The annual meeting of our English Auxiliary took place at Union Chapel, Islington (Rev. Dr. Allon), June 6th. The Earl of Aberdeen presided. The Rev. Dr. O. H. White read the general report of work done in the United States and to be done in Africa. The Rev. J. Gwynne Jones presented the financial statement. The total receipts had been £5,270; £4,727 had been expended in direct mission work, and the balance in hand was £205. £3,000 had been promised by Mr. Arthington, of Leeds, towards the establishment of a mission in Central Africa. The American Missionary Association had fully considered the proposal and deemed it practicable, and they desired now to raise another £3,000 in this country, trusting that they would be able to command funds in America for carrying on the work, if its outfit should be substantially secured here.
Miss Jennie Jackson, of the Jubilee Singers, then sang one of their plaintive hymns, after which the presiding officer addressed the meeting, referring to his personal observation of the slave trade in Africa. The Rev. Dr. Moffat followed, saying that he had been the servant of Africa for sixty years. Since he went out as a missionary in 1816 he had been incessantly engaged in advancing the Redeemer’s kingdom in Africa. He had had many opportunities of witnessing what the Gospel could do in Africa, and he could testify that it was the salvation of every one that believed. Mr. J. B. Gough then spoke in his usual entertaining and forcible way.
On the motion of the Rev. Dr. Allon, seconded by the Rev. Dr. F. Billing, the following resolution was adopted:
That this meeting desires to express the deep sense it entertains of the favoring providence of God in connection with the education of the emancipated slaves of America, for teachers and missionaries to their own race, and also in connection with the mission work accomplished by some of the society’s students (ex-slaves) on the West Coast of Africa. And this meeting would renewedly record its conviction that in the Christian education of the Freedmen we are working in the line of a special providential arrangement for a native agency for the evangelization of Africa.
MISSIONS IN CENTRAL AFRICA.
At the recent anniversary of the London Missionary Society, the Rev. W. F. Clarkson, B. A., of Birmingham, made the following remarks upon Missions in Central Africa:
“And now, turning to Central Africa, what a solemn responsibility has been thrown upon the Church of Christ in connection with that vast continent! True it is that the North of Africa has been connected with European history ever since Europe had a history, and Egypt, especially, is rich in associations of the most remote antiquity. South Africa has been colonized by modern European nations, and the East and the West Coasts have furnished the material for that iniquitous slave trade in which Christian nations have not been ashamed to join hands with Mohammedans in order to rob their fellow-men of their liberties.
“But all this has touched only the fringe of this vast continent, and the interior has been practically unknown. Look at the maps of a few years ago and you will see blank spaces, relieved only by imaginary rivers and unverified mountains, and the letterpress of the geography books was just as meagre and as unsatisfactory. I chanced to light upon a school geography, the other day, published in 1847, in which this was the description given: ‘The interior of Africa is little known. The climate is so bad that the few Europeans who travel there generally die before they return.’ And it concluded by saying: ‘Most of the inhabitants are negroes.’ I think that the young people of to-day may congratulate themselves that they have not to study the text-books of thirty years ago—at any rate, on this question. I need not remind this meeting how, by the labors of eminent geographers and explorers and, not the least, missionaries, this reproach has been rolled away, and Africa promises to be as widely known as is Asia. But it is more to the purpose of this meeting to express the admiration and the thankfulness with which we witness the Church of Christ, of divers denominations, taking up the solemn responsibilities thrown upon her, and addressing herself to the evangelization of Africa.