Various

“ While these absurd rumors have done a great deal of mischief by inciting the people in the recent outbreak, they are very insignificant when compared with the bitter feeling aroused by the greedy grabbing of Chinese territory by the different Powers. All praise to the United States, for she is the only nation that does not covet Chinese territory. The other Powers are all eager and are doing their utmost to have China partitioned, so that they may each seize upon the territory they covet. ”

“ Under the direction of the same principal for all but the first two years of its existence, the school has become the centre of many lines of influence extending in many directions and affecting many interests among the people. A library of some three thousand volumes has been gathered and has proved of great value to the students and to the community. Nothing else so directly and surely acts to train [Pg 151] to thoughtful and self-respecting lives as an acquaintance with the literature of the English language and with the personalities of the great minds who have produced it. ”

“ Finally, Le Moyne school has from the first been fortunate in gaining and holding the respect and esteem of the best, most thoughtful white people of Memphis, and of many other communities from which our students have come and back into which they have again returned, to act as regulating, renewing agencies among the people. Surely the workers in the field should not be slow nor timid in asking for the means to carry forward and to make more effective such a work as this. It is not a losing battle we wage. ”

“ Christian England! I beseech you to visit the homes which your opium has ruined and desolated. Christian England! I beseech you to rise and call a halt in your infamous traffic. Christian England! Be quick and make amends, for unless you do so, God will never forgive you.
There are many ways in which England can redeem the wrong she has done to China. First of all, she should stop the traffic in opium. Then she can also redeem herself to-day by joining the [Pg 173] United States and Japan to bring about a speedy and peaceful settlement of the trouble in China. ”

“ Le Moyne that the work of the school should be prosecuted along the most practical lines, to meet the more pressing demands of an untrained race, and to this end he stipulated that the so-called "dead languages" should form no part of its course of study, and that it should be adapted to the relief of the most pressing wrongs and needs of the colored people in the struggle for life to which emancipation had brought them. His wishes have been respected and the school has remained distinctively an English school, with as great attention to industrial training as time and means would allow. ”

“ The most helpful means of training in attention, instant obedience and self-control were the daily calisthenic exercises, which they all enjoyed and entered into with spirit.
Space permits only hasty reference to other lessons taught without books in our school, lessons in self-respect. Every child was expected to pay a small tuition, in money or labor, only a peseta, equivalent to twelve American cents, a week, but enough to inculcate the feeling that they were paying for what they got. ”

“ Such work as has been done at Oakland is, in many places, quietly being set on foot, with varying degrees of success, by students and associations of students, who had their training in schools of the American Missionary Association. The immediate aim and end of all our work is the social betterment of the people, and in the end its efficiency will be measured according as it succeeds or fails in this respect. ”

“ No one person has done more toward its perpetuation and development. The work to which he gave his life, for reasons well understood, was a difficult one and involved much of sacrifice; but among the difficulties which he encountered he ever bore himself with a calm dignity and a wise prudence which, with his intellectual power and attainments, gave him great prominence and influence throughout the educational field of the South.
To manage, govern and direct an institution like Fisk University in its environment, and in the face of many prejudices, called for an exceptional man. ”

“ The compulsory attendance of all the children from 6 to 18 years of age in school, mostly in boarding-schools, has closed the mission day-school, and the native worker has become preacher and pastor and no longer a school teacher. Ten years ago the work of our native workers could be closely planned by the white missionary, but to-day he must plan his own work largely to fit ever changing conditions, and learn to make each day count most for Christ. ”

“ At Lares the whole afternoon and evening before our teachers left there was a constant stream of children and mothers and sisters and fathers, Spanish, many or most of them, coming to say good-bye, to thank the teachers, the Misses Blowers, Blinka and French, for what they had done; to beg them, many with tears running down their cheeks, to come back to them in the fall.
And yet we have only begun to plow the ground and to sow the seed. What will the harvest be? Only He can tell for whom the sowing is done and who alone giveth the increase. ”

“ OUR FIRST CHAPEL, STANDING ROCK, N. D.
It is no uncommon thing to find a family with no neighbor within a mile. They have found it easier to haul a few loads of wood in [Pg 165] winter than many loads of hay 10 to 15 miles in summer. They are living out where they can find a good range and plenty of hay for their cattle.
In the day of villages the native preacher having his people closely about him could have a well-attended school, where parents and children learned to read the Word of God in their own language, through the long evenings of the winter months. ”

“ I have kept silent for a long time, but still the requests come, and I feel constrained to endeavor to set forth some of the facts which caused the uprising and which resulted in the massacre of so many missionaries and other foreigners, and thousands of Chinese Christians. Those who have survived the massacre are destitute and homeless. Our hearts ache with sorrow for the occurrence of these outrages. We know of no words that are adequate to express our horror at them. ”

“ As to most of the poor, ignorant people who perpetrated the crimes, they are more sinned against than sinning. They are ignorant. They have been deceived by the lies of men who knew they were lying, and who thus sent them into the work of the mob and into battle with the Westerners, to be—thousands of them—slaughtered and tortured, while the real criminals stayed in the rear. ”

“ This arrangement has given great prominence to the so-called out-station—which is in charge of a native preacher and his wife, both of like importance in the work, in the heart of an Indian community, letting its light shine every day in the year. The people are becoming more and more scattered, making the day-school well nigh an impossibility and greatly diminishing the attendance at all but Sunday religious meetings. ”

“ We soon found that our Porto Rican boys and girls know very little about study or attention or self-control and obedience. In most homes they do much as they please. In school they had been accustomed to studying out loud, to learning by heart without understanding, to reciting in concert, and to talking as much as they pleased. They are quick-tempered and apt to fly into a passion. They lack greatly in perseverance or "stick-to-it-iveness." ”

“ Every heart and life that has come into near and vital contact with the work has been itself quickened and inspired by a service so effective and life-giving. It is the old story ever repeated—"He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless return again, bearing his sheaves with him." ”

“ The Chinese Empire will then have the same footing as other nations, for her subjects have the making of a great people. The Chinese who became Christians in America will also be a great factor in building up China. God's plan is beyond the comprehension of man. He saw that America did not send forth missionaries fast enough, so He brought out the secluded Chinese to this country to be Christianized by the disciples of Christ, so that they may go back as volunteer missionaries and thus hasten the conversion of China. ”

“ The history of education in America, written largely during the past thirty years, has few features of wider interest or deeper meaning than the establishment and remarkable development of the "mission schools" among the colored people of the South since their emancipation. ”

“ Though not strong physically, he seldom failed to travel the 100 miles round trips with his people when they went for rations in the cold of winter, and these, with his rides in house-to-house visitations, hastened his death after one year of most faithful and arduous work. Five men in succession have followed him, tried to do the work and given it up as too hard. And it is hard, for the people have done little in six years to help themselves. ”

“ An out-station work of 15 years' growth has been more hopeful, and last year resulted in a church organization, and this year the people have voted to pay in part the salary of their pastor whom they have chosen for a year. There have been few changes in native workers at this place and this fact has been a hopeful factor in the good results.
MESSIAH CHAPEL AND CONGREGATION, N. D.
In proportion to its membership their women's society has led all others in its contributions. When they wanted a nice bell the people raised two-thirds of its cost. ”

“ We were afraid the parents might object to the religious songs and Bible stories and withdraw the pupils from the school. But they did not, not one, so far as we knew. Several told me that they wanted their children not merely to learn to read and to become intelligent Americans, but that they wanted them to grow up as good men and women and were glad to have them taught these things. During the last two months some time was given nearly every day, in each room, to Bible stories or Bible study. ”

“ The well-equipped woodworking shop, with its orderly benches and its system of drafting, of joining and of general construction, is giving the boy the best use of his hands and placing within his reach the power to build his own house and keep it in repair, or to go on to the mastery of a useful trade and through it to the securing of a means of livelihood. The printing office, too, gives yet another line of hand training and at the same time of intellectual accuracy in other directions and studies. ”

“ It is especially so on the Standing Rock Reservation where there has never been a mission boarding-school to make prominent a central station. Ten years ago all of the 3,700 Indians came to the agency every two weeks for their rations of meat, flour, etc. For four or five days, including Sunday, they all camped in a radius of five miles. Here was a fine opportunity for religious work. Here naturally was built the first chapel which was the home of the first church organization though the original members lived in South Dakota, 32 miles from their chapel, which was in North Dakota. ”

“ These "children's children," and there are thousands of them throughout the South, stand now as the hope and promise of the race. They represent practically a new race, with new and higher ideals and aims than their parents or grandparents could know. These ideals are not only those of a wider intellectual life, they reach out to the home, to industrial occupations and up to a purer, more practical form of worship as expressive of the religious life. ”

“ One other feature is worthy of mention with the work at Memphis, that is, the cordial and mutually helpful relations existing between the church and the school. They supplement, each, the work of the other, and pastor and teachers plan and work together for the same end, the general betterment of all the people. ”

“ In the line of intellectual awakening a glimpse into classes in history, in literature, science and mathematics, backed up by the influence coming from personal association with trained, Christian instructors, and you will not fail to recognize the means, entirely adequate to produce the result in question before you. ”

“ The success of out station work depends so largely upon the native worker, his tact, his Bible knowledge, his spirituality, that in pushing out-station work we must never be unmindful of the mission boarding-school where he must be trained. ”

“ This society has been missionary in its spirit and methods; besides organizing a Junior Endeavor Society and seeking its own development and growth, it has been active in Alley Mission Sunday-schools, Gospel services in hospitals, and temperance work.
A large number of students, while receiving their training in the schools and colleges of Washington, became members of the Lincoln Memorial Endeavor Society. They have since gone out as ministers, teachers, physicians, lawyers, business men and home makers, carrying with them the Endeavor spirit throughout the South. ”

“ Moreover, they have given many liberal contributions to relieve the suffering Christians in North China.
The cause of the trouble: The Chinese claimed that they had many good reasons for this uprising. It has often been charged by many non-Christian people in California that the missionaries were to blame for the present outbreak. I think this is unjust. I believe they are truly good men and have the good of China at heart. They have wrought a wonderful work. In fact, whatever China has accomplished is due to the preaching and teaching of these faithful missionaries. ”

“ The growth of the school, in all that counts to strengthen and confirm its influence and usefulness, has been steady and uninterrupted from the beginning, with its attendance of 250 pupils of low [Pg 150] grades, to the present year, with an enrollment of over 700, distributed through its twelve years of study and training, over 200 of whom are in the Normal Department fitting for the work of teaching. ”