Chapter C: T. COLLINS, Chairman (1)

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ADDRESS OF REV. C. T. COLLINS.

On the staircase of the Berlin Museum, the great artist Kaulbach has represented the intensity of the battle of the Huns by picturing the spirits of the dead warriors rising up in a cloud above that battle-field and prolonging the contest in a spiritual war. It seems to me a type of all great moral strifes. After the roar of the cannon has died away, and the dead have been laid in their graves, the spirits and the principles involved in the battle grapple with one another for victory.

For four long years North and South met in the crash of material strife, and now, for sixteen years, Northern principles and Southern principles have been meeting in a death grapple, and the victory will not be won until Northern principles conquer. For four years North and South met in the crash of battle, setting four million slaves free from chattel bondage, and for sixteen years North and South have met in the silent strife of spiritual warfare, to set what are now over six millions free from the grosser bondage of ignorance. When, in 1865, four and a half million Freedmen knocked at the school-house of the South for admittance, you are most of you aware of the prejudice and opposition that met them; but are you aware what the school-house was at which they knocked? The South never had provided an education for the masses. Its theory was to educate the higher classes and leave the masses alone, even those of the whites. It never had an adequate school system before the war. North Carolina was the only state in the Confederacy that kept up anything like public schools during the war, and at its close her permanent school fund of nearly $3,000,000 was lost.

After sixteen years’ replenishment, the entire school property of the eight Southern States, reported by the Commissioner of Education in his last report in 1879—the value of the sites, buildings and all other school property—does not amount to much over seven millions, or, leaving Kentucky out, much over five millions. Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Georgia, which do not report, are poor in school property. Leaving Kentucky and West Virginia out, with their four millions, in all the States south of them there are probably not to-day $7,000,000 of school property. New York, with her $30,000,000, has four times as much as all this South. Your Massachusetts, although it does not fully report, has doubtless the same multiple; and eight states of the North have each more school property to-day than all the school property of this South.

Moreover, these poorly equipped states, indifferent to the education of the poor whites, and prejudiced against the education of the poor blacks, were awfully, bitterly poor. In 1870, after recovering from the worst shock of the war, there was nearly $1,500 in Massachusetts for every man, but there was in Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina only a little over $200 for every man. Do you realize that $2,000,000,000 had been put into Confederate bonds to support that war, and that it was all gone? What would have been the state of the North if our public debt had been repudiated? And besides that, everything was in ruin, industries prostrated, society convulsed, and this poor stricken country had to lift up the debt of the Union as well as the North itself. We said bitterly, “They do not educate.” We said angrily, “They _won’t_ educate;” and, brethren, we ought to have said charitably, “Alas, O God, they _can’t_ educate!” Such, briefly, was the condition sixteen years ago. Now what has been done? Northern aid leaped to the rescue, as you well know. Millions have been given. That black form, lying blinded by ignorance at our feet, was bent over by patient, tender Christian sympathy, and the cataract lifted from his eyes with a golden, jeweled knife. Why, I look at the car of educational progress in the South, and under it I see 50,000 glittering wheels, on which it is rolling on, and those wheels are each one of them a ten dollar gold piece given last year by the North. There was, in the last report of the Commissioner of Education, 129 schools of higher education for colored youth and over 14,000 scholars in them; and almost without exception each of these schools has against it a name indicative that it sprung up out of Northern Christian benevolence. This is only a part of what the North has done.

But, friends, we hear a great deal about this and we hear very little of what the South has done. Twenty years ago it was the law of the land that the negro should not be educated; and now in every state in the South it is the constitutional law that he shall be educated; and furthermore, the commissioners of these states say they will devote every energy within them to carry out this law.

Kentucky (shame on her!) and Delaware (shame on her!) give to the negro what he pays in taxes, and they are pretty far North; all the rest of the South give of the school fund _per capita_ to the negro and to the white; and the constitutions of the states which enjoin this have been endorsed since the war by conventions in which the majority were white and originally secessionists. Oh yes! we Northerners gave, I know, $500,000 last year to educate the negro; Southern tax payers gave over $4,000,000 to educate him. I am comparing not the spirit in giving, but the amounts actually given. In our 129 schools we have 14,000 scholars. In the 14,000 colored public schools of the South there are nearly 700,000 scholars.

But that is not all. In sixteen years, Northern principle has conquered this and it has conquered Southern approval as well. I know the great bulk do not feel as Orr feels, the Commissioner of Georgia; as Brown feels, Senator and ex-Governor of Georgia; as Curry feels, administrator of the Peabody fund and ex-Senator of the Confederate Congress; as, above all, Haygood feels. I wish every man in this house would read “Our Brother in Black,” by President Haygood, of Emory College, Oxford, Ga., and so learn the true situation. I have been told, since that book was written, that that man went into a colored school in his native place, and leaning on his cane, wept tears during all the examinations, and, rising up, in a trembling voice begged pardon of the colored teacher and the colored scholars because he had misunderstood and opposed a movement so Christian. Ah, friends, let us recognize it to-day. The South is waking up. These are exceptions; they are leaders. But the great masses follow on. There are hundreds of thousands of white Christians in the South who love Christ as you and I do. They have the Bible; they have the Holy Spirit; they have missionary societies. President Haygood says it is absurd, and I say it is impossible, that a man who believes in sending missionaries to Africa should prolong opposition to missionaries for the Freedmen. He says truly that the battle never will be won until Southern white women sit before dusky faces and teach such scholars how to read. A school surrounded by a hostile community is a fortress and not a school, and crippled in all its usefulness.

Under the crape-hung flag of the Union, mourning the loss of a Northern President who set slaves free before the Emancipation Proclamation declared them free, and with his sword helped cut down the Southern cause, ex-Confederate generals have cried out of the South to the North, “He is _our_ President!” O, let us cease the old war cry of ’65; let us wipe out of all our reports and papers, as an Association, everything calculated to excite the old animosities, and cry back in a spirit of full fraternal charity, “Our brethren, by that sign of sorrow.”

Now in view of this work and spirit of the South, what must be done? We, as an Association, must redouble our efforts. There is every reason to help the South trying to help itself. There is only one scholar, in every colored school, supported by the North, and suppose every single one graduates, to supply one teacher for every public colored school in the South. Think of it! And that leaves out of calculation one and one half million of church members pleading for preachers. According to the last report of the Commissioner of Education, the North gave to the higher schools of education at the South in 1879 less than $500,000. It gave to the same schools in the North, benevolently, charitably, about $5,000,000. We hear much about $50,000 given to Berea College. We hear little about $500,000 to the college in Cleveland. One-fortieth of all negroes in the world are in the United States; one-fifteenth are in North and South America.

But I will leave others to speak of that, and pass in closing to speak of what our National Government must do now. Millions of dollars are needed to do it. No agency but the central Government can or should meet this need. It cannot be done by Northern benevolence; that is inadequate, utterly inadequate. The North would only pauperize the South, if it could and did do it. It cannot be done by the Southern states. These Southern states (leaving out Maryland, Missouri, Delaware and District of Columbia) contributed in 1879 to public school education only eight and a half millions. Of the North, Illinois gave eight, Ohio seven, Pennsylvania eight, New York ten millions to their public schools. This contribution of the South seems and is very niggardly, but it is a question how much increase we can expect. The South is loaded down with poverty, debts and heavy taxes. The other day a prominent platform speaker made a comparison between Arkansas and Kansas in order to illustrate the inferiority of Southern education. He said that in 1877 Kansas sent 87 per cent of her children to the schools, and Arkansas 8 per cent. Kansas raised $5.65 for each scholar, and Arkansas raised 50 cents. Then he went on to say that Kansas and Arkansas were in about the same financial condition. I looked that up this morning, and I found that Arkansas had a debt of five millions, and Kansas had a debt of one million; that Arkansas had $87,000,000 taxable property with which to pay her debt of five millions, while Kansas had $160,000,000 to pay her debt of one million; and that Arkansas was paying a state tax of 65 cents on every hundred, and Kansas was paying 55 cents.

Now we must remember that the South is bitterly taxed, awfully in debt, and very poor. I will read one more statistic and stop. Louisiana has 330,930 school children (those who ought to be); Massachusetts, 303,836. The school income in Louisiana is $613,453; in Massachusetts, $4,399,801. The value of school property in Louisiana is $700,000; in Massachusetts you cannot estimate it; it is not estimated. You say Louisiana is not doing anything for her children as compared with Massachusetts. True; but carry the comparison farther. The whole taxable property of Louisiana is not $150,000,000; and the whole taxable property of Massachusetts is $1,500,000,000. The debt of Louisiana is about $16,000,000; your debt, deducting the sinking fund, is $21,000,000. The amount raised by taxes in Louisiana is half that raised in Massachusetts. You pay 3½ cents state tax on every $100, and Louisiana pays 60 cents. Have you, paying 3½ cents, the face to ask her to increase her 60 cents, when this evil at the South springs out of a national sin and involves a national peril? Not one million of the Southern population are in cities. The problem is one of educational facilities in poor sparsely settled agricultural districts. The South unquestionably needs a different spirit in educational matters; but even with the best spirit, it needs national aid.

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ADDRESS OF REV. J. R. THURSTON.

MR. PRESIDENT AND FRIENDS: We have six and a quarter millions of Freedmen at the South and three-quarters of a million at the North. They belong to a strong and prolific race that does not waste at the contact of civilization, neither does it waste under oppression. They numbered but four millions in 1860, and have increased 55 per cent. in the past twenty years. Since 1870, if the statistics are correct, they have increased 33 per cent. If this rate of increase goes on at 55 per cent. for twenty years, in 1900, which many of us expect to see, they will be nearly ten millions; and if the increase of the last ten years continues, they will be more than eleven millions.

It becomes, then, a matter of exceeding moment for us, as a nation, to consider their condition and their future. Several things are at least now clear: that for a long series of generations they are to remain a distinct people. They will not amalgamate so much at the South, Dr. Haygood and others say, as they did before the war. The other elements that come to us from abroad—the German, the Celtic and all—we expect soon to be lost, and they will not retain their individuality; but this race will for generations remain a distinct colored race; so that it becomes a problem of peculiar difficulty to deal with them. We may think we are strong enough to throw them off. We cannot. God Almighty is on their side, and with the welfare of these growing millions our welfare is interlocked.

Again, they will remain, too, doubtless, at the South. We thought that they might scatter over the North. The failure of the migration to the North last year does not favor that theory. What is to bring them up to a Christian civilization? We all say at once a Christian education.

There are 700,000 in their common schools. I will simply give the outlines as to the higher schools. Of higher schools there are 45, scattered in different parts of the South; 42 normal schools, four of them state institutions, the rest under the auspices of religious organizations like this. There are 21 colleges, 21 schools of theology, four of medicine and three of law. That sounds well; but it would be wise to ask what these colleges are, scattered over the South. I asked an officer of one of these institutions this afternoon, “Is Talladega a college? It was referred to as such, but was not reported by the Commissioner of Education in 1879 as a college.” “O yes, it is a chartered institution, and soon they expect to have a college curriculum.” Many of these 21 colleges at the South are much in the same condition. They are high and normal schools, with possibly a theological school, which, however, is not as high as a college class.

Now the question is, what are we to do with them?—what are we expecting to accomplish by them? Several things are manifest. First, that this higher education at the South is to be dependent upon benevolence for its continuance and success. Nor is this any exception to the case of higher education at the North. We little realize that all our colleges have been founded by benevolent men, and have been continued in their endowments by benevolent men. We little realize that our young men who attend our colleges do not pay for their education, in many cases not one-half of the expense of it. Secondly, it is manifest that this work must be very largely a denominational work. Now this morning we had a presentation of what it would be well for us to have at the South—denominational unity. That cannot be. Men will not work upon any principle of that kind. If ever there was a time when we might say we had a clean slate, we had that time when we began our work. All united in support of this Association; but very soon we found our Baptist friends, our Methodist friends, our Presbyterian friends and our Episcopal friends withdrawing. Nor could we complain. The Baptists had thousands of colored people in their churches there and the Methodists had hundreds. To-day the Baptists report 800,000 in their colored churches, and the Methodists report 412,000. These colored churches said to them, “You must educate ministers for us;” and hence they have established their schools and higher schools. The Presbyterians had churches among the whites, and those churches, waking up, said, “You must help us in our work for the colored people;” and so they went into the work.

Again, the question is asked, why so many of these higher educational institutions?—why so many colleges?—why need of anything higher than the normal and high school? And this question is asked by people who have given largely for this work and who love it. Now what is the object—to educate all the colored people in colleges? No; but to educate those who have a desire for it and a profound capacity for it. We have graduated probably less than five hundred from all the colleges at the South so far, so there isn’t much danger of an over-supply at present of teachers and preachers. But isn’t there need of a revision of our idea of this whole matter of what the negro is to be? Let us not make at present an ideal, but ask rather what we can do for and with the negro; and as we do this, let us remember what material we have to work with, and how he has been educated by two hundred years of slavery.

In the first place, where did he come from? Not from Northern Africa; not from Southern Africa; but from the negro belt of Africa where is found the most degraded condition of the human race on the face of the globe.

He has been educated two hundred years in slavery, and not without influence upon his mental make-up. The day that the first colored regiment went from Boston in the war to the front, there was a convention of anti-slavery friends in Music Hall. There had been very severe criticism upon our Gov. Andrews because he had not put more black officers in that regiment. As Frederick Douglass was about leaving the hall, they called him back. He stood with his crumpled hat and leaned upon a chair, and talked more sense in five minutes than his white brethren had in all those hours. He said: “Gentlemen, I have as much interest in that regiment as any one here, for I have two sons in it; but I am glad that Gov. Andrews has not put more black officers into it. Here you have educated us for two hundred years for the position of servants. You have taught us that we could not guide our own steps, much less rule our fellow-men. You have wrought into the very fibre of our being a servile spirit, so that we are not fit for rule. All I ask is that when a man proves his capacity to rule, then he shall have an opportunity.”

Now, I say, in reference to the negro, let us see what we can do with him without reference to an ideal. Let us not only remove his restrictions, so that he can rise all that his upward force will impel him to rise, but put into him the mighty forces of a Christian education for forty or fifty years—several generations, in fact—and then see what we can make of the negro.

Especially do we need this higher education in order that we may train preachers. We do not want to send a man with an imperfect education as a missionary to Africa. Why should we send to their black brethren in this country men imperfectly educated as preachers to them? They, surrounded as they are by all the stimulating influences of our modern civilization, need all of this higher education which we can possibly induce them to take on. Doing this for a series of years, we may at last realize the triumph of Christianity among them. The greatest problem of Christianity which our generation sees is the question how these two races, so linked together, shall treat each other; but I believe that the time is to come when we shall see them living together in perfect harmony; when we shall see the blacks supplying their peculiar elements to a higher civilization, and we, the white race, shall have risen to a position exercising a true Christian spirit, which, without the negro linked with us, we never shall find; and then shall we see the triumph of Christianity dealing with this now dark problem, but then showing the glory of a grand success.

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CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.

PROF. CYRUS NORTHROP.

Great battles sometimes settle the fate of a country, and transfer in a day whole provinces from one dominion to another. There are no such decisive battles in the struggle for the intellectual and moral elevation of man. By no stroke of policy and by no combination of forces can you revolutionize the individual character of a whole people at once. It happens occasionally, however, in the contest between good and evil, that some convulsion occurs which in its influence on the mental and moral condition of a whole people is hardly less decisive than those political contests by which provinces are transferred from the control of one nation to that of another. Such a convulsion was our late civil war. It left the States where it found them, parts of the Union. It left all races morally and intellectually where it found them. But for the colored people of the South it had swept away in every direction, from zenith to horizon, the impenetrable clouds of more than Egyptian darkness which had brooded over them, and it had made it possible for the light of the sun to reach even these slaves. Then, indeed, the people which sat in darkness saw a great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, to them did light spring up.

The civil war made it possible for us to educate and Christianize the colored race at the South. It remained for us to take up the burden which the providence of God had laid upon us, and to do what we could to lift up these people to our level of civilization.

But need this education be _Christian_ education? I answer emphatically, yes. The world undoubtedly is making great progress in thought, in discovery, in invention. More and more the dominion of nature is being conquered and her methods understood. Education is not the same as it was a century ago. Even religion is not to us quite the same that it was to our fathers. But whatever discoveries may be made or whatever progress attained, there are some things which the world can never advance so far as to be able to do without, and I but voice the sentiment of this audience when I say that one of these is Christianity.

And now who are these that in our Southern States are stretching forth their hands and begging us to come over and help them? They are those whose minds and hearts are not pre-occupied, but like those of children, receptive, ready for the seed which may be sown, and promising, if good seed is sown, a bountiful harvest at no distant day. They are placed, in the providence of God, at our very door, and are made a part of the governing force of this great republic. For them Christian education cannot be secured through the family, for there is little Christian family life; the father and the mother are as ignorant as the child; all are children. It cannot be secured through the State, for the State has no business to teach religion as these millions need to have it taught. It can be secured only through organized charity—by the help of such agencies as the American Missionary Association. What the fathers and mothers of New England have done for the Christian education of their children, the American Missionary Association must do for the South.

I have emphasized the word Christian as I have spoken of Christian education. Let me not in any less degree emphasize _education_. Matthew Arnold is not far wrong when he says that the object of religion is conduct, and that conduct is three-fourths of life. It is simply doing what we ought. But one of the things which a man ought to do is to make the most of himself as a power for good in the world, and that he cannot do without education. Man, without education, is a clumsy machine. The educated man is force which drives machines. This force, if uncontrolled, becomes destructive. The educated man, without principles, is more dangerous than the uneducated. The latter may become at the worst a brute; it takes the former to be a demon. But we do not on this account think less of education; we only insist that the force it generates shall be controlled by Christian principle. Thus controlled it is always beneficent, like fire and water and air, which, nevertheless, when uncontrolled, may become agents of the most fearful destruction.

The necessity for Christian education at the South may be looked at and clearly seen from two different points of view. To the Christian, these millions of the South are human beings, for whom Christ died and to whom He has commanded us to carry the Gospel. Properly developed, intellectually, morally and spiritually, they will be a part of the Kingdom of God, and will become powerfully influential in establishing that kingdom throughout the world. They are accessible, eager for knowledge, ready to accept the truths of Christianity, peculiarly impressible, lacking stability only because undeveloped, and they offer to us an assured hope of a more complete, immediate and glorious harvest than seems likely to be gathered in any other part of the world. Nowhere else on the round globe will your money or your efforts bring such returns as they will at the South. You have not to contend with an impregnable hostile faith, as among the Mohammedans or Buddhists. You have only to lift the clouds of ignorance, and to overcome the natural depravity of man—a depravity greater, perhaps, than in some other places, but on that very account more easily recognized, felt and repented of.

Nor can the necessity for Christian education at the South appear less imperative to the patriot. There is no element so dangerous to the stability of the republic as ignorance and its associated lack of principle. It is by votes that rulers are elected, laws made and the country governed. Just so long as we have a large element of ignorance in the republic, whose votes can be bought at the caucus or at the polls, will the most unscrupulous men rise to prominence in our politics, for they are the only men who will utilize this ignorance.

And now what of the future? We have tried all sorts of reconstruction measures with the South and all kinds of policies with the South, and all have proved in a greater or less degree failures. They stand as monuments of our lack of the keenest foresight. The best reconstruction measure which we can now adopt is to fill the treasury of the American Missionary Association full to overflowing, that it may carry forward at once and triumphantly this work of Christian education in the South. What it has done is sufficient assurance of what it will do, if the means are placed in its hands. It cannot establish throughout the South a common school system like that which blesses the North; it cannot carry education to every cabin in the South, nor open college halls, free of expense, to all who may desire a liberal education; but it can and will qualify large numbers of these people to carry education and Christianity to the rest; and that, after all, is the best thing possible, for no lesson is more needed by these people than that of self-reliance. Teach them to take care of themselves in the best way, and we shall have done for them the best that is possible. The day will not be far distant, then, when the common schools of the South will provide education for the white and the black alike as at the North, and when the church of God in the South shall hear the voice of God saying, “All souls are mine. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones.”

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HIGHER EDUCATION.

PRES. E. A. WARE.

This paper, recognizing the importance of normal and industrial education, claims for higher education simply the place accorded to it in other sections in the educational system for the South. Its right to that place is widely questioned. The _Journal of Education_ recently had the following: “In spite of the youthfulness of colored education, some of their schools are graced with a reprint of a Northern College curriculum. What nine-tenths of the pupils in these classes want of Latin and Greek, fails of our comprehension.” We are constantly hearing about “educating them out of their place.” It will hardly be claimed that the colored man _cannot_ be educated, when several have graduated with honor from Northern colleges; when one has passed the fiery ordeal of West Point; when one, below the middle of a class of six in a Southern school, graduated above the middle of a class of thirty at Andover Seminary; and when a Southern examining board say: “We were impressed with the fact that the colored people, whether of pure or mixed blood, can receive the education usually given in such schools.”

Perhaps the frequent remark about “their place” means that they ought not to be educated. Now and then we see what might have been a good barber spoiled by the attempt to make him a minister, and a hasty generalization leads many to say: “_They_, instead of _he_, ought not to be educated.” Allowing for this folly, this talk about “their place” raises several questions. Who determines and assigns the place for six millions of American citizens? Who will keep them in their assigned places? Are our Declaration of Independence and Constitution “glittering generalities?” Are the life and teachings of Christ a vain thing? Pres. Woolsey thanked God for the war to rid us of slavery before it had so sapped the virtue of the whole people that we should not be worth saving. Surely He sent it none too soon. How few are color-blind; how many are color-blinded!

Higher education is needed because time is required for the mental, and especially the moral, development and furnishing of pupils, who neither inherit nor receive from home and church such furnishing. It is needed to continue the work to which it has already contributed so much, of the adjustment of the former owner and property to their new relations of brother and man, of fellow-citizens. The owner could not see the citizen till the man was developed. He needs higher education that he may take some part, other than with pick and shovel in, and may have his share of, the rich benefits of the development of the vast resources of the South. Again, it is often asked, “Would it not be well for the negro to keep out of politics?” Would it not be well for Niagara to run up-hill? He has the ballot, and the duty presses not simply to fit him to read it, but to furnish leaders who will teach him the sacredness of that ballot; who will teach him that the interests of labor and capital are one; the duty of debt paying, personal, state and national; the sacredness of law and the duty to obey it; that the United States is a nation and not a confederacy. The law and medicine should be open to him. The need of thoroughly educated physicians for these people can hardly be overestimated, and is second only, if indeed it be second, to the need of ministers. Higher education should be open to him, that here, if nowhere else, he may feel that he is like other people; that there may be one door that is not forever shut in his face with the words, “This is for white folks.”

Finally, an educated ministry is needed. Pres. Gillman says: “There is no greater curse to a community than an ignorant ministry.” Dr. Haygood, in “Our Brother in Black,” says: “The hope of their race in this country is largely in its pulpit. How urgent the need, how sacred the duty, of preparing those whom God has called to preach to this people!” The few ministers who have received partial training, and others who are making heroic efforts at self-culture that they may aid their people, are worthy of all praise; but their number is pitifully small, serving by their light to make the surrounding darkness visible and to show the need of the best training. This is needed to remove the mass of crude notions and superstitions that almost hide the truth. It is often harder to bring a benighted Christian than a heathen to the light. It is needed to remove the bitter sectarianism which usurps the place of the Gospel. This feeding upon ignorance can only be removed by those whose minds and hearts, broadened by generous culture, hold the great common truths of Christianity superior to the petty differences of sects. It is needed to ward off skepticism, which is to be feared from two sources: the memory of the injuries of centuries, and the continued experience of many evils, even at the hands of professed Christians; and, second, the revelation, as they grow in knowledge, of the emptiness of what is preached as religion and the ignorance and ofttimes wickedness of their ministers leading them to loss of respect, to ridicule and to unbelief. There is abundant testimony to the growth of these evils.

What machinery is needed? In the towns, the three months’ free school should be so supplemented as to continue nine months. In the larger towns and cities there should be high and preparatory schools, with normal classes. At convenient points should be boarding schools, with preparatory, normal and industrial instruction. Then, supported and fed by, and inspiring all below, should be the college, the school of higher education. Justice to a race long oppressed, obligation to meet more than half way those states that make generous appropriations to this end, and safety to the nation, demand that these should be liberally furnished with such buildings and grounds as health and comfort require, with libraries and apparatus equal to the best, and an efficient corps of teachers, so paid that their best energies may be given to instruction.

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REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON CHURCH WORK.

Your Committee on that part of the General Survey referring to Church work, report that they consider it most encouraging and inspiring. Seventy-eight churches formed; 5,472 members admitted; 8,130 scholars in Sabbath-schools! But the great question is, have we a spirit of power and development in all these organizations? for if they are dead they are worthless. Significant facts give us the answer. Five churches were added the past year; five hundred and eleven members were added to the churches; one thousand eight hundred scholars to the Sabbath-school; seven church buildings erected, or in the process of erection—one the gift of Mr. Gregory (upon whom be peace)—two parsonages and two President’s houses. One-third of these churches have had revivals indicating future enlargement. There are seven State Conferences; Woman’s Home Missionary Societies in active work; Sabbath-school Conventions; female missionaries sent forth into the houses of the poor, eleven commissioned the past year, and a revolutionized public sentiment set in so that Southern governors, generals, editors, have generously recognized the value of the work.

Now it has sometimes been questioned whether a Congregational organization, working on thoroughly Congregational principles, could so well plant the Christian church among an ignorant, degraded people, needing guidance, oversight, care, government. But how did the primitive churches in apostolic days succeed? They were all Congregational, and for the most part composed of ignorant people. Did they have apostles to guide them? So have we. Dr. Strieby and his associates and helpers are successors to the apostles in this work. They have the oversight, and the churches have freedom of expansion and growth.

What is the path, let us inquire, through which a feeble church or churches may safely become strong? It is, it must be, through self-government, self-development and self-support. As to the first, churches composed of illiterate Freedmen are, doubtless, unfit to govern themselves. But how shall they ever become fit? How shall they learn, except by trial, failure and correction under kind but faithful leadership? We have given our colored citizens the largest civil and political freedom, with no guidance but that of unscrupulous politicians. Shall we now say that they cannot be trusted in the church?—that they can be free citizens in the republic, with all the duties, trusts and responsibilities of citizenship, but that they cannot be Freedmen in the republic of God? Our church organization is in perfect harmony with the genius of our Government, and is the best possible school of good citizenship. It teaches liberty, regulated by law and love.

But the second essential principle of Congregationalism, self-development, is no less eminent. This necessitates organization and co-operation. Each church cultivates its own field, but its field expands into all the world. It looks over into the Dark Continent, and sends forth some of its young men and women to win, perchance, the martyr’s crown. Every such effort is development, strength. It brings in health and power. The working church alone grows and thrives. This is the nature of the Congregational church. Without this element of self-development into active Christian graces, the church, of whatever material formed, will remain in the weak and callow state of permanent and persistent chickenhood, and in cold nights it must be wrapped in cotton wool to keep it from dying. Now these churches of our Association have gone vigorously to work. They have done well. The facts enumerated in the Report, and to which we have briefly referred, prove this. Let us cheer them and urge them on to greater effort. The whole race will rise just so far as it shall put forth what strength it has.

The third great requisite of the Congregational church is self-support. From the way in which missionary churches come into existence, this is apt to be the most difficult principle to apply. They are weak at the beginning and must be aided. Their real wants are pressing—a pastor, church building, school-house, school. But all these are so precious to them, to their children and their posterity, that great exertion and self-denial on their part should be called forth. No one should be admitted to church membership who will not do something for these great objects. It is safe to follow the teachings of Paul to the poor Corinthians.

Let it be well understood that church membership in a Congregational church means the true Christian manhood of self-support. Let them be taught systematic giving. This will consecrate all duties and all true enterprise. This will bind the church and the pastor together, and will help them to have the spirit of Him who pronounced it more blessed to give than to receive. This will purify the church. Give alms of such things as ye have, and behold all things shall be clean unto you. As in the foreign field, so in the home, with all due safeguards, let us raise the banner, self-government, self-development, self-support. This is true Congregationalism and true Christianity.—_Cyrus Hamlin, Chairman._

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ADDRESS OF PRES. CYRUS HAMLIN.

In the few remarks, Mr. Chairman, which I have to make on this most important subject, I shall draw chiefly from my missionary experience of thirty-five years in the Turkish empire, with those feeble churches formed among a people oppressed, persecuted, despised and ignorant, and yet churches that have come up in many cases from great weakness and great doubt into noble strength and manhood. This may be received as a general fact of the result of church organization. Gather from these poor materials churches enough to be trusted to their own self-government and care: organize the church; give to that church a native pastor, and place upon it all the responsibilities of Christian growth and Christian work. You give it, of course, the Bible, and “the entrance of His word giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.” With the Bible always comes, and must come, the common school; and from the common school the high school; and from the high school the college; and from the college the professional school; and thus you have that necessary provision for preparing the native pastorate, and every church must have its pastor from its own race. I believe, in the entire field of the American Board, among all nations and races, there never has been a single instance of real success and growth of a church except under its native pastor, a pastor of its own race. And so you have in this Association the most sacred and solemn duty—duty to the church of Christ, duty to the great Head of the church, to educate for these churches competent pastors; and just so far as this great duty is neglected, our whole work will grow weak and be a failure.

I do not think it is possible to emphasize too strongly the necessity of having an educated pastorate from the people of the churches to which the pastors themselves belong—of the same race. The church and the college go together; you cannot separate them. Separate them, and they will both perish; unite them, and they will both succeed; for wherever you introduce a true evangelic work, there will be a demand for the very highest education. What a tremendous and almost tragic demonstration of this was the grand effort of the great Secretary of the American Board, to confine missionary churches to education in their own tongue—to lay aside all science, to lay aside all study of languages, and to confine education to the vernacular of each people! If anybody on this earth could, by any possibility, have carried that demonstration to successful result, it would have been our revered and beloved Dr. Anderson; but the failure was absolute and terrible. I do not believe there is a missionary now under the American Board, or under any other Board, that will contend for a thus limited education, a vernacular education, as sufficient for the pastorate or the ministry of any people, and especially of an ignorant and degraded people, where the elevating and educating force must come so largely from the pastor himself.

Now in these churches in the East, by necessity, the first pastors were not thus educated. The missionaries were compelled to get themselves such pastors as they could find, just as the apostles ordained elders in every place. They had to ordain just such elders as they could find, and the missionaries did the same. But these pastors have all been growing men; they have all been put into a way of study; they have all been kept under exciting influences; and pastors and churches have gone on together. And I think, from my personal knowledge of the pastors of those churches in the Turkish empire, that they are a noble, faithful and progressive company of laborers in the vineyard of our Lord. It must also be remembered that, in forming these churches and bringing them forward, they will commit great errors; there will be great immoralities breaking out among these church members. I have known such sins committed by church members in whom I had had confidence, that I would at the first impulse have immediately expelled them from the churches, and denied to them all possibility of knowing or having known anything of a true and pure Christianity; and yet those same men, when faithfully and patiently dealt with, have come to repentance, have returned to faithful Christian life in the church, and I have been at the bedside of some of them when they died in faith and joy, and in hope of a glorious and blessed immortality.

Now, I have great confidence in these churches which this Association has formed; I have great confidence in their progress, in their purification, in the elevation and competency and energy of the native pastorate; and it seems to me that this is the very centre, the fountain source, of the safe and onward progress of your great work.

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AFRICA.

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REPORT ON FOREIGN WORK.

Your Committee, to whom is referred that portion of the Executive Committee’s Report relating to the Foreign work of the Association, beg leave to report as follows:

The experience of the past and Providential indications of the future seem clearly to call upon this Association to concentrate their foreign work upon two fields—the Mendi mission on the West coast, and the proposed Arthington mission in East Central Africa, in the region of the Sobat River.

The experience of the Mendi mission has been a sad history of the sacrifice of many lives, and of meagre results when measured by that sacrifice, in any narrow view of the past or present. But when we stretch our gaze into the future, and think of the “must needs be,” which is the law of suffering that accomplishes great results, and lays the foundations of many generations, the Mendi mission already justifies its past. It is the key of a future that seems full of promise. It opens the door to a wider and more salubrious region, reaching back from the malarious coast towards the highlands of the head waters of the Niger, and inviting the extension of mission outposts with better conditions of success. Meanwhile, Good Hope station, on Sherbro island, is favorably situated as a base of supplies and easy communication with Sierra Leone and the civilized world.

The past experience of the Mendi mission has taught some valuable lessons. 1. That the white missionary cannot be depended on for permanent work, by reason of the deadly climate. 2. That the pure black, of good constitution, although born in America, can endure the climate, and is to be the future African missionary. 3. That a competent superintendence is desirable for this African work. 4. That extreme and deliberate care is demanded in the selection of missionaries to Africa, in respect both to physical health and thorough character. 5. That when such selections have been made, our missionaries should be better equipped and provided for than they have been in the past, for efficient and progressive work. A false economy has involved too much loss. The supporters of the Association have only need of intelligent and exact information to see and remedy this defect. A mission steamer for the Mendi work is greatly needed to save time, health, labor, and in the end, money. So are other industrial equipments that might be named, fairly essential to the highest and speediest spiritual results. Your Committee recommend that the Mendi mission be put in good repair, that, any dropped stitches be taken up, that the things which remain be strengthened, particularly in respect to its sanitary and industrial basis, and better conditions for pushing its stations further into the interior.

As to the Arthington mission, in its connection with the other generous and thoughtful projects of this enthusiastic friend of Africa, and in connection also with other Christian missions, and particularly that of the United Presbyterians on the Lower Nile, already dotting that Eastern coast, we approve of the measures under progress by Superintendent Rev. Henry M. Ladd and Dr. E. E. Snow for exploring the Sobat region, and getting all possible light on a desirable location and all other matters involved in a wise prosecution of the work proposed. Should it prove feasible, we advise, as in the case of the Mendi mission, a generous equipment, the providing of a good physical basis, particularly in the procurement of a steamer of light draft, adapted to such rivers as the Sobat and the Jub.

Also at no distant day, the establishment somewhere on African soil, in a salubrious quarter and with favorable contacts with civilization, of an educational institution for young native Africans, combining the best features of the Lovedale School in South Africa, and the Hampton School in Virginia. We believe that such a school will be essential to the best development of our future work in Africa, not only for the training of native missionaries, but for the fundamental lessons of industry and self-help that should be woven from the start into a Christian civilization.

It would also prove a stimulus and an outlet for the various gifts of our educated Freedmen in this country, and furnish a wise direction to their growing enthusiasm for that African work sooner or later to demand them, when princes shall come out of Egypt, and “Ethiopia,” as Dr. Edward Blyden renders it, “shall _suddenly_ stretch out her hands unto God.”

It is also incumbent upon this Association, as the peculiar helper of these Freedmen, to bend its utmost and untiring efforts to develop in them that prime, indispensable, and, by reason of their past limitations, sadly deficient prerequisite for missionary success—a thorough character—builded on the only sure foundations—that “fear of the Lord” which is “the beginning of wisdom,” and the love which fulfills His law.

As it appears that the foothold of future success for the Arthington mission will largely depend upon the good-will of the Egyptian Government, it is evident that vigilant care should be taken in all possible ways to secure that good-will, and the alliance of all moral and diplomatic aids from our own and European governments which are interested in projects like that of the “International Association” for the civilization of Africa.

In making the above suggestions we would not be understood to reflect upon the Executive Committee as lacking proper care or enterprise in the pursuance of the African work. We are aware of their past limitations, the sudden exigencies of the civil war, the vast responsibilities thrown upon them by the emancipation of the slaves, and that the immediate sympathies of the Christian public on which the Association relies for its support have demanded prime attention to the home work; but now that the logic of events more clearly defines the important relations of the home work to the foreign, the appeal should be strongly made for such an increase of contributions as shall warrant the Association to push its work abroad with fresh vigor.

J. W. HARDING, _Chairman_.

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ADDRESS OF REV. J. W. HARDING.

The romance of African exploration is rapidly passing by. We must, in this missionary work, take into account fully the great and peculiar difficulties in the way—difficulties beginning with the physical geography of that continent, its lack of bays and harbors, its generally unnavigable rivers, choked by sand-bars, impeded by rapids and cataracts and masses of floating soil; and then the deadly climate, the rank and putrescent vegetation, the fetid odors poisoning the air. Will you plunge with me for a few minutes into the African forest, starting with the latest travelers, Keith Johnston, son of the great geographer, and Joseph Thompson, a young man of twenty, a graduate of Edinburgh University and a good botanist and geologist? They plunge into that African forest opposite Zanzibar, following a path only eighteen inches wide, for all means of conveyance by beasts of burden—horses, mules, camels, elephants—have failed in that country, and travelers are forced back upon the narrow foot-paths. The grass, cane-like, interwoven with thorny creepers, is from ten to twenty feet high. They have to cut their way with hatchets and cutlasses, it is so soon choked by the rank growth. They are drenched with the dew for the first two hours through and through; then they are scorched by the sun. By and by comes a pouring shower and they are drenched again. At night they lie down in their little shelter tents, breathing the steamy, stuffy, poisoned air; and before they get 200 miles, Joseph Thompson, the young man of twenty, buries under a mangrove tree his friend Keith Johnston. He was only thirty-four, an athletic fellow, proud of his English training, of a splendid constitution. But that is a deadly climate. Young Thompson staggers along, often falling in his tracks. His men have to lift him up and he has to hold on to their belts; but, after fourteen months and fifteen hundred miles of travel, only losing one man, no plundering, no desertions, not a shot fired offensive or defensive, not a drop of blood shed, though under the most intense provocations, he brings all his men back to Zanzibar—a hearty, merry, jovial set.