Wherever a missionary lives, traders are sure to come; they are mutually dependent, and each aids in the work of the other; but experience shows that the two employments can not very well be combined in the same person. Such a combination would not be morally wrong, for nothing would be more fair, and apostolical too, than that the man who devotes his time to the spiritual welfare of a people should derive temporal advantage from upright commerce, which traders, who aim exclusively at their own enrichment, modestly imagine ought to be left to them. But, though it is right for missionaries to trade, the present system of missions renders it inexpedient to spend time in so doing. No missionary with whom I ever came in contact, traded; and while the traders, whom we introduced and rendered secure in the country, waxed rich, the missionaries have invariably remained poor, and have died so. The Jesuits, in Africa at least, were wiser in their generation than we; theirs were large, influential communities, proceeding on the system of turning the abilities of every brother into that channel in which he was most likely to excel; one, fond of natural history, was allowed to follow his bent; another, fond of literature, found leisure to pursue his studies; and he who was great in barter was sent in search of ivory and gold-dust; so that while in the course of performing the religious acts of his mission to distant tribes, he found the means of aiding effectually the brethren whom he had left in the central settlement.* We Protestants, with the comfortable conviction of superiority, have sent out missionaries with a bare subsistence only, and are unsparing in our laudations of some for not being worldly-minded whom our niggardliness made to live as did the prodigal son. I do not speak of myself, nor need I to do so, but for that very reason I feel at liberty to interpose a word in behalf of others. I have before my mind at this moment facts and instances which warrant my putting the case in this way: The command to "go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature" must be obeyed by Christians either personally or by substitute. Now it is quite possible to find men whose love for the heathen and devotion to the work will make them ready to go forth on the terms "bare subsistence", but what can be thought of the justice, to say nothing of the generosity, of Christians and churches who not only work their substitutes at the lowest terms, but regard what they give as charity! The matter is the more grave in respect to the Protestant missionary, who may have a wife and family. The fact is, there are many cases in which it is right, virtuous, and praiseworthy for a man to sacrifice every thing for a great object, but in which it would be very wrong for others, interested in the object as much as he, to suffer or accept the sacrifice, if they can prevent it.
* The Dutch clergy, too, are not wanting in worldly wisdom. A fountain is bought, and the lands which it can irrigate parceled out and let to villagers. As they increase in numbers, the rents rise and the church becomes rich. With 200 Pounds per annum in addition from government, the salary amounts to 400 or 500 Pounds a year. The clergymen then preach abstinence from politics as a Christian duty. It is quite clear that, with 400 Pounds a year, but little else except pure spirituality is required.
English traders sold those articles which the Boers most dread, namely, arms and ammunition; and when the number of guns amounted to five, so much alarm was excited among our neighbors that an expedition of several hundred Boers was seriously planned to deprive the Bakwains of their guns. Knowing that the latter would rather have fled to the Kalahari Desert than deliver up their weapons and become slaves, I proceeded to the commandant, Mr. Gert Krieger, and, representing the evils of any such expedition, prevailed upon him to defer it; but that point being granted, the Boer wished to gain another, which was that I should act as a spy over the Bakwains.