New Converts and Martyrs

Missions among the stolid, stupid Greenlanders seemed for long years as hopeless as melting the icebergs of the Frozen Pole. One hundred and sixty years ago, Matthew Stach wrote home: ‘’We have found here what we sought, heathens who know not God, who care for nothing but catching seals, fish and reindeer, and for this purpose are constantly roving about.”

The Eskimo religion was the lowest type of paganism. Without temples or idols, they believed in a great spirit, Tongarsuk, and priests or wizards, his Angekoks. Fear seemed to be their only religious emotion, and their superstitions fostered it. Christian truth had apparently no power to impress them, and the native tongue had no words to convey spiritual ideas. Not one missionary in a hundred would have borne what Matthew Stach and Frederick Boehnisch and the heroic John Beck who had already been in prison for the Lord’s sake, bore from those natives. The Eskimos shunned them with aversion, blamed them for the scourge of smallpox which had raged for nine months and made New Herrnhut the centre of a desert, and they adopted a systematic course of annoyance. Whatever the missionaries said, was travestied and ridiculed; whatever they did, was caricatured and grotesquely mimicked. In the midst of earnest exhortations, they feigned sleep and snored; or they would feign pious desire to hear hymns sung, and then drown the singing with howls and beating of drums. But farce and comedy were not sufficient — and personal insult and violence threatened a tragedy. For five years they sought to wear out the patience of the missionaries by a series of persecutions. They laid siege to their huts, broke their furniture, stole their food and manuscripts, pelted them with stones, and broke their boat which was their last hope of subsistence. And when starvation was threatening these noble Moravians, with monstrous ingratitude and cruelty they would not even sell them one morsel of food, though they themselves had abundance.

Seldom has mission work held out less hope. The Eskimos were repulsive dwarfs, with minds and hearts even worse dwarfed than their bodies. Their looks were ugly, their habits filthy. Mothers licked their children as cats do their kittens, and they all wallowed like swine in the mire of their uncleanness. Hans Egede had found all his efforts for their uplifting met by resistance, doggedly stubborn and malicious. They invoked the aid of their Angekoks to destroy him with their wizard arts, and when these failed they thought he must be chief of wizards, as his Master has been called Prince of Demons. But the motto of these brave men was,” Lose thy way, but lose not thy faith,” and they held on to God and persevered in prayer.

The first sign that God’s summer sun was melting these icy hearts was when John Beck’s infant daughter drew their eyes to the beauty of Christian home-life. Once more the prophecy was fulfilled: ‘’And a little child shall lead them.” Her lisping lips somehow softened their rudeness and warmed their coldness; and when the Eskimo mothers heard her singing holy hymns, they yearned to hear their little ones sing like her, and began themselves to learn those simple gospel songs which Beck and Boehnisch had written in the native tongue.

Then in 1738, as Beck was in his humble hut preparing an Eskimo Bible, a company of Greenlanders from the South came in and watched him at his work, wondering- that a piece of paper could be made to hear, remember, and repeat the words of God. He read to them from his manuscript translation of the gospels, and once more the story of the cross broke hard hearts. One of these men, Kayarnak, came nearer and looking- up into Beck’s face, said, with pathetic earnestness, “How was that? Tell it to me once more; for I too want to be saved.”

The ice was breaking, and the long winter was feeling the first touch of spring. Beck’s soul, so tried during these years of fruitless toil, could scarcely believe what his ears heard. There was at last one seeker after God. His joy overflowed in tears and in speech; again and more fully he told the tale that never loses its charm. And when his fellow-missionaries returned from work in the districts round about, they found him in the midst of a group of Greenlanders, whose open ears drank in his words, while their hands were laid on their mouths, to express amazement at the strange and wonderful things, never before heard.

From that day Kayarnak could be found daily at the mission hut, with cheeks wet with tears, with heart opened to attend unto the things which were spoken, and yearning to be taught, as no Greenlander had ever been known to yearn before him. He clung fondly to his Moravian teachers, remaining with some twenty companions, through the winter, and aiding in the translation of the gospels. On Easter morning, 1739, i presence of a large assembly of natives, he, with his wife and two children, confessed Christ in baptism. And so the first fruits of that long-delayed harvest-field began to be gathered.

The return of spring compelled Kayarnak to start again on his search for seals; for the ocean is the field which the Eskimo cultivates. His boat’s keel is his plough, and seals and fish are his crop.

With no little fear Beck and his brethren let this new convert go forth to his work with heathen companions. But a year later he came back, not only having fast hold upon his newly-found Jesus, but bringing with him his brother and his family, having been so long absent in hope to gain them as converts to the Lord.

The conversion of Kayarnak we have thus given in detail, because it marks a new era in missions to that north land. Beholding this man healed, the opposers of the gospel could say nothing against it. The miracle wrought in his changed heart and life put a sudden stop to the mockery that had made Stach’s heart burn with holy indignation; and the spirit of earnest inquiry, which flamed in Kayarnak’ s breast, kindled a like spirit among the people. Instead of keeping aloof, or coming to scoff and jeer, they became constant and reverent hearers, and learned and loved the sacred songs and gospel readings which Beck had written for them.

The whole life of the people now underwent a change. Brutal cruelty gave place to considerate kindness; past ill-treatment was confessed, and forgiveness was sought; care for the wants and woes of others, and even of strangers, took the place of heartless indifference. For instance, if the women of Greenland hated anything it was suckling a motherless babe; yet even this they were found doing gladly, so sweetly had the gospel taught them the grace of unselfish service to the most needy and helpless. If their language had no word for gratitude, their transformed conduct made up for the lack of their speech by its own peculiar dialect; and the newly converted natives found some words to express their new views and feelings which their foreign teachers had long sought in vain. It need not be said that the charms of the Angekoks were now broken and the reign of superstition was at an end.

Kayarnak, the learner, became also the teacher.

A’£IV CONVERTS AND MARTYRS. 217

He taught even the missionaries; he helped them so to understand the language as to correct the errors and blunders of earlier teaching and translating; and they learned from him a still more valuable lesson; for he led them to stop trying to convince unbelievers by mere argument, and to trust to the patient and prayerful presentation of the mere facts of redemption; to depend not on the logic that appeals to the reason, but on the demonstration of the Holy Spirit. Kayarnak himiself was permitted only to lead the way in this new era. At the end of a year of most exemplary piety, amidst a living testimony, that in its faith and fervour and rich experience was apostolic, he fell asleep; but the work went on. In 1747, twenty-five years after Hans Egede had landed at Ball’s River, the first church building in Greenland was erected, where three hundred were wont to gather. As the Moravian Brethren saw the church and school and singing class; as they beheld the very land itself yielding to culture, and the changed aspect of the v.- hole country; and most of all as they saw the desert of human hearts turning into the garden of the Lord, they could only say, “The Lord hath done more for us than we knew how to pray for. A stream of life is now poured upon this people. As we speak or sing of the sufferings of Jesus they are so sensibly affected that tears of love and joy roll down their cheeks. Though they may happen to be from four to six leagues away, almost all come to our Sunday service; and candidates for baptism can scarcely wait patiently for the happy hour.”

Other missions and missionaries followed, and progress was in geometrical ratio, for at Lichtenfels four years saw as much advance as fourteen at New Hermhut, and the largest of the congregations was gathered at Lichtenau. For thirty years John Beck was spared to watch the seed which his own hand had sown ripening into harvests. He had made a solemn vow to follow the Lord wholly in that land of ice and snow, to do all and bear all as unto Him — and sacredly had he kept his covenant. He had asked one soul saved, as the seal of God’s approval, and that prayer was answered so abundantly that all the settlements throughout Greenland are now Christian, and it is now forty-five years ago since at Proven the last professed pagan died. Kayarnak was the leader of a host; and Beck’s Bible became the base-block on which was built a new Christian State. Over the icy castles of the frozen north floats the flag of the cross, and again the prayer and pains of the missionary have their recompense of reward!

Africaner — The Hottentot Terror.

Africaner was known as the “Bonaparte of South Africa.” This notorious Hottentot chief had become the terror of the whole country. The Boers had at some time wronged or offended him, and in revenge for their insult or injustice, with characteristic rage, he carried on a constant, cruel, relentless war with the natives living near the mouth of the Orange River. He was a terrible foe, feared by everybody, deaf to remonstrance and appeal. He stole cattle, he burned kraals, he took captives only to enslave those whom he did not destroy.

When in 1817 Moffat started for Africaner’s kraal his friends warned him that this savage monster would make a drum-skin of his hide and a drinkingcup of his skull. But the noble hero of Namaqualand was not to be dissuaded even by the tears of the motherly dame who wept for the danger and death into which he was rushing.

Africaner was originally a Hottentot in the service of a Dutch farmer at Tulbach, near Cape Town. His usual work was the care of cattle; but he and his sons were often sent on raids of plunder against unarmed tribes further inland, a good school of robbery and of murder, where this Hottentot proved a quick learner; and on a slight provocation he shot his employer and his wife. Then Africaner fled as an outlaw, across the Orange River, keeping near enough to harass the Boers, but far enough away to be safe from arrest and punishment. From this time his hand, like that of Ishmael, was against every man. It mattered little whether white or black, native or foreigner, Namaqua, Hottentot, or Boer; whoever crossed his track he hunted down like a wild beast, and fire and sword were his merciless weapons. The authorities of the colony would have paid any reasonable price for his head; but where was the man daring enough to attempt to capture or kill such a monster? It was like fighting a dragon. He might tolerate missionaries, but they could not hope to change him, and gave it up in despair.

Robert Moffat won this hard-hearted monster, and it was by the same old gospel that has broken so many other hearts of stone and melted so many other hearts of steel. Into the very soul of Africaner this truth of God entered, and until the day of his death there was no break in the harmony of this strange friendship. During Moffat’s sickness, it was Africaner whose hands ministered to his needs, furnished his food and the best of milk. And when Moffat found it needful to go to Cape Town, although there was still a premium upon his head, Africaner went with him. That whole journey is one of the romances of history. When the missionary stopped on his way at the house of a farmer who had been his host as he journeyed to Namaqualand, he had no little difficulty in convincing him that he was Moffat, for the man had heard that the Hottentot chief had murdered him, and knew a man who had ‘’seen his bones.” But when he saw Africaner, who had killed his uncle, and witnessed the change in his whole character and demeanour, the farmer could only exclaim, “O God, what cannot Thy grace do! What a miracle of Thy power!”

The sensation produced by Africaner’s appearance at Cape Town defies description. Here was an outlaw, a robber, a murderer, for whose capture such large rewards had been vainly offered, himself coming back, risking arrest, trusting himself among them, a changed man. The lion had become a lamb. The governor sent for him, and the reward offered for the seizure of the outlaw was actually spent in gifts for himself and presents for his people. As Moffat found it vain to attempt further work in Namaqualand, Africaner went with him to the Bechuanas. He first moved Moffat’s goods and cattle and sheep to his new home at Lattakoo, and then, having faithfully fulfilled his trust, went back for his own movables, that he might settle beside his beloved teacher. But his end was near, and he died shortly after at his old kraal.

Kapiolani — The Hawaiian Female Chief.

Kapiolani, of the Hawaiian Islands, was the most noted among female chiefs, and had large landed possessions. When first seen by the missionaries she was seated on a rock oiling her person, and was found to be dark-minded, superstitious, intemperate, repulsive. Yet, when the gospel touched her heart, this degraded daughter of heathen kings was found attending the place of prayer, becomingly dressed, dignified in deportment, devout and meek, but resolute and courageous. She received the messengers of the Lord at her house with the courteous cordiality of Lydia, and with them planned for the improvement of her own people in condition and character with the ardour and candour of Catherine of Sienna. Like Catherine, she was inspired with the heroism of a reformer. From the sanctuary of Keave, the sacred house of deposit, she bore away the royal relics which were worshipped with divine honours, and hid them in inaccessible caves near the head of the bay in the side of a precipitous rock. When Charles S. Stewart, chaplain of the United States ship of war, “Vincennes,” was leaving Kaawaloa at midnight, she insisted on going with him to the shore, that with warm hand-shake and many tears, she might accompany him to the ship, as Ephesian elders did with Paul. This heroic woman, with her husband, strove to uproot the most tenacious idolatrous notions and customs. Without counting costs to herself, she put down murder and infanticide, theft and Sabbath-breaking, lust and drunkenness, and sought to reform morals and religion. And when, in 1841, she died, had no other gem for the crown of the great Conqueror been dug up on Hawaiian soil, this woman’s conversion sufficed to prove that the gospel is, as truly as in Apostolic days, God’s power unto salvation.

One act of her life will ever stand out in conspicuous pre-eminence. She knew that the famous crater of Kilauea was believed by the people to be the residence of the awful goddess, Pele. The superstitious hold of this goddess upon the people must be broken. And she determined to lay hold upon the very pillars of this temple of the Hawaiian Dagon and bring down this superstition into ruin. In 1825 she made a journey of a hundred miles to this volcanic crater, and there openly defied this false deity, at her throne and shrine. She not only refused to offer even the sacred bean as a propitiatory offering or in any way avert or appease the wrath and power of Pele, but she made the crater ring with the praises of Jehovah, as she sang hymns to the only true God. She had made the journey on foot with numerous attendants, who were awe-struck at the open indignity with which she defied the dreaded goddess. And those who know with what awful terrors such pagan deities are clothed in the common mind, and with what tenacity these superstitions continue to hold even professed converts, can imagine what holy courage faith must have begotten in this Hawaiian heroine. It was eleven hundred years before her (723), when Boniface at Geismar in Upper Hesse, boldly, with axe in hand, hewed down the gigantic and venerable oak sacred to Thor, the Thunderer, defying the superstitions which held the people in bondage, and the idolatrous associations of centuries; and, as blow after blow fell, the pagans looked to see the bolt of the avenger smite the profaner of his sacred grove dead. That was a heroic deed, but Boniface had never been under the thrall of this idolatry, and had no superstitions of his own to fight. But this woman was herself only just delivered from the chains of lifelong idolatry, and had no band of clergy around her to encourage and share her act of open profanation.

Kho-thah-byu — The Karen Evangelist.

One man is selected out of the Karens, or wild men of Burma, as an example of the transforming power of the gospel, mainly because he was the first convert among his people. He was a poor man and a slave, and one of the degraded people of a debased nation, a man of very ordinary abilities, and yet most useful and uninterrupted in his labours. The first of his nation to be baptized, he lived to draw hundreds and thousands to follow his own steps. He is a singular example of what ordinary faculties will accomplish when wholly consecrated. He aroused the whole nation to Christianity. Born in 1778, and baptized in 1828, he was fifty years old when he took up the cross. Until he was fifteen, he was at home, but wicked, wilful, ungovernable. After he left his parents he became a robber and a murderer; and was, no doubt, at least accessory to no less than thirty murders. His natural temper was vicious.

After the Burmese war he went to Rangoon, and

NE W CON I ^ER TS A XD MA R T YR S. 223

got into Mr. Hough’s service, by whom the first religious impressions were made upon his mind. He followed Adoniram Judson to Amhurst, and was taken into the family of Ko-shway-bay, who, having paid for him a debt, took him into his family as a servant, according to Burmese law which makes the debtor slave to the creditor. His master, who was also an inquirer, became discouraged with regard to doing him any good, and could not retain him in the family on account of his immoral character. He was, however, transferred to the family of the Rev. Francis Mason, and soon after began to pay attention to religious things, though he had fits of violent temper. Soon signs of repentance appeared, and faith in Jesus. His dark mind slowly took hold of the truths of Christianity, and his violent temper often caused him great discouragement and depression, and deferred his baptism. He was, however, baptized on the 16th May, 1828, as we have said, at fifty years of age. He had already sttidied with great diligence, in order to read the Burman Bible, and became immediately very zealous to bear witness to the Saviour whom he had found. Immediately after his baptism, accompanied by two of his countrymen, he left Tavoy to visit the Karens in the valley of Tenasserim, preaching and explaining the catechism, and with immediate results in the conversion of other Karens, Moung Khway being the first.

Nearly a whole village ultimately became Christian through the influences started by this converted Karen. From this time, so long as his strength allowed, he was accustomed to make tours among his brethren, from which he would return with converts prepared for baptism, the numbers running all the way up from six to one hundred and fifty. He obtained the ears of the people of whole villages, and remarkable changes took place under his ministry. He was unwearied in labour, would often talk of the gospel till near midnight, and absolutely spared not himself. His preaching carried with it conviction, and compelled others to say,” Truly this is the word of God.” After Mr. Boardman had preached in Burman he would interpret as much of the discourse as he could remember into Karen. Though a naturally weak man he became magnanimous, because the Spirit of Christ and the love of souls inspired him. His wife was likewise baptized in 1828. She had formerly been very ignorant and very wicked, but the influence of her husband had been blessed to her entire transformation. His tours lasted from a week to six months, spent in itinerating with perpetual labour, day and night. Most amazing results often followed his ministry. For instance, when the mother of the baptized Karen headman died, in fear that other relatives of the deceased would wish to perform heathenish customs in connection with her burial, he proposed to erect a preaching zayat near the grave, and invited Khothah-byu to hold forth the word of life there. At one time this Karen evangelist projected a journey into Siam, and actually started to visit the Karens in that country, but was not suffered to cross the border, and was compelled to return.

After Mr. Boardman became unable to labour, the whole care of the church and the instruction of the inquirers devolved on this simple-minded convert. He taught school and showed diligence in every department of labour. His pupils could repeat verbatim whole Burman tracts. His boldness in attacking idolatry was remarkable. The town of Shen Mouktee is famous for the idol which it contains, which was said to have grown miraculously from a little brass image of a few inches high, to the full size of a man. It was as sacred to the Burmans as Diana was to the Ephesians. When this old man had been left to rest in one of the zayats he was found surrounded by a large congregation of Burmans, and, holding” them under a peculiar fascination, that was compared to the influence of a serpent over a brood of chickens. And the first words that were heard by Dr. Mason as he approached, were, ‘’ Your God was a black kula;” that is, a foreigner. The peculiar look which accompanied these words could never be forgotten by the beholder. If ever a man hated idolatry, that man was Kho-thah-byu. No fatigue, no obstacles, could prevent his seeking out his fellow-countrymen, and when he could not reach the Karens he would attack the Burmans and their idolatry with unmerciful energy, utterly heedless of their ridicule. His ruling passion was for preaching, and once, when he was in danger of losing his life by drowning, his only solicitude was lest he might never more preach the gospel to the Karens. He was not only a man of very ordinary abilities, but he was actually, in some things, ignorant to the verge of stupidity. His own pupils outran their teacher in their attainments. His adaptation was for a pioneer, and God permitted him to become, in succession, the first Karen preacher to his countrymen in the districts of Tavoy, Maulmain, Rangoon and Aracan. The son born to him in Tavoy he named Joseph, the first Christian name ever conferred by native Karens; and his great desire was that that son might live to become a preacher to his people.

In his tours he sometimes had to wade streams to his armpits, and sometimes through mud and water where the rain filled the hollows; yet nothing could discourage or dismay him. He was one among a thousand. Sometimes the Karens thronged his house so that there was danger of breaking it down, and their importunity left him no chance for needed physical rest, and scarcely for food. He was chief of all the native Karen assistants employed in the carrying forward of the mission. When his days of itinerating were past by reason of rheumatism and blindness, it was to him the greatest of all his affiletions that he was unable to carry on active work: and when at Sandoway the summons came for him to cease from his labours, on the 9th of September, 1840, at sixty-two years of age, he departed without an anxious thought as to his future state. The blue mountains of Pegu, often the first land seen in India by the approaching mariner, remain his monument; and the Christian villages that adorn their sides constitute his epitaph. If he hated idolatry, he loved the gospel with equal intensity; always planning some new excursion, never so happy as to find hearers for his message. The leading truths of the Bible became familiar as his alphabet, and he sought in every sermon to bring into prominence the vicarious death of Christ. Among his converts there was a more thorough knowledge of justification by faith than can be found among an equal number even in Christian countries.

While it is true that his work was a pioneer work, breaking up the fallow ground and casting in the seed, yet few who have devoted their entire lives to such labours have been the instruments of gathering as many converts to Christ. He idolized his work. It was the only business to which he attached the least importance; and it was this which constituted the charm of his life. His absorption in preaching made him quite insensible to external objects, and he has been known in preaching to be forsaken by every individual soon after the commencement of his remarks, and yet continue with such interest as though he were preaching to listening thousands; and when, at the close of his discourse he found himself alone, without discouragement he would, with renewed zeal and ardour, enter upon his work with the very next individuals he met. He was utterly unceremonious in introducing religious themes, regarding no time or place unsuitable, and though his mental resources were limited they were well directed. He concentrated all his powers upon his work. His success can be accounted for by just four words, ‘•’• God was with him.” He was a man of prayer. It was his practice to read and pray aloud. He has been known to spend all days and, like his Master, whole nights in this way; and, however ignorant upon other subjects, the moment he touched his favourite theme he surprised all his hearers. His baptism in 1828 was the commencement of the mission, which in success exceeds perhaps any other, except that to the Hawaiian Islands. He was never ordained, because he lacked a well regulated mind, and to the last was liable to outbreaks of evil temper, which caused him great sorrow and humiliation.

When the year 1878 completed the centenary of his birth, and the semi-centennial of his conversion, a large new institute building was dedicated to the service of God and Christian education, under the name of the Kho-thah-byu Memorial Hall. That is the true monument of his twelve years of earnest and successful labour. It cost nearly 50,000 rupees, and was the result of ten years of gathered contributions among the Karens of Bassein. It was dedicated without debt in the month of May. It stands on a fine knoll in the outskirts of the town, and is visible for a long distance from the north and west. Its entire length on the south front is 134 feet. The east front and wing measure 131 feet, the west side with the wing 104 feet. The tower is sixty feet high, surmounted by a Greek cross, and on the wall of the south verandah, in carved, gilded, Burmese characters, we read this inscription:

‘’ 1828 — Kho-thah-byu — 1878.”

Ranavalona II. — Madagascar’s Queen.

When Robert Drury gave the first full account of the savages of this great island, it was under the despotism of wickedness, and might was the only right. Idolatry of the most degraded kind existed, and the island was the scene of perpetual war, lust, slavery and superstition. Thousands of natives were sold every year, and the spot where they caught the last glimpse of home, as they went into hopeless exile, even yet bears the pathetic name, ’ * The weepingplace of the Hovas.” Vices were treated as virtues. Punishments were savagely contrived to inflict long torture. The people were a nation of thieves and liars. There were no homes. A native never spoke of family or family ties. The pen refuses to record what was there seen and heard. It should be written in blood and registered in hell. Female virtue was of so little account that it did not even affect the legitimacy of offspring. Idols so filled the land that anything which was not comprehended, though it were but a machine or a photograph, was deified. The French governor of the Isle of Bourbon told the first missionaries that they might as well attempt to convert sheep, oxen or asses.

Madagascar has unenviable celebrity as the scene of a persecution which might have brought a blush even to the cheek of Nero. When Ranavalona I. mounted the throne, murdering all rivals, — the “bloody Mary” of Madagascar, treacherous as Judas, selfish as Cleopatra, — from twenty to thirty thousand victims fell annually a prey to her cruelty. Her chief amusement was a bull fight, and it was said that half of the population perished under her bloody sceptre. At her coronation she took two of the national idols in her hands, and said, “From my ancestors I received you. In you I put my trust, therefore support me.” And those idols, in robes of scarlet and gold, were held at the front of the platform to overawe the multitude.

We pass over an interval of years. In 1868, thirty-nine years after the coronation of Ranavalona I., and seven years after her death, Ranavalona II. was crowned. For the first time, Madagascar had a

Christian, as well as a constitutional, ruler. He who would see the marvellous transformation in this island need only contrast the coronation of these two queens, one on the 12th of June, 1829, and the other on the 3rd of September, 1868. At this latter ceremony, the symbols of pagan faith were nowhere to be seen. In their place lay a beautiful copy of the Bible, side by side with the laws of Madagascar. Over the queen was stretched a canopy, on whose four sides were as many Scripture mottoes:” Glory to God,” ‘’ Peace on Earth,” ‘’ Good- will to Men,” ‘•’■ God with Us.” Her inaugural address was interwoven with the dialect of Scripture, and now it was idolatry and not Christianity that became a suppliant for toleration; — and all this, seven years after the death of the bloody Mary, whose thirty- two years had been a reign of terror! Astrologers and diviners were no longer to be found at court; Rasoherina’s sacred idol was cast out of the palace; government work ceased on Sunday; Sunday markets were closed, divine worship held in the court. The Madagascar New Year was changed from an idolatrous festival to a Christian holiday, and the queen’s address declared, ‘’I have brought my kingdom to lean upon God, and expect you, one and all, to be wise and just, and to walk in His ways.” One month later this Christian queen and her prime minister were publicly baptized by a native preacher, in the very courtyard where the bloodiest edicts had been promulgated.

When the queen was examined by native ministers, previous to baptism, it was found that her first serious impressions were traceable to a native Christian. One of the four noble, men afterward burned as martyrs had thus sown the seed in her own heart. Two days before their baptism, the queen and her prime minister were married, and shortly after publicly joined in the Lord’s Supper. Her example was likely to be followed by government officers of high rank; and even the chief idol keeper, the astrologer of Rasoherina, applied for baptism. The congregations multiplied beyond all means of accommodation. A hundred new buildings were in demand. There was an increase of sixteen thousand worshippers in a year, and the royal chapel was erected in the very courtyard of the palace, where to-day that beautiful house of prayer may yet be seen. In gilded letters upon two large stone tablets forming part of the surbase of the structure, appears engraven the following royal statement, read at the laying, of the cornerstone in 1869:

“By the power of God and grace of our Lord Jesus, I, Ranavalomanjaka, Que-^u of Madagascar, founded the House of Prayer, on the thirteenth Adimizana, in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ, 1869, as a house of prayer for the service of God, King of kings and Lord of lords, according to the word in sacred Scriptures, by Jesus Christ the Lord who died for the sons of all men, and rose again for the justification and salvation of all who believe in, and love Him.

“For these reasons this stone house, founded by me as a house of prayer, cannot be destroyed by any one, whoever may be king of this my land, forever and forever; but if he shall destroy this house of prayer to God which I have founded, then is he not king of my land Madagascar. Wherefore I have signed my name with my hand and the seal of the kingdom.

“Ranavalomanjaka, Queen of Madagascar.”

Maskepetoom — The Indian Chief.

The Rev. Mr. Rundl, of the English Wesleyan Missionary Society, was the pioneer, who, at great personal risk, visited the Cree tribes of the North American Indians, that he might bear to them the message of salvation. These tribes were, perhaps, the most numerous and powerful among the Indians that roamed over the vast regions of the Canadian northwest, before the scourge of epidemic disease had mowed them down by thousands.

We put on record here the simple story of the most powerful chief among those tribes, known as Maskepetoom, or the crooked arm, from the fact that one arm had been so hacked and wounded in close conflict with his ferocious neighbours, the Black Feet Indians, that, in healing, the muscles had contracted and stiffened, and permanently crooked the arm. This chief was a born warrior. His special delight was found in the excitement of Indian conflict, in cunning ambuscades, and strategic movements. He did not hesitate to practice those barbarities and cruelties upon the captives of other tribes that have given to the Indians a character as specially vindictive and inhuman.

The Rev. James Evans, in his marvellous trips through the magnificent distances of this northwest, visited and faithfully preached the gospel to Maskepetoom and his warriors; and, although some accepted the gospel, and became Christian believers, the warlike chief himself was found impervious to the message of peace. Some years later, the Rev. George Macdougal, at one of the camp-fire services, read as his Scripture lesson the story of Christ’s trial and crucifixion, and came to the prayer which the Saviour offered for his murderers:” Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He stopped to dwell especially upon this prayer, for the Indian spirit feeds upon retaliation. If there be any attribute of the Indian character that has become historically and proverbially conspicuous, not only prominent but overtopping all others, it is the disposition to revenge real or imaginary injuries upon the perpetrators of them. And, having in mind the fact that this quality was so regnant in the hearts of his Indian hearers, he attacked the evil stronghold, and plainly told them the conditions of divine forgiveness: ‘’If we forgive not men their trespasses, neither will our heavenly

Father forgive our trespasses;” that if they really expected forgiveness from the Great Spirit, they must be able to pray such a prayer as Christ offered on the cross. The dark-eyed warrior listened with profound attention, and was deeply moved, but nothing more was said to him that evening.

The next day, as the great company led by him, and composed of many hundred Indians, was riding along over the beautiful prairie, a subordinate chief rode quickly to the side of Mr, Macdougal, the missionary, begging him, in an excited manner, to fall back into the rear, lest he should be compelled to witness the horrible torture and violent death of a man who was approaching them in a little band of Indians, seen in the distance, although so far off as scarcely to be distinguishable to a white man’s vision.

The warning of this chief was occasioned by the fact that, months before this, Maskepetoom had sent his only son across a mountain range, or pass, to bring a herd of horses home. Among the foot-hills of these massive mountains are many fertile valleys where there is grazing all the year round, and in one of these the great chieftain had kept his reserve of horses. One of his warriors was selected as the comrade of his son, to aid him in his work. It transpired that this man, having a chance to sell these horses, was so excited by the bait offered to his cupidity, that he actually murdered the son of the chief, disposed of the herd, and for a time concealing his booty, returned to the tribe, telling a plausible story that in one of the dangerous passes in the mountains the young chief had lost his foothold and been dashed to pieces over an awful precipice, so that he, being left alone to manage the herd of horses, had been compelled to see them scattering wildly over the plain. As nothing was at the time known to the contrary, Maskepetoom and his followers were compelled to accept this improbable story; but it subsequently transpired that, unknown to the murderer, the tragedy had witnesses; so that for months a horrible vengeance had been preparing when the offender should come within the control of the exasperated chief. And now the awful day had come when the vengeance might find opportunity of execution, and the bereaved father was actually approaching the band, among whom was the murderer of his only son. As he advanced the very warriors held their breath. He quickened the speed of his horse, and rode on in advance. Mr. Macdougal, anxious, if possible, to prevent the execution of such dire revenge, spurred his horse forward, and rode up just in the rear of the mighty chieftain, uplifting his prayer to God that the wrath of man might at least be restrained.

When the two bands approached within a few hundred yards of each other, the eagle eye of Maskepetoom caught sight of the murderer. He drew his. tomahawk impetuously from his belt, and rode still faster till he came face to face with the man that had treacherously inflicted the greatest injury that was possible upon the father; then, with a voice tremulous with suppressed emotion and yet with admirable command over himself, the chieftain looked in the face the man that had broken his heart and murdered his boy, and said to him, * ‘You have killed my son, and you deserve to die. I selected you as his trusted companion, and gave you the post of honour as his comrade, and you have betrayed my trust and cruelly murdered my only boy. No greater injury could you have done to me and to my tribe. You have not only broken my heart, but you have killed him who was to have been my successor. You ought to die, by all the laws of Indian tribes; but I heard from the missionary last night at the camp fire, that, if we expect the Great Spirit to forgive us, we must forgive our enemies, even those who have done to us the greatest wrongs; and but for this I would have buried my tomahawk in your brains at this instant. You have been my most cruel enemy, and you deserve death; but,” he added, as his voice trembled with still deeper emotion, “as I hope the Great Spirit will forgive me, I freely forgive you. But go away from me and from my people, and let me never again see your face.” Then Maskepetoom hastily pulled up over his head his war bonnet, his voice completely broke down, and actually quivered with the feelings that were tearing his heart, but which he had for the time suppressed; the gigantic form bowed low over the neck of the horse, and he gave way to an agony of tears.

This great chieftain not only became a devoted and consistent Christian, but for years afterwards lived a becoming and beautiful life. He gave up all his old warlike habits. He mastered the syllabic characters in which the Cree Bible was printed. He made the word of God his daily solace, his counsellor, and his joy, and the remainder of his days were spent in service to God and man. He delivered thrilling and earnest addresses to his own people, urging them to give up all their old sinful ways, and become followers of that Saviour who had so grandly saved him. They listened to his words, and many, like him, abandoned their old warlike habits, and settled down into lives of peaceful quiet. He was so desirous even to benefit his old enemies, the Blackfeet, and to tell them the story of a Saviour’s love, that he actually went fearless and unarmed among them, Bible in hand. His end was the end of a martyr, for a bloodthirsty chief of that vindictive tribe saw him approaching, and, remembering some of the fierce conflicts they had waged in other days, and, doubtless, having lost by the prowess of Maskepetoom some of his own relatives in those conflicts, he seized his gun, and, in defiance of all rules of humanity, not to say magnanimity, he coolly shot the unarmed and converted Christian chieftain in cold blood.

And SO fell a man who was a wondrous trophy of the cross, a chieftain whose conversion did a vast amount of good, showing how the gospel can change the hardest heart, eradicate the most deeply rooted habits, and enable a warlike savage so thoroughly to conquer the besetting sin of the Indian character, even under the most extreme provocation and where few could have found fault if the price of blood had been exacted and the murderer executed, as actually to forgive the offender. This is the more remarkable, because revenge, like cannibalism, has its root in a religious or superstitious conviction. Dr. S. McFarlane says that cannibalism can be accounted for in no way satisfactorily but as a religious practice. He gives many proofs of this position. It is not due to appetite for human flesh, nor simply to vindictive feeling toward enemies. They regard the devouring of an enemy as the means of incorporating into themselves the strength of a slain foe, and all the ceremonies of cannibalism are invested with the sanctities of religion. And so we may say, of the Indian character, as to revenge; it is not regarded by them as a vice, but a virtue, as the quality of a manly, brave, and noble spirit; as a form of justice, not simply of hateful passion; and something to be cherished, not to be suppressed. An Indian without revenge is a coward in the tribe, and there is nothing from which an Indian shrinks more than from the charge of cowardice; and so, when the gospel overcomes in a man like Maskepetoom the instinct of revenge, and especially when revenge could be justified as a judicial act, inflicting punishment upon a murderer, it is one of the marks of the miracle-working power of the gospel of Christ.

Ling-Ching-Ting — The Chinese Opium-Smoker.

Rev. James Main was so shocked at the vacuity of a Chinaman’s face that he declared there was in the very look of a Chinese audience somewhat that seemed to say that the consequence of not having heard the gospel was a loss of all capacity to receive and understand it.

Thirty years ago, in Foochow, a man, of about forty, found his way into the little suburban chapel at Ato, and his eyes and ears were fixed upon the Rev. S. L. Binkley, who was preaching on the all-sufficiency of Christ to save. For some reason this poor Chinaman’s attention had been strangely riveted to the truth, and he tarried at the close of the service to converse with the missionary. He said, ‘’This Jesus I never heard of until now, and I don’t know who He is; but did you not say that He can save me from all my sins? “*’ Yes,” replied Mr. Binkley, ‘* I said exactly that.” ‘’ But then you did not know me when you said so. I have been for many years a liar, a gambler, a sorcerer, an adulterer, and for twenty years an opium-smoker, and no man who has used opium for so long a time was ever known to be cured. Now if you had known me, you would never have said what you did, do you see?” Of course the missionary could only repeat with emphasis his former declaration, about the power and willingness of Jesus to save his believing people from even such a multitude of sins!

The opium-smoker was struck dumb with amazement. His mind was in bondage to ancient superstitions; the poison of lust was in his very blood; and worse than all, he was sold in hopeless slavery to the awful drug and his will was in chains to a habit of twenty years, and he had never yet known any such victim to be set free. The thought of such a deliverance as even possible, of salvation from all his sins, was too much — he was dazed by the glory of such new freedom and dared not believe such statements to be other than extravagant fancies or tormenting illusions. And so he went away; but he came back the next day, and day after day, to hear more of this wonderful Saviour, and to look into this gospel of salvation that promised to free even an opium -slave. Weeks passed by; and one morning impetuously rushing into the missionaries’ room, before his tongue could speak his radiant face had told of his new discovery: ‘’I know it now! Jesus can save me from all my sins, for He has done it.”

Yes, so quick had been the victory of faith that the last and worst enemy was destroyed; the habit was broken, and even the desire was gone. He no longer felt the bonds under which he had hopelessly struggled for so many years. Christ had made him free; and such deliverance demanded a declaration. The opium slave must speak, for he believed; he must go back to Hok-chiang, where his companions in sin lived, and tell them of this Jesus who could save them from all their sins. Friends sought to dissuade him from preaching this doctrine of these foreign devils; or, if he would, let him stay at Foochow, where he would be safe, and not risk the riotous mobs at Hok-chiang, who would take off his head, and then there would be a stop to all his talking. But, no! Ling-Ching-Ting would go to his own people, and with no weapon but the word of God. He went. He told the story of a great salvation for the worst of sinners, and held up himself as an illustration — like Paul, a pattern for other believers. Pelted with clods and stones, beaten and bruised, driven from place to place, his witness could not be stopped. At last his persecutors brought him before a cruel district magistrate at Hok-chiang, and false witnesses preferred against him the vilest charges; and the corrupt judge, glad to deal out revenge against this foreign sect, actually sentenced him to receive two thousand stripes! and upon his bare back the cruel bamboo was mercilessly laid, until the flesh lay in strips. He was borne to the mission premises almost dead, and the doctor declared that such injuries he had never before seen inflicted by the bamboo.

When Dr. Baldwin sought to comfort this martyr of Christ, before he could find words with which to address him, the suffering saint, so lately the chief of sinners, said with a smile: ‘’Teacher, this poor body be in great pain, but my inside heart be in a great peace.” Then, to the astonishment of the missionary, lifting himself a little on his bloody cot, he said, ‘’If I get up again from this, you will let me go back to Hok-chiang, won’t you?”

For some time his recovery seemed doubtful, and then improvement slowly began. While yet but half healed, and scarce able to walk, he stole away, and suddenly appeared at Hok-chiang to preach again to his hateful persecutors; and it was not strange that words of witness, sealed by such experiences of blood, brought his very foes to his Saviour.

Ling-Ching-Ting for fourteen years kept on preaching. He was ordained in 1869. He won hundreds of converts, and a score of native preachers learned from him to tell the old story of full salvation. In 1876, failing health gave the signal of his approaching end; but when too weak to stand, he still gathered around him those to whom he could bear witness to the Saviour, and passed away, singing, in the joy of an unclouded hope.

Narayan Sheshadri — The Brahman Apostle.

From the converts of India we select this remarkable man who became the first convert of the Free Church of Scotland, under the ministry of Dr. John Wilson, and Dr. Murray Mitchell, fifty years ago. He spent some years as a missionary, teacher and preacher, and was then ordained by the Presbytery of Bombay, and for the rest of his life this highly educated Brahman devoted himself to a ministry of love among the outcast Mangs of the Deccan centre of India. He left ordinary British territory that he might undertake to annex the great native state of

Hyderabad to the kingdom of Christ. This was in the year 1863, when he was about forty years of age. His evangelistic work was unceasing and untiring. He secured a tract of some three hundred acres near Jalna, and formed a Christian Church and community which he called by the name of Bethel. After ten years of toil he visited Scotland and America that he might interest the churches in his work and raise money for necessary enlargement. Those who saw him in his native Indian dress and white turban will not soon forget the impression that he made in the assemblies in which he moved. His face was charming, and his personality magnetic. His command of the English tongue was such as left little distinction between himself and the natives of Scotland. He had an extremely pithy and impressive way of speaking, and his earnestness was both captivating and contagious. He was at the Presbyterian Alliance in Philadelphia in 1880. He was made doctor of divinity by the University of Montreal.

There were no pews in the Bethel Church in India. The congregation sat on the floor in rows, devout and attentive, while the babies crawded about everywhere. An hour or so after service the catechists and Bible women met. Bands went forth under Dr. Sheshadri’s training to preach in the villages round about Bethel; and in this way small communities were formed. He carried on work amid the thirty-three villages where Christian converts resided, and, in 1890, reported 1,062 living members, beside 649 adherents. These native Christians keep all their primitive simplicity, and are not Anglicised by their Christianity.

Dr. Sheshadri was a teacher as well as a preacher, singularly facile in his interpretation of Scripture, and acute in meeting objections brought by Hindus and Moslems against Christianity. He sought to train over a thousand converts into intelligent disciples and workers. He left Bombay for Japan on account of impaired health, in February, 1891, and visited America; but on his return, while en route for Glasgow, died, and was buried in mid- Atlantic. Here was a Brahman lad who confessed Jesus Christ before the Supreme Court of Bombay, and who was blessed to lead some 2,000 of his countrymen to Christ. What has been done in the case of one educated and accomplished Brahman, who in his youth had been identified with the gods and entitled to worship, may yet be accomplished among thousands and millions of his fellow-countrymen. His first confession of Jesus Christ was in the presence of the Civil Court. 1843 two brothers left the fire worship of Zoroaster for the service of Christ, and their baptism led two Brahman brothers also to confess Jesus as Saviour. They were Narayan and Shripat. The Civil Court was appealed to. The younger was not sixteen years old, and Sir Erskine Perry handed him over to the Brahman priests, sneering at his plea that he had arrived at the age of discretion. Torn from the arms of the missionary, Nesbit, he sobbed forth the question, “Am I to be compelled to worship idols?” It was thus a Christian judge drove this lad back into Brahmanism, and he was compelled to swallow the five products of the cow that he might be restored to caste; but his older brother, Narayan, being confessedly of age, could not be hindered, and started on his new career as the Brahman apostle.

Joseph H. Neesima — The Japanese Educator.

Fifty years ago, there was born in the Sunrise Kingdom a boy for whom God had decreed a future which was to bear wrought into it, as into the crusader’s cloak, the red sign of the cross. He was but five years old when he renounced idol worship, though he had not yet found a faith that fed his soul-hunger. Then a stray copy of a sort of Chinese Bible fell into his hands, and that opening sentence: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” struck his youthful mind as more sublimely simple and satisfactory than any account of the origin of all things that he had ever met. The transcendental philosophers tell us that the owl comes from the egg, and the egg from the owl, but fail to answer the question, where did the first owl come from that laid the first Qggl But here young Neesima found a great First Cause.

Thus he first got a glimpse of the Christian God, and began to feel after Him, if haply he might find Him; and untaught by man, he prayed, ‘’ O, if you have eyes, look upon me; if you have ears, listen for me!” A glimpse of an atlas of the United States had also awakened a desire to see more of that Western World, and he thought, if he could get away from Japan, he might both see America and learn more of this new faith. And so, in disguise, he sailed for Shanghai, and thence worked his way to Boston, on the voyage studying English and reading a Chinese New Testament which he bought in Hong Kong.

As in the first verse of Genesis he had found God the Creator, so in John iii. 16 he found God the Saviour. Arriving at Boston, he fell in with a copy of Robinson Crusoe, and was taught by the prayer of Crusoe in shipwreck how to draw near to God. Nothing happens by chance; and it was a part of God’s strange ordering that the owner of the ship in which he had come to Boston should be Alpheus Hardy, one of the most benevolent and missionaryspirited men then in America. Hearing of young Neesima from the captain, he sought out the Japanese stranger, and gave him a name, Joseph Hardy, declaring that God had raised him up to be to his own people a saviour, like Joseph in Egypt. Mr. Hardy’s help secured to Neesima a Christian collegiate training; and the result was that he developed so beautiful a character that when President Seelye was asked for a testimonial to his worth, his sufficient answer was, ‘’ You cannot gild gold!”

While he was studying theology in 187 1-2, the Japanese Embassy, at Washington, secured his services as an interpreter, and the year he spent with them visiting the American cities and European capitals was radiant with his shining example of Christ-likeness. These distinguished men secured him a pardon for leaving his own land without leave, and when he returned to Japan, they were at the head of government, and gave him aid in his projects for the Christian education of his countrymen.

Joseph Neesima became the first native evangelist of his race. He not only preached Christ boldly and taught the truths of the gospel, but before he left America, had secured the money with which to lay the foundations of the Doshisha, the training college of Kyoto, for Japanese pastors.

Urged by his friends of the embassy to take a prominent and lucrative part in the government of the New Japan, he could be drawn aside by no bait of money, position or personal gain. He bore the cross to the heart of the Island Empire, first preaching Christ in the interior; and persistently wrought at his great educational enterprise for fifteen years, facing all obstacles, and patiently and prayerfully holding on to his ‘’ one endeavour,” as Doshisha implies, until, before his death, he had seen more than nine hundred pupils in his school.

His perseverance was Apostolic. When as yet the Bible could not openly be taught, he taught Christianity under the disguise of moral science. When to put up buildings for a Christian school was pronounced even by friends to be as hopeless and chimerical as to ‘’ attempt to fly to Mars,” his faith was so courageous that in four months the buildings were opening and the objector was taking part in the dedication! He used to say that he could have been nailed to a literal cross with less suffering than his labours for Christ had cost; yet nothing but the hand of death ever arrested his work or even dampened his ardour.

To the last he was planning new enterprises for the evangelization and education of his countrymen. Death overtook him, as it overtook Goujon, the sculptor, who, with chisel in hand, had his eye fixed on a half-carved statue. He was dictating final messages to his school and the missionary society: and, like a great general, with maps of five provinces before him, was marking the strategic points, and issuing orders for a grand campaign.

His funeral marks an era in the history of Japan. The foremost convert, the apostle of Japan, was dead. Seven hundred students of the Doshisha, seventy graduates from all parts of the empire, government officials, and even a delegation of Buddhist priests from Osaka, thronged the procession that followed to its resting-place the body of the man who, not yet fifty years old, had made upon the empire a mark such as no other had ever left for good.

Burial could not be permitted beside his father in the Buddhist Temple grove; but the refusal was itself the most splendid tribute to his worth; for the assigned reason was that Neesima was the very chief and head centre of Christianity in Japan, and must not, therefore, find a grave in the sacred cemetery of Buddhism!

Susi AND Chuma — “Livingstone’s Body-guard.”

The work of David Livingstone in Africa was so far that of a missionary explorer and general, that the field of his labour is too broad to permit us to trace individual harvests. No man can thickly scatter seed over so wide an area. But there is one marvellous story connected with his death, and which has to do with individual character, the like of which has never been written on the scroll of human history. All the ages may safely be challenged to furnish its parallel.

On the night of his death he called for Susi, his faithful servant, and, after some tender ministries had been rendered to the dying man, Livingstone said, ‘* All right; you may go out now.” And reluctantly Susi left him alone. At four o’clock next morning, May i, Susi and Chuma, with four other devoted attendants, anxiously entered that grass hut at Ilala. The candle was still burning, but the greater light had gone out. Their great master, as they called him, was on his knees, his body stretched forward, his head buried in’ his hands upon the pillow. With silent awe they stood apart and watched him, lest they should invade the privacy of prayer. But he did not stir; there was not even the motion of breathing, but a suspicious rigidity of inaction. Then one of these black men, Matthew, softly came near and gently laid his hands upon his cheeks. It was enough: the chill of death was there. The great father of Africa’s dark children was dead, and they were orphans.

The most refined and cultured Englishmen would have been perplexed as to what course to take. They were surrounded by superstitious and unsympathetic savages, to whom the unburied remains of the dead man would be an object of dread. His native land was six thousand miles away, and even the coast was distant fifteen hundred. A grave responsibility rested upon these simple-minded sons of the Dark Continent, — a burden, to which few of the wisest and ablest would have been equal. Those remains, with his valuable journals, instruments, and personal effects, must be carried to Zanzibar. But the body must first be preserved from decay, and they had no skill nor facilities for embalming; and, if preserved, there were no means of transportation — no roads or carts; no beasts of burden available — the body must be borne on the shoulders of human beings; and, as no strangers could be trusted, they must themselves undertake the journey and the sacred charge. These humble children of the forest were grandly equal to the occasion, and they resolved among themselves to carry that body to the sea-shore, and not give it into any other hands until they could surrender it to his countrymen. And, to insure safety to the remains and security to the bearers, it must be done with secrecy. They would gladly have kept secret even their master’s death, but the fact could not be concealed. God, however, disposed Chitambo and his subjects to permit these servants of the great missionary to prepare his emaciated body for its last journey, in a hut built for the purpose on the outskirts of the village.

Now watch these black men, as they rudely embalm the body of him who had been to them a saviour. They tenderly open the chest and take out the heart and viscera: these, with a poetic and pathetic sense of fitness, they reserve for his beloved Africa. The heart that for thirty-three years had beat for her welfare must be buried in her own bosom. And so one of the Nassik boys, Jacob Wainwright, read the simple service of burial, and under the moula-tree at Ilala that heart was deposited; and the tree, carved with a simple inscription, became his monument. Then the body was prepared for its long journey; the cavity was filled with salt, brandy poured into the mouth, and the corpse laid out in the sun for fourteen days to be dried, and so reduced to the condition of a mummy. Then it was thrust into a hollow cylinder of bark, over this was sewn a covering of canvas, the whole package securely lashed to a pole, and so it was made ready to be borne between two men upon their shoulders.

As yet the enterprise was scarcely begun — and the worst of their task was yet before them. The sea was far away, and their path lay through a territory where nearly every fifty miles would bring them to a new tribe, to face new difficulties. Nevertheless, Susi and Chuma took up their precious burden, and, looking to Livingstone’s God for help, began the most remarkable funeral march on record. They followed the track their master had marked with his footsteps when he penetrated to Lake Bangweolo — passing to the south of Lake Liembe, which is a continuation of Tanganyika, then crossing to Unyanyembe. Wherever it was found out that they were bearing a dead body, shelter was hard to get or even food; and at Kasekera, they could get nothing they asked, except on condition that they would bury the remains they were carrying. And now their love and generalship were put to a new and severe test. But again they were equal to the emergency. They made up another package like the precious burden, only that it contained branches instead of human bones — and this with mock solemnity they bore on their shoulders to a safe distance and scattered the contents far and wide in the brushwood, and came back without the bundle. Meanwhile others of their party had repacked the remains, doubling them up into the semblance of a bale of cotton cloth, and so once more they managed to get what they needed and get on with their charge.

The true story of that nine months’ march has never yet been written, and it never will be, for the full data cannot be supplied. But here is material waiting for some coming English Homer or Milton to crystallize into one of the world’s noblest epics; and it deserves the master-hand of a great poet artist to do it justice.

See these black men, whom your scientific philosophers would place at one remove from the gorilla, run all manner of risks, by day and night, for forty weeks; now going round by a circuitous route to insure safe passage; now compelled to resort to stratagem to get their precious burden through the country; sometimes forced to fight their foes in order to carry out their holy mission. Follow them as they ford the rivers and traverse trackless deserts, daring perils from wild beasts and relentless wild men; exposing themselves to the fatal fever, and

NE IV CON VER ‘^’S A ND MA RTYRS. 247

burying several of their little band on the way; yet, on they went, patient and persevering, never fainting or halting, until love and gratitude had done all that could be done, and they laid down at the feet of the British Consul, on the 12th of March, 1874, all that was left on earth of Scotland’s great hero, save that buried heart.

When, a little more than a month later, the coffin of Livingstone was landed in England, April 15, it was felt that no less a shrine than Britain’s greatest burial-place could fitly hold such precious dust. But so improbable and incredible did it seem that a few rude Africans could actually have done this splendid deed, at such cost of time and risk, that, not until the fractured bones of the arm, which the lion crushed at Mabotsa thirty years before, identified the body, was it certain that these were Livingstone’s remains. And then, on the 18th of April, 1874, such a funeral cortege entered the great Abbey of Britain’s illustrious dead as few warriors or heroes or princes ever drew to that mausoleum. And those faithful body-servants, who had religiously brought home every relic of the person or property of the great missionary explorer, were accorded places of honor. And well they might be. No triumphal procession of earth’s mightiest conqueror ever equalled for subliniity that lonely journey through Africa’s forests. An example of tenderness, gratitude, devotion, heroism, equal to this, the world has never seen. The exquisite inventiveness of a love that on the feet of Jesus lavished tears as water, and made tresses of hair a towel, and broke the alabaster flask for His anointing; the feminine tenderness that lifted His mangled body from the cross and wrapped it in new linen, with costly spices, and laid it in a virgin tomb — even this has at length been surpassed by the ingenious devotion of the cursed sons of Canaan. The grandeur and pathos of that burial scene amid the stately columns and arches of England’s famous Abbey loses in lustre when contrasted with that simpler scene near Ilala, when, in God’s greater cathedral of Nature, whose columns and arches are the trees, whose surpliced choir are the singing birds, whose organ is the moaning wind, — the grassy carpet was lifted and dark hands laid Livingstone’s heart to rest! And in the great cortege that moved up the nave of Westminster, no truer nobleman was found than that black man, Susi, who in illness had nursed the Blantyre hero, had laid his heart in Africa’s bosom, and whose hand was now upon his pall. Let those who doubt and deride Christian missions to the degraded children of Ham, who tell us that it is not worth while to sacrifice precious lives for the sake of these doubly lost millions of the Dark Continent, — let such tell us whether it is not worth while, at any cost, to seek out and save men of whom such Christian heroism is possible!