Missionary Travels and Researches in South AfricaLivingstone, David
Religion
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa
Livingstone, David
Missions -- South Africa; South Africa -- Description and travel
Another element of weakness in this part of the missionary field is the
fact of the missionary societies considering the Cape Colony itself as
a proper sphere for their peculiar operations. In addition to a
well-organized and efficient Dutch Reformed Established Church, and
schools for secular instruction, maintained by government, in every
village of any extent in the colony, we have a number of other sects,
as the Wesleyans, Episcopalians, Moravians, all piously laboring at the
same good work. Now it is deeply to be regretted that so much honest
zeal should be so lavishly expended in a district wherein there is so
little scope for success. When we hear an agent of one sect urging his
friends at home to aid him quickly to occupy some unimportant nook,
because, if it is not speedily laid hold of, he will "not have room for
the sole of his foot," one can not help longing that both he and his
friends would direct their noble aspirations to the millions of untaught
heathen in the regions beyond, and no longer continue to convert the
extremity of the continent into, as it were, a dam of benevolence.
I would earnestly recommend all young missionaries to go at once to the
real heathen, and never to be content with what has been made ready
to their hands by men of greater enterprise. The idea of making model
Christians of the young need not be entertained by any one who is
secretly convinced, as most men who know their own hearts are, that he
is not a model Christian himself. The Israelitish slaves brought out of
Egypt by Moses were not converted and elevated in one generation, though
under the direct teaching of God himself. Notwithstanding the numbers of
miracles he wrought, a generation had to be cut off because of
unbelief. Our own elevation, also, has been the work of centuries, and,
remembering this, we should not indulge in overwrought expectations as
to the elevation which those who have inherited the degradation of ages
may attain in our day. The principle might even be adopted by missionary
societies, that one ordinary missionary's lifetime of teaching should
be considered an ample supply of foreign teaching for any tribe in a
thinly-peopled country, for some never will receive the Gospel at all,
while in other parts, when Christianity is once planted, the work is
sure to go on. A missionary is soon known to be supported by his friends
at home; and though the salary is but a bare subsistence, to Africans
it seems an enormous sum; and, being unable to appreciate the motives
by which he is actuated, they consider themselves entitled to various
services at his hands, and defrauded if these are not duly rendered.
This feeling is all the stronger when a young man, instead of going
boldly to the real heathen, settles down in a comfortable house and
garden prepared by those into whose labors he has entered. A remedy for
this evil might be found in appropriating the houses and gardens raised
by the missionaries' hands to their own families.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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