Yeshudas : A Monograph Book

1902 -- TO THE LOVED hIEMORY OF HIM WHO INSPIRED THIS LITTLE STUDY, AND FOR WHOSE SOLE PLEASURE TT WAS AT FIRST UNDERTAKEN IVHO HELD THE PEOPLE OF INDIA IN HONOUR, AND WHO GLADLY LIVED HIS LIFE IN TEIEIR SERVICE IMY FATHER, JOHN SMALL OF POONA. Born at Arbroath, December 4th, 1833-Arrived in India, December qth, 1863. Worked as a Alissionary for 35 years. Died at Poonn, Jlay gth, 1899. -- PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.-- Is the story true The question lias been asked by so many correspondents that I feel constrained to take the opportunity now offered, of replying to it once for all. With the exception of the closing scenes, no incident is fictitious. The characters also were sketched from life. For reasons surely obvious, the setting is imaginary. But I venture to think that my little story is true with a deeper truth than had it been the record of a special unique instance of conversion. YeshudAs was intended to represent, for the sympathy of friends of India, a great unseen procession of souls, who, after the same solitary manner, are feeling their way towards the Light of God. I have myself met one and another of these and since the little book reached India, letters from missionaries in almost every part of the land have arrived, telling of men and women whose history is almost parallel to that of Iweshud s. I take the liberty of quoting one of these letters - I cannot easily say how interested and touched I was by its perusal. To me whose life is spent amid the scenes and the people you describe, the story came home with peculiar force and freshness. I believe the special phase of the coming of Gods King--dom, apart from what we deem the ordinary channels, is far more common than we know even amongst the poor Katkars there is one man who told me that before our coming he had been praying that help might come to his people. He said, It seemed that God had forgotten us. But we met, you a bird of one country, I a bird of another, and I knew God had heard. The hungry souls are satisfied beyond our imagining. A. H. S. TEIIS little book is not in the usual line of mission literature. That literature naturally and properly selects from missionary experience some of the cases which illustrate the happy work ing of missionary diligence and missionary method. It does not try to disguise the disappointment and failure which form part of missionary experience but it does try especially to bring home to British Christians how the harvest ripens in mission fields, and how fruit is gathered unto life eternal. Naturally, however, one desires to attain a somewhat more broad and various impression of tl c w ay in which practically the Hindu mind to speak now only of that vorlrs in its contact wit11 vi P vfatory Note. Christianity, alike in cases where the Christian message is finally received, and in cases where that does not seem to be the result. Those who have read a small work by the present authoress, Szcwd tnw, ill remember how much of its singular charm depended on the vivid pictures of Hindu women, with their native i npressions and surroundings coming under Christian influences, not always with the result a Christian desires, but always so as to present a moral situation that not only interests the heart, but that sets one thinking. The narrative which follows suggests rather how Christ may find His own through very dim uncertain echoes of the glad tidings, coming to souls that have begun to thirst. Some times, as in the case of the Karens of Burmah, whole tribes Prefntory Note. v11 . c seem to be seized with a desire for light which they know they have not got...Read More