Part 1

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APRIL, 1887.

The American Missionary

VOL. XLI. NO. 4.

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL.

FINANCIAL, 97 CONSECRATION OF WEALTH, 98 NEW PASTOR PARK ST. CHURCH, 99 DECISION OF SUPREME COURT REGARDING THE CHINESE, 100 CHINESE INDEMNITY BILL, 101 TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS, 102 THE COLOR QUESTION AGAIN, 103 PARAGRAPHS, 104 HENRY WARD BEECHER, 105 THE NEGRO ON THE NEGRO, 106 RELIGIOUS DOGGEREL, 109

THE SOUTH.

NOTES IN THE SADDLE. Supt. C. J. Ryder, 111 REVIVAL AT ATLANTA UNIVERSITY, 113 VISIT TO MT. HERMON, 114 DEDICATION OF LINCOLN MEMORIAL CHURCH, 115 EVIDENCES OF PROGRESS, 116

THE INDIANS.

OUR DEACON, 117

THE CHINESE.

FROM REV. A. F. NEWTON, 118

BUREAU OF WOMAN’S WORK.

HOW TO ORGANIZE AND CONDUCT A LADIES’ MISSIONARY SOCIETY––SECRET SOCIETIES AMONG THE COLORED PEOPLE, 120

FOR THE CHILDREN.

THE WAY TO DO IT, 122

RECEIPTS, 123

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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.

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American Missionary Association.

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PRESIDENT, Hon. WM. B. WASHBURN, LL.D., Mass.

_Vice-Presidents._

Rev. A. J. F. BEHRENDS, D.D., N.Y. Rev. F. A. NOBLE, D.D., Ill. Rev. ALEX. MCKENZIE, D.D., Mass. Rev. D. O. MEARS, D.D., Mass. Rev. HENRY HOPKINS, Mo.

_Corresponding Secretary._

REV. M. E. STRIEBY, D.D., _56 Reade Street, N. Y._

_Associate Corresponding Secretaries._

Rev. JAMES POWELL, D.D., _56 Reade Street, N. Y._ Rev. A. F. BEARD, D.D., _56 Reade Street, N. Y._

_Treasurer._

H. W. HUBBARD, Esq., _56 Reade Street, N. Y._

_Auditors._

PETER MCCARTEE. CHAS. P. PEIRCE.

_Executive Committee._

JOHN H. WASHBURN, Chairman. A. P. FOSTER, Secretary.

_For Three Years._

S. B. HALLIDAY. SAMUEL HOLMES. SAMUEL S. MARPLES. CHARLES L. MEAD. ELBERT B. MONROE.

_For Two Years._

J. E. RANKIN. WM. H. WARD. J. W. COOPER. JOHN H. WASHBURN. EDMUND L. CHAMPLIN.

_For One Year._

LYMAN ABBOTT. A. S. BARNES. J. R. DANFORTH. CLINTON B. FISK. A. P. FOSTER.

_District Secretaries._

Rev. C. L. WOODWORTH, D.D., _21 Cong’l House, Boston_. Rev. J. E. ROY, D.D., _151 Washington Street, Chicago_.

_Financial Secretary for Indian Missions._

Rev. CHARLES W. SHELTON.

_Field Superintendent._

Rev. C. J. RYDER, _56 Reade Street, N. Y._

_Bureau of Woman’s Work._

_Secretary_, Miss D. E. EMERSON, _56 Reade Street, N. Y._

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COMMUNICATIONS

Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the Corresponding Secretaries; those relating to the collecting fields, to Rev. James Powell, D.D., or to the District Secretaries; letters for “THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY,” to the Editor, at the New York Office.

DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

In drafts, checks, registered letters or post office orders 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 151 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.

FORM OF A BEQUEST.

“I BEQUEATH to my executor (or executors) the sum of –––– dollars, in trust, to pay the same in –––– days after my decease to the person who, when the same is payable, shall act as Treasurer of the ‘American Missionary Association,’ of New York City, to be applied, under the direction of the Executive Committee of the Association, to its charitable uses and purposes.” The Will should be attested by three witnesses.

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THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

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VOL. XLI. APRIL, 1887. No. 4.

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American Missionary Association.

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OUR RECEIPTS FALLING BEHIND.

It is with great regret that we call the attention of our readers to our diminishing receipts. We have been cherishing the hope that we would be spared this necessity. But the receipts in February are so much below the receipts of the corresponding month of the previous year, that unless the loss is quickly retrieved we shall be embarrassed all the rest of the year. In February, a year ago, we received $21,897.74. Last February we received only $12,389.79. This is a loss of $9,507.95. Until February we were well ahead of last year. But the drop is so great that our total receipts up to the first of March are $3,438.16 less than they were at the same time the preceding year. In church collections and individual donations, we are behind $5,389.31! We earnestly ask the attention of all the friends of the American Missionary Association to these facts. What is the reason for so heavy a falling off? Are we failing to keep the necessities of our work before the churches? In our thought that the Association was getting nicely out of the woods, have we relaxed our efforts and allowed other things to slip in and crowd the Association out? Something has happened. That during the month of February––which ought to be one of the best months in the year––only a little over $12,000 should find its way into our treasury, is occasion for anxiety. We have had our bills to pay and we have borrowed the money and _paid_ them. In so doing we have incurred a debt. We could not avoid it without leaving our missionaries unpaid. We must speedily be reimbursed, or else back again into the hated bondage and hindrance of financial embarrassment we inevitably fall. We appeal to our friends to spare us this humiliation and vexation. We ask this favor, namely: Will pastors and individual friends please take this question of our outlook upon their minds and hearts and make an earnest effort to increase contributions to our work from this time forward? Will they try, during this month and the months intervening before summer vacation, to secure so much to our treasury that during the summer months we shall be spared the agony of special appeals and special efforts? “A prudent man foreseeth the evil and hideth himself.” We are urged to be prudent now by the very unpleasant memories of what we have been obliged to do every summer, for several years past. Will you join us in foreseeing the evil and help us to avoid it?

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We are from time to time reminded that the old abolition friends of the A. M. A. are rapidly passing away. They will soon all be gone. There was something in their friendship that challenges our admiration. They gave the Association such a hearty support that there could be no question but that prayer and gifts went together. So also they have in many instances shown the wisdom of giving generously during life. The recent death of Mr. Lewis S. Swezey, of Rockford, Ill., gives emphasis to these thoughts. He helped organize the Liberty Party, and was one of a few who first voted in the town of Rockford for Birney for President. Though his whole estate did not amount to more than $10,000, he gave to the Association a one thousand dollar bond in 1885, and another amounting to seven hundred and fourteen dollars in 1886. At his death he left the Association a life policy of $2,000, and $500 in his will. He made the A. M. A. his residuary legatee, from which our treasury will probably realize about $5,000. His sympathy for the colored people may be seen in the fact that one of the last acts of his life was to give a poor old colored woman in Rockford a hundred dollars to repair her house. When dying he said to his wife, “This seems like crossing the river,” and in response to the question, “How does it look on the other side?” replied, “Very bright, very bright.” And no wonder. He had laid up his treasures where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. Money given to the Lord during life is followed with no regrets at the dying hour. Were Christians thoroughly possessed of the conviction that such work as the A. M. A. is doing must be prosecuted and sustained as a religious duty, we believe their offerings would be far more generous than they are. A sense of duty as expressed in their gifts would be accompanied by a sense of delight. Our prayer is that the surviving old abolition friends may be long spared us, and that the places of those who have fallen may be speedily filled with worthy successors.

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“It is with pleasure I assist you. I have made several of our young ladies life members during the past few years, to get them interested in the A. M. A. Anything I can do to help on the good work, be sure and call on me for, and I will do all I can for you.”

“I think the placing of the work of the Association before individual church members is productive of good results, as I find that only those well informed of the Society’s needs contribute regularly and liberally to its support.”

“We are to make a careful canvass of our congregation, with a view to increasing our missionary offerings, and securing a larger number of regular readers for our missionary magazine. Can you send us ten or a dozen copies of THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY to be used by our district visitors?”

“My gifts to the A. M. A. have been necessarily reduced to meet my change in circumstances. I gave five dollars at our last collection, which was the price of a cushion in my pew. I believe that under the circumstances the hard side of a board will be softer than the soft side of a cushion. There is no special merit in it, but I feel that it is an encouragement to the workers to know that many in the churches are willing to give up little comforts for the sake of them and the cause.”

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS.

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The new pastor of the Park Street Church, Boston, Rev. David Gregg, in his first sermon after installation, discussed the duties of the Pulpit and the Pews. One who heard it said at the close, “Well, that was a sermon that would please the secretaries of our benevolent societies as well as the rest of us.” Depend on it, that any sermon of which such testimony can be borne has two things characteristic of it: One is, it must be a gospel sermon, and another is, it must be interesting. It has been our privilege to read the sermon as reported in the Boston daily papers. It fills the bill. It is full of the gospel, and a thrill of interest runs all the way through it. Speaking for the Secretaries of the A. M. A., we can say they are pleased, intensely so. Here are two brief extracts that sufficiently justify their pleasure: “Is it the duty of Park Street pulpit to accept the service and co-operation of the Park Street pews? The pulpit here and now solemnly performs its duty, and declares its acceptance of co-operation and service. I have come among you for this very purpose. I come to beseech you to throw yourself for all you are worth into the work of the church, I come to command you in the name of the Lord that you love, not for yourselves. I greet your locked-up wealth, and ask it to come forth from the vaults of the bank to meet me and to join me in the work of Christ. I promise you to be the most liberal man in the world in dealing out your money from your pocket-books, and in accepting and in giving away your time. I am willing that every righteous and needy cause under the broad heavens shall call upon you for aid. I come among you to tell you that you have the same obligations before God to consecrate yourselves and all you have to the gospel that Jesus Christ had when he lived his sublime and devoted life. I put a gospel mortgage this day upon the pastor and people of this church, and upon all that we have, by way of brain and heart power, and gold and trade, and time and business, and natural endowment and acquired attainment. Park Street pews, you can offer no good thing to the pulpit of this church, in order that you may glorify Christ and build up his cause here, that the pulpit will not take and publicly credit. This pulpit welcomes to the service of Christ every agency filled with the spirit of Christ.” * * * * * * *

“If we are to realize the possibilities open to us as pastor and people, we must keep a constant eye upon the land and age in which we live. Our age and our country speak to us to-day. Because our lot has been cast in them, they have a claim upon us, and their voice should be heard. Our age is an age telling of ages, and it commands us to meet the duties of the hour. No relations in life ought to be more helpful for this than our church relations. There is no place for mediæval fossils outside of a museum. The demand of the hour is for living men and living women. Our age is a pivotal age, a cardinal age, a burning age, a crucial age. Let us not forget that we are living under the westering sun of the 19th century, and that this lays us under obligations to be 19th century Christians.

“While we forget not the age, we must not forget the land in which we live, and which expects an outcome of good from our church relations. America is the land where the battles of the future are destined to be fought. In push of discovery and of civilization there is no land beyond this. The fields of America are the outer rim of the earth, and here the nations of the world, crowded out of the old lands, meet, and here all the great problems and questions of ages must be debated and settled. Our land cries for help, and we can help it. We can give it the gospel of Jesus Christ and that is what it needs above all things. The gospel alone carries in it the principles which can solve with safety and finality the social and political questions which are coming to America to stay.”

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BY TREATY STIPULATIONS the Chinese in this country are guaranteed the same rights and privileges as are accorded the most favored nations. One Thomas Baldwin was arrested by a United States Marshal for driving out with force and violence a number of Chinese residents from the town of Nicolaus, California. The circuit court refused to discharge him upon a writ of habeas corpus. An appeal was taken to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court looked the matter through and found that while the United States Government has the _power_ to provide for the punishment of those who deprive the Chinese of their treaty rights, there is no statute law by which it can exercise its power! The decision of the circuit court was therefore reversed. Justices Field and Harlan dissented. In a separate opinion, Justice Field held that if the Chinese could not be protected in their treaty rights, neither could the subjects or citizens of any other nation. This is a beautiful attitude for the great United States to be placed in before the eyes of the world. Making treaties when it has not power to compel its own citizens to observe them! What a farce. Is it to be supposed that if this were understood nations would go to the trouble of making treaties with us? Were the questions at issue about the Chinese raised in regard to subjects of Great Britain or Germany or any of the first or even second-class powers of Europe, is it to be supposed that any such a decision would have been formulated and promulgated by our Supreme Court? We do not question the ability nor the integrity of our justices. The probability is that in the _strict_ construction of the law they are right. But even judges, when put to it, can sometimes find such latitude in the field of interpretation as to warrant them in setting aside mere technicalities rather than to allow justice to be defeated.

That such eminent jurists as Field and Harlan found interpretations that justified them in dissenting; that the circuit court in California found reasons for refusing to release Baldwin from custody, would certainly indicate that the decision is fairly challengeable. It is a national humiliation. It ought to be so felt by the people. It would be so felt if regard for right and justice were supreme in the national heart and conscience. It is to be hoped that this matter will be brought by the proper authority, as soon as practicable, to the attention of Congress, and that the United States Government will speedily be clothed with statutory power to enforce its own treaties. If this decision shall have the effect of getting us out of the painful predicament that it reveals our Government to be in, we may reluctantly accept it as a means of grace. Meanwhile even China is on record as being far more Christian in her treatment of our people than Christian America is in its treatment of hers.

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MONEY COMPENSATION is a very poor return as an offset to outrage. Congress passed the bill appropriating $147,750 to indemnify the Chinese sufferers from the Rock Springs riots. Hon. Wm. Walter Phelps, representative from New Jersey, spoke words upon its passage for which every Christian in the country must feel grateful. Said he:

“I want to pay this amount because the Chinese Government asked for that sum. The sum represents only the property destroyed. The Chinese Government knows that our Government never likes to pay a claim in full, so it wisely presents its bill only for the property destroyed, and says nothing of 28 men murdered––nothing of 15 men wounded––nothing of 700 Chinese hunted for ten days with club and rifle like rabbits, until they were dispersed into the wilderness and their village was made an ash heap.

“In the time when Great Britain was at war with China, an American citizen named Edwards was arrested by mistake as an Englishman, imprisoned from sunrise to sunset, and then released. The Chinese Government paid $31,600 for the injury done to his person and to the dignity of the United States. There were 700 Chinese who suffered at Rock Springs––all of them more than this man. We hesitate to pay them $200 each. Recall the familiar story of heathen generosity––how China once gave us $700,000 and said: ‘Take it and pay the claims of your citizens.’ We took it; we paid the claims with twelve per cent. interest, and there was enough left to return $200,000 to the Chinese Government.

“If this seems ancient history, long after the Rock Springs massacre there was a riot in Ching King. The rabble destroyed property belonging to the American Methodist Missionary Society. The Chinese Government has already paid $25,000 for these losses; and also, since our discussion on this bill, a riot, under similar circumstances, at Shanghai, destroyed other missionary property. The Chinese Government has paid this bill too, $5,000.

“I have no heart to speak of the obligations founded in the international law. I don’t want even to refer to the treaty, where we pledged ourselves to exert all our powers to devise measures for the protection of Chinese subjects in this country. It is not on the ground of legal, but of the moral obligations that I prefer to rest this claim.”

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OUR TREATMENT of the Indians is very much like the way a kindly parent allows his judgment to be at the mercy of the pranks of his mischievous boy. The boy takes a stick, and chasing a dog, pokes it and pounds it till the maddened brute turns upon his tormentor and bites him. This enrages the father, who forthwith takes his gun and shoots the dog. In strict justice he ought to have taken the stick and applied it to the back of the boy. The good man had no ill will whatever toward the dog, nor would he ever have thought of shooting it had the poor brute been let alone and not tantalized into biting the boy. But the dog having been enraged so as to become dangerous, there was nothing left but to destroy it. White men––some of them not even citizens of the United States––in violation of law enter the Indian reservation, steal the Indians’ ponies, drive off their cattle, shoot down a few of the Indians for resisting them, or perhaps for the mere fun of the thing. The Indians, maddened by the wrongs inflicted upon them, go on the war-path. The savage stirred with anger strikes back, and the innocent with the guilty––if indeed the guilty do not go scot free––are made to suffer. Had the Indian been let alone he would have remained peaceful and quiet and friendly. But by desperadoes he has been maddened to go on the war-path in vengeance, to retaliate for wrongs he has suffered. Then follow the blood-curdling stories of ambuscade and massacre. Popular indignation is roused. Extermination of the Indian is demanded. There is nothing left now for Uncle Sam to do but to send his army and put the Indian down. A pity that the chastisement cannot be inflicted on those whose wickedness started the mischief.

BISHOP WHIPPLE bears the following testimony to the good effect of making the Indians feel the responsibility of individual distinctive effort for themselves by vesting them with individual rights of property and by compelling them to live by their own labor:

“Twenty years ago we began with a small number of Indians at White Earth Reservation. They were wild folk, used only to savage life. Now there are 1,800 people living like civilized beings. They have houses built by themselves. They are self-supporting. It is an orderly, law-abiding, peaceful community. In religion they are about equally divided between the Episcopalian and Catholic churches. The laws are administered by an Indian police. This year they raised 40,000 bushels of wheat and 30,000 bushels of oats. They have a herd of 1,200 or 1,500 cattle, several hundred horses, swine, sheep and fowls. They are proud of their homes and of living in them like white people. They are as neat and orderly as old-fashioned Dutch housekeepers. They are excellent cooks, too; they never need to be shown twice how to cook anything. Their sewing is the most beautiful I ever saw; it is impossible to see the stitches. They have made all the carpets and bedding I have in my house. The contrast, therefore, between these White Earth people and the scattered bands of Chippewas shows plainly what can be accomplished with them by adopting right methods. The latter are utterly degraded.”

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