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

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THINKING BLACK
all the matchwood rafters shooting up and converging
into one apex, so, and much worse so, with these human
hand-ladles and spoons, all shooting into the centre of
gravity, all digging out from the mass of mush their
voracious supper. Speaking is taboo at this sacred
season. " Table-talk " is only the happy lot of other
lands who boast of tables, but Mr. African dines on
the earth that boasts of seed-time and harvest, and in
the first instance gave them that bountiful meal. But
the high crime and misdemeanour of the town is to dine
alone—their very word "criminal" has this meaning,
"Mr. Eat-alone." Such a one is a thief and has gone
over to the wild beasts. For the notion of people
assembling in order to absorb food is certainly not a
natural idea : the lower animals never invite each other
to dinner—on the contrary.
Here, then, is Africa's challenge to its Missionaries.
Will they allow a whole continent to live like beasts in
such hovels, millions of negroes cribbed, cabined, and
confined in dens of disease ? No doubt it is our diurnal
duty to preach that the soul of all improvement is the
improvement of the soul. But God's equilateral triangle
of body, soul, and spirit must never be ignored. Is not
the body wholly ensouled, and is not the soul wholly
embodied ? Too often in Missionary literature the writer
talks about these " humble abodes " of his black parish-
ioners, whereas the real phrasing of the matter is that they
are more humbling than humble. The more grandiose
our Mission stations, the more striking and impossible the