Administration at Washington. It would be a fool's policy in either patriot or Christian to dismiss from service, or limit in efficiency by shrinkage of funds or lessening of interest, an organization with such an illustrious record, which has been so honored of God and man, and which has such capacity for manifolding its successes and pushing on the growth already reached to consummate blossom and needful and opulent fruitage. No, no, brethren, the time has not yet come to remand the Association to inaction, and neither has the time come for the American church to omit one dollar of its givings, or one utterance of its prayers, or one impulse of its enthusiasm for the right and complete and final solution of the most immediate and pressing problem with which we are set face to face.

In December, 1620, a little vessel entered Plymouth harbor, having on board the devoted company of the Pilgrims. To human judgment she seemed of small account, as she lay there, crusted with spray and weather beaten with her wrestlings with the winter sea, and of hardly greater account apparently was the handful of shivering men and women who landed on the inhospitable shore. But the coming of the Pilgrim ship and the Pilgrim company to a port for which they had not sailed was the inauguration of a new era in government, ethics, social life and religion, and whatever is best and purest in our nationality to-day, traces its lineage back to that far past and seemingly insignificant event, and our largest hope for the future depends for its realization on the further and perfect development of the possibilities of which that event was the seed and prophecy. In June, 1839, another vessel, described in the journals of that day as "a long, low, black schooner," was seen lying off the coast of Connecticut. She proved to be the "Amistad," a Spanish craft, having on board some forty slaves, who had risen and overpowered their captors. Like her predecessor of Plymouth, through the treachery of the management, she had been steered to a port for which she was not bound. As the coming of the "Mayflower" opened one era in the history of the continent, so the arrival of the "Friendship" was the beginning of another. The Spanish Government claimed the slaves as their property, and the American Government arraigned them for murder on the high seas. Generous Christian men organized themselves into a committee for the defense of these unfortunates. John Quincy Adams broke the professional silence of more than thirty years, and volunteered to plead for them before the Supreme Court of the United States. "Little did I imagine," he said at the close of his masterly argument--"little did I imagine that I should ever again be required to claim the right of appearing in the capacity of an officer of this Court. Yet such has been the dictate of my destiny, and I appear again to plead the cause of justice, and now of liberty and life, in behalf of many of my fellow-men, before that same Court which in a former age I had addressed in support of rights of property. I stand again, I trust for the last time, before the Court." It _was_ the last time, and the glorious ending of an illustrious legal career, for the slaves were acquitted from all charges against liberty or life. That committee was the germ of the American Missionary Association, those slaves were the nucleus of the great work of the society on African soil, the efforts of the committee in their behalf were the beginnings of the always widening and ever blessed work which the society has done and is doing in our land. The "Mayflower" and the "Friendship"--they must always be equally historic vessels. The coming of each was a prophecy and a promise. They each reached a port for which neither was bound, and both were started on an undreamed-of, limitless voyage. "Mayflower" and "Friendship"--let them forever sail on abreast in our reverence and affection, the special and yet affiliated work which each was commissioned of God to do, acknowledged and accepted, and assiduously pressed, till the continent is clean from wrong and all its inhabitants are true and just to each other, and the imperial nation stands among the people of the earth in the purple of unquestioned supremacy, while the splendor of the Divine Favor covers it with glory and honor.

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We clip from a colored religious paper, published in Georgia, the following extract from one of its correspondents. The style of the writer, and also his facts, are strong arguments for education at the South. The schoolmaster is evidently abroad:

We are trying to come out of darkness down here by the little at a time. In the great upheaval publicly, and religiously too, some of our churches and people are suffering much in these parts for the great need of consistent, Christ like living preachers, and also teachers. Some or half of our churches are warring about preachers, and yet we have so many that they are really in one another's way. A licentee preacher and exhorter preacher became enraged about setting some gate posts in Lee County a few days ago; it ended in a fight in which the licentee preacher had his under lip cut completely off for life. I am sorry to say that generally you can find in our community preacher against preacher and members against members of the church. We have four churches here and no conversions hardly at all in the four churches. Last year there were not a dozen baptized out of the four, and yet some think they have as good preaching as any community has. The trouble seems to be this that new wine cannot be retained in old bottles any longer.

The Mount Zion Church is trying to organize a preacher night school with some success.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

The above sex has suffered much in our community in the last three months and are not out of it yet, suffering at the expense of ignorance and intemperance, saying nothing about the kind of the men that one sees going heedlessly into the vortex. We saw a horrible death of a drunkard a few days ago right at our doors, leaving a smart young wife and six little children to mourn and grope their lives through an unfriendly world. Such we think ought to solemnly warn the people against living the life of intemperance though it seems at times that some one has not heeded at any manner of intemperance.

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THE SOUTH.

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ONE OF THE DEACONS.

BY MRS. JULIA E. NELSON.

"A short, heavy-set, black man," "A good carpenter," "A man who can turn his hand to 'most anything," "None of your trifling fellows; somebody you can depend on every time." Such are the descriptions given of Deacon Jeremiah Edwards by the people among whom the chief part of his fifty years have been passed.

"The pump is out of kilter." "So? Well, tell Jeremiah Edwards to come and doctor it up."

"There's a leak in the roof, and the tinners can't seem to find it." "I'll send Jerry 'round to attend to it."

"Can't find the key of my bureau drawer; reckon Bud or the baby has lost it; drawer locked, and not a key can I find to fit in either of the hardware stores. I never saw such a place." "Don't fret about it, Carrie, I'll send Uncle Jerry up to file off one of these keys or make a new one; and while he's here, have him repair the organ and mend the picket-fence, and set the glass in the chamber window and the back bedroom. Better let him take the umbrella to his shop and mend it, and is there anything else? Oh! those shears and the butcher-knife you've been complaining about so long; let him take them along and sharpen them up." "Do you suppose, Harry, he could do anything with the cooking-stove? There's something broken about it; I reckon it's broken, but the cook says it's burnt out. Likely she broke it, though; niggers are so careless and good-for-nothing." "Certainly, certainly. Jerry used to work in an iron-foundry; he's a regular Tubal Cain. If he can't fix anything that's made of iron or brass or wood, it can't _be_ fixed, that's flat."

Now what would the residents of a town like Jonesboro, a town over one hundred years old, and very small of its age--what _could_ they do in an emergency if, instead of a missing key, there should be a missing Jerry? The probabilities are that it will take something mightier than the Western fever and more powerful than Colonization projects to carry Jerry Edwards away from the snug little home that he has made for himself, his good wife Patsey, and his little granddaughter. Many a millionaire finds less satisfaction in his palatial mansion than the proprietor of that little white cottage among the trees, as he gathers fruit from his own well-kept orchard, vegetables from his prolific garden, and corn from his own field. How much sweeter music is the cackling of hens to one who has brought them up from downy chickenhood! That and the robins' songs give more pleasure at the cottage than would the notes of imprisoned canaries.

A horse that "knows more than some people," cows that show generous keeping, and the "prettiest pigs you ever saw" are some of the adjuncts of the Edwards establishment. A pig is not pretty? Own the pig--_own the pig_ and watch him as he grows ripe for the pork barrel. Everybody's pig, like everybody's baby, is prettier than anybody's.

"Let everybody go West that wants to," says Jerry Edwards, "and let them that want to be Africans go to Africa. I'm an American, and I shall stay right here the balance of my days. If I couldn't make a living here, I should be striking out after work, but I don't need to go anywhere to hunt work; work is hunting for _me all_ the time." And so it is.

Speaking in the Literary Society on the relative merits of trades and the learned professions, he said, "Everybody ought to work with his hands that can't work with his head. Now, some try to work with their heads when they'd be doing a good deal better for themselves and everybody else if they'd just go to work with their hands. Now, I couldn't make a living by headwork if I wanted to. I don't know how it would have been if I'd had a chance for an education when I was young. I never went to school a day in my life except Sunday-school. What little knowledge I have of reading and writing is just picked up. Because I've got along without an education, I don't think everybody else ought to do the same. I'd have got along better if I'd had more. I feel as if I am crippled by the want of it, and am just crutching along. Young men, get all the education you can, but at the same time remember that it's a good thing to have a trade to fall back upon."

In the ante-bellum days, that compound of muscle and will and honesty and skill now known as Deacon Edwards, used to bring home to his master a twenty-dollar gold piece weekly, earned in the foundry where he was hired out without being a party to the contract. His master had a large family, and gave to each of his children a college education. If the earnings of Jerry and his fellow-servants did not suffice to pay bills, a boy or girl (and colored men and women were always boys and girls with their masters) would be sold. The "boy" to whom he gave two trades, although by no means rich, is in better circumstances than any of the sons whose education was paid for by the sweat of dusky brows mingled with countless tears and bitter heart-burnings.

That humorous philosopher, Josh Billings, says, "You never saw a self-made man but what was mighty proud of his job." If any self-made man has a right to be proud, it is he who, having been held as a chattel, has compelled all who know him to admit that he possesses honesty, good sense, moral courage and everything that goes to make up a true man.

Four years ago Jerry Edwards was elected School Commissioner, and served in that capacity for three years. He was the first and only colored man who has ever filled that position in his district, and was elected by an unusually large majority in a place where colored men are greatly in the minority. But he has won victories greater than this--victories over self in breaking the chains of appetite and long-established habit. Eight years ago a temperance society was organized here. "Before that time," says he, "I never heard, and it had never entered my head, that there could be any harm in drinking so long as a man didn't get drunk." He attended the meetings, listened attentively, but did not take the pledge for a long time. At first he argued for the moderate use of stimulants, the harmlessness of pure wine, etc., but yielded point by point to repeated assaults in a war of friendly words.

He had a fine vineyard, made wine, drank it, sold it, and gave it to his friends. There was no market for grapes--what should he do with his vineyard? He feared he could not abstain wholly, and tried total abstinence for several months before venturing to pledge himself to it publicly, "Don't think," said he, during his voluntary probation, "that I don't appreciate what you say, nor that I am not as good a friend to you as anybody in the Temperance Society." We had had some persecutions. "I'll be with you in six troubles," said he. "Ah! yes, Mr. Edwards," said I, "you will, and have been already: but in the seventh trouble, the temperance trouble, there you leave me to fight the battle alone." That was an unmerciful sword-thrust when he was having a harder battle than I, his foes being within and mine without--his enemies being appetite and love of gain, mine principally ignorance and prejudice. Not long after this he joined the temperance society, and now sells or gives away grapes instead of wine.

Over a year ago he resolved that he would no longer be a bond-slave to that bewitching weed whose use civilized men learned from savages. For more than forty years he had used tobacco, having begun at the early age of seven years. A poor kind of candy to reward a good boy with, certainly. It was no easy thing for the veteran smoker and chewer to bid good-bye to pipe and quid, but for fourteen months he has successfully resisted the temptation to defile himself with the unclean thing, although he has craved it every day.

"I know there's differences in religion," said Haley, the trader. "Some kinds is mis'rable. There's your meetin' pious; there's your singin' roarin' pious; them ar ain't no account in black or white; but these rayly is; and I've seen it in niggers as often as any: your rail softly quiet, stiddy, honest pious that the hull world couldn't tempt 'em to do nothing that they thinks is wrong." The "roarin' pious" never give up the use of tobacco; it takes the "stiddy, honest pious" to do that. If you are going to build a church and want solid deacon timber, take the last sort.

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JELLICO, TENN.

In this field the harvest is truly ripe. A few days since I was called to the bedside of a young man who it was thought was dying or would soon die. He said he was unsaved. I said to him, "Do you believe in Christ?" "I do not know whether I do or not." "Well," I said, "you believe Jesus died to save you?" "I don't know anything at all of him. I never read the Bible a minute in my life. I never went to church in my life. Oh, pray for me that my soul may not be lost." I sat down on the side of his bed and told him of man's fall, of God's loving kindness, of our redemption through Christ, and that whosoever believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and that whosoever will may come. He accepted the truth, is happy and is recovering health, and will through God's grace be an efficient worker in the vineyard.

E. H. BULLOCK.

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AMONG THE CHURCHES OF MAINE.

I have just returned from a very pleasant campaign among the churches of Maine, in the interest of the A. M. A. I visited and addressed meetings in thirty-one different places. At Old Orchard, in connection with the fourth annual meeting of the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, I had the pleasure of meeting representatives from all parts of New England and many of the Western States.

At New Gloucester I met one of our lady missionaries, Miss Mary Lunt, whose labor of love at Selma, Ala., is the crown of rejoicing to the Ladies' Missionary Society of Maine. At Gorham, the home of Governor Robie, I spoke to two large audiences, the Governor and the editor of one of the leading papers of Georgia being present.

During my stay at Augusta I called to pay my respects to the Hon. J. G. Blaine. Mr. Blaine inquired after the welfare of the A. M. A., and manifested deep interest in the education of the freedmen in the South. After a pleasant interview he went to his desk and returned with his check as a donation to our work.

Being in Lewiston during the memorial service of General Grant, I joined the great assembly in paying grateful and heartfelt respect to the hero of Appomattox. Senator Frye gave a stirring account of the great commander's career and an able analysis of the General's character.

In all the places I visited I found the churches and pastors deeply interested in our cause, and especially pleased to receive fresh news from the field of the grand work of the A. M. A.

I wish to express my grateful appreciation to the churches, pastors and friends of the Pine Tree State for their cordial welcome, kind hospitality and generous response to our appeal in behalf of the pressing needs of the A. M. A.

GEO. W. MOORE.

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THE REASON WHY.

BY REV. GEO. C. ROWE.

In the December number of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY an article published contained the following incident.

The First Louisiana Regiment of colored soldiers, recruited in New Orleans, was about to take its departure for the front. The colonel, who for some reason could not accompany his men, presented the regimental flags to the color-sergeant. After a brief speech, full of patriotic feeling, he concluded with these words: "Color-guard, protect, defend, die for, but do not surrender these flags." The sergeant, upon receiving them, made this simple but noble response: "Colonel, I will bring back these colors to you in honor or report to God the reason why." And when, a few days afterward, during an assault on Port Hudson, he fell defending the flag and his dying blood crimsoned its folds, another took his place and saved it from falling into the hands of the enemy. The brave standard-bearer kept his word, and in failing to return the colors to the hands that had committed them to his care, he "reported to God the reason why."

It is the eve of battle; The soldiers are in line; The roll of drum and bugle's blast Marshal that army fine.

The hour is fraught with mystery-- A hush pervades that throng, And each one thinks of home and friends, And says at heart, "How long?"

The colonel rides before his men, His thoughtful brow is bare; He calls the color-sergeant, And tenders to his care

The nation's pride, the dear old flag-- The loved _red_, _white and blue_, And says, with earnest tones and grave: "I intrust _this_ now to you.

"Yes, color-bearer, take in charge Your country's flag to-day, And to the conflict bear it-- The thickest of the fray.

"Bear it with lofty courage, And to it faithful be; This flag has inspired thousands, And led to victory.

"Take it and never leave it, 'Tis a solemn charge to thee; Bring back to me this banner, This ensign of the free!"

"Colonel," the color-sergeant said, Holding the flag on high, "I'll bring it back or else report To _God_ the reason why!"

Away to the front he bears it. Cheered on by comrades brave, Anxious to liberate his race, Bring freedom to the slave.

They charge upon Port Hudson, Where, sheltered by a wall, The foemen cut them down like grass. They bravely charge--but fall.

Yes, on that field, where thousands Unheeding the tumult lie, He left the flag, reporting To _God_ the reason why.

Another bears that flag along, Holding it proud and high: But the sergeant has reported To _God_ the reason why.

Oh, Christian soldier, going forth To battle for the Lord, Be filled with manly courage, And proudly hear God's word.

It is the standard of your King, Who rules the earth and sky; You must win, through it, the vict'ry Or tell _Christ_ the reason why.

The war will soon be ended; In the dust you soon will lie; Go forth and conquer, or report To _God_ the reason why.

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THE CHINESE.

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HOW WE TRAIN THE CHINESE FOR PREACHING.

BY MRS. C. W. SHELDON, TEACHER OF HELPERS.

The one aim and object of our schools is to show the way of life and salvation; so we mix in Bible truth with all our teaching. In all our school-rooms are charts, upon which are printed, in large type, selected passages of Scripture. Some of these texts are read each evening by the school in concert. The helper explains the meaning in Chinese and makes a short practical application of the central truth. Our hymns are gospel hymns, carefully selected, we have prayer both in English and Chinese, and each session of school is closed by the whole school repeating in concert the Lord's Prayer, first in English, then in Chinese. So the work of a helper is largely the teaching of religious truth, and is of great practical benefit in preparing him for preaching.