The American Missionary - Volume 43, No. 03, March, 1889

Excerpt

TO THE PASTORS AND CHURCHES

Dear Brethren: The work of this Association requires $1,000 per day. The receipts for the first four months of our fiscal year have been only about $800 a day. Here is the germ of a debt. Unless it is chilled and destroyed in the vigorous months of March, April and May, when the churches are full and active, it will, during the hot summer months, when the audiences are thin, grow rapidly, and develop its bitter fruit—a great deficit. The coming three months will be the test. We are the servants of the churches and are doing their work, and we are confident that they intend to give us the means to carry it forward.

We, therefore, appeal to the pastors whose collections come during these three months, or whose collections can conveniently be brought within these three months, to lend us their great help by emphasizing our needs when the collections are taken, and we appeal to our patrons that they will, both in their church collections or by their special donations, come to our aid in a time when that aid will be so beneficial.

Perhaps we never shall cease our urgent appeals for the "sinews of war." The growing work of this Association requires increasing funds to meet the enlarged demand. But we are beginning to feel the need of a greater force in the field. We sound forth the bugle note calling for recruits for the army of the Lord in our glorious warfare. We appeal to students in theological seminaries, colleges, normal schools and female seminaries, to consider the claims of this great work. We make this appeal with special urgency to the Congregational institutions of the land, for it is from this body of Christians that we receive nearly all the funds with which we carry on our work, and there is a special fitness that the sons and daughters of these churches should enter the field for which the funds are contributed.

But we wish to make a distinct announcement in connection with this appeal. We wish only to "get the best." The needy people for whom we labor have suffered such privations, and such absolute destitution of all adequate religious instruction, that we feel they are now entitled to as good as can be given them. We send no teachers to the field that are incompetent and without adequate experience. We do not believe that everybody is qualified to teach the Negroes, at least it is not fair to them, that we should employ those who cannot find occupation anywhere else. Good health, good training, good powers of discipline, a missionary spirit and a membership in some evangelical church, are the absolute essentials for all persons that we employ. We call for recruits, but we ask for only those that are well equipped, courageous and ready to endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ.

The treasurer of a church in the West, who had been an officer in a colored regiment during the war, in remitting the contribution of the church to which he belongs, thus expresses his reason for his interest in the welfare of the colored people:

"I was an officer in the 5th United States Colored Troops, the first colored regiment raised west of the Alleghenies, just before the massacre of colored troops at Fort Pillow, and knowing so much of the fidelity and valor and good service of those troops in the war to the Nation, to which they then owed so little, I have special interest in the enlightenment and uplifting of the colored race in the South."

In the last month's Missionary, we published some statements showing that persons declined to contribute to our treasury because we had been so enriched by the Daniel Hand Fund. It gives us pleasure to know that all our patrons do not take this view of the matter, as will be seen from the following extract from the letter of a practical business man:

"If A.M.A. means A Million Accepted, I hope you will be able to write it once a year till you can build churches, school-houses and colleges all through the South, but not enough to take away from the churches of the North and East the privilege of helping the poor and needy till they are able to take care of themselves."