Various

“ Wherever modern civilization without religion has touched the barbarian it has been to curse him.
The blood of every American ought to tingle at the thought of the foul stain upon our national honor because of the treatment the Indian has received.
General Sherman has told us that we have made more than one thousand treaties with him, but the United States Government has never kept one of these treaties, if there was anything to be made by breaking it; and the Indian has never broken one, unless he has first had an excuse in some cruel wrong from the white man. ”

“ That wealth earned in the South, lost and then restored, is given back to the South to educate and assist the emancipated slaves. The giver, now in the 88th year of his age, finds it the joy and crown of his life to be thus not only a benefactor to the poor blacks, but to furnish a marked illustration of the fraternal feeling which the North cherishes towards the South. And may we not add that Providence in guiding this noble man to select this once persecuted society as the almoner of his bounty, is giving it a token of the Divine approbation for its faithfulness to the oppressed slave. ”

“ How can we help loving such a man? He took up the sorrows of others and made them his own; aye more, he took up the woes of a race and made them his own. When did the colored man have a better and more faithful friend than he? Who was more completely and absolutely identified with his interests than he? Burn down the colored man's school house through the malign influence of caste feeling, and you had kindled in his soul the fires of an indignation which quite eclipsed the original conflagration. ”

“ Let us not forget that the Indians for whom we work have been excluded from our civilized communities, until it is difficult to win them to our customs, our language and our religion; that until only about twenty-five years ago, generation after generation of our colored people had been born to bondage, and had groaned its hopeless life away in far greater misery than the same conditions brought in uncivilized Africa—misery made deeper and keener by contrasts in civilized America. Is it a wonder that the women of a slave race lost their womanly instincts ”

“ The colored people of America should be aroused to this providential call to this high mission in behalf of their fatherland. We do not question nor minify their great duty and destiny in America. Their warm affections, their easily kindled zeal, their gift of song and eloquence, will yet add an enriching pathos to our piety, and a wider range to our patriotism. ”

“ It may be the providence of God that barbarism shall be crowded out by civilization, that the Indian's hunting-ground shall yield to the railway and the marts of commerce. It may not be right that a continent of eight millions of square miles, more than twice the size of all Europe, fair and beautiful and rich in resources, should be kept for game preserves for half a million savages. It is right that the forest should fall to make room for New England villages, with their churches and school-houses and industry. The rude stage of existence must make way for a higher. ”

“ It is this Society which has done more than any other one agency, to revolutionize and harmonize the national sentiment as regards the rights of the Indian to civilization and to Christianization. If now the churches of our country will hasten to do their duty, as in sight of him who is Father of us all, towards our Chinese neighbors, it will not be long before the National Government will wake to its shame and wipe off the deep disgrace of its recent demagogy and international perfidy. ”

“ But the higher has no right to be wicked in its onward movement. It has no right to rob or cheat. It has no right to make compacts and violate them. It has no right to break its faith with the weak. It has no right to outrage the principle of justice.
The history of Indian wrongs by the whites in the inevitable advances of civilization, need not be recited here. Unscrupulous greed has hovered about the Indian reservations as waiting buzzards hover near the wounded creature upon whose flesh they would fatten. Lands guaranteed to the Indians were encroached upon by white people. ”

“ The spectacle of what the Society is doing for the Chinese, especially of what it ought to have the power and the commission given it to do, is fitted to be peculiarly impressive, as an object lesson, to the nation. The radical character of a nation comes out in no other way so distinctively, as in the way it treats its weakest and most helpless subjects.
A grand part of the good done by the American Missionary Association has been in its influence, first on the conscience of the churches, and then, through this, on the moral sense and the moral sentiments of the nation itself. ”

“ For our encouragement is the ardor of the people themselves; their readiness to receive an education; their position in a republic now far advanced; the progress already made; the growing interest in the States where they are most numerous to provide for them the means of a common school education; the army of teachers already in the field.
Believing in a wise Providence over-ruling the present and the future, we regard the problems before us, though great, not insoluble to faithful, wise and patient Christian effort along the lines upon which this Association has wrought. ”

“ It is religion alone which can lead him to the truest manhood, which will quicken his slumbering intellectual faculties and prevent him from being an easy prey to the selfishness and sinfulness of men. Let us support this society in its grand work, by our money, our sympathy and our prayers. Let us join in the fight, and by-and-by we will share in the triumph. Dr. Strieby, you can remember just before this society was formed, that it was a disgrace to be an abolitionist. ”

“ But how shall we convey to them the blessings of intelligent, Christian home life? I am sure every womanly heart gives the same response: through the children.
That is our way—the foundation of the broad work of this Association. We cannot expect the mothers to teach their children what they do not know themselves, have never seen and cannot understand. So we bring the youth out of these homes, cut off as far as possible from their low surroundings, into our missionary schools, where they are lifted into a purer atmosphere and are brought into daily contact with refined Christian womanhood. ”

“ Their missionary teachers find them with the ancient characteristics unchanged—rude in thought, though with a marked intellectual power. The open book of nature, the Indian knows well. He will tell you the habits of bird and beast and tree and plant. He will tell you the time of day by looking at a leaf. But the life of civilization comes hard to him. He does not know the value of time, nor the value of money. It is hard for him to measure his days or to provide for the future, or to care for to-morrow. ”

“ What a glow would enter the hearts of these noble, self-denying woman, if from the Woman's Bureau word might go that the ladies of such churches have provided for you, and you, and you! Weary with the constant drain upon mind and heart, as they come in contact with the warped, barren lives of the people whom they would help, how it would refresh them to feel that because they are your missionaries you are working for, thinking of and praying for them. ”

“ For what were we nurtured and shielded in Christian homes; why taught self-restraint, self-reliance, the law of God as applied to our duty to ourselves and our neighbors? Why have our hands been trained to skillful work, our minds opened to knowledge, if not to make these our talents ten more by their exercise in behalf of such needy ones? ”

“ Hear the Negro, in the Slave Songs:
"Way over in the Egypt land, You shall gain the victory. Way over in the Egypt land, You shall gain the day. March on, and you shall gain the victory, March on, and you shall gain the day."
Such a people are surely destined to develop a rich and beautiful Christian life. If they should be specially trained, and their warm hearts inspired, for the work of missionaries to Africa, who can doubt the success of their efforts? ”

“ Perhaps no missions to the heathen have been more blessed than many of these to the wild, painted savages. Thousands who were barbarian in heart and in deed are now true disciples of Christ. Where heathenism held its revels, now the church-bell calls the red man to prayer, and the war-whoop is being exchanged for songs of Christian praise. Wigwams are being transformed into houses, and coarse and cruel people are illustrating home piety and virtues. ”

“ If you have ever spent a day in the mountains, with its breezy temperature, and yet with the sun filling the whole blue heavens and shining on all things—water, mountain, valley, tree and grass—if that day has left its memory of brightness and sweetness in your heart, such is the memory left on us in the office by Brother Powell. ”

“ Do they go out to teach, they are watched, written to, harassed, and only as strong in God's strength and deliverance can they escape. When you think of the snares set for these girls, and that no father or brother may even yet dare defend them, and when you know that there are those—yes, very many—who, guided by Christian teachers stand firm in the purity of their womanhood, clinging to the Everlasting Arm, how plain it is that God has a plan, a purpose for this race, when we shall have fulfilled our duty to them, and when their fiery furnace of trial shall have done its work! ”

“ Our mission is to raise up teachers, preachers, interpreters and a native agency that shall work for the regeneration of their own people. It is a mission that is hopeful.
It means a good deal to teach those who come to us in moccasins and blankets, arithmetic, algebra, the elements of geometry, physical geography, natural philosophy and mental science. It means much to give them an industrial training that shall show them how to live rightly, and enable them to do it. But above all, in all and through all, is the gospel of Christ, which is the power of God to their salvation. ”

“ On the other hand, Africa, the land of their fathers, is another anomaly in the world's history. For a thousand years it was unknown to the civilized world; its people are the most degraded upon earth, and it is a shame and reproach to the church that it has done so little to enlighten them,—yea, a double shame when, as is now well known, Mohammedanism is spreading most rapidly over the whole continent. ”

“ There is China, with its four hundred million souls, subject to a single sovereign—a heathen empire. Here is America, Christian America; the foremost republic among the nations, and soon to be the leading power among the Governments of the earth. It holds already the position of moral leadership in the far East. What shall be done with this leadership? Right here in our midst are some two hundred thousand representatives of that empire, every one of whom with hardly an exception hopes some time to return to his native Orient. What will the Christianity of America do for them? ”

“ But slavery then ruled the North as well as the South, and this society was made to feel the rod of its power. Some of its founders learned that rewards had been offered for their abduction; others suffered from the violence of mobs; and its missionaries in the South were imprisoned or banished. When the slaves were freed, the society went swiftly and energetically to their help, and has sent to them thousands of consecrated teachers and has spent millions of money for their relief. Its work is now so manifestly beneficial that it is welcomed by both the blacks and the whites in the South. ”

“ While we repudiate emphatically the idea that Mohammedanism can be a substitute for Christianity in civilizing Africa, yet it is only just that we should admit that Islam brings with it some influences for good into that benighted land—influences that strongly appeal to the higher instincts and aspirations of the people, and are, therefore, an elevating power. First of all, the One True God of Islam tends to lift the African above his idols, his fetich, his witchcraft and his cannibalism. ”

“ The motive of the early settlers of New England, which took precedence over all others—as they declared—was "a desire to advance the gospel in these remote parts of the world, even if they should be but stepping-stones to those who were to follow them." Finding these barbarous tribes here, the Pilgrim Fathers bartered with them for peaceable possession, which they did not always secure. As civilization encroached upon barbarism, the colonists kept their homes often only by the defences of war. But peace was in the hearts and purposes of the early settlers. ”

“ While in every way the general work of reaching the masses and saving them from their illiteracy is to be pressed, the time has come to place these leading schools upon a firmer foundation and to make them more conspicuous as centres. For this they need to be amply endowed and maintained with steadily advancing educational courses, suited to giving those who are to become the leaders of a great people a broad and comprehensive education, abreast with the best in the times in which they are to do their work. ”