AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION
PRESIDENT,
—– –
Vice-Presidents
Rev. A.J.F. BEHRENDS, D.D., N.Y
Rev. ALEX. MCKENZIE, D.D., Mass
Rev. F.A. NOBLE, D.D., Ill
Rev. D.O. MEARS, D.D., Mass
Rev. HENRY HOPKINS, D.D., Mo
Corresponding Secretaries
Rev. M.E. STRIEBY, D.D., 56 Reade Street, N.Y
Rev. A.F. BEARD, D.D., 56 Reade Street, N.Y
Treasurer
H.W. HUBBARD, Esq., 56 Reade Street, N.Y
Auditors
PETER McCARTEE
CHAS. P. PEIRCE
Executive Committee
JOHN H. WASHBURN, Chairman
ADDISON P. FOSTER, Secretary
For Three Years
LYMAN ABBOTT,
A.S. BARNES,1
J.R. DANFORTH,
CLINTON B. FISK,
ADDISON P. FOSTER,
For Two Years
S.B. HALLIDAY,
SAMUEL HOLMES,
SAMUEL S. MARPLES,
CHARLES L. MEAD,
ELBERT B. MONROE,
For One Year
J.E. RANKIN,
WM. H. WARD,
J.W. COOPER,
JOHN H. WASHBURN,
EDMUND L. CHAMPLIN
District Secretaries
Rev. C.J. RYDER, 21 Cong'l House, Boston
Rev. J.E. ROY, D.D., 151 Washington Street, Chicago
Financial Secretary for Indian Missions
Rev. CHAS. W. SHELTON,
Secretary of Woman's Work
Miss D.E. EMERSON, 56 Reade Street, N.Y
COMMUNICATIONS
Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the Corresponding Secretaries; letters for "THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY," to the Editor, at the New York Office.
DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
In drafts, checks, registered letters, or post office orders, may be sent to H.W. Hubbard, Treasurer, 56 Reade Street, New York, or, when more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., or 151 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.
FORM OF A BEQUEST
"I bequeath to my executor (or executors) the sum of – dollars, in trust, to pay the same in – days after my decease to the person who, when the same is payable, shall act as Treasurer of the 'American Missionary Association,' of New York City, to be applied, under the direction of the Executive Committee of the Association, to its charitable uses and purposes." The Will should be attested by three witnesses.
THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY
AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION
This Number of the Missionary will reach our friends, the pastors and the churches, about the first of June, one month before the usual vacation time sends many of the pastors to their much-needed summer rest, and when the churches enter upon the months of small congregations. We wish to remind our friends that the expenditures of a missionary society have no vacation, and to ask them that in this remaining month, special efforts be made to prepare us for the months when there is the usual outflow with only a small stream coming in.
The showing of our receipts is favorable. For the seven months to April 30th, they aggregate $158,921.20, an increase of $5,082.75 over last year. The increase in collections and donations is $9,241.84, but there is a decrease in legacies of $4,159.09, leaving the net increase as above stated. On the other hand, however, the expenditure that has been absolutely demanded by our growing work has been $23,778.24 over the receipts. Our committee has denied many appeals pressed upon it, from the workers in the field, for needed growth and strengthening; but some calls have come with such urgency to save the work already in hand, that it felt constrained to grant the additional appropriations, and we are very confident that if our constituents had been present, they, too, would have concurred heartily and unanimously in the votes.
We might reasonably hope that this debtor balance would be wiped out during the five months of our fiscal year yet before us, but there is a special reason for anxiety that it should soon be materially reduced. It is at this time that we are compelled to plan the work, and make estimates, for the next fiscal year, beginning October 1st. We are now endeavoring to cut down these estimates to the lowest possible point, but if, before the close of June, there shall be no marked reduction of this balance, we shall be obliged to cut still further, even to the arresting or crippling of work already begun. We ask our friends to rally to the rescue.
A NOBLE WORD FROM THE OHIO CONGREGATIONAL ASSOCIATION
REPORT ON THE A.M.A. BY REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D
The work of the American Missionary Association appeals to the churches of Ohio with cumulative urgency. "A.M.A.," as our stalwart brother Pike used to say, are letters that stand for the darkened races of this continent—the American, the Mongolian and the African. To the Christian people of America, these tribes are entrusted; for their enlightenment and Christianization, we are responsible. The Government at Washington can do something toward protecting these people in their political rights; but there is very little, after all, that can be done for any people which does not know how to assert and maintain its own rights. Liberty can never be a gratuity, it must always be an achievement. Peoples, as well as individuals, must work out their own salvation. The Negro at the South is cheated out of his political rights, simply because he does not know how to claim them; the Indian on the plains is defrauded of his property, because he does not know how to protect himself. No matter how favorable the laws may be to these hapless people, they will be oppressed and impoverished and kept in a condition of semi-slavery, unless they know how to use the laws in their own advantage. Education, therefore, is the only effectual remedy for their wrongs. To awaken their minds, to arouse the energies of hope, to show them that they are made in God's image and that they have a right to all the liberties of the laws of God, is the only way to complete and secure their emancipation from bondage and from barbarism.
This is the work to which the American Missionary Association calls us all. It is our just pride as Congregationalists that through this Association more has been done for the true enfranchisement of the freedmen than through any other agency, and it is our duty to see that this great work, in which we have borne so large and honorable a part, halt not nor slacken in its energy because of our failure to keep its treasury replenished and its faithful laborers re-enforced and supported by our gifts and our prayers.
FACTS AND FIGURES
The sum total of all the contributions of all the benevolent agencies for the evangelization and education of the Negro in the South, is seventeen cents per year for each person.
This seventeen cents includes whatever is done in missionary colleges and in all educational missions, as well as in the direct church work.
In twenty-one years from 1841 to 1861 there were twenty-one crops of cotton raised by slave labor, which aggregated 58,441,906 bales.
In the twenty-one years from 1865 to 1885 there were twenty-one crops of cotton which aggregated 93,389,031 bales.
That is, by free labor there was an excess over the productions of slave labor of 34,947,125 bales, or nearly 35,000,000 bales. The value of 35,000,000 bales of cotton produced by free labor in excess of the product of slave labor cannot have been less than $2,000,000,000, or about the full valuation of all the slaves who were made free by the war, had they been sold at the ruling prices. The gain is due not only to the emancipation of the blacks, but to the emancipation of the whites from enforced idleness.
The cotton factories of the world annually require about 12,000,000 bales of cotton, American weight. Good land in Texas produces one bale to the acre. The world's supply of cotton could be grown on less than 19,000 square miles, or upon an area equal to only seven per cent. of the area of Texas.
THE COLOR-LINE QUESTION: WHAT IS IT?
1. It is not the question of social equality. No one doubts the right of individuals, or the family, or the social circle, to draw their lines of association and fellowship at their own pleasure, whether at wealth, rank, fashion, talent, or anything else. To confound this with the real question, is not candid.
2. Still less is it the question of the inter-marriage of the races. Here, individual preference is undeniable. To claim that this is the question, and to ask tauntingly: "Do you want your daughter to marry a nigger?" is ungentlemanly and unworthy of an answer.
3. The question is: Shall a line be drawn between the white and black races, giving rights and privileges in Church and State to the one race, which are denied to the other, solely because of race or color? In other words: Shall a line be drawn which shall separate the Negroes, and assign them as a race to the position of inferiors irrespective of merit or character, and merely on the ground of race or color?
To narrow the discussion, we leave out of view the civil or political aspect of the question and confine ourselves to the religious, and we propose to give a few illustrations. A Negro in every way qualified, in character, piety, and intelligence, applies for membership in a white church. Shall the color-line be drawn and he be refused admission for no other reason than that he is a Negro? This does not imply that the whites and blacks should be urged or persuaded to unite in all churches or in any church. It may be conceded that the blacks generally do not desire to unite with white churches, and that, in their present state of culture, it may not always be for their edification to do so. But where an individual Negro does believe that it would be for his edification and growth in grace to belong to a white church, shall the color that God stamped on him, or the race in which God gave him his birth, be a sufficient reason for refusing him? The question and the principle apply equally if the Negro should be given to understand that while he would not actually be refused admission, yet the preference of the church would be that he should not apply; nay, we do not see why the principle is not the same if the well-known attitude of the church on the race question should be such that the Christian self-respect of the Negro would not allow him to make the application.
Again, shall colored churches, conferences or presbyteries be formed on the same territory in order that the colored members may not unite with the white churches, conferences or presbyteries? Shall a line be run between the races on the simple ground of race or color, and irrespective of character, convenience or choice, so that the Negro as a church member shall not be allowed to choose the church he shall join, or as a minister the option as to his conference or presbytery? For one race to demand such a line of separation, is to consign the other race to a position of inferiority as humiliating as it is discouraging. Such is the demand of race prejudice, and such the position of inferiority in which it insists on placing the Negro. Slavery held the Negro there, and since emancipation, this race-separation is intended to accomplish the same purpose. The Southern white man makes no objection to the race or color of the Negro, but only to his position as an equal. He was not merely tolerated, he was more than tolerated, as a slave, and he is now as a servant.
The present controversy in regard to the color-line is calling forth some frank admissions from intelligent white men at the South. Thus the Rev. Wm. H. Campbell, an Episcopal clergyman of South Carolina, vindicates his refusal to sit in Convention with the Negroes by the inferiority which the Almighty has stamped upon them. Mr. Campbell says:
"The Bishop does not understand or appreciate the reasons why some of us cannot, under any circumstances, sit in Convention with Negroes. The objections commonly made need not here be referred to. The difficulty with some of us is not 'on account of color,' as it is usually, but not with strict accuracy, put; for some Negroes are as white as some white men, but because they are of an inferior race, so made by the Almighty and never intended by him to be put on an equality with the white race, in either Church or State."
The question at issue is not one of expediency, but of principle; and, among Christians, whether in the individual church or the ecclesiastical body, it is a question of Christian duty to be settled by the Divine authority of the Master himself. We propose no argument on the subject, but content ourselves by quoting a few well-known passages of Scripture, which, though familiar, have lost neither their significancy nor their authority. In the end, the voice of God must be decisive.