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

EPILOGUE 475
subject of sin and you verily find a Tartar. The hint of
obstinacy is seen in the very set of the jaw. No, mere
sophistry will not break him, and only the power of God
can make him throw the doors of his nature open to the
Christ. But the " raising of a lump " is only one side of
the " pegging-away " story, and the very cheery face of
our old exhorter was enough to make you ask where his
lump was after so much sermon-tasting. " But," says
this old man, ''there is another aspect to this Gospel-
thumping of yours, and remember also, white man,
that if you beat the drum on one spot only you will crack
it." Sure enough, the very next day one of the biggest
drums the Devil owned in the country was cracked.
B was a notorious thief who had been in the Belgian
chain more than once, and many a time he had wept, not
the tears of penitence, but of revolt. For years, with a
customary placidity, he had gone the hard way of
rebellion. " Wasted" was the word my pen had almost
tricked me into writing concerning the pile of religious
ammunition directed against all such. But "is not My
Word a Hammer ? " said the Lord, and that holy hammer
broke him. For what the Congo law could not do (by
sjambok and chain), in that it was weak through Butugu's
sinful flesh, God did in power. Ah, there is nothing
breaks the rebel's back like the flash of memory—-''My
God hath remembered me."
Leading up to this "Year of Love," what was the raw
native's line of defence, or had he any? Slaves, for
instance, whose souls were ploughed with the ploughshare