obliged to remain with them. And what is singular is, that this desire for the Gospel, vague, undefined, and ignorant as it surely is, comes from every quarter—from the north and the south, the east and the west. The missionaries on the Gambia find themselves utterly unable to meet the earnest solicitations of the Foulahs, the Jalofs, and other tribes in Senegambia. The American missionaries in Liberia are pleading with tears for more help—for more teachers—for more clergymen. The call is so earnest at Lagos, at Abbeokuta, and in the interior from the banks of the Niger, that Mr. Townsend sends the cry across the ocean for a band of many missionaries; and the Church Missionary Society is using every possible effort to meet the call.[1]
At Calabar, and at the Gaboon, the missionaries have been obliged to refuse the earnest request of the natives for more teachers and ministers. You are, doubtless, aware of the fact that the chiefs in South Africa, in many places—chiefs representing tens of thousands of needy men, have gone hundreds of miles to the Bishop of Cape Town for teachers and clergymen,—yea, have written across the ocean to the Queen, pleading for help. And Dr. Krapf, that modern Paul, has the kings of mighty nations in Zanguebar—nations extending four and five hundred miles in the interior, numbering millions of people—-
- ↑ The root of all this disposition seems to be the yearning of the native African for a higher religion; and it is illustrated by the singular fact that Mohammedanism is rapidly and peaceably spreading all through the tribes of Western Africa, even to the Christian settlements of Liberia.
