Various - The American Missionary. Volume 49, No. 04, April, 1895

President, Merrill E. Gates, LL.D., Mass.

Vice-Presidents.

Rev. F. A. Noble, D.D., Ill.

Rev. Henry Hopkins, D.D., Mo.

Rev. Alex McKenzie, D.D., Mass.

Rev. Henry A. Stimson, D.D., N. Y.

Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D., Ohio.

Corresponding Secretaries.

Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., Bible House, N. Y.

Rev. A. F. Beard, D.D., Bible House, N. Y.

Rev. F. P. Woodbury, D.D., Bible House, N. Y.

Assistant Corresponding Secretary.

Rev. C. J. Ryder, D.D., Bible House, N. Y.

Recording Secretary.

Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., Bible House, N. Y.

Treasurer.

Henry W. Hubbard, Esq., Bible House, N. Y.

Auditors.

Peter McCartee.

James Mitchell.

Executive Committee.

Charles L. Mead, Chairman.

Charles A. Hull, Secretary.

For Three Years.

William Hayes Ward,

James W. Cooper,

Lucien C. Warner,

Joseph H. Twichell,

Charles P. Peirce.

For Two Years.

Charles A. Hull,

Addison P. Foster,

Albert J. Lyman,

Nehemiah Boynton,

A. J. F. Behrends.

For One Year.

Samuel Holmes,

Samuel S. Marples,

Charles L. Mead,

William H. Strong,

Elijah Horr.

District Secretaries.

Rev. Geo. H. Gutterson, 21 Cong'l House, Boston, Mass.

Rev. Jos. E. Roy, D.D., 151 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill.

Rev. W. E. C. Wright, D.D., Cong'l Rooms, Y. M. C. A. Building, Cleveland, Ohio.

Secretary Of Woman's Bureau.

Miss D. E. Emerson, Bible House, N. Y.

Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the Corresponding Secretaries; letters for "The American Missionary," to the Editor, at the New York Office; letters relating to the finances, to the Treasurer; letters relating to woman's work, to the Secretary of the Woman's Bureau.

In drafts, checks, registered letters, or post-office orders, may be sent to H. W. Hubbard, Treasurer, Bible House, New York, or, when more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., 151 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill., or Congregational Rooms, Y. M. C. A. Building, Cleveland, Ohio. A payment of thirty dollars constitutes a Life Member.

Notice to Subscribers.—The date on the "address label" indicates the time to which the subscription is paid. Changes are made in date on label to the 10th of each month. If payment of subscription be made afterward the change on the label will appear a month later. Please send early notice of change in post-office address, giving the former address and the new address, in order that our periodicals and occasional papers may be correctly mailed.

"I give and bequeath the sum of – dollars to the 'American Missionary Association,' incorporated by act of the Legislature of the State of New York." The will should be attested by three witnesses.

Our debt is large, but we rejoice to say that during the last three months it has been slowly diminishing. It reached its highest point November 30—$82,425.58. December 31 it was $82,032.07; January 31, $79,502.77; February 28, $76,431.49. The cause of this decrease varies in the different months. Sometimes the legacies are in advance, and sometimes the donations. The expenses have been largely reduced in all departments.

While these figures are somewhat encouraging, yet the size of the debt is ominous. The winter months, usually most fruitful in collections, have passed away, and the time for the annual appropriations is near at hand. Unless the debt can be greatly reduced, the cutting down of the appropriations for the next year must be disastrous to this great work. We do not lose our trust in God, nor our hope that the friends of these ignorant and yet struggling people will not suffer the work to be seriously hindered. We respectfully invoke pastors to secure for us as liberal contributions as possible, and we ask individual donors to remember the work with special gifts.

The unexpected and sudden death of Mr. Douglass has awakened a sense of profound sympathy never before expressed toward a person identified with the negro race, and seldom toward one of the white race. We are not surprised at the manifestations of profound respect and sorrow of the colored people, and we rejoice, too, that the white race has shown almost equal regard for his memory, by their attendance when he lay in state in Washington, and when his body was interred in Rochester. The press has voiced the sentiment of the nation in the full and eulogistic notices of his life. Frederick Douglass deserved it all.

No man, perhaps, in this country has broken through so heavy a crust of ignorance, poverty and race prejudice as was done by this boy born on a slave plantation, stealing his education, fleeing from his slave home and then achieving for himself a rank among the foremost men of the nation in intelligence, eloquence and of personal influence in the great anti-slavery struggle of this country. He has achieved honors in the public service of the nation, and has faithfully and honorably fulfilled every trust laid upon him.

Mr. Douglass is among the last survivors of that band of Abolitionists that were so potent in their influence in arousing the nation to the evils of slavery. The recent death of Theodore D. Weld, in his ninety-first year, recalls a name now almost forgotten, but that two generations ago indicated the foremost orator in the anti-slavery ranks. The poet of anti-slavery, Whittier, has gone recently, and now the most conspicuous name left of that noble band is that of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The American Missionary Association has reason to congratulate itself that its last annual meeting was made memorable by the presence of Mr. Douglass, and its vast audience stirred most deeply by his eloquent address. In that address he expressed his gratitude for himself and his people for the work done by the Association in their behalf. And in a letter subsequently addressed to the senior secretary of the Association, he says, in speaking of that address: "I am very glad to have been able thus publicly to record my sense of the value of the great work of the Association in saving my people. I am a friend of free thought and free inquiry, but I find them to be no substitute for the work of educating the ignorant and lifting up the lowly. Time and toil have nearly taken me from the lecture field, but I still have a good word to say in the cause to which the American Missionary Association is devoted."

Of the twelve millions of families now in the United States, it is said that one million cannot secure the needed work to procure the luxuries and comforts of life. On this basis the one and a half millions of colored families are at a special disadvantage. They have to contend not only against the hard times, but against the immense disadvantages of race prejudice.

The appointment of Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, to be a member of the Board of Indian Commissioners was an appointment eminently fit to be made. Few men in this country stand higher in their knowledge of the Indians and their wants, or have shown a more intelligent and self-sacrificing interest in their behalf.