‘We hope next Sunday to have a Baptism in our lovely little lake; and we have been practising baptismal hymns to sing on the joyful occasion. We had some anxiety about our young convert.... He went to Amritsar on business; and at the time when we expected his return he did not come back.
‘What could have happened? Had the dear youth been seized by his Muhammadan relations? Such things do happen; the danger is a very real one. It is often no easy matter to confess Christ in India. Mr. B., who was here, wrote off a note to a Christian Maulvi in Amritsar to search for the lad. He did so, and found him, and brought him here in safety last night; but not before —— had had a painful time of it in Amritsar.
‘I looked with interest on that Christian Maulvi, as he sat in our drawing-room, conversing with the English Missionaries.... He has known well enough to what dangers a convert may be exposed; for he has experienced them.... He was the first of his family to take up the Cross. His Muhammadan neighbours formed the fiendish design of burning him alive in his house. They piled up his clothes, etc., in an under room. He was sleeping above. The Muhammadans set fire to the pile; and the clothes, etc., were quickly consumed; but the fire did not, as was intended, set the whole house in a blaze. The ceiling was charred; that was all; and the Christian slept unharmed, watched over by the Eye that never slumbers nor sleeps.’
About this time A. L. O. E. wrote home to another quarter:—
‘Yesterday a letter arrived from the schoolmaster of O—— with tidings that a lad of fifteen has had the courage to declare to his friends his desire to become a Christian. The natural result of such a declaration has followed,—the young confessor has been beaten. It is no small matter to stand up thus openly for Christ in a heathen village. The lad may have to endure much. I have seen one who was made to stand in boiling oil by his own father, to hinder him from going to the Christians. Whether the O—— boy’s conversion has been the result of the Good Friday expedition we know not; but whether it be so or not, the lad claims our sympathy and interest. We shall try to bring him here, to the Batala Boarding-School, where he may at least receive food and protection. “It is a refuge,” said our Christian Maulvi to me yesterday, glancing up at the goodly building raised by the Maharajah Shere Singh, who little dreamed that he was preparing in it a home for a Christian Natives’ Boarding-School, and also for the ladies of a Zenana Mission. I am at present the sole English Agent of the latter Society here.’
TO MRS. E——.
‘May 10, 1878.
‘You may like to hear a little more about our School of young Panjabis, as it is rather a curiosity.
‘My nephew, Mr. Baring, has succeeded in making these young Natives like not only cricket, but gardening. We are to have a Horticultural Exhibition in August, when prizes are to be given for the best flowers and fruit. Considering that the gardens are all on ground redeemed from the lake this year, it will hardly be expected that the show will equal one in the Botanical Gardens. But oh, you should see our glorious pink water-lilies! They grow wild in the water, and would be a sight anywhere.