Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/474

464 ‘chosen vessel.’ O that God in his good providence would open up some way for these poor fettered souls (not a few) who wish to renounce heathenism and cast in their lot with the people of God, and cannot! For want of employment, we are obliged to turn off numbers who would gladly come, bringing their families with them, even very hopeful cases. O that the day may soon come when caste will be broken up! Then our converts will stand some chance.”

That letter was written on the 15th of April. Eight weeks after the writer was “before the throne,” and God in his mysterious ways was beginning to answer the martyr's prayer for the native Christians. Little did he imagine, when writing that letter, how soon and how fully Providence would “open up a way for those fettered souls!” The Christian public and the Government, immediately after the Rebellion, wanted them for situations of trust in far greater numbers than could be supplied. The Rebellion had tested and brought out the value of native Christians in a manner that admitted of no cavil or mistake.

Not one native Christian in India joined the mutineers, though their education would have made them valuable to them. It was also known that some conspiracies had been discovered and prevented by timely information furnished by native Christians. Notwithstanding the sufferings to which they were reduced during the Rebellion, as a body they stood nobly for Christianity and the British Government, though that Government had neglected and despised them. Many of them laid down their lives for their religion. Even under that fiery trial, it is asserted (see “Liverpool Missionary Conference,” page 249) that only two of their number are known to have apostatized. At length the Government itself began to appreciate them, so that the Rebellion had hardly closed ere Sir John Lawrence, as Governor of the Punjab, and who soon after became Viceroy of all India, used the following language in one of his government orders: “The sufferings and trials which the Almighty has permitted to come upon his people in this land during the past few months, though dark and mysterious to us,