The Influence Must Be Divine by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 14, 1915

“The Influence Must Be Divine”

By W. A. S.

MEDITATING on the utter depravity that he found among the Batokas, or Batongas, of the country just north of the Zambesi, and yet recalling what he had seen the grace of Christ do for one native in his first field away southward, Livingstone wrote:—

If these Batokas ever become like him, and they may, the influence that effects it must be divine.

Now our Pemba mission is among these very people. Pemba is the mission post office, seventeen miles away; but the farm is in the Monze’s district, named after the old chief Monze, whom Livingstone visited on his first journey beyond the great river.

As I watched the Sabbath school here in Batokaland,—twelve classes inside and outside the meeting house,—and saw the beaming faces of the Batoka and other young people at Bible study, and heard them singing translations of the good old songs, “What a Friend we have in Jesus,” and, “O bear me on, bear me on to Mount Zion,” etc., I thought, Truly here are wonderful transformations; and, as Livingstone wrote, “the influence that effects it must be divine.”

The grace of Christ can transform the heart. That is the lesson one gets from watching these children of the African wilds. It makes one think of the work that God longs to do in one’s own heart, and the thought comes anew,—

“His blood can make the foulest clean. His blood avails for me.”

W. A. S.