NOTES IN THE SADDLE.
BY REV. C. J. RYDER, DISTRICT SECRETARY.
The Sunday-school work of the A.M.A. has always been an important element of that work. The rapid development of this department within the past few years has been somewhat remarkable. Our friends expressed grateful surprise at the Portland meeting that the statistics were so exceedingly encouraging along this line. “The total Sunday-school enrollment, as it appears in the Annual Report of 1882, was 7,835, but we are able to report this year an enrollment of 15,109, an increase in five years of 7,274, or nearly 100 per cent.,” was the very satisfactory showing as given in the last Annual Report.
Two interesting bits of history have recently come to me, which indicate that the Sunday-school work of the Association is developing with still greater rapidity and success. Reports were gathered from twenty-two of the students of Straight University, New Orleans, who taught school during the summer vacation. These students were not so busy with their work in the day-school as to neglect their duty as Christians in the organization of Sunday-schools. They were scattered throughout Louisiana and Mississippi, and reached many needy fields. They reported the following facts:
| Number of pupils in the day-schools which were taught by them | 1,398 |
| Number of Sunday-schools organized | 13 |
| These students were superintendents or teachers in | 22 |
| Number of scholars in these Sunday-schools | 1,574 |
| Number of hopeful conversions to Christ | 168 |
| Five Bands of Mercy were organized with a membership of | 181 |
| Four Temperance Societies were formed with a membership of | 241 |
These facts furnish us excellent evidence of the judicious and enthusiastic efforts of these colored students to save and elevate their own people. Fifteen hundred and seventy-four children gathered into Sunday-schools, most of whom were absolutely unreached before, by these twenty-two under-graduates of a single A.M.A. school!
It is not strange that the President of Straight University, in giving these facts, adds, with evident satisfaction:
“If a complete record could be made of all the work done in one year even, by past and present members of our school, or any of the A.M.A. schools, it would make an aggregate most wonderful.”
Turning now to the progress of Sunday-school work in our great Mountain field, we find the same remarkable development. Calvary Congregational Church was organized at Pine Mountain, Tenn., Nov. 26, 1887, with thirteen members. The following striking facts are just reported as the results secured in the past few months by the energetic Christian workers in this church. Sunday-schools have been established in the following places, with the enrollment given below:
| Calvary Church Sunday-school enrolled | 142 |
| Shiloh Sunday-school enrolled | 127 |
| New Prospect Sunday-school enrolled | 68 |
| Lick Creek Sunday-school enrolled | 78 |
making a grand total of 415 children and young people gathered into these Sunday-schools on the mountain, and only ten pupils of this whole enrollment had ever been in Sunday-School before!! Another school is soon to be formed in this neighborhood. This “Pine Mountain” field is about 20 × 60 miles, and the little church which the A.M.A. built during the past few months is the only framed “church house” in the whole region. Think of it, O Christian friends, you who hold the Lord’s money in trust, 1,200 square miles, with cabin homes scattered along every “cove” and fertile valley, left, to this year of our Lord 1888, with only one suitable place of worship!
In building this new church, the people themselves have strained every nerve and made large personal sacrifices. They have had the occasional services of the General Missionary of the A.M.A. for that locality, and I visited them once when Field Superintendent. They have also been assisted from the A.M.A. treasury, but they have labored in season and out of season themselves in order to establish this splendid work. The rapid development of the Sunday-schools is not the only feature of this work that merits our attention. One member of this church has distributed during the year 424 new Bibles and 145 second-hand Bibles. He has visited 500 families personally. He found that 60 per cent. of these people were without the Word of God in complete form. A few had mutilated copies of the Bible.
There are hundreds of fields in the Mountain Work of the A.M.A. just as needy and just as hopeful as Pine Mountain. All the facts indicate that God has now opened this field to us. An intelligent mountaineer said to me, some months ago: “Our great and only hope lies in the A.M.A. and the Congregational churches of the North.” Surely these churches will not disappoint this hope, nor refuse to heed the voice of God speaking to them in all the stirring events of this Mountain Work.