The American Missionary | Page 4

how to preach, you may just reckon he don't make no mistakes."
[Illustration: A NATIVE MOUNTAIN CHURCH.]
On every hand, I found indications that the day of isolation for this people is rapidly passing away. Yankee inquisitiveness has discovered that these mountains are full of the best coal and iron--Northern capital has already begun to strip them of their rich forests of black walnut, oak and pine. The rivers are carrying these logs by the thousands to the immense mills, which in turn are making the large towns, toward which already the railroad is hastening.
Engineering skill is bridging streams, crossing valleys, climbing mountains or piercing them through. On every hand we see the change. From their long sleep of a century, these valleys, these homes, this whole people are awakening. A new life is beginning, a new future, opening.
And as a result of all this, I found a field of missionary work, which for opportunity and need has perhaps no equal in our country. Amidst all this change, a people, startled from their long separation, find themselves suddenly called to face, to compete with, to become a part of, our life, our intellectual advancement; to move with our energy, and work with our skill. Realizing their weakness, suddenly roused by their necessity, they are sending across their valleys and over their mountains the Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us!" Our duty to this people, whether we look at it from the standpoint of the Christian or the citizen, is beyond the measure of words.
Here, as everywhere in the South, I found that the American Missionary Association, as representative of our Northern Christian sympathy, was at work. Its normal schools, fitting teachers to go out and displace the bare-footed, ignorant, snuff-stick-chewing school mistresses; its churches, fitting mothers and fathers to enter upon their duties conscious of their responsibility; and its missionaries, bringing in an intelligent Christian life, and driving the curse of the country--intemperance--out of the home, community and the county, are thus meeting the need, and answering the cry, and fulfilling the obligations. Below is a cut of one of the buildings of the Academy at Williamsburg, Ky., recently erected among these people.
[Illustration: WILLIAMSBURG ACADEMY, KY.]
I found one worker where the field called for a dozen; one school where we should have twenty; one church where we should have a hundred; one scholar received into an over-crowded school house, when its doors should open to scores. I found one missionary with nine organized churches on his hands, and he the only pastor; the extremes of his parish being seventy-five miles apart.
And lastly, on returning to New York, I found an empty, a worse than empty, a debt-burdened treasury, forbidding all advancement in this field.
* * * * *
_Anniversary Exercises._
* * * * *
FISK UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE, TENN.
BY DISTRICT SECRETARY C.J. RYDER.
Fisk University fills a large place in the educational institutions of the South, and commencement week occupies an important place in the college year at Fisk.
When the inhuman caste prejudice passes away, the Congregationalists of the North will discover the encouraging fact that the American Missionary Association has planted Congregationalism in the South to stay. Fisk University and other such institutions, filled as they will be by young men of every class and color, will be strongholds of our New Testament faith and polity. Such a Commencement as was observed at Fisk this year does much to bring about that blessed day. This Commencement week, beginning Thursday, June sixth, and closing the evening of June twelfth, was crowded with literary and musical exercises of high order. President E.M. Cravath, D.D., delivered the baccalaureate sermon, taking for his subject, "Building on the Rock." It was a sermon of great power. Rev. Dr. Gray, a Southern Episcopal clergyman, preached the missionary sermon. On Thursday evening, came "The Senior Preparatory Exhibition." On June seventh, tenth and eleventh, the various class examinations were held, and in the evening of Friday the seventh, the anniversary exercises of the Literary Societies were given. There are three healthy and vigorous societies at Fisk, and it was difficult to tell which of the three gave the best evidence of the superior quality of its drill, in the exercises presented.
The Normal Department graduated a class of four, each presenting an essay. Rev. C.W. Hiatt, of Cleveland, Ohio, delivered the address at the close of the exercises of the normal department, taking for his subject "Earnest Living," and the address was spoken of with high appreciation by those who heard it.
The graduating exercises of the Collegiate Department were of unusual interest. There was not a poor oration or essay presented. The breadth of training given to the students at Fisk was especially noticeable in the wide range of subjects selected.
The anniversary of the Alumni Association gave evidence that the graduates of Fisk