"Why is it, Sir, that in olden times the heathens used to crucify the
missionaries and burn them, and now they give them beautiful farms, and
build them houses, and carry them about on their backs?"
The old man seemed a little puzzled, and so did the company, to whom he
smilingly retailed my question.
As nobody seemed inclined to offer a solution, I ventured one myself.
"Perhaps the heathens are grown better than they used to be?"
"The heart of man," answered the tall, dark minister, "is, and ever was,
equally at enmity with God."
"Then, perhaps," I ventured again, "what the missionaries preach now is not
quite the same as what the missionaries used to preach in St. Paul's time,
and so the heathens are not so angry at it?"
My mother looked thunder at me, and so did all except my white-headed
friend, who said, gently enough,
"It may be that the child's words come from God."
Whether they did or not, the child took very good care to speak no more
words till he was alone with his mother; and then finished off that
disastrous evening by a punishment for the indecency of saying, before his
little sister, that he thought it "a great pity the missionaries taught
black people to wear ugly coats and trousers; they must have looked so
much handsomer running about with nothing on but feathers and strings of
shells.
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