A FINANCIAL APPEAL.
In the last number of the Missionary we stated that our receipts for the four months of the fiscal year to January 31 had been $83,893.39, or an advance over last year of only 19 per cent., instead of $100,000, or the advance of 23 per cent. asked for at the Annual Meeting.
Special calls for finishing new buildings, useless unless finished, necessary repairs on old buildings, etc., compelled us to make appropriations to the amount of the 23 per cent., but the falling off in anticipated receipts left a deficit of $16,107.
We had hoped that February would show an improvement, but, with regret, we are compelled to say that the receipts for that month are about $1,000 less than for February, 1881. We needed $125,000 to meet the total demands due February 28, and our receipts at that date are $100,045.97, a deficiency of about $25,000.
To us there is the choice between a debt and retrenchment; with our patrons, whose servants we are, is the opportunity of relief. We dare not make a debt; we are held to this by our pledge to our friends, and by our past bitter experience. Retrenchment is a distressing alternative. It will check the progress along the whole line of our work. The increased receipts of the past two years have given to the colored people a new impulse of hope and activity. New buildings have been erected, schools have been enlarged, new churches formed, and the spirit of self-help has been awakened in an unwonted degree in the schools and the churches. Retrenchment will check all this. Years may be required to regain it. Importunate calls for the continuance of the extended work crowd upon us, and denial must create discouragement, and this will be intensified by the disasters of the late floods. To a struggling people, such a drawback is an incalculable evil. In their behalf we appeal–yes, earnestly and importunately we appeal–to our friends to come forward to their aid promptly and generously.
We give place in this number of the Missionary to communications relating to a week’s work among the workers, which we believe will be of special interest to our readers.
Rev. A. E. Winship, of Somerville, Mass., who was the author of the first concert exercise in behalf of the American Missionary Association, has just prepared a second exercise on the same subject. The exercise can be had gratuitously, with Jubilee Songs to accompany it, on application to Rev. C. L. Woodworth, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass. We can assure Sunday-schools and churches that the exercise is one of the best, and that its use can hardly fail to awaken new interest in the concert.
On another page will be found a very interesting letter from Mr. Ladd, giving an account of a rebellion among the tribes in the vicinity of Khartoum that threatens to hinder his progress. A letter of more recent date says that he and Dr. Snow have relinquished the hope of reaching Fatiko at present, but that they have made arrangements with the Government for passage on one of its smaller steamers that will enable them to visit the region of the Sobat. Our explorers manifest both caution and courage, and we commend them to the prayers of God’s people.
A Northern man now resident in Florida, and always, both North and South, a warm friend of our work among the colored people, after reading in our notice of the Nashville Conference, the appeal for another Theological Seminary further South, gives the whole matter not only a most cordial, but practical, indorsement by pledging himself “to be one of ten or twenty or fifty to contribute $1,000 each to make a beginning in the good work.” With thanks to our friend for his liberality, we send forth the question, Where are the nine, the nineteen or the forty-nine?
“In those portions of the South where the plantations were largest, and the slaves the most numerous, they were very fond of burying their dead at night, and as near midnight as possible. In case of a funeral, they assembled from adjoining plantations in large numbers, provided with pine knots and pieces of fat pine called lightwood, which, when ignited, made a blaze compared with which our city torchlight processions are most sorry affairs. When all was in readiness, they lighted these torches, formed into a procession, and marched slowly to the distant grave, singing the most solemn music. Sometimes they sang hymns they had committed to memory, but oftener those more tender and plaintive, composed by themselves, that have since been introduced to the people of the North and of Europe as plantation melodies. The appearance of such a procession, winding through the fields and woods, as revealed by their flaming torches, marching slowly to the sound of their wild music, was weird and imposing to the highest degree.”–From “In the Brush,” by Rev. H. W. Pierson, D.D.
An old-time midnight slave funeral.
Two or three second-hand communion sets will be very gratefully received by as many of our needy young churches in the South. Churches at the North changing from their present to better will please take note.
There were twins in this country. One was slavery and the other polygamy. One is dead and the other is threatened as never before. This Association is proud of the part it took in the extinction of the former. It now extends its heartiest sympathies to those who are determined upon the destruction of the latter.
A postal from one of our schools at the South says: “We received recently a good-sized box of books and only a few of any value. Latin books of ancient date, German, French, Spanish, and Patent Office Reports are of no use to us. Please ask our friends not to send such, as they are only a bill of expense.” We have had, heretofore, to make statements of this sort in the Missionary. We are always thankful for the liberality of our friends, but we invoke their discretion in giving.
The Congregational Year Book, just issued by our British brethren, is a document well worthy of study on this side of the water. Besides the usual statistics of ministers and churches, it makes mention of 19 colleges, 31 new schools, 37 missionary and other societies, 41 Congregational institutions, 48 periodicals, published by Congregationalists. It also gives the statistics of 16 non-conformist institutions, one of which is a Ministers’ Seaside Home–a species of benevolence that would be invaluable to our missionary laborers at the South. The record of so much enterprise and work qualifies the reader to appreciate Dr. Henry Allon’s eloquent and powerful discourse on “The Church of the Future,” which is printed in the same volume.
The death of Edgar Ketchum, Esq., which occurred March 3, removes from us a philanthropist and Christian; it diminishes the rapidly thinning ranks of earnest Christian Abolitionists, and it takes one who had long been an officer of the American Missionary Association. Mr. Ketchum was admitted to the bar in 1834; in 1841 he was made Commissioner of Public Funds for this State; in 1861 he was appointed by President Lincoln Collector of Internal Revenue for the Ninth District of New York; and in 1867 he was made a Register in Bankruptcy by Chief-Justice Chase, which position he held till the time of his death. Mr. Ketchum early identified himself with the anti-slavery cause, and was ardent and constant in his endeavors to promote it. His house was fired by the rioters in 1863. He was for a long time President of the Board of Managers of the House of Refuge, on Randall’s Island, to whose interest he gave untiring and uncompensated time and attention. He was Treasurer of this Association from 1865 to 1879, a position of responsibility and supervision, but not of active duty, and without salary. He was also the legal counsellor of the Association for many years. Mr. Ketchum was a man of fine personal presence, of very genial manners, of active business habits, and a devoted Christian.