American Missionary Association.
We place before our readers in this issue of our magazine a considerable number of communications on the subject of temperance. We believe, our missionaries are in the best possible position to reach not only the children but adults, and to train them in habits of virtue and sobriety. We have from the first put great stress on the importance of abstinence from the use of alcoholic drinks and tobacco, and the encouraging reports given herewith indicate the success we have achieved. We publish also a concert exercise relating chiefly to temperance work in the missions of the A. M. A. It is our purpose to issue this in an eight-page circular which will contain the recitations in full, and the words and music of the Jubilee song known as Rise and Shine. The circular will be illustrated with cuts. Further particulars are given in connection with the concert exercise on another page.
BUREAU OF WOMAN’S WORK.
It has become an axiom in missionary work that no race can be lifted out of ignorance and degradation except as its women are elevated. One of the marked features of this age in mission work is the clearness with which this is seen and the enthusiastic and successful efforts put forth by the noble women of the churches in this behalf. It is not merely the money which these efforts bring to the missionary societies, but the zeal for the conversion of the world infused by them into the church and the home. The Christian mother catches the enthusiasm, and the children feel its inspiration. Missionary education becomes the life-work in the family.
The American Missionary Association has from the outset realized the indispensable need of the elevation of woman in its work in the South, among the Indians, and, as far as possible, among the Chinese at the West. Its workers, largely women, have been specially adapted to it. The lady teachers have reached not merely the girls in their schools, but the mothers in their homes. The lady missionaries have labored for the purification of the home through direct visits, in mothers’ meetings, in industrial work taught to the girls, in the Sunday-school, and in temperance work. We have become so impressed with the importance and success of this part of our work that we are constrained to give it a broader basis and a more thorough organization. Our aim is not only to do more work for woman, but to give the Christian ladies of the North and West more full information as to the way in which they can co-operate with us. We wish to show that not only in varied ways, but with small sums of money they can reach the women for whom we labor.
To attain these results the Executive Committee of the A. M. A. has organized a Bureau of Woman’s Work. The object is:
1. To give information to the ladies in the churches of the variety of work now sustained by the Association, and to assist in devising plans of help.
2. To promote correspondence with churches, Sabbath-schools, missionary societies, or individuals, who will undertake work of a special character, such as the support of missionaries, aiding of students, supplying clothing, furnishing goods, and meeting other wants on mission ground.