p. 14 | A Brand Plucked Out of the Burning by W. R. French

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 5, 1914

"A Brand Plucked Out of the Burning"

By W. R. French

W. R. FRENCH

Just at the close of our morning worship, a Bengali widow convert to Christianity came into our room and said that a young girl had come to her desiring to accept Christianity, and asked if I should like to see her and talk with her. I told her I should, and asked her to bring the girl into our room. When the girl came in, trembling with fright, I saw before me a young Hindu woman of high caste. She was eighteen years old, and had lived with her husband for eight years. She had now run away from him, and had gone to the house of her aunt with a desire to be a Christian. I afterward learned from her husband that this aunt had frequented his house and instructed his wife, and that he repents of having allowed her to do so. The girl was terrified, fearing that her husband would pursue her and drag her away to his house. If this was done, she knew only too well what would be the result. He would beat her, or perhaps make away with her in some secret way, if she chose to remain firm in her decision to become a Christian. This latter thing has been done many times by the high caste Hindus of India.

To assure her, I told her to have no fears, and that as long as she was in our compound we would not allow him to drag her away by force. She begged to be sent away from Calcutta to one of our mission stations, so she would be out of his reach. Hindu women look up to their husbands as lords, and if they are beaten, they in most cases suffer in silence; therefore some husbands take advantage of this and treat their girl wives very cruelly. She related to me how her husband squandered his wages, and sometimes cruelly treated her. He had, at times when she was beseeching him to leave off his evil associates and bad habits, kicked her away (Bengali people have a custom of falling before one whom they wish to entreat, and holding his feet). Repeated actions of this kind had alienated his wife's affections.

A YOUNG WIFE OF INDIA RENOUNCING HINDUISM

I did not send her away at once, but decided to let her remain, while I would study the matter and learn what could be done legally in such cases. Her husband, finding out her whereabouts, followed her up and stood just outside the gate of the compound, displaying his anger, but did not dare to enter. I went down to the gate and talked with him, and was able to see that he was determined to leave no stone unturned in an effort to regain his wife. I sent him away, but he returned after three days accompanied by a Hindu friend and a European lawyer. The lawyer told me his business and explained that we were not allowed to detain the woman in confinement without her consent, but that if she would come before us all as witnesses, and say in the presence of her husband that she was staying of her own free will and did not want to live with him longer, she could be free to do as she chose. (This was because of her age. If by chance she had been less than eighteen years of age, this privilege would have been denied her, and her husband could have legally forced her to go to his house.) I called one of our brethren and the girl, and in the presence of her husband, in spite of his entreaties, — she knew they were covering his real feelings, — she told him and us that she had left him because of his ill treatment, and that now she wished to renounce Hinduism and become a Christian.

Four days later the police inspector called at my house and showed me a deposition by the husband, which had been filed before the magistrate, against the aunt of the girl and myself, in which the husband deposed that his wife had been taken from his house by unfair means and detained in confinement contrary to her will. The police inspector interviewed the girl in my presence and took her deposition, in which she is now on record in the court as having renounced her husband in favor of Christianity. She, however, has told her husband that if he will renounce heathenism and his evil habits and associates and become a Christian, she is willing to live with him. He is now studying hard with our missionary and learning Christianity. We can only hope that in this case the wife's fidelity may be the means of winning the husband also.

Now that everything is settled beyond the danger of legal proceedings, the girl has been sent with one of our lady missionaries to a mission station, to be taught the way of salvation more fully, so that she can be accepted into full fellowship of the church.

Is not this a brand plucked from the burning? Pray that many more such souls may be won for Christ in this dark land.