ARTHINGTON MISSION—A TIMELY PROPOSAL.
In the spring of 1879 the Executive Committee of this Association, after a careful consideration of Mr. Robert Arthington’s offer of £3,000 for a new mission in the Upper Nile basin, voted to undertake the establishment of the proposed mission on the receipt of a fund of $50,000 for that purpose. During the autumn of the same year the Committee pledged itself that on receipt of £3,000 from Mr. Arthington and a like amount from the British public, “to devote thereto the sum of $20,000, and with the blessing of God and the assistance of the friends of Africa in Great Britain and America, to undertake permanently to sustain that mission.”
They felt free to make this pledge, as was stated in the American Missionary at the time, “especially as final receipts from the Avery estate have recently come to hand, which are devoted by the donor to the evangelization of the African race in Africa.” The receipts above mentioned amounted to $12,000. Mr. Arthington and the friends in Great Britain have already paid over the £6,000, or about $30,000, apportioned to them, and the Association has entered upon preliminaries looking toward the early establishment of the mission. We still lack about $8,000 for the completion of the fund. In view of this deficiency we consider the unsolicited offer from a distinguished anti-slavery man of $500 for this mission, on condition that $500 more be given by another party for the same object, as both opportune and providential, and we not only urge that the above pledge be secured, but that the entire deficiency be made up by the early autumn, as by that time our missionaries purpose to be on their way to the Upper Nile in Central Africa.