Various - The American Missionary. Volume 50, No. 09, September, 1896

The semi-centennial of the American Missionary Association will be celebrated in Boston, October 20-22, opening at three o'clock Tuesday afternoon. A great and inspiring convocation is anticipated. Speakers of national reputation have been secured. A large and interesting industrial exhibit will be opened. Representatives from our mission fields and a new band of Jubilee Singers will be heard throughout the meetings.

Directions as to membership and correspondence will be found on the last page of the cover. Fuller details as to the entertainment of delegates, reduced rates at hotels and in traveling fares, will be given in due time through the religious press.

For the first ten months of our current fiscal year our expenditures have been $53,000 less than for the corresponding ten months three years ago. They are $37,000 less than for the first ten months of the next year. They are $13,000 less than last year. These facts indicate the severity of our retrenchments.

We have most earnestly hoped for such a large increase of benefactions as would greatly reduce our debts. Up to this time our receipts are nearly $25,000 greater than at this date last year, but they are $11,000 less than at this time year before last. That year closed with a debt on its operations of $66,000, and last year with an additional debt of $30,000. Thus far this year we have not only saved ourselves from debt, but have gained $8,000 on the debts of the previous two years.

This is a favorable difference of $38,000 between our financial standing now and that at this date last year. This advance has been made possible only by the sympathetic and generous responses from many givers and churches which have cheered the presentation of our work. Very many others have promised future aid which will lift the burden. But, for the time being, we have had to maintain our standing chiefly by making continued reductions of expenditures. This has been a difficult and sorrowful task. In answer to numberless appeals in behalf of the ignorant and suffering, we have had to explain constantly that the refusals of the Association were due, not to lack of sympathy, but to lack of means. In general, the Association can administer only the means confided to its charge. Its historic and permanent policy has been against incurring a debt. Its careful and conservative forecast two years ago encountered, like all similar benevolent work in all the denominations, a sudden and serious reduction of receipts. The next year it provided a much diminished schedule of expenditures, but this was met with a further additional reduction of support.

Therefore, the task now set to the Association is to carry on only what work it can while recovering what has been already expended in these mission fields. We believe this recovery can be made. We are most grateful to the churches, mission societies, and individual givers who have so generously come to our help in this difficult and trying year. From the promising responses which reach us, we can but believe that very many more are planning for the relief of these missions in their distress. Just now public attention is concentrated on national issues of so perplexing and doubtful a character that every enterprise, whether of business or of benevolence, waits upon their settlement. We hope and pray that the coming months may lift the clouds and pour prosperity again throughout all these vast mission fields.

At the time these lines reach the eyes of most of our readers, only thirty days will remain of the fiftieth year in the work of the American Missionary Association.

We look forward to these few days with anxious hope. Pastors, officers of churches and missionary societies, and individual givers have intimated to us that they will co-operate in making this fiftieth year a Year of Jubilee. Again and again our anxious inquiries have received the kind assurance that the year shall not close without the uplift of special help to the Association.

Many churches and many givers have fulfilled this purpose. If all had done as well, we should now be rejoicing over emancipation from all indebtedness.

We earnestly plead for personal contributions from individual givers. After all, it is upon the many individual gifts, however small each one may be, that the success of this work must now mainly depend.

We ask as earnestly that each church which has not hitherto contributed to the support of this mission work will do so now.

We respectfully request that the treasurers of churches and mission societies will now send us contributions already taken in behalf of the American Missionary Association, or balances remaining in their hands according to church plans, of proportionate contributions.

Shall not these thirty September days in the book of life record the special consecration in thousands of hearts of sacrificial service in gifts to God's poor?

It will be seen in the record of this month that the Jubilee Share Fund now aggregates pledges of over $14,000. This is a beginning, a good beginning, but a beginning only. We hope these coming September days which close our fiscal year will bring a vast increase of pledges to the Jubilee Share Fund. We know that numbers of our friends have been planning for it and looking forward to taking their part in this great and useful Christian service. "Now is the accepted time."

From Massachusetts —"Please find inclosed check for $50 for the Jubilee Year Fund, in memory of my dear father. His heart was ever with your good work to the very end of his life."

From a Tennessee A. M. A. Missionary —"Wife and I join the Jubilee contributors. Find $50 for one share. We wish we could multiply this by a hundred."

From Massachusetts —"Please find from two friends in Boston $50 each, which has been intrusted to my care for the share fund; and I gladly send it to help on the share fund."

From Connecticut —"It gives me pleasure to send you $2,000, as a donation from our church to the American Missionary Association. Also inclosed $785 as our annual contribution for the current expenses of the Association, not for the debt."

From Iowa —"Inclosed find $18, my donation to the work of the American Missionary Association. It is probably my last donation as my age (past fourscore) and poor health warn me my time is short in which to serve the Lord in this world."

From Connecticut —"I was not home last Sunday when the annual contribution for the American Missionary Association was taken up, and as I do not wish to miss having a little share in the good work of your society I will inclose my check for $10 for the work."

From New Jersey —"I am glad to be able to send the inclosed amount from the Presbyterian Sunday-school of this place. For several years we have been giving to the work of the American Missionary Association, and each year is an advance on the previous year in amount. May you all be abundantly blessed in your spiritual as well as your financial welfare."

From Massachusetts —"Inclosed find $5, which my sister before her death desired me to send to the cause she labored for so many years, and which was dear to her when her heavenly Father called her home."

From Ohio, inclosing $5 —"It is a pleasure to be able to carry out the wish of my dear husband. Ever since the organization of the American Missionary Association we have been small contributors, though Baptists. God bless and support your work."