This is, largely, due to the Christian teachers and missionaries of the American Missionary Association. No society has sent so many of them to the field, or has so signally demonstrated the quality and the value of their work. If the history of many of the most promising and useful of our graduates could be written up the story would read like romance.
The draught upon mind, and heart, and body has been heavy and exhausting. Not a few have left the service broken in health for life, and others have paid the penalty of overwork in early graves. All this they have not complained of; but their keenest anguish has come from lack of that fullness and warmness of sympathy which they had a right to expect from the whole Christian sisterhood of the North. They ask for it now, and we ask for it in their name!
Will not our Christian women re-examine this question of their duty with reference to the elevation of the colored race, and especially of the women of that race? There can be no sure and lasting elevation of that people without refined and intelligent homes; and there can be no such homes without pure and intelligent colored women to build them. Such women can be brought forward, only as they have pure models to imitate, and refined teachers to instruct and guide them.
Fortunately, Northern homes are full of such models and of such teachers; and they only need the supporting word and hand of their sisters to go forth in larger numbers, and to lay, more broadly and grandly, the foundations of a regenerated South. They know that the colored woman can be elevated by the gospel of Christ, they know that she can take on culture like a garment, and be made a power in redeeming her race.
May we not, then, once more call the attention of Christian women to this work, so peculiarly theirs, and laid upon them by so many providential tokens?
It will be of interest to a large circle of friends on both sides of the water to learn of the marriage at Prof. Geo. L. White’s residence, Fredonia, N.Y., of Miss Ella Sheppard, pianist of the original Jubilee Singer Company, to Rev. Geo. W. Moore, of Oberlin. Mr. Moore is a graduate of Fisk University and acted as pastor of the Howard Chapel at Nashville for some time, where his labors were much appreciated. He has recently been connected with the theological department of Oberlin College and has preached with acceptance to churches in Ohio.
A FALLING OFF OF 17 PER CENT. IN DONATIONS FROM THE LIVING.
The receipts from living donors for the first three months of our fiscal year amounted to $39,528.77, against $48,174.97 for the corresponding months of the previous year, showing a falling off of more than 17 per cent. The receipts from legacies, however, amounted to $15,486.65, against $7,029.65 of the year before. The total receipts for the three months ending Dec. 31st amounted to $55,015.42, against $55,204.62 for the previous year.