New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1871-06-04
Spiritual DesoiatiOn In the South.

| The New Ork Herdt0 OF sunday contains
the following article:
Six years ago, when the rebellion was
brought to peaceful close, the South was
both a moral and material waste. Pillage
and plumber by contrasting armies had done
their work surely and thoroughly. The
| military drafts in the South had drawn of
all the able-bodied men, young and old,
who could shoulder musket or haEdle a
spade; and when Lee surrendered and
Northern men began to pour into the South
and to send back the tales of distress of
that section our sympathy was aroused here
and material aid was promptly furnished.
But in the excitement attending the efforts
to tranquilize the people of the rebelliOus
States and to supply their immediate ply
steal needs their spiritual necessities were
overlooked and they remain to this day
but very partially supplied with the min
| istry and the ordinances of the Christian
| Church.
During those six years past the
| people, both North and South, have been
interested mainly in reclaiming the neg
lected fields and plantations and reopening
| the closed factories of the South, and have
| devoted very little time, labor or money in
restoring the waste places of Zion. We
/ have not been quite willing to accept the
intimatiOns which have been forwarded to
us from time to time by Northern carpet
baggers" in regard to the moral desolations
of the South, and the white survivors of the
war, whose spirit has not been quite sub
| dued, are either too proud or too ignorant
to reveal their own sad condition or to &C
cept as boon from us that which they are
too poor to paw for. Hence, after all those
years, they are nearly as bad off spiritually
as they were when the war ragged and their
churches were turned into barracks or arse
nals or worse.
Recently two important witnesses have
made tour of the Southern States, not to
speculate in lands or mines manufactures,
but to see for themselves and for the Chris
tan missionary associations which they re-
present, the actual moral condition of the
inhabitants of those States. The Rev. James
5. Ostrander general agent of the Sunday
School Union of the Methodist Episcopal
I Church, returned to this city three weeks
ago. after an absence of about three months,
during which he visited nineteen States.
South and West, and Travelled Is, 1874 miles,
mostly in the Gulf States, preaching to the
people wherever he stopped, and con versing
with the ministers and Christian laymen
wherever he found them.
The desolatiOn was the same everywhere,
there being very little difference between
the city and the country, and the poverty of
the people was terribly apparent. Windows
which had been broken and doors that had
manned unmended and unrestored ever
since. Affairs and pews and pulpits that
have been desecrated remain as they were
left in 1863. The people have no money
wherewith to repair their churches nor to
support the preaching of the Gospel among
them. As the next best thing, wherever it
was feasible to do so, Mr. Ostrander organ
lied mission Sunday schools, and his society
has forwarded grants of books, catechisms.
cards and Sucb other hp1nS AFRO ueada1
to maintain such Sunday school organiza-
tons as were willing to 90 through the
usual form of application therefor.
The Rev. George j. Mingins, superintend-
ent of New York city missions, has returned
from his Southern tour, later than Mr.. Os-
trander; but he brings a similar account.
He did not travel so extensively as Mr. Os-
trander, but his experience agrees with the
other in every particular. He saw enough
to satisfy him that the great want of the
South to-day is not so much schoolhouses,
and factories, and agricultural prosperity.
and political quiet, as the preaching of the
Gospel to the masses. In one village in
Georgia he found a hog in quiet possession
of Methodist church, in which there was
neither bench nor chair, pulpit nor pew,
door nor window. With the aid of some
colored men he drummed upa congregation
on the Sabbath, to whom he expounded the
Word of God and where also he gathered a
Sunday school. His illustrations of the ig-
nOrance of the children and youth of this
and other places which he visited would be
very amusing, were they not so serious
matter
Mr.. Mingins will, no doubt, present the
results of his observations and impressions
in the South to the Christian people of this
city, as Mr.. Ostrander has to his society.
and they, with their usual liberality will.
we dare say, promptly respond. Fifteen
hundred missionaries who should go down
to the South to teach the people, and not to
domineer over them, or to make money out
of their msfortunes, could find ample en-
ployment at once. And there are fifteen
hundred men in this city whose purses are
long enough to support one such missionary
year in that field. While we are ready
to send our money to the heather in India.
and China and Africa, let us not forget our
brethren at home, who by reason of war
and misfortune are without the institutions
of the Christian church, and unable to help
themselves. Here is field which must
yield an abundant harvest. Who will be
the first to send the laborers into this vine