Various

“ It is to say that liberty is not a sacred right, but a selfish acquisition; that government does not exist to establish rights, but to protect privileges, and that mankind are not brothers, but foes. It is to turn the shadow upon the dial of human progress backward toward the ages of oppression and chaos.
And just there is the problem that confronts us, South and North together. ”

“ 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.
Annual Report of Executive Committee.
Our laborers are faced by all the serious problems of the foreign land—problems unrelieved by a single romantic charm. When we send our missionaries to Africa they go to labor among the Africans; and when we send them down South they go to teach "niggers." I believe that the American Missionary Association, in its calm and unimpassioned history, is one grand and splendid eulogy of woman. ”

“ Those old ancestors of ours knew what freedom was; but as they came against that Roman world, they themselves were in part conquered by it, and they lost something of that freedom. But God set apart one corner of the European world for them, and called over the English Channel in the fifth century those forefathers of ours, there to watch for a century and a half that tremendous conflict in which the very plow-share of the Teutons went through the roots of the Roman life in Britain and left nothing but Teutonic fields remaining. ”

“ Finally she was set at some sort of work, and that girl, after three or four years, went out as a school teacher into a district where young men dared not go, where her eyes were blistered with the sights she saw—men shot down before her face and eyes by the whiskey distillers—and she was asked to organize a Sunday-school there. When any one starts a Sunday-school he is expected to preach, and so that girl had to become a preacher, and to-day she is preaching the gospel of God and spreading the work there. ”

“ It took half a million lives to emancipate the slaves outwardly, and it may yet take hundreds and thousands of lives—our lives—our children's lives—poured in upon this problem, that so we may lift the Negro to that point where he feels himself, and where we feel him to be, a man—taught to labor, protected in the enjoyment of the fruits of his labor, without which the strongest arm grows palsied, trained in a strong, self-reliant Christian manhood, holding the reins firmly on the neck of all passion—a man. ”

“ To get at something of God's thought for us, we must go back even into those dark Teutonic forests into which the Roman world peered with so much fear and awe, and out of which came those freemen who knew how to leap upon that Roman world in its pride and its weakness and re-assert human liberty. ”

“ So he advised me and said: "While you are in the foreign country, imitate foreign customs, but now you are in China, you have to obey Chinese customs." They try to compel me to give. I stand up and say: "If these six societies could not have this festival to the idols because I refuse, do the people depend on me? If so, then all the people are without hope, and may despair of the blessing of the idols. Is that what you believe? Because you worship the idols you give offerings to them, and expect blessing from them. I do not worship the idol, and he would not give me the blessing. ”

“ I see a possible issue in this large Christian faith of our land; and I see the time coming when the black and the white shall dwell together in a mutual helpfulness, with a more complete national feeling, a deeper dependence upon him from whom alone comes strength, less display of material resources, but more faith in God. ”

“ I say that the history of this Association is a grand and glowing eulogy of woman because these were willing to be called "teachers of niggers" for their love of humanity.
Rev. C.W. Hiatt.
It is one of the most astonishing signs of the times that really into the feeble hand of womanhood is given the key of the situation. They respect these educated girls, they reverence them and give them a place of dignity in their hearts. That makes it possible for these women to do a large and splendid work in the South. ”

“ There was humanity in those slaves who toiled their way over mountains and through swamps before the war, with their eyes focussed upon the North star of freedom. And there was humanity in those mothers who clasped their babes to their breast and fled before the bloodhounds that they might escape the enslavers of men. ”

“ It was like coming into a new world. That is, it was finding those whom I thought belonged to another, [pg 15] lower, baser life, living the same life with myself; rejoicing in that which is my greatest joy—childhood with God the Father. And after meeting Ehnamani, Grey Cloud, John Wakeman, Spotted Bear, and many others; after hearing them discuss living topics—living topics to them because they belong to the change from heathen to Christian life; after hearing them pray—though I could not understand a word, yet from their earnestness I could understand the spirit of their prayer ”

“ All these movements aim at commerce, and commerce can only flourish on the ruins of the slave-trade, and among peaceful tribes with growing industries, intelligence and civilization. The Congo Free State, with its railroad in construction, its steamboats on the rivers and its civilized settlements, is a bright omen of the future.
Surely God's people should pray for Africa, moved by pity and by hope. Christians in America can do more than pray—they can help to answer their own prayers. ”

“ Something, the right thing, can be done. Fair-minded men, both North and South, realize that all schemes involving fraud, violence, disfranchisement or deportation, are impracticable, but all are agreed as to [pg 2] the value of Christian enlightenment, enabling the Negro to earn property and to become an intelligent and virtuous citizen. This is the line on which the Association has perseveringly toiled since it opened its first school at Fortress Monroe in 1861, and it is not too much to say that nothing more effective has been done in all these years. ”

“ God weighs heavily upon this Nation this greatest of all national problems, what to do with these despised ones. But bear the burden we must, and bear it through we must to the farther shore of a Christian solution, or we and it will go down the flood together. ”

“ I do not wish for the idol's blessing. It is not because I am stingy that I will not give to the offering of the idol, but because it is against the true God in heaven, whom I trust, and whose blessing I do greatly desire." So they could not compel me to give, and they let me alone, but they felt very much indignation and were hostile to me. A Christian in China has sometimes a very hard time. "But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ." Yet more and more are believing the Gospel of Christ every year in China. ”

“ Can anything of a better sort be done in the future? Amid all the jarring discords at the South, the people there, both white and black, welcome the efforts of the Association. They feel that we are not disturbers, that we have a single honest aim, and are working at the only true solution of the great problem. We ask the people of the North, therefore, to come to the rescue once more by practical, self-denying liberality.
3. but this is not all. a work so vital to the interests of the nation and of the cause of christ needs to be uplifted by the prayers of god's people. ”

“ Their appeal to the justice of the Nation, to the Constitution and the laws can be made invincible, but it will be well to keep in touch with the sympathy of the North and with the conscience of the South, for in spite of all the wrongs inflicted on the colored people in the South, we believe there is a large and growing number of Southern people who look upon this whole question conscientiously, and although perplexed desire that the right shall be done. ”

“ It is from this bright setting sun of the last year that we turn with faith and hope to the opening of the new year. We believe, the work is the Lord's and that he will provide. But our faith alone will not save us. It is our duty to inform and arouse our constituents as to the needs and urgency of our work. ”

“ The Indian has nothing of the kind. The Dakota Indian lives in a region, not in a place. The Christian home coming into the midst of a village carries there an ideal of which the Indian knows nothing, and he is taught by the power of example day after day. The Christian woman in that home keeps her house clean, keeps her children clean, and stands here as a persistent example of the power of the gospel of soap. ”

“ Another Chinese preacher came from Canton to my district to take the dead preacher's place; also, to live in his house. Next day, he and his wife and boy all taken very sick. They grow worse and worse, every day appointed to death. I felt very much dismayed because many people say, "The Death Spirit make them very sick because they will not worship him." But I pray to God to make him well. I say:—"Oh Lord, if you let this family die also, all the people in this place will not like to hear thy Gospel, and I also may be tempted by the superstition. ”

“ For one thing the eyes of the civilized world are turned toward Africa with increasing intensity. The rainbow fringe of missions around the coasts is still sustained by the gifts and prayers of Christians, and by the blessing of God. The multiplied efforts of the European States to colonize the dark continent are facts full of encouragement. ”

“ At Austin, I found our Tillotson Institute rapidly filling with students—bright and earnest. A girls' hall is greatly needed here at once. This institution with its unlimited opportunities in the great State of Texas ought [pg 10] not to be cramped in any way, but to be given every facility. Who will give it at once what it so urgently needs? I found several intelligent people here greatly desiring a Congregational church in the city—the school-church being too far away to reach the mass of the people. ”

“ E.W. Blatchford greeted the women in behalf of the New England Church and of their co-workers in the W.B.M.I. If only all good women saw and felt, as this wise sister did, that all Christ's work is one, and that all work for him outside of our own [pg 20] home and church is mission service, their appeals to their sisters would have more irresistible force, and the Saviour's prayer be nearer answered, "That they all may be one." ”

“ There was manhood in those one hundred and seventy-eight thousand Negro soldiers who seized their muskets and went to the front and fought for us, and with us, in those dark days of 1864, when the draft was failing and when volunteering had failed, that there might be soldiers to stand in the front and to dig in the trenches, and of whom eighty thousand gave their lives for us. There was manhood in those cabins in which all over the South, our fleeing soldiers, escaping from prison, never failed to find support, help, and guidance. ”

“ The next scene is one which I shall long remember—our reception at a mission home. Other homes may be happy and other people may welcome me to their homes; but few—none that I have met—can welcome one so cordially as Mrs. Riggs welcomed us to her home at Oahe. This is a long-to-be-remembered experience. And after spending a week at Oahe, meeting the teachers and pupils of the school, and the citizen Indians there we started for our own home and work, Park Street Church Station. This place has been the home of my husband for a year. ”

“ It is a constant wonder to me to see the improvement in our girls, and their interest in their work. They are so eager to learn to do things well that I cannot think of my work as one of sacrifice, as some work may be, for the joy of it overcomes all such thought.
STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY, NEW ORLEANS. REV. C.H. CRAWFORD.
Much interest is manifest in our meetings for prayer, a number of students having expressed a desire to become Christians. I have organized a class for the instruction of Christian workers. It is composed of both teachers and students, and numbers about twenty-five. ”

“ Aye, it is our business to look out for ourselves. May God Almighty help us that we fail not to attend to it. There is just one way to save ourselves. We learned that long ago at the feet of Him who said: "He that loseth his life shall save it." ”