The teacher who has been appointed to this important post, Mr. J. W. Adams, is one who is singularly fitted by his history and antecedents to engage in this special work. Born in England, he was taken by his parents to the island of St. Helena at the age of three. When nine years old he accompanied his father, a sea captain, on one of his voyages. The vessel was wrecked on the coast of South Africa, and the young lad remained there for eighteen years. He traveled extensively throughout the country on trading expeditions, and thus became thoroughly acquainted with the manners and usages of the native tribes as well as of the British and Dutch settlers. He learned the Tonic Sol-fa system there and became so interested in it that at length he resolved to qualify himself as a teacher. It is certainly a singular and interesting fact, that the person who is first to introduce the system among the Freedmen of America should have learned it in Africa.
SUCCESS, REAL AND APPARENT.
It is often difficult, not to say impossible, to know just what success has been achieved by any special missionary effort. After years of faithful labor the missionary, if challenged to do so, may not be able to adduce a single satisfactory proof that he has not labored wholly in vain, so far as the results he has been seeking are concerned.
On the other hand, changes so remarkable, so exactly in the line of what is sought and hoped for, follow the very first proclamation of the Gospel, which we gladly attribute to Divine grace; we grow confident that at last the promise is nearing its fulfilment when “a nation shall be born in a day.”
Now, it should be understood that we are in danger of mistake as to the real condition of things in each case; a mistake which breeds despair where there may be good reason for rejoicing, or excites hopes that are fatally false on the other hand.
Doubtless many a faithful toiler has spent his whole life in laying foundations, deep and broad, but out of the sight of ordinary observers, upon which shall rise, in magnificent proportions, a temple to our God after he has gone to his reward—to the reward of one who has been faithful, rather than of one who has been observed. The merest accident may place another in such relation to this man’s toils that he shall seem to be the creator of all the results for which he labored, while he bears no other relation to them than the minnow does to the swell and roar and irresistible rush of the wave by which it has been caught and upon which it rides.
Again, men possessed of certain gifts, but devoid of needed restraints in their use, may arouse the enthusiasm of their fellows, sway their passions, play upon their imaginations, excite their emotions and propel them along certain lines of activity until confidence is created that now, at last, the kingdom is coming with millennial celerity and power. But a reaction from all this is certain, and the Gospel ship which just now was riding with grace and beauty upon the crest of the wave lies half buried in mud and sea-weed to await the rising of another tide. The whole movement has been that of an anchored boat, without the possibility of advance, and worse than useless, for in this case it has been with the waste of spiritual force.
There are two facts which all who are laboring for the coming of the kingdom of our Lord should regard as fixed, and being fixed some good degree of fixedness will be secured for their hopes with reference to its progress. One of these is the amazing ignorance and wickedness of those over whom this kingdom of light and love is to be established; and the other is the Divine power of that kingdom and the Divine purpose to establish it, and hence the certainty of its establishment.
The Gospel will never gain its conquests in such way as to relieve the Church of the duty and labor and self-denial and discipline of carrying it and proclaiming it to the heathen, who will find it, as all people have, opposed to all their habits and pleasures and traditions, and will, therefore, when they understand it, resist it before accepting it. The cheering news which so often comes to us from Central Africa and other lands will doubtless be followed by most discouraging news of disappointment and seeming disaster.