General Conference Bulletin, vol. 4

THE WORK IN INDIA

W. A. SPICER

April 22, 9 A. M.

It would be impossible to consider in one talk the many sides of the Indian question. It is a million-sided question,—such a large subject that one might spend a lifetime in India, and still get acquainted with only a few of the features of Indian life. The most that I can hope to do this morning is to talk about our work in India, the little that has been done, the open doors calling for us to enter. GCB April 23, 1901, page 432.5

Very often, in thinking of India, people have in mind rather an uncivilized country, a rough and a rude people; but we must remember that India had a civilization that was ancient when our fathers were roaming the wilds of Europe. The East prides itself on the antiquity of its civilization. The heathenism of such countries as India and China is not altogether the rough, heathenism of the wilds of Africa. GCB April 23, 1901, page 432.6

The Indians have a complicated philosophy, founded upon principles that they call scientific. That need not trouble us at all, for we can give the third angel’s message to India without having more than the remotest idea of all of their philosophic discussions and questions. In fact, it is the study of a lifetime to find out what the Hindu religion is, and any one who goes there to work will find that he has very little time to study darkness. GCB April 23, 1901, page 432.7

The work in India is simply to let the light shine, that is all; and it seems to me the most cheering message I can bring from such great heathen fields as this is concerning the simplicity of the work—that all that is needed is to tell the simple, saving truth of the third angel’s message. GCB April 23, 1901, page 432.8

In studying the Russian field one may see how, through the medium of the German colonists, the truth has made its way into the Russian Empire. So in South America the brethren have reported that a great part of the work has been done among the German Colonists, and from these the light is to be carried out to the masses round about them. Just so, as we remark the distribution of the English-speaking people over the earth, we can not fail to notice that the Lord has set the English tongue in all the world in the far corners of the earth, and that is what makes it so much easier for us to get a footing in various distant parts. It makes a vast difference in planning the work in India that the Lord in his providence has distributed through India the English-speaking people. We might just as well have had workers in the cities of India twenty years ago. But of course we did not look so far away; the truth had to gather strength in America. It has slowly pressed its way out into the great field, and we have been slow to follow the opening providences of God. GCB April 23, 1901, page 432.9

You may have thought, possibly, that we should have gone first to the native people. What was the principle the Lord gave to his apostles as he sent them into the field?—“Beginning at Jerusalem.” First of all the Lord evangelized his own people, those that had light; then when they rejected the light, later on, they turned to the Gentiles. Well, on that same principle, what shall we do in these fields first of all? Shall we not first of all tell the message to the people who believe the Lord? We shall find among them many who may join us in taking up the greater work, and pressing the lines of truth out into heathen darkness. GCB April 23, 1901, page 432.10

When Brother Robinson first went to India, with a few workers, I know their thought was for the native work, and they began with meetings in the native quarter, for the English-speaking natives; but the Lord’s providence turned the work into a broader line. An earthquake came, damaging the mission house where these local meetings were being held, to such an extent that the meetings were transferred, first, I believe to a neighboring church, by invitation; and then, as this stir of the earthquake was upon the people, the minds of the brethren were led to start public meetings in a great theater down in the heart of the city of Calcutta. The earthquake had stirred things so that the people were ready to come out in crowds to hear about the coming of the Lord. GCB April 23, 1901, page 433.1

The result of that work was to bring out a company of believers, and additions have been made, until we have the present little company in Calcutta. The work is interesting. It is among the Europeans and the Eurasians principally, although the work done for these classes has a direct influence upon the great masses of the Hindus, many of whom see that our work is a new thing in missions. GCB April 23, 1901, page 433.2

Many Hindus have been struck with the difference between preaching the word of God and preaching about the word of God. And they appreciate the word of God, and it appeals to their hearts. I am glad that we need not feel, in working for the heathen, that we must give them some argument of our own about the word of God, in order to impress them with the fact that the word is God’s, but we have only to open the word to them, and let God’s voice speak to their hearts; and there is a power in God’s voice to speak to the hearts of the heathen. The heathen man is not so different from ourselves. I have been a heathen myself, and the Lord saved me by his grace. And in heathenism you can see manifested your own disposition, the natural man: you can see in heathenism just what you would be yourself, did not the grace of God save you from your own ways, for heathenism is nothing more nor less than a religion of having your own way. GCB April 23, 1901, page 433.3

I must say that the influence of many missionary systems has been such as to lower the spiritual tone of the people. The thought is to get converts to the society. And so we have to explain that what we want is to see men joined to Jesus Christ; and then we know that if they are joined to Jesus Christ, and we are walking in the light, they will be joined with us. GCB April 23, 1901, page 433.4

You will often hear thoughtful missionaries, of various denominations, speaking out against the demands of the home boards that the missionary shall report figures and statistics; for the great cry is that good reports will bring money. And one will find, as one looks over missionary operations, that much work in the field is done with the thought that something great must be reported to get the people at home to give their money. GCB April 23, 1901, page 433.5

We do not have to work that way, because our brethren are Seventh-day Adventists, and they have the third angel’s message, and they know that the call of God is to give that message as a witness to all the world. And so we have to put the word of God in among the people, and let God bring forth the fruits. We know, then, that whether the statistics grow so rapidly or not among the heathen. God’s word is at work among the people, and in the end we shall see greater results, greater manifestations of the power of God in the conversation of the multitudes. GCB April 23, 1901, page 433.6

In our little company in Calcutta, you will find men and women as true to the third angel’s message as any of us, I believe. In a country where the white man does not do the hard work, where he is absolutely prohibited by the situation from competing with native labor, it means no little thing for the European or the Eurasian to decide that, come what may, he will follow the Lord in Sabbath-keeping. In a land where there are no European carpenters or blacksmiths or peasantry, in a land where you can get a farmer for four cents a day, where you can get a carpenter for fifteen cents a day, and in a land, too, where for the European living expenses are higher than in Europe or America, you can readily understand that to many a man this testing truth comes bringing him face to face with the fact that only by the help of God can he hope to obey and live. GCB April 23, 1901, page 433.7

The mingling of European and Asiatic, or Indian, blood has formed a large Eurasian community. In education and life and language the Eurasian is as the European. He enters the government service or various business lines; so that all through India we have the English and the Eurasian, and our church in Calcutta is made up of those two classes with a little sprinkling of native converts. GCB April 23, 1901, page 433.8

If you should enter into the company of our people in Calcutta on a Sabbath you would perhaps hear an Irish lady expressing her thanks to God for the truth, a lady of means, by the way, who has been liberal in the work of the Lord. You would hear a German brother, one of the best photographers in Calcutta, thanking God for the third angel’s message and for the truth. You would find here an Eurasian brother, clerk in the High Court, doing the same thing and telling how God had saved him from the tobacco habit. You would hear just such experiences as you hear of in the churches at home. You would find there a native brother, a descendant, by the way, of Carey’s first convert. And so, as you look over the company, you would find many a heart beating firm and true for the truth of God just as we understand it. (Voices: Amen!) And among these people we shall find workers. If we can get a framework of experienced workers to locate in various parts of India, to be used in raising up communities of believers, I am sure we shall see the salvation of God in the multiplying of workers in these vast Eastern fields. GCB April 23, 1901, page 433.9

We know that this truth and this message are something that the world needs. Without in any way belittling the work that others have done in these fields, without in any way belittling the tremendous influence that the circulation of the Bible has had in these great heathen fields, we know this, that, as at home God has given us a message that is to call even the most enlightened Christians onto a higher platform, even so in these Eastern lands, where formalism seems to reign supreme, this blessed truth will lift the people up, and accomplish a work for them which has not yet been seen. GCB April 23, 1901, page 433.10

And it is doing it, too. They are beginning to recognize the fact that those native believer who have been raised up there, and are associated with our work in Calcutta, are different men and women; that the truth has done something for them that was not done for them in their old associations. So it is most interesting to work for the people. I can see their faces now mentally-good brethren and sisters whose hearts kindle with joy at report of every advance step, who watch with the deepest interest for help to came to the field, who are ready within their means to contribute to the support of the work. GCB April 23, 1901, page 433.11

In the East, God has set a little light, and it is to grow brighter and brighter. Other lights are to be kindled in various parts of India, and the message is to go in these Eastern lands, I know, with a loud cry one of these days; for we can see how easily God can do the work. We need not think because there are vast populations unevangelized, that it will take God a long time to do the work. Never have I felt the imminence of the coming of the Lord so keenly, never has it seemed to me so clear that the Lord was even at the door, as out there in India, with the millions of heathen round about. GCB April 23, 1901, page 434.1

God will do the work: for he sends the light of the sun every day, he sends the breath of life every day, to every soul in these vast fields. How easy, then, for the Lord in his own time to send the light of his salvation to every soul, and for his Spirit to move upon hearts! The Spirit of God is working beyond our observation. GCB April 23, 1901, page 434.2

You remember, perhaps, how Brainerd, the apostle to the North American Indians in the early Colonial days, found, out in the wilderness, an Indian who had given his heart to God. The Indian had seen no missionary, but he said the Great Spirit had revealed himself to him in the forest, and had changed his heart. He would go to the men in their drunken brawls, and beseech them to stop, and to let the Great Spirit put his love in their hearts: and then when his friends would repulse him, he would go off into the forest, and weep and pray to the Great Spirit to help his brethren. God had spoken to him. GCB April 23, 1901, page 434.3

Just so in the wilderness of South America, in the olden days, the Moravians found a man who had been led out step by step from heathenism into the revelation of the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, so that the moment he heard the name of Jesus, he recognized that this was the gospel the Lord had revealed to him. GCB April 23, 1901, page 434.4

God’s Spirit is working upon heathen hearts. God is touching the heathen world. When Jesus saw the multitude, you remember, he had compassion upon them. O, how the compassionate heart of Christ must be stirred as he looks down upon these darkened fields upon the map. He has compassion upon them. I do not speak for India alone. Here are China and India together-one half the population of the world, one half of the human family, and at this point we have only just touched the fringe of the field. It is strange, is it not? Here is the gospel for the world. “God so loved the world”-not half of it, but the whole of it. The whole of his savings gospel is for this half of the world now in darkness. GCB April 23, 1901, page 434.5

The Lord has lighted the lamp of present truth not simply in Calcutta, but in other places. There is Karmatar, 168 miles from Calcutta. This station is always associated in your minds with the death of Brethren Robinson and Brown. There we have a little orphanage school -only fifteen children there at present, and that is amply sufficient to begin the work with; for we do feel that it is a most delicate thing to take the children, to endeavor to become responsible for their training and their future. Orphanage work is not the simple thing in India that some perhaps might think, when they read of great societies taking thousands of orphans. The thing we look at is how they come out of the training-schools. It is a fact that the mission-trained orphan is not always wanted in India business circles. It is a solemn and serious fact that business men generally prefer the heathen to the Christian convert in business. GCB April 23, 1901, page 434.6

We do not want to do that kind of work-not for our souls’ sake would we spend our lives in India doing the work ourselves, and having it the work of man. God must do the work. But the blessed truth is that God will do the work, if we will let him do it. So in this rescue work we must begin, just as God enables us to begin, so that we may throw around every child that we take the responsibility for influences just such as we would want thrown around our own; for there is no royal road of bringing children in heathen India into a life of usefulness. So in the little work at Karmatar, just at present we have our hands full. Brother and Sister Quantock are there looking after the school interests. GCB April 23, 1901, page 434.7

At the present time in Calcutta. Brother Ellery Robinson is looking after the office work and the work generally in the field. Formerly he has been in Bombay, across on the other side of India. Brother Ellery Robinson has been putting in the publications in Bombay for somewhat over a year. Several people there are professedly, at least, keeping the Sabbath. Very little has been done for them. More must be done to establish them, to teach them other phases of the truth. GCB April 23, 1901, page 434.8

Calcutta has a population of about 1,000,000; Bombay of about 800,000. Bombay is a fine city; noble buildings, beautiful structures, fine streets, immense population, and thousands of people who speak English, of European, Eurasian, Armenian, and native blood. Thousands of people speaking English are also found in Madras, in Colombo, on the island of Ceylon, Rangoon, in Burma, and other populous cities in northern India. Why should we not go into the field and occupy it? Why should we not make every one of these great centers a place from which the light should be sent out into regions round about? GCB April 23, 1901, page 434.9

Of course the climate is warm in India; but why speak of that? Thousands of Europeans live there for business. So many people have asked me if I liked India. I did not go there because I thought I would like it. It is none of my business whether I like it or not. I like the work of God in India. I like working for God anywhere, and I do not know of any more interesting place in this world to work in than India. I do not know of any place where one can get more courage and more joy in the service of God, more satisfaction in meeting people, than in the needy fields of the East. GCB April 23, 1901, page 434.10

The simplicity of the work is so encouraging-to talk to men about the simple truth that stirs our hearts. That is what I like to do, and I have been glad to find, in talking with these heathen, that the thing that touches their heart is not, as might be supposed, arguments about the philosophy of religion. But the things that the intelligent heathen are interested in are these historical prophecies, the signs of the Lord’s coming, in fact, the third angel’s message. That is what they are waiting to hear. It cuts the ground, so to speak, out from under their feet; and if they have thought that you were prepared to “split hairs” with them in philosophy, they are quite disillusioned when you begin to talk to them about history, about the coming of the Lord, about the signs of his coming. GCB April 23, 1901, page 434.11

When you want to preach here about the signs of the coming of the Lord, and tell about pestilences and earthquakes and famines, you refer to India, do you not? God is calling attention to India. God’s voice in his judgments abroad in the earth, is calling the attention of the world to that great “sore” of the world. You will find that nearly all the plague that spreads over the earth rises in India. India is a sea of trouble; it is never at rest; and yet we know that where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound. God wants us to carry the knowledge of his saving grace now to these lands. GCB April 23, 1901, page 434.12

Talk about “keeping up your courage” in dark fields. You do not want to keep your courage up at all. You want to get your courage down. It comes down from heaven. A man who tries to keep his courage up is in a poor way; but we can get our courage down from heaven day by day, and we shall feel of good courage all the time. I do not see how any one who believes this third angel’s message can become discouraged about the truth and the work of God. There is nothing discouraging about it; for God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. That truth holds good in heathen India, just as well as in Battle Creek. GCB April 23, 1901, page 435.1

The man that finds salvation and gets out in face-to-face work in the great world abroad will find joy and courage and strength coming down from heaven continually. GCB April 23, 1901, page 435.2

I know one heathen to whom I paid a sum of money on behalf of a European who owed him. The debt had been owing him for seven or eight years, but the Lord had worked upon the heart of the European, who gave me the money to pay the debt. I passed it over to the Hindu, and with quivering lips he told me that he had felt if he ever got that money he would like to put it into our work. We had just been having tremendous floods in Calcutta, and I know that he needed the money, that his house was failing to pieces, and that that sum represented much to him; so I persuaded him that he had better keep it for his own house and for his family, for they needed it sorely. But his eyes were filled with tears at the thought that he might do something to help the work. I feel assured that that man is not far from the kingdom of God. GCB April 23, 1901, page 435.3

In the women of India, in their homes, or zenanas, we have a tremendous field. I will read a few lines from a letter just received from Sister Burrus. After having worked several years in a suburb of Calcutta, we lately transferred our zenana work from Calcutta to the city of Chandernagore. That place is a political curiosity. It is a French town, a few miles from Calcutta, surrounded by British territory. The Catholics are strong there, and no settled Protestant mission has work in the place that I know of, so we arranged for Miss Burrus and Sister Flemming, who is working with her in the Bengali language, to go to that city and engage in the zenana work. Miss Burrus writes: “Our house is right in the midst of the Hindu neighborhood. We do not have the least difficulty in getting in among them. The first day I went out I just walked a little ways down our own street, and found entrance into enough places to keep me busy two days in the week. No work of this kind has been done here, as the strength of the Catholics lies in school work rather than going into the homes of the people. If we had twenty zenana workers in this station, there would be plenty of work for all. I have one appointment at a bathing ghat, where a number of women assemble. The ghat is on the public road, and I hope in this way to reach many. When I first came out to India, a native Christian asked me if I had come out to preach. I said, ‘Oh, no, only to teach the women in their homes.’ ‘But that is what we call preaching,’ she said, and I began to think if some of our friends at home saw me standing there in that crowd, singing and talking to them, they might think I was trying to preach. However, if some poor soul may only get hold of a ray of light that will lead him to the Lord. I am willing to be called a padre mem. GCB April 23, 1901, page 435.4

“I have been to some of the neighboring stations. The population is something immense all along the river. GCB April 23, 1901, page 435.5

“I never felt more enthusiastic about any work in my life than I do about scattering literature on present truth among these people. We can go out every morning to the villages and come in and work in Chandernagore in the zenanas during the middle of the day and afternoon. Then, by having a conveyance we can always carry appliances for giving treatment, which we could not do on wheels.” GCB April 23, 1901, page 435.6

That is only a sample of what may be done in a little city only eighteen miles out of Calcutta. Thousands upon thousands of people round about need help. We do want Bible workers, and nursing zenana workers. We need all kinds, in fact. There are so many places where we can go to work for the people. We have three native preachers, converts from the Christian community. At this time they are busy on the work of distributing thousands of tracts in Calcutta and the districts round about. A little way from Karmartar is a station called Simultala, where a Brother Barlow, an English missionary, has a mission, in which he works for the heathen Santali villages, being acquainted with that tongue. He believes the truth and is doing much tract work as he travels in the interests of his mission. Just before I left India he called for ten thousand tracts. He writes that the Lord is blessing him in his work. He says that he hopes we will bring the Santali work up at the General Conference, for he needs some assistance in developing his work. GCB April 23, 1901, page 435.7

We have in Bengal a lady missionary, speaking one or two vernaculars, who has been doing self-supporting missionary work and who has accepted the truth. I have suggested to her that if she would come in among us we would give her plenty to do, but she believes the Lord leads her in the line in which she has been at work. Sometimes she engages as teacher or governess in a family or other work, spreading literature and speaking the truth, and we are glad to have her go in circles where perhaps she could not go if directly associated with us. GCB April 23, 1901, page 435.8

As to the medical work, we have a little institution just a few minutes walk from our meeting hall. The medical work was begun there some four or five years ago. We have had Dr. Place and the Drs. Ingersoll and several nurses, and while the medical work has had to meet all the prejudices that our general work has met, it is a fact that the medical work has been used of God in breaking down many prejudices. So far as institution work is concerned it may not be that we can have many sanitariums in India. But so far as medical work itself is concerned, hand-to-hand work with the people, I need not suggest what a tremendous field there is in the three hundred millions of people in India. GCB April 23, 1901, page 435.9

It is true that just now the multitude can not leave the work in other lands and go in there. I have seen the burden of the Lord here—we have all seen it—to develop home forces, the Southern field, the European field, the Australian field. That does not mean that we are not immediately to press on into these Eastern fields. But I believe it does mean that God sends all in these “home” fields to begin an educational work, to educate the people to look beyond, to educate the home brethren to stand alone, to educate them to give of their means, and of their workers, so that we may, in a very short time, flood these eastern lands with workers, who will go in the power of the Spirit of God; and then we shall see God doing his final work. GCB April 23, 1901, page 435.10

But we have waited, waited so long that it seems awful to think what might have been done if twenty years ago we had been there. In these great cities there is just as good a field for English work as in our cities here at home; and yet we have waited these many years to begin the work. I believe God wants us to see a half dozen tried laborers at this very time sent out to India to occupy these great cities. GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.1

It is a fact that God is coming. All Asia is troubled; it is broken up, it is in the painful groanings of the latter day. It seems impossible for the world to go on much longer. The very dead weight of sin and misery would break it down if the Lord did not come. But he is coming. We can see signs of it in the East. GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.2

We know this, that God’s Spirit is not daunted by any multitude of numbers. I thought of that while coming up through the Red Sea. Sabbath morning, as I looked out of the cabin window, I found we were then within sight of Sinai, the mount of God. All day Sabbath I was watching its sides, so plain in the clear atmosphere, graven by the storms of centuries; and yet there the mount of God stood, a memorial of the fact that God is coming again; that as he stood one day upon that mount, proclaimed his law with a voice that shook the world, yet once more will he shake not the earth only, but the heavens also. GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.3

And then we came up to the place where the children of Israel crossed. No one knows the exact point; but I sat up until about midnight watching every feature of the geography of the sides of the canal, and there, somewhere, evidently about where geographers have located it, the Lord opened the sea and let Israel through. How long would it have taken Israel to have planned a way to get over that sea, had God left it to their planning, had they appointed a committee on bridge building, for instance? They could not do it; there was no way; but God made a way in the depths of the sea for the ransomed to pass over. GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.4

And when God looks down upon the blinded East, we must remember his word, that he will lead the blind by a way which they knew not. We can see in the East the gleams of the golden morning. We know that the coming of the Lord is at the door. We do plead in behalf of one half of the world, located in this dark corner of this map, that we may send the glorious third angel’s message to the people. GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.5

It is a blessed thing to carry this message; it is a blessed thing to go to people, who, through fear, are subject to bondage, and bring them light. I remember of meeting once a little way from Karmatar, a poor heathen woman without a home. The villagers told her she might live in the house of the goddess of the village; but she was afraid to do it. I do not blame her. The goddess of the village has a lolling tongue, red lips, a knife in one hand, and a man’s head in the other; and I did not blame the old woman for not wanting to sleep by the side of the chief deity of the village. What a blessed work it was to tell that woman that the day-spring from on high hath visited us, that we might be delivered from fear, and serve God without fear all the days of our lives. Oh, millions of souls are waiting to hear. Many, many of them God is calling, and they will yet come to sit with us in the marriage supper. But the Lord calls upon us now to let his Holy Spirit press the burning needs of these great fields close against the hearts of the brethren at home, that we may respond, and do the work to which God calls us. GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.6

There is one thing you can work to: for every five dollars that you will give us for India, we will circulate over 5,000 of these leaflets [showing tracts in native language]. We can get printing done cheaply in the East. And Oh, I do enjoy the thought of flooding India with little leaflets in every one of which is the thought of the coming of the Lord, and the preparation to meet him. I would like to see these thousands upon thousands of leaflets scattered throughout the villages and towns of India. If you want to help, send us money to the Foreign Mission Board office. GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.7

“THEN shall men stand up with no sickness in the body, and no taint of sin in the soul.” GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.8

“SOME people would say more if they did not talk so much.” GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.9

SILENCE is organized knowledge.”—Herbert Spencer. GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.10