Fisk University graduated its first college class in 1875, and Atlanta hers in 1876, so that from these Institutions have come only five or six small classes that have completed a collegiate education, and the first one of these students to graduate from a full theological course has just received his diploma. And then the officers of the Association have not had their pick from the graduates of their schools. Some of those best qualified for mission work abroad are fully persuaded in their own minds that their field of labor is at home. So the experiment at the Mendi mission has not been tried under the most favorable circumstances. The officers of the Association have not had, like those of the American Board for _its_ work, a large number of fully educated, mature and consecrated men and women from which to select candidates for their African mission. But what is the actual outcome of this brief experiment? The colored missionaries have kept alive the churches and schools, have well cared for the buildings and grounds of the stations, have cultivated the coffee-farm, have bought logs, manufactured and sold lumber, have organized a new church of considerable promise, and all but one of them have kept unbroken the brittle thread of life. [After granting that the mission has as a whole met with serious drawbacks, and suffered from the lack of character and wisdom on the part of some of those to whom it was entrusted, Mr. Chase refers at some length to the following as reasons why mission work in Africa is, and must be, slow: 1. Polygamy; 2. Mohammedanism; 3. The superstitions of the people; 4. The rum trade; 5. The unhealthfulness of the climate; 6. The pernicious influence of traders; 7. The inability of the natives to procure the equipments of Christian civilization. The paper concludes as follows]: Now, in view of this rather gloomy presentation, does any one say, “Let us abandon the Mendi Mission; money enough has been spent, lives enough have been sacrificed”? I have not written with any such object in view. My purpose has been to state plain facts as they exist, for the consideration of wise men, believing that if there is any lack of tangible results, it is not all the fault of management or workers, and that great things ought not to be expected in the immediate future. But there are grounds for hope as well as for despondency. The mission has a good name. The labors of Raymond, Thompson and others, are fragrant in the memories of natives and foreigners, so that even the British colonists in Sierra Leone are loud in their praise. The industrial work, instituted and carried on by the wonderful ingenuity and energy of Mr. Burton, has secured the good will of traders and foreign residents. I heard many encomiums upon the mission, especially upon its early history.