We close our account of missionary work in Africa with the following
from Mr. Grant: “The successes of the past, the openings of the present, and the demand for the future, should awaken a redoubled devotion to the blessed work. In no age of the world, in no history of continents, can anything be found so surprising as the discoveries and developments made in Africa since the days of those pioneer missionaries, Schmidt and Vanderkemp. It would take long to tell how her bays have been sounded since their time, how her plains have been spanned, her mountains scaled, her rivers threaded, lakes discovered, diamonds found, and a goodly number of grand highways projected into even the remotest parts of that, till of late little known, yet most marvelous land of the sun; and all under the gracious ordering of the Lord, that men freighted with the blessings of the Gospel of God’s own dear Son might enter and occupy. Ethiopia, all Africa, is on tiptoe of expectancy, only waiting to know who God is, that she may stretch out her hands to Him, and be lifted into His truth and grace.”
AFRIC’S LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.
ARNOT IN CENTRAL AFRICA.
“My idea of Africa had been that of a land very much desert, or else marshy and almost uninhabitable. But here was a region rich, fertile and beautiful, well watered, and, better still, with many people living all along the banks of the rivers. Of course, we had varied kinds of receptions. At one place, among the Bakuti, it was very remarkable how the people seemed to open their ears and hearts and gave their time. I spent ten days among them. The first five I went among their villages, having large meetings. As I could speak a dialect which many of them understood, I could explain myself quite freely to them. They became very much interested in what they heard me say, and they said among themselves: ‘We are only tiring the white man out by coming day after day to our villages; we will go to him.’ So, for the last five days they gathered together, and we had all-day meetings—a most extraordinary time, I might say, for Africa. They kept up the discussions among themselves, and before I left at least two of the men stood up in the midst of their tribe and declared for Jesus before all their friends, in their own simple language.
“We had to leave these people, and went on traveling from day to day. At one point we had rather a different reception. We had pitched our camp in the midst of long grass. Toward evening, as we were getting things in order, we found the grass round our camp was on fire. As soon as the men succeeded in extinguishing the flames eight of them were missing. Then we understood an enemy had surrounded us, set the grass on fire, and carried off all the stragglers. There was nothing to do but to find their trail and follow them up. After a ten-miles’ journey we reached a little village in the forest where they were resting. They thought we had
come to fight with them, and they rushed out with their guns, bows and arrows, and spears, to receive us. My men, thirty or forty in number, being only Africans, got into fighting order and began to load their guns for action. I was a little way behind, and did not take in the situation at once. Seeing how things were going, I ran forward, seized a little stool, and held it up in the air as a signal of peace. This arrested the enemy, and at last two of them came forward to hear what I had to say. After a little talk it turned out that the whole thing was a mistake. They thought we had come to their country to rob and plunder them, and quite naturally, in self-defense, they wished to have the first hit at us. Next day we spent the time in receiving presents and telling them of the things we had been speaking to the people all along the road.
“At another point on the journey there was a chief who had heard about the things of God. He was intensely interested in the reports, and he came himself, to see me. Before we had time to settle down to speak, he said: ‘All the huntsmen have been called in; the women are in from the fields; we are all here, and we want you at once to begin your conversation with us about the Great Spirit and those things you have been talking of along the road.’ After talking with them for some hours, the chief asked me to go with him to their village. He said there were some old people there who could not come down to hear me with the others, he wanted me very much to go and see them. I went up to the village and conversed with these poor old broken-down people, one after another, and it was most touching. They shook hands with me and looked me in the face with such a look! Some of them were too old to understand the things I had been telling to the younger people; they could only look wistfully at me and shake me by the hand. It reminded me of an old man I had spoken with on the upper Zambesi. After leaving my hut he came back to the door and said: ‘It is so strange for me to hear these things for the first time, and I so old.’ Truly, it must strike them strangely. There are many physical difficulties connected with travel in Africa, and I would be the last to urge any particular individual to go out there. But there are no difficulties in the preaching of the Word. As soon as you learn a little of the language you can have all the