great deed. Lieutenant Willoughby himself was killed in a village close to Delhi. No trace of Scully or the rest was ever found.
This was a great service for the English cause, but could not turn the tide for them. Unfortunately, there was an arsenal and an immense park of artillery in another part of the city, both which fell into the hands of the mutineers; while the sixty thousand Sepoys who soon found their way to Delhi brought with them from other cities abundant munitions for its defense.
After the destruction of the magazine, the murder of the officers and missionaries and other Europeans, the violation of their wives and daughters, and the spoliation and burning of their homes, was proceeded with. Then followed the demolition of the courts of law, the church, the college, and the printing-office, and deeds were done that day which devils themselves might blush to own. It was an unutterable woe; yet it was not without its great compensation.
There is a permissive providence of our God which sometimes allows a limited calamity to fall upon individuals and communities in order to preserve them from a sorrow that would be overwhelming and unmitigated: in the sense of Caiaphas's words, “It is expedient that one man die for the people,” etc. But in such cases, and indeed in general, it requires that we patiently wait until time gives the Almighty the requisite opportunity to be his own interpreter. We could not then understand God. In the midst of these agonies it seemed as if he had “forgotten to be gracious, and in anger had shut up his tender mercies.” But what light the succeeding events, and the history of the last dozen years, have shed upon his overruling providence and his wise designs!
Two facts of this class belong just here: one general, and one particular to ourselves. But for the anticipation on the part of the Meerut mutineers of the contemplated universal rising, it seems to me that not a Christian life could have been preserved in all India. Had they patiently waited till the 31st of May, and all had risen, as was intended, so that on the same day and hour, in every place, they had commenced their work of blood, not a lady nor a babe
