In the course of their revision, the Directors found that the SOUTH
AFRICA Mission needed at their hands an unusual amount of attention
and care. Owing to peculiar circumstances, it had been to a
considerable extent lost sight of for several years. At the outset
of the inquiry, several questions of vital importance presented
themselves for settlement. While the mission numbered on its staff
thirty-five European missionaries, no less than twenty-one of these
brethren were labouring in the christianized portions of the colony;
where the native population has grown thinner rather than more
numerous; and where the ministers and missionaries of other
Societies have considerably increased. Only fourteen of the
Society's missionaries were labouring in the heathen territories,
in Kafirland and among the Bechuana tribes.
The six mission estates, termed INSTITUTIONS, which for a series of
years proved a valuable refuge to the Hottentot labourers, and
trained them in habits of industry, have changed their character,
with the improved position of public opinion and public law. They
have long since accomplished their special work; and socially, in
recent years, some of them have been doing evil rather than good.
Again, the close relation subsisting between several of the
missionaries and the Native Churches of which they were pastors, has
operated much to the disadvantage of these brethren during the years
of drought; and the system required readjustment without delay. The
incomes of all the missionaries, especially of those within the Cape
Colony, were insufficient, and the education of the young was in
general very imperfectly provided for.
After careful consideration of the whole case, the Directors found
themselves able to meet the numerous difficulties which it presented,
and to shape out a system of management which may duly provide for
these missions in the future, on definite and healthy principles.
A series of RESOLUTIONS was passed by the Board, embodying that
system; and these were conveyed to the brethren in the mission, with
a DESPATCH which contained a full explanation of their views.
In considering the future of the Mission, the Directors remember that
many christian agencies have been set at work in the Colony, in
addition to their own, since they took up the cause of the Native
tribes, and successfully fought the battle of their freedom. Some
of these agencies have given especial attention to the European
Congregations, to which the Society has never devoted its
substantial strength; but amongst them the Natives also, especially
in the eastern parts of the colony, have found pastors and friends.
The time has therefore come to shift the Society's labours more
decidedly to those districts of South Africa which are still occupied
by heathen tribes, and which have but few instructors. In the western
parts of the colony our churches are few. In the neighbourhood of
PORT ELIZABETH there is a cluster of important stations, which have
exercised great influence for good over the Native races, and have
brought many of their people into the Church Of Christ.
In KAFIRLAND, in districts within the English dominion, the Society
has five stations, in most of which there is fair access to a
population still heathen. In each a Christian Church has been
gathered; the members are nine hundred in number, and the
congregations contain nearly four thousand persons. Four English
missionaries have charge of these missions, and a Native Pastor, the
Rev. A. Van Rooyen. These missions, however, are surrounded by the
agencies of other Missionary Societies; and they have not that full
scope for development which is desirable, and which they possessed
in earlier years. It is among the Bechuana missions, that enlargement
is most practicable.
For twenty years the Mission Station at the KURUMAN, with its
immediate neighbours, stood forth, the last of the border
lighthouses on the shore of that wild sea of savage life and savage
wars, which stretched northward without a break to the unpeopled
Sahara. Then for nine years Livingstone maintained a station beyond
it among the Bakwains. In 1859, in two bands, our brethren entered
the wilderness, to found new Missions among the Makololo and the
Matebele. Strange disasters broke up the first. The second was
established successfully at INYATI, and has grown in strength and
influence. Two others have since been fixed at intermediate stations
between the Kuruman and Inyati: and thus a chain of Missions, at
intervals of three hundred miles, has been carried onwards into the
centre of savage heathendom, and to the neighbourhood of the Victoria
Falls. Amid powerful difficulties our brethren have not laboured in
vain. They have had to contend with inveterate prejudices; they have
been preaching lofty truths to minds which, in religion, are on the
level of childhood, yet, in wickedness, have the experience of age.
Still they have held on. In perils of journeys; in perils of sickness;
in perils of the wilderness; in abundant labours; in privations; in
loneliness; they have lived on, if by any means they may save some.
The death of MOSELEKATSE is no common event among the South African
tribes. His career has had a terrible effect upon their numbers,
their position and their history. Leader of a tribe of Zulu Kafirs,
about 1816 he was driven from his own country by the anger of Chaka,
the savage head of the nation, and began to carve out an inheritance
for himself in new lands. Brave, bold, and shrewd, he knew how to
grasp opportunities, to make use of the right men, to reward fidelity
generously, and summarily to stamp out opposition. Throughout life
he had a wonderful influence over both nobles and people. His army
was disciplined; and its courage was stimulated by stirring songs.
In the little court-yard of this African lion, the yells of battle,
the cries of the wounded, the shouts of victory were imitated, and
the stories of brave deeds were told by rude minstrels, as
effectively as, in old days, in Scandinavian halls. His rule was
despotic in the extreme; its barbarities were unparalleled. His
warriors were rewarded by slaves and plunder, and their warlike
expeditions have been incessant to the last. Bursting upon the
Bahurutse tribes beyond the Zulu territory, myriads of lives were
flung away. The tribes were crushed, destroyed, and scattered. The
remnant fell upon their neighbours; or fled into the desert; or
escaped, like the Makololo, to a new land. For twenty years the
country was a sea of war, in which Mantatees and Bergenaars,
Barolongs and Bangwaketse, Bakwains and Matebele, were flung upon
one another, until the storm spent itself, and but a remnant was left.
Often did the Matebele themselves suffer terribly. Often did the
stratagems of Scythians and Libyans in ancient days reappear in this
modern warfare. The refugees decoyed their terrible enemies into the
desert, and left them to die miserably of thirst. Driven to the
northward by fear of Dingaan, in the Makololo and their brave chief,
Sebituane, the Matebele found their match. But on the weaker tribes,
to the banks of the Zambesi, they have waged incessant and successful
war.
What a mighty need is there of the Gospel here! In no field of the
Society's efforts is that need so strikingly manifest. The incessant
wars, the shocking inhumanity, the indescribable vices, the
universal degradation, all attest the depth of sin and misery in
which millions of our race pass their lives. Acuteness, bravery,
manliness are not wanting; right and wrong are not unacknowledged;
the future world is not unknown. Even tenderness is not unfelt; the
sorrows of children could touch Moselekatse's heart to its very core.
But how appalling their ignorance, their misery, their SIN! Is it
true that they are responsible--that "they are without excuse"? Is
it true that "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men"; that "neither thieves, nor
covetous, nor drunkards, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom
of God"; that "the fearful, the abominable, murderers, sorcerers,
idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the second death"?
How loud the call upon us to save them; to waken them from their sleep
of evil, and proclaim with tenderness and power, "Behold the Lamb
of God, which taketh away the sin of the world"! For all this wrong
and all this misery the Gospel is a perfect remedy, and we have only
to apply it fully. To enlighten these degraded souls by knowledge;
to humanize their hardness; to save women and children; to deliver
all from sin; to bring them upward to the Father whom they have
forgotten, by opening to them His divine compassion in the Lord
Jesus; to make life worth living for, because it is the portal of
a heavenly life for ever: this has been the purpose and this the work
of our faithful brethren for fifty years. Other men have gone there
with very different aims. When once the missionary had made it safe,
the trader followed with his muskets and powder, his exciting
firewater; with his brilliant beads, his gorgeous chintzes, his
convenient cutlery; he followed with sugar, and coffee, and tea,
which he was willing to exchange for karosses and deer-horns, and
cattle; for teeth and tusks of ivory. Aids to civilization such
things might prove; but standing alone how could they elevate, when
powder fed the wars; when the drink prostrated chief and people; and
even Englishmen encouraged the sale of slaves.
True civilization springs from pure religion. Where grace touches
the heart of a man, it quickens all his powers.
"The transformation of apostate man
From fool to wise, from earthly to divine,
Is work for Him that made him."
Among a barbarous people the gospel effects changes in one generation
which ages without its grace have failed to secure. "In coming back
to the station on the Kuruman," says Livingstone, "from the tribes
in the interior, I always felt that I had come back to civilization."
It is the Gospel which has made the Kuruman; and what it is, other
stations are already beginning to be. Apart from its christian church
and christian community; apart from the many who have lived a holy
life and died in the Lord; apart from the well studied translation
of the Bible to which Mr. Moffat has given the strength of his
life,--all over the northern territory the tribes which have heard
the Gospel are waking up to new, strange thought; conscience is
struggling upward into power; and life is taking for them a new form,
and is exhibiting a higher purpose. Peace is desired more than ever;
towns and settlements are becoming seats of constant industry;
waggons are purchased by chiefs and people; cottages and gardens
multiply. When Sechele and five thousand of his people hold a meeting
to pray for rain, and gather again to offer thanks for the blessing
bestowed, the influence of the rain-maker must be on the decline.
And when the Matebele hope that the successor of Moselekatse,
wandering in other districts, will have learned the religion of the
gospel, and rule gently according to its precepts, surely the time
for their deliverance is nigh at hand.