South Africa -- History; South African War, 1899-1902 -- Causes
Dr. Stewart naturally starts from the mission question. I speak
as the daughter of one of the greatest mission supporters that
South Africa has ever known when I say that the earliest
missionaries who came to this country were to a very large extent
themselves the cause of all the Boer opposition which they may
have had to encounter. When they arrived, they found the Boers at
about the same stage of enlightenment with regard to missions as
the English themselves had been in the time of Carey. And yet, in
spite of prejudice and ignorance, every Boer of any standing was
practically doing mission work himself, for when, according to
unfailing custom, the "Books" were brought out morning and
evening for family worship, the slaves were never allowed to be
absent, but had to come and receive instruction with the rest of
the family. But the tone and methods which the missionaries
adopted were such as could not fail to arouse the aversion of the
farmers, their great idea being that the coloured races, utter
savages as yet, should be placed upon complete equality with
their superiors. At Earl's Court we have recently seen something
of how easily the natives are spoilt, and they were certainly not
better in those days. When, however, the Boers showed that they
disapproved of all this, the natives were immediately taught to
regard them as their oppressors, and were encouraged to
insubordination to their masters, and the ill-effects of this
policy on the part of the missionaries has reached further than
can be told. May I ask was this the tone that St. Paul adopted in
his mission work among the oppressed slaves of his day?... It is
not those who do _not_ know the Boers, like Dr. Stewart, but
those who know them best, like Dr. Andrew Murray, who are not
only enamoured of their simple lives, but who know also that with
all their disadvantages and their positive faults they are still
a people whose rule of life is the Bible, whose God is the God of
Israel, and who as a nation have never swerved from the covenant
with that God entered into by their fathers, the Huguenots of
France and the heroes of the Netherlands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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