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The American Missionary. Volume 42, No. 05, May, 1888
Various
The American Missionary – Volume 42, No. 05, May, 1888
AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION
COMMUNICATIONS
Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the Corresponding Secretaries; letters for "THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY," to the Editor, at the New York Office.
DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
In drafts, checks, registered letters, or post office orders, may be sent to H.W. Hubbard, Treasurer, 56 Reade Street, New York, or, when more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., or 151 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.
FORM OF A BEQUEST
"I bequeath to my executor (or executors) the sum of – dollars, in trust, to pay the same in – days after my decease to the person who, when the same is payable, shall act as Treasurer of the 'American Missionary Association,' of New York City, to be applied, under the direction of the Executive Committee of the Association, to its charitable uses and purposes." The Will should be attested by three witnesses.
THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY
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.
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Deceased.
