[Pioneers and Founders by Charlotte Mary Yonge]@TWC D-Link book
Pioneers and Founders

CHAPTER VII
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A curious instance of a thorough conversion happened the same year.

A lad, educated like most other well-to-do Hindoos in the schools of the Church Missionary at Mirzampore, when about fifteen, became persuaded of the saving grace of Christianity, and determined to be baptized and openly forsake his idols.

His parents persecuted him, and he fled to a friend, a Hindoo convert; but he was seized by his relations, and the case was referred to the Supreme Court, who decided that the father's power over the son must not be interfered with; and the poor boy was dragged away, clinging to the barrister's table, amid the shouts of the heathen and the tears of the Christians.

The boy remained staunch, and three years later came again and received baptism; but his sufferings had injured his health, both of mind and body, and his promise of superior intelligence was blighted.
In 1834, the Bishop set off on his first long journey, which included Penang and Moulmein, where the Judsons had taken refuge after the Burmese war, and where he found, in the midst of half-cleared jungle and Buddhist temples full of enormous idols, a school kept by an American master, so full of notions of equality, that, at the examination, he expected the Bishop to go to each class, not the class to the Bishop.
The Commissioner had built a church, the walls of teak slabs, and the pillars each a single teak-tree, and it was ready for consecration.

After this and a confirmation, the Bishop went on his way to Ceylon, and then to the Madras Presidency, where he had already had a long correspondence with the pastors of the Christian congregations on the question of caste.
Things had not prospered of late; and, to the dismay of the Bishop, he found that, in the course of the last year, 168 Christians had fallen back to heathenism, where, not having broken their caste, they could still be received and find a place.


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