The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1914-08-04
(By Rev. John Sinclair. D. d.

From my earliest days in Scotland
had an intense interest in mission
airy work, and had my own ideas about
che kind of missionary work that was
right and the kind that was useless.
had a profound belief in the preach
sng-of- gospel missionaries. In my
student days in Edinburgh, between
1870 and 1880, l used to attend the
meetings of the Assembly of the
Free Church of Scotland-not the
Wee Free Assembly-regularly every
year The day in the Assembly which
Impressed me most was the foreign
missions day. You could see the peo-
pie vending their way up the Mound
hours before the time of meeting.
When the Moderator entered there
was always a crowd on that day of
5000 men and women ready to rise
and greet him. To US in Scotland at
that time, living missionary, especi-
ally if his hair had grown white in
a heather land, was looked on as rev.
erently as if he had been flesh and
blood brother of the Lord. When the
pronoun was substituted for his name
IN writing, we felt inclined to use a
capital al"
DR.. Alexander Duff lectured on mis-
sions and evangelistic work for some
years at the New College, Edinburgh.
He was not an interesting lecturer
when you listened to him day after
day. But we all sat out the hour IL
perfect stiffness, and gazed with ven
seration on the man with the snow
white locks who had spent in India
a long lifetime in obedience to the
command: go we into the world and
preach the gospel to every creature"
! once had a conversation with DR..
Robert Moffat in the house Of Mr..
John Cowan, of Beeslack, Edinburgh,
and while ! sat and looked on his
face as he described the joys and sor-
rows Of the African missionary of his
early days, there seemed imprinted
on the features of the aged saint the
message that came from Above to
Moses: "Put off thy shoes from off
thy feet; for the place wherein thou
standest is holy ground"
imbued with such ideas of mission
AIRY life and work, my surprise
amounted to a shock when | went to
South Africa and found that wh;,e
men and women who lived contiguous
with the heather were divided be-
tween apathy and opposition to most
forms Of missionary activity.
In Aliwal Street Congregational
Church, to which l ministered dur
ing my stay in South Africa, listen
ed one Sunday morning to papers on
missions read by six boys, of 10 to
IL years of age, in the Junior En-
deavor Society of the Church. There
did not appear to have been any col
fusion among the boys, and yet the
substance of the whole lot of the pa
pers was: "Give the natives Christian
ity, but do not educate them, because
II you educate them they become
cheeky; they think themselves as good
as the white man and above doing
work" Each boy evidently wrote as
he had been trained in the parental
home. But it is difficult to see how
Christianity could be brought to them
without education. One boy asknowl-
edged this, but still backed his argu-
ment against education by saying that
all the Bible commanded was to
"preach the gospel to every creature
The gist of those papers was that
when the natives have schools pro-
Vided for them and get smattering
of education, they begin to think them
selves on the same plane as the white
men, and then they are too proud te
touch anything that would soil theil
fingers. Of course, there is some
thing in this idea. With education
the mental and moral faculties of the
native begin to develop, and he is nc
longer in the category of dumb, driver
cattle, where many of the early pic.
neers among the whites used to place
him.
In South Africa, as well as in other
heather countries, the natives were
looked on by many of the whites as
" they were merely species of the
lower animals, and treated according
ly. But the missionary looks on the
black man as human being, with .
soul, and the labour of the mission.
airy, year in and year out, whether
BY education or by preaching the gos
pei, is TO evolve that soul so that il
can be brought into touch with Goo