The Boer people ever chafed against the restraining action of the British Government as to their practice of slavery, and they have not hesitated either to exhibit their hostility to missionary enterprise.  The confiscation of Protestant mission sites in the Orange Free State is one of the instances; another was exemplified in a raid perpetrated about forty years ago by the Transvaal Boers upon the inoffensive Bechuana tribe, whose chief and many of his people had accepted the Christian faith through the teaching of Moffat, David Livingstone, and other evangelists.  The pretext for that raid was a lying report that that Bechuana chief had bartered some 400 guns from traders to fight the Boers with.  The Boers sent an ultimatum requiring the surrender of those weapons.  Despite the protestation of the chief and his people that not more than eight guns had been bartered for hunting, which had later proved true, a commando was sent against them under Commandant Paul Krueger, now President Krueger.  Many of the natives were slain, their villages burnt, their cattle seized, and great numbers of the tribe taken captive for distribution as servants among the Boer farmers in the Transvaal.  That raid was further signalized by the total destruction of Moffat’s mission station—­church, school buildings, and industrial shops.  These, after being looted, were all consigned to the flames, as also the missionary dwellings, among which was that of David Livingstone, with his furniture, books, and belongings.  There are abundant records, besides that of the Bechuana nation, that barbarous and idolatrous peoples are amenable to Christianity without the prior influences of civilization or individual education, or that they should be subjugated first, as the Boers would have it.  What indeed is of immense aid for moral and economic advancement is the operation of civilized and liberal governmental authority, repressing slavery, under which proprietary rights and justice are equally afforded to black and white, and where the Gospel might have a free course without constraint and without inducements of material advantages.

It seemed that such conditions were on the eve of eventuating for the rescue and disenthralment of darkest Africa.  This is what Moffat, Livingstone, Coillard, and many other devoted servants of the Gospel had prayed for all their lives, what has been and still is the burden of the prayers (no doubt all inspired) of millions of Christians.  The interior is no more a blank on the map.  Much is done for the suppression of slavery.  The whole continent is parcelled out among different nations, who have assumed the task of civilizing their respective spheres.  The world’s energy and capital stand available for the object, and it appeared that many souls were being seriously aroused to the responsibility of obeying the charge pronounced in Ezekiel xxxiii. 1-11.  But sinister influences have not failed in attempts to bar beneficent dispensations.  We have seen fanaticism resulting in the fierce revolt of Mahdism in the north, and are now awaiting the issue of the war brought on by Afrikaner Bondism in the south.