Various

“ Every individual Christian at the North should feel his personal responsibility and should respond by a great increase of his contributions for this purpose. It is not too much to say that the religious influences sent from the North in school, in industrial training, in the preparation of Christian ministers and teachers, and in the planting of Christian churches, will well-nigh constitute the pivotal point of the whole movement. A loss now can never be regained, but the achievements of the present should be a stimulus for the future. ”

“ I am only a working man; you saw my large family of little children; every penny I can earn counts, but I feel that I must divide the living of my children with these poor people you have told us of to-day. ”

“ Beard gave an address full of information, concerning the work of the American Missionary Association, its aims, encouragements, and results. He emphasized the importance of making a right use of blessings, and spoke of the danger that attends all effort to help others, that it may become a hindrance instead of a help, according to the way in which it is received. He left a well-defined impression that it is the aim of the organization which he represents so to supplement the efforts of those who are trying to help themselves, that true independent manhood and womanhood shall be developed. ”

“ It is necessary to have the gospel preached constantly in order to have it penetrate these darkened hearts, preached in a tongue which can be understood, and necessary to have a Christian life lived in its simplicity in their very midst. The native missionary's family is an object-lesson of value not half appreciated by [109] our Eastern constituency. If, in addition to this, there is a white teacher to uphold, support and push with Anglo-Saxon energy the efforts of the native, the value of the out-station work is greatly increased. ”

“ It is bound to aid in primary, industrial, normal and higher education. It has the teachers and it has the money. It has a special obligation to impart religious instruction. The public school funds of the South and the money of the National Government cannot be applied to distinctively religious education. But there is no such restriction on the Northern schools in the South; they can give religious instruction in all departments, and they can train up religious teachers and preachers. The North, too, has an urgent call to found pure and intelligent churches among the masses in the South. ”

“ We have a Negro population of eight millions, which has doubled in the last twenty years, and increases at the rate of six hundred per day—requiring, if adequately supplied, the founding of a new Fisk University or Talladega College every twenty-four hours. There are 1,500,000 illiterate voters in the South, and how can the North, while admitting with President Harrison, that if the public security is threatened [93] by this ignorance the remedy is education, withhold its share of the necessary means? ”

“ A vote of the National Council or of the Annual Meeting of a missionary body, or of a State Conference, that a society should receive an increase of funds amounts to little, unless the individual donor in the church will increase his gifts.
A little increase here aggregates much. If every member will add five per cent. or ten per cent., it will be little to each, but will be great in the total. May we ask our readers to lay this to heart with the query of each to himself, "Is it not my duty to increase my individual contribution?" ”

“ I have an industrial class for girls, and give them instruction in sewing, in housework on the principle of the kitchen-garden system, without the practice, as I have not the articles to use for that purpose. Then a lesson from the Bible, also, [97] comes in, and some amusement in the way of puzzles. The girls are pleased to belong to a society of King's Daughters. I have a class for instructing the women in darning, patching, button-hole making and so on. We have a Society of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in which I have the Department of Social Purity. ”

“ There were two young women also, whom I should be glad to have in the school here. They have just united with the church and been baptized. They seem quite superior in many ways to their surroundings. They can both read in Dakota and so have the Bible to learn from. Of course they have in a manner isolated themselves from their youthful companions in having given up their heathen customs; it seems as though souls so young and untried in the Christian life must meet with many temptations and many trying experiences. ”

“ A hut will do for a pagan Zulu. When he becomes a Christian, he wants a shirt and a house. "Chinatown" in any California city, and especially in San Francisco, where sixty or seventy thousand are housed and herded in a few blocks, will open the eyes of Eastern men as to the wisdom of restricting Chinese immigration. But there is no question as to our duty to those that are here. We cannot afford to let them live and die in their heathen vices. The best solution of the Chinese problem is to Christianize those that are here. The best way to reach China with the gospel is via California. ”

“ The North has not been idle in these respects. The public in both sections of the country have, we believe, a faint conception of the amount of money already expended in the South by Northern charitable individuals and societies. For example, the American Missionary Association, including some institutions which it founded and for a time sustained, has expended $7,124,151.26; and including, also, books and clothing and the amount collected and spent in connection with its boarding departments, the total sum, as near as can be computed, would be not far from ten millions of dollars since 1862 ”

“ Others are greatly lacking in necessary facilities, buildings, furniture and teachers. Others are crippled for want of means to meet current expenses. Many of these institutions are unwisely located, others have no adequate financial basis to warrant their existence, and some seem to lack the necessary provision for supervision and responsibility. Taken all together, they furnish additional warnings to the people of the North against contributing to individual or local enterprises in the South without most careful scrutiny into the facts in each individual instance. ”

“ Patriotism is all aglow among the boys and girls of New England just now! More than twelve hundred have enlisted recently in the army of the "True Blues." Pastors, Sunday-school superintendents and teachers, officers of Young People's Societies of Christian Endeavor, and other missionary societies have been the enthusiastic recruiting sergeants, and still there is demand for more recruits. ”

“ What proportion of the funds contributed by living donors to missionary societies comes directly from church collections? We presume the answer from a large majority of the contributors would be, three-fourths or four-fifths. But the curious fact is, that, for the three years, 1886, 1887 and 1888, the average contributions to the American Missionary Association from church collections are forty-seven per cent., from Sunday-schools seven per cent., from Woman's Missionary Societies five per cent., from individual donors forty-one per cent. ”

“ He spoke of the value of a practical education, and he said he could trust these Yankees with their skill and energy to make the training they are giving in this school eminently practical. He expressed gratitude for the privilege he has had of knowing and loving a number of teachers and pastors engaged in labor here, and he invoked the divine blessing upon all these consecrated women who have left their homes and friends to do this work among the poor and needy.
Dr. Jennings spoke to the young people of the need of a high aim and firm purpose in accomplishing any important work in life. ”

“ Another source is from Northern charitable funds. The North owes an immeasurable debt to both races in the South. It emancipated the slave, and in so doing, assumed its share of the responsibility for the consequences. It cannot shrink from the duty under the plea that it is a Southern question, or even because some of the people at the South protest against its interference. ”

“ I wish you could hear some of the sensible talks in prayer-meetings, and fervent prayers for classmates, teachers, and the kind people at the North who are trying to help them.
A teacher from North Carolina sends the following:
There is not a girl in my school who uses tobacco, and that is saying a good deal. I cannot be so sure about the boys, but none use it in school or on the play ground. ”

“ Having no momentum from outside, feeling nothing of the swing and swell of progress, hearing little and knowing little of the outer world, they need now our help to uplift and enthuse and save them. Schools, churches, industrial instruction, mental and spiritual training, help for the poor and the ignorant and the degraded is sorely needed. ”

“ Far and near the leaven has spread, the older denominations are improving, the principles of industrial and Christian education are accomplishing untold good.
2.—There is also manifest in these ten years a marked improvement in the feeling between the races. When a man has lived for ten years in the South, he will begin to see how deeply rooted and immovably imbedded in the Southern mind is the sentiment of inborn contempt for the Negro. ”

“ How much could we learn of religion, of history and the world around us, if it were not for grammar? Would 1-2-3 tell us all that?"
But I have not left much room to tell about the good side. Many of the papers, for neatness, accuracy and clear expression, would do credit to any children in the world. Especially is this true of the younger pupils, who have received the training of the lower grades of the school. ”

“ Glenn and his followers, the same Legislature of Georgia has recently added two million dollars to the school fund of the State. The efforts of such brave and fearless leaders as Rev. Dr. Haygood, Rev. Dr. Curry, Hon. Walter B. Hill and others have not been in vain, and the good results of the A.M.A. work have commanded respect and even wonder from its bitterest opponents, whose number and zeal decreases. Wisdom and discretion in future will rapidly increase its friends. ”

“ From all these schools and churches, scattered through this Southland, there have come forth, year by year, hundreds of young colored men and women, whose minds have been disciplined and characters deeply impressed for a good life. ”

“ A few months ago in the city of Providence, in one of the finest churches of that or of any city in our land, before as refined and cultivated an audience as could have been convened in our country, addresses were made by colored men who sat in the pulpit with some of the most distinguished white clergymen in the country. ”

“ It purports to give the addresses of a practical blacksmith, some of them delivered in his shop to a few neighbors, but the audience becoming larger, the rest were given in an adjacent church building. To most persons, the title affords a slight clue to the drift of the book, which is to show the duty and the benefits of giving the tithe of a man's income to the Lord. The author's bottom thought is based on this statement in the preface: "God pledges himself for the success of that individual who renders obedience to the divine money-claim." ”

“ There were other songs by the older pupils, the youngest children closing with the clapping of their hands. Two Indian girls played the organ. Nine little girls recited a hymn, each one beginning with the successive letters of the word Christmas, and as they did so, those letters were hung up between them and the audience. Ten little boys recited a poem on temperance, in connection with which the Indian policeman, recently appointed, made some earnest remarks on the same subject. It was his first effort in church, and he surprised his friends by his success. ”

“ It is helpful, too, to come home and see our Indian neighbors, who less than fifteen years ago were in the same ignorant condition as those we have just seen, now living as white people, earnest Christians, doing much to help us in our work for their heathen relatives. ”

“ The public school funds of the States themselves. This must be the main source. We recognize the fact that the Southern States are comparatively poor, and the further fact, so greatly to their credit, that some of them are paying as large a per cent. on the assessed value of their property as do some of the Northern States. But all the same, the supply of school houses and teachers is utterly inadequate. ”

“ They make the best of servants. But the average working man of America cannot compete with him in the labor market, and I would be sorry if he could. I hope the day will never come when the working man of America will be reduced to such cramped conditions of home life as "The heathen Chinee" luxuriates in. Paganism can live where Christianity cannot. ”

“ It ought to be based on church collections. These should carry current expenses, and the additional plant should [94] come from outside sources. If this be so, and the societies are to increase their work at all from year to year; if, indeed, they are to meet the additional cost of the new plant given by individuals, then the church collections should be increased proportionately.
Are we not, therefore, making a legitimate appeal, when we urge upon every church member the duty of increasing his individual gift put into the plate when the collection is taken? ”