Progress Under Difficulties
WRITING from Barbados, Brother W. A. Sweeney tells of the distressing situation of affairs in that island, owing to the crisis in the sugar industry and the prevalence of smallpox. Yet the work there is moving forward, and there are frequent conversions to the truth. He says:— “Affairs are in a most terrible state just now, in this poor, stricken, quivering, throbbing isle of the sea. Ruin stares the whole West Indies in the face, owing to the sugar crisis. Every estate is being worked at a heavy loss, and complete ruin, panic, and starvation have only been averted by imperial grants and loans. Many formerly well-to-do and even wealthy people have been ruined, and the suffering of the masses is entirely beyond description. “All this is now intensified by an epidemic of smallpox that is raging. The community seems to be hopelessly in the clutches of the dread disease. There are more than one thousand cases, and a number of new ones develop daily. Deaths are frequent, and the bodies are thrown into the sea. The people are very ignorant of the disease. They hide their friends who take it, thus spreading it, and mob the doctors and the sanitary officers who try to take the patients from them to the pest house. “All our canvassers are at present in Barbados, and of course are shut up here with nothing to do, and we do not know when they will be able to get away, as no other colony will allow any one from Barbados to land. Our meager means is all that stands between some of our own people and starvation. It is only a drop in the bucket, compared with the misery; but as far as it goes, it is dedicated to the cause of the Master, in the person of his suffering ones. Our people throughout the States, many of them lacking nothing, on their fruitful farms, or earning good wages, would pour out of their means to help the cause in these needy fields if they could see and hear what we do. “None of our people have taken the disease so far, and we are hoping and praying to be spared to the honor and glory of his name and cause. I am glad to say that despite all these forbidding circumstances, our work is making some advancement. The church members are almost all earnest and active in missionary work. No phase of our work has as yet been interrupted. The church is filled, and even surrounded with interested listeners on Sunday nights, and almost every week some decide to obey God. Many are studying, and there will be quite a large class to be baptized at the next quarterly meeting.”