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VOL. T.xxxvn. RICHI
Africa And A
Titusville, the birthplace, in 1858, of the present
vast petroleum industry of the United States
and the world, and of the oil kings of finance, was
recently greatly enthused and enlightened by the
advent here and the addresses of the notable Afri
can explorer and missionary, the successor of
David Livingston in Africa, Dan (not Daniel)
Crawford.
Mr. Crawford, a native Scotchman, was allured
to this city by a native Irishman, Rev. Dr. Semple,
pastor of the only Presbyterian church of the
town, from the Grove City Convention. In three
consecutive addresses before the men and women
of Titusville he gave many particulars of his wonderful
career in Africa among the million natives
of the Bantu tribes, living almost exactly in
the heart of that vast continent. His first address
was given to 150 men of the churches at a banquet
in the Presbyterian chapel. His second day's
appearance was before a large audience in the
church, and the last before the combined ladies'
missionary societies of Titusville. This most remarkable
man has experienced in the jungles of
the Dark Continent almost all the thrilling dangers
and adventures of any African hunter or
traveler, yet all were subservient to his one great
purpose of giving the Gospel and the Bible to our
dark-skinned brethren of the forest.
Originally a semi-invalid, his twenty-three
years of strenuous life, far away from civilized
man, has made him physically, intellectually and
spiritually a most complete man of action and
great deeds.
lie came with a message from the heart of the
black man to the heart of the white man: "Come
over and help us. Bring us Bibles, those wells of
the water of life, for our thirsty souls."
By years of mental toil and struggle Mr. Crawford
succeeded in "thinking black" so as to create
a Bantu vocabulary and translate our Bible into
words and the ideas that the black men speak and
think in. They are deep and shrewd thinkers,
despite their barbarism and lack of printed language.
They possess, he says, a wonderful tongue,
with more tenses for verbs, more voices and genders
than possessed by the English language. He
says: "We (Africans) have nineteen genders, the
most aencaie 01 distinctions, and nineteen catagoriea
in the classification of nouns, and thirtythree
tenses for the verb. Your poor, cold, bad
language does not have the "futures" as we have
them. Everything that has a vascular system has
one catagorv?i. e., long things, like palms, grass,
cane, etc., are in one system; all short, blunt or
round in another; hard things in another; soft,
flabby things in another, etc. You need an adjective
for each of them, but not so the man who
thinks black. He has sixty sounds. It is difficult
to represent them with twenty-four letters. A
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ffOND, NEW ORLEANS, ^ > ,s ""A, DECEMBER
'V;%
"Thinking t>iack
By HENRY M. HALL
changed prefix makes the difference. The thousand
of verbs all end in "all," a most musical endinir.
In a lamruatre thus inflentpH it is imnnccihlo
u ? O O- ?
to speak uugramatically; the initial letter of the
principal word gives all?as if you were to say not <
"God is love," but "God is gove." It took Dan
Crawford many years to master the language and
complete his translation of the Bible. * All that
time he had been a "walking and talking Bible"
in order to teach the gospel. He says: "Missionary
labor is hard, but there is great glory in it."
The natives have no note-books, but they have
wonderful memories. "If I visit any of the different
tribes once in ten years they can repeat my
former sermon word for word, so keen is their
memory." They have no artificial light. They
call such "lighting God^' ior.tke^ tliipto that he
has drawn down the toufrjsfc&r Utah tlo go to
sleep; but they have They
have no shoes, but thein temh^ie^J^iiXi^ng that
they can trust them wlisre-l^&e not go with my
boots. God compensates us in his own way. Their
uncivilized life is full of compensations. 'Civilization'
is creeping upwards toward them with its
mines, liquor and sadness. When they hear of
our modern improvements, with our accidents,
and the wars of civilized nations, as in the Balkans,
they say, 'Better off not to be better.' A
wnoie system 01 etnics. The immortality of the
soul is believed in from one coast to the other.
'The body is the cottage of the soul/ God is his i
own pioneer in the heart of Africa?black, heathen
Africa. God hath preceded us and everything
tells of him. They can taunt us with our terrible
wars as wholesale murder, saying, 'We kill only i
criminals/ but they are sinners. I do not apologize
for them. The gospel of God is what we j
need. The night is coming when no man can
work. Afar the golden crested crane is calling; i
I must go back to Africa and live and perhaps 1
die there." ]
u:? -n #--n # ? i -
j-LiB ttuuresses were an run 01 new xnougnts, new i
ideas, on Africa and its myriads of human beings
who can think after another fashion than ours. <
Dan Crawford is full of stories of African life. :
He thinks faster than he can talk English, and <
hence his mental attitude and expressions seem <
strange, and yet most philosophical. He repeats 1
words. "Go slow, go slow, you men of America. 1
Don't bolt your food and destroy yourselves. Na
tionally you are bolting your food and are in for
a bad time of it." "Come back, come back, to the
Bible, the grand old book that never told a lie;
wherein is the true solution of the problems that
are before you." He painted before his audiences
the great reeking hot swamps, the 15-feet long
grass jungles (where lions watch for their human
prey), the sweeping rivers and the forests that
darken the sun. He tells of the Myriad sounds
al Presbyter/ah t
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White Man
that make the equatorial night a grand concert of
sweet echoes. He told of acts of kindness done by
the natives, their childlike faith, their deeds of
bravery, etc. You can see the great soul of this
earnest Christian man yearning to help them with
whom he has lived and loved so long.
Although Dan Crawford has lived for nearly a
quarter of a century in a wilderness as denao oa
Livingston ever saw, and has shot as many lions
as any white hunter in order to save his black
friends, the natives, yet he comes forth a cheerful,
optimistic, sanguine man "with a twinkling eye,
a merry laugh, and a sunny faith." He has carried
the Gospel of Christ hundreds of miles among
these dark-skinned children of nature, among
many dangers from wild men and wild beasts. He
met many bad black men, "whom," he says, "are
almost as bad as the bad American or Englishman,"
and although he has seen "cannibalism,
bloody murders, unnamable cruelties and unmenfinnoKIn
i?4-i~ -?J "* **
aiiuiuiiiaiiuijs iu me ana conauct/' yet lie
has great faith in the power of the Bible and its
gospel to regenerate Africa. After he has preached
awhile to "us pagans in America" he will "return
to Africa," with the hope of dying a few hundred
miles further inland, and marking with his grave
another milestone of the advance of "Christ's
kingdom."
His book, "Thinking Black," is one of the most
interesting works ever written on African misXT
! 1 - -
3luns. xaaviiig learned to trunk and. speak in the
Bantu language, the "wonderful language into
which I had the incomparable privilege of translating
the word of God," he understands the "ins
and outs" of African character as well or better
than any man since Moffat or Livingston. As he
now studies America he sees many things in which
white Christians here seem to be eclipsed by black
Christians there. They worship God at suhrise;
they often interpret God's parables and precepts
more clearly than we do. America, he believes, is
more materialistic than even pagan Africa.
We "seem to neglect spiritual aims for present
2ase and evanescent comfort." . "Africans don't
read the Bible because they can't. Americans
3on't read the Bible because they won't." Dan
Crawford preaches up the Bible as a wonderful
jook?the word and counsels of God to show men
:heir higher, eternal nature. "What the)' need is
Bibles." Many there have it, but he urges that
more and more be sent to Africa as the only light
hat can enlighten the minds of these native races,
tie also urges Christians in America to study the
Bible themselves more assiduously and profoundly.
His Bibles are being printed at presses on the
joast of Africa.
Titusville has, since Dan Crawford's departure,
Parted a fund of probably $2,000 for African
Bibles.