Various

“ Last year one of our Christian Association went by the steamship with his own brother, and when they both reached their old home, his elder brother said to his wife: ‘Well, to-morrow I will go tell my mother that my younger brother, Lee Foun, believes in Jesus, and was a member of the American Association while he staid in California. He does not want to worship our gods which sit in the temple, nor worship our ancestors; neither to keep the traditions which our fathers have handed down from generation to generation. ”

“ We hold in common the glories of our Revolutionary period. We share in the joys of the birth of a new nation. We have the same traditions of patriotism. We are mutually proud of the memory of Washington and Jefferson and the Adamses, and of the other fathers of the Republic. Our National Centennial gave occasion for a revival of our national feeling. Masses of our brethren who had been estranged were glad of the opportunity thus afforded to share in the thrill inspired by the world’s recognition of our national greatness. ”

“ His death was a beautiful illustration of the triumph of the Gospel of Christ. Far from friends [310] and home, yet he was not alone, for that Friend that sticketh closer than a brother was near.
He had been ill for several days, and one morning he told those about him that he should go home at three afternoon, and precisely at the hour named the summons came. He had sent messages to his mother and friends. “Tell them,” he said, “that Jesus is with me and saves me. Oh, how sweet it is to die in the arms of Jesus.” ”

“ Strange that so sweet a man ever had the grit to take up the battle against slavery. Rev. Mr. Ray, a colored minister, who had known Mr. Jocelyn, and had been associated with him for forty years, gave fitness to the occasion by his words of gratitude, and by several telling reminiscences,—one of which was that, in 1839, Mr. Jocelyn came down from New Haven to take up the gauntlet of debate upon the colonization question with Mr. Robert Finley. The discussion was in a hall in Nassau Street, and Mr. Jocelyn’s main reliance was the word of God. ”

“ He came to the school with his Bible always in his hand, as though he could not be parted from it even for a moment.
Then followed years of ripening in the Christian life, with frequent seasons of such blessing that he could not speak of Christ without tears. He early gave himself to the ministry, feeling that to preach the everlasting Gospel would be his highest joy, and was pursuing his studies with this in view. He was not, however, without temptations to a worldly life, though we are assured that the dear Saviour kept His own, even unto the end. ”

“ We present below a forcible appeal for student aid. Such aid is essential, and the question of obtaining it in sufficient amount to meet the demand lies at the bottom of the whole possibility of educating the colored youth of the South. If scholarships and educational funds are important to the white students of the North, how much more to the colored students at the South, where employment is so poorly paid, and the money so hard to be collected when earned! ”

“ They have been preserved for centuries in great numbers and vigorous manhood, notwithstanding their perpetual intestine strifes and the cruel desolations that have been occasioned by the slave trade, along both their eastern and western borders. They are in possession of a country that is not only healthful and productive, but whose navigable streams seem to have been traced out by the finger of Divine Providence for the twofold purpose of facilitating intercommunication among the people themselves, and of furthering the rapid diffusion of the Gospel wherever it has once gained a footing. ”

“ As we have endowed them with the sacred elements of citizenship, we must help them to the means of making them citizens worthy of the nation. This common duty was indicated by Hon. John Goode, of Virginia, when he said, in Congress, “Can the Government bestow civil and political rights upon these wards of the nation, and at the same time avoid the solemn obligation to provide for their mental and moral improvement?” That is the responsibility of citizens, North and South, as well as of the Government. ”

“ To-day, if a worthy Christian young man or woman appeals to us, “Can you not aid me to keep on in my studies?” our answer is a sorrowful one, “There is no fund that can be appropriated to that purpose.” Will not good men think of this and make a grand possibility of good a fact gloriously realized? ”

“ We need to conserve and utilize for the general good the partial education which the graduates of our colleges have secured. At the present time this is not done as it should be, and as it might be, if special student aid were available. Many graduates go forth from the college who are lost to view. After so much patient labor has been bestowed upon them—and in some instances special pecuniary aid given—they should be encouraged in every way to devote themselves to the greatest good of their people. Take the last class in Straight University as an illustration. ”

“ Should a half million go away, there would still be four and a half millions left to be instructed and helped in their race struggle for higher intelligence and a purer religious life. Press forward, then, the glorious work of education. Hasten the full equipment of the normal schools and colleges for the wider, grander work before them. Let new churches be planted, and the pure gospel of Christ be preached all over the beautiful and fruitful South, wherever the Freedman has his home. The work is not one of a generation, but of a century.
Student Aid. ”

“ His mother said to him: ‘My son, you ought to have got up early this morning and offered some tea and burned the incense before your ancestor; but you got up so late, and did not do it, that makes me feel bad.’ Then Lee Foun said to his mother: ‘If we go and offer tea and burn the incense before these stones, wood, clay and paper, do you think they know it? I don’t believe that, for they, having eyes, cannot see; having ears, cannot hear; having noses, cannot smell; mouth, cannot speak; hands, cannot handle; feet they have, but cannot walk; and bodies have they, but cannot move. ”

“ To secure, at the earliest day, one of the chief objects of the Association—the thorough education of colored young men and women as teachers and ministers, who shall be competent to lead the masses of their race to a higher civilization—special aid must be given to those whose minds and hearts give promise of usefulness. A large number who propose to seek only an elementary education, or those who reside in the city where a school of high grade is located, do not require aid from abroad. ”

“ We find from actual experience that an average of fifty dollars will help at least one such struggling student to support for a year in Fisk University. The balance and the money necessary to purchase books they can generally provide for themselves. We ask the readers of the American Missionary what we shall do with these cases. Any one who will send us a thousand dollars will answer the question for at least twenty. Every fifty dollars will give the answer in the case of one. Our hearts ache when we are compelled to refuse, for the want of money, these eager applications. ”

“ And He has commanded us not to worship images, neither to serve the dead; but only to worship the true and living God, and to honor father and mother while they are living. But those who take offerings of paper to be burned up, and represent money, are foolish, and deceive themselves; for the paper is nothing but paper, and cannot represent money.’ Then his mother laughed when she heard that, and Lee Foun’s brother was angry at him, because his mother was pleased with his younger brother, Lee Foun. He felt as Joseph’s brethren felt toward Joseph when they saw Jacob, their father, love him. ”

“ In efforts to promote the spirit of Christian union, it is always advised that we look for the things that we hold in common—the things that make us Christians, rather than those which make us of this or that church party. In seeking to advance national good feeling, may we not wisely pursue something of the same course? ”

“ The marvel is that such a man could ever have become an abolitionist—that he could have risked reputation, property, and even life itself, in an enterprise so doubtful of success and beset with so many dangers to the peace of the church and the nation. ”

“ We share in the essentials of the Reformed Church life. The Pilgrims and the Puritans settled in New England. Much of the blood by which the Southern States were stocked was of the Reformed quality. In the celebration, at Chicago, of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims, Dr. Bacon said that the Presbyterians were Puritans. The South has had a large portion of this moral and theological leavening. The Scotch and the Scotch-Irish element in that region has been large and largely influential. Through them Puritan notions have been planted and propagated. ”

“ From the correspondence of teachers, and through the cases known personally by the comparatively few of our old students who have already returned from their summer’s work, we could number up to-day, which is only the fourth day after the opening of the school, at least forty instances of young men and young women of known character and ability who are eager and anxious to come to Fisk University to fit themselves for teaching and other Christian work among their people, who cannot come because they have not and cannot get sufficient money. ”

“ The best material is often remote from the college, and utterly lacking in pecuniary ability. Many of the brightest, the most intellectual of the children of the Freedmen, who are intensely anxious for an education, and have a praiseworthy ambition to be fitted for positions of responsibility and usefulness, [294] are denied the privileges of the college by reason of extreme poverty. Many others are able to meet a part of the cost of an education, but without benevolent aid must stop short of a full course of study. ”

“ But God’s ways are not ours, and since we know that He ever cares for His own cause, we may believe that He calls the loved one to a higher usefulness. Such were some of the thoughts that came to our hearts when, on a beautiful June morning during the summer vacation, we read the words, “E. J. Park died yesterday afternoon,” followed by an account of the triumphant death of a student of Fisk University, who had gone to Texas to teach school. ”

“ A Puritan by birth and conscientious conviction, his religious life was after the strictest model, yet his tender sympathies rendered him kind as well as faithful in counsel or warning, while his broad Christian charity made him liberal toward all who loved the Saviour.
Father Jocelyn was born in New Haven, Ct., in 1799, and was early converted to Christ. He began active life as an engraver, but relinquished a prosperous business to preach the Gospel to the poor, devoting his ministry to a feeble colored church in New Haven. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The wise policy of the instructors in our institutions is to search for young men and women of promise, and encourage them to pursue a full course of study, and to watch over them till the benefits they receive are made a valued possession not only to themselves but to their race. ”

“ To the present time the exodus movement has been confined very largely to the disturbed parishes, or to certain exceptional cases where the conditions of labor have been oppressive. In New Orleans, while conventions and open-air meetings have been held, and the policy of emigration has been discussed, but few of the Freedmen have decided to leave the State and find a home in Kansas. There is a restless, dissatisfied feeling among the masses of the negroes, especially the poorer classes, induced by the glowing appeals made to them ”

“ As I looked through the crack near me, I saw outside a row of men seated on a log, who left their places when they heard a stranger’s voice inside and crowded into the house. I saw them put their hats up on a beam over their heads. ”

“ What is that to thee? “It was easy up North to have been an abolitionist, but to go and put yourself down by the side of and underneath the outcast ex-slave to try to raise him up, that is another thing.” What is that to thee? Follow thou me. Follow my call; follow my example in caring for “these my brethren.” Sympathy with the Saviour in His love for souls, in His self-forgetfulness while winning lost men to His Gospel, is the first qualification for this Christly work. It was a rigid scrutiny that set aside the few men that were to gain the victory of the Lord at the hand of Gideon. ”

“ Another Christian hero has laid aside his armor and received his crown. The Lord did not break the dies when He made the last of the ancient Martyrs or of the Puritan heroes. In great emergencies he reproduces them after their kind. The anti-slavery struggle needed them and they came forth, and among them there was no braver man than the gentle and amiable Simeon S. Jocelyn. It is a mistake to suppose that the bold and determined men who take front rank in great moral conflicts are destitute of kindly impulses. ”

“ As many as three hundred oblique forms can be derived from the root of every regular Mpongwe verb, each one of which will have a clear and distinct shade of meaning of its own, and yet so regular and systematic in all its inflections, that a practiced philologist could, after a few hours’ study, trace up any of even its most remote forms to the original root. ”

“ An appropriation of ten thousand dollars was made by the last Congress exclusively for the benefit of the College; not a dollar is to go to sustain the professional courses. It is fitting that the Government, which, through the Freedmen’s Bureau, did so much to found the institution, should help it along in its straits.
Prof. R. I. Greener, of the Law department, before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in session at Saratoga, joined issue with Frederick Douglass in the discussion of the exodus question. He is a man of platform popularity. ”