Ch. VI. MODERN MISSIONS AND PRIMITIVE MONASTERIES. 117 



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 snre to go 

 on. A missionary is soon known to be 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 appre- 

 ciate the motives by which he is actuated, they consider them- 

 selves entitled 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 labours he has entered. A remedy for this evil 

 might be found in appropriating the houses and gardens raised 

 by the missionaries' hands to then own families. It is ridiculous 

 to call such places as Kimiman, for instance, " Missionary 

 Society's property." Tins beautiful station was made what it is, 

 not by English money, but by the sweat and toil of fathers whose 

 children have, notwithstanding, 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 be- 

 come the home of a Boer, and the stately stone church his 

 cattle-pen. Tins place has been what the monasteries of Europe 

 are said to have been when pure. The monks did not disdain to 

 hold the plough. They introduced fruit-trees, flowers, and vege- 

 tables, in addition to teaching and emancipating the serfs. Their 

 monasteries were mission stations, winch resembled ours in being 

 dispensaries for the sick, almshouses for the poor, and nurseries of 

 learning. Can we learn notliing from them in their prosperity as 

 the schools of Europe, and see nought in their history but the 

 pollution and laziness of their decay ? Can our wise men tell us 

 why the former mission stations (primitive 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 establishments without that per- 

 manence or ability to be self-supporting 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, 



