A FRIEND of mine, some time ago, was traveling in the wilds of Orissa. As he pursued his way, he came in sight of an officer’s tent. The officer, seeing he was a European, invited him to dinner. He accepted the invitation, and after the repast, the officer said, “Mr. Wilkinson, you have come out here to try to convert the Hindus?”
“Yes, that is my object,” answered my friend.
“And a pretty affair,” rejoined the officer, “you will make of it; you don’t know these fellows so well as I do.”
“Ah, sir; I think I know something of them already.”
“Ah, but you have not had to deal with them as I have. If you had been accustomed to the command of a company of Sepoys, you would soon find out their duplicity and faithlessness.”
Mr. Wilkinson assured him he knew some converts whose earnestness and sincerity were beyond all suspicion and question.
“Ah!” said the officer, “I should like to examine them.”
“Your wish can soon be gratified, for here is one of them coming up the avenue. Gunga,” continued Mr. Wilkinson, addressing the native who entered, “here is a gentleman who wishes to examine you as to your Christianity.”
“What right has he to examine me?” inquired Gunga; “and does he mean to do so in anger or in ridicule?”
“So,” said the officer, “you have turned Christian?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get your living before you turned Christian?”
Gunga was astonished. His was also grieved.
“I am a Brahmin,” said he, throwing back his robe over his shoulders, and exhibiting a mark that attested that fact. He could not conceive how such a question could be asked of him.
The officer, somewhat abashed, asked how he had felt before he became a Christian.
He replied, “I felt that I, like all my countrymen, was in miserable darkness. I longed for the truth, but I could not find it. At length, I heard that the light of truth was to be found on the Padre side, and thither I instantly repaired to light my own taper at the source. I found what I sought for, and I carried my candle to the bazaars and public places, that I might communicate the same light to others.”
As he went on, the officer admitted to Mr. Wilkinson that this was indeed something which he had not expected to hear, A tear stood in his eye as he spoke. He had found in a Hindoo a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ; and he was preparing to retire, to indulge in his own meditations, when Gunga said―
“I should like now to examine you. Are you a Christian? Are you, indeed, a Christian?”
This was an arrow to the officer’s heart; and this question, asked in Christian simplicity, became the means of his conversion.
―An Extract from B. L.