American Missionary Association. (continued 2)

Africa and the Africans.—Mr. President: Africa and the Africans is the subject assigned me. But before entering upon it directly, it is fitting, perhaps, that I should say that for the last six and a half years I have been in Great Britain as the Secretary of the Freedmen’s Missions Aid Society, of which the Earl of Shaftesbury is President and Lord Kinnaird is Treasurer. The British people have been largely interested in aiding the American Missionary Association in preparing and sending out to Africa colored teachers, missionaries and general helpers for that great work so wonderfully opened up in that dark land. And it is well known that the Jubilee Singers, who went through Great Britain under the patronage of the Freedmen’s Aid Society, or we may say its President, the noble Earl of Shaftesbury, received very generous aid for Fisk University from our British friends. They have also aided liberally in the support of colored missionaries at the Mendi Mission on the West Coast of Africa. But latterly they have become greatly interested in the Arthington Mission, projected for the Upper Nile valley, toward which field two white missionaries have gone forth, Rev. H. M. Ladd, and Dr. Snow, of Western New York. For this mission, Robert Arthington, Esq., of Leeds, England, has given $15,000; others in Great Britain have given $15,000 more; so we have $30,000 of the $50,000 needed for the mission from our British friends. One London gentleman, after hearing a statement of the case in Scotland, sent for the speaker and gave him $5,000, as he said, instead of a legacy. Note that. A young man, who is a butler in a gentleman’s family, sent at another time $50. When asked if that was not too much for him he said, “I gave £10 a little ago, to help a friend out of a difficulty, and I can give £10 for the good of a vast continent.” A good woman, who had been a governess for some years, also handed to the Secretary £10 for herself, and her sister gave £10 more; and they agreed to give together £15 ($75) a year right on for colored missionaries for Africa. These were deeds of self-sacrifice. Are there not generous young men, and older men, and noble women in America, who will do as well for that dark continent, which our ancestors so cruelly plundered? We need, we must have $20,000 more, very soon, for that Arthington Mission. We want a steamer on the Upper Nile waters also. We must besides have a steamer, the John Brown memorial steamer, for the Mendi Mission on the West Coast at once. In that country there are no roads, there are no beasts of burden. Human beings have to be the carriers of all burdens for hundreds of miles. And our dear missionaries have fallen, many of them, in early death, in those perilous journeys through swamp and jungle, on their errands of love to the poor suffering millions of Africa. We cannot believe that their friends and our friends will hesitate and delay their giving for this steamer for the increase of good and the saving of precious lives.

If we recall the abuse and the needs of Africa, we can but see and feel our duty and privilege in this connection. Africa has been for five hundred years the hunting-ground for the bondmen of the whole world, and to this day the slave trade covers an area nearly equal to all Europe, in Northern, Central and Southern Africa. This accursed trade is to the East, and mainly to the Mohammedan countries; and it is said that from some of the Eastern ports a traveler may wend his way, without a guide, into the very heart of Africa, by following the line of human bones and the skin-covered skeletons of the poor slave victims who have fallen in that terrible march to the sea. And that this crime should have been permitted by the Christian nations down to the closing part of this 19th century is an astounding fact! And it ought not to need an argument to show any man that a people who still demand slaves, and buy human beings therefor, ought to be hounded out of the very pale of the civilized nations; for it is generally known that for every slave delivered in any country, four and often six human beings have fallen in death in the attempts to capture them, or in the cruel journey to their doom. And this trade will never be stopped till the better nations learn to treat the demand for slaves as a huge crime, as well as the act of supply. To meet and combat this crime boldly and persistently in both demand and supply is the call of God to the Christian nations out on the morning and the midnight air.

Now we may do both. Africa is open to us, and travelers are penetrating her vast territories; the steamer’s screw and paddle-wheels of reform are stirring her waters and also the thought of her people; commerce is tapping her mines of wealth; geographers are correcting her maps; scientists are studying her various climates and testing her remedial agents. Christianity, of which it was said in a meeting of the International Society for Africa, made up of distinguished travelers, learned and scientific men, “History shows that Christianity has special virtue for rescuing savage races from barbarism, causing them rapidly to over-step the first barriers in the way of civilization”—Christianity, we say, is now challenging Paganism, the Moslem curse, and the accursed slave trade, on that long plundered continent of Africa. And now we have a potent factor for the work not available a little ago. We have more than six millions of Africa’s sable children, from which people we may select educated Christian young men and women for the great work given us to do. And these are the people for Africa. They can live in hot climates; they are by blood relations and common sufferings in sympathy with the people to be reached and saved; they can touch the heart, stir the thought and lift up their own race as no other people can ever do it.

For this they are developing a peculiar type of piety on a grander scale than we have yet seen among the Anglo-Saxon race. The Pauline we have had—the intellect and conscience carried by an intense conviction of duty, so that the man would go to the stake for his principles. But the loving, trustful type of piety belongs to these sable children of the sunnier and more genial climes. Shall we, then, know our day and dare to take our opportunity with these ex-slaves for the redemption of Africa from ignorance, superstition, slavery, war and woe? We want the John Brown mission steamer. We want, we must have, in addition to all the generous and noble gifts for our Southern work, the sum of $20,000, already pledged by the committee of the A. M. A., for the Arthington Mission in the Upper Nile valley, frightfully ravaged by the villainous slave trade to this very day!

Who, then, of all God’s dear people, will rally to this standard, and come at the call of the Divine King to this momentous work, with hand and heart and money, to take possession of that vast continent of Africa, with its 200,000,000 of people, for Christ, and for the good of all nations?—Rev. O. H. White, D.D., Sec. F. M. A. Soc., London, Eng.