REV. G. W. ANDREWS, TALLADEGA.
Marion was reached Saturday night, a grand old town of three thousand inhabitants, and an educational centre for the State. As the hacks were full, a colored brother, an old friend, and deacon in our church at this place, took my bag, and I hastened along the sidewalk a mile or more to what was once the “Teachers’ Home,” but now the parsonage, a house to which I was introduced ten years ago when I left my Connecticut pastorate for a winter in the Sunny South. I cannot tell you how I felt, passing along the streets, as I recalled the experiences of ten years ago. I shuddered as I neared the house where my friend, now of Chattanooga, came near losing his life in the small hours of the night by the hands of masked and armed men. The rush, the rope, the tree, the cries for help, the final deliverance, and much more, were very vivid and real to my awakened mind. I thought, also, of those eight consecutive nights when none of our family lay down to rest as usual; of the armed guard of twenty brave men in and about the house all those nights; of the warning letters received, the threats made, the Henry rifles in our chairs when we bowed around our family altar; of the preaching with hands in my pocket on my revolver; of the fear and trembling that seized us when special danger threatened; of our isolation from all except the poor we had come to bless by our labors. I thought, too, of the school-house, the three hundred eager learners, the little church of a dozen members, the precious meetings, the great outpouring of the Spirit, the hundreds of conversions, the “never to be forgotten” prayers and songs—in all the most precious revival of my life. As a drowning man recalls the events of a whole life in a moment, so in an incredibly brief space of time passed before me those early experiences of missionary life in this strange land, impossible for me now to relate. All is changed now. To-day the missionary is welcomed by many Christian people in Marion. The dreadful past is fading from our minds in the love and friendship of the present.
Sabbath morning I looked out upon the many cottages and cabin homes in the woods and fields all about, while near by I saw the church edifice with its graceful and airy bell-tower in which hangs a choice bell from the foundry of Veasy & White, of East Hampton, Connecticut, and the gift of the people there. The house will seat three or four hundred, is well proportioned, nicely painted and frescoed,—the most handsome and best kept church edifice of the colored people in the State.
I wish it were possible for me to give some suitable account of the Sabbath greetings and services. A few touches only, and your imagination must supply the rest. The bell called us to the house of God at 9 a.m. You first meet the men and women who joined the church ten years ago, and are now pillars in it and in the Sabbath-school. And such a welcome!—such hand-shaking, such glad hearts! You very soon know Paul’s warmth towards his beloved Church of Philippi, his first love in Europe, as this was my first love in Alabama. It was nearly five hours before these morning greetings, the Sabbath-school, the preaching and then more hand-shaking, were ended, and the people willing to go to their homes. The promise, “He shall bring all things to your remembrance,” seemed that day fulfilled. Precious memories of the wonderful work of grace that drew so many of them into the fold were present to all with power. “Our hearts burned within us” as we talked of these things there, and “by the way.” The night service, the Monday calls, the informal social gathering, the eager questions, the manifest Spirit’s presence, the next day’s farewells—all made a deep impression on us, and led us to feel anew that this missionary work is God’s work, for it was that work that inspired our hearts and was our theme from first to last.
This church has already put five young men into the Christian ministry, and is in morals, intelligence and management a pattern worthy to be copied.
Since my arrival home the one question that presses heaviest on my heart is, how can we provide for the boys and girls of Marion and other places visited that want to come to the college to school? In Childersburgh, Shelby Iron Works, Calera, Selma and Marion, places along the line of my journey, I found many smart boys and girls anxious to become educated men and women. In one place I found twenty-five eager to come, not one of whom could pay more than a small part of necessary school expenses. Low wages, poor crops, the cotton worm and inherited poverty keep them where they are, and so far as I can see they must live and die there in their poverty and hopelessness, unless those whom God has more highly favored are moved to help them. Our college expenses are so low that seventy dollars will keep one pupil in school one year, and sometimes, on account of labor done or aid from home, a much smaller amount will suffice. We need more than one thousand dollars to be used in this way this year, above the amounts already pledged. Christian education transforms these boys and girls. I wish you could see the eight young men that were graduated last June from the Theological Department of the college, and hear them preach the word to their people; you could but say, “Verily, this is God’s way and I must chime in with it.” Several young men are just now entering the Theological Department who are every way worthy, but wholly dependent for means to prosecute their studies to the end.
TENNESSEE.
Revival at Memphis.
PROF. A. J. STEELE.