We print in this number of the Missionary two articles written by Secretaries of the Association, which give reliable statements touching the deplorable needs of some of these people, and yet of the cheering transformations made in their condition by our schools and churches. We invite attention to these two articles.
The Year of Jubilee.
APPEAL FOR RELEASE FROM DEBT AND LIMITATIONS.
A Jubilee Fund of $100,000 in Shares of $50 Each.
We have come to our Year of Jubilee. Fifty years ago the American Missionary Association had a darker outlook than it has to-day. It saw 4,000,000 of people, children of a common Father, who were born under the skies of our common country, in a land of churches and Bibles, and saw them, not only with no legal rights, but not even the rights of persons, chattels under the law, bought and sold as things, in sin and degradation, and without hope in the world. That was a dark outlook.
But God's providence came, and now the country, which the Association could not so much as enter, is dotted with our schools, and with ten thousand other schools, and with churches, which stand for the truths which the Congregational churches of our land believe in and teach. Has anything more wonderful occurred in the wonderful fifty years, now gone by, than this change of conditions in the South,[pg 116] or any more demanding duty come to our churches than the work which has grown out of these changed conditions?
It belonged to no man fifty years ago to foresee the magnitude of our work in the South. Add to this that among twenty tribes of Indians, and our missions in the highlands of the South among the whites, and that which has been so greatly blessed of God on the Pacific Coast, and who could have foretold it all fifty years ago?
In all this we are not engaged in a merely philanthropic work; we are doing more than to educate people in industries, though we are doing this. We are building on a foundation which no other can lay than is laid, Jesus Christ. In the schoolroom, in the teachings of agriculture and mechanics, the various trades and industries, as well as in our churches, this is our foundation. We are bringing salvation to the peoples who need it, knowing well that salvation includes this life, as well as that which is to come. Our supreme thought is to hasten on the time when there shall be a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. This has been, and this is, our work. Now we need to meet our indebtedness. It is a distressing load to carry. We are seeking to pay our obligations this Jubilee Year. We have not pressed our grievous burden upon the churches as urgently as we would have done, because our sister societies, in like distress, were in the field with their special appeals. Our hearts are now gladdened by the gracious providences that have come to them. Now, will not the churches generally engage in a special effort to lift the burden of our debt and restore prosperity to this work, which the churches and our individual givers have been, and are, doing through this Association?