The Southern Sentinel, a monthly, published at Talladega College, under the new management of Prof. Geo. N. Ellis, editor, and P. P. Green (one of the students), publisher, is taking on more of freshness and of force. A department of agriculture has been added. This will be of great value. In this we see the hand of the farm superintendent, Mr. Atkinson, who went down from Olivet College to help on in this part of the Talladega movement.
“What is that to thee? Follow thou me.”—This response of the Master to Peter’s inquiry about the lot of John indicates the measure of consecration requisite on the part of those who are called to this missionary work among despised classes. It is an unquestioning, an unconditional obedience that is needed. One may say: “Others are staying at home and having easy times.” What is that to thee? “Down there we may be sneered at and treated like pariahs.” What is that to thee? “It was easy up North to have been an abolitionist, but to go and put yourself down by the side of and underneath the outcast ex-slave to try to raise him up, that is another thing.” What is that to thee? Follow thou me. Follow my call; follow my example in caring for “these my brethren.” Sympathy with the Saviour in His love for souls, in His self-forgetfulness while winning lost men to His Gospel, is the first qualification for this Christly work. It was a rigid scrutiny that set aside the few men that were to gain the victory of the Lord at the hand of Gideon. A like carefulness of selection is necessary in this holy war. It would enlist only those who give themselves to its cause with such alacrity that they stop not for personal ease, but who lap their drink.
But the reward of those who thus follow the Divine Leader in this service is quick and ample. They are a happy set of folks. They love their work; they love their people; they have joy in their calling; in this they are like returned foreign missionaries.
A Worker at Rest.—Mrs. Anna M. (Day) Peebles departed this life at Dudley, N. C., on the 28th of August. Educated at Oberlin, she had been one of our teachers in the Washington School at Raleigh, N. C., serving also as teacher and leader of music. Something over a year ago she was married to Rev. David Peebles, of Dudley, N. C., where she took charge of the school, becoming greatly successful and beloved in the same. Excelling as a teacher, enthusiastic in the missionary aspect of her work, and winsome among her associates and pupils, her loss to our cause is greatly felt.
DEATH OF FATHER JOCELYN.
Another Christian hero has laid aside his armor and received his crown. The Lord did not break the dies when He made the last of the ancient Martyrs or of the Puritan heroes. In great emergencies he reproduces them after their kind. The anti-slavery struggle needed them and they came forth, and among them there was no braver man than the gentle and amiable Simeon S. Jocelyn. It is a mistake to suppose that the bold and determined men who take front rank in great moral conflicts are destitute of kindly impulses. Father Jocelyn was utterly uncompromising where duty called, yet I have seldom known a man of more tender sympathies, of quicker, almost womanly sensibility to sorrow or suffering. Nor are all such men, as is often imagined, so intent on pushing forward their great reforms as to overlook the rights of others. Father Jocelyn was most scrupulous in regard to the minutest claims of all men, even of his opponents. Nor are all such seemingly rash and headlong men lacking in caution. Father Jocelyn was the most cautious man I ever knew. Indeed this trait was, in some sense, a hindrance to his activity, for he instinctively saw the many adverse bearings and possible misconstructions to the course contemplated or to the document to be published. The marvel is that such a man could ever have become an abolitionist—that he could have risked reputation, property, and even life itself, in an enterprise so doubtful of success and beset with so many dangers to the peace of the church and the nation. The only explanation is in his clear perception, through all glosses, of the path of duty, and the overwhelming impulse of conscience to pursue it in spite of all dangers. Of such stuff are moral heroes made.