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
It is ridiculous
to call such places as Kuruman, for instance, "Missionary Society's
property". This beautiful station was made what it is, not by English
money, but by the sweat and toil of fathers whose children have,
notwithstanding, no place on earth which they can call a home. The
Society's operations may be transferred to the north, and then the
strong-built mission premises become the home of a Boer, and the stately
stone church his cattle-pen. This place has been what the monasteries
of Europe are said to have been when pure. The monks did not disdain to
hold the plow. They introduced fruit-trees, flowers, and vegetables, in
addition to teaching and emancipating the serfs. Their monasteries were
mission stations, which resembled ours in being dispensaries for the
sick, almshouses for the poor, and nurseries of learning. Can we learn
nothing from them in their prosperity as the schools of Europe, and see
naught in their history but the pollution and laziness of their decay?
Can our wise men tell us why the former mission stations (primitive
monasteries) were self-supporting, rich, and flourishing as pioneers of
civilization and agriculture, from which we even now reap benefits, and
modern mission stations are mere pauper establishments, without that
permanence or ability to be self-supporting which they possessed?
Protestant missionaries of every denomination in South Africa all agree
in one point, that no mere profession of Christianity is sufficient
to entitle the converts to the Christian name. They are all anxious to
place the Bible in the hands of the natives, and, with ability to
read that, there can be little doubt as to the future. We believe
Christianity to be divine, and equal to all it has to perform; then let
the good seed be widely sown, and, no matter to what sect the converts
may belong, the harvest will be glorious. Let nothing that I have
said be interpreted as indicative of feelings inimical to any body
of Christians, for I never, as a missionary, felt myself to be either
Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or Independent, or called upon in any way
to love one denomination less than another. My earnest desire is, that
those who really have the best interests of the heathen at heart should
go to them; and assuredly, in Africa at least, self-denying labors among
real heathen will not fail to be appreciated. Christians have never yet
dealt fairly by the heathen and been disappointed.
When Sechele understood that we could no longer remain with him
at Kolobeng, he sent his children to Mr. Moffat, at Kuruman, for
instruction in all the knowledge of the white men. Mr. Moffat very
liberally received at once an accession of five to his family, with
their attendants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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