p. 15 | Forward in the Sudan

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 21, 1903

Forward in the Sudan

A FEW weeks ago the daily papers printed in large type: “British at Lake Chad. How the Union Jack Was Hoisted. Capture of the Mallam Gibrella. Reception of Our Troops in Bornu.” A dozen officers, a medical staff, and a number of non-commissioned officers led the expedition, whose work lasted nearly six months, and resulted in the suppression of the most notorious slave-raider in the region (Mallam Gibrella), and the deliverance to thousands of people from the tyranny of his rule; the establishment of a chain of posts between the Niger and Lake Chad. The people were not only friendly, but overjoyed at their arrival. On all sides there was the greatest rejoicing at the capture of the Mallam. In some cases, as the latter rode through the villages beside the captors, the whole population turned out and cheered.

Among semi-Moslem, semi-heathen, wholly non-Christian people, what does this cheering for the white man mean? — Simply that in the greatest, darkest, most suffering of all lands ruled by Islam, Islam can rule no longer. The hand of God is taking it away. As a governing force the power of Islam here is broken. As a spiritual force it remains. God waits for that other conquering army, the soldiers of the cross, to enter and occupy this land.

Alas! that greater army sends no such expedition, stands for the most part idly, ignoring its Leader’s command! Mr. J. D. Aitken, of Lokoja, at the junction of the Niger and Benue, writes:—

“Are not the fields here already white unto harvest? At present they are open to us. The people hate Mohammedanism, because thousands of their friends and villages have been enslaved under its direct law. If, however, we do not quickly step in, from constant intercourse with Mohammedans under English rule, they will soon forget their old wrongs, they will embrace the religion of the false prophet, and be no longer open to us as now. When I came out in 1898, there were few Mohammedans to be seen below Iddah. Now they are everywhere, excepting below Abo, and at the present rate of progress there will scarcely be a heathen village on the river banks by 1910. Then we shall begin to talk of Mohammedan missions to these people, and any one who has worked in both heathen and Mohammedan towns knows what such a work means.”

No mission has worked at Ibi, none have ever gone to the Bautchi hills, none to Bornu, none since the dawn of the Christian era anywhere near Lake Chad. Beyond Lokoja but one station in all Northern Nigeria (Gierku, near Zaria) is occupied. Three men of the Church Missionary Society laboring here represent the entire force of the whole Christian church working among 25,000,000 souls in Northern Nigeria only, and among 50,000,000 to 80,000,000, reckoning the whole sweep of the Sudan across to the few and far-off points of light on the Upper Nile.

The Sudan Pioneer Mission has been formed to begin work up the Benue River, where at present no mission exists, aiming at the inland mountainous country of Adamawa, south of Lake Chad, as the most healthy part of the Western Sudan known. The headwaters of the Benue flow from this region, whose highest elevation is from eight thousand to nine thousand feet, and whose capital, Yola, possesses a British resident.

Convinced that it can not be according to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ that from fifty to eighty millions in the Sudan should be left without the gospel, we send forth in his name this statement, seeking for fellow laborers, to pray, go, give, help, send.—Selected.