204

THE MORAVIANS IN GREENLAND.

rance, for often when he has, by many kind speeches and a present to the chief, collected an audience, he finds his first words are only a signal for instant dismissal. I have found some chiefs, who, entirely ignorant of the motives of the missionary, have professed great anxiety to have one, and would bring a young daughter into the presence of Mrs. Moffat, assuring me that he would give her to be my wife, were I to take up my abode with him. This, no doubt, was very generous; and he, poor man, in his ignorance, must have thought me not only saucy but silly, not to embrace so fascinating an offer. These visits, although without any apparent success, were not lost either upon the natives or ourselves; for while they gradually familiarized our character and objects to the people, they taught us lessons very important in preparing us for trials greater than these.

In imparting instruction, we were obliged to keep to first principles. Among such a people it was necessary to assert who God was, as well as what He had done for a sinful world. It is recorded of the Moravian missionaries in Greenland, that they had been in the habit of directing the attention of their hearers to the existence and attributes of God, the fall of man, and the demands of the Divine law; hoping thus, by degrees, to prepare the minds of the heathen for the more mysterious and sublime truths of the Gospel. As, however, this plan had been tried for five years with no success, they now resolved, in the first instance, simply to preach Christ crucified to the benighted Greenlanders; and not only were their own souls set at peculiar liberty in speaking, but the power of the Holy Ghost evidently accompanied the word spoken to the hearts and consciences of the hearers so that they trembled at their danger as sinners, and rejoiced with joy unspeakable in the appointment and exhibition of Christ as a Saviour from the wrath to come. This fact has been reiterated; and, by the deductions drawn from it, may, we believe, have been led to suppose that the subsequent labours of other missionaries, for sixteen years, in the South Sea Islands, without fruit, must have arisen from their not "thus directing their principal attention to the only subject which was likely to be permanently profitable to the heathen." This, however, we conceive to be a very erroneous conclusion; for if we examine the journals and experience of those who laboured a much longer period than the Greenland missionaries, with no better success, we shall find that the burden of their report was, "God so loved the world," etc. If these missionaries, whom we can never cease to admire,

PAUL'S PREACHING AT ATHENS.

205

and whose extraordinary love to the Saviour influenced them to brave the tempests of an arctic sky, had confined their preaching exclusively to the attributes of God, which, as ministers of the New Testament, we can scarcely think they did, we should not wonder at their little success. It ought also to be recollected, that, by their first efforts to enlighten the minds of the natives respecting the character of the Divine Being, they were preparing the way for dilating more fully on the theme of man's redemption.

The course pursued by the apostles among the Jews, who were acquainted with the nature and operations of the true God, was to proclaim the reign of the Messiah, and even to baptize in the name of the Lord Jesus only; but Paul, whose all-absorbing theme was Christ, and Him crucified, determined, while standing on Mar's Hill, among the literati of Athens, to discourse first on the character and attributes of the true God, of whom they were ignorant. His sermon, or rather the exordium, is entirely restricted to the establishment of this most important point. This was his mode of convincing both Stoics and Epicureans of the fallacy of their tenets; and by thus introducing the character and government of what was to them an 66 Unknown God," he prepared them for the attraction of the Cross, which was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness. This inimitable discourse was addressed to idolaters, and admirably calculated to overthrow the notions of his opponents; for while the Epicureans acknowledged no gods, except in name, they absolutely denied that they exercised any government over the world or its inhabitants; and while the Stoics did not deny the existence of the gods, they held that all human affairs were governed by fate.

The Acts of the Apostles has very properly been designated a "Missionary Book;" and he who takes the first propagators of Christianity as his models, cannot err. The missionary having this guide, and relying on the direction. and promises of the Great Head of the Church, will find it necessary to adapt his discourses to the circumstances of the people among whom he labours. In Greenland he will, in the first instance, endeavour to undermine the influence of the Angekoks; in Western Africa, that of the Greegrees; and, in Southern Africa, the assumed power of Rain-makers; by declaring that "God made the world and all things therein, and giveth to all life, breath, and all things." This should be done more especially among a people who have no idol

206

A HOTTENTOT WOMAN.

atry whatever; while the exhibition of Him who is the desire of all nations ought on no occasion to be withheld.

The question may be raised, What would Paul have done among the Hindoos, the Esquimaux, or the atheistical nations of the interior of Africa? We presume that he who found it necessary, yea, of incalculable importance to become all things to all men, would leave the mode of argument requisite to convince the Jew, and preach to them as he did to the people of Lystra, that they should turn from their vanities unto the living God, who made heaven and earth and seas, and all things that are therein; and turn the attention from soothsayers, sorcerer, charms and amulets, to that divine and gracious Being who gives rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. All this the missionary finds it necessary to do, to clear away a mass of rubbish which paralyzes the mental powers of the natives; while he knows full well, that if he wishes to save souls, he must preach Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, without which all his efforts to save souls must be like the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.

We

We found it necessary to make every subject as striking and interesting as possible to gain attention, for our greatest complaint was indifference, a cold assent being the most we could obtain from even the most intelligent of them. held one service in Dutch on the Sabbath evenings for the edification of our own souls as well as those of two or three Hottentots and their families. This was the only service in which we felt any thing like real enjoyment, the others affording only that which arose from the sense of discharging a duty.

About this time a circumstance occurred which operated as a balm to some of our sorrows. We had been exceedingly tried by the conduct of Fransinna, a Hottentot woman, from Bethelsdorp. She had taken offence at our having sent away a young Hottentot in our service on account of immoral conduct, which disgraced the mission in the eyes of the Bechuanas. She took this opportunity of instigating the king and his people against us, by insinuating that we had ascribed it to Mothibi, who, of course, was hurt at being charged with that which was our own act. While her unchristian and violent spirit was threatening the overthrow of the mission, she was suddenly seized with a remarkable distemper, which prostrated her in a short time on a bed of sickness. She was visited and faithfully dealt with.

Her conduct in endeavouring to frustrate our efforts among

HER ILLNESS AND DEATH.

207 the Bechuanas, was set before her in its true colours. She was soon thoroughly convinced of the guilt of such hostility, and of the reasonableness of the step on our part which had excited her displeasure. She frankly confessed her crimes, was cut to the heart for the injury she had done to the cause, and earnestly implored forgiveness, when she was directed afresh to the fountain opened for sin. She remained several months in severe affliction, and about a month before her death, one of her legs from the knee was consigned to the dust, the rest of her limbs meanwhile gradually decaying; but while worms were literally destroying her body, she knew in whom she had believed. From the commencement of her affliction, the Lord had made her to feel that he had a controversy with her, and thrice happy was it for her that she heard the rod and Him who had appointed it. She acknowledged that for some time previous she had wandered from God, and had done things to the grief of our souls and the injury of the cause; she also said that she had used her endeavours to persuade her husband and the other Hottentots to abandon the station and return home, and that in the midst of her fiery opposi tion to us the Lord laid his hand upon her. She had thus been brought to a sense of her danger, and to have recourse to the precious blood of Christ which cleanseth from all sin. She made a full, free, and public confession of all her iniquity; and a short time before her death, remembering again the injury she had attempted to do by endeavouring to persuade the men to abandon the mission, she called them together to her bedside, and, as her dying request, entreated them not to leave the missionaries, however accumulated their privations might be, adding, that it was at their peril they deserted them. During the whole of her illness not a murmur escaped her lips. Resting on the righteousness of Christ, she gloried in his cross. A lively gratitude to God, who had redeemed her, beamed forth in her whole demeanour, and when we were called to witness her last struggle with the king of terrors, we beheld with feelings no tongue can utter, the calmness and serenity of her mind in the lively anticipation of immortal glory, and saw her breathe her last. Thus, as with captive Israel of old, "our God did lighten our eyes, and give us a little reviving in our bondage."

CHAPTER XIX.

In every heathen country the missionary finds, to his sorrow, some predominating barriers to his usefulness, which require to be overcome before he can expect to reach the judgments of the populace. Sorcerers or rain-makers, for both offices are generally assumed by one individual, are the principal with which he has to contend in the interior of Southern Africa. They are, as Mr. Kay rightly designates them, "our inveterate enemies, and uniformly oppose the introduction of Christianity amongst their countrymen to the utmost of their power. Like the angekoks of the Greenlanders, the pawaws of the Indians, and the greegrees of Western Africa, they constitute the very pillars of Satan's kingdom in all places where such impostors are found. By them is his throne supported and the people kept in bondage; when these, therefore, are confounded, and constrained to flee, we cannot but rejoice, for then indeed have we demonstrative evidence that "the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power." The rain-maker is in the estimation of the people no mean personage, possessing an influence over the minds of the people superior even to that of their king, who is likewise compelled to yield to the dictates of this arch-official. The anomalies in the human character can alone account for reasonable, and often intelligent beings yielding a passive obedience to the absurd demands of this capricious individual. Nothing can exceed his freaks of fancy, and the adroitness with which he can awe the public mind and lead thousands captive at his will. Each tribe has one, and sometimes more, who are also doctors and sextons, or the superintendants of the burying of the dead, it being generally believed that that ceremony has some influence over the watery treasures which float in the skies. He will sometimes give orders, that none of the dead must be buried, but dragged to a distance from the town to be devoured by the hyenas and jackals. One old woman died in her house not far from our premises; we dared not commit the body to the dust, and having no friend to perform the needful duty, her son was called from a distance. From their national