The prayer of the outcast in India. ― “O God, we are hungry for love; we want someone to love us.”
The vision of the dying Missionary. ―He had worked for seven or eight years among the heathen with apparently little result. Dying, he cried: “I see the temples falling; I see the idols creaking; I see my Lord Jesus crowned King.”
An Outcast’s Cry to God
At the annual meeting of the Church Missionary Society, the Rev. W. P. Hares, Punjab, in describing a crowd in an Indian village, said: “A missionary was trying to show the people something of the wonderful love of the Father, and he explained how God Himself, the very nature of God, was love, and that the love of God embraced both the Englishman and the Punjaber, that it embraced not only the Mussulman and Brahmin, but also the poor outcast; and he described the wonderful love of the Son, in that for the sake of the poor ryot He had come into the world to give His life for him, and that now He was sympathizing, now loving, now helping the poor outcast. His whole subject was love-God is Love—and then he turned to one old man and said, ‘Baboo, will you now close the meeting with prayer?’ All heads were bowed, and then slowly, and with strong emotion, the prayer went up: ‘O God, we are hungry for love; we want Someone to love us.’ And that is the cry of the outcast to the Christian Church today. ‘We want Someone to love us.’ And they have sought that love in Hinduism, and because they are outcasts Hinduism will have nothing to do with them. They have sought for it in Mahomedanism, and Mahomedanism has given them no welcome. And now, with outstretched, pleading hands they have come to the Christian Church, asking for love, asking to be given a chance, and God knows how urgently they need it.”