indulge in overwrought expectations as
to the elevation which those who have inherited the degradation of ages
may attain in our day. The principle might even be adopted by missionary
societies, that one ordinary missionary's lifetime of teaching should
be considered an ample supply of 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 planted, 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 appreciate the motives
by which he is actuated, they consider themselves entitled to various
services at his hands, and defrauded if these are not duly rendered.
This feeling 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 labors 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 English
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 become the home of a Boer, and the stately
stone church his cattle-pen. This place has been what the monasteries
of Europe are said to have been when pure. The monks did not disdain to
hold the plow. They introduced fruit-trees, flowers, and vegetables, in
addition to teaching 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
nothing from them in their prosperity as the schools of Europe, and see
naught 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-supportin