We have again reached the last month of our fiscal year. What our friends do this month will determine whether the year closes with a debt. The receipts for July, which we publish in this number, are not pleasant to look at. As compared with the July receipts last year, they are nearly seventeen thousand dollars less, and the total receipts for the year from churches and individuals, as compared with the total receipts at the same time the preceding year, are nearly twenty thousand dollars less. Dr. Dana’s Fourth of July appeal, and Miss Auld’s appeal to the ladies last year, will in part account for the falling off. The excessively warm weather during July, greatly reducing the congregations, has doubtless had an influence. But whatever the cause, our receipts are behind to an extent that threatens injury to our work, and this month is the last we have in which to ward off the double evil—debt and curtailment of work. What we do must be done quickly.
We invite our friends to serious thoughtfulness preceding action. They know better what to do than we can advise. We earnestly plead for the co-operating help of every one of them.
(1) We solicit a personal contribution from all who are able to give, and the influence of word and pen from all who can induce others to make a contribution. Please bring our needs to the attention of the prayer-meeting, the missionary concert and the Sabbath congregation.
(2) We request all churches that have made us no contribution during the year, (and there are some who have made us no contribution for several years), to be sure and give us a contribution this month. You see the work of the American Missionary Association is to be benefited or injured all through next year by what the churches do this month.
Friends, what answer will you make to this statement of facts we lay before you? You know that enemies of our work in the South are proposing the chain-gang for our teachers. They are not satisfied with ostracizing them from society, they propose to punish them as criminals because they preach the gospel to the poor and befriend the oppressed. Will you allow the work to suffer in the day when it is assailed? Must we retrench, cut down, withdraw, at such a time as this? We cannot believe that our friends will sanction it. Let there be this month such a rally to the defense and maintenance of our God-appointed mission as was never known in all our history. Let everybody have a chance to give, and let everybody give, be it much or little.
A poor colored woman, living near one of our chartered institutions, and taking a deep interest in the education of its students, has recently given her little home, paid for by savings from small wages, to this institution for the benefit of its students. This is larger than some of the first ministerial gifts to Harvard University, and is a good omen and prophecy.
The name of California is so much associated with the idea of gold that it is easy to imagine that it is a wealthy State. And it is wealthy. How easy to think the next thought; being wealthy it ought to do more for mission work within its borders. That, however, does not prove that it will or that it can be reasonably expected to do more. If only the wealth was in the hands of Christian people—ah, yes, if only. Please find Rev. Mr. Pond’s article on another page and read it. His facts are unquestioned and his meditations will bear meditation.