WHITE MAN'S RELIGION
SIR, —In a recent issue of The Spectator your correspondent, Mr. Main- waring Burton, quoted the reply made by an African Oxford graduate upon being asked where and when he had embraced Christianity. The African replied that he would never have become a Christian had he not embraced the faith before coming to England. I have spent twenty years wandering around in Africa, and I have visited a large number of mission-stations from time to time, stations representing most of our many denominations. On many occasions I have spoken to natives who have upset missionaries' calculations by drifting back to their own faith. In some cases I heard excuses which meant little to me, but in most cases I heard excuses which, though worded differently in each case, could be summed up in the words of a " backslidden " headman with whom I have enjoyed many a talk.
" The white people," he said, " boast that only their God is God. They weep over us because we do not love their God. But in Goldi (Johannesburg) they drink and they fight and they cheat even as we do. When there are white men together they cannot live as their God teaches. It is only when they live amongst us, whom they say are wicked, that they live as their God teaches." This from a man who could read people but who could not write his own name. These "ignorant savages" could point out to us much in our lives which is not in accordance with the principles which we insist are our own.—
Yours faithfully, H. MYRDDIN LEWIS. 18 St. Thomas' Road, Brentwood, Essex.
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