This “totem” worship made the monster lizard at Bonny a nuisance. They grew in number and impudence, till it was nothing unusual to see their six feet of slimy length stretched across paths and upon doorways, and to feel the lash of their serrated tails
on your legs as you passed along. If one were wounded or killed, there was no end of trouble, for the irate natives were sure to carry the case to the consul on board ship, where they secured the judgment of a fine, or else taking the law into their own hands, they insulted, or assaulted the slayer till their anger was appeased.
In other parts of the delta, a shark became the tribe “totem,” or a crocodile, or water-bird, but in no part was Zoölatry—animal worship—carried to a greater extent than at Bonny and Bross, where the lizard and python were favorites. In 1884, the Church Missionary Society took the matter in hand, and finally succeeded in doing what consuls and the war-ships had failed to accomplish. The society screwed the courage of the native converts up to the sticking point and finally proclaimed the destruction of the lizards in Bonny on one Easter Sunday morning. Men and boys, armed with hatchets and sticks went about killing the ugly beasts, and so complete was their work that the day ended with their extermination. But the sickening smell which pervaded the air for days, came near producing a pestilence. It was a hard blow to native superstitions, but the riddance soon came to be acquiesced in. A change equally abrupt put an end to the python worship at Bross, and so there has been of late years, a gradual giving up of this “totem” observance among the Niger tribes, thanks to missionary rather than commercial enterprise.
Here, surely, if anywhere on the face of the earth, the Gospel, with its enlightening, purifying, and ennobling influence, was needed. What then has been done to carry it to these degraded people, and what have been the results of missionary labor among them? Take a glance first at Sierra Leone, as it was the earliest visited by the missionaries. It is situated in the southern part of Senegambia. It has an area of 319 square miles, and a population of over 80,000, nearly all blacks. Formerly it was one of the chief emporiums of the slave trade. In 1797 the British African Company purchased land from the native princes with the view of forming a settlement for the emancipated negroes who had served in British ships during the American Revolution, and who on the conclusion of peace were found in London in a most miserable condition. In 1808 this land was transferred to the British Crown, additional tracts of country
being subsequently acquired. The colony has since served as an asylum for the wretched victims rescued from the holds of slave ships.
The history of missionary enterprise, in this land of sickness and death, is a chequered one. Colonial chaplains were appointed at different times, from the beginning, to minister to the government functionaries and others; but owing to frequent deaths and absences from illness, the office was often vacant. The first effort of a purely missionary character for the benefit of West Africa was made by the Baptist Missionary Society in 1795. Efforts of other societies followed in rapid succession; but it was not until after the commencement of the present century, when the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies undertook the work of evangelization in Western Africa, that the cause took a permanent and progressive form.
The Church Missionary Society in 1804 sent out to Sierra Leone Mr. Renner, a German, and Mr. Hartwig, a Prussian, to instruct the people in a knowledge of Divine things. In 1806 Messrs. Nylander, Butscher, and Prasse—all of whom had been trained at the Berlin Missionary Seminary, and ordained according to the rites of the Lutheran church—embarked at Liverpool to strengthen the mission. In 1816 Wm. A. B. Johnson went out as a schoolmaster to this colony. “He was a plain German laborer, having but a very limited common-school education and no marked intellectual qualifications, but he was trained in the school of Christ and was a good man, full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. It became obvious that he was called of God to preach the Gospel, and he was ordained in Africa. His period of service was brief, but marvelous in interest and power, and he raised up a native church of great value. Into the midst of these indolent, vicious, violent savages he went. He found them devil worshipers, and at first was very much disheartened. But though William Johnson distrusted himself, he had faith in Christ and his Gospel. Like Paul, he resolved to preach the simple Gospel, holding up the cross, show them plainly what the Bible says of the guilt of sin, the need of holiness, and the awful account of the Judgment Day. He simply preached the Gospel and left results with God, confident that his Word would not return to
him void. For nearly a year he pursued this course. And he observed that over that apparently hopeless community a rapid and radical change was coming. Old and young began to show deep anxiety for their spiritual state and yearning for newness of life. If he went for a walk in the woods, he stumbled over little groups of awakened men and women and children, who had sought there a place to pour out their hearts to God in prayer; if he went abroad on moonlight evenings, he found the hills round about the settlement echoing with the praises of those who found salvation in Christ, and were singing hymns of deliverance. His record of the simple experiences of these converts has preserved their own crude, broken, but pathetically expressive story of the Lord’s dealings with them, and the very words in which they told of the work of grace within them. No reader could but be impressed with their deep sense of sin, their appreciation of grace, their distrust of themselves and their faith in God, their humble resolves, their tenderness of conscience, their love for the unsaved about them, and their insight into the vital truth of redemption.”
The improvement in the appearance and habits and social condition of the people that followed was nothing short of a transformation. Their chapel was five times enlarged to accommodate the ever increasing numbers who attended. “Seventy years ago, if you had gone to what was afterward known as the Regent’s Town, you would have found people, taken at different times from the holds of slave-ships, in the extreme of poverty and misery, destitution and degradation. They were as naked and as wild as beasts. They represented twenty-two hostile nations or tribes, strangers to each other’s language, and having no medium of communication, save a little broken English. They had no conception of a pure home, they were crowded together in the rudest and filthiest huts, and, in place of marriage, lived in a promiscuous intercourse that was worse than concubinage. Lazy, bestial, strangers to God, they had not only defaced his image, but well-nigh effaced even the image of humanity, and combined all the worst conditions of the most brutal, savage life, plundering and destroying one another. Here it pleased God to make a test of his grace in its uplifting and redeeming power.”
When Johnson was under the necessity of leaving for England, hundreds of both sexes accompanied him a distance of five miles to the ship and wept bitter tears at the thought of being separated from their best earthly friend. “Massa, suppose no water live here, we go with you all the way, till no feet more move.”