TEACHER OR MISSIONARY, WHICH?
The Natal Mercury, South Africa, paints a dark picture of the Caffres, even of those who have professed Christianity. Many fathers, it says, still sell their daughters in marriage for cattle as in years past, and many practice polygamy, which still has a very strong hold upon those of whom better things ought to be expected.
This is, indeed, cause for deep regret, but ought not to be of great surprise. It may be true, that by one supreme exercise of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the results of a whole life of debauchery can be corrected in a single moment; that impure imaginations and dominant appetites and perverted tastes may all be utterly eradicated, and the degraded slave of many years restored to the normal condition of an uncorrupted child. This may be, for men assert that it has been done; but, most assuredly, it is not so common as to be expected ordinarily.
The prodigal who has gone into a far country has a long journey to retrace, and he comes back with many swinish tastes and habits of thought which he masters, if at all, by most persistent, prayerful and painful efforts.
The grace of Christ comes in as most stimulating and efficient aid in these efforts; but it comes as aid to effect, and not in the form of accomplished result. What the exact, literal truth may be in the poet-prophet’s prediction, that “a nation shall be born in a day,” we do not know; what new forces may be called into play, or what added efficiency may be given to those now employed, when the kingdom advances with millennial power and celerity, we know not; but as yet, no labor-saving machinery is known to the Church militant. The Gospel has still to be carried by laborious, self-denying effort into the homes of the degraded, and it gains its victories, if surely yet slowly, over the vices and evils of man’s corrupted heart and life, and he comes to the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus by a gradual growth.
The Sandwich Islands afford the striking illustration of the prophecy to which allusion has been made. But, in this case, the “day” covers more than half a century, and has not yet reached its meridian, and even there deplorable facts prove that the mass of the people might be “born again and again,” as the good colored preacher has it, with advantage. We are told that in the homes of the people are yet to be found many of the fruits of their long degradation—much impurity of life, little of the spiritual strength and elevation of character which the Gospel produces as its ripened fruit.
The question comes, and often with a pressure from our friends, as to the multiplication of missionaries, and, of course, because of our limited means, corresponding diminution of educational work. Our work is limited by the money put into our hands, and, therefore, we are compelled to choose between them, when we cannot do both of two desirable things. It would be pleasant, and a source of great spiritual comfort and social advantage every way, if we could send an excellent Christian woman into every negro cabin of the South, who should bring her refined womanhood into loving and sympathetic contact with the ignorant and lonely aunties, who never see a cultured white woman socially. It were easily possible to organize an evangelistic movement which would set the religious nature of the negro ablaze, and gather the people by tens of thousands into the churches which could be erected with the money now employed to sustain our schools; but all this would leave the negro helpless, at the mercy of the bulldozer or debaucher, and still under the control of his licentious and dishonest habits.
The work must be more thorough, and, therefore, more tedious than this. The negro character needs to be created in germ, and then developed into a worthy manhood and womanhood by thorough Christian culture, and the best and only adequate missionaries are the Christian teachers in our schools.
Conversion, as the negro in his ignorance understands it, is not the most important or desirable thing to be accomplished. We must first secure an enlightenment of the understanding, a toning up of the moral constitution, which shall give value to conversion when it does occur. Conversion is but the beginning of a new life—a beginning which is utterly worthless except in connection with an adequate conception of what that life is, and unless that life follows. No one who at all comprehends the nature of the work to be done, will advocate other policy than the one we now pursue of “hastening slowly.” We must enlarge, equip and multiply our educational facilities through the South. When this has been done, the number of missionaries may be multiplied manifold with advantage; but to displace or weaken educational agencies for those that aim at conversion and spiritual comfort, would prove utterly disastrous.