OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE
PEOPLE OF AFRICA
By Rev. H. C. Hornady
Paul, although a Jew by birth and education, was
emphatically the Apostle of the Gentiles. Called of God to the
great work, he went forth under the commission which authorized
and commanded him to preach the gospel to every creature. To
him, in a general sense, the field was the world, but he felt called
especially to the work of Foreign Missions. That God not only
calls men to the work of the ministry, but that he also designates
their peculiar fields of labor, is a truth evidently sanctioned by the
Scriptures. Paul was separated from his birth, as he tells us, to
preach the gospel to the Gentiles.
In Galatians, ii. Chapter 9 verse, there is a recognition of
this Divine call by James, Cephas and John, who were chief men in
the Church at Jerusalem.
“They gave to me and Barnabas,” says Paul, “the right hand
of fellowship that we should go unto the heathen and they unto the
circumcision.”
Here we see that the ministers of Christ, in the division of
labor amongst themselves, permitted each one to decide for
himself as to the field which he should occupy. And so all
ministers must be left to their free choice, as directed by the spirit
and providence of God, in entering their fields of labor. I have
made these remarks with the design of applying them to the
occupation of Africa, as a field of labor, by the Baptists of the
South. God, in his providence, has seemed to point us to this
benighted land, and we should certainly be encouraged to enter in
and occupy it, relying upon Divine help for success. In this
discourse I shall include all I have to say under two general heads.
I. Our obligations to the people of Africa.
II. How those obligations are to be met.
First, our obligations to the people of Africa.
1 . We are under general obligations to them as fellow men.
Although they differ from us in complexion, and perhaps in several
other respects, we are alike members of the same great family,
