Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/467

Rh sanction laughter here. For, when He “turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing.” For, it was literally true in the Bazaars of Lucknow, that “They said among the heathen, God has done great things for them.” He did—here was a striking evidence of it—and “we were glad!”

Even as I looked and laughed at this half-drunken creature, how vividly did God's holy Word come to my mind, as I saw him in his whimsical resolution and proposal, exulting in his ability, and so eager for its display, offering to fulfill, to the letter, those words of Holy Writ, so true then to the race whom he, even in his unworthiness and unconsciousness, there represented, that “One should chase a thousand;” nay, even more than that, for he alone offered to do the work of the “two” to whom a covenant God had engaged, that they should “put ten thousand to flight!” And why? Because “their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up;” while Christendom was, at that very time, mingling their congratulations with England for this wondrous divine deliverance, and obeying the command of the Lord Jehovah, “Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people; for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people.” Deut. xxxii, 43.

Third. The results upon the Hindoo race are equally marked. They, too, have lost their Peishwa and their prestige; they have become deeply convinced of the impotence of their idols to aid them in any great emergency; they have learned an additional lesson of Mohammedan perfidy and bitterness, which can never be forgotten by them, and which forbids the possibility of any future combination with their cruel antagonists. Their most intelligent men are fully satisfied that, till the time comes when they shall be fit for self-government, their best interests are bound up with their allegiance to the English Government. Under the security and peace which it gives them they are now, as never before, devoting their energies to material and educational improvement.

Fourth. The abolition of the East India Company is another of