At Jellico, the A.M.A. has planted both a church and a school, and built a meeting house. The interesting series of meetings, which began at Jellico, was for the purpose of dedicating the neat Congregational churches recently built by the Association along this line of railroad. Preaching services were held every afternoon and evening, the company of ministers taking turns, as they pushed on from one church to another. These churches are at Jellico, Pleasant View, South Williamsburg, Williamsburg, Woodbine, Rockhold and Corbin. Congregationalism, through the A.M.A., has taken possession of this whole region in the name of Christ. We can easily hold it in the interests of broad and evangelical Christianity, if our older Congregational churches in the East and North arouse themselves to meet the pressing exigencies, and realize the splendid [pg 203] possibilities that lie before them in this field to-day, but which will be denied them in the near future.
One very interesting feature of these meetings was the dedication of a chapel which has been recently added to the Williamsburg church, and which is used for the infant class of the Sunday-school. This class had outgrown all the accommodations of the church, in connection with the other departments of the Sunday-school. It had become a Sunday-school of itself. This chapel was, therefore, built and publicly set aside for the service of these little folks.
During these meetings, our honored Corresponding Secretary and District Secretary pushed through the storms and forded mountain streams together with the other brethren, that they might keep the appointments which had been made for them. Dr. Roy's stereopticon views, which have interested and instructed so many audiences in the North, he used with great profit during this mountain campaign.
Two men called upon Brother Myers, our general missionary in this mountain region, and requested that he and the writer visit the field, some fourteen miles away, from which they had come that morning. They told a thrillingly interesting story of how God's Spirit had entered their hearts, and stirred them up to desire better things for their children and their community than they had enjoyed. One of them was a son of a French Catholic mother, and had early adopted her faith. His life had been wild and reckless, until he found the Saviour in a meeting led by an A.M.A. missionary. He was an intelligent man of some education. He found others ready to join him in a movement for the elevation of the people. They established a church and organized a Sunday-school. We pushed over the mountain on horseback, after the other visiting brethren had left the mountain region, to inspect personally this field. We found it even as the men had represented it to be. A little church had been organized and Sunday-school gathered. I could learn of no other Sunday-school in that region. I heard afterwards, that one of the old-time preachers warned the people against the Sunday-school, saying, "It war a heap worse than a dancing place." This same preacher had a vision, and gave an account of it to his people. "Two devils," he said, "had been in that country getting up some sort of an institution that they called a church." He warned his people against them.
The two men who visited us at Jellico, together with others who had joined with them in this effort to Christianize and educate this community, we found busy on a hillside, laying the foundations of the new "church house." They were enthusiastic in this new movement, which promised so much to their community. They had drawn up a confession of faith and covenant, which were evangelical and Congregational. They reported [pg 204 ] three thousand people living in the coves and valleys radiating from the point upon which they had planted their "church house," absolutely without intelligent Christian instruction of any kind. There were hundreds of square miles without a church building of any denomination. This little company had been stirred up by God's Spirit, and were almost starving for spiritual food. There was a pathos even in their peculiar mountain vernacular, as one of them said to me, "I don't understand scarcely a word you uns say. I'm too old to larn now. I'se done left. But I does want my chilluns to know somethin'. I tell you, I'd sell my old farm down in the cove so's to help my chilluns to know somethin'." What a tremendous appeal this is from the very heart of our country! All they asked was one hundred dollars, to help them build this Congregational "church house" by the side of Hickory Creek.
While writing these "Notes," there comes flashing over the wires, the news of this horrible crime committed upon the person of Prof. G.W. Lawrence, at Jellico. I remember a conversation I had with Mr. Lawrence during this campaign of which I have been writing. He had just been offered an important and lucrative position as teacher in the North. He was a young man of only limited means, and felt almost that he must go. I told him we could not offer him financial inducements to remain, but it seemed to me that the Lord had called him to that work, and I did not know where we could find a man to fill his place. "Very well," he replied, "I will remain." The Christian hero that he was, he went patiently forward in this self-sacrificing labor. Now, he has fallen by the hand of a brutal assassin! This awful crime emphasizes the importance of this work, and calls aloud to us to send more Christian missionaries into this field, until Christian light shall displace the darkness of semi-barbarism.
Turning a moment from the field in which our missions are planted, to that from which they are supported, I give three interesting incidents. In a New England church two young girls came forward after hearing the story of the A.M.A. work in the dark places of our country, and pledged fourteen dollars, which they had themselves gathered by the sale of articles which they had made. A good example.