WAR OR MISSIONS?
Christian England is at war with the Zulus, not altogether successfully, we fear not altogether justly. It seems to be about the same question which is at issue perpetually between the United States Government and the Indians—a disputed strip of territory lying between Transvaal and Zululand is, by arbitration mutually agreed upon, decided to belong of right to the Zulus. But the Dutch Boers who had settled therein decline to give up their claims. The English Government, to whom that territory had been transferred, defend them in maintaining their resistance to what had been declared to be the rightful owner, and because King Cetywayo is a small sovereign, the Queen on whose dominions the sun never sets proposes to compel him. This is about the story as it comes to us. So Christian England and America—not the Christianity in England and America—treat their poor neighbors.
Now, in the prosecution of this Zulu war thousands of men are sent out to do battle—generals, captains, common soldiers. Money is freely spent, millions of dollars, to keep a rude race from acknowledged rights. Blood is spilt and lives are sacrificed, not by the one or two, but by the hundred. But there is another battle to be fought in Africa, in the interests of the Christianity that is in England and America; a battle against superstition, and all the ignorance and violence included in it, against the slave trade and its demoralizing influences. It, too, will cost men and money. In its accomplishment, lives will be laid down. Already in the new fields opening, one and another have fallen, until six, perhaps, have thus far given up their lives in this cause. The advance guard, the scouts, have not all escaped the perils of such service. It costs money, too; but it will not cost half as much to convert a savage African as it will to kill him. Missions are cheap compared with war.
And then, look at the end of it all. Money and blood to extend territory, to defend a flag! Where is the treasury, and where the lives ready to be laid down that the banner of the Prince of Peace may be set up in Equatorial Africa, and its inhabitants be made subjects of Him whose dominion hath no end?
Read these emphatic words of David Livingstone, so well illustrated by his own quietly heroic life:
“We talk of ‘sacrifices’ until we fear the word is nauseous to God. We have no English female missionary biography worth reading, because it is all polluted by the black man’s idea of sacrifice. It ought not so to be. Jesus became a missionary and gave His life for us. Hundreds of young men annually leave our shores as cadets. When any dangerous expedition is planned by Government, more volunteers apply than are necessary to man it. On the proposal to send a band of brave men in search of Sir John Franklin, a full complement for the ships could have been procured of officers alone, without any common sailors. And what thousands rushed to California from different parts of America on the discovery of gold! How many husbands left their wives and families! How many Christian men tore themselves away from all home endearments to suffer and toil and perish by cold and starvation on the overland route! How many sank from fever and exhaustion on the banks of the Sacramento! Yet no word of sacrifices there! Our talk of sacrifices is ungenerous and heathenish.”