CHAPTER III

A CONTROVERSY

‘Steve, you are talking nonsense.’

A group of boys were standing talking, warmly arguing about the all-absorbing topic of the day--the Transvaal war.

‘I should like to know why I talk nonsense more than you?’

‘Why, you say that the Transvaal Boers can fight against England and win. I should like to know how a few Boers can fight against England, when we have already more soldiers on the Transvaal border than there are Boers to fight, and there are as many more coming out from England, with ever so many cannon. And when these arrive, what will your Boers do then? You are talking nonsense, I say!’

‘I am not talking nonsense, for mother says that, if we pray to God to help our people, He will surely do so, and then they will win; for God is stronger than England and all the world besides.’

Steve’s opponent smiled derisively, as if he thought Steve was talking nonsense worse than ever--as if people could swallow such childish superstitions in the latter end of the nineteenth century, that God fights the battles of nations; these things are too antiquated! But, thought he to himself, I might as well fight it out with him on his own ground, and with his own weapons, so he said,--

‘But, Steve, the English people will also pray; and why do you think God would answer your people’s prayers more than the prayers of the English?’

‘Because God only answers our prayers when we pray for a righteous thing; and our people’s cause is righteous; the cause of the English is unrighteous, for they seek to oppress a weaker people than themselves, who have done them no harm.’

Steve’s simple faith in his mother’s teachings and in the promises of his God, had given him the victory in this schoolboy controversy. His opponent could only smile in a depreciating sort of way and walk off.