Ch. VI. MODEEN MISSIONS AND PEIMITIVE MONASTEEIES. 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 jplanted, the work is sure 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 wliich he is actuated, they consider them¬ 
selves entitled to various services at his hands, and defrauded 
if these are not duly rendered. This feehng 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 their own families. It is ridiculous 
to call such places as Kuruman, for instance, “ Missionary 
Society’s property.” This beautiful station was made what it is, 
not by Enghsh 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. Tliis 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 teacliing and 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 not hin g 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 civihzation and 
' agriculture from which we even now reap benefits, and modern 
mission stations are mere pauper establishments without that per¬ 
manence or ahihty 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, 
