The discovery of coal up in the interior at Udi brought a new interest
into her life, for her far-seeing mind at once realised all the
possibilities it contained. She believed it would revolutionise the
conditions of West Africa. And when a railway was projected and begun
from Port Harcourt, west of Calabar, to Udi, and there was talk of an
extension to Itu, she sought to make her friends at home grasp the full
significance of the development. That railway would become the highway
to the interior, and Calabar would cease to be so important a port.
Great stretches of rich oil-palm country would be opened up and
exploited. She urged the need for more men and women to work amongst
the rank heathenism that would soon collect and fester in the new
industrial and commercial centres. Up there also was the menace of
Mohammedanism. "Shall the Cross or the Crescent be first?" she cried.
"We need men and women, oh, we need them!"
She had been saddened by the closing of stations for furloughs, and the
apathy of the Church at home.
We are lower in numbers in Calabar than ever--fewer, if you except the
artisans in the Institute, than in the old days before the doors were
opened! Surely there is something very far wrong with our Church, the
largest in Scotland. Where are the men? Are there no heroes in the
making among us? No hearts beating high with the enthusiasm of the
Gospel? Men smile nowadays at the old-fashioned idea of sin and hell
and broken law and a perishing world, but these made men, men of
purpose, of power and achievement, and self-denying devotion to the
highest ideals earth has known. We have really no workers to meet all
this opened country, and our Church, to be honest, should stand back
and give it to some one else. But oh! I cannot think of that. Not that,
Lord! For how could we meet the Goldies, the Edgerleys, the Waddells,
the Andersons? How can our Church look at Christ who has given us the
privilege of making Calabar history, and say to Him, "Take it back.
Give It to another?"
She had been deeply interested In the great World's Missionary
Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, and had contrasted it with State
diplomacy and dreadnoughts, but was disappointed that so little
practical result had followed. "After all," she said, "it is not
committees and organisations from without that is to bring the revival,
and to send the Gospel to the heathen at home and abroad, but the
living spirit of God working from within the heart."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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