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A HINDU CHRISTIAN’S CREED

The following, indicates that some of the long darkened heathen minds, grasp the principles of Christianity much more clearly and truthfully than many born in civilized lands and educated in colleges and theological seminaries.

“Pundita Ramabai, who visited Boston, and who has more recently been with Miss Willard, at Evanston, Ill., and who is preparing to return to India to engage in teaching high caste Indian women, does not find it easy here to tell what denomination she belongs to. A reporter asked the question, and she answered: “I belong to the universal Church of Christ. I meet good Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, and each one tells me something different about the Bible. So it seems to me better to go there myself and find the best I can. And there I find Christ the Saviour of the world, and to him I give my heart. I was baptized when in England, and I commune with all Christian people who will allow me to do so. I do not profess to be of any particular denomination, for I would go back to India simply as a Christian. To my mind it appears that the New Testament, and especially the words of our Saviour, are a sufficiently elaborate creed. I believe as the Saviour has told us, and His message through John has come to us, that God is a Spirit, is light and love; in his threefold nature He creates, illuminates and pervades the universe; that Jesus His Son and Servant, the Apostle of our faith, was sent by Him to be the Saviour and leader of His children; that as many as believe on Him have the right to be the sons of God; and that the Holy Spirit is our guide and comforter, the great gift of God through Christ; that there is but one Church, and that all who acknowledge Jesus as their Saviour are members of that Church. I believe that whatever is needed for my salvation will be given me, and I pray earnestly that God may grant me the grace to be a seeker and follower of truth and a doer of His will. In Boston they said I was a Unitarian; I told them I was not. Neither am I a Trinitarian. I do not understand those modern inventions at all. I am simply a Christian, and the New Testament teaches me my religion.”

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In the Chautauquan Miss Frances E. Willard writes interestingly of this young Hindu woman, from which we quote the following incident:

“When she spoke in our Sunday gospel meeting of the W.C.T.U. at Evanston, I asked her what hymn she preferred, and in her clear, earnest voice she instantly replied—

“I heard the voice of Jesus say
Come unto me and rest.”

But the regulation missionary hymn was given out, “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains.” Standing beside her I wrote the words, “Take notice, this is none of my selecting.” Just then the audience was rolling forth, “Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile”—a comment not specially delightful to one whose relatives were “heathens.” Volumes were spoken in her swift, half-indignant, half-pathetic smile.

In the speech she made that day she responded to my earnest persuasion that she should “tell us of herself.” She spoke in glowing language of her parents, saying, “If any one wishes to say my father, so eager to learn of God, and my mother so tender and sweet, have gone to hell because no Christian ever reached them with the glad tidings of Christ, I have only to tell you: Never say so in my presence, for I will not hear it.”

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— June, 1888 —