Christ said, My peace I leave with you. I can say my blessings I leave with you. Let us pray for each other and look forward to the time when we shall meet to part no more. Farewell!
Articles and Contributions
An Echo to the Manager’s Call.
Mr. Editor: In your issue of June 21, 1877, an article appears, emanating from the business manager, indicating trouble ahead. He says that from the very fact of the editor receiving two letters to his one, and the supporters of our publishing department placing the major portions of their communications on the wrong current, the most pernicious effect is designed to flow through the stream of intellectual knowledge gleaned from the columns of the Christian Recorder.
I have only to ask my brethren, Can we, as pillars of the porch that leads to the great temple of African Methodism, sit still on our easy chair and hear such powerful peals of thunder ringing through our ears, constantly coming from the subverting clouds now overhanging our manager’s head?
Let us burst loose the bands of oppression, open the prison door and set the captive free. Give the manager a fair start in the race, and then if he die (as he says the death warrant has been served on others who had charge of the concern), let us bury him in a recreant’s grave. As to the department being whittled away by the ministry, I would like to ask, Mr. Editor, who is responsible for that? Is there not a prescribed mode of bringing these would-be men to justice? These vipers that creep through the money till of all our departments and from their atrocious dereliction or their villainous designs to defraud the connection out of what is rightfully due it? These things are actually undermining the foundation of our Church. Put them between the upper and lower millstones and grind them as fine as powder. Do not let us all suffer from the effect of the same blow. The blow the Doctor struck has shocked the connection like a mighty earthquake. Now the question goes from every loyal fort along the line, “Who are these whittlers?” Again, the manager says there is a wolf howling about the door of his sanctum, and that unless there be sufficient food to satisfy his demands, at no distant date there will be a burst up. I again ask, Cannot this eternal howling be stopped?
Now, the manager says that our articles of commendation and sweet pats on the shoulder, telling him to go ahead with the engine without anything to propel it, does not amount to much. He wants action—noble, sublime, Godlike action—such as will place him on the road to success. Then, brethren, let us act. According to the report made at the General Conference of 1872, we have three hundred thousand members, seven thousand preachers in our connection. Let a Sabbath be set apart and let it be universally known throughout the Church, and one-fourth of a dollar be collected from each member. This would give us the nice little sum of $75,000. Say that the preachers give one dollar each, including bishops, managers, editors and all others, which would make a total of $82,000. Would not this stop the howling wolf and save the department? The echo is, Yes! Then, brethren, let us awake from our sleep. Call the forces to the front, wheel into line, fire on the enemy, and the victory is ours. I will guarantee one-fourth of a dollar from each one of my members, and not only one dollar from myself, but five, at whatever time may be mentioned as a day for this purpose in the interests of the Book Concern.
A. H. NEWTON.