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

218 THINKING BLACK
cedents who would exchange these glad trials of faith
for a king's ransom ? Weary in the wilderness trail, you
listen, and lo there is the bubbling brook by the way,
and drinking you do lift the head. These are mercies
from God's right hand. The provocative policy of our
entering Africa loaded up with impedimenta does not give
the raw African a chance really to help the Missionary
he cannot conceive of such a rich Missionary being
honestly pinched. Give him the chance and you will
marvel : it will be the story of Ebed-melech the black
man over again. His own colour had abandoned
Jeremiah, and there you have the Hebrew prophet down
a hole, no water and sunk in the mire. The accurate
analogy this of an African Missionary cut off from his
ocean base and, humanly speaking, in a hole. His own
colour, I say, abandoned this white prophet, and then
it was a black man came to the rescue. What saith the
Scripture ? "So Ebed-melech the Ethiopian took the men
with him, and went into the house of the king under the
treasury, and took thence old cast clouts and old rotten
rags, and let them down by cords into the dungeon to
Jeremiah. And Ebed-melech the Ethiopian said unto
Jeremiah, Put now these cast clouts and rotten rags under
thine arm-holes under the cords. ... So they drew up
Jeremiah and took him out of the dungeon." A widow's
mite and a negro's rotten rags and cast-off clothes—how
like God to honour them with such a royal recognition.
Well it is we have no Society guaranteeing us a salary,
for the said Society would be politely and cleverly baffled