Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

"BORING IN" FARTHER 11
It is in talking with all such that the Missionary hears
the bugle call of the long-coming struggle ahead—I mean
the lack of conviction of sin. Unlike a man in England,
cradled in Gospel privilege, here we meet thousands of
souls who cannot feel remorse, for they are only the
children of their dark ancestors who lived and died in
darkness. Ask such an one if he is at peace with God,
and he, a negro who was never sick or sorry in his life,
will answer with alacrity that he never quarrelled with
Him. No wonder that peace had to be " made " for such,
apart from their opinion on the matter. They themselves
say of true conviction of sin, '*A shivering man does not
need to be forced to the fire," and this is the reason there
has been no authentic weeping for sin in any African
Mission until a preliminary period of evangelical witness
has been passed. Then the tears begin to glisten over
personal (not tribal, this time) responsibility.
^
{Later. )
Across the gulf of twenty years, ours is the pure
untarnished joy to see many such old folk rejoicing in the
evening of life. Their morning broke grey and their mid-
day was dark and stormy, but the glory of this evening
sunset blots out the memory of their gloom. When one
beholds the sacred sight of a group of grey woolly heads in
a meeting, listening with a glaze over their eyes and a foo*
over their souls, one feels stirred anew to press on. They
1 Occurring, as it does, quite often, this " Later " indicates that the section
of the narrative it introduces is subsequent in time but similar in character
to the conditions of the context.