Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/434

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424
THE LAND OF THE VEDA.

his was the name in which every thing was done, and when they look at him and realize it all their feelings get the better of them, and they feel like flying at him and revenging their wrongs upon him, so we have to protect him.” Yes, I saw it all; and the bitter remembrance of the cruel deaths of some precious friends of my own at Bareilly, and elsewhere, seven months before, banished all sympathy for this guilty author of their sufferings. In response to some remark which I made to this effect, I saw the blood mount to the cheek of the soldier as, drawing back his hand in which was the bayonet, he said, with deep feeling, “Yes, sir, it would give me the greatest satisfaction to put this through the old rascal!” The honest earnestness of the man provoked a smile; and I thought, what would Sir Thomas Roe—England's first Embassador to this Court—say, could he rise from the dead, and, after all the reverence he paid here to “the divinity which hedged” these gorgeous kings, hear a common soldier of his nation express his disgust at having to act the jailer over the Great Mogul!

A day or two previously my friend, Rev. J. S. Woodside, Missionary of the American Presbyterian Church, was here. He went to see the Emperor, and took the opportunity of conversing with him about Christianity. The old man assented to the general excellence of the Gospel, but stoutly declared that it was abrogated by the Koran—as Moses and the law were abolished by Christ and the Gospel—so, he argued, Mohammed and the Koran had superseded Christ and every previous revelation. Brother Woodside calmly, but firmly, told him that, so far from this being the case, Mohammed was an impostor and the Koran a lie; and that unless he repented and believed in Christ, and Christ alone, without doubt he must perish in his sins. He then proceeded to enforce upon his bigoted hearer the only Gospel sermon which he had ever heard. And Brother Woodside was the very man to utter it. Was not his Church entitled to that privilege by the sacrifice of the precious lives of four of their Missionaries at Futtyghur, as mentioned on page 151?

It was a just and significant providence that in such a moment,