From India by William Ambrose Spicer

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 13, 1900

FROM INDIA.

By William Ambrose Spicer

THE little company in India, but few of us, in the midst of a large field destitute of workers, feel sorely stricken. We thought it best to telegraph of the death of Elders D. A. Robinson and F. W. Brown, so that our Foreign Board would not be planning on the supposition that all was the same with us here. They died at Karmatar, a station about one hundred and sixty-eight miles from Calcutta, where the orphanage school had just been situated, and where Brother G. P. Edwards and his wife had been doing medical mission work until their return to America several months ago.

Recently the farm had been leased, with a large bungalow and outbuildings, and Elder Brown had settled there to do medical mission work. Brother Robinson and his family were also there for the winter; and he was taking pleasure in planning the farm, and putting up outbuildings on a small scale, to adapt it to the needs of the Orphanage Industrial School. He had intended to hold meetings in one of the large cities this winter; but as financial stringency seemed to forbid any such aggressive campaign, and as his strength was not what it had been, he decided to spend the winter in outdoor work on the farm, where much work needed to be done in order to make the most of the facilities secured.

Brother Brown had his hands full of work, which was increasing, patients coming from villages miles away. Soon after taking the school from Calcutta, one of the children developed symptoms of smallpox, which spread among the children; but it was so slight and unpronounced that the friends there were uncertain about its being anything more than chicken pox. But the sequel showed that it was the more serious disease. Elder Robinson was in Calcutta a fortnight ago, as the accounts and reports for the year were being closed. He felt ill, as if with fever; but we hoped that it was but the fever so common in East Bengal. Returning to Karmatar, he found Brother Brown seriously ill with fever; and Dr. Ingersoll went out to take the dispensary work there. He, however, was fully employed with Brother Brown, who developed very serious symptoms, suddenly dying from hemorrhagic smallpox. At the time of his death, Miss Royer, who had arrived only a day or two before, was with Dr. Ingersoll. Then, as Brother and Sister Robinson, their adopted

daughter, Ethel, and little Lawrence Brown were all ill, Dr. Place went out, accompanied by Miss Burrus, and Noneballa, one of our Bengali girl nurses. All passed through the normal course of the disease, I understand, except Brother Robinson, who had the severest form. His mind was clear nearly all the time, and he fully realized the nature of his malady, and put himself in the hands of the Lord for further service, or for resting if his work was done.

It was the week of prayer with our brethren in America, and it was a week of prayer with us here. Toward the last the friends asked me to go out, and so I was with Brother Robinson a portion of the last night and day. As we prayed around his bed, he was able to join us, though for several days unable to see. He seemed to feel the conviction that his work was done. But as long as life was given, we sought the Lord for him; and the Lord blessed him with peace to the last. The purpose of the Lord was evidently to lay him to rest. He said he was so weary that he would be glad to rest, though glad to go on if the Lord had work for him to do.

We buried Brother Robinson beside Brother Brown, under a tree in the fields that they had plowed for the next sowing season. ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.’ We felt that we were planting here seed that in the Lord’s goodness would bring forth fruit for India. Workers are so much needed, and these were being so fruitfully used in life that it seemed strange to our human ways of doing things that the Lord should allow us to be bereft of two so suddenly; nevertheless we felt to triumph in the Lord, who can lay workers by, and still turn it all to his glory. So we wait to see the glory of God here in India. Near the end, I suggested to Brother Robinson that possibly the sacrifice of life there would do more for India than their lives could do in pleading its needs and working for it in health and strength. He replied, with almost his last clear words, ‘Possibly, possibly.’

Brother Brown had been with us but a short time, but we knew him to be alive with zeal for the Lord, and we know that he is resting in the Lord in his death. When Brother Robinson was last here, he expressed the pleasure he felt at the work Brother Brown was doing in the medical mission there. Brother Robinson’s work in America, in South Africa, and in England is known by many, and the little company of believers here in Calcutta mourn him as a father in the gospel.

Sisters Robinson and Brown have been sustained by the Lord through their special affliction, and can praise his goodness in trial. We shall all look to our brethren for workers to replace those who have fallen; and we in these fields pray that sometime the tide may turn toward the millions in the East. It does workers in the foreign fields good to see the home work spreading, and the publications falling, like the leaves of autumn, it almost seems to us; and we are strengthened by the message of power in the Holy Ghost; but we are sad to see the funds for foreign work smaller than they used to be.

Oh, that God may send in his own way the help needed in fields like India and China, where surely we ought to run through with the message, telling the people what these things mean before the very closing scenes are upon us. Brother Robinson put his strength into the effort in Calcutta, and he had not the strength to keep on the same in all the places in India where work must be done. But the great centers need just such effort, and then there are the many nations and tribes of native India, where at least the sound of the truth ought to go, so that all whose hearts are turning toward the Lord may know the message of preparation for his coming.

W. A. SPICER.