A PLEA FOR THE NATIVE 407 



He must change all his methods of living, think as the 

 white man thinks, believe what the white man believes. 

 He is generally ready to try, but he soon tires of the impos- 

 sible task set him, and, demoralized by failure, discouraged 

 to find that he cannot retain the approval of his masters 

 and teachers, he falls back among his own people, and is 

 distinctly a worse man for his relapse. 



If we will not give Africa a much simpler religion than 

 any of our missionaries are now empowered and encouraged 

 to teach, Africa will become Mohammedan. One of the 

 chief difficulties in the way of Christian missions in East 

 and Central Africa is that missionary organizations are 

 controlled and directed from a distance by committees 

 composed of men who, however excellent and well inten- 

 tioned, are actually ignorant of the people they set them- 

 selves to help and convert. 



People at home do not know Africa, do not understand 

 the native. The most difficult thing in the world is to bring 

 the facts of native life before them. In illustration of 

 this extraordinary state of things, I take my own case. 

 Whatever value these notes of mine may have, lies in the 

 fact that they state facts for the truth of which I vouch, and 

 which are well known to be true by all men who know the 

 country. In my chapter on the life of the tribes I visited 

 I wrote of their social customs, the relation of the sexes 

 simply stating things as they were. To ignore them, to 

 refuse to recognize them, can serve no good end. They 

 should be known, they must be reckoned with, if these people 

 are to be helped. But I was told, "No library will take your 

 work if these facts are stated baldly, as you state them." 

 There in a nutshell is the main cause, as I see it, of the weak- 

 ness of the Christian missionary position to-day. If 

 missions would but take the public the great interested 

 public that really wants to do right, and longs to help 

 the downtrodden, if it only knew how to do it, into its 



