Pioneers and Founders

CHAPTER XI.  CHARLES FREDERICK MACKENZIE, THE MARTYR OF THE ZAMBESI

That Zulu country where poor Allen Gardiner had made his first attempt became doubly interesting to the English when the adjoining district of Natal became a British colony.  It fell under the superintendence of Bishop Robert Gray, of Capetown, who still lives and labours, and therefore cannot be here spoken of; and mainly by his exertions it was formed into a separate Episcopal See in the year 1853.  Most of the actors in the founding of the Church of Natal are still living, but there are some of whom it can truly be said that—

Charles Frederick Mackenzie was born in 1825 of an old Scottish Tory family, members from the first of the Scottish Church in the days of her persecution.  His father, Colin Mackenzie, was one of Walter Scott’s fellow-Clerks of Session, and is commemorated by one of the Introductions to “Marmion,” as—

His mother was Elizabeth Forbes, and he was the youngest of so unusually large a family that the elders had been launched into the world before the younger ones were born, so that they never were all together under one roof.  The father’s delicacy of health kept the mother much engrossed; the elder girls were therefore appointed as little mothers to the younger children, and it was to his eldest sister, Elizabeth (afterwards Mrs. Dundas), that the young Charles always looked with the tender reverence that is felt towards the earliest strong influence for good.

From the first he had one of those pure and stainless natures that seem to be good without effort, but his talents were only considered remarkable for arithmetic.  His elder brothers used to set him up on a table and try to puzzle him with questions, which he could often answer mentally before they had worked them out on their slates.  His father died in 1830, after so much invalidism and separation that his five-year-old boy had no personal recollection of him.  The eldest son, Mr. Forbes Mackenzie, succeeded to the estate of Portmore, and the rest of the family resided in Edinburgh for education.  Charles attended the Academy till he was fifteen, when he was sent to the Grange School at Bishop’s Wearmouth, all along showing a predominant taste for mathematics, which he would study for his own amusement and assist his elder brothers in.  His perfect modesty prevented them from ever feeling hurt by his superiority in this branch, and he held his place well in classics, though they were not the same delight to him, and were studied rather as a duty and as a step to the ministry of the Church, the desire of his heart from the first.  At school, his companions respected him heartily, and loved him for his unselfish kindness and sweetness, while a few of the more graceless were inclined to brand him as soft or slow, because he never consented to join in anything blameable, and was not devoted to boyish sports, though at times he would join in them with great vigour, and was always perfectly fearless.

From the Grange he passed to Cambridge, and was entered at St. John’s, but finding that his Scottish birth was a disadvantage according to restrictions now removed, he transferred himself to Caius College.  He kept up a constant correspondence with his eldest sister, Mrs. Dundas, and from it may be gathered much of his inner life, while outwardly he was working steadily on, as a very able and studious undergraduate.  With hopes of the ministry before his eyes, he begged one of the parochial clergy to give him work that would serve as training, and accordingly he was requested to read and pray with a set of old people living in an asylum.  The effort cost his bashfulness much, but he persevered, with the sense that if he did not go “no one else would,” and that his attempts were “better than nothing.”  This was the key to all his life.  At the same time he felt, what biography shows many another to have done, the influence of the more constant and complete worship then enjoined by college rules.  Daily service was new to him, and was accepted of course as college discipline, but after a time it gathered force and power over his mind, and as the Magnificat had been a revelation to Henry Martyn, so Charles Mackenzie’s affection first fixed upon the General Thanksgiving, and on the commemoration of the departed in the prayer for the Church Militant.

His fellow-collegians thought of him as a steady, religious-minded man, but not peculiarly devout, and indeed the just balance of his mind made him perceive that the prime duty of an undergraduate was industry rather than attempts to exercise his yet unformed and uncultivated powers.  In 1848 he was second wrangler.  There were two prizes, called Dr. Smith’s, for the two most distinguished mathematicians of the year.  The senior wrangler’s papers had the first of these; for the second, Mackenzie was neck and neck with a Trinity College man, and the question was only decided by the fact that Dr. Smith had desired that his own college (Trinity) should have the preference.

After this he became tutor and fellow of his college, taking private pupils, and at the same time preparing for Holy Orders, not only by study of books, but by work among the poor, with whom his exceeding kindness and intense reality gave him especial influence at all times.

He was ordained on the Trinity Sunday of 1851, and took an assistant curacy at a short distance from Cambridge, his vigorous powers of walking enabling him to give it full attention as well as to his pupils and to the University offices he filled.  His great characteristic seems always to have been the tenderest kindness and consideration; and in the year when he was public examiner, this was especially felt by the young men undergoing an ordeal so terrible to strained and excited intellect and nerves, when a little hastiness or harshness often destroys the hopes of a man’s youth.

With this combination of pastoral work and college life Mackenzie was perfectly satisfied and happy, but in another year the turning-point of his life was reached.  A mission at Delhi to the natives was in prospect, and the Rev. J. S. Jackson, who belonged to the same college with him, came to Cambridge in search of a fellow-labourer therein.  During the conversations and consultations as to who could be asked, the thought came upon Mackenzie, why should he strive to send forth others without going himself.  He could not put it from his mind.  He read Henry Martyn’s life, and resolved on praying for guidance as to his own duty.  In the words of his letter to Mrs. Dundas, “I thought chiefly of the command, ‘Go ye and baptize all nations,’ and how some one ought to go; and I thought how in another world one would look back and rejoice at having seized this opportunity of taking the good news of the Gospel to those who had never heard of it; but for whom, as well as for us, Christ died.  I thought of the Saviour sitting in heaven, and looking down upon this world, and seeing us, who have heard the news, selfishly keeping it to ourselves, and only one or two, or eight or ten, going out in the year to preach to His other sheep, who must be brought, that there may be one fold and one Shepherd; and I thought that if other men would go abroad, then I might stay at home, but as no one, or so few, would go out, then it was the duty of every one that could go to go. . . . And I thought, what right have I to say to young men here, ‘You had better go out to India,’ when I am hugging myself in my comfortable place at home.”  And afterwards, “Now, dear Lizzie, I have always looked to you as my mother and early teacher.  To you I owe more than I can ever repay, more than I can well tell.  I do hope you will pray for me and give me your advice.”

Mrs. Dundas’s reply to this letter was a most wise and full expression of sympathy with the aspiration, given with the deep consideration of a peculiarly calm and devotional spirit, which perceived that it is far better for a man to work up to his fullest perception of right, and highest aims, than to linger in a sphere which does not occupy his fullest soul and highest self; and she also recognized the influence that the fact of one of a family being engaged in such work exercises on those connected with them.

Others of the family, however, were startled, and some of his Cambridge friends did not think him adapted to the Delhi Mission, and this therefore was given up, but without altering the bent that his mind had received; and indeed Mrs. Dundas, in one of her beautiful letters, advised him to keep the aim once set before him in view, and thus his interest became more and more turned towards the support of missionary work at home.

In 1854, the first Primate of New Zealand, George Augustus Selwyn, visited England, after twelve years of labour spent in building up the Colonial and Maori Church, and of pioneering for missions in the Melanesian Isles, over which his vast see then extended.  He preached a course of four sermons at Cambridge; Mackenzie was an eager listener, and those forcible, heart-stirring discourses clenched his long growing resolution to obey the first call to missionary labour that should come to him, though, on the other hand, he desired so far to follow the leadings of Providence that he would not choose nor volunteer, but wait for the summons—whither he knew not.

Ere long the invitation came.  The erection of the colony of Natal into a Bishop’s See had been decided upon a year before, and it had been offered to John William Colenso, a clergyman known as active in the support of the missionary cause, and a member of the University of Cambridge.  On his appointment he had gone out in company with the Bishop of Capetown to inspect his diocese and study its needs, as well as to lay the foundations of future work.  In the party who then sailed for Natal was a lady who had recently been left a widow, Henrietta Woodrow by name, ardent in zeal for the conversion of the heathen, and hoping that the warm climate of Africa would enable her to devote herself to good works more entirely than her delicate health permitted at home.

Pieter Maritzburg had by this time risen into a capital, with a strange mixture of Dutch and English buildings; but the English population strongly predominated.  Panda was king of the Kaffirs, and fearfully bloody massacres had taken place in his dominions, causing an immense number of refugees to take shelter in the English territory.  Young people who thus came were bound apprentices to persons who would take charge of them for the sake of their services, and thus the missions and those connected with them gained considerable influence for a time.  A Kaffir, who must have been Captain Gardiner’s faithful Umpondobeni, though he was now called by another name, inquired for his former good master, and fell into an agony of distress on hearing of his fate.

Mrs. Woodrow at once opened an orphanage for the destitute English children that are sure to be found in a new colony, where the parents, if unsuccessful, are soon tempted to drink, and then fall victims to climate and accident.  The Kaffir servant whom she engaged had already been converted, and was baptized by the name of Abraham, soon after he entered her service; but “Boy,”—the name at first given to him,—became a sort of surname to him and to his family.  While watching over the little band of children, Mrs. Woodrow was already—even though as yet only learning the language—preparing the way for the coming Church.  She wrote of the Kaffirs: “They come to me of all ages, men and women, some old men from the country, with their rings upon their heads, and wrapped in their house blankets.  Then they sit down on the kitchen floor, our ‘Boy’ telling them, in his earnest way, about Jesus Christ.  These I cannot speak to, but I manage to let them know that I care for them, and ‘Boy’ says they go away with ‘tears in their hearts.’”

About two years previously, a Scottish colonist at the Cape, named Robert Robertson, had been touched by the need of ministers; had been ordained by the Bishop of Capetown, and sent to Natal as missionary clergyman to the Zulus.  Early in 1855 these two devoted workers were married, and, taking up their abode at Durban, continued together their care of the English orphans, and of the Kaffir children whom they could collect.

In the meantime, Bishop Colenso, having taken his survey of the colony, had returned to England to collect his staff of fellow-workers; and one of his first requests was that Charles Mackenzie would accompany him as Archdeacon of Pieter Maritzburg.  There was not such entire willingness in Mrs. Dundas’s mind to part with him on this mission as on the former proposal; not that she wished to hold him back from the task to which he had in a manner dedicated himself, but she preferred his going out without the title of a dignitary, and, from the tone of the new Bishop’s letters, she foresaw that doctrinal difficulties and differences might arise.

Her brother had, however, made up his mind that no great work would ever be done, if those who co-operated were too minute in seeking for perfect accordance of opinions; and that boundless charity which was his great characteristic made him perhaps underrate the importance of the fissure which his sister even then perceived between the ways of thinking of himself and his Bishop.  His next sister, Anne, whose health was too delicate for a northern climate, was to accompany him; and the entire party who went out with Bishop Colenso numbered thirty or forty persons, including several ladies, who were to devote themselves to education, both of the white and black inhabitants.  They sailed in the barque Jane Morice early in the March of 1855, and, after a pleasant and prosperous voyage, entered Durban Bay in the ensuing May.

The first home of the brother and sister was at Durban, among the English colonists.  It somewhat disappointed the Archdeacon, as those who come out for purely missionary aims always are disappointed, when called to the equally needful but less interesting field of labour among their own countrymen; put as he says, he satisfied his mind by recollecting, “I came out here simply because there was a scarcity of people that could and would come.  I did not come because I thought the work more important than that I was leaving.”  So he set himself heartily to gather and confirm the congregation that had had its first commencement when Allen Gardiner used to read prayers to the first few settlers; and, at the same time, Kaffir services were held for the some thousand persons in the town in the employment of the whites.

The Archdeacon read prayers in Kaffir, and Mr. Robertson preached on the Sunday evenings.  The numbers of attendants were not large, and the most work was done by the school that the Robertsons collected round them.  The indifference and slackness of the English at Durban made it all the harder to work upon the Kaffirs; and, in truth, Archdeacon Mackenzie’s residence there was a troublous time.  The endeavour, by the wish of the Bishop, to establish a weekly offertory, was angrily received by the colonists, who were furious at the sight of the surplice in the pulpit, and, no doubt, disguised much real enmity, both to holiness of life and to true discipline, under their censure of what they called a badge of party.  Their treatment of the Archdeacon, when they found him resolute, amounted to persecution; the most malignant rumours were set afloat, and nothing but his strength and calmness, perfect forgiveness, and yet unswerving determination, carried him through what was probably the most trying period of his life.

Intercourse with the Robertsons was the great refreshment in those anxious days.  A grant from Government had been made for a Church Mission station upon the coast, and upon the river Umlazi, not many miles from Durban; and here Mr. and Mrs. Robertson stationed themselves with their little company of orphans, refugees, and Kaffirs; also a Hottentot family, whose children they were bringing up.

Their own house had straight walls, coffee-coloured, a brown thatched roof, and a boarded floor, in consideration of Mrs. Robertson’s exceeding delicacy of health; but such boards! loose, and so springy that the furniture leapt and danced when the floor was crossed.  It was all on the ground-floor, partitioned by screens; and the thatched roof continued a good way out, supported on posts, so as to form a wide verandah; and scattered all around were the beehive dwellings of the Kaffir following, and huts raised for the nonce for European guests.

At six o’clock in the morning a large bell was rung.  At eight, Kaffir prayers were read by Mr. Robertson, for his own servants, in the verandah, and for some who would come in from the neighbouring kraals; then followed breakfast; then English matins; and, by that time, Kaffir children were creeping up to the verandah to be taught.  They were first washed, and then taught their letters, with some hymns translated into their language, and a little religious instruction.  The children were generally particularly pleasant to deal with, bright and intelligent, and with a natural amiability of disposition that rendered quarrels and jealousies rare.  Good temper seems, indeed, to be quite a Zulu characteristic; the large mixed families of the numerous wives live together harmoniously, and the gift of a kraal to one member is acknowledged by all the rest.  Revenge, violence, and passion are to be found among them, but not fretfulness and quarrelsomeness.

After the work of instruction, there was generally a ride into the neighbouring kraals, to converse with the people, and invite the children to school.  They had to be propitiated with packets of sugar, and shown the happy faces of the home flock.  There was, at first, a good deal of inclination to distrust; and the endeavour to bring the women and girls to wear clothes had to be most cautiously managed, as a little over-haste would make them take fright and desert altogether.

The Kaffir customs of marriage proved one of the most serious impediments in the way of the missionaries.  The female sex had its value as furnishing servants and cultivators of the ground, and every man wished to own as many wives as possible.  Not only did the question what was to be done in the case of many-wived converts come under consideration, but the fathers objected to their daughters acquiring the rudiments of civilization, lest it should lessen their capabilities to act as beasts of burden, and thus spoil their price in cattle, (the true pecunia of the Zulu).  Practically, it was found, that no polygamist ever became more than an inquirer; the way of life seemed to harden the heart or blind the eyes against conviction; but the difficulty as regarded the younger people was great, since as long as a girl remained the lawful property of the head of her kraal, she was liable to be sold to any polygamist of any age who might pay her value; and thus it became a question whether it were safe to baptize her.  Even Christian Zulus marrying Christian women according to the English rite could not be secure of them unless the cows were duly paid over; and as these Kaffirs are a really fine race, with more of the elements of true love in them than is usual in savages, adventures fit for a novel would sometimes occur, when maidens came flying to the mission station to avoid some old husband who had made large offers to their father; and the real lover would arrive entreating protection for the lady of his heart until he could earn the requisite amount of cows to satisfy her father.