ECHOES OF THE ANNUAL MEETING.
Dr. Hartranft’s Sermon.—“Christ stood not for any one race, but for every race and every nationality, and whenever we take this cup we pledge ourselves to put aside all barriers of race, all barriers of nationality.”
Capt. Pratt.—“If you wish Indians to live like citizens, you must let them see how citizens live, must put them for a time in well-bred communities. The kind of citizens that make free use of the revolver, they know too much of.”
“I have seen a Western village with eighty-four graves in the grave-yard, and only one man died a natural death.”
Dr. Brastow.—“Diogenes with his lantern has been 250 years hunting among the blacks for a man. Let this Association do its work in one-fifth of that time, and Diogenes will put out his lantern and find his man without it.”
Prof. Cyrus Northrop.—“Your uneducated bad man can be no worse than a brute. Your educated bad man is a demon. Hence, the education we give the colored man must be Christian.”
“Votes are the impulses that every man gives to the ship of state in the direction of safety or of danger.”
Secretary Strieby.—“When diamonds were found in Africa they might, in their native condition, have been carried away by cart-loads without suspecting their value. It was only when they were cut and polished that men knew their true value. The worth of the colored people, these black diamonds, cannot be known until they are educated.”
Gen. Howard alluded to the Exposition at Atlanta where all kinds of wares illustrating the progress of the South are now on exhibition, and then felicitously introduced the President of Atlanta University as a Ware that was having a wonderful effect upon Southern progress.
When Mr. Wright, the colored man from Georgia, was reading his address, a venerable white man, more than eighty years of age, came forward, and resting his elbows upon the platform at the foot of the desk, with bowed head listened with rapt attention. The scene was most suggestive, and in the hands of artist Rogers would make an admirable companion group for “Uncle Tom’s School.”
Rev. L. Dickerman, referring to the treatment received by the Chinese on our Western coast, exclaimed in a tone of indignation: “I don’t blame them for wanting their bones sent home when they die.”
In reply to the complaint that the Chinese don’t assimilate with our people, he says: “Don’t assimilate? It takes two to assimilate. We stone them, beat them, shoot them, kill them, and then wonder they don’t send straight to China for their wives and children to come and enjoy this higher civilization.”
Prest. E. H. Fairchild said that he knew of no people who contribute for religious purposes so much in proportion to their means as the colored people South. “They almost universally take collections every Sunday, and often twice or three times a Sunday. There is no danger of their relapsing into heathenism.”
“This blessed Association, ... and the dear old American Board, and the Home Missionary Society, thank God, are one to-day, and all past bitterness is forgotten.”
Prest. E. H. Fairchild said that the anti-slavery revolution, despite the indifference of some churches, was essentially a religious movement, aided heartily by many right-minded men outside the church, but that the few noisy infidels who denounced the Bible and the church “had little more to do with the emancipation of the slaves than they now have with the education of the Freedmen.”
The Evening Gazette, of Worcester, says: The meeting of the American Missionary Association in this city, just ended, has been singularly practical and business-like. We have the authority of an old reporter for saying that he has rarely heard, where there was so much speaking, so little uttered that it was irrelevant or commonplace. It is a good gauge of the character and intelligence of the six or eight hundred strangers who have been called to the city during the week by this occasion.