American Missionary Association
We believe that if we do the work to which God has called us, he will move the hearts of his children to provide the money. By as much as our work is successful, it is expansive. They are following closely in the steps of the Master who are teaching and ministering unto the needy and the poor. We are confident that they can safely trust in his word, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." If God sends our workers out he will send supplies. There is no limit to the measure in which God can work on Christian hearts, to move his children to give for those who have gone forth to "seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness."
While God is abundantly blessing our work in our great and wide fields among four races, we may safely ask our Christian friends to appeal to him that we shall have not only the needful funds to carry on the work without debt, but also enough to enable us to enter the doors which he opens. We are needing eight thousand dollars to keep our accounts balanced, and we ask those, in whose names we stand, to pray that all these things be added unto us. Has any pastor forgotten to take the collection?
Rev. C.J. Ryder, recently assigned to the District Secretaryship of our Eastern District, with rooms at Boston, will be found at the office in the Congregational House, March 1st. He will be ready to respond to invitations from the churches to present our cause, and can speak from a large experience in our widely-extended and varied work. We commend Mr. Ryder to the churches.
President Woodworth, of Tougaloo University, is in the North for a few weeks, and will represent the growing and very hopeful interests of Tougaloo, wherever he may be desired. Letters directed to our office in New York will be forwarded to him.
Prof. Horace Bumstead, of Atlanta University, is now in the North to present the needs of that institution, and we trust that he will have large success. He will be happy to send the Atlanta Bulletin to those who may write for it, addressing him at 148 Tremont Street, Boston. In the light of the large convention of Negroes lately held at Macon, Ga., the Bulletin will be found exceedingly suggestive.
The Indian Presbytery of Dakota, composed of converted Sioux Indians, during the last ecclesiastical year gave $571 more to Foreign Missions than any other presbytery in the synod, and during the last synodical year gave to the nine Boards of that church $234 more than any of the white presbyteries of the synod.
Nannie Jones, a normal graduate at Fisk University, of the class of 1886, is to go, under the auspices of the American Board, to the south-eastern part of Africa, about 600 miles from Natal. She is the first single colored woman sent out by the American Board. She has been adopted by the Ladies' Board of the Interior, whose head-quarters are at Chicago.
We thank our friends anew for the many kind words of sympathy, in view of our loss, and for their appreciative testimonies in memory of our departed associate, Rev. Dr. Powell.
The hearty commendations of the "AMERICAN MISSIONARY," with enclosures for renewed subscriptions, are also gratefully acknowledged.
The death of Mr. Wm. L. Clark, who passed away in November last, has removed from the list of the early and efficient workers of the A.M.A. in the South, one who deserved the warmest regards for his fidelity, his excellent services and his self-sacrificing spirit. Mr. Clark began his work for the Association in 1868, as a teacher, in Bainbridge, Ga., and was subsequently at Thomasville and Atlanta. He was for a time afterwards editor and publisher of a paper devoted to the interests of the colored people and the South. His last years were spent in Washington, D.C.
An intelligent negro, a graduate of one of our institutions, writes to us these words: "The A.M.A. is doing more to quicken the hopes and aspirations of the Southern Negro, and more toward arousing the Southern white man to just ideas of education, and more toward bringing the two races to an acknowledgment of each other's rights and duties, than all other institutions or influences in the country."
When the war closed there were 4,000,000 slaves set free in this country, absolutely poor, absolutely ignorant. The black race doubles itself in twenty years; and it is supposed that there are now about 8,000,000 Negro people. Of these, 3,000,000 may have learned to read and write; there must be 5,000,000 still in illiterate and superstitious darkness. That they are still trying hard to learn, will be accentuated by the perusal of a specimen of letters to us from locations less favored than others:
"Sir Deare Bretterin I will Rite you A few lines to let you no our condison, we has had greatiel sickness her for the last few month. But we hant had no Deth in the time of it, and we wont to no somthing A Bout our School her at ——— for ef we can geet the teacher we can have a good School now, for the is good many pepel wating on us, now. we wode Be hapa to her from you all and then we Can tell the Pepel what to Penon, and ef you Plese Rite to us A Bout the Deed that we sent to you for we hant never hern from it yeat unly By Rev. ——— and i woude Be glad to her from you A Bout it
so Rite soon yours truly in Crist"
The American Missionary Association, which is the authorized and recognized servant of the Congregational Churches, reporting to them from the fields to which it is sent in their name, not unfrequently meets the fact that schools and churches in the South are appealing for support to those who hold us responsible for mission work in the South. Thus many in the North from time to time, are contributing to schools or perhaps to churches there, under the impression that they are thus taking the shortest path to the work which appeals to them.
There are many schools, of one kind and another, which have been started at the South by private parties on a purely independent basis. Many of these are carried on for a little time and then are permitted to die out for one reason and another; and many of them are working not only with a great lack of efficiency in comparison with the A.M.A. schools, but without supervision and without scrutiny. Some are located where it has pleased those who located them to reside, without much reference to relative necessities; and some are located so unwisely that the Association has been compelled to decline to take them, when through fatigue or failure they have been given up. Some of them owe their existence to the fact that certain workers were found to be not adapted to the work, or were uncomfortable under supervision and superintendence. Some of them are conducted by those who have signally failed in our schools. Their projectors are often skillful in letter-writing and in solicitation of funds for their specific enterprises, which being purely personal, have no large and ultimate achievement. Those who give cannot know whether the donations are most wisely used, nor is there any satisfactory method by which contributions can be traced.
The Association, with its Superintendent continually in the field, reporting every fact to the Secretaries at the office, who in turn report to the churches, is certainly much better prepared to direct the gifts of the benevolent in ways that shall not be unwise or irresponsible. As these circulars and letters of appeal are often referred by those who receive them to the Secretaries, it is but their duty to say that all funds diverted from our treasury to schools or churches in the South, under no watch and care, would without doubt go further and help the great work more to which the A.M.A. is consecrated, if they should be sent through the channel which the churches have ordained, and which has not only this justification for its existence and work, but also the justification of long experience and success.
If the friends of the American Missionary Association, upon receiving appeals from colored pastors or people in the South, or from independent schools, would remember that their own ordained agency can open and supervise as many schools and churches as they will make possible with their contributions, no doubt less money would be diverted and far greater efficiency secured. Schools in the North without supervision or superintendence, are usually inferior. Much more are these irresponsible, unadvised and independent schools in the South.