American Missionary Association.

The thirty-seventh Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association will be held in the Central Congregational Church, Brooklyn, New York (Dr. A. J. F. Behrends’), commencing Tuesday, October 30, at 3 o’clock P.M. Rev. J. L. Withrow, D.D., of Boston, will preach the sermon. Other addresses and papers, and also arrangements relating to the meeting, will be announced hereafter.

We give in this number of the Missionary additional reports of eight of our educational institutions, and also a cut of the college buildings of Atlanta University. The new Stone hall, which is the centre building, is 124 feet in length, three stories high, with a basement, and contains president’s and treasurer’s offices, class rooms, Graves library room, chapel, which will seat comfortably 400, besides lecture rooms, dormitory room, etc., etc.

VACATION DAYS.

By the time this issue of the Missionary reaches our readers, a large number of those in the service of this Association will be enjoying a season of needed rest. As the climate South is enervating to those who have been raised at the North, it is essential that our missionaries working in that portion of the country return every year or two to their former homes and associations for recuperation and courage for future work. Many of them need also contact with Northern society to refresh their hearts and minds, and to gain a stimulus not imparted by the circle of acquaintances found on the Southern field. These visits North afford opportunities for our workers to make known the wants of the people with whom they labor, and to show the deep interest they take in their welfare, and the sacrifices they are willing to make in their behalf. The return of a missionary to the church from which he or she went forth, often gives a spiritual uplift to the whole congregation. We are happy to recognize the willingness manifested by pastors, by Sabbath-schools and by local missionary societies, to afford these returned missionaries the privilege of explaining the needs of their work and of enlisting a deeper sympathy for it. We wish, however, to make it known that these missionaries greatly appreciate kindly attention. Many of them have felt the want of it on the Southern field, and sometimes on their return after protracted absence receive it with glad surprise. We are sure that if those with whom they meet will be forward to express their pleasure in seeing them and their interest in their sacrifices and success, they will find that the little effort put forth to give cheer will go a long ways in strengthening the heart, and adding to the ability of the missionary to do more valiantly the work of Christian patriotism in which he is engaged. Invitations to literary and social circles, as well as to more strictly religious meetings, will almost always be grateful to the tired worker, and we are very sure that the information, the unconscious influence, imparted by the missionary, as well as the satisfaction in having done a good and kindly service, will amply repay for any effort Christian friends may make to render the missionary’s vacation agreeable and profitable.

CONGREGATIONALISM SOUTH.

RY REV. J. E. ROY, D.D.

When the American Missionary Association went “down toward the South,” Congregationalism was hated by the ruling class, as coming from the hot-bed of New Englandism, and was absolutely unknown among the people to whom the Northern evangelism then had access, and even on their part, as a system, it had yet to encounter the densest opposition which ignorance, superstition and sectarianism could combine. And when, like John the Baptist, it laid the ax at the root of the tree, demanding morality as well as pietism, it confronted the momentum of generations of pagan vice confirmed by the indurations of the system of slavery. In order to get any foothold on this basis, it has to begin with the spelling-book, as the key to the incarcerated Bible. But the hunger for letters, for ideas, forced a way into the word of God. Schools followed the army across the Southland. Revivals, like the Northern clover, sprang up in the same track. Every teacher, by his or her vow, entered into with the A. M. A., became a missionary.

Talk about women’s work for women. Here, for a score of years, have been from 150 to 200 gifted consecrated women, of whom the world was not worthy, sacrificing youth and beauty, going for a time into places where men could not stand, with their names cast out as vile, yet lifting up their lowly sisters and starting scores and scores of young men on into a religious life and into the ministry of the Lord Jesus. As converts multiplied, many of them took to the old churches, and not a few desired to have the way which their dear teachers represented. And so, gradually there came on these churches, each one a miniature republic, and each, in almost every case, an outcome of the school process.

In that early time, not a few of the best tried friends of the Association grew uneasy at the slow progress of the church work, only in late years to admire the wisdom of the administration in not picking the pear before it was ripe. The M. E. church going South had only to open its doors to receive 200,000 of the old-time Methodists, with their clinging immoralities and their corrupting ministers. Grandly has that patriotic church wrestled with its problem. But ours has been a call to a different task.

In five years after the close of the war, besides the three John G. Fee churches in Kentucky, which had flung themselves upon the serried ranks of the slaveholders, compelling a vast region to behold what sort of stuff this Puritanism was made of, the Association numbered eleven churches among the sable brethren, whose teachers and preachers usually joined with them in fellowship. In ten years these had come to number forty. And now, eighteen years after the war, the total is eighty-nine, an average of five for each year. Nor are these merely nominal or skeleton churches. Their average membership is sixty-five, while that of all our churches west of the Mississippi is thirty-five. Nearly every one has its own place of worship and its own pastor. Their own ministers have had to be grown, converted and trained up from the alphabet, while multitudes have been prepared in our schools for service in the old-time churches, the small number that we have taken (a half hundred, besides several foreign missionaries) serving only as the toll for grinding the grists. A high wisdom was that which was displayed by the early workers in seizing upon the strategic points, so that one can now hardly go to a principal city of the South without finding there a fully-working Congregational church, such as those at Washington, Hampton, Charleston, Raleigh, Savannah, Macon, Atlanta, Mobile, Montgomery, Birmingham, Meridian, Jackson, New Orleans, Austin, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Louisville. So it seems that this work has gone on in every State of the South, for in Florida, which might seem an exception, the noted church at Jacksonville was organized by one of the actuaries of the A. M. A., and nourished by another. Nor have these churches been left to the weakness of an isolated independence. For the better training of them, and for the consolidating of their strength, they have been organized into regular State associations, which have sought to introduce the methods of the North, which in their varied services often come to an intellectual and spiritual glow that astonishes us, and which come to a consciousness of their national fellowship when they each elect their delegates to the annual meeting of the A. M. A., and to the National Council, one of their own members having served at the last triennial as an assistant moderator. These State bodies now number eight, which nearly cover the whole South. So, then, the physical geography of the land is quite well mapped out, Congregationally. There remains much space for filling.

No view of the Congregationalism taken into the South by the A. M. A. will be complete without considering the pervasive influence of all of these churches and institutions of learning, that have come to be a power universally recognized. Almost every member going forth from them is, in some sense, a representative of the Congregational idea, though he does not himself take the name. In all the South, among the whites as well as the blacks, these principles have been made known, so that the way, in great part, is prepared for carrying on there a spiritual propagandism that shall yet recognize the essential feature of this past dispensation, which, at the North, has been up-borne by sympathy and prayer, the consecration of substance and the offering of sons and daughters, and which, at the South, has bravely stood, this score of years, for this sublime act and testimony, in sacrifice enduring hardness, ostracism and scorn, viz., the features of the brotherhood of man in Christ Jesus, the real unity of all Christian believers, irrespective of race, color, or social condition.

The Congregationalist.

GENERAL NOTES.

AFRICA.

—The French government will shortly submit to the Chamber a project for the construction of a railroad from Soukarras to Tebessa.

—Dr. Schweinfurth will soon come to Halle to confer with Dr. Riebeck upon the results of their exploration of Sokotora.

—The English missionaries sent to reinforce the station of Roubaga have all been detained by the fever at Msalala to the south of Victoria Nyanza.

—P. Livinhac, who for five years has directed the station of Roubaga, has been appointed apostolic vicar of Victoria Nyanza.

—According to a communication from Rohlfs to the Geographical Society of Berlin, Dr. Stecker has vainly attempted to traverse the Gallas country and will return to Europe.

—Mr. Herisson has reported from his new archæological exploration in Tunis, two grand mosaics from Carthage, the most beautiful that have as yet been found in Africa.

—Hicks Pasha has defeated over 5,000 Arabs in the Soudan, killing 500. The Arabs fight bravely, but their spears are useless against shells and cannon. The Egyptian loss was two killed.

—Captain Casati has traversed the country of the Niams-Niams, following several routes not frequented as yet by European travelers. He has encountered great dangers, was detained a prisoner for two months in the house of Prince Azanga, and only rescued himself from his captivity by flight.

—The Wesleyan missions on the West Coast of Africa in Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, Yomba, Popo and Gambia have contributed about $150,000 in the last ten years. The number in church fellowship is 15,044; in attendance on public worship, 53,474.

THE INDIANS.

—The Indian School at Carlisle has 137 acres of wheat, from which about 600 barrels of flour will be made for the use of the boarding department.

—There are Indian girls in the Indian Territory University who are studying German, French, Latin, and Greek, geology, moral philosophy, political economy and other branches of the College course.

—The Indian Mission of the Methodists in the Indian Territory is organized into a conference with four presiding elder’s districts and twenty-nine pastoral charges. There are 112 local preachers, 1,100 white members, 30 colored members, 5,107 Indian members, 58 Sunday Schools with 1,602 scholars.

—The Presbyterians have arranged to establish next September a boarding school among the Creek Indians where they have never been reached by Christian influences.

—The capacity of Indian children for learning English is shown by the fact that at Carlisle quite a number who came in August without knowing the language were able to converse in it the next May.

—It is said that the Indians of Alaska do not belong to the same race as the North American Indians, but they are probably an offshoot from Japanese Coreans. The missionaries who have been laboring among them say that in many respects their conceptions of moral law are better than those of civilized nations.

THE CHINESE.

—There are Chinese Baptist churches in Guiana, South America.

—The English Presbyterian Synod Missionary Society, having its field of labor principally in China, reported for last year an income of $425,000.

—The Trinity Baptist Church of New York has twelve Chinamen among its members. At the baptism of J. Sing recently, some twenty other Chinamen were present. One of these converts, Kun Sing, is about to go as a missionary to his countrymen in Canton, China.

—A number of Japanese have prepared a formal paper, asking that in the work of translating the Old Testament the Japanese Christians may be represented by a committee of their own countrymen, selected by themselves.

—The Stockton (Cal.) Herald gives the following account of a Chinese bride: The other afternoon a strange procession of hacks, with gay colors flying, with a scent of burning spices about them, drew up at the shed of the California Steam Navigation Company, where the steamer Mary Garratt was loading. In the first hack was a lone female, with her head in a bundle of bright-colored Chinese silk, which concealed every feature. Behind was another hack, in which several Chinese boys rode, each carrying a burning taper. Then came two more hacks, each filled with Chinese women. All alighted at the wharf, and the hooded woman was assisted out and led on board the steamer, her course being conducted by the boys with the lighted tapers and the women. The woman was so closely veiled as to be practically blindfolded. Then it was ascertained that she was a daughter of “Sonora George,” and was going to Bedouin Island to be married.

BENEFACTIONS.

Mr. Deering has given $50,000 to the Northwestern University of the Methodists at Evanston, Illinois.

Mr. John C. Phillips has given $25,000 for the further endowment of Phillips Exeter Academy.

Wm. H. Vanderbilt has added $100,000 to the endowment fund of Vanderbilt University.

Lafayette College has received from Mr. T. W. McWilliams of New York a contribution of $10,000 toward the endowment of the March Chair of Philology.

Mr. J. H. Cassedy of Thiells, N.Y., has given $5,000 to Talladega College for a model school building, to bear his name.

Miss Susie Bartlett of Oshkosh, Wis. has given $500 to Beloit College for the purchase of scientific books.

By the will of Amasa Stone, Adelbert College is to receive $100,000 in addition to the half million given during his lifetime.

The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, N.Y. has received from Mrs. Wm. Howard Harts, as a memorial of her late husband, $60,000 to endow a professorship to bear his name.

Mrs. Dr. Griffin of Troy, N.Y., a former preceptress at Cazenovia Seminary, has given $5,000 to that institution.

Oberlin College has received $5,000 from Miss Sturges of Mansfield, Ohio, for a new building for the use of ladies’ societies, to be called Sturges Hall.

By the will of Lucy O. Bowditch, late of Boston, a bequest of $5,000 is made to the industrial school for girls, at Dorchester, to be added to the permanent fund, the income to be applied to paying the expenses of the school.

Endowments for the Christian education of the coming generations are the best bulwarks of our free institutions.