148 Wanderings in Eastern Africa. 
we often secure an audience by its very marvellousness. 
They listen to you at times with eyes intently fixed 
upon you, with gaping mouths and a well-assumed 
expression of credulity upon their countenances, so 
much so that you think you are making some 
impression upon them ; you think the truth is going 
home to them, that it is telling upon their hearts, and 
that you have before you a number of people upon 
the very verge of conversion. You come to a close, 
expecting your audience to yield, instead of which 
some one looks you full in the face, and exclaims, by 
way of compliment, Ku mulongo we " (Art thou 
not a liar ?) He does not mean to call you a liar 
offensively ; at any rate, the expression has not the 
same force in Kinika that it has in English ; never- 
theless it is most humiliating, and not a little dis- 
heartening, to an anxious missionary to meet with 
such a response at the close of an earnest address. 
It is not by a single statement of gospel truth 
that an unprepared people like the Wanika are to 
be powerfully and effectually impressed with divine 
truth ; they require ''line upon line, line upon line, pre- 
cept upon precept, precept upon precept/' or ever 
their darkness is to be penetrated and the light of 
the gospel is to find its way into their minds. If it 
were not that we rely upon the Holy Spirit for their 
illumination we should utterly despair of doing them 
any good. 
But it is an intensely interesting work to be engaged 
in preaching the gospel to a people that have never 
heard it before. At the same time there is a deep 
solemnity and a weight of responsibility about it that 
is almost overpowering. I have often felt this acutely, 
