Читать книгу The American Missionary. Volume 42, No. 06, June, 1888 - Various - Страница 3

REPORT ON THE A.M.A. BY REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D

The work of the American Missionary Association appeals to the churches of Ohio with cumulative urgency. "A.M.A.," as our stalwart brother Pike used to say, are letters that stand for the darkened races of this continent—the American, the Mongolian and the African. To the Christian people of America, these tribes are entrusted; for their enlightenment and Christianization, we are responsible. The Government at Washington can do something toward protecting these people in their political rights; but there is very little, after all, that can be done for any people which does not know how to assert and maintain its own rights. Liberty can never be a gratuity, it must always be an achievement. Peoples, as well as individuals, must work out their own salvation. The Negro at the South is cheated out of his political rights, simply because he does not know how to claim them; the Indian on the plains is defrauded of his property, because he does not know how to protect himself. No matter how favorable the laws may be to these hapless people, they will be oppressed and impoverished and kept in a condition of semi-slavery, unless they know how to use the laws in their own advantage. Education, therefore, is the only effectual remedy for their wrongs. To awaken their minds, to arouse the energies of hope, to show them that they are made in God's image and that they have a right to all the liberties of the laws of God, is the only way to complete and secure their emancipation from bondage and from barbarism.

This is the work to which the American Missionary Association calls us all. It is our just pride as Congregationalists that through this Association more has been done for the true enfranchisement of the freedmen than through any other agency, and it is our duty to see that this great work, in which we have borne so large and honorable a part, halt not nor slacken in its energy because of our failure to keep its treasury replenished and its faithful laborers re-enforced and supported by our gifts and our prayers.