According to the light given us, Nashville is an important center for the colored work as well as for the white work. In this city are located several important colored schools, and a very intelligent class of colored people are brought together in consequence.
NASHVILLE CHURCH FOR THE COLORED PEOPLE
We have felt that a strong effort should be made this season to interest the colored people. While Elders Haskell and Butler were carrying forward a tent-meeting in one part of the city, it was felt that it was very important that a similar effort for the colored people should be carried forward in some other locality favorable to such work. The Southern Missionary Society had a new tent fifty by seventy-five feet, and for speakers it had two among its corps of teachers who were well qualified for this work. One was M. C. Strachan, principal of our colored school in Jackson, Miss., and the other was N. B. King, principal of the colored school at Vicksburg. Hence during their vacation they were called to Nashville, the tent was pitched, and a series of meetings has been going forward in it for about two months.
The attendance has not been large at any time, but the audiences have been composed of the thinking class, and these have come quite regularly to the meetings. We are glad to report that although the meetings will probably continue in the tent until the weather makes it advisable to close them, already seven have taken their stand for the truth, and we hope for quite a number more to decide for the truth before the course of lectures shall close.
More than this, we are glad that these school-teachers could have the experience of a work of this kind where they could receive help from those who have had more experience in such work. They will return to their school work this fall better qualified for their duties than ever before.
The illustration given on this page represents the rear and one side of the colored school and church property at Nashville. Of course the street runs by the front of the church. It will be seen that the lot slopes strongly to the rear, and when the church was built, it was raised high enough in front to allow the finishing of the basement for a schoolroom. The work is now progressing on this very rapidly, and this illustration shows something of the appearance of the building when this work shall be finished. There is one exception, however, and that is the windows. On each side of the building are two double windows and one single window, thus giving a room which is lighted better than most schoolrooms which we have ever seen. This schoolroom will be finished, ready for occupancy, this fall.
The action of the Southern Missionary Society in fitting up this building has been influenced largely by the work of Sister Anna M. Nicholas in carrying forward a mission school last winter in a private house within a stone's throw of this church. In regard to the situation as she found it, we quote the following:—
“Only two or three of those thirty or more children whose names are on the register of that ‘slum’ school of mine, knew who Jesus Christ was—and that within a stone's throw of the Seventh-day Adventist colored church. They have no church connections, and attend no Sunday-schools; hence the soil is purely virgin. They believed implicitly all I taught them, and were eager for more Bible stories. Beginning with the creation, our Bible work ran down past the flood. The last fortnight I took up the law of the ten commandments, which they learned to repeat. I was explaining the fourth one day when a boy said, ‘Them folks up at that church keeps Saturday for Sunday.’”
Under circumstances of this nature we felt that there was no better thing to do than for our Society to take the gospel to those people surrounding our church, through the influence of the mission school. Certainly if Nashville has been pointed out as a center where a special work should be done for the colored people, our school work should form as important a factor in our efforts in this place as it has in other places where it is being carried forward so successfully.
The work of fitting up the basement of this building for school purposes can not cost less than four hundred and fifty dollars. A fund has been started for this purpose, and over two hundred dollars of the amount has been already raised. It will require two hundred and fifty dollars more to complete this schoolroom ready for occupancy. We ask our friends to assist us in raising a fund for this work. In July the few office employees connected with the Southern Missionary Society raised $16.50 for this purpose. Who will join us in making up the remainder of the sum so that the schoolroom can be occupied free of debt, and without being a burden to the Society.
J. E. WHITE.
