William Butler

“ The Lord has graciously laid the claims of the Female Orphanage upon the hearts of our ladies. It is now under the special charge of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as a part of their work for women in India.
It is a beautiful sight to see the orphan girls on the Sabbath of God, in His house, so neat, and attentive, and devotional, and to hear them sing the praises of Him to whose mercy they owe so much, and then all bow down to worship in the true Biblical and
Oriental fashion. ”

“ From it must continually go forth influences which will mitigate the prejudices of the women of India, for they can understand the disinterested benevolence that thus seeks their own relief and welfare; and gratitude must surely incline them to examine into the truth and virtue of that religion whose mercy and good fruits will be so manifest in the benighted and suffering homes to which the graduates of the Bareilly Orphanage, and their devoted instructress, will bring help and healing in the days to come. ”

“ Thus God has justified our confidence when we first took these girls to train them up for him; all our hopes have been fulfilled. They have done well intellectually and religiously. More than twenty-five of them have already been married to our native preachers, teachers, and converts, and are now happy wives and mothers in their own homes, exhibiting before their heathen sisters what a Christian wife and mother is. Others of them have become efficient teachers and helpers in the work of visiting and instructing their countrywomen, as the columns of the “Heathen Woman's Friend” show. ”

“ The poor children were the last to succumb, for nature would lead the dying father or mother, heathen though they were, to give the final morsel to the child or children, in hope of saving them. The Government hurried on the measures of relief, and also sent around its police to give immediate succor to the living and to bury the dead.
From wretched homes, where a father or a mother, or both, lay dead, the surviving children were carried out and collected together. The orphan boys were assembled in one town, and the girls in another. ”

“ The number of female orphans is now nearly one hundred and fifty, about twenty having been added during the past year. The good fruits of the institution have so won the confidence of all who are acquainted with it that it has conquered prejudice and conciliated the interest and good-will of many even of the native nobility as well as the English magistrates, from whom the institution every year receives additional destitute orphans to be adopted into this Christian home and family, and trained freely upon our own principles.
From six to nine girls finish their studies and graduate each year. ”

“ A Christianity without homes, or female schools, or daughters, without wives for our native teachers or preachers, without female worshipers in our congregations, wanted the first elements of perpetuity and completeness.
Every effort was made by our missionary ladies to obtain even day scholars from among the people, but such was then their bitter prejudice against educating girls that they generally treated the proposal with scorn. The ladies of our Bareilly mission made a vigorous effort in that city to obtain even a few scholars. ”

“ There was, however, one class of persons who were ready to receive a number of the elder and most likely girls, but they knew well that their proposal would be met with indignation by the English magistrates, and that they durst not make it. They had to deal with men who understood that there was something worse for a girl than even starvation and death. So the government waited, day after day, in hope that relief for these orphans would arise from some quarter. ”

“ The enemies of their souls and bodies were defeated, and we had the satisfaction of rescuing them from hands whose “tender mercies were cruel,” and fulfilling in their case the letter and spirit of the divine Word, “Of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.” ”

“ The Government could extend only temporary relief, and what was to be the fate of the rescued children became a painful consideration. The pressure was too great for friends of the dead to come forward and receive the bereaved and destitute, and the poor children thus lay between hope and despair. ”

“ The wages of a laboring man in India is two annas per day—the anna is three cents—so that millions of men in that land toil all day for six cents, and are grateful if they can only, even at that rate, obtain regular employment. ”

“ THE preceding facts and doctrines will lead to an appreciation of the efforts made by the mission to educate and train some of the youth of India, so that we could present before the heathen the examples of Christian manhood and womanhood, and also have native helpers of both sexes on whose intelligence we could more fully rely than we could upon our adult converts. ”

“ I wrote to the Government; they were only too glad to consent, and have the children taken off their hands. We might have as many of each sex as we desired, English magistrates, in whose hands they were, were communicated with, and directed to make them over to us. ”

“ This is their whole compensation, for they find themselves—as they would not, on account of their caste prejudices, touch our food—so the six cents have to pay rent, and clothe and feed them and their families! ”

“ Most of them were weak and emaciated, and a few of them dying, whom no care could save, so that we lost, out of the one hundred and fifty, about fifteen, who were too much reduced in strength and vitality to be saved. ”

“ Of course, they could not live at all if their habits were not very simple, and the means of life very cheap. They eat only twice a day, rice and coarse flour, alternated, being their chief food, with a seasoning of curry ”