“Their Royal Highnesses’ thanks for your prayers and sympathy.”

It had thus already been seen that The General’s plans for India were answering their purpose.  It became possible first to march large parties through various tracts of country, so impressing thousands in a few days more than the isolated labours of the best individuals could have done in the course of years, and then it came to learn later from Officers placed amongst them.  All this The General knew could not mean all that it would have meant amongst peoples who understood more perfectly our teachings; but he saw no reason for not making the most of such incidents.  Why not abandon, so far as such people were concerned, our system elsewhere, and recognise them as “Adherents,” leaving them to learn after, from Officers placed amongst them, all that was necessary for them to become Salvation Soldiers.  By this plan we avoided any watering-down of our teachings or requirements, and yet those who were not fit to be enrolled in our ranks were able, so far as they chose, to abandon idolatry and every evil practice, to get the advantages of Christian schooling for their children, and generally to improve themselves, under our influence.

Famines, epidemics of cholera and plague, and other general calamities really helped us to increase our influence in various districts.  We gathered many orphans and abandoned children and brought them up as our own, whilst over wide tracts of country the people learnt to look upon us as a family of “brothers born for adversity,” whose help could be relied upon not merely with regard to heavenly but to earthly things.

The barriers of caste, which bind Indians to treat each other to so large an extent as if they were enemies are naturally a constant and serious hindrance to us, especially as most of our people naturally belong to the lower castes, or are even outcasts.  And our plan of organisation has helped us wonderfully in this matter, for the villager of Guzerat, or Ceylon, who might be very greatly hampered amongst his own natural surroundings, may be placed in an infinitely better position in some other part of the country.  Indians are marvellously quick at learning languages, so that we need seldom hesitate about their usefulness in any new appointment on account of difference of language.

And thus it has come about that we have already, after some thirty years’ work, nearly 2,000 Indian Officers, as absolutely devoted to the service of Christ as any of their comrades of any other land.  And the forces under their command have shown already that they can deal effectively with peoples utterly inaccessible to the ordinary Europeans.

The Bheels, when we first went amongst them, were all armed with bows and arrows, living entirely by the chase, and so terrified at any sign of officialism that our Officers had to avoid taking a scrap of paper with them when visiting their districts.  But we have now many Bheel villages entirely under our teaching, and quite a number of Bheel Officers who have learnt to read their own language, and to lead their countrymen as fully to follow Christ as they do themselves.