Many subject-races seem destined to fade away by contact with our
race; and if we think of the nameless cruelties, and the iliad of
woes which England's possession of this great Colonial Empire has had
accompanying it, we may feel that the harm in many aspects outweighs
the good, and that it had been better for these men to be left
suckled in creeds outworn, and ignorant of our civilisation, than to
receive from us the fatal gifts that they often have received. I do
not wish to exaggerate, but if you will take the facts of the case as
brought out by people that have no Christian prejudices to serve, I
think you will acknowledge that we as a nation owe a debt of
reparation to the barbarians and the unwise.
What about killing African tribes by the thousand with the vile stuff
that we call rum, and send to them in exchange for their poor
commodities? What about introducing new diseases, the offspring of
vice, into the South Sea Islands, decimating and all but destroying
the population? Is it not true that, as the prophet wailed of old
about a degenerate Israel, we may wail about the beach-combers and
other loafers that go amongst savage lands from England--'Through you
the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles.' A Hindoo once said
to a missionary, 'Your Book is very good. If you were as good as your
Book you would conquer India in five years.' That may be true or it
may not, but it gives us the impression that is produced by godless
Englishmen on heathen peoples. We are taking away their religion from
them, necessarily, as the result of education and contact with
European thought. And if we do not substitute for it the one faith
that elevates and saves, the last state of that man will be worse
than the first.
We can almost hear the rattle of the guns on the north-west frontier
of India to-day. There is another specimen of the injuries inflicted.
This is not the place to talk politics, but I feel that this is the
place to ask this question, 'Are Christian principles to have
anything to do in determining national actions?' Is it Christian to
impose our yoke on unwilling tribes who have as deep a love for
independence as the proudest Englishmen of us all, and as good a
right to it? Are punitive expeditions and Maxim guns instalments of
our debt to all men? I wonder what Jesus Christ, who died for Afridis
and Orakzais and all the rest of them, thinks about such conduct?
Brethren, we are debtors to all men. Let us do our best to influence
national action in accordance with the brotherhood which has been
revealed to us by the Elder Brother of us all; and let us, at least
for our own parts, recognise, and, as much as in us is, discharge the
debt which, by our common humanity, and by our possession of the
universal Gospel we owe to all men, and which is made more weighty by
the benefits we receive from many, and by the injuries which England
has inflicted on not a few. Else shall we hear rise above all the
voices that palliate crime, on the plea of 'State necessity,' the
stern words of the Master, 'In thy skirts is found the blood of the
souls of poor innocents.' We are debtors; let us pay our debts.