I HOW TO CIVILIZE SAVAGES 109 



work should properly have ceased. A native church, 

 with native teachers, should by that time have been 

 established, and should be left to work out its own 

 national form of Christianity. In many places we have 

 now had missions for more than the period of one genera- 

 tion. Have any self-supporting, free, and national 

 Christian churches arisen among savages ? If not — if the 

 new religion can only be kept alive by fresh relays of 

 priests sent from a far distant land — priests educated and 

 paid by foreigners, and who are, and ever must be, widely 

 separated from their flocks in mind and character — is it 

 not the strongest proof of the failure of the missionary 

 scheme ? Are these new Christians to be for ever kept 

 in tutelage, and to be for ever taught the peculiar doc- 

 trines which have, perhaps, just become fashionable among 

 us ? Are they never to become men, and to form their 

 own opinions, and develop their own minds, under national 

 and local influences ? If, as we hold, Christianity is good 

 for all races and for all nations alike, it is thus alone that 

 its goodness can be tested ; and they who fear the results 

 of such a test can have but small confidence in the doc- 

 trines they preach. 



The views here expressed are now, after more than 

 thirty years, receiving unexpected support, if we may 

 rely on a well-written and thoughtful article by Mr. E. 

 M. Green in the Nineteenth Century of November, 1899. 

 It appears that in our Colonies in South Africa the edu- 

 cated Kaffirs are beginning a movement for a church of 

 their own wdth native ministers and native organisation. 

 There is said to be ample education, talent, and religious 

 enthusiasm to support such a church ; but instead of being 

 welcomed and fostered by encouragement and assistance, 

 it seems to be viewed with suspicion and dislike by the 

 official representatives of the local churches. The ^outli 

 African Congregational Magazine, for example, ^vriting on 

 this movement, remarks : 



' ' The ground of their revolt appears to have been a sense of 

 resentment against the social barriers in the way of their advance- 

 ment to the chief seats of official authority in their ecclesiastical 

 system. Conceiving they had a grievance on the ground of such 



