A BISHOP AMONG THE HEATHEN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9430, 2 January 1909, Page 2

A BISHOP AMONG THE HEATHEN.

me Wonderful Record of Missionary Sacriflco and Effort.

(" Daily Mail.") Miracles, it has been said, are happening every day, if only we would open our eyes to see them. And among modern miracles none are so impressive ..perhaps as the planting and growth of Christianity in those centred of heathendom where the lamp of the Gospel has never before shed its light. Bishop Tucker's " Eighteen Years In Uganda and East Africa" is a wonderful story of miracle and martyrdom, and effort and fruition. In a sense it is the story of the primitive Church all over again. The mind is transported back to those early days when from the cradle of Christianity the unquenchable Light shone forth for the first time, and the patient " fishers of men " went to death and conquest. To; many, indeed, the miracles of the " Acts " will not seem more wonderful than the miracles accomplished by faith among the Baganda and their f6llow-men. One can only touch in a desultory way upon a few of the aspects of this great missionary enterprise. When Bishop Tucker first., arrived in the country, in 1890, the number of baptised Christians was probably two hundred. ~ • Now this little band has grown into a great host of 62,867. Of these, more than 86,000 have been baptised within the last five years — over 7000 a year. And the proportion of the communicants to baptised members is about one in three." THE FIRST GRAVE. It was in 1844 that the first missionary of the Church Missionary Society landed in East Africa, and six inontl&s later the sods were heaped on the first missionary grave ;' but it was not until Stanley, throuah the newspapers, chal- , lenged England to evangelise Uganda, that an organised > attempt was made to carry Christianity permanently into the far interior. Missionaries died, some were martyred; but as the grave closed on one courageous man, another left home to fill the breach. The seed germinated. Natives were converted in spite of the jealousy of the savage King Mwanga, who tried to stay the progress of the faith by imprisoning and flogging, then by dismembering and torturing. One native boy with two others had his arms cut off, and then, bound to a scaffold, was slowly burnt to death. Bishop Hannington, the first bishop, was martyred, " bidding his murderers tell the king that he^ died for the Baganda, and that he had purchased the road to Uganda with his life." When Bishop Tucker started on his first long march into the interior there were enemies on every, hand-r-fever, robbers, savage tribes, even water was not always to be had. The scene on the arrival of the caravan at the Ututuru Wells, he writes, "is one «that will never fade from my memory. " There were three wells to supply 2500 men. THE STRUGGLE AT THE WELL. " The struggle for the water was terrible, not that the men fought — they did not do that. But the crowding the well tops and the eager pressing into vacant places almost amounted to a fierce struggle, terrible to witness. " In the course of the day three lives were lost by men losing their foothold and falling headlong down the well. All night long the crowding continued, and when morning dawned there were yet men with their thirst unquenched." The missionaries at the capital 6oon made reading a popular passion : — "The demand for dooks was incessant," we are told later on, and this is what happened when the Scriptures in the native tongue arrived :— " ' Talk about sieges — if ever there was a siege it was yesterday, and this morning it seemed likely to be renewed tenfold. I gave out on Sunday that the Gospels of St Matthew would be sold on Monday morning. I was roused up before it was light by the roar of voices, and after dressing hurriedly sallied out to the — I had almost said — fight. ....... FIGHTING FOR BIBLES. " ' Close to my house is a slight shed used for the cows to stand in during the heat of the day. This Was barricaded, keeping the people outside; but barricades" were useless — in came the door, and we thought the whole place would have fallen. " •« In ten minutes all the hundred Gospels were sold. . We now returned for some breakfast. I had just opened another box, which I strongly suspected to be books, about 800 in all. ■" •' Here was a find ! I had barricaded my house front window, and we sold through it — the doctor selling to the women in -another place. Now was a scrimmage, and shells came pouring in. I have in the house six or seven loads of cowries. . . . I should think a thousand or more people are waiting about, each/ with shells wherewith to buy a book, but we have none to sell-' " It was a living Christianity which

proved it, grnng up life for the wew .faith when the sacrifice .was demanded. The white missionaries were too few to cope with the harvest that lay before them. Natives became evangelists. | t"Een deacons, and then priests, and went off into the far-off places of the hug« diocese to carry the message of the Gospel. The bishop during his journeyings through thotieands of miles of territory was constantly finding evidence of the growth of Christianity in everyday life. Thus, when in one. remote spot, he writes :— " I spent the night in the house of a Christian man named Luka. He waa not at home, but the members of his family received me with the utmost cordiality and entertained me with lavish hospitality. . . • . "It was a very touching and significant sight to one who, like myeelf, was anxiously watching for signs of the upspringing of anything at all approaching family life — which in our own country ib such a mighty power for good— to see how at eventide the household was gathered together by beat of drum for family worship. The absence of the master of the house made no difference. His sons took his place in reading prayers. FAMILY PRATEB9 OT A KATTVB BOMB. "Young men and maidens, old men, women and children came trooping in from all sides and joined both in prayer and praise. At earliest dawn it was the same; the prayer drum beat,, and then the hum of voices, the hush, the one voice leading, the many respond* ing. and then the loud ' Amens.' " Native customs regarding slavery, marriage and divorce were problems which pressed urgently for solution as Christianity began to take hold in the country. The Bishop telb the story of a service held in one remote place, where come 300 women " belonging to the chief and called by the sacred name of 'wife,' but knowing nothing of its high and holy ties, came to listen. " A singularly solemnising and touching sight it was to see them — their eager attention, their intelligent apprehension of point after point. "A prayer was taught them, short and pointed in its petition, and then a hymn wae sung over and over again, so that many, I doubt not. will never forget it. And then, without a moment's warning, oatne a mo&t dramatic close to our service. Moved as by a common impulse, probably fear, the whole mass rose up, and, like hunted deer, the women darted hither and thither, seeking the shelter of the houses round about, and in twenty seconds not a soul of our audience was left. " At first wo thought that com© wild beast had made < its appearance. But not All this abject fear, this wild terror, was due not to a creeping leopard or a crouching lion, but to a .man. It was the chief. " Unexpectedly he had returned, and those poor women, many of them victims of his lust and cruelty, dreading his wrath— more terrible to them than the teeth or claws of a wild beast — had sought to escape identification by his searching glance in the dark recesses of their wretched hilts. . " I do not know that any incident in the whole of my missionary experience has ever stirred and touched me more than the sight of that fleeing mass of womanhood." There is no space in which to tell the story of the many troubles that befell the Church, but something more must be said of individual missionaries. There was J. C- Price, " a truer hero never lived." In the mklst of persecution and rebellion, with the country aflame around him, he would not leave his little,,flock. He preferred to share the fate of his people. SHARED THEER FATE. And at the time 'of the great famine he would not listen to any proposal for personal relief. " How can 1 forsake them?" he said — and so he died in the midst of his work. Here, too, is the death scene of George Pilkmgton, the great linguist, and evangelist, to whom the Church in^tJganda owes so much. During that terribly anxious time of the mutiny of the Soudanese soldiery he was with the military forces, and was shot by a man who had fired at him several times. " He cried out, ' Harrison, I am hit I' and sat down on the ground. . . . Aioni (his native boy) knelt down by his side and said, ' Sebo bakukubye ' (Sir, have they shot yon?) Pilkington replied, 'Yes, my child, they have shot me.' " Then he seemed to g^et suddenly very weak, and Aloni said to him, 'My master, you are dying ; death has come,' to which he replied, ' Yes, my child, it is as you say.' " Then Aloni said, ' Sebo, he that believeth m Christ, although he die, yet shall he live.' To this Pilkington replied. 'Yes, my child, it is as you say, shall never die.' "Then they carried him some little distance to the rear of the battle, which was now raging most furiously. When they had put him down again he turned to those who had carried him and said, 'Thank you, my friends, you have done well. . . . Now five me rest,' and almost immediately c became insensible and rested from his pain." WHAT ONE MAN DID. Not one item in that programme of work which had been entrusted to Pilkington on reaching Uganda was left unfinished or undone when he died. A grammar of the language, a book of Common Prayer, the whole Bible translated into vernacular — the latter a stupendous work indeed — all had been completed. This brief glimpse into Bishop Tucker's work must close with an episode relating to the bravery of the women — this time a native woman: " Some few months ago I was officiating in the cathedral at Mengo. The great congregation had dispersed, and 'a large body of the communicants remained. Slowly the . service proceeded, the profound silence broken only by the solemn wdrds of administration. " The last communicants had returned to their places, and I was about to close the service, when from the extreme end of the building— a corner of the south aisle in which she had been sitting by herself — a woman advanced slowly up the nave. "I waited wonderingly. As she took her place, kneeling alone at the rail, Harry Wright Duta, who was assisting me, whispered in my ear, 'It is Ra-kej-i! Rakeril' "In a moment her story flashed through my mind, and with heart uplifted in praise to God, with a voiqe ill-controlled through the emotion that welled within, I administered to her the emblems of the dyin.q love of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. THE 6TOBT OF HEROIC RACHKXi. '* Now, who was Rakeri (Rachel) P She was a woman connected with the congregation at Ngogwe, near the shores of the Great Lake. Some time previously it had been told at a meet-

ing of the Christians how that on a certain island sleeping sickness had broken out, and that the people were dying in , large numbers without any^ one to teach them the way to salvation. " This ao touched th© heart of Rakeri, who was present, that 6he volunteered to go and teach the women and children. She was warned. She was told of the peril. It would be at the risk of her life. Infection meant death. There was no cure. But nothing could turn her from her purpose." '• When her errand of mercy was over she came hortie to die. She lived for some months in the hospital under the doctor's care, and as long as she oould move about she was as a ministering angel to the sick ones in the women's ward. And all the while she was a dying woman. "It was during this time of comparative strength that Rakeri came to the communion service in the cathedral. She sat in that distant corner all alone, because she knew that people would shrink away from her as they would shrink from contact with death itself." One day, very soon, when the bishop was at the hospital, the last fatal slumber came to her. "I could but whisper in ber ear the blessing of God," be writes, "and so she passed to her rest and her reward."