CLOWN TO MISSIONARY

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 83, 9 March 1925, Page 12

CLOWN TO MISSIONARY

A CLERGYMAN’S CAREER. CONVERTING A PIGMY CHIEF. , - \ CAPETOWN, Jan. 29. A circus clown, who “heard God’s voice” one night as he was poised on a trapeze above an audience of-4000, who instantly forsook his calling to become an evangelist, and who eventually Christianised a chief belonging to the mysterious pigmy people of the Motombi forest region of the Belgian Congo—such briefly ure tho outstanding features of tho extraordinary life story of the Rev. A. Phillips, as he himself told it in a Capetown church. Mr Phillipß, who is on a visit here from Durban, where he is conducting a United Denominational People’s Mission, described his boyhood and early manhood as an acrobat, tightrope-walker and clown in a circus, “with no idea of what lay between the covers of the Bible.” “In the middle of a performance before 4000 people I heard the voice of God,” he said. “I was swinging on the trapeze 60ft. above the level of the ground, and it was thero I sealed my contract with the Divine being. I kept the audience waiting for five minutes, and then climbed down, bowed to the people, gave notice to the manager, and became a travelling evangelist.” Some years later, he went on, he was given an opportunity to go as a missionary to tho North-Eustern Belgian Congo, to the tract of land 800 miles broad by 1400 miles long. Tho Great War, all unknown to tho peoplo there, was at its height when he and his wife journeyed up the Arumiwi river. One day Mr Phillips continued, they were confronted by a man barely 2ft. in height, whom the othor natives described as one of their children, but although so small and quite naked, the native was no child—he had lone, wavy hair and a matted beard, and understood the local dialect. He gave the missionary and his wife to understand that he and other pigmies had had the Europeans under observation for six moons, and finding them kind to the natives had decided to leave theii* tree habitations and approach the strange white beings. The pigmy, a chief among „ his own people, was nicknamed “Angelo, and before he died of a malignant form ot leprosy he was baptised and converted to Christianity—the first pigmy Christian of the Motombi forest. After 25 years’ work for the Church, Mr Phillips concluded, he was surer to-day than ever before in his life that he had done the right thing in leaving tho circus, and breaking away from family traditions to become a follower of God.