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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
Led on through youth to aspire to a learned profession, at the age of
fifteen years he signed his name, John Frederick Oberlin, as a
student of the University of Strasbourg. Three years later he was a
Bachelor of Arts, and five years later, a Doctor in Philosophy.
Ordained as a minister of the Gospel in 1760, seven succeeding
years were held sacred to the conviction that large usefulness means
large preparedness; so that he was still in his study at the age of
twenty-seven years, when a missionary who had been trying to save
needy souls in the mountains of the Vosges, ministering to the
spiritual necessities of a people passed by in the movements of a
world’s life and remote from civilization, came into Oberlin’s room
and urged him to take up this service.
He confessed his own lack of success, and that he had made no
impression upon them. He told Oberlin of the people, descendants of
the Huguenots, who had fled from fiery persecutions in France to
this wild and sterile mountain country. As the years had gone on for
more than seven generations of men, their teachers had died, their
preachers had died, until they, exiled and outcast, had declined into
heathenish ignorance. He had found as a distant memory of what
once had been, a single school in a mountain hamlet. It was in a
miserable hovel in one corner of which lay a helpless old man on a
rude truckle-bed, surrounded by a crowd of ragged, noisy, wild-
looking children. He asked: “Are you the schoolmaster?” “Yes.”
“What do you teach the children?” “Nothing.” “You teach them
nothing, how is that?” “Because I know nothing.” “Why then are you
the schoolmaster?” “Well, sir, I was taking care of the Waldbach
pigs, but the people thought me too old for that, and so I was
appointed to take care of the children.”
The missionary did not conceal the facts of the case, that the people
living in these remote and solitary places were not only frightfully
ignorant, but were rebellious against improvement. The region had
six months of winter, with bitter icy winds sweeping over the
mountains. There was not a single practicable road in the entire
district. Deep mud holes were before the cabin doors and the huts in
which the people were sheltered. In the short summer season they
gathered enough food to sustain an impoverished life through the
winter, in which winter they often herded for warmth in the stables
with their cattle. So far had they sunk into material and moral
desolation.
To such a ministry was invited this young man of large ambitions
and large reasons for them; to minister to this wretchedness, to go
to a people who were without sense of their needs, without
aspirations, without appreciation of the services to be done for them.
One prepared for the Professor’s chair in the great University where
it was pleasant to live, was invited to bury himself among those who
would not give him even the reward of gratitude.
It was not a pleasant call. The words of it struck the young man’s
heart like the blows of a hammer. But seven years before, he had
written in his own hand his consecration to God, that with all
sincerity of heart and in a fidelity which should not sleep he would
walk in the ways of Christ as God should reveal them to him.
And now what had this ardent student, with splendid talents and
high education, rich in special studies, who had in mind a great
sphere of usefulness, to do with this call but to take it to Him to
whom he had once for all consecrated himself, “with all sincerity of
heart”? In that little room, Oberlin, on bended knee, lifted up his
voice and prayed, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth,” and in
agony he listened for the still, small voice. He could not wish to go,
but he could not refuse to hear. And a great battle went on in his
soul.
There have been many battles in Strasbourg. The Roman armies
fought there; the Germans triumphed there; the tri-colors of France
have waved in the glory of victory there, but never a greater conflict,
perhaps, or a more glorious conquering, than this between faith and
sight, the issues of which God and the centuries were awaiting—a
great soul meeting the questions of this world and the questions of
eternity. When he arose from his prayer, he said: “I will go.”
Conviction was action. Soon among them, his quick eye perceived
that preaching to them in their condition would fall far short of their
needs. He must save souls, but he must also save men and women.
And here developed his missionary idea. It was not new, for Christ
taught it and lived it, but it was new, for Christians had forgotten it.
Christ was divinity in humanity, and the people must realize the
divinity in the humanity. He must save their souls, but their souls are
in their bodies. So he would not deal with them as if they were
disembodied spirits, but seeing them in all their ignorance and
material poverty, he would teach them how to meet their physical
destitutions and their mental destitutions, and would go to them as
persons who have a life in this world as well as in the world to come.
Salvation for this people was not to rescue here and there merely a
vacant mind, nor out of multitudes of shipwrecked souls to save here
and there one from the wreck; but to him the Kingdom of God was
like unto seed which a man put in his ground and which should grow
—he knoweth not how—by all kinds of help, but which might call for
long watching and long waiting.
Therefore he said, “Education is indispensable to the uplifting of
such a people,” and schools were planted. Home life must be
redeemed, and home industries were taught. They need the
industrial arts; hence he began to instruct them in carpentry, in
masonry, in smithing and in agriculture. He introduced the planting
of trees; societies of agriculture; instituted arbor days; taught them
how to drain their lands, how to irrigate them, how to enrich them,
how to make roads, and how to construct bridges across their
mountain streams.
There he went to stay, and among them built his own house and
brought into it a like-minded, large-minded, cultivated, earnest-
spirited wife, who with him taught the lessons of home life, its
divinity, its sacredness and its glory.
Remember, this was more than a century ago, when the world had
not the missionary thoughts of to-day. None, so far as I know, had
as yet such a missionary idea enunciated and systematized.
While thus he was laying the foundations for the regeneration of a
despised people, a still greater sacrifice presented itself. It was to
leave this missionary work for another in one of the Southern
colonies of far-off America, to live among a people more needy than
these despised ones, and more despised; to live among those who
by law were being robbed of the very rights of being, and for whose
degradation the forces of law were now operating.
Accepting the mission, he was ready to depart, when suddenly the
war for American Independence was declared, and his life was
saved. He could not then have lived a year in the South possessing
his ideas, much less to apply and expand them.
His path blocked by Providence, nothing remained but for him to
develop those ideas where he was, and to lift his voice from those
out-of-the-way hills against the sin of slavery. He would not use
sugar in his coffee, “for,” said he, “every granule of it is tainted with
the blood of the unhappy slave.” No article wrung out of involuntary
servitude should come into his house. No product of slave labor
would he touch. He was a prophet, for at this date people in New
England had not ceased to buy and sell their fellow-creatures, and
scores of years after this, ministers of the gospel in this country
were diligently searching the Scriptures to discover and establish the
divine foundations for human servitude.
Meanwhile the churches increase, the school-houses multiply, the
industries prove their value, and the mountain people are led along,
and led up from their abject poverty and misery to the experience of
comfort and prosperity. Then he worked and waited for three-score
years save one, and lived to see a rude and vulgar and despised
people regenerated and transformed, saved from the dominion of
vice to good morals and gentle manners, and many of them
converted to a personal experience of the grace that is in Christ.
You may easily now examine the results of this life and service after
the long years have tested them.
Should you go with me to his house you would cross the pont de la
charité by the way of his well-constructed road. When Oberlin
proposed to make this road, to blast the rocks along the mountain
side, the people did not see how it would look as we now do. If he
had suggested a step-ladder to the moon they would not have been
more amazed. They applied to him all the deprecatory adjectives in
their possession. It was impossible, and unreasonable, and visionary.
Assuredly he had lost his mind. Much learning had made him mad.
They positively refused to sustain him. He was altogether out of his
sphere. This would have been a good time for him to have tendered
his resignation, but the great soldier did not run away, because he
was needed. They could not starve him out, for he knew how to
starve.
But if the road were made it would be useless, they said, for “how
could we get across the stream?” He replied: “We will take the rocks
which we blast for the road and build a bridge.” This confirmed them
that the pastor’s mind was clean gone forever. Such a departure
from the old paths showed not only the danger of theological
studies, but also a capacity for speculative views that would halt at
nothing. Nevertheless, he led the way in this enterprise, and the
people looked on amazed when they saw him picking and shoveling
with his own hands. Then one came and followed him, and another
came and followed him; then a score who soon were fifty, and next
a hundred, until by the time they had reached the bridge they all
believed in it and always had! The last man who was converted over
to the majority undoubtedly went home and told his wife that the
original idea of the improvement was his own; that he had it in mind
long before Oberlin came, and he himself would have proposed it to
their leader but for the conviction that ministers ought simply to
preach the gospel and leave the labor question alone. Perhaps the
trusting soul believed him.
As you enter the home where he was a father to this people who
were as children to him and brethren to each other, you feel his
protest against caste, and his teaching that if God is a universal
father this destroys caste and makes brotherhood a reality. In his
study in his own plain hand, you may find his missionary idea fully
expanded, and from that study you will no longer look out upon the
wilderness and the solitary place, because they have been made
glad by him. You will find happy children in good schools and happy
parents in good Christian homes.
Let me turn now from the influence of the life, to the life of the
influence. It is not always easy to trace the pedigree of an idea or to
track an influence. Sometimes we can in part, for they all have their
parentage, and their evolution has been so direct that we can tell
where and when they were born. Seven years after the sorrowing
people had gathered about the missionary’s grave, two young men
in this country—themselves having something of the prophetic
instinct—in acquainting themselves with the work of this missionary
prophet caught his spirit, and set themselves to incarnate his ideas
and his methods, in consecrating themselves to the work of
education in order to salvation. The influence which Oberlin never
thought to send so far, had winged itself from his mountain tops
across the wide sea to a little village in the new State of Ohio. Then
these young men who found themselves in sympathy with his ideas
of brotherhood, its obligations and its needs, with his feeling
towards the slave and to all who might be uplifted, took upon
themselves this moral and spiritual inheritance and began the
foundations of a school which should bear the name of Oberlin and
become the reproductive center of like ideas and influences. I do not
say that there were no other influences, only that there was this
one, dominant in spirit as well as in name. The young college took
on this stamp, a missionary character, sympathy with people in low
conditions, radical ideas of human brotherhood, profound
convictions of duty towards the oppressed and ignorant. From the
atmosphere of this influence, soon from the Professor’s chair in this
College there came forth a strong man girded for a great sacrificial
work.
A little Missionary Society, the embodiment of the idea which Oberlin
three-score and ten years before had proclaimed upon the
mountains, “No complicity with slavery,” consciously or
unconsciously, having adopted the same faith and spirit, needed a
leader. From the influences of Oberlin College came Rev. Dr. Whipple
to sound the bugle blast which went echoing through the land: “We
will not use the revenues of unrighteousness to do the work of
righteousness.” Was it anything more than a coincidence or was it a
providence, that with thirty years of singular sacrifice this strong
man in obedience to his mind and heart was working out the same
ideas which the great missionary prophet had so clearly held forth?
I am not now attempting to assert heredity of ideas, or to decide the
precise degree of historic continuity that there may be in an
influence. I have the easier task of following a distinct stream of
influence, one among many which flow into the great river of life.
With no purpose to measure it I see the providence. Another
evolution from the same atmosphere of the same institution brings
to the American Missionary Association kindred ideas, kindred faith
and kindred spirit, in the second Corresponding Secretary, thus
connecting the history, and expanding and deepening the influence.
Yesterday’s Annual Survey exhibited, as well as figures may, the
work of the Society now after more than two-score years of history.
It is interesting as a fact, independent of any weighing of influences,
to note that in church work and in Sunday-school work, in
educational instruction and industrial training, in teaching those who
have not had the chances for life, how to think, how to work, how to
aspire and how to rise, we find ourselves, as if working by a chart in
the expansion of the missionary methods of this prophet who gave
his life to rescuing the despised, teaching them how to live in the
world that now is, while they are taught the lessons that shall fit
them for the world to come. The education of the schools, the
lessons in the establishment of good homes, the industries, the
churches, are pressing on in the plain paths of providence until this
day.
Already our eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord. Its
aforetime degraded people are rapidly learning to work out the
decrees of God in the blessings of a Christian civilization. Among the
dark millions of the South, in the long passed-by cabins of
impoverished and ignorant mountain people in the heart of our land,
of our own race, among the long-wronged red men and the despised
Mongolians, the evolution of this missionary idea, and the
developments of this missionary influence are proving their
reproductive and fruitful energy in the sacrificial lives of noble
missionaries, men and women who are themselves often despised
while they are ministering to the ignorant and to those who are
lowly. They also are powers for other lives, while they are sustained
by a like devotion to the things that are eternal. As from this
unlikeliest mission, a hundred years ago the light of life shone out,
the influence of fidelity to convictions coursing down the centuries,
showing what enlightened consecration can achieve; so now those
who are working together with God for the same divine ideas,
though they may be hidden from the world’s praises, may be
confident that God will not forget them, nor fail to speed their labors
of love in the Lord.
As we gather here in the interests of a work so near to the heart of
Christ, like Him we may safely appeal to the confirmations of history
in the evolutions of providence for courage now, and confidence for
the future. How often when our Lord was testifying to the reality and
power of the kingdom of God on the earth, and the faith which souls
might have and hold in working in it and in waiting for it, did He
send the minds of people back to the days of the prophets and
righteous men that they might see how the work goes on when the
workers die, and how the influences of their lives continue and
enlarge in other lives, so that assurance might take fresh courage to
discover itself in the historic current of an unmistakable divine
purpose and in the evolution of the decrees of grace. The constancy
and compassion of God in the past are cheering us, in that we have
only to hold fast the beginning of our confidence, steadfast unto the
end. We shall not fail, and we need not be discouraged.
Thus putting on strength, as we recall the care of God and power of
His truth, may we not from this high place of Christian convocation
send out our sympathies to those who have consecrated themselves
to this same prophetic work of bringing in the cast-out, of raising up
the cast-down, and of saving those who are out of the way. Much of
their work is very kindred in form and feature to this work of
Oberlin’s. It is remote, in conditions of rudeness, and in separation
from kindred society. They are living the truth of human
brotherhood. They are holding forth that which is not popular. They
are standing with and for the despised.
They may remember that we bear them in our hearts and in our
prayers; that they have the grateful recognition of the churches in
their self-denials and heroisms. God has accounted them worthy to
live lives that may well rebuke the selfishness and sinful ambitions of
those who live for themselves and those who seek only high places.
The greatness of Christian service is theirs. They can never know
where their influences may go, nor how far. Nor until the roll-call of
Eternity is made will it be revealed what great lives they have lived,
and what Christian deeds have been wrought by these men and
women, who from us have gone out and away from the world’s
vision in self-abnegation, and often in the world’s scorn are like the
prophet of the mountains, patiently laying deep and broad the
foundations of a new earth wherein shall dwell righteousness.
And so long as our churches can produce this sacrificial spirit, the
work cannot do other than move forward, and the will of God shall
be done.
 THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN; OR, THE THREE
BROTHERS WHO SETTLED AMERICA.
BY SECRETARY STRIEBY.

This country was settled by Three Brothers. The first that came was
an Englishman, a Cavalier, who located himself at Jamestown; the
second was also an Englishman, a Puritan, who landed on Plymouth
Rock; the third was an African, and was consigned to the First
Brother.
These families multiplied exceedingly and at length came to be
numbered by millions. To them was committed a great duty—the
founding of an empire, and the taking of three grand steps in the
march of human progress, (1) the establishing of civil and religious
liberty, (2) the securing of personal freedom for all and (3) the
exemplifying of the Brotherhood of Man. The last step only remains
to be taken.
The parts of this great duty were unfolded in the due order of
development, and sprang naturally out of the heredity and
environment of the Brothers. The men and their surroundings given,
the results were inevitable. It seems singular that just these men
should have been selected by Providence, especially the black man,
but the result shows that they were wisely chosen. The black was in
the end found to be an essential factor.
I. Let me sketch these Three Brothers.
1. The First, the Cavalier, had been, in the old country, loyal to king
and church, a supporter of the House of Stuart and of Archbishop
Land. He was a representative of the rural population of England,
men who loved broad acres and field sports. In his home in the new
world his great ambition was to own a large plantation and multiply
the number of his slaves, and thus imitate the baronial life of the
mother country. He cared nothing for popular education, and
thanked God that there was neither a school-house nor a printing-
press in his domain.
2. The Second Brother, the Puritan, had become more accustomed
to city life, and was addicted to trade and commerce as well as to
farming. His zeal as a reformer in church and State brought him into
collision with the House of Stuart, and indeed he was an exile in his
new home on account of his religious and political principles. He
desired to have “a church without a bishop and a State without a
king.” He was earnest in promoting education as well as religion, and
his identifying mark everywhere was the meeting-house and the
school-house.
3. The Third Brother, the African, was not voluntary in coming to his
new home nor in the choice of his occupation. He was a slave. He
was strong in body, amiable in disposition, but at length became the
innocent cause of much ill blood between the other brothers.
II. The duties assigned to these men.
1. The founding of a great empire.
Never was there a more inviting opportunity—a continent almost
unoccupied, coast lined by two great oceans, with climate varied and
healthy, and with boundless resources in fertile lands, rivers, lakes
and mines; and never was an opportunity better improved—in less
than three hundred years the new empire has nearly double the
population of the mother country.
2. The second duty was to lead in three great steps in human
progress. (1), The first step was to secure and maintain civil and
religious liberty. This step was inevitable for the two English
brothers. They had planted colonies and organized States. They had
secured charters guaranteeing the rights of Englishmen. They had
thus a training in the arts of government and had learned to value
the blessings of constitutional liberty. In an evil hour the British
Government began to invade these chartered rights. The Two
Brothers were aroused. The Puritan was by inheritance and principle
a foe of arbitrary power. He, of course, was deeply stirred. The
Cavalier had indeed been a friend of the Stuarts. He could see no
objection to arbitrary power when it was practised by himself and his
party on others, but he naturally and suddenly came to see it in an
entirely different light when he and his party were the victims; and
for once the two brothers were in accord.
A contest was imminent. The British Government could settle it
peacefully, if righteously; if not, in blood. It would not restore
chartered rights. Then came the Declaration of Independence, the
Revolutionary War, the new Republic, with the truest definition and
guarantee of civil and religions liberty the world had ever seen. The
first of the great steps in human progress, to which these men were
called, was taken.
(2.) The second step—the securing of personal freedom for all—was
plainly demanded by the taking of the first. The elements of the new
contest were embodied in the Declaration of Independence on the
one hand and Negro slavery on the other—a great principle and a
great fact at war with the principle. The antagonism was seen from
the outset. Expediency shut men’s eyes to it, but God and
conscience opened them. How skillful for a time were the devices to
escape the dilemma. It was said that the Declaration of
Independence was only for white men; that it was a mere glittering
generality; that the North had nothing to do with slavery, and finally
that slavery was right, justified both by law and the Bible. But all in
vain. God and conscience would not be silent.
Again a contest was imminent. The South could settle it peacefully, if
righteously; if not, in blood. The South would not abolish slavery,
and hence the Civil War and the overthrow of slavery. The second
step was taken.
(3.) The third step is to exemplify the Brotherhood of Man. This in
like manner is demanded by the results of the one preceding—by
the two great and opposing facts: Emancipation, and the Negro as
he is. On the one hand, every slave was emancipated; in the zeal of
the hour he was made a citizen, enfranchised and guaranteed “the
equal protection of law.” On the other hand, twenty years have
shown that these guarantees are in form and not in fact.
In other respects, too, his condition is seen to be deplorable, full of
discouragement to himself and of danger to the nation.
Let me point out some of the facts in regard to his condition:
(1.) He does not enjoy his guaranteed rights.
I wish to give due credit to the extent and to the localities in which
he does enjoy these rights, but speaking broadly they are largely
denied to him. He was deprived of the ballot at one time by
violence, and is now by fraud; in all cases where his vote would be
decisive in State or National politics, it is not counted—in other
words, the race is practically disfranchised. In the courts he seldom
finds a standing as a lawyer or a juror; in the chain-gang only does
he enjoy a monopoly. In the church, the school, the shop, he does
not, as a rule, have equal rights; he cannot join any church he
pleases, cannot choose the school to which he will send his children,
cannot enter the shop to learn a trade or to work as a journeyman.
He cannot, everywhere, ride in the street car, on the railroad or
steamboat with the white man, though he may buy the same first-
class ticket; he cannot, in many places, attend the theatre, concert
or lecture with the white man, nor with him eat a lunch at the
restaurant, nor lodge in the hotel. He is confronted, hindered and
insulted at every step he takes towards enjoyment or improvement—
a flaming sword guards the avenues of knowledge, industry and
virtue against him. His guarantees of equal rights are a mockery.
2. He is left in ignorance and vice.
Here again I wish not only to admit but to rejoice in the progress
made. More than a million of the colored people, of ten years old
and upward, can write; but, alas! more than three millions cannot! It
is these that awaken our fears, for they are in danger themselves
and are a danger to the nation. Owing to their illiteracy they cannot
keep the accounts of their earnings in the lowest kinds of
employment; they cannot enter upon the higher and more profitable
avocations; and they cannot rise to the intellectual dignity of a true
manhood. Then, too, they are in bondage to their vices. When they
escaped from slavery, many of them did not escape from lying,
stealing and licentiousness; when they entered freedom many were
captured by idleness, improvidence and intemperance. These are the
victims of designing men who take advantage of their ignorance to
defraud them, and of their vices to enrich themselves or to gratify
their lusts. The danger to the nation is from the contagion of vice
which spreads beyond race or locality, and from the schemes of
political demagogues who can sway to their own ends the millions of
these ignorant voters, who have no property to be taxed and no
character to maintain.
3. He is under the ban of caste prejudice.
This lies at the bottom of the whole difficulty. This refuses to see his
good qualities, denies his capacity for improvement, shuts to him the
doors of knowledge, cheats him at the polls, wrongs him in the
courts, and consigns him perpetually to the position of a hewer of
wood and a drawer of water, thus enstamping the race distinction
broad and permanent, and awakening in his heart either utter
discouragement or implacable hatred.
In these three facts—the withholding of the negro’s equal rights, his
ignorance and vice, and this caste prejudice—are the elements of a
race warfare; they foreshadow another “Impending Crisis”—the next
“Irrepressible Conflict.” This becomes the more obvious, because the
negro, having been recognized as a man before the law, there is no
alternative but to withdraw the recognition or to make it real. There
is no middle ground—he must be a slave or a freeman; the equal of
his white peers. The “Impending Crisis” is the more imminent from
the growth of the blacks in number. In spite of all denials, the time is
hastening on when the blacks in the Southern States will outnumber
the whites; and when they feel their strength in brawn and muscle—
and when especially there arise among them men of education and
talent, with ambition aroused and with passion stimulated by a
sense of injustice—then will the “Irrepressible Conflict” become as
certain as, and, we fear, more implacable than, the last great
struggle.
But there is a higher stand-point from which to view this great
question—the providential. When the negro ceased to be a slave he
became invested with a new significance. Then for the first time
began to be seen the meaning of his presence in America—the
reason why the black man from Africa—the most degraded part of
the world—was selected by Divine Providence as one of the Three
Brothers to settle this continent. He was the one by whom God could
test the nation and call upon it to exemplify before the world the
Brotherhood of Man. The full test could only be made when the
highest should recognize the lowest.
The nation cannot shirk this test. Justice to the negro demands it;
God, who made of one blood all nations, demands it; Christ, who
died for all men, demands it; he cares for the poor and repudiates
caste; he was born in poverty and toiled for his living; his mission
was announced and attested by miracles of help for the needy and
the preaching of the gospel to the poor; he touched the leper when
he healed him; he ate with publicans and sinners; in his church
there is neither bond nor free, but all are one in him; and in the final
judgment his award will depend upon how he himself was treated in
the person of one of the least of his brethren. His voice must be
heard. To all that call him Lord, and mean to obey his word and
follow his example, this whole question must be lifted out of the
realm of prejudice into the higher plane of Christian duty, and when
placed there, who can doubt the issue? The Brotherhood of Man
must be recognized and exemplified.
But the question remains, How shall this next great step in human
progress be taken? The question will be settled and the step will be
taken in righteousness, for no question is ever settled till it is settled
right. As we have seen before, the issue between the American
Colonies and the British Government, and that between the North
and the South in regard to slavery, might both have been settled
peacefully, if righteously; and so the question now before the nation
may be settled peacefully, if righteously, by giving the negro his
guaranteed rights, lifting him out of his ignorance and vice, and
especially by taking him from under the ban of caste prejudice. But
it is to be feared that these concessions will not be made, and then
the question will be settled by a bloody war of races, involving the
North as well as the South.
But this conclusion is too startling to contemplate without
instinctively turning to the possibility of a peaceful solution of the
problem. Let me suggest:
1. The Northern Brother has a great responsibility in this matter. He,
too, enslaved the Black Brother for a time, and gave his consent to
the virtual recognition of slavery in the Constitution; and when at
length he saw his error and demanded the emancipation of the
slave, the South resisted him to the utmost in the terrible war; and
when the slave was freed and the North insisted on making him a
citizen and on giving him the ballot, the Southern Brother, though he
could no longer resist, yet entered his most earnest protest. He said:
“I know these negroes; they are not fit for the ballot and will ruin
the country if they have it.” But the Northern Brother had the power,
and like General Jackson he “took the responsibility.” He cannot now
shrink from that responsibility. He cannot, with any better success
than Pilate, wash his hands and thus be made guiltless. He brought
his innocent Brother into his present trouble and it will be both
cowardly and criminal to leave him to his fate. No! if this great
problem is ever solved peacefully and righteously, the North must
awake fully to its special duty, and perform it at whatever cost of
money and self-sacrifice.
2. The Southern Brother has a still deeper interest in this matter. In
the first place he owes something to the Black Brother, who always
helped and never hindered him, who tilled his land and made his
wealth, who, during the war, cared for the plantation and protected
the family—though he knew that the master fought to rivet his
fetters all the tighter. Then again, the Southern Brother has and
must have the Black Brother with him, near him, his immediate
neighbor, and whatever discomforts or dangers may arise, he must
be the first, and for a time, the only one to suffer. He cannot remand
the negro back to slavery, nor even to serfdom—the nineteenth
century cannot tolerate the one more than the other—even in
Russia, much less in America. Nor can the present anomalous
position of the negro long be maintained. It is full of vexations and
of dangers; the negro will soon be strong enough to resist it, and
the North, as in the contest about slavery, must take sides with the
Black man.
Why should the South fight against the inevitable? In a recent
number of the Century, a Confederate officer, Col. Alexander, in
giving a racy sketch of Pickett’s famous charge at Gettysburg,
incidentally refers, in a humorous way, to one of their chaplains who
was accustomed to pray that “Providence would consent at last to
come down and take a proper view of the situation.” The Colonel, at
one auspicious juncture in the preliminary fight, was inclined to
believe that the prayer of the good chaplain was about to be
answered. But when all was over and the battle was lost, he dryly
admits that “Providence had evidently not yet taken a proper view of
the situation.” The same admission was equally pertinent at
Appomattox—and has been ever since—indeed, is it not time for the
South to see that the trouble is not with Providence but with itself—
that it should “consent at last to take a proper view of the
situation”? Providence did not take its view during the war to sustain
slavery, and will not in the struggle to maintain caste, which is now
the great issue, as slavery then was. That issue the South is pushing
to the front with new energy. For example, the great churches,
Methodist and Presbyterian, that had been rent asunder by the anti-
slavery agitation before the war, had seemed for a time since to be
happily coming together once more, but recently that fair prospect
has become darkened, and mainly by the strong exactions in regard
to caste-separation demanded by the South. Then as to schools, the
South has always been understood to be opposed to the co-
education of the races, but the recent demonstrations in one of the
States are almost amusingly violent. We stolid Northern people are
tempted to smile at the fear that the white young gentlemen and
ladies of the South are so eager to marry negroes that they dare not
be trusted in the same school together, and that such stringent
measures as fines, imprisonment and the chain-gang are deemed
necessary to prevent it! But we are glad to find that these severe
measures were planned by over-zealous young politicians, and that
“the sober second thought of the people” has substituted less
barbarous methods, and that other Southern States do not follow
the bad example.
But more seriously, the South has never enforced laws against the
criminal mingling of the races that has almost bleached the negroes
white. Is lawful marriage more criminal than concubinage? But who
wants the intermarriage of the races to take place? Not the North,
certainly. The Southern whites ought to be able to resist the
temptation. Every step in the advancement of the blacks contradicts
the charge that they desire it. No! the charge is fictitious, and is only
paraded to give force to the plea for caste-distinction and exclusion,
which is now the main hindrance to the incoming of the Brotherhood
of Man.
But the Southerner pleads strongly against recognizing the political
equality of the races. He says, The negro is not my equal in
intelligence, property or character. Why should he cast a ballot he
cannot read, elect men to make laws which they themselves cannot
read, to impose taxes of which he pays almost nothing, and to
squander the money for the benefit of demagogues? A most
estimable Christian gentleman from South Carolina said to me not
long since: “On one point the people of our State are agreed. We
will not again be ruled by the negroes. We have tried it and we will
not permit it to be repeated.” To all this the ready answer is: It was
one thing for ignorant, degraded and unscrupulous negroes at that
time to rule—nay, I may say, ruin—the State, and another and very
different thing, to permit negroes that are educated, possessed of
property and of established character to take their proper share in
the administration of the affairs of the State; and this brings me to
my final point.
3. It is the duty of the hour and of all concerned to unite in aiding
the negro to acquire knowledge, property and character. In the
Revolutionary struggle, the two White Brothers stood shoulder to
shoulder for one object; in the last sad conflict they fought against
each other to the bitter end. It is time that the enmity of the last
struggle should be laid aside and the amity of the first should be
imitated. Let the two White Brothers unite in directing the general
government to make ample provisions on terms satisfactory to both
to promote popular education in the South; let the State
governments in the South vote means to second the effort. Let the
North, as individuals and churches, multiply greatly its generous
offerings and increase the number of its consecrated men and
women to carry forward the work, and let the South respond in its
measure in personal contributions and labors, and especially let its
people welcome these Northern teachers, not with suspicion and
ostracism, but with co-operation and the respect due to their
Christian characters. Let the large religious denominations bury dead
issues and unite in lifting up the negro. On what nobler or more
Christian platform could they stand? Let them come to him not as
the priest and the Levite, but as the Samaritan; and let the Black
Brother show more alacrity than ever in responding to these efforts
in his behalf. When all this is done, there will be realized the great
mission of these Three Brothers in America—the founding of a great
empire, the establishing of civil and religious liberty, the granting of
personal freedom to all, and last and greatest of all, the crowning
glory of illustrating the Brotherhood of Man!
 NEED OF INTELLIGENCE IN BENEVOLENCE.
BY SECRETARY POWELL.

What should be done to increase the number of those who

intelligently contribute to the support of the American Missionary
Association?
Among the reasons for raising this question are the following:
1. A large number of the churches give us no contribution. Last year
only 1,698, out of 4,277 total, contributed to our treasury. The State
Associations every year, and the National Council every three years,
recommend the Association to the churches for their support. Sixty-
one per cent. of those churches reply: “We do not accept your
advice.” A high estimate they must put upon the reasons which
governed their representatives! Yet resolutions of commendation are
necessary. The cause that cannot obtain them is doomed. But,
though necessary, they are not enough. “Good words butter no
parsnips.” Those who say not and do are more to be commended
than those who say and do not. The resolutions of National Councils
and State Associations need to be translated into the benevolent
activities of all the churches. Otherwise they are dead letters.
2. Only a small proportion of those who contribute through the
churches do so intelligently. Some give from impulse. When the
impulse dies, the contribution dies with it. Some give only when
roused by a special appeal. If no appeal is made they give nothing.
Some give merely because the contribution box is passed—they are
ashamed not to go through the motions of putting something in, and
they would be even more ashamed to have the congregation know
just what they put in. Look at the contents of the average
contribution box as it returns from its excursion among the pews.
Notice the exceedingly large number of pennies and nickels and
quarters (given probably by as many individuals) in comparison with
the gifts of larger denomination! It is often the case, even in large
congregations, that one, two, three or four contributors—and they
not always the most able to give—contribute more than all the rest
put together. It is not forgotten that many of the small gifts are the
widows’ mites—the offerings of the poor, that, in the arithmetic of
heaven, count more than they all. Nevertheless, it remains true a
very large proportion of those who put money into the contribution
box as it is passed do not know anything about what they are giving
for, care still less, and who, if not in church when the contribution is
taken, give nothing. Woe to the cause whose annual contribution
comes on a rainy Sunday.
3. The total contributions from the churches and individuals
represent a sadly low average for the total church membership. The
receipts last year from churches and individuals, exclusive of
legacies, were $189,483.39. Divided among the church membership
of the country it represents an average contribution of only 44 cents
per member; and if the contributions of those who give annually all
the way from $1.00 up to $1,000 were subtracted, the average
would fall from 50 to 75 per cent. below this. Surely the spirit of
Christian benevolence abroad in the churches is not what it ought to
be. Did Christians give as they pray, their benevolence would reach a
higher mark. They are apt to be more honest in the expression of
their views of duty at the throne of grace than they are through the
expression of their conduct.
The pride of consistency, as we remember the confessed doctrines
of the churches, should make us all intensely dissatisfied with this
record of unfaithfulness on the part of so many church members.
4. The increase in contributions does not keep pace with the growth
of the churches in membership and wealth. The total wealth of the
United States, as officially reported for the year 1870, was
$30,068,518,507. In 1880 it was $43,642,000,000. Since 1880 the
gain has been in all probability even in larger ratio; and in this gain
the Congregational churches have had undoubtedly their full share.
Ten years ago the membership of the churches was 365,595. Last
year it was 436,379. Ten years ago the church contributions and
individual donations to our treasury, exclusive of legacies, were
$186,166.62. Last year, from the same sources, they were
$189,483.39. That is to say: During the past ten years the churches
have increased in wealth 31 per cent., and over; in membership, 19
per cent., and over; but in their contributions they have increased
only a little less than 2 per cent. Had the gain kept pace with the
increase in church membership, our receipts last year would have
been $32,055.67 more than they were. Had they kept pace with the
presumable increase of wealth they would have been $54,394.69
more than they were. “Freely ye have received, freely give,” was the
emphatic command of our Lord to his disciples as he sent them out
on errands of mercy among the sick and suffering and sorrowing
poor. “Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him
in store as God hath prospered him,” was the explicit injunction of
Paul to the churches concerning their collections for the poor. And
here are our churches organized on purpose to carry out the
teachings of Christ and his apostles; increasing in numbers and
increasing in wealth year by year; yet relatively to that increase
falling behind in their contributions to a society whose chief and
crowning distinction is that it labors among the poor and the
despised and the neglected. Will a man rob God? was a question
asked in ancient times. Modern times have not outgrown the
pertinency of its asking.
5. The Association should be relieved from a perpetual struggle to
get out of debt. From a business standpoint the struggle is not
healthy. From a religious standpoint it is not right. Thank God we
come to this annual meeting free from debt. It is four years since we
enjoyed that privilege before. We would like, if it please the
churches, to indulge in the luxury of singing the doxology at shorter
intervals. Well, then, don’t get into debt. Easily said. Had we a fixed
and certain income; had we the authority to levy upon the churches
a specified tax and the power to collect it; had we the ability to
foresee just how much was coming from legacies, we could then
show a clean balance every year. But in all these respects we are in
a field of limitless uncertainties. The gifts to our treasury are purely
voluntary. No certain dependence can be placed on legacies. One
year it may be deluge; the next it may be drought. What are we to
do? What can we do? We can only calculate probabilities and trust
our friends. What? Can you not trust God? Yes—blessed trust—we
can trust Him. But trust must be intelligent. God’s ordination is that
missionary work shall be carried on by his children, and that they
shall pay the bills. We have no right to expect that He will work
miracles in one direction to defeat what He has ordained in another.
Presumption is not piety. Fanaticism is not faith. We have a vast
work committed to our care. We have a great number of
missionaries to support. We have large money investments in church
and school property to guard. We must plan to conserve all these
interests. A sentimental trust in God will not pay taxes and
missionaries’ salaries, nor save religion from being dishonored by
broken pledges. The churches, whose servant the Association is,
should save its officers from the worry and anxiety of constant fear
lest through lack of funds the work shall be endangered and the
interests of Christ’s kingdom made to suffer.
The above are some of the reasons for raising the question, What
should be done to increase the number of those who intelligently
contribute to the support of the American Missionary Association?
Now for the answer.
1. Our theological seminaries should provide for a course of lectures
in which the history and claims of the American Missionary
Association, together with those of the other six missionary societies,
should be presented and discussed. Systematic theology, church
polity, homiletics and ecclesiastical history would lose nothing, but
on the contrary they would gain much in interest and power by the
inspiration of such lectures. To train the churches in support of these
societies is a part of ministerial life, and they need to be trained. The
initial letters by which these societies are recognized by the few who
are acquainted with them would be as mysterious and puzzling to
the great majority of our congregations as the hieroglyphics of an
Egyptian tomb!
Now this is all wrong. These societies are the organized assertions of
great truths. They are the expressions of great principles. They
represent the heart of the gospel reaching out through the churches
for the world’s salvation! The people should be instructed in
reference to their duty toward them, and not left in ignorance as to
their names and meaning. If our theological seminaries have been
established to train men for the work of the gospel ministry, they
should train them for its work all round and not merely for its work
on a few sides. James was an Apostle as well as Paul. You would
scarcely dream it from the teaching of some theologies. The
preaching that trains the people to clear intellectual conceptions of
truth is good; but the preaching that in addition to this trains them
to go out and put their belief into practice is better, and that because
it is more Christian. The roundness and fullness of truth demand it.
Theory—practice. Sympathy—benevolence. Let them not be divorced
either in the teaching of our seminaries or in the preaching of our
pulpits.
2. There should be an annual presentation of the Association’s
claims in every church. This may seem like a wild proposition in view
of the large number of non-contributing churches. But duty should
be affirmed even if no one performs it. For some reason or other a
large number of our ministers do not bring the claims of the
American Missionary Association before their congregations. It
cannot be that they are ignorant of the Society and its work. They
have the Year Book. They must know of the resolutions of the
National Council and the State Associations. They are presumably
readers of the denominational papers, and I know they all have their
pure minds stirred up periodically by way of remembrance by
circulars and other agencies. Are their churches small and poor?
There is no church so small and so poor, if it have any right to be in
existence, but that it can do a little and in doing that little receive in
return for itself and minister, both spiritual and temporal blessing. If
there is a church so small and so poor that it cannot do this then it
had better make haste to glorify God by its death than continue to
dishonor him by its life. Are there so many objects asking help that
they cannot respond? There are only seven societies in our
denominational family claiming their support. Can it be that any
minister of the gospel feels that seven contributions for benevolent
objects during the twelve months of the year are too many for his
church to make?—are more than his church ought to make? And if
he allow outside objects to come in, however worthy they may be,
and thereby crowd out any of the National Societies, is that quite
just to those societies? Generosity is indeed a virtue, but exercised
at the expense of those who have a prior claim, it can hardly be
called a Christian virtue. An Apostle has written it: “If any provide
not for his own and specially for those of his own house, he hath
denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.” The American
Missionary Association is an adopted child of the Congregational
churches of the United States. It is a lawful member of our
denominational household. It is there by virtue of every law which
governs in the fellowship of the churches. It is not a beggar asking
alms—it is not a stranger crowding for hospitality—it is a child having
all the rights and privileges of a child in its own home, and if
beggars and strangers are allowed to enter and rob it of that which
is its legitimate portion it has a right to be heard in earnest protest
against the wrong it suffers. As the accredited agent of the churches
for the prosecution of missionary work in the field it occupies it has
rightful claim to their unanimous support.
3. A committee should be appointed in each local conference to see
to it that during the year every church in the conference has the
cause presented and a contribution taken. A committee thus
appointed can write to each church, reminding it of its duty to make
an annual offering to the American Missionary Association as one of
our national societies. Where there are pastors who do not care to
present the cause themselves every year, and where there are
churches that have no pastors, certain brethren can be requested to
prepare a presentation, and by a system of exchanges secure its
delivery in all the churches, so that not one of them shall be allowed
to go a single year uninstructed in regard to this duty. All that is
needed is for some one man to take hold of this matter with
earnestness and place it clearly before the local conference, and it
will be done. Has this language the sound of authority about it—a
flavor of presbyterial or prelatic law? It is only a sound and a flavor;
nothing more. There is nothing legislative about it. It is simply the
churches themselves through their own chosen representatives in
conference devising the most effective method for carrying out a
work in which, by the very genius of their church polity, they are all
equally interested. The only law that there is about it is the
foundation principle on which they were organized and recognized
as churches, and on which they have established their local
conference.
4. There should be an assigned place in every missionary concert for
a paper or a report on some branch of the Association’s work,
prepared by some one previously designated to do it. It is to be
deplored that some churches take little interest in the missionary
concert. It is a mistake, in its effects injurious to the church as well
as to the cause of missions. The missionary concert by a little care
and painstaking can be made one of the most interesting and
profitable meetings that the church holds. Its influence as an
educational power transcends measurement. The geography,
government, history, social life and customs of the country where
missions are located, are more or less brought out in the
consideration of what the missionaries are doing. If our eyes are
only sharp enough to read it the story of missions is rich in
everything that interests the human mind. Romance, tragedy,
heroism, sacrifice, pathos, wit and humor, are all intermingled in that
wonderful story. If our ears are only sensitive enough to hear them
there come appeals from missionary experiences that stir to their
profoundest depths everything that is noble and good within us. The
American Missionary Association is peculiarly affluent in topic and
incident for use in the missionary concert. A summary of the
contents of the current number of the Missionary will always be in
order as a report; while for papers and addresses and discussions,
there is no assignable limit to the topics furnished by the history and
development of the Association and its work. Its lines reach out in
their relations to all the ends of the earth. In its anti-slavery
agitations it joined hands with the great emancipation advocates of
Europe. By its labors in behalf of the Chinese on the Pacific slope it
has become a factor in the great movement of Christian missions for
the evangelization of Asia. Through its special championship and
heroic efforts in behalf of the negro its records have already become
a part of that which shall be written when the history of redeemed
Africa is completed; and in what it has done for the North American
Indian and is doing; in what it has done for human rights and liberty,
and in defense of a pure Christianity, and is doing, it has become an
integral part of those mighty forces that will one day redeem
America from the dominance of false principles and bring in the
reign of justice, equity and truth throughout the length and breadth
of the land. Within the vast circle surrounding all these racial
questions that this Association touches in its work of the past and in
its outlook for the future there lie subjects and topics for thought
and discussion absolutely inexhaustible! There is no need of any
missionary concert’s being dull or uninteresting, and certainly there
is no need of its being unprofitable while such a missionary society
as this is in the field. It should have a place and a hearing in every
missionary concert.
5. The circulation of the American Missionary should be greatly
increased and the people urged to read it. Among the 436,379
members of the Congregational churches in the country there are
sent every month 19,463 magazines; that is on an average one
magazine to twenty-two readers. If this one magazine were passed
round so that all had a chance to read it there are enough of them
to answer the purpose. One subscriber wrote us that she made her
American Missionary to be so much of an Episcopalian, that it “kept
lent” all the year round. But the evidence is not very overwhelming
that this is done to any great extent. The evidence is, however, quite
convincing that the magazines are not all read by their subscribers,
and that the waste basket is not altogether unacquainted with their
presence. After Dr. Ellinwood, Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of
Foreign Missions, had once made an earnest appeal for money in the
Presbytery, the Moderator, a distinguished Doctor of Divinity, asked
him if he would not confer a favor on the brethren by printing the
facts that he had just stated in the Missionary magazine next month,
adding that he had been trying for a long time to obtain those
figures. “Why,” responded Dr. Ellinwood “That magazine, for the last
two months, has contained just what I have been telling you to-day.”
Missionary literature is despised. If this despite were shown on the
merits of the case there would be nothing to say, but that is not so.
It is despised without examination and in perfect ignorance of its
contents. Like the Saviour, of the progress of whose kingdom it tells
the story, it is despised and rejected of men. Not on its merits. There
are those who read it, and who read it regularly, ready to testify to
the exceeding value and interest of its matter. One of the great
literary monthlies recently contained an article in which were
assertions bearing upon a question of literature which two months
before were utterly destroyed by statements of facts that appeared
in the American Missionary. When historians undertake to write the
history of countries into which missionaries have gone, they are sure
to consult the missionary literature; and they do not often find it
necessary to question either the accuracy or the value of the
information they there obtain. This prejudice against missionary
literature, which in the main is both unfounded and unjust, ought to
be abandoned. Its worth and value ought to be recognized. Its wide
dissemination and reading ought to be advocated; and that, too, on
its merits. If there are reasons why the American Missionary should
be read by one of our church members, the same reasons hold good
why it should be read by all of them; if there are reasons why it
should go into one of our families, for the same reasons it should go
into them all. There is a wide field here for cultivation. Only one
magazine for every twenty-two readers; only one magazine for every
four families among our constituents, and all of these not read by
those who take them! No wonder there is ignorance among the
churches about our work, and there being ignorance no wonder that
there is a lack of interest and meagreness of contributions! But I
hear some one say: “Our church members will not take the American
Missionary. They would not read it were you to give it to them.” Well
then, they are not interested in our work, that is all. They don’t care
whether the gospel is preached to the poor or not; they don’t care
whether illiteracy is allowed to run rampant all over the country and
destroy our free institutions or not; they don’t care whether justice
shall be done to those who have been most cruelly defrauded or
not; they don’t care whether the honor of the nation by meeting the
involved obligations of slavery’s abolition shall be preserved or not;
they don’t care whether the issues of the war for the maintenance of
the Union, secured by sufferings and sacrifices transcending the
power of the human mind to portray, shall be made secure or not.
They don’t care? Then somebody is to blame. They do care? Then
why are they not willing—even eager to read about the work that
has all these sacred objects in view, and is helping to solve the
stupendous problems they contain? They do care. Yes, I believe it.
Their lack of interest in the American Missionary Association and
their unwillingness to read its monthly magazine is because of their
ignorance of its work, and therefore it is that there is here a wide
field, hopeful and promising, for cultivation by all those who wish to
aid in the advancement of the cause.
The reasons assigned for raising the question to which the above
answers have been given are most grave and weighty. They are
significant indications of peril that threatens the cause committed to
our care. Shall we heed the lessons which the signals flash?

Do not forget that this month of December is an excellent

time to increase the number of those who subscribe for The
American Missionary. A word fitly spoken by our friends will
secure the desired result.
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