ENGLAND AND INDIA

Pacific Press Publishing Association

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 13.

ENGLAND AND INDIA.

When so many are condemning England to-day, the following from Rev. Alfred Bayley, a Congregationalist clergyman of this city, who spent several years in India as a missionary, may be worthy of reading:—

"We found, among other things, the vast amount of benefit which the Englishman has brought to India. It is all very well for men like Dharmapala to come here and tell us that thousands of natives are killed by wild beasts every year because the English Government will not allow them to carry firearms with which to defend themselves against these monsters. Dharmapala knew that that was a lie; for, while the mortality in India from snake bites and wild beasts reaches 40,000 or 50,000 annually, the truth of the matter is that the theory of transmigration is the great cause of this. It stands to reason that if a man believes that the wild beast or the snake which is about to spring upon him is his great grandmother or grandfather, who has been reincarnated since passing from this life, he is not going to murder his progenitors in cold blood, even tho they may be about to murder him, and even the great Buddha himself, the founder of this theory, gave himself in one of his many lives to feed the hungry tigress and her cubs.

"The common schools, the colleges, the universities, the hospitals, the schools of medicine, science, and agriculture, all bear testimony to the Englishman's attempt to elevate this Eastern race. The famine that prevails now would prevail over a far greater area if it were not for his energy in trying to stem its yearly visits. The canals and railroads which can now carry water and food to the famine-stricken districts, prevent its ever being bad, as it has been in the past, when there were no such facilities for transportation, and I have no doubt that in time the problem will be solved. Individual men or companies may have made money out of India, but not the British Government itself, to whom it has always been an expense."