Читать книгу: «The American Missionary. Volume 42, No. 10, October, 1888», страница 2
QUALIFICATIONS OF CANDIDATES FOR MISSION WORK
Many of our missionaries who are engaged in their devoted and self-denying labors in the South, have been compelled by the nature of our work to take their summer vacations. The educational work of the American Missionary Association is through and through a missionary work. It is begun with a missionary purpose and is carried on in the name of Christ to disciple the people, that they may know Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. All of our teachers are sent to be missionaries. Many are returning now to their fields of service with which they are well acquainted, and some are going for the first time. Among these, questions are raised as to the requirements needed in those who are to go. We have thought that a few suggestions given to the candidates for the China Inland Mission by Hudson Taylor, might be properly repeated here for those who are to take upon themselves these responsible Christian duties. He says:
First of all, it is absolutely essential that those desiring to be missionaries should have a deep love for Christ, a full grasp of His plan of salvation, and be wholly consecrated, in their inward lives, to Him. Mission work is not preaching grand sermons, or witnessing marvellous baptisms; it is a patient Christ-like life, day by day, far from external help, far from those we love; a quiet sowing of tiny seeds, which may take long years to show above the ground, combined with a steady bearing of loneliness, discomfort and petty persecution. The work demands of every worker very real and manifest self-sacrifice and acts of faith. It aims at, and ought to be satisfied with, nothing less than the conversion of the people to God. Not witness-bearing merely, but fruit-bearing is the end in view. Anything short of the salvation of souls is failure.
It is generally found that when people are of no use at home, they are of no use in the mission field. The bright, brave, earnest spirit, ready to face difficulties at home, is the right spirit for the work abroad. A patient, persevering, plodding spirit, attempting great things for God, and expecting great things from God, is absolutely essential to success in missionary efforts. Those will not make the best missionaries who are easily daunted by the first difficulty or opposition, but those whose strength is equal to waiting upon God, and who fight through all obstacles by prayer and faith. The spasmodic worker, frantic in zeal one month, and at freezing-point another, will be weary long before the station has been reached: while in the strength of Christ the weakest of us need not draw back, nor say, "I am not fit," yet nothing less than burning love to Christ, and in Him to perishing souls, will survive and overleap the difficulties and disappointments of the work.
These are royal words, and we believe that our teachers and missionaries engaged in this most glorious work of saving needy souls will take with them this spirit, and be blessed in the communication of their blessing to others.
IMMIGRANTS AND NEGROES
The Immigrant question challenges attention. Shall immigrants be welcomed, restricted or prohibited? In the early days of the Republic, when the revolutionary war had welded the people together and our boundless territory begged for occupancy, we welcomed the oppressed of all nations. Later, the welcome has been responded to by such a rushing, heterogeneous and even dangerous mass that we are compelled to pause. Restriction is talked of, but the line of discrimination is hard to be fixed. No committee at Castle Garden can detect anarchists, criminals, or even the poor, if that line should be chosen. Prohibition—exclusion is talked of—nay, is enacted stringently against the Chinese. If need be, it may extend to all. So there is a way of averting this evil.
But the Negro question cannot be put away. The Negroes are here. They outnumber the immigrants that have come to our shores in the last thirty years, and have a foothold upon the soil as valid as the Aryan race, whether we consider the date of their coming or the labor they have put upon the land.
There is a strange disposition to shrink from the Negro question. Some avoid it by flippantly denying the danger; others turn from it because they are appalled by it. Thus an able writer on Immigration in a recent number of the Century passes the topic with this awe-stricken remark: "This problem (of the Negro) cannot be touched practically; ancient wrongs bind the nation hand and foot, and its outcome must be awaited as we await the gathering of the tempest—powerless to avert, and trembling over the steady approach" (The italics are ours.) This is not wise; it is not manly. Why try to avert the evils of immigration, or any other, if we are meanwhile only to await tremblingly the doom that is to come on us from the conflict with the Negro?
There is a strong disposition to gather hope from the newly-developed manufacturing interests in the South. But this is delusive. The South is essentially a rural population; the new industries will necessarily be confined to a few localities, and will reach but slightly the wide agricultural region, and will scarcely touch the Negroes. And more than all this, these industries will only be importing into the South the struggle between labor and capital, which so vexes us at the North. Instead, therefore, of solving the old difficulties at the South, they will add a new one.
The danger of a war of races is scouted at the North; it is not at the South. This is natural. The North is not in immediate contact with the danger; the South is. When the war of the rebellion was impending, the North refused to believe in its coming; and when it came, one of the wisest statesmen of the North, Mr. Seward, predicted that it would "not last sixty days." No such delusion prevailed in the South. Many of the best men there, nay, nearly all the border States, dreaded its coming and held back as long as possible, but they were swept into the flood they foresaw and could not avert.
Thoughtful men at the South now have no rose-colored views about the Negro problem. They fear the impending conflict. With them the supremacy of the white race is the settled point, but they see in the growing numbers, intelligence and restlessness of the Negroes an increasing danger that will only be aggravated by delay. Why should not the North and South alike manfully face the question of a war of races? What will it mean? What will be its end? If the whites and the blacks of the South alone engage in it, the blacks will be exterminated. Nothing less will meet the case. If the North mingle in the struggle, it must be to help the whites or the blacks. If to help the whites, that will mean the more rapid defeat and slaughter of the blacks; if the North help the blacks and save them from destruction, then we shall be worse off than we are now, the two races will be together with enmities aroused a thousand fold!
But why not face the more hopeful question: Is there a remedy? There is! The teacher and the preacher, the spelling-book and the Bible, the saviours of men, the reformers of society, the uplifters of races, are spreading over the South. They go to the manufacturing towns—the Birminghams and the Annistons—they go to the large cities with their common and normal schools, their medical, law and theological seminaries. When the pupils become teachers, they go into the smaller towns, they go into the rural districts, on the small farms, everywhere instructing, encouraging and stimulating the people, leading them to more intelligent industries, to economy, to the purchase of land, the erection of better houses, to a higher aim in life, and to the formation of a right character. Of such stuff men are made, citizens, Christians; men who can use the ballot, who own property that must be protected by the ballot; men who have homes that must be refined and pure, churches where God is worshipped intelligently and where a practical morality is taught and attained. Such a people will be safe, for they will be bone and muscle of the South, they will be needed in its wide expanse of fertile soil, needed in its practical trades, needed for the accumulated wealth, intelligence and cultivated piety they will bring into all the walks and avocations of life.
But it will be some time before these educational and religious means reach all the blacks, and in the meantime much patience and toil will be needed. To the blacks we would say: You won the admiration of men and the blessing of God by your patience under the yoke of slavery when there seemed to be no hope; now win both again by bearing in like spirit your lesser present ills, while hope dawns and help is near.
To thoughtful men North and South we urge: Take hold of this work like men. If a thousandth part of the self-sacrifice and money spent in the war were devoted to this work, the evil might be averted. Why stand over-awed at a threatened flood that if met in time may not only be averted but be turned into fertilizing waters over the broad lands?
BOOK REVIEW
THE REAR GUARD OF THE REVOLUTION. By JAMES R. GILMORE (Edmund Kirke). D. Appleton & Co.: New York. 1.50.
JOHN SEVIER AS A COMMONWEALTH BUILDER. By JAMES R. GILMORE (Edmund Kirke). D. Appleton & Co.: New York. 1.50.
Just one hundred years before the rebellion of the Southern States, Daniel Boone cut on a beech tree near Jonesboro, Tenn., the following words, which are still legible:
D. Boon
Cilled A BAR on
THE Tree
in YEAR 1760
The same year that Daniel Boone "cilled" (killed) this "bar," William Bean, a former companion of Boone's, settled in the valley of the Watauga River, in what is now Eastern Tennessee. The two volumes whose titles are given above trace the history of this mountain settlement from the time that this pioneer crossed the Alleghenies down to the death of John Sevier, Sept. 24, 1815. These books are of much more than ordinary interest to the readers of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY. James R. Gilmore (Edmund Kirke) has put the same power of graphic description, the simple yet thrilling narrative, which held us spell-bound to the last chapters of Among the Pines.
Our limited space does not permit an extended review of these volumes. We only call attention to them here because they touch upon great missionary problems, and throw a flood of light upon these interesting Mountain people among whom the A.M.A. has so extensive and important a work. The first of these volumes in chronological order is the Rear Guard of the Revolution. The colony of the Mountain people in the Watauga Valley, led by John Sevier and James Robertson and Isaac Shelby, constituted this "rear guard." No better blood ever mingled in the veins of a people than that which flows in this Mountain people. French Huguenot, Scotch-Irish Presbyterian and Welsh Presbyterian were their ancestors. With such leadership as these three men furnished, the early Mountain colonists ought to have been heroes, and they were.
In the author's own words, "These three men, John Sevier, James Robertson and Isaac Shelby, * * * were like Washington and Lincoln, 'providential men.' They marched neither to the sound of drum nor bugle, and no flaming bulletins proclaimed their exploits in the ears of a listening continent; their slender forces trod silently the western solitudes, and their greatest battles were insignificant skirmishes never reported beyond the mountains; but their deeds were pregnant with consequences that will be felt along the coming centuries."
They were, and they held themselves to be, "providential men." Whether reading the Bible by the light of the great pine fires, or burning the cabins of the Cherokees, or driving the marauding Chickamaugas into their lair at "Nick-a-Jack" cave, or beating the British at King's Mountain, these men felt themselves called of God to maintain for the people a free government.
There was the same reckless administration of punishment that still characterizes these Mountain people. A tory appeared in the road one day near the home of Colonel William Campbell, of the "Backwater settlement." The Colonel at once gives him chase; after a brief absence he returns to his home, and his wife eagerly asks "What did you do with him?"
"Oh, we hung him, Betty, that's all."
These early settlers did not immediately plant churches and school-houses, as the settlers of New England did. Still they were not altogether illiterate. A public document still in existence has the signature of 112 out of 114 of their number who signed the paper, two only making their X.
In 1779, the first Court House was built at Jonesboro. At about the same date, the author informs us, "The school mistress was to be found at nearly every cross-road in the older settlements. She occupied a small log-house, generally about sixteen feet square, and often without floor or windows." The author might have added that she, or one like her, occupies the same school-house to-day.
In 1779, the first "church-house" was erected, and Rev. Tidence Lane became the "first settled minister beyond the Alleghenies."
To those of our readers who have recently followed the missionary work of the A.M.A. in this Mountain region, these books will be of great interest.
CHAS. J. RYDER.
We have received from Rev. Austin Willey, author of "THE HISTORY OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAUSE IN THE STATE AND NATION," a gift of one hundred copies of the book for gratuitous distribution among our workers in the South. We gave a brief review and a warm commendation of the volume in the AMERICAN MISSIONARY for June, 1886, and we renew our endorsement, and tender our thanks to the author for his benefaction. Our field workers will be interested in this candid sketch of the early anti-slavery struggle, and we believe that many of our white friends in the South will be glad to read in the light of these quiet days the sayings and doings of a class of people whom they then misunderstood.
