The Story of an African Farm

ince he prayed and howled to his God in

e has seasons of its own; periods not found in any calendar, times that years and months will not scan, but which a

k at the little track his consciousness illuminates, sees it cut into d

is not devoid of them; the story of the most spiritual is told in them. And

es of startling clearness, disconnected, but brightly coloured, and indelibly printed in

on the doorstep; we have yet the taste of the bread and mil

re is some great being in the room, we run from our own bed to

h our arms around their head, we ride to see the little pigs, the new li

r lip, and cry hard, when one morning we run out to try and catch the dewdrops, and they melt and wet our little

re starts out more

w to look, feel the cool, unspeakably sweet wind blowing in on us, and a feeling of longing comes over us-unutterable longing, we cannot tell for what. We are so small, our head only reaches as high as the first three panes. We look at

the fir

I

ected. Material things still rule, but the

the lids, and see dark spots moving round and round, and we know they are heads and wings of angel

d p-s-a-l-m psalm. They tell us it is so because it is so. We are not satisfied; we hate to learn; we

mparably greater then even

their two green leaves flat on the sand. We hardly dare pick them, but we feel compelled to do so; and we smell and smell t

so small, they meet over our head, and we sit among them, and kis

e? This I, what is it? We try to look in upon ourselves, and ourself beats back upon ourself. Then we get up in great fea

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read now-read the Bible. Best of all we like the story o

r things again if some one took them, wicked to go to law, wicked to-! We are quite breathless when we get to the house; we tell them we have discovered a chapter they never heard of; we tell them what it says. The old wise people te

cracked teacup for ourselves at breakfast, and take the burnt roaster-cake. We save our money, and buy threepence of tobacco for the Hottentot maid who calls us names. We are exoti

be asked by some one, we know not who, who sits somewhere

ime. The grown-up people are very wise, and they say it was kind of God to make hell, and very loving of Him to send

V

t the shrewd questions are asked louder. We carry them to t

erry sunshine playing over all; and do not see it. But we see a great white throne, and him that sits on it. Around Him stand a great multitude that no man can number, harpers harping with their harps, a thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands. How white are th

has joints, sinews, arteries, etc., being caused by that penetrating and real fire of which this temporal fire is but a painted fire.

. One comes and asks why we sit there noddin

time, a na

rom that hea

me up i

ng evening by evening. What matter

poral, but the things which are no

He comes to a real person, copper-coloured face, head a little on one side, forehead knit, asking questions. Believe me, it were better to be followed by three deadly diseases than by him. He is never silenced-without mercy. T

leaves us writhing. Pr

ittle. "Do you love Him? You

y we

u?" Then h

hing what he says. We long to tell some one, that they may share our pain. We do not yet know that the cup of affliction

uch thoughts. God is good, very good. We are wicked, very wicked. That is the comfort we get. Wicked! Oh, Lord! do we not know it? Is it

od's earth, and move among His believing men. Hell is the one place for him who hates

fort. This time great eyes look at us

k of these things, why do you not t

do they not understand that the material world is but a film, through every pore of whic

he moonlight. It is a chapter in the prophets, telling how the chosen people of God shall be carried on the Gentiles

osen people? To Him, who is fathe

ur head and pray, till our teeth grind together. Oh, that from that spirit-world, so real and yet so silent, that surrounds us, one word would come to

speaking to us; His voic

ken from the inex

on a page, and bend to read by the moo

up again to Jerusalem with Barna

Titus is- Then a sudden loathing comes to us: we are liars and hypocrites, we are trying to deceive ourselves. What is Paul to us-and Jerusalem? We are Barnabas and Titus? We k

swollen eyes look out at the beautiful still world, and the sweet night-wind blows in upon us, holy and gentle, like a loving breath from the lips of God. Over us a deep peace comes, a calm, still joy; the tears now flow readily and softly. Oh, the unutterable gladness! At last, at last we have found it! "The peace with God." "The sense of sins forgiven." All doubt vanished, God's voice in t

e a water-furrow: whether you go this way or that you tread on him; you dare not look at your own reflection in the water but you see one. There is no cant ph

uivering excitement in every inch of nerve and blood vessel, there comes a time when nature cannot endure

hick cloud thy trespasses, and will remember them n

about it. In the main, "The peace with God; a sense of sins forgiven," stands fo

n the window, "Oh, God! we are happy, happy; thy chi

oes happily all day, happily all night; but hardly so happily, not happily at all

nnot

rgot. The physical world recedes further and further from us. Truly we love not the world, neither the things that are in it. Across the bounds of sleep our grief follows us. When we wake in the night we are s

a new

ee courses possible-to g

r course; or natu

ll things take rest; then why not the human reason also? So the questioning devil in us drops asleep, and in that sleep a b

m. No death for His dear insects, no hell for His dear men, no burning up for His dear world-His own, own world that he has made. In the end all will be beautiful. Do not

's yearning of love became too great for other expression, it s

knew you. Your sweet hands held ours fast; your sweet voice said always, "I

b we drive home drags its feet, we seize on it, and carry it with

raw his blanket over his head, and put green branches of

lory He will come, and the hands that ache to touch Him will hold him, and we shall see the beautiful hair and eyes of o

hem, and kneel alone on the flat, rejoicing over them. And the wilderness and the sol

oor, sleepy, half-dead devil should raise his

If your God should be cruel! If there should be no Go

u ask him for proof of it? He feels-that is all. And we feel

believe in the Bible because He tells us of it. We feel Him, we fee

should come when

gh and cry

his tail between his legs. Fierce assertion many times repeated is hard t

shines in through the windows on the artificial flowers in the women's bonnets. We have the same miserable feeling that we have in a shop where all the clerks are very smart.

erk, who was an atheist, has died

e fell, quivering and naked, the soul fled, robbed of his earthly filament, and lay at the footstool of God; how over its head has been

shut its eyes on earth it opened them in the still light of heaven? that there is no wrath where God's face is? that if one could once creep to the footstool of God, there is everlasting peace there, like the fresh stillness of the early morni

to the light-its weakness

, have they not hea

thee; but with everlasting kindness will I hav

s us violently by the arm to remind us we are

There are six hundred souls lifting

asting Father. Oh, would it not be more worship of Him to sit alone in the karoo and kiss one little purple flower that he had made? Is it not mockery? Then the thought comes, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" We who judge, what are we better than they?-rather worse. Is it any excuse to say, "I am but a child and must come?" Does God allow any soul to step in between t

house of the Lord; it is the idle excuse of a wicked boy. When will we think seriously of our souls, and love going to church? We are wicked, very wicked. And we

clothe itself in outward action; then it steps in and divides between the soul and what it loves. All things on earth have their price; and for truth we pay the dea

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of waking; short, sharp, and no

on this condition-that

ur poor nodding head is well-nigh rolled from our shoulders, and she sets us down

wrong are a seeming; pain is a shadow. Our God, He

of the thing called life,-and she says, "What do you think of these?" We dare not say "Nothing." We feel them; they are very real. But we try to lay our hands about and feel that other thing we felt before. In the dark night

ph over reality, the desire over truth. We must have been awakened. If it was d

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the pinnacle of an iceberg and sees the glittering crystals all about him. The old lo

never liked: the new one that we made for ourselves, that we loved; but now he has flitted away from us,

is no God." It may be so. Most things sa

ool who says, "No man hath said

d times in hearts with profou

at the world. We are not miserable. Why should we be? We eat

ithout sighing, "Yes, we se

unlight, but there is no sign of recompense to be made it. The black man is shot like a dog, and it goes well with the shooter. The innocent are accused and

rt of the dead for coldness, "There is no order:

mmutable, at the heart of all things; but on the changeable will of a changeable being, whom our prayers can alter. To us, from the beginning, nature has been but a poor plastic thing, to be toyed with this way or that, as man happens to please his deity or not; to go to church or not; to say his prayers right

t with our chilled, wondering eyes, is an aimless rise and swell of shifting waters. In all th

d sees no relation between cause and effect, no order, but a blind chance sporting, this is the mightiest fact that can b

h to live, and we do not wish to die. One day a snake curls itself round the waist of a Kaffer woman. We take it in our hand, swing it round and round,

ll of confusion, and the blue rag, stretched overhead

galley-slaves. No one demands it, but we set ourselves to build a great dam in red sand beyond the graves. In the grey dawn before the sheep are let out we work at it. All day, while the young ostriches we tend feed about us, we work on through the fiercest heat. The people wonder what new spirit has seized us now. They do not know we are working for life. We bear t

r building to cover the stones with figures and calculations. We save money for a Latin Grammar and Algebra, and carry them about in our pockets, poring over them as over our Bible of old. We have thought we were utterly stupid, incapable of remembering anything, of learning anything. Now we find that all is easy. Has a new soul crept into this old body, that even our int

have lived beside her, and we have never seen

ethodically overlying each other. This rock here is covered with a delicate silver tracery, in some mineral, resembling leaves and branches; there on the flat stone, on which we so often have sat to weep and pray, we look down, and see it covered with the fossil footpr

nd build their huge palaces. And that smaller people we make acquaintance with, who live in the flowers. The bitto flower has been for us a mere blur of yellow; we find its heart composed of a hundred perfect flo

he ground-spider make its trap, bury itself in the

e daily, to see the white spot wax into the chicken. We are not excited or enthusiastic about it; but a man is not to lay his throat open, he must think of something. So we plant seeds in rows on our dam-wall, and pull one up daily to see how it goes with them. Alladeen buried her wonderful stone, and a golden palace sprung up at her feet. We do far more. We put a brown seed in the earth, and a living thing starts out-starts upward-why, n

ight. With a started feeling near akin to ecstasy we open the lump of flesh called a heart, and find little doors and strings inside. We

unk, bifurcating and rebifurcating into the most delicate, hair-like threads, symmetrically arranged. We are struck with its singular beauty. And, moreover-and here we drop from our kneeling into a sitting posture-this also we remark: of that same exact shape and outline is our thorn-tree seen against the sky in mid-winter: of that shape also is delicate metallic tracery betwee

nd its branches stretching out into the immensity above, which we among the branches cannot see? Not

look into the blue sky, throw the dead gander an

erentially. Nothing is despicable-all is meaning-full; nothing is small-all is part of a whole, whose beginning and end we know not. The life that

retched out over us, and so low that our hands might touch it, pressing down on us, it