Then—its constituents were individuals, and churches of the more pronounced abolition sort. Now—since the National Council at Boston—the Association has been recognized as the agency of the Congregational churches for doing their work among “the three despised races.” The old adherents, developed into generous giving by the necessities of their enterprise, abide with the enthusiasm of veterans; while now the mass of our people acknowledge themselves under just as much obligation as they to use this organization in its peculiar sphere of Christianization at home and abroad. They find it by Providence marvelously developed and fitted to its work—tested, toughened and trusted. They hear it said from without, that our body of churches is doing more and better work among the freedmen than any other. They find that the old anti-slavery education in our families had prepared a multitude of our cultured and consecrated young people to enter this work as soon as the way was open, even at a salary little above the nominal rate. And so they find this charge laid upon them and readily accept the obligation, grateful for the opportunity.
In coming back to this service, I feel that I am only shifting from the right to the left wing of the home missionary army. No man can go beyond me in appreciation of the sublime movement represented by the American Home Missionary Society. But in this other department I find that most of the same arguments are to be used. Do we call for the Christianizing of the people of our country? Here are millions of them at the South in need of that process. Do we plead for the saving of our country from the spiritual despotism of Rome? The Jesuits, using hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly, are scheming to Romanize the congenial material found in the ex-slaves. Do we appeal in behalf of the political interests of our country? Here are 1,000,000 black voters who cannot read. Then by their side, only lower down in the social scale, are 1,100,000 white voters who also cannot read the ballots they are to cast; and the conviction is now gaining ground that the most effectual, if not the only way, to lift up that class is to put under them the leverage of the educated negro. Do we use that grandest argument—the salvation of our country for the sake of the salvation of the world? Here in our own land is looming up the most potent agency for the evangelization of Africa. That despoiled continent may yet say to her despoilers, “Ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good.”
The A. H. M. S., true to its charter as a national institution, as soon as war had battered down the walls that were in its way, sought, with the Philip of its evangelism, to go towards the South. It explored the chief cities and centres of that region, and was entering devotedly upon that part of the field. It has kept pressing every hopeful opening. It will still be true to its national idea and do all it may be allowed to do there. None feel more keenly than do its chief officers the chagrin at the few opportunities afforded and the failure in so many of them. They have done only their duty in making the costly experiments. And now the apostolic spirit of our Congregational churches seems to say to the white people of the South, “Seeing ye count yourselves unworthy of these good things, lo, we turn to the freedmen.”
If, in some distant part of the globe, a people had just been discovered, numbering 5,000,000 souls, speaking our own language, hungering for our ideas, our civilization and our Christianity, it would thrill the Christian world to go in at once and possess that land for Christ. That thing we may do in our own country, under our own flag. And some of us who now, with our years, could not pass muster to go and cope with a foreign language, have yet not a few years left in which we may do an essentially foreign missionary work in our own language, in that tongue, which, more than any other spoken by man, is freighted with the associations and the spirit of the Gospel of the Crucified One.
ANNUAL REPORTS NEEDED.
Any of our friends who have the following back numbers of the Annual Report of the A. M. A. that they can spare, will confer a favor by sending them to our office as soon as convenient: Numbers 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 14, 16, 17, 21, 22, 24. We do not ask our friends to break a set if they are anxious to keep it, but to send any extra numbers they may have. Without realizing it, we have exhausted our supply of these numbers, and now wish to make up a few extra sets to have bound for our own use. As years go by, we learn more and more the value to us of these old reports.
A GOOD EXAMPLE.
Mrs. Sally Perry died in Boston, Mass., June 17th, aged ninety-one years. The slaves had a large place in her sympathies, when she could do little more than offer her prayers in their behalf. But when the war had set them free, and left her charity at liberty to enter on practical offices of good will, she eagerly embraced the opportunity, watching for openings. She read in the American Missionary, for 1866, a call for funds to establish orphan asylums for the thousands of homeless colored children in the South. She came to our office in Boston for information in regard to it. The result was a donation of $500, to found the Brewer Orphan Asylum in Wilmington, N. C., in memory of her deceased daughter. And, year by year, while the Asylum existed, she gave it the interest of $2,000, devised in her will for its benefit.