But the matter to which it is especially fitting that your attention be directed with unwonted seriousness is the conditional decision recently arrived at by the Executive Committee of this Association to accept Mr. Arlington’s offer of £3,000, and open in Eastern Africa a new mission station. That indicates what all interested in the great problem of Africa’s Christianization should welcome with thanksgiving and prayer, viz., that this Association is to take a new and advanced part in this latest missionary crusade. Now its work will have a higher significance and a wider reach; for under God does it more and more seem that to this Association is to fall the high part of preparing the needed missionaries for Africa. The relation of the educational work of the Association to this grand enterprise becomes impressively apparent. There is a compensation in God’s providence, and in this instance it is inspiring to believe that our Freedmen, as the best fitted agents, are to become the preachers of Christianity to the land from which their ancestors were cruelly carried away as slaves. Here, now, is something proposed which will tax our faith and test our courage and consecration. The field for the proposed mission seems to be wisely chosen, and in the Nile basin, making one more in a chain of mission stations recently opened, will this Association have its place and do its share in redeeming the continent to which the entire church now is turning with a yearning heart. It is somewhat significant that the proposed field for this mission is in a portion of the continent most desolated by the slave trade. Pre-eminently appropriate is it that this society, so long the friend and advocate of the slave, should carry the tidings of “the liberty wherewith Christ makes men free” into the midst of tribes which have suffered from this terrible traffic. The full and studied report of the Foreign Committee, in the April number of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY, on the character and promise of the special field designated by Mr. Arthington, makes it unnecessary for your committee to add anything touching upon this point. The careful investigation made in the first instance confirms the wisdom of Mr. Arthington in naming to this Association the field he has. His own letter, published in the March number, shows that he had conferred with the best authorities as to the location of the mission, and that he has chosen a district that offers unusual attractions for such a station as this Association should establish.