Various

“ He voiced the sentiment of this whole Association when he said, "Here will be taught and promoted a Christianity as narrow in its creed as revealed truth, and as broad in its love as humanity!" "A creed as narrow as revealed truth." Yes! we want no inspirations from outside the sacred book. "A love as broad as humanity." ”

“ And beyond all this, standing for those principles which are most essential and fundamental in Christianity, it has glorified God by exhibiting to the world the power of Christian faith and sacrifice. Those who have been bound of Satan, lo, these many years, are loosed from their bonds and made free in Christ. War has struck off the chains of human bondage. Love shall now complete the emancipation. ”

“ A Christian woman, missionary to the poor whites among the mountains of East {159} Tennessee, under the inspiration of her great faith, writes home to her friends, "We can almost hear the bells ring in unreared steeples, and hear the songs from choirs that are as yet totally oblivious to the spirit of melody, and enter into the heart-worship of the prayer meetings that are to be when shall have been fulfilled the prophecy, that 'to the people which sat in darkness and the shadow of death, light is sprung up'." ”

“ They had come from savagery to slavery, and in a day, without training or preparation, they were set free. It is no wonder that they were ignorant, indolent, degraded and despised. As one of their own number says, "We came into bondage naked and destitute of worldly goods, we went out of it penniless, homeless and almost characterless." Now it was this mass of degraded humanity that this Association set itself to elevate and Christianize, and it did it with a calm assurance and serene hope which no obstacle has as yet been able to disturb. ”

“ The ignorance of the Negro, and the degradation of the Indian, are more our fault than theirs. We owe it to them, as a matter of simple justice, that we now make reparation, as best we can, for the wrong done to them in the past. If we, as a nation, have helped push them down, we ought to help lift them up. It is a burden which stern justice lays upon us. ”

“ The Christianity of our churches will not fall behind the humanity of Victor Hugo, who said, "I have had in my hand the gloved and white palm of the upper class and the heavy black hand of the lower class, and have recognized that both are the hands of man." ”

“ But what may be called the special characteristic of this Society among missionary organizations doing work in our own land, that which establishes its special claim upon hearts of Christian people, is the radical spirit of love there is in it. It exemplifies in a most practical way, the brotherhood of man. It repudiates caste. It is absolutely color-blind. It works for the despised. It helps those who are themselves the most helpless. ”

“ They have been taught the truth more perfectly. They have had their conceptions of a Christian's duty and a Christian's privileges raised. They have been brought into closer harmony with each other. It is too much to expect, perhaps, in view of facts as they transpire in churches of American Christians—Christians "to the manner born"—that our little groups of Chinese believers born as "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise," should be free from all envies and jealousies, walking always in brotherly love. ”

“ Its work is commended to us, for example, because it is patriotic, that is, it makes its appeal to our self-interest. The instinct of self-preservation demands that we sustain it. Four and a half millions of Negroes in our Southern States are utterly illiterate. Half that number of Southern whites are in the same deplorable condition. These men are citizens. They hold the ballot. Our free institutions are not safe in such hands as these. Education is an absolute necessity. This wide-spreading and dense ignorance, among masses of free American people, must be speedily overcome. ”

“ But I turn from all such impressive arguments as these, to find another and altogether different motive to this work, one which the statesman may consider of little worth, the appeal of which mere conscience may not feel, but, which to the Christian heart must ever be more powerful and persuasive than all other motives that can be named. ”

“ What almost infinite patience it has sometimes required, what forbearance and charity, we cannot know, but they have served willingly and cheerfully, and found the sacrifice to be a joy. And there are many of them, in school and church and home, in our Southern land and in the Western wilds, who are serving there in a spirit of self-abnegation and patient sacrifice, and whom God will honor. These faithful workers are not martyrs ”

“ These oppressed races need above all things else leaders from among themselves. It has been the endeavor of this Society to furnish them—men and women of such moral and mental quality as shall be fitted for the responsible position. They have been taught to think, to work and to live. Because labor is a moral force in establishing character, industrial education is introduced. Nothing is too great to be attempted, nothing too trivial to be omitted, the object always being the substantial development of moral and Christian character. ”

“ It is the heroism of those who lay upon themselves the lowliest duties, and perform them in the spirit of the loftiest devotion. The work that calls forth such consecration as this, so disinterested and sincere, bears its own letter of commendation. ”

“ When Chinamen were to be Christianized, immediately it had great faith for the Chinese. When the Indian missions were laid upon it, then it saw wonderful possibilities in the red man. And now, last of all, when some million or two of long-forgotten and neglected "Mountain Whites" are brought to its attention, it sees in these abjectly poor, dispirited and superstitious people, only another opportunity for elevating humanity, and proving the power of Christianity to restore the lost manhood of every race. ”

“ This Society may stand forth before the world to-day, and without any sacrifice of humility or reverence, opening the book and finding the place where it is written, it may say, in concert with the Master himself, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord that He might be glorified." ”

“ It may be that all the workers would say what the President of Talladega writes in a recent letter, "The magnitude of the obstacles are more and more real to me as I live and work." But they still live and they still work, never doubting the final result. If you want to find men who have undying faith in the future of the black race, go to those who, in the spirit of their Master, are toiling night and day, under the commission of this Society, for its elevation. ”

“ Jesus gave the best part of his three years of public ministry to the training of twelve men. He might have baptised a million. He preferred to do thorough work with a few. This Association has acted upon this principle. It has sought to develop manhood and womanhood after the pattern and by the power that is in Jesus Christ. It calls to its aid every possible force. It educates the mind, the heart, the conscience, the hand. It uses the church, the school, the workshop and the Christian home. ”

“ The difficulty with some of us is not 'on account of color,' as it is usually, but not with strict accuracy, put; for some Negroes are as white as some white men, but because they are of an inferior race, so made by the Almighty and never intended by him to be put on an equality with the white race, in either Church or State. ”

“ There is no doubt that their work for purity and sobriety is most efficient, yet this Union can have no dealings with the other Union, though color hinders neither of the vices which the Unions oppose. ”

“ What this bondage signified, this present generation will find it difficult to realize. For years it had been a crime to teach them the alphabet. They had been bought and sold like cattle. Their lives were a daily school in sensual immorality, deceit and dishonesty. Every manly aspiration, and womanly feeling, was smothered at its birth. ”

“ We are dealing with no abstractions, neither are we considering the operation of human agencies. What Christ was in his earthly ministry, that Christianity is, because of His living presence {157} in the church to-day. Wherever we discover the working of those principles which were exemplified in his life, there He is present in living power, the inspirer of the endeavor, and the strength of it. The claim that the work of the American Missionary Association makes upon our attention, may be presented in a variety of forms. ”

“ The sole condition which the grandmother makes is that he shall give up all association with his octoroon mother and refuse to recognize her in any way. Thank God, the boy is too true to his gentle and loving mother to enter into any such arrangement, even though the bribe offered is thousands of dollars and a social position of great attractiveness. There is a great deal of this quiet but heroic self-sacrifice among the colored people in the South, that never finds its way into print. ”

“ It is our just pride as Congregationalists that through this Association more has been done for the true enfranchisement of the freedmen than through any other agency, and it is our duty to see that this great work, in which we have borne so large and honorable a part, halt not nor slacken in its energy because of our failure to keep its treasury replenished and its faithful laborers re-enforced and supported by our gifts and our prayers. ”

“ This work has all along been compelled to fight its way against suspicion, bigotry and hatred; it must do so still, because it recognizes man as man, whether his skin be white or black, red or yellow; and, in taking this radical ground, it is interpreting to the world the benevolent spirit of the Saviour, and is preparing the way for that universal reign of love on earth which He came to establish. ”

“ The white people, as well as the colored, need missionary schools, as the illiteracy among them is appalling.
Think of it! Seven-tenths of one per cent. of the native white population of Massachusetts are illiterate, while twenty-three per cent. of the native white population of Georgia, and thirty-one per cent. of the same population of North Carolina are illiterate!! Why should not Georgia be proud of her educated (?) citizens, and do all she dare to drive some of the best teachers there are in the State outside her borders? ”

“ The value of 35,000,000 bales of cotton produced by free labor in excess of the product of slave labor cannot have been less than $2,000,000,000, or about the full valuation of all the slaves who were made free by the war, had they been sold at the ruling prices. The gain is due not only to the emancipation of the blacks, but to the emancipation of the whites from enforced idleness.
The cotton factories of the world annually require about 12,000,000 bales of cotton, American weight. Good land in Texas produces one bale to the acre. ”

“ Our evangelists have so presented Christ, and so magnified the duty and the blessing of brotherly love, and so exercised, also, their gifts of Christian diplomacy, as to become peace-makers, and to restore a truly spiritual order at points where chaos seemed impending. ”

“ These servants of God are not engaged in a forlorn hope. They have faith. Wherever they work there they expect results, not only in the saving of individual souls, but in regenerating whole races of men. ”

“ Francis Xavier in ten years visited fifty kingdoms and baptized a million converts, but the ten years' labor of some of our modern missionaries, spent in laying solid foundations and thoroughly training a few chosen men, may, after all, come to more in its permanent results upon the world, than all that was done by Rome's great apostle. ”

“ The red race was gradually driven toward a setting sun; the yellow race, the rabble demanded to be driven from the country; the black man was a slave in chains, with no rights which the Constitution recognized."
These unjust prejudices are by no means altogether a thing of the past. They are not as violent as they once were, thanks to the influence {160} of this Association, but they still exist. "Niggers," are still ordered out of Southern churches. Many a professed Christian still wants his Indian "dead." ”

“ Our policy toward the general colored races in this land has been one of cold-hearted and cruel selfishness. As ex-Senator Brace has said, speaking in behalf of his own people, "From the red race was taken their lands, from the yellow their labor, from the black their persons. ”

“ His apprehension of injustice is so keen and true, {155} and his seriousness, in view of the weariness and offence that the whole subject gives to a great majority of the people, is so urgent, that the paper has been criticized as pessimistic, and as an impatient cry against evils that are speedily being rectified. We may say that the optimistic view of evils never did much to correct them, and that those who are patient with wrongs will never create a sentiment against them. To us, this seems the voice of a prophet pleading for righteousness to man and righteousness in the land. ”

“ The question at issue is not one of expediency, but of principle; and, among Christians, whether in the individual church or the ecclesiastical body, it is a question of Christian duty to be settled by the Divine authority of the Master himself. ”