We need not ask their friends at the North to welcome these returned workers with that kindness that is restful, but we do ask that the facts they reveal in regard to the South may be heard and heeded. There is no set of witnesses more competent to tell of the actual situation at the South, its home life, its industries, its struggle with difficulties, than these same teachers. Sometimes the teachers have been there but a short time and their labors may have been confined to one locality, but in that narrow range their observations among the colored people have been most minute. They have watched the operations of the pupils closely from day to day, and have been brought constantly in contact with the people in their cabins, in their work, and in their trials.
But many of the teachers have been there for years and in different locations, and their representation of the state of affairs is as reliable as any that can be found from any source whatever. If the observations and experiences of this corps of teachers could be set forth, they would furnish, with all its lights and shades, the most accurate picture that could be presented of the state of affairs in the South. Pastors and churches would do well to give these returned teachers an opportunity to present in the prayer-meeting and elsewhere the exact facts as they have found them in the South.
MR. WHARTON, THE EVANGELIST.
Under the head of "Church Work" will be found in these pages a sketch of the work of an evangelist in our churches during the past year, written by himself. That evangelist is so unselfish and consecrated to his work, and has been so long and so successfully employed in it that we are sure our readers will be glad to have some account of the man himself.
Mr. James Wharton is an Englishman, resident at Barrow-in-Furness, near to Furness Abbey and the English lakes. He is not an ordained minister, but a lay preacher, as Mr. Moody is. He accepts no salary for his services, and consents to receive only the amount of his traveling expenses. For over twenty years he has been thus engaged, residing at his home in the summer but busy in gospel work, and in the winters traveling to distant places. His labors have been in England, Ireland, Scotland, the Shetland Islands, Wales, Canada, Spain and America. During these ministrations he has traveled 88,000 miles, and has made eleven trips to America.
In 1876, he learned of the condition of the emancipated slaves of this country, and entered into correspondence with this Association with reference to work here. He has spent eleven years here, and has evinced great wisdom, good judgment and, as will be seen by the report of his work this past year, has had great success. He was the first man to attempt an open-air service in New Orleans after the war. He stood on a cotton bale at the foot of Canal St., and continued the service for several weeks, although the white people threatened to shoot him. In his labors among the blacks of the South, he strikes the happy medium between undue excitement and cold formalism. As he returns from year to year, he rejoices to find the converts of earlier years holding on their way with faith and a stable Christian life. Our readers will be interested to read the sketch which Mr. Wharton gives of his labors.