Speech of an Unconverted Brahmin.
DR. J. CHAMBERLAIN missionary from southern India relates the following incident. He had delivered a lecture in an Indian village, which was attentively listened to by an audience of one hundred and eighty, composed of Brahmins, merchants, artizans, officials, and students. As I took my hat to come away, says the doctor in narrating the occurrences, a Brahmin, one of the best educated in the place, arose and politely asked permission to say a word. I, of course, politely assented, without the slightest idea what his purpose was. In a neat address of ten or fifteen minutes, couched in choice and ornate language, and with apt illustrations, he urged upon his fellow-citizens to second in every way, the efforts I was making for their intellectual and moral advancement. I will give you briefly the substance of one part:— "Behold that mango tree on yonder road-side. Its fruit is fast approaching to ripeness. Bears it that fruit for itself or its own profit? From the moment the first ripe fruits turn their yellow sides towards the morning sun, until the last mango is pelted off, it is assailed with showers of sticks and stones from boys and men, and every passer-by, until it stands bereft of leaves, with branches knocked off and bleeding from many a broken twig. Piles of stones underneath, and clubs and sticks lodged in its boughs, are the only trophies of its joyous crop of fruit. Is it discouraged? does it cease to bear fruit? does it say, if I am barren nobody will pelt me, and I shall live in peace? Not at all; the next season the budding leaves, the beauteous flowers, the tender fruit again appear. Again it is pelted, and broken, and wounded, but it goes on bearing, and children's children pelt its branches and enjoy its fruit. "That is a type of these missionaries. I have watched them well, and seen what they are. What do they come to this country for? What tempts them to leave their parents, friends, and country, and come to this, to them, unhealthy climate? Is it for gain or profit? Some of us country clerks in government offices receive more salary than they! Is it for the sake of an easy life? See how they work and then tell me. No! They seek like the mango tree, to bear fruit for the benefit of others, and that though treated with contumely and abuse from those they are benefiting. "Now, look at the missionary. He came here a few years ago, leaving all and seeking only our good. He was met with cold looks and suspicious glances, and shunned, and avoided, and maligned. He sought to talk with us of what he told us was the matter of most importance in heaven or earth, and we would not listen. Was he discouraged? He started a dispensary, and we said, 'Let the Pariahs take his medicines, we won't'; but in the times of sickness and distress we had to go to him, and he healed us. We complained if he walked through our Brahmin streets, but when our wives and daughters were sick and in anguish, we went and begged him to come into our inner apartments, and he came, and our daughters and wives now smile upon us in health. Has he made any money by it? Even the cost of the medicines has not been returned to him! And now, in spite of our opposition, he has bought this site and built this beautiful room, and furnished it with the choicest lore, in many languages, and put into it newspapers and periodicals which were inaccessible to us before: he has placed here tables to write on, chairs to sit on, and lamps for us to read by. And what does he get for all this? Does he make money by it? Why, we don't even pay for the lamp oil consumed by night as we read. Now, what is it that makes him do all this for us? It is his Bible. I have looked into it a good deal, at one time and another, in the different languages I know; it is just the same in all languages. The Bible—there is nothing to compare with it in all our sacred books, for goodness and purity, and holiness and love, and for motives of actions. Where did the English-speaking people get all their intelligence and energy, and cleverness, and power? It is their Bible that gives it to them. And now they bring it to us, and say, 'This is what raised us; take it, and raise yourselves.' They do not force it upon us, as the Mohammedans used to their Koran, but they bring it in love, and translate it into our language, and lay it before us and say, 'Look at it, read it, and examine it, and see if it is not good.' Of one thing I am convinced: Do what we will, oppose it as we may, it is the Christian Bible that will sooner or later work the regeneration of this land."—Missionary Link.