Various - The American Missionary. Volume 50, No. 08, August, 1896

Extract from the appeal of the Executive Committee of the American Missionary Association:

It is proposed to raise during the next six months a special Jubilee Year Fund of $100,000 in shares of $50 each, with the hope and expectation that these shares will be taken by the friends of missions without lessening those regular contributions which must be depended upon to sustain the current work.

Our readers will notice that our jubilee share list is increasing in numbers. We have reason to be grateful to God in that he has moved the hearts of so many and led them to help our Lord's needy ones. We would that those who have responded to our appeals could see the things that we see, and hear the things which we hear. We have nothing but gratitude for the fact that in this time of financial distress and uncertainty, when money is so hard to get, the cause which we bring to the Christian love and patriotism of good people is not losing, but gaining in their sympathies and help. This trying year—trying to so many, therefore trying to us—brings a jubilee thanksgiving to us, in that we are not sinking deeper into the horrible pit and miry clay of debt, but are little by little being pulled out of the slough. We know not how long the pull may be, but if those who love the Lord Jesus Christ will pull all together we shall not fail, and we need not be discouraged. Our feet will get upon a rock and our goings be established; for which we pray.

The Home Mission Monthly of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, in an article upon "Leaders," agrees with us in saying: "A different style of men is needed as leaders of the colored people to-day from that of those who aspired to leadership twenty-five years ago; the race has made great progress; there are multitudes now of Negro men and women who have had the advantages of the common schools, many who have a college education, and some who have university culture; to wisely influence them in their thought and action is more difficult than to control the masses of the illiterate and untrained. It is especially worthy of consideration that among the Negroes of the South to-day are some men of power and of education who are leaders; but whose leadership, unfortunately, is in the wrong direction. This renders it all the more urgent that the Mission Society and kindred organizations should seek to supply them with a class of leaders who, by reason of their godly character, their knowledge, their training, their consecration, will be able to counteract the evil influences now at work, and to lead their people into paths of righteousness.

"The Mission Society does not attempt to provide a college education for the multitudes of Negroes; even this would be a task beyond its resources. What it does aim to do is simply to secure, if possible, the education of a comparatively few young men and young women, who shall become leaders among their people; men and women who by their knowledge, training, culture, power, will be able to organize and direct the energies of the masses of the people. Leaders are needed, and these should be thoroughly competent for leadership; it is a hard task to influence successfully the development of a race of eight million people, and those who attempt the work require natural qualities of a high order and also unusual attainments."

What is to prevent these people who have been enfranchised from becoming the prey of demagogues and designing men who wish to use them for unchristian purposes and in unchristian ways, unless they have large minded, thoroughly educated leaders with knowledge of history and of life who can lead their own people in the ways of righteousness? Events now transpiring give significance to this question.

The University of Pennsylvania has conferred the degree of Doctor of Philosophy on Mr. Lewis B. Moore, who graduated from Fisk University a few years ago. We listened to his "graduating address" at the close of his college years at Fisk, whence he went to Philadelphia to take charge of a branch of the Y.M.C.A. While attending to the laborious duties of this position he has, during four years of earnest, patient, and thorough study, earned his degree of Ph.D. in Greek and Latin and Ethics, in one of the severest graduate schools in the country. Dr. Moore is one of "our boys"; and there are many of them who are preparing themselves, by their vision of a larger life and their attainment of larger possessions, to be wise leaders among their people. Dr. Moore is now an instructor in Howard University, Washington, D.C.

There are those who object to the constitutional rights of the Negro, and some who object to his Christian privileges, lest his recognition as a man shall lead to "social equality," whatever this may mean. The following from a leading Negro paper, i.e. , edited by a Negro for a Negro constituency, is a testimony as to what is and what is not the Negro's idea of "recognition":

"That the Negroes in recognizing constitutional rights are at the same time seeking an arbitrary social equality with any other race is erroneous. From the time of emancipation, the colored people have had no disposition to force a social alliance with the whites. The colored citizens have all their civil and political rights, and these rights they demand. When honored colored men or women enter a first-class hotel or restaurant, or seek a decent stateroom on a steamer, they do not enter these places because they are seeking social contact with the whites, but because they demand their just privileges for their personal protection and comfort."

Of the illustrious ones who laid the foundations for the liberation of the slave, the name of Harriet Beecher Stowe leads all the rest.

What America's greatest woman did towards making freedom possible, our devoted and consecrated women teachers have been carrying out these thirty years to the full Christian conclusion. Those who read the records of the closing days of our schools in this present August number of THE MISSIONARY will be reminded how these faithful teachers are still engaged completing the unfinished work of their greater sister.

Next to "Uncle Tom's Cabin," perhaps the book which has the truest stamp of the genius of Mrs. Stowe is her "Old Town Folks." In her incomparable description of "School Days in Cloudland," in which she shows how her sympathies went out to the people of every nation and tongue who are oppressed, she compares the influences of education in New England with a country without schoolhouses, saying: "Look at Spain at this hour and look back at New England at the time of which I write, and compare the Spanish peasantry with the yeomen of New England. If Spain had had not a single cathedral, if her Murillos had all been sunk in the sea, and if she had had, for a hundred years past, a set of schoolmasters and ministers working together as I have described Mr. Avery and Mr. Rossiter as working, would not Spain be infinitely better off for this life at least? That is the point that I humbly present to the consideration of the public."

This point which Mrs. Stowe presents to the consideration of the public, is the one to which her younger sisters are faithfully directing their faith and their works among a people who up to Mrs. Stowe's day never saw a schoolhouse.

We make our tribute to the gracious memory of her whose words went out into all the world and extended to the ends of the earth: and we ask remembrance of those who under the same inspiration are living among the children of these liberated ones and are taking with them the love and wisdom of Him who was "anointed to preach the gospel to the poor, the recovery of sight to the blind, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."