The Book of Missionary Heroes by Basil Mathews (young adult books to read .txt) π
"Then as I was journeying[6] to Damascus, with the authority of thechief priests themselves, at mid-day I saw on the way a light from thesky, brighter than the blaze of the sun, shining round about me and mycompanions. And, as we were all fallen on to the road, I heard a voicesaying to me:
"'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kickagainst the goad.'
"And I said, 'Who are you, Lord?'
"The answer came: 'I am Jesus, whom you persecute.'"
Then Paul went on:
"I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision; but I told those inDamascus and in Jerusalem and in all Judæa, aye! and the foreignnations also, that they should repent and turn to God.
"Later on," said Paul, "I fell into a trance, and Jesus came againto me and said, 'Go, I will send you afar to the Nations.' That (Paulwould say to Luke) is why I walk among perils in the
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The boys were led out with a mob of howling men and boys around them. Mujasi shouted to them: "Oh, you know Isa Masiya (Jesus Christ). You believe you will rise from the dead. I shall burn you, and you will see if this is so."
A hideous roar of laughter rose from the mob. The boys were led down the hill towards the edge of a marsh. Behind them was a plantation of banana trees. Some men who had carried bundles of firewood on their heads threw the wood into a heap; others laid hold of each of the boys and cut off their arms with hideous curved knives so that they should not struggle in the fire.
Seruwanga, the bravest, refused to utter a cry as he was cut to pieces, but Kakumba shouted to Mujasi, who was a Mohammedan, "You believe in Allah the Merciful. Be merciful!" But Mujasi had no mercy.
We are told that the men who were watching held their breath with awed amazement as they heard a boy's voice out of the flame and smoke singing,
Sing, my soul, His praises due."
As the executioners came towards the youngest and feeblest, Lugalama, he cried, "Oh, do not cut off my arms. I will not struggle, I will not fightβonly throw me into the fire."
But they did their ghastly work, and threw the mutilated boy on a wooden framework above the slow fire where his cries went up, till at last there was silence.
One other Christian stood by named Musali. Mujasi, with eyes bloodshot and inflamed with cruelty, came towards him and cried:
"Ah, you are here. I will burn you too and your household. You are a follower of Isa (Jesus)."
"Yes, I am," replied Musali, "and I am not ashamed of it."
It was a marvel of courage to say in the face of the executioner's fire and knife what Peter dared not say when the servant-maid in Jerusalem laughed at him. Perhaps the heroism of Musali awed even the cruel-hearted Mujasi. In any case he left Musali alone.
For a little time M'wanga ceased to persecute the Christians. But the wily Arabs whispered in his ear that the white men were still trying to "eat up" his country. M'wanga was filled with mingled anger and fear. Then his fury burst all bounds when Mujasi said to him: "There is a great white man coming from the rising sun. Behind him will come thousands of white soldiers."
"Send at once and kill him," cried the demented M'wanga.
A boy named Balikudembe, a Christian, heard the order and he could not contain himself, but broke out, "Oh, King M'wanga, why are you going to kill a white man? Your father did not do so."
But the soldiers went out, travelled east along the paths till they met the great Bishop Hannington being carried in a litter, stricken with fever. They took him prisoner, and, after some days, slew him as he stood defenceless before them. Hannington had been sent out to help Mackay and his fellow-Christians.
Then the King fell ill. He believed that the boy Balikudembe, who had warned him not to kill the Bishop, had bewitched him. So M'wanga's soldiers went and caught the lad and led him down to a place where they lit a fire, and placing the boy over it, burned him slowly to death.
All through this time Mackay alone had not been really seriously threatened, for his work and what he was made the King and the Katikiro and even Mujasi afraid to do him to death.
Then there came a tremendous thunderstorm. A flash of lightning smote the King's house and it flamed up and burned to ashes. Then King M'wanga seemed to go mad. He threatened to slay Mackay himself.
"Take, seize, burn the Christians," he cried. And his executioners and their minions rushed out, captured forty-six men and boys, slashed their arms from their bodies with their cruel curved knives so that they could not struggle, and then placed them over the ghastly flames which slowly wrung the lives from their tortured bodies. Yet the numbers of the Christians seemed to grow with persecution.
The King himself beat one boy, Apolo Kagwa, with a stick and smote him on the head, then knocked him down, kicked and stamped upon him. Then the King burned all his books, crying, "Never read again."
The other men and boys who had become Christians were now scattered over the land in fear of their lives. Mackay, however, come what may, determined to hold on. He set his little printing press to work and printed off a letter which he sent to the scattered Christians. In Mackay's letter was written these words, "In days of old Christians were hated, were hunted, were driven out and were persecuted for Jesus' sake, and thus it is to-day. Our beloved brothers, do not deny our Lord Jesus!"
At last M'wanga's mad cruelties grew so frightful that all his people rose in rebellion and drove him from the throne, so that he had to wander an outcast by the lake-side. Mackay at that time was working by the lake, and he offered to shelter the deposed King who had only a short time before threatened his life.
Two years passed; and Mackay, on the lake-side, was building a new boat in which he hoped to sail to other villages to teach the people. Then a fever struck him. He lay lingering for some days. Then he diedβaged only forty-one.
If Mackay, instead of becoming a missionary, had entered the engineering profession he might have become a great engineer. When he was a missionary in Africa, the British East Africa Company offered him a good position. He refused it. General Gordon offered him a high position in his army in Egypt. He refused it.
He held on when his friends and the Church Missionary Society called him home. This is what he said to them, "What is this you writeβ'Come home'? Surely now, in our terrible dearth of workers, it is not the time for anyone to desert his post. Send us only our first twenty men, and I may be tempted to come to help you to find the second twenty."
He died when quite young; homeless, after a life in constant danger from fever and from a half-mad tyrant kingβhis Christian disciples having been burned.
Was it worth while?
To-day the Prime Minister of Uganda is Apolo Kagwa, who as a boy was kicked and beaten and stamped upon by King M'wanga for being a Christian; and the King of Uganda, Daudi, M'wanga's son, is a Christian. At the capital there stands a fine cathedral in which brown Baganda clergy lead the prayers of the Christian people. On the place where the boys were burned to death there stands a Cross, put there by 70,000 Baganda Christians in memory of the young martyrs.
Was their martyrdom worth while?
To-day all the slave raiding has ceased for ever; innocent people are not slaughtered to appease the gods; the burning of boys alive has ceased.
Mackay began the work. He made the first rough road and as he made it he wrote: "This will certainly yet be a highway for the King Himself; and all that pass this way will come to know His name."
"And a highway shall be there and a way; and it shall be a way of holiness."
But the Way is not finished. And the last words that Mackay wrote were: "Here is a sphere for your energies. Bring with you your highest education and your greatest talents, and you will find scope for the exercise of them all."
[55] There is no record of the precise words, but Mackay gives the argument in a letter home.
CHAPTER XXI THE BLACK APOSTLE OF THE LONELY LAKEShomolekae
In the garden in Africa where, you remember, David Livingstone plighted troth with Mary Moffat, as they stood under an almond tree, there lived years ago a chocolate-skinned, curly-haired boy. His name was Shomolekae.[56]
His work was to go among the fruit trees, when the peaches and apricots were growing and to shout and make a noise to scare away the birds. If he had not done this they would have eaten up all the fruit. This boy was born in Africa over seventy-five years ago, when Victoria was a young queen.
In the same garden was a grown-up gardener, also an African, with a dark face and crisp, curly hair. The grown-up gardener one day stole some of the fruit off the trees, and he went to the little boy, Shomolekae, and offered him some apricots.
Now, Shomolekae had learned to love the missionary, Mr. Mackenzie, who had come to live in the house at Kuruman. He knew that it was very wrong of the gardener to steal the fruit and throw the blame on the birds. So he said that he would not touch the fruit. He went to an old black friend of his named Paul and said to him:
"The gardener has stolen the apples and plums and has asked me to eat them. He has robbed Mr. Mackenzie. I do not know what to do."
And old Paul went and told John Mackenzie, who took notice of the boy Shomolekae and learned to trust him.
Many months passed by; and two years later John Mackenzie was going to a place further north in Africa than Kuruman. The name of this town was Shoshong, where Mackenzie would live and teach the people about Jesus Christ. So he went to the father of Shomolekae, whose name was Sebolai.
"Sebolai," said John Mackenzie, "I want to take your son, Shomolekae, with me to Shoshong."
Sebolai replied: "I am willing that my son should come to live with you, but one thing I desire. It is that he should be taught his reading and to know the stories in the Bible and such things."
To this John Mackenzie quickly agreed, for he too desired that the boy should read.
So the sixteen oxen were yoked to the big wagon, and amid much shouting and cracking of whips and lowing of oxen and creaking of wagon-joints, John Mackenzie, Shomolekae, and the others, started from Kuruman northward to Shoshong.
Now, at Shoshong the chief was Sekhome, who, you remember, in our last story, was father to Khama. So when they were at Shoshong, Shomolekae, the young man who was cook, and Khama, the young man who was the son of the chief, worshipped in the same little church together. It was not such a church as you go to in our countryβbut just a little place made of mud bricks that had been dried in the sun. There were holes instead of windows, and there was no door in the open doorway; and on the top of the little building was a roof of rough, reedy grass.
These were the days that you heard of in the last story, when Khama, seeing his tribe attacked by the fierce Lobengula, rode out on horseback at the head of his regiment of cavalry and fought them and beat them, and drove away Lobengula with a bullet in his neck.
For two years Shomolekae, learning to read better every day, and serving John Mackenzie faithfully in his house, lived at Shoshong.
Sometimes Shomolekae took long journeys with wagon and oxen, and at the end of two years he went with Mackenzie a great way in order to buy windows, doors, hinges, nails, corrugated iron, and timber with which to build a better church at Shoshong.
When Shomolekae came back again with the wagons loaded up there was great excitement in the tribe. Hammers
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