122 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



pictures. The one a cruel wintry night and the 

 Thames Embankment ; the other a typical Central 

 African village basking in the warmth of God's 

 sunshine. And to whom would you accord your 

 charity, to whom should you accord your charity 

 — the cold, miserable wretches shivering in the 

 pallid glare of the street lamps, staring into the 

 rain puddles, without food, without shelter, more 

 awful still, without hope, or the well-fed, lazy 

 and contented natives of Africa who have food 

 and shelter and the supreme comfort of knowing 

 that all their wants and desires are not difficult 

 of gratification ? It is unbecoming of nations 

 that have waxed wise in worldly wisdom to talk 

 of Higher Ideals. Look at the two pictures fairly 

 and squarely. Disabuse your mind of all the 

 sorry creeds of hypocrisy that are hurled at you 

 from Tabernacles. To whom should you give — 

 those of your own race, perhaps of your own 

 kith and kin, who have fallen by the wayside, 

 often through no fault of their own, or to the 

 man with the black skin w^ho lives in another 

 World and has no need of your Christianity or 

 your charity ? 



Do you think that the African native will be 

 improved by the dinning of religious precepts 

 into his ears ? I know that he is not. Ascribe 

 it to ignorance, to narrow-mindedness, to what 

 you will, but I am convinced that the African 

 in his raw state is a far finer character and a 

 far happier personage than the African with a 

 prayer-book in his right hand and the tools of 

 murder in his left. Ask any man who has lived 

 in uncivilized Africa or who has travelled through 

 the byways, who makes the finer, more loyal 

 servant, the mission boy or the raw savage 

 straight from his elysian kraals? 



