OUR OPPORTUNITY.
We find it in Kentucky. Our Executive Committee recently sent their Field Superintendent to that State for a bit of inspection. As a sample of opportunity we refer to the deeply interesting article in this number from President E. H. Fairchild. The A. M. A. has taken up that school and has assumed the support for six months of Miss M. R. Barton, a student of Berea, from Illinois. That school-house, which is the only one in Jackson County that has windows in it, will give out a good deal of light among those mountain people. At Cabin Creek, our old ante-bellum battleground, in the foot-hill country, the people are building an “Academy,” with the money subscribed on the condition that there shall be no respect of color. The A. M. A. has been asked to lend there a helping hand. At Williamsburg, the county seat of Whitley County, a town sixty years old, where a church has never yet been finished, though three have rotted down during the process of building, Rev. A. A. Myers has returned to his old A. M. A. work, and has inspired the people to build a church edifice 40×60. He works with his own hands by the side of the citizens. He gets the base-ball club to give an hour a day to the digging and rolling of stone for the foundation. The First Congregational Church has been organized, and now the same people are bent upon getting up a high school, having turned to this Association for help, which will be gladly rendered, negotiation being already on foot to secure the teachers, who the citizens say must come from north of Mason and Dixon’s line. This town, with fine water power and rafting facilities on the Cumberland, has already attracted several mills and wood-work factories, one of which is to make oars for the market in Europe. The railway that is to cross the mountains to Knoxville will soon reach this place. Out of the mountain country still further back of this, it is said, went Dick Yates to be the War Governor of Illinois, and also its present Executive, Governor Cullom, and other notabilities. At another county seat, which can scarcely be reached on wheels—horseback being the almost exclusive mode or travel; Mr. Myers and his wife having come seventy miles in this way to the recent Berea Commencement—at this place, Beattyville, the A. M. A. is to aid a recent colored graduate of Berea, O. W. Titus, to run his, the only colored school in the county, through the school year. In these mountains is our opportunity.
In the First Congregational Church of Atlanta, Ga., Pastor Kent having led his people into a system of giving, found that the first response for the American Board, with envelopes, brought in $68, from two hundred and two contributors. This was preceded by five missionary sermons, illustrated from a large missionary map, and by a rousing Sunday-school missionary concert. “Do you wonder we are jubilant?” exclaims the pastor. “It is interesting, but not at all surprising, to observe how giving promotes spirituality. Our prayer meetings are full of interest lately, and this increase seems to date from our recent determination to put our hands to the work of the Redeemer beyond our own confines. It is delightful. The idea of ‘the world for Christ,’ is getting hold of them, and I am confident it will prove the most direct route to self-support. Several have expressed to me the conviction that they must not only give for the world, but that they must do more for the home church.”
CHANGE OF ENVIRONMENT
BY PRESIDENT WM. W. PATTON, D.D.
This is a phrase with which the physical philosophers have made the public ear familiar. The advocates of Darwin’s views have assured us that all the variations of animal form may be explained by the relations of life to environment. “Natural selection,” as the key to the development of different species, denotes simply the effect which accompanying circumstances have upon life, health and the exercise of particular organs. “The survival of the fittest,” a companion phrase, means merely the fact that those forms of life endure which have the most favorable surroundings. And no one can doubt that in the chain of causation, which links things together in this world, there is a continual and most important interaction between all life and that which environs it.
But may we not ascend, in our reasoning, from animal life to human thought and character, and find the same law operative? As human health, form and vigor are found to vary with phenomena of climate, such as heat and cold, moisture and dryness, and with geographical location among mountains and valleys, or on broad plains, by the sea-coast or in the interior, so do we not notice that mental and moral development depend upon the outward circumstances amid which one lives? Our natures are plastic, and easily take the impress of objects with which we come continually in contact. Education is not merely that from books, but that also which is received from all manner of surrounding influences, as they exist in the home, in social intercourse and in the community at large. We see whole nations continue, century after century, on the same low level of barbarism, because no change occurs in their outward circumstances to bring new forces to act upon them. Our Indian tribes are an illustration. They live, out on the western plains, precisely as their fathers did for ages before them; and thus they will live so long as the modifying influence of civilization does not reach them, and bring a change of environment.
Let such a change occur, however, and a revolution takes place, whatever race may be involved. Even the most favored nations improve rapidly, when any external fact comes in, to change circumstances, and thus to alter the current of thought and the channel of action. Think how much of modern civilization is owing to three things, themselves external and mechanical, yet powerfully affecting mind by their incidental effects—the invention of gunpowder, of the mariner’s compass and of printing. But if, in addition to new inventions and industries, there be brought in schools and churches, to operate directly on mind and heart, the effect is like placing people in a new climate. It is, indeed, scarcely a figure of speech, when we sometimes speak of an intellectual and moral atmosphere—meaning thereby the totality of constant influences in a community, which affect opinion, modify character and control conduct. As we breathe the air, every moment of every day, thinking little of the fact, yet continually drawing in health or sickness, life or death, so are we unconsciously but most really influenced for good or evil by all that is going on around us; by public opinion, social customs, example of friends and neighbors, existing institutions, industries, amusements, studies, reading, conversation and religious exercises.
It is a slow process to raise an entire population or a numerous class of people; but much may be done rapidly, if we select some of the young of both sexes and change their environment, and so prepare them to introduce the leaven of improvement into the mass. Thus, allow colored children to grow up in communities of prevailing ignorance, superstition and immorality, where they live in miserable hovels, see only examples of coarseness and rudeness and hear only a negro dialect, and they will naturally be like their parents and the neighbors. Nor will it be sufficient merely to put spelling-books and readers into their hands. Their surroundings are still depressing and degrading. But send some of these youth away to such institutions of education as the Atlanta, Fisk and Howard Universities—in other words, make a total change of environment—and the effect is marvelous. In addition to having access to books, they go where the entire conception and standard of living is different and elevated; where religion is intelligent; where morals are pure; where manners are refined; where language is grammatical; where clothing is whole and neat; where public sentiment is on the right side of disputed questions. It is, indeed, breathing a new atmosphere, where every breath is health and life. I have watched, with great interest and satisfaction, the effect of these incidental influences, during my five years’ connection with Howard University. The revolution which will occur in a rough specimen of humanity from the interior plantation districts—dull of countenance, and rude in manners and in dress—would scarcely be credited. He finds himself in a new world on reaching Washington, and mingling with older students and the city population. New ideas of dress, speech and behavior come to him daily. Chapel exercises, prayer-meetings and the preaching on the Sabbath raise his religious conceptions. The novel sights along the streets stimulate as well as interest. The competition of fellow-students arouses ambition. He hears numerous celebrated public speakers, and, on Saturdays, goes to the Capitol, and listens to Congressional debates, sees eminent men, visits the Patent-Office, the Smithsonian, the National Museum and the Navy-Yard, gets an idea of our government and of politics, and thus is hourly absorbing valuable knowledge at every pore. Three or four years of such an environment make a very different man of him; and all his new ideas he carries back to his home, and thus becomes a power for good in the community.
Why will not Christian people appreciate these facts and amply sustain the American Missionary Association in its noble work of planting and strengthening the educational institutions which operate to change for the better the environment of the colored race in this country? All improvement must be by an influence from without, which shall quicken and inspire, which shall teach and guide; and there is no such influence comparable with that which comes from the combination of schools and churches.