Various - The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 05, May, 1889

THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY presents its greetings for the month of May. Six months of our fiscal year are now in the past. The half year which we anticipate includes the summer time, when many of the friends of the ignorant millions to whom we are sent, are absent from their churches. The months of May and June ought to swell the stream of love and service against the season when the demand will continue and income will be small.

We appealed last month for an increase of the contributions in church collections. We renew and emphasize that appeal, for these collections are the steady streams on which we rely to keep in motion the wheels of the large and ever enlarging work of the Association. We believe that the interest in this great work is on the increase. We rejoice that "the most prolific missionary field ever opened to any Christian people— right here at our doors," is gaining upon the interest and benevolence of the churches year by year. Never were the friends of the cause mote responsive; never was the work more hopeful. The work enlarges, and the people's faith enlarges. Their gifts to Christ for his poor were never freer.

We have been greatly favored with special gifts. Every one of them is needed. It is a blessed thing that one can plant his benevolences in some special institution or feature of work, and know that the influences are to follow on after the giver has gone to a higher world. But we do hope that the CHURCHES OF CHRIST, AS CHURCHES, will not fail to keep step with the providences of God in their church contributions.

It is also true that some fear that the day of LEGACIES is to come to an end. Indeed, there are those who take a solemn comfort in bewailing and fearing that everything is to come to an end. They mix a pound of forebodings with an ounce of faith. If, for some unseen reasons in the movements of life and death, legacies do not appear with the regularity of insurance tables, they think the day of legacies is dead. Nevertheless legacies will continue as long as Christians pass from earth to heaven. There will always be faithful souls who will remember Christ and his cause in their wills. There will always be those who may not be able to divide their estates and to dispose of portions of them while they live, who will yet provide that they may see their works following them, when they shall look down from a world redeemed, to a world for whose redemption Christ lived and died. There will always be legacies, and the American Missionary Association, so long as it follows in the steps of Christ in such mission as it has, will not be forgotten. The legacies will come, because they ought to come. The people of God will remember this work in their wills because they ought to do this, and God will take care that what Christian stewards ought to do, shall be done.

We thank God for SPECIAL GIFTS. We thank God for LEGACIES. We also thank God for the ability and faith and sacrifices of those who cannot plant institutions or build or endow schools, but who live and give that which provides for the unceasing CURRENT EXPENSES. Almost every one can do a little more, and it is the many littles that make the difference between a debt with a crippled work, and freedom from debt with healthful growth. All along the lines, the calls for help are so urgent, that it is painful for us, in the name of the church, to be constantly saying "No!"

The churches can easily take this out of the way if they will. We believe that they will.

These pages will come before our readers amid the enthusiastic rejoicings of a great nation celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of its Constitution—a Constitution that has been tried and found worthy.

The greatest strain to which this great charter has been subjected in the past hundred years has been occasioned by slavery. The crisis cost untold blood and treasure. The great strain of the next hundred years will be what slavery has left behind it—a vast and growing black population, and an imbittered race prejudice.

There is but one way to meet this strain of the coming century, and that is by the education of the blacks. The task is great, but if the American people will awake to its urgency and put forth the needed effort, the crisis may be averted. We call upon all Christian people, and upon all patriots, to begin this new century with the purpose to increase their contributions for this great object. We ask them to begin at once and to continue steadily—in church contributions, in personal gifts, and, not to forget the object in the making of wills.

Our readers are aware that there are two Congregational Organizations in the State of Georgia. The Georgia Congregational Association was organized in 1878, and is composed of about a dozen colored churches, some of their pastors being white and some colored. The United Congregational Conference of Georgia was formed a little more than a year ago, is a much larger body, and is composed of white pastors and churches. With a view to a possible union of these two organizations, committees have been appointed by each, and, in another column, we lay before our readers the propositions to that end, made by the Committee of the Georgia Association. We cannot withhold our expression of satisfaction with the Christian spirit exhibited in this document, and the readiness to accept any possible alternative to secure the union. The Congregational Churches of the country will feel an interest in marking the progress of these negotiations, and will hail with delight a consummation that will relieve the denomination from the embarrassment of sanctioning two organizations in the same State that seem to be separated only by the color-line.

Once more in Nashville. There is no question in my mind but that Nashville is the educational leader in the South. It is a city of hills which are crowned with institutions for white and black. These are the beginnings of greater and better days for this part of "our country." My duties have taken me to Fisk University. It is a college which has justly won very high praise. Jubilee and Livingstone Halls are significant names. One speaks of an historic event, and the other of an historic person, but the work that goes on in both these large buildings does no dishonor to one name or the other.

When Congressman Kelley, of Pennsylvania, was in Nashville, he visited Fisk University. He afterwards told me that he could not conceal his surprise at what he saw and heard and only with difficulty his emotion when he arose to address the students.

I have now visited Fisk several times. I am each time more impressed with the fidelity and quality of the work on the part of the students, and the patient enthusiasm of the professors and of the teachers. If there were to be no other or greater results than those of the past and the present, all that has been done for Fisk University would be justified.

From Nashville to Sparta, Tenn., and then a rough, tough ride up the mountain side, "rattling the bones over the stones" until at length we have climbed the Cumberland Plateau. We arrive at no-where in particular, which is named Pleasant Hill. Here are a neat church, which is both church and school, and a sightly building of two stories with a third under the mansard roof, which will accommodate forty boys. A few houses are visible from the top of this building, but no one could guess where forty mountain boys and as many girls might be living.