Christians, as repeatedly happens, who themselves do not yet understand the most elementary truths of the Gospel, are employed as evangelists, and when, nevertheless, too sanguine hopes are built on the very bungling work of these young evangelists. When one takes into account the shortness of the time, the frequent deaths and the consequent interruption of work, the difficulties of language, the deep religious and moral degradation of the people, and the numerous scandals occasioned by the whites, the 10,000 Christians and the 6000 scholars who have been gathered up till now are by no means contemptible first-fruits, and give assurance of a larger harvest in the future. Besides this, however, a great influence on the side of morality and civilisation has already been exerted which cannot be statistically registered. It is still, of course, a very elementary Christianity that is found in the young congregations, but there are not wanting individual proofs that it has already shown its life-transforming power. There has been heroic self-sacrifice on the part of the numerous missionaries who have found their graves on the Congo,-the family Comber, for example, six members of which have given up their lives, and when the natives are saying of these men, "How they must love us, to die for us!" there is justification for the hope that these many wheat-corns laid in the Congo earth will bear fruit. 166. In the Portuguese colony of Angola, lying south of the Congo, there are, besides the Baptist Mission in Salvador, two other evangelical missions. (1) The W. Taylor Mission in Loanda has 7 stations in the river region of the Kuansa. These were to become the model self-supporting stations, but they seem to have as little success as the Congo stations. Like its method, its reports are also exaggerated, and the actual result of these missions, set agoing with so much boasting, is very inconsiderable. This mission is now in the hands of the American Methodist Episcopal Church, which has reduced it to 5 stations and 6 industrial schools, and is conducting it, it is to be hoped, in a more enlightened manner. (2) The work begun by the American Board in 1881 in the kingdom of Bihé, with 4 stations and diligent literary and educational work, is much more solid; and yet the numerical result of at present about 1250 Christians has been very slowly attained. 167. A pious free missionary, Arnot, belonging to the Plymouth Brethren, began an independent mission in 1886 in the kingdom of Garenganze or Katanga, which is reckoned in the Congo State, eastward of the Portuguese territory, between the Lualaba and the Lufira, which unite and fall into the Upper Congo. This mission, with 15 missionaries, has occupied 5 mission centres from Bihé to Lake Mweru, and has begun to gather small congregations. The most hopeful work is that on Lake Mweru. Arnot himself lives at present as an invalid in England. SECTION 2. SOUTH AFRICA 168. The second great, and very predominantly evangelical, mission field of the Dark Continent is South Africa. By the term we understand that whole part of Africa, from Cape Town in the south, that is bounded northwards by the Cunene river on the west, and by the Zambesi on the east. Besides the Bantu negroes, split up in their numerous tribes, we encounter here a population quite distinct in kind, which has probably been the genuine South African population, but to-day consists only of remnants, some of which are very degraded, the Hottentots (Nama) and their kinsmen the Bushmen. In addition, South Africa is inhabited by a steadily increasing number of white immigrants, who are debarred from the West Coast and its hinterlands by the climate. If the mingling of the different races and tribes of the coloured people is itself great, the white element also adds considerably to the half-breed population. The white population, which numbers now at least 700,000, by reason of its superior civilisation and its increasing hold on the land, has the industrial power every year more and more in its own hands, as it also already possesses, or is striving to attain, political dominion over the natives. When these facts are considered, it becomes evident that an ethnographical, national, and social decomposition of the native population is going on with irresistible necessity; and thus the attainment of the aim of missions, the founding of independent national churches, is either rendered quite impossible or is at least made very difficult. This decomposition has not indeed been able as yet to suppress the native languages, but their domain is crumbling away more and more with the advance of Dutch and English, and in this way, too, the melancholy process of denationalisation is being hastened. The rule of the Christian civilised powers might be made a great blessing for the education of the natives in civilisation, and also indirectly for their Christianisation, if it were exercised with justice, philanthropy, and fatherly care for their welfare. Such blessing has not been entirely wanting, but, unfortunately, in place of these virtues of colonial government, there is found more and more the most inconsiderate oppression, the policy of which is to make the native a slave of the white intruders. Almost greater difficulties than those due to the power of heathenism, which is not yet by any means everywhere broken, are now in store for the mission in South Africa in the manifold problems connected with the race question. These may be expected to lead to many a struggle yet, not only between blacks and whites, but also between the white despots and the missionaries, who feel called on, as the guardians of the natives, to represent their interests in so far as these are bound up with the work of Christianisation. This work in South Africa is not yet done, but still among not a small number of tribes Christianity has already become such a force that the time is not far distant when its victory will be universal. Among the coloured population of South Africa, numbering about 3 millions, there are to-day perhaps 575,000 Christians,1 under the care of some 30 missionary societies, English, German (with 120,000 baptized), Dutch, French, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, and American. Everywhere native helpers have been educated who give assistance in church and school; but their subordinate social standing prevents the native pastors from enjoying the same respect as the Europeans, although there are not wanting commanding individual personalties. It is indeed the case that, within recent times especially, a stronger feeling of independence prevails among the black pastors, with which vanity has not seldom something to do, but then this leads at most to separations, and not to the founding of national churches of matured independence. The "African Methodist Episcopal Ethiopian Church," with a pretended membership of 5000, of which the black American Bishop Turner (p. 111) boasts himself the founder, is probably more rhetoric than fact, and seems now, after occasioning much confusion among the discontented elements in the different missions, to be in process of collapse as a result of its chief leader, Dwane, having gone over to the Anglican Church. The coloured pupils will number over 90,000; but at present the mission schools, although receiving in the British colonies a Government grant, are not in favour with the white Africanders, who grudge the natives an education going beyond the scantiest elementary acquirements, and would like best of all to have them only ignorant labourers. Literary works, especially translations of the Bible, exist in all the native languages of South Africa, even in those which have been brought to the point of extinction by Dutch and English. What consequences the unhappy South African War will have for missions cannot The statistics of the separate missionary societies do not exhaust the number of native Christians, which is here summed up in accordance with the Government census. yet be foreseen. In the first instance, it has exercised a very disturbing and demoralising influence. 169. In the present German South-West Africa, through which passes the boundary between the Negroes and the Hottentots, and which stretches from the Cunene to the Orange River, Rhenish missionaries have been at work since the Forties, first in Nama Land, then in Herero Land, and recently also in Ovambo Land. In the last they work in company with agents of the Finnish Missionary Society, who settled down in 1870 at the invitation of the Rhenish missionaries, and have gathered at 3 stations small Christian congregations with 900 baptized members. In Nama Land, on both sides of the Orange, the London Missionary Society, which has now withdrawn, opened up the way with German missionaries from Jänicke's school, among whom Schmelen is especially outstanding; in Herero Land the Rhenish missionaries (Kleinschmidt, Hugo Hahn, and Brinker) were the pioneers. It has been a laborious work of patience that the missionaries have done in these countries, industrially so poor,-a work made difficult by the great inconstancy of the Hottentots and the strong opposition of the Herero, as well as by the entanglements of war,-and more than once in Herero Land the workers were on the point of withdrawing. But German fidelity at last carried the day. Now the whole of this great region from the Orange River to beyond Walfisch Bay, far into the interior of Great Nama Land and Herero Land, and even up to Ovambo Land, is covered with a network of 23 chief stations and 20 out-stations, the most important of which are, in Nama Land, Warmbad, Bethanien, Keetmannshoop, and Rehoboth: and in Herero Land, Otjimbingue, Okahandja, and Windhuk, the seat of the German Government. All the points that could be occupied have been made mission centres, and the whole population, including even the downtrodden Bergdamra, have been brought under the educative and civilising influence of Christianity, although the total of baptized Christians has only reached 11,000. Unfortunately, the peace restored by the overthrow of Hendrik Witbooi has repeatedly been disturbed by the rising of other tribes. The great loss of cattle caused by the rinderpest perhaps marks the beginning of a new industrial era. 170. The chief mission field of South Africa is Cape Colony, which with its annexes (British Kaffraria, 1865; Griqualand, West and East; Transkei, 1877 and 1872; Tembu Land and Bomvana Land, 1885), had at the census of 1891 a population of about 1,150,000 coloured people, among whom were 392,000 Christians, who have now increased far above 400,000. In the west and south-west of the Cape Colony the Hottentots are in the majority, while the Kaffirs dominate the east. Now, indeed, hardly any pure Hottentots exist, except perhaps in Great Nama Land; their place is taken by a population that should be called a mixed rabble rather than a mixed people, being composed of crosses between Hottentots, Bushmen, Whites, Malays, and negroes of various tribes. It has lost all original nationality, and to some extent even its language, which has been supplanted by a corrupt Dutch mingled with scraps of English. Even the Koranna, who live far inland in the Orange Free State on the Orange and Vaal Rivers, have, like the Griqua, become almost a bastard people. The Kaffirs in the east of the colony, even though not pure, have kept themselves far more free from mixture. Their chief tribes are the Xosa, Pondo, Mpondomise, Tembu, and Fengu (or Fingu). Of the remaining Kaffir tribes, there are also Bassuto in the northern districts. In the case of all these Kaffirs, too, political independence has been completely broken; but yet they stand on a much higher level socially and industrially than the mixed Hottentot population of the west, while at the same time Christianity has hitherto not found among them so much acceptance as among the latter. The immigrant white population consisted originally of Dutch and French refugees, who gradually became blended together as the African Boers. Later there came in increasing numbers Englishmen and also Germans. Between the Dutch and English elements there has developed more and more a political opposition, which at a former time expressed itself in the founding of independent Boer States, and has now led to new complications in a melancholy war. This opposition, however, does not hinder Dutch and English colonists, who in common style themselves Africanders, from being at one in the policy of oppressing the natives. This policy is as old as South African colonisation, and forms a dark chapter in the history of colonial politics, which, wherever we turn, is so rich in bloody and dirty pages. In the south and west of the colony the oppression was carried through violently enough, indeed, but still without any actual wars, while in the east bloody Kaffir wars have repeatedly been waged. In spite of all the successes of missions, even in regard to civilisation,-in spite, too, of many endeavours on the part of individual welldisposed colonists and officials, the abolition of the old racial enmity between the white and the coloured elements has not yet been attained; it is still to-day a burning flame, and there is little prospect of the attainment in the future of that which has been attempted in vain in the past. The incor - |