FINANCIAL.
The receipts in our treasury for the two months of the present fiscal year (Oct. and Nov.) are $29,258.57, as against $26,577.05 for the corresponding months of last year, showing an increase of $2,681.52, and are gratifying as a response to our appeal for enlargement, made at our annual meeting at Norwich. Never before was such an appeal of ours met in a more business-like way than at that meeting. There was no hasty vote calling for large sums of money the coming year, but a discriminating examination, and a strong setting forth in reports and addresses of the great need of enlargement. We have since ventured to suggest twenty-five per cent. of an advance over last year. This is indeed inadequate to the pressing and increasing claims made upon us by the wants of the field, but it will be a great relief. The advance as shown in these two months is but nine per cent. We are persuaded that a thoughtful purpose on the part of pastors, churches and individual friends will easily secure the larger percentage.
The story we publish in our children’s department, by Mrs. T. N. Chase, is worthy of a word of explanation. The account she gives of the Georgia colored school-teacher, her efforts for a school-house and for the education of her sister, is strictly true; but as Mrs. Chase wrote before Christmas, she was obliged to anticipate a little. The fact is, the girl never got the $300, which Mrs. Chase says, in a note to us, is needful for the school-house alone. We see no way out of the difficulty now, unless some good Christian mothers will send us the sum named. If they will do this, we will warrant there will be more than a large school of colored children who will believe that Mrs. Chase’s narrative is a very good one. And what would Mrs. Chase think to get $300 for her story?
President Fairchild of Berea, Ky., in a private letter, gives a very interesting account of a convention of the Young Men’s Christian Association at Bowling Green. Two Berea students, one white and the other colored, attended the meeting, and gave a report of the proceedings on their return. It appears that both were welcomed by the Association, while Mr. Titus, the colored man, was treated with marked attention, many taking pains to make his acquaintance. The feature of chief interest at the meeting was the discussion of questions relating to the religious education of the Freedmen. Mr. Titus was urged to assist in the organization of Christian Associations among the colored people in Louisiana. The tone of the meeting was exceedingly favorable. Pres. Fairchild concludes as follows: “A glorious time for work in the South is just before us.”
It is said that the tendency now is for the few to give largely, while the gifts of the churches, as such, are less. Sad, if true. The recent large gifts of the generous few are as gratifying as they are surprising. They are one of the hopeful signs of the substantial growth of Christian liberality and consecration. But if they are to be purchased by the drying up of the charities of the many, it is in the end no boon, for woe to the churches when they do not share in giving, even to the widow’s mite, for the spread of the Gospel. A piety that delegates its charities and self-sacrifices to the few will die. Such a state of affairs is like the Sahara of parching sands with a few green oases, as compared with the fertile and well cultivated lands where each spear of grass and blade of corn does its part towards the golden and abundant harvest.