[Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone]@TWC D-Link book
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa

CHAPTER 6
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There it is the court language, and will take a stranger any where through a district larger than France.

The Bechuanas, moreover, in all probability possess that imperishability which forms so remarkable a feature in the entire African race.
When converts are made from heathenism by modern missionaries, it becomes an interesting question whether their faith possesses the elements of permanence, or is only an exotic too tender for self-propagation when the fostering care of the foreign cultivators is withdrawn.

If neither habits of self-reliance are cultivated, nor opportunities given for the exercise of that virtue, the most promising converts are apt to become like spoiled children.

In Madagascar, a few Christians were left with nothing but the Bible in their hands; and though exposed to persecution, and even death itself, as the penalty of adherence to their profession, they increased ten-fold in numbers, and are, if possible, more decided believers now than they were when, by an edict of the queen of that island, the missionaries ceased their teaching.
In South Africa such an experiment could not be made, for 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 virtues.
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-organized 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 laboring at the same good work.


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