THE FIGURES.

Donations. Legacies. Totals.
Oct. 1, 1884, to Aug. 31, 1885$183,654.91$37,651.83$221,306.74
Oct. 1, 1883, to Aug. 31, 1884177,382.2140,558.18217,940.39
————— ————— —————
Inc. $6,272.70Dec. $2,906.35Inc. $3,366.35

The published receipts in this Missionary bring us to the end of August. There was a slight gain as compared with last year, but not enough to materially alter the threatening aspects of a heavy debt. With the receipts of September our Treasurer will close his books for the year. As we are obliged to have the matter for our magazine in the hands of the printer before the middle of the month, we are not able at this writing to forecast what the result of the rally to obviate a debt may be. We remain firm in the conviction that our friends have the ability to prevent the debt, and that if they are roused to a sense of the necessity of its prevention, they will do it. We have endeavored to be faithful in keeping them informed of our needs. Many of them have responded with great liberality and some of them at great sacrifice. We thank them with all our heart. We wish we could spare them the pain of reading our continuous appeals, because we know it leads them to ask if they ought not to do more. This they ought not to do, but the fact that there are so many who have done nothing and so many who have done little, who might do more, and that if we are compelled to have a debt, and so to see our work suffer injury, it will be because of failure on the part of those who ought to help us—it is this fact that urges us, with a pressure we cannot resist, to keep on crying out for relief.

By the time this number of the Missionary is in the hands of its readers, there will still be left a few days of the month of September. In those few days what is lacking can be supplied. Let next Sunday be a red-letter day in the number of churches that wheel into line, and place themselves upon record as having during the year made a contribution to the American Missionary Association. We also request that church treasurers and executors will promptly forward to our Treasurer, H. W. Hubbard, Esq., such money as they may have on hand, and that individuals who prefer to send their gifts directly to the treasury will remit at their earliest convenience. If all will lend a hand, deliverance will come. God grant that our faith may not be in vain!

It would be wildly unreasonable to expect that all who attend the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the American Board at Boston should also come to the Thirty-ninth Anniversary of the American Missionary Association at Madison. It is not unreasonable, however, for us to ask that all will come who can. There are two weeks between the meetings. It will cost in time and money, but the good to be reaped and wrought far surpasses the cost. The Jubilee Anniversary of the dear old Mother of us all cannot fail to be a meeting of great spiritual power. A spirit of consecration will surely pervade it, and out of the consecration there must be born an enthusiasm that will tell for all missionary work both at home and abroad. Let the anniversary at Madison be an adjourned meeting of the anniversary at Boston. Why not? They are both to be held with a view to the same end—the Extension of Christ's Kingdom in the World.

It is important that those who purpose being at Madison should be on hand at the opening and remain to the close of all the sessions. An annual meeting of a great missionary society is of significance and value not only on account of the facts it brings out, but also on account of the inspiration it awakens. You may learn the facts by reading the reports, though even then you will not get them all, but you cannot catch the inspiration. To reap the full benefit of a meeting you must be in it and become a part of it. The mysterious power that God has put into the voice and gesture of a speaker, and into the movement of feeling that is present in an audience when, with one heart and mind, it sits in contemplation of some great theme, cannot be reported. That unreportable power is of priceless value in the strengthening and development of Christian character. Go to the anniversary. Be there at the beginning. Remain to the end. It will pay.

Racy and interesting, as well as strong and convincing, is the address of Rev. Dr. E. S. Atwood, which we print elsewhere. Dr. Atwood, at our request, represented the A. M. A. this year at the May Anniversaries in Boston. The experiment of having the different causes presented on Sunday in the churches, instead of during the week as heretofore, is the explanation of the time and the occasion of this address. Those who begin to read it will not be likely to stop until they have finished. Its perusal will prove an excellent appetizer for the Madison meeting.

When George W. Cable's now famous article, "The Freedman's Case in Equity," made its appearance in the Century magazine, it proved to be a veritable bomb-shell in the camp of the enemy. It exploded, and immediately there went up a cry from the wounded both long and loud, and far-extended as well, showing that the gun which threw it had been well aimed, and that the shot was an effective one. The newspapers of the South, with few exceptions, did not pretend to answer. They made feeble attempts at ridicule. Mr. Cable's shot must have carried away the heads of many of the editors, for they had surely lost them some way when they assailed Mr. Cable so fiercely in utter disregard of what his article really contained. If the editorials that appeared in the Southern papers, big and little, in annihilation of Mr. Cable and his pestiferous article could be gathered up and published, they would afford very amusing reading.

There were, however, a few who took up "The Freedman's Case in Equity" and set themselves to a serious and manly discussion of its positions. Meantime, Mr. Cable has been, laughingly, no doubt, looking at "the tempest in a teapot" which the small fry have created by their foamings and chokings from passion, while he has also been respectfully listening to those who have tried to meet him on the plane of fair discussion. He has been biding his time, waiting for the fury to boil itself out and for those who are really "foemen worthy of his steel" to speak their minds. His time has come to be heard from again, and in the September number of The Century, under the title, "The Silent South," he reviews his reviewers in a manner most masterful, in a style most luminous and in a spirit most kind, Christian and courteous.

We said at the time that his critics, while dealing vigorous blows, did not have reach enough to find him. They were simply beating the air. A perusal of "The Silent South" confirms what we said. There is actually no need for Mr. Cable to re-argue a single point that he made in his first paper. He is able to quote the words of his opponents in vindication of every claim he made. He drives them back with their own weapons. He has no occasion to defend. He is able to show at the very start that his assailants, instead of touching him, had only gotten themselves into trouble. To get themselves out is more than they are likely to be able to do, for their own words and the facts are against them.

With strange unanimity, these writers all cried out in respect to the equities for which Mr. Cable had been pleading, "Neither race wants them." Well, Mr. Cable retorts, where is the evidence? Bring on the witnesses. There are two parties interested here. What right has one party to affirm what the other party wants? Let the other party be heard from. White men say in the press, Neither race wants them, and the very mail that brings Mr. Cable the printed statement of white men brings him scores of letters from intelligent colored men, thanking him over and over again for the words he had written and the stand he had taken! The old habit of white men thinking for the slave, and planning for the slave and speaking for the slave has not yet been broken off. That was a civil right white men once had, but they should remember that it is a right which has departed from them for ever. The freedman has that right now to himself, and when white men say respecting "the equities," "Neither race wants them," the colored man respectfully answers back, "Gentlemen, we do our own thinking now; you are mistaken; your old habits blind your eyes and warp your judgment; we deny that you have any right to tell the world what we want and what we think. Mr. Cable is right, you are wrong."

Was ever a position in controversy more triumphantly carried?

We have not space to copy this splendid article. We wish that all the readers of the Missionary might secure it. Our friends down South will find, sooner or later, that truth and right are hard things to fight. They had better give it up. This striking out and hitting nothing, only to get a good, sound pummeling in return doesn't pay. It is a losing business that were well abandoned.

Our readers who study the receipts of the A. M. A. as they appear every month in the Missionary, will notice this month a frequent item, "Sale of Bullets." A good moral is pointed by what that phrase means. Atlanta, Ga., was, during the war, a fortified city. Sherman's army in its triumphant march to the sea occupied it. Some fighting was done in and around the city. The leaden missiles sunk into the earth-works and fell into the clayey soil, where they still remain in great numbers. Our Storrs school at Atlanta needed a kindergarten attachment. We had no money to appropriate for this worthy object, and so we said to the missionaries, We cannot help you, but perhaps you can interest friends to come to your relief. The plan of digging up these bullets and selling them was hit upon. An appeal was quietly made, and as a result there have been received $621.46. These bullets were once used by Uncle Sam's soldiers to help save the country; resurrected from the earth, they have been used a second time for the same purpose. When first used they represented the gospel of force; as now used they represent the gospel of love. Love will conquer, and in its conquest there will be neither pain nor death. We congratulate our Atlanta workers in so successfully turning these instruments of war into messengers of peace.