The American Missionary — Volume 35, No. 12, December, 1881Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 35, No. 12, December, 1881
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
To make the completest success of Eastern education for the
Indians, I would use Carlisle as a sort of cleanser, a bath-tub
or something of that kind, where we could wash them, clean them
up, get a little understanding of our ways into them, and some
understanding of English, and then scatter them out over the
country to come in contact with our life. In that way they would
learn best how to become citizens of the United States.
But we can rest it here. Whenever Congress gets ready to educate
the Indian children as a whole, it will be no difficult matter to
determine upon the best methods. Three to five thousand scattered
around through the East would still leave forty-five to forty-seven
thousand for the agency schools to work upon. That number in
schools through the East, just as your Association proposes,
sending them into your mission schools, where they may learn right
from our life by comparison with theirs, by daily contact, will be
found to be the most rapid plan. Make them work, and do not forget
to make them fill their places, which they will gladly do when they
find they must.
* * * * *
THE CHINESE.
* * * * *
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.
Although in the Report of your Committee very brief mention is made
of the work among the Chinese of this country, it is not therefore
to be inferred that that work is being neglected, nor that it is
failing in the ends for which it was undertaken. Rather is there a
deepened conviction of its importance and increased encouragement
in the prosecution of it; but in estimating the importance of the
work we are not to consider alone the Chinese in this country,
though they are a body of men of sufficient number to call for
all, and more than all, that has been done for them. But we look
beyond the 75,000 Chinese in California to the 400,000,000 in their
own land. The Christian world through their missionaries, and by
personal intercourse, are coming to understand this people better
than they once did. Instead of the race of barbarians, stupid
and immovable, which they were once thought to be, those who are
well-informed accept the assertion of the Rev. John Ross, who says,
“They are beyond comparison the most intelligent of non-Christian
peoples; if any race surpasses them in industry, it is only the
Anglo-Saxon.” * * * * *
But how is the Christian church to have a part in remodeling the
institutions and customs of that vast nation? Not by any one method
alone, but one of those which Providence has opened, is doubtless
to be through the agency of Chinamen converted here and returning
to their homes to preach the Gospel to their countrymen. It cannot
be questioned that there will be a place and need for those trained
under the institutions of the Gospel to go to China and plant the
same institutions there; yet the converted Chinamen can do some
things and exert an influence in some directions not open to others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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