The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-06-05
|SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE CONGREGATIONAL HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY.

Eloquent Reviews of Work Done-rhe
 Society's Early work-The Sacrifices of
 the Pioneer Missionaries-Thc Sociesy's
 Noble Stand Against Slayery-Its Help
 to the Union Cause.-The Great Needs of
 To-day of the Society for Its Work--The
 Ever Broadening Field-Brilliant Ad-
 dresses and Earnest Appoals-Thc Clos
 ing Meeting Last Night--The Reception.
 The forenoon meeting yesterday of the Congregational Home Missionary society's seventieth anniversary con- vention was presided over by the brave and famous General O. o. Howard, the society's president for the ensuing year. Center church was again well filled and at all the meetings the attendance is large and deep interest in manifested. The convention closed last night. The reports and papers of yesterday told l further of the splendid work the society is and has been doing in many parts of the United States.
 Secretary J. B. Clark was the first | speaker yesterday. He read histori- cal paper entitled "A Look Backward" A map of the United States, on which was illustrated the progress made in the work of the society, was displayed at the left of the pulpit. The address spoke of the vast growth of the United States in the seventy years covered by | the society's history. When the society | was begun there was not 8 railroad in the United States. Four years later the first passenger road, the Baltimore 1 and Ohio, was opened. New Yorlx's population seventy years ago was l50,- l 00O New Havens was 9,500 Jeremiah Day was then Yale's president. The l Connecticut Home Missionary society, l organized in 1798, was the first national home missionary society on the western hemisphere. Fully twenty-five years before the American Home Missionary l society was dreamed of Connecticut, and one year later Massachusetts, be- | gan sending home missionaries across their own borders into the then frontier states of New York, Ohio, Indiana and 1 Illinois, and down the Mississippi, even to the Gulf of Mexico. The national l society of 1926 has ever since been fol- l lowing and extending the trail which these two pioneer states in home mis- | sionary work blazed across the conti- l nent at the opening of the century. l There is scarcely a western state of 1 to-day which the society did not first I enter while it was yet a territory, and ] usually in the earliest stages of the settlement. Chicago was a struggling hamlet when Jeremiah Porter preached the first sermon ever heard on the vest ern shores Of Lake Michigan. The speaker pointed with pride to the long | roll of western colleges whose birth | was the outgrowth of the mission work 1 of the American Home Missionary so- | ciety. He also spoke of the fact that this society was from the first strong ill | its stand against human slavery, and l five years before the first gun was fired at Sumpter it announced publicly. No l more slave holders in home mission churches" and began withdrawing it's more than fifty missionaries from the l southern states. And when the great struggle began the work of the society l in the west and northwest in thirty l five years of church planting bore fruit l in grand work done for the cause of | freedom and the Union.
 The brave self-sacrifice of the pioneer l missionaries was spoken of and many 1 of them were mentioned by name. They went further from home, judged by the time occupied in the primitive modes of travel in those days, than do the mis- l sionaries who to-day go to Turkey or l China.
 Addresses regarding college mission- | ary bands followed that of Mir Clark. Rev. Richard Cordley of Lawrence, l Kansas, described the Andover Kansas band of 1857, which resulted in the free 1 state sentiment so prevalent in the l theological school. Sylvester Dana | Storrs, a New York man, made the 1 original suggestion, and three of his 1 classmates joined him to aid in making Kansas a free state, and upbuild the | church. For two years they held week. | ly Kansas prayer meetings, and on graduation they entered the work. MT. Storrs located at Quidaro the speaker | went to Lawrence. Mir. Storrs formed 4 the church at Wyandotte, and after | ward went to Atchison. Later he was Esuperintendent of home missions in the | state
 l Rev. R. R. Parker went to Leaven- worth, where it's first church was or | tablished. He later organized the first | church at Kansas City. Grosvenor c. 1 Morse went into the southwest section of the state, founding churches at Em- | poria and Council Bluffs. All these men were influential in the establish- ment of churches schools and other in- stitutions which have made Kansas in it's intelligence and religious sentiment, a reproduction of New England.
 Rev. c. W. Shelton of Derby, Conn.,, spoke for the Yale-Dakota band.
 The Yale-Dakota band was really started in 1878 when Superintendent Sheldon talked to Yale students about going to Dakota, and the late Rev Dr. | Bacon's influence for good had an im- portant effect. After sending one of the students for summers study in Dako- ta, two students pledged themselves to 1 go. and soon seven others added them- selves to the band. The speaker was | the first member of the band to enter ! the territory. This was in 1881, the year of the great flood. Great success l attended the labors of the band.
 President s. B. L. Penrose of Whit man college reported for the Yale Washington band, which went forth six i years ago. They formed line on the