Several thousand dollars of the money pledged for the reduction of our debt, is made conditional upon our paying up the full amount by the end of this year. We beg our friends to bear this fact in mind, as a spur to make their thoughts quicker, and their hands obey their generous promptings without delay. We cannot afford to lose this offered help, and you cannot afford to have us. The impetus given at the Annual Meeting to this debt-destroying work is not abated; our friends are reminding us of their interest daily; some of those who were present at the meeting are pressing it, on their own account, in the States from which they came. How soon will you enable us to make our proclamation of emancipation from this bondage?
Our readers will see that we have endeavored, in this number of the Missionary, to present them with the doings and the sayings of the Annual Meeting not already put into print and circulation. The valuable and stirring addresses by Rev. Messrs. Atwood, Heywood and Pike, we have been able to get in form already. Other equally thoughtful and forcible addresses, though reported, have not yet come to us in such shape that we can use them immediately. What you find here is what you did not find in the Supplement to the Traveller. We beg you, then, to “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest.”
A new cartridge, No. 5, of the series of pamphlets begun last year, is ready for distribution, and contains Secretary Strieby’s review of half a generation of work among the Freedmen. As a collation of facts and testimony, we commend it as furnishing to thoughtful men the means of forming their own opinions on the success of past labors, and on the hopefulness and the duty of pressing on the good work already begun patiently to the desired end.
Three Communion Sets are needed for as many churches near Talladega, Ala. Churches at the North can make good use of their old ones if they are about to replace them with new.
We invite attention to the call of Mr. Connett, in another column, for means to erect cheap cottages for the accommodation of students. The small sum needed for each cottage will enable many of our readers to accomplish a definite and useful object, who cannot undertake larger enterprises. We indorse most heartily the appeal.