THE PROBLEM OF BAPTISM 165 
diminishes, and he begins, just like a negro, to attach 
importance to, and to argue at any length about, the 
smallest matters. In the matter of theology, too, the 
more thorough the training the better. 
That under certain circumstances a man may be a 
good missionary without having studied theology is 
proved by the example of Mr. Fehx Faure, who at the 
present time is the Head of our station. He is by 
training an agricultural engineer {ingenieur agronome) 
and came to the Ogowe first of all to manage the 
station’s agricultural land. At the same time he 
proved to be such an excellent preacher and evangelist 
that he became in time more missionary than planter. 
I am not quite in agreement with the manner in which 
baptism is practised here. The rule is that only adults are 
baptised, it being felt that only those should be received 
into the Christian community whose way of life has 
stood some amount of testing.* But do we thereby 
build up a church on a broad and safe basis ? Is it 
essential that the communities shall be composed only 
of members of comparatively blameless fife ? I think 
we must further consider the question of how they are 
to make sure of a normal stream of new members. If 
we baptise the children of Christian parents, we have 
growing up among us a number of natives who have 
been in the Church and under its influence from their 
childhood upwards. Certainly there will be some 
among them who show themselves unworthy of the 
Christian name given them in their childhood, but there 
* Most Protestant missions practise infant baptism. There are 
some, however, who object to it. On the Ogowe, infant baptism is not 
customary, because the American missionaries, who founded the 
Protestant missions here, did not introduce it. — A. S. 
