REPORT ON FOREIGN WORK.
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.