The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1928, Page 163

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

163

Jesus and the consistency that, in them, rebuked his
fickleness and inconstancy; and they were led away
to die. The crowd followed them with jeering and
mockery, led on by the ‘high priest’ of the king’s
cruelty. But ridicule and sneer expended their
darts in vain upon the shield of faith borne by these
young disciples.

“They were, like their crucified Lord, taunted
with their faith in God and their trust in His prom-
ises and were burned to ashes to test their new doc-
trine of the resurrection. But the answer to all this
was that of the prisoners in the Philippian jail —
prayer and praise to God. The place of their death
was the edge of the dismal swamp Maganja; the
bed of their torture, a wicker framework built over
a slow fire; and the prelude of this awful agony was
mutilation — the knife, then the flame. Butchery
without mercy—then roasting with fiendish cruelty !
Not a murmur of complaint — songs of praise to
Jesus, mingled with moans of agony and sobs of
anguish; and then the long silence which tells of
the end! Yet when another young convert stood by
and saw all this and was threatened with a like fate,
he only dared these human fiends to do their worst,
declaring that he was not ashamed of Jesus.” (The
New Acts of the Apostles.)

In those days human beings were bought and
sold like cattle into the hopeless misery and cruelty
of Arab slavery. The most appalling cruelties of
slave-raiding were then perpetrated, and to read the
accounts of these horrors is deeply harrowing to all
humane sensibilities. Emin Pasha, who followed
the traces of one of these slave-raiders, says that he
counted fifty-one fresh corpses emaciated to the bone.
He states that thirty-nine of these victims had their
skulls shattered. As high as twelve hundred slaves
were brought to Mengo, the capital of Uganda, at
- one time.

Were the missionaries of the seventies and
eighties of last century to revisit Uganda to-day,
they would find many surprises. Here and there
they would see elderly people, men and women, with
hands, ears, or nose gone. These sights would be
familiar to them and would remind them of the
freakish cruelties of M’tesa and Mwanga; but they
would be told that no cruelties are practised any
more. No Christian need any longer fear persecu-
tion for his faith’s sake. Then a father used to sell
his daughter for several ‘hundred goats to any suitor
that might have paid the price; to-day she may
marry the man of her choice. Forty years ago there
‘were in Uganda thousands of slaves; to-day a Bu-
ganda would deem it a great insult tobe accused of

owning a slave. Before Christianity came to
Uganda, kings murdered all their brothers when
they ascended the throne; but that cruel custom has
not been practised since 1893.

The Church’s Growth in Uganda.

In Uganda the Christian Church has had a.
splendid development. No less than two thousand
native preachers, evangelists, and teachers are at:
work. It is from Uganda as a missionary center
that it is expected the surrounding territory will be
evangelized, though it will not be an easy task be-
cause the surrounding tribes do not use the Bantu
language spoken by the Bugandas. The work of
evangelizing these tribes will also be difficult because
they live in scattered localities, are unsettled, and of
a migratory disposition.

Mackay, the Practical Missionary.

The brightest names in the missionary history of
Uganda are those of two laymen, Alexander Mackay,.
a Scotch engineer, and George Lawrence Pilkington,.
an accomplished Cambridge scholar, both of whom
gave up very promising careers in Europe to devote
their strength, yea, their lives, to the Christianizing-
of the Bugandas. Mackay and Pilkington of Uganda
will be remembered as long as the history of mis—
sions is studied.

For twelve years Mackay with energy applied
himself to the task of bettering the physical lot of
the Bugandas while also bringing them the tidings:
of salvation. By his helpfulness he softened the
enmity of the king and often was to the tyrannical
Mwanga what Elijah was to Ahab. He taught the:
people the art of boat-building, printing, and brick-
making. He showed them how to build roads, and)
to people who had never seen a well he showed how
to bring water up out of the ground. And while:
showing them all these things, he knew how to teach:
them spiritual things in a most admirable manner..
The roads he built gave him occasion to speak to
them of Christ as the only Way to heaven; the water
which he brought up out of the.ground led him to-
tell them of Christ as the Water of Life. Mackay
found the way paved for him by the previous visits.
of Stanley, the great explorer, whose call for mis-
sionary workers in Uganda had brought Mackay
to Africa. 4

When Mackay heard that some in England
thought of giving up the mission because of the per-
secutions by King Mwanga, he said, “Never!”
Though his bishop had been brutally killed, though
his pupils had been burned, his converts strangled,