Liberia ^ 



surely the English, the Americans, the Liberians, and all future 

 races that may come within the pale of the Christian religion — 

 or the Muhammadan — need not be obliged to give Hebrew 

 appellations to their sons and daughters ? They are inappro- 

 priate, their real meaning is very seldom understood, and the 

 pronunciation given to them in the English language is ugly 

 and most inaccurate. 



The Americo-Liberian need not throw away any precept 

 of Anglo-Saxon civilisation which can be usefully adapted to 

 Africa. They have a battle to fight, or, let us say, a friendly 

 rivalry to wage with the civihsation of Arabia, which is being 

 steadily brought into Liberia from the north by the Mandingos. 

 The present writer has little more sympathy with Muham- 

 madanism as a religion than with that strange amalgam of 

 Judaistic Christianity which became associated for a time with 

 the Protestant Reform, but which is now being shed rapidly by 

 the Reformed Churches. But it is useless to deny — though 

 it be inconvenient to admit — that Muhammadanism has done 

 a great deal to raise the Negro in the social order. It has 

 clothed his nakedness with good taste. It has given him pride 

 and confidence in himself which makes him look a man and 

 a ruler. It has given him great ideals for which he is ready 

 to lay down his life, and it has brought to him the reasonable 

 amenities of the East. Whether it be possible to fuse in one 

 community what is best in Muhammadan civilisation with what 

 is practical and cheerful in Christianity remains to be seen. 

 France in North Africa, England in Egypt and the Sudan, 

 are trying the experiment. Liberia on a much smaller scale 

 must solve the same problem in this forest-land of West 

 Africa. Muhammadanism, though it has greatly helped the 

 Negro, has been a bitter foe of the more reasonable side of 

 European civilisation in India, in Turkey, in Syria, Asia Minor, 



360 



