MISS D. E. EMERSON, SECRETARY.
ILLINOIS WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION.
This society, organized at the last meeting of the General Association at Rockford, is getting under way. Its President is Mrs. A. E. Arnold, of Stillman Valley; its Secretary, Mrs. J. H. Dixon, of Chebanse; its Treasurer, Mrs. E. F. Williams, 4,018 Drexel Boul., Chicago. Its Executive Committee consists of one lady in each of the dozen district associations. That committee has had a business meeting in Chicago. It is providing for the organization of the ladies in all of the associations of the State. Forty of these unions have been organized in as many local churches. The object of the State Union is to aid the A. H. M. S., the A. M. A. and N. W. E. C., A. C. U. and S. S. P. S. Such unions as desire may also embrace the work of foreign missions. As the State body absorbs the work of the former A. M. A. committee, it has also assumed the support of the same special missionaries under the American Missionary Association.
The President and the Secretary have just issued a small folio giving the officers of the Union, the constitution of the State body, and a proposed constitution of an auxiliary. The folio, besides a fresh letter representing each of three of the home mission societies, presents a stirring appeal to the more than 15,000 women in the Congregational churches of Illinois. We quote that part which refers to our work, giving our new associate a hearty welcome and a Godspeed in the blessed work it has undertaken:
The Woman's Home Missionary Union includes not only home missions as represented by the American Home Missionary Society and its Auxiliaries, but all the other great societies which act as the almoners of the gifts from our churches for missionary work in this country. It is eminently appropriate that the work of the new society should include that of the American Missionary Association.
In every Southern State, in the cabins of the freedmen, in the halls of its institutions of learning, are to be found the A. M. A. teachers. Ladies of culture and refinement go from high social circles in the North to endure social ostracism in the South. During its twenty years of existence more than three thousand women have been in this service. Patiently they have toiled, never faltering when their homes and school-houses were burned over their heads, and have endured with Christian fortitude trials that might well have crushed their brave hearts.
Our dark-faced sisters of the South to-day plead with us for love and sympathy, and for the boon of education. Men, both white and black, look upon them in precisely the same light as Turks and Hindoos regard the women of the Orient. The curse of slavery is still upon them. Is it not woman's work for woman to carry the Gospel of Christ to these despised ones? Equally pressing in kind, if not in degree, is the work among the Indians and Chinese, also carried on by the A. M. A. The work by women for women is especially emphasized by its "Woman's Bureau," which is giving efficient aid to the Society in "letting Christ shine among the oppressed and degraded of the sons and daughters of men."