PLEASE PERUSE, AND PONDER.
Our friends will pardon us for reminding them that the fiscal year of the Association will close with the month of September. What is done to swell the receipts, either for diminution of debt or to meet current expenses, must be done quickly. Let no one imagine, however, that we are not duly grateful to God and to His people, for the gifts which have made possible the work on the field, and lightened so much the drag on our treasury. Still, we feel constrained to ask these givers for a larger giving, in order that we may free ourselves from an incumbrance which has sadly embarrassed us for years, and keep pace with the openings before us. Two things we ask:
1. The debt must be cleared away. Every interest of the Association demands it. Our friends demand it—do they not? Else, would they have reduced our indebtedness, within eighteen months, from over $90,000 to some $40,000 at this present writing? Why may we not believe that God has His reserves, both of men and of money, at hand, to wipe out the remaining balance against us? We wait to see who will step into the place of honor, and make some great sacrifice in this behalf. This debt was incurred to aid the poorest of the poor, as we thought, at the call of Christ himself. May not they expect His blessing who shall now come to the rescue? “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
2. We need increased supplies to meet our constant outgo. Our friends have done well by us during this year—such a year, too, as it has been! But they must be faithful to the end of it to ensure us a good record on the 30th of September. They need not be afraid of overdoing it; for if, by any good fortune of ours and good-will of theirs, we should, after paying all our current claims, have a small balance, it will go at once to lessen this still burdensome debt.
Remember, too, that the work is ever increasing on our hands, save as we have to keep it down. Millions of these freedmen must in the next ten years, if ever, be brought under the influence of sound learning and true religion. This generation must not pass away till it be possible for every colored child to read the word of God. The Chinaman and the Indian, too, make claims upon us which their cruel treatment by our fellow-citizens only serves to emphasize. Africa, also, as a culmination of our work, is calling for new laborers of her own sons to come and bring back to those sitting in darkness the light which is the life of men. But, in order to this, our teachers and missionaries must be numbered by hundreds and thousands, where now they are numbered by scores and hundreds. This is the true economy and the true wisdom. If we are to realize our ideal, there must be a new interest kindled in the work, and a great advance in the gifts of God’s people. With the closing of the year, therefore, we invite the intelligent and liberal men of the land to consider once more the work of this Association, in its bearing upon this nation, and in its bearing upon the nations, to which these races belong. We do not see how we can vindicate ourselves as righteous men, as men who fear God and love our neighbors, if we neglect this work brought to our doors and laid upon us by sanctions as solemn and pressing as were ever imposed on men. We do, then, in behalf of these races, and in the name of our risen Lord, ask the good and the wise, everywhere, to give us their sympathies, their prayers, and their money, in measure large enough to put these fields under ample culture for a better and brighter future.
THEN AND NOW.
REV. J. E. ROY, D. D., FIELD SUPERINTENDENT.
Then—in October, 1860—as the newly-appointed District Secretary for the A. M. A., I attended its fourteenth annual meeting, in pastor M. E. Strieby’s church at Syracuse. It was an occasion of congratulation that the receipts for that year had come up to $56,000—$5,000 more than for the preceding, and $2,000 more than for any previous year. There had been sixty missionary laborers in foreign lands, and 112 in our own country, the most of whom were in the West, and forty of them in Illinois. The churches aided numbered 140, to which had been added 989 members, of whom 659 came by profession of faith. Twenty-five revivals were reported. In the South, North Carolina had one missionary and Kentucky had four, all of whom were engaged in caring for little churches among the white people. In a year and a half the war came on, and our missionaries were driven out of the South. The American Home Missionary Society had cleared itself, the first of all the national societies, from complicity with slaveholding, and so the missionary churches of the A. M. A. at the North and the District Secretary were transferred to the old society.
Now—after sixteen and a half years—I find myself, by the clearest drift of Providence, back in the service of the Association. At its anniversary of 1859, in Chicago, there was a discussion as to what should come of the A. M. A. when all the societies and churches should have reached the anti-slavery standard. Some held that the Association was only a tug to help those noble crafts out to sea. President Blanchard said, “Yes, a tug; but when she has got them all over the bar we will change her into a frigate, to course up and down all the Southern waters.” Last fall, the Association came back to Syracuse to hold its thirtieth anniversary, and, sure enough, the tug had come in as a frigate, with report of engagements all over the South. And so it had been running for the last twelve years. The Treasurer’s report ran up to $264,709. Instead of the 112 white churches North, are shown 59 churches among the ex-slaves; also 7 chartered institutions, 14 high and normal schools, with 10,000 scholars, and with 100,000 pupils reached by their teachers. The Indian work abides; the Chinese has come on. The scheme for evangelizing Africa, by using the Christianized freedmen, is opening into proportions immensely beyond the conception of its early movers.