A Great Empire

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 26, 1908

The Indian empire, including Burma, is a vast aggregation of nations and tribes and tongues. It is like a human beehive of over three hundred million people. The United States has about twenty-two inhabitants to each square mile, while India has nearly one hundred seventy to each square mile.

Religiously it is the “Gibraltar of heathenism.” The two hundred seven million Hindus are divided into innumerable sects, and the Mohammedans number over sixty-two million. The Parsees, the Jains, the Sikhs, the Buddhists, and others, enrol still other millions of votaries. Their gods are innumerable, in earth and sea and sky.

In among these people, judgment-bound, the message of the coming of the Lord is being carried. “From the Himalayas to Cape Comorin” is the phrase that sums up the expanse of India. Though our work in India is but fairly beginning, our line stretches from the Himalayas to the cape.

Our Indian mission headquarters is in Calcutta, where there are also sanitarium treatment-rooms. The publishing office is in Karmatar, West Bengal, in connection with the orphanage school. At Mussoorie, in the Himalayas, is the mountain headquarters, with a hill sanitarium and medical mission in successful operation. On the Bombay side, and in South India and Ceylon, in Dehra Dun and Lucknow, on the plains of the North, in the Santal country, in Bengal, and in Rangoon, Moulmein, and other points of Burma, work is going forward from various mission centers. The very heathen are expecting the end of the age. The message of the coming King is due to India’s millions.