TRUE METHOD OF MISSIONARY WORK. 867 



would be able to construct an enormous network of stations all over Africa. 

 These stations should be made centres for the instruction of the natives in 

 all the useful arts. The country abounded in minerals ; the natives had 

 learnt to work iron and copper, and were, in fact, expert smiths, but with in- 

 struction from civilised artisans they would no doubt become very much better 

 workmen than at present. They should try from these stations to teach 

 them what civilised life in its highest form was. 



The civilisation of the African, it should be remembered, need never be 

 the same as that of the European. There were different sorts of civilisation, 

 fitted for different races of men, and different climes. At present the great 

 fault of our contact with the African was that we forced a false veneer of civi- 

 lisation upon him, with many vices of a spurious civilisation. In working these 

 places, then, they must remember that the African had his peculiarities of 

 temper, of mind, of thought, all very different from those of people at home. 

 They had had no education, no literature, or history. With the African they 

 had had, as it were, to begin life. They had to think of him in many things 

 as being lower than the Briton at the time of the Roman invasion. But in 

 all this they must remember that the African was a man just the same as any 

 white man. He had his feelings, his love of family; he was not to be domi- 

 neered over and bullied — for he felt these things as acutely as any white 

 man. But the African must be taught what was for his own good ; that it 

 was not proper to rule people by indiscriminate murder and burning of vil- 

 lages. The missionary had to go to him as the living exponent of a higher 

 and better life. He had to teach him that his greatest happiness did not con- 

 sist in drinking the whole day long until he was drunk, and if he could get 

 enough stuff to keep drunk for a month. He had to teach the negro that it 

 was not the highest happiness of mankind to indulge in drinking and in 

 smoking "bang" until, as was the case with the chiefs of some tribes, the)' 

 came perfectly irresponsible for days and weeks together; and under these 

 influences the chiefs often committed the most frightful cruelties on the peo- 

 ple under their control. 



The missionary who went to Africa needed to go there having taken in 

 thoroughly what the magnitude of the work was, and prepared to devote 

 himself entirely to that one work. It was no good for a man to go there 

 thinking of turning back; he must stick at it either until forced to return by 

 circumstances over which he had no control, or until he died at his post — and 

 there was no more noble post for a man to die at. It was necessary to exer- 

 cise very great care in the selection of men as missionaries. These men had 

 to go among wild untutored savages like the heaven-descended prophets of 

 old, prepared to challenge the closet comparison of every act of their lives 

 with the standard of their own teaching and that of the Bible. They must 

 also be meu of great linguistic ability. A missionary to Africa must be able 



