said—­“to think that there was no one even to give Him a drink of water!” That poor savage had known what thirst is.  This one awakened chord of human sympathy with the human Christ was communicative.  Other hearts were touched, and from that time the Missionary began to reap a rich harvest from his labours.  In the midst of the elaborate services of our fashionable London churches is there often to be found so genuine a feeling as that which shook the soul of this Chief, and broke down the barrier of coldness and hardness in his fellow-countrymen which had before prevented the acceptance of the message of Salvation and of the practical obligations of Christianity among them?  Men who are capable of rising to the knowledge and love of divine truth cannot be supposed to be impervious to the influence of civilization properly understood.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  The financial resources of the country at that time amounted to 12s. 6d.]

[Footnote 2:  Quoted from Parliamentary Blue Book.]

[Footnote 3:  Report made on the spot by Mr. Shepstone (not Sir Theophilus Shepstone), Secretary for Native Affairs.]

[Footnote 4:  The name of that official was held back from publication at the time, as if his act were known by the Boers, it was believed it might have cost the man his life.]

II.

     The causes of the war date far back.  The faults of England to be
     sought in the past. A revised verdict needed. Downing Street
     government and successive colonial governors.  M. Mabille and M.
     Dieterlen, French missionaries.  Early history of Cape colony. 
     Abolition of slavery by great Britain.  Compensation to slave
     owners.  First trek of the burghers.

There is nothing so fallacious or misleading in history as the popular tendency to trace the causes of a great war to one source alone, or to fix upon the most recent events leading up to it, as the principal or even the sole cause of the outbreak of war.  The occasion of an event may not be, and often is not, the cause of it.  The occasion of this war was not its cause.  In the present case it is extraordinary to note how almost the whole of Europe appears to be carried away with the idea that the causes of this terrible South African war are, as it were, only of yesterday’s date.  The seeds of which we are reaping so woeful a harvest were not sown yesterday, nor a few years ago only.  We are reaping a harvest which has been ripening for a century past.