The name of Rev. Frank Cross, who was appointed to the charge of the Rosebud Indian Mission, was by mistake not printed in the roll of workers. He is there, however, and his work has gone on bravely and hopefully.
We wish that the extent, and necessity, and hopefulness of our mountain work, were more fully understood by our readers. Now is our opportunity and the accepted time to answer the most urgent appeals from this neglected region in the heart of our country. Our Congregational churches are just what are needed to uplift these people. One of our earnest missionaries writes us:—
"The A.M.A. has done a work here to be profoundly grateful for as a beginning, but thus far it is only playing around the edge of its mountain work. This mountain region is of great extent. Sober calculation from facts already gleaned, makes a thousand Congregational churches in these mountains the possibility of the future, if only the strategic points can now be occupied. One church and one school to a county, should be our immediate aim; then we can throw upon these the work of developing native teachers and preachers for the rest. There are forty counties waiting for us, and all our mountain work so far is in three or four. I see this place where I am, changing like magic under the influence of school and church, but the necessity for our going forward oppresses me. I am ready for any additional labor, and will carry any burden my strength will permit, if only the American Missionary Association will take for its motto, 'One church and one school in every mountain county, as fast as they can be established.' I feel, when I see the need, as if I could plead the money right out of the most self-indulgent members of our favored churches at home. It would not be expensive as compared with other missionary work. Cannot some way be devised for making a large advance on the present movement?"
Those who thought to cripple Atlanta University because it could not yield its principles for the sake of a State appropriation of $8,000 made a mistake. They have helped that which they meant to hinder. The university will get the money. Joseph's brethren took counsel together and said, "We will see what will become of his dream," and they thought they had a sure thing when they put him in a pit, but they discovered some years after that this was but a way-station on the direct road to the Viceroyship of Egypt, and they saw what became of his dream.
When Napoleon the First wished to hinder the Huguenot Church, he gave it a small stipend in order to retain hold of it. He appropriated just enough to keep it a cripple. When the State of Georgia thought the education of the Negro was becoming too marked, it reversed the policy of the far-seeing Bonaparte and took its hands off. We have never thought that Napoleon was a truly good man, but we do believe that he had a larger idea of the philosophy of control than the author of the Glenn Bill. If the State had held on, it might have hindered, but it has lost its hold.
Would it not sound well to the American people to have it said that in the United States of America, in the year 1888, our missionaries were imprisoned for reading the Bible to a heathen tribe of Indians who lived remote from civilization, the crime of it being that it was read in the only language which they could understand?