The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 101

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

101

matician. It is night. He writes in his diary for
that day, December 12: “This day last year, Liv-
ingstone died, a Scotsman and a Christian, loving
God and his neighbors in the heart of Africa. ‘Go
thou and do likewise.’ ”

He has been absorbed all day in Stanley’s book
How I Found Livingstone. He has read of the
great missionary’s gentleness and hopefulness; of
“his Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Ro-
man, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon.”
Like Stanley, his heart says, “The man has con-
quered me.”

But he is not through yet for the night with the
voices of Livingstone and Stanley. A newspaper
lying on the table attracts his attention by the
words “Central Africa.” He reads the thrilling
call of Stanley from Uganda, which just then
stirred Great Britain from end to end.

“King M’tesa of Uganda has been asking me
about the white man’s God. ... Oh, that some
practical missionary would come here! M?’tesa
would give him anything that he desired — houses,
land, cattle, ivory. It is the practical Christian
who can cure their diseases, build dwellings, teach
farming, and turn his hand to anything like a
sailor—this is the man who is wanted. Such a one,
if he can be found, would become the Savior of
Africa. ... Where is there in all the pagan world
a more promising field for a mission? Here, gentle-
men, is your opportunity; embrace it! The people
upon the shores of the Nyanza call upon you.”

These piercing words are not all that Mackay
reads this night. In the newspaper before him is
a call from the Church Missionary Society for men
to respond to the call of Uganda, the country to
the northwest of Victoria Nyanza, the great inland
sea. He is ready. He lets not an hour pass before
writing to the society. This is what he writes:
“My heart burns for the deliverance of Africa, and
if you can send me to any one of these regions
which Livingstone and Stanley have found to be
groaning under the curse of the slave-hunter, I shall
be very glad.”

Within four months Mackay sailed from South-
ampton for Zanzibar.
Uganda, but time was not lost. He built 230 miles

of road while waiting. Then, in November, 1878, _
after incredible hardships and discouragements, he —

reached the capital of King M’tesa, long his objec-
tive. It was a sinister place, despite the fact that
the king allowed Mackay to hold service each Sun- |
day at his court. Dark forces were at work against _

Illness delayed his reaching

the evangel which the intrepid soldier of Christ
‘had brought, but he lived and toiled on among them
undaunted. Three major menaces darkened every
day, besides the minor ones- of which he took no
account. Always around the king were the slaves,
his pages, some of them, Christians now, destined,
alas, ere long to pass through a fiery furnace to
their death for their faith. And always there
hovered near the shadow of the Arab slave-hunter ;
there were many Mohammedans, devotees of the
Crescent, stealthily at work against the Cross. Ro-
man Catholic priests were on the ground before
him, bitterly opposed to his simple Gospel; and it
was not easy to forget that the king had put 2,000
innocent persons to death on one occasion in a
single day:

But Mackay, the “white man-of-work,” as the
Baganda (adjective for people and language of
Uganda) folk called him, kept on creating the
Baganda language and alphabet, reducing it to let-
ters and words, translating and printing the Scrip-
tures, making his own tools, his own type, digging
wells for pure water to combat fever, working at
his lathe, his forge, and his grindstone, all for the
love of Christ and the barbarous people around him.

It was hard to explain to them why a man
should labor with his hands unless forced by a
taskmaster to do so. Very slowly the conception of
the Carpenter of Nazareth, who chose to become
a servant for the sake of mankind, found a lodg-
ment in the savage minds and hearts. Mackay was
very humble and childlike on his knees in prayer,
men said.

“Hosts of people come daily for instruction,”
he wrote. In 1882 five converts were baptized; in
1884 the native church numbered eighty-six mem-~
bers. His prayers were not forgotten before God.
He even exerted an influence with the old King
against slave-hunting.

M’tesa, the brutal and wholly hostile king of
Uganda, died in 1884 and was succeeded by his
young son M’wanga. He, weak and cruel by nature,
proved a ready tool in the hands of the worst
elements of the court. The jealous suspicion that
the white foreigners were coming to “eat up”
Uganda was played upon by the crafty Arabs; the
slumbering opposition to the new “way” broke
out in acts of fiendish persecution of the Baganda
Christians. All such were endured with fortitude
according the annals of martyrdom.

On. one day of terror, M’wanga was worked up

_, to8 ‘pitch of insane frenzy, in which he threatened