The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 04, April, 1889. Various
and some seem to lack the necessary provision for supervision and responsibility. Taken all together, they furnish additional warnings to the people of the North against contributing to individual or local enterprises in the South without most careful scrutiny into the facts in each individual instance.
A colored missionary teacher in one of the most desolate parts of North Carolina writes us as follows:
"In making out my bill, you will perhaps not understand what I mean by the amount to be 'deducted.' I desire to give one-tenth of all my earnings to God. Of course it is His by right. Our missionary has brought the matter plainly before me, so I desire that you will deduct $2.00 every month, which will be one-tenth of my entire salary, and put it where it will be used for the service of Christ."
Rev. Frank G. Woodworth writes from Tougaloo University.
The school is progressing well. If we have the necessary accommodations, I see no reason why the school should not enrol 500 pupils within the next two years. We have had nearly 340 thus far, and probably will reach 375 by the end of the year, and we have refused between 30 and 40 girls because we had no room for them.
In the last MISSIONARY we gave quite an account of special religious services held in connection with the Le Moyne Institute, Memphis, Tenn. In the brief extract below, from a letter of Prof. Steele's, we see some pleasant results:
"Our special meetings in connection with Mr. Wharton's stay of two weeks are closed. There have been some eighty or more conversions in church and school; over sixty are students in school. The work seems very genuine."
The announcement of the winners of the Tunis Quick prize for grammar and spelling has been made by the faculty of Rutgers College. The prize was equally divided between James E. Carr of New York City, and Milton Demarest of Oredell, N.J. Carr is colored. Last year he took the highest honor at the grammar school commencement, delivering the valedictory and winning a prize scholarship. He has only one eye.
We would continue to remind pastors and churches of our Leaflets, which we will be happy to furnish, on application, to those taking collections for our Association.
NOTES FROM NEW ENGLAND
I recently spoke in a manufacturing town in New England. In the forenoon service, a man, evidently an operative in one of the mills, sat in a front pew with a whole row of little children beside him, his wife at the end of the line with a baby in her lap. In the evening, the same man and family, minus the mother and baby, occupied the same pew. After the service, this man came to me, and with deep emotion said: "I am only a working man; you saw my large family of little children; every penny I can earn counts, but I feel that I must divide the living of my children with these poor people you have told us of to-day. We can get on with poorer food to give them the gospel."
This was said in the accent that told that this Christian nobleman came from old covenant-making and covenant-keeping Scotland! Not a very "dangerous foreigner!" Money given from such extreme sacrifice is sacred. Would this spirit were universal!
The close relation existing between the work of the American Missionary Association for the colored people in America, and that of the American Board for the colored people in Africa, is most interestingly illustrated by a contribution which has recently reached this New England office. Rev. B.F. Ousley of Kambini, East Africa, sends a contribution of ten dollars for the Theological Department in Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. Mr. Ousley and wife are graduates of Fisk University and went out as missionaries to Africa under the American Board, four years ago. After these years of experience they realize that Africa must be evangelized by colored people trained by A.M.A. schools, and they make this generous contribution to this grand work.
A suggestion made in the Boston "Ministers' Meeting," on the question, "How to conduct a prayer meeting," might be very appropriately applied to missionary concerts and addresses. This was the suggestion: "Keep the temperature warm, the atmosphere clear, and don't pommel the Christians!" Applied to missionary concerts and addresses, this sound advice would read: Keep the missionary temperature warm by telling incidents of missionary experience; keep the missionary atmosphere clear by presenting the grand hopefulness of the glorious work, and don't pommel those who attend these meetings and give to these causes!
Patriotism is all aglow among the boys and girls of New England just now! More than twelve hundred have enlisted recently in the army of the "True Blues." Pastors, Sunday-school superintendents and teachers, officers of Young People's Societies of Christian Endeavor, and other missionary societies have been the enthusiastic recruiting sergeants, and still there is demand for more recruits. Who will enlist next?
In the last "Notes from New England," we recorded the gift of an aged friend. Now comes this touching letter:
"Dear Sir:—Please find enclosed $5.00 for the A.M. Association, the Christmas present of a son to a father. The father is eighty-one years old to-day. He has been with the A.M.A. from its organization, and wishes its continued prosperity until its great work is accomplished.
Is there any work, North or South, at home or abroad, that requires more versatile gifts or breadth of training than the work of this Association? Here are a few lines from the letter of a missionary in Alabama, which illustrate the many-sidedness of this work:
"I have organized a Woman's Missionary Society. I have an industrial class for girls, and give them instruction in sewing, in housework on the principle of the kitchen-garden system, without the practice, as I have not the articles to use for that purpose. Then a lesson from the Bible, also, comes in, and some amusement in the way of puzzles. The girls are pleased to belong to a society of King's Daughters. I have a class for instructing the women in darning, patching, button-hole making and so on. We have a Society of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in which I have the Department of Social Purity.
"You will be able to believe that my time is pretty fully occupied. I rejoice that I am able to be here, for I am never so happy as when I am engaged in this beloved work."
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