The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 12, December 1879Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 12, December 1879
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
And now, while our original mission field is again becoming
fruitful under these new conditions, the question is brought to
us in a way we cannot refuse to consider. Shall we, in addition
to this, undertake a new field upon the other side of the “Dark
Continent”? The generous _offer made by Robert Arthington_, of
Leeds, England, of £3,000, to this Association, to aid in the
establishment of a mission between the Nile and the Jub, and from
the 10th parallel of north latitude down almost to the equator,
compelled us, early in the year, to examine the field and the
possibility of undertaking it. A large committee, through books
and travellers, made as thorough investigation as was in their
power, and were supported by the Executive Committee, as a whole,
in regarding the proposed location as offering advantages in
accessibility over almost any of the new fields recently opened
in equatorial Africa; but they delayed any distinct acceptance
of the proffer until this fund should be swelled from other
sources to not less than $50,000. In this state of abeyance the
whole matter remained until a very recent date. Dr. O. H. White,
the Secretary of the Freedmen’s Missions Aid Society in Great
Britain, has been sanguine as to the willingness of the English
and Scotch brethren to further aid us in the establishment of
the proposed mission. He has already received contributions to
a considerable amount for this object, and at the last regular
meeting of our Committee, after careful discussion, the following
resolution was unanimously passed:
“Voted, that on condition of the receipt of £3,000 from Mr.
Robert Arthington, of Leeds, as offered to us by him, for the
establishment of a new mission in Eastern Africa, and of a like
amount from the British public, raised through the efforts of Dr.
O. H. White, the Association pledges itself to devote thereto the
sum of $20,000, and with the blessing of God and the assistance
of the friends of Africa in Great Britain and America, to
undertake permanently to sustain that mission.”
The Committee were encouraged to take this step by the fact
that the debt of the Association was no more an obstacle, that
several thousand dollars were already in hand from the Avery
estate, bequeathed for this very purpose, and by other, as they
thought, evident leadings of Providence in this direction. And
now if these conditions be met, and this new work at no distant
day be fairly entered on, the Mendi Mission on the West, and the
Arthington Mission on the East, will support one another in their
plea to Christian England and America for generous and prayerful
sustentation. Our foreign work will thus be more complete than it
can be with but a single mission, and we shall be able to present
a wide field for the generous devotion and self-consecration of
the sons of Africa now in this land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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