Dr Livingstone on five occasions prevented war among the African tribes, either by influencing public opinion, or by swaying the mind and counsels of the chief. When opportunity offered he introduced salutary laws, abolished barbarous customs, and restored liberated slaves to their families and tribes.

In short the united testimony of civil and military officers, missionaries and travellers, goes to prove what inestimable blessings Christian missions have conferred on the South African tribes, hence leading us in reference to present and future efforts to THANK GOD AND TAKE COUrage. It is not only so ordered by our heavenly Missionary difficulties in Father, that in this world the evil shall be South Africa. mixed with the good; but also that the greatest and best shall be produced and sustained with the most difficulty. War, the demon-scourge of our race, is maintained by the millions readily voted by a nation's senate, and applauded by the praises of a people's voice; but the message of the Prince of Peace is perpetuated by suffering, contemned by power, and propagated too often by the comparatively niggardly offerings of a country's mite.

Missionary work has its difficulties and failures. The blood of the martyrs has ever been the seed of the church. Toil, care, anxiety, persecution, stripes, imprisonment and death, were the common lot of the first Christian missionaries: but they sowed in tears, and soon will reap in joy. They went forth weeping, bearing precious seed, and shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing their sheaves with them. Such has been the fate, and like will be the reward, of the faithful modern missionary.

Let us turn attention to some of the difficulties belonging to missionary work, mentioned by our traveller.

It is not easy to make the subject of religion plain to persons unaccustomed to think, and who have led only an animal life. In reference to language, different idiomatic

usages, and modes of thought, often require in the missionary an uprooting of his own habitudes of expression and ways of thinking, in order that he may become one with those whom he teaches.

Among a nomad people difficulties are even greater. The first thing is to get them to settle down. With such you may have a congregation of some hundreds one day, and another these may be all scattered to the winds.

We have before seen how the Boers hindered the work: and the following remarks of our traveller fairly represent some other difficulties.

"In addition to other adverse influences, the general uncertainty, though not absolute want, of food, and the necessity of frequent absence for the purpose of either hunting game or collecting roots and fruits, proved a serious barrier to the progress of the people in knowledge. Our own education in England is carried on at the comfortable breakfast and dinner-table and by the cosy fire, as well as in the church and school. Few English people with stomachs painfully empty would be decorous at church any more than they are when these organs are overcharged. Ragged schools would have been a failure had not the teachers wisely provided food for the body as well as food for the mind; and not only must we shew a friendly interest in the bodily comfort of the objects of our sympathy as a Christian duty, but we can no more hope for healthy feelings among the poor, either at home or abroad, without feeding them into them, than we can hope to see an ordinary working-bee reared into a queen-mother by the ordinary food of the hive.

"Sending the Gospel to the heathen must, if this view be correct, include much more than is implied in the usual picture of a missionary, namely, a man going about with a Bible under his arm. The promotion of commerce ought to be specially attended to, as this, more speedily than

anything else, demolishes that sense of isolation which heathenism engenders, and makes the tribes feel themselves mutually dependent on, and mutually beneficial to, each other '."

The difficulty of getting the natives at first to attend with reverence on divine service, or to religious duties, has been before dwelt on. When Dr Livingstone attempted to sing or pray among the Bakalahari, these people burst out into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, thinking him to be mad, or that he judged them to be so.

Then, again, a native literature has to be founded and extended. This is a work requiring much time and labour, especially in a country wherein languages have to be arranged in grammars, and over the thousands of whose square miles not a bookseller's shop is to be found. Still these difficulties will be overcome. Those Christian missionaries who first came to the British Islands before St Augustine, as well as he, found our forefathers halfclad savages; and what has Christianity after the lapse of ages made us now?—The greatest nation standing in the forefront of the civilization of the most astonishing age of the world's history. Let Britain fulfil her mission; especially towards Africa, whom she has, in former years, helped to degrade, enslave and curse.

shortcomings in South Af

rica.

Missionary There is no doubt whatever but that our failures and National Church is much behind in missionary effort among these people. She certainly has a Bishop of Sierra Leone, Cape Town, Graham's Town, and Natal: together with the missionaries belonging to the two great Societies before mentioned. But these are labouring mainly in our own Colonies. She has few missions among the real heathen in Africa; especially in the South.

Dr Livingstone says that Sectarianism is a source of 1 Travels, pp. 27-28. 2 Appendix, p. 148.

hindrance to the work:-" Such a variety of Christian sects have followed the footsteps of the London Missionary Society's successful career, that converts of one denomination, if left to their own resources, are eagerly adopted by another; and are thus more likely to become spoiled than trained to the manly Christian virtues1."

He further states:

"Another element of weakness in this part of the missionary field is the fact of the Missionary Societies considering the Cape Colony itself as a proper sphere for their peculiar operations. In addition to a well-organised and efficient Dutch Reformed Established Church, and schools for secular instruction, maintained by Government, in every village of any extent in the colony, we have a number of other sects, as the Wesleyans, Episcopalians, Moravians, all piously labouring at the same good work. Now, it is deeply to be regretted that so much honest zeal should be so lavishly expended in a district wherein there is so little scope for success. When we hear an agent of one sect urging his friends at home to aid him quickly to occupy some unimportant nook, because, if it is not speedily laid hold of, he will not have room for the sole of his foot,' one cannot help longing that both he and his friends would direct their noble aspirations to the millions of untaught heathen in the regions beyond; and no longer continue to convert the extremity of the continent into, as it were, a dam of benevolence."

The work of evangelization is generally a gradual one in influencing race. The case of New Zealand is an exception to this rule. Some tribes do not at first receive the Gospel at all; and with all others temporary failures arise from various causes, although the work goes on rapidly in some cases. Many Africans have the same feelings towards missionaries, which our poor often have towards the clergy 1 Travels, pp. 115–166. 2 Ibid. p. 116.

here at home. They teach because they are paid for it, say both. In such circumstances ministrations are most difficult.

Despite these, and many other hindrances to the progress of the Gospel in South Africa, still labour has not been in vain, and strength has not been spent for nought. "The wilderness has begun to blossom as the rose;" all these heathen do not despise the day of their visitation. Additions are being made to the church daily of such as shall be saved. The degraded have been raised, the savage tamed. "Those who have lien among the pots shall be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold." These shall go in and out and find pasture in heaven's kingdom of unfading glory.

The Qualifications and Attainments necessary for the Successful Missionary in South Africa,

"And he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?"-Acts ix. 6.

"Depart; for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles."-Acts xxii. 21.

"But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood."-Gal. i. 15, 16.

Dr Livingstone has been a successful missionary; and since his main object in coming to Cambridge was to try to influence some among us to become missionaries, we may profitably attend to his ideas on this important head, Already has he briefly discussed the topic1.

Feeling convinced that many persons would like to know his opinion on so great a subject as to the type of man the best suited for a missionary in Africa, presupposing spirituality of mind, and devotion of heart and soul to God's service, in December last the Editor of this book

1 Lecture II. p. 181.