The service began with a hymn sung by the congregation. The natives are natural musicians, and they easily acquire the faculty of part-singing. The harmony seemed to intensify the discord and unrest of Matshaka’s troubled spirit; all the events of his turbulent life seemed to crowd in on his mind as the past is said to overwhelm the consciousness of a drowning man.
The hymn over, a prayer was said by the minister, but it made no impression on Matshaka; the ideas were pitched in a key to which his mind could not yet vibrate. After the prayer another hymn was sung, and then the minister opened the Bible and said he was going to read the Word of God. This statement set Matshaka’s mind on the alert; now he would hear the very words spoken by the majestic and all-powerful God to the men He had made. It was with an almost sick feeling of disappointment the forlorn man soon learnt that the words being spoken were not those of the God towards whom his spirit was passionately stretching forth its hands, but of one of His many prophets, who were, after all, only men.
The chapter happened to be the second in the Epistle of Paul to the Colossians. Matshaka listened to the sentences read by the minister in a sonorous voice and with excellent execution, and presently felt an unfamiliar stir within him. When the minister reached the thirteenth verse: “And you, being dead in your sins, and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,” something seemed to transfix the heart and then the brain of the desolate man sitting in the corner of the church, with bent head, and face hidden in his hands.
Then happened to Matshaka what happened to Saul of Tarsus when on the road to Damascus: a great light from Heaven shone round about him. This was succeeded by a darkness as of death. Then the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw with a blinding clearness of vision. That strange new birth, that awakening of the soul which transfigures those who genuinely experience it, was his; let those doubt it who may, this experience is the great fact in some lives. Its existence is ignored by many, denied by a few, and explained satisfactorily by none. The Christian explanation is partly vitiated by attributing it solely to Christian influences; the fact being that it was well known in ancient times amongst Pagan nations. Moreover it is in these days realised by many to whom Christianity, in some of its most important aspects, is a book sealed with adamant. The materialistic attempt at an explanation is quite untenable. Conversion, the conviction of sin, the awakening to a higher life, that thunder-trump which separates the many goats from the few sheep of our past, and summons the soul to that seat of agony from which it can and must discern good from evil, without speciousness or self-deception, is as real and fundamentally natural as the earthquake, and as tremendous in its effects.
Matshaka broke into a passion of sobs which he vainly strove to stifle. At the conclusion of the reading the minister came down the aisle, and kneeling next to the penitent, besought the Lord to save this sinner, whose spirit was broken and whose pride lay in the dust. The congregation prayed silently in unison, not one turned his head to look. They well knew what was happening; most of the elder members had undergone a similar experience.
A short time elapsed and then Matshaka’s sobs ceased. When the ordinary service proceeded he became quite calm. After its close, the minister met the penitent, took him by the hand, and led him apart. It was eventually settled that he was to attend regularly for instruction each day at the mission, before being formally received as a church member.
When Matshaka left the mission for his home the rain had cleared off; the steep, green slopes of the Intsiza shone in the sunlight, and foaming cataracts shot down the gleaming crags. In his eyes was a new-born light, and his heart was the home of a virginal peace from whose gentle face the spirits of wrath had fled away—never to return.
Three
Probably no more villainous and unmitigated fraud than the Kafir “isanuse” or witch-doctor cumbers the earth. Pretending to the faculty of divination, he trains his powers of observation and memory to an extraordinary extent. Every trivial circumstance coming within the sphere of his cognisance is hoarded with a view to future use, and by means of spies he is kept informed of all going on among the people of his clan. Rich and influential men are, of course, the objects of his keenest regard. Nothing is too unimportant to claim his attention. The pattern of a snuff-box, a dent in an assegai handle or blade, the number of cowrie shells in a necklet or armlet—all facts of this description are noted with the view to possible use against the owner, should it be advisable to convict him of practising black magic. Such facts can be used in this way, for instance: if a man be accused of causing any one’s illness or death, it is very useful to be able to say—“You took the assegai with the crack in the handle that you mended with the sinew of a she-goat last spring, dug a hole with it in front of the sick man’s hut, and buried therein” (whatever the particular supposed magical substance may be). This knowledge of detail fills the spectators with awe at the witch-doctor’s powers of divination. All the friends of the accused know that he possesses an assegai mended in the manner described, and they at once feel that he is guilty.
Superimposed upon all this fraud is a growth of self-deception; no doubt many of these wretches believe themselves to be possessed of magical powers.