DR. MOFFAT gave an address some years ago to our Sunday school, and I feel sure the young readers of FAITHFUL WORDS will be interested in reading the notes which we took of it. The aged missionary said: ―
My dear children, I want you all to hear me, but I am getting old, and my voice is not very strong. You all know I come from Africa, where lions abound, and doubtless many of you have seen lions, but they were shut up in cages, with strong iron bars. I have seen them loose in their wild state, and to see them and hear them roar near you is enough to make you tremble.
I will tell you a little story about lions. For more than fifty years I traveled a great deal in Africa, and preached very often wherever I went, telling the poor black people about Jesus. Once an African woman, who had heard of me, said to her children, “I will take you where a teacher lives,” and away she went, with her boy and girl running along with her. Her little children wondered what a teacher or missionary was. They had a long way to go, and when they were about midway on their journey, the sun being very hot, and the children being tired, the mother said, “We will stop here; you rest under that tree, and don’t go away, while I go and find wood and water to cook some food, and then we will go on again.” When the mother came back, there were no children to be seen. She looked first one way, then another, when she saw them on a plain bond the bushes, and oh, how her heart beat! — a lion was coming towards them! She screamed to them, and ran to them as if she had wings to help her. The children had seen the lion, but supposed it to be a great calf. On reaching them, she turned them back, and said, “Flee, my children, to the bushes; it is the lion come to eat you.”
The brave mother stood still, and when the lion was within ten yards of her, she looked him in the face. Then she raised her voice to the highest pitch, and holding out her fist, called the lion a rogue, a vagabond, a bloodsucker, and every bad name she could think of, and dared him to touch her. Surprised at being scolded thus, the lion couched, and after staring at her for some time, got up and walked away. So the mother and her children were saved. Was not that a marvelous deliverance and a wonderful instance of God’s ever-watchful care?
My next is a sad story. A mother, with her boy, had been traveling all day in the heat of the scorching African sun. She said to her son, “We will go through the hills, as that is our nearest way;” but the boy said, “Don’t go that way, mother, for I have heard there are cannibals living there.” Cannibals are men who eat men and women and children. The boy’s mother answered, “We will go that way; they won’t see us.” But they had not gone far before three men rushed out of the bushes and seized the woman. The terrified boy ran into the bushes, and hid himself in a hyena’s hole. There he lay all night. In the morning, when looking about for his mother, he found her head. Away he ran, as fast as he could, all day. Towards night he met a man with a gun slung across his shoulder, and supposing he was a cannibal with a club he fell on his knees to him, and said, “Oh! pray don’t eat me; see,” (lifting his arms and showing his ribs) “I am nothing but bones.”
The man said, “I am not going to eat you.” He belonged to a missionary station, and took the boy away with him, taught him to read and write, taught him the gospel, and the boy became happy and useful.
The cruel men were more fierce than the lion!
When traveling in the wilds of Africa we get as near to the trees as we can when we halt for the night, so as to be able to climb up among the branches out of the way of the lions; and it is a rule always to make a fire to frighten them off.
On one occasion a man, whom I knew, had halted under a tree; it was dark, and he was just making a fire. He discovered a lion approaching, and you may be sure the man was up the tree in a trice. There he sat, as best he could, but having scarcely any clothes on, the branches felt very hard. It was pitch dark, and he was afraid to come down, for he thought the lion might be lying watching at the foot of the tree, which was the case. The man was very tired; he could not rest his weary head, and after waiting for a long time he fell asleep. Presently down he tumbled off the tree, and fell—where do you think? —right upon the lion! This so startled the great beast that it started up and ran off, quite as much frightened as was the man.
In Africa they do not teach the children to love and to serve God and His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Among the heathen it. Africa the men lead the boys about quite naked during the coldest hours of the night of the coldest month, and whip them with switches, and, if the boys complain or run away, they are killed. The Bechuana tribe have a ceremony during which the boys are whipped with switches of a supple shrub. Men and boys engage in a kind of dance and the boys wear their sandals on their hands instead of their feet, while the men switch them till their bodies bleed. All the time the lads are obliged to look quite pleased and happy, and never even to appeal to mind the terrible lashes which scar their bodies for lifetime. This schooling is to make them hard, so as to be able to resist pain, and to be fearless warriors. The girls are disciplined, though not in quite the same way, to prepare them for hard work in the fields and in building houses.
When I first went out to Africa, there were no books among the natives, and, of course, nobody could write or read. I once asked a man to take a letter for me to Mrs. Moffat, who was residing at some distance off. He stared at me as he took the letter, and said, “Do you say it will talk to her?” I said, “Yes.” He instantly arose, laid the letter upon the ground, and moved off, afraid lest it should talk to him.
On another occasion I wanted to send a letter, and, as there are no posts, it is difficult to do so, but at last I got a man to take it and also a parcel, and in the letter told Mrs. Moffat to give the man some strings of beads and buttons and plenty of food. But the man delivered the letter and not the parcel. So Mrs. Moffat said, “Where is the parcel?” He answered, “The letter tells fibs, for it could not see, as it was in the bag behind my back all the way.”
Now there are in Africa Sunday schools, and thousands of children, as well as the grown-up persons who can read and sing as well as you.
I remember a sweet little child, one of our school children, who became very sick. She was sitting on her mother’s knee, and said, “Mother, let us sing a hymn” — the child had taught her mother to sing “I’m a little pilgrim here.” Just as they had finished the hymn the child died in her mother’s arms. I said to the mother, “What a loss!” but she answered, “I would not call her back; she has gone to Jesus — gone to heaven. She won’t come back to me, but I shall go to her.”
Is it not a great mercy to be taught to know that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”?
Only think of riding on an ox! One chief rode on his ox one hundred miles to hear me preach. I had a great deal of ox-riding in Africa, and I got to like it. Oxen are sure-footed animals, and easy to ride, but they will have their own way. They have very long horns, and a small rope is put through the nose as a sort of rein, but for all that, if you try to make them go a different way from that which they wish to take, they will sometimes very quickly turn you over “topsy-turvy” with their horns. I have had many a rough shaking of that description.
Though the children in Africa are not white like you, they think themselves pretty, and pretty they are to me. I love them exceedingly, and pray always to God to make them know Him, and to bring them to heaven. You know that God loves them and loves you, and that Christ died for sinners, and that all are sinners, but however much your parents and teachers may love you, they cannot save you. Remember, the Lord Jesus loves you, and died to save you, and you cannot come to Him too early.
Dear children, I am an old servant of missions, having spent the greatest part of my life in Africa. But I am not tired, and should so like to go back again to the black people. Yet I cannot expect to do this; but I wish some of you may become true missionaries some day. What a joy it will be to me if boys and girls now hearing me, when they grow up, should go to preach the Gospel in distant lands! It is a blessed work.