INDIA by John Louis Shaw

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 31, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, Nos. 43, 44.

INDIA

By John Louis Shaw

Our Work and Opportunity

WITH an even force of one hundred workers, including Indian helpers, our India Union Mission is at work in eight languages among the hundreds of millions of people in various parts of India and Burma.

Each station represents a candle of light shining forth a knowledge of present truth amidst the dense darkness of India's heathenism. As indexfingers they point to the one true God, telling of salvation alone through His Son and proclaiming His second coming and the preparation necessary for welcoming Him when He shall appear as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

In our work agencies are used which appeal to the Indian mind and serve to meet the people where they are. Medical missionary work is a helpful factor. With malaria, dysentery, cholera, bubonic plague, leprosy, and many other dreaded diseases making India a lazar house of need, caring for the sick and suffering becomes a necessary means of preparing the way for the Gospel of Christ. Last year at our various dispensaries more than forty-two thousand treatments were given. Our medical work is appreciated by the rich as well as the poor.

Mission schools fill another want in this country, and afford a grand opportunity of teaching the Word of God in thousands of villages. India is awakening from centuries of slumber, and an eagerness for knowledge is taking hold of even the most ignorant. Village schools are wanted in every part of the land. Into these openings our workers are pressing; and tho unable to find teachers to answer in any measure the calls, a beginning is made. I recently visited one station where a Mohammedan head man offered land and promised to put up buildings and furnish one hundred pupils if we would but provide a teacher. At present seventeen schools in seven different languages are conducted. In every one of these the Word of God is pressed home to the heathen mind. Recently in one school four souls were accepted for baptism.

Evangelical work, preaching to the people in the crowded thorofares, at the market-places, or in more quiet meeting halls, affords opportunity of telling of Christ. Hindus and Mohammedans will listen to the simple story of the cross; and no means is more potent in reaching even heathen hearts than the portrayal of the sacrifice and sufferings of Christ, the Lamb of God.

Literature is another powerful agency, tho the number of people able to read is small compared with the multitudes of those who are illiterate. Yet it is not uncommon to see a company of Indian peasants listening to a head man of their village, or some other person willing and able to read to them. The Holy Scriptures in many Indian languages, and the ever-increasing number of Christian books, periodicals, pamphlets, and tracts, are having a quickening influence. Our "Watchman" press is now printing periodicals, pamphlets, and tracts dealing with the vital points of present truth in five different languages. Yet what are five among one hundred and forty-seven!

There lie before us in every line of mission effort vast unentered fields. Our slender forces pitted against the entrenched forces of heathenism seem as nothing. Our mission stations, dispensaries, and schools should be greatly strengthened and increased; and for this, men and means are urgently required. We look to the home land, where every man, compared to an Indian villager, is a wealthy king; and upon your prosperity, liberality, and sacrifice depends in a very large way the Gospel's measure of success in this Gibraltar of heathenism.

As you lengthen and strengthen the ropes, and God grants power and prosperity, the message of present truth so greatly needed will swell into a strong cry in every part of this unchristian land. Now is the decisive hour of India missions. It is the time of all times for lovers of truth to unite, and with quickened loyalty, and reliance upon the living God, to undertake to plant the standard of righteousness in every nation of the India Mission field.

J. L. SHAW.