3. Nyassa Mission.
Again is the stimulus of Livingstone’s labors seen, and his name and memory honored in the founding of another mission: the Livingstonia on Lake Nyassa. It was a labor of love for the Free Church of Scotland, aided by sister communions to undertake this mission. In the Spring of 1875, the expedition started, having been furnished with all needed supplies, including a beautiful steel steamer and two boats for the use of the mission on the Lake. After a tedious journey up the Zambesi and Shiré and a toilsome land journey of 60 miles, around the Murchison Falls, the Lake was at length reached.
After a brief search, a site was selected that held out unusual hopes of coveted advantages—there were no mosquitos and a favoring lake breeze gave promise of health. But alas for the unforeseen and insignificant difficulties that sometimes defeat the greatest undertakings—the fatal tsetse fly compelled the choice of a new location. But we cannot give space for the subsequent details.
The disasters and deaths in these missions have had a depressing effect upon the hearts of Christians in Great Britain, and we fear that the discouragements will to some extent be felt in this country. But we must guard ourselves against hasty inferences and unwarranted fears. We should remember:—
1. That trials at the outset are often God’s means of arousing a deeper faith. The history of missions, modern and Apostolic, is full of examples. The Teloogoo Mission where such an unusual work of Divine grace has recently been experienced and the converts have been numbered by thousands, was for a long time the scene of unfruitful labors. Bishop Crowther’s Mission in West Africa, now so strong and growing, had an early experience of toils and persecutions. The Apostles themselves encountered imprisonments and death not only, but their labors were sometimes followed by defections, perversions of doctrine and scandals in life.
2. We should take courage from the fact that the slave-trade, the worst foe to missionary labors in Africa, is feeling the effects of the earnest efforts of Great Britain for its overthrow. Sir Samuel Baker, and after him Col. Gordon, the stout old Covenanter—the Havelock of Africa—have crippled its power on the Upper Nile, while the labors of Sir Bartle Frere, and subsequently of Dr. Kirk at Zanzibar, have been equally effective along the coast, so that the Church Missionary Intelligencer feels authorized to say that “the slave-trade if not killed, is scotched.” The missions themselves, though hindered in many respects, have had a salutary influence in shaming and arresting this fiendish traffic.
3. Finally, the church of God must bear in mind that the Saviour’s last and great command, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel,” is accompanied by that all-comprehensive and all-sufficient promise, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” God will redeem the whole world, and in the Saviour’s heart and plan, Africa is not forgotten.
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA AND AFRICA.
Dr. Edward W. Blyden, of Liberia, Africa, is the author of an interesting article in the Methodist Quarterly Review for January, 1880, from which we gratefully reprint elsewhere his tribute to our work. Anything which comes from the pen of this distinguished gentleman—one of the most cultured men of the race whose cause he pleads—is well worth reading and consideration. With much that the Doctor says, we are in full and hearty agreement, but beg leave to make one or two suggestions, growing out of what seem to be at least not unwarranted deductions from his positions.