Reality versus romance in South Central Africa : An account of a journey across the continent from Benguella on the West, through Bihe, Ganguella, Barotse, the Kalihari Desert, Mashonaland, Manica, Gorongoza, Nyasa, the Shire Highlands, to the mouth of the Zambesi on the East Coast / [James Johnston].

  • Johnston, James, M.D., of Brown's Town, Jamaica.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reality versus romance in South Central Africa : An account of a journey across the continent from Benguella on the West, through Bihe, Ganguella, Barotse, the Kalihari Desert, Mashonaland, Manica, Gorongoza, Nyasa, the Shire Highlands, to the mouth of the Zambesi on the East Coast / [James Johnston]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. of native children as future missionaries to their people. Good enough, if he could by a civilized upbringing change their hearts; but even Christian influences are not sufficient to turn the wayward into paths of recti- tude, as many godly parents can testify. They may acquire some knowledge of the three IPs, and how to dress in European fashion—the boys developing into idle dudes with unlimited conceit, and their natural antipathy for honest work immeasurably increased; and the girls will be much sought after for wives by the more aristocratic heathen (as has been the experi- ence of missions on the Gaboon and in Sierra Leone, etc.). But is this gain to the kingdom of God? Or is this the work Christ has sent us to do ? Nor am I alone in my conclusions. In the issue for February of this year of The Regions Beyond, one who takes a deep and practical interest in African mission work writes: “ Paul said to Timothy, 4 Meditate on these things; give thyself wholly to them;7 and when he himself, for special reasons, and for a brief time, gave himself to manual labor and tent-making, it was not in uncivil- ized Africa! He had not to learn a barbarous lan- guage, or to get acquainted with the thoughts and feelings of a savage people. He was preaching in his mother-tongue, to his fellow-Jews in the familiar synagogue, and living in luxuriously civilized Corinth, where his hosts attended to all his wants, and where he had neither linguistic studies nor translation work nor sickness nor dispensing nor school-teaching nor long journeys to distract him. A very different state of things! Moreover—and this leads to a very impor-