Needs of this Field.
REV. S. S. ASHLEY.
Not only is this field needy, but promising. A majority of the people, and those living about the old Midway Church, are nearly all colored. Many of the white landed proprietors are non-residents. Rice culture is the principal employment. The colored people are rapidly becoming land owners, and are remarkably successful in making their payments. Just now, their means are mostly consumed in this effort, consequently they can expend very little in improving their habitations; yet there is improvement in this respect. They are beginning to come out of the swamps and build by the roadside. As slaves, they were not allowed to dwell near the “big road”; therefore, the woods and the swamps seem to them more like home than the roadside. But without instruction they will not achieve much domestic improvement. In fact, they need instruction in every direction—in house-building, in road-making, in agriculture, in domestic economy, in the improvement of time, in business, as well as in schools and churches. A missionary to this people should be an Oberlin. An Oberlin’s work will pay richly. The whole field is accessible to missionary labor. Very many desire instruction. They listen eagerly to kind, plain, Christian advice, and will travel many miles for the privilege. Certainly these are the marks of a good missionary field.
But to energize this prosperity, the meeting-house should be put into comfortable condition. It is a large but unfinished structure. In damp and chilly weather, it is uncomfortable—so much so, that the pastor doubts about the propriety of holding, in the winter, meetings at night. The place of Divine worship should be, not only comfortable, but refining and elevating. The people who have good meeting-houses will have good dwelling-houses. The meeting-house should be a teacher of neatness, care, attention, thrift and reverence. Unless the house is attractive, attractive preaching is well-nigh impossible.
Again, the school-house should be removed to the road, beside the meeting-house, and enlarged. Its present situation is out of the way, and it is too small to accommodate the pupils.
These are my impressions concerning the A. M. A. work in Liberty County. Brother Smith is succeeding well, but he needs the improvements I have mentioned. I hope that you can aid in completing the meeting-house. If the building stands a year longer without attention, it will require repairs as well as finishing. A portable saw-mill would be a grand civilizing and missionary agency.
Ogeechee.
REV. JOHN K. MCLEAN.