Rufus Anderson (1796–1880) was an American minister who spent several decades organizing overseas missions. Anderson, assistant secretary of the American board for foreign missions wrote an interesting memoir of Catharine Brown, a Cherokee.
CATHARINE BROWN was born about the year 1800, at a place, now called Wills-Valley, in a beautiful plain of tall forest trees, within the chartered limits of Alabama, a few miles west of the Georgia line, and twenty-five miles south-east of the Tennessee river.
This delightful little narrative is a cheering first fruit of the missions of the American Board, among our western Indians. We love to read such things, for they teach us the sovereign power of the gospel over the human heart and they give us evidence from fact, that it is the Bible, and the Bible alone, which is designed of God, to be the great instrument of renovating the world. We love to read them, for they encourage all the friends of mission to more ardent prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and arouse them to more untired activity in the work of sending the gospel to the destitute. They intimate to us that the current which has so long been setting against missionary effort* must soon turn in its favour. Facts such as this narrative discloses are unanswerable, and it is only necessary that they be universally known, and it must be as universally acknowledged, that the missionary and his helpers are not only the kindest and most self-denying, but also that they are the wisest and most successful of any who have ever attempted to make their fellow men happier and better. It is delightful to mark these changes in public opinion, and to witness patient benevolence at last reaping the consideration it has all along deserved. It is an additional motive to Christians to persevere in every labour of lovef in good report and evil report holding forth the word of life; always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as their labour is not in vain in the Lord.
We are also happy that the pleasing task of writing this Memoir,has fallen into the hands of one so well qualified to execute it successfully. The style is simple and perspicuous; and though many parts of the work are eminently pathetic, yet it is wholly destitute of any attempt at effect. The whole narrative is, in fact, a powerful appeal in favour of Missions, and is written by one who has devoted his life to the Missionary cause and yet there is not to be found in it a single word of boasting. The object of the author is simply to lay before the public, a statement of the facts which he had been able to collect,concerning the life and death of this interesting young convert from paganism; and he leaves them,after a few apposite reflections,to make their own impression upon the hearts of those who love the Lord Jesus Christ.
This book originally published in 1828 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.
CATHARINE BROWN was born about the year 1800, at a place, now called Wills-Valley, in a beautiful plain of tall forest trees, within the chartered limits of Alabama, a few miles west of the Georgia line, and twenty-five miles south-east of the Tennessee river.
This delightful little narrative is a cheering first fruit of the missions of the American Board, among our western Indians. We love to read such things, for they teach us the sovereign power of the gospel over the human heart and they give us evidence from fact, that it is the Bible, and the Bible alone, which is designed of God, to be the great instrument of renovating the world. We love to read them, for they encourage all the friends of mission to more ardent prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and arouse them to more untired activity in the work of sending the gospel to the destitute. They intimate to us that the current which has so long been setting against missionary effort* must soon turn in its favour. Facts such as this narrative discloses are unanswerable, and it is only necessary that they be universally known, and it must be as universally acknowledged, that the missionary and his helpers are not only the kindest and most self-denying, but also that they are the wisest and most successful of any who have ever attempted to make their fellow men happier and better. It is delightful to mark these changes in public opinion, and to witness patient benevolence at last reaping the consideration it has all along deserved. It is an additional motive to Christians to persevere in every labour of lovef in good report and evil report holding forth the word of life; always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as their labour is not in vain in the Lord.
We are also happy that the pleasing task of writing this Memoir,has fallen into the hands of one so well qualified to execute it successfully. The style is simple and perspicuous; and though many parts of the work are eminently pathetic, yet it is wholly destitute of any attempt at effect. The whole narrative is, in fact, a powerful appeal in favour of Missions, and is written by one who has devoted his life to the Missionary cause and yet there is not to be found in it a single word of boasting. The object of the author is simply to lay before the public, a statement of the facts which he had been able to collect,concerning the life and death of this interesting young convert from paganism; and he leaves them,after a few apposite reflections,to make their own impression upon the hearts of those who love the Lord Jesus Christ.
This book originally published in 1828 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.
