Stanley in Africa

A correspondent of The Christian, (London) writing from Gibraltar, says: “We have had very cheering news from Morocco. A wonderful work has sprung up among the Spanish and Jewish people of Tangier. Meetings, commenced two or three months ago, have been held in Spanish, addressed through an interpreter by some brethren of the North African Mission, and there has been an intense eagerness to hear the truth. The Holy Spirit has carried home the Gospel message with conviction to many hearts, and a few days ago the brethren informed me that seventeen Jewish and Spanish converts were baptized, and others were waiting for baptism. The meetings have been crowded night after night, so much so that the friends in Tangier contemplate hiring a music-hall, at present used for midnight revelry and sin. This revival has aroused the enmity of both rabbi and priest, consequently bitter persecution has followed. Several Jewish inquirers have been beaten in the synagogue, converts have been dismissed from their employment, and the priests have offered bribes and made threats to the Spanish converts to induce them to cease attending the meetings, but so far the converts are holding firm.”

E. F. Baldwin is meeting with great success in Morocco. He writes from Tangier:

“We have had great encouragement in the work here. For some two months we have had nightly meetings for inquirers and young converts, attended by from ten to twenty. Many have received Christ as their personal Saviour and have been at once baptized. For some weeks most of my time was occupied from morning until night talking with interested ones who visited me, and daily there would be natives in my room much of the time. At times conversions occurred daily. All of them are brought out of Mohammedan darkness. They all renounce that false religion formally at their baptism. Almost all are young men, some of good position, but most of them from among the poor. There is not one who has not prayed and spoken in our meetings from the day of his conversion.

“Two of the earliest converts are in the mountains traveling on foot without purse, scrip or pay, preaching in both Arabic and Shillah. They have been away now several weeks. Others, whose faces we have never seen, have been converted in distant places through one from here, and write us of many others believing through their word. We have reason to believe the Gospel has taken root in several places in Southern Morocco within these few weeks. Two others of our number are arranging to start at once to preach in another direction. Mr. Martain and I are also leaving as soon as we can get away, and will travel also as Christ commanded, on foot and without purse or scrip.”

Later he writes from Mogador: “For upwards of a year new accessions have been constant, and every one baptized has renounced Mohammedanism. For a time the work was seemingly much hindered by severe persecution, imprisonment, beating, disowning, banishment – these are all too familiar to the converts here in Southern Morocco. But when it was impossible to work longer here in Mogador we travelled and preached, going literally on the methods laid down in Matthew X, which we hold with, we find, increasing numbers of God’s children, to be of perpetual obligation. We have found them to contain the deep and matchless wisdom of God for missionary effort. Several others besides myself, including recently converted natives, are so travelling. The natives knowing no other methods, have gone gladly forth, without purse or scrip, on foot, taking nothing, and marvellous blessing in the way of conversion has followed the step of their simple faith. They go with no thought of pay or salary. The Father makes their simple needs His care. My own position as an unattached missionary, dependent only on God for temporal supplies (which, blessed be His name, He ceaselessly supplies), enables one to consistently instruct these native Christians in the principles and methods of Mathew x, and encourage them to go forth upon them.

“It is to this return to these first principles of mission work I attribute the constant flow of blessing we are having, and which is so exceptional in Mohammedan fields. I earnestly recommend them to others who may have the faith and are so circumstanced as to practice them. I say this without any reflection upon the more ordinary and accepted lines of mission endeavor. The field is vast and the need great, and by all and every means let the Gospel be preached.

“Just now the vigilance of our persecutors and adversaries has somewhat relaxed, and our frequent meetings (sixteen in Arabic and eight in English per week,) are well attended and we are cheered by more conversions. Several are just presenting themselves for baptism. Last night one of the most intelligent and best educated Moors I have ever met, publicly confessed Christ for the first time – both speaking and praying (as all the native Christians do from the hour of their conversion) in our meeting before many witnesses. He is one of the few ‘honorable’ ones who have been won. We trust he may become a veritable Paul. He was some months since arrested and thrown into prison on the suspicion of being a Christian, which at that time he was not. His feet, like Joseph’s, ‘they hurt with fetters,’ the scars of which he will never cease to carry. Poor fellow! He was then without the comfort that comes to a child of God in affliction, and yet enduring reproach for Christ. But God blessed his dreary sojourn in prison to his soul, and it contributed to his conversion.

“Some from among the few resident Europeans and from among the Jews also have turned to the Lord and confessed Him in baptism.

“Tidings from different places in the interior, where the word of life has been carried from here, tell us of many turning from Mohammed’s cold, hard, false faith, to the love and light the Gospel brings them. May not all this encourage the zeal and faith of scattered workers toiling in these hard Moslem fields?

“Some new workers, all committed to Mathew X lives, have just joined us. There are now six of us here, all men of course, with our lives given up to toil for Christ under his primitive instructions. A band is forming in Ayrshire, Scotland, of others who will come to us soon, we trust. Others in different places are greatly interested. We hope to have many natives together here in the summer months for training in the Word, that they may afterwards go forth two by two, without purse or scrip.”

Alfred S. Lamb writes as follows:

“Within four days’ journey of Britain one may land on African soil and find a large field – almost untouched – for Christian labor among the natives of Algeria, the Kabyles. Visiting recently among these people, and making known to them, for the first time, the glad tidings of salvation, I was much struck with the attention given to the message. Doubtless the novelty of an Englishman speaking to them in their own unwritten language, and delivering such a message as a free salvation without works, was sufficient of itself to call forth such attention. Seated one evening in a Kabyle house, I was greatly delighted with the readiness to listen to the Gospel. The wonderful story of the resurrection of Lazarus was being read, when my host announced that supper was ready, and when I liked I could have it brought up. Having expressed a desire to finish the narrative, the little company of Mohammedans continued to give the utmost attention to the words read and spoken. Supper ended, the conversation was renewed. One of our company, an honorable Marabout or religious Mohammedan, who, because of having made a pilgrimage to Mecca, was called Elhadj, entertained us while he read from an Arabian tract. The man showed us, with evident pride, a book in Arabic (I presume a portion of Scripture,) given him two years ago in Algiers by a Christian English lady who was distributing tracts among the people. Frequently during that evening’s conversation, my statements were met by the words, ‘You are right,’ ‘Truly.’ That night I had two sharing the sleeping apartment with me. Having seen me bow the knee in prayer, one of them asked me afterward if I had been praying. Replying that I had, he added, ‘May God answer your prayer!’”

The north of Africa, so long neglected by the missionaries, seems now to share in the interest that has been awakened in the whole continent.

We come now to the west coast. Western Africa is divided into numerous petty States, in all of which the most degrading superstition and idolatry, with their usual concomitants of lawlessness and cruelty, are the outstanding features. The entire population was no doubt pagan at no very remote period; but in modern times the religion of Mohammed has extensively prevailed, having been jealously propagated with fire and sword by northern tribes of Arab descent. But there is not so much difference between the Mohammedanism and paganism of the negroes as many suppose. The distinction is rather nominal than real, so far as the moral conduct of the people is concerned. All profess to believe in the existence of God, if a confused notion of a higher power may be so designated; but all are entirely ignorant of the character and claims of the Divine Being, and exceedingly superstitious. The African Mussulman repeats the prayers, and observes the feasts and ceremonies prescribed in the Koran, but he has quite as much, if not more faith, in his charms and amulets, or greegrees.

Paganism in West Africa is known by the name of “fetishism.” It assumes different forms in the various tribes. It is to a large extent a system of devil worship, in connection with which the belief in witchcraft plays an important part. Not only are the deities themselves called “fetishes,” but the religious performances of acts of worship, and the offerings presented are also spoken of as “fetish,” or sacred, because they are performed and offered in honor of those deities. In the daily household worship, in every domestic and public emergency, in seasons of public calamity, when preparing for and engaged in war, in the taking of oaths, at births and deaths and funerals, and, indeed in connection with every event in life, the “fetish” superstition holds the people in the most slavish, degrading, and cruel bondage. When a death occurs a solemn assembly is held in a palaver house to inquire into its cause; and as witchcraft is the one often assigned it results in death to some unfortunate individual suspected of the crime.

To be suspected of witchcraft is the worst thing that can overtake a man or woman in Africa, and at every death it is the priests’ business to make out who has been the cause of the death. On such occasions a brother, sister, father, nay, in many cases even a mother, may be accused of the unnatural crime of having occasioned the death of their dearest. Against such a charge there exists no defense. Free room has been left to the priesthood for the execution of its malicious plottings and selfish designs, as they mostly are. It is hard to say which men dread the most, the effects of witchcraft or being themselves accused of practicing it. People avoid with the utmost carefulness and solicitude every look, every word, every act, which is in the slightest measure open to misinterpretation. If any one is seriously ill, care is taken not to be too cheerful, lest it should appear as if one was rejoicing over the expected decease. But, again, one does not dare to seem too solicitous, lest it should be surmised that he is concealing his guilt under a mantle of hypocrisy. And yet, with all these precautions, one is never secure. If such a suspicion has once been uttered against any one, neither age, nor rank, nor even known nobility of character defends him from the necessity of submitting to the ordeal of poison, the issue of which is held infallible.

The people through belief in this doctrine, are the victims of the priests and priestesses – the “fetish” men and women – who constitute a large class. The most incredible atrocities resulting from this belief form one of the darkest chapters in the history of this dark land.

Some of the superstitious rites and ceremonies of the negro race partake more of the nature of open idolatry than any of those which have yet been mentioned. For instance, they pay homage to certain lakes, rivers and mountains, which they regard as sacred, believing them to be the special dwelling places of the gods. They also adore various animals and reptiles, which they believe to be animated by the spirits of their departed ancestors. In some places large serpents are kept and fed, in houses set apart for the purpose, by the “fetish” priests. To these ugly creatures sacrifices are presented and divine homage is paid by the people at stated periods – a liberal present being always brought for the officiating priest on all such occasions.

The ruling people of the Niger delta, at Bross, New Calabar, Bonny and Opobo, are the Ijos. Every community of them had formerly its “totem,” or sacred animal, in whose species the ancestral Spirit of the tribe was supposed to dwell. So profound was this belief that the English traders in the Oil River region – the Oil Rivers embrace the tributaries of the Niger, and are so called in general because the commerce in palm-oil is large upon them – were forbidden to kill the sacred lizard of Bonny, and the more sacred python of Bross. One agent of a large trading firm at Bross found a python in his house and inconsiderately killed it. On learning of it, the Bross natives destroyed the firm’s factory and store, dragged the agent to the beach and inflicted indignities on him. The British consul considered the case, but such was the sentiment against the sacrilegious conduct of the agent, that the consul, as a matter of trade polity, was forced to decide that redress was impossible, in as much as he had brought the punishment on himself.

This “totem” worship made the monster lizard at Bonny a nuisance. They grew in number and impudence, till it was nothing unusual to see their six feet of slimy length stretched across paths and upon doorways, and to feel the lash of their serrated tails on your legs as you passed along. If one were wounded or killed, there was no end of trouble, for the irate natives were sure to carry the case to the consul on board ship, where they secured the judgment of a fine, or else taking the law into their own hands, they insulted, or assaulted the slayer till their anger was appeased.

In other parts of the delta, a shark became the tribe “totem,” or a crocodile, or water-bird, but in no part was Zoölatry – animal worship – carried to a greater extent than at Bonny and Bross, where the lizard and python were favorites. In 1884, the Church Missionary Society took the matter in hand, and finally succeeded in doing what consuls and the war-ships had failed to accomplish. The society screwed the courage of the native converts up to the sticking point and finally proclaimed the destruction of the lizards in Bonny on one Easter Sunday morning. Men and boys, armed with hatchets and sticks went about killing the ugly beasts, and so complete was their work that the day ended with their extermination. But the sickening smell which pervaded the air for days, came near producing a pestilence. It was a hard blow to native superstitions, but the riddance soon came to be acquiesced in. A change equally abrupt put an end to the python worship at Bross, and so there has been of late years, a gradual giving up of this “totem” observance among the Niger tribes, thanks to missionary rather than commercial enterprise.

Here, surely, if anywhere on the face of the earth, the Gospel, with its enlightening, purifying, and ennobling influence, was needed. What then has been done to carry it to these degraded people, and what have been the results of missionary labor among them? Take a glance first at Sierra Leone, as it was the earliest visited by the missionaries. It is situated in the southern part of Senegambia. It has an area of 319 square miles, and a population of over 80,000, nearly all blacks. Formerly it was one of the chief emporiums of the slave trade. In 1797 the British African Company purchased land from the native princes with the view of forming a settlement for the emancipated negroes who had served in British ships during the American Revolution, and who on the conclusion of peace were found in London in a most miserable condition. In 1808 this land was transferred to the British Crown, additional tracts of country being subsequently acquired. The colony has since served as an asylum for the wretched victims rescued from the holds of slave ships.

The history of missionary enterprise, in this land of sickness and death, is a chequered one. Colonial chaplains were appointed at different times, from the beginning, to minister to the government functionaries and others; but owing to frequent deaths and absences from illness, the office was often vacant. The first effort of a purely missionary character for the benefit of West Africa was made by the Baptist Missionary Society in 1795. Efforts of other societies followed in rapid succession; but it was not until after the commencement of the present century, when the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies undertook the work of evangelization in Western Africa, that the cause took a permanent and progressive form.

The Church Missionary Society in 1804 sent out to Sierra Leone Mr. Renner, a German, and Mr. Hartwig, a Prussian, to instruct the people in a knowledge of Divine things. In 1806 Messrs. Nylander, Butscher, and Prasse – all of whom had been trained at the Berlin Missionary Seminary, and ordained according to the rites of the Lutheran church – embarked at Liverpool to strengthen the mission. In 1816 Wm. A. B. Johnson went out as a schoolmaster to this colony. “He was a plain German laborer, having but a very limited common-school education and no marked intellectual qualifications, but he was trained in the school of Christ and was a good man, full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. It became obvious that he was called of God to preach the Gospel, and he was ordained in Africa. His period of service was brief, but marvelous in interest and power, and he raised up a native church of great value. Into the midst of these indolent, vicious, violent savages he went. He found them devil worshipers, and at first was very much disheartened. But though William Johnson distrusted himself, he had faith in Christ and his Gospel. Like Paul, he resolved to preach the simple Gospel, holding up the cross, show them plainly what the Bible says of the guilt of sin, the need of holiness, and the awful account of the Judgment Day. He simply preached the Gospel and left results with God, confident that his Word would not return to him void. For nearly a year he pursued this course. And he observed that over that apparently hopeless community a rapid and radical change was coming. Old and young began to show deep anxiety for their spiritual state and yearning for newness of life. If he went for a walk in the woods, he stumbled over little groups of awakened men and women and children, who had sought there a place to pour out their hearts to God in prayer; if he went abroad on moonlight evenings, he found the hills round about the settlement echoing with the praises of those who found salvation in Christ, and were singing hymns of deliverance. His record of the simple experiences of these converts has preserved their own crude, broken, but pathetically expressive story of the Lord’s dealings with them, and the very words in which they told of the work of grace within them. No reader could but be impressed with their deep sense of sin, their appreciation of grace, their distrust of themselves and their faith in God, their humble resolves, their tenderness of conscience, their love for the unsaved about them, and their insight into the vital truth of redemption.”

The improvement in the appearance and habits and social condition of the people that followed was nothing short of a transformation. Their chapel was five times enlarged to accommodate the ever increasing numbers who attended. “Seventy years ago, if you had gone to what was afterward known as the Regent’s Town, you would have found people, taken at different times from the holds of slave-ships, in the extreme of poverty and misery, destitution and degradation. They were as naked and as wild as beasts. They represented twenty-two hostile nations or tribes, strangers to each other’s language, and having no medium of communication, save a little broken English. They had no conception of a pure home, they were crowded together in the rudest and filthiest huts, and, in place of marriage, lived in a promiscuous intercourse that was worse than concubinage. Lazy, bestial, strangers to God, they had not only defaced his image, but well-nigh effaced even the image of humanity, and combined all the worst conditions of the most brutal, savage life, plundering and destroying one another. Here it pleased God to make a test of his grace in its uplifting and redeeming power.”

When Johnson was under the necessity of leaving for England, hundreds of both sexes accompanied him a distance of five miles to the ship and wept bitter tears at the thought of being separated from their best earthly friend. “Massa, suppose no water live here, we go with you all the way, till no feet more move.”

Similar success attended the work at other stations, so that we find Sir Charles M’Arthy, the governor, reporting in 1821 as follows in regard to the villages of these recaptured negroes: “They had all the appearance and regularity of the neatest village in England, with a church, a school, and a commodious residence for the missionaries and teachers, though in 1817 they had not been more than thought of.” In 1842 a committee of the House of Commons thus testified to the state of the colony. “To the invaluable exertions of the Church Missionary Society more especially – as also, to a considerable, as in all our African settlement, to the Wesleyan body – the highest praise is due. By their efforts nearly one-fifth of the whole population – a most unusually high proportion in any country – are at school; and the effects are visible in considerable intellectual, moral and religious improvement.”

The bishopric of Sierra Leone was founded in 1851, and some idea may be formed of the trying nature of the climate from the fact that no fewer than three bishops died within three years of their consecration. In 1862 the Native Church having been organized on an independent basis, undertook the support of its own pastors, churches, and schools, aided by a small grant from the society.

In a work entitled “The English Church in Other Lands,” it is stated that “in the first twenty years of the existence of the mission, 53 missionaries, men and women, died at their post;” but these losses seemed to draw out new zeal, and neither then, nor at any subsequent period, has there been much difficulty in filling up the ranks of the Sierra Leone Mission, or of the others established on the same coast. The first three bishops – Vidal, Weeks and Bowen – died within eight years of the creation of the See, and yet there has been no difficulty in keeping up the succession.

The present results are a sufficient reward for all the self-sacrificing devotion. There is now at Sierra Leone a self-sustaining and self-extending African church. The only white clergyman in the colony is Bishop Ingram; the whole of the pastoral work being in the hands of native clergymen. Many native missionaries, both clerical and lay, have been furnished for the Niger and Yoruba missions.

An outline of the proceedings of the Wesleyan Missionary Society in this part of the wide field may be compressed into a few sentences. Among the negroes who were conveyed from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone in 1791, there were several who had become partially enlightened and otherwise benefited by attending services of the Methodist ministers in America. Some of these having made repeated applications to Dr. Coke for preachers of their own denomination to be sent from England, in the year 1811 the society responded to their request by the appointment of the Rev. G. Warren as their first missionary to Western Africa. He was accompanied by three English schoolmasters. They found about a hundred of the Nova Scotia settlers who called themselves “Methodists.” These simple minded people had built a rude chapel in which they were in the habit of meeting together to worship God from Sabbath to Sabbath, a few of the most intelligent among them conducting the services and instructing the rest according to the best of their ability. They received the missionary from England with the liveliest demonstrations of gratitude and joy; and to them, as well as to the poor afflicted liberated Africans, who were from time to time rescued from bondage by British cruisers and brought to Sierra Leone, his earnest ministrations were greatly blessed. But the missionary career of Mr. Warren was of short duration. He was smitten with fever and finished his course about eight months after his arrival – being the first of a large number of Wesleyan missionaries who have fallen a sacrifice to the climate of Western Africa since the commencement of the work. Other devoted missionaries followed who counted not their lives dear unto them if they could only be made instrumental in winning souls for Christ. No sooner did the intelligence arrive in England that missionaries and their wives had fallen in the holy strife, than others nobly volunteered their services, and went forth in the spirit of self-sacrifice – in many instances to share the same fate. This has been going on for three quarters of a century; and although the mortality among the agents of the society is appalling to contemplate, the social, moral, and spiritual results of the mission are grand beyond description. Congregations have been gathered, places of worship erected, native churches organized, and Christian schools established, not only in Free Town, but in most of the villages and towns in the colony. High schools have, moreover, been established for the training of native teachers and preachers, and to give a superior education to both males and females. The advancement of the people, most of whom have been rescued from slavery, in religious knowledge, general intelligence, moral conduct, and, indeed, in everything which goes to constitute genuine Christian civilization, is literally astonishing. In addition to the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies, who took the lead in the work of religious instruction in Sierra Leone, other agencies have been advantageously employed. The census of 1881 showed 39,000 evangelical Christians, about equally divided between the Wesleyans and the Church of England. Some reports give the nominal Christian population as high as 80,000.