Children -- India; India -- Social life and customs; Missions -- India
Once it was a man-servant who saved a lovely child. He heard an aside in
the market which put him on the track. The case was very usual. The
parents were dead, and the grandmother was in difficulties. For the
parents' sake she wanted to keep the dear little babe; but she was old,
and had no relatives to whose care she could commit it. Mercifully we
were the first to hear about this little one; for even as a baby she was
so winning that Temple people would have done much to get her, and the
old grandmother would almost certainly have been beguiled into giving
her to them. How often it has been so! "She will be brought up carefully
according to her caste. All that is beautiful will be hers, jewels and
silk raiment." The hook concealed within the shining bait is forgotten.
The old grandmother feels she is doing her best for the child, and the
little life passes out of her world.
"It is a dear little thing, and the man (its grandfather) seemed really
fond of it. He said he would not part with it; but its parents are both
dead, and he did not know what might happen to it if he died." This from
the letter of a fellow-missionary, who saved the little one and sent her
out to us, is descriptive of many. "Not the measure of a rape-seed of
sleep does she give me. I have done my best for her since her mother
died, but her noise is most vexatious." This was a father's account of
the matter only a week or two ago. "Have you no women relations?" we
asked him. "Numerous are my womenfolk, but they are all cumbered with
children: how can they help me?"
Given these circumstances of difficulty, and the strong under-pull of
Temple influence--is it wonderful that many an orphaned babe finds her
way to the Temple house? For in the South the child of the kind we are
seeking to save is never offered to us because there is no other place
where she is wanted. Everywhere there are those who are searching for
such children; and each little one saved represents a counter-search,
and somewhere, earnest prayer. The mystery of our work, as we have said
before, is the oftentimes apparent victory of wrong over right. We are
silent before it. God reigns; God knows. But sometimes the
interpositions are such that our hearts are cheered, and we go on in
fresh courage and hope.
Among our earliest friends were some of the London Missionary Society
workers of South Travancore. One of these friends interested her
Biblewomen; and when, one morning, one of these Biblewomen passed a
woman with a child in her arms on the road leading to a well-known
Temple, she was ready to understand the leading, and made friends with
the mother. She found that even then she was on her way to a Temple
house. A few minutes later and she would not have passed her on the
road.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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