he was on what may be called the level tableland of his
life. These years had not the same romantic incidents as the pioneering
days, for they were devoted chiefly to the consolidation and expansion of
Lovedale. Confusion must overtake us if our record of this period attempts
to keep equal step with the growing years. We must, therefore, for the
present abandon the chronological order, and describe consecutively what
was contemporaneous. We shall thus devote a separate chapter to each of
Stewart’s many-sided activities; for he was at this time a Missionary, an
Educationalist, an Agriculturalist, a Captain of Industry, a Physician, a
Preacher, an Author, and a Statesman who had some share in shaping the
laws. All these efforts were intertwined, but we can untwist the strands,
and then reunite them. It will help us to understand him in all his
capacities, if we begin by examining the human material upon which he was
always working. The subject has many attractions for all students of
mankind and of comparative religion, and it will reveal the environment of
the African missionary, and, to some extent, of all foreign missionaries.
There are three attitudes toward the
native:
extravagant laudation, pagan scorn,
and Christian reasonableness. The first is represented by Bishop Colenso,
who petted and spoiled the Zulus. He regarded them as a glorious race,
destined to guide, ‘absorb and assimilate’ the white man. Some at the
other extreme would practically deny him the bare rights of manhood.
Between these two stand all reasonable Christians, who accept him as a
member of the human family and capable of elevation. No one was more
reasonable in this matter than Stewart was.
Lovedale had pupils from some
fifteen tribes south of the Zambesi. Nearly all were from the parent stock
of the Bantus. The Makololo, the Banyai, and the Barotsi were originally
Zulus, Hence Coillard’s native Basuto evangelists could at once address
Lewanika’s people in their mother-tongue. The wild Ngoni around Lake Nyasa
were also of the Zulu stock, and so they could understand William Koyi
from Lovedale.
All missionaries agree that it is
very hard, some would say that it is impossible, thoroughly tc explore the
black mind, or to ‘think black.’ ‘It is no disparagement to his insight
into native character, writes one of Stewart’s friends, ‘to say that the
more he knew them, the more he recognised that inscrutable something which
has puzzled the most experienced missionaries.’ Selous, the hunter, says
that he failed to fathom the native mind. ‘The character of the Zambesians,’
writes Coillard, ‘is like the cataracts of Musi Oa Tunya (the Victoria
Falls) One cannot sound them, or yet even see the bottom.’
It seems that the native can be many
men al once: he can say one thing, think another, and do third. The best
informed often say regarding him ‘After all, one never knows.’
Many place the Kafir next to the
white man though he is prone to believe that everything need5 a lie. The
Ethiopian is usually a great liar, and he dearly loves superlatives,
finding in big words an apparent relief from the little things that make
uç his life. For centuries he has had to practise such habits of
concealment as weak wild beasts use when encircled by powerful and cunning
beasts of prey Then he is polite, and lies from his desire to please the
white man. ‘They value politeness more than truthfulness,’ Dudley Kidd
says. Stewart regarded the native as a diplomatist, who, like diplomatists
all the world over, is full of suspicion, and, in self-defence, studies
‘an economy of truth,’ and will never commit himself till he has
discovered the probable consequences. Hence in his dealings with his
neighbours his intellect is often his accomplice rather than his guide.
Some heathen practices clave at first to the early Christians who were
deeply devoted to Christ, and so the Christian native needs to have his
conscience trained, especially regarding his besetting sins of lying,
ingratitude, and dishonesty.
It has been said that in their
native state all the roots of their nature were exhausted in the
production of one sterile orchid—the warrior without a conscience. In
their creed war was the chief end for which man was made, as with Homer’s
heroes. ‘To go on plundering expeditions against other people,’ an African
replied, when asked for what purpose he had been made. Chaka, the Napoleon
of South Africa, is said to have killed one million of people in his wars.
Lo Bengula’s title was ‘the Eater of his People,’ and his capital, the
last great stronghold of African heathenism, was called Bulawayo, ‘the
place of slaughter.’ Yet cruelty is not a distinction of the native except
when specially provoked. Stewart said that, when a medical student in
Edinburgh, he was more afraid of the white heathen there than he was in
after years of the black heathen in Africa. I have heard him say that he
found in Africa nothing so shameful as the wife-beating by drunkards at
home.
These earth-children are a very
sensual race, but paganism is protected from complete disclosure by the
enormity of its vices: among them is the shame that cannot be explained or
even named for shame. Kidd makes exceedingly painful statements about the
atrocious immorality of their celebrations when boys and girls enter on
manhood and womanhood. The fountains of their life are then poisoned, and
the native girls are treated as chattels, not as persons. ‘The imagination
of the Kafir runs to seed after puberty. It would be safer to say that it
runs to sex.’ (Kidd.) Educationalists believe that this is the reason why
the natives keep pace with the whites till about fifteen years of age, and
then fall far behind them. [Mr. Bryce, in his impressions of Africa,
says that our Government now forbids these evil rites, as well as the
‘smelling out’ of witches.]
Stewart denies that the Ethiopian is
incurably lazy, and Dudley Kidd and Sir Harry Johnston agree with him. He
is not lazy as a warrior, a hunter, a carrier, or a runner in the ricksha,
the man-drawn carriage. Like people nearer home, he works only when he has
a sufficient motive. He greatly enjoys warm and social laziness, but he is
capable of great exertion and perseverance. Stewart highly appreciated
their services as carriers. In an article in the Nineteenth Century
for January of this year, Sir Harry H. Johnston says that, all things
being equal, the negro is as willing to work for a salary as the Asiatic
or the European. This has been proved, he says, on a large scale by the
construction of the Congo Railway The negro’s reputed laziness, he
maintains, is due to the fact that for centuries he has been regarded ‘as
a fit subject to be cheated.’ No doubt, like people in other lands, he
wishes to secure the prizes of life without paying the price.
The South African Native Affairs
Commission say: ‘The theory that the South African natives are hopelessly
indolent may be dismissed as being not in accordance with facts.’
The chief difficulty with the
genuine Ethiopian is to get him to think. He always turns up laughing,
whatever his troubles may be. Life is treated by him as a joke. His ideals
are few and low, and he is not sobered by the struggle for existence. An
animal programme of life contents him, and his idea of personal
responsibility is very faint. ‘He is the greatest optimist of all the
human types.’
Like the rest of mankind, the
Africans are a religious race, though they have neither temple, nor idol,
nor stated worship, nor written creed. The universal heathen heart has
still something of its fatherland in it: if you go deep enough, you will
find the instincts of God and the life to come even among those who are at
the swine troughs. Homer truly says, ‘As young birds ope their mouths for
food, so all men crave for the gods.’ ‘Religion is not a new invention,’
says Max Muller, ‘it is at least as old as the world we know. The earliest
man was in possession of religion, or rather possessed by religion. There
is no trace of the making of religion out of the rudest of materials. It
grows wild and luxuriates, like wind-sown plants in the richest soil.’ ‘As
for the inscription of a deity in their hearts,’ says Fuller, ‘it need not
be new written, but only new scoured in them.’ Among the heathen, religion
needs not to be created, but to be corrected. Their hearts, like ours,
require a god. There are kindred rays in all men, and from the same
source, and beclouded by the same errors. Tertullian taught that religion
was as old as the world, and that the soul of man was naturally Christian.
When rightly understood, every religion is, in some degree, a preparation
for the teaching of Christianity. / Africa wishes to worship God, but does
not know how, and gropes about like a blind man. Popular superstitions are
practically the same in all heathen races and have their origin in the
same definite facts and experiences; and many of them survive even in
nominally Christian lands. As with the wise men from the East, and as with
some who met Christ in the days of His flesh, superstition may pave the
way for the true faith. These world-wide facts are a striking proof of the
unity of our race, and especially of the essential identity of men in
moral and spiritual things. Julius Caesar and Augustus believed in magic
as thoroughly as the Africans of to-day. Child-life everywhere is
essentially the same, though a white child sucks the thumb and a black the
forefinger. The life-blood in all men is red, and flows according to the
same laws.
The Ethiopian believes that his life
at every point touches the supernatural. He lives continually in an
atmosphere of spiritual things. His use of the poison cup and other
ordeals is an appeal to a spiritual and final tribunal. Such a practice
was common in England in King Alfred’s day, and regarded as a direct
appeal to God. The African is hag-ridden by religious fears, many of which
are shadows projected by his accusing conscience and by centuries of
frightful oppression. ‘I believe in devils,’ is the first article of his
creed. Feeling helpless in the presence of the unseen, he grows old in
seeking imaginary relief from imaginary evils, and in vain efforts to
‘square’ the evil spirits with which he peoples the unseen world, and
whose hearts, he believes, are full of vengeance and mischief. The amulets
he wears are to protect him against their malignity. All his customs about
witchcraft are based upon a belief in a world of spirits. In him we see
religion gone mad, but it is religion still, and by far the mightiest
force in his life. This bewildered religion proves that the African is a
man.
Some praise picturesque ‘heathendom’
and tell us that the man of Africa is ‘nature’s gentleman,’ happy in his
raw state, and that he should be let alone. That is an old story, for
Homer describes the ‘Ethiops’ as an ‘embrowned’ people, who dwell ‘most
remote’ from men, in a state of native virtue; and some classical writers
used to locate Paradise among the blameless Ethiopians whom the gods loved
to visit. The ancient and the modern views are equally fables.
This objection to Foreign Missions
is also very old, for Julian said that Christian fishers take men out of
the element in which they are free and happy.
But what are the facts? The
traveller could hardly find in any other land more woebegone faces than in
South Africa, and years imprint more wrinkles on the heart than on the
face. The native child, black but comely, and as chubby as a Cupid, looks
like a statue of the boy Apollo painted black; but when he passes middle
life, he bears the most monstrous traces of care and fear. His face is
like corrugated iron, and his ‘wrinkles seem to obliterate the features
and to be graven down to the very skull.’ They all keenly feel the
mysteries around life and death, and they are like the Greeks in Homer’s
day who attributed death to the arrows of Apollo or Artemis. The bow with
the bowstring cut across is their touching symbol of death. They do not
believe that any death comes from natural causes. ‘Death inspires them
with terror,’ writes Decle in his Three Years in Savage Africa.
‘They have an unspeakable horror of a corpse. The boldest hunter when
dying will call for his mother, though she has been dead for years. He
knows no one else who would be minded to help him through the dark valley.
It seems that the sacred writer must have known them when he wrote,
"Through fear of death—all their life-time subject to bondage."
David Livingstone knew the native,
if ever man did. More than any other man, he explored both the heart of
Africa and of the African. His books are a rich mine of information,
illustration, and suggestion regarding this attractive subject. [The
fullest consecutive statement of Livingstone’s missionary creed is found
in the last pages of The Zambesi and its Tributaries.] We are sure
that he sets forth there what were also the deepest convictions of
Stewart. Both very generously recognised all that is good and hopeful in
the native religion, as Paul did at Athens.
‘Nothing,’ Livingstone says, ‘is
more heartrending than their death wails.’ He speaks of their ‘dread of
the strange land beyond the mountains.’ ‘Great Father, give us rest and
peace,’ was their pathetic appeal to him. ‘Do people die with you?’ asked
two intelligent young men. ‘Have you no charm against death? Where do
people go after death?’
Livingstone believes as firmly as
Paul did in the conscience and religious instinct of the heathen. He says:
‘A belief in a supreme, the Maker or Ruler of all things, and in the
continued existence of departed spirits, is universal. The fact that His
Son appeared among men and left His words in a book, always awakens
attention. The primitive African faith seems to be that there is one
Almighty maker of heaven and earth. Their idea of moral evil differs in no
respect from ours. The only new addition to their moral code is, that it
is wrong to have more wives than one. They believe in a Providence, a
Judge, and an Almighty King. All the Africans we have met with are as
firmly persuaded of their future existence as of their present life. They
regard the dead as living. And we have found none in whom the belief in
the Supreme Being was not rooted. . . Some begin to pray in secret to
Jesus as soon as they hear of the white man’s God, and, no doubt, are
heard by Him, Who, like as a Father pitieth His children. As I glance over
their deeds of generosity, recorded in my Journal, my heart glows with
gratitude to them, and I hope and pray that God may spare me to make some
return to them. . . . If this fails to interest them (the story of the
Birth, Life, and Death of Jesus Christ) nothing else will succeed... .
Unquestionably a great amount of goodness exists in the midst of all their
evil.’ He tells that he had seen a mighty hunter sink to the ground,
melted into tears by the story of Christ.
The Ethiopians who are not familiar
with town-life among the Europeans, have a most pathetic sense of their
inferiority in presence of the white men, and are therefore very apt to be
influenced by missionaries who have won their confidence. ‘Truly ye are
gods,’ they exclaim when they see some of the wonders of civilisation.
‘God made the white man first, but did not love us black men.’ The
ambition of many is to be white. ‘I really think that my face is becoming
whiter,’ said an Ethiopian, as he looked at the glass after several severe
scourings in the hope of changing his skin. One day
King Lewanika asked Coillard, ‘Where
do the descendants of Japheth dwell?’ ‘In Europe,’ was the reply. ‘And
where are the descendants of Shem?’ ‘In Asia,’ Coillard answered. ‘You
need not tell me,’ the King added, ‘that Ham was the father of Africa. I
knew it long ago.’ ‘Why so, Lewanika?’ Coillard asked. ‘Ah, my father, the
curse.’
All the great African missionaries
have proved that the Ethiopian is capable of a splendid devotion to the
white man in whom he can completely believe. The world knows by heart the
story of Chuma and Susi, and how, after a year’s terrible march to the
coast, they brought the body of their beloved chief from Ilala to London.
That story stands alone in history. Facts like these justify the belief
that men who can display such an earthly allegiance may also come under
leal-hearted allegiance to the Saviour of mankind.
