Читать книгу: «The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 11, November, 1889», страница 2

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DEATH OF SUPERINTENDENT HALL

Just as we are going to press, (October 18th), we are startled by the telegraphic announcement of the sudden death from typhoid fever of Prof. Edward S. Hall, one of our Field Superintendents. Mr. Hall had been one year in the service of the Association, and had already shown himself to be a man of varied and remarkable capabilities—not only skilled in the management of schools, but familiar in an unusual degree with the practical work of building and repairing school and church edifices. His services have been invaluable to the Association, and it will be difficult to supply his place. As a man of noble Christian character and consecration to the work entrusted to him, he had won our highest esteem.

DEATH OF LARMON B. LANE, M.D

Rev. Larmon B. Lane, M.D., died at his home in St. Charles, Ill., Sept. 15, 1889. He was born in Tallmadge, Ohio, June 21, 1821. He studied medicine at Cleveland Medical College, and afterward attended Oberlin College and Theological Seminary, graduating in 1848. The following year he was sent by the American Missionary Association as missionary physician to Siam, where he labored faithfully, ministering to soul and body six years. In 1855 a severe hemorrhage compelled him to give up the missionary work. After a short rest he began his work of preaching the gospel. He had successful pastorates in Illinois and Ohio; afterwards he practiced medicine in Geneva and St. Charles, Ill., at which latter place he died. He was successful as a physician and continued to the end a loyal servant of Christ, was deacon, treasurer and Sunday-school Superintendent, besides being always ready to do with his might what his hands found to do.

S.

FORTY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE,
For The Year Ending September 30th, 1889

GENERAL SURVEY

The American Missionary Association finds its commission in the words of the Master, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."

It does not choose its fields of labor because the people in them are black, or red, or yellow, or white; but because they are those for whom Christ died and to whom he commanded the glad tidings of salvation to be preached. In the fields to which it providentially has been called, it seeks to bring the gospel to every human being who has it not in its purity as an uplifting power.

In nineteen States and Territories we are laboring—six in the West and thirteen in the South. In ninety-four schools and one hundred and forty-two churches we have been directly teaching and preaching the gospel during the past year. In them have 456 missionaries wrought with holy purpose. 12,132 pupils have been taught in our schools; more than seventeen thousand have received instruction in Bible truth in our Sunday-schools; 782 conversions have been reported. $3,160.14 have been reported as given in our mission churches for benevolence, and $21,658.57 for their own expenses—again over last year of $660.03 in benevolence and $2,322.62 in church expenses. Besides all this and all that in various ways has failed to be reported to us, have been the vacation work of our students, the large work of our previous graduates, the indirect results of many kinds, and the unknown results and influences of great power and far-reaching importance which have gone forth from our institutions and missionaries whose only possible record is in God's Book of Remembrance.

THE SOUTH

In the South, we are directly reaching three classes—the colored people, the mountain whites, and the new settlers from the North and from the old countries. Indirectly we are reaching many more. The schools we plant often incite others to plant schools; the houses of worship we aid in erecting cause others to be erected. A single neat, but inexpensive building for a country church of colored people has been known to occasion the building or repairing of at least nine church buildings of neighboring white people. The incontestably good results of our work among the colored people are slowly but surely undermining race prejudice. In spite of all the race trouble during the past year and the increasingly bitter utterances of some papers and some public speakers, during no other year in the history of our country have so many manly words in favor of the Negro been printed in Southern papers, and sounded from the pulpits and platforms of the South. It was in a Southern University and before a Southern audience that a Southern man, a Bishop of a Southern church which took the name Southern when it declared for slavery, this year uttered these words:

"It is a travesty on religion, this disposition to canonize missionaries who go to the Dark Continent, while we have nothing but social ostracism for the white teacher who is doing a work no less noble at home. The solution to the race problem rests with the white people who live among the blacks, and who are willing to become their teachers in a missionary spirit."

Cruel and unreasoning is prejudice, but when the public platforms, and especially the pulpits, begin to yield in their utterances to the sway of logic and humanity, by and by public opinion will feel their force. Our institutions and our missionaries have compelled the respect of the Southern people. This year many expressions of it have been heard.

EDUCATIONAL WORK

CHARTERED INSTITUTIONS

During the past year we have directly sustained five chartered institutions in the South—Fisk University, Talladega College, Tougaloo University, Straight University and Tillotson Institute. Every year that passes emphasizes anew that these are most wisely located, so that each is a center of far-reaching power, and supplements the work of all the others.

Fisk University at Nashville, Tenn., with its 503 students, has had a year of great prosperity, and solid, telling work. Its buildings have been full, the quality of the work done has been excellent. A graduate of Fisk recently took his diploma from an Eastern school of medicine, with a rank two per cent. higher than any other man in his class. Another graduate of Fisk is a missionary in Africa under the American Board, and is not only declared by the Secretaries to be one of its best missionaries, but has shown such business capacity that he has been chosen treasurer of his mission. His wife, a worthy helpmeet, is also a graduate of this institution. Fisk has high ideals—few institutions in the South have higher ones, or come nearer reaching them.

Talladega College, in Talladega, Ala., has had 427 students in all departments. Its year's work has shown most satisfactory results. Talladega is closely connected with the church work of the State. All the pastors in the Congregational State Association but four are from its theological department and several other States have found pastors there. The last State Association, with its fine body of young men, educated, dignified and earnest, was a most emphatic demonstration of the good work done in this institution. The students of Talladega have carried forward during the past year, under direction of a member of the Faculty, a systematic mission work in the surrounding neighborhoods, which has yielded large results, both in the good done in the neighborhoods and in the training received by the workers for future usefulness.

Tougaloo University has been filled to overflowing with 343 students, and after the last inch of room had been filled, scores had to be turned away. This school is situated almost in the center of the State, and reaches a far larger region not limited by State lines. It is near the border of the Yazoo country, which has begun to be so wondrously developed, and is so rapidly filling with colored people. The evangelization and enlightenment of this new Africa must largely come through Tougaloo. Here must be trained preachers, teachers and other leaders of character for this new region, as well as for the older portions of the State. Good, solid work has been done here all through the year, and preparation has been made for even better results in the future.

Straight University, in New Orleans, La., is peculiarly situated for an important and far-reaching work. It draws its students not only from the States, but also from Mexico and the West Indies—484 last year. With the enlarged accommodations for the primary and intermediate work which have been planned, this institution will be better prepared to meet the demands of higher education.

Tillotson Institute, at Austin, Texas, the youngest of our chartered institutions, has had a prosperous year with 230 students, in the Primary, Intermediate, Grammar, Normal, College Preparatory and College departments. Situated at the capital of the great empire of Texas, it is destined to be an educational, religious and evangelistic centre, a power for the building up of the kingdom of Christ. It greatly needs enlarged accommodations. Where is the Lord's steward who is ready to give it at once the imperatively needed Girls' Hall?

NORMAL AND GRADED SCHOOLS

Next to our chartered institutions come our normal schools. These have the same course of study up to the college department as the chartered institutions have. These normal schools are eighteen in number, and are situated at Lexington and Williamsburg, Ky.; Memphis, Jonesboro, Grand View and Pleasant Hill, Tenn.; Wilmington and Beaufort, N.C.; Charleston and Greenwood, S.C.; Atlanta, Macon, Savannah, Thomasville and McIntosh, Ga.; Athens, Mobile and Marion, Ala. Adding to these the normal departments of our five chartered institutions, gives us twenty-three normal schools in the South.

Besides these, we have in the South thirty-seven which we class as common schools. Eight of these are graded, with two or three teachers each. Nearly all are parochial schools. The teachers are in both the day schools and the Sunday-schools, and are not only school teachers, but church missionaries. They train the young of our congregations for greater usefulness, encourage many of the most promising to go to higher institutions, teach the parents better ideas of home life, and lead all ages to a more intelligent and spiritual worship.