The Missions to the natives, beyond the protection of the colonies, have made the least progress. They are established upon the proper basis, but have fewer agencies employed than the other missions, and a corresponding inefficiency is the result. Common schools, Sabbath schools, and preaching, are means used for promoting the Gospel in all the African missions. Those to the natives, are limited chiefly to these three plans of operation, while the other missions possess many subordinate means that greatly facilitate their progress. Preaching to adults, though not altogether unsuccessful, has won but few converts, and done but little for the overthrow of superstition. Education lays the axe at the root of ignorance, but from the fewness of the teachers and schools, the small attendance of pupils, and the reaction of heathenism upon them, it has made very little impression on the surrounding barbarism. Less, still, has been done by these missions, in preventing native wars; while polygamy remains almost wholly unaffected by them. The greatest difficulty, however, is, that the missionaries, with very few exceptions, are white men, whose constitutions, generally, yield to the effects of the climate, and the missions are constantly liable to be weakened and broken up. This is true of the Gaboon and Mendi Missions, particularly, and can be remedied, only, by substituting colored missionaries, since they, alone, have constitutions adapted to the climate. The mission to the Zulus differs from these two, in having a climate better adapted to the Anglo-Saxon; but it has to contend with the additional obstacle of a hostile white immigration, which threatens its existence. As the customs and morals of Christianity become better understood, at these missions, the enmity of the natives continues to increase; and the missionary, after years of toil, feels, more and more, the indispensable necessity of multiplying the agencies for removing the barriers to the Gospel by which he is surrounded.
The Missions in South Africa, by their early success, and the progress they have always made in times of peace, afford ample evidence of the practicability of Christianizing Africa, wherever civil government protects the missionary, and prevents the prevalence of native wars. But while we may here derive a powerful argument in favor of increased effort for the extension of Christianity, where the conditions of society are thus favorable; the additional lesson is impressed upon the mind, with tremendous force, that the white and black races—that Englishmen and Africans—can not dwell together as equals; but that the intelligence and active energies of the one, when brought into conflict with the ignorance and indolent habits of the other, must make the Negro an easy prey to the Anglo-Saxon. The sad results of this conflict of races, in the wars of the last few years, casts a deep gloom over the future prospects of South Africa, and renders it doubtful whether the missions can be sustained among the natives as independent tribes. It would appear, that, under British policy, the loss of liberty is the price at which the African must purchase Christianity.
The immigration of Englishmen into South Africa, then, instead of diminishing the obstacles to the success of the Gospel, is adding a new one of an aggravated character. Nor can the difficulty be obviated. When Christian missions harmonize with the policy of England, she grants them protection; but when they stand in the way of the execution of her schemes, they are brushed aside as objects of indifference, and treated with no higher regard than pagan institutions. While her soldiers were slaughtering the Christian Hottentots, in the church of the Moravians, her revenues were upholding the heathen temples of India. As she designs to build up an extensive white colony, in South Africa, the main obstacles to these missions will be rendered as immovable as the British throne. In this respect, they are more discouraging than those to the natives, the barriers to which must be broken down by time and perseverance.
How strangely the cruelty of Great Britain, towards the Kaffirs, contrasts with her humanity towards the recaptured Africans of Sierra Leone! In the former case, she robbed the blacks of their possessions, to give lands to her white subjects; in the latter, Cuba and Brazil were deprived of their cargoes of slaves, to build up a colony for herself. But how much stranger, still, does England’s conduct contrast with the policy of American Colonization! Liberia, instead of robbing the Native African of his rights, was founded, expressly, to rescue him from oppression and superstition, and to bestow upon him liberty and the Gospel of Christ.
The Missions in the English Colonies of Recaptured Africans, have been more successful, and are more promising, than either of the two just noticed. The cause of this difference should be considered. The foundations of Sierra Leone were laid, when Africa was literally “the land of the shadow of death.” Its corner stone inclosed the last link of the shackles of slavery in England. Its founder looked forward to the redemption of the land of Ham, as a result of the scheme he had projected. A large majority of the emigrants who founded the Colony, had been trained where Religion was free, and where Liberty was struggling into birth. They had caught something of the spirit of freedom, and wished to realize its blessings. These hopes were blasted; and, in anger, they abandoned the churches they had built, rather than accept religion at the hands of those who had denied them freedom. They failed to discriminate between the unchristian policy of the English government, and the Christian charity of the English Church. The slave-trade was carried on under the flag that brought them the missionary; and they turned coldly away from the man of God, to let him re-embark for his English home, or sink to the grave beneath a tropical sun. Thus did the Gospel fail in its establishment among the emigrants of Sierra Leone. Neither could it succeed among the surrounding natives, while the hunters of slaves kept the tribes in perpetual hostilities. Thus twenty years rolled away, before the traffic in human flesh was suppressed; and then, only, could Christianity gain a foothold.
But the gift of equal rights was not included in the gift of the Gospel; and half the stimulants to mental improvement remained unsupplied. The agencies established, however, were not powerless for good. Security was gained for the missionary, and the population could dwell in peace. The Episcopal missionaries were driven into the Colony, to prosecute their labors under its protection. The prejudices engendered by the early collisions with the civil authorities, wore away with the lapse of time. The American fugitives, who had refused the Gospel from the Episcopalians, now accepted it from the Wesleyans. The denial of civil rights to themselves, could not justify their refusal of eternal life for their offspring. The children were gathered once more into the schools, and education commenced. Sierra Leone was made the “city of refuge,” for all who should be rescued from the horrors of the slave-ships; and thus it became a central sun from which the light of the Gospel could radiate to the farthest limits of Africa.
Sierra Leone, as a mission field, is free from some of the most serious difficulties which retard the progress of the Gospel among the Natives and in South Africa. Its chief advantages consist in its freedom from war; in the absence of white Colonists; and in the accumulating progress of civilization. Its inhabitants possess such a unity of races, such a social equality, as to prevent hostile collisions on account of color. Its officers and principal merchants, only, are white; and, hence, fewer occasions arise here than in South Africa, where the black man is made to feel his inferiority to the white. The intellectual improvement of its people has been much more rapid than that of the population in the South African Missions; and, as a consequence, the teachers of the schools and seminaries, in Sierra Leone and its connections, are, mostly, colored men; while few, indeed, of the natives in the Colonies of the Cape, have been able to attain such positions.[[54]]
In these facts are we to find the causes of the superiority of the Sierra Leone missions, over those to the Natives and to the South of Africa.
Sierra Leone, however, when contrasted with Liberia, is found to lack some of the essential elements of progress possessed by the Republic. The liberty secured to the citizens of Liberia, extends to all their relations, personal, social, political. The people of Sierra Leone, enjoy but two of these elements of progress. They have personal freedom and a fair degree of social equality, but are deprived of the third—political equality—which, above all, exerts the most potent influence to stimulate the intellectual faculties of men. The young convert in the seminary at Sierra Leone, doubtless, finds great encouragement to mental improvement, in the prospect of becoming a teacher, or in entering the ministry; but to the unconverted youth, in the absence of the prospect of political promotion, there is, absolutely, nothing to stimulate to efforts at high attainment in science and literature. Thus the political system of Sierra Leone, supplies but half the elements of progress to its people. Had it been otherwise, had the aspirations of its early emigrants been cherished, and its civil affairs committed mainly to their hands, the Colony might now be in a far more advanced situation. This will be apparent on a fuller contrast of its condition with that of Liberia.
Thirty years after the waves of the Atlantic had closed over the remains of Samuel J. Mills, it was proclaimed from the top of Montserado, that the star of African Nationality, after ages of wandering, had found its orbit in the galaxy of Nations. On that eventful day, a multitude of grateful men, with their wives and little ones, were lifting up their voices in thanksgiving and praise, to their Father in Heaven. Over their heads waved a banner bearing the motto, “The love of liberty brought us here.” The barbarism that excited the pity of Mills and Burgess had disappeared; the superstitions over which they grieved had vanished; a Christian Nation had been born; and the vault of heaven re-echoed to their shouts of joy.