And the little church was at that moment too deeply absorbed in its own troubles
to annoy the clan. It all began over the question of admitting outcasts.
These outcasts, or osu, seeing that the new religion welcomed twins and such
abominations, thought that it was possible that they would also be received. And so one
Sunday two of them went into the church. There was an immediate stir, but so great was
the work the new religion had done among the converts that they did not immediately
leave the church when the outcasts came in. Those who found themselves nearest to
them merely moved to another seat. It was a miracle. But it only lasted till the end of the
service. The whole church raised a protest and was about to drive these people out,
when Mr. Kiaga stopped them and began to explain.
"Before God," he said, "there is no slave or free. We are all children of God and
we must receive these our brothers."
"You do not understand," said one of the converts. "What will the heathen say of
us when they hear that we receive osu into our midst? They will laugh."
"Let them laugh," said Mr. Kiaga. "God will laugh at them on the judgment day.
Why do the nations rage and the peoples imagine a vain thing? He that sitteth in the
heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision."
"You do not understand," the convert maintained. "You are our teacher, and you
can teach us the things of the new faith. But this is a matter which we know." And he
told him what an osu was.
He was a person dedicated to a god, a thing set apart--a taboo for ever, and his
children after him. He could neither marry nor be married by the free-born. He was in
fact an outcast, living in a special area of the village, close to the Great Shrine.
Wherever he went he carried with him the mark of his forbidden caste--long, tangled
and dirty hair. A razor was taboo to him. An osu could not attend an assembly of the
free-born, and they, in turn, could not shelter under his roof. He could not take any of
the four titles of the clan, and when he died he was buried by his kind in the Evil Forest.
How could such a man be a follower of Christ?