missionary operations conducted by inspired men, who were
specially empowered and guided by the Holy Ghost, in which the
preaching of Christ was the all-absorbing theme? Peter and James
among the Apostles, and Philip and Stephen among the deacons,
were illustrious preachers in their day, and models of devotion
to the single purpose of winning men to Christ. Converts were
multiplied, churches organized, and believers made to feel that
the _one supreme_ work was to teach or to preach Christ. The
movement began on the day of Pentecost by preaching Christ, and
on that line it continued its triumphant way while the Apostles
lived. They neither sought nor asked for anything more. They were
content to wield the sword of the Spirit which is the word of
God. And so they preached Christ, “to the Jews a stumbling-block
and to the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which were saved,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
(3.) If we needed other evidence that this line of work is
the true one, we have it in the historical _examples of other
successful missionary work_ since the time of the Apostles.
We only need to examine those great religious movements in
history which not only lifted the Church, but started the human
race forward on higher courses of thought and life, to satisfy
ourselves that the Gospel was the quickening power, and furnished
the motive and impulse to the astonishing results which followed.
A single text ringing in the ear of the monk as he slowly and
wearily climbed Pilate’s stairs at Rome, on his knees, “The
just shall live by faith,” explains the Reformation. That was
the key-note to all the preaching and writing of Luther and the
Reformers. That truth lifted and saved men; that truth organized
the free thought and the Protestant churches of Germany, and made
the Reformation a success.
The Puritan movement in England, to some extent contemporaneous
with that in Germany, proceeded on the same principles. Men
mighty in the Scriptures were raised up to preach the word. They
relied on nothing but the simple Gospel of Christ. All the might
of king and council and Parliament could not crush a movement
having its sources in the word of God. It crystallized into
dissenting churches; it flowed beyond the British Islands on to
the continent of Europe and to the continent of America, taking
possession of a new empire and a new world.
The Methodist movement, under Whitefield and the Wesleys, was
still another uprising and following of the human mind after the
simple truths of the Gospel. Though educated men themselves,
they had almost a contempt for human learning and the wordly
appliances on which other churches so much relied. The preaching
of the word accompanied by the power of the Holy Ghost was their
_sole_ reliance. On that principle they organized their churches,
literally preaching the Gospel to the poor, and, at the end of a
century, had a membership outnumbering any Protestant church in
Christendom. It would be easy to show that modern missions, at
home and abroad, have been most successful as they have relied
most fully on the simple preaching of the word, and that the
building up of churches has been the saving power of communities
_intellectually_, _morally_ and even _materially_.
(4.) Applying now the facts and principles barely glanced at
in this review to the subject in hand, we shall find that, so
far as the South is concerned, pure and intelligent churches
are at this moment more a necessity even than schools are. The
education of the intellect is vitally important; but for its own
security it should rest on the broader education of the moral
nature. The former will make keen, sharp men, shrewd in business
and other transactions, but only the latter can be trusted to
make honest, faithful, conscientious men. While we insist that
_Christian schools_ are the true handmaid of religion, we must
not be tempted to substitute science and culture for piety, nor
to make schools stand for more than churches. The church alone
is fundamental, but for the best results they belong together
and should go together. Schools _can_ be made and _should_ be
made helps to religion; but we mistake their nature entirely
when we imagine that there is anything in the ordinary studies
of the class-room—the classics, the mathematics, or the natural
sciences—to sanctify the heart or subdue the will to God.
The colored race is vastly more run down on its moral side
than on its intellectual side. This is true of all degraded,
barbarous races. The direct effects of slavery on the colored
race were its moral effects. To be sure, it left the race poor
and uncultivated; but _that_ might have been borne and easily
repaired had it left the moral integrity of the race intact and
pure. The school of slavery perverted the moral nature, and until
_that_ is rectified, no process of intellectual education can
lift the race on to the high level of a true manhood and a great
future.
Men and nations are lifted and made truly great through their
moral qualities rather than through their intellectual. At any
rate, if history teaches any lesson it is, that no nation has
long exhibited great intellectual qualities which has not been
sustained by greater moral qualities; and that no nation, ancient
or modern, has become intellectually great that was not first
morally great. The age of Pericles in Greece, and the Augustinian
age in Rome, when the human mind in each of those countries
reached its climacteric, was preceded by those great moral
virtues among the people which made them severely simple, honest,
brave and true. Greece had her Homer, her Solon, her Æschylus,
her Euripides, her Sappho, before she had her Pericles. Rome had
her Romulus, her Numa, her Cato, her Scipios, and for mothers,
her Cornelia, her Marcia and her Portia, before she had her
Augustus. England had her Alfred, her Bede, her Wickliffe, her
Knox and her Reformers, before she had her Bacon, her Shakespeare
and her Milton. Germany had her Luther, her Melanethon, her
Calvin, her Zwingle, and her long line of Protestant confessors
and defenders, before she had her Goethe, her Schiller, her
Humboldt, her Herder and her Beethoven. The ancient nations,
whose masterpieces in literature and art are still the models on
which we form our taste, declined intellectually precisely as
they declined morally. The great age of English literature was a
greater age of moral heroism; and Germany’s highest intellectual
development is but the consummate flowering of the moral forces
which have come down from the Reformation. Both will decline as
the moral supports on which they rest are weakened or undermined.
In the light of the past, it would seem clear that if we merely
sought the highest intellectual development of the colored race,
we would educate most assiduously their moral nature—their
weakest and most neglected part. But this can be done effectually
only through a pure and intelligent ministry of the word. In pure
churches alone can moral instruction, based on Divine authority,
find its highest sanctions. The secular teacher, indeed, may
instruct in morals and religion, but his words do not carry the
sanctity nor the authority of him who ministers at God’s altar in
holy things. It is in the Church, where men speak in the name of
God, and where the soul is brought face to face with the claims
of God, that the highest moral motives are pressed and felt. And
hence we say, the Church _foremost_, and everything tributary to
the Church, because the Church deals supremely with the moral
nature, through which degraded races can alone be lifted.
(5.) There is a farther necessity for such churches, in order
that we may save the present and coming generation of educated
young colored men and women from skepticism and infidelity.
The moment we educate a young man or a young woman to read
intelligently, or to speak and write the English language
grammatically, we have educated them out of the old colored
churches. They will not listen to men whose vocabulary has more
sound than meaning, and who violate with every sentence every law
of correct speech. The white churches are not open to them in any
such sense that they feel at liberty to enter them on any footing
of Christian equality. Unless we provide for them something which
is more pure and rational than their own churches, free from the
clamors and excitements of mere animal passion, we send them into
the streets and away from the house of God. After a young man
or a young woman has remained in school long enough to see the
ignorance of the colored preachers, and has gained sufficient
intelligence to make moral distinctions, it is inevitable that he
should turn from such teachers, and revolt from such moral and
religious guides.
If they are compelled to judge religion only by the specimens
of it which they see around them, why should not a common
intelligence reject it altogether? Our education, therefore, must
either lead our students out of the old churches into infidelity,
or it must lead them into churches where an intelligent ministry
and a pure worship will satisfy both intellect and heart. I can
conceive no greater wrong we can do that race than to destroy
their faith in the religion taught and practiced in their
churches, if we do not supply them with a better. A race without
a religious faith is lost; and, while our education destroys the
old, let us be careful to put in the place of it the _new_ and
the _true_.
(6.) And, finally, pure and intelligent churches are a necessity
in order to create a reservoir of piety and ability sufficient to
nurture and bring forward the young men and women needed for the
work of redeeming Africa. If the colored race in this country is
ever to be broadened to the full conception of saving Africa—is
ever to be made capable of laying broad and deep the foundations
of Christian States on that dark continent—if it is ever to be
inspired to the effort of such an undertaking—the movement must
begin at the foundations of character, in the moral sensibilities
and convictions of the soul. And a movement that is wide enough
and strong enough to sustain such an attempt must begin at the
house of God, must have its roots in Christian homes, must be fed
in the closet, at the family altar, with the word of God and the
breath of prayer. The movement which saves Africa will be a race
movement; will be the light and pressure of Divine truth upon the
minds and consciences of the people, and a baptism of Pentecostal
fire consecrating them to the work. But to what agencies shall
we look for such mighty spiritual energies as are needed for
the recovery of a race to Jesus Christ? The Church is the vast
reservoir of spiritual forces, and she utilizes other instruments
as they are needed to accomplish her work. But if it should
happen that we should mistake instruments or methods for power,
even schools for the Church of the living God, we should soon
find that the body without the spirit is dead.
It would avail little if here and there one in our schools might
be persuaded to enter the African field. What could he do without
the prayers, the sympathies, as well as the moral and pecuniary
support of his race behind him? And what certainly would there be
of a supply or of a succession of laborers, unless the churches
were holding their members to the work and were pushing forward
their children to offer themselves in its behalf? The churches
alone can create a race sentiment broad and deep and potent
enough to bear up an enterprise aiming at the Christianization
of Africa. It is the Gospel, ministered by holy men, which
unifies and exalts communities. It is the Church, as the centre
and representative of divine power, which stands for God, and
the word and the ordinances entrusted to her keeping are his
only visible hold upon the world. If we would have Christian
scholars in training for Africa—as teachers, as preachers, or
as statesmen—they should come from homes and churches in which
the spirit of Christ, the spirit of humanity, and the spirit of
missions was as the breath of life. On the one hand, we want the
churches as the inspiring and sustaining power both for men and
money, and on the other, as the motive and model for the work
we are called to do. Our missionaries need to live and move in
an atmosphere of holy self-denial and charity, to be empowered
by the prayers and godly zeal of the great brotherhood of the
saints, in order to a full consecration. We can expect men and
money for the work in sufficient number and amount only as the
churches, like mighty reservoirs, gather and hold all their
forces of brain, of heart, of will, of wealth and of learning, of
piety and of power, for Christ.
* * * * *
AFRICA.
* * * * *
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.
The report on the Association’s work in Africa, submitted
to your committee, shows that the Mendi Mission has reached
once more a degree of prosperity and promise. In its church,
school and industrial work it has been prospered, and in the
plan of preparing and using native helpers do we find the
great principle of all successful schemes for disseminating
the Gospel wisely adopted. Furthermore, the signal fact seems
now already permanently established that the Freedmen are the
providential missionaries for the dark continent. They endure
the climate as Europeans cannot, and, as trained for their work
in the seminaries of this society, they evince a capacity which
fits them for a rare evangelical service in the land of their
ancestors.
But the matter to which it is especially fitting that your
attention be directed with unwonted seriousness is the conditional
decision recently arrived at by the Executive Committee of this
Association to accept Mr. Arlington’s offer of £3,000, and open
in Eastern Africa a new mission station. That indicates what all
interested in the great problem of Africa’s Christianization
should welcome with thanksgiving and prayer, viz., that this
Association is to take a new and advanced part in this latest
missionary crusade. Now its work will have a higher significance
and a wider reach; for under God does it more and more seem that to
this Association is to fall the high part of preparing the needed
missionaries for Africa. The relation of the educational work of
the Association to this grand enterprise becomes impressively
apparent. There is a compensation in God’s providence, and in this
instance it is inspiring to believe that our Freedmen, as the best
fitted agents, are to become the preachers of Christianity to
the land from which their ancestors were cruelly carried away as
slaves. Here, now, is something proposed which will tax our faith
and test our courage and consecration.
The field for the proposed mission seems to be wisely chosen, and
in the Nile basin, making one more in a chain of mission stations
recently opened, will this Association have its place and do its
share in redeeming the continent to which the entire church now
is turning with a yearning heart. It is somewhat significant
that the proposed field for this mission is in a portion of
the continent most desolated by the slave trade. Pre-eminently
appropriate is it that this society, so long the friend and
advocate of the slave, should carry the tidings of “the liberty
wherewith Christ makes men free” into the midst of tribes which
have suffered from this terrible traffic.
The full and studied report of the Foreign Committee, in the
April number of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY, on the character and
promise of the special field designated by Mr. Arthington, makes
it unnecessary for your committee to add anything touching
upon this point. The careful investigation made in the first
instance confirms the wisdom of Mr. Arthington in naming to
this Association the field he has. His own letter, published
in the March number, shows that he had conferred with the best
authorities as to the location of the mission, and that he has
chosen a district that offers unusual attractions for such a
station as this Association should establish.
We believe your committee but voice the feeling of all
friends of this Association when expressing the hope that the
conditions on which this missionary advance depends will be
promptly met, so that without delay measures can be adopted
to enter this open door, and improve this latest and greatest
opportunity of doing for the millions of the long-forgotten and
long-despised continent. It is very evident that the foreign
work of the Association is to become of increasing importance
and magnitude, for to it has providentially fallen the high
privilege of preparing the workers especially required in
African evangelization. With its old mission on the West Coast
rising now into fresh usefulness, on its new basis of depending
upon Freedmen missionaries and native helpers, and the projected
station south and west of Gondokoro, in a field full of promise,
it will become a great evangelistic power in Africa. The springs
and feeders of its work will be in those noble educational
institutions established in our Southern land, for from these
will go forth the colored men and women who will show of what
holy sacrifice and achievements they are capable.
* * * * *
We should not forget that to this Association belongs the honor
of inaugurating in this country the more recent phase of African
evangelization. At the annual meeting in Clinton, Iowa, in 1874,
was the first note sounded for a missionary advance into the
heart of the dark continent, and in the annual gathering of
1875 and every year since has it been a prominent subject for
consideration. Mr. Arthington was induced to make his offer to
the Association because of its early and pronounced sympathy with
this plan of interior missions in Africa, and we, of our own
belief, would be disloyal to the flag we first gave to the winds
of heaven if we did not gird ourselves for this new venture. This
Association cannot afford to be absent from the Christian forces
now entering the far land, for by Providence and the signal
history of past years, and its peculiar relation to the African
race, it is called to take its place, highest of all, in the
lustrous belt of missions that now extend from the Zambesi along
the chain of lakes to the region in the Nile basin which we are
to man under the name of the Arthington Mission.
M. M. G. DANA,
H. T. ROSE,
G. D. PIKE,
S. J. HUMPHREY.
* * * * *
THE MENDI COUNTRY AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD.
BY REV. G. D. PIKE.
The territory under view is bounded on the east by the River
Niger, on the north by the Great Desert, and on the west and
south by the Atlantic Ocean.
(1.) Its surface is varied by mountains, plains, forest and
rivers, while its coast is indented with bays and harbors of
grand proportions. Skirting the coast there is an alluvial region
extending for fifty miles to a mountain forest range eighty
miles in width; then follows an open plateau which extends to
the Niger and beyond. The soil of this plateau is described as a
rich prairie land, of such productiveness and beauty that it is
regarded by missionaries who have seen it as the garden spot of
the world.
(2.) The climate of the country is admitted on all hands to be
hostile to efforts for the advancement of its people, while the
coast has been fitly styled “the burial-ground of white men.”
A deadly malaria, poisonous both to man and domestic animals,
checks the progress of industries and the work of Christianity.
It is believed, however, that this malaria is more especially
confined to the low mangrove swamps of the coast, and that after
the forest belt is passed the open plateau will afford healthy
localities.
The sanitary condition of a country can be determined in a
measure by its domestic animals. The pestilential vapors of a
malarious region are said to be absorbed to a greater extent by
quadrupeds, living constantly in the open air, than by mankind,
living a portion of the time in-doors. The ancient Greeks
observed this fact, and incorporated it in verse centuries ago:
“On mules and dogs the infection first began,
And last, the vengeful arrow fixed in man.”
Now the open plateau we have mentioned may be called the
“cattle-belt of the Mendi country and its neighborhood.” Here
unnumbered herds of horses, cows and other domestic animals
abound, making it somewhat evident that the climate may be found
favorable for the development of an advanced civilization.
(3.) The products of this country are such as are common to the
tropics, and are very abundant. Coffee grows spontaneously.
India-rubber enough for generations could be easily obtained.
Vast areas of timber lands, characterized by trees thirty feet
in diameter, with spreading branches sufficient for the shelter
of a regiment, abound in the forest belt. Here are found great
varieties of dye-woods, and other woods that admit of a beautiful
finish. Lumber is in great demand, and the saw-mill belonging
to this Association is taxed to its utmost, and quite unable to
furnish a supply sufficient for the market near at hand. The
export of palm-oil from this locality is very great, and at
present is doubtless the leading article of merchandise.
It is quite possible, however, that within a generation the most
alluring wealth of the country will be its treasures of gold.
This precious metal is found in a belt extending from the Gold
Coast inland three hundred and fifty miles. Of the productiveness
of the gold mines or pits, as they are called, we can judge but
little otherwise than by the meagreness of the facilities of the
natives for collecting gold, and by the amount found among the
different tribes. From what can be learned I am led to believe
that the great enterprise that shall yet stir the thought of the
mercantile world in behalf of this region will be that of the
gold hunter. In support of this view we have facts before us like
the following: The king of the Ashantees is covered with golden
ornaments. He is served by his cook with a golden spoon. His
spies, to the number of a thousand, wear golden breastplates,
his officers carry gold-hilted swords, and his subjects use gold
dust for money. The chiefs of the land manufacture golden images
to display their wealth, while their attendants are embellished
with golden badges. Even on the great plateau, three hundred
miles inland, gold is the money of the country. In Bouré the
people do nothing but dig up gold, which they exchange for food
with the neighboring tribes. The indications certainly are,
that if so much gold is secured by native women, who wash out a
little surface sand in their simple gourds, mines of wealth must
lie beneath awaiting the more powerful machinery of an American
civilization.
(4.) We come now to notice the internal improvements projected for
opening up this country to commerce and the higher development of
its people. Lines of steamers ply from the Senegal to the Niger,
and ports are opened where trade is carried on equal in amount
to $20,000,000 annually. The Niger and its tributaries afford
navigable waters for 3,500 miles, enabling the merchant to proceed
with boats from Timbuctoo to the Atlantic. Steamers already ply
upon this river and inland trade is rapidly developing.