MODERN MISSIONS AND PRIMITIVE MONASTERIES. 131 



foreign teaching for any tribe in a thinly-peopled country, for 

 some never will receive the Gospel at all, while in other parts, 

 when Christianity is once planted, the work is sure to go on. A 

 missionary is soon known to he supported by his friends at home ; 

 and though the salary is but a bare subsistence, to Africans it 

 seems an enormous sum ; and, being unable to appreciate the 

 motives by which he is actuated, they consider themselves enti- 

 tled to various services at his hands, and defrauded if these are 

 not duly rendered. This feeling is all the stronger when a young 

 man, instead of going boldly to the real heathen, settles down in 

 a comfortable house and garden prepared by those into whose la- 

 bors he has entered. A remedy for this evil might be found in 

 appropriating the houses and gardens raised by the missionaries' 

 hands to their own families. It is ridiculous to call such places 

 as Kuruman, for instance, "Missionary Society's property." This 

 beautiful station was made what it is, not by English money, but 

 by the sweat and toil of fathers whose children have, notwith- 

 standing, no place on earth which they can call a home. The 

 Society's operations may be transferred to the north, and then the 

 strong-built mission premises become the home of a Boer, and the 

 stately stone church his cattle-pen. This place has been what 

 the monasteries of Europe are said to have been when pure. The 

 monks did not disdain to hold the plow. They introduced fruit- 

 trees, flowers, and vegetables, in addition to teaching and emanci- 

 pating the serfs. Their monasteries were mission stations, which 

 resembled ours in being dispensaries for the sick, almshouses for 

 the poor, and nurseries of learning. Can we learn nothing from 

 them in their prosperity as the schools of Europe, and see naught 

 in their history but the pollution and laziness of their decay? 

 Can our wise men tell us why the former mission stations (prim- 

 itive monasteries) were self-supporting, rich, and flourishing as 

 pioneers of civilization and agriculture, from which we even now 

 reap benefits, and modern mission stations are mere pauper estab- 

 lishments, without that permanence or ability to be self-support- 

 ing which they possessed ? 



Protestant missionaries of every denomination in South Africa 

 all agree in one point, that no mere profession of Christianity is 

 sufficient to entitle the converts to the Christian name. They 

 are all anxious to place the Bible in the hands of the natives, and. 



