Chapter II: Part 2

This is true politically. Thrice true is it religiously--Christian faith is not confined to State boundaries. It belongs everywhere. The problem is not a new one. It has its roots bedded deep in history. When years ago it began to be discussed by a few they were called agitators, as if the discussion of right and wrong were itself a wrong, as if the letting in of light upon the darkness were a deed of darkness. Nevertheless, the Nation became thoughtful over the question of the rights of man. While it was musing the fire burned, and an irrepressible conflict came. In the issue it was settled that no man should be held by another man in involuntary servitude in this common and inseparable country.

A quarter of a century has elapsed since this settlement of a problem which involved the destiny of two races, and of our whole country. The question now before the Nation and before the churches is a corollary of slavery. It is the second section of the first chapter. The first question was: How shall liberty be proclaimed to the captive and the enslaved become free? The second is: Being free, how can the two races--as distinct and separate as are the white and black races of the South--now equal before the law, live side by side under the same government, and live in Christian truth and peace? This is the problem, and, like the first, it is irrepressible.

In one sense it is a new question--that is, a new generation of white people has in part come forward to participate in the duties of citizenship, since all men became men in the law of the land. To them the question is practically new. The situation as they find it, is this: The Negroes, who, twenty years ago, were four millions, are now eight millions. The increase of the blacks above the increase of the whites in the period of twenty years, is fourteen per cent. In his work on the African in the United States, Professor Gilliam, having in hand the figures of our Census Bureau, forecasts with the demonstration of mathematics our population one century hence. We do not know what may modify his figures, but he computes that at the present rate of increase there are to be in the old slave States in one hundred years, ninety-five millions of whites and double this number of African descent. Therefore, whatever may modify, it is probable that before one half an hundred years are over, the numbers of the blacks will furnish them sufficient guarantee for their legal rights.

There are those in this presence who have seen the population of this republic multiply itself nearly three times. Our childhood's geography taught us that twenty-three millions of people lived in the United States. Now our children learn that there are sixty millions. Twenty years ago four millions of Negroes and eight millions to-day. Therefore, as large as the problem now is to us, it will be greater for our children if we err in our solution of it.

This race of African descent has been declared by constitutional enactment to be entitled to whatever privileges belong to man, as man. Standing on this, and beginning with nothing but the heredity of hindrances, with the brand of color and the prejudice of race against them, this people have climbed up from their low estate with a remarkable progress. They have applied themselves to take hold of knowledge as no other people ever did in the annals of history. They have made great inroads upon their previous illiteracy. They have rapidly acquired property. They have developed industrial skill, and established the evidences of business facility. They have shown themselves capable of good citizenship, both in the understanding of its duties and the practice of them. They have vindicated the act of emancipation and the decrees of citizenship.

Yet to-day their standing both as citizens and as Christians is opposed. The question of their rights is discussed as if it were an open one, and in the South it is coming to be increasingly denied. Under the plea that it is unsafe for the black man to exercise his civil rights, there arises a condition of affairs that can have no standing under our government except a revolutionary standing. And the question whether the rights of man as man shall be regarded, is to-day a more pressing question than it has been at any previous time since the slaves were declared to be men.

The Southern press, which both creates and voices public opinion, reveals an attitude of mind increasingly hostile to the equal civil rights of the black man, for the simple reason that he is not white, which is calculated to fill the friends of American institutions with gravest apprehensions, and which demands the serious attention of us all. Almost every week discloses to us the fact that intimidation, oppression and violence do override the government of the land, in its application to the Negro people. Influential Southern journals have pronounced the Fifteenth Amendment a living threat to the civilization of the South, and declare that Christian statesmanship demands its abrogation.

A thoughtful book published in New York, written in a calm and judicial tone by an able lawyer in Virginia, in its chapter upon the future of the Negro, says: "The social aspect of the Negro suffrage is certain to _grow more_ threatening as the blacks increase. The motives which have led the great body of whites to vote together in this age, must augment in force in the age to follow. To day the rapid increase of the black population constitutes a greater danger to the stability of our government than any that is sapping the vitality of the European monarchies. The partial disfranchisement of the Negro in the future would appear to be inevitable, essential, if not to the existence of the South, then to the prosperity of the Union." This is a temperate expression of much Southern opinion.

Not a few hold the view that the education and advancement of the Negro tends to create the race problem, and do not hesitate to say that if the Negroes could only be kept as laborers in the cotton and rice and sugar fields, in the furnaces and mines of the South, aspiring to nothing higher and not antagonizing the whites in political matters, there would be no race problem.

Six months ago we could quote from an editorial column written by an ex-Confederate officer for an influential Democratic paper in the South these words: "The duty of the white people of the South is plain. In the spirit of _noblesse oblige_ we must sympathize with those who are fitting the colored people for the duties of life, remembering what the Negroes were to our forefathers and what our forefathers were to them. No one can doubt that a Negro has a soul to save. That admitted, he is as much entitled to the benefits of salvation as the white man. But", he adds, "what do we see? Nearly all the bodies of Christians even, except the Roman Catholics, shuffling to set the Negro apart and leave him largely to his own ways, shuffling out of their responsibility according to the gospel which they profess as their guide, and putting the Negro apart in spite of the word of God, whom they worship, that he is no respecter of persons. The Negro was brought over here by theft and outrage. He is here to stay, and we must deal with him according to the golden rule, and as we would wish to be done by if we were similarly placed."

This is not a quotation from the National Council of Congregational Churches, where such an utterance would both by nature and by grace find expression, but it is from the pen of an officer of the Southern Confederacy, who knows the light when he sees it, who keeps open an honest eye, and who does not hesitate to speak from an honest mind. This sentiment balances somewhat of that which pleads against the black man, and not a few friends of this kind has the American Missionary Association won to itself throughout the South. It never had so many who are saying: "Yours is the most practical missionary work ever undertaken by a Christian body." "You have won our confidence by your spirit and your methods; you have our cordial sympathy." At the same time we recognize the fact that both prejudice and partisanship are now making strenuous efforts to create the judgment that the Negro should be stripped of his civil rights and that his education is going on too rapidly. For example, the _Southern Journal_, whose Christian sentiments of six months ago, just quoted, with another editor to-day, comes to us with another deliverance, probably nearer to the heart of most of its constituency, saying: "The Negro is not a fit subject for Northern missionary effort. Northern money is not wanted to build him schools, and Northern teachers and preachers are not wanted to improve his mind nor to save his soul. He should be let alone. He is out in the water: let him swim. He should be left alone to work out his own salvation." The editor who says we must save him is an ex-Confederate officer who has always lived in the South. The editor who says he should be left alone is a Northern man who has gone South to live. The first writes, _noblesse oblige_. The second does not understand the language. He, doubtless, has the largest constituency.

The pulpit also creates and voices public opinion. Our work is coming to get many a good word from the Southern pulpit. But a Southern white bishop--Bishop Pearce--did not write to unwilling ears when he said: "In my judgment higher education would be a calamity to the Negroes. It would elevate Negro aspirations far above the station which the Negro was created to fill. The whites can never tamely, and without protest submit to the intrusion of colored people into places of trust, profit, and responsibility." This, you will observe, is from a minister of Christ. It is from a bishop of a church. It is from one who prays our Lord's prayer, given alike to white and black. "After this manner, therefore, pray ye." "Our Father." This is from one who believes in the baptism at Pentecost, when devout men from every nation under heaven received the impartial benedictions of God. This from one who read the story of Peter and the sheet. "Alas, my brother."

All this, then, is the atmosphere of the situation. Some prophetic souls are looking out upon a most perplexing and perilous problem with profound solicitude, and extending to us their sympathy and prayers for our work. More, many more, are teaching and preaching that God has created the Negro race to fill forever a place of inferiority, and that he must stay down in the bog or in some way be destroyed. It is not surprising, therefore, that ignorant white people should give form and substance to these hostile opinions in scenes of violence and cruelty. They believe in the inherent inferiority of the blacks, and have a mighty fear lest this doctrine should prove to be untrue. The Negro, twenty-five years ago in absolute poverty and illiteracy, has been greedy for education, and has seriously thought of nothing but to rise from his low condition.

The intelligent white man now, and to his great surprise, is all at once confronted by the intelligent black man. They are not so numerous now as to be an element to fear, but the whites are foreseeing the not distant day when they can not be relegated to inferiority because of their color. The calamity that Bishop Pearce deplores and would prevent is not far away--educated Negroes with aspirations, in other words, men.

The general Negro illiteracy is gaining fast upon the white ignorance, and the despised Negro is found to be living above many of his illiterate white neighbors. This makes it easy work for designing men to sharpen race prejudices, which by force and fear shall keep the Negro down.

On the Negro side, he has been patient and forbearing. With these outbreaks of persecution some are discouraged, and are ready to surrender their manhood. On the other hand, some are no longer patient, but are enraged. They would retaliate. They feel that defense against wrongs is right. An influential Negro paper says, "EDUCATE, AGITATE, RETALIATE. Does one strike me? With the power of God on high, back also will I strike him." This feeling grows. Add to it the fact that the Negro is developing the power of organization. There are leaders. They are in their councils and conventions. They are feeling deeply, speaking plainly, and organizing efficiently.

This is the situation! "How shall this problem be solved? How shall we prevent the conflict between races?" A Southern author says: "These problems have been solved in the past in four ways. By reducing the weaker race to slavery, or by expulsion, or by extermination, or by the amalgamation of the races. Slavery is out of the question--that is settled. Equally repugnant is expulsion or extermination. Amalgamation is abhorrent." Therefore, the problem will not be solved by any historical precedents. The two races must live here in the same sections, equal before the law, with mutual rights, and all rights must be sanctioned and confirmed.

The American Missionary Association is living with this problem day by day. It is trying to see it with the look of Christ. This Association foresaw this question forty years ago. It took on itself the preparation for it. It guided itself to meet the problem in the fields before the armies in the South were disbanded. It went with its distinctive and unpopular principles. It went in the patience and love of Christ. For the most part it met a natural and unconcealed hostility. It did not retaliate even in spirit, but it stood firm in spirit and in truth. It has lived on in the South, and taught the same ever-living and everlasting gospel for all men, of whatever race or color. Its record is before the churches. They have never had reason to feel other than grateful to God for its work. Beginning with a great number of little primary schools, and with thousands of beginners in the alphabet of learning, it has gradually passed into larger and more far-reaching influences by teaching teachers and preachers, who shall go, and who do go out and reach multiplied thousands.

In order that applied Christianity may have the power of self-help and self-care, industries are introduced. In that the people are being fitted to save themselves. All of our work from first to last is missionary, and instinct with the motive of salvation; our schools are means to an end; fitting preachers, teachers, mechanics, home makers to meet the problem and the peril. It is not by education that the question is to be solved. The missionary view is not simply the educational view. This society is not an educational society. Education is not the panacea for the ills of man. Ignorance is a great evil, but it is not the worst one; sinfulness is worse and more difficult to cure. The one who is educated may make trouble and not heal it; secular education can not meet the problem; State education can not protect against the peril, but sanctified education can, for it has in it the power of God. This society is a missionary society which, like the American Board, teaches in order to save. You can scarcely save ignorance. This means Christian schools not only full of ethics, but vital with faith. It means also the twin life of school work and church work. To put these factors apart would be a great disaster to each; nay, it would put away from the only society that can effectively, and we believe effectually, meet this problem, the chief factor in the solution of the impending and serious question. Education alone is not equal to this question, and those who have won the ear and the sympathy of those who need to come under the power of the gospel, who have been their friends and teachers, who have their confidence and trust, are the ones to take this gospel to them and show them how to take it to others. The schools reach parents, the schools reach pastors, the schools reach the people, the schools are intertwined with all the church life that has any hope in it. This is the missionary view. When this people in the wilderness cried out in their distresses, "Who will speak for us?" the Association spoke for them. When they needed sympathy, sympathy it gave. When they needed instruction, it went to them in the name of Christ. In his name it stood for the Negro. In his name it stood by the Negro. In his name it stood with him. It stands there to-day. It is his friend and counselor. When the Negro is cast down, the churches will hear one voice and they will wish their own society to be found faithful in this.

With this charter as a missionary society for schools and churches, we present to the Negro race continually the personal hope of souls not only, but the hope of the race. When they think that the progress is slow we tell them that Christianity is sure. When they tell us that they can not wait, but must organize and retaliate, we tell them to wait upon God. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." We ask them to remember that a quarter of a century, or a century, is a short time in the history of a people. We point to a million--a round million--of Negro children in the schools to-day. We are teaching them to be men. We are saving them to be Christians. We teach them not to remain down and not to be put down. Being men, they are to stand like men, but like Christian men, to conquer prejudices by worthiness, to meet race hatred with only a stronger purpose to command respect, not to render evil for evil, but contrariwise, blessing; not blow for blow, but to go on upbuilding themselves, deserving their rights, and remembering that a great element in the solution of this problem must be an intelligent faith in God. With this missionary view we stand firm. We have learned that the Southerners of our own race, even when they hold their prejudices against our principles, respect those who stand in a Christian way for their principles; and that these principles will never be accepted in the South by our holding them loosely, or in suspense, or in any sort of abeyance. They respect us when we teach our people that they have all the rights of manhood and womanhood; that they are to respect themselves and to be worthy of self-respect; that they are not to consent in their own minds to any assertion of superiority based upon the tint of the skin, and that they are never to feel guilty for being black. We are teaching the colored people to hold honor with themselves.

What this Association and other missionary forces have done and are doing--this Association more than others--will be the balance of power to prevent the dreaded conflict of races; _the balance of power_ to settle the question; How can the two races live in the same section with mutual respect for each other's civil and Christian rights? This may take time. Christianity takes time. It is ours to take Christianity to teach that the beginning of Christianity was the death blow to wrong principles and evil practices of men, however well intrenched and fortified these forces may be.

It is this which gives us courage to grapple with centuries of wrong and to undertake the slow reduction of these evils. When Christianity came, the era of conscience came, and in His gospel is the power of intelligence and moral determination that shall not be overcome of evil, but shall overcome evil with good.

"Men bound with right are strong:
Right bound with right in Christian faith
Will conquer a world of wrong."

The missionary schools and the missionary churches are, we believe, the only safeguard against the conflict of races. They are the guardian against this national peril. This being so, the churches must speed them more and more. They must not hinder them nor tie their hands. The guarantees of this peaceful solution are in the hands of the churches. Multiply and hasten the Christian energies. Multiply the Christian prayers that we may be workers together with Him of whom it is written, "He shall not fail or be discouraged."

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REPORTS OF COMMITTEES.

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REPORT ON EDUCATIONAL WORK SOUTH.

BY REV. WM. BURNET WRIGHT, D.D., CHAIRMAN.

It is an ominous fact that in the South illiteracy is steadily increasing. It is an encouraging fact that in the region surrounding our chartered and normal schools illiteracy is steadily diminishing. The colored people are multiplying more rapidly than the means of educating them. If the supply of school accommodations to-day exactly equalled the demand, so that every colored child of suitable age was provided for in some school, there would be at the time of our next annual meeting 255,500 children asking to be taught their letters to whom we should have to say, We cannot teach you. But the supply does not yet nearly equal the demand.

In respect to education, the South is a dark sky rapidly growing darker, but flecked with patches of lighter shade, which are gradually growing brighter and larger. Such a bright space frames each of our chartered and normal schools. Fisk University, Talladega College, Tougaloo University, Straight University, in New Orleans, and Tillotson Institute, at Austin, Texas, are doing work which vindicates each year more distinctly the strategic sagacity which located them. In these institutions alone nearly two thousand students of both sexes are being trained to be light-bearers to their race. Besides these, each of which is essentially a normal school, and includes a normal department, eighteen distinctively normal schools are sustained at different points of strategic importance. Two new schools have been established during the year. Good work has also been done among the mountain whites. The income from the gift of Mr. Daniel Hand has enabled the Association to enlarge its school accommodations, and to assist more than three hundred students, who, without it, would have been unable to attend schools of any kind.

The committee would emphasize among special needs of the work, funds for a girls' hall at Tillotson Institute, and for the endowment of a theological school for training colored pastors. Two facts are pre-eminently gratifying. The first is that in nearly all the schools of the Association some kind of industrial training is provided, and that the influence of such training is conspicuously shown in improved ideas of home life and comfort among those connected by family or other ties with our students. The second fact is, that in all our schools the students are taught that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and that consequently the separation between religion and morality, which is the supreme danger of the Southern black churches, is perceptibly diminishing.

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REPORT ON CHURCH WORK.

BY PROFESSOR GRAHAM TAYLOR, CHAIRMAN.

The mission of the American Missionary Association is shown to be a _specialty_ and a _unit_ by its church work. It is the work of a specialist among Christian organizations that alone could have produced these churches. To meet the demands of an exigency which could not be met by the pre-existent ordinary agencies, this child of Providence was born of God and the times. For the accomplishment of ends for which no means had been found, its methods were providentially chosen by a process of spiritual selection. Its agencies are the accretions of the Divine purpose in its progress toward the salvation of the undermost, and the edifying of the whole body of Christ. To the production of its unique Christian institutions the exclusive devotion to the study of the peculiar conditions of these entirely distinct communities was necessary. There have been generated by this devotion and acquired through the experience of nearly half a century a knowledge and skill which claim for this Association the recognition of the world as its foremost expert in the successful application of Christianity to the solution of the most difficult race problems of modern civilization.

And yet in the accomplishment of this great achievement, loyalty to the common faith and to our own polity, as well as to the teachings of experience, demanded only the new application of the old prime factors of God's own choice, the _local church_ with its evangelism and Christian nurture.

In the work of this Association these two great agencies are uniquely one. The pastor is often teacher and evangelist. The sanctuary is school-house and mission station. At twenty-three points on the field God has made of these twain--the church and the school--one. The church is the unit of this unity. For while the church is generally the offspring of the school, the school finds both its profoundest reasons for existence and its highest consummation in the needs and ends of the church. In it the work both of the teacher and evangelist co-ordinates and culminates.

It will not be so very long before these schools and colleges will find their chief sources of supply in these churches, which although now so dependent, must ultimately be depended upon to maintain and develop their own institutions. Even now it is to be remembered that the appeal of this evangelizing church work meets with the wider and more popular response from the giving constituency of the Association, while the educational institutions are more dependent upon the larger gifts of interested individuals.

Moreover, it is the church which opens the springs of the family life from which the schools must draw their scholars. And it is the church which creates the environment necessary to the Christian homes, to which the graduates are sent back again to live their lives, and from which, as the heart's fulcrum, their saved lives can best lift up the lost.

These little church groups of evangelized and educated families are at once the prime sources and the constituent elements of the new Christian civilization which already heralds the coming of the kingdom to those neglected, outcast peoples, to secure whose human rights, Christian privileges and church fellowship is the first, loudest, longest call upon the Congregational Churches of America.

Therefore, in the name of this Association, whose heroic type of missionary and teaching service makes our whole membership and ministry the more attractive and ennobling; in the name of its schools which became churches, and its churches which are schools; in the name of their 8,400 professing Christians, and their 15,000 Sunday-school scholars, and the 1,000 converts of the year; in the name of the races of three continents to whom the Father is sending these our brethren as we are sent to them, we pledge the fidelity of the American Missionary Association to the two-fold agency of its one work, the discipling of these races by the evangelizing church, and the Christian nurture of its schools. And we re-echo the call which the National Council makes upon our churches for the $500,000 required by the exigencies and opportunities of this year's work for the neediest and most helpless of all our fellow-countrymen.

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REPORT ON MOUNTAIN WORK.

BY REV. D.M. FISK, D.D., CHAIRMAN.

The formal report of your committee can without injustice be brief; not because the field considered is narrow, or the work unimportant as a missionary movement, but from the fact that a certain unity pervades both, making it possible to comprehend in one view even the diversities of a population of over two millions, and an area of above one hundred thousand square miles.

The official summary of the year's work, on which we report, once again sets before this Association the situation and its involved problem; a situation full of contradictions, a problem at once serious but not hopeless.

Here is the amazing spectacle of a self-isolated people, begirt with the active life and thought of our eager times, yet sharing neither. Here is an empire that is content to live in the past: having rich resources it neglects to develop them; a productive soil but niggard crops. Amidst a veritable Lebanon of forestry it has shanties for homes; with coal deposits that are the envy of the world, its shivering women in stoveless hovels attempt to defend themselves about their domestic toil with coarse homespun shawls and slat-bonnets. In an age that has harnessed mechanism, beast, and steam to the plow, scythe, sickle and flail, these owners of mountains of iron and mines of power still indolently vex a grudging soil with tools of such barbaric simplicity that their intrusion is scarcely more than a provocation to weeds.

Here is needless poverty in the lap of potential wealth, thriftlessness in the face of every seeming stimulus to diligence. Here is a diversified landscape that should inspire and a climate that should invigorate, but in place of vivacity and health we find apathetic endurance and intrenched disease. Scrofula and its parasite kin are domesticated in the debilitated blood, and pills, calomel, and death jointly contend for the prolific cradle, and even when temporarily defeated succeed in transforming childhood into unlovely age, without the long interval of intermediate active, zestful manhood.

And yet, pitiful as is this exhibit of deficiency, these Highland dwellers are none the less men and our brethren. Slavery robbed them of their lands half a century ago, and roughly shouldered them off into the mountain wilderness dowered with the pauperizing maxims of oppression, notably the indignity of toil, and their shrewd native mother-wit has been left to rust to dullard loss in the absence of schools worthy the name; worse still, their natural devoutness has been warped by unworthy shepherds, till superstition, bigotry, and gross immorality have taken fierce possession of many a society, hearthstone and heart. If to-day the schools are inefficient and some of the preaching blasphemous; if self-satisfied idleness has turned over this mountain realm to want and the slavery of low living, and (as ever) made woman at once the servant and the victim of its barbarism, it is but another historic count in the awful indictment of human selfishness. And all these crying deficiencies are but make-weights with our conviction of responsibility to this mountain flock of God, that often has been misled and unworthily sacrificed.

The only problematical element in this matter is the measure of our faith in God and man and all-prevailing truth. Wherever the ground has been broken by faithful men there is a crop to show as returns for invested toil. More than a thousand children are now under Christian instruction in our schools. Our pupils are in hungry demand as teachers, even to a minimum of years that to us would seem absurd (15 and 16 years). Over twenty churches are holding up a reasonable religion, as a life rather than merely a profession. New fields plead for mission work. Our already planted churches and schools are stimulating other denominations to redoubled diligence in church planting. Courage is in the tone and look of our frontier workers. The officers of this Association feel in an aggressive mood. The question resolves itself into one of faith and contributions. What, my brethren, shall be our answer?

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REPORT ON INDIAN WORK.

BY REV. ADDISON F. FOSTER, D.D., CHAIRMAN.

The committee on the work of the American Missionary Association among the Indians respectfully report that they gratefully recognize the good hand of God in the work already done.

Since the American Missionary Association took the work, the expenditures have increased from $11,000 to $52,000, the out-stations for direct evangelistic effort from seven to twenty-one, and the churches from two to six. This last year, the Association has established three new out-stations: the Moody station among the Mandans, fifty miles north of Fort Berthold; the Moody Station No. 2 among the Gros Ventres, twenty-five miles north of Fort Berthold; the Sankey Station among the Dakotas at Cherry Creek. It has just put up a mission house, with a room for church worship, at Rosebud Agency. It has organized anew church at Bazille Creek, some distance out from Santee; a branch church at Cherry Creek, on the Sioux Reservation, and is just forming a church at Standing Rock, for which a building is now completed.

This record is certainly gratifying and shows that the Association appreciates the emergency, and is striving to meet it, so far as the means put in its hands allow. But your committee feel also that never before was there so great an opportunity as now brought before the Christians of this land, and especially our own denomination, for work among the Indians.

The relations of the Government and of the churches in Indian work are now unusually harmonious and kindly. The present Administration is thoroughly in sympathy with missionary operations, and will do nothing to impair their efficiency. We believe it to be sincerely actuated by a desire to promote the best welfare of the Indians, and ready to co-operate with all good people in efforts in this direction. It aims to educate every Indian child. We desire to see this done, and believe that when the Government assumes, as it should, the primary education of all Indians of school age, we shall be called on to turn our efforts to a much larger work for direct evangelization.

Our opportunity is enlarging further by the breaking down of the old pagan prejudices of the Indians. The testimony of all the workers on the field is to this effect. The Indians are desirous of living as white men. They are rapidly losing their distinctive Indian ideas and are imbibing the notions of their white neighbors. This is seen in their burials, which now are not uniformly, as of old, on scaffolds, but are more and more interments. It is shown in their feeling and behavior when death comes into their households. They no longer fill their houses with hideous outcries, but instead seek the missionaries to inquire about the life in the other world.

A further opportunity is to be noted in the fact that the Dakota Indians have specially fallen into our care. Our chief missions are located among them, at Santee, Rosebud, Oahe, Standing Rock, and outlying stations. But the Dakota Indians number 40,000 in all, or about one-sixth of all the Indians in the country. We have mastered the Dakota language; and a Bible, hymn-book, dictionary and other books are printed in that tongue. We have, then, special ability to carry on mission work among them, and are bound to utilize it to the full. The time is ripe for immediate action. It must be taken without delay if taken at all. The opening up to white settlement of a large strip of land though the center of the great Sioux reservations is to bring the Indian into contact with the influence of white men as never before. It is impossible that that influence shall be altogether good. The contact of the Indian with the frontiersmen of our own people has resulted most deplorably in the past, and we cannot hope for much better results now. Rum and licentiousness are sure to work untold harm to the Indian unless they are met by the gospel. This opening up of Indian territory to white settlement lays, therefore, a most imperative and immediate obligation on Christian people to protect the Indian from ruin by giving them the gospel.

We are satisfied that nothing but the gospel will suffice. Education alone can not save, and may simply give new strength to evil habits and influences. It must be a Christian education; schools should be simply preliminary and altogether subsidiary to the most energetic and wise presentation of the gospel. The uniform policy of the American Missionary Association in all departments of its work has been in this direction, and we gladly recognize the fact that its Indian work has steadily progressed with the idea of evangelizing the Indian.

We know very well that the Association is laboring for 8,000,000 Negroes and for 2,000,000 Mountain White people and for 125,000 Chinese, as well as 262,000 Indians. We know that the proportion of the Indians is comparatively small. At the same time we urge that this disproportion is to a large degree counterbalanced by the special opportunities we have considered. The Indian problem is before us for immediate settlement. It admits of no delay. Care for these few Indians now, Christianize them now, as we may, and the Indian becomes as the white man, and our missionary efforts will then be released for other fields.

In this special emergency we feel strongly the necessity laid on the Association for an enlargement of its administrative force. Since the death of our lamented brother, Secretary Powell, the force at the New York office of the Association has been short-handed. We hope that the earnest efforts which are being made by the Executive Committee to find a suitable person to become another Secretary of the Association may be at once successful. An emergency is upon us, and we say this with the conviction that the demands of the Indian work are now so imperative as to require a large portion of the time and thought of such a Secretary. It is a necessity that such a Secretary should frequently visit the field and be in constant communication with the workers.

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REPORT ON CHINESE WORK.

BY REV. E.A. STIMSON, D.D., CHAIRMAN.

This is the smallest and least conspicuous department of the work of the American Missionary Association, but the one that stands in the closest relation to ourselves, and the one also that can show the largest returns. The Chinese in America are few in number, but they are scattered everywhere, as if God intended in them to put the spirit of our churches to a crucial test, and, where that test is endured, to give to his servants a prompt reward and an unanswerable confirmation of his promises and of their faith.

These strange little men from "the land of Sinim," mysterious, silent, capable, incredibly industrious, money-making, with their pig-tails and their felt shoes, their "pidgin English" and their unintelligible "turkey tracks," their wooden countenance and their "bias eyes," their opium, and their "ways that are dark," who, in spite of restrictive laws and brutal personal treatment, are filtering in everywhere, until they may be seen crouched in the corner of any street car, and are a familiar object in the village street--why are they here? here just now and here so persistently? It is no mighty immigration of men, such as De Tocqueville liked to dwell upon. It is no conquering host, no familiar immigration. Whatever may once have been the attractive force of the California gold fields, washing soiled linen can hardly be regarded as satisfying a national instinct, or thumping through the long hours of the night upon an ironing table a soul-filling amusement. Much may be said of "the golden fleece," but these are no modern Argonauts. They are money-making as our friends the Jews, but no "high emprise" or "grand endeavor" fires their calm pulse, and much as has been written of the coolie system and the "Six Companies," nothing has been adduced which seems adequate to explain the movement.

The fact is, God is in it. He is crowding these heathen upon our churches in these missionary days of an opening world, first of all to prove our Christianity. Do we believe that all men are brothers? Do we believe that the Holy Ghost who renewed our hearts can renew these? Do we believe that the Lord who died for us, died for the world? Do we believe--not that the world--but that this particular heathen as he stands before us in his blue blouse, or sits at our side with his reading-book, is as dear to our heavenly Father as you and I are? Do we believe that we are to go to him with the gospel to find a way for the truth into his heart, to bear his burdens, to win him by love, and that without him we ourselves can not be made perfect? Do we believe, in short, that God has brought him here to our door that we might learn that if we have not a religion that will save, and will make us eager to have it save a Chinaman, we have not a religion that will save ourselves?

Seven hundred and fifty of these men already members of the churches connected with our mission on the Pacific Coast! and who will say how many more on the rolls of our churches from St. Louis to Boston! What are these Chinese converts, the fruitage of our Sunday-schools and prayer-meetings, our personal labor, but God's blessed seal set upon our Christian faith! Here is the evidence. Ours is the conquering faith of the world. It will save every man, for it has saved these men, no less than you and me.

But this is not all. China's day has come. We hear from beyond the sea of the new railway, the awful floods, the burning of the "Altar of Heaven," and the strange stirrings of the mind of that mighty people, the oldest, and judged by its persistent life, the strongest now on the globe. Merchants tell us of its limitless trade: diplomatists speak of its astuteness and of its new navy, second only to that of England; scholars wonder at a nation of heathen with whom learning determines rank, and where the "boss" and the fixer of elections are unknown. Missionaries write of the throngs that gather in strange cities to hear them preach, of the new gentleness and courtesy everywhere shown them, and of the increasing number of young people pressing into the mission schools.

In the midst of all this, when the Lord's voice is heard calling us to lift up our eyes and look on the fields now white for the harvest, comes word from our solitary watchman upon the watch-tower in Hong-Kong that when he returned to his post, as he did last year, perplexed and down-hearted, because not one Christian in all America heeded his call and went with him to his field, to his surprise and joy the Lord has been preparing his own servants in the person of Chinese emigrants coming home from America, bringing with them not money only and knowledge of the wide world, but the new-found faith; graduates of laundries, but also of our Sunday-schools, members of our churches, filled with an eager spirit to tell their parents, their brethren, their neighbors, of Jesus Christ. Ah, dear friends, God's ways are not as our ways. Let us not be slow to catch his thought and walk where he leads.

Here, then, is the call to us. Begin with the Chinaman at your door. Recognize that the Lord Jesus stands before you in him. You prove your own faith; you "do it unto" your Lord; you forward the plan of God when you take him by the hand and gently entreat him for Christ.

For the same reason you will give your money to support the work of this Association. No work has been more devoted, more upheld by prayer, more Christlike, or, we may add, more deservedly successful than that under the lead of our representative, Dr. Pond, on the Pacific Coast. He has already surrounded himself with a band of trained Christian converts, who would be a joy in any field, and who are making themselves felt for good far and wide. Their influence reaches to Chicago, St. Louis, and even Boston and New York. It is ours to see that the Christian city they find here is not less Christlike than that which met them when they landed on our shores, and that the hoodlum of our Eastern cities no more represents the spirit of our churches than does he of San Francisco and of Oakland. Let us be careful to show that our hand will be as promptly raised to protect the helpless Chinaman from insult on the street as it will be to lead his soul to Christ. Let us insist upon it, as Americans and as Christians, that no distinction of race or of color shall stand between any man and his rights, either in the State or in the Church. Then may we hope that all--white and black, Chinaman and American--will care less for rights and more for duties, and, in the joy of a true brotherhood, will labor together to bring in the day of the Lord. In any case, let us, with all our multiform machinery, our conventions, our societies, our churches, be not so busy "saving souls" that we have not care to save men and women.

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REPORT OF THE FINANCE COMMITTEE.

BY F.J. LAMB, ESQ., CHAIRMAN.

Your committee beg leave to report that they have had under consideration the matters committed to them. They have been attended by your Treasurer, and they have examined his reports submitted, particularly the detailed statement of receipts and expenditures for the year closed; also statement of trust funds of the Association; also statement of resources and liabilities, and of the income of the Daniel Hand Educational Fund for the same period. These statements come to us duly vouched for by the standing committee of auditors elected by the Association. A summarized statement of receipts and expenditures has been printed and distributed at this meeting, which accords with the detailed report. Other reports show that the invested funds of the Association, aside from the Daniel Hand Fund, are $230,875.78, being $500 more than in the previous year. From the statement of resources and liabilities, we find that the various colleges, schools, stations, buildings, and property constituting what may be termed the plant of the Association, amount, at their estimated value, to $745,849. This is a large sum, but the investment yields no pecuniary return to the Association. It represents the fixed property with which the Association carries on its work, and the figures may serve in some measure to apprise us of the magnitude of the work being carried on by the Association.

The Daniel Hand Fund is a separate and distinct trust, and its income cannot be used for the general work of the Association, and may demand some further notice before this report is closed. The general condition of the fund is found on the printed abstract already mentioned.

We find the system of keeping the accounts clear, convenient, and well adapted to exhibit from month to month the exact pecuniary condition of the Association, and the restrictions upon drawing money from the treasury well calculated to insure safety in that respect, and we find the management of the Treasurer's accounts and office in all details satisfactory and deserving our commendation. Comparing the gifts and work of the Association for the last year just closed with the previous year, and the recommendations of the Finance Committee a year ago, we find that the year 1888 closed with a deficit of over $5,000, that the amount of receipts for that year had been $320,953.42; that the Finance Committee then recommended that the friends of the Association should raise for the year $375,000 for its current expenditures. It is a source of great gratification to find that this recommendation has been nobly met, and $376,216.88 have been received during the year just closed, an increase of over $55,000; that the deficit of the former year has been supplied, and that the Association commences the current year with a fund in the treasury of $4,471.67. This we deem substantial indorsement of the Association and its work, by the churches, Sunday-schools, missionary societies and its individual friends. This report might stop here with congratulations for the prosperous year just closed, but the duties so well done, and work so well performed, must simply furnish the Association a standing place and vantage ground for a greater work on its part, and grounds for greater sacrifices and gifts by its friends for the year to come.

The National Council, representing the Congregational churches of the whole nation, lately in session at Worcester, by a unanimous vote recommended that the churches and friends of the work of this Association raise for it for current expenditures for the year now commenced the sum of $500,000. Is this magnificent sum too much to ask for the year now auspiciously begun? Happily for your committee, we are saved the necessity of elaborate or studied examination of the needs of the work that has been done by the papers read and to be printed and addresses delivered from the platform during the meetings up to this time. You are thus informed more fully than we could hope to inform you what these needs are and their urgency. But we may say that of the 8,000,000 Negroes in the South it is estimated only 2,000,000 can read and write. Add to these the millions of poor whites in the mountains and the red men of the West and the Chinese in our land, and we are fully justified in asserting that the work of this Association equals in magnitude any work of the church, and involves issues of Christianity, and patriotism touched by no other work of our age. It is estimated by the officers of the Association that through its schools and colleges and the teachers furnished by them, who are instructing the children in the South more or less every year, perhaps 175,000 are being reached and instructed. Assuming that as many are reached by other missionary and benevolent societies, we see the tremendous need that can not be ignored. This burden is laid peculiarly and urgently on this society and its contributing friends. Can we meet this duty with less than $500,000 for the current year? Your committee say, No. Perhaps you will be ready to acquiesce. But let us see what this means. It means that every living donor who contributed last year must increase his contribution 50 per cent., or the number of donors must be largely increased. A large amount was received last year from estates and legacies, namely, $114,020.41. This resource is a variable quantity. The Association can not _depend_ on any increase from this source. Its confidence must be in the living, who can give if they will.

Your Committee deem it proper to call more particular attention to the magnificent gift of Daniel Hand to the Association. It is quite likely that some may suppose, and some may have measured their gifts last year in the belief, that the income of this fund was applicable to pay current expenses of the Association. But this is not so. The Daniel Hand Fund is appropriated to special work, which, although connected generally with the work of the Association, is yet not a part of that ordinary work for which this fund we recommend to be raised is to be expended. Hence all friends of the Association must make and measure their gifts to it understanding that the sum we propose must be raised without any aid from the income from that million dollars constituting one of the grandest gifts of our time. Shall this $500,000 for the current work of the Association for 1889 be furnished to it? This is God's work. The churches here represented and the friends of the Association have the money. It can not be put to any nobler Christian use; the needs demand it, and we recommend that $500,000 be raised for the Association for its current work for the year now begun.

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REPORT ON SECRETARY STRIEBY'S PAPER.

BY REV. G.B. WILLCOX, D.D., CHAIRMAN.

The paper by Dr. Strieby impresses your committee as an admirably comprehensive and discriminating statement of the policy and work of the Association. As to the reconstruction of our educational and missionary societies, to the suggestion of which much of the paper calls attention, and from which he dissents, we should do well to make haste slowly. Some time in the future it may become practicable. But we discover no finger of Providence pointing toward it at present.

If the thought were to reduce our societies to which these interests are intrusted to two, calling for but two annual collections where we now have three or four, it needs no prophet to foresee the effect of that on the amounts collected. If the suggestion is of the reconstruction, not of the societies, but only of the work--if it proposes that our educational and missionary enterprises be so divided that no one society shall to any extent conduct both--it has certainly an attractive look.