Ethiopia Stretching Out Her Hands Unto God
OR,
Africa’s Service to the World.
THERE was, for a long time, in the Christian world considerable difference of opinion as to the portion of the earth, and the precise region to which the term Ethiopia must be understood as applying. It is pretty well established now, however, that by Ethiopia, is meant the continent of Africa, and by Ethiopians, the great race who inhabit that continent. The etymology of the word points to the most prominent physical characteristics of this people.
To any one who has travelled in Africa, especially in the portion north of the equator, extending from the West coast to Abyssinia. Nubia and Egypt, and embracing what is known as the Nigritian and Soudanic countries, there cannot be the slightest doubt as to the country and people to whom the terms Ethiopia and Ethiopian, as used in the Bible and the classical writers, were applied. One of the latest and most accurate authorities says: “The country which the Greeks and the Romans described as Ethiopia, and the Hebrews as Cush, lay to the south of Egypt, and embraced, in its most extended sense, the modern Nubia, Senaar, Kordofan, &c, and in its more definite sense, the kingdom of Meroe, from the junction of the Blue and White branches of the Nile to the border of Egypt.”[1]
Herodotus, the father of history, speaks of two divisions of Ethiopians, who did not differ at all from each other in appearance, except in their language and hair; “ for the eastern Ethiopians,” he says, “are straight haired, but those of Libya (or Africa), have hair more curly than that of any other people.”[2] “As far as we know,” says Mr. Gladstone, “Homer recognised the African coast by placing the Lotophagi upon it, and the Ethiopians inland from the east, all the way to the extreme west.”[3]
There has been an unbroken line of communication between the West Coast of Africa, through the Soudan, and through the so-called Great Desert and Asia, from the time when portions of the descendants of Ham, in remote ages, began their migrations westward, and first saw the Atlantic Ocean.
Africa is no vast island, separated by an immense ocean from other portions of the globe, and cut off through the ages from the men who have made and influenced the destinies of mankind. She has been closely connected, both as source and nourisher, with some of the most potent influences which have affected for good the history of the world. The people of Asia, and the people of Africa have been in constant intercourse. No violent social or political disruption has ever broken through this communication. No chasm caused by war has suspended intercourse. On the contrary, the greatest religious reforms the world has ever seen—Jewish, Christian, Molmmmedan—originating in Asia, have obtained consolidation in Africa. And as in the days of Abraham and Moses, of Herodotus and Homer, so to-day, there is a constantly accessible highway from Asia to the heart of the Soudan. Africans are continually going to and fro between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea. I have met in Liberia and along its eastern frontiers, Mohammedan Negroes, born in Mecca, the Holy City of Arabia, who thought they were telling of nothing extraordinary when they were detailing the incidents of their journeyings and of those of their friends from the banks of the Niger—from the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone and Liberia —across the continent to Egypt, Arabia and Jerusalem. I saw in Cairo and Jerusalem, some years ago, West Africans who had come on business, or on religious pilgrimage, from their distant homes in Senegambia.
Africans were not unknown, therefore, to the writers of the Bible. Their peculiarities of complexion and hair were as well known to the ancient Greeks and Hebrews, as they are to the American people to-day. And when they spoke of the Ethiopians, they meant the ancestors of the black-skinned and woolly-haired people who, for two hundred and fifty years, have been known as labourers on the plantations of the South. It is to these people, and to their country, that the Psalmist refers, when he says, “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hand unto God.” The word in the original, which has been translated “soon,” is now understood to refer not so much to the time as to the manner of the action. Ethiopia shall suddenly stretch out her hands unto God, is the most recent rendering.
But, even if we take the phraseology as it has been generally understood, it will not by anyone acquainted with the facts, be held to have been altogether unfulfilled. There is not a tribe on the continent of Africa, in spite of the almost universal opinion to the contrary, in spite of the fetishes and greegrees which many of them are supposed to worship—there is not, I say, a single tribe which does not stretch out its hands to the Great Creator. There is not one who does not recognise the Supreme Being, though imperfectly understanding His character—and who does perfectly understand His character? They believe that the heaven and the earth, the sun, moon, and stars, which they behold, were created by an Almighty personal Agent, who is also their own Maker and Sovereign, and they render to him such worship as their untutored intellects can conceive. The work of the Christian missionary is to declare to them that Being whom they ignorantly worship.
There are no atheists or agnostics among them. They have not yet attained, and I am sure they never will attain, to that eminence of progress or that perfection of development; so that it is true, in a certain sense, that Ethiopia now stretches out her hands unto God.
To any one who has travelled in Africa, especially in the portion north of the equator, extending from the West coast to Abyssinia. Nubia and Egypt, and embracing what is known as the Nigritian and Soudanic countries, there cannot be the slightest doubt as to the country and people to whom the terms Ethiopia and Ethiopian, as used in the Bible and the classical writers, were applied. One of the latest and most accurate authorities says: “The country which the Greeks and the Romans described as Ethiopia, and the Hebrews as Cush, lay to the south of Egypt, and embraced, in its most extended sense, the modern Nubia, Senaar, Kordofan, &c, and in its more definite sense, the kingdom of Meroe, from the junction of the Blue and White branches of the Nile to the border of Egypt.”[1]
Herodotus, the father of history, speaks of two divisions of Ethiopians, who did not differ at all from each other in appearance, except in their language and hair; “ for the eastern Ethiopians,” he says, “are straight haired, but those of Libya (or Africa), have hair more curly than that of any other people.”[2] “As far as we know,” says Mr. Gladstone, “Homer recognised the African coast by placing the Lotophagi upon it, and the Ethiopians inland from the east, all the way to the extreme west.”[3]
There has been an unbroken line of communication between the West Coast of Africa, through the Soudan, and through the so-called Great Desert and Asia, from the time when portions of the descendants of Ham, in remote ages, began their migrations westward, and first saw the Atlantic Ocean.
Africa is no vast island, separated by an immense ocean from other portions of the globe, and cut off through the ages from the men who have made and influenced the destinies of mankind. She has been closely connected, both as source and nourisher, with some of the most potent influences which have affected for good the history of the world. The people of Asia, and the people of Africa have been in constant intercourse. No violent social or political disruption has ever broken through this communication. No chasm caused by war has suspended intercourse. On the contrary, the greatest religious reforms the world has ever seen—Jewish, Christian, Molmmmedan—originating in Asia, have obtained consolidation in Africa. And as in the days of Abraham and Moses, of Herodotus and Homer, so to-day, there is a constantly accessible highway from Asia to the heart of the Soudan. Africans are continually going to and fro between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea. I have met in Liberia and along its eastern frontiers, Mohammedan Negroes, born in Mecca, the Holy City of Arabia, who thought they were telling of nothing extraordinary when they were detailing the incidents of their journeyings and of those of their friends from the banks of the Niger—from the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone and Liberia —across the continent to Egypt, Arabia and Jerusalem. I saw in Cairo and Jerusalem, some years ago, West Africans who had come on business, or on religious pilgrimage, from their distant homes in Senegambia.
Africans were not unknown, therefore, to the writers of the Bible. Their peculiarities of complexion and hair were as well known to the ancient Greeks and Hebrews, as they are to the American people to-day. And when they spoke of the Ethiopians, they meant the ancestors of the black-skinned and woolly-haired people who, for two hundred and fifty years, have been known as labourers on the plantations of the South. It is to these people, and to their country, that the Psalmist refers, when he says, “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hand unto God.” The word in the original, which has been translated “soon,” is now understood to refer not so much to the time as to the manner of the action. Ethiopia shall suddenly stretch out her hands unto God, is the most recent rendering.
But, even if we take the phraseology as it has been generally understood, it will not by anyone acquainted with the facts, be held to have been altogether unfulfilled. There is not a tribe on the continent of Africa, in spite of the almost universal opinion to the contrary, in spite of the fetishes and greegrees which many of them are supposed to worship—there is not, I say, a single tribe which does not stretch out its hands to the Great Creator. There is not one who does not recognise the Supreme Being, though imperfectly understanding His character—and who does perfectly understand His character? They believe that the heaven and the earth, the sun, moon, and stars, which they behold, were created by an Almighty personal Agent, who is also their own Maker and Sovereign, and they render to him such worship as their untutored intellects can conceive. The work of the Christian missionary is to declare to them that Being whom they ignorantly worship.
There are no atheists or agnostics among them. They have not yet attained, and I am sure they never will attain, to that eminence of progress or that perfection of development; so that it is true, in a certain sense, that Ethiopia now stretches out her hands unto God.
Footnotes:
1 Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible—(sub voce).
2 Herod, iii, 94; vii, 70.
3 Homer and the Homeric Age; vol. iii, p. 305.
1 Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible—(sub voce).
2 Herod, iii, 94; vii, 70.
3 Homer and the Homeric Age; vol. iii, p. 305.
And if the belief in a common Creator and Father of mankind is illustrated in the bearing we maintain towards our neighbour, if our faith is seen in our works, if we prove that we love God, whom we have not seen, by loving our neighbour whom we have seen, by respecting his rights, even though he may not belong to our clan, tribe, or race, then I must say, and it will not be generally disputed, that more proofs are furnished among the natives of interior Africa of their belief in the common Fatherhood of a personal God by their hospitable and considerate treatment of foreigners and strangers than are to be seen in many a civilised and Christian community. Mungo Park, a hundred years ago, put on record in poetry and in prose—and he wished it never to be forgotten—that he was the object of most kindly and sympathetic treatment in the wilds of Africa, among a people he had never before seen, and whom he never could requite. The long sojourn of Livingstone in that land in contentment and happiness, without money to pay his way, is another proof of the excellent qualities of the people, and of their practical belief in an universal Father. And, in all history, where is there anything more touching than that ever-memorable conveyance, by “faithful hands,” of the remains of the missionary traveller from the land of strangers over thousands of miles, to the country of the deceased, to be deposited with deserved honour in the “Great Temple of Silence”?
And this peculiarity of Africans is not a thing known only in modern times. The ancients recognised these qualities, and loved to descant upon them. They seemed to regard the fear and love of God as the peculiar gift of the darker races. In the version of the Chaldean Genesis, as given by George Smith, the following passage occurs: “The word of the Lord will never fail in the mouth of the dark races whom He has made.” Homer and Herodotus have written immortal eulogies of the race. Homer speaks of them as the “blameless Ethiopians,” and tells us that it was the Ethiopians alone among mortals whom the gods selected as a people fit to be lifted to the social level of the Olympian divinities. Every year, the poet says, the whole celestial circle left the summits of Olympus and betook themselves, for their holidays, to Ethiopia, where, in the enjoyment of Ethiopian hospitality, they sojourned twelve days.
The Sire of gods and all the etherial train
On the warm limits of the farthest main
Now mix with mortals, nor disdain to grace
The feasts of Ethiopia’s blameless race;
Twelve days the Powers indulge the genial rite,
Returning with the twelfth revolving night.
Lucian represents a sceptic, or freethinker, of his day, as saying, in his irreverence towards the gods, that on certain occasions they do not hear the prayers of mortals in Europe because they are away across the ocean, perhaps among the Ethiopians, with whom they dine frequently on their own invitation.
It shows the estimate in which the ancients held the Africans, that they selected them as the only fit associates for their gods. And, in modern times, in all the countries of their exile, they have not ceased to commend themselves to those who have held rule over them. The testimonies are numerous and striking, in all the annals of this country, to the fidelity of the African. The newspapers of the land are constantly bearing testimony to his unswerving faithfulness at this moment, notwithstanding the indignities heaped upon him.
But there is another quality in the Ethiopian or African, closely connected with the preceding, which proves that he has stretched out his hands unto God. If service rendered to humanity is service rendered to God, then the Negro and his country have been, during the ages, in spite of untoward influences, tending upward to the Divine.
Take the country. It has been called the cradle of civilisation, and so it is. The germs of all the sciences and of the two great religions now professed by the most enlightened races were fostered in Africa. Science, in its latest wonders, has nothing to show equal to some of the wonderful things even now to be seen in Africa. In Africa stands that marvellous architectural pile— the great Pyramid —which has been the admiration and despair of the world for a hundred generations. Scientific men of the present day, mathematicians, astronomers and divines, regard it as a sort of key to the universe—a symbol of the profoundest truths of science, of religion, and of all the past and future history of man. Though apparently closely secluded from all the rest of the world, Africa still lies at the gateway of all the loftiest and noblest traditions of the human race —of India, of Greece, of Rome. She intermingles with all the Divine administrations, and is connected, in one way or another, with some of the most famous names and events in the annals of time.
And this peculiarity of Africans is not a thing known only in modern times. The ancients recognised these qualities, and loved to descant upon them. They seemed to regard the fear and love of God as the peculiar gift of the darker races. In the version of the Chaldean Genesis, as given by George Smith, the following passage occurs: “The word of the Lord will never fail in the mouth of the dark races whom He has made.” Homer and Herodotus have written immortal eulogies of the race. Homer speaks of them as the “blameless Ethiopians,” and tells us that it was the Ethiopians alone among mortals whom the gods selected as a people fit to be lifted to the social level of the Olympian divinities. Every year, the poet says, the whole celestial circle left the summits of Olympus and betook themselves, for their holidays, to Ethiopia, where, in the enjoyment of Ethiopian hospitality, they sojourned twelve days.
The Sire of gods and all the etherial train
On the warm limits of the farthest main
Now mix with mortals, nor disdain to grace
The feasts of Ethiopia’s blameless race;
Twelve days the Powers indulge the genial rite,
Returning with the twelfth revolving night.
Lucian represents a sceptic, or freethinker, of his day, as saying, in his irreverence towards the gods, that on certain occasions they do not hear the prayers of mortals in Europe because they are away across the ocean, perhaps among the Ethiopians, with whom they dine frequently on their own invitation.
It shows the estimate in which the ancients held the Africans, that they selected them as the only fit associates for their gods. And, in modern times, in all the countries of their exile, they have not ceased to commend themselves to those who have held rule over them. The testimonies are numerous and striking, in all the annals of this country, to the fidelity of the African. The newspapers of the land are constantly bearing testimony to his unswerving faithfulness at this moment, notwithstanding the indignities heaped upon him.
But there is another quality in the Ethiopian or African, closely connected with the preceding, which proves that he has stretched out his hands unto God. If service rendered to humanity is service rendered to God, then the Negro and his country have been, during the ages, in spite of untoward influences, tending upward to the Divine.
Take the country. It has been called the cradle of civilisation, and so it is. The germs of all the sciences and of the two great religions now professed by the most enlightened races were fostered in Africa. Science, in its latest wonders, has nothing to show equal to some of the wonderful things even now to be seen in Africa. In Africa stands that marvellous architectural pile— the great Pyramid —which has been the admiration and despair of the world for a hundred generations. Scientific men of the present day, mathematicians, astronomers and divines, regard it as a sort of key to the universe—a symbol of the profoundest truths of science, of religion, and of all the past and future history of man. Though apparently closely secluded from all the rest of the world, Africa still lies at the gateway of all the loftiest and noblest traditions of the human race —of India, of Greece, of Rome. She intermingles with all the Divine administrations, and is connected, in one way or another, with some of the most famous names and events in the annals of time.
The great progenitor of the Hebrew race and the founder of their religion sought refuge in Africa from the ravages of famine. We read in Gen. xii, 10, “And there was a famine in the land; and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was grievous in the land.” Jacob and his sons were subsequently saved from extinction in the same way. In Africa, the Hebrew people from three score and ten souls multiplied into millions. In Africa, Moses, the greatest lawgiver the world has ever seen, was born and educated. To this land also resorted the ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome, to gaze upon its wonders and gather inspiration from its arts and sciences. Later on, a greater than Moses and than all the prophets and philosophers, when in infancy, was preserved from death in Africa, “Arise,” was the message conveyed by the angel to Joseph, “Arise, and take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.” When, in his final hours, the Saviour of mankind struggled up the heights of Calvary, under the weight of the Cross, accused by Asia and condemned by Europe, Africa furnished the man to relieve him of his burden. “And as they led him away they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the Cross that he might bear it after Jesus.”
And all through those times, and in times anterior to those, whether in sacred or profane matters, Africa is never out of view, as a helper. Egypt was the granary of Europe, often furnishing relief to starving populations out of her inexhaustible abundance. Then in modern times, when the enterprise and science of Europe had added a fourth continent to the knowledge of mankind by the discovery of America, the discoverers found themselves helpless in their efforts to utilise the richer portions of the vast domain. The Aborigines, who welcomed them to the strange country, were not available for industrial purposes. The imagination of the new comers was dazzled with visions of untold wealth, but they were powerless to avail themselves of it. The feeble frame of the Mexican could not support the burdens of his Spanish taskmaster, and the whole race was passing away, with the throne of Montezuma, before the mailed warriors of Castile. The despairing cries of a moribund population reached the ears of the sympathetic in Europe, when the Negro with his patience, his stronger physical qualities, and his superior powers of endurance, was thought of, and Africa, the grey-haired mother of civilisation, had to be resorted to for the labourers who could work the newly-discovered country, and thus contribute towards the development of modern civilisation, and towards making this almost boundless territory what it now is. The discovery of America without Africa, would have been comparatively useless, but with Africa, the brilliant eulogy recently pronounced upon this country by Mr. Bright, has become appropriate.
“If we examine,” says that distinguished orator and statesman, “all those old empires, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Parthian or the Roman; or if we go still further back in time and place, and examine what we know of the great empires of India or of China; or if we go to a more modern time and regard the fall of ancient Rome; if we look, in our own time, at the growth of the empire of Russia; if we look at the French Revolution, with all its vast results; if we look at the present power of Germany in Europe; if we look at the vast empire over all the world, of most of which we in this little island are, for a time, the centre, I think we shall admit, after all, that there is nothing, in all these transactions of history, which for vastness and for permanence, can compare with the grandeur there is in the discovery of the American continent by Christopher Columbus.”
But in bringing about these great results, in helping to achieve this material and moral grandeur, Africa has borne an important part. He who writes the history of modern civilisation will be culpably negligent if he omit to observe and to describe the black stream of humanity, which has poured into America from the heart of the Soudan. That stream has fertilised half the Western continent. It has created commerce and influenced its progress. It has affected culture and morality in the Eastern and Western hemispheres, and has been the means of transforming European colonies into a great nationality. Nor can it be denied that the material development of England was aided greatly by means of this same dark stream. By means of Negro labour sugar and tobacco were produced; by means of sugar and tobacco British commerce was increased; by means of increased commerce the arts of culture and refinement were developed. The rapid growth and unparalleled prosperity of Lancashire are, in part, owing to the cotton supply of the Southern States, which could not have risen to such importance without the labour of the African.
And all through those times, and in times anterior to those, whether in sacred or profane matters, Africa is never out of view, as a helper. Egypt was the granary of Europe, often furnishing relief to starving populations out of her inexhaustible abundance. Then in modern times, when the enterprise and science of Europe had added a fourth continent to the knowledge of mankind by the discovery of America, the discoverers found themselves helpless in their efforts to utilise the richer portions of the vast domain. The Aborigines, who welcomed them to the strange country, were not available for industrial purposes. The imagination of the new comers was dazzled with visions of untold wealth, but they were powerless to avail themselves of it. The feeble frame of the Mexican could not support the burdens of his Spanish taskmaster, and the whole race was passing away, with the throne of Montezuma, before the mailed warriors of Castile. The despairing cries of a moribund population reached the ears of the sympathetic in Europe, when the Negro with his patience, his stronger physical qualities, and his superior powers of endurance, was thought of, and Africa, the grey-haired mother of civilisation, had to be resorted to for the labourers who could work the newly-discovered country, and thus contribute towards the development of modern civilisation, and towards making this almost boundless territory what it now is. The discovery of America without Africa, would have been comparatively useless, but with Africa, the brilliant eulogy recently pronounced upon this country by Mr. Bright, has become appropriate.
“If we examine,” says that distinguished orator and statesman, “all those old empires, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Parthian or the Roman; or if we go still further back in time and place, and examine what we know of the great empires of India or of China; or if we go to a more modern time and regard the fall of ancient Rome; if we look, in our own time, at the growth of the empire of Russia; if we look at the French Revolution, with all its vast results; if we look at the present power of Germany in Europe; if we look at the vast empire over all the world, of most of which we in this little island are, for a time, the centre, I think we shall admit, after all, that there is nothing, in all these transactions of history, which for vastness and for permanence, can compare with the grandeur there is in the discovery of the American continent by Christopher Columbus.”
But in bringing about these great results, in helping to achieve this material and moral grandeur, Africa has borne an important part. He who writes the history of modern civilisation will be culpably negligent if he omit to observe and to describe the black stream of humanity, which has poured into America from the heart of the Soudan. That stream has fertilised half the Western continent. It has created commerce and influenced its progress. It has affected culture and morality in the Eastern and Western hemispheres, and has been the means of transforming European colonies into a great nationality. Nor can it be denied that the material development of England was aided greatly by means of this same dark stream. By means of Negro labour sugar and tobacco were produced; by means of sugar and tobacco British commerce was increased; by means of increased commerce the arts of culture and refinement were developed. The rapid growth and unparalleled prosperity of Lancashire are, in part, owing to the cotton supply of the Southern States, which could not have risen to such importance without the labour of the African.
The countless caravans and dhow-loads of Negroes who have been imported into Asia have not produced, so far as we know, any great historical results; but the slaves exported to America have profoundly influenced civilisation. The political history of the United States is the history of the Negro. The commercial and agricultural history of nearly the whole America is the history of the Negro.
Africa, in recent times, also, has been made, incidentally, to confer an important political benefit upon Europe, and probably upon the whole of the civilised world. When, two generations ago, Europe was disturbed and threatened by the restless and uncontrollable energy of one of whom Victor Hugo has said that he put Providence to inconvenience (il genait Dieu); and when the civilisation of the whole world was in danger of being arrested in its progress, if not put back indefinitely, by a prolific and unscrupulous ambition, Africa furnished the island which gave asylum to this infatuated and maddened potentate, and, by confining to that seagirt rock his formidable genius, gave peace to Europe, restored the political equilibrium, and unfettered the march of civilisation.
And now that Europe is exhausting itself by over-production, it is to Africa that men look to furnish new markets. India, China and Japan are beginning to consume their raw material at home, thus not only shutting Europe out from a market, but cutting off the supplies of raw material. Expedition after expedition is now entering the country, intersecting it from east to west and from north to south, to find out more of the resources of a land upon which large portions of the civilised world will, in no very remote future, be dependant. In the days of the slave-trade, when the man of the country was needed for animal purposes, no thought was given to the country. In those days Africa was not inaptly compared to “An extensive deer forest, where the lordly proprietor betakes himself at times in quest of game and recreation. He has certain beats, which he frequents, where the deer have their tracks, and to which his beaters drive them. Here he takes his stand and watches for his prey, while the deep recesses of the forest remain to him a perfect terra incognita. In the same way the nations of Europe had planted their establishments upon that coast, upon those lines which communicated most freely with the interior, and there awaited the approach of their prey, while little thought was given to the country beyond.”
But now things have changed. The country is studied with an almost martyr-like devotion, but with a somewhat contemptuous indifference as to the inhabitants. In their eager search, the explorers have discovered that Africa possesses the very highest capacity for the production, as raw material, of the various articles demanded by civilised countries. English, and French, and Germans, are now in the struggles of an intense competition for the hidden treasures of that continent. Upon the opening of Africa will depend the continuation of the prosperity of Europe. Thus Providence has interwoven the interests of Europe with those of Africa. What will bring light and improvement, peace and security, to thousands of women and children in Africa, will bring food and clothing to thousands of women and children in Europe.
Thus, Ethiopia and Ethiopians, having always served, will continue to serve the world. The Negro is, at this moment, the opposite of the Anglo- Saxon. Those everywhere serve the world; these everywhere govern the world. The empire of the one is more wide-spread than that of any other nation; the service of the other is more wide-spread than that of any other people. The Negro is found in all parts of the world. He has gone across Arabia, Persia, and India to China. He has crossed the Atlantic to the Western hemisphere, and here he has laboured in the new and in the old settlements of America; in the Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern States; in Mexico, Venezuela, the West Indies and Brazil. He is everywhere a familiar object, and he is, everywhere out of Africa, the servant of others. And in the light of the ultimate good of the universe, I do not see why the calling of the one should be considered the result of a curse, and the calling of the other the result of special favour. The one fulfils its mission by domination, the other by submission. The one serves mankind by ruling; the other serves mankind by serving. The one wears the crown and wields the sceptre; the other bears the stripes and carries the cross. Africa is distinguished as having served and suffered. In this, her lot is not unlike that of God’s ancient people, the Hebrews, who were known among the Egyptians as the servants of all; and among the Romans, in later times, they were numbered by Cicero with the “nations born to servitude,”[4] and were protected, in the midst of a haughty population, only “by the contempt which they inspired.” The lot of Africa resembles also His who made Himself of no reputation, but took upon Himself the form of a servant, and, having been made perfect through suffering, became the “Captain of our salvation.” And if the principle laid down by Christ is that by which things are decided above, viz., that he who would be chief must become the servant of all, then we see the position which Africa and the Africans must ultimately occupy. And we must admit that through serving man, Africa—Ethiopia—has been stretching out her hands unto God.
Africa, in recent times, also, has been made, incidentally, to confer an important political benefit upon Europe, and probably upon the whole of the civilised world. When, two generations ago, Europe was disturbed and threatened by the restless and uncontrollable energy of one of whom Victor Hugo has said that he put Providence to inconvenience (il genait Dieu); and when the civilisation of the whole world was in danger of being arrested in its progress, if not put back indefinitely, by a prolific and unscrupulous ambition, Africa furnished the island which gave asylum to this infatuated and maddened potentate, and, by confining to that seagirt rock his formidable genius, gave peace to Europe, restored the political equilibrium, and unfettered the march of civilisation.
And now that Europe is exhausting itself by over-production, it is to Africa that men look to furnish new markets. India, China and Japan are beginning to consume their raw material at home, thus not only shutting Europe out from a market, but cutting off the supplies of raw material. Expedition after expedition is now entering the country, intersecting it from east to west and from north to south, to find out more of the resources of a land upon which large portions of the civilised world will, in no very remote future, be dependant. In the days of the slave-trade, when the man of the country was needed for animal purposes, no thought was given to the country. In those days Africa was not inaptly compared to “An extensive deer forest, where the lordly proprietor betakes himself at times in quest of game and recreation. He has certain beats, which he frequents, where the deer have their tracks, and to which his beaters drive them. Here he takes his stand and watches for his prey, while the deep recesses of the forest remain to him a perfect terra incognita. In the same way the nations of Europe had planted their establishments upon that coast, upon those lines which communicated most freely with the interior, and there awaited the approach of their prey, while little thought was given to the country beyond.”
But now things have changed. The country is studied with an almost martyr-like devotion, but with a somewhat contemptuous indifference as to the inhabitants. In their eager search, the explorers have discovered that Africa possesses the very highest capacity for the production, as raw material, of the various articles demanded by civilised countries. English, and French, and Germans, are now in the struggles of an intense competition for the hidden treasures of that continent. Upon the opening of Africa will depend the continuation of the prosperity of Europe. Thus Providence has interwoven the interests of Europe with those of Africa. What will bring light and improvement, peace and security, to thousands of women and children in Africa, will bring food and clothing to thousands of women and children in Europe.
Thus, Ethiopia and Ethiopians, having always served, will continue to serve the world. The Negro is, at this moment, the opposite of the Anglo- Saxon. Those everywhere serve the world; these everywhere govern the world. The empire of the one is more wide-spread than that of any other nation; the service of the other is more wide-spread than that of any other people. The Negro is found in all parts of the world. He has gone across Arabia, Persia, and India to China. He has crossed the Atlantic to the Western hemisphere, and here he has laboured in the new and in the old settlements of America; in the Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern States; in Mexico, Venezuela, the West Indies and Brazil. He is everywhere a familiar object, and he is, everywhere out of Africa, the servant of others. And in the light of the ultimate good of the universe, I do not see why the calling of the one should be considered the result of a curse, and the calling of the other the result of special favour. The one fulfils its mission by domination, the other by submission. The one serves mankind by ruling; the other serves mankind by serving. The one wears the crown and wields the sceptre; the other bears the stripes and carries the cross. Africa is distinguished as having served and suffered. In this, her lot is not unlike that of God’s ancient people, the Hebrews, who were known among the Egyptians as the servants of all; and among the Romans, in later times, they were numbered by Cicero with the “nations born to servitude,”[4] and were protected, in the midst of a haughty population, only “by the contempt which they inspired.” The lot of Africa resembles also His who made Himself of no reputation, but took upon Himself the form of a servant, and, having been made perfect through suffering, became the “Captain of our salvation.” And if the principle laid down by Christ is that by which things are decided above, viz., that he who would be chief must become the servant of all, then we see the position which Africa and the Africans must ultimately occupy. And we must admit that through serving man, Africa—Ethiopia—has been stretching out her hands unto God.
Footnotes:
4 Renan’s Hibbcrt Lectures, p. 47.
4 Renan’s Hibbcrt Lectures, p. 47.
But, if we understand the phrase to mean “suddenly,” there is every indication that it will receive literal fulfilment. Men are now running to and fro, and knowledge of Africa is increasing. The downfall of Negro slavery in this country was sudden. The most sanguine philanthropists, thirty years ago, did not dream of so sudden a collapse of that hoary institution. And more has been learned of Africa in the seventeen years since slavery has been abolished, than was ever known during all the previous period of modern civilisation, or, perhaps, of the world’s history. And now, every possible interest that can give impulse to human activity is aroused in connection with that land; and the current which is moving the civilised world thitherward, gains every day in force, in magnitude and in importance. The man of science is interested on account of the wonderful things that must be concealed in that vast continent. The statesman and politician is interested in the possibilities of new states yet to be founded in the march of civilisation. The merchant is interested in the new and promising outlets for trade. The philanthropist is interested in the opening of a career of progress, of usefulness, and of happiness before the millions of that country.
Another indication of the suddenness of Africa’s regeneration is to be found in the restlessness of her descendants in this country. There are thousands of Negroes, in comfortable circumstances here, who are yet yearning after the land of their fathers; who are anxious, not so much to be relieved from present pressure, as to obtain an expansive field for their energies; who feel the need not only of horizontal openings—free movement on the plane which they occupy—but a chance to rise above it—a vertical outlet.
Within the last thirty years, the sentiment of race and of nationality has attained wonderful development. Not only have the teachings of thinkers and philosophers set forth the importance of the theory, but the deeds of statesmen and patriots have, more or less successfully, demonstrated the practicability of it. The efforts of men like Garibaldi and Cavour in Italy, of Kossuth in Hungary, of Bismarck in Germany, of the Ashantees and Zulus in Africa, have proved the indestructible vitality and tenacity of race.
Notwithstanding the widespread progress of Mohammedanism in Africa, and though it has largely influenced the organic life of numerous tribes in the vast regions of the Soudan, yet the Arabs, who first introduced the religion, have never been allowed to obtain political ascendancy. None of the Nigritian tribes have ever abdicated their race individuality or parted with their idiosyncracies in embracing the faith of Islam. But, whenever and wherever it has been necessary, great Negro warriors have arisen from the ranks of Islam, and, inspired by the teachings of the new faith, which merges all distinctions in one great brotherhood, have checked the arrogance of their foreign teachers, and have driven them, if at any time they affected superiority based upon race, from their artificial ascendancy. In the early days of Islam, when the Moors from the north attempted to establish political supremacy in the Nigritian countries, there rose up a Negro statesman and warrior, Soni Heli Ischia, and expelled the Moorish conquerors. He destroyed the ecclesiastical strongholds, which were fast growing into secular kingdoms, and erected upon their ruins one indigenous empire, having conquered all from Timbuctoo westward to the sea, and eastward to the frontier of Abyssinia, making about three thousand miles in length. Since then, Islam in Africa has been very much modified in its practices by the social peculiarities of the people. And, within the last twenty years, a distinguished native scholar and warrior, Omaru Al-Hajj, suppressed the undue influence of the Arabs at Timbuctoo—attacked that city in 1864, expelled the Arabs, and, with the same troops, confined the French to the western side of the Niger. His son Ahmadu now reigns at Sego, and, both by diplomacy and force, is checking or controlling the renewed operations of the French in the valley of the Niger.
This seems to be the period of race organisation and race consolidation. The races in Europe are striving to group themselves together according to their natural affinities. The concentration and development of the Sclavonic power in deference to this impulse is a menace to other portions of Europe. The Germans are confederated. The Italians are united. Greece is being reconstructed. And so this race impulse has seized the African here. The feeling is in the atmosphere—the plane in which races move. And there is no people in whom the desire for race integrity and race preservation is stronger than in the Negro.
Another indication of the suddenness of Africa’s regeneration is to be found in the restlessness of her descendants in this country. There are thousands of Negroes, in comfortable circumstances here, who are yet yearning after the land of their fathers; who are anxious, not so much to be relieved from present pressure, as to obtain an expansive field for their energies; who feel the need not only of horizontal openings—free movement on the plane which they occupy—but a chance to rise above it—a vertical outlet.
Within the last thirty years, the sentiment of race and of nationality has attained wonderful development. Not only have the teachings of thinkers and philosophers set forth the importance of the theory, but the deeds of statesmen and patriots have, more or less successfully, demonstrated the practicability of it. The efforts of men like Garibaldi and Cavour in Italy, of Kossuth in Hungary, of Bismarck in Germany, of the Ashantees and Zulus in Africa, have proved the indestructible vitality and tenacity of race.
Notwithstanding the widespread progress of Mohammedanism in Africa, and though it has largely influenced the organic life of numerous tribes in the vast regions of the Soudan, yet the Arabs, who first introduced the religion, have never been allowed to obtain political ascendancy. None of the Nigritian tribes have ever abdicated their race individuality or parted with their idiosyncracies in embracing the faith of Islam. But, whenever and wherever it has been necessary, great Negro warriors have arisen from the ranks of Islam, and, inspired by the teachings of the new faith, which merges all distinctions in one great brotherhood, have checked the arrogance of their foreign teachers, and have driven them, if at any time they affected superiority based upon race, from their artificial ascendancy. In the early days of Islam, when the Moors from the north attempted to establish political supremacy in the Nigritian countries, there rose up a Negro statesman and warrior, Soni Heli Ischia, and expelled the Moorish conquerors. He destroyed the ecclesiastical strongholds, which were fast growing into secular kingdoms, and erected upon their ruins one indigenous empire, having conquered all from Timbuctoo westward to the sea, and eastward to the frontier of Abyssinia, making about three thousand miles in length. Since then, Islam in Africa has been very much modified in its practices by the social peculiarities of the people. And, within the last twenty years, a distinguished native scholar and warrior, Omaru Al-Hajj, suppressed the undue influence of the Arabs at Timbuctoo—attacked that city in 1864, expelled the Arabs, and, with the same troops, confined the French to the western side of the Niger. His son Ahmadu now reigns at Sego, and, both by diplomacy and force, is checking or controlling the renewed operations of the French in the valley of the Niger.
This seems to be the period of race organisation and race consolidation. The races in Europe are striving to group themselves together according to their natural affinities. The concentration and development of the Sclavonic power in deference to this impulse is a menace to other portions of Europe. The Germans are confederated. The Italians are united. Greece is being reconstructed. And so this race impulse has seized the African here. The feeling is in the atmosphere—the plane in which races move. And there is no people in whom the desire for race integrity and race preservation is stronger than in the Negro.
And I may be permitted to add here, that on this question of race, no argument is necessary or effective. Argument may be necessary in discussing the methods or course of procedure for the preservation of race integrity, and for the development of race efficiency, but no argument is needed as to the necessity of such preservation and development. If a man does not feel it—if it does not rise up with spontaneous and inspiring power in his heart— then he has neither part nor lot in it. The man who needs conviction on this subject, had much better be left unconvinced.
The Rev. Henry Venn, the late able Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, frequently dealt with this subject in the “Instructions given to Missionaries at their dismission” from Salisbury Square. In one of these inimitable addresses he says, with large practicality and clearness of judgment:--
The importance of taking into account national distinctions is forced upon us by the enlargement of our missionary experience. . . . . The committee warn you, that these race distinctions will probably rise in intensity with the progress of the mission. The distinctions may be softened down by grace; they may be hid from view in a season of the first love, and of the sense of unity in Christ Jesus; but they are part of our nature, and, as the satirist says, “You may expel Nature for a time by force, but it will surely return.” So, distinctions of race are irrepressible. They are comparatively weak in the early stage of a mission, because all the superiority is on one side; but as the native race advances in intelligence, as their power of arguing strengthens, as they excel in writing sensational statements, as they become our rivals in the pulpit and on the platform, long cherished but dormant prejudices, and even passions, will occasionally burst forth.[5]
But to return after this digression. It is no doubt hard for you in this country to understand the strong race feeling in the Negro, or to appreciate the existence of such a feeling. As you glance over this land at the Negro population, their condition is such as to inspire, if not always the contempt, the despair, of the superficial observer, as to their future; and as you hear of their ancestral home, of its burning climate and its fatal diseases, of its sandy deserts and its malarious swamps, of its superstitious inhabitants and degraded populations, you fancy that you see not one glimpse of hope in the dim hereafter of such a race. But let me assure you that, ignoble as this people may appear here, they have brought a blessing to your shores; and you may rely upon it, that God has something in store for a people who have so served the world. He has something further to accomplish by means of a country of which He has so frequently availed himself in the past; and we may believe that out of it will yet come some of the greatest marvels which are to mark the closing periods of time.
Africa may yet prove to be the spiritual conservatory of the world. Just as in past times, Egypt proved the stronghold of Christianity after Jerusalem fell, and just as the noblest and greatest of the Fathers of the Christian Church came out of Egypt, so it may be, when the civilised nations, in consequence of their wonderful material development, shall have had their spiritual perceptions darkened and their spiritual susceptibilities blunted through the agency of a captivating and absorbing materialism, it may be, that they may have to resort to Africa to recover some of the simple elements of faith; for the promise of that land is that she shall stretch forth her hands unto God.
And see the wisdom and justice of God. While the Africans have been away rendering service their country has been kept for them. It is a very insignificant portion of that continent, after all, that foreigners have been permitted to occupy. Take any good map of Africa, and you will see that it is blank everywhere almost down to the sea. Senegambia, that important country north of the equator, has been much travelled over, and yet it is only on the coast and in spots here and there that it is occupied by Europeans.
Going down along the west coast, we find the French colonies of Senegal and Goree, the British settlements at the Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Lagos, the French colony of Gaboon, the Spanish island of Fernando Po, and the Portuguese colony of Loanda. The most important parts of the coast are still in the hands of the aborigines; and civilised and Christian Negroes from the United States occupy six hundred miles of the choicest territory in Africa, called the Republic of Liberia. All travellers along the Coast pronounce the region of country included within the limits of Liberia, as the most fertile and wealthy along the entire coast, and commanding a back country of untold resources. Europeans tried for centuries to get a foothold in that territory; but the natives would never consent to their settlement in it, while they gladly welcomed their brethren returning from exile in this country.
The exiled Negro, then, has a home in Africa. Africa is his, if he will. He may ignore it. He may consider that he is divested of any right to it; but this will not alter his relations to that country, or impair the integrity of his title. He may be content to fight against the fearful odds in this country; but he is the proprietor of a vast domain. He is entitled to a whole continent by his constitution and antecedents. Those who refuse, at the present moment, to avail themselves of their inheritance think they do so because they believe that they are progressing in this country. There has, no doubt, been progress in many respects in their condition here. I would not, for one moment, say anything that would cast a shadow upon their hopes, or blight, in the slightest degree, their anticipations. I could wish that they might realise to the fullest extent their loftiest aspirations. It is indeed impossible not to sympathise with the intelligent Negro, whose imagination, kindled by the prospects and possibilities of this great country, the land of his birth, makes him desire to remain and share in its future struggles and future glories. But he still suffers from many drawbacks. The stranger visiting this land, and going among its coloured inhabitants, and reading their newspapers, still hears the wail of slavery. The wail of physical suffering has been exchanged for the groans of an intellectual, social, and ecclesiastical ostracism. Not long since the touching appeal of a coloured man almost in forma pauperis, before a great ecclesiastical assembly for equal rights in the Church,[6] was wafted over the country, and sent its thrilling tones into many a heart, but yet the only response has been the reverberation of the echo. And who cannot understand the meaning of the hesitancy on the part of the powers that be to grant the appeal? “He who runs may read.”
The Rev. Henry Venn, the late able Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, frequently dealt with this subject in the “Instructions given to Missionaries at their dismission” from Salisbury Square. In one of these inimitable addresses he says, with large practicality and clearness of judgment:--
The importance of taking into account national distinctions is forced upon us by the enlargement of our missionary experience. . . . . The committee warn you, that these race distinctions will probably rise in intensity with the progress of the mission. The distinctions may be softened down by grace; they may be hid from view in a season of the first love, and of the sense of unity in Christ Jesus; but they are part of our nature, and, as the satirist says, “You may expel Nature for a time by force, but it will surely return.” So, distinctions of race are irrepressible. They are comparatively weak in the early stage of a mission, because all the superiority is on one side; but as the native race advances in intelligence, as their power of arguing strengthens, as they excel in writing sensational statements, as they become our rivals in the pulpit and on the platform, long cherished but dormant prejudices, and even passions, will occasionally burst forth.[5]
But to return after this digression. It is no doubt hard for you in this country to understand the strong race feeling in the Negro, or to appreciate the existence of such a feeling. As you glance over this land at the Negro population, their condition is such as to inspire, if not always the contempt, the despair, of the superficial observer, as to their future; and as you hear of their ancestral home, of its burning climate and its fatal diseases, of its sandy deserts and its malarious swamps, of its superstitious inhabitants and degraded populations, you fancy that you see not one glimpse of hope in the dim hereafter of such a race. But let me assure you that, ignoble as this people may appear here, they have brought a blessing to your shores; and you may rely upon it, that God has something in store for a people who have so served the world. He has something further to accomplish by means of a country of which He has so frequently availed himself in the past; and we may believe that out of it will yet come some of the greatest marvels which are to mark the closing periods of time.
Africa may yet prove to be the spiritual conservatory of the world. Just as in past times, Egypt proved the stronghold of Christianity after Jerusalem fell, and just as the noblest and greatest of the Fathers of the Christian Church came out of Egypt, so it may be, when the civilised nations, in consequence of their wonderful material development, shall have had their spiritual perceptions darkened and their spiritual susceptibilities blunted through the agency of a captivating and absorbing materialism, it may be, that they may have to resort to Africa to recover some of the simple elements of faith; for the promise of that land is that she shall stretch forth her hands unto God.
And see the wisdom and justice of God. While the Africans have been away rendering service their country has been kept for them. It is a very insignificant portion of that continent, after all, that foreigners have been permitted to occupy. Take any good map of Africa, and you will see that it is blank everywhere almost down to the sea. Senegambia, that important country north of the equator, has been much travelled over, and yet it is only on the coast and in spots here and there that it is occupied by Europeans.
Going down along the west coast, we find the French colonies of Senegal and Goree, the British settlements at the Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Lagos, the French colony of Gaboon, the Spanish island of Fernando Po, and the Portuguese colony of Loanda. The most important parts of the coast are still in the hands of the aborigines; and civilised and Christian Negroes from the United States occupy six hundred miles of the choicest territory in Africa, called the Republic of Liberia. All travellers along the Coast pronounce the region of country included within the limits of Liberia, as the most fertile and wealthy along the entire coast, and commanding a back country of untold resources. Europeans tried for centuries to get a foothold in that territory; but the natives would never consent to their settlement in it, while they gladly welcomed their brethren returning from exile in this country.
The exiled Negro, then, has a home in Africa. Africa is his, if he will. He may ignore it. He may consider that he is divested of any right to it; but this will not alter his relations to that country, or impair the integrity of his title. He may be content to fight against the fearful odds in this country; but he is the proprietor of a vast domain. He is entitled to a whole continent by his constitution and antecedents. Those who refuse, at the present moment, to avail themselves of their inheritance think they do so because they believe that they are progressing in this country. There has, no doubt, been progress in many respects in their condition here. I would not, for one moment, say anything that would cast a shadow upon their hopes, or blight, in the slightest degree, their anticipations. I could wish that they might realise to the fullest extent their loftiest aspirations. It is indeed impossible not to sympathise with the intelligent Negro, whose imagination, kindled by the prospects and possibilities of this great country, the land of his birth, makes him desire to remain and share in its future struggles and future glories. But he still suffers from many drawbacks. The stranger visiting this land, and going among its coloured inhabitants, and reading their newspapers, still hears the wail of slavery. The wail of physical suffering has been exchanged for the groans of an intellectual, social, and ecclesiastical ostracism. Not long since the touching appeal of a coloured man almost in forma pauperis, before a great ecclesiastical assembly for equal rights in the Church,[6] was wafted over the country, and sent its thrilling tones into many a heart, but yet the only response has been the reverberation of the echo. And who cannot understand the meaning of the hesitancy on the part of the powers that be to grant the appeal? “He who runs may read.”
Footnotes:
5 Instructions of the Committee, June 80, 1868. See Memoir of the Rev. H. Venn; by Rev. William Knight, M.A.—Longmans, Green and Co., London, E.C.
6 Rev. Mr. Hammond before the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held at Cincinnati, in May, 1880, on the question of the election of a coloured bishop.
5 Instructions of the Committee, June 80, 1868. See Memoir of the Rev. H. Venn; by Rev. William Knight, M.A.—Longmans, Green and Co., London, E.C.
6 Rev. Mr. Hammond before the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held at Cincinnati, in May, 1880, on the question of the election of a coloured bishop.
As a result of their freedom and enlarged education, the descendants of Africa in this country are beginning to feel themselves straitened. They are beginning to feel that only in Africa will they find the sphere of their true activity. And it is a significant fact that this impulse is coming from the Southern States. There is the great mass of the race; and there their instincts are less impaired by the infusion of alien blood and by hostile climatic influences. There we find the Negro in the almost unimpaired integrity of his race susceptibility, and he is by an uncontrollable impulse feeling after a congenial atmosphere which his nature tells him he can find only in Africa. And he is going to Africa.
As long as he remains in this country, he is hampered both in mind and body. He can conceive of no radiance, no beauty, no inspiration in what are ignorantly called “the Wilds of Africa,” The society in which he lives in the lands of his exile he supposes, from knowing no other, to be the normal condition of man, and fancies he will suffer if he leaves it. But when he gets home he finds the atmosphere there a part of himself. He puts off the garment which has hampered his growth here, and he finds that he not only does not take cold, but has a chance for healthful development.
There is not a single Negro in the United States on the road to practical truth, so far as his race is concerned. He feels something in him, his instincts point to it, but he cannot act out what he feels. And when he has made up his mind to remain in America, he has also made up his mind to surrender his race integrity; for he sees no chance of its preservation. There is in him neither hope enough to excite the desire to preserve it, nor desire enough to encourage the hope of its preservation. But, in Africa, he casts off his trammels. His wings develop, and he soars into an atmosphere of exhaustless truth for him. There he becomes a righteous man; he casts off his fears and his doubts. There for him is perpetual health; there he returns to reason and faith. There he feels that nothing can happen to the race. There he is surrounded by millions of men, as far as he can see or hear, just like himself, and he is delivered from the constant dread which harasses him in this country, as to what is to become of the Negro. There the solicitude is in the opposite direction. There he fears for the white man, living in a climate hostile, and often fatal to him.
But there are two other facts, not, perhaps, generally known, to which I would like to call attention. The first is, that, notwithstanding the thousands and millions who, by violence and plunder, have been taken from Africa, she is as populous to-day as she ever was; and the other is, that Africa has never lost the better classes of her people. As a rule, those who were exported— nearly all the forty millions who have been brought away—belonged to the servile and criminal classes. Only here and there, by the accidents of war, or the misfortunes of politics, was a leading African brought away. Africa is often called the Niobe of all nations, in allusion to the fact that her children in such vast numbers have been torn from her bosom; but the analogy is not strictly accurate. The ancient fable tells that Niobe clung to her children with warding arms, while the envious deities shot child after child, daughters and fair sons, till the whole twelve were slain, and the mother, powerless to defend her offspring, herself became a stone. Now this is not the fact with Africa. The children who were torn from her bosom she could well spare. She has not been petrified with grief; she has not become a stone. She is as prolific to-day as in the days of yore. Her greenness and fertility are perennial. It was said of her in the past, and it may be said of her to-day, that she is ever bringing forth something new.
And she has not been entirely bereaved even of those who have been torn from her bosom. In all the countries of their exile, severe as the ordeal has been, they have been preserved. It might be said of them as of the Hebrews in Egypt, “the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.”
No; if we are to gather an analogy to Africa from ancient fable, the Sphinx supplies us with a truer symbol. The Sphinx was said to sit in the road side, and put riddles to every passenger. If the man could not answer, she swallowed him alive. If he could solve the riddle, the Sphinx was slain. Has not Africa been, through the ages, sitting on the highway of the world? There she is, south of Europe, with but a lake between, joined on to Asia, with the most frequented oceans on the east and west of her—accessible to all the races, and yet her secret is unknown. She has swallowed up her thousands. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle at last. The opening up of Africa is to be the work of Africans.
As long as he remains in this country, he is hampered both in mind and body. He can conceive of no radiance, no beauty, no inspiration in what are ignorantly called “the Wilds of Africa,” The society in which he lives in the lands of his exile he supposes, from knowing no other, to be the normal condition of man, and fancies he will suffer if he leaves it. But when he gets home he finds the atmosphere there a part of himself. He puts off the garment which has hampered his growth here, and he finds that he not only does not take cold, but has a chance for healthful development.
There is not a single Negro in the United States on the road to practical truth, so far as his race is concerned. He feels something in him, his instincts point to it, but he cannot act out what he feels. And when he has made up his mind to remain in America, he has also made up his mind to surrender his race integrity; for he sees no chance of its preservation. There is in him neither hope enough to excite the desire to preserve it, nor desire enough to encourage the hope of its preservation. But, in Africa, he casts off his trammels. His wings develop, and he soars into an atmosphere of exhaustless truth for him. There he becomes a righteous man; he casts off his fears and his doubts. There for him is perpetual health; there he returns to reason and faith. There he feels that nothing can happen to the race. There he is surrounded by millions of men, as far as he can see or hear, just like himself, and he is delivered from the constant dread which harasses him in this country, as to what is to become of the Negro. There the solicitude is in the opposite direction. There he fears for the white man, living in a climate hostile, and often fatal to him.
But there are two other facts, not, perhaps, generally known, to which I would like to call attention. The first is, that, notwithstanding the thousands and millions who, by violence and plunder, have been taken from Africa, she is as populous to-day as she ever was; and the other is, that Africa has never lost the better classes of her people. As a rule, those who were exported— nearly all the forty millions who have been brought away—belonged to the servile and criminal classes. Only here and there, by the accidents of war, or the misfortunes of politics, was a leading African brought away. Africa is often called the Niobe of all nations, in allusion to the fact that her children in such vast numbers have been torn from her bosom; but the analogy is not strictly accurate. The ancient fable tells that Niobe clung to her children with warding arms, while the envious deities shot child after child, daughters and fair sons, till the whole twelve were slain, and the mother, powerless to defend her offspring, herself became a stone. Now this is not the fact with Africa. The children who were torn from her bosom she could well spare. She has not been petrified with grief; she has not become a stone. She is as prolific to-day as in the days of yore. Her greenness and fertility are perennial. It was said of her in the past, and it may be said of her to-day, that she is ever bringing forth something new.
And she has not been entirely bereaved even of those who have been torn from her bosom. In all the countries of their exile, severe as the ordeal has been, they have been preserved. It might be said of them as of the Hebrews in Egypt, “the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.”
No; if we are to gather an analogy to Africa from ancient fable, the Sphinx supplies us with a truer symbol. The Sphinx was said to sit in the road side, and put riddles to every passenger. If the man could not answer, she swallowed him alive. If he could solve the riddle, the Sphinx was slain. Has not Africa been, through the ages, sitting on the highway of the world? There she is, south of Europe, with but a lake between, joined on to Asia, with the most frequented oceans on the east and west of her—accessible to all the races, and yet her secret is unknown. She has swallowed up her thousands. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle at last. The opening up of Africa is to be the work of Africans.
In the Providence of God, it seems that this great and glorious work is reserved for the Negro. Centuries of effort and centuries of failure demonstrate that white men cannot build up colonies there. If we look at the most recent maps of Africa, we see that large tracts have been explored: English, German, Belgian, French and American expeditions have lately described large portions of the continent; but every one must be struck by the enormous gaps that remain to be filled in—the vast portions which the foot of the white man has never trodden. With the exception of the countries south of Egypt, the great lake region, and the strip of country from east to west, containing the routes of Cameron and Stanley, and if we leave out the portion of North Central Africa explored by Barth—the country is still as unknown to foreigners as it has been throughout all history, from the days of Herodotus and Ptolemy to the present. Who knows anything of the mountains of the moon? of all that vast region which lies directly east of Liberia, as far as the Indian Ocean? What foreigner can tell anything of the interior of Bonny, or of Calabar? If we examine the Continent, from the extreme north to the extreme south, from Egypt to Kaffraria or the country of the Zulus, we see very little yet accomplished. The most successful effort yet made in colonising Africa is in Liberia. This will be permanent, because the colonists are of the indigenous stock. There are six hundred miles of coast, and two hundred miles of breadth, rescued for civilisation. I mean, in that extent of country, over a million of people are on the road to self-elevation. They come in contact with an atmosphere of growth.
Now the people who are producing these changes have a peculiar claim upon this country—for they went out from this nation and are carrying American institutions into that Continent. And this great country has peculiar facilities for the work of African civilisation. The nations of Europe are looking with anxious eyes to the “Dark Continent,” as they love to call it, probably for the purpose of kindling their religious zeal, or stimulating their commercial instincts. But not one of them has the opportunity of entering that Continent with the advantages of the “United States. They cannot send their citizens there from Europe to colonise— they die. France is now aiming at taking possession, by railroads, of the trade of the Soudan, from Algeria and Senegal. But the success of the scheme, through European agency, is extremely problematical. The question has been mooted of transferring their Negro citizens from the West Indies—from Martinique and Guadaloupe— but they cannot spare them from those islands. England would like to transport to the countries of the Niger, and to the regions interior of Sierra Leone, civilised blacks from her colonies in the Western hemisphere: but to encourage such a movement would be to destroy Barbadoes, Jamaica and Antigua. The King of the Belgians, in his philanthropic and commercial zeal for the opening and colonising of Africa, has no population available. The United States is the only country which, providentially, can do the work which the whole world now wants done. Entering on the West Coast, through Liberia, she may stretch a chain of colonies of her own citizens through the whole length of the Soudan, from the Niger to the Nile—from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.
This country, said Dr. Storrs, has thousands of liberated and Christianised Africans in it, just at the moment when that dark continent is suddenly opened to the access of the Gospel. God has been building here a power, for the glory of His name, and for His service in the earth. I see the stamp hold in the hand, and the liquid wax lying before it; and I do not doubt that the purpose is to fix the impression on that wax from the engraved brass or stone. I see the men whom man has brought here, and whom God has converted, and before them those vast outstretching realms made ready for the truth; and I cannot doubt that His purpose is to fix by these men, upon those prepared lands, the inscription of the Gospel and the Cross! And it seems to me that in the end all men must feel this.”[7]
Some have already gone, the pioneers in this great work. Leaving the land of their birth, where they have laboured for generations, they have gone to brave the perils of another wilderness, to cut down forests, to clear away jungles, to make roads, to build towns, to cultivate farms, and to teach regular industry to their less favoured brethren; and they ask you to follow these new settlements, as they push into the heart of the continent, with all the aids and appliances of your advanced civilisation.
In visions of the future, I behold those beautiful hills—the banks of those charming streams, the verdant plains and flowery fields, the salubrious highlands in primæval innocence and glory, and those fertile districts watered everywhere as the garden of the Lord; I see them all taken possession of by the returning exiles from the West, trained for the work of rebuilding waste places under severe discipline and hard bondage. I see, too, their brethren hastening to welcome them from the slopes of the Niger, and from its lovely valleys—from many a sequestered nook, and from many a palmy plain— Mohammedans and Pagans, chiefs and people, all coming to catch something of the inspiration the exiles have brought—to share in the borrowed jewels they have imported, and to march back hand-in-hand with their returned brethren towards the sunrise for the regeneration of a continent. And under their united labours, I see the land rapidly reclaimed—raised from the slumber of ages, and rescued from a stagnant barbarism; and then, to the astonishment of the whole world, in a higher sense than has yet been witnessed, “Ethiopia shall suddenly stretch out her hands unto God.”
Now the people who are producing these changes have a peculiar claim upon this country—for they went out from this nation and are carrying American institutions into that Continent. And this great country has peculiar facilities for the work of African civilisation. The nations of Europe are looking with anxious eyes to the “Dark Continent,” as they love to call it, probably for the purpose of kindling their religious zeal, or stimulating their commercial instincts. But not one of them has the opportunity of entering that Continent with the advantages of the “United States. They cannot send their citizens there from Europe to colonise— they die. France is now aiming at taking possession, by railroads, of the trade of the Soudan, from Algeria and Senegal. But the success of the scheme, through European agency, is extremely problematical. The question has been mooted of transferring their Negro citizens from the West Indies—from Martinique and Guadaloupe— but they cannot spare them from those islands. England would like to transport to the countries of the Niger, and to the regions interior of Sierra Leone, civilised blacks from her colonies in the Western hemisphere: but to encourage such a movement would be to destroy Barbadoes, Jamaica and Antigua. The King of the Belgians, in his philanthropic and commercial zeal for the opening and colonising of Africa, has no population available. The United States is the only country which, providentially, can do the work which the whole world now wants done. Entering on the West Coast, through Liberia, she may stretch a chain of colonies of her own citizens through the whole length of the Soudan, from the Niger to the Nile—from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.
This country, said Dr. Storrs, has thousands of liberated and Christianised Africans in it, just at the moment when that dark continent is suddenly opened to the access of the Gospel. God has been building here a power, for the glory of His name, and for His service in the earth. I see the stamp hold in the hand, and the liquid wax lying before it; and I do not doubt that the purpose is to fix the impression on that wax from the engraved brass or stone. I see the men whom man has brought here, and whom God has converted, and before them those vast outstretching realms made ready for the truth; and I cannot doubt that His purpose is to fix by these men, upon those prepared lands, the inscription of the Gospel and the Cross! And it seems to me that in the end all men must feel this.”[7]
Some have already gone, the pioneers in this great work. Leaving the land of their birth, where they have laboured for generations, they have gone to brave the perils of another wilderness, to cut down forests, to clear away jungles, to make roads, to build towns, to cultivate farms, and to teach regular industry to their less favoured brethren; and they ask you to follow these new settlements, as they push into the heart of the continent, with all the aids and appliances of your advanced civilisation.
In visions of the future, I behold those beautiful hills—the banks of those charming streams, the verdant plains and flowery fields, the salubrious highlands in primæval innocence and glory, and those fertile districts watered everywhere as the garden of the Lord; I see them all taken possession of by the returning exiles from the West, trained for the work of rebuilding waste places under severe discipline and hard bondage. I see, too, their brethren hastening to welcome them from the slopes of the Niger, and from its lovely valleys—from many a sequestered nook, and from many a palmy plain— Mohammedans and Pagans, chiefs and people, all coming to catch something of the inspiration the exiles have brought—to share in the borrowed jewels they have imported, and to march back hand-in-hand with their returned brethren towards the sunrise for the regeneration of a continent. And under their united labours, I see the land rapidly reclaimed—raised from the slumber of ages, and rescued from a stagnant barbarism; and then, to the astonishment of the whole world, in a higher sense than has yet been witnessed, “Ethiopia shall suddenly stretch out her hands unto God.”
Footnotes:
7 Discourse before the American Missionary Association, October, 1879.
7 Discourse before the American Missionary Association, October, 1879.
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