Читать книгу The American Missionary. Volume 44, No. 06, June, 1890 - Various - Страница 2

Not long since Rev. R.S. Storrs, D.D., preached a sermon in his own pulpit, presenting the claims of the American Missionary Association for the annual collection in its behalf from the Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn, N.Y. This sermon appeared in print in one of the daily papers, and attracted the attention of a benevolent gentleman deeply interested in the Christian education of the colored people, who was so impressed with the great value of the address, that he has furnished the Association with the means to print a large edition for general circulation. This we have done, and we presume that already, many of our readers have had the opportunity of reading this eminently wise and timely utterance on one of America's greatest problems. Should any one desire an extra copy, we will gladly furnish it on application.

Although the discourse has had large circulation, we cannot resist the temptation to extract a few of its forcible utterances on some very important points.

Permanent popular liberties have their only sure foundation in sound moral conditions practically universal. We must secure these among those to whom we have given the ballot, and who are to be henceforth citizens with ourselves. Otherwise, we are building our splendid political house on the edges of the pestilential swamp from which fatal miasmatic odors are rising all the time. Yes, we are building our house on piles driven into the thick ooze and mud of the pestilential swamp itself. We are building our cities, which we think are so splendid, and which are so in fact, as men built Herculaneum and Pompeii, on a shore which ever and anon trembled with earthquake, over which was hung the black flag of Vesuvius, and down upon which rolled, in time, the lava floods that burned and buried them.

We have got to meet this immense problem, which is not far off, but right at hand; which is not a problem of theory, or of distant history, but of practice and fact; and which concerns not the well-being alone, but the very life of the nation. Noble men and women at the South are engaged in it already, with all their hearts; and we must help, mightily! It would be the craziest folly of the age for us to be indifferent to it.

Some men may say, perhaps, "But this is a work that cannot be done. It is too radical and vast to be hopefully attempted." Nonsense! There is no work for the kingdom of God and the glory of His name, which cannot be done! With the Gospel in our hand, we can do everything.

There has been a good beginning made already. This Society, to which we are to contribute to-day, the American Missionary Association, has four established colleges, three of which are entirely supported by itself, have been founded by it and are carried on by it; and the fourth very largely so. It has multitudes of high schools, normal schools and primary schools.

First of all, we want men trained, and women too, in the knowledge of the truth as it is in Christ, and then to have them teaching others. And that is precisely the line along which the Society to which we are to contribute to-day, as we have done gladly and largely heretofore, is carrying its incessant operation.

Now I affirm absolutely that if ever there was a work of God on earth, this is his work! If there was ever anything to which the American Christian people are called, they are called to this. If there was ever a great opportunity before the Christian church, here it is.

Ah, my friends, don't say "It is too great a work." It is going to be done! You and I may do or may not do our part in it. It is going to be done!