settlements on the mainland; and as I had several friends there, I know
something about it from personal observation, and regret that its
members are not Catholics, for a more devoted set of workers it would
be hard to find. They have a house on a _shamba_, or estate, two miles
from the town, in which there are a number of liberated slave boys, who
are instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and are taught such
trades as carpentering and field labor. Dr. Steere, the third bishop of
this mission, which was set on foot by the English universities of
Oxford and Cambridge at the instance of Livingstone, is a linguist,
being the authority on Swahili, the language commonly spoken at
Zanzibar and on the coast. He has written a Swahili grammar, and
translated into the language great parts of the Bible, prayers, hymns,
and school-books, and these are excellently printed in the mission
press by some of the pupils, a few of whom he took to England to
perfect themselves in the trade at a large London printing
establishment. All the printing done in Zanzibar is their work. They
have a beautiful chapel, where there are daily morning and evening
services, and these are attended by all the establishment; and I am
told that many of the boys show great devotion, kneeling for a quarter
of an hour together in the chapel. I am inclined to fear, though, that
the African Anglican’s notion of religion is something which will
propitiate an angry, hostile power—in fact, a relic of demonology. “Our
Father” has no meaning to one who had perhaps been sold to an Arab by
his parent for a bowl of rice. Two miles beyond the English mission’s
boys’ house is a similar establishment for girls under the charge of
women. The girls look fatter and healthier than the boys, a large
proportion of whom are affected by the terrible skin diseases so
prevalent amongst the blacks.
The mission had a devoted young clergyman there some years ago, who,
being possessed of large means and wealthy friends, purchased the old
slave market in Zanzibar, on which a handsome stone church with groined
roof, and different school buildings, were erected. But he sacrificed
his life, as most of the workers of this mission have done, by his
zeal, and fell a victim to fever; his funeral was attended by parties
from the English men-of-war in the harbor, and by some of the Catholic
missionaries, and many of the European residents who wished to pay a
last tribute of respect to the memory of a brave and devoted, if
mistaken, man. He once told me that some of his pupils asked him a very
pertinent question: Why, if the Christian religion was one, the French
and English missions were not united? He evaded it by replying that
they taught in English, but the others in French! When his death was
announced in England a young clergyman, who had formerly worked in the
same mission, was preaching for it in an English church and exhorting
his hearers to give money and, if possible, their personal services to
the cause. He was astonished afterwards at a young woman presenting
herself and offering herself for the work. Neither pictures of fever,
discomfort, nor death could deter her from going to Zanzibar, as I
believe she afterwards did.
Bishop Steere used to give a weekly address in the native language in
the city of Zanzibar to any who chose to attend, and I have heard that
the rich Arabs used to flock to it in crowds, coming to the bishop’s
house afterwards to discuss the different Christian doctrines of which
they had heard. But if any Arab became a Christian he would probably be
assassinated by his comrades, so great is their bigotry. Singularly,
the part of the Bible which has most interest for an Arab is the
genealogies; for, as is well known, they are most careful in preserving
such records, even of their very horses.
The Mahometan residents at Zanzibar and on the coast, both Arab and
Ki-Swahili, go to school at seven years of age, and in two or three
years learn to write, and read the Koran. They are also taught a few
prayers and hymns and some Arab proverbs, and this completes their
education. In two points a good Moslem puts ordinary Christians to
shame—in prayer and temperance. In the East one often sees even the
poorest people prostrating themselves towards Mecca on their
praying-mat, and repeating the accustomed prayers at the stated hours,
which occur five times a day. I have seen a naked black laborer praying
in a coal-lighter during an interval of work. One is reminded of the
quaint old Belgian cities, where it is common to see female figures, in
their long black cloaks, kneeling before a crucifix in some open space.
Temperance the Arab rigidly observes; and how can one expect them to
become Christians when they daily witness the drunkenness of white
seamen? In fact, this objection has been urged upon me by natives, and
the answer which one makes, that our religion does not permit
drunkenness, is not satisfactory to them. “If we got drunk,” they say,
“our sultan would put us in prison.”
Strict Mahometans are very Pharisaical. We once had great trouble with
a Mahometan priest or schoolmaster who visited our ship. He refused the
coffee which we offered him because it was made by a Christian, and
would only condescend to drink some lime-juice out of a glass which we
assured him had never been used, and even this beverage had to be
prepared by his own servant. Some Arab gentlemen who accompanied him
and dined with us, being prevented from eating anything that we had
cooked, could get nothing but oranges.
The Hindis are a sect of Mahometans who are not recognized by the
Arabs, but the exact nature of their differences I have not been able
to learn. Neither could I arrive at the religion of the Banians. Their
mortality at Zanzibar is very great, and you may daily see processions
of Banian men going to the beach beyond the town, where they raise a
funeral pyre of wood, on which their deceased friend is consumed, the
remains being washed away by the rising tide.
On the coast the people are much the same as those who inhabit the
island of Zanzibar. There are the lazy, cowardly Belooch soldiers and
their families, and these swashbucklers are thoroughly despised and
hated. The towns are ruled by headmen, who are subject to the Sultan of
Zanzibar, but who enrich themselves by extortion. The Washenzi are
day-laborers, and are barbarians from the interior. Banians are always
found prospering in trade. The Ki-Swahili—which means people of the
coast, degenerate Arabs—are ignorant and vicious. They have a great
fear and hatred of the white man, particularly of the English, whom
they called _Beni Nar_—Sons of Fire. They think that, if once the white
man’s foot has been placed on the land, he is sure to obtain possession
of it in the end; and in this they are not far mistaken. The Wamrina
are a coast clan even more debased and vicious than the latter people,
and they appear to have little reason. They are cowardly and cautious,
but very cunning, and, as most of the inhabitants in those parts, lie
habitually, even when there is no object to be gained thereby.
There are a number of small towns on the coast from Magadoxo, a little
north of the equator, to Kilwa, the great slave-mart in the south. The
chief ones are Brava, Lamu, Marka, Melinda, and Mombas. At both of the
latter are Portuguese remains, and at Mombas is a Protestant mission
which at the time of my visit had been established thirty years, and
had cost a large amount of money, but had apparently done very little
good. The celebrated Dr. Krapf, who had been four years in Abyssinia,
was the first to go there, starting from Zanzibar. This was in 1844. He
was the first to draw up a Ki-Swahili grammar, in which he was assisted
by Dr. Rebmann, who arrived two years afterwards. Their journeys from
Mombas, which is situated in 4° south latitude, are well known. They
discovered Kilima Njaro, a snow-clad mountain 22,814 feet high, only 3°
south of the equator, and what they heard from the natives of vast
lakes in the interior, where nothing but sandy deserts had hitherto
been supposed to exist, led to the famous travels which have exposed a
new world to the wondering eyes of men and opened up new fields for the
glorious labors of the missionary.
Dr. Rebmann was living near Mombas at the time of my visit, though old
and blind, and, I hear, has since died. I did not see him, though I
started to do so with one of the missionaries. I was so disgusted by
this man’s narrow sectarianism in the midst of heathendom—he commencing
to abuse the mission of his own church at Zanzibar—that I preferred to
spend the night on the river in a boat with our seamen rather than,
with my friends, accompany him to the Rabai Mission. We came across a
pamphlet written by them for their English supporters, containing a lot
of pious texts: “Come over and help us”; “The fields are white to the
harvest”; “A wide door and effectual is open,” and so on; but it struck
us as being great nonsense. However, I am told that they have since
that started a large establishment of liberated slaves. The Wesleyans
have a mission in the neighborhood, but of them I know nothing, as we
did not visit them.
The Sultan of Zanzibar visited England two years ago, offered to place
his dominions under British protection, and has exerted himself to put
a stop to the slave-trade, though he fought hard against its abolition
at first, as from it he derived the principal part of his revenue. If a
stop could be put to this evil and peace established in the interior, a
splendid field for mission-work would be the result, the black having
such respect for the superior knowledge and intellect of the white man
that many tribes would receive the missionary with a hearty welcome.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY, WITH A VIEW OF THE STATE OF THE ROMAN
WORLD AT THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. By George P. Fisher, D.D., Professor
of Ecclesiastical History in Yale College. New York: Scribner,
Armstrong & Co. 1877.
Dr. Fisher has taken up a line of argument of great interest and
importance, which has employed the minds and pens of a number of able
writers before him, but which cannot be too frequently or copiously
treated. The author informs us in his preface that he has prepared the
work as now published from a course of lectures before the Lowell
Institute of Boston. The principal portion of his argument presents
precisely what is needed by a large number of educated persons in New
England, especially in Boston, where a reckless, extravagant
rationalism and neologism, borrowed from Germany, are rapidly
undermining all belief in the genuineness, historical truth, and
doctrinal authenticity of our earliest Christian documents, together
with those of Judaism. This modern infidelity saps the historical basis
of Christianity, that it may be free to criticise it as a theory, a
mere natural phenomenon, a phase of human evolution. Any one who turns
their own historical and critical methods against these sceptics does
good service to truth. We are pleased to recognize the many merits,
both in respect to matter and diction, in the essay of the learned
professor. The five chapters on the Roman policy, and Greco-Roman
religion, literature, philosophy, and morals, are admirable. The
geographical accuracy and distinctness with which, as on a map, the
Roman Empire is graphically delineated, makes a characteristic and
noteworthy feature of this part of the work, which is enriched with a
great number of happy classical quotations. The succinct review of
historical Judaism during the important but much-neglected period of
five centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ is interesting
and valuable. A very able critical defence of the genuineness of the
New Testament history, of the truth of the miracles and resurrection of
our Lord, his superhuman character and divine mission, completes a
solid and unanswerable argument for the historical basis of
Christianity as a divine and supernatural religion.
The author has shown the convergence of all the lines of movement drawn
in the past history of the world towards the moment of Christ’s
appearance. This is one of the strongest proofs of his divine mission,
inasmuch as it shows that the Author and Ruler of the world is also the
Author of the Christian religion. The complement to the argument should
point out the divergence of the lines from the same point through the
post-Christian times, and the work of human regeneration historically
fulfilled—the second and even greater proof of the divine legation of
Christ. The author shows very conclusively that those destructive
critics and sceptics who deny the true historical idea of Christ as
presented in the New Testament take away all sufficient cause for the
effect produced in Christianity.
The foundation for a complete argument from cause to effect and effect
to cause, in the relation between the historical idea of Christ and the
historical idea of his regenerating work, is laid by establishing his
supernatural character, mission, and works. Thus far Dr. Fisher gives
us complete satisfaction. When he proceeds to develop his own
conception of the true Christian idea—the plan, namely, of human
regeneration, and the means for executing the plan—we do not find it
complete and adequate. As compared with the view heretofore prevalent
among evangelical Protestants, it is, nevertheless, a marked
approximation to the Catholic idea. We consider that Dr. Fisher’s
argument requires a complement, in order to make the historical circle
embracing all ages and centred in Christ perfect in its circumference.
To explain our statement and adduce reasons for it would require many
pages, and we must for the present refrain from anything beyond a mere
expression of our judgment.
There is only one passage which we have thus far noticed in a perusal
of nearly the whole of Dr. Fisher’s volume which has jarred upon our
feelings as out of tune with his prevalent mode of philosophical candor
and historical justice. On page 238 it is written: “Pharisaism, like
Jesuitism, is a word of evil sound, not because these parties had no
good men among them, but because prevailing tendencies stamped upon
each ineffaceable traits of ignominy.”
We are persuaded that in the great number and variety of studies which
have absorbed his time and attention the writer of the foregoing
passage has never found leisure to read the books which would give him
the true notion of the institute and history of the Jesuits. We give
him credit for great sincerity and love of truth, and yet we cannot
help thinking that there is still a remnant of prejudice left in his
mind, which in this case causes, to use his own words, “groundless,
gratuitous suspicion, such as, in the ordinary concerns of life, is
habitually repelled by a healthy moral nature.”
As a production of learning, philosophical thought, and literary taste,
the _Beginnings of Christianity_ deserves, in our opinion, a place
among the best works of New England scholars. We will close this notice
by an extract which shows the philosophical and religious tone and
quality of the great argument presented in the volume:
“When we look back upon the ancient philosophy in its entire course, we
find in it nothing nearer to Christianity than the saying of Plato that
man is to resemble God. But, on the path of speculation, how defective
and discordant are the conceptions of God! And if God were adequately
known, how shall the fetters of evil be broken and the soul attain to
its ideal? It is just these questions that Christianity meets through
the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. God, the head of that universal
society on which Cicero delighted to dwell, is brought near, in all his
purity and love, to the apprehension, not of a coterie of philosophers
merely, but of the humble and ignorant. There is a real deliverance
from the burden of evil, achieved through Christ, actually for himself
and potentially for mankind. How altered in their whole character are
the ethical maxims which, in form, may not be without a parallel in
heathen sages! Forgiveness, forbearance, pity for the poor, universal
compassion, are no longer abstractions derived from speculation on the
attributes of Deity. They are a part of the example of God. He has so
dealt with us in the mission and death of his Son. The cross of Christ
was the practical power that annihilated artificial distinctions among
mankind and made human brotherhood a reality. In this new setting,
ethical precepts gain a depth of earnestness and a force of impression
which heathen philosophy could never impart. We might as well claim for
starlight the brightness and warmth of a noon-day sun” (p. 189). This
fine passage is supplemented by two condensed statements in another
place, that the end in view of the plan of Jesus was “the introduction
of a new life in humanity,” and the plan itself “the establishment of a
society of which he is the living head” (p. 467). This really
comprehends the whole Christian Idea in germ. Its true and perfect
evolution, and an accurate commentary upon it, would present a complete
philosophy of Christianity.
DE DEO CREANTE: Prælectiones Scholastico-Dogmaticæ quas in Collegio
S.S. Cordis Jesu ad Woodstock, Maxima Studiorum Domo Soc. Jesu in
Fœd. Americæ Sept. Statibus, habebat A.D. MDCCCLXXVI.-VII., Camillus
Mazzella, S.J., in eod. Coll. Stud. Præfectus et Theol. Dogm.
Professor. Woodstock, Marylandiæ: Ex Officina Typographica Collegii.
1877. 8vo, pp. xxxv.-935.
This treatise is a complete exposition and defence of the Catholic
doctrine on creation and its kindred topics as handed down in the
church by tradition from the earliest ages to the present day. As the
title of the book indicates, the subject is considered not merely from
a dogmatic point of view; all the errors of the ancients as well as of
their modern imitators being taken up in turn and refuted. A glance at
the general divisions of the work will show the wide range of topics
treated: I. “De Creatione Generatim”; II. “De Angelica Substantia”;
III. “De Hominis Origine et Natura”; IV. “De Hominis Elevatione ad
Statum Supernaturalem”; V. “De Humanæ Naturæ Lapsu”; VI. “De Hominis
Novissimis.”
Each of these subjects is developed with the greatest detail. Take, for
example, the seventeenth proposition in the third disputation, on the
origin of the human race. In the introductory remarks to this
proposition the author first explains our descent from Adam, the first
man, according to revelation, and then devotes some ten pages to a
concise but thorough exposition of Darwinism and its companion errors.
After this he lays down the following thesis: “Primi parentes, prout ex
divina revelatione constat, non modo quoad animam, sed etiam quoad
corpus, immediate a Deo conditi sunt. Quam certissimam veritatem
frustra evertere aut infirmare nituntur qui nunc audiunt Transformistæ:
principium enim quod assumunt arbitrarium est, atque experientiæ
repugnans; media, quæ assignant, ad transformationem efficiendam sunt
insufficientia; probationes, demum, quas adducunt, nihil omnino
evincunt.” This he proves directly by a large array of arguments from
the Holy Scriptures, the fathers and the doctors of the church. He then
proceeds to show the untenableness of the opposite theories,
demonstrating that animals can only be propagated by others of the same
species; that the ablest practical scientists of the day have
acknowledged the arbitrariness of the transformation theory, and that
many have proved it contrary to known facts; that the means suggested
by the evolutionists are insufficient to explain the origin of man,
etc., etc. He introduces a large and well-marshalled army of quotations
from American, British, and Continental scientists to back up his
position.
The divisions of the work and the order in which they are treated lay
no claims to originality, which the author has very sensibly considered
as worse than out of place in a theological text-book, since it tends
only to perplex the student and to introduce confusion into the schools
of divinity. The fate of writers who have, even in our own day, adopted
a different course proves clearly the correctness of this view.
Nevertheless, the method pursued in the treatment of particular
questions is at once novel and useful, and, as far as we know, peculiar
to Father Mazzella. As a general rule, theological writers, after
having briefly explained the meaning of the proposition and touched on
the errors of their adversaries, enter at once on the demonstration.
This done, they devote a great deal of space to the solution of
difficulties and the refutation of objections; and it is on this last
point especially that they rely for making the sense of their thesis
clear. Father Mazzella has adopted a different mode of proceeding. The
development of each of his propositions contains two distinct parts: in
the first he presents a complete exposition of the subject-matter in
all its bearings; in the second he proves the point at issue. He starts
out by giving a summary of the decisions of the church regarding the
question under discussion. Then, if there be any diversity of opinion
amongst Catholic doctors, he explains each system and notes the degree
of probability contained in it. Finally, he proceeds to the exposition
of contrary errors or heresies, and of the various senses, false and
true, in which the doctrine may be interpreted. All this opens the way
to the second part, in which the thesis is proved from Scripture, the
fathers, and reason, and the few difficulties that perhaps remain are
answered.
This manner of developing a subject seems to us to confer a twofold
benefit on the student: it gives him a clear and comprehensive
conception of the positive doctrine, and at the same time supplies him
with general principles by means of which he may readily solve any new
objections that may chance to arise in discussion. It is not sufficient
for the young theologian to have learned by heart a number of proofs,
and the answers to the long string of difficulties given in his
text-book. He must be imbued with the whole spirit of Catholic
doctrine, and thus he will form within himself a new theological
_sense_, if we may use the expression, by which he can easily discern
what is consonant with, and what is repugnant to, the truths contained
in the deposit of faith. Such is the result aimed at in Father
Mazzella’s method. Hence he devotes but little space to the answering
of objections; for he has already disposed of them in the exposition of
his thesis. Most difficulties, in fact, arise from a misunderstanding
of Catholic doctrine; hence it is plain that they must readily
disappear, if the dogmas of the church be clearly explained.
As is proper for a theologian, the author makes abundant use of
Scripture and tradition. Whilst avoiding all needless excursions into
the fields of philology and hermeneutics, he does not refuse to handle
the difficulties brought from these sciences. An instance of this is
his vindication of the true sense of the famous [Greek: eph ô]—_in
quo_—in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. Whenever the
question under discussion has been defined by the church, the decrees
are carefully given and explained. We frequently find a series of
definitions on the same subject, taken from councils held at various
periods, proving the wonderful unity of the church’s teaching in
various ages. Father Mazzella makes frequent use of the fathers and
great scholastic writers. He generally quotes them word for word, thus
ensuring conviction as to their real opinion, and familiarizing the
reader with their peculiar modes of thought and expression, taking
care, however, to explain all obscurities in the text.
Every student of theology is aware of the importance of mental
philosophy in our days, when the repugnance of the supernatural to
reason is so loudly and boldly asserted. Hence the author constantly
appeals to it, but is careful to admit only such opinions as are
approved by the authority of the schools, taking as his guides only St.
Thomas and the ablest commentators of the Angelic Doctor, especially
Suarez.