But more than this, it is believed that in this department the Association is doing germinal work. The few early ears that have ripened for our encouragement are types and prophecies of a greater coming harvest. In any other view of the matter the religion of the Gospel is spiritual class legislation. It is suited to the needs of the few and not the many. The Cross loses its power under the shadow of the Great Wall; and men scorn, as well they may, such a deduction as that; they are shut up to the only other possible conclusion, that the school, the mission work, the unfolded Word, will effect in the Pacific Coast, and among the Chinese immigrants, just what it effects here and among us. And, therefore, we say to the Association that its high mission in this hour is to push its work. Let it turn a deaf ear to all pleadings to stay its hand, however plausible those pleadings may be, and from whatever quarter they may come. Let it distrust the shallow expedients of so-called statesmen, who are even shallower than their expedients. Let it give no heed to the unreasoning taunts and empty rage of Communism, but push its work; secure in the fact that back of its efforts is the intelligent Christian public sentiment of the land; and still more encouraged by the greater fact, that the God who has made of one blood all nations, and provided one Gospel for all men, is saying with an emphasis that cannot be mistaken, “Go forward!”
Rev. E. S. Atwood.
Rev. G. R. W. Scott.
The report was discussed by Rev. E. S. Atwood, Rev. Jesse H. Jones, of North Abington, Rev. Geo. E. Freeman, of Abington, Rev. A. P. Marvin, of Lancaster, Rev. S. H. Emery, of Taunton, and Col. Amos Tappan, of Ipswich. The report was accepted, and the resolution adopted.
Rev. Geo. A. Oviatt gave the report in behalf of the committee on the “Work of the Association in Africa” as follows:
Your Committee on so much of the report of the Executive Committee as relates to the Mendi Mission in Africa, beg leave to submit the following:
At the time of the last Annual Meeting of this body, the first company of colored missionaries was on its way to the Mendi Mission. The plan of sending out to Africa men and women of African descent redeemed from American slavery, converted and educated at the South, was long and thoroughly considered before it was adopted for action. Great care was exercised in selecting this first band of colored missionaries, and it is evident that the right workers were sent forth to test the experiment—persons of deep, earnest piety, of more than ordinary common sense, and of sound education, as their communications to the Executive Committee show. In February two other missionaries, and their wives, were sent out to help the too small number of those who set sail for Africa in September.
This year’s trial has proved two things: (1) That persons of African descent can endure the sickly climate of the country of which their ancestors were natives, better than white missionaries: and (2) That converted and educated Freedmen and women are equal to the work of wise, thorough missionary labor in the land of their fathers. Everything at the stations to which these brethren and sisters were sent, seems to have been improved under their management. Converts have been multiplied and pupils gathered into the schools in augmented numbers.
The call is for an enlarged number of missionaries to occupy this promising field, and for more ample provisions to enable them to take a larger number of native children into their homes, “to be under their care, as well as removed from the debasing influences of their heathen surroundings.”
The Executive Committee express the hope that, with the strengthening of these mission stations, “they may be made the point of departure for a mission into the interior of Africa.”
It is a grand, inspiriting idea, that the men and women the best adapted to civilize and Christianize the millions of Africa, are to be found among those who, at the South, were so lately in bondage, and fitted for their work as foreign missionaries in Normal schools, Colleges, and Theological Seminaries, planted and sustained by Northern philanthropists and Christians, not on Northern but Southern soil.