It is with great regret that we call the attention of our readers to our diminishing receipts. We have been cherishing the hope that we would be spared this necessity. But the receipts in February are so much below the receipts of the corresponding month of the previous year, that unless the loss is quickly retrieved we shall be embarrassed all the rest of the year. In February, a year ago, we received $21,897.74. Last February we received only $12,389.79. This is a loss of $9,507.95. Until February we were well ahead of last year. But the drop is so great that our total receipts up to the first of March are $3,438.16 less than they were at the same time the preceding year. In church collections and individual donations, we are behind $5,389.31! We earnestly ask the attention of all the friends of the American Missionary Association to these facts. What is the reason for so heavy a falling off? Are we failing to keep the necessities of our work before the churches? In our thought that the Association was getting nicely out of the woods, have we relaxed our efforts and allowed other things to slip in and crowd the Association out? Something has happened. That during the month of February—which ought to be one of the best months in the year—only a little over $12,000 should find its way into our treasury, is occasion for anxiety. We have had our bills to pay and we have borrowed the money and paid them. In so doing we have incurred a debt. We could not avoid it without leaving our missionaries unpaid. We must speedily be reimbursed, or else back again into the hated bondage and hindrance of financial embarrassment we inevitably fall. We appeal to our friends to spare us this humiliation and vexation. We ask this favor, namely: Will pastors and individual friends please take this question of our outlook upon their minds and hearts and make an earnest effort to increase contributions to our work from this time forward? Will they try, during this month and the months intervening before summer vacation, to secure so much to our treasury that during the summer months we shall be spared the agony of special appeals and special efforts? “A prudent man foreseeth the evil and hideth himself.” We are urged to be prudent now by the very unpleasant memories of what we have been obliged to do every summer, for several years past. Will you join us in foreseeing the evil and help us to avoid it?
We are from time to time reminded that the old abolition friends of the A. M. A. are rapidly passing away. They will soon all be gone. There was something in their friendship that challenges our admiration. They gave the Association such a hearty support that there could be no question but that prayer and gifts went together. So also they have in many instances shown the wisdom of giving generously during life. The recent death of Mr. Lewis S. Swezey, of Rockford, Ill., gives emphasis to these thoughts. He helped organize the Liberty Party, and was one of a few who first voted in the town of Rockford for Birney for President. Though his whole estate did not amount to more than $10,000, he gave to the Association a one thousand dollar bond in 1885, and another amounting to seven hundred and fourteen dollars in 1886. At his death he left the Association a life policy of $2,000, and $500 in his will. He made the A. M. A. his residuary legatee, from which our treasury will probably realize about $5,000. His sympathy for the colored people may be seen in the fact that one of the last acts of his life was to give a poor old colored woman in Rockford a hundred dollars to repair her house. When dying he said to his wife, “This seems like crossing the river,” and in response to the question, “How does it look on the other side?” replied, “Very bright, very bright.” And no wonder. He had laid up his treasures where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. Money given to the Lord during life is followed with no regrets at the dying hour. Were Christians thoroughly possessed of the conviction that such work as the A. M. A. is doing must be prosecuted and sustained as a religious duty, we believe their offerings would be far more generous than they are. A sense of duty as expressed in their gifts would be accompanied by a sense of delight. Our prayer is that the surviving old abolition friends may be long spared us, and that the places of those who have fallen may be speedily filled with worthy successors.
“It is with pleasure I assist you. I have made several of our young ladies life members during the past few years, to get them interested in the A. M. A. Anything I can do to help on the good work, be sure and call on me for, and I will do all I can for you.”
“I think the placing of the work of the Association before individual church members is productive of good results, as I find that only those well informed of the Society’s needs contribute regularly and liberally to its support.”
“We are to make a careful canvass of our congregation, with a view to increasing our missionary offerings, and securing a larger number of regular readers for our missionary magazine. Can you send us ten or a dozen copies of The American Missionary to be used by our district visitors?”
“My gifts to the A. M. A. have been necessarily reduced to meet my change in circumstances. I gave five dollars at our last collection, which was the price of a cushion in my pew. I believe that under the circumstances the hard side of a board will be softer than the soft side of a cushion. There is no special merit in it, but I feel that it is an encouragement to the workers to know that many in the churches are willing to give up little comforts for the sake of them and the cause.”