The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 05, May, 1879Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 05, May, 1879
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
Christian England is at war with the Zulus, not altogether
successfully, we fear not altogether justly. It seems to be about
the same question which is at issue perpetually between the United
States Government and the Indians—a disputed strip of territory
lying between Transvaal and Zululand is, by arbitration mutually
agreed upon, decided to belong of right to the Zulus. But the Dutch
Boers who had settled therein decline to give up their claims. The
English Government, to whom that territory had been transferred,
defend them in maintaining their resistance to what had been
declared to be the rightful owner, and because King Cetywayo is a
small sovereign, the Queen on whose dominions the sun never sets
proposes to compel him. This is about the story as it comes to us.
So Christian England and America—not the Christianity in England
and America—treat their poor neighbors.
Now, in the prosecution of this Zulu war thousands of men are
sent out to do battle—generals, captains, common soldiers. Money
is freely spent, millions of dollars, to keep a rude race from
acknowledged rights. Blood is spilt and lives are sacrificed, not
by the one or two, but by the hundred. But there is another battle
to be fought in Africa, in the interests of the Christianity that
is in England and America; a battle against superstition, and all
the ignorance and violence included in it, against the slave trade
and its demoralizing influences. It, too, will cost men and money.
In its accomplishment, lives will be laid down. Already in the new
fields opening, one and another have fallen, until six, perhaps,
have thus far given up their lives in this cause. The advance
guard, the scouts, have not all escaped the perils of such service.
It costs money, too; but it will not cost half as much to convert a
savage African as it will to kill him. Missions are cheap compared
with war.
And then, look at the end of it all. Money and blood to extend
territory, to defend a flag! Where is the treasury, and where the
lives ready to be laid down that the banner of the Prince of Peace
may be set up in Equatorial Africa, and its inhabitants be made
subjects of Him whose dominion hath no end?
Read these emphatic words of _David Livingstone_, so well
illustrated by his own quietly heroic life:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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