“Polygamy! Ay, I was going to ask you about that. I can understand that you would find yourself in a difficulty there. But I do not quite know what your practice is. If a Kaffir chief, who has a number of wives, is converted, would you oblige him to put them all away but one, as a condition on which you will admit him to baptism?”
“It is a point on which Christian ministers are not fully agreed. I see a difficulty myself. A man has solemnly promised to take and keep a woman for his wife, and she has been faithful to him. If he puts her away, she may not only be distressed for the loss of her husband, whom she loves, but may be placed in very painful and degrading circumstances, which she has in no way merited. It seems contrary to the genius of Christianity, which is replete with justice and mercy, that she should so suffer. The Scripture no doubt allows but of one wife, that being God’s primary institution of marriage. It cannot, therefore, permit any to contract polygamy, but that hardly meets the case. Scripture also commends the man ‘who swears unto his neighbour and disappoints him not.’ It is a great difficulty.”
“How do you yourself meet it, sir?”
“I do not lay down any hard and fast rule. I make a point of talking the matter over with the husband and with the wives, and try to induce them voluntarily to separate, in every case but that of the wife first married. But if I cannot succeed in this, I do not refuse baptism. We must remember that, though polygamy has always been a thing contrary to the divine intention, it was tolerated ‘for the hardness of men’s hearts,’ until the truth in all its fulness was bestowed upon men.”
“It is not the first time that the difficulty has occurred,” said George. “The French Church, after the conversion of the northern barbarians, was long embarrassed by the same question.”
“True; and the custom gradually died out, and was heard of no more, as Christian light grew stronger,” said Mr Bilderjik. “We must hope that the same result will follow in Southern Africa. But here I think we are at last. If I do not mistake, that is the Buffalo river that we see glancing in the distance, and those small specks are the houses at Rorke’s Drift.”
“Yes, that must be the place,” said George. “See the baggage-waggons, and the horses and men on either side the ford. But there is nothing even resembling a village, that I can see.”
This opinion was confirmed as they drew nearer. There was a stone kraal, and a storehouse near it, and at a distance of a hundred feet or so another building, which, as they afterwards learned, was used as an hospital for thirty sick soldiers. Nearly a quarter of a mile off, in a hollow between two hills, stood the house in which Mr Bilderjik’s brother minister resided.