ONE of the most interesting and successful missions in Africa is that of the Church of England in Uganda, on the shores of the great inland sea, the Victoria Nyanza. It will be remembered that when Stanley first visited that region old King Mtesa was reigning. Stanley was so much attracted to him and his war-like, but intelligent and self-reliant, people that he made an appeal for missionaries for Uganda. The Church Missionary Society quickly responded and sent a force of men to Mtesa’s capital. It was a long, costly, and perilous journey by a caravan route of about eight hundred miles.
Mtesa was pleased at first with the missionaries and their teaching, but he was unstable, and his son, Mwanga, who succeeded him, was cruel and inclined to persecute the Christians. The mission was founded in blood, the noble bishop Hannington being one of the martyrs.
Now a railroad six hundred miles long has been completed from the coast to Uganda by the English Government, and a remarkable civilization is to be found where barbarism reigned not many years ago.
A more wonderful story of success of the Gospel in Africa has never been told than that which Bishop Tucker, of Uganda (Anglican), has to tell.
After sowing with patience and pain, in tears and blood, the reaping time for Uganda began about ten years ago. Then there were three hundred baptized Christians, now there are thirty thousand; then there were a few communicants, now there are ten thousand; then there were only twenty native evangelists, now there are two thousand. Then the name of Christ was known in Banyoro to the north, Busoga to the east, and Toro to the west, and missionaries of the infant church are also carrying the good news to the pygmies, among whom the first Christian baptism recently occurred.
There are also Christian schools and a press, and intelligence is being disseminated. The chiefs who a few years ago were worshiping the lubari, or spirits of the lake, and planning cruel wars, now carry on correspondence like statesmen by the use of the typewriter!
How was so great a work accomplished? Bishop Tucker says by self-extension, self-support, and self-government. The policy was in the beginning that the missionaries were to do nothing that the native preachers could do, to grant no money which the native Christians could raise, and to take no responsibility which could be laid upon the native churches. The work of the missionary was to train native evangelists and teachers; the latter were to do the rest.
Not a dollar of European money goes to support the two thousand native evangelists. The native Christians provide it. Natives build, support, repair the churches, and also the schools. Converts are from the first impressed with the sense of the duty, privilege, and responsibility of supporting and spreading the Gospel, and one in every five is doing some kind of work.
Self-support, in Bishop Tucker’s opinion, entitles to self-control. So in Uganda there is self-government.
Is there not a lesson in this Uganda history worth studying.—World Wide Missions.
