And yet a distinct progress is clearly manifested through facts which stand out in eloquent boldness. On the one hand, we see the Pygmies, without organization or law or even language save the most meager, with scarce enough even of settled custom to fix any habits of moral life. On the other hand, the most advanced tribes of north and east Africa, like the Yorubas, the Zulus, and the Kaffirs, exhibit a marked degree of progress. Here are well-defined organizations; codes of laws which, however they fall short of ours, are actual codes sufficing for them; moral codes which, however far from the Christian standard, yet form codes to be obeyed and enforced; a language (in the case of the Kaffirs) “adequate for the expression of any ideas whatever”; industries sufficiently developed to meet backward needs; a highly developed aesthetic sense; enough of self-control to conserve courage; and a fair degree of steadfastness of purpose. Among the very highest type, is found the practice of the virtues of affection, kindness, and mutual helpfulness; of honesty in their own group, even to punishing the liar—and much more. Who can gainsay the fact of progress far too great to be overlooked? Who can say what might have been attained under more favorable conditions? Who can say what further progress—slow, very slow, and deliberate—awaits achievements, in view of that which, in the past, has been distinctly and, in many cases, wholly their very own? It is beside our purpose to make a comparison of races. Our study is of the Negro himself; and our findings prove, what naturally would have been expected of God’s creation, a people worth while in themselves.
What has been the effect of the coming of civilized people to these backward races? The well-nigh universal testimony is proclaimed as a tragic wail, that contact with the white man has, upon the whole, been degrading, not elevating to the Negro. And this is consistently true, though with bright and hopeful exceptions here and there.
From the demoralizing era of the slave-traffic, involving robbing, cheating, the violation of the most solemn treaties, and the bad example of private life, up to the settling of the Congo, the one aim of the white man has been his own profit at whatever cost to the natives. Certain, and often great, advantages to the Negro have been sought and gained by the Christian Church and by scientific efforts; but these are small beside the hurt inflicted by the horde of profit-seeking, selfish fortune-hunters, to whom the Negro is a savage of the lower order, to be tramped upon.
To quote Miss Kingsley again: “It is an unfortunate concomitant of European civilization that its first impress has, almost without exception, been disastrous to the people of lower degree of culture than the European standards. For every sincere bearer of the banner of the Prince of Peace there were a hundred reckless buccaneers, without one thought of the spiritual or physical welfare of the ‘savage heathen’ whom they met. It is so in the case of Africa. Down both coasts, the European civilization marched, one missionary disposed to recognize the brotherhood of man, and a hundred freebooters insistent that to the victor belong the spoils.” Miss Kingsley’s language is mild, and is quoted because of its tone.
But happily there is another side here, too, to relieve the tragic gloom of the picture. Concerning the comparatively large endeavors of the Christian missionaries of Uganda in East Africa, and of those on the West Coast, it is most encouraging to be able to quote from Dowd:
“Contact with the Europeans has done much to lift the Waganda (Uganda) from their savagery. It has diminished wars, human sacrifices, trial by ordeal; and has reformed the administration of justice. Many Mission-schools have Christianized and enlightened the masses. It is claimed that 200,000 (this is eight years ago) of the natives can read and write. In religious, as in other innovations, however, the transformation has been too sudden, and not always adapted to native psychology.”
This is a mere word about a truly great mission, on a nation-wide scale, whose success constitutes one of the really great romances of modern times. Unhappily, it does not fall to our lot to relate its history, but the reader will miss much if he fails to learn the story as told by the English Church missionaries.
Special attention is called to the closing sentence of the quotation above; for, in it, the finger is put upon the crux of the problem of Christian evangelization, whether in Africa or in America, among the Negroes or the Indians, or wherever one race evangelizes another. When Bishop Tucker of Uganda writes, one feels himself to be at the feet of an expert. “Were I asked,” he writes, “to give my opinion as to what, in my estimation, has most hindered the development and independence of the native Churches, I should unhesitatingly answer, that deep-rooted tendency which there is in the Anglo-Saxon character to Anglicize everything with which it comes in contact.” And recently, upon his visit to America, Dr. King, President of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and formerly Bishop of Zanzibar, expressed substantially the same judgment.
The reluctance of the white race, whether in England or America, to permit the negro race to develop his own Christian civilization with all of racial coloring and aesthetic characteristics, has long been restively regarded by many of us. Christianity is not a racial, but a catholic, religion; not obliterating racial characteristics, but regenerating them. A superficial expression of this is the assertion so often made, “religion must adapt itself to peoples.” Christianity is a life, and life is not adaptable, it is adoptable. Once adopted, it grows and, therefore, takes form. It is the form that is adaptable; and when the life is permitted to grow normally, it appropriates and consecrates the form that is adaptable to the personality that it inhabits.
Christianity is nowhere and at no time to be adapted to anybody; but anybody may be adapted to Christianity, as the power (not the form) of its life transforms and transfuses man. Racial traits and tendencies are so slow to change, that it is a very real question whether they really do change, or whether they are only modified or quickened or redirected with the change of environment which new climes or training, or education produce.