But we have too long ignored the fact that there are several millions of poor whites at the South who need our help, and must have it if they are to be fitted for citizenship on earth or in heaven. They have claims upon our Christian sympathy equal to those of the colored people, for they too are the victims of slavery, and are despised by the old slaveholding aristocracy—and even by the negroes. A Southern man said in our hearing a few days ago, “There are as many white people at the South who need your help as there are colored people, and they must be reached by similar means, viz.: the Christian school and the Christian church.”
Let us now ask the question—Have we been doing our duty by these people? We know we have not. God forgive us for having neglected them so long, and may we now show by our actions that our repentance is genuine! Do you wish the Home Missionary Society to organize an agency to do this work?
REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON DR. BARROWS’ PAPER.
But why ask the Home Missionary Society to plant these churches and commission these missionaries? Simply because the endeavor is one which no present organized agency can successfully accomplish.
The work of the American Missionary Association is noble, and its field is wide. But broad as are its principles it cannot, as a practical matter of fact, cultivate the whole of that needy part of our Lord’s vineyard. That which has been the pride and the strength of the American Missionary Association, the thing it has printed on its publications and blazoned on its banners, that it was organized for the help of the despised races of America, to some extent honorably incapacitates it for some of the work which, nevertheless, needs to be done. Not in this generation, nor in the next, can men and women, between whom not history and habit only, but nature and providence, run lines so deep as between the races of the South, be made to any considerable extent to blend in comfortable and harmonious church relationship.
The ignoring of this fact will cost limitless labor and limitless disappointment. Why not take up the case as we find it, and in those places where the hand of invitation now so obviously beckons, respond to the call? What need of trespass, what occasion for misunderstanding, if the Home Missionary Society and the Association thus at some points work side by side?
The Home Missionary.
DR. WALKER’S ADDRESS.
There is no man in this house who has, to the limit of his ability, done more cordial and earnest work for the American Missionary Association than I have. There is no man who maintains a more cordial relationship with the secretaries and officers of that society than I do. Personally, each one of them is my friend. But I do feel, Christian friends, that we have here a question that we must meet; and the best way to meet it is in the spirit of frankness and openness, giving it the deliberation which it requires. The American Missionary Association, as has been suggested in the paper which has been presented to you, is, in my view, handicapped for doing a part of the work which is necessary to be done. * * *
Now the question is: Is it not expedient for us to enter upon that work? I am met by the objection: “Why, you are doing the same work that the American Missionary Association is doing. Why have two societies, side by side, doing essentially the same work?” They are not doing the same work, in the fact that the subjects for which they labor are providentially made distinct. It is impossible in this generation, and in the generation to come, for the American Missionary Association to plant Congregational churches to any considerable extent through the South. Now, the plain and practical question is: Is it wise for us to neglect the present opportunity and, for the sake of what may be proved after all to be but sentiment, let the present moment pass, a moment so freighted with consequences to the future? Is it wise for us to insist upon the strength of ecclesiastical ties as sufficient to hold men together, whom we cannot counsel to come together by strength of natural ties? We cannot advise marriage among the races; why insist upon a kind of work that forces them together in ecclesiastical relationships to which they are equally unfamiliar and averse?