THE true method of civilisation was one of the
questions Stewart had to consider and expound during the whole of his
missionary life. People were always saying to the missionaries: ‘You go
about your work in the wrong way; give the natives time; you are in too
great a hurry; civilise first and then Christianise,’ Upon no other
subject did Stewart speak with greater reiteration, plainness, and
earnestness. It received special attention in his Opening address as
Moderator of the General Assembly, and, I believe, in every one of his
books. He knew that it lay at the very heart of missionary
work and methods, and also of a man’s conception of the religion of
Christ. His guiding idea was that Christianity is the universal educator
and civiliser of heathen races, and that civilisation without Christianity
never civilises. His creed is found in the following passages
:—‘ As a missionary place, it (Lovedale)
seeks spiritual results as its highest and most permanent result, and as
its primary aim. If the will and conscience is right, the man will be
right. Its aim, therefore, is not to civilise, but to Christianise. Merely
to civilise can never be the primary aim of the missionary. Civilisation
without Christianity among a savage people is a mere matter of clothes and
whitewash. But among barbarous races a sound missionary method will in
every way endeavour to promote civilisation by education and industry,
resting on the solid foundation of religious instruction. Hence there is a
variety of teaching. . . .
To the question often put:
"Do you civilise or Christianise first? With a people
in the entirely uncivilised state, we should think the civilising process
ought to come first." Our answer is always this: "If possible we avoid
doing things twice. When a man is Christianised— that is, when the great
change has really taken place in him—he is generally civilised as well; or
he will become more so day by day. He will appear clothed, and in his
right mind, and the change will continue." The theory of improving the
African anywhere through all the wide area in which he dwells, by commerce
or civilisation only, is a very surprising one. What is there in either
the one or the other, by itself, to morally improve a savage, except to
sharpen his wits and make him more cunning and overbearing, and supply him
more abundantly with materials for a more animal kind of life?
Civilisation, that "complex entity," so difficult to define, has to do
with the present life. It is a gift of God as well as a result of man’s
activity, and, like all his other gifts, may be used for good or evil, to
rise higher or sink lower, according as it is accompanied or not by moral
influence. But by itself for moral purposes, as every missionary knows, it
is pointless and powerless; and to primitive races by itself is a
dangerous gift. The one hope for a better and happier future for Africa,
and for its progress in true civilisation, is via Christianity. If
there is no hope this way, there is no hope any way, for the African
continent The same is equally true of the rest of the world, whether
civilised or not. It is the moral element and not the material which forms
the chief part of man’s happiness and well-being, whatever be the colour
of skin or the clime in which he dwells.
‘The evolutionist wants aeons for his process. The
missionary can do with less. In morals, as in mechanics, the intensity of
the factor diminishes the necessity for time. The tremendous chasm between
fetishism and Christianity is seen to be passed at a single bound in the
lifetime of an individual.
‘The coming King of this earth is Jesus Christ. He is
the world’s larger hope. The hope of a better and happier day does not lie
in social panaceas, or in dreams about equality in a world where no two
men are, or remain, equal for a single day, nor in wholesale distribution
of the hard-won fruits of honest industry among the lazy and dishonest.
These are the remedies of a well-intentioned, but badly instructed, and
sometimes slightly crazy, benevolence. These ill-regulated remedies only
make matters worse. They are the falsehood of extremes, and the
exaggerations of human thinking applied to those everlasting truths which
fell from the lips of the Greatest Human Teacher. The little grain of
truth they contain has been stolen from Christianity itself. A saner
spirit, and a more robust common-sense, and a sounder interpretation of
what Christ has taught, and above all, the practice and the spirit of
these teachings, must come first.
‘There is no denying the fact that the Christian
missionary has been the real pioneer of civilisation in Africa.
‘What is needed for that vast continent is a Christian
civilisation, not a non-Christian one with the seven devils of the vices
of modern civilisation entering the house, and making the latter end worse
than the beginning. Of that great problem the question is: How is the
change from African barbarism to modern civilisation to be safely brought
about? The answer is, just as with all permanent moral changes in the
individual—by changing him within; and for this, so far as Africa’s fate
and future are concerned, there is no power in the world except the
religion of Jesus Christ. Commerce cannot do it; civilisation cannot do
it; science cannot do it; none of these powers want to do it even if they
could. That is not in their line. Islam cannot do it. The chief feature
and the invariable and inevitable results of Islam are despotic
government, the degradation of woman, and the sanctioning of slavery.’
This was one of the subjects which he had thoroughly
studied and about which he had read extensively. The treatment of it in
Benjamin Kidd’s Social Evolution commended itself to him. Japan, he
is aware, may be quoted in opposition to his contention that Christianity
is the universal civiliser. ‘Japan may seem to be an exception,’ he
writes. ‘Its progress during fifty years has perhaps been unparalleled;
but that has been gained by borrowing the products of a civilisation that
is Western and Christian.’ The gospel of work and the gospel of commerce,
he admits, are both excellent and necessary, and where humanely and
lawfully tried, they have produced very beneficial results, but by
themselves they cannot supply what is needed. Everywhere missionaries have
been the advance agents of true civilisation.
All will admit that heathen races can be rescued from
their degradation only by the aid of the more favoured nations. Niebuhr
says that all the immense and varied research of our age with respect to
the origins of civilisation, has discovered no single savage race which
has risen to civilisation apart from help from without.
The theory that we must civilise the rudest nations
before we can hope to Christianise them seems very reasonable in some
moods of the mind. ‘First that which is natural and then that which is
spiritual,’ looks like a self-evident truth. But there are two objections
to this theory: it cuts the sinews of missionary endeavour, and it is in
conflict with all the essential facts of the case. During the last
nineteen centuries countless experiments have been made in every land and
class, and the ample pages of sacred and secular history record the
results. The endeavour to produce supernatural results by natural means is
a complete failure. Civilisation without Christianity only teaches the
black man to add the white man’s vices to his own. ‘Darkest Africa,’ says
Captain Hore, R.N., of Tanganyika, ‘is where the white man has longest
been.’
Christ’s public ministry was less than three years, and
the social conditions around Him were extremely unfavourable. The masses
of the people were incredibly poor, and under an alien and cruel tyranny.
Did He delay His spiritual work till these conditions had been improved?
No: He began at once in the worst possible social conditions. He began
with the individual and with the soul, and wrought from within outwards.
Did He send forth His apostles to civilise first and then to evangelise?
Students know that the condition of the heathen cities then was so bad
that the whole truth about them cannot be told. Did Paul and his comrades
delay their spiritual work on that account? Did they believe that the
ground had to be prepared before they could teach a spiritual creed? Of
all the degraded and seemingly hopeless people in that degraded age, the
slaves were the very worst. What method did Paul adopt with the slave and
the criminal Onesirnus?
How did civilisation come to the heathen nations of
Europe? Consider what Europe was two thousand years ago. Great Britain
then was probably as savage as Africa is to-day. Consult, for instance,
Montalembert’s Monks of the West. How were Stewart’s forefathers
civilised by Columba and his monks? Is not civilisation in the modern
world demonstrably a part of the Gesta Christi? Heat is not more an effect
of the sun than modern humanity is the creation of Christ. Civilisation is
only a secular name for Christianity.
But have the critics of missions ever attempted to
civilise the heathen? Have they ever shown the missionary what they
believe to be the right way? Is there any spot on earth’s surface where
civilisation came first, and gradually developed into Christianity? The
South African Native Affairs Commission spent two years of very diligent
search, and in all South Africa they did not find one such spot. All the
civilising influences they discovered came from the missionaries and
Christian households. ‘I have had twenty-one years of experience among
natives. I have lived with the Christian native, and dined, and slept with
cannibals. But I have never yet met with a single man or woman, or with a
single people, that civilisation without Christianity has civilised.’ All
missionaries would endorse this testimony of James Chalmers of New Guinea.
This quest for a civilisation before, and as a
preparation for, Christianity, was made with wonderful thoroughness by Dr.
F. Percy Noble, the author of the Redemption of Africa. Dr. Noble,
a Government official in Washington, desired to write a book on
civilisation in Africa. He soon found, to his surprise, that everywhere
civilisation was the undoubted product of Christian missions. He seems to
have read every book on the subject. He consulted no less than 343
authorities, of which 283 are missionary. Thus, while wishing to trace the
progress of civilisation, his book became a history of African missions. [Dr.
Noble says that the American ploughs sold in 1899 in Zululand brought more
money than it cost to sustain the Zulu Mission (p. 712). It is said
that for every £1 that goes over the Kei for missions, £100 comes back to
benefit colonial commerce.]
We have asked, Has any man seriously attempted to
civilise savages with a view to their ultimate Christianisation? Yes: one
man has made the experiment in a very thorough and scientific fashion. Dr.
Noble records the result in The
Redemption of Africa (p. 576). ‘Bishop Colenso selected twelve boys
from the superior race of the Zulus. He pledged himself that he would give
them no religious education. He conscientiously and persistently devoted
himself to their intellectual education and industrial training. He had
them indentured as apprentices for several years.’ Here we have all the
conditions demanded for a thorough scientific experiment. The susceptible
Africans made rapid progress. At last, when the Bishop thought. they were
civilised, he set them free. He told them that all their training was
preliminary and incomplete without their acceptance of Jesus Christ as
their personal saviour, and of His Gospel as the rule of their lives. He
appealed to them to receive his religious instruction. Next morning every
man had gone back to the red blanket and to native life. Their only
gratitude was to leave behind the European clothes with which they had
been furnished. Colenso went to the American missionaries in his
neighbourhood who wished to reach civilisation via Christianity,
gave them a donation of £50, and said, ‘You are right. I was wrong.’ This
experiment was made at a station, the native name of which means the
‘Palace of Light.’ Without Christianity no advance is possible on the path
of true civilisation. The improvement of the soul is the soul of all real
improvement. Is it not one of the greatest historical facts that religion
has usually blazed its own way heedless of economic conditions? ‘Build in
the spirit first, then from that to the flesh. This is, I believe, the
spirit of every true missionary.’ So says Mackay, the ‘St. Paul of
Uganda.’
‘The raising of the Bantu races to a higher level can
only be done very gradually—it will take generations,’ writes a friend of
native education. If he means all the Bantu race, he is right. But what of
the Basutos? What of Uganda? What of Livingstonia? What of men like King
Khama, the Rev. Tiyo Soga, and many others, who in less than one
generation have, through the divine dynamics of the Gospel, risen to as
noble a civilisation as is found in the most cultured races of Europe and
America? The Gospel that turned into Christians our Celtic and Saxon
forebears, has no new thing to do in elevating the Africans. Here is
Livingstone’s opinion:
‘We do not believe in any incapacity of the African in
either mind or heart We have seen nothing to justify the notion that they
are of a different breed or species from the most civilised. The African
is a man with every attribute of humankind. I have no fears as to the
mental and moral capacity of the Africans for civilisation and upward
progress. . . . I believe them to be capable of
holding an honourable rank in the family of man.’
If the results are disappointing in many quarters, we
should remember how long it took to civilise our own race, and how many in
it are not civilised yet. A working hope of the civilisation of the native
races is found only in alliance with a living apostolic faith. Other
interpretations of Christianity do not succeed in this work, and usually
do not even attempt it. A living faith pours the healing salt into the
spring of the waters, while other agencies seek to purify only the
streams.
The test of civilisation is the condition of woman in a
land where she has been regarded as a thing rather than a person, a
chattel, an instrument, and, along with cattle, the chief wealth of the
tribe. ‘There is growing up’ (as the fruit of missions), the Native
Affairs Commission reports, ‘an ever increasing number of self-respecting
native women who are learning to understand the freedom which has come to
them and are careful not to abuse its privileges. Improvement in the
position and treatment of women has been brought about by the influence of
Christian and civilised views on the marriage question, and the labour of
women has been much lightened by the introduction of the plough and other
appliances.’ ‘The Gospel is written on the land by the plough,’ says a
visitor, ‘and in the faces of the women and children. The very dogs know
the benefits of Christianity.’
On his recent return from Uganda, Mr. Winston
Churchill, M.P., said at a men’s meeting in London:
‘All the way up the Uganda Railway there are to be seen
naked pagan savages, people living their tribal life in the darkness of
ignorance and savagery, but on landing in Uganda we found ourselves in a
new world, one of clothed, well-mannered, well-organised, and polite
people. About 200,000 of them, so I was told, are able to read and write,
and nearly 100,000 perhaps more, have embraced one form or another of
Christianity. And in embracing it they made what to them was a complete
reversal of their former habits of life. They abandoned polygamy and
adopted Christian marriage. That is a great and marvellous thing, and
coming to that community in the heart of Africa it seemed to me as if I
had come to a centre of peace and illumination in the middle of barbarism
and darkness, a new world where all the hopes and dreams of the negrophile
and philanthropist have at last been fulfilled....A great many cheap
sneers have been poured out on Exeter Hall by people with hot heads and, I
am inclined to think, with rather cold hearts.
And yet it was Exeter Hall that won Uganda.’ In another
address he said: ‘The material services which missionary work renders to
the British Empire are immense; but they can be appreciated. The moral
services which it renders are far greater, and can never be measured.’
One day a missionary in alliance with Lovedale wished
to give his visitor an object-lesson on the civilising effects of the
Gospel. He began with the witch-doctor, a perfect heathen with two huts
and two wives, and wearing the head ring, the distinguishing mark of the
responsible warrior. They visited in all some twelve houses, each of which
was a little better than the other, and indicated the stage which the
inhabitants had reached along the Christ-ward path. We found a house and a
hut within a stone’s-throw of each other. They might have been built about
the same time, but it seemed as if a whole century divided them. The
Christian faith had made all that difference. At last we came to a house
of five apartments, each of which was scrupulously clean. Many articles of
furniture were adorned with native needlework; gleeful children were
playing at the door; and a neat garden and well-cultivated fields lay
around, in some of which cattle were grazing. The native farmer and his
wife gave us a most friendly welcome. A Bible, hymnbook, and a copy of the
Pilgrim’s Progress were lying on the table at the entrance. Over
all within and around that comfortable homestead might have been written
‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these
things shall be added unto you.’ It was only twenty-five years since that
mission had begun its blessed work among a people without an alphabet, or
a history, or any trace of civilisation. Lives there a man with soul so
dead that he cannot rejoice in, such achievements among those who were
lately the least favoured of humankind? It was the pale Galilean who had
conquered in that African village. Through His heralds He had not only
taught them virtue, but had brought among them a virtue-making power.
Civilisation may give the native everything about virtue except the power
to live it.
It is only a few years ago since Sir George Leigh Hunt
said, speaking of British New Guinea: ‘The Government owe everything to
the missions. I wish I could make you fully realise what missions mean to
the Administration. It would have to be doubled, perhaps quadrupled, in
strength if it were not for the little whitewashed houses along the coast
where missionaries live. So every penny contributed to these missions is a
help to the King’s Government; every penny spent on missionaries saves a
pound to the Administration, for the missions bring peace and law and
order.’
The importance of this question, and the amazing
ignorance regarding it among many who are otherwise intelligent, may
justify the addition of a few testimonies from experts in the science of
civilisation.
‘That the African is capable of Christianisation and of
rising to take his place among the foremost races of men, I regard as an
indisputable fact. Let it be remembered what Europe was at the beginning
of our era. There we find fetishism, polygamy, slavery, absolute savagery,
in many instances worse than anything to be found in Africa to-day. The
problem to be solved and the conditions of the case were pretty much the
same in Europe once as they are now in Africa.’—Mackay of Uganda.
‘The missionary is the mainspring of Africa’s modern
evolution, the hope for the betterment of her hapless people.’—Dr. Cust in
Africa Rediviva.
‘Through these alone (English and Scottish missions
around Lake Nyasa) is growing up such civilisation as exists in Nyasaland.
Christianity is the only hope of the people. When the history of the
African States of the future comes to be written, the arrival of the first
missionary will, with many of these new nations, be the first historical
event. This pioneering propagandist will assume somewhat of the character
of a Quetzalcoatl—of those strange, half-mythical personalities that
figure in the legend of old American empires, the beneficent being who
introduces arts, manufactures, implements of husbandry, edible fruits,
medicinal drugs, cereals, and domestic animals.’—Sir H. H. Johnston.
At the beginning of the ninth chapter of the second
volume of his History of England in the Ezghteenth Century, Lecky
says that the policy of the elder Pitt, the splendid victories by land and
sea, and the dazzling episodes in the reign of George II., must
yield in real importance to the religious revival begun in England by the
preaching of the Wesleys and of Whitfield. Green, in his Short History
of the English People, makes a similar statement.
‘In eastern as in other parts of the great dark
continent, civilisation without Christianity has intensified the moral and
physical evils arising from native vice.’—Archdeacon Walker of Uganda.
‘Evangelisation must precede civilisation. Nothing less
than the power of divine grace can reform the hearts of savages. After
this the mind is susceptible.’—Robert Moffat, after twenty-six years’
experience.
Sir George Grey and Sir Bartle Frere prized and used
the missions as civilising agencies.
Lord Shaftesbury records how he heard Lord Macaulay, in
the House of Commons, declare that ‘the man who speaks or writes a
syllable against Christianity is guilty of high treason against the
civilisation of mankind’; and Froude, in his essay on Calvinism, expresses
the same thought when he says, ‘All that we call modern civilisation in a
sense which deserves the name, is the visible expression of the
transforming power of the Gospel.’
‘Itself missionary in spirit from the beginning, the
Wesleyan Methodist Church gratefully acknowledges the surpassing worth of
the vast work performed by the late Dr. Stewart, not only at Lovedale, but
through that Institution in every part of the land, and regards his work
as a leading factor in the Christian civilisation of the many native
peoples of South Africa.’
‘It is not by the State that man can be regenerated and
the terrible woes of this darkened world effectually dealt
with.’—Gladstone.
‘The religious idea at the bottom of our civilisation
is the missionary idea.’—W. T. Harris.
‘We have a well-founded right to say that the most
certain and effectual agent of civilisation is the missionary.’—Professor
Gaston Bonet-Maury.