Читать книгу: «The American Missionary. Volume 42, No. 05, May, 1888», страница 4

The sentiment has sometimes been whispered, that the work of this Association, and those akin to it, was about accomplished. That sentiment has selfishness or ignorance at the bottom of it. How long must this work be kept up? Until all that mass of darkness which fills the Southern horizon be shot through and through with shafts of light. How long must it be kept up? Until the last trace of prejudice that separates brother from brother shall have been removed. How long will this thing be kept up? Until the black man feels that he is a man; until he can vote intelligently, and live wisely, and until he has the ability and the will to discriminate carefully in matters of morals. How long must it be kept up? Until no man can plead ignorance, or want of opportunity, for rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ. The Eastern question has been a live question in European politics for more than four centuries. It is no more puzzling than the Southern question is with us. There is an experiment in physics that is typical of this work. An iron bar is suspended in the air and then a tiny cork, hung from a string, is thrown against it. At first no impression is made, but the blows are repeated, until, by and by, the bar begins to tremble, then to vibrate, then to swing to and fro. The repeated impacts of the little cork at last move the mass. It will not be by any great rush that the Southern problem will be solved. It will yield at last to the constancy, and fidelity, of the great multitude of those who love their brother because they love their Lord; who are content to work in secret, and many of whom already rest in unmarked graves. That mass of ignorance, wretchedness and wrong will swing and disappear at last before the multitudinous strokes of individual gifts and individual prayers.

All the problems which are vexing the older nations are essentially social problems, and the watchword of all the movements that are undermining thrones and caste, and the wicked social order, is, "The world no longer for the few, but for the many." In America the many are already in possession, and the problem with us is, How may our rulers—the people who can never be dethroned—be rendered competent to rule? That is the question to which the American Missionary Association is devoting itself; and its answer is the only true one: By making the people intelligent, and Christian. And how long before that will be accomplished? A Scotchman once asked an Irishman, "Why were half-farthings coined in England?" Pat instantly replied, "To give Scotchmen an opportunity of contributing to missions." When will this problem be solved? Never, if the Christians of America are like Pat's Scotchman, but quicker than any of us dream, if all the Christians of America are like that woman in the New Testament who put into the treasury two mites.

THE SOUTH

SOUTHERN TESTIMONY

We insert the following from the Southern Presbyterian, as a recent testimony to the views, principles and work of the American Missionary Association. It will be all the stronger from the fact that it was not written for a testimony, but as a setting forth of facts by a Southerner to Southerners.

The old masters and the old slaves are now rapidly passing into eternity. In ten years more no one of our people, white or black, under forty years of age, will know personally anything of slavery. It then comes to this, that now and from this time forward, we white Christians must be impressed with the fact that we have here at our doors, in our houses, offices, stores and kitchens, and on our farms, not slaves, but a race of people, three-fourths of whom are but a little removed from savages in so far as their knowledge of religion is concerned. They have among them those whom they call preachers; they hold meetings, they halloo, they shout, but no saving truth is preached or heard from that source. The result is great animal excitement, but no moral elevation. Then many of them are receiving secular education. That sharpens their intellects but gives no Christian character. It does just the opposite; it fits them for rascality. They are increasing. There are probably eight millions of them now, and there will be many millions more. Those who are dying without Christ are dying here in a Christian land without hope.

The statement of a Congregational missionary recently made, is probably true, viz.: that "one-fourth of the race is improving rapidly," yet much the larger part of them are almost, if not altogether, heathen. They are not across the ocean; under God's providence they are here, where you can touch them with your finger. Why here? It will not do to say that nothing can be made out of them. Go to Texas, to Tennessee, and come right here to Atlanta now, and our most intelligent white men will tell you that on the prohibition question, negroes, educated, smart and very eloquent, have made, and are making, ringing speeches. There have been smart speakers on both sides. Some of their speeches would do credit to any white orator in the South. Dr. Sanderson, our late Professor at Tuskaloosa, stated on the floor of the Synod of Alabama last week, that he had taught a good deal, and that a young negro, twenty years of age, one of our divinity students at Tuskaloosa, was as smart a pupil as he had ever seen; that if he were in the State University he would be in its first rank of students, and that he heard him recently preach a sermon on the mediatorial work of Christ, such that he (Dr. Sanderson) would not undertake to make a better one on that majestic theme. * * *

In Dallas Presbytery, Texas, recently, a black man was examined for two days on Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and on all that is required by our Book of Government for ordination, and he did not falter once. So the brethren there testify.

Then it comes to this: this race of people is here; the great body of them are heathen. Can anyone doubt that it is the purpose of the Almighty to prepare a large number of them, converted, educated and civilized, to go back to Africa to redeem that continent for civilization and for Christ? We are commanded to preach the Gospel to every creature, to teach it to all nations.

OUR WORK, AS A GRADUATE OF FISK UNIVERSITY SEES IT

BY WILLIAM A. CROSTHWAITE.

The American Missionary Association is doing more to quicken the hopes and aspirations of the Southern Negro, more toward arousing the Southern white man to educate himself, and more toward bringing the two races to an acknowledgment of each other's rights, than any other similar institution in the country.

In the summer of 1884, near Leesburg, Texas, a well-appointed Negro school was burned by the whites of that community. The colored people, seeing their hope of years in ashes, advertised their little holdings for sale, and prepared to leave in a body. But the whites offered to supplement the insurance on the former building and to re-build the school, if the colored people would remain in the community. The terms were accepted, and now West Chapel, which is the name of the school, is excellently furnished and has a $200 bell upon it, and is the best known school in Northeast Texas. Previous to the burning of West Chapel, the whites were continually distracted by factional fights. There was general apathy with regard to improvement in any way whatever. Their teachers were always of the inferior class. But, when they found that the colored people would have a school, they decided to have one also. The colored people bought a bell. So did they. The colored people had a foreign teacher. So must they have one, and they paid $750 a year for him. One of the white citizens of the locality summed the situation up thus:—"West Chapel is to the whites what a coal of fire is on the back of a terrapin." This school was organized by a Fisk student and has ever since been taught by students of Fisk. Thus is the A.M.A. lifting up the Negro directly and the whites indirectly, and establishing friendly relations between the two.

But this is no isolated case. The story is the same wherever the educated Negro comes in contact with the whites. At one time, our school was so far in advance of the white school, that I was told by my school director that "no high-learnt teacher was wanted to teach 'Nigger Schools,'" and I was actually driven from my school by threats of violence.

The North can better understand the work of the American Missionary Association, when it is fully understood that the presence of Fisk University in Nashville brought about the existence of Vanderbilt University. When Fisk began to send out her graduates as refined and upright gentlemen, and the newspapers were enthusiastic in their accounts of its literary and musical exhibitions, the white people said; "We must have a university in Nashville also."

In the recent Prohibition campaign in Tennessee, the students of Fisk were one of the chief factors. In the beginning of the movement, the cry; "Where does Fisk stand on this question?" went up from the good people all over the State. Fisk was the first college to declare in favor of the proposed Amendment, and one hundred young men and women went from her walls and fought valiantly for the cause.

It is due the profound Christian spirit that characterizes the work of the Association to say, that every student and alumnus of Fisk in the State of Tennessee was an ardent supporter of the cause, save two. During the campaign the most cordial feelings existed between the better elements of both races. Heretofore these things were almost unheard of.

There was a time when policy or political expediency had no effect upon the prejudices of the Southern whites, but the educational process inaugurated by the North is elevating a class of colored people to a plane where they are respected as never before. No State or Federal aid can do for us what the A.M.A. is doing. Such aid as the Blair Bill proposed would meet a certain need, and enable the men that are educated by the A.M.A. to get at the masses; but the peculiar work of preparing honest and devout Christian leaders must be otherwise provided for. The complete regeneration of the South is a thing of the future. The A.M.A. must remain among us to hasten on "the harvest of the golden year."

That the Christianization of the Negro must come from without his own institutions, will be clearly seen by looking at his present religious condition. The new life that is developing cannot be crowded into the narrow limits of his church. The moral element is almost entirely wanting in his creed and doctrine. Such is the condition of the church that moral and spiritual growth are impossible. He must be educated away from the institutions that attended his enslavement; as far from them as Canaan is from Egypt. Again, the pulpit, with comparatively few honorable exceptions, is filled with adventurers and impure ministers. To a great extent this is true. But signs of a spiritual and moral exodus are everywhere manifest. The judgment of God rests heavily upon the Negro's temple-worship and the structure tumbles to the ground. Within the last two years I have seen six of the largest colored churches in Tennessee split on moral grounds, and the discontent with what is bad, grows among them. The old associations are losing their power over the rising generation. Intelligent men are seeking to supply their spiritual and moral wants. The A.M.A. has but to persist in the establishment of its school and church work among the colored people, with good strong men as ministers, and it is sure to be the leaven of the church of the future for the Negro people.

Last summer an old father, who had educated four children at Fisk University and had himself been there on one Commencement occasion, said to me:—"That Fisk school is the buildin'-up-est place to our people in the world. I never expect to have such a good time and treatment again until I get to heaven." Thus are our hopes quickened and our aspirations for nobler things awakened.

But to one who understands the situation, the question of our education is of serious moment. All our institutions of higher learning are living from hand to mouth, with no endowment, and the North's purse-strings are growing tighter as the years go by. On the other hand, prejudice strikes savagely at our State appropriations. This year, in the advanced State of Tennessee, the white State-student gets one hundred dollars while the colored gets only twenty-two dollars and a half. In his poverty what can the Negro student do with this sum in the way of educating himself?

I could take you in the homes of those whom you have educated, then could you appreciate the wisdom of your investments. It is around the fireside, and in the conduct of the children, that your noble work is manifesting itself so clearly. The intellectual, moral and spiritual life found there are the true and only guarantees that old things are passing away.

The abject condition of the great body of Negroes appeals to Christian religion and philanthropy for the help that must come to redeem their lost minds and souls. The South cannot give them a Christian education. The cry goes up to the great, warm heart of the North. We crave the crumbs that fall from your God-given, bountiful table.