GOOD, Adolphus Clemens

[s. 287] : Born December 19, 1856, near Dayton, Pa. When but a lad he made gublic confe ion of his faith in the Presbyterian hurch. He received his preparatory training in Glade Run Academy from 1873 to 1876; was graduated from Washington and Jefferson College in 1879 and from the Western Theological Seminary in 1882. His degree of Ph.D. was given by Washington and Jefferson College in 1890. In June, 1882, he was ordained by the Presbytery of Kit tanning as an evangelist, preparatory to sailing for Africa, having been previously appointed a mi ionary by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Mi ions (N.). He chose the Dark Continent as his field of labor mainly because it was a hard field and because few at that time were found willing to enter it. He sailed September 18, 1882, and on his arriva igned to Baraka station, near the mouth of the Gaboon River. Being a man of fine linguistic ability, he soon mastered the Mpongwe language and ten months after landing preached his first sermon in the native tongue. It was his chief delight to itinerate along the river, carrying the Gospel to those sitting in darkne . In this work he waa greatly ble ed. for Africa al Golbantl Goodell 869 was For several years there was an almost continuous outpouring of the spirit, and hundreds of converts Largely from heathenism were baptized. through his own instrumentality the one church existing in 1884 multiplied to four before his During final removal from that field in 1893. his last year or two on the Ogowe, when burdened with the care of the widely scattered churches, he also revised the entire New Testament in Mpongwe and the Hymn Book then in use, adding quite a number of hymns to the latter. During this period and also later Dr. Good made some valuable contributions to natural history by sending many choice specimens to the Western University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Good made three distinct journeys into the unexplored interior, with no companions save Altho he made light of the discomfort encountered and of the danger to which he was exposed, no one can read his unvarnished narrative of travel without being impre ed with native carriers. the heroic spirit of the man. He marched day after day along the beds and on the edge of streams, sometimes through mud a foot deep, his clothing constantly soaked with the dense foliage kept wet by frequent tropical showers. But these were small matters in his estimation compared with the joy of being able to open a pathway for the Gospel to the savage tribes of the interior. The joy increased as the range of his vision widened and he found the Bule people to belong to the great Fang family, and to be widespread and quite acce ible. He was pushing exploration and translation with all his might, with the intention of joining his family in America the ne.xt spring; intending while here to prosecute his literary work and see through the pre the Gospels and po ibly other parts of the Scriptures, when his life closed in 1893. 287