l
sum to continue the work of Christian education. It has seen many
another consecrated missionary take from the savings of a lifetime, to
enable the Association to light one more lamp for the dark places of
the South, and not a few turn back three-fourths of their small
salaries to help in sustaining the work. The liberality of the
missionaries testifies not only to the genuineness of the work, but to
the importance of the field and its irresistible appeal.

With such a history the American Missionary Association stands before
the churches in this, its fiftieth, year. God has graciously widened
the fields before it. The 4,000,000 of freed slaves are a race of
8,000,000 in our midst. "Never since the apostolic age has there been
open to the church a field so vast, so urgent, so hopeful."

God has graciously widened the mission fields of the Association; the
mountain regions of the South have been opened, and the gospel,
carried with such personal risk fifty years ago, reaching only here
and there a few, may be carried freely to the 2,000,000 of our
mountain countrymen mentally and spiritually bound. God has graciously
widened the fields. The Indian missions present their claim, for
wherever a pagan Indian tribe remains there may the gospel be carried
quickly and without personal harm. The providential call has been
heard also, and answered by this Association, for the Chinese within
our borders and the Eskimo on the Alaskan coast. The work of this
Association may well be the glory of the churches. God has done His
part. He has opened the fields, He has richly blessed every effort
toward enlightenment and Christian civilization. The missionaries have
done their part in prayer, in labor, in gifts, in voicing the earnest
appeal of these poor, whose greatest need is Christian education and a
pure gospel.

Now, the Association has come to its fiftieth year, the fiftieth
chapter in its serial history. Standing always for emancipation, it is
itself enthralled in the toils of a terrible debt. It trusted the
churches; it believed that the action of the churches in separating
their Indian work from the government, relinquishing $22,000, would be
followed by $22,000 additional gifts from the people of God, that the
Indian missions should not suffer loss. It believed that the growing
claim of the Southern mountain work and the claim of this great
African race in our midst would not be disregarded. It still believes
in the churc