EDITORIAL IN ADVANCE.
We fear that many of those who are criticising the policy of the society (A. H. M. S.), in pushing its work in the South, know little or nothing either of the New West or of the South. We call the attention of Dr. Bacon, and the minority which he represents, to a few facts. In the first place, the American Missionary Association cannot reach the white people of the South. In proof of this we appeal to agents of that society, who are in the field—Dr. Roy and the missionaries down South. One of the missionaries has just been in this office and gave his testimony most freely, while we were reading the proof of Dr. Bacon’s article. He said: “I have been three years in Alabama. I am pastor of a colored church there. We are prosperous. We were never more so. The Southern people are coming more and more to labor with us, and to co-operate with us in every way for the education of the negro. But there must be a colored church for colored people, and a white church for white people, and this will be done without saying anything about it. Both races prefer it, and it is a natural method. Our society cannot reach the white people, we ought not to attempt to do so.” * * *
There is a call for the work of the American Home Missionary Society in the South. To refuse to go there would be wicked. That society has just as much right to build a church in Mississippi or Georgia, and to give it aid, as it has to aid a church in Iowa or Dakota. No other society has a right to bid it keep north of Mason and Dixon’s line.
WHO SHALL WORK AT THE SOUTH?
BY REV. J. E. ROY, D.D.
To the Editor of the Advance:
In your response to Dr. Bacon on this question, you said: We appeal to Dr. Roy. I did not understand you as committing me; but finding that some brethren took you as setting me down to the theory that the A. M. A. could not do the work among the white people there because of its relation to the colored, I wish to disavow it, for I never held that view, never expressed it. I think that the A. M. A. could do that work if the constituency shall so direct, though, as our experience among the mountain people of Kentucky proved, it would require patience, wisdom and fortitude, and would be a slow process.
The Advance.
RESOLUTION AT SARATOGA MEETING.
Voted, That a committee of five be appointed who shall consider our denominational work in the South and confer with the secretaries of the American Missionary Association, or any committees appointed by that society, in reference to the same, and report at our next meeting.