Chapter 2

_Resolved further_, That never, until we are in the fullest enjoyment of our rights at the ballot-box, will we cease to agitate and work for what justly belongs to us in the shape of suffrage.

_Further resolved_, That it shall be the policy of the colored race to vote so as to bring the greatest division to the white voters of this country, for in this we believe lies the boon of our desire.

The last resolution is not entirely plain to us, and we refrain from comment upon it, but the convention itself, the fact of leadership taking shape among the Negroes, and the forth-putting of their purposes, are very significant.

When the Glenn Bill was born, and when the Georgia House of Representatives stood sponsor for its baptism, we believed that the enemy of righteousness had made a mistake, and that this particular piece of artillery would kick. They who think to thwart the providences of God usually help them forward. Christianity has had many a help from its opposers.

Upon the incidental question of temperance, the sentiments of the convention were voiced by one of the speakers in these words: "The best thing for the Negro is industry, temperance, virtue, economy, union and courage. Get land, get money, get education; be sober and be virtuous. We have drunk enough whiskey since the war to build a railroad from Atlanta to Savannah. The Negro race cannot be great except as individuals rise towards greatness." They are rising. A little more yeast, good friends.

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The following illustrations of some features of our work are not sent forth for the sake of a smile, but for the thought which will be under the smile. The text of the thought, which may be expanded at pleasure, will be found in an ordinance of the United States, dated 1787, viz.: "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged."

ENGLISH AS SHE IS "NOT" TAUGHT IN OUR SCHOOLS.

CONTINUED FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF A MISSIONARY TEACHER.

Go to the great physicianer.

I use consecrated lye.

She is a crippler.

I seldomly hear that.

O Lord, give us good thinking facticals.

The meeting will be in the basin of the church.

O Lord, throw overboard all the load we'se totin, and the sins which upset us.

Jog them in remembrance of their vows.

I want her to resist me with the ironing.

I want all you people to adhere to the bell.

There will be no respectable people in heaven. (God is no respecter of persons.)

I was much disencouraged.

It was said at the startment of this meeting.

I take care of three head of children.

We have passed through many dark scenes and unseens.

May we have the eye of an eagle to see sin afar off and shun it.

I have made inquiration at several places.

A letter written jointly to represent the opinions of several persons, thus expresses itself to us: "We are happy to write this letter to you in a conglomerate manner."

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THE EDUCATIONAL WORK OF THE A.M.A.

BY REV. FORREST F. EMERSON.

The report of the Executive Committee on educational work in the South, confirms the conviction which must have impressed itself on many minds, that the Association is a divinely-appointed agency for carrying forward a work delegated to us as a _nation_. God calls nations as he calls men, and consecrates them to a special work. Rome had a call, and fulfilled it, under the Divine Providence, and that call was to work out the idea, and demonstrate the necessity, of government, and to cultivate in the minds of men everywhere regard for the authority of law; Greece had her mission, and it was to teach the value of individual culture, both physical and intellectual; the people of Israel had their call to teach the doctrine of God, of his moral government, and of the eternal nature of moral law; and this Christian nation has its divine call, and that call arises from the peculiar relation which it sustains to the other races and nations of the earth.

For a long time it seemed as if this land was to be given exclusively to the English race. The Dutch who settled here were assimilated and absorbed; the Spaniards and Portuguese found a congenial clime in South America; the French, by the progress of events, were prevented from gaining a foothold in New England, and with the sale of so-called "Louisiana"--an immense area extending from the Gulf to British America,--France relinquished her last claim to ownership of any part of our domain. The period of history, from the landing at Jamestown and Plymouth to the war of 1812, and later, was the unfolding of events which pointed to the supremacy of the English in North America. Our religion was Protestant and English; our literature took root in English forms of thought; our free institutions were the outcome of principles which had been, and now are, influential in English politics; our common law was English, our traditions of liberty were English, and that union of liberty and law which makes us strong, we inherited from our English fathers. So that in 1820, two hundred years after the arrival of the Mayflower, we were essentially an English nation; old England broken away from old forms and precedents, the natural expansion of England under new forms of government and society.

Now it would have been pleasant, to human ways of thinking, if we could have remained always thus homogeneous. But God had a work for us to do. We were not left to sit down amidst the vast resources which the land affords for material prosperity, and just watch and foster our own growing and expanding life, but God gave us four problems to solve. These four problems came to us from the four quarters of the globe, the Indian of America on the North, the Chinaman of Asia on the West, the descendant of Africa on the South, and the emigrant of Europe on the East, who poured, in great masses, through our Eastern gates, the German unbeliever, the Irish Catholic, the Mormon convert, and representatives of every race of Europe.

The English race, which still represents the heart and brain of the nation, confronts these four problems. The problem on the North and South we brought on ourselves, as results on the one hand of our neglect and injustice, and on the other of our cupidity and cruelty. The troubles that come to us through our Eastern and Western ports, are drawn to us by the attractive influence of our free institutions and our material prosperity.

What are we to do with these alien elements? Do as Rome did. When Rome heard of a hostile nation on her borders, she conquered it, attached it to the Empire, and made it a new pillar of imperial power. So are we to conquer every element of darkness and attach it to the kingdom of light, making it an element of strength in our American civilization and our American Christianity. The difference in the method is the difference between paganism and Christianity, for while Rome conquered with a sword of steel, we conquer with the sword of the Spirit. We conquer by giving gifts unto men, the four gifts of law, land, letters and religion. We have given law to the African and the European with citizenship and the ballot; we have given land to the African and the European, and, thanks to Christian statesmanship, we will soon give it to the Indian in severalty; and to all will we give letters and religion.

It is the peculiar glory of this Association that it deals more directly than any other agency with the gravest and most urgent of these problems, the education of the colored race, so that while the Government gives the Negro citizenship, and permits him to own land, this society undertakes the work of fitting him for the ownership of land and for the responsibility of citizenship. And it is doing this in the genuine way, through the gospel of Christ, and education as the handmaid and helper of the gospel--that helper without which Christianity would be falsely conceived, and erroneously applied, and without which a failure would result in the ethical training of the colored race. The Association, by its educational work, is thus fulfilling the divine purpose in the call made to us as a Christian nation.

The report of the committee also suggests the heroic element in our work. It brings to mind the obstacles and difficulties which we are called upon to overcome. The illiteracy of the colored people is a fact immense in extent and dark in its prophetic significance. Your hearts were rejoiced, I know, by the statements of the changes going on in the education of the colored children in several States through free schools. The need of this movement will be appreciated when we remember the figures which bring before us the present illiterate condition of the people. I present the outline of a report made in January, 1885, based on reports of Albion Tourgee, and on articles in the _North American Review_. According to that report, seventy-three per cent. of the colored population of the South cannot read and write. In the eight Gulf and Atlantic States, seventy-eight per cent. are in the same condition. Over two millions of colored people in these eight States cannot read and write. But this is not all. We must take into account the rapid increase of the negroes. In three States of the South they already outnumber the whites. In eight States, they are about one-half the population. In all the Southern States they increase faster than the white population. From 1870 to 1880, in the eight States mentioned above, they increased thirty-four per cent., the whites only twenty-seven per cent. The immigration of foreign-born whites will not change the proportionate difference of increase, as the foreign-born white population has decreased 30,000 since the war, and the immigration of northern-born whites amounts to only a fraction of one per cent. According to the present rate of increase, the colored race in one hundred years from now will have a population many millions in excess of the whites, since, while it will take thirty-five years for the white race to double its numbers, the blacks will do so every twenty years. In less than twenty-five years from this date, the colored race in the South will outnumber the whites in nearly all the States, and then the world will witness a conflict of races, the aspiration of the negro against the caste-prejudice of the white, the end and result of which no man can foresee.

These facts all point to the greatness of the work undertaken by this Association. Christian education is the only education for a race having before it such a future. The illiteracy which we deplore must be overcome, but something more than that; that change must be provided for, when the Negro in large numbers will pass from the quiet and peaceful pursuits of agriculture to be massed together in mine and factory and the work of the mechanic arts, but something more than that; intelligence for the burden of citizenship must be given, but something more than that; incentives to the accumulation of property and the building of homes for themselves and their families must be encouraged, but something more than that must be done. If we were simply patriots, we would educate these people; if we were only philanthropists, or wise statesmen, or political economists, we would still feel bound to educate them. But we are more than these, we are Christians, and so there is one other thing we must do besides these I have mentioned, something which includes all these and so is greater than they all--and that thing is to make them Christian. Education is a part of the means to be used, and not the total end and aim.

For what is education? Not the mere accumulation of knowledge, nor the mere training of the powers of the mind, but the building of manhood. You have tempered your Damascus blade, but who is going to hold it--the patriot, or the rebel? You have your educated man with his printing press, but what is he going to print--the Police Gazette or the Gospel of St. John? You have built your college and found your young man, and trained him up to the very highest point of mental excellence and power, but what is he going to do with his mind? The mind is only an instrument under the direction of the man. The great thing is the ethical man who is going to use this mind. If there is any thing the American people need to learn, it is that there is one thing greater than talent, and that is character--the love and regard for righteousness.

It is here that this Association does its work in the genuine way, regarding education as necessary for the colored race and for all races, not as an end in itself, but as an instrument in the hands of a man ethically and Christianly trained. The gospel must go with the school, so that we may train not only the hand and the brain, but also the conscience and the heart. When I think of the future of the Negro race in America, of the possibilities of that race already being revealed, of the immense political significance of its position to-day, of the certain increase of its numbers, of the inevitable collision of races by and by, unless there be a change in the spirit of the whites, I feel that no education is to be trusted but Christian education, an education based on the gospel of Christ.

And to what purpose can any of us, with better hope of success, devote our time, our money, our labor? Let us have more money for this work. I would say no word to depreciate foreign missions, but is not this after all the work of foreign missions? How will you influence the future of China, or of Japan, or of Africa, or of Europe, in more direct, sympathetic, permanent ways, than by giving the gospel, and the education that goes with the gospel, to those at our very doors from all these lands, who shall carry back, and send back, to their own native countries the same gospel they have learned in this?

* * * * *

TO THE MEMORY OF DR. POWELL.

BY A PASTOR IN THE SOUTH.

One night, entranced, I sat spell-bound, And listened in my place, And made a solemn vow to be A hero for my race.

He plead as but a few can plead. With eloquence and might, He plead for a humanity, The Freedmen and the right.

His soul and true nobility Went out in every word, And strongly moved for better things Was everyone that heard.

Too soon has death made good his claim On him who moved us so; Too great and white the harvest yet, To spare him here below.

O! "why this waste?"--forgive me, Lord, I would not Judas be; Yet who will plead as he has plead, For Freedmen and for me?

Perhaps, ah, yes! I know he will-- This sleeping Prince of Thine, In many a multitude be heard, Yet plead for right and mine.

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THE INDIANS.

LETTER FROM GRAND RIVER, DAK.

_Dear Friends_:

I have never seen a worse day in the Territory than to-day. The snow was about two feet deep and light. Last night the wind began to blow, and to-day it is blowing a gale and the snow flies like powdered glass. Neither man nor beast can endure it. I cannot see my stable, which is within a stone's-throw of the house. I have wood and water enough in the house to last two or three days; so I shall not suffer personally, and I will spend the time of imprisonment in writing, if I can, between making fires. The snow sifts through my door and window until I have a regular snowbank all along the inside of the house. Though I am warm right by the stove, yet I cannot get the room warm enough to melt the snow. Last winter and this are the hardest I have ever seen in the Territory.

So dear Dr. Powell has gone home! No one should feel sorry for him. How grand and glorious thus to be called home to God! I do not think the work here will suffer because he has gone from our sight. He is only promoted. God will no doubt let him work on in heaven; only gone from the ills that the flesh is heir to. Dead? Oh no! he is not dead. He is living evermore. May we all be as ready as was he for the final call!

On the same day that he died, we trust that there passed through the gates with him one of our Indian boys, whose cause Dr. Powell had so eloquently pleaded. Harry Little-Eagle died like a hero. No one ever suffered more for four months than he, and not once did his faith fail. He prayed and sang, and talked for Jesus as long as his strength held out. The night before he died his voice returned, and he said: "God gave it back to me and told me to talk to the people." He did. He said: "I am going home, God will give me a greater work there to do. Do not cry. You must keep a stout heart and give my message to all the people." Then he prayed, "O Father, keep a big work for me. I have not lived here long. I have only known thee a short time, and I have been a great sufferer. I have done nothing for thee. Keep some work up there for me. I want to help you." Then he said: "Tell Winona to be brave; tell her to have a strong will; tell her to seek out the lost; some will believe and be saved. Tell her to continue to work for the people." I asked, "Are you afraid now, when you are so near the water?" "No," he replied, "I am in a hurry to go home." To his father he said: "God will send you a comforter. I will help prepare a home for you, and my mother and sister and brother. I shall wait for you."

His father, Little-Eagle, seems inspired. New Year's Day he stood up before some Teton Indians and said: "I am one of you. You all know me. You all see me. You see the same body that has been on the war-path with you many times; the same body that has been rigged out in paint and feathers and rattlers, and has danced with you in the dance. The body is the same, but that is all. The part of me that your eyes cannot see is not the same. I am not the same. I think differently; I feel differently; I plan differently. I like different things; I am a new man. My heart is made clean in Christ. When I first tried to follow Christ, I was satisfied. I tried to do right and I thought God would own me. When my boy died he said: 'Tell the people that God has said, "Thou shalt have no God but me. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy."' Then my heart was heavy. All day and night I sat mute. I said: 'I have done all these things and my boy never did any of them. He will be saved and I shall be lost.' I went to Winona and told her. She told me: 'My friend, if we never had sinned, Christ would not have died. Because you sinned and broke God's laws, Christ died for you. His death makes you his.' Then light came. Yes, I am a sinner, just like the rest of you. We have all done the same things. Now I stand here acquitted. Come to Christ. Come to God. You seek after food for the body; that is all your thought. I sought God, and when I sowed my seed in the spring, I prayed to God and attended to my soul, and God has taken care of my body. I wished, and he made my field flourish when all yours dried up in the sun. If you will seek God he will take care of your bodies. Trust in the Lord. Put away heathen dances and plays. Be not like children; be men and women and God will feed you."

These were his words. He spoke the truth, for he is the only Indian who had an abundant crop.

Little Eagle cannot speak an English word. His son Harry who died could read English a little. He learned at Santee. But his knowledge of the Bible, and his Bible-reading to the people and his work for Christ, were in his own tongue. It was the truth in his own tongue that saved Little Eagle. _Shall we not, then, teach the children Christian truths in their own language?_

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THE CHINESE.

A CHINESE CHRISTIAN IN CHINA.

Chin Toy was a shoemaker until he accepted my invitation to become a Missionary Helper. His education, in English and as a Christian, has been wholly in our humble mission work. He is now engaged in evangelistic service. Having recently returned from a visit to his native land, I asked him to give me an account of his experience there. I give it below to the readers of the _Missionary_. W.C. POND.

DEAR PASTOR:--You asked me kindly to give you my experience during my visit in China. I stayed home about ten months. I had a very hard time there at first, because I have no Christian friends who live near enough to help me. The temptations around me very great. My father and my uncle wanted me to help in their store: they had sacrifice-paper and candles for the offering of idols for sale. This hurted my feeling very much. I told them I was a Christian. I could not help in that business, for I know it was against the law of the true God. They laughed at me and said I was very foolish to believe such a doctrine. I found it very difficult to enlighten their minds.

Two weeks after I got home was a birthday of my grandfather, who died many years ago. My father set some sacrifices on the parlor table, before the ancestral tablet; he wanted me to bow down and worship with him, but I refused. I told him while I honored my grandfather a great deal, yet I could not worship him. The Christians only worship the one true God. This made him very angry at me, he so angry that he did not take his breakfast that morning. From this time on, my father was cross to me very often, he called me a man without conscience. I did not mind about that, for I knew he loved me in his heart. He had not learned what Christianity was. I tried to please him all I could. When he scolded me I answered him softly. I prayed for him and for all my relatives every day. I asked the Lord to send the Holy Spirit to them, that they might prove what was good. Two or three months afterward, I found my father and relatives changed a great deal. They seemed to like Christianity more than they did.

Sometimes I showed them some things which they never saw before, such as photograph album, Holy Bible, book of mission stories with many pictures in it. I explained the pictures to them and they were all pleased. I also told them that these good books were presented by my kind teachers. I gave the names of these faithful workers of the Lord and said they were the best friends of the Chinese, the reason was that they love Jesus. I then went on and told them about the true God, and his blessed Son Jesus, who love the whole world. They all kept quiet and listen attentively. Besides these, I show them my coal-oil stove, alarm clock, thermometer, etc. These things greatly pleased them. I told them the wonderful arts, the machineries, railways and the telegraphs. These news led them spoke out in a loud voice, "The people in Christian land have more wisdom than our Chinese." I said, "God gave this wisdom, our Chinese must love the true God and forsake the idols, then God will send the Holy Spirit to make us wise and happy, and love to do good. The Bible says, Trust the Lord and do good." After this, I found opportunity to preach the gospel every day. Though I could not make them become Christians yet, I was glad they shew so much interest in receiving the good seeds. Nearly every day, some people came in our little store and asked me to tell them about this new doctrine. During March, Rev. C.R. Hager paid us a visit. Our store was crowded with people. They all came to see him. He preached to them. Several of the students had a long talk with him.