The American Missionary. Volume 42, No. 10, October, 1888. Various
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lives and others permanently impairing their healths, by taking care of the smitten ones. Such heroism is demanded when the danger comes, but it does not seem best to seek the danger. A little delay in some places, we hope, will be all that is necessary.
By the time these pages reach our readers, most of our workers will have resumed their labors in the South. Many of the ministers and a few of the teachers have remained at their posts all summer, but the schools have been closed. Work in the cotton fields has called for the younger pupils, the summer schools have given employment to the older ones, while rest and a change of climate have been required by the white teachers from the North. But now activities will be resumed, and we contemplate the work with joy and hope.
These workers, and others like them, are the hope of the South. They go not arrayed and armed for bloody battle-fields; they go not as commercial travelers to sell the wares of the North; they go not as capitalists to start the whirling spindles or to kindle the fires in the smelting furnaces; they go not as politicians to speak for or against tariffs, nor to build up or break down parties. Their work is quieter and deeper than all this. They reach the mind and heart. As Christ aimed not so much at once to tear down or build up the outer, but to reach the inner springs of the soul, so these workers aim to make character, intelligent, pure, active, and thus to impel to all that is noble and honest in life, that stimulates to industry, economy, thrift—to making the home pure and all outer things prosperous and right. But, as Christ was misunderstood and rejected, so are these laborers ostracized. We rejoice to find a growing recognition of their worth and work, and trust that the day is coming when they will be fully appreciated and welcomed. In the meantime they toil on uncomplainingly, and for their sakes and for the work's sake we invoke, not perfunctorily but earnestly, the prayers of God's ministers and people in their behalf.
On another page will be found a review of two books by the well-known author, Edmund Kirke (J.R. Gilmore), who has made a special study of the white people of the Mountain regions of the South. Mr. Kirke has at our invitation prepared a paper to be read at our Annual Meeting, in connection with the Report on our Mountain Work. We have been permitted to read it. It is replete with racy incidents and delineations of quaint yet noble characters. If the tears and smiles which the reading of the paper drew from us are any test, then we can promise a treat to those who may hear it at the meeting in Providence.
QUALIFICATIONS OF CANDIDATES FOR MISSION WORK
Many of our missionaries who are engaged in their devoted and self-denying labors in the South, have been compelled by the nature of our work to take their summer vacations. The educational work of the American Missionary Association is through and through a missionary work. It is begun with a missionary purpose and is carried on in the name of Christ to disciple the people, that they may know Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. All of our teachers are sent to be missionaries. Many are returning now to their fields of service with which they are well acquainted, and some are going for the first time. Among these, questions are raised as to the requirements needed in those who are to go. We have thought that a few suggestions given to the candidates for the China Inland Mission by Hudson Taylor, might be properly repeated here for those who are to take upon themselves these responsible Christian duties. He says:
First of all, it is absolutely essential that those desiring to be missionaries should have a deep love for Christ, a full grasp of His plan of salvation, and be wholly consecrated, in their inward lives, to Him. Mission work is not preaching grand sermons, or witnessing marvellous baptisms; it is a patient Christ-like life, day by day, far from external help, far from those we love; a quiet sowing of tiny seeds, which may take long years to show above the ground, combined with a steady bearing of loneliness, discomfort and petty persecution. The work demands of every worker very real and manifest self-sacrifice and acts of faith. It aims at, and ought to be satisfied with, nothing less than the conversion of the people to God. Not witness-bearing merely, but fruit-bearing is the end in view. Anything short of the salvation of souls is failure.
It is generally found that when people are of no use at home, they are of no use in the mission field. The bright, brave, earnest spirit, ready to face difficulties at home, is the right spirit for the work abroad. A patient, persevering, plodding spirit, attempting great things for God, and expecting great things from God, is absolutely essential to success in missionary efforts. Those will not make the best missionaries who are easily daunted by the first difficulty or opposition, but those whose strength is equal to waiting upon God, and who fight through all obstacles by prayer and faith. The spasmodic worker, frantic in zeal one month, and at freezing-point another, will be weary long before the station has been reached: while in the strength of Christ the weakest of us need not draw back, nor say, "I am not fit," yet nothing less than burning love to Christ, and in Him to perishing souls, will survive and overleap the difficulties and disappointments of the work.
These are royal words, and we believe that our teachers and missionaries engaged in this most glorious work of saving needy souls will take with them this spirit, and be blessed in the communication of their blessing to others.
IMMIGRANTS AND NEGROES
The Immigrant question challenges attention. Shall immigrants be welcomed, restricted or prohibited? In the early days of the Republic, when the revolutionary war had welded the people together and our boundless territory begged for occupancy, we welcomed the oppressed of all nations. Later, the welcome has been responded to by such a rushing, heterogeneous and even dangerous mass that we are compelled to pause. Restriction is talked of, but the line of discrimination is hard to be fixed. No committee at Castle Garden can detect anarchists, criminals, or even the poor, if that line should be chosen. Prohibition—exclusion is talked of—nay, is enacted stringently against the Chinese. If need be, it may extend to all. So there is a way of averting this evil.
But the Negro question cannot be put away. The Negroes are here. They outnumber the immigrants that have come to our shores in the last thirty years, and have a foothold upon the soil as valid as the Aryan race, whether we consider the date of their coming or the labor they have put upon the land.
There is a strange disposition to shrink from the Negro question. Some avoid it by flippantly denying the danger; others turn from it because they are appalled by it. Thus an able writer on Immigration in a recent number of the Century passes the topic with this awe-stricken remark: "This problem (of the Negro) cannot be touched practically; ancient wrongs bind the nation hand and foot, and its outcome must be awaited as we await the gathering of the tempest—powerless to avert, and trembling over the steady approach" (The italics are ours.) This is not wise; it is not manly. Why try to avert the evils of immigration, or any other, if we are meanwhile only to await tremblingly the doom that is to come on us from the conflict with the Negro?
There is a strong disposition to gather hope from the newly-developed manufacturing interests in the South. But this is delusive. The South is essentially a rural population; the new industries will necessarily be confined to a few localities, and will reach but slightly the wide agricultural region, and will scarcely touch the Negroes. And more than all this, these industries will only be importing into the South the struggle between labor and capital, which so vexes us at the North. Instead, therefore, of solving the old difficulties at the South, they will add a new one.
The danger of a war of races is scouted at the North; it is not at the South. This is natural. The North is not in immediate contact with the danger; the South is. When the war of the rebellion was impending, the North refused to believe in its coming; and when it came, one of the wisest statesmen of the North, Mr. Seward, predicted that it would "not last sixty days." No such delusion prevailed in the South. Many of the best men there, nay, nearly all the border States, dreaded its coming and held back as long as possible, but they were swept into the flood they foresaw and could not avert.
Thoughtful men at the South now have no rose-colored views about the Negro problem. They fear the impending conflict. With them the supremacy of the white race is the settled point, but they see in the growing numbers, intelligence and restlessness of the Negroes an increasing danger that will only be aggravated by delay. Why should not the North and South alike manfully face the question of a war of races? What will it mean? What will be its end? If the whites and the