Mr. Tappan and his associates, fifty years ago, founded the American Missionary Association amid the obloquy and danger that surrounded anti-slavery people in that day; and now, as the Association is rejoicing in its successful and honored work in this its Jubilee year, we take pleasure in its behalf in testifying to the courage and self-sacrificing labors of its founders.
It would appear that there was a certain definite loss to the cause of Christianity among the Indians when that work ceased to be called Foreign Missions, and became Home Missions. In the face of much opposition and many sneers since the day it first discovered its "marching orders," the Church has never ceased to believe it to be its duty to go out into all the world and preach the gospel, and persecution, neglect, or starvation have only served to intensify its zeal. It _must_ preach the gospel to the heathen. But in regard to Home Missions the Church has felt that it _may_ preach the gospel to neighbors, not that it _must_--that it is a good and desirable thing to do, but by no means an inexorable duty. If the Indians had remained foreign heathen, we might hope for a Students' Volunteer movement, for an Inland Mission, for a zeal beyond wisdom which even sets forth to preach the gospel in the midst of war. The Indians are as pagan as the Japanese or the Hindus, for instance: their redemption is as great a necessity as the redemption of the Chinese. Their chiefs plead for help and teachers in no less touching fashion than do South African kings. But those fill us with missionary zeal. We cry unto heaven for money and opportunity to go over seas to convert those; but these, the heathen in our very midst, most of us neither see nor hear. Can it be because there is neither romance nor mystery about these others? The test of the reality of our zeal is before us here and now. We may measure the value of our professions for ourselves.
At this present time the need of the Indians for missionaries is greater than ever before. They have reached not only a new crisis, but a crisis of a new kind. Practically speaking the Government has done what it can for them, or very nearly all. The Indian has law, land, education, he is fast becoming absorbed in the surrounding people, but never was he in worse need. All these great fundamental principles of social life have been thrust upon him, oft against his will and largely unprepared; certainly with very little comprehension of their resulting privileges or duties. He needs a friend beside him at every step. Thrust out into an alien and hostile community, he is in some sense in a worse case than when he dwelt alone in undisturbed barbarism.