2nd. There is here a grand, perhaps unsurpassed opportunity for influencing men. I am not only a Home Missionary, but also a Foreign Missionary to Africa, and that last with special facilities. I am master of the language, and do not work at the disadvantage of a half-learned and half-murdered tongue. Neither is there any prejudice against me as a Foreigner because of my brogue, or my dress or my habits. Without the honors of a Foreign Missionary, I am also without many of his disadvantages, and my national and Yankee peculiarities, which might hinder across the sea, help on this side of the Atlantic. This is indeed a missionary field, but operated with special facilities. It is a double missionary field. For,
3d. The most pressing work in our own country is here. As surely as in 1861 our national peril is largely in the South. Ignorance is dense; immorality is rampant: lawlessness is wide-spread, while intelligence, morality and obedience to law form the only basis for such a government as ours. To save our country, we must save the South; to save the South, we must save the Southerners, and there are no Southerners more hopeful and more deserving than the late slaves. They are down but their faces are upward. Give them a hand and they will take it, especially if it be a “Yankee hand,” and a little lifting develops a good deal of spring in themselves. Thus it is that Patriotism as well as Humanity and Christianity keep me here, and no campaigning in our recent war seemed more a duty of loyalty than that in which I am now engaged. I am glad to be in the ranks and to still wear the blue. But,
4th. Looking beyond our broad land, I hope, standing here, to reach some portion of the “Dark Continent.” I regard this as a good pou sto for moving Africa. Our students, more than those who have been life-long readers, use their memories. They are more impressible than the young of some other stock. They have a strong desire, as they are helped, to help others. Apparently the great missionary movement of the next few years is to be in Africa. The call is already heard for men. Some of these men are here, and the impressions now made, the very words we now speak, may yet be felt and heard in lands whence the fathers of these men were stolen, and in the jungles which the white man may well fear to tread.
5th. Besides, there are some special rewards in this work. If we have the white man’s contumely, we have the black man’s love. A more grateful and appreciative people than some of these, fresh from the prison-house of bondage but now rejoicing in a double freedom, I have never seen. Seldom is a pastor more fervently and affectionately prayed for than are some of us here. And I suspect as the Lord judges souls—He seeth not as man seeth—we have our companionship chiefly with the foremost of this part of the Land. These and similar considerations have led me to think that this College stands somewhere on Mt. Pisgah. Certainly just now I would rather be here than in any other part of the Universe of God. Tell our friends at the North that we do not need their sympathy but we do need their help. With more of means we could greatly multiply our labors and their results. Let those at the rear at least send on supplies, and more abundantly.
Is the Work in Vain?—Building Progress—A Missionary Spirit.
REV. HORACE J. TAYLOR, ATHENS.
Sometimes one is tempted to say that the work here is in vain. We know, for instance, that a great deal has been done during the last fifteen years by the Principal of Trinity School, and yet one can see that the work is by no means finished. Have not some people at the North been thinking that, after fifteen years of good work among the colored people of the South, the A.M.A. ought to be about leaving the field here for some other? Some here say to me, it will be a work of centuries to bring up this people; others, that the colored race never will be fit for anything but farm laborers; they must be hewers of wood and drawers of water. Some people in Ohio think the religion of the colored man in the South is a “pure and undefiled” religion. Some people here think there is no use in trying to give the colored man a pure system of religion. “They get together and shout and carry on, and that is all they are fitted for.” “Their religion is impure and defiled, and they cannot appreciate a pure religion.” So say the enemies of the colored race. Well, this is partly true; too true. The colored man has emotion, and his late masters were too often content with that “religion” in the slave. As slaves they were allowed to preach and steal and commit adultery, and all together, too.
When we think of the pit from which they have been lifted, and of their ancestry—only a few generations ago heathen all of them, cannibals some of them—can we think that the results are less than we might expect? A great deal has been done here, and there is a great deal to show for it. Some might think there was not much to be seen of good results. A church of forty-four members—three less than two years ago, five less than one year ago—some weak ones, the church as well as the school still pecuniarily dependent on the A.M.A., they will not be ready to cut loose from the fostering care of the Association for some years yet.
Christ said that the kingdom of heaven was like a grain of mustard seed, or like a little leaven. These churches and schools act like leaven in a mass of ignorance. And this leaven works. And it is because of this leavening power of the Gospel that we are encouraged. The whole will be leavened in time. But time is necessary. The Congregational churches have undertaken a mighty work, and they must patiently stick to it for years yet. Much as can be seen of the results of the work here, more than half of it cannot be easily seen. Other churches have been enlightened and helped. Even those who try to keep out the light can’t prevent some of it getting through the chinks.