CHRISTIAN BENEFICENCE

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 21, 1881

CHRISTIAN BENEFICENCE.

IN one part of Burmah there is a village of professing Christians, belonging to the Karen race. Years ago, although they had Christian teachers, they had no Bibles—at least, their entire Bible was the gospel of Matthew in manuscript. One day the missionary's wife was reading to a group of them that chapter where Christ speaks of being visited when sick or in prison, as represented in the person of his disciples. They instantly took it home to themselves. Like most heathen, they had hitherto been most heartless towards their suffering neighbors. But they were not content with knowing the Lord's will; they went their way and did it. There was one poor widow who, with her child, was afflicted with leprosy. They had hitherto left her to pine away, neglected and uncared for; they now hastened to her hovel. Some of them cleared her house; another fetched water; and some brought her rice and other comforts, till the poor outcast was bewildered with delight. In the same way they dealt with other afflicted neighbors, and it was not a mere spirit of kindness, but was sustained with silent and unostentatious perseverance, none being allowed to lack what they themselves enjoyed.—Bible in Many Lands.