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

EPILOGUE 477
Yet God was over all even then, and in some crude
sense these poor wanderers from Him were under a
schoolmaster leading them to Christ. Crudely, granted,
yet even Paul dignifies that intuition of theirs by the
exalted name of '' law " when he insists that they, too, are
a "law unto themselves." One of the strongest threads
in the fabric of their national life is the austere creed of
taboo, and here is a fresh "as we go to press" example.
Just a minute ago I tried hard to get a tiny boy named
Kasongo to eat a fish. Pinched with hunger, here was a
little nipper with no "moral" backbone, yet he shut his
milk teeth, and defied all my entreaty. No, he dare not
break tribal taboo, dare not touch fish, wheedle him as
you may. Poor superstition of course it all is, but at
least the negro breed is thereby stronger in grit and
tenacity of purpose, and in some sense this loyalty to law-
keeping does not soften the fibre of his black mind. In
fact, the day this type of negro weeps for sin will be the
same glorious date when that very negro will welcome
Christ into his life by the front door of fearlessness and
not by the back door of cowardice. Nor will you need to
spend long hours indoctrinating him with ideas as to the
sanctity of law per se. He has got that in his bones, for
in his own tribal taboo did he not "play the game"?
. Thus Christ subjugates all things unto Himself, and
instead of casting away the old spear of taboo, he now
converts it into a Gospel ploughshare. Is there no taboo
in the Ecclesia ? I trow there is. Are there no holy
" thou shalt not's " in Christianity ? And did the negro
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