MR. STANLEY'S address yesterday to the Baptist Missionary Society, who entertained him to breakfast, was an ambiguous performance. Many must have suspected that he was solemnly "chaffing" his hosts, and nobody can deny that he treated the arduous life of the Evangelist in Central Africa from the standpoint of the excruciatingly comic man. Perhaps this was provoked by the suspicion of satire which lurks in the address presented to him, in which the society stated that "but for your strong but peaceful force at Stanley Pool, it is very doubtful whether the missionaries of the society would have been able to establish their station on its banks." Still there was a grain of serious truth in Mr. Stanley's humorous and cynical sketches of missionary life. Something like practical teaching and training must be regarded as essential to the success of the average missionary -- in other words, when he goes to Central Africa he must not imagine he is going to live in a conservatory like the palm-house at Kew, with a few decorated savages running about him in a highly picturesque manner. He has to deal in fact with extremely disagreeable people, in extremely disagreeable surroundings, and he has to work under conditions of difficulty and embarrassment without a parallel in the country of his nativity. "The work of the missionary," said Mr. Stanley, "was very slow and very hard. He must begin with the alphabet, teaching himself first. And what was given to encourage him? A few sodden bananas, a few pounds of rice, and it was thought he was being dealt with in a princely fashion if he had a quartern of wheaten flour. No wines, no whiskies, no champagnes." In fact, he is simply allowed as his daily beverage Congo water, which is, we believe, only a little less abominable then that applied to the people of South London from the Themes. As Mr. Stanley says, what an unbounded capacity of charity a man must have who, after sacrificing heavily to undergo these hardships, finds stupid officials at the Colonial Office thwarting his policy and his best efforts, and yet in spite of it all can meet his enemies and his troubles with a smiling face! That is just the quality that Mr. Stanley has, and it is because he has it he has succeeded.
Daily Chronicle, May 20, 1885
The Congo Valley
The Natal Power of France
Table of Contents
Miracles of healing - Christian Miracles or Healing
History of Russia: Christian Versus Barbarian
History of Japan: Early Christian Martyrs
The Jesus of History
The Assyrian Origin of Devil Worshippers
The Christ Of Dogma
The early history of Constantinople
