Bureau of Woman's Work.
THE ASSOCIATION JUBILEE.
BY SEC. D. E. EMERSON.
Not long after emancipation a freed-woman, about 50 years old, who was learning to read, came to the word "unbound" in her lesson, and exclaimed, rapturously, "How good, to feel unbound!"
If the American Missionary Association, its work, principles, and all that it represents, could be expressed in one word, that word would be emancipation—deliverance from bondage, deliverance from caste prejudice, from ignorance, superstition, and darkness. Its mission is to preach the gospel to the poor, to loose the chains of the bound, to proclaim "The truth shall make you free."
It was a little company of earnest men and women that gathered in Albany, N. Y., in September, 1846, to form this organization. Its early history was not only of works, but of "witness," fearless and undaunted. It had a God-given mission, and this conviction sustained its brave adherents during those years of severe trial and testing. Yet all was not discouragement. Every year brought added strength in numbers and in funds. Every year showed more plainly that the hand of the Lord was in this movement.
So it worked for fifteen years, gaining varied experience in industrial, educational, evangelistic, and church work, in methods of administration, in wise use of funds. At the close of this period it was conducting prosperous missions at thirty-seven stations in its foreign field, and in the home field it had under its care 120 churches. Then came the rebellion and war, and the unmistakable call of Providence to the rapid development of missions southward. Immediately the Association, now encouraged and supported by all the churches, moved in the wake of the Union army, beginning in 1861 to work for the contrabands at Fortress Monroe, where 1,800 colored people had sought the protection of the American flag. All its varieties of experience and resources were called into action. It became a philanthropic society to feed and clothe the suffering, a Bible society to distribute the word of God. It became an industrial society to help people to homes and teach practical farming, trades, and housewifery. It established social settlements, with groups of missionary teachers living in one household among the degraded and despised people, to whom they ministered; an educational society with its system of schools; a church society, seeking always the salvation of souls and gathering of converts into churches.
Now it was that the wisdom, the heroism, the unfaltering faith of this Association, strengthened by fifteen years of valorous adherence to the gospel principles of emancipation, prepared it to launch out upon its great mission. The demands were almost overwhelming in extent and variety.
First, Fortress Monroe, then Norfolk and all eastern Virginia, Newport News, and Port Royal; then the Carolinas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. So closely did the missions follow the victorious armies that by the time the war-storm had fully cleared away, the American Missionary Association had 320 missionaries preaching and teaching the gospel to the freedmen, with 16,000 pupils in its schools. No wonder that it was said, "Behold how God has fitted this Association for this vast and mighty work."