A Scene in India | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Sep 6, 1883

A Scene in India.

The following tender incident, related by A. H. Baynes, in a recent address, will touch a responsive chord in many a Christian heart.

I shall never forget as long as I live that day when in the glow of the eventide, as the sun was sinking and as the mists were creeping over the land, I walked with one of our native brethren by the riverside, and saw a light in the dim distance, when he said to me, "Yonder is the only Christian in all that great town." Ten years ago he received Christ into his heart; his father and mother turned him out; his friends forsook him; his neighbors persecuted him, and all these years he stood his ground, scarcely getting food to eat.

During all these ten years he maintained his Christian character, unspotted in the midst of the heathen around him, and the native brother said to me, "Now his business is reviving, because people say he sells the best things, and always means what he says." I entered his humble bamboo hut and sat down upon the ground by his side, and as I discoursed about his loneliness and his sadness, the tears sprang into his eyes, and he said, "No I am never lonely; for as Christ was with the Hebrew children, and as he was with Daniel in the lions' den, so all these years has he been with me."

"Lonely, dear Lord! how can I be With thy sweet presence here ? Thy strength in weakness to make strong, Thy hand to wipe each tear ?"