Another mistake I find in Dr. Tucker’s speech, the greatest and most fatal of all, and the last I will notice, is his color line “plan” for all educational and religious work in the South—a school and a church on this side of the street for the whites, a school and a church on that side for the blacks—a double system, with, as he says, “double the expense.” But neither a system such as that, nor the spirit that desires or prompts it, will have any place on earth when the gospel of Christ gets a proper ascendency in the hearts and lives of men.
We have issued Pamphlet No. 8, on The Reflex Influence of the Work of the American Missionary Association, an address delivered in Tremont Temple by Rev. S. L. Blake, D.D., Fitchburg, Mass., a quotation from which will be found elsewhere. Copies of this Pamphlet will be supplied gratuitously on application, to those wishing them for distribution.
A HYMN BOOK FOR OUR CHURCHES.
It is the “Manual of Praise,” published by E. J. Goodrich, Oberlin, Ohio, compiled by the lamented Rev. Dr. Hiram Mead and J. B. Rice. It has the cream of our hymnology, the worshipful, endeared hymns to the number of six hundred. It has the wearing pieces of Moody & Sankey. Compiled not by an ambitious amateur in musical composition, it does not seek to force upon the churches a great batch of new and unproven tunes. It was evidently put together for practical purposes, and is small enough to go into a side or hip pocket, a “multum in parvo.” It is cheap, coming by the dozen, for introduction, so as not to cost over sixty cents a copy. It is suited to all occasions. It has a logical arrangement, which will be of constant advantage in the use of it, though those who have it may not know just how the logic comes in, even as the perfection of the art of elocution is to conceal the art. Where it has been used in our institutions and schools, it has been much approved. It is certainly a desideratum for our new churches in the South and in the West.
A LIFE NOT TOO LONG.
One of our regular contributors, in transmitting his donation to our treasury, accompanies his gift with the following cheering words: “Through the goodness, mercy and truth which has not been taken away from one highly undeserving, I am again permitted the privilege of herewith inclosing a draft to your order for the general use of the A. M. A., for $1,000. Whether now in my eightieth year, I shall be permitted to repeat the pleasant offerings, I know not. Shall I note the fact that coming from no large store, I cannot see that they diminish it?”