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and so, on that occasion, the Calvinistic Gospel was prudently kept back. But the houses, the fold, the garden-walls, the irrigating canal, and the forge, were all displayed to view. Hence "admiration and astonishment," " utmost gravity," "most respectful demeamour," and profound veneration." “You are men," said they; we are but children." (Ib. p. 511.) An exclamation significant of all that we have already said, on the feelings of the heathen towards their unauthorised white teachers! It was not as missionaries that they venerated them, but as men; not even as good men, but as clever men. The Bechuanas, for instance, thought them strange beings, who had other views than the mere propagation of fables, and had visited them in quest of a living ;-nor were they far from the mark. Less just were the surmises of "brighter minds," which pronounced them guilty fugitives from their native land, and from the hands of justice. (Ib. p. 297.) The truth is, that, although nobody mistook them for the ambassadors of Christ, there were very different opinions as to their real character. The cunning ones, who lived by rain-making, viewed Mr. Moffat as one of their fraternity. "It requires very great wisdom to deceive so many,—you and I know that;"-said a rain-maker one day, broadly hinting at the same time, that the field of labour among the Bechuanas would not support them both. (Ib. p. 314.) The Baharutsi too, and the Bauangketsi, listened attentively to brother Hamilton, as a rainmaker of renown; it having rained very heavily, after prayers he had said for the purpose, at their request. This was the only circumstance they had retained in their minds, when Mr. Moffat visited them: what brother Hamilton said being quite forgotten. In vain did our author talk about giving them another missionary. "You must come and make rain, you must come and protect us," were all the answers he got in that place. (Ib. p. 388.) At another time and place, the same poor gentlemen were denounced for their supposed powers, of defeating the good intentions of the rain-makers, and of preventing rain. The curses of the people were poured forth against them, because the clouds would not pour forth rain at the bidding of the rain-maker. It very nearly cost them their lives. (Ib. p. 320.) Another unhappy incident occurred to strengthen these horrid suspicions. Over the Dutch clock, that surmounted his meeting-house at Lithako, stood two lilliputian soldiers, who strutted out when the clock struck. The affrighted natives regarded these as the precursors of foreign occupation, and the emblems of an odious vocation, to which conquerors from Cape Town were to devote them; while the meeting-house itself became, in their

eyes, an eintlu ea kholego, or "house of bondage." By taking down the little puppets, and cutting off a bit of wood from each, their fears were somewhat allayed, but the general suspicions of the people remained uneffaced. "They continued to suspect that the motives of the missionary were anything but disinterested." (lb. p. 339.)

The Bauangketsi were more reasonable. At the summit of a hill in their country our author produced a compass, which did indeed astonish them. But when he, anticipating another easy triumph over their darkness, asked them if they did not think him a conjuror, they laughed heartily, like men who thought him no conjuror. (Ib. p. 396.) On further acquaintance, the exaggerated notions of the Bechuanas, as to the powers of the brethren, very much declined; and homelier ones were imbibed. Thus, when Mathibi, at their request, changed their station, he did so for reasons that were not very flattering to the brethren as missionaries. He chose for them a new locality, because he wanted them as stock-keepers or herdsmen in that quarter,-in other words, as a protection to his cattle from the bushmen who were troublesome." (Ib. p. 375)

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It is true that the missionaries had to thank themselves for very much of this low secular estimation, in which their dependents held them. They had taught them, that the superior advantages which were at the command of the whites might be theirs too, if, like the whites, they were simply to fix their habitations, and cultivate their grounds. (Ib. p. 195.) Preachers of a Gospel which is supposed to forbid covetousness and worldly minded cares, their time is acknowledged to have been "incessantly occupied, in building and labouring frequently for the meat that perisheth ;" and truly the facts stated abundantly illustrate this extraordinary acknowledgment. (Ib. p. 285.) We can readily imagine that Mr. Moffat, after the manual and menial labours-on the sawpit, at the anvil, in the water-ditch, or in treading clay, which, he tells us, were the business of every day of his Bechuana life, was “in no very fit condition for study, even when a quiet hour could be obtained in the evening for the purpose." (Ib. p. 292.) If the natives were taught that, by refusing to confine themselves to "the vegetables cultivated by their forefathers," they had broken down "the ancient ramparts of superstition," and were therefore, we presume, on the high road of salvation,—we do not wonder that they should have formed those carnal notions of the office and duties of a missionary. We do not wonder that "the strong excitement," with which all Calvinist missions commence, "had subsided," while "knowledge was on the increase, a growing seriousness

observable, and there was every reason for encouragement." (Ib. p. 558.) The progress of worldly wisdom, of severe thrift, and of a merely sensual prosperity, is by no means inconsistent with the utter absence of spiritual knowledge and piety, and of the faintest prospect of such. Our readers must bear this remark most carefully in mind, should duty, or curiosity, ever happen to direct them to the pages of a Protestant missionary. His very terminology will convince them of its truth. Does he speak of the "inexhaustible capabilities" of a heathen mission? They must not understand the term as they would, when used by a Catholic missionary. He means, not the spiritual, but the agricultural or commercial" capabilities" of the locality. Thus, the Griqua mission is said to possess such, because the Yellow river may be so led out,—with the obedient help of the Bastaards who dwell on its borders,-" as to irrigate a considerable portion of the country." (Ib. p. 211.)

Much of the ill-will with which some tribes regarded them,-much of the respectful treatment they received from other tribes,-may be accounted for diplomatically; that is to say, they were believed to possess a political character, rather than a religious one ;-they were considered as emissaries of the colonial governors, and not as missionaries. "The progress and results of missionary labours," amongst the Griquas, eminently tended to confirm other tribes in this not ill-founded suspicion. They were not ignorant of the political connexion, in which they (the Griquas) stood to the colony." That connexion showed plainly enough, they thought, "that the missionary there was an agent of government, and a pioneer to prepare, by pacific measures, the minds of the natives for the control of a foreign power." It was in vain that Mr. Moffat and his brethren heaped gifts and services on their heads. The Bechuanas continued to believe them the mere "emissaries of the colonial governor." (Ib. p. 236.) How can Mr. Moffat, on this account, charge them with being evil disposed persons? What says he himself of the Griqua mission,—or station, as we prefer to call it? From Anderson, in "1804, to Waterboer, in 1842, not a missionary-chief of Griqualand has failed to accept colonial pay, as confidential agent to the colonial government." (Ib. p. 206) Anderson, above all,-" founder and father of that mission," whose name “doubtless distant generations will venerate,❞—(for distant indeed that veneration seems at this day),— was obliged to seek safety, in flight, from the weapons of the Griquas. In obedience to Lord Caledon's orders, he had endeavoured to press twenty of their tribe for the Cape corps,—a measure which, (very natų.

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rally, as we think), "they supposed to have originated from their connexion with the government." Before leaving them, he preached to the following "terse and unique" effect: "Formerly I went, out and in among you, as your father, your friend, and your guide. But now I am compelled to leave you, viewed by you as nothing better than a dry stalk of maize.” (Ib. p. 198.) This is his own account of the matter. Mr. Moffat thinks that his career was "crowned with remarkable success." We now know what to think of the meaning he attaches to that word success. As to the moral influence of these holy statesmen upon their Griqua subjects, we have our shrewd suspicions, that there is something very wrong somewhere. Mr. Moffat says indeed, that, "so long as it supports by its influence the cause of GOD, and continues the faithful ally of the Cape Colony, the government they have set up will be able to maintain itself." (Ib. p. 206.) But we like not such vague generalities as this, nor the Orange watchword, of which it is but a counterpart, "Trust in GOD, and keep your powder dry." Let us deal with the facts which Mr. Moffat gives us, some of which have been been already glanced at in this article. We had known that the complete ascendancy of congregational dissent was the signal for civil war in Griqualand, and Mr. Moffat has now written a book, to confirm this proposition. "The Griquas were rent with internal discord," he says, in the year 1827, "and the united force of the four chiefs was now divided into four separate interests." Those of them," concerning whom they had begun to hope, having been thus exposed to incessant alarms and losses, despairing of help from any quarter," abandoned their country, and settled elsewhere. "We felt," he says, 65 as if we were thrown some years back." (Ib. p. 479.) Nor are the Griquas more amiable to their neighbours. Their outbreaks have deluged the whole of the frontier countries with blood. They appear to depend for their support on the destruction of others, like all other nations of Southern Africa, whether they affect the Christian name or not. Their intercourse with the whites having placed new weapons of death within their reach, these wars are now more deadly by far, than in times when Mr. Moffat was as yet unknown to them. "Such commotions were unknown within the memory of the oldest native: tradition could give us no parallel. They existed as far northward as our knowledge of the tribes extended." (Ib. pp. 434-5.) The heathen king of the Bechuanas, smarting under his wrongs, demanded justice of the missionaries, but apparently without effect. They recommended him to fly from the invaders, and not to attempt resistance. With scorn not unsuited to

the occasion, Mothibi made answer, that the Griquas, nurtured under their Gospel, were the heads of the banditti who had involved him in the war, and that they relied on the missionaries being able to prevent him from taking retaliatory measures, but that he would disappoint them. He reproached them with their hypocrisy, and bade them reform the Griquas, and especially Cloete and Drayer, robber-chiefs, and "professors of religion." (lb. p. 430.) Nor was this a solitary instance. "Go and teach the marauders not to destroy us,' was constantly thrown in our teeth," he says, while exhorting the savage heathen," to improve dispensations" inflicted upon them by his Gospellers. (Ib. p. 439.)

So long as that lesson remained untaught, they must have appeared strangely untrue to the character, in which they had been permitted to take up their abode in the country. It had been fondly supposed, that their presence was a guarantee from all hostilities, on the part of those immediately under their influence or jurisdiction. Makaba, the heathen king of the Bauangketsi, approved of a mission being established among that people, and also of another one among the Bahurutsi, merely on

the diplomatic ground, that " men of peace should live in every nation,

that a friendly intercourse might be kept up." (Ibid. p. 402.) The marauder, who slew him in the midst of his routed forces, dispelled that miserable delusion. (Ibid. p. 434.) The American missionaries at the court of Moselekatse very narrowly escaped with their lives, from the consequences of the same crooked policy. It is too much to attribute, to it, the failure of their mission among the Matabili, for that unblessed mission must have failed under any circumstances. Still, their sudden departure from Mosega was immediately occasioned by their treasonable relations with the lawless boers, who had ravaged the territories and slain the subjects of the king. In their precipitate retreat to the Orange River, they were accompanied by these missionaries, who, says their apologist, were scarcely able to judge how they should act." Into the merits of this case, he expressly declines to enter; and we are left to form our own conclusions upon the subject. (Ibid. p. 587.) Among the Bechuanas, the lives of Mr. Moffat and his comrades were perpetually endangered, from the suspicious character of their politics. In Kaffraria, brother Brownlee found himself at fault from the same cause. Brother Kay intimates, that the Kaffres considered their white teachers as no better than spies. Brother Thompson, of the Kat River, an honest witness against himself and his brethren, acknowledges the true reason, He says, that "his poli

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