p. 19 | An Appeal for Help for Our Colored Work

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 16, 1916

An Appeal for Help for Our Colored Work

By George I. Butler

THE appeal of Elder C. B. Stephenson in the REVIEW of November 2 for the work among the colored people, touched a tender chord in my heart, and I desire to impress upon our people the importance of this branch of our work. Abolition of slavery in the United States has resulted in there being now ten million free colored people in this country. Their ancestors were wild, idolatrous Negroes, but many of the present generation are educated Christian people. Many of them are easier to reach with the truth of God than are the white people, and they are more religiously inclined. The atheistic, the infidelic, the evolutionary, and the “higher criticism” ideas, so freely permeating the white race these days, are not so readily received by this people. As a rule they accept the Bible as the Word of God, and are quite easily reached with the truths of the message when they are properly presented.

In our missionary efforts we are working in the very wilds of Africa, and reaching many of those heathen tribes. I greatly rejoice at this success, and wish to see that work continually advanced; but here in America, at our very doors, are ten millions of people who are much more easily reached, as it costs far less to bring the truth to them. Then they are far higher in the scale of civilization; they can read our books and papers, and our ministers can teach them the truths of the gospel. Elder Stephenson, the superintendent of the colored work, forcibly places before us their very great need of help, and we ought to give it careful thought, and respond by a generous offering, that these important wants may be met.

NEVER can I forget the anxiety of the servant of God for the success of our work for the colored. During the last years of her life she frequently made appeals for it. In the six years of my presidency of the Southern Union Conference, composed of nine great States, I was in constant correspondence with her, and was in perfect harmony with her appeals and efforts. I earnestly encouraged this work. During that time great and constant efforts were put forth to build up the Huntsville school, and an orphanage for colored orphans was built. In a recent visit to the school I was made glad to see that it is prospering; it is surely a success. But there is desperate need of help in starting church schools where the children can be educated.

I am so thankful that Elder Stephenson is the superintendent of the colored work. He is a Southern man, and the colored people get along better under the direction of a man reared in the South. Being brought up together in the same community, they know each other better. He is a man of tender heart, and is deeply interested in the prosperity of the colored work.

DEAR brethren and sisters, there are precious, noble souls among the colored people who are greatly devoted to this blessed truth. Read again Elder Stephenson’s appeal. The present time is really a crisis. We have not been doing our whole duty toward these people. They have been receiving but very little attention in many places. Men who have gone out from among us because, as I suppose, they were really not of us, are busying themselves in working upon the sympathies of the colored people, seeking to make them feel that we care little for them and treat them with little consideration. This is not true. Our people have desired to see the colored work prosper. But their tremendous efforts to keep our foreign missionary work properly supplied have possibly resulted in not caring sufficiently for the work nearer home.

Let us all help by a generous gift to the colored work on November 18. The time is near at hand. Let us carefully consider this important matter. Let us help this unfortunate people in their efforts to advance the work of God.

GEO. I. BUTLER,