Dark-Skinned Children in Darkest Africa Singing in Beautiful English—Pathos and Soul Expression in the Song
AGRIPPA, the teacher at Batlani's kraal, on the Fish River, is a good singing master as well as school-teacher. His children were lined up on one side of the Kafir hut in which seventy of us were packed that afternoon. The narrow door and the two tiny windows in the mud walls, seemed only to remind one that every law of ventilation demanded that seventy persons should have more breathing space than that hut was giving us.
THE CHILDREN WERE TO SING
But all was expectation; for the children of Agrippa's school were to sing for us—visitors from afar, and fond parents from the kraals. There were children of our Christian believers, and children from the Red Kafir huts round about, where raw and sunken heathenism holds on its way in ignorance and darkness.
At a signal, the children rose from the earth floor, every eye on the teacher.
SCENE ON THE ZAMBEZI RIVER BELOW VICTORIA FALLS
"Will we hear a Kafir song?" I was asking myself, "or will they try an English gospel hymn?"
Agrippa sounded the note on his little tuning harp. The baton dropped, and the air began. "Stop," the leader called; "you have missed the note."
Then again the note was sounded; and this time, at the wave of the leader's hand, in clear, ringing voices, with good enunciation at every word, the hymn rolled out:
"When all my labors and trials are o'er,
And I am safe on that beautiful shore,
Just to be near the dear Lord I adore,
Will through the ages be glory for me."
The first thought was of the strangeness of the song's setting,—the mud hut, with the reed-thatched roof; the English language as the medium among these children of the Fish River, with huts of Red Kafirs all about, and even children from these heathen homes joining in the soul-inspiring gospel song.
But very quickly the serious earnestness of this service of song took away all suggestion of incongruity. The children knew what they were saying, evidently; and most of them, at least, were singing of a Saviour whose love they had but recently learned. This love had changed the lives of fathers and mothers, and had opened the most wonderful door of hope and opportunity before these children.
THEY TOUCHED OUR HEARTS
So the visitors ceased to be mere auditors, and our hearts were touched with a new tenderness by the sincerity of the song, and by the thought of the wonders of redeeming love that had begun a new era in these kraals.
Clear and strong, again, rose the hymn:
"When, by the gift of His infinite grace,
I am accorded in heaven a place,
Just to be there, and to look on His face,
Will through the ages be glory for me."
God grant it you, little children of the mud-walled hut amidst the Fish River bush. Heaven seems nearer, and the love of Jesus dearer, for the view given us of God's wondrous, saving grace in these villages. W. A. S.
South Africa.
