“Sow in the morn thy seed,
At eve hold not thy hand;
To doubt and fear give thou no heed,
Broadcast it o’er the land;
And duly shall appear,
In verdure, beauty, strength,
The tender blade, the stalk, the ear,
And the full corn at length.”
When at last Mackay arrived in the capital of Uganda (in November, 1878), he quickly ascertained that Stanley, with his accustomed buoyant hopefulness, had exaggerated the prospects of the mission. Mtesa was still on the throne, and though it was true that he had asked for missionaries, and though he extended to Mackay a courteous welcome, he was far from an appreciation of even the rudimentary elements of a Christian character. His life was in many respects vicious in the extreme — not vicious precisely from lack of knowledge of the truth, but because of a lack of inclination to forego his brutal orgies.
R. P. Ashe, who afterward became Mackay’s colleague in Uganda, in his book “The two Kings of Uganda,” admirably sketches in a few words the arch king’s character. “Mtesa, kindly but formal, fearful of his dignity, crafty, suspicious, and capable of acts so foul that they may only be hinted at; surrounded by an abject court, an object of groveling adoration to slavish thousands, but really great in nothing.”
Mackay himself adds a grim somberness to this dark picture. “The king and I are great friends, and the chiefs also have great confidence in me, and I hope to be able to guide them in the way of a more humane policy than has existed hitherto. Cruelty, slavery, polygamy, witchcraft, are only some of the terrible evils to be combated, and I have not been slack in my testimony regarding them. Only the grace of God can undo all that the devil has been doing here since the world began. But that grace is sufficiently powerful to do so and more.”
The hero’s entries in his diary, and likewise his letters to England, are full of hope and confidence. For a time, work progressed smoothly but slowly. Mackay was prepared to sow the seeds patiently and faithfully, and wait God’s good time for the reaping. Continents like Africa are not converted in a day, nor a year, nor even during the lifetime of the oldest man. Mackay knew this, and was patient. He knew too well that the truth (though divinely destined to triumph in the end) moved slowly in the cultured cities of Edinburgh and Berlin, where hundreds of devoted servants of God were laboring together to accomplish the same glorious purpose. How long would it take one or two, or even three, lonely men to win the teeming thousands of Uganda from their rapacity, their idols, their false gods, their superstitions, which they cherished as dearly as their own lives? God only knew. The issue was in His hands. Mackay felt honored by being called to be a coworker with Him in the fulfillment of His purposes.
Many things prevented rapid progress. The Arabs, who represented the old heathenism, were in the confidence of the king, and had great influence upon the development of his character. Then Mackay was seriously ill for a long time, and very soon after his providential recovery he was, more frequently than he liked, brought into very close controversial contact with the papist propagandists, who had followed him to Uganda as it seemed for the purpose of destroying the beneficial effects of the Christian teaching. But Mackay possessed a wonderfully strong faith in the vitality of the truth to outlive, and eventually subdue, all forms of error and strife. So he worked on patiently, devotedly, and his influence began to be perceptibly felt in the purification of the moral atmosphere of Mtesa’s court. Frequent services and Bible readings were held at court in the presence of the king and his numerous chiefs. Then he began to carve wooden types for the purpose of printing select portions of the Gospels in their own tongue, after which he commenced the necessarily slow and tedious task of teaching numbers of people to read. Mackay, it must be remembered, was a statesman and organizer just as much as he was a Christian missionary. Like a strong, patient, self-constrained man, he labored (as Gordon labored in another not very distant part of Africa) for the purpose of placing a boundary upon the paralyzing effects of the slave trade. His influence upon Mtesa was considerable. He argued with him the question of slavery, from its religious and humane points of view, with, such power that he published a decree forbidding any person in Uganda to sell a slave on pain of death. The king also forbade Sunday labor, and after a long struggle, Mackay wooed him from his bloody charms, which in his heathen superstition he considered were a prevention against the machinations of the evil one.
The missionary often turned his mechanical skill to useful account in the extension of Christ’s kingdom. Mackay always wrote enthusiastically of the natural resources of Uganda, and the reading of his geographical descriptions is an instinctive reminder of the region immortalized in poetry where “only man is vile.”
On Sunday, the 26th January, 1879, he held service in court and read the 51st Psalm, and the king interpreted to those assembled.
A passage or two from his diary tell the missionary’s feelings which were created by this memorable service: “The Spirit of God seemed to be working, for I never found so deep an interest before, nor so intelligent an understanding. Explained carefully the failure of man to keep the commandments of God, and the way of salvation through Jesus Christ — He who loved man so much as to die for him. The king was so struck with the truth of this that he said to Songura, ‘This is truth I have heard today. There can be only one truth.’ The king spoke also of the persecution which he must endure from Egypt by becoming a Christian, but saw that persecution was the cross of Christians. I never had such a blessed service. Oh, may the mighty Spirit of God work deeply in their hearts by His grace! He alone can do it. In the afternoon the king sent a message with a present of a goat, saying it was a blessed passage I read today. Toli called and spoke of the same.”
Extracts like these come with all the force of messages from the sainted and honored dead.
How closely the heroic missionary walked with God through the years of his danger and toil is evidenced by the following passage from his diary, which is only the echo of many similar passages: “Lord, enable us to search our hearts and humble ourselves before Thee. Oh, for a closer walk with God, more faith, more sincerity, more earnestness, and more love. I must study more the Word of God. ‘If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’ The Master said so, and His words are true.”
The priests of Rome continued to arrive in Uganda much more rapidly than the teachers of the Protestant faith. Mackay was anxious to avoid anything approaching controversial contact with them, but this ultimately became impossible, and he had to combat before the king and chiefs the many sweeping assertions which Pere Lourdel and his associates made against the truthfulness of the faith which he taught. The Frenchmen made presents to the king very much calculated to win his vain heart. In one place Mackay records in his diary the presentation by the French priests of “five repeating rifles, a box of powder and shot, embroidered military suits, cuirassiers’ helmets, swords, mirrors, silver plate, etc.” — most unbefitting emblems of the doctrine of peace and righteousness which they ought to have taught by word and deed.
In spite of the efforts of the priests, the king more than once begged Mackay to pray with him, and read to him portions of Scripture. Mackay fortunately had with him various chapters of the Bible printed in Swahili, a language understood by the king and many of his people. Mtesa also requested baptism, and after one of Mackay’s arguments he confessed his belief in Christ as the Son of God from all eternity, and as the only future Judge of the world. “I liked exceedingly Mtesa’s behavior today. I often think there is the work of God in his heart. We must only pray earnestly that the Lord will give him grace to be a real disciple. It is no small matter for such as he to leave the way of his forefathers and live a Christian.”
On the anniversary of his arrival at Uganda (Nov. 6), Mackay wrote cheerfully: “This day is the anniversary of my arrival in this place. Praised be the good and loving Father of all, who has bestowed on us and on our work so much blessing and prosperity since then, in spite of our imperfect service and our constant unfaithfulness. I have much reason to rejoice that matters have turned out as they have done, in spite of the gloomy prospect not many months ago, and the still gloomier forebodings of the members of our mission here.”
From this point it must be confessed that Mackay’s hopefulness of the king’s intentions began to materially decrease. He played with the old superstition and the new faith, until at last the missionary felt compelled to ask him if he desired him to cease teaching the Word of God at court. The king’s reply was a negative one, but it soon became evident that his life was not perceptibly improved by Christian teaching. He began to regard Mackay as one of his slaves almost, and constantly ordered or requested him to use his mechanical skill in his service.
Mr. Ashe gives a somewhat amusing description of Mackay making a copper coffin for the king’s mother out of fine Egyptian trays, which most probably had been given to the king by General Gordon during his governorship of the Sudan.
On one occasion (very soon after the time when Mackay asked the king if he should cease teaching at court) Mtesa said he had understood that missionaries came to teach him and his people how to make powder and guns. What he wanted at his court was men who could do so. Mackay replied that he could not, if he would, teach the king how to make guns and powder, and insisted that the object of his presence in Uganda was to teach the people the Word of God. “The king thereupon got exceedingly angry, and replied that if to teach was our main object, then we were not to teach any more.” The diary continues: “He (the king), wanted us to work for him. I said we had never refused to do any work he wanted us to do, and that everything he had asked to be done I had done. There was scarcely a chief present, I said, for whom I had not done work. I showed my hands, which were black with working in iron every day for these very chiefs who were saying we would not work for them. They said they wanted us to stop teaching to read, and to do work only for them and the king. I replied that we came for no such purpose; and if he wished that, then we could not stay. ‘Where will you go?’ was asked, to which Mackay replied: We shall go back to England.”
It is perfectly clear that Mackay never conjectured an immediate return to England. He was too chivalrous to leave those poor benighted ones who had embraced Christianity to redrift into their heathen idolatry and superstition, and to become the defenseless victims of cruel persecution. But it is equally clear that the conduct of the king, which continued to develop in an unpleasant direction, created a good deal of anxiety in Mackay’s mind. He could measure the king’s influence in contributing to the success or abject failure of the pioneer expedition. In those regions the people almost blindly follow the king. How can they be expected to do otherwise when their lives are literally in his hands, and when a single word from him would doom hundreds, perhaps thousands, to a bloody sacrifice?
Still against everything that opposed him, the Christian exhibited a noble courage and an almost sublime patience. It is said that not long before embarking, Mackay had a few minutes’ conversation with Robert Moffat who had just returned from Africa. The young man asked the veteran what was the chief qualification for a missionary in Africa, and with a shrewd smile he replied “Patience, patience, patience.”
Mackay now realized the significance of that quaint but admirable piece of advice. “A godly patience” became, as it were, his motto, his guide in life. He was brought into hourly contact with many things that grated somewhat harshly upon his manly nature, and it needed all his sanctified restraint to keep his protests within the measure of respect which was rightly due to the king, who, with all his faults and foibles and sins, was a host who had extended towards them his protection and support.
In the same day’s entry in the diary he says: “One result I should rejoice to see, namely, to have permission to work among the common people, and let the court alone. When I asked this today (Dec. 23, 1879), the idea was scouted. It seemed that the chiefs themselves saw the absurdity, or rather the danger, of the common people being taught Christianity, while they themselves stuck to their idols and witchcraft.”
Things went from bad to worse. Mtesa sniffed human blood and then began to wallow in it. Human sacrifices of a most inhuman character, and on a large scale, became one of his chief sources of amusement. Truly, “the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.” Mackay and his few comrades, and those whom he had reclaimed from the blackness of their heathenism, went in daily expectation of being sacrificed on the terrible altar of Mtesa’s inhuman cruelty.
“We are in God’s hands,” calmly wrote Mackay, but a few days later his mighty spirit seemed to burst the restraint he had placed upon it, and he indulged in some bitter passages which are happily rare indeed in his many letters home. After describing some of Mtesa’s vile acts, he says: ‘The wretch who orders all this to be done for his own gratification is he who is called in Europe the enlightened and intelligent King of Uganda.’ It is he who professed to Mr. Stanley to be converted to Christianity, whom the Romish priests write of as becoming a good Catholic. It is he who says that we Protestant missionaries are mad, because we deny the use of worshipping the lubare (genius of the country); while I am especially mad, because I told Mtesa that he was merely playing with religion, in professing himself one day a Christian, another day a Mussulman, and a third a follower of his old superstition ... Now, however, he has for more than a year thrown off all disguise, so far as our teaching is concerned. Even the Romanists allow that all his professions of faith in them are only a ruse. The Mohammedans, too, are obliged to confess that he is no Mussulman at heart, nor in practice, even to the smallest degree. Mtesa is a pagan — a heathen — out and out. All the faculties of lying, low cunning, hatred, pride, and conceit, jealousy, cruelty, and complete ignorance of the value of human life, combined with extreme vanity, a desire or notoriety, greed, and absolute want of control of his animal propensities — all these seem not only to be combined, but even concentrated in him. All is self, self, self.”
This is perhaps the most terrible indictment that has ever been penned against the arch autocrat who ruled with a rod of hot iron over the court of Uganda during the greater part of Mackay’s residence there. This is undoubtedly the verdict on Mtesa that will go down to history, and be accepted as literal truth. There was very little bitterness in Mackay’s soul; he possessed an intense love of the absolute truth, and we may rest assured that nothing but the grimly accumulated testimony of years allowed him to sketch Mtesa’s character in the stern words given above.
And yet, in spite of the treachery of the king, a noble work was done — a work that will continue bearing rich and golden fruit until the blessed day when all flesh shall come for judgment before the great white throne of Him who ordered all things. In Mr Stanley’s last great book, “In Darkest Africa,” it is claimed that “the success of the Mission to Nyanza is proved by the sacrifices of the converts, by their determined resistance to the tyrant (Mwanga), and by their successful deposition of him.” In the next chapter or two we shall see the basis upon which the great explorer founds this argument.