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

THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 277
thanks," say they. And this African of ours and his
" other- worldliness " is deeply touching—wouldn't even
condescend to argue with an Atheist. " How do I know
there is a God ? " he asks. " How do I know my goat
passed over that wet ground if not by the footprints she
left in the mud ? " Thus any such phrase as *' laws of
Nature" is unknown to him, for an act postulates an
agent, and what is Nature but God's mere minion ? No
Atheist could hoodwink a black man with the notion that
mere laws explain everything, for your negro retorts,
** As if a law does not require construction as well as a
world." Another of these men proved the existence of
God by the quiet query :
'' Who ever forgot there was a
Sun ? " A proof this that he reads his Book of Nature so
well that in every rock and tree God is staring him in
the eyes and shouting in his ears. Yet in the teeth of
this, such an expert as Burton could insist that " the
necessity of a Creator, so familiar to our minds, is gener-
ally strange to savages. In the present day, the African
races generally have never been able to comprehend the
existence or the necessity of a One God." Fie, Sir Richard !
Even Cicero long ago could declare that " there is no nation
so brutish as not to be imbued with the conviction that
there is a God." So, too, Plutarch : " We may search
the world throughout, and in no region where man has
lived can we find a city without the knowledge of a God
or the practice of a religion." And the whole continent
of Africa choruses an eager " Yes !
" to these ancients.