The covenant - James A. Michener [513]
In his last lecture, like a healing balm, the predikant soothed all spiritual strains by reverting to the marvelous texts of the Old Testament, reminding his Afrikaners of who they were and the special obligations they owed God. He started by assuring them that in the Calvinistic sense they were among the elect, for God had specifically said so:
'Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine.
'If you are a peculiar treasure, what follows?' he asked, and in the thundering passage from Leviticus he provided the answer:
'But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people.
'It is right that you should be separated, for you have special tasks to perform'and he elucidated them: 'To rule justly. To be fair to all men. To love your neighbor as yourself.' On and on he went, instructing the future rulers of the country as to how they must behave when they assumed power. 'I tell you these rules, young men,' he cried in his most powerful voice, grasping his lapels with two hands and leaning far forward, 'because God is most specific as to how he will punish you if you ignore his teaching,' and he set forth the unmistaken call for obedience:
'If ye forsake the Lord, and serve strange gods, then he will turn and do you hurt, and consume you, after that he hath done you good.'
He concluded this lecture and his series with a crisp twenty minutes of what this all meant to the governance of a church, and specifically the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa. He dealt briskly with the most trying problems, brushing them away as if adherence to basic principles eliminated difficulties. When he came to the question as to whether it was proper for the white church to prevent blacks from worshipping side by side with them, he cried, 'Certainly it is proper. What does Deuteronomy say? "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people." Almost the last words of the Old Testament, the final verse of Zechariah, address this problem: "And in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts." We are separate. We are wonderful each in our way. God has assigned us our proper places and our proper tasks. Let us live accordingly. But I would close with these words of Jesus Christ which launched these talks: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."'
In these four lectures, among the most important ever delivered at Stellenbosch, Brongersma spelled out the dilemma facing any theocracy: How does one organize a society so as to attain the order of the Old Testament and the freedom of the New? Detleef van Doorn, whose advanced education started with these lectures, heard only the first half of that question.
When the speculative and philosophical aspects of Detleef's education fell into place, thanks to that penetrating series of lectures by Barend Brongersma, and when his position at the university was securely established because of his excellence as a rugby playerat Stellenbosch that would always be determinativehe felt that it was time to start thinking seriously about a wife. He was twenty-three now, much older than the Voortrekkers when they married, and his thoughts turned to two young women.
He had not seen much of Maria Steyn, for she had remained on her family farm at Carolina. With her mother dead in the camp, and her father shot as a traitor, she had to assume heavy responsibilities and was able to travel little. She had never visited the university, and from