On the other hand, Africa, the land of their fathers, is another anomaly in the world’s history.  For a thousand years it was unknown to the civilized world; its people are the most degraded upon earth, and it is a shame and reproach to the church that it has done so little to enlighten them,—­yea, a double shame when, as is now well known, Mohammedanism is spreading most rapidly over the whole continent.

These added facts emphasize the question already asked, Are not these freed Negroes peculiarly fitted and providentially called to carry the gospel to their fatherland?  Is there not here a Divine purpose that the church should be quick to see and prompt to carry out?  As the Hebrews were taken to Egypt, disciplined by bondage, and made familiar with the arts of the most enlightened nation then on earth, and were thus prepared for their high destiny in developing the plan of salvation, so are not these children of Africa, chastened by their severe bondage, brought into contact with the civilization of America, and fitted by their ardent religious impulses, destined to bear a large share in the work of Africa’s evangelization?

It is to the development of this thought that I invite attention.  Let me first revert to the slow progress of Christianity in Africa, Christianity, soon after the apostolic age, made one of its brightest triumphs in Northern Africa—­in Egypt and Abyssinia.  But ere long that light went out there and never penetrated the great continent.  So far as is now known, darkness has ever hovered over it—­ignorance, superstition, degradation, cannibalism, slavery and war, have made and perpetuated that darkness.

But I wish now to call attention to the efforts of the church in modern times to preach the gospel in Africa.  There are now, so far as I can ascertain, forty-one societies engaged in missionary work there.  The number of missionaries employed by them in Africa, foreign and native, is 1,086.  These have endured the malaria of the climate and the dangers from hostile people, and some of them have shown the most heroic spirit of self-sacrifice.  They have been preceded by others, who have laid down their lives in the work, and the living stand on the graves of the dead, expecting soon to follow.  A measure of success has attended and rewarded this zeal, and a few favored examples can be found of men who have long endured the climate and have seen the good work grow upon their hands.  But the results, as a whole, have been discouraging.  Christianity has found a precarious footing along the shores of the continent while, as yet, in the vast interior the missionaries are compelled to follow at a tardy pace the footsteps of the explorers.  Africa is yet unevangelized.

The causes of this are not far to seek.  The white missionaries from Europe and America succumb under the fatal malaria, or are deterred by the unreasoning and deadly hostility of the natives.  The missionaries are a foreign people, with different color, features and habits.  They are known to the natives as coming from nations that have plundered and enslaved them.  They come as a superior race, unable to meet the natives on the basis of a common brotherhood.  A gulf yawns between them.  The Christianization of Africa needs a new impulse from some other quarter.