Читать книгу: «The American Missionary. Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888», страница 6
Oftentimes have I thought of our brother in connection with a remark once made by Rufus Choate. Mr. Choate was an over-worked man, and in his later years, the tension under which he was laboring was quite apparent. He was met by a friend on the street one morning who reminded him of his careworn appearance. Said his friend, "Your labors are too unremitting, and what is worse, you are endangering your constitution." "Ah!" said Mr. Choate, "my constitution was gone long ago; I am living on the by-laws now." In the last years of his life, it seemed to me that our brother was living on the by-laws of his constitution.
He was aware that but a brittle thread kept his earthly moorings; but this did not deter him; he must work while the day lasted; for the night cometh when no man can work. While the vital spark remained, he would not, indeed we may say, he could not stay his hand. And so in the midst of his years God took him.
What a privilege to have walked with him in the fellowship of love, and to have enjoyed the richness and fullness of his friendship! What springs of tenderness in his nature ready to gush forth to refresh and quicken the tendrils of a drooping heart. How the sorrows of others found echo and response in his own soul. The grim messenger death once entered my own home, and made all a desert and a desolation. I never can forget the letter that I received from our brother at that time. What melting tenderness and sympathy were expressed in it! He was smitten and afflicted; he was wounded and bruised for my sake. It was as if he was the stricken one and not myself. But I could not account, however, at the moment, for the blotted and blurred appearance of the writing. But it was all explained in a postscript. "Please excuse the writing. I could not keep the tears back; they fell so thick and fast as nearly to destroy the legibility of my letter." How can we help loving such a man? He took up the sorrows of others and made them his own; aye more, he took up the woes of a race and made them his own. When did the colored man have a better and more faithful friend than he? Who was more completely and absolutely identified with his interests than he? Burn down the colored man's school house through the malign influence of caste feeling, and you had kindled in his soul the fires of an indignation which quite eclipsed the original conflagration.
I have been permitted to observe the advancement and development of his faith. As the years carried him forward in his course, that faith assumed stronger as well as more graceful and beautiful outlines. He was not one who never had doubts or questionings. The difficulties of belief as well as unbelief, were not unknown to him. But when he took up the mighty task to which he consecrated his life, and was left to grapple with illiteracy, superstition and the needs of a benighted and down-trodden people, knotty questions in theology no longer vexed him, for he recognized that there was but one all-sufficient solvent for the dark problems which thrust themselves into the foreground, and that was the redemptive power of the Gospel of Christ. Men may be puzzled and perplexed concerning the theory of sunshine, but there are no questionings on the subject that can override the practical effect of the sun. The sun shines in spite of our metaphysics! Our brother advanced into the practical aspects of faith, and had the assurance that Christ was the light of the world, in spite of our theories of inspiration.
He had an unbounded faith in applied Christianity. There was nothing it could not do in the way of recasting and uplifting the despised peoples of the land. We had but to go forward in the name and power of our great Leader to effect the national redemption. But I must not detain you longer. He has gone out from us. His mission is ended here. Those eloquent lips must remain forever sealed on earth. He simply ceases to be seen of us. We follow his path of translation with mingled tears and joy. The future life, whose place is beyond the skies, was a matter of great concern to him. I recall the hour when he returned to his room from a lecture on the immortality of the soul. He was almost overcome by the discussion which was being carried on in the class-room. He wanted the subject taken out of the realm of probability, and brought to the test of certainty and demonstration. "O, chum!" he exclaimed, "I wish I might die now; I can hardly wait for the demonstration!" He did not wait long. The bending heavens caught up his spirit, and he has gone into the holy city through the beautiful gate which opens over all graves.
"Thus saints, that seem to die in earth's rude strife, only win double life; they have but left our weary ways to live in memory here, in Heaven by love and praise."
EULOGY BY DR. STRIEBY
After what has been so eloquently and fittingly said I have very great reluctance to appear before you to speak of Brother Powell. I have on several occasions spoken of him, and it is only because I am unwilling that the office and the office workers should not in some way be recognized that I consent to say a few words to-day.
What I have to say relates not so much to his public life as to our office relations with him. It has been my sad duty to go to the graves or speak at these meetings in reference to the death of all the officers associated with me when I came into this work; Lewis Tappan, George Whipple, S.S. Jocelyn, G.D. Pike—all of these I have followed to the grave. There is this one difference between Brother Powell's death and that of the others in our memory—all the others had a long, wasting sickness; we remember the darkened room, the pale face, the parched lips, the night vigils. But we have no such thought in regard to Brother Powell's death. The morning after the holiday of Christmas I came to the office not to hear the statement that Brother Powell was very sick, but the astounding announcement "Brother Powell is dead." This was indeed terrible; but the memory of Brother Powell has not been darkened with the thought of sickness, but remains with us just as he was in health and vigor. We still think of the quick step with which he came into the office, the hearty cheer with which he greeted us, the pleasant face that shone not only at the door, but through the whole day. He was a busy worker, as has been said, but ever and always the same bright face, the same cheerful heart, the same warm love, the same readiness to help bear everybody's load, went through the long day. If you have ever spent a day in the mountains, with its breezy temperature, and yet with the sun filling the whole blue heavens and shining on all things—water, mountain, valley, tree and grass—if that day has left its memory of brightness and sweetness in your heart, such is the memory left on us in the office by Brother Powell.
I must speak of his faithfulness as a worker. It has been referred to in better language than I can give, but Brother Powell was indefatigable; he knew no rest; when he toiled until the string snapped he would go down into a sickness that lasted usually just six days; then he would rise as quickly. This one instance will show how he sacrificed himself. On one Sabbath he preached two or three times; then on Monday he sank down in a six days' illness, but on the next Sabbath morning he had agreed to preach in Mr. Beecher's church in Brooklyn, and taking himself out of his bed, he did preach in that church twice, and then sank down into another six days' illness. It was in this way that the man burned out his life in the service. I often urged him to rest, I urged his dear wife to persuade him to rest, but I always had from him the assurance, "It is more wearisome to spend the day in trying to rest than to work." He always worked at a white heat or he was sick.
Brother Powell was a consecrated man, and with this I shall close. His eloquence was appreciated. He had calls to go elsewhere, to greater fields with larger salary, to apparently greater popularity, but these he always and unhesitatingly declined. He stayed with us, and I believe that it was Brother Powell's sympathy with the Lord Jesus Christ in those poor, degraded races that led him to say, I will give my life to them and let the honors and emoluments of the world go. Such was the man we loved and honored in our hearts.
EULOGY BY PRESIDENT TAYLOR
I knew Brother Powell, of whom the friends have spoken so beautifully, touching our hearts so deeply.
I was most impressed by two things in Brother Powell—his radiant joyousness and his delightful humor, and the ease with which he could make the transition from the telling of a funny story to the uttering of a devout prayer, thus leading others with him up to the very steps of the throne of grace.
A while ago, in Scotland, there was an old Covenanter, William Guthrie by name, who had a disposition very much like Brother Powell's, full of joyousness and fun—let us call things by their right names—and on one occasion a large number of brethren gathered together in his manse, among whom was James Durham, better known as the author of a book on Revelation, who was a popular minister in Glasgow at the time. He was a very serious man, like the dog that John Brown tells about, with a life so full of seriousness that there wasn't anything of the joyous in his disposition, but on that day Guthrie was bubbling over with fun, and while they were worshiping he was called upon by a brother to pray, and he went just straight up to the Hearer of prayer, and they were all moved to tears by his devotion; and Durham said after they arose from their knees: "William, I can't understand. If I had been as merry as you were a little while ago, I could not have prayed for four and twenty hours;" and Guthrie replied: "If I hadn't laughed so much I couldn't pray."
My model is Paul. Hear what he says: "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say, rejoice. Let your moderation be know unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made know unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."
You see how near the joy follows the serious.
The Lord knew that the Christian lives in the ray of sunshine of Jesus, and we do dishonor to our Master, because we do not let our joyousness speak for him. And I bless God that wherever James Powell went he went with joy, the man he was. He did not keep it within. The joy of his Lord was with him even on the day when men shall depart because he is with them.
* * * * *
THE AMERICAN FREEDMEN AS FACTORS IN AFRICAN EVANGELIZATION.
BY REV. M.E. STRIEBY, D.D
The presence of the Freedmen in America is an anomaly in the world's history. European nations have gradually abolished serfdom, and the master and the slave being of the same race, the line of separation has soon broken down. In America, slavery is abolished, but the master and ex-slave are as far apart as ever. America is a nation of immigrants, mostly from Europe and Africa. The Europeans soon assimilate, and only the tradition of the individual family tells of the particular nation from which it came. But the African immigrants are still, after nearly 300 years' residence in America, separated from the white race by visible marks of color and features, and are thus, at the same time, identified with the land of their fathers.
Are not these facts suggestive? Does not the persistent race-identity of these people, linking them still with Africa, suggest a duty they may owe to it; and do not their vigorous intellects and warm religious characteristics indicate that duty to be a high and sacred one?
On the other hand, Africa, the land of their fathers, is another anomaly in the world's history. For a thousand years it was unknown to the civilized world; its people are the most degraded upon earth, and it is a shame and reproach to the church that it has done so little to enlighten them,—yea, a double shame when, as is now well known, Mohammedanism is spreading most rapidly over the whole continent.
These added facts emphasize the question already asked, Are not these freed Negroes peculiarly fitted and providentially called to carry the gospel to their fatherland? Is there not here a Divine purpose that the church should be quick to see and prompt to carry out? As the Hebrews were taken to Egypt, disciplined by bondage, and made familiar with the arts of the most enlightened nation then on earth, and were thus prepared for their high destiny in developing the plan of salvation, so are not these children of Africa, chastened by their severe bondage, brought into contact with the civilization of America, and fitted by their ardent religious impulses, destined to bear a large share in the work of Africa's evangelization?
It is to the development of this thought that I invite attention. Let me first revert to the slow progress of Christianity in Africa, Christianity, soon after the apostolic age, made one of its brightest triumphs in Northern Africa—in Egypt and Abyssinia. But ere long that light went out there and never penetrated the great continent. So far as is now known, darkness has ever hovered over it—ignorance, superstition, degradation, cannibalism, slavery and war, have made and perpetuated that darkness.
But I wish now to call attention to the efforts of the church in modern times to preach the gospel in Africa. There are now, so far as I can ascertain, forty-one societies engaged in missionary work there. The number of missionaries employed by them in Africa, foreign and native, is 1,086. These have endured the malaria of the climate and the dangers from hostile people, and some of them have shown the most heroic spirit of self-sacrifice. They have been preceded by others, who have laid down their lives in the work, and the living stand on the graves of the dead, expecting soon to follow. A measure of success has attended and rewarded this zeal, and a few favored examples can be found of men who have long endured the climate and have seen the good work grow upon their hands. But the results, as a whole, have been discouraging. Christianity has found a precarious footing along the shores of the continent while, as yet, in the vast interior the missionaries are compelled to follow at a tardy pace the footsteps of the explorers. Africa is yet unevangelized.
The causes of this are not far to seek. The white missionaries from Europe and America succumb under the fatal malaria, or are deterred by the unreasoning and deadly hostility of the natives. The missionaries are a foreign people, with different color, features and habits. They are known to the natives as coming from nations that have plundered and enslaved them. They come as a superior race, unable to meet the natives on the basis of a common brotherhood. A gulf yawns between them. The Christianization of Africa needs a new impulse from some other quarter.
On the other hand, and in sharp contrast with all this, is the rapid progress of Mohammedanism in Africa. This progress has been noted by the modern explorers, but has been recently brought more distinctly to the attention of Europe and America. Dean R. Bosworth Smith, in the Nineteenth Century for December, 1887, thus states the extent to which Mohammedanism covers Africa: "It is hardly too much to say that one-half of the whole of Africa is already dominated by Islam, while, of the remaining half, one-quarter is leavened, and another is threatened, by it. Such is the amazing, the portentous problem which Christianity and civilization have to face in Africa, and to which neither of them seems as yet half awake."
The causes of this rapid spread over Africa are easily discernible. The Mohammedans, though they appeared at first as conquerors, became at length Africans by their permanent residence on the soil, and they went forth afterwards in propagating their faith, not as warriors, but as fellow-citizens and brothers. They resembled the natives in color, manners, and modes of thought, and readily assimilated with them by marriage ties and the affinities of home life. Their converts among the native races were even more naturally welcomed, as friends and brothers. They, of course, found no difficulty with the climate, for in it they were born.
While we repudiate emphatically the idea that Mohammedanism can be a substitute for Christianity in civilizing Africa, yet it is only just that we should admit that Islam brings with it some influences for good into that benighted land—influences that strongly appeal to the higher instincts and aspirations of the people, and are, therefore, an elevating power. First of all, the One True God of Islam tends to lift the African above his idols, his fetich, his witchcraft and his cannibalism. Then, the prohibition of wine and strong drink snatches the people from what threatens to be the vortex of their ruin—intemperance; while Christian nations are now, to their shame and infamy, swelling the floods and increasing the velocity of that vortex by larger importations of intoxicating liquors. Then, too, the followers of Mohammed are using the school of the prophets in the preparation of their missionaries. The great training school, the Old University of Cairo, is said to number at times as many as ten thousand students of the Koran, a number which may well challenge a comparison with the Protestant Theological Seminaries of Europe and America, not only by their numbers, but by the astonishing success of their pupils as missionaries. They run where we halt, they win where we fail.
It is now in order to ask if the Freedmen of America can be fitted to take a special part in the evangelization of Africa. There are strong reasons for believing that they can be; they have race advantages similar to the Mohammedans, and they can readily obtain the acquired advantages of the white missionary. In the first place, they are numerous—eight millions now, and increasing rapidly. In physical proportions they are stalwart and vigorous, inured to toil and capable of great exertion. Their mental powers are quick and susceptible of wide culture. Their capacity to acquire learning, even in the higher branches, has been abundantly proved in the schools they have attended.
The religious characteristics of the race are very marked; faith, hope and love are leading traits. They endured a bondage that would have crushed other races; their faith and hope never deserted them. Their bitter experience in those long and weary years drove them to God as their only source of help, and the "Slave Songs," with the sad history out of which they grew, are among the most pathetic utterances of patience, trust and triumphant hope that human literature presents. So it was during the war, which was long and sometimes of doubtful result, but they never lost their faith in their ultimate deliverance. The Jew in his journey from bondage to Canaan, often became despondent and murmured; the Negro never did either.
Hear the Jew:
"Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us to die in the wilderness?"
"Let us make a Captain and let us return into Egypt."
Hear the Negro, in the Slave Songs:
"Way over in the Egypt land,
You shall gain the victory.
Way over in the Egypt land,
You shall gain the day.
March on, and you shall gain the victory,
March on, and you shall gain the day."
Such a people are surely destined to develop a rich and beautiful Christian life. If they should be specially trained, and their warm hearts inspired, for the work of missionaries to Africa, who can doubt the success of their efforts? They would stand on a better vantage ground there than the Mohammedan, for he is a foreigner transplanted on the soil. They would come back to the home of their fathers, and would meet the natives as brothers—long separated, yet as brothers; their color and personal characteristics would attest the kinship, their Christian love would kindle towards the degraded of their race, and their holy ambition would be fired by the great work to which they were called—the uplifting of the millions of long-neglected Africa. It would be reasonable to expect that they would endure the African climate better than the white man. They are a tropical race, and, in America, they love and cling to the sunny South, seldom migrating to the North; they do not suffer from the malaria that is so fatal to the whites in the South.
These views and impressions are confirmed by actual experience. With a view of learning the results of that experience, I addressed letters to the Secretaries of all the larger societies in Europe and America doing missionary work on that continent, and, in due time, received courteous replies from nearly all of them, giving opinions and facts with more or less fulness of detail. My inquiries mainly centered around two points: first, the ability of the colored missionary as compared with the white, to endure the climate; and secondly, his relative success as a missionary. The opinions given in those letters, as might be expected, are various, and the facts themselves, gathered from widely different sources, and relating to very different climates and local circumstances, point to somewhat different conclusions.
The specific statements of these letters may be thus summed up:
1. No society reports that the colored man is less healthy than the white; one or two societies discern as yet no special difference; but the larger number say that he endures the climate much better than the white man.
2. On the second point—the comparative success of colored missionaries—the testimony bears very decidedly, as a rule, and as yet against them; while a few and very favorable exceptions indicate that the fault is with the individual and not with the race, and hold out the hope that time and better training will remove the difficulties.
The more full account may be thus given: Some of the societies charge a want of carefulness, perhaps a want of integrity against the colored missionaries—that "colored treasurers will not render accounts, teachers will not make reports, missionaries desire to control, and they seldom are sufficiently respected, especially when of younger age." Now, these are manifestly the vices and infirmities of an immature and imperfectly cultured race. We must recollect that centuries of civilization and Christian influences are behind Europeans and Americans, while the native African, converted and trained in his own land, has behind him only the few years of his own life separating him from the densest degradation of heathenism; the African born and converted in the West Indies has been a freedman only since 1840; and the American Negro was perhaps himself a slave, and his race had the shackles struck from their bodies only in 1863, while the fetters of ignorance and vice still manacle the minds and hearts of the mass. We ought not, therefore, so much to wonder at the failure of the many, as to rejoice and take courage at the success of the few, especially as there is a bright side to the dark picture, to which I now take pleasure in turning your attention.
There have been some very successful colored missionaries in Africa, whom the Christian world has known and honored, and the letters I have received joyfully refer to them, and mention others not yet widely known, but whose work attests their wisdom, piety and usefulness. Thus one Secretary refers to a missionary, born a slave in America and educated here, as "the most scholarly man in the whole mission." Another society testifies, and our personal knowledge of the man referred to confirms the testimony, to the remarkable success of one of its colored missionaries as "a business manager, a preacher and a teacher, showing himself fully equal to any emergency, and remarkable in his influence with the heads of the tribes, and his success in winning souls." The testimony in regard to two others of its missionaries is almost equally emphatic.
The Secretary of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America writes: "All ordained men on our missionary staff in Africa, from the Bishop down, are colored men. I think we have concluded that, all things considered, except for the work of higher education, colored missionaries are more available in that field than white." He refers with gratification to the career of Bishop Ferguson, the only colored man who has a seat in the American House of Bishops, who was born in America, educated in the mission schools, and has risen through the positions of teacher, deacon, priest and rector, until he was consecrated the Bishop of Cape Palmas in 1885, and has worthily filled all these positions. The Church Missionary Society of London refers to the remarkable career of Bishop Crowther, who was born in Africa, put on board a slave ship, rescued, and landed at Freetown, educated in Sierra Leone and in England, and at length entered his chosen field on the Niger, reduced the language of the people to writing, and preached the gospel to them in their native tongue. In 1861, there were reported to be 1,500 converts as the result of his labors. He received the degree of D.D., from Oxford, England, and was consecrated in 1864 African Bishop of the Niger. This society also mentions others, one as possessing "special educational and linguistic powers;" another as a "pastor and evangelist with remarkable power and spiritual influence;" another as "a practical organizer and administrator;" another as "very successful in educational work," and it adds: "Many others have also shown considerable power as educationists, pastors and evangelists."
From all these facts, the inferences are plain:
1. That Negroes have succeeded in this work, and that those in America can be prepared for it. They can endure the climate, find ready access to the hearts of the people, and be eminently successful in preaching the Gospel. They should have the best training for the purpose, and great care should be exercised in selecting and sending forth only those of good education, mature character, sound judgment and unquestioned piety.
2. America owes it as a debt to them and to Africa that they be furnished with the means for this training. The guilt of man-stealing and of slavery can have no better atonement than by sending back to Africa the sons of those stolen from those benighted shores, who shall bring with them the light and blessing of civilization and Christianity. England, too, having had a share in introducing slavery into America, should take its share in making this atonement.
3. The colored people of America should be aroused to this providential call to this high mission in behalf of their fatherland. We do not question nor minify their great duty and destiny in America. Their warm affections, their easily kindled zeal, their gift of song and eloquence, will yet add an enriching pathos to our piety, and a wider range to our patriotism. But this call to Africa, while not interfering with duty here, will broaden their vision and deepen their piety. There will be a grand uplift to them in grasping and endeavoring to realize this great work. It will raise them above petty ambitions, it will give a practical turn to their religious enthusiasm, and bring them into closer sympathy with Jesus Christ. They have been in fellowship with Him in suffering, they may now be co-workers with Him in redemption.
But Africa, so degraded! Why should her sons go back to her? The Scot loves the hills and the glens whence his family came; the German never forgets the Fatherland; but what is there to awaken the love of the Negro for Africa? Gen. Garfield was born in a humble home, and went thence as a canal driver, but when he became President of the United States he did not despise that humble home, nor the mother that bore him, lowly as both were, but at his inauguration he had his mother placed in an honored seat on the platform, and his first act after taking the oath of office was to step over, before that vast assembly, and kiss that mother.
American descendant of Africa! The home of your fathers is humble and degraded, and you are elevated and refined. Show that you are really great and Christlike by giving the redeeming kiss to Africa!
