The strength and vitality of a race, and its power of holding its own in the world, depend less on the quickness of its intelligence than on the solidity of its character. Its character depends upon the moral ideas which govern its life, and on the habits in which those ideas take shape; and these, in their turn, depend very largely upon the conceptions which the race has formed of religion, and on the influence that religion has over it. This is especially true of peoples in the earlier stages of civilization. Their social virtues, the beliefs and principles which hold them together and influence their conduct, rest upon and are shaped by their beliefs regarding the invisible world and its forces. Races in which religious ideas are vague and feeble seldom attain to a vigorous national life, because they want one of the most effective bonds of cohesion and some of the strongest motives that rule conduct. It may doubtless be said that the religion of a people is as much an effect as a cause, or, in other words, that the finer or poorer quality of a race is seen in the sort of religion it makes for itself, the higher races producing nobler religious ideas and more impressive mythologies, just as they produce richer and more expressive languages. Nevertheless, it remains true that a religion, once formed, becomes a potent factor in the future strength and progress of a people. Now the religious ideas of the Bantu races, as of other negroes, have been scanty, poor, and unfruitful. And accordingly, one cannot meditate upon their condition and endeavour to forecast their progress without giving some thought to the influence which better ideas, and especially those embodied in Christianity, may have upon them.

Neither the Kafirs nor the Hottentots have had a religion in our sense of the word. They had no deities, no priesthood, no regular forms of worship. They were, when Europeans discovered them, still in the stage in which most, if not all, primitive races would seem to have once been—that of fearing and seeking to propitiate nature spirits and the ghosts of the dead, a form of superstition in which there was scarcely a trace of morality. Hence the first task of the missionaries who came among them was to create a religious sense, to give them the conception of an omnipotent spiritual power outside natural objects and above man, and to make them regard this power as the source of moral ideas and the author of moral commands. To do this has been a difficult task.

Besides this constructive work, which was less needed in some other more advanced heathen races, the missionaries had also a destructive work to do. Though the Kafirs had no religion, they had a multitude of superstitious rites and usages closely intertwined with the whole of their life and with what one may call their political system. These usages were so repugnant to Christian morality, and often to common decency, that it became necessary to attack them and to require the convert to renounce them altogether. Renunciation, however, meant a severance from the life of the tribe, contempt and displeasure from the tribesmen, and possibly the loss of tribal rights. These were evils which it required courage and conviction to face, nor had the missionary any temporal benefits to offer by way of compensation. There was, however, very little direct persecution, because there were no gods who would be incensed, and the witch-doctors were less formidable opponents than a regular priesthood would have been. The chiefs were often friendly, for they recognized the value of missionary knowledge and counsel. Even the ferocious Mosilikatze showed kindness to Robert Moffat, and Livingstone complained far more of the Boers than he ever did of Kafir enemies. Lo Bengula protected the missionaries: Gungunhana listened, and made his chiefs listen, to their discourses, though his nearest approach to conversion was his expression of detestation for Judas Iscariot. But it rarely befell that a chief himself accepted Christianity, which would have meant, among other things, the departure of all his wives but one, and possibly the loss of his hold upon his tribe. All these things being considered, it need excite no surprise that the Gospel should have made comparatively little progress among the wild or tribal Kafirs.

It has been preached to them for nearly a century, by German (chiefly, I think, Moravian) and French, as well as by English, Scottish, and American missionaries. At present there are not a few British societies and denominations in the field. The French Protestants have done some excellent work, especially in Basutoland, and have also stations near the east coast and on the Upper Zambesi. There are also French Roman Catholic missions, mostly in the hands of Jesuit fathers, many of whom are men of learning and ability. Between the Roman Catholics, the Protestant Episcopalians (Church of England), and the missionaries of the English Nonconformists and Scottish or French Presbyterians there is little intercourse and no co-operation. Here, as in other mission fields, this absence of intercourse and sympathy puzzles the native. I was told of an English (Protestant Episcopal) clergyman who made it one of his prime objects to warn the Kafirs against attending the services of the French Protestant missionaries, whom he apparently regarded as outside the pale of the true Church. In the Boer Republics there are fewer missions in proportion to the number of natives than in British territories; but no district, except the deserts of the west, seems to be wholly unprovided for, and in some cases stations have been pushed far beyond the limits of European administration, as, for instance, among the Barotse, who dwell north of the Upper Zambesi. The native congregations are usually small, and the careers of the converts not always satisfactory. This is so natural that it is odd to find Europeans, and most conspicuously those whose own life is not a model of Christian morality, continually growling and sneering at the missionaries because their converts do not all turn out saints. The savage is unstable in character, and baptism does not necessarily extinguish either his old habits or the hold which native superstitions have upon him. It is in this instability of his will, and his proneness to yield to drink or some other temptation, rather than in his intellect, that the weakness of the savage lies. And a man with hundreds of generations of savagery behind him is still, and must be, in many respects a savage, even though he reads and writes, and wears European clothes, and possibly even a white necktie. The Kafirs are not such bad Christians as the Frankish warriors were for two or three generations after the conversion of Clovis. We must wait for several generations before we can judge fairly of the influence of his new religion upon the mind of a Kafir whose ancestors had no religion at all, and were ruled by the lowest forms of superstition.

These facts are better recognized by the missionaries to-day than they were sixty years ago, and they have in consequence made some changes in their methods. They are no longer so anxious to baptize, or so apt to reckon success by the number of their converts. They are more cautious in ordaining native pastors. The aid of such pastors is indispensable, but the importance of the example which the native preacher or teacher sets makes it necessary to be careful in selection. The dogma of the equality of the black man and the white, which was warmly insisted on in the old days, and often roused the wrath of the Boers, has now been silently dropped. It was a dogma wholesome to inculcate so far as equality of protection was concerned, but its wider application led the early philanthropists of South Africa, as it led their excellent contemporaries, the Abolitionists of America, to some strange conclusions. Perceiving that other influences ought to go hand in hand with religion in helping the natives forward, the missionaries now devote themselves more than formerly to secular instruction, and endeavour to train the people to habits of industry. The work of education is indeed entirely in their hands. Special mention is due to one admirable institution, that which was founded by the Free Church of Scotland at Lovedale, in the Eastern Province, not far from King William's Town, nearly fifty years ago. Conducted on wholly non-sectarian lines, it receives coloured people, together with some whites, not only from the Colony, but from all parts of Africa—there are even Galla boys from the borders of Abyssinia in it—and gives an excellent education, fitting young men and women not only for the native ministry, but for the professions: and it is admitted even by those who are least friendly to missionary work to have rendered immense services to the natives. I visited it, and was greatly struck by the tone and spirit which seemed to pervade it, a spirit whose results are seen in the character and careers of many among its graduates. A race in the present condition of the Kafirs needs nothing more than the creation of a body of intelligent and educated persons of its own blood, who are able to enter into the difficulties of their humbler kinsfolk and guide them wisely. Dr. Stewart, who has directed the institution for many years, possesses that best kind of missionary temperament, in which a hopeful spirit and an inexhaustible sympathy are balanced by Scottish shrewdness and a cool judgment.

One of the greatest among the difficulties which confront the missionaries is to know how to deal with polygamy, a practice deeply rooted in Kafir life. A visitor from Europe is at first surprised to find how seriously they regard it, and asks whether the example of the worthies of the Old Testament does not make it hard for them to refuse baptism to the native who seeks it, though he has more than one wife. The clergy of the Church of England, however, and those of the French Protestant Church—and I think other missionaries also—are unanimous in holding that, although they may properly admit a polygamist as a catechumen, they should not baptize such a one; and they say that the native pastors hold this view even more strongly than they do themselves. Polygamy is so bound up with heathen customs, and exerts, in their view, so entirely baneful an influence upon native society, that it must be at all hazards resisted and condemned.[70] One is reminded of the Neoplatonic philosophers, the last professors of the Platonic academy at Athens, who in the sixth century of our era sought an asylum from Christian persecution at the court of Chosroes Anurshirwan, in Persia. They forced themselves to tolerate the other usages of the people among whom they came, but polygamy was too much for them, and rather than dwell among those who practised it, they returned to the unfriendly soil of the Roman Empire.

The missionaries, and especially those of the London Missionary Society, played at one time a much more prominent part in politics than they now sustain. Within and on the borders of Cape Colony they were, for the first sixty years of the present century, the leading champions of the natives, and as they enjoyed the support of an active body of opinion in England and Scotland, they had much influence in Parliament and with the Colonial Office. Outside the Colony they were often the principal advisers of the native chiefs (as their brethren were at the same time in the islands of the Pacific), and held a place not unlike that of the bishops in Gaul in the fifth century of our era. Since, in advocating the cause of the natives, they had often to complain of the behaviour of the whites, and since, whenever a chief came into collision with the emigrant Boers or with colonial frontiersmen, they became the channel by which the chief stated his case to the British Government, they incurred the bitter hostility of the emigrant Boers and some dislike even in the Colony. To this old cause much of the unpopularity that still attaches to them seems due. Unpopular they certainly are. They are reproached with the paucity of their converts, and that by white men whose own treatment of the Kafirs might well make the white man's religion odious to a native. They are also accused of abusing their position to enrich themselves by trade with the Kafirs. This abuse has sometimes occurred, and clearly ought to be checked by the home societies. But probably it does not disgust the wandering white trader any more than the fact that the missionary often warns the native against the exorbitant prices which the trader demands for his goods. They are blamed for making the converted Kafir uppish, and telling him that he is as good as a white man, an offence which has no doubt been often committed. A graver allegation, to which Mr. Theal has given some countenance in his historical writings, is that they used to bring groundless or exaggerated charges against the Boer farmers, and always sided with the natives, whatever the merits of the case. I do not venture to pronounce on the truth of this allegation, which it would take much time and labour to sift. As there have been some few missionaries whose demeanour was not creditable to their profession, so there have doubtless been instances in which partisan ardour betrayed them into exaggerations. But whosoever remembers that but for the missionaries the natives would have lacked all local protection, and that it was only through the missionaries that news of injustice or cruelty practised on a native could reach the ears of the British Government, will look leniently on the errors of honest zeal, and will rejoice that ministers of religion were found to champion the cause of the weaker race and keep the home Government alive to a sense of one of its first duties.

Notwithstanding the slowness of the progress hitherto made, the extinction of heathenism in South Africa may be deemed certain, and certain at no distant date. There is here no ancient and highly organized system of beliefs and doctrines, such as Hinduism and Islam are in India, to resist the solvent power which European civilisation exerts. In forty years there will probably be no more pagan rites practised in Cape Colony. In eighty years there will be none in Matabililand, or perhaps even sooner, if the gold-reefs turn out well; for though a mining-camp is not a school of Christianity, it is a destroyer of paganism. Already I found, in traversing Mashonaland, that the poor ghosts were ceasing to receive their wonted offerings of native beer.

What will happen when heathenism and the tribal system have vanished away? Such morality, such principles of manly conduct as the natives now have, are bound up with their ghost-worship and still more with their tribal system, which prescribes loyalty to the chief, courage in war, devotion to the interests of the tribe or clan. When these principles have disappeared along with the tribal organization, some other principles, some other standard of duty and precepts of conduct, ought to be at hand to replace them. Where are such precepts to be found, and whence are the motives and emotions to be drawn which will give the new precepts a power to command the will? Although the Kafirs have shown rather less aptitude for assimilating Christian teaching than some other savage races have done, there is nothing in the experience of the missions to discourage the hope that such teaching may come to prevail among them, and that through it each generation may show a slight moral advance upon that which has gone before. As the profession of Christianity will create a certain link between the Kafirs and their rulers which may soften the asperity which the relations of the two races now wear, so its doctrines will in time give them a standard of conduct similar to that accepted among the whites, and an ideal which will influence the superior minds among them. So much may certainly be said: that the Gospel and the mission schools are at present the most truly civilizing influences which work upon the natives, and that upon these influences, more than on any other agency, does the progress of the coloured race depend.