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
Let it not be thought by any of the friends of the Association, because
we have not had more to say in the MISSIONARY, that we have given up
the hope of yet being able to accept the noble offer of Mr. Robert
Arthington, and of establishing and sustaining the Mission proposed by
him. We have already fully and formally recognized the importance of
the work, the accessibility of the field and its peculiar claims upon
our body. Equatorial Africa is our sphere. It is in that that we have
labored for over thirty years, and to that that we desire to confine
ourselves. This Eastern Mission will be a proper balance and complement
to the Mendi Mission on the Western coast. But we have tried to make
haste slowly.
The condition precedent made by Mr. Arthington, that the debt of the
Association should be extinguished, is now fully and fairly met. That
is an obstacle out of the way. The only other condition is one on our
part of prudent anticipation. It will take a large amount—though it
has been more often over than underestimated—to provide the men and
the outfit and to put them on the ground. It will require at least an
amount annually equal to that we are expending on the Western Mission
to sustain this in the East. And the Executive Committee have thought
it wise to assure themselves of $50,000, which they would have in hand
to devote to this work as it might be required, before they should take
the first step towards beginning it.
There are several things within our horizon to-day which conspire to
give us hope of a speedy realization of this plan. Mr. Arthington’s
offer still holds good. There is $15,000 for the work to begin with.
Dr. O. H. White, the indefatigable Secretary of the Freedmen’s Missions
Aid Society in Great Britain, is enthusiastic on the subject of this
Mission, and reports to us that the interest of the English and Scotch
people in it is deep and deepening. Already he has secured considerable
sums to be devoted to this work. Recently he has written us asking for
a definite agreement on the part of the Association as to what it will
do in the way of providing from this country a portion of the fund
deemed necessary to the inception of the Mission, if he shall raise
from the mother country a second $15,000. The Committee has answered
him that they will agree to provide the $20,000 to make the needed
$50,000 for the start, and will then, “with the blessing of God and
the assistance of the friends of the African race in Great Britain and
America, perpetually maintain the Mission.”
The Committee felt free to make this pledge, in the present financial
condition of the Association, and especially as final receipts
from the Avery estate have recently come to hand, amounting to a
considerable part of this sum, and which are devoted by the donor to
the evangelization of the African race in Africa.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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