North India by H. R. SALISBURY

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 24, 1914

North India

By H. R. SALISBURY

H. R. SALISBURY

SEVEN years ago when Brother and Sister Burgess returned from their furlough in America, they began work among the hill tribes of Garhwal, a district that has Tibet for its northern border. Hardy and industrious are these people living in the foothills of the Himalayas. Hills we call them, but they are really mountains, for they rise abruptly from the great plain of Hindustan to an elevation of from seven to ten thousand feet. Yet they truly seem but hills in comparison with the precipitous snow-clad peaks lying just behind them, which reach an altitude of from 23,000 to 29,000 feet.

The plan of working for these people was to establish a school for Hindu boys, and Elder S. N. Haskell through his writings raised the funds for the erection of the buildings. It is a boarding school, the boys bringing their own food with them, and being Hindus, of course prepare it themselves. The school has now been in operation for five years.

The Bible has been taught daily to all the boys; and while they have taken an intelligent interest in this subject, they have held fast to their idolatrous religion. In my last visit to the school three months ago, Brother C. C. Belgrave, the principal, told me that among some of the boys who had been in the school from the first, there were unmistakable signs that the Word of God had fallen into good ground and was crowding out heathen superstitions. Recently Brother Belgrave wrote me the welcome news that one of the older boys had openly confessed Christ and asked to be baptized. Last Sabbath, in company with one of his teachers, the young man came down to our mission station at Najibabad, a distance of about thirty-five miles, as it was thought best to send him away from the school because of the intense feeling among the other boys that his baptism would cause.

Just as the sun was setting, I led him down into the water and buried him in baptism with Him who two thousand years ago suffered death for all mankind. As I walked back to our mission bungalow, I thought of our young people in Christian lands, many of whom are at the parting of the ways, unwilling to give up the world for Christ. With Banka it means complete ostracism. He will now be driven from his home, and become an outcaste among his people. When it became known that he was going to be baptized, his fellow students, among whom he was a favorite, gathered around him and earnestly pleaded with him not to do a thing that would forever separate him from them. It was a great struggle for him, but he did what he knew to be right. Now he must go back to the school and be the one Christian student among the seventy-five boys.

Over the mountains of Garhwal are scattered more than a thousand villages. They are a part of the great “all the world” that must hear before “the end come.” I believe that Banka, the first fruits from Hinduism in the Garhwal School, may soon go among his own people with the last message of mercy. There are already indications that others in the school will soon follow his example.