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CAPABILITY FOR CHRISTIANITY. Chap. XXIX. 



" bonny lasses " should not now have been exported regularly 

 to the harems of the East.* 



We have been so often asked whether the Africans were 

 capable of embracing the Christian religion, that we 

 venture to make the following observations, although our 

 doing so may appear to be a work of supererogation 

 to all who have witnessed the effects already produced in 

 West and South Africa by teaching supplied entirely by 

 private benevolence, or who have watched the Missionary 

 movements of various Christian Churches during the last 

 quarter of a century. The question seems to imply a 

 belief on the part of those who put it, that the reception of 

 the Gospel involves a high development and exercise of the 

 reasoning powers. Some men, indeed, are constitutionally 

 prone to reason out every subject as far as their intellects can 

 lead them ; but those who are led through life by pure 

 reason constitute a very small minority of any race. To 

 quote from one of Sir James Stephen's excellent Historical 

 Essays : — " The Apostles assume in all men the existence of 

 a spiritual discernment, enabling the mind, when unclouded by 



* The peculiar convexity of face, 

 and enormous size of ears, which 

 mark the African species of elephant, 

 are so clearly denned in an Egyptian 

 sarcophagus in the British Museum, of 

 the 26th Dynasty, some 500 years 

 before our era, as to render it probable 

 that the sculptor saw the animal alive ; 

 and it is more likely that it was a 

 tame one than that the sculptor was 

 a traveller, or that a wild elephant 

 was driven down to Egypt. The 

 elephants used by the Romans and 

 Carthaginians were certainly African ; 

 and in a treaty, pointed out by Mr. R. 

 S. Poole, the Romans bound down the 

 Carthaginians not to tame any more 

 elephants. " Perfugas, fugitivosque, 

 et captivos omnes redderent Ronianis, 



et naves rostratas, prseter decern 

 triremes, traderent : elephantasque, 

 quos haberent domitos, neque do- 

 marent alios." — Livy xxx. 37. This 

 indicates the close of one branch of 

 African industry. The Egyptian 

 monuments show that other wild 

 animals also were tamed; but the 

 stagnation of intellect common to the 

 later Egyptians and other tribes on 

 that and the Indian Continent, seems 

 to have taken place at very remote 

 periods. In speaking of the African 

 race, the reader will observe that we do 

 not, as those do who know little of the 

 great interior, take the negro inhabit- 

 ing the minute fringe by the low 

 West Coast as typical of the whole 

 family. 



