But though Christ is the King of India, those who own His sway there are only very very few, and He still needs those who love His thoughts and His kingdom in other lands to help to carry His message more and more into the heart of India.
CHAPTER X
NEW SIGHTS IN INDIA
Men and women have gone to India to tell of the King of the world, and because of that new things are coming into the lives of the children there. There is great excitement when a European is seen for the first time in an Indian village. One day the boys of Holapura heard that an English lady had entered the house of the headman of the place. They left their games and hurried to the hut, but ere they got there, it was crowded to the door, so they climbed on the roof and looked down through the holes in the thatch. As they looked in they saw the crowded room and the white lady. A woman was bringing out a blanket from a dark inner room, and was spreading it on a mound of earth, which did for a seat, and now the white lady sat down and the boys gazed and listened. They saw a streamlet of water trickling across the mud floor at her feet; they saw the little room packed with women and boys and babies, and in amongst them they saw the household cow, the goats, and some chickens; but these things did not astonish the boys at all; they had often seen a crowded hut before, and even when Ruthamma, an Indian Christian teacher who was with the white missionary, began to speak, they scarcely listened, for all their attention was fixed on the stranger. But they began to listen a little when she sang “What a friend we have in Jesus” in their own language. Before many lines had been sung a goat made up its mind to go out, and there was so much bustle amongst the children about his going that Ruthamma had to stop and begin her hymn over again. The boys listened eagerly, till suddenly they heard a swoop and a whiz through the air. They shrank back, for vultures are not nice birds, and this one was coming very near. It shot past them through the hole in the thatch into the room. A dead fowl hung from the roof. The bird clutched it and flew away again. The fowl was gone; everyone rushed out and shouted to make the vulture drop it. But the bird would not, and when it had flown far far away from the village, the little group gathered again. But this had spent much time, and Ruth hurried on in spite of a lively quarrel between two wee boys, who, when their grandmother tried to catch them, vanished underneath the cow, to sit and make faces at each other there, and be quite ready to begin to fight again when the missionaries had gone.
That is how some children first hear of the King of India. But of course they understand little of what they hear for a long time. Sometimes the children catch up the tunes and the words of the new songs, so unlike their old ones, and remember them. In a town far from this village, a missionary was riding along the street one day, when he heard a sound that seemed familiar. He checked his horse and looked and listened. No one in the side street noticed him. There he saw a little Hindu boy with Hindu men and women around him. He was singing away heartily in Telugu:—
“Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so!”
When the verse was finished a Hindu asked him:—
“Little fellow, where did you learn that song?”
“Over at the school.”
“Who is Jesus, and what is the Bible?”