Frequently the boys themselves become missionaries. They build churches
and tell the people the wonderful story of the "Tribe of God" to
which they belong. Many of them start schools. None of them sit around
their huts all day and smoke and drink and beat their wives and
quarrel, as their fathers and grandfathers used to do. While they learn
their trades, they become better Christians, not only because they
listen to the preaching on Sunday, but because they watch Mr. and Mrs.
Hope and the other missionaries and see how they live.
Fred Hope said he would be a missionary if he could be one without
being a preacher, yet he preaches every day. Sometimes he ventures
to stand up in church or among the people who crowd the doors of the
mission, and tell them the story of the Son of God who gave Himself for
them, but most of his preaching is his every-day living.
He has won his "drum name." He began to win it when he paid his pledge
for $1.00 by catching rats when his bean crop failed, and always since
then he has found some way to do the things that he undertakes no
matter how hard they are or how many difficulties he meets.
If you were in an African village which Mr. Hope was about to
visit, you would not be handed a telegram stating "Fred Hope has
arrived," but instead, you would hear the drums beat the call,
"'Tree-Not-Shaken-by-the-Wind' is here."
V
WHEN MARY WAS AFRAID
The night was gloomy and rain threatened, yet there were many boys and
girls on Queen Street in Dundee. They were doing nothing in particular;
they did not seem to be on their way anywhere; they were simply hanging
about.
Opening into Queen Street were courts called "pends" or "closes." These
were not streets, for they were very narrow, or thoroughfares, because
they led nowhere; they were merely vestibules to tall buildings where
human beings lived huddled together like animals. They were paved with
rough stones, and in order to reach the spiral staircase on the outside
of the old tenements one had to step through masses of filth.
Even so, these boys and girls found the pend and the gateway into the
street and the street itself a pleasant change from the crowded rooms
in which they lived. All day they worked in factories, and in the
evening they naturally tried to find entertainment.
This evening they were in a good humor, and it was very plain that they
were awaiting some interesting event. They looked down the street
eagerly as one might look for the approach of the band at the head of a
circus parade. Presently they drew near together before the door of a
little room on the ground floor of Queen Street. The window-shades were
lifted and within were to be seen rows of benches and a little table.
They looked in and laughed.
"We'll get her!" said a rough voice. "Just wait till she comes to her
prayer-meeting!"
So it was not for a circus parade they were watching!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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