When the Portuguese Held Sway There—Why Were They Set Aside?—People of the Book—The Country and Missionary Activities There
This is the second of some twelve articles by Elder Spicer descriptive of what he saw and heard during his recent trip to South Africa. Next week he will tell of the aboriginal tribes.—Editor.
IT is interesting to watch the hand of Providence in this world's ever shifting scenes and history. We can see an overruling Providence in the course of events that has given the missionary movement a strong base of operation in the dominion of South Africa.
UNION COLLEGE, CLAREMONT, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
FAILED THROUGH NEGLECTING THE BOOK
The Portuguese were the discoverers. While we recognize the debt of civilization to this enterprising people, it is nevertheless a fact that the Portuguese — and particularly the Portuguese of the old time — were not themselves possessed of the open Bible, and could never have done the work that Providence evidently was to make sure of being done in the most favored part of Africa for European colonization.
WHY THIS VITAL OVERSIGHT?
In his book "The Opening Up of Africa," Sir H. H. Johnston remarks upon the singular fact that while "for three quarters of the sixteenth century Portugal had it all her own way in Africa," she never established herself in the one region that was really the choice of all. He says:
"In the subsequent development of a Portuguese empire over Africa, a fatal blunder was made. The Portuguese neglected to occupy the Cape of Good Hope, or any other stronghold on the southern extremity of West Africa. . . . To any power that aspired, as did the Portuguese, to occupy and rule East Africa and India from the west of Europe and by means of the cape route, it was an oversight difficult to understand that prevented their garrisoning the necessary places of call . . . at the southern extremity of Africa."-Page 166.
But thus it came to pass; and into this region, so necessary as a base for missionary extension among the tribes of the interior, there came the Dutch and the English, with the word of God, and the freer institutions of Protestant lands.
Colonial South Africa had its Pilgrim Fathers, as well as our New England colonies. In the days of persecution in France, following the revocation of the edict of Nantes, in 1685, thousands of the best culture of France fled to England and to Holland. Holland had fought its battle for freedom and religious liberty against all the power of Spain and the Spanish Inquisition. From among these Huguenot refugees in the Netherlands, several hundreds took ship for South Africa, joining with the Dutch colonists in making the new state below the equator.
"Then came men, our Pilgrim Fathers, noblest blood of sunny France—
Broad-browed men of free-born spirit, lighted with the eagle glance;
Spoiled, by bigot priest and despot, of the broad lands of their line,
Rich yet in the glorious freedom that dares know itself divine.
Hither came they—welcomed hither by the gallant northern race
Whom they well might own for brethren, breast to breast in close embrace,
Those stanch darers of the waters who first broke the giant force
That would rule man's free convictions as the rider guides his horse;
Struggling, and despairing never, till at length they gained the war;
Spain, the hope of priest-led tyrants; Holland, freedom's polar star."
Thus the foundations were laid by a people of the Open Book, and the liberal institutions of the British dominion have fostered the spirit that makes for liberty and progress and enlightenment.
BAKED HER BIBLE TO HIDE IT
One of our aged members, descended from one of the Huguenot families, told me how her great-great-grandmother managed to get her treasured Bible out of France in the days of her flight. Even when Protestants were allowed to cross the border, their luggage was searched for Bibles, which were seized and burned. Our sister's worthy ancestor wrapped her Bible in a mass of dough, and baked the dough into a generous sized loaf of bread. Thus with the "staff of life" concealing the "bread of life" indeed, she made her way out to liberty, and carried her treasure to the new world of Africa.12
WORKERS AND DELEGATES FROM THE DUTCH CHURCHES ATTENDING THE CAMP MEETING IN DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA
I had many times good evidence that our fellow believers in Africa are lovers of the Book. One pleasing experience I must tell. I was traveling alone northward through the Orange Free State. In the early gray of morning, we in the train were rolling out of our rugs and settling down for the day's run over the veldt, dotted here and there with sheep and cattle ranches.
SIGNALED THE BIBLE READER
I noticed in the car a passenger who had come aboard during the night. The first thing, after rolling up his rugs, he opened a bag, and took from it a Bible, which he sat reading, while all about, men smoked and talked.
"I wonder," I said to myself, "if that man who opens his Bible the first thing in the morning, no matter where he may be, is a Seventh-day Adventist."
"But no," I thought; "there are multitudes of people in South Africa besides ourselves, who love God's book."
After all, I determined to signal the Bible reader. So I took out of my bag a copy of our South African paper, the Sentinel, published in Cape Town. Holding it up, I began to read. At once the stranger sprang up and came to me.
"Do you know the people who publish that paper?" he asked.
"Yes; I am one of them."
"So am I," he said; and I found I was talking with one of our Dutch evangelists, Brother Baren de Beer.
And we ought to be a people of the Book—we who stand for the last step in the Reformation, and are preaching the return to the New Testament standard of "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus."
A PHRASE BURDENED WITH POWER
It is really wonderful, the power there is in this phrase of inspiration that is used in the Revelation to describe the remnant church just before the second coming of Christ. We hear of it in all lands; and in South Africa it bears its witness also.
One lady, attending a camp meeting in the Cape Province, heard sermons, but went away with no particular impression. One phrase, however, kept with her. She had heard it at the meeting.
"Those words," she said, "'the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus,' kept ringing like a voice in my ears, until I surrendered to keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus."
Again on this visit, I met a lady, bearing one of the old Huguenot family names, who told me that she had rather decided against this way.
Illness, however, brought her to one of our sanitariums. Here she heard again of these truths. "I am too ill," she said to herself, "to think about it; God Himself will have to teach me the right way."
She was too ill to read, and no one discussed religious things with her.
WORDS THAT SPOKE TO HER HEART
"But these words kept speaking to my heart," she said,—"'the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus'; and they brought me into this light and truth, which have been the greatest blessing and joy of my life."
Yes, the words of God are living words, and the Holy Spirit is speaking to hearts and minds in all the earth.
THE CALL THAT TOOK US TO AFRICA
We Seventh-day Adventists were called to South Africa thirty years ago. Two men in the region of the diamond fields had been led independently to inquire after the truth concerning the Sabbath, knowing nothing of any people keeping the seventh day of the fourth commandment. Providence had the agent ready just at that moment to direct their attention to this advent movement growing up in America and Europe. The agent was an old miner, who himself had first heard of this message in the early days of California. This miner carried the truth in his heart and life to Australia, and then to the new diamond fields of the Kimberley district.
Thus two Dutch brethren,—Messrs. E. van Druten and P. J. D. Wessels, whom I found rejoicing in the truth,—learned of Seventh-day Adventists, and sent the invitation to our General Conference, in 1886, which led to the sending of Elders C. L. Boyd and D. A. Robinson and associates to open our evangelistic work in South Africa.
Our first church building in Africa was erected in Beaconsfield, near Kimberley; and I was glad, as I visited it, to find that notwithstanding the shifts and changes that time brings in a new country, there is still a company of believers worshiping here, one or two being charter members.
It was at Cape Town, however, that most of the early evangelistic work was done by our pioneer laborers. There are several churches now in and about the city. The educational center for our work is Claremont, a beautiful suburb around the eastern base of Table Mountain. The Union College here has sent numbers of our youth into the missionary and evangelistic fields. Further on is the Plumstead Sanitarium, the headquarters for our health and temperance work, and a training school for nurses.
CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY
What kind of country is it around this cape region?—Well, it is much like one of the grape-growing valleys of California, a beautiful countryside, now grown up with suburban villas, with here and there some genuine specimens of the real old Dutch colonial type. Simon van der Stel, one of Riebeek's early successors in the governorship, started the grape industry around this part—now the famous Constantia vineyards. He was really the most progressive of the early governors in pushing back the wilderness, developing the resources of the soil, and making a beautiful home country for the European settler.
"Not as the rest, for greed of spoil,
He ruled by Table Bay;
In new-built barn and seeded soil
His little kingdom lay.
Cornfield and garden, oak and vine,
He loved and tended well.
'Who plants a tree is a friend of mine,'
Quoth Simon van der Stel."
Between the mountain ranges, which begin a little way to the northward of the cape, is fine, well watered farming and fruit country. In northern Cape Province, and then on up through the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, is the rolling veldt, or prairie, the land of the sheep and cattle farmer, and of the great mealie or Indian corn industry. The province of Natal is part veldt, and part hilly country, where subtropical fruits of all kinds abound.
FOUND OUR PEOPLE EVERYWHERE
Through all the states, I found Seventh-day Adventist churches here and there, little companies, from Johannesburg, the mining center and metropolis of South Africa, to the cape, where first I met our South African colonial people. The work is carried on in the Dutch and English languages. The union conference issues two general religious journals, the Sentinel, in English, and the Wachter (Watchman), in Dutch, the latter paper being a translation of the former.
The war situation led many to ask what these things mean that are coming on the earth, and the spirit of inquiry abroad had enabled our brethren to give some special numbers of their paper a circulation as high as thirty thousand and even more. By post, these papers are sent to addresses of farmers scattered in the remote country districts, in regions that it is difficult for the living evangelist to visit. So up and down colonial South Africa I found the message spreading. W. A. S.
