An African becoming a Christian in South Africa passes through a remarkable experience of two complete worlds; two religions wholly contradictory, two social systems as different, and two methods of church organisation adapted to the separate social systems. Most natives are still born in tribal circumstances, either in the Reserve Territories, Zululand, Basutoland, Swaziland and the others in which natives are under their own chiefs and ancient tribal laws; or at least they are born on European farms on the veldt, where their immediate family and social life is the tribal one, although they are not within a tribe.

Let us suppose a heathen becoming a Christian, for most of our adult Christians are still first-generation Christians, and consider his experience.

He is born into a wide sunlit land, an awe-inspiring creation whether it is the limitless, treeless sweeps of the veld or the great black barren ‘Dragon’ mountains. He lives in some sort of an oasis, valley or riverside or near water on the veld. He lives under a burning sun the year round, but with tremendous cold at night in winter, violent short rains and hailstorms, peril of crops and beasts. The earth is not friendly as in temperate climates. Insects are dangerous. There are snakes. It is not a land to rest on the grass, or splash in the water. But it has a stirring beauty, vastness, stillness, wonderful fruits, sudden grass and flowers after a brief rain, a light that is polished and air like wine. You may see red hills in South Africa and a green cloud; it is exotic, and the brown men who live in it love colour.