THE ASSOCIATION JUBILEE.
BY SEC. D. E. EMERSON.
Not long after emancipation a freed-woman, about 50 years old, who was learning to read, came to the word "unbound" in her lesson, and exclaimed, rapturously, "How good, to feel unbound!"
If the American Missionary Association, its work, principles, and all that it represents, could be expressed in one word, that word would be emancipation—deliverance from bondage, deliverance from caste prejudice, from ignorance, superstition, and darkness. Its mission is to preach the gospel to the poor, to loose the chains of the bound, to proclaim "The truth shall make you free."
It was a little company of earnest men and women that gathered in Albany, N. Y., in September, 1846, to form this organization. Its early history was not only of works, but of "witness," fearless and undaunted. It had a God-given mission, and this conviction sustained its brave adherents during those years of severe trial and testing. Yet all was not discouragement. Every year brought added strength in numbers and in funds. Every year showed more plainly that the hand of the Lord was in this movement.
So it worked for fifteen years, gaining varied experience in industrial, educational, evangelistic, and church work, in methods of administration, in wise use of funds. At the close of this period it was conducting prosperous missions at thirty-seven stations in its foreign field, and in the home field it had under its care 120 churches. Then came the rebellion and war, and the unmistakable call of Providence to the rapid development of missions southward. Immediately the Association, now encouraged and supported by all the churches, moved in the wake of the Union army, beginning in 1861 to work for the contrabands at Fortress Monroe, where 1,800 colored people had sought the protection of the American flag. All its varieties of experience and resources were called into action. It became a philanthropic society to feed and clothe the suffering, a Bible society to distribute the word of God. It became an industrial society to help people to homes and teach practical farming, trades, and housewifery. It established social settlements, with groups of missionary teachers living in one household among the degraded and despised people, to whom they ministered; an educational society with its system of schools; a church society, seeking always the salvation of souls and gathering of converts into churches.
Now it was that the wisdom, the heroism, the unfaltering faith of this Association, strengthened by fifteen years of valorous adherence to the gospel principles of emancipation, prepared it to launch out upon its great mission. The demands were almost overwhelming in extent and variety.
First, Fortress Monroe, then Norfolk and all eastern Virginia, Newport News, and Port Royal; then the Carolinas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. So closely did the missions follow the victorious armies that by the time the war-storm had fully cleared away, the American Missionary Association had 320 missionaries preaching and teaching the gospel to the freedmen, with 16,000 pupils in its schools. No wonder that it was said, "Behold how God has fitted this Association for this vast and mighty work."
The development of this marvelous work has many thrilling chapters among the forty-nine that have been already written. They tell the story briefly of the devoted men and women who have been carrying on the blessed work of emancipation. They show how not less than 3,000 women have given of their best talent and strength to this Christ-like service. They speak of the perils by shotgun and by fire; of imprisonment, ostracism, and scorn; of persecution, that it was believed the progress of the age had made impossible in these later days, but which the State of Florida has been able to revive. But these chapters tell also how the truth has been setting many free, blacks and whites alike, bringing them into a truer conception of God's fatherhood, man's brotherhood through sonship by Jesus Christ.
The American Missionary Association finds its highest testimonial in the work itself, in its system of Christian schools, including graded primaries, academies, normal and industrial schools, in its colleges in each of five states, and in its advancing church work. Nay, its best testimonial is in the product from these schools and churches, the teachers and preachers, lawyers and doctors, the good farmers and mechanics, the upright mothers and fathers, the sweet though humble homes, the conscientious Christian citizens, in whose influence and leadership lies the hope of the African race. It finds its testimonial in the loyalty and devotion of its missionaries, their self-denial for the cause they love. It has seen a gifted woman from a home of comfort going year by year for twenty years to this work of emancipation for the "bound" in Georgia and Tennessee, among a despised people, and, when called from earth and earth's opportunities, leaving a liberal sum to continue the work of Christian education. It has seen many another consecrated missionary take from the savings of a lifetime, to enable the Association to light one more lamp for the dark places of the South, and not a few turn back three-fourths of their small salaries to help in sustaining the work. The liberality of the missionaries testifies not only to the genuineness of the work, but to the importance of the field and its irresistible appeal.
With such a history the American Missionary Association stands before the churches in this, its fiftieth, year. God has graciously widened the fields before it. The 4,000,000 of freed slaves are a race of 8,000,000 in our midst. "Never since the apostolic age has there been open to the church a field so vast, so urgent, so hopeful."
God has graciously widened the mission fields of the Association; the mountain regions of the South have been opened, and the gospel, carried with such personal risk fifty years ago, reaching only here and there a few, may be carried freely to the 2,000,000 of our mountain countrymen mentally and spiritually bound. God has graciously widened the fields. The Indian missions present their claim, for wherever a pagan Indian tribe remains there may the gospel be carried quickly and without personal harm. The providential call has been heard also, and answered by this Association, for the Chinese within our borders and the Eskimo on the Alaskan coast. The work of this Association may well be the glory of the churches. God has done His part. He has opened the fields, He has richly blessed every effort toward enlightenment and Christian civilization. The missionaries have done their part in prayer, in labor, in gifts, in voicing the earnest appeal of these poor, whose greatest need is Christian education and a pure gospel.
Now, the Association has come to its fiftieth year, the fiftieth chapter in its serial history. Standing always for emancipation, it is itself enthralled in the toils of a terrible debt. It trusted the churches; it believed that the action of the churches in separating their Indian work from the government, relinquishing $22,000, would be followed by $22,000 additional gifts from the people of God, that the Indian missions should not suffer loss. It believed that the growing claim of the Southern mountain work and the claim of this great African race in our midst would not be disregarded. It still believes in the churches. There has been only a temporary withholding. In the sisterhood of missionary societies, two have been freed from debt. Now by one grand concentration of gifts to the Jubilee Fund of the American Missionary Association, shall it not be enabled to celebrate a remarkable record, a marvelous work, a divine call to present widening fields of usefulness and a jubilee of financial freedom that by the grace of God shall last? May we not then confidently look for the opening of the windows of heaven, and the outpouring of such a blessing on home churches and mission fields as shall summon the attention of an indifferent and unbelieving world to the certain and rapid progress of the kingdom of God?