The causes of this rapid spread over Africa are easily discernible. The Mohammedans, though they appeared at first as conquerors, became at length Africans by their permanent residence on the soil, and they went forth afterwards in propagating their faith, not as warriors, but as fellow-citizens and brothers. They resembled the natives in color, manners, and modes of thought, and readily assimilated with them by marriage ties and the affinities of home life. Their converts among the native races were even more naturally welcomed, as friends and brothers. They, of course, found no difficulty with the climate, for in it they were born.
While we repudiate emphatically the idea that Mohammedanism can be a substitute for Christianity in civilizing Africa, yet it is only just that we should admit that Islam brings with it some influences for good into that benighted land—influences that strongly appeal to the higher instincts and aspirations of the people, and are, therefore, an elevating power. First of all, the One True God of Islam tends to lift the African above his idols, his fetich, his witchcraft and his cannibalism. Then, the prohibition of wine and strong drink snatches the people from what threatens to be the vortex of their ruin—intemperance; while Christian nations are now, to their shame and infamy, swelling the floods and increasing the velocity of that vortex by larger importations of intoxicating liquors. Then, too, the followers of Mohammed are using the school of the prophets in the preparation of their missionaries. The great training school, the Old University of Cairo, is said to number at times as many as ten thousand students of the Koran, a number which may well challenge a comparison with the Protestant Theological Seminaries of Europe and America, not only by their numbers, but by the astonishing success of their pupils as missionaries. They run where we halt, they win where we fail.
It is now in order to ask if the Freedmen of America can be fitted to take a special part in the evangelization of Africa. There are strong reasons for believing that they can be; they have race advantages similar to the Mohammedans, and they can readily obtain the acquired advantages of the white missionary. In the first place, they are numerous—eight millions now, and increasing rapidly. In physical proportions they are stalwart and vigorous, inured to toil and capable of great exertion. Their mental powers are quick and susceptible of wide culture. Their capacity to acquire learning, even in the higher branches, has been abundantly proved in the schools they have attended.
The religious characteristics of the race are very marked; faith, hope and love are leading traits. They endured a bondage that would have crushed other races; their faith and hope never deserted them. Their bitter experience in those long and weary years drove them to God as their only source of help, and the "Slave Songs," with the sad history out of which they grew, are among the most pathetic utterances of patience, trust and triumphant hope that human literature presents. So it was during the war, which was long and sometimes of doubtful result, but they never lost their faith in their ultimate deliverance. The Jew in his journey from bondage to Canaan, often became despondent and murmured; the Negro never did either.
Hear the Jew:
"Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us to die in the wilderness?"
"Let us make a Captain and let us return into Egypt."
Hear the Negro, in the Slave Songs:
"Way over in the Egypt land, You shall gain the victory. Way over in the Egypt land, You shall gain the day. March on, and you shall gain the victory, March on, and you shall gain the day."
Such a people are surely destined to develop a rich and beautiful Christian life. If they should be specially trained, and their warm hearts inspired, for the work of missionaries to Africa, who can doubt the success of their efforts? They would stand on a better vantage ground there than the Mohammedan, for he is a foreigner transplanted on the soil. They would come back to the home of their fathers, and would meet the natives as brothers—long separated, yet as brothers; their color and personal characteristics would attest the kinship, their Christian love would kindle towards the degraded of their race, and their holy ambition would be fired by the great work to which they were called—the uplifting of the millions of long-neglected Africa. It would be reasonable to expect that they would endure the African climate better than the white man. They are a tropical race, and, in America, they love and cling to the sunny South, seldom migrating to the North; they do not suffer from the malaria that is so fatal to the whites in the South.