“‘But it is unhealthy?’ So are all tropical and especially equatorial climes to those who are not accustomed to the intense and steady heat, and do not use common sense in adapting their clothing, eating and drinking, and habits of life, to these peculiar surroundings. One must not go from temperate to torrid zone, and wear the garments, eat the heating food, use the stimulating drinks, risk the exhausting labors, or even live in the same unventilated houses which are permissible in cooler latitudes. A trip to New Orleans or Florida has proved fatal to many a fool who would not take advice. Even the heroism of the Gospel does not demand needless exposure or careless venture.
“Here is a grand opportunity. It may be doubted whether there has been anything like it since the clarion voice of our Great Captain trumpeted forth the last commission. Ethiopia is stretching forth her hands unto God. On those hands are the marks of manacles which England and America helped to rivet there. There is but one atonement we can make for Africa’s wrongs—it
is to lay down our lives, if need be, to redeem her sable sons from the captivity of sin.
NATIVE GRASS HOUSE ON THE CONGO.
“We ought to turn this Congo into a river of life, crowd its waters with a flotilla of Henry Reeds, line its banks with a thousand chapel spires, plant its villages with Christian schools, let the Congo Free State mark its very territory with the sign of Christian institutions, so that to cross its border will be to pass from darkness into light. Where is our Christian enterprise, that such a work, with such a field and such promise, should wait for workmen and for money! What do our converted young men want, as a chance to crowd life with heroic service, that the Congo Basin does not attract them! Here what a century ago would have taken fifty
years to accomplish, may be done in five. The unexplored interior is open, the ‘Dark Continent’ waits to be illuminated. Nature has cast up her highway of waters, and there is no need to gather out the stones. Give us only the two-wheeled chariot, with steam as the steed to draw it, and the men and women to go in it bearing the Gospel, and from end to end of this highway we can scatter the leaves of that tree which are for the healing of the nations.
“Where are the successors of Moffatt and Livingstone! What a hero was he who dared forty attacks of fever and then died on his knees beside Lake Bangweolo, that he might open up the dark recesses of Africa to the missionary! Let us pour men and money at the feet of our Lord. We have not yet paid our debt to Simon the Cyrenean and the Eunuch of Ethiopia!”
The Baptist church has for years carried on energetic mission work in Africa. The English Baptist Missionary Society, working in co-operation with American Baptists, has pushed its way, by means of flourishing stations far up the Congo and into the interior. In 1885, it presented a steamer, on the Upper Congo, to the American missionaries, and then proceeded to build another for its own use. Dr. Guinness, the president of this large and prosperous society, on a visit to the United States in 1889, spoke thus of the missionary field in Africa: “Stanley was three years in discovering the source of the Congo, and though he met hundreds of strange tribes in that journey of 1000 miles, he never saw a mission station. He found difficulty in coming down this region, but our missionaries sent out to evangelize this country found their difficulty in going up. We found it comparatively easy to found a station near the mouth, and as far as a hundred miles up. After years of labor we reached Stanley Pool, which is the key to the interior, but not without the loss of hundreds of lives.
“The mission in Africa is in its infancy. Africa is a world in itself. The languages spoken would take more than ten hours to enumerate, as there are over 600. They are principally the great Soudanese groups. I gave a year to making the first grammar of the Congo language that was ever prepared. More than 1000 natives have been converted. In this work there is the stage of pure indifference, succeeded by one of inquiry, then hostility, and