Various

“ We have in bur Indian work eighteen schools and six churches, one new church having been added this year. In these, 68 missionaries have been doing noble service for the Indian and for the country. Shall the Indian problem forever perplex and shame both the country and the Church? Will not the churches enable us to send all the workers and do all the work needed to be done, and thus hasten the day when it can be joyfully proclaimed that the Indians are evangelized—no longer pagans and foreigners, but our fellow Christians and our fellow citizens? ”

“ The time has now come when our church work can be greatly enlarged. Our schools have been doing their work, and scattering all through the South those who have learned what pure religion and spiritual worship mean, and they are ready and longing for something better than they find within their reach. We can now push our work as fast as the churches of the North will furnish the money. ”

“ A gentleman, not a member of the church, who had never been interested in missionary work, was stirred up by the solicitation of the children, and gave both time and money to their effort. He afterwards said to a good lady who inaugurated the movement, "I am glad I have given to this cause; it makes me feel good, and I want to keep right on giving." That is the way it affects every one when the heart and pocket-book are open to these missionary objects. It makes them feel good, and stirs up a desire to continue the process. ”

“ There are 260,000 Indians in this country. Compared with our great fields in the South, this is small. But there is an emphasis on this work which is not made by figures. Those who were native to this land have been made foreigners. Those who were the first to receive missionary work here, and who responded as readily as any heathen people ever did, are still largely pagans. While one Christian has been telling the Indians the story of the gospel, another calling himself a Christian has been shooting them. They have not yet had a full chance to learn what Christianity is. ”

“ A vigorous Society is one of the elements of work in this Indian school, and a most useful element. In a letter written by an Indian boy is the following: "We have a Christian Endeavor Society here. I joined that society not very long ago, and we have nice meetings on Saturday night. It does make me feel good in those meetings. There are about thirty members now." And so these Societies of New England in their prayers for, and contributions to, the work of the American Missionary Association, are clasping hands with the same societies among the Negroes, Mountain people and Indians. ”

“ A graduate of Fisk recently took his diploma from an Eastern school of medicine, with a rank two per cent. higher than any other man in his class. Another graduate of Fisk is a missionary in Africa under the American Board, and is not only declared by the Secretaries to be one of its best missionaries, but has shown such business capacity that he has been chosen treasurer of his mission. His wife, a worthy helpmeet, is also a graduate of this institution. Fisk has high ideals—few institutions in the South have higher ones, or come nearer reaching them. ”

“ The evangelization and enlightenment of this new Africa must largely come through Tougaloo. Here must be trained preachers, teachers and other leaders of character for this new region, as well as for the older portions of the State. Good, solid work has been done here all through the year, and preparation has been made for even better results in the future.
Straight University, in New Orleans, La., is peculiarly situated for an important and far-reaching work. It draws its students not only from the States, but also from Mexico and the West Indies—484 last year. ”

“ In the South, we are directly reaching three classes—the colored people, the mountain whites, and the new settlers from the North and from the old countries. Indirectly we are reaching many more. The schools we plant often incite others to plant schools; the houses of worship we aid in erecting cause others to be erected. A single neat, but inexpensive building for a country church of colored people has been known to occasion the building or repairing of at least nine church buildings of neighboring white people. ”

“ Besides these, we have in the South thirty-seven which we class as [pg 308] common schools. Eight of these are graded, with two or three teachers each. Nearly all are parochial schools. The teachers are in both the day schools and the Sunday-schools, and are not only school teachers, but church missionaries. They train the young of our congregations for greater usefulness, encourage many of the most promising to go to higher institutions, teach the parents better ideas of home life, and lead all ages to a more intelligent and spiritual worship. ”

“ STATISTICS OF EDUCATIONAL WORK IN THE SOUTH. CHURCH WORK IN THE SOUTH.
Our church work has necessarily been of slow growth. Churches might have been multiplied, had we thought it best to lower the standard near the level of the old churches, and acknowledge wild ravings as belonging in the worship of God. We have believed that our churches should mean new ideas and intelligent worship. We have knowingly lent our aid to nothing else. ”

“ Through it pass the sympathy and the help of the earnest workers in the older churches to the earnest workers in our mission churches and schools. The people for whom we labor cannot be saved either for this world or the next, unless the women who make the homes are lifted out of coarseness and vice, and taught true womanhood and womanly duties and arts. The Woman's Bureau is a most potent factor in the work of bringing the Gospel to the rescue of womanhood in our mission fields. ”

“ Should every church and individual in the land double last year's contribution this year, we would be compelled still to leave greatly needed work undone. In view of boundless opportunities, we can ask no less of the churches than that which the recent National Council at Worcester recommended—five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000) for the work of the coming year. Brethren, with more prayer, more consecration and more self-denial let us take up together this vast work and these difficult problems which God has set before us. ”

“ Nearly all our schools—chartered, normal and even common—give some industrial training.
At Fisk, the young men are taught wood-working and printing; the young women, nursing, cooking, dress-making and house-keeping.
At Talladega, the young men learn farming, carpentry, painting, glazing, tinning, blacksmithing and printing; the young women, cooking, house-keeping, plain sewing and other needle-work.
At Tougaloo, the young men learn farming, carpentry, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, painting, turning and tinning; the young women, sewing, dressmaking, cooking and housekeeping. ”

“ Talladega College, in Talladega, Ala., has had 427 students in all departments. Its year's work has shown most satisfactory results. Talladega is closely connected with the church work of the State. All the pastors in the Congregational State Association but four are from its theological department and several other States have found pastors there. The last [pg 307] State Association, with its fine body of young men, educated, dignified and earnest, was a most emphatic demonstration of the good work done in this institution. ”

“ Nothing else can meet cruel prejudice, which would forever deny full manhood or womanhood to those called to it by God himself, and pour oil upon its angry waves until they shall be still.
Our plan of work in the South is often misunderstood and often misrepresented. ”

“ Cruel and unreasoning is prejudice, but when the public platforms, and especially the pulpits, begin to yield in their utterances to the sway of logic and humanity, by and by public opinion will feel their force. Our institutions and our missionaries have compelled the respect of the Southern people. This year many expressions of it have been heard.
EDUCATIONAL WORK. CHARTERED INSTITUTIONS.
During the past year we have directly sustained five chartered institutions in the South—Fisk University, Talladega College, Tougaloo University, Straight University and Tillotson Institute. ”

“ Where our schools and churches have been established, men and women of worth and ability have stepped out and become strong helpers in building up new institutions. But away from these institutions and out of touch with the life of the towns, we find a class of people whose condition in itself is a Macedonian cry. ”

“ In the fields to which it providentially has been called, it seeks to bring the gospel to every human being who has it not in its purity as an uplifting power.
In nineteen States and Territories we are laboring—six in the West and thirteen in the South. In ninety-four schools and one hundred and forty-two churches we have been directly teaching and preaching the gospel during the past year. In them have 456 missionaries wrought with holy purpose. 12,132 pupils have been taught in our schools; more than seventeen thousand have received instruction in Bible truth in our Sunday-schools ”

“ We are not even trying to force the races together in the churches. We have no principles which would prevent our aiding two churches in the same town—one with a membership of white, the other of colored people. ”

“ In aiming at this ultimate result, our missionaries are doing a work of inestimable importance for the nation and the world. They are successfully working upon some of the great problems of this country, which armies and millions of money have failed, and of necessity must fail, to solve. ”

“ God has answered prayer, has been true to his promise, has changed to blessing the stress that we were under by placing thus upon our work the seal of his own and his people's approbation.
Sixteen missions have been in operation during the year, all but three of them for the entire twelve months. Thirty-five workers have been employed, ten of whom have been Chinese brethren. The months of labor aggregate 354.
The total number who have been enrolled as pupils in our schools is 1,380. ”

“ The students of Talladega have carried forward during the past year, under direction of a member of the Faculty, a systematic mission work in the surrounding neighborhoods, which has yielded large results, both in the good done in the neighborhoods and in the training received by the workers for future usefulness. ”

“ From place to place they have been pushed so that they have not had time to build their altars to the true God. We have wronged them and we owe them more than we shall pay. We shall meet our obligations but in part, when we do all we can to save them. ”

“ Men of power have come from among them, and shown of what they are capable. Side by side with the Northern soldiers these mountaineers fought for the Union, or suffered in prisons rather than fight against it. ”

“ Another item of good news is, that by an arrangement among the ladies of this church, a reduction in the teaching force which I have been compelled to make is to be made good by volunteer service, each lady giving one evening in each week. ”

“ It appeared that he had been misunderstood—at least in so far as any immediate curtailment of the "contract schools" is concerned, and he impressed the Conference warmly in his favor as a Christian man with broad views, impartial and progressive. He will meet, we feel sure, with the cordial support of all the societies engaged in Indian educational work. ”

“ At Tillotson, carpentry is taught the young men; needlework, cooking and housekeeping, the young women.
Our normal schools at Memphis, Tenn., Macon, Ga., and Williamsburg, Ky., have carpentry, printing, and other industrial training for the young men, and training in the various arts of home life for the young women.
At Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Macon, Thomasville, Athens, Ala., Marion, Mobile, Pleasant Hill, Sherwood, and other normal, graded and common schools, the young women are trained in the things which they will most need in making comfortable and pleasant homes. ”