OUR ROLL OF HONOR.
According to custom, we publish this month a list of our mission stations and the names of the missionaries. It furnishes a fruitful field in which to glean valuable information. A glance at it shows the magnitude of our work. There are 215 stations, in charge of 422 workers. Each station is a centre at which mission work is organized for all the region round about. To him who scans it carefully the list reveals the variety of the work. It is both evangelistic and educational. Church planting and building; Sunday-school work; primary, normal, industrial, collegiate and professional training, are all represented, because the people need to be instructed in everything secular, social and religious, that pertains to civilized life and well-ordered society.
If facts and incidents in the lives of individual missionaries and in the development of work at specified points are ascertained (consult back numbers of The American Missionary) and brought into the public meeting, interest cannot fail to be awakened; nor will the interest be evanescent; it will go home with the people; it will stay with them; it will secure a place in their thought and prayer; it will get into the contribution box; it will reach the field.
Some of the stations, by reason of special agencies, as, for example, Fisk University, have become well known; but for the greater part they are indefinitely thought of in the mass. The same is true of the missionaries. Only a few of them are widely known. Yet in their isolation, bearing obloquy and reproach for their work’s sake, misjudged as to their character and mission, even by Christian ministers and church members who keep aloof from their acquaintance and fellowship, it is natural that they should crave the expressed sympathy of those they represent. It would lighten their burdens and brighten their path to feel that they are known and remembered by name in the churches at home.
There is one thing to be noted which a mere study of the list does not reveal, and that is: our missionaries are a very happy band. Despite the discouragements and trials incident to their work, they are neither cast down nor discouraged. On this point their testimony is strong and continuous. They have the joy of their Lord’s presence and the sustaining power of His almighty grace. “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,” has become the gladsome song of their hearts.
They are happy, too, in the knowledge that they have so many friends and such generous supporters. The fact that the list of their names is so long proves to them that their work has taken a large hold upon the churches. The fact that contributions come from so many churches and individuals, in amount sufficient to maintain so great a work as the Association is carrying forward, is a demonstration that they have the love and hearty support of tens of thousands, some of whom make large sacrifices to contribute as they do. They know that there are thousands who eloquently plead their cause and defend their good name before the public, and on bended knee remember them and their work at the Throne of Grace.
They are happy, also, in the knowledge that they are loved and honored by those for whom they labor. Father Riggs was almost worshipped by the Indians who knew him. E. A. Ware is a sainted name that thousands of colored people, young and old, are ready to rise up and honor, and whose very mention is an inspiration in their hearing.
We recall to our readers words spoken by Prof. W. A. Crogman, himself a fine specimen of the Christian scholar and thinker such as his race is capable of producing under Christian training. We quote from an address he made two years ago Thanksgiving Day, before the Atlanta University, of which school he is a graduate: “If I were asked to-day what one thing since the close of the war has contributed most to the permanent prosperity of the South, I unhesitatingly answer, Christian charity. When the victorious army of the North was passing in review before President Johnson in the streets of Washington, another army, vastly inferior in numbers, imbued with a different spirit, and armed with no other weapons than the Bible and the spelling-book, was marching under the eye of God down into this very field from which Grant and Sherman had but recently withdrawn. Silently came they into the field. There was no heralding of their approach, no display. Hopefully came they into the field, notwithstanding they knew that to the majority of the people their presence would be obnoxious. They came with faith in God and love for man. They came, impelled by Christian duty and patriotism, to wage a new war against the more deadly enemies of the Republic—ignorance and vice. I am thankful to-day for the pen of Lincoln and for the sword of Grant, but more thankful, by far, for the patient ‘schoolma’am’ who taught the negro his letters and set a million of us to reading.”
Let our Roll of Honor be studied, and let its history and memory be made known among the churches. It is abundantly worthy, and in results will repay with rich reward.
“While practicing law a number of years ago,” says Judge Tourgee, “I had a peculiar will case. An old lady who was a slaveholder, dying, bequeathed her colored man, John, and her dusky maid, Jane, who sustained to each other the relation of husband and wife, to the trustees of the church, to be used as far as possible for the ‘glory of God.’ I was curious to know what course was taken, and upon investigation found that, after meditation and prayer, the pious trustees sold their living legacy at auction, and with the proceeds sent a missionary to China.”
The New England Society of New York celebrated Forefathers’ Day December 22d. There was one feature of this anniversary of special interest to the readers of the Missionary. It was a speech by Mr. H. W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Mr. Grady is a representative Southerner of the progressive type. His theme was The New South, and he handled it in such a way as to elicit the heartiest applause and the warmest commendation from those who heard him. Of course he could not speak on such a theme without having a good deal to say about the negro. We give the following extracts:
“But what is the sum of our work? We have found out that in the general summing up the free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We have planted the schoolhouse on the hill-top and made it free to white and black.”
“The relations of the Southern people with the negro are close and cordial. We remember with what fidelity for four years he guarded our defenseless women and children, whose husbands and fathers were fighting against his freedom. To his eternal credit be it said that whenever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he raised his black and humble hands that the shackles might be struck off, those hands were innocent of wrong against his helpless charges and worthy to be taken in loving grasp by every man who honors loyalty and devotion.”
“But have we solved the problem he presents or progressed in honor and equity towards its solution? Let the record speak to this point. No section shows a more prosperous laboring population than the negroes of the South, none in fuller sympathy with the employing and land-owning class. He shares our school fund, has the fullest protection of our laws and the friendship of our people. Self-interest as well as honor demand that he should have this. Our future, our very existence, depend upon our working out this problem in full and exact justice. We understand that when Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation, your victory was assured, for he then committed you to the cause of human liberty against which the arms of man cannot prevail, while those of our statesmen who made slavery the corner-stone of the Confederacy, doomed us to defeat, committing us to a cause that reason could not defend or the sword maintain in the light of advancing civilization.”
“We fought hard enough to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accepted as final the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found her jewel in a toad’s head. The shackles that had held her in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the negro slave were broken. Under the old régime the negroes were slaves to the South, the South was a slave to the system. Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people, as the rich blood is gathered at the heart, filling that with affluent rapture, but leaving the body chill and colorless.”
When Mr. Grady said, “We have planted the school house on the hill-top and made it free to white and black,” he must have had in mind the Atlanta University, for he knows all about that school. The $8,000 a year appropriated from the State justly entitles the Georgians to regard Atlanta University as a State school. But whence comes the money necessary to supplement this appropriation, to meet current expenses? Whence came the $150,000, and more, that have gone into the fine grounds, buildings and equipments? From New Englanders and children of New Englanders in the West, through the American Missionary Association. Mr. Grady must have known these facts. He knew that New England brains conceived the school, that New England money planted it, that New Englanders have always been, and are, its teachers, what sacrifices they have made, what social ostracism endured, what splendid work they have done and are doing. He knows from personal inspection the superiority of that school, and that this superiority has frequently been spoken of in the columns of the able paper of which he is the editor. He knows that the munificent funds bearing the names of Slater and Peabody were given by New Englanders. All these things, and more in the same direction, Mr. Grady knows, and yet in the presence of New Englanders and in the city where are the headquarters of the American Missionary Association, he did not make the faintest reference in recognition. It is said his speech was extemporaneous. Nevertheless was it not unfortunate that upon such an occasion he failed to give honor to whom honor is due?
The Freedmen’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church recently opened a University for white students in Chattanooga, Tenn. Some colored students applied for admission. They were refused, but this was not the end. A colored minister, Rev. B. H. Johnson, pastor of one of the Methodist Episcopal Churches of Chattanooga, meeting Professor Caulkins of the university in a store, offered him his hand, but as it was a black hand the professor would not accept it. That would have been a recognition of “social equality.” The colored brother felt, and felt justly, that he had been insulted. When knowledge of the insult reached the Executive Committee of the Freedmen’s Aid Society, whose funds in large part built and support the university, steps were immediately taken to learn the exact facts in the case. They moved cautiously and wisely, that no wrong should be done and that no unjust judgment should be pronounced, and when they had made a thorough examination of the whole case, heard from both sides and from all sides, they voted that through the trustees of the university the professor be asked to resign at once. The Executive Committee has done right and should have the cordial backing of the entire Methodist Church. A mistake was made when the colored students were refused admission. No matter if they were hired by wicked white men to go and force the issue. All the more should an issue be met when forced by such people. Better that a millstone be hanged around the neck of the institution and that it be drowned in the midst of the sea than that it be made an occasion of offense to one of Christ’s little ones. Christ is in the world in the person of these little ones, and he who insults them insults Him, and he who insults Him insults all who love Him.
We take the following extracts from a letter received by Dr. Strieby from our good friend, Mr. Robert Arthington, of Leeds, England. As a little mirror, showing “ourselves as ithers see us,” it has special significance. We have often thought that the indifference of the Christian people of this country to the question of the salvation of the Indians was a sad spectacle for our brethren in other lands to look upon. Would that the churches might be made to feel this:
“Dear Dr. Strieby—I trust the ‘missionary laugh’ will, by the great mercy of God, ‘never come on the air by my side.’ Oh, that it might be so with all real Christians.
“In the November Missionary the Indians are mentioned. I am at this moment intensely desirous that the Indians of the South American continent should be reached by the Gospel message. This appears to me to be very difficult, sadly, sadly difficult. But the case in the North American continent seems to me to be altogether different. There, as it regards your part, is a government, and a people, which and who approve of all men’s reading the Christian Scriptures. Grand, glorious, if only they would be more practical. Why does not the Government at once solve the problem by sending persons well fitted for the purpose to teach each tribe to read? Then when they can read, the American Bible Society might introduce extensively to the whole of the Indian tribes in the United States the inestimably precious word of God.
“For goodness’ sake, if not for God’s sake, O, Americans, arise and do this necessary thing. There is no time to be lost. You have “heaped teachers” to yourselves, and you leave these poor men and women, as worthy as yourselves, except real Christians, to their darkness, devoid of the light, joy and infinite good beyond description of a personal intimate knowledge of the sacred Christian Scriptures.”