The jungle folk of Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

The next Sunday Dr. Good again entered Zanga’s town. Zanga saluted him, exclaiming enthusiastically: “Ah, Ngoot, I am keeping the Sabbath fine to-day. I have hired two men to make the roof, and I am just sitting here giving them orders.” He was doing as well as he knew; and most of us know far more than we do. God knows our thoughts and intentions.

At the beginning of my third year among the Fang, I began to feel that the time of harvest was drawing near. People from towns far and near began to bring their fetishes to me, laying them at my feet, and renouncing them; and the surrender of their fetishes was a better confession than could have been made in words. I especially required the surrender of the father’s skull, the most sacred fetish of the men. I soon had so many of these uncanny things that the question what I should do with them became urgent. When I was leaving Africa, a Christian native, who had heard that I was taking some of these skulls with me, came to me in great anxiety and asked me whether I had considered the confusion that might take place at the resurrection if those skulls were on the other side of the sea. Sure enough, I had never thought of that. I scarcely realized the degradation of their beliefs until men and women brought their fetishes to me, and explained them fully as they renounced them.

One day I visited a town in which twenty-two persons, five men and seventeen women, stood up in a line in the street, and delivering up all their fetishes, renounced them, and said that they would follow Christ and worship only the true God. This was the first large group of Christians in one town, and when a church was afterwards organized I gave it the name of that town, Ayol, which is still the name of the Fang church. The Ayol Church belongs to Corisco Presbytery, and to the Synod of New Jersey. In a few months there were a hundred Christians, and at the end of a year, two hundred, scattered over the large Fang field in groups of six, eight, or ten persons in a town. They had all discarded their fetishes, and they were meeting together every evening to sing and pray in the hearing of all the people.

The fact that those Christians were not in a single community, but scattered over extensive territory and in widely separated towns, greatly enlarged the outlook for the future. In a single community, it sometimes happens that when a few persons of influence and decision become Christians they make Christianity popular, and the thoughtless crowd follow their lead, but never exhibit a strong type of Christian character. And this suggests another objection to the small, undermanned station. Its work is usually restricted to the vicinity of its location, where the tremendous prestige of the white man makes Christianity dangerously popular, and where the Christians are near enough to the missionary to lean upon him for spiritual support, and perhaps for worldly support also if they are very poor. But these small groups of Fang Christians, scattered in towns far apart, were leaders, not followers, of others. They became Christians when Christianity was not popular, and had no artificial prestige. They were far enough away from the mission for wholesome independence, and near enough for the help which they really needed. They also had a field of opportunity immediately around them, and the whole number brought into contact with the Gospel was very great.

These Christians in saluting each other invariably use the term, “Brother,” though they may belong to hostile and warring clans, and before they became Christians might not have been able to pass each other without fighting. And, strange enough, I did not teach them this salutation; for I never used it myself until they established it. Flesh and blood did not reveal it to them, but the Spirit of God; for where Christ is, there is the instinct of brotherhood.

The number of Christians gives no idea whatever of the whole effect of Christian influence. Between African heathenism and Christian faith there is an immense interval; and multitudes, while not professing to be Christians, were yet far removed from their former heathenism. Old beliefs were all unfixed, with a corresponding change in morals. Cannibalism almost ceases at the first sound of the Gospel, and wars become less frequent.

One day two men called upon me, who were not to be suspected of any inclination to Christianity. They told me that the sea had been dreadfully rough during the whole night in which they were on their way to Gaboon. They thought they would all be lost. One of these two men said to the others: “We have been sinning against God, for we have been travelling to the market all this Sabbath day, and we know that it is wrong.” Then they all prayed to God, as the Christians pray, asking that He would forgive them and save them. I asked him why he did not trust his fetishes in the hour of need; for he had enough of them on him.

“Fetishes are nothing,” he replied; “it was only an angry God that we feared.” There was a great deal of ignorance in all this; but it showed that they were far removed from their former faith in fetishes; for in the crisis they forsook the fetishes, and turned to God.

The care of all these new converts, or catechumens, added an entirely new department to my work, and already the departments were numerous. A convert is baptized and received into the church only after he has been two years on probation; and during those two years he is supposed to receive a regular course of instruction. These Christians were now asking for such instruction that they might be received into the church. My purpose had been to form a class in each of the towns where Christians resided, and to place a catechist in charge of several adjacent towns, who would live among the people, and teach them daily. But my catechists were not yet ready, though for some time I had been preparing for the emergency. In connection with the school I had a class of young men, to whom I had been giving special attention, in the hope that they might be fitted for the work of catechists. Yielding to the exigency of circumstances, I placed three of these, Amvama, Obiang, and Eyena, in three principal towns to teach the people. It was a mistake, however, and I soon recalled them.

During the next year I concentrated my efforts upon this class of catechists, and meanwhile, I visited these groups of Christians as often as possible, just to keep up their courage. My catechists accompanied me in my itinerating, and much of their training was in the actual work of preaching and teaching, and in discussions and criticisms as we travelled between the towns. But occasional and desultory teaching did not answer the needs of these new converts. It was hard to keep them waiting; for they had delivered up their fetishes, and were helplessly asking, “What shall we do next?” I kept them waiting a whole year before I sent out the catechists. Those were strainful as well as joyful times, and it was then that I received the name by which all the Fang came to know me, “Mote Ke Ye,”—Man who doesn’t sleep.