THE REV H. JOHNSON.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1678, 19 February 1913, Page 8

THE REV H. JOHNSON.

CONGREGATIONAL MINISTER, FOR CHRISTCHURCH MISSIONARY EXPERIENCES. Among the arrivals from London by the Arawa yesterday was the Rev. H. Johnson, who has been appointed to the charge of the Trinity Congregational Church, Christchurch, and who is to take up his duties forthwith. He is accompanied by his wife, two young daughters and a son. Mr. Johnson is not a stranger altogether to New Zealand, having toured the Dominion as a lecturer on Africa some six years ago. On missionary work in that vast country, Mr. Johnson speaks with a certain authority, having spent ten years of his life in Central Africa, mostly in the country bordering on Lake Tanganyika, whither he ventured on pioneer missionary work as far back as 1896. In those days the country was practically unexplored, and the natives were a wild, untutored lot, with little respect for life and superstitious to a degree. Those, too,

were tho days of slavery, when parties of well-armed Arabs used to raid the country, herd large numbers of helpless natives togother, and drive them down to the coast to be shipped north to Arabia, Persia; and other countries. In this nefarious work the marauders from the north were actually assisted by tho natives. If in the tribal wars one tribe captured a number of the enemy, they would purchase immunity by trading them off to the Arab slave-getters, and would even undertake to carry off people they had a quarrel with to soil to the slavers. This trade was engaged in openly as late as the year 1900, and in 1903 Mr. Johnson himself saw a large party of natives being smuggled down to tho coast. It was then a very risky business, on account of the activity of the British Navy, but a very lucrative one. As to the value of the missionary work done, Mr. Johnson stated that it all depended on the point of view taken. While they were missionaries seeking to spread the beneficent teachings of the Bible, they were also the pioneers of commerce and civilisation. Taking a broad liberal view of the work, it must be accounted to be highly successful. For instance, the natives, steeped in superstition, had a variety of revolting customs, chief among which was tho practice of mutilating offenders against tribal laws and captured enemies. It was a common thing for them to lop off a man's ears, cut off his lips, or eyelids, or even gouge out his eyes, as revenge, for some petty offence. These practices were now, as the result of civilising influences, relegated to the far back. Another horrible practice was the trial by ordeal. In this case the offender's ordeal was to have to drink a cup of poison. If the man died be was adjudged guilty, but if, as was sometimes the case, the poison acted as an irritant to the stomach and became an emetic, the sufferer was held to be guiltless. That custom was still going on, he believed, in territories in Central Africa, which had not experienced tho civilising influence of the missionaries. If their work there was to be judged narrowly on the number of converts, there would not be a great deal in it. They had done the substructural or foundation work, which had proved successful, and paved the way for better things.

For the past five years Mr. Johnson had been pastor of the Willesden Congregational Church, Bradford, where he conducted, as a specialty, men's Sunday meetings most successfully; His appointment to Christchurch had been the outcome of his visit to New Zealand six years ago.