PARAGRAPHS.
Mrs. Sarah Spees, who died at York, Nebraska, June 10th, was for many years one of our faithful workers among the Indians at Red Lake, Minn. Born in 1832, at Nelson, Ohio, she was converted at the age of fourteen years, and took at once strong and decided grounds for Christ. She was for a time a pupil of Mr. Sturgis, of Micronesia, who inspired her with missionary zeal. Soon after her marriage to the Rev. Francis Spees, she went with him to his missionary field among the Chippewas of Minnesota, bearing the severest privations. The journey required great fortitude. The Indians were in the rudest state of heathenism, and life itself was not secure. Amid scenes of danger and peril, she never shrank or wavered, or regretted that she had entered on so arduous a work. For three years, Mr. and Mrs. Spees labored among these people, and then left them for a quieter work at Tabor, Iowa. Ten years later, the way was opened for their return, and no sooner were they back among the red faces than a precious revival was enjoyed among the Government employees. In addition to her work as missionary, Mrs. Spees added the care of the Girl’s Boarding School. This was too great a tax upon her, and after a few years her strength gave out, and she was obliged to rest. For three years she waited by the river. Her pastor says that often, when visiting her in her feebleness, he found her wearied with the slow progress of the work of Christ on earth, and turning over in her mind how money could be raised for the spread of the Gospel. Her work well done, she has now entered upon the “rest that remaineth to the people of God.”
The Pastor of the Central Congregational Church of Brooklyn must take a great deal of solid satisfaction in the noble missionary work of its Sunday-school. Thoroughly imbued as he is with the mission spirit, he does not fail to impart something of it even to the lambs of his flock. This school is also blessed with one of the most earnest and successful Christian workers of the city as its superintendent, and, therefore, it is not surprising that, in addition to its own local missionary work, it supports, this year, four missionaries—one in the foreign field, and three among the Freedmen. We take great pleasure in referring to this school, whose example might be followed by many others with great benefit to the cause of missions, and, also, to the schools themselves.
If the person who sent us a card, post-marked “Hartford, Conn., June 24,” but without name or signature, will send us his name, we will gladly answer his inquiry.
A Burst of Patriotism.—On the Confederate Decoration Day, at Montgomery, Alabama, this year, the Memorial Address was delivered by Tennent Lomax, Esq., son of Gen. Lomax, who fell at the battle of Seven Pines, and whose monument, the principal one in the cemetery at the capital, received the special floral attentions of the day. We give an extract from the oration as printed in the local daily:
“Let us again to-day, standing upon this sacred spot, extend the hand of perfect reconciliation to our fellow citizens of the North, and ask them to clasp that hand in the true spirit of fraternal love, and to live with us as a band of brothers, united in one grand enterprise, the advancement of the honor, the interest, and the glory, of our common country; and to pray with us to almighty God to hasten the advent of that day, for it must surely come, when the star-spangled banner, ‘with not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured,’ shall float, not over ‘a country dissevered, discordant, belligerent,’ but over a union of co-equal States, re-united and bound together by a golden chain of unbroken friendship.”
At the meeting of the North Carolina Conference at Dudley, in May, one of the delegates, Deacon Stevens, of Beaufort, as he was preparing his pipe, heard the little children of his host remarking to themselves about the poison of tobacco, and the bad practice of using it. His thought was started. He went out to get away by himself for a smoke. He observed that the people about him were not indulging in that habit. At the end of the three days’ meeting, he searched about the audience room to see if there were any of the defilements of tobacco. He found none. That church, (Rev. D. Peebles, pastor,) and its Band of Hope eschew tobacco as well as all intoxicating drinks. The deacon went home convinced, as he said, that it was a “dirty, ugly, mean habit.” He joined in starting a Band of Hope, and told his experience as above narrated. “A little child shall lead them.” The little ones did not address him, but he thought that they intended their remarks for his benefit.
Mr. Spurgeon finds caste even in England. He says: “I know several half-sovereign people who would not think of asking a half-a-crown to tea, and there is a very strong aversion on the part of the half-crowns to the three-penny pieces; and, perhaps, a stronger aversion still on the part of the three-pennies to anything coppery. I have heard of a Christian minister in this country now, who, I am told, is humble and useful and talented, but there is not a congregation that will have him for its minister. He was nearly starved to death a few years ago, and the great sin he has committed is that he married a black wife. Now, you would not like a minister’s black wife; you know you would not. Up comes the caste feeling directly. We condemn it in the Hindoo, and here it comes in this country. We like a negro if he has been a slave, and we raise money for him when we would not for a white man. Now, I do not think a black man is any better than a white man, and I do not think that because a man is green he is at all superior. I believe that we are all pretty nearly equal, and that God made of one blood all nations on the face of the earth. But we want to hear these stories about caste in India that we may be taught to avoid it here; and if it were not for these follies, vanities, and prides of human nature, carried out to extremity abroad, we might not so readily see them to be evils in what is thought to be a mild form at home”.