French Roman
Catholic missions, mostly in the hands of Jesuit fathers, many of whom
are men of learning and ability. Between the Roman Catholics, the
Protestant Episcopalians (Church of England), and the missionaries of
the English Nonconformists and Scottish or French Presbyterians there is
little intercourse and no co-operation. Here, as in other mission
fields, this absence of intercourse and sympathy puzzles the native. I
was told of an English (Protestant Episcopal) clergyman who made it one
of his prime objects to warn the Kafirs against attending the services
of the French Protestant missionaries, whom he apparently regarded as
outside the pale of the true Church. In the Boer Republics there are
fewer missions in proportion to the number of natives than in British
territories; but no district, except the deserts of the west, seems to
be wholly unprovided for, and in some cases stations have been pushed
far beyond the limits of European administration, as, for instance,
among the Barotse, who dwell north of the Upper Zambesi. The native
congregations are usually small, and the careers of the converts not
always satisfactory. This is so natural that it is odd to find
Europeans, and most conspicuously those whose own life is not a model of
Christian morality, continually growling and sneering at the
missionaries because their converts do not all turn out saints. The
savage is unstable in character, and baptism does not necessarily
extinguish either his old habits or the hold which native superstitions
have upon him. It is in this instability of his will, and his proneness
to yield to drink or some other temptation, rather than in his
intellect, that the weakness of the savage lies. And a man with hundreds
of generations of savagery behind him is still, and must be, in many
respects a savage, even though he reads and writes, and wears European
clothes, and possibly even a white necktie. The Kafirs are not such bad
Christians as the Frankish warriors were for two or three generations
after the conversion of Clovis. We must wait for several generations
before we can judge fairly of the influence of his new religion upon the
mind of a Kafir whose ancestors had no religion at all, and were ruled
by the lowest forms of superstition.

These facts are better recognized by the missionaries to-day than they
were sixty years ago, and they have in consequence made some changes in
their methods. They are no longer so anxious to