DECEMBER, 1883.

VOL. XXXVII.

NO. 12.

The American Missionary

CONTENTS

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION,

Rooms, 56 Reade Street.

Price 50 Cents a Year, in Advance.

Entered at the Post-Office at New York, N.Y., as second-class matter.

THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.

PRESIDENT.

Hon. Wm. B. Washburn, LL.D., Mass.

VICE-PRESIDENTS.

Rev. C. L. Goodell, D.D.; Rev. F. A. Noble, D.D.; Rev. A. J. F. Behrends, D.D.; Rev. J. E. Rankin, D.D.; Rev. Alex. McKenzie, D.D.

Corresponding Secretary.—Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.

Treasurer.—H. W. Hubbard, Esq., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.

Auditors.—Wm. A. Nash, W. H. Rogers.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

John H. Washburn, Chairman; A. P. Foster, Secretary; Lyman Abbott, A. S. Barnes, J. R. Danforth, Clinton B. Fisk, S. B. Halliday, Edward Hawes, Samuel Holmes, Charles A. Hull, Samuel S. Marples, Charles L. Mead, S. H. Virgin, Wm. H. Ward, J. L. Withrow.

DISTRICT SECRETARIES.

Rev. C. L. Woodworth, D.D., Boston. Rev. G. D. Pike, D.D., New York.

Rev. James Powell, Chicago.

COMMUNICATIONS

relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the Corresponding Secretary; those relating to the collecting fields, to the District Secretaries; letters for the Editor of the “American Missionary.” to Rev. G. D. Pike, D.D., at the New York Office; letters for the Bureau of Woman’s Work, to Miss D. E. Emerson, at the New York Office.

DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

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 112 West 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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Address

H. STOKES, President.

H. Y. WEMPLE, Sec’y.
S. N. STEBBINS, Act’y.

J. L. HALSEY, 1st V.-P.
H. B. STOKES, 2d V.-P.

THE

American Missionary.

Vol. XXXVII.

DECEMBER, 1883.

No. 12.

American Missionary Association.

We send this number of the Missionary to some who do not receive it regularly, hoping they will find it of such interest, and the work it represents of so much concern, that they will be induced to become regular subscribers. The price is 50 cents.

Fifty Gold Dollars.—One of the newly-elected members of our Executive Committee has placed in our treasury fifty gold dollars, given to him to be used in charity, at his discretion, by a friend in New Haven, who adopted this method of commemorating his fiftieth birthday. The example is a good one, and we hope there are scores of others who will follow it without necessarily waiting until they are fifty before doing so.

ANNUAL MEETING.

The Annual Meeting of this Association, held in Brooklyn, will be remembered as one of special interest for several reasons: (1.) The work done during the year was unusually encouraging; and the reports of the committees on the several parts were discriminating and full. (2.) The financial exhibit, showing once more a surplus of receipts over expenditure, with, however, a falling off in the income from the living, was examined with candor and with warm recommendations for more liberal gifts. (3.) A topic of much interest to the Association and to an honored sister missionary society was considered at length in several papers, which we present to our readers in full, without, however, intending to hold the Association responsible for the individual views therein expressed.

The great number of the reports, papers and addresses compels us to select and abridge, reserving some for publication in future numbers of the Missionary or in the Annual Report. Papers relating to work for women will appear in the January number of the Missionary, and the Sermon, as usual, will be found in the Annual Report.

ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS AT THE ANNUAL MEETING.

The Thirty-seventh Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association was held in the commodious Central Congregational Church, Brooklyn, N.Y., beginning Tuesday, Oct. 30, at 3 P.M. In the absence of the President, detained by illness, Rev. J. E. Rankin, D.D., one of the Vice-Presidents, presided. Rev. C. P. Osborne was appointed Scribe, and Revs. F. E. Snow and G. P. Lane Assistant Scribes. Committees were appointed as follows:

On Nominations. Rev. G. R. W. Scott, D.D., Rev. Wm. A. Robinson, Hon. David N. Camp, Rev. E. O. Bartlett and Rev. P. B. Davis.

Business. Rev. A. J. F. Behrends, D.D., Rev. W. W. Scudder, D.D., Rev. Frank Ayer, Rev. E. B. Palmer, H. H. Ricker, Esq.

Arrangements. A. S. Barnes, Esq., Chas. A. Hull, Esq., Rev. G. D. Pike, D.D., Wm. G. Hoople, Esq., Richard M. Montgomery, Esq., G. Johnson, Jr., Esq. and Rev. S. B. Halliday.

Indian Missions. Rev. Joseph Anderson, D.D., Rev. C. C. Painter, Gen. S. C. Armstrong, Rev. Cushing Eells, D.D., and Mr. Wm. H. McKinney.

Chinese Missions. Rev. Wm. Alvin Bartlett, D.D., Rev. Geo. M. Boynton, Rev. Evarts Scudder, Rev. S. L. Blake, D.D., and Rev. Geo. S. Smith.

Educational Work. President S. C. Bartlett, D.D., Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D., Rev. C. G. Fairchild, Rev. G. L. Ewell, Rev. E. W. Bacon.

Church Work. Prof. Llewellyn Pratt, Rev. T. P. Prudden, Rev. C. L. Woodworth, D.D., Rev. Isaac Hall, Rev. G. F. Gleason.

Finance. Dea. Eliezur Porter, Rev. William M. Taylor, D.D., Rev. D. O. Mears, D.D., Hon. H. D. Smith, Rev. Erastus Blakeslee.

H. W. Hubbard, Esq., Treasurer, read his annual report, which was referred to the Committee on Finance. Rev. J. E. Roy, D.D., presented the report of the Executive Committee, which was referred to the appropriate committees. Rev. G. M. Boynton read the report of the Committee on the Constitution, which was referred to a special committee. A half hour was spent in prayer and song.

Tuesday evening, at 7:30, Rev. Joseph Anderson, D.D., conducted devotional services, and Rev. J. L. Withrow, D.D., of Boston, preached the annual sermon, from Luke, 9:24. Rev. A. J. F. Behrends, D.D., made an address of welcome. The Lord’s Supper was administered by Rev. Samuel Scoville and Rev. W. S. Palmer, D.D.

Wednesday morning, Rev. R. B. Howard conducted a half-hour prayer-meeting. At 9 o’clock Dr. Rankin took the chair and read an address on “The Gospel of Christ our only Solvent for Race Difficulties.” A committee to confer with the Conference Committee of the Am. Home Miss. Society selected at Saratoga, was appointed as follows: President, S. C. Bartlett, D.D.; Rev. J. L. Withrow, D.D., Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D., Rev. D. O. Mears, D.D., and Rev. Wm. H. Ward, D.D.

Rev. D. K. Flickinger, D.D., Secretary of the Board of the United Brethren in Christ, gave an account of the Mendi Mission.

Rev. A. H. Bradford read a paper on “Woman in Modern Charity and Missions.” Rev. G. M. Boynton read a paper on “The Place of Missionary Literature in the Conversion of the World.”

Prof. Albert Salisbury, of Atlanta, Ga., read a paper entitled: “For What are We Sent?” Rev. A. A. Myers, of Williamsburg, Ky., read a paper on the “Mountain White Work.”

Five-minute speeches were made by Rev. Isaac H. Hall, of New Orleans, La.; Rev. Geo. S. Smith, of Raleigh, N.C., and Rev. Alfred Connet, of McLeansville, N.C.

Wednesday afternoon, Rev. W. H. Ward, D.D., made a report on a visit to the Dakota mission. The report of the Committee on Indian Missions was read by Rev. Joseph Anderson, D.D., Chairman, and addresses upon Indian affairs were made by Dr. Anderson, Rev. Cushing Eells, D.D., Rev. Samuel G. Rankin and Rev. Anson Gleason, formerly missionary to the Choctaws. The report of the Committee on Chinese Missions was presented by Rev. Wm. Alvin Bartlett, D.D., Chairman, who also made an address.

On motion of Rev. S. Wolcott, D.D., Resolved, That we place on record our thorough disapproval, as an Association, of the exclusive and prohibitory legislation of our government relative to the Chinese. The report of the Committee on the Constitution was presented by Rev. W. S. Palmer, Chairman, and accepted. After discussion the Amended Constitution was adopted with no dissenting vote.

Evening Session.—Devotional Services were conducted by Rev. J. M. Whiton, Ph. D. Addresses were made by a Chinaman, Ju Sing, from Oakland, Cal.; by an Indian, Wm. Harrison McKinney, of the Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory, a recent graduate of Roanoke University; by a negro, Rev. J. C. Price, of Salisbury, N. C., graduate of Lincoln University in 1879, and by Secretary James Powell. The exercises were interspersed with singing by a choir of nine young Chinamen, resident in Brooklyn and members of the Central Church Sunday-School.

Thursday Morning.—The half-hour prayer meeting was conducted by Rev. Geo. S. Smith. At 9 o’clock Dr. Rankin resumed the chair. Secretary M. E. Strieby read a paper on “Caste in America.” President S. C. Bartlett read the report of the Committee on Educational Work and made an address on that subject. A committee to consider Secretary Strieby’s paper on “Caste in America” was appointed, consisting of Deacon Samuel Holmes, General E. Whittlesey, Rev. S. Wolcott, D.D., Rev. G. M. Boynton, Rev. D. L. Furber, D.D. Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D., made an address on “Illiteracy in the South.” Rev. Edward W. Bacon, Rev. C. G. Fairchild, and Rev. John L. Ewell, made addresses upon the different phases of educational work at the South. Brief remarks were also made by Rev. A. P. Foster and Rev. R. B. Howard.

Thursday Afternoon.—After devotional services, Professor Llewellyn Pratt, D.D., read the report of the Committee on Church Work, and Rev. T. P. Prudden followed with an address. Rev. Erastus Blakeslee read the report of the Committee on Finance. Dr. Wm. M. Taylor made an address on “What the Bible Says About Giving.” Rev. D. O. Mears, D.D., made an address on “The Function and Privilege of the Churches.” Mrs. A. A. Myers, of Kentucky, read a statement regarding the mountain people of the South.

The following resolution was passed: “Whereas, the Finance Committee, after careful examination of the needs of the Association, have recommended that the contributions of churches, Sunday-schools and individuals for the coming year be increased 50 per cent, above the amount given by them during the past year, therefore, Resolved, That we approve this recommendation of the Finance Committee, and urge contributors everywhere to increase their contributions accordingly.”

The Committee appointed to consider Secretary Strieby’s paper on Caste in America made report through the Chairman, Dea. S. Holmes.

Officers for the coming year were elected as printed on second page of cover.

The following resolution offered by Rev. E. Blakeslee was adopted: Resolved, That if the Executive Committee now elected have any question as to their legal status under the Constitution, they be and hereby are authorized to take legal advice thereon, and, if competent to do so, to arrange themselves in three classes according to the terms of the new Constitution.

Thursday Evening.—Rev. A. P. Foster conducted the devotional services.

Addresses were made by Rev. S. R. Dennen on “Spiritual Life the Supreme Power in Your Work,” and by Dr. Wm. M. Barbour, on “Spiritual Vitality the Crowning Necessity in Missionary Work.”

A resolution of thanks offered by Secretary Woodworth was adopted, and Dr. Behrends responded for the Brooklyn people in fitting terms, and the meeting was dissolved.

All the sessions were characterized by a hopeful spirit and by deep spirituality which found frequent expression in the voice of prayer.

SUMMARY OF THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE TREASURER OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION FOR THE YEAR ENDING SEPT. 30th, 1883.

H. W. Hubbard, Treasurer,

56 Reade Street, New York.

ABSTRACT OF THE GENERAL SURVEY.

WORK IN AFRICA.

Mendi Mission. The income of the Avery Fund and the “John Brown” steamer have been transferred for five years to the United Brethren, who have a mission—Shengay—adjoining Mendi.

The Arthington mission and fund have been offered to the United Presbyterians, who have a successful mission in Egypt.

INDIAN WORK.

Dakota missions transferred from the American Board to the A. M. A., except the six churches of Sisseton Agency, which had been transferred to the Home Mission Board of Pres. Gen. Assembly. Leaving out those, we have now, including the mission in Washington Territory, 5 stations, 9 schools, 5 churches, 12 missionaries, 25 teachers, 1 native pastor, 12 native teachers, 271 church members, 356 pupils, 584 Sunday-school scholars.

WORK AMONG THE CHINESE.

At our recommendation the American Board has opened a mission at Hong Kong, China, a rally-centre for converted Chinamen returning to their native land.

In California the last year—Rev. W. C. Pond, Superintendent—19 schools; 2,823 scholars; 40 teachers, of whom 14 are Chinese; 175 have ceased from idolatry; 121 give evidence of conversion; 400 during history of mission have turned to Christ.

WORK AMONG NEGROES.

Work in twelve States of the South, and in Kansas and District of Columbia; 8 chartered institutions; 12 high and normal schools; 42 common schools; 279 teachers; and 9,640 students. The Theological Department of Howard University has 34 students; Talladega, 14; Fisk, 9; and Straight, 13, with 20 students in law.

New Buildings: “Whitin Hall,” at New Orleans; “Cassedy Hall,” at Talladega; Stone Hall at Atlanta finished; Library Building at Macon, Ga.; schoolhouse at Hillsboro, N.C.; at Memphis, Le Moyne Institute enlarged.

Industrial Work: Farms at Talladega and Tougaloo and Atlanta; shops at Memphis, Tougaloo, Macon, Charleston; cooking, nursing, sewing, taught at Atlanta, Fisk, Tougaloo; house-work in all the eight boarding schools.

Church Work: Six new churches—At McLean’s, N.C.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Birmingham, Ala.; Jackson, Miss.; Fayetteville, Ark.; Belle Place, La.

The six new churches of last year are all doing well. Total number churches, 89; members, 5,974, an average of 67; additions, 667; on profession, 528; Sunday-school scholars, 9,406; raised for church purposes, $12,027.21; benevolent contributions, $1,049.35.

Six new church edifices built at Pekin, Oaks and McLean’s, in N.C.; at Knoxville, Tenn.; Louisville, Ky.; Mobile, Ala. and Belle Place, La.; Brick Church at Lawrence, Kan., rebuilt.

MOUNTAIN WHITE WORK.

Besides original churches and schools in Kentucky, a new church and academy at Williamsburg, Ky. Other missions coming on around this place. The academy has had 108 scholars, who have paid as tuition $303—not one failing to pay. Work encouraging. Color question tested and carried in accordance with the principles of A. M. A.

WOMAN’S BUREAU.

From September, 1861, on to the present time women have been prominent workers. By 1864, 169 women workers; in 1865, 261; in 1866, 264; in 1870, 450; in 1869, 2,000 different ladies had served; and to date not less than 3,000, an army of Gospelers! Among Indians, 17 lady missionaries. Among Chinese in California, 24 lady missionary teachers.

Miss D. E. Emerson has been appointed as secretary. She is experienced on the field, and acquainted with the details of office work, as clerk for the southern field.

WANTS.

1. For current work, $1,000 for every day of the year.

2. Endowments in the several institutions.

3. A Boys’ Hall at Tillotson Institute, Austin, Texas.

4. $10,000 to add to Edward Smith’s $10,000 to build the first hall, at Little Rock, of Edward Smith’s College, for whose campus (14 acres) he paid $5,500, already greatly enhanced in price. New hall to be named for second donor.

SAYINGS AT THE ANNUAL MEETING.

—Prof. Albert Salisbury: I do not approve the factory idea of industrial instruction.

—Dr. Withrow: Selfishness is as sure to destroy what it seeks to save as a cancer is to kill.

Never in this world was a monument made to memorialize a mere money-getter.

—Dr. Behrends: The color-line is only a section, and a very small section at that, of the race-line.

It is not in India alone that the existence of caste constitutes one of the most serious obstacles to the progress of the Gospel.

—Dr. Rankin: For Southern educational work this Society has put in millions by the side of the United States Government’s millions. The Government has given $5,000,000, this Society has given $5,000,000.

Westminster Abbey opened of its own accord to take the dust of David Livingstone. Why? Because he stretched himself on Africa, as the prophet stretched himself on the dead body of the widow’s son.

—Rev. A. H. Bradford: Florence Nightingale robbed war of half its terrors.

These Women’s Boards of Missions do more than all other means combined to keep alive the missionary spirit.

The women of our day have reversed the Apostolic injunction and are reading it, “Help those men.” We need to restore the original reading, “Help those women.”

—Rev. Isaac Hall: Speaking of the colored people’s futile efforts to solve the race problem, he said: First we thought we would go to Africa, but we couldn’t get ships enough: then we thought we would go to Kansas, but we couldn’t get cars enough; then, since we couldn’t get away, we decided we would stay; and now what are you going to do about it?

—Dr. Wm. Alvin Bartlett stigmatized the California law which forbade a Chinaman to live in an apartment with less than 500 cubic feet of air, and punished him with imprisonment in a cell with less than 200 feet of air.

The Chinese are not illiterate, but it is objected that they are too numerous. Why, there are hardly Chinamen enough in our country to be schoolmasters of our countrymen who cannot read and write.

But the Chinese worship their ancestors. Well, I would rather revere my ancestors than leave my children such pernicious doctrine as the anti-Chinese people teach. It is better to worship your ancestors than to damn your posterity.

—Ju Sing recognized the fact that all Americans are not hostile to Chinamen. “We know that there are some God’s people, and some devil’s people.”

—Nine young Chinamen, residents of Brooklyn and members of the Central Sunday-School, sang Gospel Hymns. They also sang “Pass me not, O Gentle Saviour,” done into Chinese, Jim Sing taking the solo.

—Secretary Powell: Now that slavery has gone, there must go with it blind-eyed prejudice and anti-Christian caste.

—Rev. J. C. Price, North Carolina: At the close of the war Canaan was not entered, as a recent decision of the Supreme Court tells us, but the Red Sea was crossed. Has the Negro grown? Then his chief object was to be in Gen. Sherman’s army; if not in it in the wake of it. Now he is looking about for property and education.

The colored people of Georgia alone have acquired a property of $6,000,000. In North Carolina from twelve to fifteen newspapers are edited, owned and controlled by colored people.

If God has made the Negro a man, he requires of him all the work of a man. Then let Christian people do all they can to qualify him for that work. He quotes the words of the Secretary: “The true solution of the Negro problem is not to change his color or his place of residence, but to change his character.”

—Sec. Strieby: This Society is not handicapped for this work except by its firm and well-known attitude against caste, and any other Society equally faithful on that subject would soon be equally handicapped.

—Pres. Bartlett claimed to represent an institution that from the very first has rejected the color line; a century ago it was educating the Indians, a half a century the Negro shared its privileges. Speaking of the Negro’s unquestioned piety he said: “He sees hell impending, heaven before him and the chariot swings low.”

—Dr. Gladden: No man has a right to engage in the work of governing who does not know what just government is. I protest against that kind of government.

From 1870 to 1880 the colored voters at the South increased 30 per cent.; their illiteracy increased only 20 per cent. The whites at the South are gaining in intelligence but little, the blacks splendidly. Most of the gain South is due to the education of the Negro.

How do you account for this gain? Did you ever hear of Fisk and Berea and Atlanta? The census tables have heard of them if you have not.

Any society that is as really and thoroughly Christian as this one will meet the same objection as this one.

—Dr. Taylor: “Bring an offering and come unto my courts.” In Scotland, where I was brought up, the first act of worship was to lay a piece of money on the table.

Sometimes a man assigns a debt so that what is due him is paid to another. So the Lord Jesus has assigned the debt, and we are to pay a large part of what we owe to him to the poor and needy; to the benighted and degraded; to the Indian, the Negro and the heathen that need the light.

—Dr. Dennen: Speaking of denominational antipathies, he was reminded of the brass oxen under the brazen laver standing with their rumps toward each other and their eyes directed away to their own selfish interests.

THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE ONLY SOLVENT FOR RACE DIFFICULTIES.

Rev. J. E. Rankin, D.D., who presided happily at our annual meeting, read an interesting opening address, from which we give the following extracts:

The Cross of Christ proves man’s universal brotherhood. If He is our brother-man, we are His brother-men.

When last night we took that bread and drank that wine, what did we do? We symbolized Christ’s human brotherhood. This He did for humanity’s sake. What taint of Judaism had He? What recognition did He ever make that He belonged to any single nationality, to any single tribe, to any single class? Is He brother-man to the Jew only, because he was born of a Jewish mother? Is He any less brother-man to the Gentile? When we ate that bread, we ate that which sets forth, what? God manifest in the flesh. God manifest in the flesh of humanity. Not because we are Anglo-Saxon, and have the Anglo-Saxon Bible, the Anglo-Saxon literature, the Anglo-Saxon civilization, the Anglo-Saxon freedom and manhood, of which we are so proud, have you and I a claim to this Brother-man? It is because we are on the same human level with the other races, from which we so much differ, and above which God has given us such an exaltation. For such were we. It is because we are brother-men to Frederick Douglas, and Sitting Bull, and the last Chinaman who has been smuggled from the Celestial kingdom, because the continent is too narrow for him and us. It is because we are so low and not because we are so high, that we had a right to sit there; to eat that bread, and drink that cup. That broken bread is the emblem, not of Anglo-Saxon humanity, but of lost, degraded, fallen humanity.

The Cross of Christ interprets man’s universal brotherhood. It needs to be interpreted. It is the last thing man learns here; that in Christ Jesus the humblest man is his equal. Ask almost any man if he wants the elevation of his brother-man; if he wants his brother-man in India, in China, in Japan, in the South, or on the Pacific Coast, made his equal, and given a chance to outstrip him, in the struggle for betterment? And he will usually answer, “Why yes, of course. Do I not pray for it and contribute for it?” But, will you sacrifice your prejudices for his sake? He needs different religious influences, different educational influences, different social influences, he needs to feel that he is no longer ostracised, and that he may aspire for himself and his children, just as you may. Will you adopt him into your religious, educational, social circles? But, you reply: “That is a society question.” It is a society question. And you belong to the Kingdom of God; to the unseen society, which, by the power of His Cross, this God-Man, who took the form of a servant, is gathering out of the nations; you have fellowship with Him, in His humiliation for humanity’s sake. And yet, you propose to decide this question according to the laws and usages of a society to which you do not belong, out of which God has called you, and against whose inhumanity to man, against whose worldly pride the Cross is a standard lifted up by God himself. You are under the most sacred of bonds to record your testimony as belonging to quite another society.

In what sense, after all, are we brothers? Can society answer this question? Can anything but the Cross of Christ? The Saviour gives us a picture of what it is to be a true neighbor in the parable of the Good Samaritan. “Who,” asks He, “was neighbor to him that fell among thieves?” He that thought it was a society question, a question of caste; he who came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side? He that put money into the contribution box for him, or sent some one else to help him to the hospital? No; only the man that set him upon his own beast, carried him to an inn, and took care of him. A man cannot live a neighbor to man if he is not living a neighbor to God, as he is in Christ Jesus.

Before the war, there was organized a benevolent society, whose anniversary occurs the present week—a society to preach the Gospel among the heathen. Its founders said, “We cannot take money that has been coined from slave labor. It is the price of innocent blood. It cries up to God for vengeance.”

What is the history of that society? Why, the smoke of our civil contest had hardly cleared away before it began to build up the waste places of the South, heaping coals of fire upon the people there. Under its auspices, the choicest daughters of New England (as though they had been angels of God) went down there, with the spelling-book and the Bible; took their share of the ostracism meted out to the recent bondmen, for Jesus’ sake; many of them laid down their lives there. There has scarcely been a foreign missionary field in the world which has had more perils, which has demanded greater sacrifices, which has developed spirits more heroic, more Christ-like. The same spirit which led our brave boys in blue to die to make men free, led their sisters to die to make them holy. And what do you see to-day? This society has done more to stay the tide of illiteracy, to lay the foundations of permanent civil and religious prosperity than all the other agencies put together. God’s secret is with them that fear Him. The men who, for Christ’s sake, said, “We cannot set apart to God that which has come from unpaid human labor; we cannot thus have fellowship with the works of darkness;” these men God has put into the fore-front of the great battle with ignorance and degradation—the great battle in which the South begins to ask the Nation which cannot protect the black man to come to her assistance, crying out, like Caesar to Cassius, “Help, Cassius, or we sink!” They got their baptism at the foot of the Cross. Look at the queenly institutions which they have planted. Look at the thousands of the sons and daughters of Ethiopia, whom they have developed into the mental, moral and spiritual stature of true manhood; whom they have polished after the similitude of a palace, fitted for professions, for business, for home life. Look at the churches they have planted. This is their conception of the brotherhood of man, as they have been taught it at the Cross, as the Cross has interpreted it to them.

I know no difference of race,
Of African and Saxon;
Of tawny skin, of rose-cheeked face,
Of hair of crisp and flaxen.
The soul within, that is the man,
There is God’s image hidden:
And there He looks, each guest to scan,
The bidden and unbidden.

One God in love broods over all!
One pray’r to Him is taught us;
One name for mercy, when we call;
One ransom, Christ has brought us.
One heart of meekness, lowly mind,
Life’s counter currents breasting;
One Father’s House, we hope to find,
Within God’s bosom resting.

THE PLACE OF MISSIONARY LITERATURE IN THE CONVERSION OF THE WORLD.

REV. GEO. M. BOYNTON.

The literature of missions has a threefold function in its relation to the conversion of the world: to inform, to quicken and to direct. It would be hard to over-estimate the importance of the history and record of missionary efforts and successes in their relation to the intelligence of the Christian people of our land and our day. If we are exhorted to add to our faith, virtue (manly and holy enterprise) and to virtue, knowledge, the exhortation must apply (next to the knowledge of God and of His word) to the knowledge of the history and progress of His kingdom in the world.

We do not call him even a fairly intelligent citizen of the United States who does not know something of the history of his own country—who does not know the general order of its great questions and great conflicts. What shall we say of one who claims to have his citizenship in heaven and yet is willingly ignorant of the great battle-grounds of Christ’s kingdom of even the near past, and so knows nothing of the questions which agitate the present day or the forces of the foes now in the field?

It is no small thing to follow the current history of the world, as it has been brought so near to us in our day, and yet with what eagerness the morning paper is looked for in every home of even ordinary intelligence; and after the half-hour’s search, how often to the question, “What is there of interest to-day?” the answer comes, “Oh, nothing.” The journals are full of manufactured news; political squabbles; stories of scandal and of crime; with now and then some event which marks a step in the world’s progress of more than ordinary consequence. It is often said that our missionary periodicals are not of thrilling interest, but I am willing to leave it to the testimony of any candid man whether they do not at least fairly approximate the secular press in interest and ability, only that men are more eager to know what is going on in the kingdoms of this world than in the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It is the appetite which largely gives its savor to the food. When our hearts are all aglow with love to the Master of us all, and we want to know, above all things, that he is being satisfied with the travail of his soul, we do not count the tidings of the advancement of his kingdom dull. If his interests are ours, we shall watch them.

One of the great requisites to giving or praying is that men should know to what their alms are directed and for what their prayers go up to God. Let the missionary press, then, give us information, and give it freely. The men and the women who read want to have, not the impressions of other people reproduced, but the details which made those impressions. They want the facts, set forth with vivid exactness, with life-like coloring. It is only now and then one of our missionaries at the front who seems to comprehend that he must make us see what he sees, and must remember that his reflections upon the things that have become familiar to him will not make us familiar with the facts. If he can stir our imaginations and make us his attendants during his day’s work, we shall be led to sympathy and support.

When the Church Missionary Society of London was making its exploration into Africa the long pages of journal written on the spot from day to day were the most thrilling pages of current history that were being written; and many of you have not forgotten the diary of our own Dr. Ladd of his journey up the Nile. Nothing should be spared to open the eyes of the givers and the prayers to what you may call instantaneous views of the workers at their work. Give us the facts in the best possible shape if you want our sympathy, our prayers, our money. Until you have done that, you cannot, if you would, call down on us the condemnation spoken to him that “seeth his brother have need” and does not help him.

But Christian character needs inspiration as well as information. It needs not only to know, but to feel; not only to have its eyes made clear to see, but its heart stimulated to a worthy enthusiasm. We do not get our inspiration so much from great events as from great men. Souls are quickened by quickening souls. The contagion of enthusiasm spreads from life to life. That in the literature of missions, which will especially kindle missionary enthusiasm is to be found in the veins of the noble lives of the men and women who have counted their lives not worth the keeping, for their love for Christ and for the Kingdom of whom this world was not worthy, and who, in the world, were least of all men of it.

What other fuel can you find to build a fire of grand enthusiasm for the Master like the one you have in the biography of missions? Nowhere away from the sacred record can you find nobler events of Christian living and devotion. Nowhere are there grander illustrations of the spirit of Christian heroism. Nowhere more stirring suggestions of the possible attainments of Christian grace.

Nor do I recall a missionary biography which is morbid and so misleading—which sets up an introspective and dyspeptic type of piety as a model and standard. The missionary has no time to be morbid. He has made a consecration of all his energies to his Master. His life is led actually and daily by the high purpose which he has set before him. His biography is not a picture of still life. He cannot stop to take becoming attitudes, even before his own eyes. He has no time to write a journal of his supposed spiritual states. If you take his photograph you must take him in motion, as nowadays they take a horse upon the race-track, and you get him with every muscle set and every nerve charged with life.

I know no better books for men or boys, for matrons or maidens, than such books as these, in which you have such lives embalmed.

Where can you find a manlier life than that of John Coleridge Patteson, Bishop of Melanesia, his diocese the island of the sea, inhabited by blacks. The story of his patience and his pluck and cheerful confidence is enough to dispel the worst type of malarial saintship—shaky and intermittent. To see him with his senior bishop approaching a new island, rowing in his small boat as near as was safe to the breakers, and then the two pioneers of the Gospel taking a header through the waves and swimming to the land to tell the Gospel of great joy to the dusky and unclad islanders! There’s tonic in the very reading. He could be a bishop without robes or titles. God had sent him to be an overseer of lone regions and lost souls. Or what could be more tragic than the final scene of his death by the treacherous arrows of the natives, and the ghastly tableau of the still young hero of God floating out in the boat alone toward his waiting friends.

There is a biography yet unwritten of one connected with the work of this Association which, if it could be spread upon the record, would equal this in the sincerity of his devotion, in purity of his motive, in his bearing patiently when nearly all men spoke ill of him, for Christ’s sake and the Gospel’s, and even friends for a time began to doubt him, in his readiness to take up the hardest thing there was to do until the end. You will know of whom I speak when I tell you that he was equally the friend of the Indian and of the negro; that he became the target of all the shafts of malice when he sought to protect the poor Indian from his worse than savage foes within the capital of the nation and on the western reservation; that he became the victim of the deadly malaria of the African coast, where he had gone to reorganize and direct the work of this Association in the Mendi Mission. I speak of one whom we all delight to honor and call reverend—the Reverend Edward P. Smith.

And there are others still upon the field, whose names may or may not be known to any wide fame with men, and women, too, who have hazarded their lives for the privilege of preaching and of teaching in the name of Christ. We cannot afford to lose the records of such positive and aggressive Christianity for their stimulus to the Christian character of those at home and those whose characters are forming yet.

Dr. Goodell names as one of the ten ways by which the world is to be saved, that we keep the home and Sunday-school libraries full of that most interesting and profitable of all our literature for the young, the books written by Christ’s soldiers upon the field of battle. I would emphasize even more than that—the books written about these heroes of the faith and their lives of earnest and joyful sacrifice. Who will not acknowledge that we need the inspiration in our day?

If the Christian world needs for its own sake the information and the inspiration which can only come from the literature of missions, the missionary work itself needs equally this means to make its opportunities known to the Christian world.

That is only in part, if at all, a Christian church which is not a missionary church as well. The salt which has lost its savor is no longer salt. It will save deception if you take off the label. It is “good for nothing,” and is to be cast into the street only to get rid of it, and not because it is good for a road.

The true Church of Christ is concerned about the progress of his kingdom, is in earnest sympathy with those who are at the front, is eager in its outlook for new opportunities of service. To such a waiting ear—and, brethren, it is waiting—come through the missionary press the tidings of opportunity, the sound of doors, long closed, creaking on their hinges as they fling open for the feet of the delaying messengers of grace. This is the telephone which summons to instant response. It sounds in the counting-rooms of our men of business, and invites them to new investments in behalf of those for whom God goes security, for “he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.” It rings its summons in our Theological Seminaries and among our younger brethren in the ministry, and calls them to occupy until He comes. It goes into the offices of the organizations through which the churches reach the needy east and west, north and south, and says not pull down your barns, but build greater ones; for, as are the broad farms of the West to the old New England homesteads, so are the harvests to be reaped to those which have been already gathered in. It mixes in our homes, and calls on our sons and daughters to the waiting work.

And neither we at home, nor those in the broad field, can afford to be left unnoticed or uncalled. They need it that souls may be born into the kingdom; we need it that we may by pure toil and sacrifice grow unto the stature and the likeness of our risen Lord.

The Church of Christ will not know more of the advancement of His kingdom or of its hindrances than it is told. God will not save us the trouble of the inquiry or the report. The Church of Christ will have no more enthusiasm in the work than it gets by entering into sympathy with those who do it, and with Him who died that it might go on.

And yet, in the light of all this already trite and quite self-evident truth, you hear it said, even by those who are concerned in the progress of the work, “What are we going to do with this increasing mass of missionary literature? We are quite flooded with it, and especially with these periodicals, these Missionary Heralds, and Home Missionaries and American Missionaries. Can’t we make it less? Can’t we combine them and double the thing up? It bothers us.” Ah, brethren, the wonder is that we do not cry for more and better. The wonder is not that so many take the missionary magazines, but so few, and that so few of those who take them read them.

Brethren, the time will come—if the time comes when men seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, not last—that Christian men and women will not want to wait a month to glance over the few pages of a missionary magazine; but will want to know the latest news of the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom in the morning before they look to see the stock-list or the scandal-list of the day before. When the question of the morning will be what new progress, what new delays, what new need for the advancing hosts of Christian warriors; and at night the thought will be, the sun has gone to shine on other fields and other laborers, and while we sleep this work goes on. And in those days it shall go on with speed and sureness.

Let our missionary literature then be not lessened in quantity or deteriorated in quality. Let not our agents think the time is lost in which they stop to tell us of the work. The growth of Christ’s people at home is as important as the conquests of His grace abroad, indeed, the last will be largely proportioned to the first. Let ingenuity and enterprise be put into these channels of communication. Let the facts be fresh and full—more fresh and full than ever. Let them be clothed in choice and skillful diction. Let us leave the arts which the satanic or the merely mundane press monopolize to their uses. Let us not grudge the cost. It is not cost of administration at all. It is not cost of collection, though it helps that department greatly. It is more than all the missionary work of each society for the constituency that supports it. Our churches and our Christians here at home need it for their own vitalizing and the direction of their awakened energies. If our fires be not kept up at home the warmth will not be diffused. These are days of organization. It used to be that if a man had lost his way in these then dark country roads some one must go out alone with his hand-lantern to guide him to safe shelter. Now your streets are full of lamps, and your illuminated signs band them at every corner. You may take all the care that is possible of the lamps and burners; it will do no good if you neglect to keep the fires up where the illuminating gas is made. If the fires go out there the lights go out in every street and home. Do not let us ask these organizations to lessen their efforts to inform, to quicken and to guide our missionary zeal at home, as though it were not an important part of their legitimate work.

REPORT ON CHINESE WORK.

The report of your committee on the Chinese Department of the American Missionary Association is as follows: The keynote of the year’s work is success. Four more schools, 256 more scholars enrolled, nine more teachers, with an increase of four Chinese instructors. The number of those professing to forsake idolatry in excess of last year, 19. There have 121 given good evidence of conversion—last year 106, making 400 who have embraced Christianity during the history of the Mission. Only seven thousand dollars of the nearly twelve thousand dollars expenses of the mission came out of the treasury of the Association. The number of local churches contributing has doubled. The receipts of the “California Chinese Mission” have gained 37 per cent. These gratifying facts inspire confidence that this work in purpose and method is blessed of God. They should beget a zeal commensurate with the hope they enkindle.

The new mission established by the American Board in Hong Kong—the natural fruit of this work—places peculiar emphasis upon its value, as its initial demand came from Chinamen Christianized by its influence. The Rev. Mr. Hager goes to this important control not only with the prayers of his American brethren behind him, but escorted over and welcomed by the devout supplications of specimen Chinese converts. It is an omen of profound significance that four or five Chinese workers for Christ, trained in these schools, contribute their invaluable services to the enterprise. It is equally suggestive that the Chinese Christians remaining behind cheerfully gave $500, adding to their faith, men, and to men, money, an evidence of the genuineness of their confidence. The past year’s experience alone demonstrates that most of the ingenious, infamous charges made against this people are lies. So Providence has opened a golden opportunity. The narrow and bigoted ignorance, lack of patriotism, lack of statesmanship, lack of humanity, lack of equitable dealing exhibited by our Government in its recent legislation on the Chinese question have corraled 75,000 of them on these shores. It is the open day for Christian privilege. Cannot the majority of these be surrounded by our faith, wrought on by the power of Christianity, saturated by a genuine Christian life and made the standing army for whom we shall send officers and soldiers to conquest the empire? If the teeming millions are appalling can we not subdue this installment isolated by inscrutable wisdom for this Christian experiment?

With such a present and pressing basis of appeal this work should have abundant means to reach without delay the limit of its capacity.

If there be not vital Christian warmth sufficient in the United States to resuscitate this waif upon our coasts, how can we hope to rescue the myriad nation? It is floundering in the Arctic Ocean of heathenism.

Respectfully Submitted,

W. A. Bartlett, Chairman.

ADDRESS OF REV. WILLIAM ALVIN BARTLETT, D.D.

After remarking that the Chinese question was little in some aspects, as when fifty million people frantically rise to defend themselves against a paltry handful of 75,000 Chinamen, Dr. Bartlett continues: But there is a sense in which it is large. It is a large question to any man. We find, according to the best accounts, 430 odd millions of Chinamen. It is the largest question of statesmanship and of commerce to know how best to handle the largest body of men who live together, and have lived together the longest, on the planet, and that speak one language.

But if it is large commercially, what is it in a Christian point of view? We go here and there picking up the scraps and the scattered remnants of races, but look at this majestic aggregation of humanity; look at their tremendous history! It is the largest question to-day before the missionary Christianity of the world.

Well, I am to say a word or two about the Chinese in America. How did they come here? They came here on the invitation of the Americans. California boasted at first of the grand people they were to receive. But that soon changed, and they began a system of ingenious abuse, such as has never been equalled. Take the laws passed by San Francisco—the “basket” law; the “cubic foot of air” law, under which, if a Chinaman was found living in a room with less than 500 cubic feet of air, he was thrust into a prison where he would not have over 200 cubic feet of air; and the “tax” law, under which Chinamen were taxed for sending their children to school and not permitted to send them. Every man in the street took the license himself of breaking every law of God and of humanity by pounding and stoning them. Then, it was not enough for the municipality to seize this question, but the State took hold of it. The Legislature of California settled all ethnological questions at once. They passed a law and said, by majority, that the Chinaman was an Indian! That settled it. Then the nation took hold of it and passed a law—these great 50,000,000 of people against 75,000 of people.

So the nation passed a law to keep the Chinamen out, violating all the traditions of the country, and to import the Chinese wall! They ceased importing the Chinamen and imported their wall—a barbaric, ramshackled old thing of a great many centuries. It was a kind of waistband to the Chinese Empire when it was young; but they burst it long ago and ran over it.

This infamy was carried to this extent. A committee was appointed by the United States Senate, and a corresponding committee from the House, in 1876, to investigate this subject thoroughly. They examined 130 witnesses. They took over 1,200 pages of evidence from experts in all departments in regard to Chinese history and ethnology and everything else. They met them face to face and talked it over. Senator Sargent, the chairman of the Committee, made this statement in his report. He says, in the first place, that the Chinaman is an “indigestible mass.” Well, that is not quite definite; a man hardly knows how to handle such a statement as that. It is a kind of mince-pie, I suppose, in the body politic. I think I shall leave that for the gastric juice to analyze. But his next assertion is more practical. He says that the brain capacity of the Chinaman is not sufficient to furnish motive power for self-government; for all that, he has governed himself since the time that Senator Sargent’s ancestors, assuming him to be an Anglo-Saxon, were cautiously cracking acorns in Northern Europe and wearing bearskins! Mr. Pixley, a gentleman we sent to California from my part of the State of New York, a lawyer, and violently opposed to the Chinaman, says in his opinion before this Committee that the Chinaman is the inferior of any being that God ever made; he says that a specimen cannot be produced that has ever been affected in any particular by Christian influences, and that in his (Pixley’s) opinion the Chinaman hasn’t any soul, or if he has a soul it is not worth saving. Gentlemen, these things have been put into laws and organized before people of influence, and their animus spent itself in that infamous legislation in Congress which abrogated a treaty without consultation and flew in the face of a hundred years of precedents.

What is the fact? Why, the fact is that Chinamen are human beings. They are honest human beings as the rule goes. The word of a Chinese merchant in California is taken everywhere. They are industrious and frugal. Senator Cassidy said—he was very much opposed to them—in this book of testimony to which I have referred: “They are the most ingenious, industrious and frugal people on the planet; and if they come into competition with us in low forms of industry to-day, they will come in higher forms to-morrow.”

There was an old philosopher who lived 500 years before Christ, Confucius by name, who wrote certain maxims; and it does seem as though he was inspired to look ahead precisely at this treaty that they passed at Washington, when he said, “It is an evidence of the superior man, of the great moral man, the true man, that he adheres strictly to the old agreements, however long they may have stood.” He was asked if he could put into one word what would express the whole duty of man, and he said, “Is not that word 'reciprocity'?” (That was a “reciprocity” treaty.) He says, “We should not ask another to do unto us what we would not be willing to do unto him.” And then he says, “The superior man has regard to virtue and to the sanctions of law; but the small man only thinks of himself and what favors he is to receive.” It looks like an inspired and animated riddling of this whole question as it stands to-day before the nation.

One of the largest land proprietors and wheat-growers in California said that the work could not be done without the Chinamen; they have reclaimed two millions of acres.

Now, mind you, with all the wrongs that the Chinese have received on our shores, every little disturbance on the Chinese coast which has ever occurred, or where a mission station has been sacked by a mob, we have collected and been paid every dollar of the damage; and the Chinese Government has paid nearly a million dollars to our Government for the wrongs perpetrated upon American people But this Government has not paid a dollar to the Chinese. There is a claim which the Chinese Embassy are now pressing on the Government, for $40,000 that was destroyed in one night in Colorado; but the reply upon such claims usually is, “We have not been in the habit of paying such claims to Chinamen.” Isn’t that justice? Isn’t that purity of legislation?

The Chinese are an educated people. They have vast libraries, large and broad, rich in literature. They have the lives of great men. They know about our Washington: they teach about him in their schools. Do we know anything about their Washingtons—about their great men who have guided the grandest nation, in some respects, that history has given us any account of for nearly 3,000 years, possibly more? We know about Yung Wing, who graduated at Yale College, taking the prizes in English composition. We know the standing of their students in our colleges generally. We know the fact that of the 75,000 Chinese in this country every one can read and write. In this country, according to the census before the last, we had over 5,000,000 who could not read and write; so that there are hardly Chinamen enough in this country to be schoolmasters to those of our number who cannot read and write! Dr. Hedge in Boston stated some years ago that, in a conversation with Charles Sumner, Sir John Bowring, the representative of Her Majesty at the Court of Pekin, said that when he was there the Chinese Ministers were the superiors of any European cabinet. Mr. Sumner replied: “I am astonished! You do not pretend to compare them with Lord Palmerston, Lord Derby and Mr. Gladstone?” Said he: “I mean precisely what I say, without any invidious comparison; I will add that the Prime Minister of China, during my residence in Pekin, has not, in my opinion, his intellectual superior upon the planet.”

The Chinese are a cleanly people, a decent people. The Chinese laborer washes himself all over every day. As a rule they can come into our mission schools and sit beside our ladies with perfect propriety. When I was preaching in Indianapolis we had every Chinaman in the city in our schools. They are not a clannish people; they are glad for American society.

They have crimes and vices. They are human. They lie and steal, and gamble, and have their peculiar method of getting intoxicated with opium. But I don’t know as it ever has been proven that they can carry on lying to such a magnificent extent as we do in an ordinary political campaign, and they have never risen to the refined plundering of Wall street. They say they take opium, and you know how they took it—they took it at the cannon’s mouth at first. England must make 400 per cent. profit in the poppy fields of India. It was shocking to them to the utmost; and their torment has gone on ever since in homes that were never addicted to any crazier drug than tea and knew nothing of a hell so orthodox as the delirium tremens. The Emperor petitioned England, in a document which I think has not its equal in all the documents of Governments, not to set fire to the morals of his people by loading them with their accursed opium. But they did.

The Chinese worship their ancestors. Well, if I had to choose the least of two improprieties, I think I would prefer to pay a very hearty and cordial appreciation of my grandfather rather than to curse my children with such doctrines as have been proposed toward the Chinese. It is better, I think, to worship your ancestors than to damn your posterity.

But the Chinese have noble qualities. In the days of the yellow fever at Memphis I was near it. We almost felt the hot breath of that dreadful pestilence. We needed money and men; and there came a telegram from San Francisco that the Chinese merchants of that city had contributed $12,000 for the yellow fever sufferers. That looked like putting the prayer of Christ upon the cross into physical results: “Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

We know the Chinese philosophy, the height of their morality; we know the purity of Confucius’ recommendations and the wondrous statement of Lotse that we should love our enemies; and we know that the highest crest waves of this Chinese morality throw spray around the feet of Jesus. I have stood this summer in the far West. I have stood where you can test civilization. There in Seattle stood a university on our right hand, and on it the Indian words Al-Ki—by and by—the motto of the Territory—“By and by we will show you.” Brethren, I am not given to nightmares nor to day dragons, but it did seem to me as we stood there and looked out upon that majestic sheet of water, Puget Sound, being nearer in the centre of the majority of the population in the planet than we are here, that the day would come, with that matchless harbor, that wonderful climate, with coal and iron in the vicinity, with all cereals and fruits possible, when the throne of power would be transferred from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, and when the argosies of the world would float without any bar, either in Puget Sound or in the cities around it, and ride there at peace in the security of a gospelized and millennialized age. It can only be done by our appreciation of the necessity of keeping our Christianity clean and solid and aggressive, and on the old basis of sin and salvation through a crucified Redeemer.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON INDIAN MISSIONS.

Your Committee, to whom has been referred that part of the annual statement of the Executive Committee which relates to the American Indians, desire to report as follows:

The chief event of the year, in the Indian department, is the adoption by this Association of the Indian Missions of the American Board. Your Committee look upon this as an event of conspicuous importance in the history of the Association. As long ago as 1872, at the annual meeting of that year, the Committees on the Indian and the foreign work suggested a double transfer—namely, the transfer of the foreign missions of the Association to the American Board, and the transfer of the Indian missions of the Board to this Association. The propriety of such an exchange has seemed obvious to many patrons of the two societies for some time. However satisfactory the explanation of the existing condition of things afforded by the historical development of the two organizations, it was plain that the time had come for such a unifying and concentrating of the work of this Association as would result from leaving the foreign field to others, and assuming the care of those missions in our own country which our foreign missionary society had so well established.

These missions are among the Dakotas, one of the most widely extended and important of the American Indian stocks. The largest of these missions—that at the Sisseton agency, formerly under the care of the lamented Stephen R. Riggs—has chosen for its new mother not our Association, but another missionary board, by which it will doubtless be thoroughly cared for and warmly cherished. The missions which actually come under our care constitute an important group of churches and schools, and should be received with a hearty welcome by an Association with such antecedents as this. The new trust committed to us calls for new purpose and energy in our specific work.

We find that these Dakota missions are not dead or dying, but thoroughly alive. And because they are thoroughly alive they need very real help. The men in charge of them are men awake to their opportunities, believers in a forward movement, and in whatever legitimate experiments may be involved therein. We feel that in all such experiments they should have the ready co-operation of the Christian Church. We therefore heartily endorse the Executive Committee in their plans for enlargement in the Dakota field—for improvements in the mission property and in methods of work, where they are called for, and the establishment of new missions in places which promise success.

One project, your Committee believe, deserves to be regarded with special favor, the establishment of a school—agricultural, mechanical and normal—at Fort Sully. The Executive Committee have secured a delightful site for such a school, and they know the man to take charge of it. What is wanted is money to furnish the proper financial basis, and we can scarcely doubt that this will be forth-coming. The industrial school method of missionary work has already been thoroughly tested at the east—in Hampton and Carlisle—and the verdict is altogether favorable. There is good reason to believe that the adoption of the same method among the Indians themselves would result in real benefit. Let the work of instruction, in all its interesting details, be carried on where the red man can see it, and it will surely make its impression upon him. At all events, we have in favor of this view the opinions of men who may be looked upon as experts in this matter.

In adopting as its aim these Dakota missions, and thus enlarging its strictly missionary work among the American Indians, the American Missionary Association gives its approval anew to the attempt, now so long continued, to Christianize the red men. There are those who scoff at the idea of such a work; but history—not to say the Gospel—teaches us better. No race of men has yet been discovered so low that it cannot be reached and moved by the religion of the Crucified, and the American Indians are certainly no exception. The Indians as a whole are by no means the lowest or the least susceptible; and the results on record are far from insignificant. God has blessed the efforts of his church in their behalf throughout the past two hundred years, and we know he will continue to bless them. Respectfully submitted.

Joseph Anderson, Chairman.

ADDRESS OF REV. DR. ANDERSON.

When the question arose in my mind in what line to follow up this brief report, it seemed to me that the subject of Indian wrongs and Indian rights had been sufficiently discussed for the present in this Association and elsewhere, and that it might be of advantage for us to look for a little while in another direction.

There are few, I suppose, who are aware of the largeness of this work as carried on upon our continent, few who appreciate the amount of real labor and real suffering, I may say, endured in this direction. In order to a correct estimate, it seems to me that we ought not to lose sight of, but rather we ought to recognize, the work which has been done by our Roman Catholic friends. They began as long ago as 1611, and from that date onward until 1832, at least, they carried on an extended work among the American Indians upon eight or ten different and important fields. I find, by looking over their lists, that 170 men gave themselves to the work of saving the Indian from barbarism and elevating him to a higher and Christian level during this period.

Then, in order to a correct appreciation of this work, we must remember also what our beloved friends, the Moravians, have done—not only what they did in Greenland, not only what they did in the West Indies, but what they did within the bounds of our own nation, especially in Pennsylvania and farther west. And so, too, we must recognize the work done by the Episcopalians and the Methodists and the Presbyterians, who, through a long series of years and in varied fields, have been laboring for the conversion of the American Indian.

But in none of these fields has a more satisfactory work been done than that which has been done in this America of ours by the Congregational churches and the men whom they have sent out. The missionary work among the American Indians began with the founding of the church in New England—began under the molding hand of John Elliot in Massachusetts. A hundred years later than the day when Elliot began that work another figure arose upon the stage of history: David Brainerd, the humble, quiet young man, who gave himself for Christ and for the beloved Indians, and labored and suffered even unto death. And then, when we come down to 1813 or thereabouts, we find the American Board, newly organized, turning its attention to the Indians in the South and Southwest. In the record of their early work we have such names as Cyrus Kingsbury and Byington and Father Gleason, and in the far West Williamson and Riggs, our lamented brethren to whom reference has already been made, and many others, some of whom are still with us, including our excellent brother and my fellow committeeman Rev. Cushing Eells.

Here we have a list of heroes doing their work quietly, silently, patiently, yet a work deserving to be called heroic, as much so as that which has been done on the islands of the sea and on the other side of the globe—a work in which noble men and women have taken part. What is the result? Here is the good seed sewing. What kind of a harvest has been gathered? There are those who think—perhaps it is the common impression—that the results of Indian missions have been meagre and of little value at the best; but let us consider. It seems to me that in any such calculation some account should be made of what may be called the reciprocal effect produced in the lives of the missionaries themselves and of the churches sending them forth. I observe that Dr. Shay, author of the History of Catholic Missions in America, referring to the extinction of the Spanish missions in the southern part of our country, says that even if they have become extinct and if there are no results that we can trace to-day, that does not count for their condemnation any more than the disappearance of the works of art produced so long ago by Apelles and Zeuxis is to the condemnation of those workers. He might have gone farther and called attention to the effect produced upon the artists themselves by their contributions to ancient art, the effect produced upon the artist anywhere by the work that he does in his own field, the effect produced upon the reformer by the work of reform which he accomplishes, the results produced in the lives of missionaries who constitute so large a company in our church from their labors, their sufferings and their sorrows.

I noticed in a past number of the American Missionary published during the present year that a cut had been reproduced representing a group of Indians watching a railroad train—an impressive picture; and it suggested to me that our aim should be to bring these Indians of the West where they shall not stand suspiciously watching a railroad train, the emblem of advancing civilization, but where they shall co-operate with us and appreciate the railroad train and make it theirs. We want them to adopt as rapidly as possible all the appliances of our civilization, and above all we want them to accept the Lord Jesus Christ.

ADDRESS OF REV. J. C. PRICE.

On the 1st of January, 1863, the negro was like a newly-built ship launched upon the waters without mast, sail or rudder. Pleased with liberty, he thought his happiness complete; but a few months’ experience taught him better. When the ballot was denied, when he could not—nay, more, when he cannot—claim as a right or privilege the comforts of travel; when deeply-rooted prejudice on account of his color and previous condition of servitude confronted him at every turn, he soon found that he had not reached the full stature of an American citizen, but was still in his infancy. And the question that presents itself to your minds, and to the friends of the negro and to ours, the orphaned recipients of your generosity, is, Has the negro grown any? has he made any noticeable advancement? Or is he where freedom found him and where slavery left him? January, 1863, found the negro penniless, ignorant, a homeless wanderer, his chief object to be in General Sherman’s army, or if not in it, in the wake of it; but he is now settled, fixed, and by industry and by perseverance he has purchased homes, and he and his children, through the generous aid of friends, have received some education. The land that he once sowed in slavish fear and reaped with trembling, he now sows in joy and gathers with the gladsome shout of a free and jubilant harvester. In fact, the material, as well as the intellectual and moral progress of the negro has surprised his best friends. He has gone forth without possessing the tattered garments that he wore, without a foot of soil on which to tread, and he has purchased those homes. And not only has he purchased them, but he has carried into them those things which make home what it is—the comforts of home. It is nothing strange to go into a Southern home and see a carpet on the floor. If it is not on all of it, it will be a big piece in the middle. And if you don’t find it all the way up-stairs, you will find a little as you step on the first step. That shows a disposition to do something that is elevating. And then the fact that they have purchased these homes is something. I have seen it repeated in the newspapers of the North—and I regret to say by men who do not know the negro—that he is a lazy, shiftless fellow. Well, they do not go down South, as we term it, and go into the negroes’ houses. They do not go into his colleges and universities and high schools, but they ride around by the station, they see a few at the depot—a lot of lazy negroes, as you find a lot of lazy white men under similar circumstances. They judge us unfairly. No man is judged by the worst, but by the best. Did you want Lord Chief Justice Coleridge to form an opinion of America by the men that he met by accident or saw in the slums of New York—“lazy” men, that he saw lounging around the corners of the streets? No; you wanted him to judge you by your best, and you put your best forward. Now, what we ask for the negro is that he be judged by his best and not by his worst. Of course, the best is always in the minority, but that is the way we are judged. If these same men were to go into the South and go into the negroes’ homes, they would find there very often excellent comfort. Some one has asked whether the negro has any of this race prejudice in him. No; he will give you the best bed and the fattest pig and the best chicken he has got in the yard. There is no prejudice there. And then, not only these things, but you find in many of their houses instruments of music—some with an organ, some with a piano; and you can find young girls there who can play on both, and if you want a little singing they can do that too. Negroes can sing as well as my friends the Chinamen. These things, too, are not only found in the cities but in the country places and villages.

The negro has done all this, notwithstanding that he has lost millions—yes, the negro has been defrauded of millions, yet he has accumulated millions, and in many instances he has become the owner of the farms and plantations of his former master. It was no longer than two or three years ago that the papers told us that the farm of Mr. Jefferson Davis rightly belonged not to him, but to two negroes, they having paid $200,000 for it. And these are but examples. You go through the South and you find negroes owning farms of 100 or 200 acres each; and I know of one man who owns 900 acres, all of which he has bought since the war. We have gone forth to the earth, and with the horny hands of toil we have made the earth to answer to our appeals; and these have been the results. Why, in Georgia alone there are more than 85,000 colored voters who own 500,000 acres of land valued at about $1,244,000, besides city property valued at $2,100,000, horses and mules, etc., valued at, $2,000,000, making an aggregate for Georgia alone of more than $6,000,000, which the colored people in that State now own.

But why should I enumerate? In fact, the negro has made the waste places of the South to blossom as the rose. He has built its railroads, dug its canals, erected its mansions, makes its carriages and buggies, and in 1878 produced for the American people more than $250,000,000. In the face of these evidences, who would dare question his industry, stigmatize him as “lazy,” and ridicule his unskilled labor?

But these are but the beginnings—the gray streaks of dawn ushering in a brighter day for this toiling and long-oppressed son of Ham. We are often reminded of what the negro was in ancient days, especially in Northern Africa; but to-day we are forced to see what he is in America, notwithstanding its prejudices and its political oppression and persecution; we are forced to look at him rising in his incomparable glory, the anomaly of the race and the wonder of mankind.

But there is another feature. The negro’s highest powers and worthiest capabilities are not all shown in the development of sterile marshes or barren highlands. If slavery brought out his power of endurance, his patience and his unparalleled fidelity, freedom called forth his intellectual ability and causes the world to wonder at his rapid attainments. But this angel in him long ago would have sought his native heaven, but slavery clipped his wings, forbade his flight, and confined him to corn hills, cotton rows, rice marshes and pine forests. But his wings are growing again, and already he lifts himself somewhat from the earth. But you say, “Are there any signs of his educational progress?” I might answer by pointing to distinguished colored men who fill positions of responsibility and emolument in this country. But not only are there men who are educated among us, but there are also schools of high grade whose portals are anxiously crowded by young men and women thirsting for knowledge. I have taken one State as an example of our material progress; let another show our intellectual advancement. In 1861 there was not a school in North Carolina to which persons of color were admitted. But to-day, in addition to her common schools, she has Shaw University, Biddle University, St. Augustine Normal School, four State Normal Schools, Esther Seminary, Scotia Seminary, Bennett Seminary, and the Zion Wesleyan Institute—institutions of high grade; these have in them to-day an aggregate of 2,000 young men and women preparing for the great work of uplifting their brethren, and every summer they go forth throughout North Carolina and other Southern States doing what they can for the improvement of their fellows. Besides this, we have in North Carolina from twelve to fifteen newspapers, weeklies, semi-weeklies and monthlies, edited, owned and controlled by colored men. The negro has done something, and we consider it something—something that we are proud of, especially when we think of the manner in which it has been done.

But, notwithstanding this favorable aspect of the condition of the people as seen in these two States, we are forced to ask the question—in fact it comes to us as we travel among the people—what is our material progress in Georgia, what is North Carolina’s educational outlook, when we consider the masses of the people through the South? They are but a drop in the bucket. If you could travel through that section and view the condition of the people away off in the remote towns and districts, you would say so, especially when you remember that the population has increased to almost double its original number. Since 1863 the 4,000,000 have grown to nearly 7,000,000. It is nothing strange to see the need of instruction among the people, even among the ministry. It is my theory that we must get the ministry straight first; and when we have an intelligent ministry before the people, then we will soon have an intelligent people. “Like priest” always “like people”.

It was truly said by President Tobey at the meeting of the A. M. A. in Chicago that the presence of the negro in the United States is of great significance, that the enthusiasms of political life in our nation have resulted from his presence, and that he has been the occasion of the most exhaustive discussion of the rights of man and the formation of a new political party and is now the most considerable element in our politics. That is true; but that is telling us our disease without a cure. What is the remedy? That is what you are here for to-night; that is what you have bean turning over in your minds ever since you assembled. What is the remedy for these existing political and social evils among us? We think it was precisely set forth by the Secretary of the Association at that same meeting when he said, “The true remedy for the existing evils is not to change the negro’s color or his party, but to change his character,” and that is what we ask.

Legislation cannot solve the negro problem in this country. The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, the Civil Rights Bill and the Constitution itself cannot solve the negro problem. We must go behind the Constitution, behind the amendments; we must go to the public sentiment. What effect has a law if there is not a public sentiment to back it up? We have had the Civil Rights Bill for several years, but what did it amount to in some sections of the country? It amounted to nothing, because there was not a public sentiment to sustain it. And it seems to me that we want to educate the public sentiment and it is evident that the solution of this great vexing problem can only come through the gradual and thorough development of the negro’s mental and moral nature. I say thorough, because some men think that the negro need have only an elementary training, that he is not prepared for a higher training. Why is he not? If it has taken centuries of culture, with the best masters and the best teachers, to uplift the white race, why is it not necessary to uplift the black race? God has made of one blood all nations of men that dwell upon the face of the earth; and we believe that there are only individual and not race distinctions as to their mental and moral capabilities. Therefore, what one race requires another race requires; and we feel assured that, when this has been done, the millions of minds, both in this country and in Africa, that are now rough and unshapen as the rock from the quarry, will begin to show signs of symmetry under the constant hammer and steady chisel of competent workmen.

Then, and not till then, the negro’s sun of progress and prosperity, whose earliest rays already gladden his eastern horizon, will rise and climb the firmament of his glory until it reaches its zenith, and from that zenith it will shed forth a light that all the nations of the earth shall behold, whose heat shall melt away all prejudice, in whose light all indignities and all inhumanities shall vanish; and all these nations, in one united, harmonious voice, shall cry aloud, “Ethiopia, Ethopia has indeed and in truth stretched forth her hands unto God.”

CASTE IN AMERICA.

BY SECRETARY STRIEBY.

India has four castes, America two. The Hindoo castes are the priest, soldier, merchant and laborer or Soodra. The last is the largest and lowest and bears the weight of all the upper classes, whom it is born to serve and by whom it is despised. The highest caste may come down to the employments of the soldier or merchant, but not to those of the Soodra, but, according to Hindoo orthodoxy, the Soodra can as little enter a higher caste as a stone can become a plant.

America’s two castes are simply the white and the colored races. The latter are the Soodras, and in the orthodox theology of slavery they were born to serve the whites. But while that high orthodoxy suffered a rude shock in the Proclamation of Emancipation, caste comes in to save it from utter overthrow, and has fixed a great gulf between the races, so that especially “they cannot pass to us that would come from thence.”

This proscription of the colored races includes the Indian and the Chinaman, but for the sake of simplicity of presentation I shall refer mainly to the most numerous race in this country—the Negro.

By caste prejudice they are denied fellowship which Christ enjoins—rights which the Constitution grants, access to trades, professions and schools where they could compete with the whites.

Caste is a worse sin in America than in India. In practicing it the Hindoo obeys his gods and his veda; the American dishonors his God and disobeys his Bible. The Hindoo is a heathen and is degraded by caste; the American sends missionaries to convert him and to denounce his caste, and yet sustains caste at home. The Hindoo is consistent in denying equal rights to all men; the American boasts that God made of one blood all nations, and that all men are free and equal, and yet tolerates caste.

In sustaining caste the American perpetuates the inconsistency and shame of slavery. No greater inconsistency was ever shown than in holding slaves in America after the Declaration of Independence; and no greater shame than in the zealous defense of slavery by the press, the pulpit and the theological seminaries—at the imperious bidding of the slaveholder. Caste is the tap root of slavery, and the defense of it is a repetition—nay, an aggravation—of the apologies formerly made for slavery. Men will live to be ashamed of this defense.

Caste is a curse to America.

It injures those who cherish it. Caste-prejudice is a sin. All prejudice is narrow, born of ignorance and hate. Caste-prejudice, therefore, by narrowing the mind and embittering the heart, harms the American citizen both as a man and a Christian. It hinders the progress of its victims. The slaves are emancipated—their continued degradation is the nation’s danger, their elevation the nation’s hope, and yet caste shuts up the avenues of trades, professions, schools and churches, through which alone they can escape from ignorance and degradation. If they rise it must be in spite of all the obstacles that caste can throw in their way.

It creates race antagonisms. The foreign immigration into this country creates no antagonisms. It flows into the great river of American life like brooklets, bringing down often their turbid waters, but these are soon mingled and purified in the mightier stream. But caste renders the colored races an opposing tide now indeed overflowed and borne under, yet resisting their fate. That they are overborne is seen in the nullifying of their vote in the South and in denying them access to the rights, immunities and privileges of the dominant class. But they are neither silent nor submissive. We know how prompt and deadly is the resentment of the Indian; the negro and the Chinaman are more quiet, but they resist as best they can and await the time, in the conflict of tides, when their volume and momentum will give them the preponderance.

Nor is that awaiting vain, nor that time distant, in view of the astonishingly rapid increase of the colored population—an increase of over 500 per day—an increase of 35 per cent. in ten years, as against 28 per cent. in the white population of the South. It is easy to estimate in how few years the colored population will equal the whites, and it is easy to see that, as this growth goes on and long before the equal numbers are reached, the sense of growing strength and of continued wrong will stimulate the negative resistance of the present to the determined hostility of the future; and when that race conflict comes, what human ken can foretell the issue? But we may be sure that when it comes the North, the whole nation, can no more keep out of it than it could keep out of the dreadful conflict with slavery, out of which this impending struggle grows.

Special significance is given to all this by the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States pronouncing the Civil Rights Bill unconstitutional. This takes from the colored man the last shadow of legal protection to rights which he, and all men for themselves, consider essential to their manhood, and will stimulate him to more determined resistance unless the conscience and good sense of the white races shall speedily end this needless, yet dangerous conflict.

This leads me to ask: Is there a remedy for all this, and what is it? Not in dragging the white man down, but in lifting the colored man up. Both races must coöperate. The white man must let down the ladder; the black man must climb. The white man must open the door of the shop, and the black man must go in and do as good work as the white man can. The white man must open the school house and the black man must go in and become as good a scholar as the white man is. The black man can never attain positions and honors by demanding them simply because he is a black man; he must fairly win them by being worthy of them. The white man cannot maintain his superiority by denying the black man the chance of becoming his equal. He cannot hold it by force. Slavery for a time enabled him to do so, for then he had superior numbers and the aid of the Government, but he has no longer that aid and he cannot always have the weight of superior numbers. The white man must give the chance, and the black man must take it and win his position.

But the white man is not ready to give the chance—in other words, surrender the vantage ground his color gives him. Here is a call for an appeal to conscience. The subject must be discussed, North and South, among white and black alike. As the anti-slavery reform arose not out of the stagnant waters of indifference, but out of the dashing stream of healthful agitation, so must the caste reform be brought about. That discussion has begun in earnest, and will not cease till caste be sent to that bourne to which slavery, its ancestor, has gone and whence it shall never return. But discussion must take shape; the Church must cease to sustain caste. The time was when men were afraid to oppose slavery because it would hinder the spread of their churches in the South. They urged: “Why endanger the growth of our denomination by joining in this useless clamor against slavery?” But the time came when these same persons decided that it was more important to destroy slavery than multiply churches that sustained slavery. Missionary societies abandoned their churches in the South, and the great national churches allowed themselves to be rent in twain rather than uphold slavery. Only such an attitude against caste will avail anything. When the North feels that ten churches or schools that stand unequivocally against caste are more important than a thousand churches or schools that sustain caste, then we shall see the beginning of the end.

But the colored people themselves must be educated out of caste. Strange as it may seem, some of them are its abettors, and, stranger still, they are so religiously. As men, they repudiate it; as Christians, they sustain it. They prefer separation mainly, perhaps, because they think the whites would not welcome them. Other reasons may be given. Some of the members love excitement in their worship, and this they can enjoy better if no whites are present; the leaders can be bishops and rulers among their own people, but, if joined to the whites, these honors are denied, or, at least, unequally divided. Why is it that religion is compelled to shield some of the greatest wrongs on earth? Albert Barnes said, long before slavery was abolished: “There is no power out of the Church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.” Must sinful and harmful caste, the baleful progeny of slavery, find its bulwark in the Church—nay, in some of the colored churches themselves?

But this wish or willingness of these churches for separation is gravely made use of by many most excellent people as a reason for ceasing to make war against caste. It is said triumphantly: “See how the colored people, welcomed to Dr. Goodell’s or Dr. Rankin’s churches, prefer churches of their own.” Does their abetting caste help to destroy it? Did the wish of the Israelites in the wilderness to return to Egypt help them on to Canaan? If the slaves in this country were ever content to remain slaves, as was sometimes alleged, that was all the greater evidence of the curse of slavery. If the Soodra consents to remain a Soodra, all the more does he need the breaking of his bondage that he may become a man. And so, if the colored people consent to caste separation, all the more do they need emancipation from the bondage of caste.

In this point of view the action of some of the large religious bodies North and South in consenting to a separation on the color line is riveting the chains of caste on the colored people, and sustaining caste-prejudice in the hearts of the white race; and it is seriously questioned by many considerate persons whether the presence of two Congregational Missionary Societies in the South, the one working mainly for the whites, and the other side by side, mainly for the blacks, will not, with all explanations, be construed into a sanction of caste. The question is fairly before the churches, and should be met in a frank and Christian way.

The presence with us to-day of a committee appointed by the American Home Missionary Society to confer on this very subject renders its consideration by this meeting a matter of comity and of Christian duty, and to aid in its intelligent and harmonious settlement I beg leave to contribute some facts and considerations.

The A. M. A. was organized when the great missionary societies, home and foreign, aided churches in the South that received slaveholders as members. It was formed not as an anti-slavery society, nor merely as a formal protest against slavery, but as affording a channel through which anti-slavery Christians might carry forward missions without complicity with slavery. Hence it established missions in foreign lands and among the Indians, and also home missions in the West.

But in the progress of the anti-slavery movement the large missionary societies withdrew their aid from slaveholding churches, and soon thereafter came the opening for the great work to be done for the freedmen. The Association was believed to be providentially prepared to undertake this work, and hence it gave up its home missions in the West and among the Indians and entered with alacrity into this new field.