know, but both of us being churchmen, will make my mention of them excusatory. With three or four of these congregations I am intimately acquainted, and I see no difficulty whatever in the way of their adopting some such plan as this: 1. Preparing, as a commencement, some two or three young men for the ministry, for the special purpose of becoming missionaries to Africa. This, of course, presupposes a regular, systematic effort on the part of the ministers of these churches to interest their people in Africa, and to train them in the habit of giving to missions. In this way one young heart and another would ever and anon come forward, anxious to devote himself to the evangelization of Africa. The young men might take theological lessons of the minister, and when prepared, might be placed under the Episcopal authority on this coast, and receive orders. 2. When about sending off the young men, if any pious mechanics, or farmers, or schoolmasters desired to devote themselves to the work, the congregation might extend their interest to them as well as to the candidates for orders, and assure them of continued regard and future zeal and self-sacrifice in their behalf.[1] 3. A company thus formed, might be placed at the disposal of the mission, with the request, perhaps, that they might be located together, as one party; and the church from whence they came, or
- ↑ I regret that the theme before me forbids that I should speak of the almost absolute necessity, in any such scheme, of connecting manual labor with missionary effort. Indeed no man should become a colonist to Africa whose example is likely to encourage the heathen in their irregular, unsystematic, unplodding modes of labor.
