Read Ebook: The American Missionary — Volume 43 No. 09 September 1889 by Various

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 599 lines and 32420 words, and 12 pages

A. They are not, though they have been successful in exciting interest for Africa among the students of their schools. Some of these are now foreign missionaries; others are preparing to go; but the missions of the A.M.A. in the broadest sense are Home Missions, for they minister to white and black as to citizens of a common country, who alike need the Gospel. The A.M.A. is planting white churches every year, and has added several this year, though none of them would refuse membership to a man because he is black, and is planting colored churches , none of which should be excluded from State Associations merely because of color.

A. Social ostracism is gradually giving way among the more intelligent Christian people. Nothing, however, dies so hard as prejudice, and nothing is so cruel; but missions do not cease to be Home Missions, because they may be where there is sinful prejudice and dense ignorance.

A. Missions in the South which would treat an entire race as foreigners and aliens because in God's wisdom he has seen fit to make them black, would be foreign to the spirit of the Gospel: "For He is our peace who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us. Through Him, we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the general household of God, and built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord." Missions in the South which exclude pastors and delegates from Associations and Conferences, would be foreign to the Gospel. Missions in the South founded upon an aristocracy of skin, would be foreign to the spirit of the Gospel. Missions which would preach against caste in India, and perpetuate it in America, would be foreign to the methods of Christ, and to Christian methods in foreign lands.

A. The A.M.A. does not regard it as at all probable that such churches will exist to any great extent. Race tastes and race affiliations will make for churches essentially white and essentially black. "But to close the door on any Christian is in so far to make it an unchristian church. To go into the South and establish white churches from which, whether by a formal law or by an unwritten but self-forcing edict, men are excluded because God made them black, is to deny one of the fundamental tenets of Christ. There is no need to attempt to corral all men of all races in one enclosure, but for any church, especially a church of the Puritans, to enter upon a missionary work in the South and initiate it by refusing to fellowship a black man because he is black, is to apostatize from the faith in order to get a chance to preach the faith." The doors of every Christian church ought to stand wide open to men of every race and color, and in all representative bodies these churches should be one.

A. It is: The Roman Catholic Church would not for a moment recognize any color-line in its assemblies or priesthood.

A. The A.M.A. has never seen any social equality anywhere, and believes and teaches nothing about it. It believes in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

A. It is not. It always has proclaimed its principles for the interests of the oppressed, and always has championed the cause of God's poor, pleading for the right because it is right.

A. Because the Lord has said; "Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it."

THE CARS, THE CHURCH, THE COURTS.

Our esteemed brother, Rev. G.C. Rowe, pastor of the Plymouth Congregational Church, Charleston, S.C., and his associates, on their return from the meeting of the Joint Committee on the union of the Georgia Association and the Georgia Conference, were forcibly transferred to an inferior car on the Georgia Railroad. They were not driven from the train, they were allowed to ride, and the car in which they rode was connected with the cars containing the white passengers. They were simply separated from the others and that only because they were colored persons.

The reception these honored ministers of Christ met in the Joint Committee was very much of the same sort. The white brethren did not deny them their place in the church--nay, the two bodies, white and colored, were to be connected together, but these colored brethren were to be kept separate and that only because they were colored persons.

An appeal will be made to the courts, but the interesting question is: which will be first to recognize the equal manhood of the colored man-- the cars, the courts or the church? Would it not be a shame to the church and a dishonor to the Christian name if the church should be the last?

Speaking of the race problem, in his baccalaureate sermon at Vanderbilt University, recently, Bishop Galloway, of Mississippi, of the Methodist Church, South, startled his hearers by the following vigorous declaration: "It is a travesty on religion, this disposition to canonize missionaries who go to the dark continent, while we have nothing but social ostracism for the white teacher who is doing a work no less noble at home. The solution to the race problem rests with the white people who live among the blacks, and who are willing to become their teachers in a missionary spirit."

THE WORK OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION AND FOREIGN MISSIONS.

The American Missionary Association has done both home and foreign missionary work. There is nothing in its constitution or traditions to prevent its doing the same again.

Providence, however, seems to indicate clearly that its work at present be within the United States. While in this sense it does home missionary work, the peculiar conditions of the people among whom it mostly labors require largely the methods of foreign missions. It must supply the school, as well as the church; industrial training as well as that which is intellectual and moral. It must create a native ministry and develop native workers of all kinds. In fact, it would be hard to find on foreign mission fields a single kind of activity which is not duplicated in the fields of the American Missionary Association.

Home missions aid foreign missions by creating the conditions of more income and more missionaries for foreign fields. The work of this Association has done this already to some extent; without doubt it is to do it to a far greater extent in the future.

In taking people from the ignorance and poverty of slavery and savagery, it could not be expected to form them at once into large givers or efficient workers for foreign fields; but who can say, after the marvels of the past twenty-four years, what the future shall show, when the coming millions shall arise and, out of gratitude for what they have received, give of their increasing means and send forth their sons and daughters to tell the glad story of freedom, truth and love.

It has been a favorite idea of many that the Negroes of America should evangelize Africa. Perhaps some have been disappointed that so few of them have gone to Africa as missionaries; but such, I am sure, have failed fully to consider the facts. A people who had received only the degrading tuition of slavery could not produce at once many who should have the reliable qualities and the intellectual and moral training needed for the responsible and, to a large extent, the unsuperintended work of a foreign missionary. Then, every capable preacher, teacher and leader has been needed in a hundred places at home. They could scarcely be justified in leaving their own brothers and sisters in heathenism and without the truth within their reach, to go to the heathen abroad.

Yet a few have gone forth and proved themselves capable, faithful and successful. A former slave of Jefferson Davis is not only a successful missionary in Africa, but has proved himself such a level-headed man that he has been chosen treasurer of one of the missions of the American Board. Such as he are an earnest of what shall be, when the colored people shall be more fully evangelized and the appeal for Africa can be made strong to their hearts and consciences. Then there will be such a going forth as will astonish the Christian Church.

The bearing of the work for the one hundred thousand Chinese in this country on foreign missions can be clearly seen. Christian work for them is missionary work for China--it sends them back to become missionaries to their native land. The fruitfulness of this work for foreign missions has been fully demonstrated.

The possibilities of the influence of the evangelization of the Indians on foreign missions is a topic which I do not remember having seen or heard mentioned. Yet it seems to me worth thinking about.

Mexico has four million Indians; Central America, one million five hundred thousand, and South America seven million. Here is a foreign mission field of twelve and a half million souls. How can it be otherwise than that, when once the Indians of our land shall come to have and appreciate the blessings of a Christian civilization, their hearts shall be stirred by the needs of their brethren according to the flesh, and that they will go to them with the gospel story?

Give these mountain boys and girls a chance, and the people who gave the nation a Lincoln will give it ministers and missionaries, not only for the seven mountain States, but also for other home mission fields and for foreign lands.

If the Congregational churches will listen to the call of Christ and appreciate the opportunity which he has placed before them, there may be in these mountains, filled with their marvellous mineral wealth, Congregational churches which shall be not only self-supporting, but give generously for the advancement of Christ's kingdom throughout the earth. The most generous giver I know, is a native of the mountains and a member of one of our missionary churches.

ROME AND THE NEGRO.

We need not say that we have no sympathy with Romanism and its errors, nor with the "Missionary Society of the Sacred Heart," and its efforts to plant Romanism among the colored people of the South.

We can, however, but admire the fidelity of the church to its doctrines, and the Christian example it gives to all missionary societies in its recognition of man as man. The quotations which we make from the Roman Catholic Quarterly will account for the strong hold that Romanism is beginning to secure upon the negro race.

The following, for example, is a Roman Catholic tribute to John Brown:

On the 2nd of December next, thirty years will have passed since John Brown, in his sixtieth winter, ascended the scaffold and gave his life for the colored race.

Connecticut gave the hero birth--from heroes; New York, in her Adirondack recesses, developed in him that spirit of liberty which Ohio had nurtured, and is forever honored by his grave; while Virginia, "building better than she knew," bestowed the martyr's crown. It was necessary that one man should die for the people , and God arranged that he who is likewise one of the great benefactors of the human race as well as of his native land should crimson and beautify with his blood the soil that gave a cradle and a tomb to the Father of his Country.

Grand indeed is the greatness of the rock-ribbed Adirondacks where John Brown lived, prayed, thought out his great life-thought, and made his first trials in the work of emancipation, but grander is the stone there that marks the grave of him whose mighty spirit is still "marching on;" for the greatness of that soul invests the tomb with moral grandeur, and calls "all the astonishing magnificence of unintelligent creation poor."

Fair indeed are the banks of the Shenandoah, and beautiful the landscape on which the dying eyes of the hero rested, but more lovely far the death of him and of his sons and comrades,--"even in death they were not divided" , because the most beautiful thing in the world or out of it is love, and he and they died of love for their brethren, God's children. It is truly fitting, therefore, that they who were rescued by him from bondage should love and honor his glorious name, and that we all should chant the praises of the man who was the chosen instrument of Providence in destroying out of our country the inhuman custom of human slavery.

There are men who never are mistaken. If your opinion or plan, no matter how well sustained, differs from theirs, they solemnly greet you: "Our conscience is our monitor: we can make no concessions of principle." The case is ended. You may as well make your humble bow and pass on, leaving them in their lofty and superior place. Such men are of little use in the world. They may have a few satellites, but that is all. It is noticeable how uniformly the conscience and principles of these men agree with their prejudices, salaries and other interests, and with changed circumstances how "concessions" distill from them gently as the dew.

Man was created in God's own image and likeness. This image and likeness is, however, not a physical one, it is a spiritual or soul likeness. The likeness and image of the operation of the human soul--the mind--through the material, physical medium of the brain, is not only similar, but substantially and formally alike in every division of the human race. It thus follows that fundamentally there is an identity of mental or soul activity and action in all the human race. Neither color, nor form, nor feature, nor clime, operates a change on the formal and fundamental identity of human thought as evolved by the human mind....

It follows that the negro race, thinking the same thoughts, have the same apprehension of the perfect, good and true, and, thinking in the same lines as the Caucassian race, must needs be of the same order of creation, in the image and likeness of their Maker, although physically different in color, yet in mind and soul the same. This, too, removes the theory of the inferiority of races, and relegates it to the lumber room of the mere physicist or corporal anatomist, who, because he cannot find life in death any more than thought, would deny life as he would deny the soul, even as La Place would not admit a Creator--God-- because he could not see him at the end of his telescope....

Naturally working for and under white men, their industry, versatility and submissiveness have made many people think they were an inferior race. This cannot be. Give them a fair chance in life's battle, train their minds, fill their immortal souls with worthy conceptions of the truth as only presented by the Roman Catholic Church, and you will make of the negro race a kind, charitable, intelligent, worthy Christian people, as full of love for the country of their former enslavement as the best patriot descendant of the Revolutionary fathers. Tried in peace and in war when they have received but half the training of the white race, they have not been found wanting, but have proven themselves worthy of offices of trust and honor in every sphere of life and as good Christians as God has ever granted His divine grace to. His promises are for all nations and for all times, and necessarily for the negro as for the white man, all of whom in their souls are created in His own image and likeness from the beginning.

Apropos of Romanism among the colored people, Archbishop Janssens, of New Orleans, writes:

Last year there were baptized 3,705 colored children and 297 colored adults, which I estimate forms a population of about 75,000 Catholics in this Diocese.

We have six convents of colored Sisters, of which four are schools, one an asylum for 74 girls, and the other an asylum, for 21 old women. There are, besides, nine schools conducted by white Sisters, and eleven schools conducted by lay teachers--in all, twenty-four schools with 1,330 scholars. It is not bad.

At Emmetsburg, Maryland, the Roman Catholics report the following:

Says the editor: "How quickly the color-line disappears in the Catholic Church."

NOTES BY THE WAY.

BY DISTRICT SECRETARY C.J. RYDER.

Not long ago, I met a Frenchman in the halls of the Congregational House, who was looking for Secretary Coit of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society. He evidently had a very limited knowledge of the English language, for he accosted me as follows:--"You--eh, you somewheres? Ah! I begs my pardon."

This amusing bungle of the French brother fairly represents my condition during the past few weeks. I have not been altogether sure that I was even "somewheres." Preaching one Sunday in Dover, N.H., the next in Talladega, Ala., the next at Santee Agency, Neb., the next on the Cheyenne River, Dak., then enjoying a communion season with Brother Hall at Fort Berthold, and the next standing beside the pastor of a New England Church at the same Lord's table.

The days between these Sabbaths were filled with pleasant duties, in talking over the great work of our Association with the earnest and devoted missionaries. But many things are impressed upon one's thought by such a trip as this. We realize more than ever that the American Missionary Association is a great National Society, limited neither geographically nor by any race restrictions; actually gathering in its schools and missions, Negroes, Whites and Indians, and Chinese and Japanese, and Hondurans and Cubans, and who knows how many other needy and destitute people! Another fact that must impress one, is the thoroughness of the work done. The examinations were thorough and exhaustive in the schools. This was true, not only in the lower grades, but also in the advanced classes. Dr. Andrews conducted the examinations in Church History, at Talladega, which would have done credit to any of our Theological Seminaries. And Dr. DeForest's classes in Mental Philosophy gave evidence of careful study and of assimilation of that which they had studied. They had not only eaten, but had digested their mental food. The same was true at Fisk. What a grand thing it would be, if the good friends of the Association in New England, and elsewhere in the North, to whom our work is only presented through an appeal for funds, might visit some of these grand institutions in the South and West, and see just what is being done for these neglected people! The work cannot be appreciated in its vast importance and magnificent results, except after such a personal inspection of the field.

These large institutions are the centers of still larger missionary work outside. One professor in Talladega, a graduate of Harvard, has been especially busy during the last year, developing the Sunday-school work in the surrounding districts. The following are some of the results:-- eight Sunday-schools enrolling about five hundred scholars; thirty teachers, all students in the College; two schools meet in buildings belonging to the College, three in log churches, owned by other denominations, not having Sunday-schools, two in log cabins. "In one school, teachers and scholars have to huddle together under umbrellas, if they have any, or go wet, if they haven't them, whenever it rains; and it is a sight which makes one long for better accommodations, that more efficient work may be done," writes this self-sacrificing professor in a note just received. In one house, he found a family of white children, all of them very ignorant, and, so far as he was able to discover, there was not a single book of any kind in the cabin. He invited the children to Sunday-school, where, like Robert Raikes, he teaches reading and spelling as well as the Bible, but the mother indignantly refused, saying that she "didn't let her children go to school with Niggers!"

There are many evidences of heroic sacrifice on the part of the people among whom we labor, that one runs across in such a trip as this. Here is one: A small church in Alabama has recently voted to pay fifty dollars per month of their pastor's salary, that they may become self-supporting, and so let the funds which they have received go to other more needy fields. There are seventy-five persons in this church who might be termed paying members; of all these, the pastor informed me, not more than fifteen receive over a dollar per day; sixty receive less than this. They pay, on an average, ten dollars per month for rent; there are twenty-six working-days to the month, and they often lose at least five of these, on account of weather or lack of work, making an income of only twenty-one dollars per month. Ten dollars going for rent, leaves but eleven dollars for the support of the family. Pretty heroic economy that!

The Annual Meeting of the Dakota Mission, the Convention of missionaries who are at work in the Indian field under the direction of this Association, gathered at Santee Agency, Nebraska, Saturday, June 15, and was full of interest. Sessions were held for three days, and continued late into the night. Thrilling incidents of exposure on the prairie during winter, swimming swollen and chilly streams, breaking through the ice when crossing, which, in one case, resulted in the drowning of a team of horses, seemed to be every-day incidents in the life of these heroic missionaries, who are carrying on this noble work among the Indians. The two Riggs brothers, whose heredity as well as personal consecration fit them for large usefulness in the Indian work, were especially rich in experience and inspiring in conference. One thing, especially, impressed me in this Indian work, and that was, the difference in character between the average teacher employed by the Government and those employed by this Association and other missionary bodies. Many noble men and women are at work under the Government in teaching the Indians, but the purpose of the Government-school at the best is simply to make intelligent citizens. The purpose of the mission-school is to develop character, to inculcate purity, to create moral earnestness, in other words, not simply to citizenize, but to Christianize. We need more mission schools among the Indians, for only the mission idea can redeem a pagan people. I would like to speak of Miss Collins's work, gradually bringing the village of Running Antelope on the Grand River into the knowledge of Christ, and of the developing work at Fort Yates, and of the work among the Mandans, Rees and Gros Ventres, and of the motley and picturesque crowd that gathered for communion in the little church at Fort Berthold; but the interesting facts from these fields must be left for other notes.

THE SOUTH

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet