Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/547

Rh ﻿think with wonder and admiration of the perfect safety with which I thus passed, unguarded and alone, by night, through a part of India to which I was a complete stranger. And so you may go through almost any portion of this great heathen land. Is there no meaning in this? Is there in fact no call from God to the church to enter in and possess the land? Surely there is a most unmistakable call to sow the seeds of truth in the fields thus spread before us. Not to do so will bring upon us the guilt of disobedience to the intimations of Providence, as well as to the direct command of Christ, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." By thus throwing open the door of entrance, God is, as it were, making that command specific for India.

The town of Coimbatoor is the centre of a district of the same name, containing about a million inhabitants, and is three hundred miles distant from Madras. It is a flourishing place with sixty thousand inhabitants, and surrounded by a fertile plain, yielding large crops of cotton, rice, and tobacco. This plain spreads itself towards the south and east, but on the north are the Neilgherries with their belt of woodland, and on the west the forests and Rh