SAYINGS AT THE ANNUAL MEETING.
—Prof. Albert Salisbury: I do not approve the factory idea of industrial instruction.
—Dr. Withrow: Selfishness is as sure to destroy what it seeks to save as a cancer is to kill.
Never in this world was a monument made to memorialize a mere money-getter.
—Dr. Behrends: The color-line is only a section, and a very small section at that, of the race-line.
It is not in India alone that the existence of caste constitutes one of the most serious obstacles to the progress of the Gospel.
—Dr. Rankin: For Southern educational work this Society has put in millions by the side of the United States Government’s millions. The Government has given $5,000,000, this Society has given $5,000,000.
Westminster Abbey opened of its own accord to take the dust of David Livingstone. Why? Because he stretched himself on Africa, as the prophet stretched himself on the dead body of the widow’s son.
—Rev. A. H. Bradford: Florence Nightingale robbed war of half its terrors.
These Women’s Boards of Missions do more than all other means combined to keep alive the missionary spirit.
The women of our day have reversed the Apostolic injunction and are reading it, “Help those men.” We need to restore the original reading, “Help those women.”
—Rev. Isaac Hall: Speaking of the colored people’s futile efforts to solve the race problem, he said: First we thought we would go to Africa, but we couldn’t get ships enough: then we thought we would go to Kansas, but we couldn’t get cars enough; then, since we couldn’t get away, we decided we would stay; and now what are you going to do about it?
—Dr. Wm. Alvin Bartlett stigmatized the California law which forbade a Chinaman to live in an apartment with less than 500 cubic feet of air, and punished him with imprisonment in a cell with less than 200 feet of air.
The Chinese are not illiterate, but it is objected that they are too numerous. Why, there are hardly Chinamen enough in our country to be schoolmasters of our countrymen who cannot read and write.
But the Chinese worship their ancestors. Well, I would rather revere my ancestors than leave my children such pernicious doctrine as the anti-Chinese people teach. It is better to worship your ancestors than to damn your posterity.
—Ju Sing recognized the fact that all Americans are not hostile to Chinamen. “We know that there are some God’s people, and some devil’s people.”
—Nine young Chinamen, residents of Brooklyn and members of the Central Sunday-School, sang Gospel Hymns. They also sang “Pass me not, O Gentle Saviour,” done into Chinese, Jim Sing taking the solo.
—Secretary Powell: Now that slavery has gone, there must go with it blind-eyed prejudice and anti-Christian caste.
—Rev. J. C. Price, North Carolina: At the close of the war Canaan was not entered, as a recent decision of the Supreme Court tells us, but the Red Sea was crossed. Has the Negro grown? Then his chief object was to be in Gen. Sherman’s army; if not in it in the wake of it. Now he is looking about for property and education.
The colored people of Georgia alone have acquired a property of $6,000,000. In North Carolina from twelve to fifteen newspapers are edited, owned and controlled by colored people.
If God has made the Negro a man, he requires of him all the work of a man. Then let Christian people do all they can to qualify him for that work. He quotes the words of the Secretary: “The true solution of the Negro problem is not to change his color or his place of residence, but to change his character.”
—Sec. Strieby: This Society is not handicapped for this work except by its firm and well-known attitude against caste, and any other Society equally faithful on that subject would soon be equally handicapped.
—Pres. Bartlett claimed to represent an institution that from the very first has rejected the color line; a century ago it was educating the Indians, a half a century the Negro shared its privileges. Speaking of the Negro’s unquestioned piety he said: “He sees hell impending, heaven before him and the chariot swings low.”
—Dr. Gladden: No man has a right to engage in the work of governing who does not know what just government is. I protest against that kind of government.
From 1870 to 1880 the colored voters at the South increased 30 per cent.; their illiteracy increased only 20 per cent. The whites at the South are gaining in intelligence but little, the blacks splendidly. Most of the gain South is due to the education of the Negro.
How do you account for this gain? Did you ever hear of Fisk and Berea and Atlanta? The census tables have heard of them if you have not.
Any society that is as really and thoroughly Christian as this one will meet the same objection as this one.
—Dr. Taylor: “Bring an offering and come unto my courts.” In Scotland, where I was brought up, the first act of worship was to lay a piece of money on the table.
Sometimes a man assigns a debt so that what is due him is paid to another. So the Lord Jesus has assigned the debt, and we are to pay a large part of what we owe to him to the poor and needy; to the benighted and degraded; to the Indian, the Negro and the heathen that need the light.
—Dr. Dennen: Speaking of denominational antipathies, he was reminded of the brass oxen under the brazen laver standing with their rumps toward each other and their eyes directed away to their own selfish interests.