The defense Roman Catholicism makes against Protestant ruffianism varies according to environments; in Uganda it takes one form, in the United States another; but it is good to see the necessity of some form of it, as stated in one of the Roman Catholic journals in Mexico as follows: “It is necessary that the Catholics rise resolutely and make a rapid and voluntary movement in defense of their belief. To-day, unfortunately, the Protestants come with a subvention, and their teachings are extending throughout the whole country. They circulate their writings at the lowest prices, even give them away, sometimes in tracts, sometimes in papers, which is the favorite method of sowing the bad seed; and, sad to say, in exchange, the Catholic weeklies are dying off for lack of subscribers to sustain them. Protestantism is becoming truly alarming among us.”
The colored Baptist churches of Virginia and South Carolina, believing the time has come when they should go forth to the millions of their fatherland with the Gospel, have sent out two missionaries; and now the churches of Virginia unite in calling a convention to meet at Montgomery, Ala., on the 24th of November. This call is as broad as all the colored Baptist churches and other religious bodies of the colored Baptists of the United States, and is “for the purpose of eliciting, combining and directing the energies of all the colored Baptists in one sacred effort for the propagation of the Gospel in Africa.”
This may seem to some a somewhat narrow call, but it is for a broad work—a work that shall yet elicit the energies of all our Father’s children of whatever color and denomination, until the dark continent shall be made glorious by the Sun of Righteousness.
Mohammedanism, whatever its affinity for Africa as it has been, and its baleful power because of this, has no outlook for the future of that sad, but soon to be made glad, continent. The Foreign Missionary well says: “If we consider only the physical condition of success, it must be allowed that Islam has an immense advantage in its central position and its vicinage to the field to be won. There is much also in the greater similarity of character between the Moslem and the heathen tribes as compared with Europeans, whose habits are so utterly different from those of all African tribes. But on the other hand, the forces of Christianity have now well nigh surrounded Africa, and are pushing through a hundred avenues into the interior. Discovery, time, commerce and civilization, are handmaids of the Gospel as they are not of Islam. That can only endure the dim light which survives from a past age. It belongs to an age which has passed away, and to a type of civilization which is everywhere sinking into decay.”