After several years in the school; also among the first Christians.
On the occasion of this second communion service I spent the preceding Saturday in going to Ayol and several other widely separated towns with the Dorothy, gathering the people for the service. Early Sunday morning I pulled into Makwena with sixty people in the launch, on top of it, and in a big canoe behind. They were singing hymns, and singing them beautifully, for there were enough of my schoolboys there to take the parts. Between the hymns they occupied the time with the praises of Dorothy, the like of which, for comfort and for speed, they had never dreamed of. Upon our arrival a large number of people came down to welcome their fellow Christians. They wore more clothing than the whole town had formerly possessed. These Christians were of various tribes who in former times had been continually at war with each other. And I could imagine such a company coming together and making the little river run red like crimson with each other’s blood. But now they were all saluting each other as, “Brother” and “Sister”; and there was such hand-shaking and social palaver that it scarcely seemed possible there could be so much happiness in that land of cruelty and tears. And as I reflected that these were but the first-fruits of a great harvest, all the labour, the trials, the perils, the sickness of the years that had passed seemed as nothing.
Among those who were baptized that day I distinctly recall a certain old woman who had probably lived long enough to have experienced all the evils and the suffering of heathenism. Her face was almost beautiful with the light of joy that shone in her eyes. Her paltry garment was so scrappy and so scanty that I wondered whether there was enough of it to meet the requirements of propriety. But when she came into the service she was dressed in a pure white robe that came up to her shoulders and reached to her feet, and was held with a black sash.
I baptized thirty-seven persons and received several whom I had already baptized at Baraka, making in all fifty-five members in the Ayol church at the end of that year; and besides there were nearly two hundred catechumens. All those whom I baptized had been on probation and under instruction for two years or more. It was a long service, but the time passed quickly for us all, and more so because we sang many hymns. At length we closed the service by repeating all together the Lord’s Prayer:
“Tate wa a n’ eyô, e jui die e boñ éki. Ayoñ die nzak. Mam w’ a nyege, be boñe mo e si ene, ane b’ a be eyô. Vage bie biji bi a kôge bie emu. Zamege bie mam abé bi a bo, ane bi a zam abé bôt b’ a bo bie. Ke lète bie nzèn mekoñ. Kamege ne bie môt a n’ a bé. Togo na, ô ne y’ ayoñ, ye ki, y’ éwôge, mbè mbè, Amen.”
A few mouths later I held a communion service in one of the up-river towns, in which were gathered all the Christians from the upper towns. There I baptized sixty-five persons, making in all one hundred and twenty members in the Ayol Church. And, besides, there were nearly three hundred catechumens.
When I reflect on the kind of men and women that these Christians are, and consider the savages they might have been; when I realize the surroundings of darkest ignorance, revolting degradation and horrible cruelty in the midst of which they walk in ways of righteousness and truth; when I think how rough that way is and how very dark the night of Africa, my heart goes out to them all in eager sympathy and solicitude.
May the “kindly light” of God’s love, seen in the face of His Son, shine more and more upon their path, and lead them on “o’er crag and torrent till the night be gone.”
THE END
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