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Walton, John : A Charge Delivered to the Newly-ordained Ministers at the Conference of the Wesleyan-Methodist Church of South Africa Held at Durban, Natal, April, 1885

(Grahamstown: Richards, Slater, and Co., 1885)

204 x 132 mm; lacking wrappers; pp. 24. Very good condition. Removed from a tract volume; a few fox spots here and there; housed in film-fronted bag. (SABIB 4, p. 716) COPAC finds just one library holding this title: the University of Manchester; SABIB IV lists four South African repositories. Not in Gordon-Brown: The Settlers' Press. In the appendices to The Settlers' Press, Alfred Gordon-Brown provides a list of printers who worked in Grahamstown between the years 1830 and 1900. He gives 1884 as the year that Richards, Slater & Co went out of business, which, on the evidence of this publication, cannot be accurate. The author of this discourse is almost certainly the same John Walton whose son Sir Edgar Harris Walton became a Cape cabinet minister. Another son, Sir Lawson Walton, was British attorney-general under the Campbell-Bannerman government. John Walton, "after working in the East, settled in South Africa and became the first president of the Wesleyan Circuit of the Eastern Province." (DSAB III, p. 829) It is significant that ten of those ordained on the occasion of this discourse were black, their names being Jeremiah Dhlamini, David Msikinya, January Menye, Stephen Makhobotloane, Jonas Goduka, Ebenezer Magaba, Henry Matibule, Luke Msimang, Enoch Sigudo, and Paul G. Mtembu. Walton addresses the Black ministers thus: "My dear Native Brethren, Your presence here, in the position in which you now stand before this christian assembly, is one of the most significant facts presented to the Conference and to the Connexion. You are among the greater triumphs of the Gospel. Sprung from the Kafir races, converted to God, successful preachers among your own countrymen, and divinely called to the work of the ministry, you are chosen witnesses for the genuineness of Kafir Christianity. The native Churches are vindicating their position and claims, for they are yielding pastors and teachers upon whom God has set His approving seal. The complete evangelization of the Kafir tribes, indeed, will be achieved, not by strangers and foreigners of other races, but by men of their own blood. Upon you therefore who stand in the earlier ranks of this ministry, rests a peculiar responsibility."

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