A Missionary Story

DR. MOFFAT gave an address some years ago to our Sunday school, and I feel sure the young readers of FAITHFUL WORDS will be interested in reading the notes which we took of it. The aged missionary said: ―
My dear children, I want you all to hear me, but I am getting old, and my voice is not very strong. You all know I come from Africa, where lions abound, and doubtless many of you have seen lions, but they were shut up in cages, with strong iron bars. I have seen them loose in their wild state, and to see them and hear them roar near you is enough to make you tremble.
I will tell you a little story about lions. For more than fifty years I traveled a great deal in Africa, and preached very often wherever I went, telling the poor black people about Jesus. Once an African woman, who had heard of me, said to her children, “I will take you where a teacher lives,” and away she went, with her boy and girl running along with her. Her little children wondered what a teacher or missionary was. They had a long way to go, and when they were about midway on their journey, the sun being very hot, and the children being tired, the mother said, “We will stop here; you rest under that tree, and don’t go away, while I go and find wood and water to cook some food, and then we will go on again.” When the mother came back, there were no children to be seen. She looked first one way, then another, when she saw them on a plain bond the bushes, and oh, how her heart beat! — a lion was coming towards them! She screamed to them, and ran to them as if she had wings to help her. The children had seen the lion, but supposed it to be a great calf. On reaching them, she turned them back, and said, “Flee, my children, to the bushes; it is the lion come to eat you.”
The brave mother stood still, and when the lion was within ten yards of her, she looked him in the face. Then she raised her voice to the highest pitch, and holding out her fist, called the lion a rogue, a vagabond, a bloodsucker, and every bad name she could think of, and dared him to touch her. Surprised at being scolded thus, the lion couched, and after staring at her for some time, got up and walked away. So the mother and her children were saved. Was not that a marvelous deliverance and a wonderful instance of God’s ever-watchful care?
My next is a sad story. A mother, with her boy, had been traveling all day in the heat of the scorching African sun. She said to her son, “We will go through the hills, as that is our nearest way;” but the boy said, “Don’t go that way, mother, for I have heard there are cannibals living there.” Cannibals are men who eat men and women and children. The boy’s mother answered, “We will go that way; they won’t see us.” But they had not gone far before three men rushed out of the bushes and seized the woman. The terrified boy ran into the bushes, and hid himself in a hyena’s hole. There he lay all night. In the morning, when looking about for his mother, he found her head. Away he ran, as fast as he could, all day. Towards night he met a man with a gun slung across his shoulder, and supposing he was a cannibal with a club he fell on his knees to him, and said, “Oh! pray don’t eat me; see,” (lifting his arms and showing his ribs) “I am nothing but bones.”
The man said, “I am not going to eat you.” He belonged to a missionary station, and took the boy away with him, taught him to read and write, taught him the gospel, and the boy became happy and useful.
The cruel men were more fierce than the lion!
When traveling in the wilds of Africa we get as near to the trees as we can when we halt for the night, so as to be able to climb up among the branches out of the way of the lions; and it is a rule always to make a fire to frighten them off.
On one occasion a man, whom I knew, had halted under a tree; it was dark, and he was just making a fire. He discovered a lion approaching, and you may be sure the man was up the tree in a trice. There he sat, as best he could, but having scarcely any clothes on, the branches felt very hard. It was pitch dark, and he was afraid to come down, for he thought the lion might be lying watching at the foot of the tree, which was the case. The man was very tired; he could not rest his weary head, and after waiting for a long time he fell asleep. Presently down he tumbled off the tree, and fell—where do you think? —right upon the lion! This so startled the great beast that it started up and ran off, quite as much frightened as was the man.
In Africa they do not teach the children to love and to serve God and His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Among the heathen it. Africa the men lead the boys about quite naked during the coldest hours of the night of the coldest month, and whip them with switches, and, if the boys complain or run away, they are killed. The Bechuana tribe have a ceremony during which the boys are whipped with switches of a supple shrub. Men and boys engage in a kind of dance and the boys wear their sandals on their hands instead of their feet, while the men switch them till their bodies bleed. All the time the lads are obliged to look quite pleased and happy, and never even to appeal to mind the terrible lashes which scar their bodies for lifetime. This schooling is to make them hard, so as to be able to resist pain, and to be fearless warriors. The girls are disciplined, though not in quite the same way, to prepare them for hard work in the fields and in building houses.
When I first went out to Africa, there were no books among the natives, and, of course, nobody could write or read. I once asked a man to take a letter for me to Mrs. Moffat, who was residing at some distance off. He stared at me as he took the letter, and said, “Do you say it will talk to her?” I said, “Yes.” He instantly arose, laid the letter upon the ground, and moved off, afraid lest it should talk to him.
On another occasion I wanted to send a letter, and, as there are no posts, it is difficult to do so, but at last I got a man to take it and also a parcel, and in the letter told Mrs. Moffat to give the man some strings of beads and buttons and plenty of food. But the man delivered the letter and not the parcel. So Mrs. Moffat said, “Where is the parcel?” He answered, “The letter tells fibs, for it could not see, as it was in the bag behind my back all the way.”
Now there are in Africa Sunday schools, and thousands of children, as well as the grown-up persons who can read and sing as well as you.
I remember a sweet little child, one of our school children, who became very sick. She was sitting on her mother’s knee, and said, “Mother, let us sing a hymn” — the child had taught her mother to sing “I’m a little pilgrim here.” Just as they had finished the hymn the child died in her mother’s arms. I said to the mother, “What a loss!” but she answered, “I would not call her back; she has gone to Jesus — gone to heaven. She won’t come back to me, but I shall go to her.”
Is it not a great mercy to be taught to know that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”?
Only think of riding on an ox! One chief rode on his ox one hundred miles to hear me preach. I had a great deal of ox-riding in Africa, and I got to like it. Oxen are sure-footed animals, and easy to ride, but they will have their own way. They have very long horns, and a small rope is put through the nose as a sort of rein, but for all that, if you try to make them go a different way from that which they wish to take, they will sometimes very quickly turn you over “topsy-turvy” with their horns. I have had many a rough shaking of that description.
Though the children in Africa are not white like you, they think themselves pretty, and pretty they are to me. I love them exceedingly, and pray always to God to make them know Him, and to bring them to heaven. You know that God loves them and loves you, and that Christ died for sinners, and that all are sinners, but however much your parents and teachers may love you, they cannot save you. Remember, the Lord Jesus loves you, and died to save you, and you cannot come to Him too early.
Dear children, I am an old servant of missions, having spent the greatest part of my life in Africa. But I am not tired, and should so like to go back again to the black people. Yet I cannot expect to do this; but I wish some of you may become true missionaries some day. What a joy it will be to me if boys and girls now hearing me, when they grow up, should go to preach the Gospel in distant lands! It is a blessed work.

Narratives from the Gospels in the Light of Jewish Customs.
BY THE WELL OF SYCHAR.
IN our last paper we called attention to some of the points of difference between the Lord Jesus — “a teacher come from God”— and the Rabbis of His day. If further proof or illustration of this difference were sought, perhaps in no place could we find it more distinctly than in that familiar scene by the Well of Sychar. A strong contrast was it to the ways and thoughts of the time, and a rebuke to the Jew who would scorn a Samaritan, to the Pharisee who would loathe contact with a sinner, and to the Rabbi who was forbidden by the traditions he so highly honored to hold converse with a woman.
But there was more. The love of Christ — the love of God in Christ — is there plainly seen, and He who had come to reveal the Father speaks the first word of that revelation to the sinful woman who had refused Him a cup of water. Let us follow the story.
The Lord “left Judæa, and departed again into Galilee. And He must needs go through Samaria.” Why such need? It was not simply that it was the most direct route; there was another, but a longer, road by way of Peræa, but He may have thought it well to avoid that seat of Herod’s government; or, better still, the soul-want of the poor Samaritaness may have furnished the “needs-be” of His route, even as He said He must the same word] abide in Zacehæus’s house. He journeys, and reaches a city of Samaria, called Sychar, where also was Jacob’s Well. Wearied with His journey, “He sat thus on the well,” and to the woman who came thither for water, He said, “Give Me to drink.” It was not much to ask, but, in strange contrast to the eagerness with which Rebekah answered the request of Abraham’s servant (“Drink, my lord, ... I will draw water for thy camels also”), she replies with a question: “How is it that Thou, being a Jew askest drink of me which am a woman of Samaria?” The evangelist adds a word to account for it: “The Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.”
In order to rightly understand this, we must go back some time in the Bible history. During the reign of Hoshea, the Samaritans were, under God’s judgment, taken into captivity by the King of Assyria, and after the fashion of those days, the district was repopulated by various peoples, but principally by Cuthims from Cuthah. The new people were idolaters, and for their idolatry the Lord sent lions among them. This led to the king sending an instructor to teach the people “how they should fear the Lord,” but a priest who had been consecrated by such a king as Jereboam, was not likely to greatly help them, and the result of his teaching is stated in the Divine history — “they feared the Lord, and served their own gods.” In Ezra’s time, these semi-heathens claimed to be of the same faith with the returned Israelites, and asked that they might help in the rebuilding of the Temple — help firmly and rightly refused by the faithful. This strengthened, however, the rivalry already existing between Jews and Samaritans (up to the captivity a national quarrel), and the feud henceforth raged with more or less fury according to the circumstances of various times. The religious differences became fixed when the Samaritans built a rival temples at Shechem on Mount Gerizim (“this mountain,” on which according to the woman, their fathers worshipped), and, by a shameless falsification of Scripture, struck out the word “Ebal” from Deuteronomy 27:4, and substituted “Gerizim.” It added to the feud that the Samaritans were joined by some apostate priests and others from. Jerusalem, who brought the Samaritan worship into greater likeness to the Jerusalem ritual, though they could not give to it the divine sanction which Jerusalem possessed, or make their worship any the less false. There was outward resemblance, but they worshipped they knew not what. So little was God really known and feared, that at the time of the persecution by Antiochus Epiphanes, they (calling themselves Sonians, and addressing him as God) prosed to dedicate their temple to Jupiter!
Scornful as was the manner of the Jews to the Samaritans, the latter were little better. They only were the faithful; they only kept Moses’ words. As for the prophets, they refused them, and every person or thing which might help to establish the authority of Jerusalem. Samuel was “a magician and an infidel;” Ezra was “cursed forever.” Nor did they confine their opposition to words. They defiled the Temple at Jerusalem by scattering dead men’s bones in it; they killed pilgrims journeying thither; and it will be remembered that they even refused to entertain the Lord because “His face was as though He would go to Jerusalem.” On the other hand, the Jews charged their rivals with worshipping the idol-gods which Jacob had buried under the oak at Shechem, and, what would be more keenly felt, they disclaimed all affinity with them in race or religion. In the Jews’ estimation the Samaritans were “lion-converts,” a name having scornful reference to the incident before referred to. “May I never set eyes on a Samaritan!” was their saying; and it was taught that he who hospitably entertained a Samaritan, deserved that his children should go into captivity. Even the writer of the apocryphal book, Ecclesiasticus, says: “There be two manner of nations which my heart abhorreth, and the third is no nation; they that sit upon the mount of Samaria, and they that dwell among the Philistines, and that foolish people that dwell in Sichem [Shechem].”Yet, notwithstanding all this, Samaritan food might lawfully be eaten by a Jew, so that there is no want of harmony between the evangelist’s statement as to the absence of intercourse between Jews and Samaritans, and his information that the disciples had gone into the city to buy meat. At a later time, when the jealousy had reached a higher pitch, Samaritan bread was declared to be like swine’s flesh, and so was absolutely forbidden.

We return to the gospel story. In several ways — by dress, by feature, by pronunciation — the woman would know that the stranger was a Jew. “How is it that Thou... askest drink of me?” The Lord heeds not her repulse, for, however real His natural thirst, He had a yet greater — her blessing. “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.” Very little of this did she understand. Who or what was the gift of God she knew not; she caught at the words, “living water,” for it was for water that she had come thither, and the words themselves were by no means new. When Isaac dug his well at Gerar, “living water” sprang up; the bird which was killed at the cleansing of the leper was killed over “living water.” In the idiom of the language it meant bright, fresh, running water, and this was all that the woman saw in it. But from whence and how was it to come? He had no vessel, and then, the well was deep. Was He greater than their father Jacob, who gave them the well?
Again the Lord answers her, with words which might well lead her thoughts from earthly to heavenly things, and again she misses everything that speaks of spiritual blessing; she thinks only of having a full water pot, and of release from the drudgery of toiling to the well. And then, abruptly, the Lord changed the current of His words. “Go, call thy husband, and come hither.” And in His presence she could not speak falsely, though her words gave not the whole truth, but what was lacking the Lord supplied. It told of a life of sin and shame, and though she confessed nothing, she saw that she was in the presence of One who knew all things. Conscience at last was reached. “Sir, I perceive that Thou art a prophet.” This was an advance, that she could admit a prophet to have arisen in Judaea. And then she turns off to that hotly-fought question of the rival claims of Gerizim and Jerusalem, perhaps not so much to ward off all dealing with her conscience as we might at first imagine, as because in those days, to a heart which longed to be right with God, the place for worship was a really grave consideration. Here was a prophet — could he answer the question? On her side she had the traditions of her people; from the dust of this mountain Adam had been formed; here he had erected his first altar; here the ark had rested, and Noah had offered his burnt offerings. Here, too, Abraham had bound his son, and Jacob had seen heaven opened. Accepting, as no doubt she did, all these fictions as truth, was there not enough to support the sanctity of Gerizim as against Jerusalem?
Then came those wondrous declarations from the lips of the Lord concerning the Father and the worshippers He sought. It may seem strange that He should discourse on such high themes to a poor, sinful woman, but it is the way of His love, and the way of His wisdom. So He told of the cessation of all merely local worship; vindicated the Jewish faith against the Samaritan, thus roving the false hope which they cherished of a Messiah to arise from among themselves, and declared that the hour had then come when the true worshippers should worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for “God is a Spirit.”
As though all this seemed infinitely beyond the woman’s understanding, she only answered, “I know that Messias cometh...when He is come, He will tell us all things.” And now the Lord discovers Himself. That relation which He had withholder from the learned Nicodemus He makes to her, “I that speak unto thee am He,” and she finds that beside her sits the One of whom Moses did write the Prophet whom the Lord should raise up. And in true keeping with their limited view of the Messiah, she sees only His Prophet-character: “He shall teach us all things.” It was little that she knew, but, after all, the great thing is not the extent of our knowledge about the Christ, but that we receive Him. Leaving her water pot, she went to the men of the city, saying, “Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” And when they came to Jesus and heard His word, they, too, believed in Him, “not” (say they to the woman) “because of thy saying: for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” So for two days He abode with them.
We cannot help recalling that name given by Pharaoh to “Father Jacob’s” best loved son — “ Zaphnath-Paaneah.” None can say positively whether it is a Hebrew or an Egyptian name, but strangely enough (and probably there was a divine overruling in the choice of the name, however little conscious of it Pharaoh might be) in the one tongue it signifies “the Revealer of Secrets”; in the other it means “the Saviour of the world.” To the woman He was indeed “the Realer,” it was as though He had told her all things that she had done; to the Samaritans He was “the Saviour of the world,” from among the Jews, indeed, as He had said, but like that “fruitful vine by a well,” of which Jacob spoke, “whose branches run over the wall,” He had brought life and blessing and joy for them, for it was not possible that His love could be restrained by any Jewish limitations.
Have we learned Him thus — as Revealer, as Saviour? Or to go back to other parts of the wealth of blessing which the story brings before us, have we received from Him the “living water” which He gives to those thirsty souls who ask of Him? Whatever “waters” we may find on earth, none can satisfy — we thirst again; but His promise is, that they who drink of the water which He will give shall never thirst, but it shall be in them a well of water, springing up into everlasting life.