Excerpt from Oxford and Cambridge Mission to Central Africa: A Memoir of Its Origin and Progress to the Close of the Year 1859, (Reprinted From the Colonial Church Chronicle for February;) The general interest manifested in the projected Mission to Central Africa, which the two Universities have combined to establish, invites a more detailed notice than has hitherto been attempted of the providential circumstances which have led to this undertaking, as well as of the design contem plated by those who have been most active in its promo tion. The fact of the two ancient Universities uniting, for the first time, in an enterprise perhaps more distinctively missionary in its character than any hitherto attempted by the English Church might well be regarded, if taken alone; as marking an epoch in the ecclesiastical history of this country, and Of this century, fraught with the most hopeful promise for the future; but when considered in conjunction with other circumstances entirely independent of it, yet exercising an important bearing upon the origin and progress of this enter prise, and intimately afi'ecting its prosperous issue, it appears so remarkably to indicate a Divine guidance, pointing to the degraded and debased nations of Africa as the Objects of philanthropic and Christian zeal, that it becomes almost a duty to put on record, in their historical sequence, the extraordinary combination and: concatenation Of events which have resulted in this great and most important Mission. This task is here attempted in hopeful anticipation that the establishment of the Oxford and Cambridge Mission to Central Africa will be looked back upon at some future day as the very turning-point in the destinies of the African race - as an era in the history of that portion of the continent to which it is directed, parallel to that of the mission of St. Patrick to Ireland, of St. Augustine to the anglo-saxons, or of the Missionaries of these later days to New Zealand and the South Sea Islands. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.