On a minute scale, and under very different conditions, the clergy of the Dutch churches have for nearly two centuries fulfilled the same complex functions towards their people in South Africa. They have, it is true, been the sacerdotal consolers and guides of their folk; but they have been infinitely more. They have been the representatives of that higher learning and culture which circumstances denied to the mass of their people; the parsonage and the church have been the social points round which the national life centred, and from which have radiated whatever of culture and social organization was attainable.
It has often been scornfully described how when, in some remote Boer farmhouse, one son showed unusual mental alertness, he was predestined for the Church; how often, by rigid economy on the part of other members of the family, the money was accumulated to send him to college in Europe, and how on his return Mynheer was regarded with profound reverence and almost awe, even by his aged parents and the boys with whom he had minded lambs in childhood. This is true; but to suppose the feeling took its rise merely in a superstitious reverence for the black coat and ghostly prerogatives of the preacher would be to err profoundly. The man who returned from his studies differed materially, in the extent of his information and in his grasp on many aspects of life, from his brothers and companions who had remained tending the paternal flocks, or labouring in the family vineyards; and he had therefore necessarily certain social functions to perform, which could be performed by no other members of his community, and this apart entirely from his priestly office. The feelings with which he was regarded combined, with relation to one person, the feeling which the modern man entertains for his skilled lawyer, his family physician, his favourite writer, and his political leader. For years the clergy of the Dutch Church formed of necessity the connecting link between the Boer, widely scattered through remote districts, and the outer world. They were his advisers, often his representatives when he entered into contact with keen social and political elements of the hungry modern world. It was largely through them that such conditions of culture and knowledge as he had brought with him into the desert were maintained and enlarged; and they formed the channels through which were conveyed to him whatever influence of the modern world reached him. And nobly, on the whole, have they performed their task.