American Missionary Association.
This is the Annual Meeting number of The Missionary. It is twice the usual size, and more than twice the usual value. Addresses omitted for lack of space will appear in subsequent numbers. Dr. Behrends’s sermon will be printed in the Annual Report.
The Portland Meeting was one of the best in the history of the Association. The intellectual and spiritual power of all the sessions was marked and sustained throughout. The attendance was large. The churches provided right royally for those who attended. The ministers and those associated with them worked night and day. They anticipated every want. They made themselves the servants of all. We cannot thank them as we ought. We cannot reward them as they deserve. They have done the cause a noble service.
An enthusiastic, profitable, inspiring meeting was anticipated, and that expectation was more than fulfilled. There was no debt to mourn over, and no question of administration to dispute about. The one object in coming together was to get a bird’s-eye view of the field, and to crystalize the aroused enthusiasm in the form of increased contributions, exertions and prayers for the society’s work.
Never did the magnitude of its field and the complex character of its labors appear in such startling lines. Either one of the four principal departments of labor demands the money and the force which is distributed among all. But, in the providence of God, this society is called upon to prosecute this fourfold work. It cannot abandon a single field, and it must not be asked to. It can do in the next five years a work for Christianity and for Congregationalism in the South and West which will tell on the coming century. As Christians, and as Congregational Christians, we must see that it be not obliged to pinch its workers, and to turn away from promising openings in order to keep free from debt the coming year.
In two respects the deliberations are likely to issue in action which will affect the other societies as well. The strong sentiment in favor of a consolidation of the missionary publications will probably take form in some definite action ere long, and the frequent and prolonged laments over the scanty gifts of Christians for missionary operations indicate a determined effort on the part of pastors and leaders to induce a revival of giving.
The American Missionary Association has a united constituency at its back, and a boundless field before its face. In the solving of the problems which confront American Christianity, it is to have a glorious share.
The Congregationalist.
Rev. Dr. Roy, our Western District Secretary, has secured a number of stereopticon-views illustrative of our work in all its departments. By aid of the stereopticon he tells his story in a way that keeps both eyes and ears of his audience engaged. The venture is highly praised. The overflow meeting, Wednesday evening, in Portland, were treated to a part of the lecture and exhibition. People who say missionary meetings are dull, make themselves conspicuously scarce when Dr. Roy comes round.
Now is a good time to induce our friends, not subscribers, to subscribe for The American Missionary. With January a new volume of the magazine begins. The price is only 50 cents. The reading matter will be found interesting and profitable. There is a prejudice against missionary literature. It is unjust. Will our friends aid us by trying to destroy that prejudice? We cannot offer premiums to induce formation of clubs. It is a missionary magazine that we publish. We invite missionary effort to enlarge its paying circulation.
That word paying makes us think. We have a large number of life members, to all of whom we send The Missionary free. We also send it to pastors and Sunday-school superintendents of contributing churches free. By so doing we do not mean to debar them from the privilege of paying. Many of these, knowing that they will receive the magazine anyway, put their subscription into their annual donations. Better send the subscriptions separately. It would enable us, by entering the subscriptions upon our books where they belong, to lower the expense of publication. Of course, in the result it is as broad as it is long. We have so much receipts and so much expenses, but it is well to give credit where credit is due, and our magazine should have its credits acknowledged. Where subscriptions are put in with the general contribution, they go into the general treasury. They do not appear in the specific magazine account, and we have no means of knowing exactly what the magazine costs the general treasury. It is very certain it costs no where near what we are obliged to report. We respectfully ask the attention of our friends to this point.
A pastor writes us: “If pastors would take a little pains to have The American Missionary sent to carefully selected persons in their communities, it would bring large returns, I am sure.” This is a very important statement, if true. We believe it is true. What have pastors to say about it? They are most earnestly requested to express their opinions. The question is open.
This is the way the editor of a colored religious paper in the South puts it to the ministers:
“If the Lord called you to preach, he also calls you to subscribe for our paper, so that you may be cut and qualified to preach. It is just so, and you had better believe it. Send in your money.”
And then he goes for delinquents after this fashion:
“How can you call yourself honest while you are indebted for your paper? The Lord will not hold you guiltless unless you pay what you owe. Pay up! Pay up!! Pay up!!!”
We hasten to add, we were not thinking of subscriptions for The American Missionary when we made the above clippings.
The special attention of pastors is called to the resolution presented by the Committee on Secretary Powell’s paper and adopted by the Annual Meeting. Will they please see to it that this resolution is brought to the notice of the local conferences with which they are connected. Nothing goes in this world unless there are earnest souls behind it pushing. If that resolution is translated into action by all the local conferences, it will bring thousands of dollars into our treasury.
The Georgia Legislature has adjourned and gone home. The Chain-Gang Bill of the House was too barbarous for the Senate to follow. The more refined, though not less cruel Bill of the Senate, the House would not accept. A Committee of Conference failed to find ground for common standing. Thus it was at the time of adjournment. Pending, however, these considerations, another Bill was passed which has taken from Atlanta University the State appropriation of $8,000, and this is all the legislation enacted on the subject.
Governor Gordon, of Georgia, has been making political speeches in Ohio. Of course he had a good deal to say about the colored people, and as might be expected he told his Northern audiences that the charges about their being oppressed at the South were all false. In this opinion the colored people do not agree with the Governor. They assert the opposite with vehemence and persistence. The man who lays on the lash affirms that the strokes do not hurt. The poor victim cries out in pain; but we must not believe the victim. Oh, no! He is merely crying for political effect. Indeed, he is not being whipped at all. He only imagines it, or he has been worked up by Northern emissaries to make all this outcry about nothing! The testimony of the colored people is against the Governor. The Legislation of his own State, with its story of colored code laws, political disability laws, and Glenn Bills, is against him. The inexpressibly infamous Penitentiary system of his State, which, if the victims of its inhuman cruelties were white as they are colored people, would not be tolerated for a moment, is against him. Northern people read and think. Up this way, assertions do not stand against facts.