I Was Not Anxious
For A Deeper Insight In Detecting Shams Than Others, But I Expected Character,
Such As We
Imagine the primitive disciples had - and was disappointed.*
When, however, I passed on to the true heathen in the countries
Beyond
the sphere of missionary influence, and could compare the people there
with the Christian natives, I came to the conclusion that,
if the question were examined in the most rigidly severe or scientific way,
the change effected by the missionary movement would be considered
unquestionably great.
-
* The popular notion, however, of the primitive Church
is perhaps not very accurate. Those societies especially
which consisted of converted Gentiles - men who had been accustomed
to the vices and immoralities of heathenism - were certainly
any thing but pure. In spite of their conversion, some of them carried
the stains and vestiges of their former state with them when they passed
from the temple to the church. If the instructed and civilized Greek
did not all at once rise out of his former self, and understand and realize
the high ideal of his new faith, we should be careful,
in judging of the work of missionaries among savage tribes,
not to apply to their converts tests and standards of too great severity.
If the scoffing Lucian's account of the impostor Peregrinus may be believed,
we find a church probably planted by the apostles manifesting
less intelligence even than modern missionary churches. Peregrinus,
a notoriously wicked man, was elected to the chief place among them,
while Romish priests, backed by the power of France, could not find
a place at all in the mission churches of Tahiti and Madagascar.
-
We can not fairly compare these poor people with ourselves,
who have an atmosphere of Christianity and enlightened public opinion,
the growth of centuries, around us, to influence our deportment;
but let any one from the natural and proper point of view behold
the public morality of Griqua Town, Kuruman, Likatlong, and other villages,
and remember what even London was a century ago, and he must confess
that the Christian mode of treating aborigines is incomparably the best.
The Griquas and Bechuanas were in former times clad much like the Caffres,
if such a word may be used where there is scarcely any clothing at all.
A bunch of leather strings about eighteen inches long hung
from the lady's waist in front, and a prepared skin of a sheep or antelope
covered the shoulders, leaving the breast and abdomen bare:
the men wore a patch of skin, about the size of the crown of one's hat,
which barely served for the purposes of decency, and a mantle
exactly like that of the women. To assist in protecting the pores of the skin
from the influence of the sun by day and of the cold by night,
all smeared themselves with a mixture of fat and ochre;
the head was anointed with pounded blue mica schist mixed with fat;
and the fine particles of shining mica, falling on the body
and on strings of beads and brass rings, were considered as highly ornamental,
and fit for the most fastidious dandy.
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