08 Another Stage at Kangwe
Chapter 8 ANOTHER STAGE AT KANGWE November 1890―1891 A VIGOROUS inspection of his great parish was inaugurated at once after Dr. Good’s return to Africa, and his unvarnished reports went home to America.
"The state of the work is a good deal mixed; some sad falls; inquirers grown careless. No denying the fact that in general Christians have decidedly cooled off, especially in out-of-the-way places. At Nganda: Talked to a small audience who manifested small interest. At Olamba: A large company of Christians welcomed us. The gospel has in fact prevailed; the town seems completely transformed. At Ajumba: Found old Afangananga a mere skeleton, evidently near death. He and his people have exhausted all their superstitions to work a cure, but have given it up as hopeless. Now, Afangananga seems disposed to look to God in his extremity, and who knows but he may be accepted even yet? At Longwe: Nearly all the women who were enrolled as inquirers have been guilty of adultery. The falling away of so many can only show that the work there was very superficial. Was glad to get away from the place, even though it was to enter the blank heathenism of the lower river.
" In two Syeki towns, people listened well; in a third, listened intently. At Nenge, people saw my helmet and ran into the bush, having heard a rumor that M. de Brazza was seizing men to serve as soldiers. Almost impossible to gain their confidence; and this is where, on a former journey, I supposed I made so favorable an impression. At Enyonga, hundreds of people believe in the gospel, but they are depending upon some sinful course for their living and are not ready to sacrifice all for Christ. Mbora was stationed here in 1889. It has been trying for him, fighting heathenism single-handed. As a music teacher he is not a success. I started a tune which they were said to know, but no two sung the same tune. Result something fearful; but the audience seemed to enjoy it. Spent the night at Ngumbi; intensely interesting service; people seemed impressed with the folly of their superstition. On the whole, encouraging and discouraging features are about equally divided."
Ten were baptized at the first communion. Given, mere babes in Christian knowledge; added, the African temperament; leave them unshepherded for a twelvemonth in their native villages, and who could look for better results? However, the chief cause of declension was not mere neglect, but a revival in the ivory and rubber trade. Prices trebled in Europe, wages ― to traders, canoe-boys, house-boys ― went up on the Ogowe, and there was a rush to its upper sources. The best Christian young men were first to go. Their families left behind, with the prospect of a year’s separation, beyond reach of the Sabbath or Christian influence, surrounded by drunkenness, many were swept away by temptation. " I long for the day," wrote Dr. Good, "when this wretched trade will be a thing of the past. Then these people will stay at home and till the soil, and the greatest hindrance to Christianity be removed."
One incident of the autumn visitation must be given with somewhat of fullness.
" After having preached in five villages in the course of the day we came, about sundown, November 20, to a large town called Nengawaga, sixty miles perhaps from Kangwe. The people on this part of the river belong to the Orungu tribe, who occupy the region about the mouth of the Ogowe and to the north. When I stopped at this village in February, 1889, I was the first white man to come after the Spanish and Portuguese, who had visited all this region in quest of slaves. I preached here then, and Mbora has visited and preached at this village two or three times since. This is all they had heard of the gospel of Christ.
" The old chief, Mbiti, received me cordially, and at once installed me in his fine large house, which stood at the head of the main street of the village. I noticed that he was staying in a much poorer house a little on one side, and I said, ’ Why do you give me the whole of your fine large house! ’ He replied: ’ I do not go into it any more.’ ’ Why not?’ said I. I dare not. My doctor, or medicine man, has told me that I must not go into that house again or I will die; a demon is lying in wait for me with a club, and will kill me if I enter the door.’ A crowd was standing about, and I turned the laugh on him by exclaiming in much indignation: ’ So a demon with a club haunts that house, and you are afraid, but you put your guest there to be killed! ’ He hastened to exclaim that for me it was safe; the spirit would only be dangerous to him. Then I said, ’ Do you really believe that!’ He replied: ’It is so. If I even come near to the door I begin to feel hot.’ ’ You begin to feel afraid,’ I said, and I tried to explain to him how much fear has to do with sickness and health. For example, a Fang woman will see her dead husband in a dream, and he will say, I want you; come join me in the spirit land. Next morning she will say to her friends, I am going to die; my husband has called me.’ Her people will try to make her forget it and cheer up, but it is useless. She pines and in a few days dies. Now,’ I said, ’ your case is similar. If you are afraid of what the medicine man told you, I would not myself urge you to enter that house. You might be so worried by your fears that you would lose your appetite and perhaps sicken and die. But if you had faith in God, and courage to walk into that house without fear, it would harm you no more than me.’ He admitted the force of all that I said, but still the old fear remained.
" I tried another tack. ’ Did the medicine man who told you this live in your town, or does he belong to another family? ’ I knew that these doctors always come from a distance and have usually no honor among their own people. He came from down-river,’ said the old chief, ’ Ah, I understand it now.
You are one of the first chiefs in your tribe. You have built a house that is an honor to your town. This medicine man is jealous of your greatness, and so he takes this way of making your fine house useless to you.’
" This no doubt true explanation, at least in part, set the old chief and others to thinking. But when I called the people together for evening service, Mbiti asked me to hold it, not in the large front room, as I thought of doing, but in the street, where he could sit near by. He was still afraid to enter his house. He seemed convinced, but still did not care to take any risk. I have repeatedly noticed this. A man may be so thoroughly convinced of the folly of his superstitions that he will neglect them, but he will never throw away his fetishes or violate a command of a medicine man, until the converting power of the Spirit has set him free from his bondage of fear.
" I wish you could have seen that meeting. A table was set in the middle of the street and on it was my lantern. At this I sat, and around me was my audience ― fifty or sixty people. Many living in the place were away; you almost never find more than a third of the people of a town at home. It was a brilliant moonlight night, about an hour after dark. The world seemed asleep and the time a fitting one for drawing near to God.
" I spoke to them of their neglect of God, their Maker. I reminded them that they knew God, and their fathers had known him and called him Anyamhie, before they ever heard of white men. I said, I come not to introduce a new religion, but to reestablish the religion of your fathers; for they must have once worshiped God, whose name has come down to you. This high and noble worship you have given up for foolish superstitions, which are an offense to God and a disgrace to yourselves.’ I pointed them to the fact that they knew clearly right and wrong; that they had a book which every one could read without going to school, written in their hearts by the finger of God; but they had deliberately violated its precepts.
"All this time the most intense interest ― not a dissenting murmur; only low exclamations of approval. Tired as I was before I began, I talked an hour. When that solemn meeting closed, and the last strains of ’ Delay not, delay not! ’ (in Mpongwe, of course) had died away, every one drew a long breath, which was almost a sigh. For a moment no one spoke. Then the old chief said there could be no further doubt; it was all clear at every point, and whoever would not believe now had no head.’ To have seen that audience, you would have thought half at least would avow themselves on the Lord’s side. To have heard the response of the old chief, you would have said, He, at least, is certainly converted.’ But, if you could have seen that same company next day, your heart would have sunk. The old chief as worldly and superstitious as ever, and most of those who seemed so impressed careless as before. I have no doubt that meeting will do much towards breaking down superstition; but one does not work long in Africa till he realizes that convincing a man is not converting him, and a profound impression is not the new birth. Men are not converted from such darkness as that of Africa by a single sermon. The wonder is that they sit by so tamely and allow us to demolish what has always seemed to them sacred." The death of a young French teacher, only two months after arriving at Kangwe, cast a dark shadow across the spring of 1891. " He went to work so quietly, so sensibly, so earnestly, that it is only to-day we realize what a helper he had already become. As a true missionary M. Tissot came, and he stood ready to spend his life in the service of Christ in Africa." A contrasting opinion of another was fully justified: " He has not come out for life; not for the work of redeeming Africa, but to see how he likes it." A fourth church was organized this year, at Olamba, with a membership of forty-three. A class of young men was taught, for a month, at the station; and uncounted hours were expended on fatiguing revision of the Mpongwe New Testament and hymn-book.
These volumes were a necessity for the church of the Ogowe. " Our French successors could not take it up for years.... Will be the most valuable legacy we can leave them." So sincere was the purpose of the mission in parting with the Ogowe stations; so true to the broad interests of the Church of God. The Fang were hard to catch. They constituted perhaps four fifths of the population on the Ogowe. They seemed impervious to the gospel. Their great tribe was looked upon as terrible and cruel, even by their cruel neighbors, and they bore a stigma above all tribes on the river ― cannibalism. Twice a school of six or eight Fang boys was attempted at Kangwe; but as soon as their cheeks were plump from plenty of food and their bodies arrayed in a clean cloth, they all with one accord arose and fled. It was therefore a notable event when a regular, though informal, Fang service was instituted in 1891. It followed the church service in Mpongwe on Sunday mornings. "I have for some years spoken the language but all the time was painfully conscious that what I said was hardly intelligible, certainly could not be interesting. Now I have been working on their language and feel that I can really talk to them." In October the first Fang convert on the river was reported.
" We have several times had young men from that tribe express a desire to become Christians, but it was always coupled with a request for employment. I knew they looked upon godliness as a way of gain.’
"But some time ago a middle-aged man who had four wives, nothing in the world to make and a great deal to lose by becoming a Christian, announced that he wanted to be saved no matter if he lost all he had in the world. He gave up three of his wives; that was like giving up half his fortune. Not only that, but he did something else which took my breath away. Every Fang keeps the skull of his father in a bark bucket and from time to time makes offerings, sometimes of blood, at others meat of a goat or fowl, to this skull. This is supposed to secure the favor of the ancestral spirit. If he goes to trade, or to marry another wife, or to war, he cooks a feast for his father’s spirit and sprinkles the skull with redwood powder. This is, in short, the great fetish of the Fang. All I expected was that converts would cease to make offerings to the skulls; one could hardly expect them to throw them away. Imagine my surprise when, one day, Bie gave me the neat basket in which was this precious fetish. This was something so unheard of among the Fang that it brought on Bie’s head a storm. There is no danger of violence being done him, but the Fang vocabulary of abusive epithets has been exhausted by his neighbors in expressing their opinion of the man who will give up three women and his biety, his great fetish, and for what? But his stand has had an effect, and quite a number are seriously balancing the claims of this world and the next. Three young men are inquirers, and promise well. But it takes some such sacrifice as Bie made to give me confidence in a Fang."
Bie was genuine. After instruction a whole year, it was said: " Bie has taken up his cross and follows." In 1893 twelve more Fang were added to the class from Foula, Bie’s town. A proposition had been sent to the Board of Foreign Missions from Trinity Church, in Montclair, N. J., while Dr. Good was in America, that they be allowed to assume his entire salary and regard him as their special representative in Africa. This arrangement resulted most happily. Dr. Good’s relation to the Board was in no wise altered thereby, and a particular benefit has accrued to the church at large; for never before had he allowed himself the time to write such full, leisurely letters upon general subjects, as he recognized it his duty to write to the mixed congregation of young and old in Trinity Church.
He was intolerant of glamour or rose-color in representations of missionary work, and his former ideas of the usefulness of missionary letters were somewhat narrow. They were modified by his home visit, so that, while he always had stood up squarely to the duty of fully informing the Board upon his work, he now went further, and said to his secretary: " I am coming to realize that we on the field must assume more of the burden. The church is not awake to the facts of missions; and though I dislike writing above all things, I shall endeavor to do my part if you point it out." But, to the end, the best he had to say he said to the Board and to Trinity Church, and never wrote a line for a newspaper. The pastor, Rev. Orville Reed, by wish of the session, sends the following testimony : " The influence upon Trinity Church of these letters was at once apparent. Foreign missions became real as never before. Hard-headed businessmen, looking at things from a business point of view, now took a vital and increasing interest in the work. They became warmly attached to Dr. Good, but also evinced an increasing interest in all missionary work. Read at monthly concert and then passed about among the families of the congregation, those letters kept alive interest, called forth many a gift, and inspired to most hearty prayer for Africa. "Attachment deepened as the months passed on. The ’ pastor in Africa ’ was included with the pastor at home in the hearty prayers of a devoted people, and his labors were watched with the deepest interest."
One of the Montclair letters of this period introduces us to neighbors, whose depredations were frequent.
" Now, I submit, it is hard to preach the gospel in anything like the right spirit to people who you know have robbed you and are studying how they can do it again. I find it most difficult to live the gospel of charity and forbearance and not lay myself open to be cheated at every turn. These Fang like us and respect us, but their greed is insatiable and their ideas of honesty so low they cannot resist the temptation to help themselves from what seems our superabundance.
" Here lies the difficulty in giving the Fang the gospel. Ten dollars in cash would buy all the worldly possessions of the average Fang man, barring his wives. Every Fang, on the average, owes for wives already married two or three times as much as all he possesses. Besides this, he wants to marry some more, no matter whether he has one or twenty. He never accumulates goods. Cloth is the principal currency; but few men will be found to have more than ten or twenty yards in their possession. It goes as soon as bought to pay for some woman. Where do the hundreds of thousands of yards go? The Fang number perhaps three millions. Of these only a few thousand get cloth directly from traders. The others buy it with ivory, rubber, but especially with women. The poor interior supplies wives to their more fortunate countrymen who have the white man. There is little polygamy among the poorer interior tribes. While such a system prevails, and every man keeps before him as his highest ambition the marrying of at least five wives, the Fang will remain poor.
" Such a man brings his plantains to sell. He sees in the mission store perhaps a thousand dollars’ worth of goods. Oh, what riches! He learns that when we need more goods we write home for them. How easy that seems! What great men these missionaries must be! And where do all their goods come from? They cannot believe that people in America would of their own free will contribute such sums to enable us to come out here and teach people who are not even of our own color. It is, to their minds, pure nonsense. It must be that we have some way of getting goods without earning them. Often I have been questioned on this point, and as often as I tried to explain, they have set aside my explanation and returned to the attack in some other form. Sometimes they try to catch me by leading questions: ’ Who makes cloth and guns and powder?’ We white men do,’ I reply. ’ No, you do not. Is it not Anyam [God] who makes these things?’ That sounds very pious, but wait till you see what he is aiming at. Does not God give you all these goods you white people sell to us? and they don’t cost you anything; and why can’t you put the prices down, and why can’t you make us poor people gifts of cloth, tobacco, etc.?’ Again I go over the whole ground and explain how white people work for what they have, and goods are given by Christians in America to enable us to live among them and give them the gospel, and are not to be given away, else they would soon be finished and the work stopped. But it is useless. Some shrewd old scoundrel will look up after I am done and say with a provoking grin:
Now, Good, you know you are lying. You white people don’t make cloth. Only God could do that. You white people are hard not to be willing to divide with us who have nothing on our bodies but one small cloth.’
"... While I am preaching they are studying my clothes, and when I am through, these are some of the exclamations I hear: How finely he is dressed! Look at that coat; and he is not satisfied with that, but he wears something else under it. See his shoes and hat, and look at us! Only two yards of cloth on our whole body! ’ They are disposed to blame God. If he loves us, why has he given white men so much and us nothing? ’
" Our whole manner of living is a snare to them. Our plain table has on it a wealth of dishes to a people who eat out of a basket with their fingers, and dip their soups out of the pot in which they were cooked, using leaves for spoons. And a bed! What rolls of cloth! That one bed would buy a woman.
" Some will imagine that natives of this country would be impressed by the sacrifice we make in spending our lives among them. This is the case with the more intelligent. But to these Fang, fresh from the bush, our life seems one of luxury and ease.
"Some will suggest that, like Paul, we might be everything to every man, and live as the people do among whom we labor. But no half-way measure would be appreciable to these ignorant savages. I presume no one would ask us to reduce our wardrobe to the native standard, or to sleep on a bed of logs laid together with the round side up.
" We can only pray God to impress upon these poor grown-up children the fact that there is something more important than worldly wealth. Meanwhile we must expect that, while they look upon us as they now do, they will steal. And we must rejoice with trembling in our spiritual successes. When a man says he wants to come to the mission and learn about God, we must act cautiously. From the way we question him you would imagine that we did not want the Fang to become Christians. We say, What is it you want? ’ I want to live in the mission,’ he replies. ’What for?’ ’I want to do God’s work.’ You want employment in the mission so you can get wages!’ ’Yes; but I want to learn about God too.’ Beware! the man is probably not a convert.
" We have had most of our success among older tribes who have known us long and well. But I believe the future of our work lies among these hardy and energetic but fearfully ignorant Fang. There seems to be a beginning already." A packet of questions was sent to Dr. Good from Trinity Church friends, some of his answers to which fill the remainder of this chapter. To a general inquiry, he answered:
" The most intelligent Christians here cannot see why they should not have everything we have. They have no national costume, and every one of them would like to have clothes just like ours, from hat to shoes, regardless of the fact that they would be miserable in such dress. One of our elders made me fairly shudder, some months ago, by appearing at communion in a thick overcoat. He sweltered in it through a long hot day with a look of supreme contentment. It was a white man’s coat, and therefore must be right. I suppose I was the only person in the audience who did not envy him. I saw a young man ready to pay four months’ wages for a clock, for which he had no use whatever. These are illustrations of a prevalent evil. An African wants everything he sees.
" A few Christians are in mission employ, and they are discontented and grumble because their wages will not enable them to live as we live. If we keep their wages down, they are bitter against us and say we want to keep them down. If we increase their wages out of proportion to incomes of the people, we put off indefinitely the day of self-supporting churches. They do not want to see that day, for they know that any support the churches can give them will be meager compared with what we furnish. Do not imagine these men are mercenary hirelings. Most of them are earnest men. But it is hard for them to see why the means of grace should not be provided without price to the end of the chapter. Great firmness and wisdom will be needed in dealing with our churches."
Q. " After a self-sustaining church and an educated ministry have been secured, do you think the church will live and grow without the missionary! "
A, " That is a hard question. Not all the churches established by the apostles lived and grew. Doubtless this question means, Can the people of Africa maintain and propagate Christianity, once it is established among them, or are they essentially inferior to other races, so that they will never stand without outside support? I believe that, given the same conditions and opportunities we have, the African will stand morally and intellectually just where we do. But a people who have been stunted and degraded by thousands of years of heathenism cannot be transformed at once into such Christians as this question contemplates. Growth is a gradual process. It will not be in ten or in fifty years."
[To a question concerning his health.] " Once a month or so I bring myself thoroughly under the influence of quinine, and so escape fevers."
Q, "Do you not often grow weary and homesick! "
A. " Of course one’s thoughts often turn to friends and scenes in the home land, and one wishes he could, at least for a little time, annihilate space. But I believe, since I came to Africa, there has never been a time when, after balancing the pros and cons I would not rather remain than go home. I do not mean to say that I like the country or people of Africa as such; that I enjoy isolation, ill health, living on canned provisions, working where my best efforts are little appreciated. I could probably have better health, more amusement, a better time generally, in America, perhaps a more successful career, regarded from some points of view; but I doubt whether, knowing the needs of Africa as I do, I could have an easy conscience if I were to run away from this work. I prefer to stay at my post till the Lord discharges me. Meanwhile I manage to be fairly comfortable and happy in Africa.
" I have spoken only for myself; but I think nearly all who have come to Africa as missionaries have felt much as I feel on this subject."
[At the close of 1891.] " Looking at the physical side, I think I can honestly say that I have worked up to the full measure of my strength. But when I remember that the success of efforts put forth in the service of Christ depends absolutely on our spiritual attitude towards him and his work, I am conscious of shortcomings that amount almost to failure."
Seventy-two persons were admitted to the church this year in the Ogowe.