FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68  
69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   >>   >|  
n find opportunities for helping others." [Illustration: GIRLS OF ALL CASTES MEET ON COMMON GROUND IN THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE.] Eminent among the student body for maturity of thought and depth of Christian purpose is Shelomith Vincent. Many of these characteristics may be accounted for by her splendid inheritance. Her father was of the military caste, the son of a Zemindar, or petty rajah. At the time of the Mutiny he, a boy of ten years, ran away in the crowd and followed the mutineers on their long march from Lucknow to Agra, where he was rescued by a missionary and brought up in his family. Later, longing to know his past, the young man returned to Lucknow, found his relatives, weighed in the balance the claims of Hinduism and Christianity, and of his own accord decided for the latter. Later we see him a Sanskrit student in Benares, where he married his wife, a fifteen-year-old Brahman convert. The Christian couple moved soon to the Central Provinces, where Mr. Vincent entered upon his twenty-five years of service as a Christian pastor, using his Sanskrit learning to interpret the message of Christianity to his Hindu friends. Yet it was in lowlier ways that his life was most telling. Settling in a peasant colony of a thousand so-called converts, only half-Christianized, the story of his labors and triumphs reads like that of Columba, or Boniface in early Europe. Through perils of robbers and perils of famine he labored on, building villages, digging wells, distributing American corn in famine days, reproving, teaching, guiding. All this I am telling, because it explains much of the daughter's quiet strength. One of ten children, she has spent many years in earning money to educate the younger brothers and sisters, and she is finishing her college course as a mature woman. Miss Vincent hopes that the American fellowship may one day be hers; and already her plans are developing as to the ways she will contrive to pass on her opportunities to her fellow countrywomen. Her heart is with those illiterate village women among whom her childhood was passed; her longing is to share with them the truth, the beauty, and the goodness with which Lal Bagh has filled her days. Has Lal Bagh been a paying investment? One wishes that every one whose dollars have found expression in its walls might come to feel the indefinable spirit that pervades them, filling cold brick and mortar with life energy. For centuries philosophers sea
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68  
69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Christian
 

Vincent

 

famine

 

American

 
telling
 
perils
 

longing

 
Christianity
 

Sanskrit

 

Lucknow


student

 

opportunities

 
earning
 

explains

 
teaching
 
guiding
 

spirit

 

indefinable

 
children
 

pervades


reproving

 

strength

 

daughter

 
Through
 

Europe

 
philosophers
 

centuries

 

Boniface

 

triumphs

 

labors


Columba

 

robbers

 
distributing
 

educate

 

digging

 

villages

 
energy
 
mortar
 

labored

 

building


filling

 

illiterate

 

wishes

 

investment

 
village
 

fellow

 
dollars
 

countrywomen

 
paying
 

beauty