THE WIDOWS OF INDIA

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 4, 1880

THE WIDOWS OF INDIA.

THERE are in India to-day, 80,000 widows between the ages of six and sixteen! From the custom of early marriages in India arise the worst features of Hindoo widowhood; for many a child becomes a widow before she reaches the age of seven years. It may be that the child has never lived with her husband, and yet custom forbids her ever marrying again. From the hour of her widowhood her life becomes one of misery. She has no sympathy from her friends, not even from her own family. She is bereft of all her ornaments; her hair is cut off. She is clothed in the commonest apparel, and acts in the capacity of a menial for all the household. Her jewels, which she valued so much in the days of her pride, are no longer upon her person. She can never wear them again, never wear a nice dress, or eat other than a given quantity of poor food. She seldom mingles, or is allowed to mingle in the company of her more fortunate sisters. Her presence is considered a contamination. We cannot depict her misery. Her condition is almost hopeless. A childless widow, herself perhaps a child, drinks to the dregs the bitterest cup of a soulless heathenism, whose only fate is law.

How different the teachings of Christianity. "Ye shall not afflict the widow." "Let thy widows trust in me."—Christian Observer.