The American Missionary — Volume 52, No. 02, June, 1898Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 52, No. 02, June, 1898
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
Our supreme purpose is "to give light and to save life," but we have
never tried to save disembodied spirits. We have written Christianity
large over and in all of our work in the school rooms, in the manual
training shops, in the farm instruction, because we are sure there is
no recuperative energy in the colored race, nor in any other,
sufficient to save itself. There is nothing so practical to uplift men
or races as Christianity. Said Archdeacon Tiffany the other day at
Yale, "A prevailing idea is, to create an environment is to develop
Christian life. Put people in the right places and they will be all
right, a statement, however, which experience has denied from the
Garden of Eden until now. Environment is a great factor but it does
not furnish the life impulse. Recognize the help of environment but do
not depend on it. How often environment does not make character but
may retard it." Our work strikes its roots far deeper than in
externals. Nevertheless, Christianity assumes intelligence and depends
upon it. With Christian character and intelligence we hear the call
for technical skill and provide for it in our industrial annexes side
by side with our work in mental development. Hence you will find the
Samples "in our line" as easily as a commercial traveler finds the
stores which handle his goods.
[Illustration: INDUSTRIAL ROOM, ORANGE PARK, FLA. A SAMPLE.]
We have industrial samples also in educated farmers, architects,
carpenters, masons, contractors, merchants and bankers, who in the
industrial competitions of life are proving the mettle of their
pasture in the fields where they were fed and trained. While we were
teaching them first of all to be larger and better in mind, stronger
in heart and will, teaching them to have a large and intelligent faith
in God, and an honest following of Christ, we have taught them at the
same time how to till the soil wisely, how to excel in the trades, how
to keep their accounts accurately and how to have accounts to keep. We
would like to have the great American Missionary Association
constituency see these samples as we have seen them and do see them,
not alone in pulpits, in schools and on farms and in trades, but also
in commercial life and in places of extended influence. We should like
to show our Samples in their Christian homes, homes which are not made
of brick and mortar and boards and shingles, but which are only
sheltered by these; homes where there is educated intelligence, where
there are books and thoughtful minds that can appreciate them; homes
where there is refinement, and where samples are examples of exalted
life which in itself stimulates and uplifts life all around--these are
centres of untold good. The light streams out from them day by day.
They are the leaven of a rising race. I go not anywhere in towns or in
rural places in any Southern state where I fail to find such samples
and examples which in their various ways are thus holding forth the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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