p. 12 | One View of the Sad Problems

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 16, 1911

One View of the Sad Problems

It is not always best to pass over the sad side of the missionary’s problems. Here, for instance, is a somber view given by our Nyassaland superintendent, along with his glad story of a thousand students in our main station and out-station schools:—

“We required a native overseer for our new industry—cotton growing. On request from a planter, a man of fine physique and quiet manners came. Soon a wife and child followed, and they were given a house in our main mission village. After three months, the man came one day apparently with troubled heart. He had attended our Sabbath-school and services. Having once been a soldier, he had fallen in with Mohammedanism. And this is one great bane and blight upon all evangelizing effort in Africa. Islam allows polygamy, and this is doubtless (with its attending vices) the greatest single obstacle to the progress of missions in Central Africa—one might say in all Africa.”

“Polygamy was the cause of our overseer’s heavy heart. The wife who came here with him is his second one. He said to me, with tear-filled eyes: ‘I have heard here that Jesus teaches that a man may have only one wife. I have two. The one now with me is not my lawful wife. What can I do?’ Then the story came out that this later wife did not at first want to live with him. He practically took her against her will, as is commonly done with consent of the woman’s chief. But now she loves him and her children. I soon learned that she was a sort of ‘Dorcas’ in her way, and all her neighbors loved her. The man told me he knew he must send her away, and get back his first wife. He was doing this as the first step toward becoming a Christian. What could I answer?—Only that he must provide for her and his children, as a first condition. But I must call the woman, and hear her story. Fortunately, my wife had already learned this in detail through one of her faithful native girl helpers. The story is too long and painful to tell here. But the end of it is that the woman went away amid the mournings of her many friends made during her short stay at the mission. The man seems deeply affected by the truth heard here. How the matter will end in his case, I can not say. He will require thorough instruction, and the question of his baptism will be answered in not less than a year, possibly two.”

“Many instances might be related of the great obstacles which we constantly meet in polygamy and vice. But this is heathenism, and we must expect vice where that is. A young girl of about fourteen, having been in the mission three years and baptized last year, was called home recently by her father, a heathen chief, and sold to a corrupt European because he was the highest bidder. We are told that she tried bravely to resist being sold without any marriage, but was carried off against her protests while trying to escape.”