Chapter C: M. Lamson, D.D., of Vermont, presented the report upon Secretary (2)

Conviction was action. Soon among them, his quick eye perceived that preaching to them in their condition would fall far short of their needs. He must save souls, but he must also save men and women. And here developed his missionary idea. It was not new, for Christ taught it and lived it, but it was new, for Christians had forgotten it. Christ was divinity in humanity, and the people must realize the divinity in the humanity. He must save their souls, but their souls are in their bodies. So he would not deal with them as if they were disembodied spirits, but seeing them in all their ignorance and material poverty, he would teach them how to meet their physical destitutions and their mental destitutions, and would go to them as persons who have a life in this world as well as in the world to come. Salvation for this people was not to rescue here and there merely a vacant mind, nor out of multitudes of shipwrecked souls to save here and there one from the wreck; but to him the Kingdom of God was like unto seed which a man put in his ground and which should grow—he knoweth not how—by all kinds of help, but which might call for long watching and long waiting.

Therefore he said, “Education is indispensable to the uplifting of such a people,” and schools were planted. Home life must be redeemed, and home industries were taught. They need the industrial arts; hence he began to instruct them in carpentry, in masonry, in smithing and in agriculture. He introduced the planting of trees; societies of agriculture; instituted arbor days; taught them how to drain their lands, how to irrigate them, how to enrich them, how to make roads, and how to construct bridges across their mountain streams.

There he went to stay, and among them built his own house and brought into it a like-minded, large-minded, cultivated, earnest-spirited wife, who with him taught the lessons of home life, its divinity, its sacredness and its glory.

Remember, this was more than a century ago, when the world had not the missionary thoughts of to-day. None, so far as I know, had as yet such a missionary idea enunciated and systematized.

While thus he was laying the foundations for the regeneration of a despised people, a still greater sacrifice presented itself. It was to leave this missionary work for another in one of the Southern colonies of far-off America, to live among a people more needy than these despised ones, and more despised; to live among those who by law were being robbed of the very rights of being, and for whose degradation the forces of law were now operating.

Accepting the mission, he was ready to depart, when suddenly the war for American Independence was declared, and his life was saved. He could not then have lived a year in the South possessing his ideas, much less to apply and expand them.

His path blocked by Providence, nothing remained but for him to develop those ideas where he was, and to lift his voice from those out-of-the-way hills against the sin of slavery. He would not use sugar in his coffee, “for,” said he, “every granule of it is tainted with the blood of the unhappy slave.” No article wrung out of involuntary servitude should come into his house. No product of slave labor would he touch. He was a prophet, for at this date people in New England had not ceased to buy and sell their fellow-creatures, and scores of years after this, ministers of the gospel in this country were diligently searching the Scriptures to discover and establish the divine foundations for human servitude.

Meanwhile the churches increase, the school-houses multiply, the industries prove their value, and the mountain people are led along, and led up from their abject poverty and misery to the experience of comfort and prosperity. Then he worked and waited for three-score years save one, and lived to see a rude and vulgar and despised people regenerated and transformed, saved from the dominion of vice to good morals and gentle manners, and many of them converted to a personal experience of the grace that is in Christ.

You may easily now examine the results of this life and service after the long years have tested them.

Should you go with me to his house you would cross the _pont de la charité_ by the way of his well-constructed road. When Oberlin proposed to make this road, to blast the rocks along the mountain side, the people did not see how it would look as we now do. If he had suggested a step-ladder to the moon they would not have been more amazed. They applied to him all the deprecatory adjectives in their possession. It was impossible, and unreasonable, and visionary. Assuredly he had lost his mind. Much learning had made him mad. They positively refused to sustain him. He was altogether out of his sphere. This would have been a good time for him to have tendered his resignation, but the great soldier did not run away, because he was needed. They could not starve him out, for he knew how to starve.

But if the road were made it would be useless, they said, for “how could we get across the stream?” He replied: “We will take the rocks which we blast for the road and build a bridge.” This confirmed them that the pastor’s mind was clean gone forever. Such a departure from the old paths showed not only the danger of theological studies, but also a capacity for speculative views that would halt at nothing. Nevertheless, he led the way in this enterprise, and the people looked on amazed when they saw him picking and shoveling with his own hands. Then one came and followed him, and another came and followed him; then a score who soon were fifty, and next a hundred, until by the time they had reached the bridge they all believed in it and always had! The last man who was converted over to the majority undoubtedly went home and told his wife that the original idea of the improvement was his own; that he had it in mind long before Oberlin came, and he himself would have proposed it to their leader but for the conviction that ministers ought simply to preach the gospel and leave the labor question alone. Perhaps the trusting soul believed him.

As you enter the home where he was a father to this people who were as children to him and brethren to each other, you feel his protest against caste, and his teaching that if God is a universal father this destroys caste and makes brotherhood a reality. In his study in his own plain hand, you may find his missionary idea fully expanded, and from that study you will no longer look out upon the wilderness and the solitary place, because they have been made glad by him. You will find happy children in good schools and happy parents in good Christian homes.

Let me turn now from the influence of the life, to the life of the influence. It is not always easy to trace the pedigree of an idea or to track an influence. Sometimes we can in part, for they all have their parentage, and their evolution has been so direct that we can tell where and when they were born. Seven years after the sorrowing people had gathered about the missionary’s grave, two young men in this country—themselves having something of the prophetic instinct—in acquainting themselves with the work of this missionary prophet caught his spirit, and set themselves to incarnate his ideas and his methods, in consecrating themselves to the work of education in order to salvation. The influence which Oberlin never thought to send so far, had winged itself from his mountain tops across the wide sea to a little village in the new State of Ohio. Then these young men who found themselves in sympathy with his ideas of brotherhood, its obligations and its needs, with his feeling towards the slave and to all who might be uplifted, took upon themselves this moral and spiritual inheritance and began the foundations of a school which should bear the name of Oberlin and become the reproductive center of like ideas and influences. I do not say that there were no other influences, only that there was this one, dominant in spirit as well as in name. The young college took on this stamp, a missionary character, sympathy with people in low conditions, radical ideas of human brotherhood, profound convictions of duty towards the oppressed and ignorant. From the atmosphere of this influence, soon from the Professor’s chair in this College there came forth a strong man girded for a great sacrificial work.

A little Missionary Society, the embodiment of the idea which Oberlin three-score and ten years before had proclaimed upon the mountains, “No complicity with slavery,” consciously or unconsciously, having adopted the same faith and spirit, needed a leader. From the influences of Oberlin College came Rev. Dr. Whipple to sound the bugle blast which went echoing through the land: “We will not use the revenues of unrighteousness to do the work of righteousness.” Was it anything more than a coincidence or was it a providence, that with thirty years of singular sacrifice this strong man in obedience to his mind and heart was working out the same ideas which the great missionary prophet had so clearly held forth?

I am not now attempting to assert heredity of ideas, or to decide the precise degree of historic continuity that there may be in an influence. I have the easier task of following a distinct stream of influence, one among many which flow into the great river of life. With no purpose to measure it I see the providence. Another evolution from the same atmosphere of the same institution brings to the American Missionary Association kindred ideas, kindred faith and kindred spirit, in the second Corresponding Secretary, thus connecting the history, and expanding and deepening the influence.

Yesterday’s Annual Survey exhibited, as well as figures may, the work of the Society now after more than two-score years of history. It is interesting as a fact, independent of any weighing of influences, to note that in church work and in Sunday-school work, in educational instruction and industrial training, in teaching those who have not had the chances for life, how to think, how to work, how to aspire and how to rise, we find ourselves, as if working by a chart in the expansion of the missionary methods of this prophet who gave his life to rescuing the despised, teaching them how to live in the world that now is, while they are taught the lessons that shall fit them for the world to come. The education of the schools, the lessons in the establishment of good homes, the industries, the churches, are pressing on in the plain paths of providence until this day.

Already our eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord. Its aforetime degraded people are rapidly learning to work out the decrees of God in the blessings of a Christian civilization. Among the dark millions of the South, in the long passed-by cabins of impoverished and ignorant mountain people in the heart of our land, of our own race, among the long-wronged red men and the despised Mongolians, the evolution of this missionary idea, and the developments of this missionary influence are proving their reproductive and fruitful energy in the sacrificial lives of noble missionaries, men and women who are themselves often despised while they are ministering to the ignorant and to those who are lowly. They also are powers for other lives, while they are sustained by a like devotion to the things that are eternal. As from this unlikeliest mission, a hundred years ago the light of life shone out, the influence of fidelity to convictions coursing down the centuries, showing what enlightened consecration can achieve; so now those who are working together with God for the same divine ideas, though they may be hidden from the world’s praises, may be confident that God will not forget them, nor fail to speed their labors of love in the Lord.

As we gather here in the interests of a work so near to the heart of Christ, like Him we may safely appeal to the confirmations of history in the evolutions of providence for courage now, and confidence for the future. How often when our Lord was testifying to the reality and power of the kingdom of God on the earth, and the faith which souls might have and hold in working in it and in waiting for it, did He send the minds of people back to the days of the prophets and righteous men that they might see how the work goes on when the workers die, and how the influences of their lives continue and enlarge in other lives, so that assurance might take fresh courage to discover itself in the historic current of an unmistakable divine purpose and in the evolution of the decrees of grace. The constancy and compassion of God in the past are cheering us, in that we have only to hold fast the beginning of our confidence, steadfast unto the end. We shall not fail, and we need not be discouraged.

Thus putting on strength, as we recall the care of God and power of His truth, may we not from this high place of Christian convocation send out our sympathies to those who have consecrated themselves to this same prophetic work of bringing in the cast-out, of raising up the cast-down, and of saving those who are out of the way. Much of their work is very kindred in form and feature to this work of Oberlin’s. It is remote, in conditions of rudeness, and in separation from kindred society. They are living the truth of human brotherhood. They are holding forth that which is not popular. They are standing with and for the despised.

They may remember that we bear them in our hearts and in our prayers; that they have the grateful recognition of the churches in their self-denials and heroisms. God has accounted them worthy to live lives that may well rebuke the selfishness and sinful ambitions of those who live for themselves and those who seek only high places. The greatness of Christian service is theirs. They can never know where their influences may go, nor how far. Nor until the roll-call of Eternity is made will it be revealed what great lives they have lived, and what Christian deeds have been wrought by these men and women, who from us have gone out and away from the world’s vision in self-abnegation, and often in the world’s scorn are like the prophet of the mountains, patiently laying deep and broad the foundations of a new earth wherein shall dwell righteousness.

And so long as our churches can produce this sacrificial spirit, the work cannot do other than move forward, and the will of God shall be done.

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THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN; OR, THE THREE BROTHERS WHO SETTLED AMERICA.

BY SECRETARY STRIEBY.

This country was settled by Three Brothers. The first that came was an Englishman, a Cavalier, who located himself at Jamestown; the second was also an Englishman, a Puritan, who landed on Plymouth Rock; the third was an African, and was consigned to the First Brother.

These families multiplied exceedingly and at length came to be numbered by millions. To them was committed a great duty—the founding of an empire, and the taking of three grand steps in the march of human progress, (1) the establishing of civil and religious liberty, (2) the securing of personal freedom for all and (3) the exemplifying of the Brotherhood of Man. The last step only remains to be taken.

The parts of this great duty were unfolded in the due order of development, and sprang naturally out of the heredity and environment of the Brothers. The men and their surroundings given, the results were inevitable. It seems singular that just these men should have been selected by Providence, especially the black man, but the result shows that they were wisely chosen. The black was in the end found to be an essential factor.

I. Let me sketch these Three Brothers.

1. The First, the Cavalier, had been, in the old country, loyal to king and church, a supporter of the House of Stuart and of Archbishop Land. He was a representative of the rural population of England, men who loved broad acres and field sports. In his home in the new world his great ambition was to own a large plantation and multiply the number of his slaves, and thus imitate the baronial life of the mother country. He cared nothing for popular education, and thanked God that there was neither a school-house nor a printing-press in his domain.

2. The Second Brother, the Puritan, had become more accustomed to city life, and was addicted to trade and commerce as well as to farming. His zeal as a reformer in church and State brought him into collision with the House of Stuart, and indeed he was an exile in his new home on account of his religious and political principles. He desired to have “a church without a bishop and a State without a king.” He was earnest in promoting education as well as religion, and his identifying mark everywhere was the meeting-house and the school-house.

3. The Third Brother, the African, was not voluntary in coming to his new home nor in the choice of his occupation. He was a slave. He was strong in body, amiable in disposition, but at length became the innocent cause of much ill blood between the other brothers.

II. The duties assigned to these men.

1. The founding of a great empire.

Never was there a more inviting opportunity—a continent almost unoccupied, coast lined by two great oceans, with climate varied and healthy, and with boundless resources in fertile lands, rivers, lakes and mines; and never was an opportunity better improved—in less than three hundred years the new empire has nearly double the population of the mother country.

2. The second duty was to lead in three great steps in human progress. (1), The first step was to secure and maintain civil and religious liberty. This step was inevitable for the two English brothers. They had planted colonies and organized States. They had secured charters guaranteeing the rights of Englishmen. They had thus a training in the arts of government and had learned to value the blessings of constitutional liberty. In an evil hour the British Government began to invade these chartered rights. The Two Brothers were aroused. The Puritan was by inheritance and principle a foe of arbitrary power. He, of course, was deeply stirred. The Cavalier had indeed been a friend of the Stuarts. He could see no objection to arbitrary power when it was practised by himself and his party on others, but he naturally and suddenly came to see it in an entirely different light when he and his party were the victims; and for once the two brothers were in accord.

A contest was imminent. The British Government could settle it peacefully, if righteously; if not, in blood. It _would not_ restore chartered rights. Then came the Declaration of Independence, the _Revolutionary War_, the new Republic, with the truest definition and guarantee of civil and religions liberty the world had ever seen. The first of the great steps in human progress, to which these men were called, was taken.

(2.) The second step—the securing of personal freedom for all—was plainly demanded by the taking of the first. The elements of the new contest were embodied in the Declaration of Independence on the one hand and Negro slavery on the other—a great principle and a great fact at war with the principle. The antagonism was seen from the outset. Expediency shut men’s eyes to it, but God and conscience opened them. How skillful for a time were the devices to escape the dilemma. It was said that the Declaration of Independence was only for white men; that it was a mere glittering generality; that the North had nothing to do with slavery, and finally that slavery was right, justified both by law and the Bible. But all in vain. God and conscience would not be silent.

Again a contest was imminent. The South could settle it peacefully, if righteously; if not, in blood. The South _would not_ abolish slavery, and hence the _Civil War_ and the overthrow of slavery. The second step was taken.

(3.) The third step is to exemplify the Brotherhood of Man. This in like manner is demanded by the results of the one preceding—by the two great and opposing facts: Emancipation, and the Negro as he is. On the one hand, every slave was emancipated; in the zeal of the hour he was made a citizen, enfranchised and guaranteed “the equal protection of law.” On the other hand, twenty years have shown that these guarantees are in form and not in fact.

In other respects, too, his condition is seen to be deplorable, full of discouragement to himself and of danger to the nation.

Let me point out some of the facts in regard to his condition:

(1.) He does not enjoy his guaranteed rights.

I wish to give due credit to the extent and to the localities in which he does enjoy these rights, but speaking broadly they are largely denied to him. He was deprived of the ballot at one time by violence, and is now by fraud; in all cases where his vote would be decisive in State or National politics, it is not counted—in other words, the race is practically disfranchised. In the courts he seldom finds a standing as a lawyer or a juror; in the chain-gang only does he enjoy a monopoly. In the church, the school, the shop, he does not, as a rule, have equal rights; he cannot join any church he pleases, cannot choose the school to which he will send his children, cannot enter the shop to learn a trade or to work as a journeyman. He cannot, everywhere, ride in the street car, on the railroad or steamboat with the white man, though he may buy the same first-class ticket; he cannot, in many places, attend the theatre, concert or lecture with the white man, nor with him eat a lunch at the restaurant, nor lodge in the hotel. He is confronted, hindered and insulted at every step he takes towards enjoyment or improvement—a flaming sword guards the avenues of knowledge, industry and virtue against him. His guarantees of equal rights are a mockery.

2. He is left in ignorance and vice.

Here again I wish not only to admit but to rejoice in the progress made. More than a million of the colored people, of ten years old and upward, can write; but, alas! more than _three millions_ cannot! It is these that awaken our fears, for they are in danger themselves and are a danger to the nation. Owing to their illiteracy they cannot keep the accounts of their earnings in the lowest kinds of employment; they cannot enter upon the higher and more profitable avocations; and they cannot rise to the intellectual dignity of a true manhood. Then, too, they are in bondage to their vices. When they escaped from slavery, many of them did not escape from lying, stealing and licentiousness; when they entered freedom many were captured by idleness, improvidence and intemperance. These are the victims of designing men who take advantage of their ignorance to defraud them, and of their vices to enrich themselves or to gratify their lusts. The danger to the nation is from the contagion of vice which spreads beyond race or locality, and from the schemes of political demagogues who can sway to their own ends the millions of these ignorant voters, who have no property to be taxed and no character to maintain.

3. He is under the ban of caste prejudice.

This lies at the bottom of the whole difficulty. This refuses to see his good qualities, denies his capacity for improvement, shuts to him the doors of knowledge, cheats him at the polls, wrongs him in the courts, and consigns him perpetually to the position of a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, thus enstamping the race distinction broad and permanent, and awakening in his heart either utter discouragement or implacable hatred.

In these three facts—the withholding of the negro’s equal rights, his ignorance and vice, and this caste prejudice—are the elements of a race warfare; they foreshadow another “Impending Crisis”—the next “Irrepressible Conflict.” This becomes the more obvious, because the negro, having been recognized as a _man_ before the law, there is no alternative but to withdraw the recognition or to make it real. There is no middle ground—he must be a slave or a freeman; the equal of his white peers. The “Impending Crisis” is the more imminent from the growth of the blacks in number. In spite of all denials, the time is hastening on when the blacks in the Southern States will outnumber the whites; and when they feel their strength in brawn and muscle—and when especially there arise among them men of education and talent, with ambition aroused and with passion stimulated by a sense of injustice—then will the “Irrepressible Conflict” become as certain as, and, we fear, more implacable than, the last great struggle.

But there is a higher stand-point from which to view this great question—the providential. When the negro ceased to be a slave he became invested with a new significance. Then for the first time began to be seen the meaning of his presence in America—the reason why the black man from Africa—the most degraded part of the world—was selected by Divine Providence as one of the Three Brothers to settle this continent. He was the one by whom God could test the nation and call upon it to exemplify before the world the _Brotherhood of Man_. The full test could only be made when the highest should recognize the lowest.

The nation cannot shirk this test. Justice to the negro demands it; God, who made of one blood all nations, demands it; Christ, who died for all men, demands it; he cares for the poor and repudiates caste; he was born in poverty and toiled for his living; his mission was announced and attested by miracles of help for the needy and the preaching of the gospel to the poor; he touched the leper when he healed him; he ate with publicans and sinners; in his church there is neither bond nor free, but all are one in him; and in the final judgment his award will depend upon how he himself was treated in the person of one of the least of his brethren. His voice must be heard. To all that call him Lord, and mean to obey his word and follow his example, this whole question must be lifted out of the realm of prejudice into the higher plane of Christian duty, and when placed there, who can doubt the issue? The Brotherhood of Man must be recognized and exemplified.

But the question remains, How shall this next great step in human progress be taken? The question will be settled and the step will be taken in righteousness, for no question is ever settled till it is settled right. As we have seen before, the issue between the American Colonies and the British Government, and that between the North and the South in regard to slavery, might both have been settled peacefully, if righteously; and so the question now before the nation may be settled peacefully, if righteously, by giving the negro his guaranteed rights, lifting him out of his ignorance and vice, and especially by taking him from under the ban of caste prejudice. But it is to be feared that these concessions will not be made, and then the question will be settled by a bloody war of races, involving the North as well as the South.

But this conclusion is too startling to contemplate without instinctively turning to the possibility of a peaceful solution of the problem. Let me suggest:

1. The Northern Brother has a great responsibility in this matter. He, too, enslaved the Black Brother for a time, and gave his consent to the virtual recognition of slavery in the Constitution; and when at length he saw his error and demanded the emancipation of the slave, the South resisted him to the utmost in the terrible war; and when the slave was freed and the North insisted on making him a citizen and on giving him the ballot, the Southern Brother, though he could no longer resist, yet entered his most earnest protest. He said: “I know these negroes; they are not fit for the ballot and will ruin the country if they have it.” But the Northern Brother had the power, and like General Jackson he “took the responsibility.” He cannot now shrink from that responsibility. He cannot, with any better success than Pilate, wash his hands and thus be made guiltless. He brought his innocent Brother into his present trouble and it will be both cowardly and criminal to leave him to his fate. No! if this great problem is ever solved peacefully and righteously, the North must awake fully to its special duty, and perform it at whatever cost of money and self-sacrifice.

2. The Southern Brother has a still deeper interest in this matter. In the first place he owes something to the Black Brother, who always helped and never hindered him, who tilled his land and made his wealth, who, during the war, cared for the plantation and protected the family—though he knew that the master fought to rivet his fetters all the tighter. Then again, the Southern Brother has and must have the Black Brother with him, near him, his immediate neighbor, and whatever discomforts or dangers may arise, he must be the first, and for a time, the only one to suffer. He cannot remand the negro back to slavery, nor even to serfdom—the nineteenth century cannot tolerate the one more than the other—even in Russia, much less in America. Nor can the present anomalous position of the negro long be maintained. It is full of vexations and of dangers; the negro will soon be strong enough to resist it, and the North, as in the contest about slavery, must take sides with the Black man.

Why should the South fight against the inevitable? In a recent number of the _Century_, a Confederate officer, Col. Alexander, in giving a racy sketch of Pickett’s famous charge at Gettysburg, incidentally refers, in a humorous way, to one of their chaplains who was accustomed to pray that “Providence would consent at last to come down and take a _proper_ view of the situation.” The Colonel, at one auspicious juncture in the preliminary fight, was inclined to believe that the prayer of the good chaplain was about to be answered. But when all was over and the battle was lost, he dryly admits that “Providence had evidently not yet taken a proper view of the situation.” The same admission was equally pertinent at Appomattox—and has been ever since—indeed, is it not time for the South to see that the trouble is not with Providence but with itself—that _it_ should “consent at last to take a proper view of the situation”? Providence did not take its view during the war to sustain slavery, and will not in the struggle to maintain caste, which is now the great issue, as slavery then was. That issue the South is pushing to the front with new energy. For example, the great churches, Methodist and Presbyterian, that had been rent asunder by the anti-slavery agitation before the war, had seemed for a time since to be happily coming together once more, but recently that fair prospect has become darkened, and mainly by the strong exactions in regard to caste-separation demanded by the South. Then as to schools, the South has always been understood to be opposed to the co-education of the races, but the recent demonstrations in one of the States are almost amusingly violent. We stolid Northern people are tempted to smile at the fear that the white young gentlemen and ladies of the South are so eager to marry negroes that they dare not be trusted in the same school together, and that such stringent measures as fines, imprisonment and the chain-gang are deemed necessary to prevent it! But we are glad to find that these severe measures were planned by over-zealous young politicians, and that “the sober second thought of the people” has substituted less barbarous methods, and that other Southern States do not follow the bad example.

But more seriously, the South has never enforced laws against the criminal mingling of the races that has almost bleached the negroes white. Is lawful marriage more criminal than concubinage? But who wants the intermarriage of the races to take place? Not the North, certainly. The Southern whites ought to be able to resist the temptation. Every step in the advancement of the blacks contradicts the charge that they desire it. No! the charge is fictitious, and is only paraded to give force to the plea for caste-distinction and exclusion, which is now the main hindrance to the incoming of the Brotherhood of Man.

But the Southerner pleads strongly against recognizing the _political_ equality of the races. He says, The negro is not my equal in intelligence, property or character. Why should he cast a ballot he cannot read, elect men to make laws which they themselves cannot read, to impose taxes of which he pays almost nothing, and to squander the money for the benefit of demagogues? A most estimable Christian gentleman from South Carolina said to me not long since: “On one point the people of our State are agreed. We will not again be ruled by the negroes. We have tried it and we will not permit it to be repeated.” To all this the ready answer is: It was one thing for ignorant, degraded and unscrupulous negroes at that time to rule—nay, I may say, ruin—the State, and another and very different thing, to permit negroes that are educated, possessed of property and of established character to take their proper share in the administration of the affairs of the State; and this brings me to my final point.

3. It is the duty of the hour and of all concerned to unite in aiding the negro to acquire knowledge, property and character. In the Revolutionary struggle, the two White Brothers stood shoulder to shoulder for one object; in the last sad conflict they fought against each other to the bitter end. It is time that the enmity of the last struggle should be laid aside and the amity of the first should be imitated. Let the two White Brothers unite in directing the general government to make ample provisions on terms satisfactory to both to promote popular education in the South; let the State governments in the South vote means to second the effort. Let the North, as individuals and churches, multiply greatly its generous offerings and increase the number of its consecrated men and women to carry forward the work, and let the South respond in its measure in personal contributions and labors, and especially let its people welcome these Northern teachers, not with suspicion and ostracism, but with co-operation and the respect due to their Christian characters. Let the large religious denominations bury dead issues and unite in lifting up the negro. On what nobler or more Christian platform could they stand? Let them come to him not as the priest and the Levite, but as the Samaritan; and let the Black Brother show more alacrity than ever in responding to these efforts in his behalf. When all this is done, there will be realized the great mission of these Three Brothers in America—the founding of a great empire, the establishing of civil and religious liberty, the granting of personal freedom to all, and last and greatest of all, the crowning glory of illustrating the Brotherhood of Man!

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NEED OF INTELLIGENCE IN BENEVOLENCE.

BY SECRETARY POWELL.

_What should be done to increase the number of those who intelligently contribute to the support of the American Missionary Association?_

Among the reasons for raising this question are the following:

1. A large number of the churches give us no contribution. Last year only 1,698, out of 4,277 total, contributed to our treasury. The State Associations every year, and the National Council every three years, recommend the Association to the churches for their support. Sixty-one per cent. of those churches reply: “We do not accept your advice.” A high estimate they must put upon the reasons which governed their representatives! Yet resolutions of commendation are necessary. The cause that cannot obtain them is doomed. But, though necessary, they are not enough. “Good words butter no parsnips.” Those who say not and do are more to be commended than those who say and do not. The resolutions of National Councils and State Associations need to be translated into the benevolent activities of all the churches. Otherwise they are dead letters.

2. Only a small proportion of those who contribute through the churches do so intelligently. Some give from impulse. When the impulse dies, the contribution dies with it. Some give only when roused by a special appeal. If no appeal is made they give nothing. Some give merely because the contribution box is passed—they are ashamed not to go through the motions of putting something in, and they would be even more ashamed to have the congregation know just what they put in. Look at the contents of the average contribution box as it returns from its excursion among the pews. Notice the exceedingly large number of pennies and nickels and quarters (given probably by as many individuals) in comparison with the gifts of larger denomination! It is often the case, even in large congregations, that one, two, three or four contributors—and they not always the most able to give—contribute more than all the rest put together. It is not forgotten that many of the small gifts are the widows’ mites—the offerings of the poor, that, in the arithmetic of heaven, count more than they all. Nevertheless, it remains true a very large proportion of those who put money into the contribution box as it is passed do not know anything about what they are giving for, care still less, and who, if not in church when the contribution is taken, give nothing. Woe to the cause whose annual contribution comes on a rainy Sunday.

3. The total contributions from the churches and individuals represent a sadly low average for the total church membership. The receipts last year from churches and individuals, exclusive of legacies, were $189,483.39. Divided among the church membership of the country it represents an average contribution of only 44 cents per member; and if the contributions of those who give annually all the way from $1.00 up to $1,000 were subtracted, the average would fall from 50 to 75 per cent. below this. Surely the spirit of Christian benevolence abroad in the churches is not what it ought to be. Did Christians give as they pray, their benevolence would reach a higher mark. They are apt to be more honest in the expression of their views of duty at the throne of grace than they are through the expression of their conduct.

The pride of consistency, as we remember the confessed doctrines of the churches, should make us all intensely dissatisfied with this record of unfaithfulness on the part of so many church members.

4. The increase in contributions does not keep pace with the growth of the churches in membership and wealth. The total wealth of the United States, as officially reported for the year 1870, was $30,068,518,507. In 1880 it was $43,642,000,000. Since 1880 the gain has been in all probability even in larger ratio; and in this gain the Congregational churches have had undoubtedly their full share. Ten years ago the membership of the churches was 365,595. Last year it was 436,379. Ten years ago the church contributions and individual donations to our treasury, exclusive of legacies, were $186,166.62. Last year, from the same sources, they were $189,483.39. That is to say: During the past ten years the churches have increased in wealth 31 per cent., and over; in membership, 19 per cent., and over; but in their contributions they have increased only a little less than 2 per cent. Had the gain kept pace with the increase in church membership, our receipts last year would have been $32,055.67 more than they were. Had they kept pace with the presumable increase of wealth they would have been $54,394.69 more than they were. “Freely ye have received, freely give,” was the emphatic command of our Lord to his disciples as he sent them out on errands of mercy among the sick and suffering and sorrowing poor. “Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him,” was the explicit injunction of Paul to the churches concerning their collections for the poor. And here are our churches organized on purpose to carry out the teachings of Christ and his apostles; increasing in numbers and increasing in wealth year by year; yet relatively to that increase falling behind in their contributions to a society whose chief and crowning distinction is that it labors among the poor and the despised and the neglected. Will a man rob God? was a question asked in ancient times. Modern times have not outgrown the pertinency of its asking.

5. The Association should be relieved from a perpetual struggle to get out of debt. From a business standpoint the struggle is not healthy. From a religious standpoint it is not right. Thank God we come to this annual meeting free from debt. It is four years since we enjoyed that privilege before. We would like, if it please the churches, to indulge in the luxury of singing the doxology at shorter intervals. Well, then, _don’t get into debt_. Easily said. Had we a fixed and certain income; had we the authority to levy upon the churches a specified tax and the power to collect it; had we the ability to foresee just how much was coming from legacies, we could then show a clean balance every year. But in all these respects we are in a field of limitless uncertainties. The gifts to our treasury are purely voluntary. No certain dependence can be placed on legacies. One year it may be deluge; the next it may be drought. What are we to do? What can we do? We can only calculate probabilities and trust our friends. What? Can you not trust God? Yes—blessed trust—we _can_ trust Him. But trust must be intelligent. God’s ordination is that missionary work shall be carried on by his children, and that they shall pay the bills. We have no right to expect that He will work miracles in one direction to defeat what He has ordained in another. Presumption is not piety. Fanaticism is not faith. We have a vast work committed to our care. We have a great number of missionaries to support. We have large money investments in church and school property to guard. We must plan to conserve all these interests. A sentimental trust in God will not pay taxes and missionaries’ salaries, nor save religion from being dishonored by broken pledges. The churches, whose servant the Association is, should save its officers from the worry and anxiety of constant fear lest through lack of funds the work shall be endangered and the interests of Christ’s kingdom made to suffer.

The above are some of the reasons for raising the question, What should be done to increase the number of those who intelligently contribute to the support of the American Missionary Association?

Now for the answer.

1. Our theological seminaries should provide for a course of lectures in which the history and claims of the American Missionary Association, together with those of the other six missionary societies, should be presented and discussed. Systematic theology, church polity, homiletics and ecclesiastical history would lose nothing, but on the contrary they would gain much in interest and power by the inspiration of such lectures. To train the churches in support of these societies is a part of ministerial life, and they need to be trained. The initial letters by which these societies are recognized by the few who are acquainted with them would be as mysterious and puzzling to the great majority of our congregations as the hieroglyphics of an Egyptian tomb!

Now this is all wrong. These societies are the organized assertions of great truths. They are the expressions of great principles. They represent the heart of the gospel reaching out through the churches for the world’s salvation! The people should be instructed in reference to their duty toward them, and not left in ignorance as to their names and meaning. If our theological seminaries have been established to train men for the work of the gospel ministry, they should train them for its work _all round_ and not merely for its work on a few sides. James was an Apostle as well as Paul. You would scarcely dream it from the teaching of some theologies. The preaching that trains the people to clear intellectual conceptions of truth is good; but the preaching that in addition to this trains them to go out and put their belief into practice is better, and that because it is more Christian. The roundness and fullness of truth demand it. Theory—practice. Sympathy—benevolence. Let them not be divorced either in the teaching of our seminaries or in the preaching of our pulpits.

2. There should be an annual presentation of the Association’s claims in every church. This may seem like a wild proposition in view of the large number of non-contributing churches. But duty should be affirmed even if no one performs it. For some reason or other a large number of our ministers do not bring the claims of the American Missionary Association before their congregations. It cannot be that they are ignorant of the Society and its work. They have the Year Book. They must know of the resolutions of the National Council and the State Associations. They are presumably readers of the denominational papers, and I know they all have their pure minds stirred up periodically by way of remembrance by circulars and other agencies. Are their churches small and poor? There is no church so small and so poor, if it have any right to be in existence, but that it can do a little and in doing that little receive in return for itself and minister, both spiritual and temporal blessing. If there is a church so small and so poor that it cannot do this then it had better make haste to glorify God by its death than continue to dishonor him by its life. Are there so many objects asking help that they cannot respond? There are only seven societies in our denominational family claiming their support. Can it be that any minister of the gospel feels that seven contributions for benevolent objects during the twelve months of the year are too many for his church to make?—are more than his church ought to make? And if he allow outside objects to come in, however worthy they may be, and thereby crowd out any of the National Societies, is that quite just to those societies? Generosity is indeed a virtue, but exercised at the expense of those who have a prior claim, it can hardly be called a Christian virtue. An Apostle has written it: “If any provide not for his own and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.” The American Missionary Association is an adopted child of the Congregational churches of the United States. It is a lawful member of our denominational household. It is there by virtue of every law which governs in the fellowship of the churches. It is not a beggar asking alms—it is not a stranger crowding for hospitality—it is a child having all the rights and privileges of a child in its own home, and if beggars and strangers are allowed to enter and rob it of that which is its legitimate portion it has a right to be heard in earnest protest against the wrong it suffers. As the accredited agent of the churches for the prosecution of missionary work in the field it occupies it has rightful claim to their unanimous support.

3. A committee should be appointed in each local conference to see to it that during the year every church in the conference has the cause presented and a contribution taken. A committee thus appointed can write to each church, reminding it of its duty to make an annual offering to the American Missionary Association as one of our national societies. Where there are pastors who do not care to present the cause themselves every year, and where there are churches that have no pastors, certain brethren can be requested to prepare a presentation, and by a system of exchanges secure its delivery in all the churches, so that not one of them shall be allowed to go a single year uninstructed in regard to this duty. All that is needed is for some one man to take hold of this matter with earnestness and place it clearly before the local conference, and it will be done. Has this language the sound of authority about it—a flavor of presbyterial or prelatic law? It is only a sound and a flavor; nothing more. There is nothing legislative about it. It is simply the churches themselves through their own chosen representatives in conference devising the most effective method for carrying out a work in which, by the very genius of their church polity, they are all equally interested. The only law that there is about it is the foundation principle on which they were organized and recognized as churches, and on which they have established their local conference.