Various

“ It must be remembered that these shrill expostulations against progress are comparatively isolated and do not represent the general and deliberate sense of the intelligent South. The day has come when intelligent leaders, North and South, can unite their efforts and push forward the work of popular upliftment throughout the South. The lesson of the hour is not that of impatience and denunciation, but of mutual sympathy and co-operation. The hopeful progress of the past is a presage to the magnificent progress assured to the immediate future. ”

“ We are agreed in the great truths of our holy religion, and we will work together that they may produce in this historic island all the choicest fruits of Christian life and culture. We would teach the children the way of eternal life, and bring to the men and women—full of cares and burdens—the rest and comfort and hope that come through faith in the Saviour. ”

“ In the name of our common Master we pray you give us and our preachers welcome, and join your labors with ours that this island, so charming in its natural features, may more and more have the beauty of a pure and purifying religion. Then happy will be your homes and happy your people—as Holy Scriptures declare, 'Happy is that people whose God is the Lord.' Education will brighten the lives of the children ”

“ Exceeding few in comparison with the vast multitude of their race will be those who receive their diploma at Fisk; but they are to be the leaders of a people sorely needing leadership. And Fisk's determination to rear such leaders is an abiding protest against the spirit which denies to any human being a chance, and a declaration that the Church, like its divine Master, is to minister especially to those who most need help.
Fisk Products are the test of its work. Each year it publishes to the world its list of graduates, and over against each name what he is doing for the world. ”

“ I understand the best time on Sunday for public worship is in the evening. The young men are most of them occupied during the day. Sunday is their busy market day until three or four o'clock in the afternoon, when the market and stores close and all are free to go whither they like. Some of the young men told me that a number would attend our meetings in the night, that could not come during the day. Of course, this is a condition unfavorable to such Christian work, and yet I hope to be able to gather considerable audiences and reach this needy people with the living gospel of Jesus Christ. ”

“ If Northern institutions of learning must rely upon endowments to pay from two-thirds to three-quarters of the cost of educating their students, certainly an institution educating the youth of a race scarcely forty years out of the house of bondage, and hence poor beyond all expression, needs vastly more the income of an endowment to supplement the meagre tuitions which its pupils pay. Here is an opportunity for the man of large means to bestow a princely gift, while the man of slender means none the less can invest in the same undertaking. ”

“ Society proves, therefore, among the Indian boys and girls and young people just what it does everywhere else. It gives them larger views of the kingdom of God, it stimulates them to greater sacrifice in giving of their means to the spread of this kingdom, and awakens within them deeper spiritual earnestness. The life of a Christian Endeavorer, wherever that life may be spent, cannot be a narrow, selfish life, if loyal to the great Christian Endeavor idea. This society is an important factor in Christian enlargement and quickening among our young people on the prairie. ”

“ A native policeman, a business man waiting for his car, three beggars, boys with large trays of bread, fruit and sweetmeats on their heads, a washerwoman with a huge basket of clothes poised securely on her head, the driver of an ox-cart, who stopped his team while we sang "America," three women going to market, a party of daintily dressed, sweet-faced senoritas with their chaperone, a dirty, wild-looking old hag who almost frightened me, a young mother carrying a naked baby in her arms, and boys—well, it was no use to count them. ”

“ The growth of varied and inter-related manufactures cannot rest upon a labor element of clumsiness and stupidity. Civil duties demand intelligence and morals. The best patriotism of the South joins hands with that of the North in the elevation of the lowly and ignorant. What has been done is only the initiation of the ten times more which must be done.
It is a significant fact that the last national census showed that the white illiteracy of the South was deeper than even the foreign illiteracy of the North; while that of the Southern black population was fearfully darker. ”

“ In the young people's society many of the members remain the same from year to year; but during the ten years one hundred and thirty-two young people have joined. They have come from eighteen different agencies, and in several cases from more than one village in the agency. Out of this one-hundred and thirty-two, twenty-three have been engaged, since leaving school, in direct missionary work, most of them as preachers and teachers of day-schools, but a few as the wives of such teachers, or as teachers in mission boarding-schools or missionary helpers. ”

“ Millions of the Southern whites and blacks are dwelling together in amity and co operation for the advance of education and for moral progress. Illustrations are [Pg 3] multiplying on every side of the desire on the part of the progressive South to fulfil the duties and meet the heavy responsibilities thrust upon it by the masses of population submerged in ignorance.
These immense masses are the burden not only of the South, but of the American people at large. Ignorant labor is shiftless and wasteful labor. ”

“ The young people's society at Santee has been a training school for its members. It has broadened their feeling of Christian fellowship with the great army of fellow Endeavorers. It has given them songs that they enjoy very much. It has increased their interest in missions and deepened their feeling of responsibility for service to the Master.
The junior work at Santee has been especially encouraging among the girls, who are rather more responsive than the boys. Of the twelve little girls in the picture, one died last year, but eight are now members of the senior society. ”

“ It is encouraging to note the signs of progress at the South towards meeting the heavy responsibilities of the situation. It is a mistake to imagine that the Southern situation does not improve from year to year. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, appreciate the trend of events and the necessity for the elevation of the depressed millions with whom they are intermingled. ”

“ The church is built upon the site of an old slave-pen, the key of which is preserved as a relic of those dark days. The neat chapel now stands as a symbol of light and truth to the people. The pastor, Rev. W. L. Johnson, is a graduate of Fisk, and his wife is from Le Moyne Institute. She has taught in our service at Memphis and Mobile.
Some of the most representative and influential citizens are members of our Lexington Church, among whom are the two leading physicians, the supervising principal and several teachers of the public schools. ”

“ In the first place, Porto Rico is the only territory that has come under the immediate direction and control of the United States government as a result of the war with Spain. It is emphatically a home missionary field. The responsibility of our American churches is immediate and direct for the spread of the gospel among the inhabitants of this island, who are even now our fellow citizens. ”

“ A new Concert Exercise has been prepared and will be sent to superintendents and teachers who desire to keep this day in the interests of Christian patriotism and for the support of the work among the needy millions represented in the life and history of our martyred President, Abraham Lincoln. The A. M. A. reaches by Christian education the American Highlanders, from whom Abraham Lincoln came. It sends missionaries and teachers to the Negroes, whom Abraham Lincoln freed. It plants its Christian work among the Indians, for whom Abraham Lincoln spoke words of honest sympathy. ”

“ To make that race true free men was a task much more vast than to emancipate them. The parting of the ways had come. An illiterate people must be taught. No longer should it be a crime to instruct them. ”

“ In a word, what one would expect to find in a Caucasian institution, composed of pupils of moderate means, with high ideals and gentle manners, are found at Fisk. The choicest of the recently emancipated race are here seeking a training. As always [Pg 18] and everywhere, none reach the highest ideal. Some are found who fail to aspire to it; a few are intractable, but to one who recalls the life of the race and the treatment it has received before and since it was freed, life at Fisk is a constant miracle. ”

“ Both public and private efforts are being made in countless communities of the South to begin the lifting of this great burden. Some of the States have already taken encouraging measures in this direction. While there are reactions, the general tide is that of progress. It is easy to make too much of the violent reactionary outcries of a few Southern newspapers. ”

“ Already the large enrolment of pupils, coming, as they do, from more than a score of the states of our Union, is making the proposed buildings a necessity and affording other givers the opportunity to bless humanity that has been so handsomely met by those large-minded donors who have built the structures already erected. ”

“ Dubois, the noted negro scholar and writer, came from Massachusetts to Tennessee to take his college training at Fisk University. But it is of the Southern field, as I have seen it during the last six weeks, that I wish to speak.
Our Chandler Institute at Lexington, Ky., is filled with earnest students, under the direction of Miss Fanny J. Webster and her associates. Every year well-trained young people go out from this school to their life-work. During a gospel meeting recently held with the Lexington Church, more than fifty of the pupils of Chandler School avowed their faith in Christ. ”

“ Fisk's greatest need is an answer to the prayer of God's people for that constant indwelling of the divine Spirit which shall keep in stout heart those who, with personal self-sacrifice, are doing its work. ”

“ And so this little band of eight devoted men and women have entered upon the pioneer work in opening up Porto Rico to an intelligent gospel. They have gone out with the prayers and sympathy of thousands of those who have been greatly interested in the important work in this island territory. The future promises large things in the building up of Christian character and the establishment of progressive Christian institutions. ”

“ It would not be right to subject children of school age to the influences of the life here. You wrote us up last year as having 'no time for gold hunting, and yet gold has been discovered within a few miles of the Cape.' This brings upon us new anxiety and greater work. ”

“ In addition to this amount needed for the work which has been established in other years, the claims of Porto Rico are pressing. Ten thousand dollars was a very conservative estimate of the amount that was needed at once in this new island territory. The churches, and especially the Sunday schools, have responded generously in bringing up the gifts to about half this amount. There is imperative need immediately for the full amount, properly and energetically to press the work in Porto Rico along the lines of Christian education and evangelization. ”

“ I have taken one new herder as an apprentice, and hope to take another or two next year. We sold reindeer at thirty dollars per head to the Bureau of Education, which furnished money for training other apprentices. Our old apprentices can now pay their own way, and the sale of the reindeer in the future will go toward helping new apprentices till they can help themselves. ”

“ Among the members of this church are three teachers of the Colored High School, who are Fisk graduates. The president of the Christian Endeavor is Dr. Whipple, a physician of note, and the superintendent of the Sunday-school is Professor Perry, the principal of a large public school of over a thousand pupils. Some of the most active workers are mechanics and people in humble life. ”

“ Many of them walk in from the country a distance of several miles. Among the pupils are two men who are preachers. Miss M. L. Corpier and Miss Nicholson are in charge of this school. They are both graduates of Fisk University. A revival of great spiritual power was held in connection with the Florence church and school. Four men of mature life and heads of families were among the converts. The church is growing in numbers and influence under the ministry of Rev. R. J. McCann, a graduate of Talladega College. ”

“ The house seems just built for our purpose, and with a minimum expense can be enlarged to give two good-sized dormitories. All the people whom I saw were very much interested in our work. The city can do nothing. They have paid no salaries for months."
The schools at Lares and Santurce represent the present educational work of the Association in Porto Rico. ”