To6 MONASTERIES AND MISSIONS. 



emancipating 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 Burope, 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 permanence 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, with ability to read, 

 there can be little doubt as to the future. We believe 

 Christianity to be divine, and equal to all it has to perform ; 

 then let the good seed be widely sown, and, no matter to 

 what sect the converts may belong, the harvest will be 

 glorious. Let nothing that I have said be interpreted 

 as indicative of feelings inimical to any body of Christians, 

 for I never as a missionary felt myself to be either Pres- 

 byterian, Episcopalian, or Independent, or called upon 

 in any way to love one denomination less than another. 

 My earnest desire is, that those who really have the best 

 interests of the heathen at heart should go to them ; and 

 assuredly, in Africa at least, self-denying labours among 

 real heathen will not fail to be appreciated. Christians 

 have never yet dealt fairly by the heathen and been 

 disappointed. 



When Sechele understood that we could no longer 

 remain with him at Kolobeng, he sent his children to 

 Mr. Moffat, at Kuruman, for instruction in all the know- 

 ledge of the white men. Mr. Moffat very liberally received 

 at once an accession of five to his family, with their 

 attendants. 



Having been detained at Kuruman about a fortnight 

 by the breaking of a waggon-wheel, I was thus pro- 

 videntially prevented from being present at the attack 

 of the Boers on the Bakwains, news of which was brrught, 

 about the end of that time, by Masebele, the wife of 

 Sechele. She had herself been hidden in a cleft of a rock, 



