ever become a Christian—that with her life would expire the only hope of reaching and ameliorating the lot of her sex in Rohilcund. How little they knew that Jesus is Jehovah! Nor did they imagine how soon He would dash to pieces, like a potter’s vessel, the despotism which they built up that day upon the ruins of his cause. How much less did they anticipate that, on the very spot where they murdered his faithful handmaid, he would found an institution to be a Christian home for their own daughters, taken from their side when famine had laid them low in death, and that thus he would answer, in judgment to them and in mercy to their innocent offspring, their rage against him, and their diabolical efforts to overthrow his holy cause and to bind permanently the fetters of darkness upon the women of India! “Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints!”
There stands that Orphanage to-day, one of the brightest hopes that shines for woman in the East; and of it may be said, that the little one has become one hundred and fifty, and the solitary female worshiper an exultant congregation of bright, happy girls, with a future of Christian usefulness before each and all of them. Truly, “Thou makest the wrath of man to praise thee, and the remainder of wrath wilt thou restrain.”
Our early congregations in India, from 1857 to 1861, had, in one sense, a melancholy aspect. There would be from ten to forty men, chiefly young men, on one side of the room, offset by perhaps one woman or two, the wives of our native helpers, on the other side. No Christian families, no social aspect in our services. It was all a one-sided, unnatural-looking affair, with a certain monkish appearance that seemed dejected and forlorn. Woman was not there. The great want was felt deeply by the missionary as he rose to conduct the services. Nor was there then any way, or hope even, by which this dreary aspect could be relieved by female presence. We felt it the more because in India every young man looks forward to marriage as a duty as well as privilege. These young men, as they became attached to our congregations and converted to our faith, were met at the threshold by the
