‘This is rather curious, as none of our Punjabis have ever seen the sea. The chorus will be first-rate practice for rapid, clear pronunciation; for
‘“When the boatswain pipes ‘All hands aloft!’”
would not be an easy line even for some English boys. If the lads manage tolerably well, the charade will be great fun. Who would ever have dreamt that part of a Missionary’s work should be to set boys to learn a lively charade!
‘I pity the City boys. I suspect that there is a sort of wistful longing raised in many a young heart, “I wish I were one of those Christian boys!” If there could be a blind ballot of Batala boys, as to whether the whole town should become Christian, I am by no means sure whether the votes would not be in our favour. I do not mean that the poor, dear lads are converts, but that they use their eyes and ears,—and think that ours must be a very pleasant, genial kind of religion, connected in some sort of way with singing, and cricket, and kindness.’
Another short English play, written by Miss Tucker for the boys, was called The Bee and the Butterfly. Miss Mulvany, a Missionary, went one day, somewhere about this time, to Batala for a few hours; and in the course of her visit she was sent upstairs, while Charlotte Tucker gave the boys a lesson in acting the said little play. Miss Mulvany has never lost the impression made upon her by the peals and shouts of laughter which came up from the merry company below.
TO MRS. HAMILTON.
‘June 19, 1878.
‘I am reading the Granth,[82] the sacred book of the Sikhs. Like the Koran, it is very long,—I think more than 600 quarto pages,—and with an immense deal of repetition in it. But it leaves on the mind a very different impression from the Koran. As far as I have read, it is wonderfully pure and spiritual. If you could substitute the name “Almighty” for “Hari,” and “Lord Jesus” for “Guru,”[83] it might almost seem the composition of hermits in the early centuries, except that celibacy is not enjoined. Woman seems to be given her proper place. Many exhortations are addressed to women....
‘There is something touching in the longing—the yearning—after God,—the intense love of His Name! The Sikh idea of God is not that of the Hindus, with their fiend-like deities. The Creator is light, and goodness, and happiness. There is indeed the ridiculous idea of people having to pass through 840,000 states of existence,—unless the probation be shortened by meditation, purity, and the repetition of God’s name,—but this fearful number of births is regarded as very tiresome indeed.
‘One might call the Granth “the book of yearning,” and I feel humiliated that I, with Gospel light, should in spiritual contemplation and longing for closest communion with the Deity come so far behind these poor Sikhs. Unfortunately, the Sikh religion has been so much corrupted that it is almost dying out. I suppose that it was too pure to please the Enemy; he knew that the Granth would offer no strong opposition to the Bible. Here, in Batala, his stronghold seems to me to be Muhammadanism. It shocks me to find how that invention of Satan darkens the moral sense. What would be thought sin in another, is by some openly defended as no sin if committed by Muhammad!!