A Providential Meeting in Africa
BEING forbidden to preach the gospel in Cape Town, Barnabas Shaw bought a yoke of oxen and a cart, and putting his goods into the wagon, he and his wife seated themselves therein, and headed the lowing oxen toward the interior of the country, not knowing whither they went. Thus they journeyed on day after day, till they had traveled three hundred miles. On the twenty-seventh day of their journey they encamped for the night. They discovered a company of Hottentots halting near them. On entering into communication with them, they learned to their astonishment that this band of heathen, headed by their chief, were journeying to Cape Town in search of a missionary to teach them “the great Word,” as they expressed it. Had either party started a half day earlier or later, they would not have met; but as it was, they met just in the nick of time, and that nick of time proved such a juncture of providence as has rarely occurred in the history of God’s church.—The Holy Spirit of Missions.