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

138 THINKING BLACK
reaping with joy. Days grow into months, and months
into years, and then a lady can tell of a whole town of
Luvale ^ turning to God by Jesus Christ : men, women,
and children, who at last look beyond the Missionary to the
God Who sent him. Oh !
ye binders of other men's
sheaves, remember the weary Birds and Copithornes of
the African field. Let us not therefore judge " another
man*s servant " in this resolve of Cyril Bird to die in and
for Africa. Much can be said pro and con, but probably
more ^ro than con. Would you desert your own infant
in a foreign land when desertion meant doom ?
Under English laws it is a misdemeanour punishable
with five years' penal servitude to abandon or expose an
infant or child under two years so as to " endanger its
life or to inflict permanent injury, actual or probable,
upon its health." How much more the crime committed
against the new-born African soul in exposing it to the
vicissitudes of a pastorless existence ! Too
well this brave
man knew that mere "marking time" is of as little value
as counting beads in worship. Too well he knew, that if
we speak a dozen African languages with the tongues of
men and angels and have not love, then Africa only
claims in us one more of the mob of sounding brass and
clanging cymbals. Ay, even if we give our bodies to be
burned with African fever and have not love, we are
nothing. Nevertheless, it is just here the Roman
^ Following Mr. and Mrs. Bird came Mr. Schindler, Dr. Fisher, Mr. and
Mrs. O'Jon, Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham, and many other noble men and
women. Kazombo was the first branch station, then Kalunda, then Kalene.