GEORGIA.
A Struggling Church—A Growing Temperance Work—Hindrances.
REV. J. R. McLEAN, NO. 1 MILLER STATION.
The school is doing well. I have enrolled 67 now, and have larger scholars than at any time before. The Sunday-school is growing in numbers and also in interest, and its work has had great power over the people here for good.
The church has been pulling together quite well, and has raised towards the work here about $30. A number of the people are not able to do anything, for they need some one to help them to get bread. None have joined the church this year thus far; still I hope to have some come in before the year closes.
We have our house all ceiled inside, and now we are trying to get it painted. I do wish we could find some one to give us some singing books, both for Sunday-school and church. We have only three that we can use in worship. I like the “Songs of Devotion,” but then anything else will do if we can get that.
The Temperance Society is doing good, but there is room for it to do much more. At our meeting last Sabbath, five joined us. The band numbers now about 50. Some, as might be expected, have broken their pledges. I find it is those who are trained in our schools, and those only, that take hold of our principles.
O, if more could be done for the children, and for a larger number of them, there would be some hope for the race yet! What can be done for them?
The white people are doing nothing to help them, as I shall tell you when I get to it. But the old ones find it hard to leave off the habits of slavery, which have been going on so long that they have taken deep root, and how they are to be dug out I cannot tell. But will not our Heavenly Father overlook many of these wicked habits!
Our church grows slowly because we are trying all the time to get the people out of their old ways, which most of the people like best, and so they are held by the other churches.
The large rice planters are doing nothing for them, only to keep them on their farms and get all the work out of them they can, and pay them as little as possible for their work. How is this done?
By giving them great feasts on the Sabbath. At these feasts they have the colored people come into the big house (this means the white people’s house) and shout for them, as it is called here, but I call it dancing. They are given ginger snaps, rum and wine. This kind of a party, or feast, or shout, was given last Sunday (they are called by all these names). I am told that the colored people on a certain plantation ate two boxes of ginger snaps, and drank two gallons of wine and four gallons of rum. They have them on the Sabbath so as not to stop the work.
This is the way they hold them. I said in my haste last Sabbath, if the white man was to tell them that on the other side of Hell they could get as much rum and wine as they could get free, many of them would try to cross over. Many of them have given up all they have for it, and will go anywhere to get it. This is awful, but it is the truth. Our work will tell in the end in saving those that believe. Please excuse any rough expressions, but this is not half like it is. I am not able to tell just how the people do act here; still they are my people, and I must do all for them I can. Pray for me, that I may have courage to do my part of the work.
A Lady’s Sunday-School and Missionary Work.
MISS O. B. BABCOCK, MACON.
My infant class in Sunday-school has grown from five to forty-five since I came; and, as I visit all my scholars, it keeps me busy. Monday afternoons I give to practising music in the Sunday-school; Wednesday, we have our school prayer-meeting; Thursday, a mother’s meeting, for prayer and conversation. This last has always been an interesting feature in my labors among the poor, and I trust it will be so here. Friday evening, I have a meeting for Bible-reading and prayer in the cabins near by. The reading is greatly enjoyed by the people. Sunday evenings I usually spend in the same way. Saturday, at 2 P.M., I have the sewing-school, numbering seventy-five, and weekly increasing in numbers and interest. The mothers are delighted, and the children not less so. As the entire burden of the work rests on me, with no white help, you can see that my moments at home are all occupied with cutting and basting. I have finally succeeded in getting some colored teachers, and may, in time, have help in preparing work. I try to visit the homes of all the scholars, that I may know their condition and needs. This is one of the very best means of access to the people, and helps to fill up the Sunday-school with needy ones. I feel as much at home as if I had always lived here, and can go to any part of the city with perfect ease. I have visited Vineville, Unionville, East Macon, Tybee, Sandy Bottom, etc., the suburbs of the city.
There was one dear old colored aunty here who was sick for months, but always so tender and thoughtful of me that my visits were a comfort and even pleasure. She went home last week, after a blessed death, singing with her last breath: “I’se passed over Jordan! Hallelu! Hallelu!” I wouldn’t have believed that I should miss her as I do. I don’t find many like her.
I feel very grateful for the barrels that I have received; I have received one barrel from Boston, a cask and barrel from Newburyport, one from Wentworth, N. H., one from Chicago. I have written letters to nine different Sunday-schools, and keep up a constant correspondence with my own church and Sunday-school, also with the Ladies’ Society in it. This was at first a burden to me, but it becomes easier and more of a pleasure. I find I have made 150 calls during January, and though this is not a large number, still it implies a great many miles of walking. I often can make but one or two calls in half a day, the distances are so great and there is no way to ride. I have spent a great many hours in teaching children their A B C’s and reading to them. I carry primers with me and find plenty of teaching to do.
A Communion Season—District Meetings.
MISS E. W. DOUGLAS, McINTOSH, LIBERTY CO.
It was our Communion Sabbath and eleven united with the church, one by letter. Five were baptized, four by sprinkling, one by immersion. While a few went to the water to witness that ordinance, the many gathered in the church for a season of prayer, and I think that hour gave tone to the services of the day. I have seldom, if ever, seen so much quietness and seriousness in so large a gathering of this emotional people as there was that day. I refer to the greetings after the close of the service. There is usually much loud talking and laughing. The lesson of the morning hour was that they should not forget that the object of the Lord’s table was not to draw a crowd together to meet one another, but to meet the Lord and “remember” Him, and the chapter read and explained by the pastor when he returned from the water led our thoughts to the Crucified One. Three of those who united with the church professed conversion during the week of prayer.
As the members of this church are so widely scattered that it is difficult for the pastor to visit them often, they are arranged in seven districts, each having its “watchman,” whose duty it is to sustain district prayer-meetings and to report to the pastor any thing needing his attention. I have attended one of these district meetings, and hope to attend at least one every week.
Church and School must Work Together.
REV. S. E. LATHROP, MACON.
During the last session of the Georgia Conference at Savannah, a debate took place on the subject of the church and school work as of necessity going together in this Southern field, which impressed me deeply. It was mainly carried on by the young colored brethren, both ministers and laymen, and in matter and manner showed that they knew whereof they spoke, and were deeply impressed with its importance. Any person who may have doubted the vital necessity of the school to the church work here, would surely have been convinced by the earnest arguments of these brethren, most of whom came to the church through the educational department of the mission work.
Said one young preacher: “The school is the primary department of the church. It trains the children and youth to think, and hence to accept of a thoughtful religion like ours, instead of the mere shouting and emotional style to which the ignorant and untrained cling. The true religion is one which teaches us to love God and our neighbor supremely, and this can be done best by the intelligence which comes only through the school training.”
Another said: “Our people never had any mental training, or any encouragement to think for themselves, and did not know how, until the A. M. A. schools awakened these powers. We, as a race, are not naturally a reasoning people. We are too much governed by impulse, by emotion, by instinct, by passions, and too easily offended, with little self-control. Slavery was a very poor mental discipline, and when freedom came, there were many extravagant ideas and ignorant impulses that led the people to extremes. The utter lack of public schools for our race made us at first prize most highly the advantages offered so generously by the A. M. A. Afterward, as the slumbering intelligence slowly awoke, we saw not only the intrinsic value of education, but we were more able to appreciate the kindness which suggested the sending of these faithful teachers and missionaries. Gratitude prompted us, in many cases, to break away from the old superstitious churches, and growing enlightenment helps us to see more clearly the superior advantages of an intelligent religion. The consecrated teachers of the Association have many of them done grand missionary work, although very few of them are open to the charge of sectarianism. Congregationalism, by its broad, liberal, unsectarian policy of churches and schools, has done a vast amount of good to all the other denominations. They are being leavened more and more by true intelligence, and the ancient foundations of ignorance and hierarchy are slowly giving way. Upon their ruins shall arise more beautiful temples to God, more enlightened worship, more worthy conceptions of daily life and religious duty.”
Another speaker claimed that “The day-school brings about sympathy of the day scholars with the church and Sunday-school work. The religious exercises of the schools cause the impression that there is a soul as well as a brain to be trained. The knowledge that the teachers are universally engaged in Sunday-school work, by the very law of cause and effect, calls attention to that work also. The sympathy that always exists between the preacher and teachers, and the hearty interest in the children that is shown by the ministers, cause both parents and children to think that the work is all one, as it really is. New England ‘blossoms as the rose’ to-day, because the church and the school-house have always been built together, and in their mutual work are as inseparable as the Siamese twins. May the day hasten when it shall be so in the South.”
The young delegate from Atlanta said: “The first church of Atlanta is the outgrowth of the Storrs School, whose devoted teachers have always sought after the spiritual as well as the mental welfare of their scholars. They have been true missionaries and worthy co-laborers in the Gospel with the pastors of the church.”
A young preacher, who is also the successful teacher of the day-school in his parish, said that “The training of the school children to be punctual at the morning roll-call, teaches also the very necessary habit of punctuality at church, in which our people are so deficient. The promptness, the discipline of order, cleanliness, good behavior and attention, which is taught in school, has also a corresponding effect in the church services. If our people were educated and enlightened, perhaps the church could get on without the school; but in their ignorance they must be taught to think, before they can get a right idea of Bible religion. The intellect must go with the heart, preparing the way for the coming of the Lord. Superstition is still a formidable enemy in our church work, and nothing but sanctified intelligence will ever defeat that adversary.”
Said another delegate: “I came into the church through the night-school. I was working hard all day and could not attend day-school, but went at night and studied as well as I could. There I first heard of the Congregational church. I found by inquiry that it was a church which had been very active in the anti-slavery times, and believed in free speech, free schools, free churches and equal rights in church and state. That attracted me, and I inquired more, until finally God forgave my sins and I united with the church. I love more and more the freedom and fraternity I find, and I believe in the church, which makes so much of schools, and has educated so many of my people.”
Said another: “The church must go with the school, because education alone only sharpens the mind for greater mischief. In the very nature of things, every school teacher ought to be a true Christian, to exert a Christ-like influence in the school, to encourage pupils to attend church and Sunday-school. The teacher’s power is greater over scholars here than in the North.”
Dr. Roy spoke of the many mission Sunday-schools and churches which had sprung up around Talladega College, the result of labor by the Christian students. He also recalled the history of the mission schools in India, which, on account of some complaints, were at one time given up, to the great detriment of the missions.
This is but an outline of the remarks made upon this important subject, which would have cheered the hearts of all philanthropists to hear. The decorum and general manner of expression throughout would have done honor to the most dignified deliberative body.