Author of "Thinking
Black"
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DAN
CRAWFORD, Central African my. and
Pioneer, who spent many years in the "long grass,"
thus wrote the story of his new birth:
"I am thinking of a quiet Sunday night in the
month
of May. The scene is the village of Gourock on the Clyde,
and a humble little meeting-place with white-washed
walls well covered over with Gospel
texts. The meeting
that night was a small one, and I was there for the first
time. I was afraid some of my companions might see me
going into the meeting-room and raise a laugh at me. I
remember so well taking a winding route round by the
back of the hall, then climbing over a wall, and at last
reaching the little meeting-place. I was indeed anxious
to be saved. For one long
fortnight God had been con-
vincing me of sin, and oh! my misery was intense. My
sore distress was at the thought of meeting God. During
that fortnight I had got a glimpse of what I was, and
the Sunday night which closed the fornight found me at
my very worst. A working man that night told the simple
story of a Saviour's love, but the close of his address found
me, as at the beginning, still dreading the wrath of God.
I seemed riveted to my seat and could not rise when the
meeting dismissed. I waited on until some one came to
point me Christwards. For a long time we talked, but
I seemed chained with doubts. Never did I realise
before how thoroughly I was Satan's
captive. Great
volumes of doubt rushed into my soul.
We had stood thus for nearly an hour, when one dear
man of God, taking a lead pencil from his pocket, stooped
down and drew on the floor a thick black line between the
door and where I stood. Rising, he deliberately said:
'Dan, you won't step over that line until you have trusted
Christ.' Everything seemed so terribly real to me that
moment. Heaven and Hell: Christ and the world: I must
make a choice. It pressed upon me that I was making
God a liar, and that if I crossed that line a Christ-rejecter,
perhaps God might call me to judgment that hour. We
stood there before God, I in the balance between life and
death, they pressing me to accept
Christ. At twenty
minutes past ten o'clock, by grace
I crossed the line.
'the light of the glorious gospel' shone in, and that
hour
I began to live. O happy hour! Jesus was mine, and I
was His. O the 'joy unspeakable and full of
glory' which
flows to me from the knowledge that Christ is mine, mine
to save, and mine to satisfy, mine even
now, and mine
for ever."
There were no half-measures with Dan Crawford. He
immediately confessed Christ as his Saviour and served
Him as Lord and Master. At once he became a my.
at home, and later on followed in the footsteps of those
noble men of God, David Livingstone and F. S. Arnot,
and finally he settled down at Luanza, on Lake Mwera,
in Central Africa. From then he had but one object in
life--to win the African to Christ, and as a result of his
life of 37 years' service, it is quite a common sight to see
some thousands of Ethiopia's sons, saved by the grace of
God, sitting for hours on end, listening to the ministry of
the Word of God.
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