Dr. O. H. White, Secretary of the Freedmen’s Missions Aid Society, writes from London:
The recent death of Dr. Mullens and four others connected with the effort of the London Missionary Society to reach Central Africa, has turned the thought of this people to our plans and work for Africa as never before. They begin to believe that, as Dr. Moffat said, “Africans must go to teach and save Africans; it is the Divine plan.” And the more I speak upon this idea, and the more I see of the people, the more I am persuaded that this view will prevail in the future, and we shall have all we can do to furnish the colored missionaries for all the missionary societies of Europe working in Africa.
If our colored missionaries show to the world that they can live in Africa and can manage the affairs of a mission as well as white men, then the demand for them by the missionary societies of this country will be large enough for all we can supply from America in many years. And the ministers here tell me that if my mission to the country should result in nothing else, it will more than pay for all the time, work and expense which I am giving to this effort.
Were it not for the earnest commendation of many of the most prominent ministers and laymen in England and Scotland of my sermons and addresses on the subject of the evangelization of Africa by the Freedmen, I should give up at once in these hard times of dreadful depression in business; but the Lord has evidently given me the ear and the heart of the people with reference to the future redemption of that vast continent of Africa by the emancipated slaves.
NO DEBT—NO DEFICIT.
From time to time during the year our readers have been told the condition of our treasury. Occasionally it has been only a place to put money in, a great vacuity. It has been with us a year of anxiety and frequent change, of falling and of rising tides. And now we have just closed the books which contain the record of another financial period. And by the arrival of the date which this number of the Missionary bears, and which we have to anticipate for printing and mailing to our remotest subscribers, we shall have made its full statement to the annual meeting.
It is with profound gratitude to Almighty God, and with renewed confidence in Him and in His people, that we write its record.
First. We have fully met all the expenses of the year from the year’s income. We have kept in active operation all our institutions and churches. No one has been suspended or stopped for lack of funds. We do not by any means intend to say that all have been fully equipped and carried on to the best advantage, for we have not dared by any means to do with them all that could have been done. They have all been run in the most economical manner consistent with the accomplishment of their main intent. The salaries have been small, the services have been great, the self-denials have been many, of our pastors and teachers; still, in the year, which only at its close has begun to show signs of returning commercial prosperity, we are glad to record an undiminished work all paid for.
Secondly. We have fully paid the debt. The $37,389.79 of indebtedness reported at the last annual meeting has absolutely disappeared. Every cent of it has been paid, to the last of the seventy-nine. The great work undertaken three years ago is finished, and we are free. We have been for a long time like Lot’s wife, looking back and fearing lest perchance the past might overwhelm us; but God has only rained down riches out of Heaven and buried our burden beneath His gracious gifts; and we are free now to look and to press forward.