Preface to the Second Edition.
THE generosity which has made a second edition of this volume necessary is no less surprising than gratifying. It was originally written chiefly with a view of instructing Negro youth in Christian lands eager to study the history, character and destiny of their race. In my early years I sorely felt the need of some such work to assist my own studies and direct my aspirations.
Wherever I turned for light and guidance, I found only what the dominant white man had said in his own way and for his own purposes; or discovered, now and then, some crude literary effort of the Negro in exile and bondage, giving in broken utterances and in forma pauperis the conceptions of a blurred past and the hopes of an indistinct and troubled future. As I advanced in my studies and researches, difficult and hampered as they were, I determined to do, as soon as I felt able, whatever in me lay to supply the desideratum. The reception which my first effort in this direction has met has far exceeded my expectations. The volume appears to have been read with interest and profit, not only by my own people, but by foreigners in the highest literary walks, both in Europe and America.
One very interesting and important effect of the generous reception accorded to the work will be to convince the intelligent Negro youth, first, that in the Republic of Letters, as Mr. Herbert Spencer once said to me, there is no such thing as caste; and, secondly, that if any man, whatever his race, has anything to say worth listening to, men of all races who think will give him more than a respectful hearing.
The Christian Negro has, hitherto, as I have tried to show throughout this volume, rarely been trained to trust his own judgment, or to think that he can have anything to say which foreigners will care to hear. His subordinate position everywhere in Christian countries has made him believe that what his foreign teachers think is the only proper thing to think and that what they say is the only right thing to say. He is, therefore, untrue to the natural direction of his powers, and attempts to soar into an atmosphere not native to his wing. This is what often brings that shadow of disappointment over the brows of his best friends, as his profound disqualifications for the work for which they suppose they had trained him, become apparent. The faulty estimate which he himself entertains of the true field for his energies is not corrected by his guides, who, familiar with and strong on their own ground, can conceive of no other, and do not suspect the vicious estimate of himself and of his destiny in the mind of their protégé. It is difficult for the European to put himself in the place of the Christian Negro. But it is evident that there can be hope for the future improvement of the African only as he finds out his work and destiny and, as a consequence, learns to trust his own judgment; and it is hoped that this volume and the reception it has met, while stimulating effort in that direction on the part of the rising generation of Africans, will encourage their European guides and patrons to allow greater scope and freedom, not only for their mental and moral, but for their social and political evolution.
Wherever I turned for light and guidance, I found only what the dominant white man had said in his own way and for his own purposes; or discovered, now and then, some crude literary effort of the Negro in exile and bondage, giving in broken utterances and in forma pauperis the conceptions of a blurred past and the hopes of an indistinct and troubled future. As I advanced in my studies and researches, difficult and hampered as they were, I determined to do, as soon as I felt able, whatever in me lay to supply the desideratum. The reception which my first effort in this direction has met has far exceeded my expectations. The volume appears to have been read with interest and profit, not only by my own people, but by foreigners in the highest literary walks, both in Europe and America.
One very interesting and important effect of the generous reception accorded to the work will be to convince the intelligent Negro youth, first, that in the Republic of Letters, as Mr. Herbert Spencer once said to me, there is no such thing as caste; and, secondly, that if any man, whatever his race, has anything to say worth listening to, men of all races who think will give him more than a respectful hearing.
The Christian Negro has, hitherto, as I have tried to show throughout this volume, rarely been trained to trust his own judgment, or to think that he can have anything to say which foreigners will care to hear. His subordinate position everywhere in Christian countries has made him believe that what his foreign teachers think is the only proper thing to think and that what they say is the only right thing to say. He is, therefore, untrue to the natural direction of his powers, and attempts to soar into an atmosphere not native to his wing. This is what often brings that shadow of disappointment over the brows of his best friends, as his profound disqualifications for the work for which they suppose they had trained him, become apparent. The faulty estimate which he himself entertains of the true field for his energies is not corrected by his guides, who, familiar with and strong on their own ground, can conceive of no other, and do not suspect the vicious estimate of himself and of his destiny in the mind of their protégé. It is difficult for the European to put himself in the place of the Christian Negro. But it is evident that there can be hope for the future improvement of the African only as he finds out his work and destiny and, as a consequence, learns to trust his own judgment; and it is hoped that this volume and the reception it has met, while stimulating effort in that direction on the part of the rising generation of Africans, will encourage their European guides and patrons to allow greater scope and freedom, not only for their mental and moral, but for their social and political evolution.
Of the numerous reviews of the work which I have had the opportunity of seeing, I have studied none with greater attention and respect than those which have appeared in the Church Missionary Intelligencer, as expressing the views of that large and influential body of Christians who, of all Missionary organisations labouring in Africa, must take precedence for the magnificence of their liberality and the breadth of their conception in planning for the erection of a Christian Church in Africa, and to whose patient and untiring efforts it is owing, notwithstanding existing perplexities, that so many difficulties have been overcome and so many drawbacks removed from the normal development of a genuine African Church.
But I have noticed with regret that the reviewer in the Intelligencer for November, 1887, proceeding upon the assumption that Mohammedanism is eulogised in this volume to the disparagement of Christianity, devotes a large portion of his article to bringing charges against Islam. The tu quoque argument is never satisfactory, dignified or edifying; and in this case it is especially and sadly irrelevant, when the necessity is so pressing for a careful consideration of the elements in the methods of foreign Christian workers in Africa which prevent wider and more permanent results—a subject to the discussion of which the work is chiefly devoted, but which the reviewer seems either to ignore or to deliberately put aside. Most reviewers, however, have discovered no attack upon Christianity itself, but only a serious arraignment of the methods of the Christian teachers of the Negro.
The earlier Missionaries laboured for the people to the extent of the possibilities of that time, and they did noble and exemplary work. The later Missionaries seem not to recognise the altered circumstances and the tendencies created by previous training to growth on racial lines, but wish to walk in the footsteps of their predecessors, as if they still had to deal with a tabula rasa. The result is, that all real life is strangled in a body whose form, notwithstanding advancing years, they strive to retain. They increase their expenditure in certain directions, and wonder that the reproductive power of their work does not fulfil its earlier promise or is not commensurate with the pecuniary outlay. “So long as you treat us like children,” said a wealthy African merchant to the Rev. Henry Venn, late Honorary Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, more than thirty years ago, “we shall behave like children. Treat us like men and we shall behave like men.” [1]
The foreign teachers of the African are able to deal with accidental and external peculiarities—like the names and dress of the people. They secure by large expenditures of money outward conformity, but they have no means of shaping a healthful evolution; indeed, the word “evolution” implies spontaneity. It demands, for its effective operation, the carrière ouverte aux talents in Church and State. Nature suppressed, if vigorous, will make an outlet for itself, and there is no telling the shape it will take when once it has found or made that outlet. But it certainly will not conform to the regulations of those who would keep it down. It is by due attention to these things that Mohammedanism, with its more elastic social and political system, threatens the whole of Africa. What our religious and political teachers should pray for is the gift to recognise the necessity of increasing measures of freedom on the part of their protégés as the condition of social as well as spiritual advancement, so as to afford full scope for the expansion of the inherent energies of the mind. But, as long as they believe that there are no inherent energies to be expanded, they will aim at making the Negro what they think he ought to be, by the plastic hand of European religious organisations and the moulding force of European laws; and these will have no influence beyond European settlements, and, even there, they will stifle all true life in the people. The intelligent Negro of the interior, whether Pagan or Mohammedan, looks upon many of these regulations and laws as not only despotic but absurd, and will reject them as calculated to put him and his people in an awkward and helpless position.
But I have noticed with regret that the reviewer in the Intelligencer for November, 1887, proceeding upon the assumption that Mohammedanism is eulogised in this volume to the disparagement of Christianity, devotes a large portion of his article to bringing charges against Islam. The tu quoque argument is never satisfactory, dignified or edifying; and in this case it is especially and sadly irrelevant, when the necessity is so pressing for a careful consideration of the elements in the methods of foreign Christian workers in Africa which prevent wider and more permanent results—a subject to the discussion of which the work is chiefly devoted, but which the reviewer seems either to ignore or to deliberately put aside. Most reviewers, however, have discovered no attack upon Christianity itself, but only a serious arraignment of the methods of the Christian teachers of the Negro.
The earlier Missionaries laboured for the people to the extent of the possibilities of that time, and they did noble and exemplary work. The later Missionaries seem not to recognise the altered circumstances and the tendencies created by previous training to growth on racial lines, but wish to walk in the footsteps of their predecessors, as if they still had to deal with a tabula rasa. The result is, that all real life is strangled in a body whose form, notwithstanding advancing years, they strive to retain. They increase their expenditure in certain directions, and wonder that the reproductive power of their work does not fulfil its earlier promise or is not commensurate with the pecuniary outlay. “So long as you treat us like children,” said a wealthy African merchant to the Rev. Henry Venn, late Honorary Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, more than thirty years ago, “we shall behave like children. Treat us like men and we shall behave like men.” [1]
The foreign teachers of the African are able to deal with accidental and external peculiarities—like the names and dress of the people. They secure by large expenditures of money outward conformity, but they have no means of shaping a healthful evolution; indeed, the word “evolution” implies spontaneity. It demands, for its effective operation, the carrière ouverte aux talents in Church and State. Nature suppressed, if vigorous, will make an outlet for itself, and there is no telling the shape it will take when once it has found or made that outlet. But it certainly will not conform to the regulations of those who would keep it down. It is by due attention to these things that Mohammedanism, with its more elastic social and political system, threatens the whole of Africa. What our religious and political teachers should pray for is the gift to recognise the necessity of increasing measures of freedom on the part of their protégés as the condition of social as well as spiritual advancement, so as to afford full scope for the expansion of the inherent energies of the mind. But, as long as they believe that there are no inherent energies to be expanded, they will aim at making the Negro what they think he ought to be, by the plastic hand of European religious organisations and the moulding force of European laws; and these will have no influence beyond European settlements, and, even there, they will stifle all true life in the people. The intelligent Negro of the interior, whether Pagan or Mohammedan, looks upon many of these regulations and laws as not only despotic but absurd, and will reject them as calculated to put him and his people in an awkward and helpless position.
[1] Memoir of Rev. Henry Venn B.D., p.546
The reviewer in the Church Missionary Intelligencer for November, says, “Another topic is abundantly dwelt upon in Dr. Blyden’s volume. It is largely devoted to hymning the praises of Liberia.” Perhaps explanation is necessary. That Republic represents two principles for which, in common with all intelligent Christian Negroes, I should contend: First, the return of the exiled African from the house of bondage; and, secondly, Christian Negro autonomy in Church and State on African soil. Liberia is the only country which redeems Christianity, or rather Christians, from the charge of appropriating the country of another people as a reward for giving them the highest religion. There is no other country in the world belonging to any dark race which, evangelised by Christians, has been left to the control of the natives. All Christian countries, excepting Liberia and Haïti, are under the government of Europeans or white people. But we have Mohammedan countries under the rule of men of all the races— Caucasian, Mongolian and Negro—from North-western China to West Africa. Mohammedan conquests mean subjugation to the Koran, and not to Arab or Turk. If I have “hymned the praises of Liberia,” it is because, whatever its present difficulties or failures, it represents an important principle, and may be made the instrument of a great work.[2]
Did Sir William Hunter realise the full effect upon the minds of thinking people among unevangelised races of the eloquent utterances at the close of his able lecture on “The Religions of India,” delivered a few weeks ago before the Society of Arts? He said, “Speaking as an Englishman, I declare my conviction that English missionary enterprise is the highest modern expression of the world-wide national life of our race. I regard it as the spiritual complement of England’s instinct for colonial expansion and Imperial rule.”
Does he know that Chinese, Japanese and African critics of “English missionary enterprise” attribute the energy and zeal displayed to the restless desire for foreign possessions— “for colonial expansion and Imperial rule?”
I am convinced that it is utterly impossible for Christianity to penetrate this continent by the methods now in general favour. I venture to think that if the desire is to convert Mohammedans, Christians should give up their bitter hostility and study Islam—not at second hand, but as far as possible in its original records—with greater sympathy and liberality. The agency of the press diffuses rapidly to the remotest parts of the earth everything said and done in Christian countries. Mohammedan newspapers are reporting foreign intelligence to their people. When Missionary Societies, in their official publications, denounce Mohammed as a “false prophet,” still reproducing the unchastened conceptions of the Middle Ages, they cannot expect that their agents will be received without, to say the least, suspicion in Mohammedan countries.
In view of the past and present position of Islam, Christians have no ground for special exultation. Ishmael holds his own before Isaac. The Cross has surrendered to the Crescent the very locality which it first consecrated.
The voice of the Muezzin is heard in the plain of Sharon and in the hill country of Judea; on the banks of the Jordan, and by the waters of Abana and Pharpar; at Bethlehem, Hebron, Nazareth. Over one of the gates of the “Holy City,” the Muslim formula is displayed, “There is no God but God and Mohammed is the Apostle of God.” If in those countries Islam has lost its productive and conquering energy as a dominant force, Christianity has not regained its ancient influence. Intelligence furnished by Christian missionaries in the Turkish Empire does not show that Mohammedanism is growing any weaker at its centre. As a rejoinder to the attacks made upon Islam in the recent or pending controversy in England and America, the highest Turkish authorities propose the enactment of a law restricting or abolishing the privileges formerly enjoyed by Christian missionaries in the establishment and conduct of schools. Dr. Washburn, the President of Robert College, at Constantinople, has just furnished in the New York Independent (Feb. 9) the translation of an important letter written by the Sheikh-ul-Islam, giving an official statement of Mohammedan doctrine for the instruction of recent and expected converts to Islam.[3]
Did Sir William Hunter realise the full effect upon the minds of thinking people among unevangelised races of the eloquent utterances at the close of his able lecture on “The Religions of India,” delivered a few weeks ago before the Society of Arts? He said, “Speaking as an Englishman, I declare my conviction that English missionary enterprise is the highest modern expression of the world-wide national life of our race. I regard it as the spiritual complement of England’s instinct for colonial expansion and Imperial rule.”
Does he know that Chinese, Japanese and African critics of “English missionary enterprise” attribute the energy and zeal displayed to the restless desire for foreign possessions— “for colonial expansion and Imperial rule?”
I am convinced that it is utterly impossible for Christianity to penetrate this continent by the methods now in general favour. I venture to think that if the desire is to convert Mohammedans, Christians should give up their bitter hostility and study Islam—not at second hand, but as far as possible in its original records—with greater sympathy and liberality. The agency of the press diffuses rapidly to the remotest parts of the earth everything said and done in Christian countries. Mohammedan newspapers are reporting foreign intelligence to their people. When Missionary Societies, in their official publications, denounce Mohammed as a “false prophet,” still reproducing the unchastened conceptions of the Middle Ages, they cannot expect that their agents will be received without, to say the least, suspicion in Mohammedan countries.
In view of the past and present position of Islam, Christians have no ground for special exultation. Ishmael holds his own before Isaac. The Cross has surrendered to the Crescent the very locality which it first consecrated.
The voice of the Muezzin is heard in the plain of Sharon and in the hill country of Judea; on the banks of the Jordan, and by the waters of Abana and Pharpar; at Bethlehem, Hebron, Nazareth. Over one of the gates of the “Holy City,” the Muslim formula is displayed, “There is no God but God and Mohammed is the Apostle of God.” If in those countries Islam has lost its productive and conquering energy as a dominant force, Christianity has not regained its ancient influence. Intelligence furnished by Christian missionaries in the Turkish Empire does not show that Mohammedanism is growing any weaker at its centre. As a rejoinder to the attacks made upon Islam in the recent or pending controversy in England and America, the highest Turkish authorities propose the enactment of a law restricting or abolishing the privileges formerly enjoyed by Christian missionaries in the establishment and conduct of schools. Dr. Washburn, the President of Robert College, at Constantinople, has just furnished in the New York Independent (Feb. 9) the translation of an important letter written by the Sheikh-ul-Islam, giving an official statement of Mohammedan doctrine for the instruction of recent and expected converts to Islam.[3]
[2] See Appendix
[3] See Appendix
[3] See Appendix
As to India, Sir William Hunter has recently told us of the new vitality awakened among the Mohammedans of that country. “The sternly religious character,” he says, “of their early teaching gives a vigorous coherence to Islam in India which may yet be productive of great political results.”[4]
In Central Africa, the religion of Arabia shows its pristine vitality and expansive power, carrying on its operations by indigenous agents and simple methods; while Christianity attempts to confront it by an expensive missionary system and exotic agencies—by various sects and a complicated ecclesiasticism. The experience of each day, especially when we contrast the results of the two systems, convinces the careful and earnest student of the question that an effective missionary among the Natives of interior Africa,
whether Pagan or Mohammedan, must begin with “Silver and gold have I none” and continue with, “Stand up; I myself also am a man.”
And it is becoming more and more apparent that an enterprise which requires so much and such continuous foreign aid and oversight—such an apparatus of alien training and directing agencies—is ill-adapted to compete with that energetic and cosmopolitan system from Arabia, whose agents are indigenous and stand on their own legs, pursuing methods, which, if under the inspiration of the Koran, are “racy of the soil.”
WEST AFRICA, March 20th, 1888.
In Central Africa, the religion of Arabia shows its pristine vitality and expansive power, carrying on its operations by indigenous agents and simple methods; while Christianity attempts to confront it by an expensive missionary system and exotic agencies—by various sects and a complicated ecclesiasticism. The experience of each day, especially when we contrast the results of the two systems, convinces the careful and earnest student of the question that an effective missionary among the Natives of interior Africa,
whether Pagan or Mohammedan, must begin with “Silver and gold have I none” and continue with, “Stand up; I myself also am a man.”
And it is becoming more and more apparent that an enterprise which requires so much and such continuous foreign aid and oversight—such an apparatus of alien training and directing agencies—is ill-adapted to compete with that energetic and cosmopolitan system from Arabia, whose agents are indigenous and stand on their own legs, pursuing methods, which, if under the inspiration of the Koran, are “racy of the soil.”
WEST AFRICA, March 20th, 1888.
[4] Religions of India.
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