Читать книгу The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 05, May, 1889 - Various - Страница 1

THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY presents its greetings for the month of May. Six months of our fiscal year are now in the past. The half year which we anticipate includes the summer time, when many of the friends of the ignorant millions to whom we are sent, are absent from their churches. The months of May and June ought to swell the stream of love and service against the season when the demand will continue and income will be small.

We appealed last month for an increase of the contributions in church collections. We renew and emphasize that appeal, for these collections are the steady streams on which we rely to keep in motion the wheels of the large and ever enlarging work of the Association. We believe that the interest in this great work is on the increase. We rejoice that "the most prolific missionary field ever opened to any Christian people— right here at our doors," is gaining upon the interest and benevolence of the churches year by year. Never were the friends of the cause mote responsive; never was the work more hopeful. The work enlarges, and the people's faith enlarges. Their gifts to Christ for his poor were never freer.

We have been greatly favored with special gifts. Every one of them is needed. It is a blessed thing that one can plant his benevolences in some special institution or feature of work, and know that the influences are to follow on after the giver has gone to a higher world. But we do hope that the CHURCHES OF CHRIST, AS CHURCHES, will not fail to keep step with the providences of God in their church contributions.

It is also true that some fear that the day of LEGACIES is to come to an end. Indeed, there are those who take a solemn comfort in bewailing and fearing that everything is to come to an end. They mix a pound of forebodings with an ounce of faith. If, for some unseen reasons in the movements of life and death, legacies do not appear with the regularity of insurance tables, they think the day of legacies is dead. Nevertheless legacies will continue as long as Christians pass from earth to heaven. There will always be faithful souls who will remember Christ and his cause in their wills. There will always be those who may not be able to divide their estates and to dispose of portions of them while they live, who will yet provide that they may see their works following them, when they shall look down from a world redeemed, to a world for whose redemption Christ lived and died. There will always be legacies, and the American Missionary Association, so long as it follows in the steps of Christ in such mission as it has, will not be forgotten. The legacies will come, because they ought to come. The people of God will remember this work in their wills because they ought to do this, and God will take care that what Christian stewards ought to do, shall be done.

We thank God for SPECIAL GIFTS. We thank God for LEGACIES. We also thank God for the ability and faith and sacrifices of those who cannot plant institutions or build or endow schools, but who live and give that which provides for the unceasing CURRENT EXPENSES. Almost every one can do a little more, and it is the many littles that make the difference between a debt with a crippled work, and freedom from debt with healthful growth. All along the lines, the calls for help are so urgent, that it is painful for us, in the name of the church, to be constantly saying "No!"

The churches can easily take this out of the way if they will. We believe that they will.