PREFACE

Summary

The writer offers the following pages to the churches of his country as an humble contribution to their stock of knowledge relative to heathen lands. It contains a faithful record, of events which have occurred within the range of his experience and observation, and supplies much that may serve to illustrate the peculiar attributes of African society. It may, he ventures to hope, tend materially to promote the study of the philosophy of missions. It will furnish both the Sage and the Divine with facts for which perhaps they were not prepared, and exhibit phases of humanity which they have not hitherto observed. It will further show that, amid circumstantial differences there is a radical identity in the operations of human depravity, in Asia, in Polynesia, and in Africa; and that while the Gospel is the only, it is also the uniform remedy for the distress of a world convulsed by sin, and writhing with anguish. It will present striking examples of the complete subjugation of some of the fiercest spirits that ever trod the burning sands of Africa, or shed the blood of her sable offspring.

The Writer has indulged but slightly in philosophical disquisition, as he deemed it his province principally to supply facts. He leaves it with men of leisure and reflecting habits to analyze, compare, and deduce from those facts such doctrines as they supply. Indeed, little in this way can be added to the luminous works of Drs. Campbell and Harris, and Messrs. Hamilton, Noel, and others, by whom the subject of Missions has been so learnedly and eloquently illustrated.