The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 01, January, 1889Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 01, January, 1889
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
It is refreshing to find in this grasping, selfish and money-making world
that there are wealthy men who amass fortunes and use them for noble
purposes. It is said that growing wealth only tightens the grip on the
money and hardens the heart against the calls of benevolence. But the
examples are accumulating that give shining evidence that there are noble
exceptions. Mr. Hand has added his name to the number. He knows the needs
of the colored people, and he devotes a vast fortune to their benefit.
But Mr. Hand has not exhausted the opportunities, even in the range of
the work of this Association, for blessing needy races of men, or of
aiding in the varied forms of effort for the colored people. The mountain
regions of the South present an unique and promising field of effort. The
inhabitants are a noble people, descendants of some of the best races
that settled America. Their mountain isolation separated them from the
people around them. The want of schools and churches left them ignorant,
their thin mountain lands kept them poor; but they never held slaves and
they were loyal to the Union in the war. Railroads now penetrate their
mountains and valleys, and the hitherto unused wealth of mines and timber
is brought to light. A new future opens out to these people, and the
question is, "Shall that future be one of prosperity and piety, or one of
intemperance and infidelity?" Some other man wise and wealthy can do for
these people what Daniel Hand has done for the primary and industrial
education of the Negroes. But this does not exhaust the opening for large
investments in the work of the Association. The Indians are fewer in
number than the blacks or whites of the South, and their future will
sooner be determined by their being incorporated into the national life
as citizens, yet that problem is not settled, and a large fund could be
wisely used for their benefit. Then, too, our higher schools and colleges
need endowment, and our church work should be _indefinitely_
expanded.
If this review does not succeed in drawing large gifts for these several
objects, it may at least serve to show that our wants are not all
provided for, and that smaller contributors have still the duty and the
privilege of aiding by gifts and prayer this good work of patriotism and
Christianity.
* * * * *
THE SOUTHERN SITUATION.
The position of the South is becoming once more clearly defined. Before
the war, it was fully formulated thus: The Negroes are an inferior race,
and slavery is their divinely ordained condition. To this was added: The
Negro question is purely local, and with it no one outside of the South
has any right to interfere. To these axioms agreed the press, the pulpit
and the politician. But the war came as an earthquake, with the utter
upheaval of these firm foundations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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