Children -- India; India -- Social life and customs; Missions -- India
One dear little fat "fair" baby was brought to us as a surprise, for we
had not heard of her. It had seemed so improbable that Devai could get
her, that she had not written to us to ask us to pray her through the
battle, as she usually does. The sound of the bullock-bells' jingle one
moonlight night woke us to welcome the baby. She had travelled fifty
miles in the shaky bullock-cart, and she was only a few days old; but
she seemed healthy, and we had no fears. "Ah, the Lord our God gave her
to me, or never could I have got her! Her mother had determined to give
her to the Temple; and when I went to persuade her, she hid the baby in
an earthen vessel lest my eyes should see her. But earthen pots cannot
hide from the eyes of the Lord. And here she is!" The details, fished
out of Devai by dint of many questions, made it clear that in very
truth the Lord, to whom all souls belong, had worked on behalf of this
little one; moving even Hindu hearts, as His brave old servant pleaded,
making it possible to break through caste and custom, those prison walls
of most cruel convention, till even the Hindus said: "Let the Christian
have the babe!" We do not know why she was taken. She never seemed to
sicken, but just left us; perhaps she was needed somewhere else, and
Dohnavur was the way there.
The other meant even more to us, for she was our first from Benares, the
heart of this great Hinduism; and her very presence seemed such a
splendid pledge of ultimate victory.
This little one was saved through a friend, a Wesleyan missionary, who
had interested her Indian workers in the children. The baby's mother was
a pilgrim from Benares, and her baby had been born in the South. A
Temple woman had seen it and was eager to get it, for it was a child of
promise. Our friend's worker heard of this, and interposed. The mother
consented to give her baby to us. It was not a case in which we dare
have persuaded her to keep it; for such babies are greatly coveted, and
the mother was already predisposed to give her child to the gods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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