et those who were
not fit to be enrolled in our ranks were able, so far as they chose, to
abandon idolatry and every evil practice, to get the advantages of
Christian schooling for their children, and generally to improve
themselves, under our influence.

Famines, epidemics of cholera and plague, and other general calamities
really helped us to increase our influence in various districts. We
gathered many orphans and abandoned children and brought them up as our
own, whilst over wide tracts of country the people learnt to look upon
us as a family of "brothers born for adversity," whose help could be
relied upon not merely with regard to heavenly but to earthly things.

The barriers of caste, which bind Indians to treat each other to so
large an extent as if they were enemies are naturally a constant and
serious hindrance to us, especially as most of our people naturally
belong to the lower castes, or are even outcasts. And our plan of
organisation has helped us wonderfully in this matter, for the villager
of Guzerat, or Ceylon, who might be very greatly hampered amongst his
own natural surroundings, may be placed in an infinitely better position
in some other part of the country. Indians are marvellously quick at
learning languages, so that we need seldom hesitate about their
usefulness in any new appointment on account of difference of language.

And thus it has come about that we have already, after some thirty
years' work, nearly 2,000 Indian Officers, as absolutely devoted to the
service of Christ as any of their comrades of any other land. And the
forces under their command have shown already that they can deal
effectively with peoples utterly inaccessible to the ordinary Europeans.

The Bheels, when we first went amongst them, were all armed with bows
and arrows, living entirely by the chase, and so terrified at any sign
of officialism that our Officers had to avoid taking a scrap of paper
with them when visiting their districts. But we have now many Bheel
villages entirely under our teaching, and quite a number of Bheel
Officers who have learnt to read their own language, and to lead their
countrymen as fully to follow Christ as they do themselves.

So many of our people in Guzerat were weavers that one Officer set
himself specially to the task of improving their loom. He was soon able
to make one with which they could double their daily product. The making
of these looms created a new industry, also, so that