Your Committee, to whom is referred that portion of the Executive
Committee’s Report relating to the Foreign work of the Association,
beg leave to report as follows:
The experience of the past and Providential indications of the
future seem clearly to call upon this Association to concentrate
their foreign work upon two fields—the Mendi mission on the West
coast, and the proposed Arthington mission in East Central Africa,
in the region of the Sobat River.
The experience of the Mendi mission has been a sad history of the
sacrifice of many lives, and of meagre results when measured by
that sacrifice, in any narrow view of the past or present. But
when we stretch our gaze into the future, and think of the “must
needs be,” which is the law of suffering that accomplishes great
results, and lays the foundations of many generations, the Mendi
mission already justifies its past. It is the key of a future
that seems full of promise. It opens the door to a wider and more
salubrious region, reaching back from the malarious coast towards
the highlands of the head waters of the Niger, and inviting the
extension of mission outposts with better conditions of success.
Meanwhile, Good Hope station, on Sherbro island, is favorably
situated as a base of supplies and easy communication with Sierra
Leone and the civilized world.
The past experience of the Mendi mission has taught some valuable
lessons. 1. That the white missionary cannot be depended on for
permanent work, by reason of the deadly climate. 2. That the pure
black, of good constitution, although born in America, can endure
the climate, and is to be the future African missionary. 3. That
a competent superintendence is desirable for this African work.
4. That extreme and deliberate care is demanded in the selection
of missionaries to Africa, in respect both to physical health and
thorough character. 5. That when such selections have been made,
our missionaries should be better equipped and provided for than
they have been in the past, for efficient and progressive work. A
false economy has involved too much loss. The supporters of the
Association have only need of intelligent and exact information to
see and remedy this defect. A mission steamer for the Mendi work is
greatly needed to save time, health, labor, and in the end, money.
So are other industrial equipments that might be named, fairly
essential to the highest and speediest spiritual results. Your
Committee recommend that the Mendi mission be put in good repair,
that, any dropped stitches be taken up, that the things which
remain be strengthened, particularly in respect to its sanitary and
industrial basis, and better conditions for pushing its stations
further into the interior.
As to the Arthington mission, in its connection with the other
generous and thoughtful projects of this enthusiastic friend of
Africa, and in connection also with other Christian missions, and
particularly that of the United Presbyterians on the Lower Nile,
already dotting that Eastern coast, we approve of the measures
under progress by Superintendent Rev. Henry M. Ladd and Dr. E. E.
Snow for exploring the Sobat region, and getting all possible light
on a desirable location and all other matters involved in a wise
prosecution of the work proposed. Should it prove feasible, we
advise, as in the case of the Mendi mission, a generous equipment,
the providing of a good physical basis, particularly in the
procurement of a steamer of light draft, adapted to such rivers as
the Sobat and the Jub.
Also at no distant day, the establishment somewhere on African
soil, in a salubrious quarter and with favorable contacts with
civilization, of an educational institution for young native
Africans, combining the best features of the Lovedale School in
South Africa, and the Hampton School in Virginia. We believe
that such a school will be essential to the best development of
our future work in Africa, not only for the training of native
missionaries, but for the fundamental lessons of industry and
self-help that should be woven from the start into a Christian
civilization.
It would also prove a stimulus and an outlet for the various gifts
of our educated Freedmen in this country, and furnish a wise
direction to their growing enthusiasm for that African work sooner
or later to demand them, when princes shall come out of Egypt, and
“Ethiopia,” as Dr. Edward Blyden renders it, “shall _suddenly_
stretch out her hands unto God.”
It is also incumbent upon this Association, as the peculiar
helper of these Freedmen, to bend its utmost and untiring efforts
to develop in them that prime, indispensable, and, by reason
of their past limitations, sadly deficient prerequisite for
missionary success—a thorough character—builded on the only sure
foundations—that “fear of the Lord” which is “the beginning of
wisdom,” and the love which fulfills His law.
As it appears that the foothold of future success for the
Arthington mission will largely depend upon the good-will of the
Egyptian Government, it is evident that vigilant care should be
taken in all possible ways to secure that good-will, and the
alliance of all moral and diplomatic aids from our own and European
governments which are interested in projects like that of the
“International Association” for the civilization of Africa.
In making the above suggestions we would not be understood to
reflect upon the Executive Committee as lacking proper care or
enterprise in the pursuance of the African work. We are aware of
their past limitations, the sudden exigencies of the civil war, the
vast responsibilities thrown upon them by the emancipation of the
slaves, and that the immediate sympathies of the Christian public
on which the Association relies for its support have demanded prime
attention to the home work; but now that the logic of events more
clearly defines the important relations of the home work to the
foreign, the appeal should be strongly made for such an increase
of contributions as shall warrant the Association to push its work
abroad with fresh vigor.
J. W. HARDING, _Chairman_.
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