1. "Yesu oa me oa nthata,Leha ke le mo dibin;A re yalo mo kwalon,A re yalo mo pedun.E, Yesu oa me,E, Yesu oa me,E, Yesu oa me,Oa me, mo loraton.2. "Yesu oa me oa nthata,O ntehetse molato;O mpusitse timelon,O ntlhapisa mo pedun."E, Yesu oa me," etc.
1. "Yesu oa me oa nthata,Leha ke le mo dibin;A re yalo mo kwalon,A re yalo mo pedun.
E, Yesu oa me,E, Yesu oa me,E, Yesu oa me,Oa me, mo loraton.
2. "Yesu oa me oa nthata,O ntehetse molato;O mpusitse timelon,O ntlhapisa mo pedun.
"E, Yesu oa me," etc.
This is what these words mean in English. I expect you know them very well.
1. "Jesus loves me, this I know,For the Bible tells me so;Little ones to Him belong,They are weak, but He is strong."Yes, Jesus loves me,Yes, Jesus loves me,Yes, Jesus loves me—The Bible tells me so.2. "Jesus loves me, He who diedHeaven's gate to open wide;He will wash away my sin,Let His little child come in."Yes, Jesus loves me," etc.
1. "Jesus loves me, this I know,For the Bible tells me so;Little ones to Him belong,They are weak, but He is strong.
"Yes, Jesus loves me,Yes, Jesus loves me,Yes, Jesus loves me—The Bible tells me so.
2. "Jesus loves me, He who diedHeaven's gate to open wide;He will wash away my sin,Let His little child come in.
"Yes, Jesus loves me," etc.
But, you see, the missionary had to alter the words sometimes so as to make the Sechuana lines come right for the music; and the second verse really means:
"My Jesus loves me;He has paid my debt;He has brought me back from where I strayed;He has washed my heart.Yes, my Jesus, Yes, my Jesus.Yes, my Jesus. Mine in love."
"My Jesus loves me;He has paid my debt;He has brought me back from where I strayed;He has washed my heart.
Yes, my Jesus, Yes, my Jesus.Yes, my Jesus. Mine in love."
They would learn the words off by heart because there was only the one hymn-book, and they would sing them together, Shomolekae's voice leading.
They learned them so well that sometimes when the mothers were out hoeing in the fields, or the little boys were paddling in their canoes and fishing in the marshy waters, you would hear them singing the hymns that they learned in Shomolekae's little school hut.
Then on Sunday they would have Sunday-school, and when that was over Shomolekae would gather the chocolate-faced men and women and boys and girls together—all who would come—and he would teach them to kneel down and pray to the one God, Who is our Father, and they would sing the hymns that theyhad learned, and then he would speak to them a simple little address, telling them of the Lord Jesus.
But Shomolekae desired always to go further and further, even though it was dangerous and difficult. So he got a canoe and launched it in the river by the village and paddled further and further up the stream, under the overhanging trees, and sometimes across the deep pools in which the big and fierce hippopotami and crocodiles lived.
He paddled up the River Okanvango, though many times he was in danger of his life. The river was not like rivers in our own country, deep and with strong banks; it was often filled all over with reeds, and as shallow as a swamp, and poor Shomolekae had to push his way with difficulty through these reeds. Always at night the poisonous mosquitoes came buzzing and humming around him. The evil-tempered hippopotamus would suddenly come up from the bottom of the river with his wicked beady eyes, and great cavernous mouth, with its enormous teeth, yawning at Shomolekae as though he quite meant to swallow him whole.
On the banks at night the lions would roar, and then the hyenas would howl; but Shomolekae's brave heart held on, and he pushed on up the river to preach and teach the people in the villages near the river.
So through many years, with high courage and simple faith, Shomolekae worked.
A good many boys and girls in England before they are ten years old own many more books than Shomolekae ever had and have read more than he. They also have better homes than he, for he pushed on from one mud hut to another along the rivers and lakes, and allthe possessions that he had in the world could be put into the bottom of his canoe.
But our Heavenly Father, Who loves you and me, went with him every step of the way. When Shomolekae taught the boys and girls to sing hymns in praise of Jesus, even in a little mud hut, He was there, just as He is in the most beautiful church when we worship Him. Now God has taken Shomolekae across the last river to be with Himself.
Shomolekae was a negro with dark skin and curly hair. We are white children with fair faces and light hair. But God is his Father as well as ours and loves us all alike and wishes to gather us together round Him—loving Him and one another.
FOOTNOTES:[56]Pronounce Shoh-moh-leh-kei.
[56]Pronounce Shoh-moh-leh-kei.
[56]Pronounce Shoh-moh-leh-kei.
Mary Slessor
(Dates, b. 1848, d. 1915)
The Calabar Girls at the Station
As the train from the south slowed down in Waverley Station, Edinburgh, one day in 1898, a black face, with eyes wide open with wonder, appeared at the window. The carriage door opened and a little African girl was handed down onto the platform.
The people on the station stopped to glance at the strange negro face. But as a second African girl a little older than the first stepped from the carriage to the platform, and a third, and then a fourth black girl appeared, the cabmen and porters stood staring in amused curiosity.
Who was that strange woman (they asked one another), short and slight, with a face like yellow parchment and with short, straight brown hair, who smiled as she gathered the little tribe of African girls round her on the railway platform?
The telegraph boys and the news-boys gazed at her in astonishment. But they would have been transfixedwith amazement if they had known a tenth of the wonder of the story of that heroic woman who, just as simply as she stood there on the Waverley platform, had mastered cannibals, conquered wild drunken chiefs brandishing loaded muskets, had faced hunger and thirst under the flaming heat and burning fevers of Africa, and walked unscathed by night through forests haunted by ferocious leopards, to triumph over regiments of frenzied savages drawn up for battle, had rescued from death hundreds of baby twins thrown out to be eaten by ants—and had now brought home to Scotland from West Africa four of these her rescued children.
Still more would those Scottish boys at Waverley Station have wondered, as they gazed on the little woman and her group of black children, if they had known that the woman who had done these things, Mary Slessor, had been a Scottish factory girl, who had toiled at her weaving machine from six in the morning till six at night amid the whirr of the belts, the flash of the shuttles, the rattle of the looms, and the roar of the great machines.
Born in Aberdeen, December 2, 1848, Mary Slessor was the daughter of a Scottish shoemaker. Her mother was a gentle and sweet-faced woman. After her father's death Mary was the mainstay of the home. Working in a weaving shed in Dundee (whither the family moved when Mary was eleven) she educated herself while at her machine.
The Call to Africa
Like Livingstone, she taught herself with her book propped up on the machine at which she worked. Sheread his travels and heard the stories of his fight against slavery for Africa, till he became her hero.
One day the news flashed round the world: "Livingstone is dead. His heart is buried in Central Africa." Mary had thrilled as she read the story of his heroic and lonely life. Now he had fallen. She heard in her heart the words that he had spoken:
"I go to Africa to try to make an open door....; do you carry out the work which I have begun. Ileave it with you."
As Mary sat, tired with her week's work, in her pew in the church on Sunday, and thought of Livingstone's call to Africa, she saw visions of far-off places of which she heard from the pulpit and read in her magazines—visions of a steaming river on the West Coast of Africa where the alligators slid from the mud banks into the water; visions of the barracoons on the shore in which the captured negroes were penned as they waited for the slave-ships; pictures of villages where trembling prisoners dipped their hands in boiling oil to test their guilt, and wives were strangled to go with their dead chief into the spirit-land; visions of the fierce chiefs who could order a score of men to be beheaded for a cannibal feast and then sell a hundred more to be hounded away into the outer darkness of slavery—the Calabar where the missionaries of her church were fighting the black darkness of the most savage people of the world.
Mary Slessor made up her mind to go out and give her whole life to Africa. So she offered herself, a timorous girl who could not cross a field with a cow init, as a missionary for cannibal Calabar, in West Africa.
For twelve years she worked at the centre of the mission in Calabar and then flung herself into pioneer work among the terrible tribe of Okoyong. No one had ever been able to influence them. They defied British administration. For fifteen years she strove there, and won a power over the ferocious Okoyong savages such as no one has ever wielded. "I'm a wee, wee wifie," she said, "no very bookit, but I grip on well none the less."
To-day over two thousand square miles of forest and rivers, the dark savages, as they squat at night in the forest around their palaver-fires, tell one another stories of the Great-White-Ma-Who-Lived-Alone, and the stories they tell are like these.
Through the Forest in the Rain
A strange quiet lay over all the village by the river. For the chief lay ill in his hut. The Calabar people were waiting on the tip-toe of suspense. For if the chief died many of them would be slain to go with him into the spirit-world—his wives and some of his soldiers and slaves.
Suddenly a strange African woman, who had come over from another village, entered the chief's harem. She spoke to the wives of the chief, saying, "There lives away through the forest at Ekenge a white Ma who can cast out by her magic the demons who are killing your chief. My son's child was dying, but thewhite Ma[57]saved her and she is well to-day. Many other wonders has she done by the power of her juju. Let your chief send for her and he will not die."
There was silence and then eager chattering, for the women knew that their very lives depended on the chief getting well. If he died, they would be killed.
They sent in word to the chief about the strange white Ma.
"Let her be sent for," he ordered. "Send a bottle and four rods (value about a shilling) and messengers to ask her to come."
All through the day the messengers hurried over stream and hill, through village after village and along the forest paths till at last, after eight hours' journey, they came to the village of Ekenge. Going to the courtyard of the chief they told him the story of their sick chief, and their desire that the white Ma who lived in his village should come and heal him.
"She will say for herself what she will do," said the chief.
So he sent a messenger to Mary Slessor. She soon came over from her little house to learn what was needed of her.
The story of the sick chief was again told.
"What is the matter with your chief?" asked Mary Slessor. Blank faces and nodding heads showed that they knew nothing at all.
"I must go to him," she declared. She knew that the way was full of perils, and that she might be killed by warriors and wild beasts; but she knew too that, ifshe did not go and if the chief died, hundreds of lives might be sacrificed.
Chief Edem said, "There are warriors out in the woods and you will be killed. You must not go."
Ma Eme, a tall fat African widow of Ekenge village, who loved Mary Slessor, said, "No, you must not go. The streams are deep; the rains are come. You could never get there."
But Mary Slessor said, "Imustgo."
"Then I will send women with you to look after you, and men to protect you," said Chief Edem.
Mary Slessor went back to her house to prepare to start on her long dangerous journey in the morning. She could not sleep for wondering whether she was indeed right to risk her life and all her work on the off-chance of saving this distant sick chief. She knelt down and asked God to guide her. Then she felt in her heart that she must go.
In the morning at dawn a guard of Ekenge women came to her door.
"The men will join us outside the village," they said.
The skies were grey. The rain was falling as they started. When the village lay behind them the rain began to pour in sheets. It came down as only an African rain can, unceasing torrents of pitiless deluge. Soon Mary Slessor's soaked boots became impossible to walk in. She took them off and threw them into the bush; then her stockings went, and she ploughed on in the mud in her bare feet.
They had walked for three hours when, as the weather began to clear, Mary Slessor came out into a market-place for neighbouring villages. The hundredsof Africans who were bartering in the market-place turned and stared at the strange white woman who swiftly passed through their midst and disappeared into the bush beyond.
So she pressed on for hour after hour, her head throbbing with fever, her dauntless spirit driving her trembling, timid body onward till at last, when she had been walking almost ceaselessly for over eight hours, she tottered into the village of the sick chief.
The Healing Hand.
Mary Slessor, aching from head to foot with fever and overwhelming weariness, did not lie down even for a moment's rest, but walked straight to the chief who lay senseless on his mat on the mud floor. Having examined him she took from her little medicine chest a drug and gave a dose to the chief. But she could see at once that more of this medicine was needed than she had with her. She knew that, away on the other side of the river, some hours distant, another missionary was working.
"You must go across the river to Ikorofiong for more medicine."
"No, no!" they said, "we dare not go. They will slay any man who goes there."
She was in despair. Then someone said, "There is a man of that country living in his canoe on the river. Perhaps he would go?"
They ran down to the river and found him. After much persuading he at last went, and returned next day with the medicine.
The chief, whom the women had believed to bealmost dead, gradually recovered consciousness, then sat up and took food. At last he was quite well. All the village laughed and sang for joy. There would be no slaying. They gathered round Mary Slessor in grateful wonder at her magic powers. She told them that she had come to them because she worshipped the Great Physician Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father—God who made all things. Then she gathered them together in the morning and evening, and led them as with bowed heads they all thanked God for the healing of the chief.
Years passed by and Mary Slessor's name was known in all the villages for many miles. She was, to them, the white Ma who was brave and wise and kind. She was mad, they thought, because she was always rescuing the twin babies whom the Calabar people throw out to die and the mothers of twins whom they often kill. But in some strange way they felt that her wisdom, her skill in healing men, and her courage, which was more heroic than that of their bravest warriors, came from the Spirit who made all things. She would wrench guns from the hands of drunken savage men who were three times as strong as she was. At last she used to sit with their chief as judge of quarrels, and many times in palavers between villages she stopped the people from going to war.
Through the Forest Perilous
One day a secret message came to her that, in some villages far away, a man of one village had woundedthe chief in another village and that all the warriors were arming and holding councils of war.
"I must go and stop it," said Mary Slessor.
"You cannot," said her friends at Ekenge, "the steamer is coming to take you home to Britain because you are so ill. You will miss the boat. You are too ill to walk. The wild beasts in the woods will kill you. The savage warriors are out, and will kill you in the dark—not knowing who you are."
"But I must go," she answered.
The chief insisted that she must have two armed men with lanterns with her, and that she must get the chief of a neighbouring village to send out his drummer with her so that people might know—as they heard the drum—that a protected person was travelling who must not be harmed.
It was night, and Mary Slessor with her two companions marched out into the darkness, the lanterns throwing up strange shadows that looked like fierce men in the darkness. Through the night they walked till at midnight they reached the village where they were to ask for the drum.
The chief was surly.
"You are going to a warlike people," he said. "They will not listen to what a woman says. You had better go back. I will not protect you."
Mary Slessor was on her mettle.
"When you think of the woman's power," she said to the chief, "you forget the power of the woman's God. I shall go on."
And to the amazement of the savages in the villages she went on into the darkness. Surely she must bemad. She defied their chief who had the power to kill her. She had walked on into a forest where ferocious leopards abounded ready to spring out upon her, and where men were drinking themselves into a fury of war. And for what? To try with a woman's tongue to stop the fiery chiefs and the savages of a distant warlike tribe from fighting. Surely she was mad.
Facing the Warriors
She pressed on through the darkness. Then she saw the dim outlines of huts. Mary Slessor had reached the first town in the war area. She found the hut where an old Calabar woman lived who knew the white Ma.
"Who is there?" came a whisper from within.
But even as she replied there was a swift patter of bare feet. Out of the darkness leapt a score of armed warriors. They were all round her. From all parts dark shadows sprang forward till scores of men with their chiefs were jostling, chattering and threatening.
"What have you come for?" they asked.
"I have heard that you are going to war. I have come to ask you not to fight," she replied.
The chiefs hurriedly talked together, then they came to her and said—
"The white Ma is welcome. She shall hear all that we have to say before we fight. All the same we shall fight. For here you see are men wounded. Wemustwipe out the disgrace that is put upon us. Now she must rest. Women, you take care of the white Ma. We will call her at cock-crow when we start."
This meant an hour's sleep. Mary Slessor lay down in a hut. It seemed as though her eyes were hardly shut before she was wakened again. She stood, tottering with tiredness, when she heard the cry—
"Run, Ma, run!"
The warriors were off down the hill away to the fight. She ran, but they were quickly out of sight on the way to the attack. Was all her trouble in vain? She pressed on weak and breathless, but determined. She heard wild yells and the roll of the war drum. The warriors she had followed were feverishly making ready to fight, a hundred yards distant from the enemy's village.
She went up to them and spoke sternly.
"Behave like men," she said, "not like fools. Do not yell and shout. Hold your peace. I am going into the village there."
She pointed to the enemy. Then she walked forward. Ahead of her stood the enemy in unbroken ranks of dark warriors. They stood like a solid wall. She hailed them as she walked forward.
There was an ominous silence. She laughed.
"How perfect your manners are!" she exclaimed. She was about to walk forward and force them to make way for her when an old chief stepped out toward her and, to her amazement, knelt down at her feet.
"Ma," he said, "we thank you for coming to us. We own that we wounded the chief over there. It was only one of our men who did it. It was not the act of all our town. We ask you that you will speak with our enemy to bring them to peace with us."
The Healed Chief
She looked into the face of the chief. Then she saw to her joy that this was the very chief whom she had toiled through the rain to heal long ago. Because of what she had done then, he was now at her feet asking her to make peace. Should she run back and tell the warriors, who a hundred yards away were spoiling for a fight? That was her first joyful thought. Then she saw that she must first make her authority stronger over the whole band of warriors.
"Stay where you are," she said. "Some of you find a place where I can sit in comfort; and bring me food. I will not starve while men fight. Choose two or three men to speak well for you, and we will have two men from your enemies."
These grim warriors, so sullen and threatening a few moments ago, obeyed her every word. At length two chiefs came from the other side and stood on one side of her, while the two chiefs chosen in the village came and threw down their arms and knelt at their feet.
"Your chief," they said, "was wounded by a drunken youth. Do not let us shed blood through all our villages because of what he did. If you will cease from war with us, we will pay to you any fine that the white Ma shall say."
She, too, pressed them to stop their fighting. Word went back to the warriors on both sides, who became wildly excited. Some agreed, others stormed and raged till they were in a frenzy. Would they fight even over her body? Furious warriors came moving upfrom both sides. But by arguing and appealing at last she persuaded the warlike tribe to accept a fine.
The Promise of Peace
The town whose drunken youth had wounded the enemy chief at once paid a part of the fine. They used no money. So the fine was paid in casks and bottles of trade gin. Mary Slessor trembled. For as the boxes of gin bottles were brought forward the warriors pranced with excitement and made ready to get drunk. She knew that this would make them fight after all. What could she do? The roar of voices rose. She could not make her own voice heard. A daring idea flashed into her mind. According to the law of these Egbo people, clothes thrown over anything give it the protection of your body. She snatched off her skirt and all the clothing she could spare and spread them over the gin. She seized the one glass that the tribe had, and doled out one portion only to each chief to test whether the bottles indeed contained spirit. At last they grew quieter and she spoke to them.
"I am going," she said, "across the Great Waters to my home, and I shall be away many moons. Promise me here, on both sides, that you will not go to war with one another while I am away."
"We promise," they said. They gathered around her and she told them the story of Jesus Christ in whose name she had come to them.
"Now," she said, "go to your rest and fight no more." And the tribes kept their promise to her,—so that when she returned they could say, "It is peace."
For nearly forty years she worked on in Calabar, stricken scores of times with fever. She rescued her hundreds of twin babies thrown out to die in the forest, stopped wars and ordeal by poison, made peace, healed the sick.
At last, too weak to walk, she was wheeled through the forests and along the valleys by some of her "twins" now grown to strong children, and died there—the conquering Queen of Calabar, who ruled in the hearts of even the fiercest cannibals through the power of the Faith, by which out of weakness she was made strong.
FOOTNOTES:[57]The African uses the word "Ma" as mother, (a) to name a woman after her eldest son,e.g.Mrs. Livingstone was called Ma-Robert; and (b) as in this case, for a woman whom they respect.
[57]The African uses the word "Ma" as mother, (a) to name a woman after her eldest son,e.g.Mrs. Livingstone was called Ma-Robert; and (b) as in this case, for a woman whom they respect.
[57]The African uses the word "Ma" as mother, (a) to name a woman after her eldest son,e.g.Mrs. Livingstone was called Ma-Robert; and (b) as in this case, for a woman whom they respect.
Abdallah and Sabat
(Time of Incidents, about 1800-1810)
Two Arab Wanderers
One day, more than a hundred years ago, two young Arabs, Abdallah and Sabat, rode on their camels toward a city that was hidden among the tawny hills standing upon the skyline.
The sun was beginning to drop toward the edge of the desert away in the direction of the Red Sea. The shadows of the long swinging legs of the camels wavered in grotesque lines on the sand. There was a look of excited expectation in the eyes of the young Arabs; for, by sunset, their feet would walk the city of their dreams.
They were bound for Mecca, the birthplace of Mohammed, the Holy City toward which every man of the Mohammedan world turns five times a day as he cries, "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is the prophet of Allah." To have worshipped in Mecca before the sacred Kaaba and to have kissed the black stone in its wall—this was to make Paradise certain for them both. Having done that pilgrimage these two Arabs, Sabat and Abdallah, would be able to take the proud title of "Haji" which would proclaim to everyman that they had been to Mecca—the Holy of Holies.
So they pressed on by the valley between the hills till they saw before them the roofs and the minarets of Mecca itself. As darkness rushed across the desert and the stars came out, the tired camels knelt in the courtyard of the Khan,[58]and Sabat and Abdallah alighted and stretched their cramped legs, and took their sleep.
These young men, Sabat and Abdallah, the sons of notable Arab chiefs, had struck up a great friendship. Now, each in company with his chum, they were together at the end of the greatest journey that an Arab can take.
As the first faint flush of pink touched the mountain beyond Mecca, the cry came from the minaret: "Come to prayer. Prayer is better than sleep. There is no God but Allah."
Sabat and Abdallah were already up and out, and that day they said the Mohammedan prayer before the Kaaba itself with other pilgrims who had come from many lands—from Egypt and Abyssinia, from Constantinople and Damascus, Baghdad and Bokhara, from the defiles of the Khyber Pass, from the streets of Delhi and the harbour of Zanzibar.
We do not know what Abdallah looked like. He was probably like most young Arab chieftains, a tall, sinewy man—brown-faced, dark-eyed, with hair and a short-cropped beard that were between brown and black.
His friend Sabat was, however, so striking that evenin that great crowd of many pilgrims people would turn to look at him. They would turn round, for one reason, because of Sabat's voice. Even when he was just talking to his friend his voice sounded like a roar; when he got excited and in a passion (as he very often did) it rolled like thunder and was louder than most men's shouting. As he spoke his large white teeth gleamed in his wide mouth. His brown face and black arched eyebrows were a dark setting for round eyes that flashed as he spoke. His black beard flowed over his tawny throat and neck. Gold earrings swung with his agitation and a gold chain gleamed round his neck. He wore a bright silk jacket with long sleeves, and long, loose-flowing trousers and richly embroidered shoes with turned-up toes. From a girdle round his waist hung a dagger whose handle and hilt flashed with jewels.
Abdallah and Sabat were better educated than most Arabs, for they could both read. But they were not men who could stay in one place and read and think in quiet. When they had finished their worship at Mecca, they determined to ride far away across the deserts eastward, even to Kabul in the mountains of Afghanistan. So they rode, first northward up the great camel-route toward Damascus, and then eastward. In spite of robbers and hungry jackals, through mountain gorges, over streams, across the Syrian desert from oasis to oasis, and then across the Euphrates and the Tigris they went, till they had climbed rung by rung the mountain ranges that hold up the great plateau of Persia.
At last they broke in upon the rocky valleys of Afghanistan and came to the gateway of India—to Kabul. They presented themselves to Zeman Shah, the ruler of Afghanistan, and he was so taken with Abdallah's capacity that he asked him to be one of his officers in the court. So Abdallah stayed in Kabul. But the restless, fiery Sabat turned the face of his camel westward and rode back into Persia to the lovely city of Bokhara.
Abdallah the Daring
In Kabul there was an Armenian whose name we do not know: but he owned a book printed in Arabic, a book that Abdallah could read. The Armenian lent it to him. There were hardly any books in Arabic, so Abdallah took this book and read it eagerly. As he read, he thought that he had never in all his life heard of such wonderful things, and he could feel in his very bones that they were true. He read four short true stories in this book: they were what we call the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. As he read, Abdallah saw in the stories Someone who was infinitely greater than Mohammed—One who was so strong and gentle that He was always helping children and women and people who were ill; so good that He always lived the very life that God willed; and so brave that He died rather than give in to evil men—our Lord Jesus Christ.
"I worship Him," said Abdallah in his heart. Then he did a very daring thing. He knew that if he turned Christian it would be the duty of Mohammedans to kill him. Why not keep quiet and say nothing about his change of heart? But he could not. He decided thathe must come out in the open and confess the new Captain of his life. He was baptized a Christian.
The Moslems were furious. To save his life Abdallah fled on his camel westward to Bokhara. But the news that he had become a Christian flew even faster than he himself rode. As he went along the streets of Bokhara he saw his friend Sabat coming toward him. As a friend, Sabat desired to save Abdallah; but as a Moslem, the cruel law of Mohammed said that he must have him put to death. And Sabat was a fiery, hot-tempered Moslem.
"I had no pity," Sabat told his friends afterward. "I delivered him up to Morad Shah, the King."
So Abdallah was bound and carried before the Moslem judges. His friend Sabat stood by watching, just as Saul had stood watching them stone Stephen nearly eighteen centuries earlier.
"You shall be given your life and be set free," they said, "if you will spit upon the Cross and renounce Christ and say, 'There is no God but Allah.'"
"I refuse," said Abdallah.
A sword was brought forward and unsheathed. Abdallah's arm was stretched out: the sword was lifted—it flashed—and Abdallah's hand, cut clean off, fell on the ground, while the blood spurted from his arm.
"Your life will still be given you if you renounce Christ and proclaim Allah and Mohammed as His prophet."
This is how Sabat himself described what happened next. "Abdallah made no answer, but looked up steadfastly toward heaven, like Stephen, the first martyr, his eyes streaming with tears. He looked at me," saidSabat, "but it was with the countenance of forgiveness."
Abdallah's other arm was stretched out, again the sword flashed and fell. His other hand dropped to the ground. He stood there bleeding and handless. He bowed his head and his neck was bared to the sword. Again the blade flashed. He was beheaded, and Sabat—Sabat who had ridden a thousand miles with his friend and had faced with him the blistering sun of the desert and the snow-blizzard of the mountain—saw Abdallah's head lie there on the ground and the dead body carried away.
Abdallah had died because he was faithful to Jesus Christ and because Sabat had obeyed the law of Mohammed.
The Old Sabat and the New
The news spread through Bokhara like a forest fire. They could hardly believe that a man would die for the Christian faith like that. As Sabat told his friends afterward, "All Bokhara seemed to say, 'What new thing is this?'"
But Sabat was in agony of mind. Nothing that he could do would take away from his eyes the vision of his friend's face as Abdallah had looked at him when his hands were being cut off. He plunged out on to the camel tracks of Asia to try to forget. He wandered far and he wandered long, but he could not forget or find rest for his tortured mind.
At last he sailed away on the seas and landed on the coast of India at Madras. The British East India Company then ruled in India, and they gave Sabat a post inthe civil courts as mufti,i.e.as an expounder of the law of Mohammed. He spent most of his time in a coast town north of Madras, called Vizagapatam.[59]A friend handed to him there a little book in his native language—Arabic. It was another translation of those stories that Abdallah had read in Kabul—it was the New Testament.[60]
Sabat sat reading this New Book. He then took up the book of Mohammed's law—the Koran—which it was his daily work to explain. He compared the two. "The truth came"—as he himself said—"like a flood of light." He too began to worship Jesus Christ, whose life he had read now for the first time in the New Testament. Sabat decided that he must follow in Abdallah's footsteps. He became a Christian.[61]He was then twenty-seven years of age.
The Brother's Dagger
In the world of the East news travels like magic by Arab dhow (sailing ship) and camel caravan. Very quickly the news was in Arabia that Sabat had renounced Mohammed and become a Christian. At once Sabat's brother rose, girded on his dagger, left the tents of his tribe, mounted his camel and coursed across Arabia to a port. There he took ship for Madras. Landing, he disguised himself as an Indian and went up to Vizagapatam to the house where his brother Sabat was living.
Sabat saw this Indian, as he appeared to be, standingbefore him. He suspected nothing. Suddenly the disguised brother put his hand within his robe, seized his dagger, and leaping at Sabat made a fierce blow at him. Sabat flung out his arm. He spoilt his brother's aim, but he was too late to save himself. He was wounded, but not killed. The brother threw off his disguise, and Sabat—remembering the forgiveness of Abdallah—forgave his brother, gave him many presents, and sent loving messages to his mother.
Sabat decided that he could no longer work as an expounder of Moslem law: he wanted to do work that would help to spread the Christian Faith. He went away north to Calcutta, and there he joined the great men who were working at the task of translating the Bible into different languages and printing them. This work pleased Sabat, for was it not through reading an Arabic New Testament that all his own life had been changed?
Because Sabat knew Persian as well as Arabic he was sent to help a very clever young chaplain from England named Henry Martyn, who was busily at work translating the New Testament into Persian and Arabic. So Sabat went up the Ganges to Cawnpore with Henry Martyn.
Sabat's fiery temper nearly drove Martyn wild. His was a flaming Arab spirit, hot-headed and impetuous; yet he would be ready to die for the man he cared for; proud and often ignorant, yet simple—as Martyn said, "an artless child of the desert."
Sabat's knowledge of Persian was not really so good as he himself thought it was, and some of the Indian translators at Calcutta criticised his translation. Atthis he got furiously angry, and, like St. Peter, the fiery, impetuous apostle, he denied Jesus Christ and spoke against Christianity.
With his heart burning with rage and his great voice thundering with anger, Sabat left his friends, went aboard ship and sailed down the Bay of Bengal by the Indo-Chinese coast till he came to Penang, where he began to live as a trader.
But by this time the fire of his anger had burnt itself out. He—again like Peter—remembered his denial of his Master, and when he saw in a Penang newspaper an article saying that the famous Sabat, who had become a Christian and then become a Mohammedan again, had come to live in their city, he wrote a letter which was published in the newspaper at Penang declaring that he was now—and for good and all—a Christian.
A British officer named Colonel MacInnes was stationed at Penang. Sabat went to him. "My mind is full of great sorrow," he said, "because I denied Jesus Christ. I have not had a moment's peace since Satan made me do that bad work. I did it for revenge. I only want to do one thing with my life: to spend it in undoing this evil that has come through my denial."
Sabat left the house of the Mohammedan with whom he was living in Penang. He found an old friend of his named Johannes, an Armenian Christian merchant, who had lived in Madras in the very days when Sabat first became a Christian. Every night Johannes the Armenian and Sabat the Arab got out their Bibles, and far into the night Sabat would explain their meaning to Johannes.
The Prince from Sumatra
One day all Penang was agog with excitement because a brown Prince from Acheen, a Malay State in the island of Sumatra, had suddenly sailed into the harbour. He was in flight from his own land, where rebels had attacked him. The people of Acheen were wild and ferocious; many of them were cannibals.
"I will join you in helping to recover your throne," said Sabat to the fugitive Prince. "I am going," said Sabat to Colonel MacInnes, "to see if I can carry the message of Christianity to this fierce people."
So Sabat and the Prince, with others, went aboard a sailing ship and crossed the Strait of Malacca to Sumatra. They landed, and for long the struggle with the rebels swayed from side to side. The Prince was so pleased with Sabat that he made him his Prime Minister. But the struggle dragged on and on; there seemed to be no hope of triumph. At last Sabat decided to go back to Penang. One day he left the Prince and started off, but soldiers of the rebel-chief Syfoolalim captured him.
Great was the joy of the rebels—their powerful enemy was in their hands! They bound him, threw him into a boat, hoisted him aboard a sailing ship and clapped him in the stifling darkness of the hold. As he lay there he pierced his arm to make it bleed, and, with the blood that came out, wrote on a piece of paper that was smuggled out and sent to Penang to Colonel MacInnes.
The agonies that Sabat suffered in the gloom and filth of that ship's hold no one will ever know. We canlearn from the words that he wrote in the blood from his own body that they loaded worse horrors upon him because he was a Christian. All the scene is black, but out of the darkness comes a voice that makes us feel that Sabat was faithful at the end. In his last letter to Colonel MacInnes he told how he was now ready (like his friend Abdallah) to die for the sake of that Master whom he had in his rage denied.
Then one day his cruel gaolers came to the hold where he lay, and, binding his limbs, thrust him into a sack, which they then closed. In the choking darkness of the sack he was carried on deck and dragged to the side of the ship. He heard the lapping of the waves. He felt himself lifted and then hurled out into the air, and down—down with a crash into the waters of the sea, which closed over him for ever.
FOOTNOTES:[58]The inn of the Near East—a square courtyard with all the doors and windows inside, with primitive stables and bunks for the camelmen, and sometimes rooms for the well-to-do travellers.[59]Pronounce Vi-zah'-ga-pat-ahm.[60]The Arabic New Testament revised by Solomon Negri and sent to India by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge in the middle of the eighteenth century.[61]Baptized "Nathaniel" at Madras by the Rev. Dr Kerr.
[58]The inn of the Near East—a square courtyard with all the doors and windows inside, with primitive stables and bunks for the camelmen, and sometimes rooms for the well-to-do travellers.
[58]The inn of the Near East—a square courtyard with all the doors and windows inside, with primitive stables and bunks for the camelmen, and sometimes rooms for the well-to-do travellers.
[59]Pronounce Vi-zah'-ga-pat-ahm.
[59]Pronounce Vi-zah'-ga-pat-ahm.
[60]The Arabic New Testament revised by Solomon Negri and sent to India by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge in the middle of the eighteenth century.
[60]The Arabic New Testament revised by Solomon Negri and sent to India by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge in the middle of the eighteenth century.
[61]Baptized "Nathaniel" at Madras by the Rev. Dr Kerr.
[61]Baptized "Nathaniel" at Madras by the Rev. Dr Kerr.
Henry Martyn
(Dates, b. 1781, d. 1812. Time of Incident 1810-12)
In the story of Sabat that was told in the previous chapter you will remember that, for a part of the time that he lived in India, he worked with an Englishman named Henry Martyn.
Sabat was almost a giant; Henry Martyn was slight and not very strong. Yet—as we shall see in the story that follows—Henry Martyn was braver and more constant than Sabat himself.
As a boy Henry, who was born and went to school in Truro, in Cornwall, in the West of England, was violently passionate, sensitive, and physically rather fragile, and at school was protected from bullies by a big boy, the son of Admiral Kempthorne.
He left school at the age of fifteen and shot and read till he was seventeen. In 1797 he became an undergraduate at St. John's College, Cambridge. He was still very passionate.
For instance, when a man was "ragging" him in the College Hall at dinner, he was so furious that he flung a knife at him, which stuck quivering in the panelling of the wall. Kempthorne, his old friend, was at Cambridge with him. They used to read the Bible together and Martyn became a real Christian and fought hard to overcome his violent temper.
He was a very clever scholar and became a Fellow of Jesus College in 1802. He at that time took orders in the Church of England. He became very keen on reading about missionary work, e.g. Carey's story of nine years' work inPeriodical Accounts, and the L.M.S. Report on Vanderkemp in South Africa. "I read nothing else while it lasted," he said of the Vanderkemp report.
He was accepted as a chaplain of the East India Company. They could not sail till Admiral Nelson gave the word, because the French were waiting to capture all the British ships. Five men-of-war convoyed them when they sailed in 1805. They waited off Ireland, because the immediate invasion of England by Napoleon was threatened. On board Martyn worked hard at Hindustani, Bengali and Portuguese. He already knew Greek, Latin and Hebrew. He arrived at Madras (South India) and Calcutta and thence went to Cawnpore. It is at this point that our yarn begins.
A voice like thunder, speaking in a strange tongue, shouted across an Indian garden one night in 1809.
The new moon, looking "like a ball of ebony in an ivory cup,"—as one who was there that night said—threw a cold light over the palm trees and aloes, on the man who was speaking and on those who were seated around him at the table in the bungalow.
Beyond the garden the life of Cawnpore moved in its many streets; the shout of a donkey-driver, the shrill of a bugle from the barracks broke sharply through the muffled sounds of the city. The June wind, heavywith the waters of the Ganges which flows past Cawnpore, made the night insufferably hot. But the heat did not trouble Sabat, the wild son of the Arabian desert, who was talking—as he always did—in a roaring voice that was louder than most men's shouting. He was telling the story of Abdallah's brave death as a Christian martyr.[62]
Quietly listening to Sabat's voice—though he could not understand what he was saying—was a young Italian, Padre Julius Cæsar, a monk of the order of the Jesuits. On his head was a little skull-cap, over his body a robe of fine purple satin held with a girdle of twisted silk.
Near him sat an Indian scholar—on his dark head a full turban, and about him richly-coloured robes. On the other side sat a little, thin, copper-coloured Bengali dressed in white, and a British officer in his scarlet and gold uniform, with his wife, who has told us the story of that evening.
Not one of these brightly dressed people was, however, the strongest power there. A man in black clothes was the real centre of the group. Very slight in build, not tall, clean-shaven, with a high forehead and sensitive lips, young Henry Martyn seemed a stripling beside the flaming Arab. Yet Sabat, with all his sound and fury, was no match for the swift-witted, clear-brained young Englishman. Henry Martyn was a chaplain in the army of the East India Company, which then ruled in India.
He was the only one of those who were listening to Sabat who could understand what he was saying.When Sabat had finished his story, Martyn turned, and, in his clear, musical voice translated it from the Persian into Latin mixed with Italian for Padre Julius Cæsar, into Hindustani for the Indian scholar, into Bengali for the Bengal gentleman, and into English for the British officer and his wife. Martyn could also talk to Sabat himself both in Arabic and in Persian.
As Martyn listened to the rolling sentences of Sabat, the Christian Arab, he seemed to see the lands beyond India, away across the Khyber Pass, where Sabat had travelled—Mesopotamia, Arabia, Persia.
Henry Martyn knew that in all those lands the people were Mohammedans. He wanted one thing above everything else in the world: that was to give them all the chance of doing what Sabat and Abdallah had done—the chance of reading in their own languages the one book in the world that could tell them that God was a Father—the book of letters and of biographies that we call the New Testament.
The Toil of Brain
There was not in the world a copy of the New Testament in good Persian. To make one Henry Martyn slaved hard, far into the hot, sultry Indian nights, with scores of mosquitoes "pinging" round his lamp and his head, grinding at his Persian grammar, so that he could translate the life of Jesus Christ into that language.
Even while he was listening to Sabat's story in the bungalow at Cawnpore, Martyn knew that he was so ill that he could not live for many years more. Thedoctor said that he must leave India for a time to be in a healthier place. Should he go home to England, where all his friends were? He wanted that; but much more he wanted to go on with his work. So he asked the doctor if he might go to Persia on the way home, and he agreed.
So Martyn went down from Cawnpore to Calcutta, and in a boat down the Hoogli river to the little Arab coasting sailing ship theHummoudi, which hoisted sail and started on its voyage round India to Bombay. Martyn read while on board the Old Testament in the original Hebrew and the New Testament in the original Greek, so that he might understand them better and make a more perfect translation into Persian. He read the Koran of Mohammed so that he could argue with the Persians about it. And he worked hard at Arabic grammar, and read books in Persian. Yet he was for ever cracking jokes with his fellow travellers, cooped up in the little ship on the hot tropical seas.
From Bombay the governor granted Martyn a passage up the Persian Gulf in theBenares, a ship in the Indian Navy that was going on a cruise to finish the exciting work of hunting down the fierce Arab pirates of the Persian Gulf. So on Lady Day, 1811, the sailors got her under weigh and tacked northward up the Gulf, till at last, on May 21, the roofs and minarets of Bushire hove in sight. Martyn, leaning over the bulwarks, could see the town jutting out into the Gulf on a spit of sand and the sea almost surrounding it. That day he set foot for the first time on the soil of Persia.
Across Persia on a Pony
Aboard ship Martyn had allowed his beard and moustache to grow. When he landed at Bushire he bought and wore the clothes of a Persian gentleman, so that he should escape from attracting everybody's notice by wearing clothes such as the people had never seen before.
No one who had seen the pale, clean-shaven clergyman in black silk coat and trousers in Cawnpore would have recognised the Henry Martyn who rode out that night on his pony with an Armenian servant, Zechariah of Isfahan, on his long one hundred and seventy mile journey from Bushire to Shiraz. He wore a conical cap of black Astrakhan fur, great baggy trousers of blue, bright red leather boots, a light tunic of chintz, and over that a flowing cloak.
They went out through the gates of Bushire on to the great plain of burning sand that stretched away for ninety miles ahead of them. They travelled by night, because the day was intolerably hot, but even at midnight the heat was over 100 degrees. It was a fine moonlight night; the stars sparkled over the plain. The bells tinkled on the mules' necks as they walked across the sand. All else was silent.
At last dawn broke. Martyn pitched his little tent under a tree, the only shelter he could get. Gradually the heat grew more and more intense. He was already so ill that it was difficult to travel.
"When the thermometer was above 112 degrees—fever heat," says Martyn, "I began to lose my strength fast. It became intolerable. I wrapped myself up ina blanket and all the covering I could get to defend myself from the air. By this means the moisture was kept a little longer upon the body. I thought I should have lost my senses. The thermometer at last stood at 126 degrees. I concluded that death was inevitable."
At last the sun went down: the thermometer crept lower: it was night and time to start again. But Martyn had not slept or eaten. He could hardly sit upright on his pony. Yet he set out and travelled on through the night.
Next morning he had a little shelter of leaves and branches made, and an Arab poured water on the leaves and on Martyn all day to try to keep some of the frightful heat from him. But even then the heat almost slew him. So they marched on through another night and then camped under a grove of date palms.
"I threw myself on the burning ground and slept," Martyn wrote. "When the tent came up I awoke in a burning fever. All day I had recourse to the wet towel, which kept me alive, but would allow of no sleep."
At nine that night they struck camp. The ground threw up the heat that it had taken from the sun during the day. So frightfully hot was the air that even at midnight Martyn could not travel without a wet towel round his face and neck.
As the night drew on the plain grew rougher: then it began to rise to the foothills and mountains. At last the pony and mules were clambering up rough steep paths so wild that there was (as Martyn said) "nothing to mark the road but the rocks being a little more worn in one place than in another." Suddenly in the darkness the pony stopped; dimly through the gloom Martyn could see that they were on the edge of a tremendous precipice. A single step more would have plunged him over, to be smashed on the rocks hundreds of feet below. Martyn did not move or try to guide the beast: he knew that the pony himself was the safest guide. In a minute or two the animal moved, and step by step clambered carefully up the rock-strewn mountain-side.
At last they came out on the mountain top, but only to find that they were on the edge of a flat high plain—a tableland. The air was pure and fresher; the mules and the travellers revived. Martyn's pony began to trot briskly along. So, as dawn came up, they came in sight of a great courtyard built by the king of that country to refresh pilgrims.
Through night after night they tramped, across plateau and mountain range, till they climbed the third range, and then plunged by a winding rocky path into a wide valley where, at a great town called Kazrun, in a garden of cypress trees was a summer-house.
Martyn lay down on the floor but could not sleep, though he was horribly weary. "There seemed," he said, "to be fire within my head, my skin like a cinder." His heart beat like a hammer.
They went on climbing another range of mountains, first tormented by mosquitoes, then frozen with cold; Martyn was so overwhelmed with sleep that he could not sit on his pony and had to hurry ahead to keep awake and then sit down with his back against a rock where he fell asleep in a second, and had to be shaken to wake up when Zechariah, the Armenian mule driver, came up to where he was.
They had at last climbed the four mountain rungs of the ladder to Persia, and came out on June 11th, 1811, on the great plain where the city of Shiraz stands. Here he found the host Jaffir Ali Khan, to whom he carried his letters of introduction. Martyn in his Persian dress, seated on the ground, was feasted with curries and rice, sweets cooled with snow and perfumed with rose water, and coffee.
Ali Khan had a lovely garden of orange trees, and in the garden Martyn sat. Ill as he was, he worked day in and day out to translate the life of Jesus Christ in the New Testament from the Greek language into pure and simple Persian. The kind host put up a tent for Martyn in the garden, close to some beautiful vines, from which hung lovely bunches of purple grapes. By the side of his tent ran a clear stream of running water. All the evening nightingales sang sweetly and mournfully.
As he sat there at his work, men came hundreds of miles to talk with this holy man, as they felt him to be. Moslems—they yet travelled even from Baghdad and Bosra and Isfahan to hear this "infidel" speak of Jesus Christ, and to argue as to which was the true religion. Prince Abbas Mirza invited him to come to speak with him; and as Martyn entered the Prince's courtyard a hundred fountains began to send up jets of water in his honour.
At last they came to him in such numbers that Martyn was obliged to say to many of them that he could not see them. He hated sending them away. What was it forced him to do so?
The Race against Time
It was because he was running a race against time. He knew that he could not live very long, because the disease that had smitten his lungs was gaining ground every day. And the thing that he had come to Persia for—the object that had made him face the long voyage, the frightful heat and the freezing cold of the journey, the life thousands of miles from his home in Cornwall—was that he might finish such a translation of the New Testament into Persian that men should love to read years and years after he had died.
So each day Martyn finished another page or two of the book, written in lovely Persian letters. He began the work within a week of reaching Shiraz, and in seven months (February, 1812) it was finished. Three more months were spent in writing out very beautiful copies of the whole of the New Testament in this new translation, to be presented to the Shah of Persia and to the heir to the throne, Prince Abbas Mirza.
Then he started away on a journey right across Persia to find the Shah and Prince so that he might give his precious books to them. On the way he fell ill with great fever; he was so weak and giddy that he could not stand. One night his head ached so that it almost drove him mad; he shook all over with fever; then a great sweat broke out. He was almost unconscious with weakness, but at midnight when the call came to start he mounted his horse and, as he says, "set out, rather dead than alive." So he pressed on in great weakness till he reached Tabriz, and there met the British Ambassador.
Martyn was rejoiced, and felt that all his pains were repaid when Sir Gore Ouseley said that he himself would present the Sacred Book to the Shah and the Prince. When the day came to give the book to Prince Abbas, poor Henry Martyn was so weak that he could not rise from his bed. Before the other copy could be presented to the Shah, Martyn had died. This is how it came about.
The Last Trail
His great work was done. The New Testament was finished. He sent a copy to the printers in India. He could now go home to England and try to get well again. He started out on horseback with two Armenian servants and a Turkish guide. He was making along the old track that has been the road from Asia to Europe for thousands of years. His plan was to travel across Persia, through Armenia and over the Black Sea to Constantinople, and so back to England.
For forty-five days he moved on, often going as much as ninety miles, and generally as much as sixty in a day. He slept in filthy inns where fleas and lice abounded and mosquitoes tormented him. Horses, cows, buffaloes and sheep would pass through his sleeping-room, and the stench of the stables nearly poisoned him. Yet he was so ill that often he could hardly keep his seat on his horse.
He travelled through deep ravines and over high mountain passes and across vast plains. His head ached till he felt it would split; he could not eat; fever came on. He shook with ague. Yet his remorselessTurkish guide, Hassan, dragged him along, because he wanted to get the journey over and go back home.
At last one day Martyn got rest on damp ground in a hovel, his eyes and forehead feeling as though a great fire burnt in them. "I was almost frantic," he wrote. Martyn was, in fact, dying; yet Hassan compelled him to ride a hundred and seventy miles of mountain track to Tokat. Here, on October 6th, 1812, he wrote in his journal:
"No horses to be had, I had an unexpected repose. I sat in the orchard and thought with sweet comfort and peace of my God—in solitude my Company, my Friend, my Comforter."
It was the last word he was ever to write.
Alone, without a human friend by him, he fell asleep. But the book that he had written with his life-blood, the Persian New Testament, was printed, and has told thousands of Persians in far places, where no Christian man has penetrated, that story of the love of God that is shown in Jesus Christ.