American Missionary Association.
Among the list of our workers in the February number, two names were in some unaccountable way omitted. We hasten to supply them here—Mrs. H. B. Northrop is our missionary at New Orleans, La., and Rev. P. W. Young the pastor of our church at Byron, Ga.
Our lady teachers are also missionaries. The lady missionaries sent out by the Woman’s Boards often find their first and most effective means of access to the people in the schools they start for girls. Our one hundred and fifteen lady teachers are doing the work of Christian training along with that of school teaching, and are missionaries nearly as much as the seven ladies who devote themselves exclusively to direct mission work. They have a right to consider themselves as missionaries.
We notice in the list of officers of the First State Sunday-school Convention of Louisiana, the name of Rev. W. S. Alexander, President of Straight University and pastor of the Central Congregational Church of New Orleans, as one of the Vice-Presidents and also of the Executive Committee. He was chairman of the Committees of Credentials and on the Constitution. Dr. Roy was also present. Certainly there is no cause for a complaint of lack of recognition of those engaged in our work in the midst of such examples as these.
The question how to interest the Sunday-schools in missionary work has met with a new answer in the cordial reception and use of our Jubilee Concert Exercise. Five large editions have been exhausted, and now a second Exercise has been prepared (No. 2), in which a number of questions are to be answered by as many persons as there are letters in the alphabet, covering the main facts of our various work. Five Jubilee Songs are inserted to be sung by a choir, and place is left for short addresses. We commend it to our friends, who will receive as many copies as they need for use, gratuitously, by applying to Dist. Sec. Pike.
It is with profound sadness that we record the death of two of our most esteemed co-laborers in the administration of missionary work. The Rev. Charles P. Bush, D. D., for many years associated with all our churches, especially in the Middle States, as the District Secretary of the A. B. C. F. M., has not only enjoyed the confidence, but won the love, of pastors and people on every hand. We shall miss him greatly. The Rev. Robert L. Dashiell, D. D., the Secretary of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, has been a tower of strength not only to the broad missionary enterprises of that denomination, but, by his genial sympathy and wise counsels, has added to the efficiency and courage of his brethren in the work outside of his own organization.
We much regret to learn of the death of Miss Dell Safford, formerly a teacher under this Association. For six years, she labored faithfully and conscientiously among the Freedmen in Talladega and Selma, Ala. She was patient and untiring in her efforts for the real good of those under her instruction, and her interest in them did not flag even after she left the field, but showed itself especially in the care she exercised over one of her pupils, whom she had brought with her that he might receive the benefits of a Northern education. After leaving the service of this Society, she removed to Wisconsin. But a cold taken in the spring, when she was already overworked and worn, could not be controlled, and consumption followed. She died at the last very suddenly of hemorrhage.
One of the most hopeful signs of the times in the missionary field is seen in the increasing demand and the corresponding supply of missionary intelligence. The Missionary Herald has enlarged its space between the borders, and fills it with valuable matter. Its strong point is, as it has been, its full and valuable letters from the front. The Foreign Missionary of the Presbyterian Board has been of late renewing its youth, and coming up, until it has become the most suggestive and vivacious of all the periodicals of the kind which meet our eyes. But nowadays, when intelligent people read the doings of all the world every morning at their breakfast tables, and are no longer satisfied with the village or the county news, they must have something which shall give them broader views of the great field of missions, which is the world, than they can obtain from the organs of special societies.
To meet this want, the societies themselves are increasingly informing their constituency that there is other work being done than that they do themselves. “The work of other societies” is becoming a familiar heading. Even this, however, does not answer the full demands—and that the day has come for missionary periodicals, which are edited and circulated upon the same basis as those which deal with scientific or material progress, shows that the broader interests of the coming kingdom are taking more fully their appropriate place in the hearts and minds of Christian men and women. The Missionary Review, which has been published for more than two years from Princeton, New Jersey, and which as an unsparing critic of existing missionary societies, is adapted to promote great circumspection in those who administer them, is re-enforced in this general field by The Gospel in all Lands, edited by Rev. Albert B. Simpson, and published by Randolph, which will give itself to the broader aspects and principles of missionary work, and to a compilation of fresh intelligence from all quarters. We rejoice in all such methods for the diffusion of knowledge, and the stimulation of interest, in carrying out “the great commission.”
“Through the Light Continent” is a comely octavo in elegant type, from the London press, giving the observations of William Saunders on a tour taken through our country in 1877–8. In a chapter upon “Education in Atlanta,” after speaking of the Public Schools, he says: “One of the most interesting institutions of Atlanta is the University for the education of colored persons, under the superintendence of Professor Ware. The Atlanta University has 175 students (the last catalogue made them 244), half of whom pay the fees and cost of board. Many young negroes have worked, and saved up $200 or $300 in order to come to the University. It will thus be seen that the energy which the negroes are manifesting to obtain education is not confined to the ordinary work of the Board of Schools, but extends to the higher branches of learning. About 75 of the students are girls, and their progress is regarded as universally satisfactory.
Professor and Mrs. Ware, who have devoted their lives to this work with true missionary zeal, are now much cheered to find their labors recognized and encouraged in quarters from which persistent opposition was formerly experienced. When they came to Atlanta, any manifestation of regard for the blacks was looked upon as an act of hostility to the whites; but a great change has taken place in public opinion, and it is now generally felt that national advancement requires the elevation of the negro race, and those who undertake their education are no longer regarded with disfavor.
There are many societies in the Northern States for promoting numerous enterprises amongst the negroes. Before reaching Atlanta, I noticed a large crowd of negroes at one of the wayside stations, and found the occasion to be the leaving of a missionary, who had been working amongst them for two or three years, and was then changing his station. The respect and regard paid to him and to his wife were pleasant to see; the missionary was a most intelligent travelling companion, evidently devoted to his work in the genuine spirit of Christianity.”