We have found, too, that when a church was thus organized where we have no school, we are very soon importuned to start one. In localities with a scattered population there might not be sufficient public funds to open a colored public school; in many more places they would sustain the school for only two months in the year, and in larger towns it sometimes has happened that these public schools were of such a character that the parents begged for a Christian school as a means of saving the moral purity of their children. Thus, in every way, and under all circumstances, the school and the church need and help each other. And what is true of the colored people is equally true of the whites in the mountains and elsewhere, among whom the Association is working so auspiciously, planting its schools and churches in mutual helpfulness.
The suggestion that all the church work of the denomination in the home-field be given to one society, and all the educational be concentrated in one other society, deserves thoughtful consideration, for it meets with this very serious objection, that it provides for but one collection for work that now receives two or three. The experience of our churches is conclusive against the hope that one enlarged collection would be given to the one society. For a time, a brief time, spasmodic efforts might, as in former cases, result in some special contributions, but the new experiment would certainly be more disastrous, if it should fail, than those already tried, because it would involve far greater interests.
It is not to be supposed for a moment that such consolidation is contemplated in order that the churches may escape the large responsibility now resting upon them; and if economy and efficiency are the only objects sought, we fear the result would be disappointing. Such an arrangement would not save in the number of workers in the field, and surely it is not wise business management to leave great interests inadequately supervised. Even if the consolidated society were divided into separate departments or bureaux, the supervision could not be less, if efficient, while the combination would be likely to lead to complications, and would weaken, in the several departments, the sense of individual responsibility and take away the impulse of historic life and achievement.
More work well managed and vigorously pushed seems to me to be the only plan that will satisfy the Christian conscience or meet the approval of the Master.
3. The work of the Association extends to all races of men. This claim is sanctioned by the fraternal agreement existing between it and the American Home Missionary Society, by its own history, and by the needs of the field. The agreement with the sister society says explicitly that the Association is "to pursue its educational and church work in the South among both races." The history of the Association shows that at the beginning the populations reached by it in America were all white except the Indians and a few colored refugees in Canada.
Its home missions at the North and West were among white people: and so were they even in the South before the war. John G. Fee and his heroic associates in Kentucky, and Daniel Worth and others in North Carolina, founded churches and schools only among the whites. Berea College was for whites only, at the outset. It was not till the era of emancipation with its overwhelming flood of freedmen that the Association turned its direct and almost exclusive attention to them. It heard the voice of God in the tramp of these millions marching out of bondage into freedom, and in that voice it heard the call to itself, providentially prepared for the new era. It answered the call, without, however, abandoning its mission to preach the gospel to the whites also; and now, with its schools and churches well established throughout the South, with an open door to the whites, and especially to those in the mountain regions, it hears the voice of God calling it thither. The ready adaptation of its methods to these people, and the success of its efforts among them, attest the validity of its call and the wisdom of its response.
4. The work of the Association is not a transient one. A New England pastor at the beginning of our work for the freedmen, gave me a hearty welcome to present our cause in his pulpit, telling me frankly he did so the more cheerfully because he thought our work would soon be over—say in twenty or twenty-five years. Now that good man believed that home missions in the West, and in some of the older Eastern States, would be needed well nigh on to the millennium, yet he imagined that the blacks, just escaped from bondage, utterly poor, ignorant and degraded, would (perhaps he hardly stopped to think how) rise in twenty-five years above all need of help from any quarter in their upward struggle! But the fallacy of such a supposition is realized more since these twenty-five years have passed than it was then. It is now clearly seen that these ex-slaves will require for three or four generations the most abundant help to bring them up to the level of those Western settlers, including the Swedes, Germans and Norwegians crowding in thither, who are comparatively well-off and intelligent. And then, after that preparation of the Negro has been made, the regular work of home missions will only be fairly begun among them. The work for this people, therefore, is not transient, and the missionary society that has it in hand has before it not only a great but long-continued task.
And for that great work the Association has had a manifest call and preparation, and has gained an experience and an influence of peculiar value in its further prosecution. The Association has wrought itself into the schools and churches, into the industries of the colored people, the improvement of their homes, the preparation of their sons and daughters for home and business life, and for teachers and preachers and physicians; it has wrought itself into their better aspirations for both this world and that which is to come. It has won upon the confidence and respect of the white people by its unselfish and Christian work, its kind but firm adherence to principle, and by the blessing it has conferred upon both races in aiding the South in the only true solution of its great problem.
The Association has become anchored to this great work by the large amount of invested funds intrusted to its care. It has received thousands of dollars from the Freedmen's Bureau, from the Avery estate, from the gifts of Mrs. Stone and others, and added to all these is the large sum placed one year ago in its hands by the munificence of Mr. Hand. These several sums aggregate more than two millions of dollars—an amount of endowment, we believe, without a parallel among our Congregational societies for the home field. While no inconsiderable share of these funds is in plant, and therefore increases instead of diminishes current expenses, yet the Association is the only legal custodian of these funds. They constitute, therefore, a strong evidence of the confidence of large donors in its usefulness and stability and in the importance of its work, and at the same time they make a strong plea for current contributions to sustain that work. God has moved the hearts of noble men and women to lay these firm foundations. Will not others equally able and far-seeing in their benevolence add to these gifts and thus extend these foundations, and will not the churches build thereon with diligent and cheerful hands?
These forty-three years under review have been memorable in the history of this Nation. They have witnessed the reign of slavery in the height of its arrogant domination. They have seen the rising protest of conscience and religion against that domination, with the mad resistance of slavery, until it culminated in one of the bloodiest wars of modern times. They have beheld a united Nation emerge from the conflict, and not a slave in all its broad land. They have seen the uplifted hands and hearts of the freedmen grasping for knowledge. And, last of all, they behold the new power seated on the throne vacated by slavery, dooming the colored man to a position of inferiority scarcely less degrading than slavery itself.
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