As we now return to our old plan of selecting the lady missionaries, and of supporting them from our treasury, we most earnestly solicit the aid of the noble women of our constituency who sympathize with our endeavor to lift up the lowly of their sex, and to bring into their homes the refining and elevating influences of the Gospel. Whether this aid shall be rendered by individual gifts or by united efforts on the part of ladies of given churches or localities, we most cheerfully leave to their good judgment to decide. The work we know is promising, the opportunities are abundant, and the blessings two-fold to those who give.
LADY MISSIONARIES
As we intend to increase the number of our lady missionaries in the South, it is fitting that we explain our aim in sending them and the methods of their work. Their services are mainly in the home with the mothers and the children. We regard the home, the school and the church as the pivots of the Christian life, each most effective when working with the others. A home that is not neat, attractive and pure, cripples the efforts of the school and the church. If a child spends six hours in a school and eighteen hours in a disorderly and immoral home, or if a man attends service in a church on Sunday and spends all the rest of the week in that same home, the progress of both boy and man in the Christian life will be slow indeed. We aim to build up character, and if the school, the church and the home, co-operate in harmony “according to the effectual working in the measure of every part,” the product will, under God, be men and women of intelligent minds and pure hearts, happy themselves, useful to their race and the nation, and ornaments to the church of Christ.
LADY MISSIONARY IN NEW ORLEANS.
We have appointed Miss A. D. Gerrish as lady missionary in New Orleans, and she entered upon her work there Oct. 1. She will devote her energies with special reference to aiding our work in Straight University and in Central Church, in accordance with the principles laid down in the foregoing article. There is much benevolent and Christian work to be done in that great city, and the A. M. A., unable, of course, to do it all, must make choice. For the Chinamen in America, we are doing our great work on the Pacific Coast, and those who float into Eastern and Southern cities seem to have been brought providentially to the doors of the large and wealthy local churches, whose duty and privilege it is to lead these strangers to the Saviour. As to the maintaining of orphanages, our experiment, thoroughly tried in the opening of our work in the South, when such asylums were more needed than now, proved to us that our broadest and best work for the colored people could not be done in them. We are persuaded that a given sum of money will do more for the effectual elevation of the colored people in connection with our regular work in church, school and home than in any other way. The lady missionary, aiding to make the home of the pupil and parishioner neat, intelligent and pure, will not only brighten that spot, but will render the school and the church more effectual.
Miss Gerrish is no stranger to our work. She has been eminently successful as missionary in Topeka, Kansas, where her remarkable musical gifts, her magnetic enthusiasm, and her earnest Christian character, have won all hearts within her influence. We bespeak for her a share in the sympathies and prayers of the faithful Christian women of the North and West, who toil for the elevation of women who are depressed by poverty and ignorance.
We publish in consecutive pages in this number of the Missionary the Constitution of the A. M. A. as it now stands, and the Proposed Constitution as it will be reported at our Annual Meeting for action. They will be convenient for reference and comparison.