Various - The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 09, September, 1889

PRESIDENT, Rev. Wm. M. Taylor, D.D., LL.D., N.Y.

Vice-Presidents.

Rev. A.J.F. Behrends, D.D., N.Y.

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

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

Rev. D.O. Mears, D.D., Mass.

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

Corresponding Secretaries.

Rev. M.E. Strieby, D.D., 56 Reads Street, N.Y.

Rev. A.F. Beard, D.D., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.

Recording Secretary.

Rev. M.E. Strieby, D.D., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.

Treasurer.

H.W. Hubbard, Esq., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.

Auditors.

Peter McCartee.

Chas. P. Peirce.

Executive Committee.

John H. Washburn, Chairman.

Addison P. Foster, Secretary.

For Three Years.

J.E. Rankin,

Wm. H. Ward,

J.W. Cooper,

John H. Washburn,

Edmund L. Champlin.

For Two Years.

Lyman Abbott,

Chas. A. Hull,

Clinton B. Fisk,

Addison P. Foster,

Albert J. Lyman.

For One Year.

S.B. Halliday,

Samuel Holmes,

Samuel S. Marples,

Charles L. Mead,

Elbert B. Monroe.

District Secretaries.

Rev. C.J. Ryder, 21 Cong'l House, Boston.

Rev. J.E. Roy, D.D., 151 Washington Street, Chicago.

Rev. Rev. C.W. Hiatt, 64 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio .

Financial Secretary for Indian Missions.

Rev. Chas. W. Shelton.

Field Superintendents.

Rev. Frank E. Jenkins,

Prof. Edward S. Hall.

Secretary Of Woman's Bureau.

Miss D.E. Emerson, 56 Reade St. 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.

In drafts, checks, registered letters, or post-office orders, may be sent to H.W. Hubbard, Treasurer, 56 Reade Street, New York, or, when more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., or 151 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. A payment of thirty dollars at one time 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 bequeath to my executor (or executors) the sum of – dollars, in trust, to pay the same in – days after my decease to the person who, when the same is payable, shall act as Treasurer of the 'American Missionary Association,' of New York City, to be applied, under the direction of the Executive Committee of the Association, to its charitable uses and purposes." The Will should be attested by three witnesses.

The next annual meeting of the American Missionary Association will be held at Chicago, Ill., in the New England Church, commencing at three o'clock Tuesday afternoon, October 29. Rev. R.R. Meredith, D.D., of Brooklyn, N.Y., will preach the sermon. On the last page of the cover will be found directions as to membership and other items of interest. Fuller details regarding the reception of delegates and their entertainment, together with rates at hotels, and railroad and steamboat reductions, will be given in the religious press and in the next number of the MISSIONARY.

A meeting of exceptional interest is expected, and we trust our friends will be present in large force.

It will encourage the contributors to the great work entrusted to us, to know that the friends of the A.M.A. are enabling us to make a very hopeful report up to this date.

If those who have not shared in the work of the Association as yet, this year, will make a corresponding effort with those who have done so, we shall have reason to hope that we can go to our Annual Meeting in Chicago, owing no man anything but love and good will.

But those who have waited are many, and we are waiting and depending on these. Those who have not taken their contributions have the power to convert our hopes into realities.

We appeal, therefore, to the pastors whose collections for this fiscal year have not been taken to take their collections and forward them to our treasury before the close of September.

We have been thinking that the methods of Christ were divine as well as his truth, and that when the Christian world will use Christ's methods in the propagation of truth there will be a great advance upon some features of the present. Dr. Parkhurst has some very suggestive sentences in this line of thought in a sermon on "The Regenerative Force of the Gospel." His words are: "Christ never patches. The Gospel is not here to mend people. Regeneration is not a scheme of moral tinkering and ethical cobbling. In the Gospel, we move into a new world and under a new scheme. The Gospel does not classify with other schemes of amelioration."

This accords with our thought of the methods of Christ. The way to meet that which is wrong, is to meet it as a wrong. We shall not do well to ameliorate it. If we may not expect those who have been "raised" amid prejudices and ignorance to be leaders for the absolute rectitude of things, those who have not lived where this excuse is available should be the leaders. If some do not lead, none will follow. Where principles were at stake, Christ never gave way to prejudices. He never yielded to that which was in itself wrong. If those to whom he ministered could not come up to his standard, then he waited, but he never compromised. That which is right should not yield to that which is wrong.

It may take a right hand. It may take an eye. But "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off," and "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out." He would not "cut it off" by amputating the finger and gradually disjointing it up to the mark; and plucking out the offending eye is not to bandage it so that it temporarily does not see the evil to which it is attracted. No, the Gospel is not a system of repairs. It is not here to temporize, but to make all things new, and it strikes at the heart of evil and not at its surface.

It was not Christ's method to ignore an evil which confronted him. He did not evade or get around issues. He met them. He answered them. He was an "incarnate conscience" in the land. He knew what was in man. His followers cannot fail when they walk closely with him in the path which he has made plain.

1.—If the Georgia Association had been without any colored members in it, would the Georgia Conference ever have been formed?

2.—If the Georgia Association had been without any colored members, would the Georgia Conference have declined to unite with it, on some one of the terms submitted by the Georgia Association?

3.—If the Georgia Association had been without any colored members, would this curious and ingenious scheme of "co-ordinate and equal bodies," "to elect delegates" to visit each other now and then ever have been concocted?

4.—Is it worth while to "darken counsel with words" as to methods, when it is evident that the purpose is, not to form any union which would be other than humiliating to a colored man, and contrary to the heretofore held principles of the Congregational Churches?