Forty-Fifth Annual Report of the African Missionary Society of First African Baptist Church, Richmond, published in The Commission, July 1860

FORTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT Of the Board of Managers of the African Missionary’ Society of the First African Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia It is our pleasant duty to meet on this our Forty-Fifth Anniversary, and we would most humbly invoke the blessing of our Heavenly Father upon this Society, to make it the means of doing much good. The condition of this Society is not so flourishing as it might be, owing to our not having more meetings. We have had only two quarterly meetings since our last annual meeting. At the first meeting, in the latter part of July, 1859, we collected thirty-three dollars and nineteen cents. Ten dollars of this was a donation from the Sunday School connected with this church. The second meeting was held the 15th of January, 1860, when we collected thirty-six dollars and ninety-four cents. Nine dollars of this was, as above, a donation from the Sunday School. Also, on the first day of April, we received six dollars from the Sunday School, thus showing that the children have contributed twenty-five dollars towards the cause of missions. They have our best thanks. Thus there are in the hands of the treasurer seventy- eight dollars and twenty-three cents. In May, 1859, the treasurer paid over to Mr. Edwin Wortham, Treasurer of F.M.B., the sum of one hundred and fifty-three dollars and ninety-three cents. Let us take a retrospective view of the past days of Africa. It was one unbroken, uncivilized, barbarian land. Science and art were unknown. The Gospel had never been heard. But those days have now passed. The sunlight of our blessed Redeemer has at last risen over that once dark and dreary land. We are hearing from there regularly; and what do we hear? It is this, “Brethren in America, do come over and help us fight against the mighty wicked.” Shall that cry be heard and not answered? God forbid. What is it that has caused this mighty commotion on the shores of Liberia? It is the Gospel of our Lord and Master, which is being spread from the seaboard towards the interior. Those that have tasted of the sweet comforts and joys of religion, have been great lights to their countrymen in the land of our forefathers. Those of the natives that have made an open profession of religion, have gone back to their tribes, and have become missionaries themselves. We should feel proud to be engaged in this work of missions. We should feel thankful that it has been our lot to be