Читать книгу: «The American Missionary. Volume 42, No. 11, November, 1888», страница 2

ORDINATION AT NEW ORLEANS

A council of Congregational Churches was held in New Orleans, Sept. 16th, for the purpose of ordaining Prof. Geo. W. Henderson, A.M., B.D., to the Christian ministry. Rev. R.C. Hitchcock, President of Straight University, was chosen Moderator. Mr. Henderson sustained an excellent examination, and was installed Pastor of the Central Congregational Church. The entire service was impressive, and Rev. Mr. Henderson enters upon a very responsible charge of a large church with many encouragements and hopes of great success.

OUR SCHOOLS AND THE YELLOW FEVER

We have been extremely gratified with the manifestations of faith and courage on the part of our lady teachers in the South during the time of fear and panic because of the yellow fever. Some were already at their stations and in their schools, and some were on the way, subject to the trials of quarantine. Not one hesitated in the path of duty. Many teachers from the different parts of the North were ready to go when the reports of the pestilence were most alarming, but not one of the teachers who had previously been in the work, failed to await instructions to go forward whenever we should speak the word. We have been grateful to God during all these days of the autumn for the splendid qualities of consecration and courage which have come out of our correspondence with our honored teachers. Never did their fathers or brothers, years ago, when deadly war called them to face the perils of battle, show higher courage or a larger sense of duty. Almost all of our Southern schools are now in session, and begin with increased attendance.

SCHOOL ECHO.—A teacher writes: "One of my pupils who had been teaching during the summer came to me in despair over a sum, saying: "I can't understand sympathizing fractions."

(When we went to school years and years ago, "sympathizing fractions," meant broken candy. We understood, but the teacher didn't. Times change, and we change with them.)

THE SAMARITAN WOMAN

BY REV. C.J. RYDER, BOSTON

"And they marveled that he talked with the woman."

Why? She was a sinful woman. But these disciples must even thus early in Christ's ministry have learned that he had come to call sinners, not the righteous, to repentance. She was a Samaritan! That was a larger reason for their marvel. They could rise above their hatred for sin more easily than their race prejudice; so can we. The Samaritans were an inferior people. Degraded they were. They had been degraded for centuries. The Jews shunned them. Socially our Lord was making a great blunder, perhaps a fatal blunder, in talking to this Samaritan woman. His cause was in its infancy. The hand of social prejudice would surely throttle it. Why antagonize the existing order of society? How much better to utilize it for the establishment and enlargement of the great and glorious kingdom of our Lord! This cause needed the influence of Jewish leaders. Why risk this potent influence for the sake of one miserable Samaritan woman, or, for that matter, for a whole race of Samaritans? It seemed very poor management of a cause, new in that country. "Far be such unwisdom from thee, Lord," we can hear the impassioned and worldly-wise Peter exclaim. But our Lord chose to sacrifice the temporary success of his kingdom that he might be true to the eternal principles of that kingdom; and so he talked with this sinful woman of this despised race just as considerately as with Nicodemus. He invited her to his discipleship just as cordially, and to the same discipleship. There is not a hint that the Good Shepherd built another fold for the Samaritan sheep, lest some of the Jewish flock should jump over the fence, if they were put into the same fold.

These Samaritans were not only degraded and despised socially, but they were also superstitious in their religious beliefs, and semi-heathen in their forms of worship. It would take generations to bring them up to a level with the Jewish Christians. They could not comprehend much of the intelligent preaching that Christ addressed to the Jews. Why not appoint a special missionary for them, and then quietly exclude them from the ordinary gatherings? This course would avoid criticism; it would not violate the established ideas of social and religious propriety. Nothing need be said about it. It would not be best to put it on parchment; just let it be quietly whispered about that the disciples thought it was better for the Samaritan Christians not to meet with the others. The disciples were surrounded by prejudiced people, to be sure, but these prejudices were very old; time would correct all these social and race inequalities. The disciples thought it better to ignore them, and just organize and carry on their work with no reference to these degraded and superstitious Samaritans. Such seems to have been somewhat the reasoning of these timid disciples. It was not our Lord's reasoning; the doors of his blessed kingdom opened to all. It required no magic sesame of race respectability to throw back these gates of pardon and hope. Sin must be left outside, but the sinner of every race and tribe was welcomed to all the privileges of this kingdom. We now see the wisdom and the divinity of our Lord's course.

Had these marveling disciples had their way, the sect of the Christians would have been added to the sects of the Herodians and the Sadducees, and been buried in the same grave centuries ago. The voice that talked with this Samaritan woman is heard round the globe now, and every century only adds greater authority to its divine utterance; and it is heard because it spoke with this despised Samaritan woman. Our Lord did not ignore this race prejudice; he rebuked it. And so these timid disciples, realizing only the temporary danger that threatened, marveled that he talked with this woman. God pity them! But how human they were. So to-day, in India, the missionaries of the cross, true to their Lord's great example, talk with pariah and Brahmin, and welcome them both to equal privileges in the kingdom of his grace—and men marvel. And so in Alabama and South Carolina, the missionaries of the cross, true to the same divine example, talk with black and with white, and welcome them both to the same privileges in this kingdom—and even some timid disciples marvel. But the principles of this divine kingdom do not change; the Lord of that kingdom, who talked with the sinful, weary, despised Samaritan woman, would, if here in bodily presence now, talk with the sinful, weary, despised black woman, no matter how much his worldly-wise disciples might marvel. His kingdom is built upon this eternal truth of human brotherhood, and it will endure because it is. Nothing short of this is of his kingdom, but will crumble to dust.

The Congregationalist

Forty-Second Annual Report Of The Executive Committee,

FOR THE YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30TH, 1888

General Survey

The field of missions is the world which lieth in darkness. We have to do with that part of it for which we are doubly responsible. It is in darkness and it is our own.

We look upon our own land, with its States equal in extent and capacity to foreign kingdoms. When we know that they hold the certainty of a future influence of which their past power has been but a prophecy, our fears press hard upon our hopes.

Nor are our work and our fears an intrusion. When the pestilence which walks in darkness brings the destruction which wastes at noonday, it is our call to feel deeply the distresses of those who are stricken. But plagues consuming human lives are less grevious than those which abide, and which, walking in the intellectual and moral darkness of a people, waste the lives of men and the hopes of souls. This is our call.

Remember that it is our own country where, in twelve great States, like empires, forty per cent. of the population cannot read, where, to-day, three-fourths of the illiteracy of the whole nation exists; where the darkness is increasing more rapidly than it is being lighted up; where much which passes for religion even among those who preach it, is a travesty upon Christianity, openly divorced from relationship with truth, purity, integrity and intelligence.

Our survey takes in questions that are painful; disturbing questions that are not in the North, nor in the West. They are difficult to meet. They are near, and the troubles which the questions hold are near. They come close to the heart of Christianity. They are close to the life of the churches. They are close to the first principles of human rights. They are questions that can have only one final solution, which may be so remote that fearful dangers will culminate in terrible disasters before the only remedy can do its work. There are now nearly eight millions of a Negro population, from four millions twenty years ago. There are more than two millions of mountain people in the South, one-half of whom cannot read. These benighted people live where there has never been a public-school system even for the more highly favored race, and where this more highly favored race deliberately assigns those who are not of its color to a permanent inferiority. The laws of caste are to be inflexibly enforced against all people of color who would rise from their low-down conditions. This is our Southern mission field, which God has committed to us, according to our faith and opportunity.

Those of our own race in the South could not do this work, which is upon our consciences and hearts, if they would. They do not see what we see. They would not if they could. They do not feel what we feel.

We are sent, not as philanthropists who hear the cry of the poor and needy, nor as patriots who realize the perils that overhang the State, but as missionaries of Jesus Christ who believe that salvation takes in the whole man, including philanthropy and statesmanship, and whatever builds up man for time and for eternity.

We have, however, no other charter for our work than that of missions. We have no other errand than that of the messengers of Christ. Only as we go in his name and with his spirit do we ask the churches to listen and hear with us, and with us to look and see.