Ought there not to be a stern purpose to pay as we go, and to pay with sufficient liberality to enable us to go with vigor and dispatch to the utmost bound of a rapidly increasing demand? May the plea of great interposition, great opportunity and great ability find fitting response.—The Advance.
CONGREGATIONALISM IN THE SOUTH.
We reprint the following article from the Christian Recorder, the able organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It is a significant endorsement of the church work done by the Association, and from those who are most profoundly concerned in the Christian elevation of the colored people of the land. We have not even omitted the sharp criticism of the approving words of those who gathered at Chicago to review our work, hoping that we may thus escape the charge of “Phariseeism” in accepting the commendations and congratulations of our brethren of the A. M. E. Church:
“The thirty-third Annual Report of the American Missionary Association is before us. We wish that we could place the Report in the hands of every A. M. E. preacher in the land. Years ago we called attention to the fact that the A. M. A. was destined to become the strongest competitor the A. M. E. would find in the South. As we declared, it is even now seen. The twenty-three Congregational churches of 1869 have become sixty-seven in 1879. But it may be said, what is sixty-seven churches with a membership of 4,600, compared to our thousands? They would not be much, to be sure, were they of the same general material. But they are not. They are, as it were, a picked body. In a sense they may be said to occupy the same relation to our Church as the regular army sustains to the volunteer force of the country. And we all know what that means. A thousand regulars can do the work of ten thousand volunteers. Is it asked, How is this? The answer is at hand. Each Congregational church grew out of the school which the Congregational preacher in the person of a teacher taught. Knowing his material, and wielding it much as the potter wields the clay, he occupied for his church a position decidedly advantageous; and the result shows that he has not failed to profit by it.
“In nothing that we have said is it to be supposed that we are in wrath at their manifest success. Of course, we have no patience with the spirit of Phariseeism breathed forth in the report of the Committee on Church Work in the South. Nothing that the typical Pharisee of the New Testament said excels it; but for the work itself of these, our companions in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, we entertain the highest possible respect; begging, however, the privilege of suggesting that next year’s report be not so strenuously self-complacent.
“And now we repeat what we have so often said to our brother ministers, especially of the South, where they are brought in contact with this energetic body of men: Know, once for all, that the Church possessed of the best cultured heads and the best cultured hearts, is to win. That we are infinitely stronger in numbers to-day than are the Congregationalists, argues nothing for the future. It is with churches as with everything else, the fittest survives. If African Methodism prove to be that fittest, it will survive. If not, it must inevitably pass away, and only be remembered as a thing of the past. To be the fittest, it is required that she banish all ignorance, all immorality and superstition from her midst. This must be done, let the cost be what it may. Thin out the ministry of the church until there shall not be found an ignorant man nor a bad man in the ranks. Thin out the church itself. Expel the vicious. Drive out the notoriously bad. Have a clean church. Let such steps as these be taken, and African Methodism will have a future that will be to the glory of God and the best interests of mankind. But if she draw back, let her remember that God can take no pleasure in her.”
IGNORANCE OF THE NEGRO QUESTION.
From a paper read by W. N. Armstrong, Esq., before the Yale Alumni Association of New York in January, as printed in The Present Century: