Excerpt
Our Missions And Missionaries.
It is our custom to publish in the second issue of the Magazine for each year a catalogue of the churches, institutions and schools into which we place the offerings devoted by those who send them, to the great work of the American Missionary Association.
If our readers will look carefully at this, and preserve it for future reference, they will come into sympathy more easily and truly with those who have gone from our Christian homes and churches in the name of Christ and for his sake.
These pages of names and places represent many things:
First.—The work. Our missionaries are among four races, the white, the black, the red and the yellow. These are children of a common Father; they are under the dominion of a common sinfulness; they are the possible heirs of a common Saviour. We go to them with the same gospel, which is able to save them to the same fellowship of faith and love on earth and to the same heaven.
Secondly.—The missionaries and the characteristics of their work. There are represented in this list, teachers of theology, teachers of language, of history, of philosophy and of science. There are teachers of "common branches" and "higher branches." There are teachers of industries for men and women, house-makers and home-makers. There are preachers to organized churches and preachers at large whose work is to gather churches. They are all alike missionaries.
Notice, also, what a large proportion of our missionary work is being done by Christian women. Well did Secretary Hiatt say, "The history of this Association is a grand and splendid eulogy of woman." "Our sisters who went South while the sky was yet heavy with the clouds of war from the homes of refinement and culture and religion," are many of them remaining until now, and they are continually re-enforced from our best institutions of learning in the East and in the West. There is a common fidelity on the shores of the Gulf, in the mountains of the South and among the tribes of the plains. These men and women in our churches and schools who have given themselves in consecration and sacrifice to this service are leading those who have been crushed by oppressions and wrongs of men, and who have been degraded in ignorance and in sin, to rise into a new life, and into new habits of thought and feeling.
They are working to rescue millions from the woful inheritances of the pitiless centuries. They are teaching those who are to be the teachers of their people. They are preparing those who shall lead their own peoples. It is not a work of a score of years, nor of half a century. It is a part of the work of Christianity, whatever time it may take, and we ask those who pray "Thy kingdom come" to remember these missionary teachers and preachers before God that they may be of good courage, faithful and patient in their ministering.
Thirdly.—These pages represent also the faith and sacrifices of Christians by which this service of Jesus Christ goes on. Brethren and sisters, you who contribute to this work, read in these names assurances to gladden your hearts and cheer your faith....