CHAPTER XVISOOBOO
Itis not only to poor and outcast girls that the sight of the King of India brings joy. There are women in that land whose lives were happy and glad before they saw Him, who yet felt, whenever they knew Him, that there was nothing that could make up to them for missing His service.
Sooboo was one of these. She was a young girl of high caste in Madras. Her father was wealthy and honoured and she still stayed with him, though she was married, because, though she had all the honour that is given to a wife, her husband would never take her to his house. She had been born on a Friday and she was one of twin children, and because of these things she would bring ill-luck to her husband’s house if she entered it. She was very happy in her father’s house, and she gave her time to the worship of the gods. All day long she thought of them, and planned what she could do to show her reverence for them, and to win merit by deeds of devotion.
One of her plans was to build a temple and to have within it an image of herself bowing before her god, and the image and the god were both to be made of gold. She had charge of the household gods too, and she longed to learn to read in order that she might find out for herself from the oldest Indian writings—the Vedas—what the will of the gods really was, because different priests and teachers seemed to contradict each other, and she thought that if she could get away back to the sacred books she would know better how to worship.
She tried to find some Hindu woman who would teach her. But there was not one. There were Zenana missionaries, but her friends were terribly frightened to let them near her. “They will teach you this new religion about Jesus,” they said. But Sooboo was so eager to learn to read and so sure of her own faith in the Hindu gods that she said, “What they teach me about that will go in at one ear and out at the other.” Sooboo had said “that.” She meant the religion of the foreigners. She did not know that the Christians had a real living King whom they knew and obeyed. She thought they had just another set of rules about life and stories of gods who could be worshipped but who sat apart and had no care for the men and women who served them.
When she saw the King of India she knew Him to be her King, and the thought of Him entered deep into her heart. At first she hoped that she might stay at home and win her father and the others there to serve Christ too. His service was so wonderful toher, so different from the worship of the idols and so immensely better, that she could not believe that those she loved so well, and whom she honoured, would not serve Him too if they could only see Him.
But she did not know how fiercely her family hated the religion of the foreigner. They tried every way they could to make her yield, and when their pleading and their caresses failed, they began to ill-use her. But she did not flinch. She only thought she must be patient and wait till those whom she loved saw Jesus Christ for themselves. But one night she heard an awful thing. She heard that her people were planning to send her away to a far distant city to make her a priestess in an idol temple there. She knew too well that if they took her there, she would be forced to worship the god and to take part in rites that were hateful to her, or else to die. She had been willing to bear pain and unkindness in the hope that she might win her friends to Christ, but she could not yield to this. So one night she left her father’s house and reached the home of the missionaries in safety. She would not yield to the entreaties of her friends who came to seek her, though she still loved them, and they could not force her to go back, for she was old enough to be free by law to decide for herself.
You remember the golden image of Sooboo that was being made to stand in the Hindu temple. There was another image made of Sooboo now. It was not made of gold, and it was large—as large as Sooboo herself. When it was finished it was not set up in a temple.It was laid on a stretcher like a dead body, and carried through the streets of Madras and Sooboo’s father and brothers wailed out as they carried it, “Sooboo is dead!” “Sooboo is dead!” And Sooboo listened as they passed along. She heard the voices of those she loved wailing out this terrible dirge, and in her misery she covered her ears with her hands.
The image of Sooboo was burned on the funeral pyre as if it had really been Sooboo; and what followed after was even more terrible for the girl, for she heard that her mother, who had always been so much cared for, and had enjoyed the comfort and luxury of a wealthy home, and who had lived away from the sight of all except those of her own family, had taken the ashes of the image of Sooboo and had started out on foot to beg her way to the Ganges and throw the ashes on its waters. No one knew so well as Sooboo how great her mother’s love for her was, when it could make her venture out into the unknown land to walk, in poverty, hundreds of miles, in order, if possible, to win forgiveness for her child. How she longed to fly to comfort her mother. But that could only be by denying her King!
Sooboo had a pilgrimage of her own to make, for she carried the devotion that had made her plan how she could best serve the gods into her service of the King. Her pilgrimage took her into the villages and the Zenanas round Madras that she might help the women of her land to see the King of India. And ever when the sight of a funeral made her think of that awful wail “Sooboo is dead,” or when some agedpilgrim brought back the thought of her mother’s weary steps over the burning roads of India, she turned to her own pilgrimage more eagerly, that she might hasten the time when India would know that it was life and not death to find the King, and when its peoples would crowd to Him, instead of to the Ganges.
For there is something about the King of India that makes men and women who have really seen Him feel that there is nothing so great as to serve Him, and nothing so kind as to help some one else to see Him too.
But this King of India is the King of all the world, and He still asks those who have seen Him to help Him in His kingdom. The boys and girls in India to-day could win all their land for Him if they only knew Him. But the boys and girls in Christian lands must help, for even those who are far away have their part to do. Long ago if a boy wished to be a knight he began by serving a knight. Christ the King needs many knights to ride for Him in India, to redress wrong, to save the sad and dying and the sinful; but He needs others to be servants of the knights, and each boy and girl can find something to do to help the knights of the King of India.