The Call of the Hour by C. P. BOLLMAN

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 3, 1908

The Call of the Hour

By C. P. BOLLMAN

We are told by the spirit of prophecy that the South ought to have been entered years ago; that the work for the colored people could have been done then much more easily than now. The opportune time was allowed to pass by unimproved. Now God by his providence is giving us another opportunity, and upon every hand are to be found open doors through which access can be had to the colored people of the different States.

THE MISSION HOME FOR COLORED WORKERS, NASHVILLE, TENN.

Race feeling is increasing rapidly in almost every part of the South; and even now the work is much more difficult in some respects than it was a few years ago. On the other hand, influences are at work which make the present a most opportune time in which to give to the colored people “this gospel of the kingdom.”

As the temporary withdrawal of the Roman army from before the walls of Jerusalem gave the Christians of that day opportunity to escape from the doomed city, so the noble stand taken by such men as Ex-Governor Northen, of Georgia, in favor of Christian and industrial education for the negro of the South, gives us as a people what the writer firmly believes is the final opportunity to do for the negroes of our own land the work that ought to have been done years ago.

The Testimonies call for the establishment of small schools and sanitariums, in which colored people can be taught to labor for their own race. The whole of the South is open just now for this kind of work as it has not been open before for more than a decade.

The Ethiopia of the South is stretching forth her hands unto God, and upon every side is heard the Macedonian cry, “Come over, . . . and help us.” What shall our response be?

During the past year simple buildings to serve as schoolrooms and meeting-houses have been provided in three cities of the South as a means of reaching the colored people; but what are they among so many? Property which cost $3,650 has been purchased in Nashville, Tenn., to serve as treatment-rooms and a mission home for colored workers. This was in response to the plain statements of the Testimonies that such facilities should be provided in that city. But the property is not fully paid for, and it must be fitted up for the work for which it is designed.

Something like seven hundred dollars has been raised to provide needed facilities in Atlanta, Ga.,—barely enough to buy a plat of ground eighty by one hundred feet for the needed buildings. Elder W. A. Westworth writes me that he thinks the necessary buildings can be provided for about thirty-five hundred dollars. Shall we not rally to the work and quickly provide needed facilities in these and other places, that the necessary work may go forward in these strategic points?

Then there are the touching appeals which come to us from faithful colored teachers who from the firing-line ask us to send them help in the way of humble school buildings, books, and appliances.

At the Oakwood Summer School our mission teachers told the simple story of their labors, their hardships, their conflicts, their victories. They told of the crowded rooms, of pupils who had no books, of schoolrooms furnished only with soap-boxes, of walls unadorned by blackboards or maps, and of rooms lighted only by an open door and unglazed windows. But there was no note of complaint or discouragement.

Brethren and sisters, let us send reinforcements to these earnest, humble workers. Let us say to them by a liberal offering the first Sabbath in October: Go forward, extend your work, enlarge your borders, gather in the children, instruct the ignorant, comfort the sorrowing, and minister the gospel to all; and we will minister to you of the substance of which God has made us stewards.

C. P. BOLLMAN.