Various

“ All who know anything of Sunday-school work are perfectly aware that much depends upon the interest that one is enabled to keep up among the children and adults by such means; it is so with you in civilized countries, much more so in a heathen country, where one is required to teach them everything. Now I am sure that some Sunday-school or some lover of the Christian cause will respond to this, my most humble appeal in the name of Christ, and send such books, papers, etc., to Avery Station as he can afford. ”

“ May there not be in the organization of this young ladies’ society, designing to work through the Sunday-school, a suggestion that the ladies might take up everywhere? Why not, after first defining the word young to have reference to feeling rather than years, organize young ladies’ missionary societies in all our churches, to work through the Sunday-schools for the support of lady missionaries among the freed women?—Scrooby, in The Congregationalist. ”

“ When the crop is gathered, if the renter does not find himself in debt to his landlord, he is more fortunate than many. He rarely finds himself richer for his summer’s work. The simple rules of arithmetic, thoroughly understood by the tenant, will remedy all this; and when I hear the colored children at school reciting the multiplication table so enthusiastically, I am sure it is a prophecy of a “good time coming” to them. ”

“ Our school opened the 20th of November, almost two months after the regular time, with only 17 scholars the first week, and with but little prospect of any considerable increase. The teachers were all new except Miss Stephenson, and hence they did not know what to expect, and therefore not enough about the work to be discouraged. Ignorance, sometimes at least, is bliss. If it did not give us faith, it saved us from being faithless. There are some things that are food in a negative way by preventing the usual waste in the system. Knowledge is power. ”

“ This city is full of devil-traps. These strangers who are moving in will largely become victims. Now, we should have some agency by which as many as possible of these families can be reached. Their domestic condition is deplorable. In fact, this may be said of the colored families generally of the South. They need influences and instruction that can best, and, as I believe, only be carried to them by a woman missionary. The women, the mothers, the homemakers of this people, must be instructed and led to better things in their homes. They must be seen in their houses. ”

“ Is there no serious warning in this movement to the people of those States?—a lesson not political so much as industrial; an intimation that fair treatment even of the lowest, poorest and most ignorant classes, especially if they are held by no artificial bond like ownership, is essential to a rendering of the service for which they were valued once as slaves, and for which they are no less indispensable as freemen. ”

“ I have a Sabbath-school, which is almost beyond my ability to teach. I am superintendent, treasurer, secretary, and everything. I find it difficult to interest the children. Last Sabbath there was an attendance of twenty-seven.” Of her day-school she writes: “It is very difficult to make the children think that they do not know everything. Many of them have been studying books that they cannot even read understandingly. I am trying to govern by kindness as much as possible, and punish only when I see that I cannot possibly help it. ”

“ Whoever owns his own labor must control the market.
—After all, there is an inclination to block this aspiration of the colored man. The Atlanta Constitution holds that it is an open question whether this effort should be encouraged. It holds that there are two solutions of the labor problem which is now vexing the farmers. Either the negro must be made comfortable as a tenant, or he must be encouraged to provide himself a home. Either something like the English tenant system must be adopted or the system of small farms will prevail. ”

“ One says, “We cannot get equal rights in the South before the law. A white man will pay ten dollars for the same offence that a negro will go to that second death, the chain-gang, for.” He also says, “There are some counties in Georgia, and in every one of the Southern states, where a white man will whip a negro just the same as formerly.” Again, a certain lawyer defending a white man the other day, at Jefferson, in Georgia, said, “God made the negro inferior, and the white man was justified in killing the negro for insulting him.” ”

“ Sometimes, instead of going to law, our Chinese agree to refer matters in dispute to the presidents of these companies as a board of arbitrators; but such arbitration is in principle and practice exactly that which American business men often resort to; exactly that which between Christians ought to be always a sufficient substitute for suits at law. Some years ago Chinese merchants were able to arrange with the steamship companies to sell no tickets to Chinamen unless they could show what has been incorrectly called a permit from one or the other of these companies. ”

“ These immense areas of cheap, rich, southern lands, that were never cursed by the filth of slavery, are calling in the Freedmen to take to themselves homes and farms and the respectability that comes from ownership of the soil. ”

“ This city is rapidly increasing in population. The increase of the colored population keeps pace with the white in numbers, and far outstrips the white in ignorance and poverty. The number of vagabond black children here would astonish you. On the Sabbath, the vacant lots and outskirts of the city are thronged with them. They are without parental restraint, and never attend meeting or Sabbath-school. They are ripening in vice and crime. ”

“ The colored laborer is becoming a settled, independent property holder, and his own master. When he can work, buy and sell for himself, and own his cabin, he is emancipated from domineering dictation. ”

“ The churches established in the South are a result of the same effort. Their chapels and houses of worship represent a money value of fifty thousand dollars more. What Congregationalism has to show is in these permanent institutions for the mental and moral training of the colored people. It is not all that is needed, but it is an investment of inestimable value, and one which will compare favorably with the work of any other denomination, for thorough educational and religious work among the enfranchised race. ”

“ Thus the influence of our school and [148] our teaching is extended, and in this way are the masses to be reached. Christian people of the North, let the means be liberally provided to educate these teachers who are to carry light and knowledge to their people.
Our work is not all overspread with cloudless skies. We are under many disadvantages, and experience some sore disappointments. Not all whom we look upon with great hopes and earnest desires that their future may be marked by Christian usefulness, meet our expectations. We find careless and idle and heedless pupils ”

“ At the “Home” we have three meetings Sunday evenings: one for women, one for boys, and a girls’ class prayer meeting, with a kindergarten for the little ones during the week.
One of the pleasant incidents in our winter’s work has been the distribution of five barrels of clothing from kind friends at the North. The people are poor, but not penurious. A girls’ sewing class has sent $21, the avails of their handiwork, for the Mendi Mission, and the church appropriates the “weekly offering” once a month towards the pastor’s salary. ”

“ I have been happily disappointed in witnessing the industry and thrift of the Freedmen as mechanics and common laborers; the colored men seem to do very nearly all the work which is done, and with the aid of the women, who are equally industrious, they secure an honest and, what is to them, a comfortable living. ”

“ Most of those whom I found worthy of relief were people who were suffering from the effects of the fever, and could only make money enough to pay the rent. To such, a few barrels of coal or some provision and shoes gave a start, so that they could get on very well alone. We have had an unusually cold winter, and people have consequently needed more fuel, the sickly ones often having to remain in bed to keep warm. A pastor of one of the colored churches has been a great help in this work, by reporting needy cases in his part of the city. ”

“ It is yet a small school, indeed, but it is in good working order. The machinery is complete in all its parts. Its lack is inward rather than outward. It needs only the animating power of the Holy Spirit to make it a living body. We have got the dust together and have formed it, and we are praying that God would breathe into its nostrils that it may become a living soul. To this end the teachers have just resolved to hold a half-hour prayer-meeting at the close of the school each Sabbath.
Our church is quite small. ”

“ Several families which have been relieved now send their children to our Sunday-school. Although several thousand dollars were sent here to relieve yellow fever sufferers, many of the colored people received but little, some nothing. It is very sad to hear of those who were so feeble that they could not stand in the ranks to await their turn at the relief office, but sat on the ground till night came, and then receiving no attention, went home to die! ”

“ These institutions must train multitudes of competent teachers, who will educate the masses. In these institutions must also be educated a native ministry to meet the wants of their people at home, and to carry the Gospel to the dark continent from which their fathers came. It is difficult to conceive of a work more important, or promising more beneficent results, than that which is being done by the higher educational institutions for the Freedmen. ”

“ Every year adds to their intelligence, and if the helping hand of Christian philanthropy is not withheld, they will, by education, by temperance, by morality and more intelligent piety, by industry and the accumulation of property, win for themselves a position of respectability. ”

“ The wealthier Chinese find their impoverished countrymen thrown upon their charities, and they use every influence they can bring to bear to restrain others from coming. What if there are 400,000,000 of them just across the sea; they may as well stay there and starve, as to come 10,000 miles and do the same. If the recent bill had become a law, and had been executed, no others in all the land would have profited by it so much as the Chinese in California. ”

“ Ignorance is somewhere along there when it saves us from the need of power. We accepted what we found as being all that we had any right in our simplicity to expect, and carefully hid it as leaven in the meal. ”

“ Avery is the most interior station held by the American Missionary Association in Africa. This one step has been taken, and a sufficient time has elapsed since to teach us that it is all important to push our work farther into the country. There lies on either side of us a vast territory, densely populated by an anxious and thirsty people who are dying for want of the truths of the Gospel.
In regard to the work at Avery, the new year has opened up quite favorably to us in all our departments. The church I am glad to say, is progressing far beyond all expectation. Sunday, Feb. ”

“ But it should be observed that these reasons do not—with, at most, two exceptions—apply to Chinese immigration alone. The Irish laborer underbid the native American, and crowded him out of the field. In some cases great suffering temporarily ensued. But the American at length found other and better fields to which, indeed, the Irishman’s toil prepared his way. It would be so again. The Irish, French and German immigrants have brought with them principles and practices sadly at variance with those which gave us free institutions, our Christian Sabbaths, and our happy homes ”

“ Art. VIII. This society, in collecting funds, in appointing officers, agents and missionaries, and in selecting fields of labor, and conducting the missionary work, will endeavor particularly to discountenance slavery, by refusing to receive the known fruits of unrequited labor, or to welcome to its employment those who hold their fellow-beings as slaves. ”

“ Another feature connected with the church work is full of interest, and that is the prayer meetings. They are, as a general thing, largely attended by the country men, and great interest is manifested among them. We hope that many will be brought to the Lord during this year; but this will depend very greatly upon earnest prayer on the part of the Christians at home.
One thing is discouraging, and that [151] is the condition of the Sabbath-school. We have no papers, no Bibles, and scarcely any singing-books, with which to carry it on. ”

“ Many rose and asked the church to pray for them. To our great surprise and joy, sinners have come flocking home, backsliders have been reclaimed, the church has been made alive, and many out of Christ are inquiring. The manifest result of our season of revival thus far is, that six have been added to the church. Four young ladies, all under twenty-three years of age, joined by the profession of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. ”

“ The colored man being an American citizen, it is improbable that the English tenant system can be made to fit his case. The rights of citizenship will secure to him the rights of labor. The homestead delivers him from serfdom, and secures to him the independent ballot. ”