XVFETISHISM AND THE CROSS
During my study of the language of the Fang I was one day talking to a young boy and searching for a better word formercythan the very vague word in general use. He was a bright lad, with beautiful eyes and frank manner. I said to him:
“A man was hunting in the forest, when he discovered a woman of a neighbouring town alone in her garden. He decided to steal her and add her to the number of his wives. He caught her and tied a bush-rope around her, and himself holding the end of it he made her walk ahead of him through the forest towards his town. On the way, the woman, recovering from her first fright, began to cry and to plead with him to let her go. She told him that she had three little children and that the youngest was sick and would probably die without its mother. The man for some time hardened his heart, but the woman continued to plead and to cry more bitterly. Then at last the man’s heart was softened. He began to think that perhaps two wives were enough for the present; and he let the woman go.
“Now, when he reaches his town and tells the people what he has done what will they say about him?”
Promptly came the answer: “They will call him a fool.”
“Why will they call him a fool?” I asked.
“Because he is not a real man. He has a soft heart like a woman’s heart. All women are fools.”
“And how about small boys?” I asked.
“Oh,” said he, “small boys are very much like women; but of course we will be real men when we grow up.”
Not that the African is destitute of the instinct of humanity—by no means; but a false ideal calls for the repression of his best instincts.
In the course of a war between two villages, in which I knew nearly all the people, a young man namedMinkoa, a bright and rather manly young fellow, was one day out in the forest hunting when he was shot to death by a party who were in hiding near the path. Minkoa’s sister was married to the very man who first shot him, and they had been intimate friends, like brothers in each other’s regard, and had visited much together; but the man did not know that it was Minkoa when he fired the shot in the dark forest. Having wounded him, and seeing him fall to the ground, he sprang forward to complete the work, and instantly recognized his friend Minkoa. The savage heart is never wholly savage. With a cry of grief he fell beside the wounded man and with his own body would have saved him from further injury; but the rest of the party having come up, they dragged him back, flung him aside with a curse, and standing over Minkoa, fairly riddled his body with bullets. Compassion, or even natural affection, under such circumstances, is a weakness and must be suppressed as incompatible with what they regard as manly courage.
All heathendom suffers for want of a perfect human ideal. The first result is a variety of ideal and type in different nations and different religions. Not only does the Confucian type, the Mohammedan type, the Buddhist type, differ from the Christian type, but they also differ essentially from each other. In each, some one virtue, parental authority, for instance, or courage, occupies almost the entire foreground, while other virtues recedein the perspective of character. In Africa virtue is almost identified with courage, and power is worshipped. Woman, therefore, who in all lands represents the gentler virtues—compassion, devotion, patience—is contemptible; and the child also; for where power is worshipped feebleness can have no claim. Woman, thus relegated to a place of inferiority and contempt, sinks to a lower level of degradation than the man. Cruelty is the characteristic of the men; licentiousness, of the women.
But notwithstanding the imperfection of his ideal the African is essentially moral. He knows the difference between right and wrong; he knows that it is wrong to lie and to steal. Sometimes I was disposed to doubt it; when he told me lies for no possible advantage, or when he committed wanton wickedness.
For instance, I ask a man what town he comes from, and he answers that he comes from Jamanen, when he really came from Atakama; and there is no conceivable reason why he should deceive me, except that he lies by preference. In the first days among the Bulu, before there was an established friendship between them and ourselves, when I have asked the road to a certain town the men have directed me the opposite way, and I have inferred the truth from the suppressed exclamations of the tittering women. A man steals a woman, instead of offering a proper dowry; and when I remonstrate, indignant that he should precipitate a war with all its bloodshed and suffering rather than pay a dowry, he amazes me by confessing that he expects to pay the dowry all the same—after the war. Why not pay it in the first place and save the lives of his people? And why does the African tell me a lie when the truth would serve his purpose better? Has he sunken to such a depth that “Fair is foul, and foul is fair?” So it sometimes seemed. But a more intimate knowledge of him alwayscompels one to abandon this theory. It is never the love of bloodshed that leads him to act thus, but an excessive admiration of courage. His attitude of distrust towards his fellow men has bred in him a disposition to secretiveness and deception, so that he lies even when there is no occasion, not from preference but from force of habit.
Let him discover that another has lied to him, or stolen from him, and he will resent it as readily and as naturally as ourselves. On occasion I have heard him preach a fairly good extemporaneous sermon on these subjects. In Old Calabar I was shown the leaf of a certain tree, the lower side of which is like sandpaper, and I was assured that it is frequently used upon the lips of persons convicted of lying—though I did not observe that trees of this kind were being rapidly defoliated by reason of this custom. The African lies in self-defense, and steals in the interest of success; but what he practices himself he condemns in others; for he knows that it is wrong.
Again, the universal practice of theordealis evidence of the moral nature of the African; though at first sight it would seem rather to indicate moral imbecility. Sometimes a hen is set on eggs and the accused person is adjudged guilty or innocent according as the greater number of chickens hatched are male or female. This is a mode of trial for less serious offenses. More commonly in the case of witchcraft a mild poison is administered to the accused in a drink. Sometimes it only produces vomiting and does him no harm. But if he is seized with vertigo and staggers, he is adjudged guilty.
Since the establishment of foreign governments it is seldom that a white man is allowed to witness this ordeal; but in earlier days they witnessed it frequently. Du Chaillu tells of such a trial at which he was present,in a town near Gaboon. There lived in the town a woman, Ogondaga, an unusual woman among her people, he says; the one also who had kept his house and cooked his food and had been exceedingly kind to him. A number of deaths occurred in the town, and when the witch-doctor was consulted he announced witchcraft as the cause. The usual panic ensued. The terrified people, exclaiming, “There are those among us who eat people,” ran through the streets with drawn swords, athirst for blood. The witch-doctor named three persons as possible witches; and last among them he named Ogondaga. As they dragged her from her house towards the river she caught sight of her white friend and piteously begged him to save her. The lonely white man, pale and trembling, looked on, but could do nothing. They made her drink the poison. There was a moment’s terrible suspense; then she was seized with vertigo and staggered. But even before she fell they sprang upon her with savage yells, cut her body to pieces, and with curses flung it piece by piece into the river. And yet I am citing the ordeal as evidence of a moral nature!
The roots of certain shrubs, the bark of certain trees, and, above all, the notorious Calabar bean are used as ordeal poisons. Sometimes both the accused and the accuser are compelled to submit to the ordeal. In at least one African tribe, when one person charges another with certain serious offenses they are both (accused and accuser) tied to stakes some distance apart, on the brink of the river in the neighbourhood of crocodiles, and whichever of the two is seized first is adjudged guilty. The other is then set free.
The ordeal is a form of judicial trial in which supernatural aid is relied upon to take the place of evidence and to determine guilt or innocence. We must not forgetthat the ordeal was a medieval practice in Europe; and that our fathers were required to prove their innocence by dipping their hands into boiling water, or carrying a red-hot iron nine paces. But our fathers believed in a righteous God, and when evidence was wanting the ordeal was a direct appeal to His judgment. It is very different, and more strange, to find the African relying upon the ordeal, who does not believe in a righteous God. The God of African belief made the world; but in character He is no better than the Africans themselves; and, moreover, he is a God afar off and inactive, while the spirits who are near and active are also evil and hostile.
The principle of the African ordeal is that there is an eternal connection between guilt and retribution; and knowing of no righteous God to execute vengeance, they attribute wrath to the dumb forces of nature; these, they conceive, are in league against the wrong-doer and will execute vengeance. The belief is the more impressive because it is directly contradicted by the facts of experience. Fire burns the innocent; the lightning-stroke is no respecter of persons; the fury of the tornado is not partial to the good. And yet the belief persists. It persists because of the irrepressible instinct that wrong-doing deserves punishment, and that somewhere at the heart of the universe there is a moral power that connects guilt and retribution.
The same instinct accounts for the sleepless Nemesis and the whips and scorpions of the Furies of ancient mythology. There is a peculiar and striking instance of it in the Scriptures: Paul, having been shipwrecked on the island of Melita, gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire which the natives had kindled; but a viper, by reason of the heat, came out and fastened on his hand. Then the natives said one to another: “No doubt thisman is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.”
But when, instead of falling dead suddenly, they saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god.
One still night, as we lay at anchor in the middle of the broad river, amidst profound darkness, a deep-voiced man related to the crew a story of how a certain man, whose father and sisters had been killed by another man in a tribal war, not being able to avenge himself, at last “threw his face on his enemy.” It is not necessary to repeat the unpleasant details of how this is done; but in many tribes they believe that where a great wrong has been unavenged it really can be done, and, intentionally or otherwise, it illustrates in a gruesome manner a principle of remorse of which some suppose that the African is incapable. Ever after the man threw his face on his enemy the enemy saw that face. It haunted him in the midst of all his joys, made his sorrows the heavier, and poisoned all the pleasures of his life. Fetishes, prayers, incantations were all in vain; he still saw it, saw it alike in the darkness and the light, and saw it always. At last, when madness threatened him because of this haunting face, he killed himself to escape from it. But it is very doubtful whether he would escape it even in death; for there are those who say that a face thrown upon a man will continue to haunt him in the next life even as in this.
Again, even more clearly does the African prove that he is essentially moral by the ceremonies which he has instituted for the relief of a sense of guilt. I once witnessed a peculiar ceremony of this kind in a native town. A series of dire misfortunes, which had exhausted the usual resources of fetishism, led them at length to search their own hearts for the cause. By some means it wasconcluded that the infidelity of the wives of the town was the cause of their calamities. Thereupon a fetish medicine was prepared in a large bucket. An individual who played the part of priest was hidden in a green booth in the middle of the street. He was supposed by the women to be a spirit, and not a human being. He spoke in a false voice that was inhuman enough for any spirit. The women as he called them by name, one by one, approached and sat down on a seat a few yards from the booth. The “spirit” within the booth held one end of a rope of vine, while the woman seated without held the other. Then he asked her whether she was guilty of the sin that had wrought so much evil. The women believed that the spirit already knew their guilt or innocence, and they were afraid to lie. They all confessed their guilt in the hearing of the people—probably every woman in the town. Then an assistant, at the command of the priest, dipped a bunch of grass into the medicine and sprinkled it upon the guilty, thereby removing the curse.
Since that time they have all heard of the blood that was shed on Calvary; and by its sprinkling some of those some women, I trust, have been cleansed from a guilty conscience.
Blood itself is often used in these ceremonies; the fresh blood of fowls, or of sheep or goats. In such a ceremony the people are seated on the ground, one behind another, and the priest passing along pours the blood over their heads and shoulders. To most of them it is a mere ceremonial and removes the curse without reference to the heart. Such a scene often recalled the observation of George Adam Smith, that the essence of heathenism is not idolatry but ritualism. Many of them shrink from the blood, lowering their heads to keep it off their faces and evidently desiring as little of it as possible. But occasionally one may see a woman welcome it with eager,upturned face, and eyes of infinite and pathetic longing; in the spirit of that disciple who said: “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.”
“Out of the depths,” said the psalmist—“Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord.” And must we not believe that this inarticulate cry from the abysmal depths of the poor African woman’s darkness and degradation is heard by the attentive ear of Him who sitteth upon the throne of the heavens and is very nigh unto them that are of a contrite heart?
In nothing else does the African reveal his essentially moral nature more than in his immediate recognition and acceptance of the character of Jesus as the human ideal; although it is an ideal that traverses all his former conceptions, that subverts those ideas which are the basis of his dearest social customs, and condemns utterly that conduct which has been his very boast. Jesus is so immediately understood by the African that we are often asked whether Jesus was a black man. He is understood by every tribe and nation, because He unites in Himself the ideals of all. He also unites in Himself individual qualities of seeming incompatibility. In Him the most masculine qualities are united with those which are usually regarded as feminine, such as gentleness, patience, devotion. Christ redeems woman from oppression and bondage by rescuing from contempt those virtues in which she excels, and even giving them preëminence. He is the ideal of woman as well as man.
But that which concerns us just now is the strange fact that the African immediately accepts the new ideal. He recognizes the character of Jesus as the authoritative standard even when he refuses to conform to it; and its authority is based wholly on his perception of its intrinsic superiority. The African finds in Jesus the complete definition of his own conscience. We shall not find abetter explanation of this fact than that of the Bible; that he was made in the image of God and has not forgotten his origin.
If this depiction of the mind and heart of the African be true, it will be almost a foregone conclusion that the gospel which inspires his faith and becomes the power of God unto his salvation is the gospel of the cross and the atoning Saviour. Those who are called to preach Christ to the most degraded of mankind are ever in accord with the persistent instinct of the Church in all ages, embodied in the beautiful tradition that the spear which wounded our Saviour’s side on Calvary had henceforth the power to heal every wound that it touched.
This gospel of the atonement, in the first place, relieves his sense of guilt. His sense of guilt is very vague, indeed; but the ceremonies which he has instituted for its removal are the most concrete expression of his moral nature. He knows nothing of the theological implications of the atonement, nor does he understand the philosophy of his own salvation; but he knows that the crucified Christ satisfies his heart and relieves his conscience. For man is always greater than his reasoning faculty, and sometimes when it is impotent he still may know the truth by faith direct. The justice of vicarious atonement is not incredible to the African because he already has the idea. In common with most oriental races he has an idea of human solidarity which the occidental has lost (though he is regaining it) by reason of his excessive emphasis upon individualism. The African represents the opposite extreme. Each member of a family or tribe may be held justly accountable for any misdeed of any other member. If, for instance, in conducting a caravan through the forest one of them should desert, it would be in strict accord with African justice to shoot all the remaining members of that man’s tribe. White men (includingsome missionaries) have occasionally won a reputation for generosity by foregoing their rights in this respect. The human mind will never exhaust the divine mystery of the cross; but somewhere in its neighbourhood society will probably find the true mean between the two extremes of individualism and social solidarity. The voluntary sacrifice of Christ as our representative and its procurement of our pardon is credible to the African and relieves his sense of guilt.
Again, it is Christ as the atoning Saviour who secures his repentance. Nowhere else but at the cross have men united the ideas of holiness and love, God’s hatred of sin and love of men. In heathen religions, when love is attributed to God, as in some forms of Hinduism, He is indulgent and indifferent to sin; when holiness is attributed to Him, as in Mohammedanism, He is remote and indifferent to men, because they are sinful. And even the Pharisees were scandalized, not understanding how that Jesus, while professing to be holy, could receive sinners and eat with them. But the atoning death of Jesus, in which the divine goodness is concreted, unites holiness and love, hatred of sin and love of righteousness, and makes them inseparable.
Those who have acquired an intimate knowledge of the mind and heart of the heathen know that it is the consequences of sin, rather than sin itself, which they would escape. There is but little real abhorrence of sin. And the missionary feels instinctively that to proclaim to such an audience a gospel of forgiveness on a basis of repentance alone, without either penalty or atoning sacrifice, would only give license to indulgence, and make repentance itself impossible. The atonement of Christ, while offering free pardon, impresses even the mind of the African with the enormity of sin and the impossibility of pardon to the impenitent.
And again, Christ the atoning Saviour is the highest impulse to self-sacrificing service. The love of the atonement is more than the love of complacence. The atonement is love actualized as service.
It seems to me one must have lived among the heathen in order to realize how this principle of self-sacrifice stands over against the world’s principle of self-assertion. It is claimed, and with some truth, that Buddhism also has this principle of self-sacrifice. But, according to that religion, self-sacrifice leads to death, practical annihilation, which is therefore more desirable than life. In Christianity self-sacrifice leads to more abundant life and is the way not to a grave but to a throne. In Revelation a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world is seated upon the throne and rules: self-sacrifice is the principle not of death but of life, the way to power and glory; and this is not merely a temporal discipline, but an eternal principle—“from the foundation of the world.”
The African has a capacity for devotion not surpassed in the world. And he easily construes Christian duty in terms of service.
Ndong Koni was one of the first of the Fang Christians. He chose Christ early in life, and his mind was as completely purged of fetishism as was his heart of heathen cruelty. He was gentle and affectionate; and through all the years in which he was my constant companion, in frequent sickness, and in toils long and hard, I received from him so much kindness and affection that my heart still grows tender when I think of him. Ndong Koni was accounted very poor because he had no sisters. A man gives his sisters in marriage, and with the dowry which he obtains he procures for himself as many wives as he has sisters. Ndong Koni had not even one sister; and since he would not elope with another man’s wifehis domestic future was a problem which neither he nor his friends could solve. Therefore, when he came to the mission and asked for work, I supposed that he had resolved to procure a dowry by working for it—which would require the labour of years. But I found, when I visited his town, that, with only the assistance of an old uncle, Ndong Koni had built a little church in his town; and in order that it should be far better than any house in town they had decided that it should have real carpenter-made windows and doors swinging on real hinges. This grandeur would be very costly, and Ndong Koni had sought work at the mission in order to earn money to pay for it. From that time, as long as I remained in Africa, he never left me, except for an occasional brief interval. He rose from one position to another until he was captain of the crew of theDorothy, and, finally, a catechist. Many of the towns near Ndong Koni’s home were new, the people having come recently from the interior. I was the first white man to visit most of these; but I always found that Ndong Koni had preceded me and was the first missionary.
One of Ndong Koni’s converts was Onjoga, a remarkable man, who afterwards became an elder in the Fang church. Onjoga had reached middle age when he became a Christian, and for a long time he was the only Christian in his town. It was a peculiarly bad town. Soon after his conversion he came to the mission to ask me if I could send a teacher to his town; for, he said, he would like to learn to read the Bible that he might instruct his people. I had no teacher whom I could send; but Onjoga was so determined that I concluded to keep him at Baraka for a while and give him special instruction. He remained several months during which I taught him daily; and half of each day he worked in the yard to earn the price of his food.
He winced perceptibly when I told him that the only work which I could give him at the time was that of cutting grass. This is the one kind of work, above all others, that the African soul abhors. The coarse, rank grass grows with astonishing rapidity in that moist, hot climate. But for reasons of health it must be kept down. A lawn-mower is useless: it is cut with a short, straight cutlass—the English matchet—and in wielding this cutlass one must stoop to the very ground. It is extremely hard work, and regarded also as peculiarly menial. To keep half a dozen natives working at it steadily for half a day is the final test of the white man’s power of command in Africa.
One day I set the crew of theEvangelineat this work. Makuba, the captain, was very resentful; and the next day when I ordered him to get the boat ready for a missionary journey he was still resentful—so much so that he could scarcely walk. In answer to my stare of amazement at his snail pace he informed me that he had rheumatism as a result of cutting grass. Makuba was an incomparable boatman and a faithful friend; but in that mood he was sufficiently exasperating to demoralize both crew and missionary and to make the heathen rage. When we got well under way, and theEvangelinehad spread her white wings to the wind, the other men began to eat; but Makuba would not even touch his food. At length I said to him:
“Makuba, I am very sorry that your rheumatism is so bad you can’t eat; for I am going to have a fried chicken for my dinner and I was expecting to give you a portion of it—about half, perhaps.”
I had already learned that the chicken is the one African fetish whose potency survives all changes. Makuba’s countenance was a study; but he replied:
“Mr. Milligan, chicken no be same as other chop. Ibe fit to eat chicken.” (Makuba was not a Fang, so he always addressed me in English.)
“But do you think it would cure your rheumatism?” I asked; “I am not sure that I can spare it unless it is going to effect a complete cure.”
Makuba assured me that fried chicken was the specific for his kind of rheumatism. And he was right; for it cured him completely. We had a successful missionary tour, Makuba doing extra service at every opportunity and singing as he held the helm.
The reader will understand, therefore, that Onjoga, the Fang Christian, a man of middle age, and of real importance in his town and tribe, did an extraordinary thing when he consented to cut grass that he might stay at Baraka and be instructed in the Christian religion. He was distinctly a man of brains. Before I left Africa I saw him stand before a large audience and read a chapter from the Gospel of Matthew; and he read it well. It was he, by the way, who, after one of our missionary tours, first gave me my African name,Mote-ke-ye:Man-who-never-sleeps.
While Onjoga was living at Baraka I often took him as one of the boat-crew in my work of itinerating. On one occasion, after a long journey and a futile effort to reach a certain town during the afternoon, we lost our way; for there was a network of small rivers. We could neither find that particular town nor any other. Our predicament became serious when darkness approached and the air became dense with mosquitoes. At length we espied a canoe in the distance with several persons in it. We pulled as fast as possible in order to overtake them; but they evidently thought that we were pursuing them and they tried to escape from us. Then Onjoga, rising in the boat and calling to them as loud as he could yell (loud enough to be heard at any finite distance) told them thatwe were lost and that we would like to go with them to their town for the night. Having observed my helmet, they knew that there was a white man in the boat and they were afraid, and refused to take us to their town; for the French had recently burned some of their towns. Onjoga assured them that I was not a government officer. Then they asked who I was.
Onjoga shouted back: “He is a missionary.”
Across the distance came the question: “What is a missionary?”
Then Onjoga, shouting with all the strength of his powerful lungs, gave them an outline of my work, a brief character-sketch of myself, and a rapid synopsis of the Gospel which would have laid the world under lasting obligation if I could have preserved it. Much to my surprise it had the desired effect. They waited for us and took us to their town, one of considerable size of which I had not before known the existence. We spent the night there and preached to the people. In the evening, when all the people were assembled, one of their own number started a Fang hymn (one that I had translated) in which they all joined, to my astonishment. Then they sang another, and another. The explanation was that Ndong Koni had frequently visited the town in order to teach them.
Onjoga’s wife, Nze, was a great trial to him after he became a Christian. At length he told me that he was going to put her away and asked me to come to his town and judge the palaver. For he wished me to know that he was folly justified. I went to his town and held a great palaver and heard many witnesses. I listened half a day to the very unpleasant story of Nze’s infidelity. Onjoga said that he did not care so much about it before he became a Christian, but now it was revolting to him and intolerable. After a long talk with Nze I asked Onjogato take her back once more. He was at first very unwilling. I said:
“I know it is hard; but she promises to do right in the future; and besides, if you put her away you will probably marry some one else just as bad; for they are all alike, or nearly so.” This was before there were any conversions among the women.
“I know it,” he replied; “but I shall procure a very young wife and I am going to beg you to take her to Baraka and raise her for me.”
His heart was so set upon this project that I had some difficulty in persuading him that training wives for other men was not exactly my specialty.
At last he consented to take Nze back once more. “But,” he said, “I know she will not keep her promise.”
He was right. It was only a little while until Nze was living as badly as ever. He put her away and remained single for some time. Then he married a woman who had become a Christian under his teaching, and they lived most happily together. Shortly before I left Africa I went to his town and baptized their infant daughter. That service is still a sweet memory.
It was not a great move for Nze. She married a man in the same town and lived next door to Onjoga. Onjoga was a natural leader of men, and the influence of his life transformed that town. Each time I visited him he told me of men and women who had renounced their fetishes, together with their cruelties and adulteries, and had confessed the Christian faith. But the last time I visited his town he came walking down the street to greet me, leading by the hand none other than Nze, whom he presented saying: “She is now a Christian; and she is in the class that I am teaching.” When I left Africa Nze was still a faithful member of Onjoga’s class.
He was a man of evangelistic fervour. He regardedhimself as a debtor to all his people to make known the gospel of Christ crucified, which was always the burden of his preaching. There were but few towns on the Gaboon where his voice was not heard. Ndong Koni was gentle and winsome; but Onjoga was aggressive and forceful. They represented extreme types; and there are other types among the Fang equally pronounced. For Christ lifted up upon the cross draws all men unto Him.
Onjoga’s own town instead of being one of the worst became one of the best towns on the Gaboon. In the early days when I first visited it the characteristic sound which greeted me as I approached it (usually in the early night) was perhaps the bitter cry of a woman who was being tortured for witchcraft; or the uncouth howling of a leopard-man whom women and children may not see lest they die; or the weird wail of their mourning for the dead; or the noise of war-drums and the savage shouts of warriors who were keeping an expected enemy warned that they were on the watch. Such were the sounds that ascended in the darkness like the smoke of their torment. A few years later, in that town one would hear every evening at a regular hour the people, young and old, singing hymns, and singing them as they ought to be sung, from the heart. Nor was there any cry of torture, nor any howl of a leopard-man, nor beating of war-drums, nor any other sound that would strike fear into the heart or quench the laughter of children at play.