THEN AND NOW.
REV. J. E. ROY, D. D., FIELD SUPERINTENDENT.
Then—in October, 1860—as the newly-appointed District Secretary for the A. M. A., I attended its fourteenth annual meeting, in pastor M. E. Strieby’s church at Syracuse. It was an occasion of congratulation that the receipts for that year had come up to $56,000—$5,000 more than for the preceding, and $2,000 more than for any previous year. There had been sixty missionary laborers in foreign lands, and 112 in our own country, the most of whom were in the West, and forty of them in Illinois. The churches aided numbered 140, to which had been added 989 members, of whom 659 came by profession of faith. Twenty-five revivals were reported. In the South, North Carolina had one missionary and Kentucky had four, all of whom were engaged in caring for little churches among the white people. In a year and a half the war came on, and our missionaries were driven out of the South. The American Home Missionary Society had cleared itself, the first of all the national societies, from complicity with slaveholding, and so the missionary churches of the A. M. A. at the North and the District Secretary were transferred to the old society.
Now—after sixteen and a half years—I find myself, by the clearest drift of Providence, back in the service of the Association. At its anniversary of 1859, in Chicago, there was a discussion as to what should come of the A. M. A. when all the societies and churches should have reached the anti-slavery standard. Some held that the Association was only a tug to help those noble crafts out to sea. President Blanchard said, “Yes, a tug; but when she has got them all over the bar we will change her into a frigate, to course up and down all the Southern waters.” Last fall, the Association came back to Syracuse to hold its thirtieth anniversary, and, sure enough, the tug had come in as a frigate, with report of engagements all over the South. And so it had been running for the last twelve years. The Treasurer’s report ran up to $264,709. Instead of the 112 white churches North, are shown 59 churches among the ex-slaves; also 7 chartered institutions, 14 high and normal schools, with 10,000 scholars, and with 100,000 pupils reached by their teachers. The Indian work abides; the Chinese has come on. The scheme for evangelizing Africa, by using the Christianized freedmen, is opening into proportions immensely beyond the conception of its early movers.
Then—its constituents were individuals, and churches of the more pronounced abolition sort. Now—since the National Council at Boston—the Association has been recognized as the agency of the Congregational churches for doing their work among “the three despised races.” The old adherents, developed into generous giving by the necessities of their enterprise, abide with the enthusiasm of veterans; while now the mass of our people acknowledge themselves under just as much obligation as they to use this organization in its peculiar sphere of Christianization at home and abroad. They find it by Providence marvelously developed and fitted to its work—tested, toughened and trusted. They hear it said from without, that our body of churches is doing more and better work among the freedmen than any other. They find that the old anti-slavery education in our families had prepared a multitude of our cultured and consecrated young people to enter this work as soon as the way was open, even at a salary little above the nominal rate. And so they find this charge laid upon them and readily accept the obligation, grateful for the opportunity.
In coming back to this service, I feel that I am only shifting from the right to the left wing of the home missionary army. No man can go beyond me in appreciation of the sublime movement represented by the American Home Missionary Society. But in this other department I find that most of the same arguments are to be used. Do we call for the Christianizing of the people of our country? Here are millions of them at the South in need of that process. Do we plead for the saving of our country from the spiritual despotism of Rome? The Jesuits, using hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly, are scheming to Romanize the congenial material found in the ex-slaves. Do we appeal in behalf of the political interests of our country? Here are 1,000,000 black voters who cannot read. Then by their side, only lower down in the social scale, are 1,100,000 white voters who also cannot read the ballots they are to cast; and the conviction is now gaining ground that the most effectual, if not the only way, to lift up that class is to put under them the leverage of the educated negro. Do we use that grandest argument—the salvation of our country for the sake of the salvation of the world? Here in our own land is looming up the most potent agency for the evangelization of Africa. That despoiled continent may yet say to her despoilers, “Ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good.”
The A. H. M. S., true to its charter as a national institution, as soon as war had battered down the walls that were in its way, sought, with the Philip of its evangelism, to go towards the South. It explored the chief cities and centres of that region, and was entering devotedly upon that part of the field. It has kept pressing every hopeful opening. It will still be true to its national idea and do all it may be allowed to do there. None feel more keenly than do its chief officers the chagrin at the few opportunities afforded and the failure in so many of them. They have done only their duty in making the costly experiments. And now the apostolic spirit of our Congregational churches seems to say to the white people of the South, “Seeing ye count yourselves unworthy of these good things, lo, we turn to the freedmen.”
If, in some distant part of the globe, a people had just been discovered, numbering 5,000,000 souls, speaking our own language, hungering for our ideas, our civilization and our Christianity, it would thrill the Christian world to go in at once and possess that land for Christ. That thing we may do in our own country, under our own flag. And some of us who now, with our years, could not pass muster to go and cope with a foreign language, have yet not a few years left in which we may do an essentially foreign missionary work in our own language, in that tongue, which, more than any other spoken by man, is freighted with the associations and the spirit of the Gospel of the Crucified One.