1887.
The American Missionary wishes all its readers and friends a “Happy New Year.” The memory of the old year makes this salutation a hearty one. God has blessed our work in a signal manner both at the North and at the South. Our appeals have been heard and have met with generous responses. The religious press has rendered us most valuable aid. Friends have interested friends in our behalf. The debt has been almost wiped out. The year of 1886 stands conspicuous in its attestation of the favor God has given the Association in the eyes of the churches. Our greeting, therefore, is not merely formal. We have occasion to be grateful. Will our friends then please be assured of our gratitude, as entering upon the work of 1887 we wish for them, one and all, a “Happy New Year.”
This is the time to make resolutions. Good resolutions now formed and faithfully carried out will be certain to make the new year a happy one. We would suggest that the resolutions passed at the National Council at Chicago and adopted as its own by our annual meeting at New Haven, asking for $350,000 from the churches this year for our work, be approved by every reader of The Missionary, with this one added, “Resolved, that I will do my part as an individual to make these resolutions effectual.” If this resolution is heartily adopted and lived up to, then certain results will follow: (1) The sixty per cent. increase upon the contributions of last year, that the amount called for necessitates, will be secured. (2) A larger number of churches will be found among those contributing to the A. M. A. than has ever yet been recorded. (3) Special appeals will not be heard. (4) Demanded enlargement of work at a number of points will be made, and new fields entered. (5) Our missionaries will be made happy in the knowledge that their work is to be sustained.
We feel that we can ask God’s blessing upon all who thus resolve with an assurance of faith that the blessing will be bestowed where the resolution is kept.
One of the crying evils of the times is the severe tax put upon the eyes by reading small print. The American Missionary has been an offender in this respect, but it has seen the error of its ways and promises to try to do better. It has selected the first month of the new year in which to inaugurate the reform. Small print has been banished from its pages of reading matter. We trust that this effort of The Missionary to make its pages more readable will be responded to by a great increase in the number of its readers. The annual subscription is only fifty cents.
Notes in the Saddle, by Field-Superintendent Ryder, is a heading under which will be found, on another page, some good reading. We hope to continue these notes during the year. We caution our readers against falling into the phonetic craze when they read this announcement. We are not responsible for the way in which our Superintendent spells his name, but we presume he follows the analogy of “ancient tyme.” At any rate, he who in the saddle, with reins over the neck and speed unchecked, can make notes, must be an expert rider, no matter how we spell or pronounce his name.