The American Missionary - Volume 49, No. 4, April, 1895

Excerpt

THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY

Our debt is large, but we rejoice to say that during the last three months it has been slowly diminishing. It reached its highest point November 30—$82,425.58. December 31 it was $82,032.07; January 31, $79,502.77; February 28, $76,431.49. The cause of this decrease varies in the different months. Sometimes the legacies are in advance, and sometimes the donations. The expenses have been largely reduced in all departments.

While these figures are somewhat encouraging, yet the size of the debt is ominous. The winter months, usually most fruitful in collections, have passed away, and the time for the annual appropriations is near at hand. Unless the debt can be greatly reduced, the cutting down of the appropriations for the next year must be disastrous to this great work. We do not lose our trust in God, nor our hope that the friends of these ignorant and yet struggling people will not suffer the work to be seriously hindered. We respectfully invoke pastors to secure for us as liberal contributions as possible, and we ask individual donors to remember the work with special gifts.

DEATH OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

The unexpected and sudden death of Mr. Douglass has awakened a sense of profound sympathy never before expressed toward a person identified with the negro race, and seldom toward one of the white race. We are not surprised at the manifestations of profound respect and sorrow of the colored people, and we rejoice, too, that the white race has shown almost equal regard for his memory, by their attendance when he lay in state in Washington, and when his body was interred in Rochester. The press has voiced the sentiment of the nation in the full and eulogistic notices of his life. Frederick Douglass deserved it all.

No man, perhaps, in this country has broken through so heavy a crust of ignorance, poverty and race prejudice as was done by this boy born on a slave plantation, stealing his education, fleeing from his slave home and then achieving for himself a rank among the foremost men of the nation in intelligence, eloquence and of personal influence in the great anti-slavery struggle of this country. He has achieved honors in the public service of the nation, and has faithfully and honorably fulfilled every trust laid upon him.

Mr. Douglass is among the last survivors of that band of Abolitionists that were so potent in their influence in arousing the nation to the evils of slavery. The recent death of Theodore D. Weld, in his ninety-first year, recalls a name now almost forgotten, but that two generations ago indicated the foremost orator in the anti-slavery ranks. The poet of anti-slavery, Whittier, has gone recently, and now the most conspicuous name left of that noble band is that of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The American Missionary Association has reason to congratulate itself that its last annual meeting was made memorable by the presence of Mr. Douglass, and its vast audience stirred most deeply by his eloquent address....