But I had occasion frequently to review the records of the session of the church, and of realizing the undercurrents of the lives of those people; and there I found nothing amusing. It was a sad, sad story of pathos and dire tragedy. There were confessions of weak failure; but there were other confessions of defeat only after long and brave fighting against temptations which those in Christian lands cannot conceive and which I cannot relate. There were stories of domestic sorrow. A Christian man tells the session that he did not partake of the communion because his heart was full of bitterness against his heathen wife for her unfaithfulness and immorality. A Christian woman declares that she refused to marry a man who had other wives. She was tied hands and feet and carried to his house. Another woman tells the wrongs she endured from a heathen husband. A broken-hearted father tells that he had not lately attended the services because the death of his only son had filled him with doubt of God’s goodness. A widowed mother also confesses doubt because God had taken away her only son. These are the _weak_ Christians who have been called before the session; and these are the men and women at whose weaknesses travellers and other critics would laugh and point the finger of scorn, and because of them condemn the entire congregation of those who profess to be Christians. The majority of white men in Africa judge the native Christians without mercy, and they judge the whole native church by its weakest member. At Las Palmas, on Grand Canary Island, I tasted a fresh fig for the first time in my life and pronounced it “disgusting,” whereupon a native Spaniard, a judge of figs, looking at me, said: “O, sir, you are eating a bad one!” He was right. I was eating a bad fig and judging the whole species by that one. It is thus that many white men judge the native Christians of Africa. Prominent in the Batanga Church, and always present at the service, was a woman, Bekalida, noted in her tribe for her good looks, but in these latter years smitten with a disease that had horribly disfigured her, and had eaten away her entire nose. When this calamity befell her she was so overwhelmed with grief and shame that for a long time she could not bear to be seen in public. But at last, with her face covered, she appeared in the little prayer-meeting of women conducted by her great friend, Miss Nassau, and there, in pathetic and eloquent words, she poured out her heart while they wept, and told them how that she had been vain and proud until the Lord in His love had smitten her; how that during the long weeks of her affliction faith forsook her. Her heart was hard and rebellious and she felt that she could not bear her shame; but she yearned for that comfort that only God could give; she came to Jesus again in penitence and He received her and her heart was filled with the peace of God; for it was better to be disfigured than to be vain and proud.