The American Missionary - Volume 44, No. 10, October, 1890

Excerpt

Editorial

ANNUAL MEETING.

The next annual meeting of the American Missionary Association will be held in Northampton, Mass., in the Edwards Church, commencing at three o'clock Tuesday afternoon, October 21st. Rev. Frank W. Gunsaulus, D.D., of Chicago, Ill., will preach the sermon. On the last page of the cover will be found directions as to membership and other items of interest. Fuller details regarding the reception of delegates and their entertainment, together with rates at hotels and railroad reductions, will be given in the religious press. A meeting of unusual interest is expected, and we hope our friends will be present in full attendance.

For notice of Woman's Meeting, see page 318.

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The holding of our Annual Meeting in Northampton will call up some very remarkable associations. Northampton was the home of Jonathan Edwards, who was not only the eloquent preacher and profound theologian, but the missionary to the neighboring Stockbridge Indians. It was also the home of his son-in-law, David Brainerd, who was the typical self-denying martyr-missionary to the Indians in New Jersey. It was the home of the Tappan family, two of whose sons, Arthur and Lewis, were among the early founders and most valued friends of this Association. In June, 1848, the Tappan family held a joyous family reunion in Northampton, continuing for a week.

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Frederick Douglass is hopeful. In a recent address he says: "A great change has taken place among the colored race—vast and wonderful has it been. It seems as if we had realized the vision of St. John when he saw a new heaven and a new earth. But the change has come at last. The time has come when we can look our fellow-citizens in the face and share in the glory of the country."

No man has a better right to say this than he, for his life has touched the degraded condition of the slave and the exalted position of an Embassador of this great Republic. He adds: "Some talk of exterminating our race, and others say we will soon die out, but I tell you both are impossible. If slavery could not kill us, liberty won't." Liberty ought to do more than save them alive. It ought to educate, elevate and Christianize them.

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The Independent quotes from Dr. Mayo's address before the American Social Science Association on "The Third Estate," in which the Doctor, refers to the strange population of the great Southern mountain world—nearly two millions at present—as a body of people that sends forth a louder cry for the missionary of modern civilization than any other portion of the Republic, and adds:

"What is also said by the Unitarian, Dr. Mayo, of the need of missionary work for this class of the Southern whites, calls for an emphasis even stronger than we could put on any political conclusion. We pass this patriotic appeal along to those who have the wealth that is seeking a worthy object on which to expend itself. There are missionary societies whose business it is to do this. For the Congregationalista, the American Missionary Association will for a very moderate amount establish a church and an academy in any one of a hundred counties inhabited by these people, and what a man with a million dollars to expend could do we hardly dare to say....