JULY, 1880.
No. 7.
American Missionary Association.
We are glad that we can keep silent in regard to the closing exercises of our schools and let others praise us; strangers, and not our own lips. Nay, better than this, we can say that in many cases those whose praise we repeat, are no longer strangers. In place of some of the usual reports written by our teachers, or friends who have gone down to look into our work, having the greatest sympathy with it, we gather up what is said by the native whites of the South, many of whom have been most interested attendants upon all the anniversary exercises of the schools contiguous to them. We find no fuller or more sympathetic or enthusiastic reports in the Southern papers of the schools for whites than of ours for the colored people. We, therefore, ask the special attention of our readers to these reports this year, as showing the estimate the Southern press and people are putting upon our work.
Dr. Rufus Anderson.—Seldom have nature and grace, culture and varied discipline, combined to form a more rounded and perfect character than that of this sainted man, so long identified with the life of Missions, who passed to his rest on the last Sabbath of May. He became permanently connected with the A. B. C. F. M. in 1822, and since 1832 has largely shaped the policy of that Society. For more than half a century, he has been in the closest sympathy with the Divine Master in His effort to save the world, and it has often seemed to us that his face reflected much of the sweet longings of the Master for its accomplishment.
It were sad to be forever on a journey, and never reach home, and so, while the church feels a sense of loss and bereavement because of his removal from its councils, we yet rejoice over his beautiful and useful life, and in the assurance that to him has been administered an abundant entrance into the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.