The Foreign Mission Report was given in by the Rev. Neil Cameron, convenor of Foreign Mission Committee. He stated that the first part of his report consisted in the sad news of the death of Mrs. Radasi, their missionary’s wife. He had received a letter from Mr. Radasi in which he wrote as follows: “It is with deep sorrow that I have to inform you of the death of my wife after an illness which lasted about eleven days. She caught a cold in the lungs, and everything that could be done was done for her, but it pleased the Lord to take her away from us. Her removal will cause a great blank to our Church here.” Mr. Cameron said that he was sure they all felt the very deepest sympathy for Mr. Radasi in the great and unexpected bereavement that he had sustained, and that the Synod would send him a letter of condolence expressing their deep sorrow and the sorrow of the Church as a whole at this trying dispensation. Mr. Mackay, who had been so recently on a visit to the Mission, and had personally seen Mrs. Radasi, would be able to speak more particularly about her. Mr. Radasi had also taken occasion to mention for the benefit of the Synod meeting that another new preaching place was opened in a small mine, named Florida, where no work was done on the Sabbath like the rest of the mines, and that nearly all the young men, members of his Bible class, and several young women had professed faith in Christ and had been baptised. He concluded: “We need the prayers of the Lord’s people that the kingdom of grace may be advanced and the kingdom of darkness destroyed, and that many might be brought to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.” Mr. Cameron also reported that the clothes that had been sent out, had safely arrived and were found very suitable for the climate.
Rev. J. R. Mackay, on rising to make a motion in connection with the Foreign Mission Report, said that before coming to speak of matters in regard to which, as one that had been so recently in Africa, he had given some thought, he must touch upon the mournful subject which Mr. Cameron had now brought to the Synod’s knowledge—he meant the death of Mrs. Radasi. He counted it, he said, now a privilege that he had made the late Mrs. Radasi’s personal acquaintance, and he mourned with heart-felt sorrow on account of her early removal. Somewhat younger in years than Mr. Radasi himself, she seemed in a real sense a helpmeet for him. She belonged to the same Fingo-Kaffir tribe, and was one of the gentlest of creatures. What was much more, she appeared to be a true child of God. Mr. Radasi spoke to him, he thought more than once, of the great comfort he enjoyed in respect that Mrs. Radasi was so thoroughly in sympathy with his views of doctrine and worship.
Mr. Mackay then proceeded to read the following statement:—
In the two reports of my visit to South Africa, which appeared in the December, 1909, and February, 1910, numbers of the Magazine, I gave a detailed account of how I found things at the Mission. The letters which have been appearing since then in the Magazine will have kept the Church as a whole as well-informed on the situation as we have had any means for so informing our people. The Mission, so far as we can judge, is in a healthy condition. This should fill us with gratitude to the Lord of all, who humbleth Himself to behold things in heaven and on the earth. There is a lack of sympathy with, appreciation of, and care for, the natives of South Africa on the part of very many Europeans out there. That I regard as simply lamentable. That Mr. Radasi should have, to put it so, purchased for himself so good a degree as that the Government of Rhodesia regards the Mission, over which he is overseer, in a kindly way, is something to be acknowledged to the praise of God’s grace. Members of the Court will have read in the July Magazine how, through the kind offices of Mr. Lanning, the Native Commissioner, the Government of Rhodesia are about to open, at the Government’s expense, a well near the Mission for the Mission’s benefit. What a well of water that never dries up means to a people who, under a tropical sun, pass seven months of the year without any rain, the more favoured people in this respect of this country can scarcely realise. Ordinarily, water can be had in Rhodesia by digging some 70 feet into the earth. Mr. Radasi was himself, with the help of a neighbour, at the expense of sinking one well at the Mission before I had gone out, and I have no doubt the existence of two wells of water near the Mission will mean that a larger number of the native population will set up huts in proximity to the Mission.
Another notable circumstance about the Mission is the kind way in which the native population, from the highest to the lowest, look upon it. I referred in a former report to the pleasing way in which the native chiefs showed appreciation of the work undertaken at Ngwenya. Mr. Radasi’s letter in the July Magazine reveals still more largely how widely extended this appreciation and sympathy is. Chief Sojini lives, I should say, 120 miles north-east of the Mission. Chief Ratidladi, who, as you heard, is a brother to Khama, King of the Bechuanas, and who, as reported in the July Magazine, came bringing a son and a headman’s son to the Mission in February, lives, I should say, more than 120 miles to the south-west of the Mission. I make mention of this mileage just to show how widely spread are the knowledge of the Mission’s existence, and the appreciation of its work by the natives.
As regards the prospects of our getting a metrical version of the Psalms in Kaffir, I can add nothing to what Principal Henderson has written in a letter to me which appeared in the July Magazine, and which, I presume, members of the Court have read.
No one taking an intelligent interest in the Mission can help asking, What is to be its future? Humanly speaking, the existence of that Mission depends at the present hour on the life of Mr. Radasi. I took it upon myself in the presence of some of the leading native men at the Mission to say that if there were a young man of talent and piety among them, willing to become a minister of the Gospel, I was sure the Church at home would wish to educate such a young man with a view to his being useful in the Mission. Thereafter David N’Tuli, a brother-in-law of Mr. Radasi’s, and now an elder in the church at Ngwenya, a man whom Mr. Radasi has in great esteem, offered to come for training for six years to this country, if the Church would accept of him. Mr. David N’Tuli is, I should think, not younger than Mr. Radasi, and he is a man with a wife and family, so that the wisdom of encouraging him to become a student studying for the ministry is questionable. At the same time, I thought it my duty to bring N’Tuli’s offer to the Synod’s notice, and in any case the Synod, if the Court think so, might say that Mr. David N’Tuli, who is evidently a man of some talent, a man also who has been engaged in other parts of Africa than Rhodesia as a preacher, and who is held in such esteem by Mr. Radasi, might be urged to take up work in connection with the Mission, analogous to what lay preachers do at home. I have, I may say, both by word and by letter urged upon the Mission the duty of their showing their appreciation of the Gospel by themselves undertaking to maintain a lay missionary, and all the more so as the whole cost of maintaining Mr. Radasi falls upon the Church at home.
That brings me to another matter, which it is still more difficult for one to come to a conclusion about. I refer to the question of asking the Government for a farm in connection with the Mission. It is likely to be regarded by members of the Court as something rather worldly in its nature to ask for a large farm in connection with the Mission. I may say, however, that there are several denominations now working in Rhodesia, as the Episcopal, the Methodist Episcopal, the Wesleyan Methodist, and the Presbyterian Church of South Africa, and, I believe, one and all of them are finding it necessary to ask for farms. The reasons are such as these: (1) British farmers are fast taking up the best parts of Rhodesia for farming purposes. When a British farm is thus occupied, the natives on it become squatters and cottars, as we would say. Now the rule is that the British farmers object to missionaries coming to their farms for preaching purposes, although of course they cannot object to natives leaving their farms and going abroad to hear the Gospel preached at the nearest Mission Station, which will generally be found on a Church farm or on a native concession, so called. (2) When a Church denomination gets a farm, the natives who formerly lived on that farm become connected with that particular denomination, and over and above that, if the Church farm is well watered the tendency is for more and more natives to come and build huts on that Church farm. (3) If a missionary, whether he be European or African, opens a new Mission, he must, ere doing so, ordinarily get the consent both of the Native Commissioner and also of the native chief or chiefs, and oftentimes it is difficult to get these combined concessions. If the Church has its own land, it is free to send as many preachers as it will to preach within those bounds, and neither Commissioner nor chief will object.
It is possible that the expense of it may deter this Church from attempting anything of this nature, but I have thought it my duty to bring the matter before the Synod, (1) because it was urged upon me by the leading men at our Mission in Africa; (2) because it will be difficult to enlarge our scope in Rhodesia much without our adopting such a measure as I have now indicated; (3) because the sooner the farm is asked for the cheaper it is likely to be found, as the best lands are being fast taken up.
Mr. Mackay then submitted the following motion:—”The Synod, having heard the Convener’s and the African Deputy’s reports on the Mission in Rhodesia, desire to give expression to their sense of indebtedness to God for His grace shown towards this Mission since its inception; they order that £7 15s., which Mr. Radasi, on his own account, paid for sinking a well at the Mission, be refunded to him; they express the hope that the Mission at Ngwenya will undertake to support Mr. David N’Tuli as a lay missionary, working in connection with the Mission at Ngwenya; and without their committing themselves to anything farther in this regard, the Synod instruct the Clerk to make inquiries at the office of the Chartered Company in London as to the terms on which a farm of about 3,000 acres would be granted to this Church in carrying on Mission work in Rhodesia.”
At this point the Clerk intimated that he had received from the Rev. Walter Scott, Edinburgh, the annual collection, amounting to £8 15s., for the Foreign Mission Fund of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, taken by the elders of Mr. Scott’s former congregation—Brushgrove-Grafton, New South Wales. The Synod unanimously agreed to send their best thanks to Mr. Scott and the elders and congregation of Brushgrove-Grafton, for this substantial contribution.