The American Missionary Association, which is the authorized and recognized servant of the Congregational Churches, reporting to them from the fields to which it is sent in their name, not unfrequently meets the fact that schools and churches in the South are appealing for support to those who hold us responsible for mission work in the South. Thus many in the North from time to time, are contributing to schools or perhaps to churches there, under the impression that they are thus taking the shortest path to the work which appeals to them.
There are many schools, of one kind and another, which have been started at the South by private parties on a purely independent basis. Many of these are carried on for a little time and then are permitted to die out for one reason and another; and many of them are working not only with a great lack of efficiency in comparison with the A.M.A. schools, but without supervision and without scrutiny. Some are located where it has pleased those who located them to reside, without much reference to relative necessities; and some are located so unwisely that the Association has been compelled to decline to take them, when through fatigue or failure they have been given up. Some of them owe their existence to the fact that certain workers were found to be not adapted to the work, or were uncomfortable under supervision and superintendence. Some of them are conducted by those who have signally failed in our schools. Their projectors are often skillful in letter-writing and in solicitation of funds for their specific enterprises, which being purely personal, have no large and ultimate achievement. Those who give cannot know whether the donations are most wisely used, nor is there any satisfactory method by which contributions can be traced.
The Association, with its Superintendent continually in the field, reporting every fact to the Secretaries at the office, who in turn report to the churches, is certainly much better prepared to direct the gifts of the benevolent in ways that shall not be unwise or irresponsible. As these circulars and letters of appeal are often referred by those who receive them to the Secretaries, it is but their duty to say that all funds diverted from our treasury to schools or churches in the South, under no watch and care, would without doubt go further and help the great work more to which the A.M.A. is consecrated, if they should be sent through the channel which the churches have ordained, and which has not only this justification for its existence and work, but also the justification of long experience and success.
If the friends of the American Missionary Association, upon receiving appeals from colored pastors or people in the South, or from independent schools, would remember that their own ordained agency can open and supervise as many schools and churches as they will make possible with their contributions, no doubt less money would be diverted and far greater efficiency secured. Schools in the North without supervision or superintendence, are usually inferior. Much more are these irresponsible, unadvised and independent schools in the South.
SHALL CHRIST OR MOHAMMED WIN AFRICA?
Ultimately Christ will, as we know by the sure word of prophecy; immediately, Mohammed gains most rapidly, as present facts seem to indicate. The rapid strides of Mohammedanism in Africa have been noticed by nearly all recent explorers and travelers, but the full statement of the fact has been brought forth more vividly in a remarkable book written by a remarkable man. The book is entitled, "Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race." The author is Edward W. Blyden, LL.D., of whom it is said by a competent witness—and our own personal acquaintance with him confirms the testimony, so far as we are competent to judge—that he is a great traveler and an accomplished linguist, equally familiar with Hebrew and Arabic, with Greek and Latin, with five European and with several African languages, and, had he been born a European, might fill and adorn almost any public post. Dr. Blyden was born a full-blooded Negro in the Danish Island of St. Thomas, emigrated in his seventeenth year to Liberia, entered an American missionary school and rose to the head of it, became in 1862 Professor in the College of Liberia, and, two years later, Secretary of State in the African Republic. In 1877, he represented Liberia at the Court of St. James, as Minister Plenipotentiary, and has been abundantly decorated with honorary degrees.