American Missionary | Page 9

one good college. If there were Congregational churches in this region in the same proportion as in New England there would be a full thousand. If they were in the same proportion as Connecticut, there would be twelve hundred churches; as New Hampshire, thirteen hundred; as Vermont, sixteen hundred.
Congregationalism goes to these people as the representative of pure, intelligent and progressive Christianity. We can gather them into schools, Sunday-schools and churches, anywhere where we can put a Christian worker. Our only limit is consecrated workers and the support for them. The field is as ripe this very day for a thousand as for a score. But the school and the church must go together.
This is one of the richest of the mineral regions of the world. Great forests of black walnut, poplar, and other valuable timber, are awaiting the woodman's ax and the lumberman's mill. Railroads are either built, building or planned for every part to carry away its wonderful natural resources. The people are poor, but the land is rich, and a few years hence will see wealth in the place of poverty, in the hands of either the natives, or those who will have displaced them. All the motives which urge the establishment of the church and the school for the incoming population of the West, press us to build them in this great empire of the South; and they become doubly imperative when we take into account the fact that a population of between two and three millions is already in the land and needs to be saved now. The motives for home and foreign missions are thus combined, and impelling us for Christ's sake, for humanity's sake, and for our country's sake, to give the gospel to this people.
We are not building pauper institutions in this mountain country to be forever a dead weight for the Northern churches to carry, but institutions which will very speedily take care of themselves, and give to others as they have received.
This is a portion of the South where slavery scarcely existed. When war came, it was loyal to the Union almost to a man. This fact shows that they have a natural affiliation with "Northern ideas." The caste spirit is among them--as it is indeed in the North to some extent--but it much more readily yields to reason and loving teaching than in other portions of the South. Vigorous and extensive missionary work can and will mould the ideas and sentiments of this whole region, and thus establish no-caste churches and schools, where they would demonstrate to the South that they do not carry with them social disorder and every baleful influence.
Amid the success, joy and hopefulness of the year's work, came the affliction of the shooting of Prof. George Lawrence, while about his duties in our school in Jellico, Tenn. It was the work of a miserable creature whose brain was fired with whiskey, and who was urged on by the saloon element as a retaliation for earnest temperance work. After long and anxious weeks of intense suffering, a brave fight against death proved successful, and we now hope that our missionary's life is spared for many years of usefulness. Nearly a hundred men have been shot already in this one place, and the place itself is not more than six years old. Is it strange that these mountain people who have a glimpse of better things, are appealing to us every week of the year to plant institutions among them? Is it not the voice of Christ clearly commanding us to possess and subdue this land, and to transform it into a part of his peaceful and beneficent Kingdom, which shall join hands with us to pass on the torch of Christ to others yet in darkness?
THE INDIANS.
The people of America are determined to press the Indian problem to a speedy solution. Provision has been made for giving lands in severalty, and the next great movement should be to induce the Government to provide secular education, and the churches to furnish religious instruction to all the Indians. The American Missionary Association, during the year, has responded to this new impulse by enlarging its work--in the opening of new stations, in the erection of new buildings, and in the appointment of more missionaries and teachers.
At the Santee Agency, Nebraska, our oldest mission station and school has had marked prosperity in its normal, theological and industrial departments, and, better than all, in a deep and wide-spread religious interest that has pervaded the school and the church. The new building, named Whitney Hall--from its giver--has been erected, affording accommodations for twenty-two of the larger and more advanced pupils, and furnishing rooms for the treasurer's family. A liberal gift from Mrs. Henry Perkins, of Hartford, Conn., provides, for the present at