Rev. Geo. W. Phillips, pastor of the church in which the meetings were held, responded to this resolution in a very felicitous speech. Among other things he said:
It is evident from the numbers which have been entertained here, it is evident from the interest which has prevailed in all these assemblies, that this cause, represented by the American Missionary Association, has taken its place already fairly side by side with all the other great missionary organizations and operations that are under the patronage and direction of our churches. The Worcester which you visit at this present time is not the Worcester that was here when this Society was organized. It is not the city that it was when this Association held its meeting here something like a score of years ago. From scarcely more than thirty thousand it has grown to be a city of more than sixty thousand people; and side by side with its growth in population we are happy to assure you—and I think you have seen some visible evidence of it—that we have kept pace with our Christianity, with our church extension.
The best meetings on earth, all meetings on earth, must have their end; and we are come to the last hour of the last great day of this American Missionary Association feast. We say our good-byes; we go hence, each to his church, his community, his home. We shall not all of us meet on earth again; but it is grateful to think that by and by there is to be another meeting—a meeting in which we shall no more plan for the salvation and for the moral purification of this lost world, in which we shall no more seek to bring men to acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, because those great words shall have been realized, “Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
ECHOES OF THE ANNUAL MEETING.
Dr. Hartranft’s Sermon.—“Christ stood not for any one race, but for every race and every nationality, and whenever we take this cup we pledge ourselves to put aside all barriers of race, all barriers of nationality.”
Capt. Pratt.—“If you wish Indians to live like citizens, you must let them see how citizens live, must put them for a time in well-bred communities. The kind of citizens that make free use of the revolver, they know too much of.”
“I have seen a Western village with eighty-four graves in the grave-yard, and only one man died a natural death.”
Dr. Brastow.—“Diogenes with his lantern has been 250 years hunting among the blacks for a man. Let this Association do its work in one-fifth of that time, and Diogenes will put out his lantern and find his man without it.”
Prof. Cyrus Northrop.—“Your uneducated bad man can be no worse than a brute. Your educated bad man is a demon. Hence, the education we give the colored man must be Christian.”