Soga’s journal mixes mundane commentary about people attending class and Sunday services with doubts about his own ability to preach and observations on Africans he encountered. His writings clearly reveal his insider-outsider status. Not only did he have a Scottish wife and a European lifestyle, he had not gone through male initiation ceremonies and, therefore, was not regarded by many Xhosa as a mature man. Although these factors militated against his identification with other Africans, including the Xhosa, he also suffered from racial discrimination, particularly after his return to South Africa.
His evangelical programme did not feature accommodation to British rule, and he saw no cultural impediment to Xhosa acceptance of Christianity. Though Soga made distinctions between Christians and heathens, he found both receptive to his itinerant preaching among thirty communities located up to 23 miles from his Emgwali mission. He was impressed by considered questions put to him by non-believers. On one occasion when he had reprimanded ‘my poor benighted country-men’ for wearing painted blankets and ornamentation useless to ‘an immortal being like me’, they responded by asking him questions about sin. Would an infant who died be considered sinful and be cast into hell? Would a person who had sinned a short time be forgiven? Soga replied that a merciful God would not cast the infant into hell, but there was ‘no possibility of escape to any who have once entered the regions of evil'. A few years later he challenged some fellow countrymen to explain why they did not accept Christianity. A senior chief responded that such knowledge should have come from their forefathers if it was so important; it should not have been withheld from them. Soga pointed out that neither had their forefathers known the white man’s metal spades, hoes, and blankets. He used both reasoned argument, based on his knowledge of Xhosa society, and diabolical threats of punishment in the afterlife to reinforce his Christian message. These discussions suggest that the people to whom Soga preached did not connect technological innovations with Christianity, unlike many people in other parts of the Empire. They also worried that this religion was not being incorporated into existing belief systems in an appropriate manner.
Soga treated their nuanced responses seriously, and addressed their often unstated reservations. He could claim to be one of them and present himself as an example of the benefits of being a Christian. Yet he could be as judgemental as the harshest of European missionaries: criticizing slavish adherence to superstitions such as rainmaking or killing witches. From an imperial perspective the most striking aspect of Soga’s texts was his nationalist belief that Christianity could unify the battered and divided Xhosa people, even though in the short run the division of Africans into Christians and non-Christians had the potential to undermine chiefly authority. He strongly believed that, while Christianity could not tolerate some aspects of their culture, it posed no threat to their African identity. Soga’s education outside the continent made him conscious of his identity not only as a Xhosa, but also as an African. Rejecting the European view of Africans as doomed to extinction, he argued that God gave Africa to Ham and all his descendants, and that God would ensure that they stayed there. He recognized that Africans depended on European missionaries to spread Christianity, but they had to resist the European vices that inhibited human progress and enlightenment.