The American Missionary Association is doing a noble work in the schools it has inaugurated for the education of colored young men and women to be teachers and missionaries, and should receive increased subscriptions from our New England States.
We have now reached the point where attention may be well directed to the opportunity of Congregationalism for enlargement, and so for greater usefulness in the Southern States, and especially among the blacks. If the claim that our faith and polity lie in the very letter as well as spirit of the New Testament be anything more than pretense, then it is nothing less than cowardice to consent that either should be limited by lines of latitude. The other denominations have spread over the country, and have aspired to a national name and influence; but Congregationalism, until within thirty years, had hardly set foot outside of New England. It had clung to the early home, and lingered among the graves of the fathers, while other churches were pressing across the continent. Late in the contest it joined the grand march of the churches Westward, and has shown what fine work she can do as an educator and civilizer. Now the door opens Southward, and she will be recreant to every call of duty, to every impulse of patriotism and religion, if she does not widen her borders and diffuse her influence in that direction. The opportunity is before her for enlargement to the full dimensions of our country, and she should be satisfied with nothing less. The church of the Pilgrims has a right to a national name——the South has a right to any good she may have to bestow.
It has been intimated, indeed, that other churches hold the field, and that ours has no right to intrude. If the churches on the ground had fairly done all the work——had enlightened the ignorant, had lifted the degraded——there would be some place for such a sentiment. It may seem a cheap and almost contemptible thing to enter the South through the negro cabins and offer the poorest of the poor our culture and our faith. But nothing is contemptible that bears the image of the Son of God or carries His sanction. We simply follow the spirit of His own command: “If they receive you not in one city, flee ye into another.” We have no disposition to discriminate against the whites, but when they discriminate against themselves we have no alternative but to turn to the blacks. And perhaps it is as well; for if the whites had opened their hearts and their homes to receive us, what would have become of the race that needs us most of all; that showed such hunger for knowledge and eagerness for teachers as perhaps was never before seen in the history of races? As it is now, we can lay foundations at the very bottom of Southern society. It is an opportunity to be useful to those who have made themselves useful to us.