THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

Vol. XLII. May, 1888. No. 5.

American Missionary Association.

Six months of our fiscal year have come to a close. It may be of interest to our readers to know how our treasury compares with the same period of time last year. During this half-year, there has been an increase in collections of $6,250.73, a decrease in the amount paid in from estates and legacies of $2,880.05, making a balance in the total receipts, of $3,370.68 in advance of those of the preceding year for the corresponding period.

This, however, does not mean that we are in advance of our expenditures. All life predicates growth. When there is no growth, the body has begun to die. Those who will read the able paper of Dr. Bradford in this magazine, will doubtless conclude with him, that the imperative demand is for increased life, and for multiplied efforts to save those to whom Providence has manifestly called us. The natural and necessary growth of life has been upon us. While we have cut and trimmed and pinched with an economy that the most careful might think an unwise policy, there has yet been growth. Success necessitates development. Good schools will enlarge. One church creates another. One foothold secured in a missionary region opens districts to many who swell the cry of need to the heart of Christian compassion "come over and help us," so that with all our pruning the work has grown beyond the slight increase of funds from our churches.

We ought to push our work. Ignorant millions need the truth which we have. They need the knowledge which we have. They need salvation, and if we have it and have the spirit of Christ's compassion, we will see that they are not left in darkness. There is enough and to spare in the hands of the disciples of Christ for this vast and increasingly urgent work. "Why," says George W. Cable, "if you knew the national value of this work, to say nothing of its gospel value, you would quadruplicate it before the year is out," He calls it "the most prolific missionary field that was ever opened to any Christian people," "right here at your doors."

While then we have the right to thank God and his people, and reason to take courage, we should be false to the churches and to ourselves should we fail to accentuate the necessities of our work, and the demand upon those in whose name we stand. Brethren, is not ours the appeal of Christ to you for his neglected and his needy ones? Bring your thank offerings to God and make enlargement for this enlarging work.

We are thankful for our receipts from legacies. They are testimonies that speak, from those whose lips are sealed in death, for the gospel of Christ and its elevating and saving power when it is applied to the low-down and the poor and the wronged. In these legacies, those who are dead yet speak the word of life to those whom they have remembered.

Our work, however, should be planned, not upon the uncertainties of legacies, but upon the ability and faith of those who live and give. It cheers us to know that our living donors are increasing and are entering with us the doors of opportunity which God has so manifestly opened and which no man can shut.

We congratulate the American Home Missionary Society that it closes its year, not having realized its fears even if it has not absolutely compassed all its hopes. We are grateful, for its success. Our congratulations also are hearty that our great Foreign Missionary Society, the A.B.C.F.M., reports itself at the end of its fiscal half-year $78,000 in advance of what was received for the same period last year.

But do not forget the great work which the churches have put upon us. See nearly eight millions who went from barbarism into slavery, and from slavery came out the poorest of the poor, the most ignorant of the ignorant, the most dependent of the dependent, without true religion and with no opportunity to know what true religion is unless we tell them. Africa is in America, China is in America, the barbarous heathen Indian is in America, and two millions of white people in the mountain region in four hundred counties, where ignorance is solid, are in America. These all look to the American Missionary Association. Will it not be our turn next to receive from the churches their increasing Godspeed on this work in such measure that we may carry the truth and the life to those who ought to have it.

The Connecticut Normal Industrial School previous to the brief spring vacation was visited by many northern friends at Thomasville, Ga., upon the occasion of its closing exercises. The Thomasville Times calls sympathetic attention to the work and adds "That the boys and girls are being carefully taught and trained will be apparent to any one who will go to the Institution and see its workings. The attendance has averaged over two hundred." Thomasville is not far removed from Quitman geographically but, in point of intelligent regard for its own interests and the interests of the Negro, the distance is incalculable. As Joseph said to his brethren, we can say to the school incendiaries of Quitman, "Ye meant it for evil but the Lord meant it for good."

An attractive and interesting four-paged weekly journal called the Chinese Evangelist comes to us. It is the first number of a curiosity in the way of a newspaper, being printed half in the English and half in the Chinese language. Its editor is Mr. J.S. Harper, son of Rev. A.F. Harper, of Canton College, and the manager is Guy Maine, a Christian Chinaman and member of the Broadway Tabernacle Church. The address of the editor is No. 117 West 87th St., New York, and of the manager, No. 15 University Place. It is intended for all workers in Chinese Sunday-schools, and every teacher of Chinese Sunday-school scholars would do well to send a dollar and secure this invaluable aid for a year. Its column of items is named "Tea Leaves." We would suggest that the motto for this bright little paper be "Tu doces."

THE VERNACULAR IN INDIAN SCHOOLS.

BY SECRETARY STRIKEY.

This question is not settled. One thing that has kept it unsettled has been the uncertain use of the term "missionary schools" in the Orders of the Indian Department. What is precisely a missionary school? Let me try to explain. There are three kinds of schools in the nomenclature of the Indian Office, based on the sources of their support.

1. Government Schools, supported wholly by Government appropriations—such as those at Carlisle, Genoa, etc. These may be left out of the account in this discussion, for no one objects to the Government's directing the studies in them.

2. Contract Schools, so called because the missionary societies which sustain them receive under contract with the Government a certain amount of money in aid of their support. The school at Santee, Nebraska, and the school at Yankton, Dakota, are specimens of this class. But these are mission schools, for the societies which support them would not continue to do so for a day except for their missionary character; and yet these schools are classed by the Department not as missionary but as contract schools.

3. Missionary Schools, which are supported wholly by missionary funds, the Government contributing nothing. Here, again, in the recent order, the Department employs the confusing use of terms, speaking in general terms of "missionary schools," and then of missionary schools under the charge of "native Indian teachers," and at remote points; the inference being that the white teacher of a missionary school, though it may be in a place so remote that neither the pupils nor the people can understand the English language, cannot teach in the vernacular.

With these explanations we present, under date of Feb. 11, 1888,

THE LATEST ORDERS OF THE DEPARTMENT.

1. No text-books in the vernacular will be allowed in any school where children are placed under contract or where the Government contributes, in any manner whatever, to the support of the school; no oral instruction in the vernacular will be allowed at such schools. The entire curriculum must be in the English language.

2. The vernacular may be used in missionary schools only for oral instruction in morals and religion, where it is deemed to be an auxiliary to the English language in conveying such instruction; and only native Indian teachers will be permitted to otherwise teach in any Indian vernacular; and these native teachers will only be allowed so to teach in schools not supported in whole or in part by the Government and at remote points, where there are no Government or contract schools where the English language is taught. These native teachers are only allowed to teach in the vernacular with a view of reaching those Indians who cannot have the advantage of instruction in English, and such instruction must give way to the English-teaching schools as soon as they are established where the Indians can have access to them.

3. A limited theological class of Indian young men may be trained in the vernacular at any purely missionary school, supported exclusively by missionary societies, the object being to prepare them for the ministry, whose subsequent work shall be confined to preaching unless they are employed as teachers in remote settlements, where English schools are inaccessible.

4. These rules are not intended to prevent the possession or use by any Indian of the Bible published in the vernacular, but such possession or use shall not interfere with the teaching of the English language to the extent and in the manner hereinbefore directed.

The gravamen of the objections urged in all this controversy is that the Government has no right to interfere with these mission schools; in the first place, in excluding all use of the vernacular in contract schools, even for religious instruction, and in the next place, in controlling the studies of the mission schools supported wholly by missionary money and in excluding white teachers from vernacular schools. The missionary societies have found by long experience that these mission schools in which the vernacular is taught, especially in remote places, are the most effective, and in many cases the only modes by which the people can be reached by the Gospel. The pupils are taught to read the Bible and it is carried by them to their homes. Now we ask, is it the function of the Government of the United States to dictate in matters so purely religious and to override the Christian churches in the choice of their most approved methods of disseminating the Gospel?

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S LETTER.

The President, under date of March 29, 1888, in response to some resolutions adopted by the Philadelphia M.E. Conference, writes a letter on this subject, which deserves careful and candid consideration, both for what it concedes and for what it does not concede. We present the portion of the letter bearing upon the points at issue.

"Secular teaching is the object of the ordinary Government schools, but surely there can be no objection to reading a chapter in the Bible in English, or in Dakota if English could not be understood, at the daily opening of those schools, as is done in very many other well-regulated secular schools. It may be, too, that the use of words in the vernacular may be sometimes necessary to aid in communicating a knowledge of the English language, but the use of the vernacular should not be encouraged or continued beyond the limit of such necessity, and the "text books," the "oral instruction" in a general sense, and the curriculum certainly should be in English. In missionary schools moral and religious instruction may be given in the vernacular as an auxiliary to English in conveying such instruction. Here, while the desirability of some instruction in morals and religion is recognized, the extreme value of learning the English language is not lost sight of. And the provision which follows, that only native teachers shall "otherwise" (that is, except for moral or religious instruction) teach the vernacular, and only in remote places and until Government or contract schools are established, is in exact keeping with the purpose of the Government to exclude the Indian languages from the schools as far as is consistent with a due regard for the continuance of moral and religious teaching in the missionary schools, and except in such cases as the exclusion would result in the entire neglect of secular or other instruction."

On this letter let me remark:

1. That it concedes what has not heretofore been granted, the reading of the Bible in the vernacular in contract schools and its use in explaining the English. We accept this concession with gratification.

2. But it makes no concession whatever (beyond that made in the order of the Commissioner) in regard to the use of the vernacular in schools supported wholly by missionary funds, or in the employment of white teachers in vernacular schools in remote districts. Until concessions are made on these points, the controversy will go forward.

The aim of the Government is expedient, in trying to secure ultimately the use of the English language among the Indians. The aim of the missionary societies is to fulfil an imperative duty, in trying to reach the Indians with the Gospel in the most effective methods. There should be mutual respect for these aims; the Government should yield to the conscientious conviction of the missionary societies as to methods for giving religious instruction, and the missionary societies should co-operate with the Government in introducing the English language as rapidly as possible consistently with their higher aim. I venture to suggest an outline of Regulations that would probably attain both these objects and meet other objections to the ruling of the Department that are not removed by the President's letter.

DETAILS OF PROPOSED REGULATIONS.

1. No text-books in the vernacular will be allowed in any Government school, supported wholly by the Government; no oral instruction in the vernacular will be allowed at such schools. The entire curriculum must be in the English language.

2. In contract schools supported in part by missionary societies, the vernacular may be used only for the reading of the Sacred Scriptures, and for oral instruction in morals and religion and where it is deemed to be an auxiliary to the English language in conveying such instruction.

3. In all "missionary schools" supported entirely by missionary or benevolent funds, no restrictions will be put upon the use of the vernacular, with the understanding, however, that the English language shall be introduced as rapidly as those conducting these schools shall deem compatible with the higher aim—religious teaching; and that when these schools shall be prepared to use the English language wholly, the Department will give them a place on the list of contract schools rather than to establish others in their stead. If new mission schools are established they must be so located as not to interfere with existing Government or contract schools.

4. That any religious denomination shall, at its discretion and entirely at its own cost, be allowed to conduct special classes in the vernacular for the training of teachers and preachers. As it is desirable that those teachers and preachers should be taught in English studies as well as in the vernacular, these classes may be conducted in connection with contract schools, yet so as not to interfere in any way with the regular curriculum in the English language.

"Ramona Days," is the title of a neatly printed pamphlet of forty-three pages, being the January number of a quarterly, published by the Indian Department of the University of New Mexico. This Indian school is named in honor of Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson, who has rendered such valuable services to the Indians in setting forth in thrilling terms their wrongs, and in pleading so pathetically for their rights. The Ramona school is under the efficient supervision of Pres. H.O. Ladd, and is aided in part by the American Missionary Association.

The pamphlet is not a catalogue of the school, but contains a variety of interesting matter on Indian affairs, the titles of some of the articles being; "Wiser Methods," "Famous Apache Chiefs," "Treaty Obligations to the Navajoes," "A Recent Movement Toward Indian Civilization," "Ramona Memorial," etc., etc. There are also letters from the teachers, and two cuts, one representing the proposed Memorial Building, Ramona. Mr. Ladd's work lies largely among that remarkably promising race of Indians, the Apaches, and those who wish to know more about them would do well to have the pamphlet. It can be had by addressing Rev. H.O. Ladd, Santa Fe, New Mexico; subscription price, 50 cents for the four numbers.

THE TIME FACTOR IN THE SOUTHERN PROBLEM.

BY REV. A.H. BRADFORD, D.D.

The supreme question in English politics is the unity of the empire. The problem of the mother country is, How may the scattered colonies be joined in one body whose heart shall be London? All the other questions of the island-empire are but parts of this. This in turn is forced into prominence by the under-current of the world's aspiration for larger liberty. "The world no longer for the few, but for the many," is the watchword of an increasing number in all the nations. How to maintain the manhood of her subjects, and yet not to force the dismemberment of the empire, is the question uppermost in old England.

With us, the problem is not one of scattered colonies but of divergent people. There is in the United States the double problem of how to consolidate and preserve the interests of a nation with a long area north and south, and with the most diverse elements of population ever gathered under one flag. This is complicated by other factors. Our study is confined to those which touch what is known as the Southern question. The problems of English and American political and religious life are identical in that both are inspired by the watchword of the rising multitudes, "The world for the many."

The Southern problem is but part of the larger one of area and races. Consider a few facts. The South is peopled chiefly by two classes, native whites and native blacks. Both whites and blacks are there to remain. More whites leave the South than blacks, and the population is increasing. Emigration avoids the States chiefly inhabited by blacks. It is not probable that the exodus of whites will be very great. The population of the future will probably be of the same classes, although the proportion is rapidly changing. Native whites and native blacks, unless signs fail, will possess the land.

The Negro race is appallingly fertile. It shows no sign of decadence. It is multiplying faster than any other. The number of blacks in the United States has risen from four millions to nearly eight millions since the war. That has been entirely by natural reproduction. The increase of whites during the decade from 1870 to 1880 was twenty-nine per cent.; of blacks thirty-five per cent. If, now, we allow nine per cent. for the increase of the whites by immigration, we find that the increase of blacks over the whites by natural order is about fourteen per cent. Here, then, is a simple problem in arithmetic. If the blacks increase on an average fourteen per cent. faster than the whites, and to the South there is little immigration, how long will it be before the blacks preponderate? They will go neither to Africa, to Mexico, nor to the West Indies. They are here to stay. They are multiplying faster than their white neighbors. They are growing in consciousness of power faster than in intelligence. What is the sure result of conscious but blind power? The story of Samson answers. The problem is the new-birth of a rapidly increasing race. How long it will take may possibly be imagined from the questions which follow.

I. How long will it require for race-prejudices to go? I put that question to an intelligent colored man who had been a slave. His answer was, "Until the present generation is dead."

The conflict between classes in the South will last until they recognize that they have an identity of interests, or that they are brethren. Prejudice is neither dead nor fast dying. There is a change in the cities, but it does not reach far inland. In how many Southern States are the same privileges extended to both races in schools? in cars? in hotels? in churches? This prejudice is in the blood. Heredity and training have both fostered it. Race prejudices die slowly. For centuries the contest between Patrician and Plebeian was carried on in ancient Rome. The subject-class never affiliated with the master-class. Two or three hundred years ago a new people was introduced into the north of Ireland. The north is essentially Scottish. Its inhabitants are Protestant and phlegmatic. In the south, the religion is Romanist, and the people are mercurial. They are of the same color. They have had the same history for centuries. For nearly five hundred years, the Turk has been a disturbing factor in Europe. The Turk is Asiatic. He is surrounded by European life. How rapidly has the antipathy between races disappeared where the Turk has power? The race-lines are as distinct as if the waters of a white river and a black ran in the same channel. The Hebrews are found in all parts of the world. They are industrious, and as decent as the average man; they mingle with other people, and yet almost everywhere the prejudice against them is constant and bitter. How long before Protestant Orangemen and Catholic Irishmen will walk arm and arm in the same procession? How long before the German and Russian and Englishman will recognize the Jew as a brother? In the South, the antipathy is between black and white, between a master-class and a subject-class, between oppressed and oppressor. How long before this prejudice will disappear?

II. How much time will be required for the consciousness of having been wronged to wear from the breast and the blood of the black man? This consciousness of having been wronged is not a race-prejudice, and yet it may become one. It is hard to eradicate. It is aggravated when the same feelings are in many hearts. This is a complicated factor. Some of the blacks seem incapable of sentiments of revenge. They are too lighthearted to cherish grievances. But all are not so. The pure blacks who carry with them the consciousness of having been deeply injured, are many. What will you say of the mulattoes? A man who knows his father, and knows that his father ignores his existence, may keep it to himself, but he cannot smother his feeling. He who sees his brothers and sisters pass him on the street in carriages, living in comfort and honor, while he is poor, and nothing to them, will, in proportion as he is a man, hate the social order in which they live. Until this consciousness of having been injured and degraded vanishes, the Southern question will disturb political and social life.

III. Closely allied to the consciousness of degradation is the lack of manly feeling. Appreciation of manhood is a condition of improvement. He who thinks himself only an animal will live like one. Does this condition exist at the South? It could not be otherwise. Any one who has travelled there must have his faith in the evolution of some men from the lower animals immeasurably strengthened. Rev. Dr. Taylor, of New York, has said that he knows that the Darwinian theory cannot be true, because, if it were, "an Englishman's right arm would have developed into an umbrella long ago." But Dr. Taylor would find faces in the South which, from their resemblance to lower orders of life, might weaken his faith in his demonstration.

The black race is no more degraded than our own would be under similar circumstances, but its condition is appalling. How long will it take to develop the consciousness of manhood where all the tastes, and all the tendencies, and almost all the environment, are low and in the opposite direction? The colored people have not the help of higher and refining influences. Their tendencies have been downward, and present environment increases the tendency. Regeneration or reform is not the work of a year or a generation. The change will come only by the creation of new and higher conditions, and with the birth of a more self-respecting stock.

IV. How long will be required for the education of the colored people and the poor whites?

The author of "An Appeal to Caesar" says, "The Southern man, black or white, is not likely to be greatly different to-morrow from what he was yesterday. Generations may modify; years can only restrain. The question is not whether education, begun to-day and carried on however vigorously and successfully by the most approved agencies, would change the characteristics of to-day's masses. Not at all. The question is whether it would so act upon them as they are, would so enlighten and inform their minds, as to convince them of the mutual danger, peril, disaster, that must attend continual oppression or sudden uprising. We cannot expect to make intelligence instantly effective in the elevation of individual citizenship, or the exercise of collective power. Little by little that change must come."

About ninety per cent, of the whole colored population of the South, and about forty-five per cent. of those above ten years of age, are illiterate. In 1880, nineteen per cent., or about one in every five, of the white people of the South, and seventy-three per cent. of the colored people, could neither read nor write; and this estimate is far too large. After fifteen years of the ballot, seventy-three per cent. of the colored race of the South could neither read nor write. Much is being done to promote education by schools and charities, but what are these among so many? To meet the ignorant condition of things, the Government is doing nothing. The State governments are doing only a little. In the Southern States previous to the war there was no system of common schools. After the war there were not even old foundations to build upon. Everything had to be started de novo by those who had nothing with which to start. "We must remember," said Dr. Mayo, "that nine men out of ten of the South never saw what we call a good public elementary school. It has been said that the public school-buildings of Denver alone exceed in value all the public school-buildings of the State of North Carolina."

The average school year throughout the South, in 1880, was less than one hundred days; the average attendance less than thirty per cent. of those within school age. In a belt of States where seventy-three per cent., and probably ninety per cent., of the population are illiterate, where they are too poor to do much except keep up the struggle for existence, where there are no traditions of culture, where it has been a crime for a black man to read, where the Nation is doing nothing, and where the State, when it does its best, provides instruction which reaches only thirty per cent. of those of school age for one hundred days in a year, and where the population is increasing so rapidly that in 1900 the blacks will be in a decided majority, charity and religion are doing—what? The progress under the circumstances is amazing, but how long will it take to educate the nineteen per cent. of Southern whites, and seventy-three per cent., of Southern blacks? There is more illiteracy now than at the close of the war, because education has not kept pace with the increase of the race.

V. How long will be required for the moralizing of the lower classes of the South? Ability to make moral discriminations grows slowly. Ability to appreciate moral motives grows still more slowly. These people were trained in a school in which virtue was ignored. They have lived under conditions which have put a premium on theft. Slavery always makes thieves. The heredity of the passion for stealing is just as clearly marked as the heredity of the Roman nose or the faculty for music. The transmission of the tendency toward the gratification of the animal propensities is as definite as, and stronger than, the tendency for insanity and consumption to reproduce themselves. These people come into life blind, and find little but darkness around them. Here you have about eight millions with an ancestry which began in heathenism and has had two centuries of slavery—a people inheriting all the evils of slavery; a people who have never been trained to make moral discriminations, and whose ancestors for unknown generations have been trained still less than they; a people who have none, or at least but little, of the inspiration toward a higher moral life which comes from a healthy environment; a people whose religion is almost all emotional; who can soar on the wings of imagination and enthusiasm to heights which would make an archangel dizzy; who from paroxysms of anguish at the condition of those whose burning bodies are lighting the fires of hell, will go off and commit adultery or rob a hen-roost as complacently as if to do so were a part of their religion. This is not fiction. Religion has not meant chastity, for slavery made that impossible; it has not meant justice, for injustice forged their chains; it has not meant generosity, for they had nothing; it has been simple emotion. The ethical element has been absent, and it was through no fault of the black man.

In 1860, President Hopkins said that a greater proportion of the Sandwich Islanders could read than of the people in New England. They were educated but not moralized. There were three hundred thousand of them a century and a half ago; in 1883, there were forty-nine thousand. Education without morality is no safeguard.

Prof. Gilliam shows, from census reports, that if the population of the Southern whites increases for a century, as at present, in 1985, there will be ninety-six million whites in the Southern States, and in 1980, one hundred and ninety-two million blacks. Statistics may lie; but there is enough truth in these to give terrible emphasis to the inquiry, How long before the colored people will be sufficiently educated to need no help? How long before they will have sufficient moral discrimination to know what the commandments require? When we realize how difficult is the task of inducing men with the environment of Christian influence at the North, and in England, to live even decent lives, the wonder is that the freedmen do as well as they do. How long before we can expect a race with such antecedents and environments to be fitted to be left to themselves? What answer must be given? I am not exaggerating the picture. I am only hinting at conditions of heathenism which exist. I am least of all blaming these poor and needy people; but none the less clear and strong comes the appeal for their moral and intellectual emancipation. The moralizing of a race which has such a history, how long will that require? No people ever rose more rapidly in the world's history. That shows what is possible. It does not tell us when our work will be finished. So long as one-half of the American republic is inhabited by those whose interests are alien to the other half, there can be no permanent prosperity. It has been said that there are three essentials to the permanent unity of a nation; viz., unity of language, unity of interest and unity of religion. There is a common language between the blacks and whites, but the unity of interest is not recognized, and agreement in religion is only in name. The religion of the poor whites in the South is mechanical, and unintelligently doctrinal; the religion of the blacks is emotional and fantastic; and the religion of both blacks and whites is lacking in the ethical element. The process of political reconstruction has been progressing for twenty years and more, and is still incomplete. That is an easy work compared with what must be created intellectually, and socially, and morally. Before the Southern problem will be solved, a new stock must take the place of those who were reared in slavery; the old traditions must fade, and education, and an ethical type of Christianity, must do their work. How long will be required for that, none can tell. In the meantime, new complications may arise. The principles of socialism and anarchy are not unlikely to pervade the South, and if the masses of blacks are ever exploited by a central, unknown and irresponsible committee of agitators, the results must be a new reign of terror. The labor agitators are moving southward. It has been said that colored people have no tendencies toward socialism and anarchy. I am no prophet, but I will hazard the prediction that it will not be long before the socialistic agitator will stir up a commotion at the South that will make employers of labor and people of wealth tremble.

The sentiment has sometimes been whispered, that the work of this Association, and those akin to it, was about accomplished. That sentiment has selfishness or ignorance at the bottom of it. How long must this work be kept up? Until all that mass of darkness which fills the Southern horizon be shot through and through with shafts of light. How long must it be kept up? Until the last trace of prejudice that separates brother from brother shall have been removed. How long will this thing be kept up? Until the black man feels that he is a man; until he can vote intelligently, and live wisely, and until he has the ability and the will to discriminate carefully in matters of morals. How long must it be kept up? Until no man can plead ignorance, or want of opportunity, for rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ. The Eastern question has been a live question in European politics for more than four centuries. It is no more puzzling than the Southern question is with us. There is an experiment in physics that is typical of this work. An iron bar is suspended in the air and then a tiny cork, hung from a string, is thrown against it. At first no impression is made, but the blows are repeated, until, by and by, the bar begins to tremble, then to vibrate, then to swing to and fro. The repeated impacts of the little cork at last move the mass. It will not be by any great rush that the Southern problem will be solved. It will yield at last to the constancy, and fidelity, of the great multitude of those who love their brother because they love their Lord; who are content to work in secret, and many of whom already rest in unmarked graves. That mass of ignorance, wretchedness and wrong will swing and disappear at last before the multitudinous strokes of individual gifts and individual prayers.

All the problems which are vexing the older nations are essentially social problems, and the watchword of all the movements that are undermining thrones and caste, and the wicked social order, is, "The world no longer for the few, but for the many." In America the many are already in possession, and the problem with us is, How may our rulers—the people who can never be dethroned—be rendered competent to rule? That is the question to which the American Missionary Association is devoting itself; and its answer is the only true one: By making the people intelligent, and Christian. And how long before that will be accomplished? A Scotchman once asked an Irishman, "Why were half-farthings coined in England?" Pat instantly replied, "To give Scotchmen an opportunity of contributing to missions." When will this problem be solved? Never, if the Christians of America are like Pat's Scotchman, but quicker than any of us dream, if all the Christians of America are like that woman in the New Testament who put into the treasury two mites.