After maintaining this mission for 30 years with white missionaries, with a rapid death-rate and meagre results, Providence seemed to open to us a plan for using the Freedmen of America, trained in our schools, as missionaries to Africa. Three years since a company was sent out, with Rev. Floyd Snelson as a leader. His age and experience guided the mission well, and the next year new recruits were added. But the failure of Mrs. Snelson’s health compelled him to return with her to this country. The management fell into younger and less experienced hands, and dissensions and complaints ensued. Prof. T. N. Chase, of Atlanta University, accepted our invitation to visit and inspect the mission. Accompanied by Rev. Jos. E. Smith, the pastor of our church in Chattanooga, he spent two months at the mission, making most careful examinations, the result of which he embodies in an extended report. It may suffice here to say that Mr. Chase found many things in an unsatisfactory condition, chargeable in some degree to moral delinquency, but more largely to immaturity of experience and of judgment.
From Mr. Chase’s report and our own knowledge of the affairs of the mission, we reach these results:
1. The colored man of America can endure the climate of western tropical Africa. We have sent to the Mendi Mission 17 persons of that race—seven men, five women and five children. Of this number not one man has died, and but one has been compelled to leave on account of ill-health; nor have any of these, with this one exception, suffered from the African fever so as to hinder their work, except temporarily. The children were not sick; of the women, one died, the wife of Dr. James. Mrs. Miller has been compelled to return as far as England for the recovery of health. In the single case of death and in the three of failure in health, the cause can be traced to the germs of disease in the constitution, existing there prior to leaving America; but in every case of a sound constitution, good health has been maintained. In this we see hopeful evidence that, with careful previous medical examination, the colored people of America can furnish missionaries for tropical Africa capable of enduring the climate and of rendering active service as missionaries—a result full of encouragement.
2. Due allowance must be made for the inadequate training of the young colored missionary. The Anglo-Saxon race has behind it 17 centuries of culture; the negro race in America, 17 years. This should make a difference as to the races. The white candidate for the post of missionary was born in a Christian home, reared in a Christian community, educated in early days with the best culture of school and church, enjoyed afterwards the training of the best college and seminary, with their full corps of highly educated professors, with all the advantages of large libraries, apparatus and lectures; and above all, that unconscious education that comes from constant contact with practical men and cultured society. The colored candidate was born a slave, lived in the slave quarters with no refinements of home or surroundings; his education was in our young and imperfectly equipped schools and colleges, and his knowledge of the world is bounded by this limited horizon. This should make much difference with the individual. Perhaps these facts on both sides have not been duly considered. They will hereafter be fully recognized by us, and will lead us to place the management of our African mission for a time in charge of a white superintendent. They will also dictate a great deal of caution in selecting candidates for that field. We may send fewer at first; we will try to send those that are best prepared.
3. Our experiment with colored missionaries in West Africa has not been discouraging when compared with our former efforts there with white missionaries, or with those of other societies in other parts of Africa. A new impulse has been given to African Missions by the startling discoveries of Stanley and others, and if the Christian world expects these new missions to be crowned with immediate success, it will soon be undeceived. There, as elsewhere, missions must furnish heroes and martyrs, must fight battles, suffer defeats, win victories and endure hardness. Leviathan in the African jungle is not easily tamed, and the efforts which would overcome the barbarism which has for ages defied civilization, and even discovery, will test the “perseverance of the saints.”
In the missions growing out of the new impulse for Tropical Africa discouragement and trial have been nearly everywhere encountered. Of the sixteen missionaries sent so promptly by the Church Missionary Society to establish the mission in Mtesa’s kingdom, some have died, some have returned on account of sickness, and the whole work is now in abeyance. The mission of the London Missionary Society at Ujiji is still pushed forward, yet with much sickness and several deaths, among which is numbered that of the lamented Secretary Mullens. The Livingstonia Mission on Lake Nyassa is compelled to abandon its first station on account of the tsetse fly. The Scotch Blantyre Mission has had the sad experience of wrongs practiced by the missionaries upon the natives, attracting the attention and stirring the sorrow of Great Britain.
We are not alone, then, in the trials of our African Mission, nor must we, more than others, be discouraged. Africa was not forgotten in the Redeemer’s plan. His people must meet and overcome difficulties. The assurance that the colored American can endure the African climate is worth all the effort we have made.
THE DEMANDS OF THE FUTURE.
1. Enlargement in the work already in hand among the Freedmen.