n land--problems
unrelieved by a single romantic charm. When we send our missionaries to
Africa they go to labor among the Africans; and when we send them down
South they go to teach "niggers."
Notice, then, what the report of this committee signifies in the
presence of the fact that our laborers not only grapple with foreign
languages, conceptions, idolatries, habits of benighted peoples, but all
the time are hindered and assailed on every hand by these Bedouin Arabs
of our land--the minions of mammon and the slaves of caste. To gather
and hold and save in such a field as this, is task enough for the finest
corps in the army of the Lord.
In the presence of these well-known facts, the report of the committee
adds another chapter to the Book of Acts. It gladdens our hearts with
thrilling music--the music of ringing sickle and reaper's song. From all
over this mighty field, from mountain, and savannah, and shore, and
plain, we hear the resonant footsteps of advancing troops--a solid
regiment of converts marching in the army of our Christ and into the
fellowship of his Congregational Church. I want you to notice that this
church which we have planted in the South is just the kind of a church
to take these people and assimilate them, to save them and to preserve
them to their highest usefulness. And why? In the first place, because
it is a church that will take them in. I saw the other day this
inscription over a great arch erected in honor of our Pan-American
guests in the city of Cleveland, "Welcome All Americans." Well, the
Congregational Church has put three talismanic letters over the portal
of every church that it has planted in the South and in the West,
"A.M.A.--All mankind acceptable."
Every convert in our work has cosmopolitan views respecting the
brotherhood of man. This means that one thousand people have seated
themselves before an apostolic communion table. White, black, red and
yellow, side by side in harmony before the broken memorials of the life
of love. The spirit of color-caste is a post-apostolic devil. The most
eminent convert of the evangelist Philip was as black as a middle vein
of Massilon coal. Perhaps that is why they met in the desert and the
spirit compassionately caught Philip away. The purest church and the
purest ray of sunshine are alike--they absorb the seven colors of the
spectrum. When the Creator flung the rainbow like a silken scarf over
the shoulder of the summer cloud, he drew h
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