p. 176 | All for Christ

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 12, 1883

All for Christ.

THOSE who become Christians in heathen lands have often literally to forsake all to follow Christ. In a letter from Nowgong, Assam, Rev. S. H. Moore relates two affecting instances of this. On the 1st of last October five young men from the Mission Normal School were baptized by the lately-ordained pastor, Tuni. One of them was the only son of an aged widow, who looked to him for support in her declining years. She used entreaties, tears, and threats to dissuade her son from forsaking the religion of his fathers. For months the struggle went on in the young man's heart—filial love and duty and all the ties of early associations on the one side, and on the other the conviction that Jesus is the only Saviour of sinners. If he became a Christian the terrible power of caste would at once shut him off from all intercourse with his family, and make him an outcast and an abomination. But at last he decided for Christ, and "in his face," writes Mr. Moore, "we see the peace and joy which Christ gives to those who trust in him." The other case was that of a young man who became deeply interested in the gospel, but was bitterly opposed by his father and brothers in his desire to become a Christian. He finally left home, and by a circuitous route found his way to the mission at Nowgong, where he was taken into the Normal School, and some time after was received as a candidate for baptism. His father and older brother, hearing that he was at the mission, hastened thither to save him if possible, from becoming a Christian, but did not arrive until after his baptism. The father's grief was very great, for thenceforth his son was lost to him—he had broken caste, and there could be no further intercourse between them. Such, adds Mr. Moore, is the power and tyranny of caste.—Selected.