Later in the day he might have been heard telling his friends not to let the white man hear them say that the rainbow is a snake—if they did not want a bucket of water thrown on them. So we made a conversion after the Mohammedan fashion. But that native must have wondered what might be the essential difference between the _reign of law_ and the _law of rain_. A million such experiments, even if perfectly successful, would not be worth while except as amusement; for the native mind is wrong not merely in particulars, but fundamentally. The idea of God must be injected into nature, as a basis for law, before a scientific attitude is possible. Only the idea of God can expel the multitude of spirits whose activities make of nature a haphazard warfare of conflicting forces. And how shall we convey this idea to the degraded mind of the African? Of course we should change his idea of nature if we could persuade him of God’s _unity_, and that nature, therefore, is the product of a single mind; His _spirituality_, and that He is therefore present everywhere, in nature and the hearts of men; His _holiness_, and that God and nature are therefore on the side of righteousness; His _love_, and that God and nature are therefore benevolent and sympathetic with man. But to talk to the African about God’s attributes is to speak in an unknown tongue. And besides, God’s personality is something more than the sum of His attributes, which no more make God, as some one has said, than arms and legs and head and trunk make my father. But we can present to the African mind the personal Christ—God incarnate—and the African heart responding can love Him; and loving Him he can know Him; for love is more knowing than reason. The African is, above all, still capable of strong personal affection; and looking into the face of Jesus he sees God—the _One God_ of conscience—and learns to call Him _Father_, a word which even to the African mind implies _love_ and _care_. He knows nothing of attributes, but like a child he can discern his Father’s will.