55C LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



missions on the coast similarly circumstanced, especially those of Sierra Leone. 

 There, where all the intertropical tribes are represented in those rescued from 

 slave-ships or their descendants, a native agency of teachers and ministers 

 has been raised up, not only to supply the schools and pulpits of the colony 

 and its dependencies, but to enter those countries whence they or their fathers 

 came with the light of divine truth. The Niger mission, the nearest to us 

 on the coast, is entirely manned by a native agency, and superintended by 

 Bishop Crowther, himself rescued from a slave-ship in his boyhood. At Sierra 

 Leone we have just learned that he lately took from there thirteen additional 

 native agents, to plant in the various mouths of the Niger. Such, we trust, 

 will eventually be the experience of the Calabar mission. The natives of dis- 

 tant interior tribes, brought into contact with the gospel in Calabar, receiving 

 it to the salvation of their souls, and instructed so as to be able to teach it to 

 others, will, we hope, be raised up as an agency, and that the most effective, 

 for evangelising the unknown regions whence they have come. May Cod 

 graciouly grant our prayer, and accomplish our hopes in this, that so His 

 own promise meets its fulfilment, and ' Ethiopia soon stretch out her hands 

 to God.' 



" Situated on the margin of an unknown continent, where the power of 

 Satan has hitherto been unquestioned, our position does not resemble that 

 of the missionaries of the South Seas, who can stretch their influence around 

 their little insular communities ; nor of our brethren in south Africa, where 

 long- established missions have planted their stations thickly throughout the 

 land. We stand and gaze on a vast field, into which we have recently 

 entered — a field which would more than absorb all denominational effort, and 

 which, moreover, is left entirely to ourselves. Realizing these facts, let us 

 redouble our efforts, and with all prayer and patience and perseverance address 

 ourselves to the work, until the true light shine throughout all these wide- 

 spread regions." 



The Rev. Dr. Robb, of the Calabar Mission, Ikorofiong, in writing home 

 on the subject of African Evangelisation, remarks: — "To Christianise Africa 

 is one of the hardest tasks before the Church of Christ. The negroitic races 

 have been allowed to sink to the lowest depth. There are greater facilities 

 for spreading the knowledge of Gfod among the peoples of Asia than can 

 be found in Africa. The former is healthier far than tropical Africa; its 

 greater populations can be largely reached by Christian literature at the very 

 outset ; and a higher class of native Christian labourers is furnished even by 

 the first generation of its converts. We have now obtained pretty extensive 

 information about the negro tribes, and never yet has one been found pos- 

 sessed of a literature, or that could be influenced or instructed beyond the 

 reach of the living voice of the evangelist. 



" When the Hamites entered on their inheritance — the African conti' 



