II.—THE BURNING HUT.
Sheosahai, the Brahmin, stood in his straw-thatched cottage, gazing on the image of Krishna, the dark god, which for centuries he and his fathers had worshipped.
His young son, Sheo Deo, who from his birth had been paralyzed in his limbs, lay on his mat near, and thus addressed his father:—
“O father, the time for pujah (worship) has come! Why do you not prostrate yourself before Krishna?”
Sheosahai made reply: “My son, I was at the mela (fair) yesterday, and there was a man preaching;[48] and I stood to listen, and his words have troubled my soul. He said that thousands of years ago the mighty God came down upon a mountain in fire and smoke, and that from the midst of the fire and smoke a terrible voice gave this command,—Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, or the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them. I would fain have cast dust at the speaker; and yet his words clung to my soul, for he spake as one who knows that he speaks the truth.”
“Was the great God of whom he told the God of the Christians?” asked Sheo Deo, who had heard something of their religion before.
“The same,” replied his father. “And the preacher went on to say that in England, thousands of years ago, men bowed down to idols, and worshipped the work of their own hands; and then the people were feeble and few. But the nation has long since cast away idols, and now men read their holy Book, and pray to the Lord Jesus Christ; and therefore England is mighty, and a blessing rests on the land.”
“O father! do you not fear the wrath of Krishna when he hears you repeat such words?” cried Sheo Deo, looking up in alarm at the painted image.
Sheosahai made no reply; he turned and slowly left the hut. Perhaps the thought arose in his heart: “Has Krishna power to hear them?”
After his father’s departure Sheo Deo lay still on his mat, from which he could not move, and often he gazed up at the idol, and turned over in his mind the strange words which his father had heard.
Presently there came on a terrible storm. The thunder roared above like the noise of a thousand cannon, and fierce lightnings flashed from the darkened sky; the whole earth seemed to tremble with the fury of the great tempest.
“Was it in a storm like this,” thought Sheo Deo, “that the awful voice was heard from the mountain, Thou shalt make no graven image?”
Then came a more terrible crash than Sheo Deo had ever before heard; and the moment after there was the smell of burning, and then the glare of fire above. Lo! the lightning had struck the hut, and the thatch was blazing over the head of the wretched boy, who, paralyzed as he was, could not even crawl out of the burning dwelling.
The red light glared on the image of Krishna; to the terrified Sheo Deo it seemed almost as if the idol had life!
“Help me—save me! Oh! save thy worshipper, great Krishna!” he cried; while the heat around him grew more and more fearful, even as that of a furnace.
But the image stirred not, heard not. The sparks were kindling upon it.
Then, in the agony of his terror, the poor Hindu bethought him of the Christian’s powerful God. Even in the presence of his idol he clasped his hands and uttered the cry, “O Lord Jesus Christ, if Thou canst save me, oh! save me!”
At that moment Sheosahai burst into the blazing hut.
The Brahmin looked at his helpless boy lying on the mat, and then on the idol which he had so long worshipped. He had no time to save both; which should he leave to the devouring flames? Only one day previously the Hindu might have hesitated in making his choice, but he did not hesitate now. He caught up his son in his arms; he bore him forth from the fiery furnace. “If Krishna be a god he will save himself,” muttered the Brahmin.
The hut was soon burned to ashes, and the idol lay a heap of cinders within it.
Sheo Deo lived; and in the following year, after much instruction from the missionary, he and his father received the water of baptism, believing that which is written in the holy Scriptures: This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.