"He said, 'My wife, if I believe that certain men whom we have raised on
high, and to whom we have given power, have done a cowardly wrong, shall I
not say it?'

"And she said, 'Yes, and only a little while ago, when Rhodes was licking
the dust off the Boers' feet that he might keep them from suspecting while
he got ready this affair, then you attacked both Rhodes and the Bond (The
Afrikander Bond, the organised Dutch political party, through whom Mr.
Rhodes worked, and by whom he was backed.) for trying to pass a Bill for
flogging the niggers, and we lost fifty pounds we might have got for the
church?' And he said, 'My wife, cannot God be worshipped as well under the
dome of the heaven He made as in a golden palace? Shall a man keep
silence, when he sees oppression, to earn money for God? If I have
defended the black man when I believed him to be wronged, shall I not also
defend the white man, my flesh-brother? Shall we speak when one man is
wronged and not when it is another?'

"And she said, 'Yes, but you have your family and yourself to think of!
Why are you always in opposition to the people who could do something for
us? You are only loved by the poor. If it is necessary for you to attack
some one, why don't you attack the Jews for killing Christ, or Herod, or
Pontius Pilate; why don't you leave alone the men who are in power today,
and who with their money can crush you!'

"And he said, 'Oh my wife, those Jews, and Herod, and Pontius Pilate are
long dead. If I should preach of them now, would it help them? Would it
save one living thing from their clutches? The past is dead, it lives only
for us to learn from. The present, the present only, is ours to work in,
and the future ours to create. Is all the gold of Johannesburg or are all