plied with missionaries in the world; and in proportion to the number of agents compared to the population, the success may be inferior to most other countries where efforts have been made." What would the great missionary say to the magistrate's report for the district of Kokstad, where there is a population of 5800 (including 600 Europeans) for whose benefit "work is carried on by the Church of England, Roman Catholic Church, Wesleyan Society, and Congregationalists? School work by all the above is being carried on, the number of schools being seven."

If missionaries accepted the good things the gods provide for them in the same spirit in which in the old days the old school of parsons accepted fat livings, they would be less open to criticism; but when one reads, in a Review which is supposed to represent the prosaic fag-end of a practical century, about these individuals "flinging to the winds all considerations of wealth, and ease, and social position, and worldly honour, having left behind them friends and country, everything which is ordinarily supposed to make life worth having"one turns for refreshment to the journals of Livingstone. That greatest of travellers, who had some little knowledge of what hardship and isolation are, repudiated with supreme scorn the idea of self-denial. One of the chief stumbling-blocks to the success of missionary work, he said, was cant of this sort, and he asked if British officers ordered out to India ever boasted of their self-denial. The sight of the trim farmhouses standing in their cultivated lands in the loveliest climate in the world made me wonder if many a parish priest, working in the sunless dens of the great cities of Europe, would

not sometimes like to give up the advantages of civilisation to practise the life of self-denial vaunted at May meetings. No wonder Livingstone wrote, "I never felt a single pang at having left the Missionary Society." A missionary society is no place for a great missionary. In 1857 he again wrote, "My views of what is missionary duty are not so contracted as those whose ideal is a dumpy sort of man with a Bible under his arm." The dumpy sort of man is still often to be seen in South Africa, but as often wielding the scales behind the store counter as carrying the volume of the sacred Law.

My strictures are not aimed against all missionary propaganda. The apostolic labours of the missionaries of Rome have pioneered the way for civilisation in many dark places of the earth, and there are self-denying men of Protestant persuasion who are enduring dangers not less than those which Williams and Patterson in the Pacific Islands endured to the death. I am writing only of South Africa; and even there, there are men of single purpose and of indefatigable energy who are working hard in the interests of Christian civilisation. The existence of the Lovedale Institute, which belongs to the Free Church of Scotland, with its admirable system of technical education for natives, is a standing proof of what can be done if the right method be adopted. But Lovedale is an oasis in the African desert. The fact remains that the costly missionary organisations which have representatives in South Africa far out of propor-. tion to the native population, are doing practically nothing in the interests of civilisation; and it cannot be said that they have the obstacles to contend with which

used to beset the old pioneer missionaries. The climate of South Africa is superb; the people are orderly, and in case of any outbreak armed forces are at hand to repress it. The land is fertile, and I am absolutely certain that there are at this moment hundreds of unemployed Oxford and Cambridge men who, if they could be located in a comfortable Kaffrarian mission-house, would undertake not to boast of the "social position and worldly honour" they have given up, as is the custom of some of those evangelists who have previously failed in the minor walks of commerce.

A curious feature of South African religious life is this. A large number of the Dutch pastors are annually imported from the Scottish universities, as the doctrines of the Reformed Church and of the Presbyterian Church are almost identical. It therefore follows that two young graduates of Aberdeen may have been college friends, and have come out to the Cape together-one of them to minister to an opulent congregation of Boers, the other to engage in the missionary propaganda; and although their belief is presumably the same, it will be the mission of the one to preach down the mission of the other, as the Africander-Dutch sternly discountenance missionaries. Perhaps the Boers may be right in this respect. Our methods with the native races have not been so successful that we can sit in judgment on the Cape Dutch, who were in the country before us. And, moreover, what is the civilisation that we are bringing into Africa? Let any one read the searching and interesting evidence taken before the South African Commission on the Native Laws and Customs, and

then let him read the Report of and Evidence before the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, of which I have some knowledge, and he will fail to find any description of life so degraded and barbarous in the African narrative as of what is going on at our own doors. It is often said in answer to those who criticise the slowness of the results of missionary work, that one forgets that it has taken nearly nineteen centuries to perfect modern civilisation. For my own part, I do not think that we need take this practically despairing view, for I believe that in less than a fifth of the time which has elapsed since the landing of Augustine in Kent, our successors may see South Africa, under European rule, reduced to the civilisation now to be found in Southwark and in Clerkenwell.

I should have liked, had space permitted, to have referred at some length to the question of the Mohammedan propaganda in Africa. Mr Bosworth Smith, who is perhaps the greatest English authority on Islamism, in his essay on 'Mohammedanism in Africa' gives a valuable account of the West Coast religions, but he has impaired its worth by generalisations. The title he has chosen is far embracing, and the recurrence of expressions like "pagan Africa" would seem to include the whole continent from Tripoli to Pondoland, while distinct references to Moffat, to the Kuruman mission, and to Cape Colony, show that his remarks must be taken as referring to what is commonly known as South Africa, as well as to Central and North Africa, unless expressly limited.

I will make no reference to Mr Bosworth Smith's comments on

the progress of Islam on the Zanzibar and Mozambique coasts, as not germane to this article, though in some points my observations in those regions would lead me to join issue with him. As, however, some of his remarks refer to the land of the Kaffirs, it will not be inappropriate to mention them. He says there is no disguising the fact that hitherto, with the exception of one or two isolated spots, Christian effort has been anything but markedly successful in Africa. In this I have already shown that I am in complete agreement with him, but some of the causes he adduces seem a little far-fetched. He says that one reason is that Christianity has come to the negro as an incident of slavery. As far as South Africa goes, there is no foundation for this suggestion. The degenerate race of Hottentots -who, it is perhaps needless to say, are not negroes but yellowmen-may have associated Christianity with the oppression of their Dutch masters; but that is by no means the case with the Kaffirs, who, as far as servitude goes, are as independent as in the earliest days of Moffat and of Livingstone. Christianity having failed, Mr Bosworth Smith says Mohammedanism is fast spreading over the whole continent. His words are "It is hardly too much to say that one half of the whole of Africa is already dominated by Islam; while of the remaining half, one quarter is leavened and another threatened by it." This is, I venture to say, an exaggerated statement; and that he is thinking of Kaffraria is shown by another passage, where he says: "Southward they [the followers of the Prophet] are to be found scattered, always anxious to propagate their creed, even among the unbelieving Kaffirs, and still further

afield in Cape Colony." The facts of the case are as follows. Throughout Africa, south of the Zambesi, there are vast and increasing numbers of Mohammedans. In the seaport towns of Cape Colony there is a relatively enormous settlement of Malays, especially at Cape Town, where they are the most prosperous section of the working population. Their mosques are costly edifices, crowded with worshippers, and their priests are conspicuous in the streets; but my most careful inquiries could never elicit a single instance of the conversion of an African native to Mohammedanism, or even of an attempt to proselytise.

Again, the Indian and Arab traders, who have nearly all the commerce of the Zanzibar and Mozambique coasts in their hands, have spread down to Natal, and thence inland into the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, where they undersell all other merchants and store-keepers. In Natal especially, they are brought into close contact with the natives, but never has an instance been known of proselytism. The same may be said of the coolies, who are imported into Natal by the thousand.

The fact is, the religion of Islam gains its influence in these days by precisely the same methods by which it obtained its power of old

by force. It will probably be found that throughout Africa no converts are made to Islamism save in the case of slaves of Mohammedans, or in localities where the faithful are in such a majority that those who are not Mohammedans are looked down upon. The reason why the religion of Mohammed has made no progress in South Africa, and why it will never make progress among the Kaffirs, is that the followers of the