THE CALL TO GO FORWARD.
We thank our friends for their noble efforts to conquer the Debt. As we feared, however, the help thus given has diminished the supplies for our regular and pressing work. We have wrought with only one hand on the work and with the other held a weapon. But now that the debt is well nigh vanquished, we must gird ourselves not merely to repair the neglected gaps, but to push forward along the whole length of the wall.
THE DEBT PROVIDED FOR.
Relying upon the payment of the money pledged, our actual indebtedness is reduced to only $6,440. Against this amount our Executive Committee has set apart our remaining Iowa lands, which at a low valuation fully balance it, as a sinking fund, to be held for this purpose only. The debt is thus provided for, and we have no more pleas to urge for its extinction,—save as we suggest for this last time, there is a noble opportunity just now for some generous friend to step in and claim the honor of giving the finishing stroke to this Goliath, so setting free those lands again to aid our current work. We praise the Lord that we can now turn from this accomplished effort to other
DEFERRED AND URGENT WORK.
The debt effort has enforced an economy in field work that has been rigid—nay, hindering. For example, one of our higher institutions has become so full that while it has accommodations for only 40 girls it has 60 in attendance, and one of the recitations must be held in a bed-room. Another instance is found in one of the brightest towns in Georgia, where we have planted a church and opened a school. The place is so near our Atlanta University that its pupils can readily supply it with both teaching and preaching force; but for the lack of a few hundred dollars to erect a cheap, and yet adequate building for school and church, both are hindered in growth and usefulness, and if the means be not soon furnished, might as well be abandoned.
Our industrial schools suffer for want of funds. The colored students are so poor that unless aid can in small amounts be furnished them, either by facilities for work or by help in money, many of them must abandon the effort for an education. These items as to school and church work are but samples of what come to us from all parts of the field. But there are other calls of special importance. No State in the South is growing more rapidly than Texas. A generous friend of the colored race has purchased an eligible lot of eight acres in Austin, Texas, and given it to us as the site of a colored institution. He and other friends have added gifts amounting to nearly $10,000, towards the erection of a substantial building. We shall begin the structure this spring, but will only enclose it, unless the means are furnished to complete it. We will make no debt. We hope—nay, we plead—that the money may be speedily forthcoming to finish this building and prepare it for immediate use.
The noble offer of Mr. Arthington, of Leeds, England, to which we call attention below, opens another avenue for the efforts of the Freedmen in the Evangelization of the land of their fathers. The proposed mission lies in tropical Africa, and is desolated by the slave trade. It thus appeals to our deepest sympathies as the life-long opponents of slavery, and to the millions from whom we shall select the missionaries who were themselves its victims.
In view of these facts, we press our appeal on the hearts of our friends. Let us go forward in the work so well begun, and let us enter the new fields opened to us in the providence of God. We ask not merely for special gifts for special objects, but also for the regular work so well in hand, and needing so greatly the means of enlargement.