ZENANA WORK | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 25, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 46.

ZENANA WORK.

THE Zenana work has gone on steadily; we have had more requests from Hindu gentlemen for us to visit their homes than at any previous time. Only in one case has a pupil's work with us been prevented because of Scripture teaching. This contrasts hopefully with a time two years ago, when ten houses in one week were closed to us because of the Bible teaching given. Thus practically the Zenana work has had no opposition, while conversations with thoughtful women, who gladly receive the words of Jesus, have again and again given us exceeding joy in our work; although we do not see them coming forward openly as Christians, yet I know that there are several secret believers, and some who read their Bibles whether we visit them or not.

Then, again, we have often come in contact with the sick and delicate child mother, and found that the medical help we have been able to render is one of the best means by which many of the cruel and degrading customs of Hinduism may be broken through, and the way cleared for the more deeply needed spiritual doctoring.—London Missionary Society Report.

THE first zenana teaching ever attempted in the East was in Siam in 1851, as zenana work in India did not begin until 1858. Twenty-one of the thirty young wives of the king composed the class. And the beginning in India was on this wise: A certain missionary's wife in Calcutta sat in her parlor embroidering a pair of slippers for her husband. A Brahman gentleman admired them. Mrs. Mullen asked him if he would not like to have his wife taught to make them. He answered, "Yes." "That was a fatal word to those who wished to cling to idolatry, but a joyous yes it has proved to be to them. As this lady was teaching the woman of India to twine the gold and purple into the slippers, she was twining into her heart the fibers of the sufferings and love of our Lord and Saviour." After one home was opened to the missionary, it was easy to gain access to others.—Christian at Work.

SLAVERY IN SIAM.

Slavery has been abolished in name, but it can never be abolished in fact, for the slaves have no means of supporting themselves outside their master's houses. Every member of the Siamese upper classes can fetter his servants or throw them into prison without any kind of trial or permission being necessary. One morning I went to call upon one of the ablest and most enlightened of the ministers, a man who has been to Europe, and who once actually got into serious trouble for trying to inaugurate a sort of woman's rights movement in Siam. I made my way by mistake into a part of his grounds where visitors were not expected, and I found a slave fastened down to the ground in an ingenious kind of pillory, in which he could not move hand or foot, while another slave tortured him with severe strokes of a bamboo rod, at the word of a member of the family, in order to force him to confess to some misdeed.—Christian at Work.