368 THE LAND OF THE LION 



can at present take. He has offered him membership 

 in a great, free (no Mohammedan can be a slave) brother- 

 hood. And the East African crowds to him, and proudly 

 steps forward into the better, higher life offered. 



Africa is the land of failures. We have as yet no knowl- 

 edge which enables us to do more than guess at the cause 

 of such universal failure. But the sad fact remains. 

 Religious and political influences that have succeeded else- 

 where have failed in Africa. If we except the Egyptians, 

 no African race has risen to greatness, no African people 

 have written their name distinctly on any record of olden 

 or modern time. Africa proper has never had a chance. 

 In oldest times as in most modern, its fate has been to be 

 ravaged by the gold-seeker and the slave-hunter. No 

 nation seems to have cared or thought it worth while so 

 much as to try to bring to its dark millions the blessings 

 of order and settled rule. Religious movements that 

 transformed the rest of the world and gave or preserved to 

 mankind art, literature, civilization and hope, in dark 

 tempestuous times, if they ever seriously tried to help 

 Africa, failed. They seem indeed, never to have deeply pene- 

 trated the continent, and soon lost foothold even on the 

 coast. 



We know that in the fifth century there were no less 

 than four-hundred African bishoprics. For a time the 

 African branch of the Christian Church was strong both in 

 members and influence; but even in those days of her 

 glory she seems to have stood helplessly before the stupen- 

 dous missionary problem which the dark, unknown southern 

 continent presented to her, and was contented to main- 

 tain herself among the civilized and luxurious peoples of 

 the coast lands, while she left unhelped and untaught 

 the dark millions beyond the mountains. Perhaps if she 

 had better discharged her duty to them, they might have 

 in turn succoured her, in her long and bloody decline. 



