The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 11, November, 1879Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 11, November, 1879
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
—Mr. Mackay gives most interesting accounts of his intercourse with
Mtesa and his chiefs. Every Sunday, after Wilson left, he conducted
service at the palace for the king and chiefs, speaking in Suahili
without an interpreter, and Mtesa interpreting into the Uganda language
for the benefit of those who did not understand Suahili. On Christmas
day a special service was held, all the chiefs being in “extra dress,”
when Mackay explained the great event of the day. He regards Mtesa as
most intelligent, and quite inclined to listen to the word of God.
Gratifying instances are mentioned of the influence already exerted
upon him. Some Arab traders arrived to buy slaves, offering cloth in
exchange, and saying they had come from the Sultan of Zanzibar. Mackay
vigorously opposed them, informed the king of the Sultan’s decrees
against the slave traffic, and of the cruelties perpetrated upon its
victims. Then he gave a lecture on physiology, and asked why such an
organism as a human body, which no man could make, should be sold for a
rag of cloth which any man could make in a day. The result was not only
the rejection of the Arabs’ demand, but a decree forbidding any person
in Uganda to sell a slave on pain of death! By another decree Mtesa has
forbidden all Sunday labor, and the question of the evils of polygamy
has been seriously discussed by him and the chiefs. He was on capital
terms with the chiefs, and was teaching numbers of people to read,
having made large alphabet sheets for the purpose. He describes the
Arab traders as most bitter against the Mission. They are distilling
ardent spirits from the plantain, and drunkenness is spreading in
consequence.
* * * * *
THE FREEDMEN.
REV. JOS. E. ROY, D. D.,
FIELD SUPERINTENDENT, ATLANTA, GA.
* * * * *
PART OF A TOUR THROUGH THE CAROLINAS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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