CHAPTER V.

DYING FOR A FRIEND.

ISA DÁS had not always the bitter trial of seeing those for whom he had laboured and prayed living without God, and dying without hope. The work of an evangelist is specially a work of faith, and those who sow are not always permitted in this world to reap. Their harvest-joy is reserved for the blessed day when they who sow and they who reap shall rejoice together. Yet even in the hard field in which the convert's lot was cast, he was not without occasional tokens that his labour was not in vain in the Lord.

One of those in whom Isa Dás took the deepest interest was a kahar of the name of Gopal, who was slowly dying of an inward disease. The doctor knew that he could not cure the poor man, but he could sometimes relieve his pain; and attending him gave to the Christian opportunities of dropping in words that might be as seeds of light to a Hindu dying in darkness. The tall form of Isa Dás, wrapt in his old worn blanket, was therefore often seen in the cottage of Gopal.

One day Isa Dás found the kahar in very low spirits, tears flowing down his hollow cheeks. Isa Dás sat down on the sick man's charpai (bed), and gently asked him, "O brother! What sorrow is pressing on your heart?"

Gopal only groaned in reply.

"Is the pain in your chest greater than usual?"

The question had to be repeated before any answer was given.

Then said Gopal, "It is not the pain that I cannot endure; I know that it cannot last very long. You see yon crescent moon in the sky? Before she reaches the full, I know that my funeral pile will be lighted." And he gave a heavy sigh.

"Do you ever think of what will come to your soul after death?" inquired the Christian.

"It is that which troubles me," groaned the Hindu, who could no longer refrain from pouring out his griefs. "I don't know through how many of the eight million four hundred thousand transmigrations I may already have passed. I have had no time for pilgrimages, and no disposition for contemplation. I have led an active life, and have never spent many pice on feeding Brahmins. And, what is worse than all—" he stopped and looked anxiously around, as if afraid of being overheard.

"No one else is near, you may speak freely," said Isa Dás. As Gopal remained silent, he suggested, "Perhaps you have been tempted to steal?"

The sick kahar shook his head.

"Perhaps you have borne false witness in a court of justice?"

"Worse than that," sighed Gopal, who, like most of his countrymen, thought little of lying. "A Jogi came to my door, and asked for alms. It was a time of scarcity. I had scarcely enough of food to keep soul and body together. The Jogi looked fat and well-fed. I told him I had nothing to spare. The Jogi sat at my door from morning till noon, with a loud voice demanding pica; and I gave him nothing—woe is me!—I gave him nothing. Then the holy man got up in a rage, and cursed me; from that day I have never been well. And now I feel sure that when I die, my soul will go into the body of an ass or a swine. I shall be punished in my next birth for the crime committed in this!" The poor superstition-enslaved Hindu groaned again at the thought.

"Oh, brother!" exclaimed Isa Dás. "If you were a Christian, you would be troubled by no such idle fears!"

"In your religion, do you not believe in new births?" asked the Hindu.

"Only one new birth, a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness. We believe in one great change, the change of heart which comes when he who knows himself to be a sinner believes from his heart in the Saviour of sinners."

Isa Dás had repeatedly spoken thus to the Hindu, but this was the first time that his words had seemed to have the slightest effect.

Gopal looked earnestly at his friend for some moments, and then said, "I know that you believe that Jesus Christ saves sinners, but I cannot see in what way."

Isa Dás had never found Gopal willing to listen to a verse from the Bible, so he thought that he would begin his explanation by an illustration from Indian history. "Have you ever heard of the love of the Emperor Babar for his son?" he inquired. "Or what he did when that son was thought sick unto death?"

The story is widely known, but the Hindu kahar had not heard it.

"The Emperor, from great love, resolved to take his son's sickness on himself," said Isa Dás. "He solemnly walked seven times round the prince's bed, and it was God's will that the son should recover and the loving father sicken and die."

"I wish that there were any one who loved me enough to die in my stead!" said the poor Hindu.

"That is exactly what God's Son, the King of Heaven, has already done!" cried Isa Dás. "The Lord Jesus Christ saw all men lying in sin, about to die and perish for ever. The doors of heaven were closed against guilty souls. All are unholy; yes, Brahmins, the Jogi, the devotee are all under one terrible sentence, 'The soul that sinneth, it shall die' (Ezek. xviii. 20). God's Son took pity on a perishing world; He came and assumed a mortal body, * that in that body He might die. He bore our punishment as He hung on the Cross. And now, through Christ's great sacrifice, the fear of death is taken from true believers. 'There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus' (Rom. viii. 1)."

* The doctrine of the Incarnation offers no such difficulty to the Hindu's mind as it does to that of the Mahomedan.

"Are they emancipated from the eighty-four lakhs (100,000) of births?" asked the Hindu earnestly. "Are they in no danger of entering a vile body when they die?"

"These supposed transmigrations are but the wild dreams of men," replied Isa Dás. "The Word of God tells of an abode of perfect delight into which all will be admitted after death who in their lifetime believe in the Saviour."

"To believe—is that enough?" cried the dying Hindu.

"Yes, if the faith be that living faith, whose fruit is love and obedience," replied the Christian. "He who believes from the heart that the Son of God died for me, even me, cannot but love his Redeemer. 'We love Him, because He first loved us' (1 John iv. 19). And obedience follows on love; what faithful disciple obeys not the voice of his Goru? Our heavenly Goru hath said, 'If ye love Me, keep My commandments' (John xiv. 15)."

Isa Dás said no more that day, for he saw that Gopal was too feeble to listen long. The Christian, however, left the hut of the poor kahar with a feeling of hope, which he turned into fervent prayer. It was something that Gopal should think of his own soul and its state after death. It was something that he had listened with something like attention to the story of redeeming Love. When we see the first green blade rise from the ground which we have ploughed and sown, is it not as an earnest to us of the harvest which may one day be reaped?