that was closely hidden in a Hindoo home in Rohilcund, those in the “Residency” of Lucknow, and those in the intrenchments at Cawnpore—not a white face in all that great valley was left alive. Within that fearful circle on the 31st of May, 1857, were five American missionaries. I am the only one of the number that came out of the terrible vortex; all the rest, with their wives and children, were ruthlessly murdered. We knew them well—Brothers Freeman, Campbell, Johnson, and M’Mullen, and their devoted ladies and little ones, honored and beloved missionaries of the American Presbyterian Church. We alone of the number are left alive to tell the story of the circumstances under which they suffered, and of our own wonderful escape from a similar death! How well we can appreciate the victory of Christian civilization over heathen cruelty and purposes, as well as the amazing strides made by the Gospel and by education since that fearful day!
The reader will well remember how the world stood horrified in the fall of that year as mail after mail brought the tidings of cruelty and massacre, in which neither age nor sex was spared, and also with what anxiety they watched the progress of the feeble bands of heroes who, under such leaders as the gallant and saintly Havelock, fought their dreadful way to our rescue, too late to save even one at Cawnpore, but in time to rescue us and those at Lucknow.
The intervention of the civil war in this country necessarily for the time turned away attention from the horrors which were fourteen thousand miles distant; but the public interest in this subject has not ceased, nor will the story of the “Sepoy Rebellion” ever be forgotten while men admire and honor heroic sufferings, Anglo-Saxon pluck, and sublime Christian courage, exhibited against the most fearful odds and in the face of certain death, in the center of a whole continent of raging foes, while the Prince of the powers of the air marshaled the hosts of hell to annihilate the religion of the Son of God. Doubtless “the rulers of the darkness of this world” had more interest and part in that fearful struggle than was taken by the poor, ignorant Sepoy or his crafty priest. It was earth
