m so inevitable, why not warn its
prospective fuel?

Granted the Love of Jesus (Who was certainly what South Africans
would call a Jew Boy, Who was possibly so dark that any dorp
school would have hummed over His admission, Who enrolled Himself
in that House of David one of Whose ancestresses was the Hamitic
Rahab apparently, Who took Ham's curse as well as Japheth's);
granted that that Love is the one and only supreme motive for
Christian Reform, yet for all that, facts are facts, and it may
be kind to tell people into what fires the fires of Racialism
threaten to merge their selves. On the whole, I am glad that our
lay reader preached on that bright morning that over-gloomed
sermon, preaching from my own soothing pulpit to my startled
congregation. They did not seem to know what to make of it. But
the preacher himself seemed quite unrepentant about it. He was
talking to me about it that morning when we drove home again, he
to his farm and I with him, to walk on to my mission. We
outspanned in a very green valley, I remember, and sat long over
roast monkey-nuts that his driver benignantly provided.

'The Lord put a word into my mouth,' my friend said quite firmly
and simply. 'Was there not the cause the cause of a child's
career? Didn't our Savior speak plainly as to the ugly analogy of
the man drowned like a dog with a stone round his neck in the
deep of the sea? Weren't His children in question when Jesus
spoke; wasn't there a Christian child in question when I
preached?'

I thought he made out something of a case for his position as a
preacher of fiery doom. We were sitting on a beautiful green
carpet. The Earth there had come through her bad time. Away
on the hillside a black forbidding patch testified to the
unpleasantness of the remedial stage. Away in the distance was a
beautiful tree-shaded granite hill with much show of brown
foliage and purplish underspaces. Just beside that hill the
flames came driving (through the old last year's feed, I
suppose). His eyes followed mine the way of the flames. 'Hurray!'
he said heartily. 'Now we shan't be so very long surely after
all. Don't you see the green grass on its way? It was a snug
corner, verily, for the old dry stuff. Look, how the flames leap
up in the thick of it! Not very juicy browse nor tasty feed, but
fine fuel for the fire; good for that, anyway. It was a snug
corner, but at last the time was ripe when the fire came driving
straight for it the fire w