As I look into this work, the first thing that impresses me is the faith that inspired it. It was a most sublime undertaking. It began, so far as relates to its present fields of labor, with the millions of freedmen just emancipated from two and a half centuries of bondage. What this bondage signified, this present generation will find it difficult to realize. For years it had been a crime to teach them the alphabet. They had been bought and sold like cattle. Their lives were a daily school in sensual immorality, deceit and dishonesty. Every manly aspiration, and womanly feeling, was smothered at its birth. They had come from savagery to slavery, and in a day, without training or preparation, they were set free. It is no wonder that they were ignorant, indolent, degraded and despised. As one of their own number says, "We came into bondage naked and destitute of worldly goods, we went out of it penniless, homeless and almost characterless." Now it was this mass of degraded humanity that this Association set itself to elevate and Christianize, and it did it with a calm assurance and serene hope which no obstacle has as yet been able to disturb. The road has been a long and hard one, but it did not anticipate an easy time or miraculous success. It has met with new and perhaps unexpected difficulties. It may be that all the workers would say what the President of Talladega writes in a recent letter, "The magnitude of the obstacles are more and more real to me as I live and work." But they still live and they still work, never doubting the final result. If you want to find men who have undying faith in the future of the black race, go to those who, in the spirit of their Master, are toiling night and day, under the commission of this Society, for its elevation.
In the same spirit, also, this Association has welcomed new labors and entered into new fields. When Chinamen were to be Christianized, immediately it had great faith for the Chinese. When the Indian missions were laid upon it, then it saw wonderful possibilities in the red man. And now, last of all, when some million or two of long-forgotten and neglected "Mountain Whites" are brought to its attention, it sees in these abjectly poor, dispirited and superstitious people, only another opportunity for elevating humanity, and proving the power of Christianity to restore the lost manhood of every race.
These servants of God are not engaged in a forlorn hope. They have faith. Wherever they work there they expect results, not only in the saving of individual souls, but in regenerating whole races of men. A Christian woman, missionary to the poor whites among the mountains of East Tennessee, under the inspiration of her great faith, writes home to her friends, "We can almost hear the bells ring in unreared steeples, and hear the songs from choirs that are as yet totally oblivious to the spirit of melody, and enter into the heart-worship of the prayer meetings that are to be when shall have been fulfilled the prophecy, that 'to the people which sat in darkness and the shadow of death, light is sprung up'." Such buoyant, hopeful faith as this, so clear and beautiful in its confidence in the promises of God, is one of the "radical forces" which command, while they inspire, this holy work.
II.—A RADICAL LOVE.
But what may be called the special characteristic of this Society among missionary organizations doing work in our own land, that which establishes its special claim upon hearts of Christian people, is the radical spirit of love there is in it. It exemplifies in a most practical way, the brotherhood of man. It repudiates caste. It is absolutely color-blind. It works for the despised. It helps those who are themselves the most helpless. This is no newly-discovered fact. I remember the first sermon I ever heard in behalf of this work, more than twenty years ago; it was drawn from the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The text was, "Who is my neighbor?" The address of the honored late President of this Association at the close of the last Annual Meeting which he attended, was in the trend of this very same Scripture. "This organization," he said, "is the Good Samaritan, loving to bestow its aid upon the poorest and most despised, the most severely wounded races of our country." The sermon, a score of years ago, told us that our neighbor was the Negro, just then made free. So said President Washburn, "If you can point out to this organization any race that needs its assistance, whether colored or white, there is the legitimate field of this Association."
It would seem that a law so emphatically taught by Jesus Christ as the common brotherhood of man, and so familiar to the world, would long ago have been accepted and adopted in the practice of Christian nations, especially by a Christian Republic within its own borders. But, instead of that, it is the hardest of all laws for us to learn and the most difficult of all to put in operation. Our policy toward the general colored races in this land has been one of cold-hearted and cruel selfishness. As ex-Senator Brace has said, speaking in behalf of his own people, "From the red race was taken their lands, from the yellow their labor, from the black their persons. The red race was gradually driven toward a setting sun; the yellow race, the rabble demanded to be driven from the country; the black man was a slave in chains, with no rights which the Constitution recognized."
These unjust prejudices are by no means altogether a thing of the past. They are not as violent as they once were, thanks to the influence of this Association, but they still exist. "Niggers," are still ordered out of Southern churches. Many a professed Christian still wants his Indian "dead." This work has all along been compelled to fight its way against suspicion, bigotry and hatred; it must do so still, because it recognizes man as man, whether his skin be white or black, red or yellow; and, in taking this radical ground, it is interpreting to the world the benevolent spirit of the Saviour, and is preparing the way for that universal reign of love on earth which He came to establish. Such a work as this is the salvation of our Christianity. Without it, one of the chief evidences for Christianity would be taken away, and the spirit of it would die. Standing before a congregation of white men, Negroes and Indians, with a Chinamen or two to make the tale complete, President Mark Hopkins last May dedicated the new chapel at Hampton to the worship of Almighty God. He voiced the sentiment of this whole Association when he said, "Here will be taught and promoted a Christianity as narrow in its creed as revealed truth, and as broad in its love as humanity!" "A creed as narrow as revealed truth." Yes! we want no inspirations from outside the sacred book. "A love as broad as humanity." By all means, yes! for no smaller measure will satisfy the demands of that book or fulfil the will of the Master.
III.—A RADICAL CONSECRATION.
Another principle required in this work and exemplified by it, is a thorough-going consecration. The men and women who have taken up this work, have followed Christ in his self-abnegation. There is no worldly honor in it. It is not an easy life. You know well enough how these devoted missionaries have braved social ostracism, and shut themselves in to their lowly ministry. With the Christly "sympathy of identification," they have made themselves one with their despised brethren, bearing their burdens, sharing their privations, stooping to meet their needs. What almost infinite patience it has sometimes required, what forbearance and charity, we cannot know, but they have served willingly and cheerfully, and found the sacrifice to be a joy. And there are many of them, in school and church and home, in our Southern land and in the Western wilds, who are serving there in a spirit of self-abnegation and patient sacrifice, and whom God will honor. These faithful workers are not martyrs; but there is something heroic in their lives. It is the heroism of those who lay upon themselves the lowliest duties, and perform them in the spirit of the loftiest devotion. The work that calls forth such consecration as this, so disinterested and sincere, bears its own letter of commendation. The spirit of Him, who "came to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many," is exemplified by it.