I Do Not Believe That There Is One Boer,
In The Cashan Or Magaliesberg Country, Who Would Deny That A
Law was made,
in consequence of this labor passing to the colony, to deprive these laborers
of their hardly-earned
Cattle, for the very cogent reason that,
"if they want to work, let them work for us their masters,"
though boasting that in their case it would not be paid for.
I can never cease to be most unfeignedly thankful that I was not born
in a land of slaves. No one can understand the effect
of the unutterable meanness of the slave-system on the minds of those who,
but for the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling
the degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered,
would be equal in virtue to ourselves. Fraud becomes as natural to them
as "paying one's way" is to the rest of mankind.
Wherever a missionary lives, traders are sure to come;
they are mutually dependent, and each aids in the work of the other;
but experience shows that the two employments can not very well be combined
in the same person. Such a combination would not be morally wrong,
for nothing would be more fair, and apostolical too, than that the man
who devotes his time to the spiritual welfare of a people
should derive temporal advantage from upright commerce,
which traders, who aim exclusively at their own enrichment,
modestly imagine ought to be left to them. But, though it is right
for missionaries to trade, the present system of missions
renders it inexpedient to spend time in so doing. No missionary
with whom I ever came in contact, traded; and while the traders,
whom we introduced and rendered secure in the country, waxed rich,
the missionaries have invariably remained poor, and have died so.
The Jesuits, in Africa at least, were wiser in their generation than we;
theirs were large, influential communities, proceeding on the system
of turning the abilities of every brother into that channel
in which he was most likely to excel; one, fond of natural history,
was allowed to follow his bent; another, fond of literature,
found leisure to pursue his studies; and he who was great in barter
was sent in search of ivory and gold-dust; so that while in the course
of performing the religious acts of his mission to distant tribes,
he found the means of aiding effectually the brethren
whom he had left in the central settlement.* We Protestants,
with the comfortable conviction of superiority, have sent out missionaries
with a bare subsistence only, and are unsparing in our laudations of some
for not being worldly-minded whom our niggardliness made to live
as did the prodigal son. I do not speak of myself, nor need I to do so,
but for that very reason I feel at liberty to interpose a word
in behalf of others. I have before my mind at this moment
facts and instances which warrant my putting the case in this way:
The command to "go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature"
must be obeyed by Christians either personally or by substitute.
Now it is quite possible to find men whose love for the heathen and devotion
to the work will make them ready to go forth on the terms "bare subsistence",
but what can be thought of the justice, to say nothing of the generosity,
of Christians and churches who not only work their substitutes
at the lowest terms, but regard what they give as charity!
The matter is the more grave in respect to the Protestant missionary,
who may have a wife and family.
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