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. 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.
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