some two or three colored churches, might regard that station as their own,—supply it with school-books, farming utensils, clothes for missionaries and converts, and provisions to a greater or less extent; might recruit ever and anon with new schoolmasters, or replace decayed or deceased missionaries,—or take charge of their children [in America,] and prepare them for the work of their parents, in the future.
This is only an outline of what the few colored Episcopal churches in the United States could do."[1] Perhaps you say, "This is a large scheme!" I reply without hesitation that, from my knowledge of the wealth that has been concentrated in it, St. Thomas' Church, Philadephia, could have done all this thirty years ago. The expense of a small mission, thus constituted, would not near eopial the lavish expenditure of some city congregation of colored people, in balls, parties, fashionable rivalry, jewelry, pic-nics, and the department which is politely termed cuisine.
Without entering into details, I merely remark that from their numbers, and the increasing intelligence and learning of their ministers, the Presbyterians could do a larger work than the Episcopalians. They have so many white colleges and seminaries opened to them, so many obstacles have been removed out of the way of their aspiring young men, and so wide and warm and hearty is the desire of all classes of white Presbyterians to build up their
- ↑ There are no less than three different fields into which effective laborers would likely be welcomed:—the chureh in Sierra Leone, in Liberia, and in the projected field in South Africa, where the "Cambridge and Oxford" mission intend to establish a colony.
