LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 
5 
blood. The first thing he asked for when he 
reached the mission was— deliverance from his tor- 
mentors ! Never again during the whole of this 
stay was a night journey taken without a friendly 
light. 
The experience of that deputation reminds me of 
another incident caused in the same way. Very 
early one morning, just before daybreak, one of our 
missionaries was awakened out of his heavy sleep 
by loud knocking at his back door. When he went 
out he found three natives earnestly desiring his 
help. The story they told was something like this. 
Eager to obtain work at a town not far from Oron, 
they had left their homes some miles awaj/ and 
walked on through the day and far into the night. 
Being without a light, one of them, all unawares, 
trod upon a snake coiled up on the road. Quick 
as a lightning flash the snake hit back, biting the 
unfortunate traveller on the leg. Flence their appeal 
for the missionary's medicine to kill the pain and 
heal the wound. 
The Psalmist lived in a country something like 
Africa, where travelling after sunset without a light 
was both foolish and dangerous; and surely this 
was at the back of his mind when he wrote : Thy 
Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my 
path.'' Only, of course, he was thinking of another 
kind of darkness as well— the darkness that falls 
upon men and women on life's journey. Blacker 
still is the darkness that covers the people who live 
in heathen lands without any knowledge of God 
or His great love-gift, Jesus Christ. If I had room 
to tell you I could relate to you case after case 
which proves that vAthout the light of God's Word 
