The day has gone by when the world could dismiss Christian missions in West Africa with a contemptuous sneer, for Christian missionary effort with its eloquent facts, definitely established, can no longer be ignored. Of all the forces which have made for real progress in West Africa, Christianity stands some say first, others second, but none can place it last. To it belongs primarily in point of time at least, the economic prosperity of the Gold Coast. To it belongs, almost entirely, the credit for the native clerks and educated men on the coast. To it the natives owe their knowledge of useful crafts. To one section of the Christian Church at least belongs the honour of having on the spot saved the Congo natives from extirpation.

Whilst all missions have much in common, the investigator cannot but observe the fact that administrators and commercial men alike will, in the majority of cases, hold in a measure of contempt the Protestant missionary, whilst they esteem highly his Catholic brethren. One searches for a reason for this attitude, which can neither be found in the devotion of the missionary—for heroes abound in both sections—nor is it to be found in the character and success of their respective missionary labours, for in this particular both sections are witnessing encouraging results. The only answer which the administrator and trader will give is that Father O’Donnell is “a good fellow.” It is difficult to escape from the conclusion that the good father is more “diplomatic” than his bluff and somewhat puritanical Protestant confrère. The Protestant missionaries with greater freedom than that allowed to the Catholic Fathers, criticize administrations, report abuses, and generally give any form of oppression or iniquity a quick, even reckless exposure. The colossal crime of the Congo was exposed on the spot almost entirely by the Protestant missionaries, although far outnumbered by the Catholics. In the French Congo are established several Roman Catholic Orders, yet hardly a priest has raised his voice against the atrocities committed there. The slavery of Angola and San Thomé has been exposed primarily by Protestants, the priests standing by and for the most part content to witness the traffic in human beings without a protest. I do not condemn, but merely state facts. I know too well how the sufferings of native tribes have appealed to generous members of the Roman Catholic Church, but no review of Christian missions in West Africa would be honest or complete without some reference to this fundamental difference between the two great sections of the Christian Church.

My chief reason, however, for calling attention to this feature is that the antipathy towards Christian missionaries is hardly likely to become less marked in the near future. The great changes which are taking place may precipitate a grave situation within the next twenty years. The attitude of administrators is no longer the benevolent tutelage of native races. There is an increasing autocracy in most colonies; the martial spirit with its harsh regulations and rigorous discipline, so out of place in nature’s calm paradise, is permeating every department of affairs. This spirit brooks no opposition, knows no sympathy, and sometimes even forgets justice. It blows hot or cold, where and when it listeth, but it tends always towards menacing native peace and progress. High-minded Christian men must be driven by this restless spirit into an increasingly resolute defence of their native communities.

Commercial methods, too, are undergoing a still more far-reaching change. As I have already pointed out, the old-time merchant is giving place to the highly organized syndicate, which possesses neither heart nor conscience and is generally strong enough in influence at home and power abroad to menace any administration, and, if necessary, threaten the various Governments in two, three and even more countries at one time. The missionary, bold in his isolation, knowing no higher earthly authority than his highly tempered conscience, willing, if need be, to suffer any extremity, is bound to find himself more and more in conflict with the exploiting energy of these vigorous dividend seekers. This conflict is of course an excellent tonic for the Church, but it makes the lot of these isolated men and women in Central Africa very much harder to bear.

The forces of Christianity have not yet made much headway in the far hinterland of the Sierra Leone Protectorate, the northern territories of the Gold Coast, nor in Northern Nigeria. In the Sierra Leone colony, where slaves liberated during a period of fifty years were dumped down as they were released by British battleships, Christianity has permeated fairly completely the life and habits of the people; nearly two-thirds of the population are nominally Christian, whilst the Mohammedans number less than one-tenth. In the Gold Coast the traveller may witness some of the most effective missionary work in West Africa. The Basel Mission alone has over 30,000 adherents who find about £5000 a year towards mission expenses. Another notable fact is that the natives have invested in the Mission Savings Bank over £23,000, a sum considerably in excess of the amount deposited with the Government. As was the attitude towards the Quaker bankers of Puritan England, the Christian community of the Gold Coast is regarded by the natives as the safest repository for the wealth of both worlds.

In Southern Nigeria Christian missionaries find themselves confronted with a firmly entrenched Mohammedan community. Something over fifty per cent. of the population is Mohammedan, and that of a most attractive order. None can meet the leading Mohammedans of that colony without being impressed with their simple piety and their tenacity to what they regard as their invincible faith. Officialdom opposes the advance of the emissaries of Christianity in the more northerly territory, on the ground of trouble with the Moslem community. This attitude is regarded by most Mohammedans as anything but a compliment to their religious faith, holding firmly as they do that the Koran is powerful enough to withstand all the assaults of another creed. Below Nigeria, that is south-east of the Niger delta, Mohammedan influence is left behind, and Christianity is confronted with simple paganism. Not the bloodthirsty and strongly entrenched barbaric paganism which confronted Livingstone in East Africa, Ramseyer at Kumasi, Hannington in Uganda, and Grenfell in the Congo, but a paganism so broken by the forces of civilization, so rent and riven by internal mistrust, that the masses of the people are crying out: “Who will show us any good?”

Efforts to win West Central Africa to Christianity divide themselves into two periods. The first effective efforts were made by the Portuguese and Dutch settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The first period was almost exclusively due to Roman Catholic zeal, which, under the blessing of the Pope, regarded the tropics as a preserve of the Vatican. The nineteenth century witnessed but little advance, until Livingstone’s enthusiasm and his romantic career lighted a flame which spread throughout the civilized world, and Protestantism, awaking to its opportunity, began to pour missionaries into the tropical regions of West Africa. The Basel Mission attempted the Gold Coast, and its first missionaries perished to a man; the Church Missionary Society pushed on its work from Sierra Leone away up the Niger, where men and women did little more for a time than replace the dead and dying; the Methodists, never behind any other denomination in enthusiasm, began work in Sierra Leone, Calabar, and the islands of the Gulf of Guinea; the Baptists established an excellent mission in the Cameroons, where they were “elbowed out” by the Germans, and at a later date commenced their great work in the Congo.

Little remains in the social life of Africa as a result of the work of the early Roman Catholic missionaries. The tribes have no settled church organization based upon the devoted efforts of three centuries ago. Ruins may be seen in several parts and extremely interesting ones too. On the islands of San Thomé and Principe, we frequently saw the partial structure of churches, one of which must have been erected very early in the sixteenth century, for a tomb close to the chancel, grey with age and moss grown, was dated 1542. If the colonists of San Thomé were zealous slavers, they certainly gave much of their ill-gotten gain to the erection of churches. Fragments of these edifices are lying about in the tropical undergrowth and an examination will show that marble pillars, façades, altars, even common stone, had been gathered from the four corners of the earth to build ornate “Houses of God” on these isolated rocks in the Gulf of Guinea. Visiting one of these ruins we were struck by the pathetic reverence with which the natives regarded those crumbling walls; the priest had long since died, and there was none to lead those almost hopeless souls along the path of religious faith. Standing inside those four walls, gazing at the broken altar and the creeper-clad walls, we were forced to keep our heads covered, for the ruin had lost its roof generations before, and the equatorial sun was pouring its direct rays upon us. Directing a question to some of the natives standing near by, we were amazed to find that they refused to answer; two or three times we repeated our questions, but they all maintained immovable positions and refused to utter a single word. A man close at my elbow then informed me that no native could reply whilst the white man kept his hat on his head in the House of God! The silent rebuke of those simple natives forced us to leave the precincts of the old ruin and pass into the little chapel which still remains more or less watertight. Into this place, not more than ten feet square, the natives had moved the images of the Virgin and Apostles, and in the centre of the room a native palm oil lamp sent forth its unpleasant odour. This lamp was half African fetish and half salvation to those natives, for their worship had degenerated into a sort of corrupt Zoroastrianism, and the Alpha and Omega of their religion seemed to be the uninterrupted burning of this light. They were most insistent that since the foundation of the church, between 1500 and 1530, the light had never been allowed to go out!

This, however, was but one testimony to the relic worship of the slave islands. Along the roadsides, in secluded corners of out of the way roças, nestling in plantain groves, the traveller may see miniature chapels constructed from rustic forest tree branches, very similar to the fetish houses of the mainland of Africa. In most of these one also sees little prayer-stools, and in all of them a rude cross roughly cut out with the native axe and the cross pieces bound together with forest vines. Most of these crosses are surrounded by native pagan charms, and thus all that is least essential in Christianity is joined together in native religious fervour with the superstitions of paganism, and this gives a melancholy impression of the result of the years of toil and sacrifice by men and women devoted to the theory of the Christian Faith.

Ichabod is written along every roadside and in every ruined chapel; the very images in decay seem to utter the word, and the mind is compelled to recall the fact that Christianity in creed only, without Christian practice, is foredoomed. Surely the curse of the miserable slaves of generations ago rests upon everything on those islands; by their agony and bloody sweat they toiled to erect those magnificent churches, the crack of the whip on the slave plantations extorted the gold which purchased the images of the Virgin, to add lustre to countless churches and to purchase images of the compassionate Christ for the cross roads and public places. One wonders what all this parade meant to the slaves at the time. They have long ceased to suffer the bonds of slavery, or the crack of the whip; those slaves whose toil built the churches and bought the crucifixes have gone, and though decay everywhere marks the one-time existence of an unholy Christianity, one element remains and flourishes—a slavery, without any hope beyond that which may be inspired by the hybrid of effete Christianity wedded to African superstition.

The results accruing to the second period of Christian propaganda have the unmistakable signs of a vitality which will revolutionize Central Africa. Whilst purely missionary zeal centres itself upon the heroic figure of Livingstone, recognition must be given to Henry Stanley, and also—though one hesitates to couple the name with these two heroes—to King Leopold. Looking back upon African history, one fact emerges above all others, that the work of Livingstone and Stanley together had created an international interest in the position of the peoples and the possibilities of the countries in those regions. This condition observed by King Leopold, his master mind promptly seized and exploited it. The crafty Belgian monarch saw that by preaching Christianity and civilization for the African, his long-awaited opportunity for colonial expansion and a place in history would be gratified,—a place in history he has that none assuredly will envy; his people, too, possess a colony, and though they do not see it to-day, they will yet heap their curses upon the sovereign who has fastened the millstone round their necks.

The labours of Livingstone, Stanley, and King Leopold, culminated in the Conference of Berlin, which was unique in that it had for its programme not only the interests of honest commercial expansion, the suppression of the slave-trade, the sale of arms, ammunition and alcohol, but also that of stimulating Christian missionary propaganda, and by its subsequent treaty, missionaries were encouraged to win pagan tribes from barbarism. The immensity of the area which by this historic event was thrown open under international stimulus to the forces of Christianity is not generally realized. The Congo basin extends far beyond the boundaries of the Belgian colony. Its northern frontier reaches the tributaries of the Niger and the Nile, while its eastern border includes a large section of German East Africa, and in the south and west larger areas still of both British Central Africa and Portuguese Angola come under the operations of the Act of Berlin. In and around this great pagan area, almost as large as the European continent, the forces of Christianity have within the last half century been concentrating their energies.

Christian effort in these regions is confined to no single country, and is the monopoly of no single denomination. Great Britain, America, Germany, Sweden, and France have all found devoted men and women, and have all poured forth most generously the necessary funds. Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Free Churchmen, and Lutherans, have all taken their share, selecting spheres which for various reasons they considered themselves best able to manage.

The character of the work, however, differs considerably. At first Protestant missions revolted against the idea of industrial missions; they had, and it must be admitted they still have, a constitutional objection against anything which provides a “return.” It is difficult to find a reason for this, but probably it is due to a revulsion from the practices of Pizarro and his miscreants in Peru, and of the slave-dealing work of the Portuguese, in which the Church of Rome became so deeply involved. This dislike for any other work than that of simple preaching and teaching left to the Roman Catholics the whole field of industrial enterprise and right splendidly they have occupied it. There are many separate features which one dislikes, but looked upon as a complete work the Roman Catholic missionaries are rendering noble service to stable progress. I shall not readily forget visits to their farms on the Congo; to their admirable outfitting, printing, house-building, and wheelwright departments of German Togoland. In Lome we saw a score of lads learning bootmaking under the patient tuition of a lay brother. In the tailoring shop another score were cutting out and making suits of every description, from the cheap 20-mark ducks to the 150-mark dress suit to which the superintending Father was putting finishing touches—and made for a native too!

If in earlier years Protestant missions hesitated to engage in remunerative industrial pursuits, they scored heavily over their Catholic confrères, and continue to score, in medical work. It was at first difficult to make the native see the advisability of even comparative cleanliness, for ablutions of any kind are, with many natives, a degrading practice only fitted for the effeminate white race. “What! I wash?” exclaimed an old chief to us in horror-stricken tones, when once I asked him to take a journey to the river before sitting near our table. However, as he proceeded to do a worse thing—scrape himself—I withdrew and apologized for the insulting suggestion! There is some hope that the medical fraternity will in time bring the natives to realize the value of the bountiful streams which God has given them, though they may retort that the devil has filled them with crocodiles.

It is, however, certain that the tribes of Africa are beginning to value the generous and devoted medical work of the Protestant missionaries. Journeying up the Congo one day we had on board a chieftain who three months before had left his village for an operation at a mission station hundreds of miles below his home. The senior missionary in this man’s district had persuaded him to take the journey and run the risk. The man had been bedridden for years with an elephantiasis growth; his wives had forsaken him and most of his friends had abandoned him. He had long given an obstinate refusal to the missionary’s proposal, but ultimately he was prevailed upon to make the journey to the distant mission post. The day for departure came, and with it funeral-loving friends, and weeping women who made the track echo with a monotonous death wail as the man was carried on board the steamer,—never, as they believed, to return alive. Two months later the man had come through the operation and seemed to be in perfect health. He boarded the steamer in full vigour, carrying his own box and sundry goods which the travelling native collects from the long-lost brothers and cousins whom they have a habit of discovering in every town. After three weeks’ steam, we were nearing the chieftain’s home; what a dressing of the hair and anointing of the body took place during several hours before the village itself was sighted! Within hail, lusty voices shouted to the villagers that their chief was aboard and was well and strong. The cry passed from lip to lip until the beach was lined with incredulous natives, the most hopeful amongst them anticipating nothing better than that the man would be carried ashore. Fifteen minutes later the ship was at anchor, the “gangway” run ashore and lo! the first man to stride off the ship was the erstwhile bedridden chief! It was too much for the majority who promptly took to their heels and bolted to a safe distance! In a few minutes, however, they realized that it was not a spirit, but the real man returned alive and well. Gradually they surrounded him, questioned him, gesticulated excitedly, rang the drums to inform the countryside that so great a miracle had taken place, and generally made such a din and noise that it was only with difficulty conversation became at all possible. That sort of sermon is far more eloquent to the native than many discourses on Christian ethics preached with the inevitable limitations of a foreign tongue and at the best often misunderstood; moreover, it renders him very receptive to Christian teaching.

The advantage of medical work in Protestant missionary propaganda has indeed been great. But it does not stand alone, for the natives have of recent years witnessed and wondered at another spectacle—to them no less miraculous—white man opposing white man on their behalf. It is a grave misfortune to Christianity, and to the Roman Catholic missionaries themselves, that they have hitherto been unable to make common cause with their Protestant brethren in protecting natives from oppression. There is, however, some hope that this feature is passing away and that the future will witness their co-operation with those who fight and struggle for native freedom, for at present the prestige which accrues to the championship of native rights belongs almost exclusively to the Protestant communities. How powerfully this has operated was brought out in the report of the Commissioners, whom King Leopold was compelled to send to the Congo, in 1904. Writing in this connection, Monsieur Janssens and his Committee said:—

Without doubt the advent of the late King Leopold as an Administrator in Central African affairs was a calamity almost impossible to exaggerate and had his influence continued it would sooner or later have overrun the surrounding territories administered respectively by Britain, France, and Germany. That they indeed suffered contamination was only too clearly demonstrated in the case of French Congo, while German Cameroons was not altogether free from the Leopoldian taint. On the Congo itself, the very name of white man was made to stink in the nostrils of the native tribes for all time, by reason of the enormities in which King Leopold figured as the chief actor. But even that wily monarch outwitted himself; by his protestations of Christianity and Philanthropy he was bound by the clauses of the Berlin and Brussels Acts to countenance and encourage missionary enterprise, and in practice to admit to the vast regions of the Congo Valley the Heralds of the Cross. And this was his undoing, for thereby came those exposures of almost incredible abuses, which shocked the civilized world, and branded the arch culprit for all time as a murderer of millions. The same fatal blunder in his diplomacy worked on the spot salvation for the remnant of the people. They flocked from all quarters to the protection of the missionary, who was to them the personification of justice.

What wonder that the word “Ingleza” (English) became a passport to any native community, no matter how wild and how averse to the white man. It is recorded that the Belgian rubber merchants, recognizing this, have sought safety when travelling amongst hostile tribes in adopting the name and manner of the Englishman. A certain Belgian tells how two of his colleagues when travelling were attacked by infuriated natives whose relatives had suffered at the hands of the rubber-mongers, and on being told that it was the natives’ intention to first mutilate them, as they themselves had been mutilated, and then to put them to death, one of them in his extremity sought refuge in the reputation of the missionary and replied, “What, put Ingleza to death!” While stoutly repudiating the assertion that they were English, the natives requested them to sing a hymn, and, fortunately for the desperate men, one of them remembered and sang a verse of a hymn he had learnt somewhere, and so amazed the natives that they let them go unharmed.

“Ingleza nta fombaka” (the Englishman never lies), has passed into a proverb and is spreading not only throughout the Congo, but even into Portuguese Angola. Possessing the unbounded confidence of the native mind, the Christian missionary, reinforced by practical medical work, may, if he desires, possess the vast unoccupied fields of the continent and obtain there an ever firmer foothold.

Within recent years, however, Protestant missions have taken up with increasing zeal industrial and commercial enterprises in the interests of the natives. We were unfortunate in being unable to visit what I am told is one of the finest industrial enterprises in West Africa—the Scotch Calabar Mission, but apart from those of the Roman Catholics we inspected several Protestant establishments. The British Government, recognizing what is now becoming common ground, that a purely literary and spiritual education does not produce the most robust type of civilized African, is now combining technical training in industries with literary studies, and no longer gives grants of lump sums to missions, but so much per head for the “finished product,” e.g. a native attaining a given literary and technical standard. In the Gold Coast the maximum per annum is 27s. 6d. per capita. In a school at Christiansborg, the annual upkeep of which costs £500, over £170 was earned in one year by the ability of the scholars in this way. The Primitive Methodists have a very effective little Industrial Mission on the Spanish island of Fernando Po. Under the vigorous and enlightened leadership of the Rev. Jabez Bell the mission situated at Bottler Point is now so prosperous that the returns from the cocoa farms together with subscriptions from the native members, more than cover the expenditure. If in any forthcoming rearrangement of the Map of Africa Fernando Po should come under Germany the character of the Primitive Methodist Mission on that island is bound to appeal to the practical-minded Teuton.

The price which Christian missions have paid for religious work amongst the pagan tribes of West Central Africa can never be correctly estimated. In the Congo alone Protestant missions have spent nearly one and a quarter millions sterling within the last twenty-five years. Out of some 550 missionaries, over 170 have gone to an early grave, many not living six months, some only a few days. These men and women were not only the matured youth of their countries, but they were compelled to pass the most rigid medical examination prior to acceptance by the missionary boards. They were indeed the flower of the Christian Church; moreover, the very difficulties and dangers which were known to exist, served to attract none but the strongest characters. Some people, incapable of recognizing sterling qualities in any but themselves, have written and spoken of missionaries as those who could not have made their way in any other sphere of life. Whatever may be true of other mission fields, so far as the missionaries of West Africa are concerned, the majority resigned good and assured positions and accepted a comparative pittance in order that they might serve what surely is the greatest of all causes. I have failed to obtain statistics from the Roman Catholic Church, but the foregoing applies equally to the devoted men of that body. With them, as with the Protestants, it has been via crucis via lucis.

The following statistics, so far as they are a guide to Christian progress, show some of the results achieved by the missionary forces of Protestantism in West Africa:—

From the statistical tables of the Protestant Missions, we have a known membership and communicant list of over 200,000 men and women, and nearly 80,000 scholars under daily Christian instruction. If to this be added an equal number in connection with the Roman Catholic Church—probably a generous estimate—West Central Africa possesses a Christian Church of something approaching half a million strong. This, however, does not take into account the large native interest in Christianity evidenced by the considerable purchase of the Scriptures. Every year the British and Foreign Bible Society ships some thousands of pounds worth of Bibles to the different colonies, the natives contributing an increasing sum to the Bible Society, which gives a “return” in cash from the native Christian community of the Protestant Churches of over £30,000 per annum, or an average contribution of over 4s. 3d. per head throughout the Churches.

The fact that the results of missionary industrial enterprise are hampered by a not unreasonable dislike to “profit-making” prevents embarkation upon those bye-products of industrial activity which render commercial enterprise financially sound. A missionary is usually quite willing to teach men to adze timber, plane boards, square joints, lay bricks, and grow cotton and rubber, but he knows that his Board and its supporters regard “profit” with a very critical eye. Richard Blaize, an educated native of Abeokuta, left his fortune to meet this difficulty and now extensive workshops are erected at Abeokuta, and all the public buildings of that splendid city have been erected “at a profit” by the Christian Industrial School of Abeokuta.

In the Gold Coast the German Basel Mission leads the way with engaging vigour in the matter of industrial missions. The commercial section of the Mission includes industrial training institutes, and nothing could be more pleasing than the interest and energy with which the natives devote themselves to cabinet work, coach-building, and agricultural pursuits; but the main activities of this department are those of the ordinary African merchant with the exception that the agents are forbidden to sell spirituous liquors. This branch of the work, which is conducted by twenty-three “mercantile” missionaries, is in every respect admirable. One of the leading railway managers remarked to me that, “The most business-like commercial house in the colony is the Basel Mission; their men always know how many trucks they will require, their trolleys are to time, their goods properly bagged and labelled, and their whole organization so smart and up-to-date that they never dislocate the traffic.” There can be little doubt that the attention given to business by the representatives of the Mission is due to the type of white men they can command—none are accepted unless they agree to make their employment a matter of conscience, and develop their commercial undertakings with the same motive as that which animates their spiritual brethren, with whom they share all things in common, with the exception of salaries, those of the mercantile brethren being considerably higher and based, to some extent, upon returns. The white agents are assisted by coloured men in charge of branches, many of whom can show a record of service extending from 12 to 15 years, and some of them are now drawing salaries—including commission—of £500 per annum. These men are to be found on Sundays teaching in the Sunday schools, and preaching at the out-stations of the Mission.

The capital for these operations is derived, in the main, from three sources: (1) the Basel Mission itself; (2) shareholders connected with the Mission, whose dividends are limited to 5 per cent. per annum; (3) from funds in the Mission’s Savings Bank, into which the natives of the colony have placed for security considerably over £20,000 at interest varying from 3½ to 5 per cent.

The results of the Mission’s work can be seen all over the colony; the polite native clerks, the managers of stores, the English-speaking planters, the coloured Government officials have nearly all of them received their training at the Basel Mission schools, and the Acting Governor does not hesitate to recognize that his best officials have been produced by the Mission. Testimony of this nature is unhappily seldom forthcoming from other colonies.

The industrial section usually executes orders to the value of about £4000 per annum; its go-carts, trolleys, traps, and waggonettes are sent into almost every colony from Sierra Leone to German Cameroons. The net profits of this department average slightly over £400 per annum.

The commercial department is certainly one of the most profitable enterprises in the colony, and the stores of the Mission are crowded with purchasers throughout the day. The exigencies of business naturally precluded the possibility of obtaining with any degree of exactness the volume of trade done by the Mission, but some of the figures are eloquent testimony to the confidence the natives have in these mercantile missionaries. In the year 1909-1910, the Mission exported 35 tons of rubber, 14,000,000 lbs. of palm kernels, 600,000 gallons of palm oil, and nearly 17,000,000 lbs. weight of cocoa beans.

The profit-bearing transactions of the Basel Mission cannot be much under £150,000, which on the moderate basis of 8 per cent. net profit would provide the Mission Exchequer with a sum of £12,000 per annum. Government grants-in-aid of educational work amounted in 1910 to £240. There are also periodic collections in aid of Mission funds; the native Church at Nsaba, for example, collected £240 last year. The whole expenditure of this Mission must be almost, if not completely, covered by its income from the various operations.

Whatever the actual financial position of this Mission, its general business operations, splendid educational institutions, its devoutly spiritual atmosphere, combine in forming one of the greatest—if not the greatest—force for progress in the Gold Coast colony. But the price has to be paid, for, according to the report of the Acting Governor, “The highest death-rate was again amongst the missionaries!”

The future of Christianity in West Africa is hopeful but it has its dangers. First its very success may lead to disastrous consequences. In the early years the mission work was almost entirely in the hands of the extreme evangelical section of the Church, who subordinated everything to the actual work of preaching. We understand and sympathize with the fiery zeal that believes in doing all the preaching, but the native thinks the preacher a strange being, and frequently does not understand two sentences of Anglicized Bantu, or worse still, his Bantuized English! Circumstances have broadened the outlook and men are beginning to realize the value of training the native to do the preaching, contenting themselves with an apparently more restrictive sphere in the class-room and study. The native preacher thus prepared is zealous to a degree, and that he is ready to suffer incredible hardships and even torture, we know from the romantic history of the Uganda Mission. He is willing and able to carry his message further afield than the white man could ever hope to do; he is, moreover, able to present his message through the medium of a complete mastery of the native tongue. The results of this form of propaganda are becoming almost startling. Christian evangelists from one territory are meeting those of far distant regions and in this manner the whole of the riverine systems of Central Africa are coming rapidly under the influence of Christianity. It is in this respect, rather than in tabulated statistics, that one sees the onward march of the Christian Faith. The bush native no longer clings to and prides himself in paganism; if he is not a Mohammedan, he will tell you he is a Christian, even though his life and conduct would shut him out of the formal communion of any Christian Church.

This condition of affairs may lead to a grave situation, for already in several colonies the natives are restive under an inadequate white control or leadership. Educated in the principles of liberty, but without much respect for, or belief in, the nobler tenets of the Christian Faith, they are breaking away from Christian government and forming themselves into Christian communities in which personal desire is never allowed to conflict with accepted standards of ethics. One day I visited a leading “Christian” in a certain colony; he showed me round the district, took me over his delightful little farm, pointed out his model dwellings, machinery houses, and so forth; then I inspected a building with three compartments and was informed that one section was used as a “gin store,” the middle section for prayer meetings, and in the third the man kept his wives! All this he boldly asserted could be justified by reference to the Scriptures. I was not prepared to contest the assertion, because my host claimed his own conscience as the final arbiter of interpretation. The extent to which these secessions may go can be gathered from the fact that one such seceding church in West Africa claims a membership of over 10,000 adults.

The missionary societies, unable to supply sufficient men to cope with these vast areas, are forced to leave the movement almost alone and thus it spreads, and will continue to spread, until Central Africa is completely brought under the influence of a form of Christianity which for many years will be a caricature of the religion of Christ. The only hope, and happily a probable development, is that the religious wave, which is now moving irresistibly across the central regions, will be followed by an ethical wave which will give the “Light eternal” to the Dark Continent.