Women of Achievement: Written for the Fireside SchoolsBrawley, Benjamin Griffith
History
Women of Achievement: Written for the Fireside Schools
Brawley, Benjamin Griffith
African American women -- Biography; Women -- Biography
spiritual culture of the natives on a scale undreamed of before. In this
training such an enlightened country as England will naturally play a
leading role, and America too will doubtless be called on to help in
more ways than one. It must not be supposed, however, that the task is
not one of enormous difficulties. As far as we have advanced in our
missionary activities in America, we have hardly made a beginning in
the great task of the proper development of Africa. Here are
approximately 175,000,000 natives to be trained and Christianized. Let
us not make the common mistake of supposing that they are all ignorant
and degraded savages. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Many
individuals have had the benefit of travel and study in Europe and more
and more are themselves appreciating the great problems before their
country. It is true, however, that the great mass of the population is
yet to be reached. In the general development delicate questions of
racial contact are to be answered. Unfortunately, in the attitude of the
European colonist toward the native, South Africa has a race problem
even more stern than that of our own Southern states. As for religion we
not only find paganism and Mohammedanism, but we also see Catholicism
arrayed against Protestantism, and perhaps most interesting of all, a
definite movement toward the enhancement of a native Ethiopian church,
with the motto "Africa for the Africans." Let us add to all this
numerous social problems, such as polygamy, the widespread sale of rum,
and all the train of African superstition, and we shall see that any one
who works in Africa in the new day must not only be a person of keen
intelligence and Christian character, but also one with some genuine
vision and statesmanship. Workers of this quality, if they can be found,
will be needed not by the scores or hundreds, but by the thousands and
tens of thousands. No larger mission could come to a young Negro in
America trained in Christian study than to make his or her life a part
of the redemption of the great fatherland. The salvation of Africa is at
once the most pressing problem before either the Negro race or the
Kingdom of Christ. Such a worker as we have tried to portray was Nora
Gordon. It is to be hoped that not one but thousands like her will
arise. Even now we can see the beginning of the fulfilment of the
prophecy, "Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch
out her hands unto God."
[Illustration: META WARRICK FULLER]
META WARRICK FULLER
IV.
META WARRICK FULLER[B]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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