The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
The committee would emphasize among special needs of the work, funds for
a girls' hall at Tillotson Institute, and for the endowment of a
theological school for training colored pastors. Two facts are
pre-eminently gratifying. The first is that in nearly all the schools of
the Association some kind of industrial training is provided, and that
the influence of such training is conspicuously shown in improved ideas
of home life and comfort among those connected by family or other ties
with our students. The second fact is, that in all our schools the
students are taught that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom, and that consequently the separation between religion and
morality, which is the supreme danger of the Southern black churches, is
perceptibly diminishing.
* * * * *
REPORT ON CHURCH WORK.
BY PROFESSOR GRAHAM TAYLOR, CHAIRMAN.
The mission of the American Missionary Association is shown to be a
_specialty_ and a _unit_ by its church work. It is the work of a
specialist among Christian organizations that alone could have produced
these churches. To meet the demands of an exigency which could not be
met by the pre-existent ordinary agencies, this child of Providence was
born of God and the times. For the accomplishment of ends for which no
means had been found, its methods were providentially chosen by a
process of spiritual selection. Its agencies are the accretions of the
Divine purpose in its progress toward the salvation of the undermost,
and the edifying of the whole body of Christ. To the production of its
unique Christian institutions the exclusive devotion to the study of the
peculiar conditions of these entirely distinct communities was
necessary. There have been generated by this devotion and acquired
through the experience of nearly half a century a knowledge and skill
which claim for this Association the recognition of the world as its
foremost expert in the successful application of Christianity to the
solution of the most difficult race problems of modern civilization.
And yet in the accomplishment of this great achievement, loyalty to the
common faith and to our own polity, as well as to the teachings of
experience, demanded only the new application of the old prime factors
of God's own choice, the _local church_ with its evangelism and
Christian nurture.
In the work of this Association these two great agencies are uniquely
one. The pastor is often teacher and evangelist. The sanctuary is
school-house and mission station. At twenty-three points on the field
God has made of these twain--the church and the school--one. The church
is the unit of this unity. For while the church is generally the
offspring of the school, the school finds both its profoundest reasons
for existence and its highest consummation in the needs and ends of the
church. In it the work both of the teacher and evangelist co-ordinates
and culminates.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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