Gone are the slave-raiders,
the inter-tribal wars, the cruelties of the white men, along that
line. There stand instead negroes who cap make bricks, build
houses, turn a lathe; engineers, printers, bookbinders,
blacksmiths, carpenters, worshipping in churches built with their
own hands. But beyond, and among the myriad tributaries and the
vast forests millions of men have never yet even heard of the love
of God in Jesus Christ, and still work their hideous cruelties.
So Grenfell, like Livingstone, opened a door. It stands open.
CHAPTER XVIII
"A MAN WHO CAN TURN HIS HAND TO ANYTHING"
_Alexander Mackay_
(Dates 1863-1876)
The inquisitive village folk stared over their garden gates at Mr.
Mackay, the minister of the Free Kirk of Rhynie, a small Aberdeenshire
village, as he stood with his thirteen-year-old boy gazing into the
road at their feet. The father was apparently scratching at the stones
and dust with his stick. The villagers shook their heads.
"Fat's the minister glowerin' at, wi' his loon Alic, among the stoor
o' the turnpike?"[49] asked the villagers of one another.
The minister certainly was powerful in the pulpit, but his ways were
more than they could understand. He was for ever hammering at the
rocks on the moor and lugging ugly lumps of useless stone homeward,
containing "fossils" as he called them.
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