The Association is to be congratulated upon new accessories to its working force. Rev. Henry S. DeForest of Iowa has accepted the Presidency of Talladega College, and is already upon the ground. Rev. S. D. Gaylord, a highly commended schoolman of the West, has taken the principalship of the Avery Institute at Charleston, S. C. The late principal, Prof. A. W. Farnham, is proposed as an occupant of a chair in one of the colleges of the A. M. A.; Rev. C. W. Hawley, pastor of the Second Church at Amherst, Mass., is to enter upon the pastorate of the First Congregational Church of Atlanta, which was resigned by Rev. S. S. Ashley, that he might take a season of respite after his fourteen years of invaluable Southern service. Rev. O. W. Fay accepts the call to the pastoral charge in Montgomery, Ala.; Rev. O. D. Crawford of West Bloomfield, N. Y., goes down to serve as pastor of the church and superintendent of the Emerson Institute at Mobile; Prof. J. K. Cole is transferred from New Orleans to the principalship of the Beach Institute at Savannah, Ga.; while Prof. McPherron is promoted to be Principal of the Normal Department of Straight University.
THE MENDI MISSION.
We call attention to the summary on another page of the Second Annual Meeting of our Missionaries on the West Coast of Africa. There seems to have been in it a careful review of the work of the year and a study of the means at hand for carrying it in the future, and a reasonable view of its needs and possibilities.
It will be seen that the report of church and evangelizing work indicates not only earnest effort but substantial results. The missionaries are planning—and the plan has resulted from their own experience and observation—a more free use of native helpers as it shall become possible. All Missions have come or are coming to this. It needs but a simple knowledge of the love of God and the redemption of the world by the Lord Jesus Christ, to fit a man to go home and tell his neighbors the good news which has come to him. That is the work of evangelization. And if these native Christians, carrying to their own people only that portion of the Gospel which they have known and certified by their experience, can come into frequent contact with the missionaries educated and established in the faith, they will be kept from wandering off into error, and grow in grace and knowledge by using the grace and knowledge they have already received and acquired.
The missionaries have, to some extent, upon the basis of the year’s experience, re-arranged themselves so that they think (and we agree with them) that they can work to better advantage than the past year.
One of the schools, that at Good Hope, seems to have been very successful and to have reached a large number of native children. The other, at Avery, has been more confined to the training of children, who are taken into the home to be under continuous influence, in the hope that by industrial and religious, as well as mental training, they may in time be fitted to be important helpers in the work.
Mr. Anthony, who joined the Mission in March last, to take especial charge of the mill and other industrial work at Avery, has already proved to be a valuable addition to the band. And the Committee have just commissioned and sent out another recruit to strengthen the hands, we trust, of those already in the field. His name is Nathaniel Nurse. He was born in the island of Barbadoes, West Indies; immigrated to Liberia, Africa, where he spent five years; came to the United States; spent nearly two years in the cities of New York and Boston; was converted to Christ in the latter city nine years ago. He returned to Barbadoes, visiting also various other West Indian islands. In 1875 he went to England, visiting Liverpool, and spending a year in London. While in the latter city he was engaged in missionary work.
He was sent, about two years ago, by the Freedmen’s Missions Aid Society, of London, assisted by Belmont Church, Aberdeen, Scotland, and several individual Christians, to Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn., where he has been studying with a view to devoting himself to missionary work in Africa.
These young men are in a very trying position, and need the prayers of all good people that they may have wisdom and grace and patience from the Giver of all good and perfect gifts.