Various

“ If the gospel cannot save the lowest, then there is no salvation for the highest. The Indian is a man, and Christ tasted death for every man, and he is able to save to the uttermost every man. That lowest savage, wretched and vile as he is, can be redeemed, and in this redemption can be raised to highest manhood. All culture and excellence of mind and heart are attainable to him whose soul has felt the redeeming power of Christ’s salvation. ”

“ Nothing so nearly concerns the welfare of this land, and of all lands, as the thorough merging and assimilating of all the races here into one Christian commonwealth. This is needed for the unity and strength of our own nation, and for an example and influence upon the nations abroad. The despised races, in particular, need to be thus fused and absorbed, in order that they may be inoculated and empowered with the spirit of the Republic to carry its freedom, its learning and light, to the lands in darkness. ”

“ I charge you to remember that your mission gives repeated emphasis to the faith of the Christian church in the redeemability of the Indian. Lack of faith in this truth has been the cause of much of the cruel indifference on the part of many good people—even Christian people—to the wrongs that Indians have suffered, and has occasioned lack of enthusiasm in the prosecution of Indian missions. It has paralyzed endeavor, and [203] prepared the way for the indulgence of enmity. But notice this: No body of Christians have ever put themselves on record as not believing in the Indian’s redeemability. ”

“ Poor material is too commonly offered, not only as to native talent, but especially as regards thorough drill in primary studies and the commencement of genuine mental discipline. With an imperfect drill in the lower schools, we can do no perfect work in the higher branches, and we find it difficult to develop and sustain in the mind the idea of a true scholarship, and of the lofty aims of a liberal education. It is but slowly that such an intellectual atmosphere can be made to pervade the colored colleges of the South as is found in the white colleges of the New England States. ”

“ The activities of our daily life, the forces of our liberty, learning, piety, government, must do immensely more for a man in America than the feeble pulses of gospel life and light can do for him in China and Africa. ”

“ But if we could bear in mind, in dealing with the Chinaman, the Indian and the Negro, that it is the races we are after, the turning of single souls to God would not seem the small thing that it does. We should then comprehend, perhaps, how much more favorable was a Christian land for the conversion of men, and for the raising up of broad, intelligent, and thoroughly equipped teachers and preachers for the benighted and perishing, than were heathen lands. ”

“ So, in our homes, in our workshops, in the fields, in the churches and schools, through the pages of history, and within our own hearts, we will never forget the boys in blue who saved the Union, and the glorious hero who laid down his life willingly and freely, that the curse of slavery should be forever extinguished from the bright, fair pages of our history. ”

“ Thousands have been taught the rudiments of knowledge, and a select few have received a higher training. Some ambition has been roused in the masses, and a little progress has been made in supplying them with more intelligent leaders in church and in state. No doubt remains that the Negro may be rendered capable of filling all the stations in life which are occupied by white men. Ordinary acquirements are made with creditable ease. The higher education can also be acquired by the proper proportion of students, but this effort is only partially successful as yet. ”

“ At the close of the examination on Wednesday, P. M., the school assembled in the chapel to listen to the report of the examiners on what they had seen and heard. They had nothing but praise to bestow on the literary work of the University; the evidences of hard and accurate study; of clear, inspiring teaching, and of the scholarly bearing and quiet, orderly spirit in all departments of the school. They were specially gratified with the manual training given in so many directions, and its promise of future value to the State. ”

“ When the Indian was given the chance, he was found ready to accept it. The facts are most encouraging. Wonderful has been the progress the gospel has made among these people during the last fifteen years. But the field is vast, and, in comparison with the needs, only a beginning has been made. There are 40,000 wild Indian children in the country. Of this number, all told, there are but 12,000 gathered in the Government and mission schools, leaving 28,000 children to whom no school opens its door, and to whom no Christian missionary comes. ”

“ They are part and parcel of our people, fused or not, and the character of the nation will be affected by their presence and influence. The measure with which we mete to them shall be measured to us again. We are in a partnership which involves common gains and common losses. What we put into them of intelligence, piety and moral power, we put into the nation not only, but we put into the mightiest of the unbaptized races of men. We have little conception, indeed, of the immense inertia of the heathen races ”

“ It will interest the readers of the Missionary to learn that the Act of Congress for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians provides that every head of an Indian family shall be settled on 160 acres; every unmarried person over eighteen years of age, and every orphan, shall have 80 acres; and every single person under eighteen born before the President issues the order making allotments, 40 acres. The allotments so made are to be inalienable for 25 years, and the lands remaining over are to be bought of the Indians by the Government and opened to homestead settlement only ”

“ As the spirit of caste is overcome, and places of honor and profit begin to open to colored men, fully qualified persons must be ready to embrace the new opportunities. Every educated and earnest Christian minister sent forth from our institutions will not only supply his immediate church, but will probably organize in the outlying neighborhood one or two others, requiring similar pastors in a short time. And he will also inspire the uneducated preachers of that region to aim at higher work, and to seek school privileges. ”

“ When in this magazine we report progress in our work, we are reporting progress in temperance, for that is a part of our work. If the word “temperance” doesn’t always appear, it is simply for the same [207] reason that the words honesty, chastity and truth, are not always appearing as words. They are always there in significance. It is the work of the gospel to advance these virtues. We make a few extracts showing the temperance interest as represented at some of our mission stations:
Sunday was a busy day. ”

“ Stories of massacre and one-sided testimony, when the Indian could not have a hearing, have led many Christians by their opposition to Indian missions, unwittingly to array themselves against the gospel. They did not think, in taking up the cry, “There is no good Indian but a dead Indian,” “The Indian cannot be civilized,” “The Indian should be exterminated,” and other such falsehoods, that they were denying the Christian faith and practically proclaiming that there was no salvation for themselves nor for anyone else ”

“ The noble and energetic pastor spoke to the children of the Sunday-school in such words as these, “If your mother tells you to go and get a glass of beer, you tell her ‘No.’ If she whips you, come and tell me. I want to know who she is. Be brave enough to tell her ‘No.’” Such words would sound very strange in some places, but here they are needed, for some of those very mothers are members of that church, but they are getting aroused. That meeting Sunday did a great deal for them. ”

“ How much easier, then, the conversion of heathen under the blaze of our Christian sky, and how much stronger and better men can we make of them to undertake the salvation of their own lands!
The great want is the means—both men and money—to throw upon the Pacific slopes, upon the Indian reservations, the Southern savannas, a Christian force large enough to put these races under thorough Christian culture. Anything less than this will fail of the end. It is an opportunity to lay hold of the unsaved races, such as is likely never to come again ”

“ A Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was formed at Shelby, with twelve members, and there will doubtless be four or five more organized in other places, when the delegates can have proper instructions, and in no better way can the influence of our churches and work be felt, than in this direction. Nothing has brought about such a desirable harmony as the temperance work in churches of all denominations, and the mothers, wives and daughters see more and more the necessity of uniting their influence against intemperance. ”

“ The churches, the school-houses, the intelligence and the character that will be needed for the uplift of these races, we have only begun to supply. Indeed it is a question as to whether we have yet formed any adequate idea of a work, as for races, in distinction from a work which deals merely with individuals. ”

“ The gospel of Jesus Christ reaches head, heart and hand. Anything that is injurious to a human being, in any part of life, the gospel condemns. Temperance is a gospel doctrine. It is one of the great multitude of truths our missionaries proclaim. ”

“ My brother, remember as you stand to preach the gospel among the Indians it will be your precious privilege to show that the wrongs and injustice they have suffered at the hands of the white man have been inflicted in opposition to the teachings of Christianity and in defiance of its commands. ”

“ It is sad, of course, that these people [189] are savages, but the spirit that lurks behind this telegram is far sadder. It is absurd to talk of these youth as lapsing. Indian education is not to be judged by the conduct of those who have been in school from less than one year up to three years at most; nor, even had they been in school for ten or fifteen years, is it to be condemned should it be proved that two out of eighty-four, yielding to temptation, had fallen. ”

“ The Chinese Government has issued instructions to the local Governors, in pursuance of which these officials have put forth proclamations warning the people against the persecution of missionaries and Christians.
“Know all men,” says the Governor of Che-Kiang, “that the sole object of establishing chapels is to exhort men to do right; those who embrace Christianity do not cease to be Chinese, and both sides should therefore continue to live in peace, and not let mutual jealousies be the cause of strife between them.” ”

“ New York Post, “while in Kansas only 31 in a thousand, and in Nebraska only 30 in a thousand are so illiterate. But in Kentucky 173 white men in a thousand cannot write their own names!” The A. M. A. schools in the South are seeking to correct this appalling state of things. They not only educate, but they inspire also a desire for education in those reached by their influences. It is unfortunate that these influences are mostly confined to the colored people, but that is not because the whites are excluded from our school privileges. “None are so blind as those who will not see.” ”

“ All that I can report on this point is that we are feeling our way towards something effective—praying continually, and watching diligently for an answer to our prayer, that God will raise up some Chinese believer and endue him with such power that he may not only disciple those already gathered in our schools, but may make his voice to be heard among the perishing crowds that now refuse to enter our opened doors, and love darkness rather than light. ”

“ The exercises are held in the evening, as most of those interested in the school being working people, many who would desire to attend could not do so in the daytime. In New Orleans, especially in summer time, audiences are not noted for assembling early, but people have come to know that when Straight University says 7 o’clock, that is the hour when exercises will commence; and as soon as the doors were open, the crowd was ready to go in. No such an audience ever before occupied that church. ”

“ Our Sunday-school Temperance Workers held a meeting at a little Methodist Church, called Providence Chapel. The church was filled, and we had a very good programme. Several little girls spoke temperance pieces, and some of them spoke very beautifully and made a deep impression. Music and short, stirring addresses, and printed selections, filled up the time, and some new names were obtained for the pledge. The hardest task, almost, is to induce the older men to give up tobacco, but some of them came to that decision in the meeting. Providence Chapel is surrounded by saloons. ”

“ God sets before us this open door, and not to enter in is to peril their future as well as our own. A responsibility greater than this could hardly be given to men, and an eye to see it and a soul to feel it are what, beyond all things, our people need. ”

“ It is just like no other work on the New Testament that we can find elsewhere, and therefore it fills a niche that has hitherto been left empty. The very things which a young minister—and many an older one, also—ought to know about the chief words in his New Testament, he will be able to learn in this affluent volume. ”

“ Most of what is discouraging might have been averted if we had fit Chinese helpers in sufficient numbers, and the means to sustain them. The American teachers at these points are specially faithful, skillful and devoted, but nothing can make up for the loss entailed by the absence of effective Chinese helpers.
[205]
Oroville is a rendezvous for the Chinese scattered over a very wide territory. Its resident Chinese population is also large; not less than six hundred. Loo Quong had done a good work here, and I found the school in better condition than ever before. ”