BY • HELEN 
 
LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. 
 
 BV 3269 .F84 D93 1903 
 
 Dyer, Helen S. 
 
 A life for God in India 
 
A Life for God in India 
 
%^ Ai^ fiCcJ^ 
 
A Life for God in 
 India 
 
 Memorials of Mrs Jennie Fuller ^^ . «^ «. 
 
 of Akola and Bombay f^ ^^r 
 
 APR i.^' 1924 
 
 By 
 
 ^ 
 
 Helen S. Dyer 
 
 Author of 
 Pandita Ramabai ; the Story of her Life ; &c. 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London Edinburgh 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Introductory 9 
 
 Mrs Jennie Fuller : a consecrated life. Her husband's testi- 
 mony. 
 
 CHAPTER I / 
 
 Links in a Chain of Blessing ..... 13 
 
 Unevangelised India three decades ago. The vastness of its 
 need. How God used William Taylor. The planting of new- 
 missions. The province of Berar. Ellichpur. A day of prayer. 
 A speedy answer. Albert Norton's faith work. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Called and Qualified for a Missionary Career 21 
 
 Jennie Frow. A sister's reminiscences of early days. Conflict 
 of soul, and call to India. College life at Oberlin. Leadings in 
 faith. Sent forth. Mr Finney's influence. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Steps in Faith and Answers to Prayer . . 33 
 
 Arrival in India. Welcome to Berar. Her missionary appren- 
 ticeship. Famine orphans. Hearts regenerated in answer to 
 prayer. How the children learned to pray. The beggars' service. 
 A blind convert. Chikalda experiences. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Miss Frow Becomes Mrs Fuller .... 41 
 
 Return to America and marriage. Second journey Eastward, 
 Stay in London. Dr Boardman's teaching. Providential 
 openings and supplies. Voyage to India. Notes of travel. A 
 delightful reception. Filled with praise and thanksgiving. 
 Shanti's testimony. 
 
 5 
 
6 Table of Contents 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Busy Years in Akola 57 
 
 Branching out. New work at Akola. Preservation from 
 danger. The "dog question" settled in answer to prayer. Test- 
 ings and trials. Family cares. The Everlasting Arms, a blessed 
 reality. Orphanage work. Industrial training. Kunwadi. The 
 Opium Traffic's "dirty shillings" refused. Foundation of 
 Eurasian orphan work. Miss Helen Dawlly. New helpers and 
 added cares. Miss Carrie Bates. Prayer and promises concern- 
 ing enlargement. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 A Widening Sphere 73 
 
 Return to America in 1890. A trying voyage. A hard lesson 
 well-learned. A home in America. The dress question. The 
 brown bonnet. The Christian Alliance. Missionary volunteers. 
 Reinforcements for Berar. Mr and Mrs Fuller chosen as leaders. 
 Two bands led forth. The baby's cap lining. Louisa Ranfs 
 death. Welcome meetings in Bombay. A new inflow of spiritual 
 life. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Extension and Language Difficulties . , 87 
 
 The life of faith. A change of method only. Workers and 
 stations multiplied. Parallel extension by another mission. 
 Gujarat and Khandeish occupied. Language difficulties. Miss 
 Olmstead's estimate of Marathi. Mrs Fuller's experience of 
 difficulties cleared by the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Burden of the Lord. More Prayer for 
 
 Missions ........ 95 
 
 Mrs Fuller's prayer life. Growing conviction of the possibilities 
 of prayer. Her message to the home churches in 1694. Con- 
 ventions and camp meetings. Prayer for Indian Christians. 
 Removal to Bombay. Open air work prior to the plague. 
 Persecution and retribution. Little Jean. The Lord's healing. 
 
Table of Contents 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PAGH 
 
 Travel and Bereavement ..... 105 
 
 In journeyings oft. The spring of victory. The Konkan. 
 Among Syrian Christians in Travancore. A strange foreboding. 
 Jean's question. Preparations for furlough. Jean's sickness. 
 The folded lamb. Anchored on the Word of God. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 The Time of India's Trouble . . . .115 
 
 Mrs Fuller in America. Enlisting sympathy for the famine 
 stricken. Famine orphans. The story of Chandur : A hard field ; 
 an opening made ; conversion of an opium slave ; famine relief; 
 baptism of eight converts. Thanksgiving Day in America ; how 
 the turkey was provided. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Literary Work in America and India . . 129 
 
 A facile pen. " God's Care." Return to India. Th^ Bombay 
 Guardian. "The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood." Parents 
 and children. The money element in mission work. Pandita 
 Ramabai. Her own experience. A desk from the Lord. Public 
 activity in Bombay. A vision awaiting fulfilment. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Through Dark Days to Everlasting Life . 139 
 
 Recurrence of famine. Gujarat and Berar involved. Mrs 
 Fuller's pen active on behalf of the sufferers. Water famine at 
 Khamgaon. A copious supply in answer to prayer. Plans for 
 help. Incidents in Gujarat. Trouble in Bombay. Miss Park's 
 removal by small-pox. Al ast and weighty message. Cholera at 
 Khamgaon. Mrs Fuller stricken. A weary thirteen weeks of 
 hopes and fears. Taken Home. Tributes to her memory from 
 the Bombay Y.M.C.A., a Brahmin pandit, and a non-Christian 
 editor. 
 
Table of Contents 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Testimonies from Far and Near . • . i53 
 
 Letters from missionaries in India. From other friends in 
 India and in Western lands, including Bishop Thoburn and 
 Editor of New York Christian Herald. 
 
 II 
 
 From Missionaries of the Christian Alliance 163 
 
 Mrs Jessie Simmons. Mrs Carrie Bates Rogers. Mrs Martha 
 Ramsey. Mrs Blanche Hamilton. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In Memoriam 173 
 
 Tributes from Hattie L. Bruce and Alice D. Home. 
 IV 
 
 Covenant Promises to Parents . • • • 180 
 
 A Bible Reading by Mrs Fuller. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 This little book does not claim to be a 
 biography. It is but a simple attempt to 
 gather up the threads of a life lived for God, 
 and to show how He glorified Himself thereby. 
 It claims to show how a life offered, con- 
 secrated, and accepted for the King's service, 
 fitted into His plans for mission work in India, 
 and became a factor in the extension of the 
 knowledge of God over an entire province. It 
 claims to show also how God used this life to 
 edify and extend His Church on earth, and to 
 lift individual Christian souls into higher aims 
 of service ; to inspire the home churches with 
 missionary zeal, and rouse them to a sense of 
 their responsibility in regard to prayer for 
 missions. 
 
 Our subject, Mrs Jennie Fuller, was a living, 
 loving personality, who gave out to others as 
 freely as God gave to her. In discussing a 
 missionary biography with a literary friend a 
 few weeks before the close of her life on earth, 
 Mrs Fuller remarked, " No one can write a bio- 
 graphy of me when I am gone. I have kept no 
 diary, and my letters for several years have 
 been but notes, except to my children." But 
 
lo Introductory 
 
 though Mrs Fuller kept no diary and wrote 
 few letters, she had for some years realised 
 that God had given her many experiences of 
 His love and favour, that she might give them 
 out to others. She loved to magnify His 
 name with her pen, and thus, perhaps un- 
 consciously to herself, she wrote much of her 
 own life story. She loved hard lessons in 
 order that she might thereby be qualified to 
 teach others, and she rejoiced to pass on sweet 
 thoughts that God gave her. From various 
 sources these have been collected, and in this 
 book, it may be said, " She being dead, yet 
 speaketh." 
 
 " HER HUSBAND ALSO, AND HE PRAISETH 
 HER." 
 
 In supplying a few notes and connecting 
 links for this story, Mr Fuller puts a good 
 testimony on record concerning her. He 
 writes : " I realise that Mrs Fuller's life was 
 a very precious legacy for her children and 
 for all of us who knew her. There was so 
 much of God in it. He did much for and 
 in her, and that made it possible for Him to 
 do much through her. There were the years 
 of quiet toil before we joined the Alliance 
 when she was so hungry to know the fulness 
 of the Spirit, and even then there was 
 a measure of the Spirit which made her a 
 blessing to many. But God saw the deep 
 desire to know Him, and in a remarkable 
 
Introductory 1 1 
 
 degree He granted that desire. She was so 
 genuine, and longed to be rather than appear to 
 be filled with the Spirit. She had unusual 
 natural gifts which she so fully gave to God 
 that He could use them for His glory. 
 
 " The depth and strength of her convictions 
 and her sincere purpose to be true to all the 
 light which God had given her were very 
 noticeable points in her character. She was 
 one of the truest souls I have ever known. 
 She was a woman of prayer, and when she 
 felt clear in her guidance her opinions were of 
 great value. When perplexed over matters, 
 she would wait on God for weeks for light, 
 and when she found it she had a gift of 
 imparting it to others. She had by nature 
 unusual gifts as a teacher, and these gifts were 
 consecrated to God and illuminated and in- 
 tensified by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 
 God often helped her to make truth very 
 plain to the simple native Christians by illus- 
 trations and incidents. 
 
 " She loved her friends very deeply, and 
 naturally longed to please them, but her 
 loyalty to Christ made her very faithful in 
 dealing with them, and she was willing to be 
 misunderstood or even for a time to forfeit a 
 friend's approval rather than be disloyal to 
 Christ and the truth which He had made plain 
 to her. I lived with her for nineteen years, 
 and as I look back over those years I realise 
 
12 Introductory 
 
 that God gave me for a wife one of the best 
 women I have ever known." 
 
 Testimonies of others of her friends have 
 been gathered into the Appendix, which will 
 be found not the least interesting and in- 
 spiring portion of this volume. That the 
 Lord will use the book for spiritual refresh- 
 ment and blessing is the chief desire of its 
 compiler. 
 
 Helen S. Dyer. 
 
 Aldington, Kent. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 LINKS IN A CHAIN OF BLESSING 
 
 "Ask of Me and I shall give thee the heathen 
 for thine inheritance" 
 
 Pens more graphic than that of the present 
 writer have endeavoured to depict in ways that 
 should arrest attention, and compel thought, 
 the vastness of the need of unevangelised 
 countries ; the fewness of the workers, and the 
 immensity of the field. 
 
 The last three decades of the nineteenth 
 century have seen a rapid development of mis- 
 sionary enterprise in India. Thirty years ago 
 a large part of Central India was entirely with- 
 out evangelistic effort. Mission stations were 
 few and far apart. There was mission work 
 in Bombay, Nagpur, Jabalpur and Allahabad, 
 a leap of some hundreds of miles from station 
 to station, and between — darkness. The beau- 
 tiful valley of the Nerbudda, and the equally 
 fertile province of Berar, with the Satpura hills 
 -between, had no missionary. Each of these 
 contains numerous cities with swarming popu- 
 lations, and myriads of villages. It is marvel- 
 
14 A Life for God in India 
 
 lous to see how God has worked in covering 
 these spiritually destitute tracts of country with 
 spirit-filled workers. 
 
 In the early seventies God sent William 
 Taylor (of Californian fame) to India. In the 
 space of from two to three years he was used 
 to convert scores of the English-speaking popu- 
 lation in the large cities. These converts 
 formed themselves into Methodist churches in 
 Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Lucknow, and else- 
 where, and from the ranks of these converted 
 Europeans, Eurasians and Indians, many grand 
 gospel workers have been furnished. They 
 and their children form the backbone of many 
 Christian communities in India to-day. 
 
 The vastness of the field, and the scarcity of 
 labourers, impressed deeply the heart of William 
 Taylor. He sent an urgent call to America 
 for men to come out to India as self-supporting 
 missionaries. The call was heard. A small 
 band of rugged, but consecrated, Christians 
 responded. Some arrived in time to par- 
 ticipate in the closing scenes of William 
 Taylor's campaign ; others came to help carry 
 on the work after he had left the country. 
 Some settled as pastors of the churches of 
 English-speaking people alluded to, and en- 
 deavoured, with the aid of their flock, to open 
 out Native Mission work. Others went out 
 into the jungle straight to the heathen. Some 
 of these stalwarts are still in the field, some 
 
A Life for God in India 15 
 
 have retired, others have passed over the line 
 from work to reward. It is impossible to esti- 
 mate too highly the courage and self-denying 
 toil of these pioneer labourers. The planting 
 of the Gospel in Western India owes much to 
 their zeal. 
 
 From that date there has been a continual 
 series of developments. In less than ten years 
 a number of new missions had been planted, 
 many of them small in their inception, at first 
 feeble and seemingly insignificant, but they 
 were planted in faith, took root, and spread, 
 and covered large tracts of the country hitherto 
 unclaimed for Christ. One lone Englishwoman 
 with a concern to be useful to the women of 
 India was the frail plant which has grown into 
 the Friends' Foreign Mission in the Nerbudda 
 Valley, with its occupation of the important 
 towns of Hoshangabad, Sohagpur, Seoni Malwa 
 and Itarsi, with its large orphanages and indus- 
 trial enterprises, and encouraging village settle- 
 ments. The Swedish Mission has located in 
 other towns on the borders. But it is of 
 Berar, and the marvellous planting of the 
 Gospel on that virgin soil, with which our 
 narrative has to do. 
 
 In the cool season a trip through Berar is 
 most enjoyable. It is a small compact pro- 
 vince joined to Hyderabad State on the west 
 and south, and to the Central Provinces on the 
 north and east. It formerly belonged to the 
 
1 6 A Life for God in India 
 
 Nizam of Hyderabad, but was assigned to 
 the British Government by negotiation. The 
 country is particularly well cultivated, and it is 
 a pretty sight to pass by the cotton fields ripe 
 for picking ; the women, in their picturesque 
 red or blue sarees^ working away, and piling 
 the cotton into little snow-like heaps as they 
 gather it from the bushes. At the same time 
 the jowari harvest is going on. Jowari is a 
 tall'growing corn, with a large bunchy head. 
 It is cheiper than wheat, and more commonly 
 used in the country where it grows. The fields 
 of linseed, with their bright blue blossoms ; the 
 yellow mustard, also grown for its oil ; and the 
 frequent herds of cattle, all diversify the scene, 
 and indicate comfort and prosperity. Such is 
 Berar in non-famine days. 
 
 One of the most attractive stations in Berar 
 is Ellichpur. It is well wooded with shade 
 trees and clumps of bamboos, and is bounded 
 on the north by a fine range of hills, the Sat- 
 p'lras. On one of these is situated Chikalda, 
 a beautiful hot weather retreat, about twenty 
 miles from Ellichpur. A prominent object on 
 another hill brow is the fortress of Gawilgarh. 
 One hundred years ago (in 1802) this was 
 stormed by the British army. The Mussul- 
 mans who were defending it believed it to be 
 impregnable, but finding the foe was breaking 
 through their walls, they turned, killed their 
 women and children, and themselves escaped 
 
A Life for God in India 17 
 
 by an underground passage down a narrow 
 defile. For many years Ellichpur was a depot 
 for British soldiers, but has for some years 
 now been garrisoned only by a small force of 
 Native infantry. It has an English church and 
 cemetery, but very few resident English-speaking 
 families. 
 
 It was in Ellichpur, nearly thirty years ago, 
 that the seed of the movement was first planted 
 that has now covered Berar with a network of 
 mission stations. How much of this steady 
 extension has been the result of earnest believ- 
 ing prayer may never be known, but we believe 
 that hundreds of workers have been prayed 
 into the mission field in direct answer to the 
 command of the Saviour (Matt. ix. 38). Here 
 and there we meet with a reminiscence, and 
 catch a glimpse of hearts burdened with 
 prayers, which have afterwards been most 
 preciously answered. It was so in this case. 
 
 Colonel G. W. Oldham, a Christian officer 
 in the Government Engineering Department, 
 then resident in Bombay, but now spending an 
 honoured old age in London, writes : — 
 
 "In 1874 I was stationed in India, and at 
 Christmas I went up to Ellichpur, in the north 
 of the province of Berar, to spend Christmas 
 with my wife. On New Year's Day we were 
 cast down in spirit, because there was no 
 messenger of the Lord caring for the people 
 there. We spent nearly the whole of the day 
 
1 8 A Life for God in India 
 
 in prayer, asking God to send someone to work 
 in EUichpur, which is thirty-two miles from the 
 nearest railway station, and therefore quite out 
 of the world. 
 
 " Ten days afterwards I was returning to 
 Bombay, and when I got to the railway station 
 at Amraoti, the first man I saw was Albert 
 Norton, an American, who had come to India 
 in connection with William Taylor's mission. 
 I asked him what he did there, and he replied : 
 * I am thinking of starting work at EUichpur.' 
 
 " ' Praise God,' I said, ' I did not think my 
 prayer was to be answered so soon.' " 
 
 Mr Norton began his mission work in a 
 very humble way, trusting in God to lead him 
 forward. The money that enabled him to 
 start for EUichpur was a remittance from Bul- 
 garia of eighty-seven rupees from a friend who 
 had heard of his call to India, and was partly 
 subscribed by quite poor people. He resolved 
 to live very humbly, and at first boarded in a 
 native hut. As news of his work and the 
 wonderfully open doors in a needy field reached 
 his circle in America, others were drawn to 
 join him, and one to become his wife, who has 
 ever since been his faithful co-worker in all his 
 labours for the Lord. In the course of time 
 they had a family of six sons, and as Col. 
 Oldham testifies, "they led a wonderful life in 
 India. And just as wonderfully were they 
 fed as Elijah by the ravens. Sometimes an 
 
A Life for God in India 19 
 
 official sent them food, sometimes a native 
 gentleman sent a basket of vegetables. Some- 
 times a note came from England or America 
 with money, but they never knew where the 
 money was to come from. And as the result 
 of this one man's faith, over one hundred 
 workers for the Lord have subsequently gone 
 out to India." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CALLED AND QUALIFIED FOR A MISSIONARY 
 CAREER 
 
 " That our daughters may be as corner stones^ 
 polished after the similitude of a palace!^ 
 
 Among the earliest to respond to Mr Norton's 
 call for fellow - labourers was Miss Jennie 
 Frow, afterwards Mrs M. B. Fuller, whose life 
 forms the subject of this volume. She was 
 born in Winchester, Adam's County, Ohio, 
 December 1 6th, 1 8 5 i, the third daughter of Mr 
 and Mrs John Frow of that city. A brief 
 story of her early days has been tenderly out- 
 lined by her surviving sister, Mrs Margaret 
 Donaldson, of Tavarez, Florida, who writes : — 
 " Our Jennie, the baby of the household, for 
 nine years had no clouds to darken a happy 
 care-free childhood. But at that age, when 
 most needed, the life of a tender Christian 
 mother went out, and the home and hearts of 
 father and children were left desolate. Life 
 went on with the accumulating interests of the 
 years, when Jennie's education, at the age of 
 sixteen, fitted her for the office of teacher. 
 
22 A Life for God in India 
 
 She performed her duties with scrupulous con- 
 scientiousness, and made for herself a reputa- 
 tion as an instructor and disciplinarian which 
 secured for her situations of trust and responsi- 
 bility. During this period Jennie had much 
 to bear, but the trials of life finally brought 
 her to God. 
 
 " At the age of nineteen she studied farther 
 at the Normal School at Lebanon, Ohio, in 
 preparation for what she then thought would 
 be her life work. In these years, while deal- 
 ing with the hearts and minds of the young 
 under her care, the Lord by His Spirit was 
 dealing with her soul, and she was brought 
 into a deeper Christian experience where she 
 could hear His voice calling her to Gospel 
 service in the ' regions beyond.' The conflict 
 that this implied in her mind was the secret 
 with her sister Margaret, who rejoiced with 
 her when victory came and she was enabled to 
 say ' Yes,' to the Lord. From this time the 
 whole plan of Jennie's life was changed, and 
 the first step of preparation was her going to 
 Oberlin, Ohio, to enter college for a literary 
 course. This was in 1873. 
 
 " From infancy her eyes spoke the language 
 of her heart, and the buoyancy of her spirits in 
 childhood and early womanhood, as well as 
 after great burdens came into her life, brought 
 joy to all about her. Her keen sense of 
 humour and kindly spirit embellished by God's 
 
A Life for God in India 23 
 
 grace made her a congenial companion. Her 
 love of the beautiful and of good cheer were 
 inherent qualities which grace only intensified ; 
 even when her soul went through deep waters 
 the sunshine of her spirit would beautify the 
 clouds. 
 
 " As a daughter she was loyal, as a sister 
 unselfish and loving. Words fail me to tell 
 what she was to me. While I'm glad to-day 
 in her gladness, yet there are times when the 
 world seems very empty without her. Her 
 ministry of love will not fail me in life, and 
 will go on to life eternal. The whole secret 
 of her fruitful life came from her love of the 
 truth, and the joy of the indwelling CHRIST. 
 Her true, transparent soul would have nothing 
 but the truth, and while one's pen could bring 
 out much that would seem like eulogy, we 
 know she would say ' Not unto us, not unto 
 us, O Lord, but unto Thy name give glory.' 
 
 " After entering college the enemy made a 
 great fight to defeat the purpose to which she 
 was so clearly called. But God was faithful, 
 the battle was His, not hers, and she was 
 compassed about with songs of deliverance, 
 and never after questioned God's leading. 
 From this time forward she followed every 
 step, however difficult or seemingly impossible, 
 in simple childlike faith. The fruit of her 
 consecration and trust touched many lives for 
 blessing." 
 
24 A Life for God in India 
 
 It was in the closing years of the life 
 of that great and good man, who made 
 Oberlin famous as an evangelical centre, 
 Charles G. Finney, that Jennie Frow joined 
 the college as a student. In a letter to her 
 sister Margaret, written at that time, she 
 mentions her first glimpse of Mr Finney, and 
 of the promised pleasure of an interview. 
 The same letter gives bright and chatty 
 details of her life in college, but breaks off in 
 the middle with the remark : " I do not think 
 of anything particular for the future now, only 
 His glory. If it is His will for me to take 
 a college course here He will open the way. 
 If not I am 
 
 * Content to fill a little space 
 IfThou be glorified.'" 
 
 Although the future was then hid from her 
 eyes, the spirit of entire consecration to God's 
 service, which led her out into the mission 
 field, was already at work in her heart. The 
 Lord was teaching her many things, and she 
 was anxious to lead her much loved sister out 
 into the fuller experiences of consecration and 
 sanctification which she was pressing into her- 
 self An indication this of one of the most 
 necessary qualifications for service. Miss 
 Jennie obeyed the command : " Go home to 
 thy friends and tell them how great things 
 the Lord hath done for thee" (Mark v. 19). 
 
A Life for God in India 25 
 
 The enemy of souls tempted her for this, and 
 warned her against writing home so much of 
 her experience lest she should not " hold out." 
 But she based her experience on the Word 
 of God — another life-long characteristic and 
 sound qualification for the mission field. 
 " These temptations," she says, " caused me 
 to tremble at first, but now I know much 
 that Jesus is able to do : — 
 
 Able to succour them that are tempted.— Heb. ii. 18. 
 
 Able to make me stand. — Rom. xiv. 4. 
 
 Able to do more than I can ask or think. — Eph. iii. 20. 
 
 Able to keep all I have committed to Him. — 2 Tim. i. 12. 
 
 Able to build me up. — Acts xx. 32. 
 
 Able to keep me from falling. — Jude i. 24. 
 
 Able to subdue all things unto Himself. — Phil. iii. 21. 
 
 All this ! and then Jesus asks, * Believe ye 
 that I am able to do this ? ' How can the 
 answer be other than, ' Yea, Lord ! ' " 
 
 She then goes on to explain to her sister 
 the beautiful simplicity of the way of holiness 
 as follows : — 
 
 " I do realise that Jesus saves me just 
 now. ... To enter this way the first step 
 is an entire consecration to the Lord. Laying 
 ourselves on the altar, our reputation (willing 
 to be called fools for Christ's sake), our time, 
 talent, influence, tongue, loved ones, will, 
 everything must be laid on the altar. That 
 is all the part we have in the work. Con- 
 secration immediately precedes sanctification, 
 
7.6 A Life for God in India 
 
 and ever after accompanies it. Faith is the 
 only condition of sanctification. Faith to 
 beheve God has promised it in His word ; 
 faith that He is able to perform ; faith that 
 He is willing, and that He does do it just 
 now. 
 
 " Oh, it is nothing but believing that the 
 past has had one glorious atonement made 
 upon the Cross, so complete, and I had 
 nothing to do with it — all done by the Son 
 of God, and believing that the shed blood 
 does cleanse from sin ; believing also that 
 God has taken your will as you laid it on 
 the altar, you have nothing but His will, you 
 leave the future in His hands, looking to Him 
 moment by moment, believing that He does 
 save you, for He is able to save to the utter- 
 most. 
 
 " Satan will tempt you ; but, Maggie dear, 
 don't stop to argue with him, but flee right 
 to Christ, saying, ' He is able to succour.' 
 You can usually defeat Satan with a passage 
 of Scripture, but if not enough, say ' Glory to 
 the Lamb ! ' for the devil cannot bear to hear 
 His name. Satan is making grand struggles 
 for my soul, but Jesus saves me just now." 
 
 In the light of her after life and service for 
 the Lord, it is beautiful to trace how wonder- 
 fully He was leading and qualifying this dear 
 child of His for future usefulness in the 
 mission field. Satan always makes strong 
 
A Life for God in India 27 
 
 fight for souls whom the Lord destines to use 
 greatly in His service, but the measure of the 
 fight is the measure of the victory, and leads 
 up to the point of being able to help others 
 that are tempted. 
 
 This same leading is manifest also in another 
 aspect in her early life. The following she 
 says did much to teach her how to trust the 
 Lord for greater things :- - 
 
 " I had been a Christian less than three 
 years, when one summer, with a journey before 
 me, I was resting in a village in Ohio. The 
 seven dollars necessary for my railway fare I 
 put on one side in my purse, and in one way 
 and another I spent all the money I had 
 remaining. As I was retiring for the night, 
 with my trunk packed, and expecting the 
 omnibus to call for me in the forenoon, the 
 thought occurred to me that I had better count 
 that money and see if it were all right. I did 
 so, and, to my dismay, found it some cents 
 short. I racked my memory in vain to re- 
 member where I had spent it, or what had 
 become of it. I felt I could not tell any one 
 of my difficulty, and how was I to leave in the 
 morning with not enough money to pay my 
 fare ? Then, like many Christians, I began to 
 worry. After a long time I fell asleep, and on 
 awaking in the morning my difficulty like a 
 cloud came upon me. It occurred to me to 
 tell God all about it, and in so doing I had 
 
28 A Life for God in India 
 
 peace and quietness. In about half an hour I 
 heard a rap at my door, and on opening it, 
 found a gentleman there who handed me the 
 exact sum, twenty-three cents. I asked him 
 why he did it. He replied that one day in an 
 emergency he had borrowed it of me, and had 
 forgotten all about it until a little while ago. 
 I had forgotten it, too, but God had not, and 
 when I cried unto Him He delivered me by 
 reminding this brother of that sum. But my 
 story is not yet finished. In departing a 
 friend, who was in poor circumstances, gave 
 me a dollar. I refused to take it, feeling hers 
 was the greater need, assuring her that I had 
 enough. But she urged it upon me saying : 
 ' You may need it to get something on the way.' 
 I took it reluctantly to please her, secretly 
 resolving in some way to return it. When I 
 reached the city I found to my astonishment 
 the fare was eight dollars instead of seven. 
 Had not this dear woman given me the dollar 
 I would have been alone in a great city without 
 enough money for the rest of my journey. 
 How God's care humbled me ! He not only 
 gave me the few cents I thought I needed, but 
 supplied a need which He alone foresaw, and 
 of which I was ignorant. It made a great 
 impression on my mind. How true it is that 
 He ' is able to do exceeding abundantly above 
 all that we ask or think ! ' " 
 
 Incidents such as this, which she loved to 
 
A Life for God in India 29 
 
 relate as evidences of God's care for His 
 children, encouraged Miss Frow to step out in 
 faith when the call came for wider service, and 
 it was revealed to her that her life was to be 
 given to God for India. 
 
 In the autumn of 1876 she was a member 
 of the Literary graduating class at Oberlin, 
 and was regarded as its best linguist. Her 
 intention had been to graduate and then de- 
 vote some time to teaching, until she should at 
 least pay the expense of her College course. 
 But at this juncture she was brought to face 
 the question whether it was the Lord's will for 
 her to leave her College course incomplete, 
 and go at once to India as a missionary. 
 
 Her reply was characteristic and prompt. 
 " I will pray about it. And I will ask God if 
 He wants me to go to India at this time, that 
 He will send money to pay what I am under 
 an obligation to refund for my education, and 
 enough also for my outfit and passage to 
 India ; but that if He does not want me to go 
 now, that He will withhold the money." 
 
 In a few weeks the Lord had sent her the 
 money, her own plans were broken off, and 
 her way made perfectly clear to go to India. 
 A part of the sacrifice no one knew but God. 
 But He knew and accepted her all as she laid 
 it on the altar, but afterwards returned the 
 blessing to her life in overflowing measure. 
 
 In the beautiful story she tells of her praying 
 
30 A Life for God in India 
 
 Irish friend, " Mary Ann," she relates that 
 when she received her marching orders for 
 India she was perplexed about leaving her 
 sister Margaret, who was much of an invalid. 
 Then in answer to prayer the Lord reminded 
 her of Mary Ann. " I can never forget when 
 asked if she would take my place and let me 
 go. We could give her no remuneration, only 
 a home, and the fact that she freed me to go. 
 She received it as the call of God." 
 
 Her sister Margaret writes recalling this 
 period : "When the time came in 1876 that 
 the Lord said ' go forward,' the cords of love 
 that bound Jennie to the hearts of her family 
 were drawn taut Ourpjed father held closely 
 to his youngest born, but the Lord in His 
 tender mercy spared him the pain of the separa- 
 tion by taking him to the heavenly mansions 
 just three weeks before she was to sail for 
 India. A dear brother and sister only were 
 left of the ties of the flesh to surrender. 
 Counting all things as nothing to follow the 
 excellency of God's will for her, the pain of 
 the good-bye lost its sting. To the sister 
 came such a vision of the honour the Lord 
 conferred upon her by calling her darling to 
 such a glorious service, that when the farewell 
 came the tears were stayed, and her heart said, 
 ' Nay, Lord, I will not give Thee a weeping 
 sacrifice.' In all the long years that followed, 
 when the great waters rolled between us there 
 
A Life for God in India 31 
 
 was never any desire to take the offering from 
 the altar." 
 
 Had Miss Frow applied, she could no doubt 
 have been sent to India under the auspices of 
 one of the large and established Missionary- 
 Boards. But her sympathies had been drawn 
 out towards the pioneer faith work of Albert 
 and Mary Norton at Ellichpur, and she felt 
 that the Lord was calling her to that place as 
 her future sphere of labour. She went out 
 with no pledge of support from any human 
 source, because she felt that thus her life would 
 tell more for Christ and His Kingdom. One 
 who knew her well at this time says that the 
 influence of Mr Finney may be traced in 
 this decision. He felt deeply that mission- 
 aries and preachers generally were handicapped 
 and without power from on high, because 
 they did not have faith to the extent of their 
 duty and privilege. Duncan Matheson said : 
 " Reality is the great thing ; I have always 
 sought reality." This was very true of our 
 sister. It was an axiomatic truth with her that 
 anything she might say would be of no weight 
 unless backed by her life. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 STEPS IN FAITH AND ANSWERS TO PRAYER 
 
 " Take this child, . . . nmse it for Me, and I 
 will give thee thy wages!' 
 
 Miss Frow arrived in India on January 4th, 
 1877. " The motto of her missionary life from 
 the beginning was, * Have faith in God.' She 
 seemed such a lonely little soul, but God was 
 with her." So writes a life-long friend who 
 met her for the first time when she landed, a 
 stranger in a strange land, on the shores of 
 India. Thus early indeed was Miss Frow's 
 name added to that roll of honour, which, 
 beginning in the eleventh of Hebrews, still 
 goes on receiving additions wherever God's 
 people step out in faith on His promises, in 
 answer to His call. Like Abraham, Miss 
 Frow went forth not knowing whither she 
 went. She landed in Bombay without friends 
 or promise of financial support ; without 
 special training for the mission field or know- 
 ledge of the country and people. 
 
 One seal of her call to India came to her on 
 the voyage. Among her fellow-passengers 
 c 33 
 
34 A Life for God in India 
 
 was a pilot of Rangoon harbour, an English 
 sea captain. He had been a hater of missions 
 and missionaries. But the gentleness and 
 Christlike character of our sister, who shone 
 for Jesus amid the discomforts of an ocean 
 voyage, touched his heart, and converted him 
 to a friend of missions. He afterwards cor- 
 responded with her and sent money for her 
 work. 
 
 Miss Frow received a warm welcome from 
 Mr and Mrs Norton. Mr Norton came to 
 Bombay to meet her and pilot her up to the 
 wilds of Berar. Her early missionary experi- 
 ences were not smooth, but they fitted her to 
 endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus 
 Christ. She needed the full assurance of her 
 call to India to enable her to hold on, and she 
 had it. Later on she was wont to remark that 
 the first two years in the field are always the 
 most trying and difficult, and generally decide 
 a young missionary's career. 
 
 Miss Frow served an apprenticeship of 
 three and a half years at Ellichpur, part of 
 the time with Mr and Mrs Norton, and part 
 with Mr and Mrs Sibley, who took up the 
 work there and enabled Mr Norton to branch 
 out into labour among the Kurkus, the hill 
 tribe inhabiting the southern slopes of the 
 Satpura hills. 
 
 The records that remain of those days are 
 meagre. Miss Frow gained a colloquial know- 
 
A Life for God in India 35 
 
 ledge of Hindustani and Marathi, and learned 
 to know and love the people. The usual 
 duties of preaching and visiting were carried 
 on side by side with the study of the language. 
 
 There was a severe famine in South India 
 in 1877-8. It was some two to three hundred 
 miles away from Berar, but Miss Frow's heart 
 was stirred on hearing of missionaries in the 
 affected district taking some of the orphans to 
 train for the Lord. She felt she would like 
 to have a share in such a blessed work. Mr 
 Sibley was going to Bombay, and he was 
 commissioned to meet Mr C. B. Ward of 
 Bellary/ and receive from him six orphan 
 girls and bring them back with him to Ellich- 
 pur. Mr Ward was gathering in large num- 
 bers of orphans in the Hyderabad country south 
 of Sholapur. He was willing to give the girls 
 but it was with some difficulty they were 
 persuaded to go, and were taken back the long 
 journey by road and rail to Ellichpur. 
 
 Most of them were mere skeletons, and it 
 required the greatest care and watchfulness to 
 save the lives of two or three of them. They 
 were like little Arabs for wildness, with no 
 conception of truth or honesty. In fact they 
 were so depraved that the first efforts to train 
 them seemed most discouraging. Finally, 
 after six months, the most trying one, and the 
 
 ^ Now of Yellandu and Bastor. Mr Ward was one of 
 William Taylor's stalwarts alluded to in Chapter I. 
 
^6 A Life for God in India 
 
 ringleader in mischief, came to Miss Frow and 
 expressed sorrow for her bad conduct. The 
 Spirit of God worked on their hearts and 
 brought them wonderfully to see that they 
 were sinners, and they all yielded themselves 
 to Jesus for salvation. 
 
 A few weeks later Miss Frow received a 
 letter from a Christian blacksmith in Ohio, 
 telling her that at a certain time he had spent 
 a whole evening in prayer to God for the 
 conversion of these children, and for a spiritual 
 uplift for her own soul. Miss Frow referred 
 to her diary, and found that it was the very 
 day that the first signs of penitence showed 
 themselves in the children. He told her to 
 take heart, for God had given him the assur- 
 ance that all would be saved. Truly the 
 uplift had come, and the incident was to Miss 
 Frow ever after a goodly illustration of the 
 text, " While they are yet speaking I will hear." 
 
 She had much cause to praise God for the 
 change wrought in the children. They became 
 truthful, asked for what they wanted instead 
 of stealing it, and began to be industrious and 
 obedient. 
 
 But there was one thing they did not seem 
 able to comprehend, and that was how to pray. 
 One little girl would kneel down and say over 
 and over, " Lord, make me a good girl ; Lord, 
 make me a good girl." Then she would say 
 " Amen," and think she had prayed. 
 
A Life for God in India '^^'^ 
 
 In the mission house was a beautiful Persian 
 cat which became the children's special pet. 
 One evening pussy was missing, and the 
 children were inconsolable ; they thought it 
 would be killed by a hyena or a jackal. 
 When they gathered for evening prayer, Miss 
 Frow proposed they should tell Jesus about 
 the lost pussy, and ask that, if in accord with 
 His will, it should be brought back safely. 
 This was something real and definite to their 
 minds, and they listened with a sort of awe. 
 
 Early in the morning a man appeared in 
 the compound with something white under 
 his arm. The girls saw it, and a shout went 
 up, " Oh, Mamma, God has heard prayer ; 
 pussy has come back." 
 
 Miss Frow rejoiced that God had used this 
 simple incident to teach them how to pray. 
 And especially that the thought that their 
 pet's return was an answer to prayer was 
 uppermost in their minds. From that time 
 they began to pray from their hearts. They 
 realised that God was a Person who heard and 
 knew and answered them, and it revealed to 
 them His love and willingness in giving them 
 back what was a great joy to them. 
 
 On a later occasion, when supplies ran short 
 for their support, all were gathered for prayer. 
 The eldest girl knelt and said : " O Lord, 
 the young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but 
 they that seek Thee shall never lack." And 
 
38 A Life for God in India 
 
 then followed with a simple petition that God 
 would supply their need, and He did. 
 
 A beggars' service was held on the verandah 
 of the Ellichpur mission house every Sunday. 
 This is a common institution in India. 
 Beggars of all sorts abound. There are the 
 maimed, halt, lame, blind, young and old. 
 It is easy to make known to this com- 
 munity that they are welcome at the mission 
 house at a certain hour each Sunday and 
 at no other time. And they come and listen 
 to the Gospel message week in and week 
 out, year after year, for the sake, in most 
 cases, of the cup of rice, or other grain, or the 
 small coin of money that is distributed to 
 each at the close. 
 
 Among those who attended this service at 
 Ellichpur was a blind boy, almost grown to 
 manhood, whose eager clutch at the reward 
 did not give much encouragement to hope 
 that the truth was entering his heart. He 
 would, however, frequently stand and listen to 
 the preaching in the bazaar, and one Sunday 
 presented himself, saying he desired to become 
 a Christian. The missionaries were surprised 
 that he had retained a knowledge of divine 
 things, and told him to come again in the 
 afternoon. He was there promptly, and told 
 them he had been to his relatives to tell them 
 he was going to become a Christian, and they 
 asked him if he was going to become a 
 
A Life for God in India 39 
 
 Christian for his stomach's sake. He said, " I 
 told them * Yes, for my stomach's sake,' for 
 what could they understand?" Immediately, 
 without any reproof from those present, he fell 
 down on his knees, and cried out, " O Lord, 
 save me from lying, and from all sin." He 
 gave further evidence that his heart was 
 genuinely touched, was baptised by the name 
 of Bartimeus, and became a useful worker. 
 
 A small bungalow was secured at Chikalda, 
 the little sanatorium on the hills, and formed 
 a welcome hot weather resort when the heat 
 in Ellichpur became too great. Going to 
 Chikalda did not mean any cessation of labour 
 for Miss Frow and her co-workers, they found 
 their work wherever they went, and testified 
 of the saving power of Jesus to the people 
 at Chikalda as they did at Ellichpur. 
 
 A scrap of Chikalda experience may come 
 in here, but as it has no date I do not know 
 exactly when to locate it. Miss Frow wrote : 
 " We have been very low in funds. Our box 
 from home of fruits, etc., has been such a 
 luxury and supplied all the lack of food we 
 could not buy. We have had some royal meals 
 out of that bean bag and the corn bag. 
 Neither are exhausted yet. The night the 
 money came which delivered us, one of the 
 girls said to me, * Mother, we will eat less.' 
 My heart was so touched, but that night's mail 
 brought twenty-four dollars from home. It is 
 
40 A Life for God in India 
 
 just wonderful how the dear Lord cares for us. 
 We are so far from all provisions up here — 
 eighteen miles — that even at the best our food 
 has not much variety. We have had splendid 
 success making tarts with the dried fruit after 
 your recipe. To-day some officer who has 
 been out hunting has sent us in a small leg 
 of venison, and a jungle fowl. 
 
 " Thus the dear Lord does set a table in the 
 wilderness. Oh why will men not put their 
 trust in Him ? ' The young lions do lack and 
 suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord 
 shall not want any good thing.' But strange to 
 say, my greatest faith text for daily bread is 
 this : ' Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and 
 His righteousness, and all these things shall 
 be added unto you.' " 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 MISS FROW BECOMES MRS FULLER 
 
 " / being in the way the Lord led me," 
 
 A SEVERE attack of jungle fever, followed by 
 a relapse of the same, made it imperative for 
 Miss Frow to seek a lengthened rest, and led 
 to her return to America in August, 1880. 
 
 At this time an acquaintance was renewed 
 which had been laid upon the altar on her call 
 and departure to India, with the result that 
 Miss Frow was united in marriage to Marcus 
 B. Fuller, an old friend and fellow student, 
 who was now prepared to devote his life also 
 to the service of God in India. The marriage 
 took place at her sister's home at Lodi, Ohio, 
 on April 6th, 1881. Early in 1882 Mr and 
 Mrs Fuller left America for England on their 
 way to India. 
 
 Mrs Fuller was unable during this furlough 
 to do so much as she desired in arousing 
 interest in India's needs, but in a quiet way was 
 made a blessing to many. In all her furloughs 
 home (says her sister) there was an eagerness 
 to return to the land of her adoption, and to 
 
 41 
 
42 A Life for God in India 
 
 her work there as a precious trust, put into 
 her hands, as she felt, by the King of Heaven. 
 
 It may seem incredible to some readers, 
 and to others intensely imprudent, for these 
 young people to start on their way to India 
 without sufficient means to complete the 
 journey. They met with opposition and dis- 
 couragement from home friends in taking this 
 course, but they saw before them the Lord 
 guiding and leading, and were content to 
 follow. Among the few letters which have 
 been preserved, some relate to this journey, and 
 we find that Mrs Fuller thoroughly enjoyed 
 the experience. She again proved the Lord's 
 care and gracious providing Hand, and praised 
 Him for so ordering their journey as to permit 
 them to enjoy several weeks in London and a 
 visit to Scotland also. Some passages from 
 these letters will help the story. 
 
 London, March gth, 1882. — "We spent two 
 weeks at Dr Boardman's, and then took a room 
 near by. We get our own breakfasts, and are 
 usually out for dinner and tea. Mark and I 
 enjoy being r.lone, a luxury we have not had 
 much since we have been married. I have 
 learned to love the Boardmans very much. 
 They have a meeting for holiness every Tues- 
 day. I do not think I ever attended a meeting 
 so profitable and so full of instruction. Since 
 Dr Boardman has published his book on heal- 
 ing by the prayer of faith, so many have 
 
A Life for God in India 43 
 
 written to him, and God uses him wonderfully 
 in this line of work. . . . Truly, as of old, ' I 
 am the Lord that healeth thee.' I understand 
 this faith as never before. . . . Oh, I realise, 
 as in all spiritual things, it is easy to get hold 
 of it theoretically, and not practise it. I was 
 taught a simple lesson by an old woman when 
 we were in Scotland. Mark had been preach- 
 ing, and when he came down from the pulpit 
 he saw this dear old woman with a bright face, 
 and he asked her if she were a Christian. ' Oh 
 yes,' she replied boldly. And her boldness led 
 Mark to suppose she had been one some time. 
 So he continued : ' How long have you been a 
 Christian ? ' ' Oh, just since you have been 
 preaching.' Wonderful decision of soul. She 
 saw the truth and grasped it at once. How 
 much we lose by not making a promise our 
 own the moment the Spirit illuminates it to 
 us. Oh, let us live up to the light we receive, 
 and make instant decision of soul as soon as 
 we see the truth. I saw I was to give my 
 body to Christ as His body. ' Therefore 
 glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, 
 which are Gods^ 
 
 " Our visit here has been such a blessing to 
 us. So many things have been made clear to 
 me. How kind the dear Lord has been. 
 There has one difficulty assailed me in my 
 spiritual life, and it is only this last year that 
 I have been coming out of it. It was throw- 
 
44 A Life for God in India 
 
 ing away my confidence. When I first became 
 a Christian, I would sin or my feelings would 
 go, and then the devil would whisper, 'You 
 can't be a Christian and feel this way, or do 
 this way. You are deceived.' I would listen 
 and say, ' That's so,' and throw away my con- 
 fidence, and for days and weeks be in darkness 
 and unhappy. Then I would have to come 
 back to the Lord and do the first works over 
 again. I did that many times, till I learned 
 Satan's device. Then, when the devil would say, 
 ' See here, you can't be a Christian,' instead of 
 throwing away all God had done for me, I 
 would reply, ' Well, if I am not a Christian, it 
 is high time I became one. I will get down 
 on my knees and become one.' That broke 
 the power of the devil there. Well, I ceased 
 to have any doubts as to my acceptance, when 
 the same snare would be spread for me 
 later on. 
 
 " I sought again and again for the baptism 
 of the Holy Spirit, and God gave it to me. 
 Then I would ask Him to make me more like 
 Himself To do this He would have to show 
 me what hindered, and the sight of some bit 
 of self in my heart would throw me into 
 despair. I would say, ' Could such a heart as 
 that have the baptism of the Holy Ghost ? ' 
 and away would go my confidence. Well, 
 darkness would be the result, until I came back 
 to Him. Perhaps it was some precious testi- 
 
A Life for God in India 45 
 
 mony or experience which was different from 
 mine, and I would say, * I have nothing like 
 that,' and away would go my confidence. Or 
 perhaps it was the experience of some one far 
 ahead of me, and in perfect despair I would 
 say, ' I can never attain to that,' and away 
 would go my confidence again. Over and 
 over I have done this, but now I have learned 
 to hold fast my confidence. If the Lord 
 shows me some bit of self in my heart, I have 
 learned to thank Him. How He must love 
 us to take such pains to let nothing remain 
 that hinders our very prayer to be like Him. 
 If some one is far ahead of me, He helps me 
 not to go into despair, but to thank Him for 
 the new light. He will bring us through in His 
 own way. ' Cast not away therefore your con- 
 fidence, which has great recompense of reward.' 
 I need patience to let the Lord mould me as 
 He will, not dictating to Him how to do it. I 
 have given up all hope of self to expect any- 
 thing from self, but to have all things in 
 Christ. ' Let us come boldly.' I have lost so 
 much by feeling I would not have this or that, 
 I was so unworthy. That is not true humility. 
 The Lord likes to have us bold. 
 
 " Once in India when some disapproved of 
 me, and I felt so downcast that maybe God 
 did too, I asked Him to give me just one 
 verse to show how He viewed me. Trembling 
 for fear it would be some condemnation, I 
 
46 A Life for God in India 
 
 went to the Bible and got these words : * He 
 that toucheth you toucheth the apple of His 
 eye.' I drew back ; I thought I must be mis- 
 taken. 1 could not think that I was the apple 
 of His eye. So I pled that He would speak 
 to me once more. Again were the same words 
 given me. But I could not believe it. I said, 
 * Dear Lord, don't be grieved with me. Try 
 me just once more, and I will not ask again.' 
 Again the third time I got the same words. 
 Oh, do let us take God at His word. It is 
 true we are unworthy, but He never expects 
 us to be worthy. We never can be, but it 
 grieves Him when we do not take Him at His 
 word. He does these things for us for His 
 own sake. 
 
 " The Spirit once revealed to me, as I was 
 feeling my prayers did not avail, that I was 
 secretly trying to recommend myself to God ; 
 that on account of my goodness or faithfulness 
 He would hear me. I started back. Oh ! I 
 came only in Jesus' name. The first petition 
 we learned at our mother's knee, ' for Jesus' 
 sake,' sometimes takes years for us to 
 know what it means. There can never be 
 any good thing in me. I have all things in 
 Christ. * All things are yours . . . and ye are 
 Christ's.' And I can only do through Him. 
 May the Lord find us thus empty that He can 
 work through us. . . . 
 
 " We have learned so much in our visiting 
 
A Life for God in India 47 
 
 time here. How precious it has been. Dear 
 Mark has always wanted to spend a few weeks 
 in England. If we had had the money to go 
 on direct to India we would have been on our 
 way. But God had better things in store for 
 us, and we have been detained. He keeps 
 adding to our store of passage money. I was 
 asked to speak at the Y.M.C.A. Rooms. When 
 I got through, a dear man, a Christian pub- 
 lisher, put a sovereign in my hand. Last 
 evening I went out with Mrs B. The gentle- 
 man of the house had said nothing to me, but 
 on hearing I was a missionary asked me what 
 Board I was under. I told him that we had no 
 pledged support. Without a word — God in- 
 clined his heart — he laid twenty shillings in 
 my hand. We went from there to a drawing- 
 room meeting. God helped me to speak, but 
 not concerning missions. We had only spent 
 a few pence for omnibus hire to get there, but 
 the friends made us take five shillings for 
 expenses. Mrs Boardman insisted on my having 
 the balance. 
 
 " I came home and found Mark, and laid it 
 little by little in the palm of his hand. He 
 retaliated by showing a letter which had con- 
 tained five pounds. The writer said it had 
 been sent her for a certain purpose which had 
 already been provided for, and so she had 
 great joy in sending it on to me. 
 
 " Thus God gives us our hire, and when He 
 
48 A Life for God in India 
 
 lifts the pillar of cloud and fire with the com- 
 mand ' Go forward/ we shall have enough and 
 to spare. When the fragments are measured 
 sometimes there are twelve baskets over. 
 
 " Mark said the other day at breakfast : 
 * We could not have felt that it was best for 
 us to stay so long, nor would our friends have 
 thought it a wise use of money, but God 
 managed it.' How truly they that trust in 
 Him are never confounded ! 
 
 " I want you to pray much for us and feel 
 it your work as much as if you were in the 
 field. I have had wondrous views of what God 
 wants to do at EUichpur. You and Mary Ann 
 can help us as if you were with us. Feel it 
 your work as well as ours." 
 
 London, March 20th. — " Dearest ones, we 
 are off for Bombay this week. We sail 
 Wednesday. The Lord has been indeed 
 good to us in letting us stay so long in 
 London. It has been so rich in blessing to our 
 souls. You will hear from us several times on 
 our way to Bombay. Hurrah ! I feel like a 
 bird. I can hardly wait to get there. * Thou 
 openest Thine hand and satisfiest the desire of 
 every living thing.' Have not we proved it 
 true ! We learn that Brother Sibley is expect- 
 ing to come to Bombay to meet us. Is not 
 that splendid ! " 
 
 N earing Port Said, s.s. Ancona, April 2,^d, 
 1882. — " You will see by our letter to N 
 
A Life for God in India 
 
 49 
 
 that up to within one day of Malta we had 
 very rough weather from Gibraltar. That last 
 day we felt was given us in answer to prayer. 
 ' He knoweth our frame.' We found our- 
 selves in Malta bright and early on Thursday 
 morning. The only young lady on board had 
 had her trunks left behind, and I agreed to go 
 ashore with her to procure clothing. It adds 
 to the interest of the place to know the Apostle 
 Paul was once here. On landing we were 
 besieged by men wanting to act as guides. 
 One man with a carriage followed us a long 
 way. He seemed to feel that we would lose 
 our way and be forced to take him. But he 
 did not know that we had the God of Jacob 
 with us. I lifted up my heart that we might 
 find some English person to speak to. Then 
 we sat to rest, for we were all tired out with 
 our climbing up the steep narrow street. As 
 we sat an English lady, dressed in black, 
 hurriedly passed us. I eagerly touched her 
 arm and she kindly directed us to the main 
 thoroughfare, to an English shop where we 
 could get what we wanted and the prices were 
 fixed. Once in the cool shop with a bona-fide 
 English girl to wait upon us, filled us with 
 gratitude. 
 
 " I cannot tell you how I enjoyed those 
 hours on land. The air so fragrant and 
 balmy ! Such flowers, beautiful roses, gera- 
 niums, heliotrope, pansies, etc., and orange 
 
50 A Life for God in India 
 
 trees bearing both blossoms and fruit. But 
 one o'clock was the hour set for sailing, and we 
 must get back to the ship, so leaving all the 
 beauty (which, like everything else, has its 
 alloy in beggars, etc.), we stepped into a little 
 boat and were rowed back with our hands 
 full of packages, rough baskets of oranges and 
 lemons and our flowers. And how tenderly 
 we have been shielded since. The sea has 
 been so smooth and there has been no rocking 
 until last evening and to-day. To-morrow 
 morning early we anchor at Port Said." 
 
 April A,th. — " We entered the Canal this 
 forenoon. . . . We are both so well. Some- 
 times I am a wonder to myself When I 
 think how I realised all this dimly by faith 
 when we began to get ready, I can see it 
 was God leading us, else we would never have 
 had the courage to go through all the opposi- 
 tion and discouragement we received. It is 
 nearly three months since we left you, and I 
 never spent such a blessed three months in 
 my life. We have learned so much; it has 
 been full of teaching. Oh, if I could sit down 
 by you and recount it all step by step it would 
 fill your heart full of praise too. Unbelief has 
 been the cause of all my spiritual troubles, and 
 of many temporal ones also. ' He is faithful 
 that promised.' " 
 
 Chikalda, May 2nd, 1882. — "When we 
 reached Aden and I realised we were less 
 
A Life for God in India 51 
 
 than a week's journey from India, it seemed 
 too good to be true. The last two nights on 
 ship-board I could not sleep well. My heart 
 was pressed so full. We landed on Tuesday, 
 April 1 8th, and Mark and I arose very early 
 that we might catch the first glimpse of land 
 — the land of our adoption. Soon we dis- 
 cerned it like a shadow upon the water. 
 Bolder and bolder it became until I could 
 distinguish the familiar parts of the harbour, 
 and soon the city itself lay stretched out before 
 us — Bombay. Yes, India. I could only offer 
 my life afresh to Him to use according to His 
 own purpose and glory in this dark land. 
 
 " How eagerly I watched the boats coming 
 off to the ship, to catch the glimpse of a 
 familiar face. Friends met friends ; but none 
 came for us, and I turned downstairs to my 
 cabin. Soon I heard my name, and there 
 stood Mr Mody, a converted Parsee, and now 
 a missionary in Bombay. To his greeting he 
 added the words, ' Mr Sibley is on deck with 
 your husband.' Soon we had each other by 
 the hand, and oh what memories of days 
 spent in work together at dear old Ellichpur 
 crowded in upon me. We were like three 
 little children. The tears were very near the 
 surface, and when we arrived at the home ot 
 Mr Mody how sweet it was to fall upon our 
 knees in praise and thanksgiving. We stayed 
 two days in Bombay getting our baggage off 
 
52 A Life for God in India 
 
 and other business attended to, and on Thurs- 
 day morning turned our faces Ellichpur-ward. 
 The heat in Bombay was great though tem- 
 pered by a dehcious sea-breeze, but we knew 
 our journey up country would not be thus 
 tempered. And yet how God did shield us. 
 It was a wonderful journey, which we will all 
 ever remember. We were from 8 A.M. Thurs- 
 day till 7.30 A.M. Friday reaching our railway 
 station. We stayed until evening in the 
 travellers' bungalow before venturing to start 
 for Ellichpur. 
 
 " Dear, faithful Abraham met us at the 
 station. At last we were on our way. The 
 journey grew shorter and shorter. Our hearts 
 were full. We had had nothing but mercies 
 all the way. Our God had encompassed us 
 about. As our wheels crushed the gravel 
 walk up to the door, first Mrs Sibley came 
 out, then all the girls and native Christians, 
 although it was only 2 A.M. In the morning 
 we had a thanksgiving service. 
 
 " I cannot tell you my emotions as I looked 
 into the faces of the dear native Christians 
 and remembered so vividly the days when we 
 toiled on alone, when the heavens seemed 
 brass, when we were as a sparrow on the 
 housetop, and now how God had enriched us ! 
 As I went about and saw the answered prayers, 
 how full of praise I became ! There was one 
 thing I had asked of God more than two years 
 
A Life for God in India $;^ 
 
 ago. I had had no intimation that it had ever 
 been answered, and yet here it was so richly 
 answered. How it taught me to wait upon 
 God. Then I wish you could have feU the 
 contrasts in the girls as I did. The wild 
 untutored children who came to us, and the 
 womanly girls with us now, it would do your 
 heart good. 
 
 " We are prone to call ourselves ' a little 
 mission,' and yet my deep conviction in coming 
 back after a twenty months' absence is this, 
 which I have said over and over to myself: 
 'This is a vine of His own planting.' 
 Pray much for the labourers and waterers. 
 
 "We came up to Chikalda in a few days 
 as the heat in Ellichpur was very great. The 
 Sabbath before we left we had a communion 
 service. Mark preached in English and Mr 
 Sibley addressed the native Christians in 
 Hindustani. This remembrance of His death 
 was never before so precious. It was a blessed 
 season to us all. What shall we render to 
 the Lord for all His benefits? We could do 
 nothing but give back our lives to Him to be 
 used as He wished. 
 
 " We had quite an experience getting up to 
 Chikalda, and Mark got his first taste of the 
 vicissitudes of Indian travel. I came in a palan- 
 quin, the others by the new road in the coach 
 with the children in a cart. Both had bad 
 bullocks, and the time they had with them! 
 
54 A Life for God in India 
 
 They expected to meet me here in the morning, 
 but were detained over until another night at the 
 halfway place. They had the keys and the 
 money. Everything was locked, but I 
 borrowed some food and got along nicely. 
 Our experiences in getting settled would make 
 you smile. Our water supply is a mile away, 
 and the leathern bag in which it is brought 
 burst, so that for a few days we were limited 
 to a very little water, and that had a bad 
 taste. We all took colds. The mat-man 
 who had agreed to cover our floors failed to 
 put in an appearance, but we finally got 
 settled, and our rooms, furnished with the gifts 
 of you dear ones, are a little home-like. . . . 
 
 " My days are full and busy. How I wish 
 you could see the girls, and how hard they 
 try to please. Shanti (Peace), the oldest girl, 
 is growing into such a beautiful Christian, and 
 is such a solid comfort and help to me, so 
 steady and trustworthy. She knows she is 
 dull, and how she seeks God's help to learn, 
 and how He gives it ! If you had been in the 
 native prayer meeting this afternoon, you 
 would have been touched by her testimony, as 
 we all were. Six heathen were present, and 
 listened attentively. 
 
 " Shanti said : ' Before I was a Christian, I 
 sinned without a care. I lied, stole, quarrelled, 
 etc., without any concern. I cannot do so 
 now. If I sin, I am so sad, and when I am 
 
A Life for God in India ^^ 
 
 victor over sin it is such joy.' That is a 
 meagre translation of her words, but she told 
 me afterwards of her struggle with God's 
 Spirit. ' He would tell me to speak ; then I 
 would question, Would it be proper to say this 
 before all ? But the Spirit would say in my 
 heart. Speak, speak ! And finally it came 
 that in refusing I would only incur more sin, 
 and I begged His help and power, and spoke.' 
 " I do so enjoy the Bible lesson with the 
 girls. We have the Life of Christ under 
 consideration, and it would do you good to 
 see them with their Bibles. We have eight 
 girls now with the baby. I do not know how 
 long we will be able to keep Tara, the new 
 girl, but she is ' a bud of promise,' and I hope 
 she has been given us for her good. I wish 
 you could see their sewing, it is really very 
 nice. They have so much to tell me, so the 
 sewing class is a very chatty hour. They 
 have improved so under Mrs Sibley's care." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 BUSY YEARS IN AKOLA 
 
 " Kept by the power of God through faith" 
 
 The spiritual destitution of Berar as a whole 
 pressed heavily upon the souls of the few 
 workers at Ellichpur. Much prayer was made 
 for this needy province, and before twelve 
 months had passed it was made clear to Mr 
 and Mrs Fuller that they should branch out 
 and open work for God in one of the other 
 large cities of Berar, where no flag for Christ 
 yet floated on the breeze. The Akola 
 district was chosen, and a few months passed 
 at the town of Akote, but a final settlement 
 was made at Akola, a town on the main line 
 of railway, about one day's journey nearer to 
 Bombay than Ellichpur. A graphic picture 
 of their experiences at this time comes from 
 Mrs Fuller's own pen : 
 
 " We were detained for a few months on 
 our way to our new station by a flooded 
 river, so we took rooms in a large Government 
 building in which were several families. Our 
 next door neighbour was the owner of three 
 
 57 
 
58 A Life for God in India 
 
 large powerful dogs. One of them had been 
 bitten by a mad dog, but, loth to part with it, 
 he refused to kill it, and as time passed, it 
 had been almost forgotten. 
 
 " One Saturday night, w^hile my husband 
 was suffering from fever, one of these dogs, 
 called * Fanny,' came in our back porch and 
 kept leaping over the chairs and table. It 
 kept us awake. I hunted the house over for 
 a large riding whip to give her a blow or two, 
 and thus, as I thought, teach her never to 
 come again. But I could not find it. It was 
 God's hidden care of me, and I knew it not. 
 So I opened the door and bade her go. Had 
 I struck her she might have leaped upon me. 
 How God covered me in the time of danger I 
 came afterwards to know. 
 
 " The next day, as we were preparing for 
 our weekly service, I heard my husband cry 
 out, * Shut the door at once, and call in the 
 servants. Fanny is mad, and has the M.'s 
 servant pinned down to the ground.' It 
 seemed hours, though only a few moments 
 elapsed, before a gun was fired ; the dog was 
 dead, and the poor man freed with an ugly 
 bite in his arm. We did all we could for him, 
 but he died from hydrophobia nearly two 
 months afterwards. It was a great shock to 
 me, though deeply touched with God's protect- 
 ing care. Truly He had covered us with His 
 feathers. 
 
A Life for God in India 59 
 
 " Not long afterwards we moved on to our 
 new station. The town was over-run with 
 half starved mangy dogs that no one owned or 
 cared for. They invaded our premises and 
 stole our fowls and everything they could get 
 at. My husband shot one or two that were 
 very troublesome, and one that was really mad. 
 Now an orthodox Hindu will not take the 
 life of anything, not even of an insect. In 
 their belief in the transmigration of souls, they 
 fear some deceased relative or friend might be 
 in the animal or insect, and it would be 
 murder. Pious Hindus take the greatest 
 precautions. A fine young man once, assum- 
 ing to be an enquirer, came to me to be taught 
 the Bible. He adroitly turned the conversa- 
 tion to the Ten Commandments. When we 
 reached ' Thou shalt not kill,' he attacked me 
 hotly with accusations of taking life. It was 
 evidently the sole object of his visit. 
 
 " Now this place we were living in was very 
 bigoted, and the fact that my husband shot 
 three dogs caused much talk. The devil took 
 advantage of it to break up almost every 
 open-air service. One evening my husband 
 came home heart-sick and weary, saying, * Oh ! 
 if God would deliver us from this dog question! ' 
 We knelt and committed the whole matter in 
 prayer to Him. In a short time deliverance 
 came through a most painful circumstance. 
 We were sent for to visit a man who was ill. 
 
6o A Life for God in India 
 
 My husband went and found it was hydro- 
 phobia, and it proved fatal. 
 
 " After all was over I went to the house 
 with a word of sympathy. He was a fine 
 young fellow of high caste and much beloved. 
 His caste men gathered around me, and one 
 old man said sadly, ' Madam, your husband is 
 right, he is right,' and a murmur of approval 
 ran through the crowd. The whole subject of 
 my husband taking life was dropped from that 
 day. And not only that, but if they suspected 
 a dog was mad, they would beg him to come 
 and shoot it." 
 
 In the years of their life at Akola, Mr and 
 Mrs Fuller followed the same lines of faith in 
 God for the supply of all their needs. One 
 who knew them well at this time says : " Their 
 life was not an easy one ; but like Israel of 
 old^ they were tested and prepared to lead 
 others in the way of faith. Making Akola 
 their headquarters, they itinerated in the 
 surrounding villages as well as preached the 
 Gospel in the native city, worked among the 
 educated natives, and testified to the Europeans 
 in Berar. 
 
 " Mrs Fuller had the gift of sympathy with 
 all classes of people. There was nothing 
 priggish or exclusive about her religion. She 
 took people as she found them, and met them 
 in their special circumstances of need. Children 
 
 ^ Deut. viii. 3 
 
A Life for God in India 61 
 
 were gathered in and cared for. Many workers 
 came to join their mission, but one of the trials 
 of this period was that few continued with 
 them, and Mrs Fuller learned by experience 
 the peculiar difficulties of union in faith 
 mission work. Instead of being exempt from 
 trial they seemed to pass through every kind 
 of trial that they might learn how to succour 
 others. As the years passed there did not 
 seem to be as much progress or so great 
 results as faith had led these devoted workers 
 to expect. In waiting upon God in prayer, 
 He sometimes gave wonderful visions of what 
 He was going to do — and still the vision 
 tarried. In the light of after years we can see 
 how all these experiences and preparation 
 were necessary to fit Mr and Mrs Fuller to be 
 leaders of that large band of missionaries of 
 the Alliance Mission which God was about to 
 lead forth from America. They became 
 thoroughly well versed in all branches of 
 missionary work and missionary trial, and 
 obtained a thorough knowledge of Marathi, to 
 the careful study of which Mrs Fuller attached 
 great importance." 
 
 During these years a little family was 
 growing up around them. The best of Mrs 
 Fuller's life was given to God and His service, 
 but next to that came her children. How she 
 loved them and watched over them and coveted 
 every permissible pleasure and indulgence for 
 
62 A Life for God in India 
 
 them. Any kindness shown to her children 
 always lived in her heart and called forth her 
 warmest gratitude. But griefs as well as joys 
 came with the children. Two sweet little girls, 
 Margaret and Faith, buds of promise, were 
 early taken to the heavenly home. 
 
 Besides the care of her little ones, a strenu- 
 ous part was taken by Mrs Fuller herself in 
 all the lines of work enumerated. When 
 Mr Fuller was absent itinerating in the 
 villages the burden of the Mission at Akola 
 rested on her frail shoulders. She has told 
 some pathetic stories of her life at this time. 
 For her there was no regular relief and change 
 as the hot season came round, such as is con- 
 sidered necessary for most Europeans who live 
 on the burning plains of India. For six years 
 she and her husband found it impossible to 
 take a journey together. But there came a 
 time when, after an illness, she was in a very 
 low bodily condition, tormented with neuralgia 
 and racked with pain and sleeplessness. She 
 says : " I needed a chan"ge of air, and to go to 
 the dentist's, but was too weak to take the 
 journey alone to Bombay with three little 
 children, so my husband accompanied us. I 
 can never tell anyone the luxury of that 
 journey — to have no care or responsibility ; 
 nothing to do but to let everything go into my 
 husband's hands, and rest ! If little Margaret 
 fretted, or was hungry, he soothed her. If 
 
A Life for God in India 6^ 
 
 the older children were restless, he restrained 
 them. When we changed trains late in the 
 evening I did not have to think of the luggage. 
 I did just what he told me to do, and he took 
 all the responsibility. How delicious the sense 
 of abandonment was ! I can never foget it. 
 Afterward a Voice said : 'If you would let all 
 your life and work go into My Hands, I would 
 take all the care and responsibility of every- 
 thing, and you might rest and be free.' Yes, 
 I understood it afresh. I could let go the 
 strain and push and care, and let the govern- 
 ment be upon His shoulder. I knew then 
 what it meant by ' casting all your care upon 
 Him, for He careth for you.' " 
 
 To the glory of God, and as an illustration 
 of how real the promises and comforts of His 
 love were made to her soul, she related the 
 above and other incidents. At another time 
 of prostration and weakness she was dreading 
 the approach of the hot season, which is also 
 the season of Hindu weddings — a season of 
 brass bands, torchlight processions, and general 
 noise and tumult, especially at night, to which 
 their house in the native city was peculiarly 
 exposed. She wrote : " As one procession 
 passed our door my courage failed. The 
 drumming seemed all on the top of my head, 
 and I felt I could never endure days of it. 
 Something said, ' You must get away from 
 here,' and not realising that it was temptation, 
 
04 A Life for God in India 
 
 I responded * Yes/ while my brain was busy 
 with plans of escape. Then these words came : 
 ' No, do not go away. These are God's cir- 
 cumstances. He is able to deliver you. 
 Underneath are the Everlasting Arms.' I 
 did just what I should have done at first, I 
 let go clinging to God, let go my fears and 
 just dropped down into the Everlasting Arms. 
 Oh, what rest ! I did not have far to drop, and 
 they felt so solid. . . . Not only did my heart 
 get rest and peace from its fears and anxiety, 
 in the willingness to let God care for my 
 surroundings, but He did not let that proces- 
 sion pass the house again. It was no longer 
 a theory — I knew how to drop into the Ever- 
 lasting Arms." 
 
 The orphanage work begun at Ellichpur with 
 the six famine orphans, as previously related, 
 was continued and augmented at Akola. Boys 
 as well as girls were received. Industrial works 
 were established under the care of James P. 
 Rogers, a skilled mechanic of American birth, 
 but descended from the English martyr, 
 " Master John Rogers " (as Foxe terms him), 
 who suffered for his faith in the days of 
 Queen Mary. These works were opened with 
 the view of training the boys in habits of 
 industry. They were thus among the pioneers 
 of Industrial Mission work, a subject which 
 the recent five years of famine has forced upon 
 Indian Missions generally. 
 
A Life for God in India 6$ 
 
 A product of the old plan of training 
 boys in mission schools was thus described 
 by another writer, after a trying experience 
 of attempting to get several youths of the 
 same class to engage in manual labour. 
 *' Yesu Das was sure he could preach, had 
 never been converted, could not cook, never 
 learned any sort of work, not strictly honest, 
 either in tongue or fingers — but a candidate 
 for the ministry of Jesus Christ ; self-assured 
 of his fitness for such work." 
 
 Mr and Mrs Fuller gave much thought to 
 this question, and to the whole future of the 
 Indian Christian Church with the view, so far 
 as their share of the problem was concerned, 
 of raising up a self-reliant, independent, self- 
 propagating Christian community. Visitors 
 to their workshop have been much struck 
 with the element of cheerful briskness and 
 sturdy independence that pervaded the place. 
 
 In 1883, Mr Fuller took into the orphanage 
 a boy named Kunwadi, the son of a Madras 
 cook, who had died in Akola. From the 
 school he graduated into the workshop, where 
 he became an expert carpenter, and after 
 a time foreman. He continued his studies 
 after leaving school, and applied his mind to 
 mechanical engineering. Three years ago a 
 public examination on this subject, open to 
 the Bombay Presidency, was held in Bombay. 
 Kunwadi went up for this, and out of a class 
 
66 A Life for God in India 
 
 of over thirty he passed second, only missing 
 one question in three days' examination. Six 
 high caste Brahmins, who had gone through a 
 Government Training College in Akola, went 
 up for the same examination. They were 
 arrayed in fine silk garments, while Kunwadi 
 went barefoot and plainly dressed. On meet- 
 ing him, these Brahmins asked Kunwadi what 
 /le was there for, and laughing at him told 
 him he would not pass, for what did he know, 
 being a Christian ? On the first day these six 
 Brahmins made a complete failure, while the 
 despised Christian went through successfully. 
 
 Kunwadi is not only a Christian in name, 
 but an earnest evangelist in his spare hours ; 
 and at the time of writing is in sole charge of 
 the workshops during Mr Rogers' absence on 
 furlough. 
 
 It is the practice of the majority of missions 
 in India to shape their school work to fit in 
 with the Government Education Code, place 
 the schools under Government inspection, and 
 thus obtain a grant in aid per capita of children 
 passed. The Akola Mission has always been 
 an exception to this. Part of the Government 
 revenue being raised by the opium and liquor 
 traffics, Mr and Mrs Fuller from the first felt 
 they could have no complicity with these evils 
 by taking Government money. When asked 
 why they refused a Government grant for their 
 industrial training school, Mr Fuller replied : 
 
A Life for God in India 67 
 
 " A dying Scotchman called his sons around 
 him, and told them what he had to leave them, 
 and how they should divide it among them- 
 selves. He then said : * My sons, it is not 
 much that I have accumulated for you, but 
 remember this, there is not a dirty shilling 
 among it ! ' There are too many * dirty shil- 
 lings ' in the revenue of the Government of India 
 for me to receive such money for God's work. I 
 would not receive a donation for our work from a 
 liquor or opium seller ; and as long as Govern- 
 ment continues to be the sole manufacturer 
 and wholesale dealer in opium, I will not 
 receive its money for our work. It is said that 
 Government must have the revenue. When I 
 visit the opium hells, the schools where men 
 are graduated into perdition, I say to myself, 
 * If Government must destroy men, soul and 
 body, for revenue, then / will lessen the need a 
 little by refusing the grant for our school!^ Mr 
 and Mrs Fuller were not solitary in this prac- 
 tical form of protest against a giant wrong, 
 but were in a very small minority. In mention- 
 ing it here, it is well to notice that though it 
 was yet the day of small things, sound founda- 
 tions were being laid for the future to build 
 upon. 
 
 Along with the native children taken by 
 Mrs Fuller into the orphanage were some of 
 Eurasian or semi-European parentage. It was 
 not possible to train the two classes together, 
 
68 A Life for God in India 
 
 so a separate department was opened for the 
 latter. Miss Helen F. Dawlly came out from 
 America to take charge of these children, and 
 took them entirely out of Mrs Fuller's hands. 
 Some time later the Anglo-Indian Orphanage 
 was removed to Poona as being a more healthy 
 place, with better educational advantages. Miss 
 Dawlly died in 1893. Others have built on 
 her foundation, and a large and successful 
 work among a most neglected class is now 
 being carried on, still on the same lines of 
 faith in God for supplies by which it was com- 
 menced by Mrs Fuller and continued by Miss 
 Dawlly. 
 
 Other helpers came but they had to get 
 acclimatised and to learn the language, and 
 still much of the burden of the work rested on 
 Mrs Fuller. Once the care of the orphanage 
 was left to her single-handed, through a 
 hot season, in which she had been expecting 
 to get a rest and change. Her co-worker, 
 who should have relieved her at this time, had 
 a most tempting offer of a sojourn in the hills. 
 In the generosity of her soul Mrs Fuller said 
 " Go." Though it cost her some conflict she 
 felt that God would have her remain in Akola. 
 Then Isa. xl. 29-31 was made very real to 
 her. Like a glad song it fell upon her ears, 
 " They shall run and not be weary, and they 
 shall walk and not faint." She said : " These 
 verses were translated into my life for that hot 
 
A Life for God in India 69 
 
 season. I arose in the strength they gave me, 
 and went about my work contentedly, praying 
 that at least a way might be prepared for my 
 husband to have his rest, knowing he would 
 not willingly leave me with all the added care. 
 A most unexpected matter of business called 
 him away for a week, and while gone a lovely 
 offer was made him to remain with a friend 
 we both loved, to study and assist in a work 
 with the educated classes. With much diffi- 
 culty he was persuaded to do this. The heat 
 was very great. The orphanage was not pro- 
 perly finished ; we had only one living room. 
 I conducted four Marathi services a week, and 
 had all the orphanage, with its endless petty 
 cares to see to. I studied with my pandit 
 one hour a day, and nursed a sick child for 
 two or three weeks night and day. 
 
 " And yet I did not mind the heat. It 
 often seemed as if a shadow rested on the 
 house protecting me, and when it was all over, 
 and they all came home, I could not see but 
 that I was as rested and refreshed as they. If 
 I had only learned then to abide in that 
 strength, how much it might have saved me ! " 
 
 In writing to her sister she mentions the 
 difficulty of getting support for the uninterest- 
 ing children in the orphanage, and says : " I 
 have for some unexplainable reason rebelled in- 
 wardly from writing letters praising up a child 
 to get money for its support. How many 
 
70 A Life for God in India 
 
 children at home do you know that you could 
 write a letter about that would satisfy the 
 public demand ? I wish friends at home loved 
 the Lord enough to be willing to send money 
 labelled ' For the support of an orphan child 
 to be trained for Christ.' ... I am afraid I 
 am sadly out of tune with the way work has 
 often had to be done, that must be stimu- 
 lated by something interesting instead of 
 downright love to Christ." This love of truth 
 and hatred of all shams was a very pronounced 
 feature in Mrs Fuller's character, and showed 
 itself in a variety of ways. 
 
 While the orphanage claimed so much of 
 her time and thought, her spirit was by no 
 means in bondage to her surroundings. She 
 took the world and its needs into her horizon 
 and brought all in prayer before the Throne. 
 In the same letter she writes : " My heart has 
 been much stirred of late, thinking over 
 Afghanistan, Beloochistan, and the places of 
 the earth still unopen to the Gospel. I wish I 
 could go to them and lift up Christ. I believe 
 the day is fast coming when God will do the 
 work of a thousand years in one day. Praise 
 His Name ! We kept the day of prayer for 
 missions, and it was a very sweet time to us. 
 We were much blessed in lifting up our hearts 
 for the dark places of the earth. The earth 
 seems very little and God's heart of love very 
 great, and the plan of redemption so ample. 
 
A Life for God in India 71 
 
 Oh for the time when the knowledge of the 
 Lord shall fill the earth." 
 
 Miss Carrie Bates (now Mrs Rogers), who 
 joined Mrs Fuller in 1889, became one of her 
 most faithful helpers. It was to Miss Bates' 
 care that Mrs Fuller entrusted the orphanage 
 and other work when in the autumn of 1890 
 she was able to leave India for a furlough to 
 the home land. Mrs Rogers writes : " I have 
 had an intimate acquaintance with Mrs Fuller 
 since the beginning of 1889. We have worked 
 together and shared our joys and sorrows. I 
 shall never cease to thank God for what she 
 has been to me. Her many deeds of kindness 
 come often before me. Many times have we 
 united in prayer for the work which always lay 
 so near her heart. 
 
 "During the rains of 1890 the subject of 
 enlargement was laid heavily upon our hearts, 
 and Mrs Fuller proposed our meeting together 
 every night for a week to unite in special 
 prayer for more workers. There were only 
 four of us at the time, and no human prospect 
 of any others joining us. But the Lord was 
 talking with us, and Mrs Fuller would quote 
 verse after verse that He had given her : ' En- 
 large the place of thy tent, and let them stretch 
 forth the curtains of thine habitations : spare 
 not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy 
 stakes ; for thou shalt break forth on the right 
 hand and on the left ; and thy seed shall inherit 
 
72 A Life for God in India 
 
 the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be 
 inhabited,' Isa. liv. 2, 3. 'Produce your cause, 
 saith the Lord ; bring forth your strong 
 reasons ; saith the King of Jacob,' Isa. xli. 
 21. ' Concerning the work of My hands com- 
 mand ye Me,' Isa. xlv. 1 1 ; and many othei 
 passages. That fall she went to America with 
 her two children, her heart full of zeal and 
 enthusiasm for the enlargement of the work. 
 She passed through many testings and dark 
 places, but never surrendered her faith, and 
 God honoured her in it." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 A WIDENING SPHERE 
 
 " With my staff I passed over this Jordan^ and 
 now I am become two bands'' 
 
 Almost every incident that Mrs Fuller's own 
 pen has recorded, whether concerning her own 
 life or that of others, has been of soul-deal- 
 ing with God, answers to prayers, or lessons 
 learned in the school of Christ. Of her visit to 
 America in 1890-92, a visit fraught with im- 
 portant consequences to herself and others, as 
 well as to her field of labour in India, she has 
 left several such incidents on record. 
 
 I have stated that Mrs Fuller welcomed hard 
 lessons that she might thereby be fitted to teach 
 others. She said that " the only way to be able 
 to sow the incorruptible seed of the Word in 
 other hearts is to first have it made real to our- 
 selves in some time of need." On this voyage 
 to America some little time was spent visiting 
 friends in Scotland. It was late autumn, and 
 on inquiring for a passage to America, Mrs 
 Fuller was told by the agent that the larger 
 steamships were crowded at that season, and 
 
74 -^ Life for God in India 
 
 no berths obtainable. She was therefore induced 
 to take passage on a line of which she knew 
 nothing, although assured by the agent that it 
 was good and safe. The friend she was visiting 
 had misgivings about the ship chosen, but gave 
 her as a parting message : " Let everything that 
 hath breath praise the Lord." In a cloud of 
 rain and mist Mrs Fuller and her little ones 
 boarded the ship at Liverpool. She wrote : " A 
 more cheerless scene I had not faced for many 
 a day. The deck was wet and the steps were 
 muddy. I knew no one. The second-class 
 saloon was small and badly lighted, and the 
 stewards were careless. I wanted to sit down 
 and cry : but I did not. I saw no retreat out 
 of it, and how I was to endure until I reached 
 New York I did not know. Then there was 
 the added bitterness that my friend was right, 
 and that I had made a mistake. 
 
 " When we had passed Queenstown, the 
 wind increased and the waves arose. How 
 can I describe the days that followed ! The 
 storm grew in violence. We were ten days 
 getting to the banks of Newfoundland. Ropes 
 had to be stretched for the stewards and 
 men to hold as they walked about. The officers 
 said they had not encountered such a storm in 
 ten years. I could not stand, and there was 
 nothing to do but lie in my berth day after day. 
 The food was poor, and I could not eat. Every 
 
A Life for God in India 75 
 
 few minutes a great wave would crash against 
 the bow of the ship, break over the deck, and 
 come down the companion-way, and slush up 
 past my cabin door. 
 
 " How often the vision of my friend at the 
 carriage window saying, * Let everything that 
 hath breath praise the Lord,' came up before 
 me, and I was enabled to praise Him. But 
 the Word that held me was : ' God is faithful, 
 who will not suffer you to be tempted above 
 that ye are able ; but will with the temptation 
 make also the way to escape, that ye may be 
 able to endure it' (i Cor. x. 13, R.V.). Over 
 and over did it seem as if I could never endure 
 it. And God would reply : ' Ye shall not be 
 tempted above what ye are able to bear.' And 
 somehow I came to know that I should not be. 
 In every deep trial since, I know that it will 
 not be above what I am able to bear, and that 
 God will prepare a way to escape. 
 
 " When we reached the banks, and had out- 
 ridden the storm, and had glided into smooth 
 waters, how sweetly the words came to me : ' He 
 maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves 
 thereof are still. Then are they glad because 
 they be quiet' (Psalm cvii. 29, 30). Four days 
 more and we were anchored in New York. 
 
 " But so deep was the submission that God 
 wrought in my heart to His will in my circum- 
 stances in that never-to-be-forgotten voyage,that 
 
76 A Life for God in India 
 
 I felt I could go right back the same way if He 
 had asked me. 
 
 " How painful it is to hear God's children say : 
 * I will not bear this/ or ' I will not have it so,' 
 and make their own way of escape out of trial 
 or difficulty. They thus lose the discipline, and 
 often involve themselves in greater difficulties." 
 
 A few months after their arrival in America 
 another little daughter was born, and Mr Fuller 
 arrived to join them in the home land. Mrs 
 Fuller took a cottage at North Chili, in New 
 York State, and the family lived in the simplest 
 manner, she performing all her domestic duties, 
 and taking every opportunity to speak and write 
 for India and its needs. Especially was she 
 used among the students at the Free Methodist 
 College at North Chili, under the care of Pro- 
 fessor and Mrs Roberts. At conventions and 
 camp meetings deep impressions were created. 
 
 Mrs Fuller was always self-denying in her 
 dress. At one time in India there was con- 
 siderable discussion as to whether the adoption 
 of native dress by missionaries would or would 
 not help them to get more in touch with the 
 people, but Mrs Fuller thought it much more 
 of a cross to dress like a poor European than 
 to use the native dress. For missionaries to 
 wear native costume did not commend itself to 
 her mind and experience, although she sympa- 
 thised with the motive. 
 
A Life for God in India 77 
 
 Her simple dress was of course hopelessly 
 out of fashion in America. The hat she was 
 wearing, which passed well enough in India, 
 caused a good deal of comment among her 
 friends. Several times she essayed to buy a 
 new one, but the hats seemed so fantastic and 
 worldly she had no heart to buy. At one of 
 the conventions a lady offered to accompany 
 her to a shop and buy her a bonnet. " Some- 
 thing," she said, " restrained me that I had no 
 liberty to go with her, though I could give no 
 reason. Gradually the picture of a neat brown 
 straw bonnet formed itself in my mind, and I 
 often wished I might find one like it. After 
 the convention we settled for the winter in a 
 little village near a large city in Western New 
 York. It was but a short ride into this city, 
 where we did all our shopping. Soon after 
 this a friend and I spent a busy day shop- 
 ping, and just at the close she said : *I have 
 had five dollars given me to get you a bonnet, 
 come and let us see about it' Again I felt 
 the same shrinking and said : ' It is too late, it 
 is near train time ; we will attend to it another 
 day,' and as I spoke, my thought of a brown 
 bonnet came again to me and I timidly added, 
 ' I would like a brown straw bonnet.' My 
 friend laughed and said, * It is too late now to 
 get a straw bonnet. They are all out of 
 season.' 
 
78 A Life for God in India 
 
 " On reaching home I found some letters on 
 my table. In one of them was this paragraph : 
 ' We are sending what you left here, and in 
 the box we have put a brown straw bonnet, 
 which Mrs R has sent you.' 
 
 " When the box came we opened it with 
 great eagerness. There lay the bonnet. It 
 was very pretty and a perfect realisation of the 
 picture I had had. Never before or since have I 
 had such comfort in a bonnet. It was the Lord's 
 choice and provision for me. But above all was 
 the precious lesson of His care and thought. 
 Ever since, I have known in a deeper sense that 
 our Heavenly Father knoweth that we have 
 need of all these things, and that if we seek 
 His kingdom first that He does add these 
 things." 
 
 Since Mr and Mrs Fuller were in America 
 before, the Christian Alliance had been formed 
 under the leadership of Mr A. B. Simpson, of 
 New York, and had commenced to create a 
 strong missionary spirit among those who 
 were attracted to its teaching. The watchword 
 of the Alliance was the fourfold Gospel as 
 indicated by the following motto : 
 
 *' Jesus as Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer, 
 AND Coming King." 
 
 Mr and Mrs Fuller attended the conven- 
 tions of the Alliance and came in contact with 
 
A Life for God in India 79 
 
 its leaders. Before long the answer to their 
 prayers for enlargement seemed to loom in sight. 
 From the ranks of the Alliance, a band of 
 missionary volunteers was called forth. Here 
 were reinforcements for Berar, waiting a 
 leader. Here were Mr and Mrs Fuller, 
 trained and experienced missionaries, ready to 
 welcome them and capable of leading them 
 out and placing them in needy fields ripe for 
 labourers, long prayed for. 
 
 Mrs Carrie Bates Rogers, writing of how the 
 Lord raised up this large company of conse- 
 crated workers, says : " I have often thought of 
 Jacob's saying, * For with my staff I passed over 
 this Jordan, and now I am become two bands ' 
 (Gen. xxxii. 10). When Mr and Mrs Fuller 
 came out before, just one friend went to the 
 steamer to see them off. They had one trunk 
 and a satchel between them, and were obliged 
 to stop in England till the Lord sent them 
 more money to go on with. When they came 
 out in the autumn of 1892 they had literally 
 become two bands ; Mrs Fuller leaving a 
 month before her husband with seven new 
 missionaries (five ladies and a married couple, 
 Mr and Mrs Ramsey), and Mr Fuller coming 
 on later with another married couple and a 
 contingent of young men." 
 
 Evidently this new responsibility was not 
 accepted without much prayer and seeking to 
 
8o A Life for God in India 
 
 know the mind of the Lord with regard to it. 
 Mrs Fuller wrote concerning this period in 
 America : 
 
 " God often has to repeat our lessons. 
 After I had known rest of heart for a long 
 time, and had proclaimed it to many, I came 
 to circumstances where I had to make an 
 important decision wherein the welfare of 
 others depended upon what I chose. All un- 
 consciously I began bearing the burden of the 
 responsibility. I grew troubled and took up 
 the old habit of sighing as I went about my 
 work. It was a time when summer was 
 merging into autumn, and the weather was 
 often chill. I noticed as I took Baby Jean out 
 that her cap was thin, and I would resolve to 
 put a lining in it. But the resolve would be 
 soon forgotten as other perplexities pressed in 
 upon me. 
 
 " At last God spoke to my heart. One 
 morning I awoke as usual troubled and under 
 a cloud. I went down to the breakfast table 
 saying, ' Oh, if I only knew what God wanted,' 
 and hoping that the morning mail would bring 
 me some token of His will. 
 
 " The mail came but there was nothing for 
 me but a newspaper. With a feeling of dis- 
 appointment I opened it carelessly, when lo, 
 from the inside of the newspaper fell two soft, 
 wadded, China silk baby cap-linings ! What a 
 
A Life for God in Ind 
 
 la 
 
 halt there was in my soul ! I stood like one 
 God had rebuked. The rebuke was very real. 
 God seemed to say, ' Why are you so troubled ? 
 If I, with the government of worlds upon my 
 shoulders, can remember that your baby's cap 
 needs a lining and can provide for it, can you 
 not trust Me with your affairs ? ' How quickly 
 I rolled the government upon His shoulders, 
 and He did decide most wonderfully for us." 
 
 An incident must be related here which had 
 an influence in God's ordering in calling some 
 of these new missionaries into the field — a life 
 sacrifice that bore much fruit. When Mr 
 Fuller left Akola, an earnest young missionary 
 from Ellichpur, Louisa Ranf, joined Miss Bates at 
 Akola to assist in the work for a few months. 
 Like others of these pioneer missionaries she 
 also was much burdened in soul on account 
 of the unevangelised country all about. Miss 
 Ranf took charge of the boys in the orphanage 
 and was a fountain of strength to the work. 
 In November, 1891, she returned to Ellichpur 
 on a short visit. On a Sunday afternoon 
 she told her missionary friend at Ellichpur 
 that she felt God had some great purpose in 
 store for her, possibly to go to America and 
 rouse missionary interest in the home churches 
 for the great needs of India. When in prayer 
 together a little later, she cast herself on the 
 Lord in full consecration to fulfil His will, 
 
 F 
 
82 A Life for God in India 
 
 whatever it might cost her. That night she 
 with the other missionaries at the station went 
 to the English church at Ellichpur to attend 
 the evening service. She knelt down and 
 rising knocked her head against an oil lamp 
 which fell and speedily ignited her thin dress. 
 She was sadly burnt and died before midnight in 
 spite of all that could be done. "Ah," she said, as 
 she lay dying, " I know now what my prayer this 
 afternoon meant" She realised that God had 
 accepted the sacrifice and was taking her to 
 Himself She did not go to America to call 
 out a band of workers, but the story of her 
 consecrated life and almost martyr death did 
 go, and was used to stir the fire of consecration 
 in many hearts. I have myself met with several 
 who said it was her death which led them to 
 offer for India. Among them was one young 
 man in the contingent that came out with Mr 
 Fuller at this time. 
 
 Meetings to welcome these liberal reinforce- 
 ments for the mission field were held in 
 Bombay. Their advent seemed to bring a 
 breath of fresh life into Christian circles in 
 that city where they tarried for a few days 
 before proceeding to Akola. Mrs Fuller 
 especially seemed to have received a fresh 
 inflow of spiritual life. At the service at 
 the Grant Road Church on the Sabbath 
 evening after her arrival, she told some 
 
A Life for God in India S^ 
 
 of the experiences into which she had been 
 led. She said she had been for some time 
 in an unsatisfied condition, longing for an ex- 
 perience of holiness to which others testified, 
 but which she seemed unable to grasp. While 
 in this condition the words, " Christ in you, the 
 hope of glory," were brought with great power 
 to her soul. She saw then fully that Christ 
 must sanctify as well as save, and that the 
 power of an indwelling Christ was a grand 
 thing to preach to the heathen. She felt that 
 what the Lord wanted of His people was that 
 they should let everything go, swing loose, go 
 into bankruptcy of all their own strivings and 
 efforts, and let the Lord Jesus take entire 
 possession, speak through them, work through 
 them and love sinners through them. 
 
 The same thought more amplified is found 
 among her writings : " I was with some kind 
 friends who were wholly given up to the Lord. 
 During all my stay with them they never 
 seemed to weary in ministering to me that I 
 might have rest and comfort. I saw that I 
 shrank from the sacrifice that they made to 
 do it, and looking up queried : * Lord, if it is 
 right that they should do this, why do I shrink 
 from it ? ' 
 
 " The answer seemed to come back : ' Child, 
 you are wrong. You have your eye on them 
 and the sacrifice. These dear ones are wholly 
 
84 A Life for God in India 
 
 Mine. I can do through them what I please. 
 It has been I caring for you through them.' 
 I was filled with praise. I saw the possibili- 
 ties of * Christ in you ' as I had never done 
 before. It was not our imitating Jesus. It 
 was not trying to reproduce the life of Jesus ; 
 but it was our being an empty surrendered 
 temple for Jesus to dwell in, to repeat His own 
 life in us. 
 
 " Our part is to keep the channels open 
 and unobstructed. I saw how He would love 
 sinners through us, and draw us out after 
 them ; how He would minister to them 
 through us, and how He would pray through 
 us. After that it was no longer the cry of 
 my heart, ' Lord, help me to do this or that ; ' 
 
 * Lord, help me to speak ; ' and, ' How can I do 
 that ? ' But as I met each emergency, it was, 
 
 * Lord, do this through me ; ' or, ' Lord, speak 
 through me now,' and as I went to prayer I 
 would abandon myself to Him to give the 
 petition. 
 
 " I found, too, that Christ's presence in me 
 often spoke to others without a word from 
 me. Oh ! the possibilities of such an aban- 
 doned life to God ! Some of us have sweet 
 happy flashes of this life, and how like a bit 
 of heaven it is ! Some of us see it, yet do 
 not break away from old habits of thought 
 about our being a wonderful Christian, and 
 
A Life for God in India 85 
 
 that God is going to help us do a great 
 work. And so God can only work through 
 us in a limited way. Yet His thought for 
 us is that His life in us may be an abiding 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 EXTENSION AND LANGUAGE DIFFICULTIES 
 
 " Not by power ^ nor by might, but by My Spirit, 
 saith the Lord^ 
 
 In accepting the position of Superintendents of 
 the Alliance Mission in India, Mr and Mrs 
 Fuller changed the method, though not the 
 principle, of their life of faith. By the experi- 
 ence of the previous years they had proved 
 that God could provide a table in the wilder- 
 ness for those called to depend entirely on 
 Him ; and the basis arranged for the support 
 of the Alliance missionaries commended itself 
 to their experience and judgment, as a prac- 
 tical method of conducting a large work on the 
 faith principle. No salaries were guaranteed 
 to the workers, but a maintenance allowance 
 was fixed, to be sent out monthly as supplies 
 came in to the mission treasury in New York. 
 When less than the full amount was in hand, 
 allowances were to be paid in proportion. 
 Mr and Mrs Fuller took no larger allowances 
 than the most inexperienced recruit of the 
 mission, and whenever there was shortage all 
 
 shared alike. 
 
 87 
 
88 A Life for God in India 
 
 Other detachments of new workers followed 
 those who came out with Mr and Mrs Fuller, 
 till, in the course of a year or two, the numbers 
 swelled to fifty or sixty.^ Then the visions 
 of past years began to become realities. 
 Stations were opened in populous parts of 
 Berar, in centres for which workers had long 
 been prayed for, and also in the adjoining 
 territory of Khandeish, where the language 
 spoken was also Marathi. 
 
 Parallel with this gratifying increase, a similar 
 extension came to the work at Ellichpur and 
 the hill district beyond. After fifteen years of 
 hard, self-denying labour among the Kurkus 
 (whose language he reduced to writing) Albert 
 Norton 2 was invalided home to America in 
 1889. On his way thither he arranged for a 
 new missionary agency in connection with 
 Mrs Baxter's work at Bethshan, London, to 
 take over his field of labour. Its early mis- 
 sionaries were received and initiated by Mrs 
 Norton. After she joined her husband in 
 America, Mr and Mrs Ernest F. Ward ^ (who 
 had succeeded the Sibleys at Ellichpur) con- 
 tinued to help the new arrivals to settle in. 
 But later, as those sent out from England in- 
 creased in numbers and became acclimatised, 
 
 ^ In December, 1902, there were fifty-four missionaries on the 
 field in nineteen stations, and eighteen at home on furlough. 
 
 2 Now of the Boys' Christian Home, Dhond, Poona District. 
 
 ^ Working at present with "Vanguard Mission," Sanjan, 
 Gujarat. 
 
A Life for God in India 89 
 
 Mr and Mrs Ward left them in possession of 
 the whole district, with Ellichpur as head- 
 quarters. This mission is now well established 
 and is known as " The Kurku and Central 
 Indian Hill Mission." Thus while workers 
 from America were rapidly filling one part of 
 the province of Berar, English Christians 
 undertook the task of evangelising the other 
 part. 
 
 " It is a marvel to me, Brother Fuller," said 
 another experienced missionary whom he met 
 in Bombay, " that you have been able to locate 
 your men so quickly in all these places. We 
 always find it most difficult to get a footing 
 in a new place in our district, and when we 
 do get the prospect of a house or a piece of 
 land, the negotiations go on for months before 
 we can come to any definite arrangement with 
 these slippery land-owners. How have you 
 done it ? " 
 
 " I do not know," replied Mr Fuller, " except 
 that we make every step a matter of prayer, 
 and the Lord Himself goes before and opens 
 doors." 
 
 When the needs of Berar were fairly pro- 
 vided for, Mr Fuller prospected in Gujarat, 
 of which a large unmissioned district was 
 opened up, and one which proved most fruitful 
 and interesting as the birth-place of souls. 
 Success came earlier than on the Marathi field, 
 the people seemed easier to reach. 
 
90 A Life for God in India 
 
 In all the continuous labour and planning 
 which this work entailed, Mrs Fuller took her 
 full share. If she was found resting in the hot 
 weather, it was usually in a small house at 
 Igatpuri, with a colony of young missionaries 
 round her whom she was coaching in Marathi. 
 Over and over again have I heard those whom 
 she taught express their indebtedness to her 
 for their proficiency in the language, the men 
 as well as the women sharing her tuition. 
 
 Marathi is a beautiful and expressive 
 language, but is also correspondingly difficult 
 to acquire. A graphic account of the diffi- 
 culties of its study was written by one of the 
 ladies of the Alliance Mission, who was highly 
 educated, having occupied a good position in 
 a woman's college in America before offering 
 herself for mission work in India. This lady, 
 Miss M. Olmstead, said, " The language taxes 
 the memory severely. After you have learned 
 sixteen vowels and forty-eight consonants, 
 you may be pardoned for supposing that you 
 have the Marathi alphabet ; but this is a vain 
 hope. There are yet twelve vowel abbrevia- 
 tions and 1 3 i principal compound consonants. 
 It is an encouragement to know that these 207 
 characters make Marathi spelling very simple. 
 
 " Even to the Greek, Latin, and German 
 scholar, Marathi inflections bring surprise. 
 The noun has eight cases, the verb has four 
 different methods of agreement, and seventeen, 
 
A Life for God in India 91 
 
 yes seventeen tenses, besides numerous verbal 
 compounds. 
 
 " Marathi idioms are not only numerous, 
 but often difficult to understand. The expres- 
 sion, ' having drunk the milk, throw it away,' 
 means, * drink the milk all up.' * I sat watch- 
 ing his way,' is, * I sat waiting for him.' 
 'Making thought comes to my soul,' is the 
 Marathi way of saying, ' I can think.' When 
 you have learned to say ' goose ' and always 
 think ' rat,' to use ' mice ' for female buffalo, 
 and ' dude ' for milk, you are making progress, 
 but more than that is required. Your previous 
 notions of grammar must be sacrificed. You 
 must sometimes view the instrument as the 
 subject of the verb, and learn to say * By God 
 made created the world,' and ' God makes 
 love on me.' ... To learn Marathi easily, one 
 needs to be simple, childlike, teachable. One 
 needs the humility that is willing to learn 
 from anyone ; the unconsciousness of self that 
 can make blunders and be corrected. This is 
 the spirit so needful in entering the Kingdom 
 of God and receiving the life more abundant. 
 The study of Marathi is an admirable training 
 school for missionary labour." 
 
 It is not easy to realise the difficulties that 
 beset the path of the foreign missionary with 
 such a language to face ; and when it is 
 remembered that the people's conceptions of 
 God, of sin, the hereafter, etc., are so different 
 
92 A Life for God in India 
 
 from ours, the task of enlightening their minds 
 would seem overwhelming but for the enablings 
 of God's Holy Spirit. To encourage her 
 pupils Mrs Fuller told of a crisis in her experi- 
 ence when she was abundantly helped to make 
 her message clear. She said : 
 
 " In trying to lead our Christian people up 
 to a full consecration, I saw that with all I said, 
 they got no idea of a complete surrender to the 
 will of God. One Saturday I was much 
 burdened about it. I said to myself, ' Perhaps 
 I do not use the correct Marathi words to 
 express my thoughts.' I then prayed that I 
 might be led to use the right words. The 
 next morning, after an unusually good Sunday 
 school, my husband announced that we would 
 meet all who stayed for prayer. A number 
 stayed, and as we knelt in prayer they began 
 asking for the Holy Ghost. I felt they did 
 not understand the very first step of separation 
 and surrender. For a moment the old despair 
 seized me, over the meagreness of my Marathi, 
 but looking up to God, I broke in with the 
 following question, ' What is the difference 
 between a slave and a servant ? ' There were 
 various answers, but the sum of it was, that a 
 servant could remain in service or not, as he 
 chose ; but a slave was not supposed to have 
 any will but his master's. 
 
 " What was said was simple enough, and 
 but few words used, but the Spirit took the 
 
A Life for God in India 93 
 
 thought and multiplied it in their minds 
 marvellously. One young man broke out in 
 prayer, ' Lord, I've been Thy servant up to this 
 time ; I am Thy slave henceforward.' A 
 woman cried out, ' Lord, give me the seal of my 
 slave-ship, the Holy Ghost.' Another woman 
 said in prayer, * I've been a Christian a good 
 many years, but I have never understood like 
 this.' Then she followed this with a confession 
 to another sister that her husband had stolen 
 from her and she had covered it up. Two, 
 who had not been speaking to one another, 
 became reconciled. Some one then prayed in 
 the language of the beautiful figure of the 
 slave letting his master pierce his ear to the 
 doorpost, ' that we might go out of the Lord's 
 House no more for ever.' 
 
 " It was a wonderful meeting. Then the feed- 
 ing of the five thousand was unfolded to me 
 — Jesus bids us give this people to eat. Our 
 knowledge of the language is limited, is like 
 the five barley loaves and two fishes. Oh how 
 we have been made to feel our insufiliciency 
 before this great multitude ! But the Holy 
 Ghost can take our words, and multiply and 
 teach their meaning to those to whom we talk, 
 and carry it beyond our expectation in results. 
 Our sufficiency is of God." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE LORD : " MORE 
 PRAYER FOR MISSIONS" 
 
 " Always bearing about in the body the dying of 
 the Lord Jesus^ that the life also of Jesus 
 might be manifest in our body!' 
 
 It will be gathered by those who have 
 followed the narrative thus far, that prayer was 
 indeed Mrs Fuller's "vital breath." She 
 prayed at all times, and under all circum- 
 stances, and watched and waited for the 
 answers. She learned something of the value 
 of prayer from Mr Finney, whose lecture on 
 " prevailing prayer " was a trumpet call to 
 the Church in his day. She found another 
 example in one of her friends in America, 
 already referred to, a woman in humble life, 
 whom she spoke and wrote of, as her " praying 
 friend, Mary Ann." This woman lived a life of 
 constant intercession, and knew God as few of 
 His servants do. 
 
 But it was on the occasion of a journey to 
 America in 1894 that the importance of more 
 
 prayer for missions was deeply impressed on 
 
 95 
 
g6 A Life for God in India 
 
 Mrs Fuller's heart, and focussed itself in a 
 definite appeal to the Christians with whom 
 she met in conventions and camp meetings. 
 The object of her journey was some necessary- 
 consultation with the Board of the Alliance. 
 Mrs Fuller was only absent from India for a 
 few months, returning in the autumn with 
 reinforcements for the Mission. In speaking 
 about her journey on her return, she said she 
 had not gone weighted with any concern to 
 speak in public, nor with any burden of appeal 
 for men or money. But looking to the LORD 
 for guidance, she had been led out into work, 
 and everywhere, and at all times, she was 
 led to impress upon her hearers the great 
 and universal need of MORE PRAYER FOR 
 MISSIONS. 
 
 As she visited her old haunts in Northern 
 Ohio, and stood by the grave of the sainted 
 Finney, the same yearning desire filled her 
 soul that the old time spirit of prevailing 
 prayer might be revived. Addressing a con- 
 vention of the Christian Alliance, she told her 
 hearers : " God wants the prayer that reaches 
 up to heaven, and brings the blessing down to 
 earth. God wants you not to let go till the 
 work is done. Some day you will find that 
 God will charge the death of some missionary 
 and the small success of many a work to His 
 people at home. Remember our missionaries 
 are young and inexperienced. They have the 
 
A Life for God in India 97 
 
 difficulties of acquiring the language, a vitiated 
 moral atmosphere, and the power of Satan to 
 contend with. May God lay upon your hearts 
 the necessity of upholding them with your 
 prayers." This earnest advocacy bore fruit in 
 after years, and is still going on to bear fruit.^ 
 During this short furlough, Mrs Fuller received 
 the most marked infilling of the Spirit that 
 she had ever known, and from that time was 
 more used of God than ever before. 
 
 Another point upon which Mrs Fuller's 
 mind was much burdened at this time, and 
 indeed to the close of her life, was the condi- 
 tion and possibilities of the Indian Christian 
 Church. Speaking and writing on the necessity 
 of prayer, Mrs Fuller said : 
 
 " Pray that God will thrust forth native 
 labourers into the field. I feel this to be a 
 deeper need than more European helpers. 
 When I remember the history of this work in 
 India, how it was founded in prayer, how two 
 godly servants of Christ visited Ellichpur in 
 this province, and, seeing its destitution, they 
 spent New Year's day in prayer that God 
 would thrust forth labourers into this field, and 
 now He has called us all from all over the 
 world — we represent seven different nationali- 
 ties — and brought us here ; I am deeply 
 moved. When those friends prayed, many of 
 us were unconverted. So I am moved to pray 
 
 ^ See Letters, etc. in Appendix. 
 G 
 
98 A Life for God in India 
 
 for God to thrust forth an army of native 
 helpers with us, many of whom are possibly 
 now unconverted, but our God is able. The 
 limitations to a missionary, of climate, of 
 language, in being a foreigner, are great. One 
 of their own people, baptised with the Spirit, 
 must have greater possibilities than we. Pray 
 that God will pour out His Spirit on the 
 people, and that many may be prepared for 
 His coming." 
 
 How Mrs Fuller longed and prayed for the 
 deepening of spiritual life among the Indian 
 Christians ! ^ She never missed an opportunity 
 of influencing them, either as individuals or 
 as a community. When, in 1895, the head- 
 quarters of the Alliance Mission in India were 
 removed to Bombay, and Mr and Mrs Fuller 
 took up their residence in that city, Indian 
 Christians were continually flocking to her for 
 advice and sympathy. They were always 
 welcome to all the meetings at " Berachah " (as 
 the Home in Bombay is called), whether held 
 in English or Marathi, and many lives were 
 
 ^ This burden of prayer for Spirit baptised Christians to go 
 forth as evangeUsts to their own people was taken up by 
 others. May not the precious ingathering of souls which 
 followed the rescue of famine waifs be in part the answer to 
 these prayers ? God's ways are not our ways. In judgment 
 He sends pestilence and famine, but at the same time makes 
 the affliction bear precious fruit to His glory. Twenty-five 
 thousand waif children and widows were gathered in by 
 missionaries and others during the famines of 1897 -1 900. The 
 Gospel has had free course among these, and many are already 
 going forth to tell the good news of Salvation. 
 
A Life for God in India 99 
 
 brightened, and homes transformed, through 
 her tender sympathy and loving counsel. 
 
 Here in Bombay Mrs Fuller's life was, if 
 possible, more busy than ever. Their large 
 house was continually filled with missionaries 
 coming and going, besides several always in 
 residence, studying the language, and carrying 
 on work in the city. 
 
 It may have occurred to some that the 
 Alliance was not needed in Bombay, where 
 several large and important missionary societies 
 had been established for many years. But it 
 has been felt that God had a purpose in send- 
 ing these new missionaries into the city at that 
 time. Their immediate reason for taking a 
 house in Bombay was the necessity of central 
 headquarters ; Bombay being conveniently situ- 
 ated between Berar and Gujarat, Mr and Mrs 
 Fuller could more efficiently conduct the affairs 
 of the Mission, and journey quickly to either 
 place as needed. 
 
 Most of the missions already in the city had 
 large educational work on their hands, and 
 comparatively little attention was given to 
 aggressive evangelistic effort. After mission- 
 aries had laboured in the city for seventy-five 
 years, statistics showed that (in 1888) there 
 were less than one thousand Protestant Indian 
 Christians, including children.^ This in a 
 
 ^ Vide paper read before the Bombay Missionary Conference, 
 September 1888, by Mr Dhanjibhai Naoriji, the senior Indian 
 minister in the city. 
 
loo A Life for God in India 
 
 populace of 800,000, Bombay at that time 
 claiming the position of the second city in the 
 British empire as to population. 
 
 Bombay has always been looked upon as a 
 hard field, and the Alliance, as well as other 
 missions, found it so. On settling in the city, 
 Mr Fuller at once organised a campaign of open 
 air preaching. Every afternoon in the week, 
 save Saturday, as soon as the heat of the sun 
 cooled off, a party of men and women from the 
 Alliance Home sallied forth to proclaim the 
 Gospel, often joined by missionaries and lay 
 Christians of various denominations. On Sun- 
 days they spoke in English to the crowds who 
 frequented the seashore. On most other even- 
 ings they took up their stand in prominent 
 places, where busy multitudes thronged the 
 streets, and preached in the vernaculars. 
 
 This went on for about three years ; mean- 
 while the plague broke out which has since 
 carried off thousands of the population. It 
 seemed as though God was speaking to the city 
 through His servants ; that many must have 
 heard the truths of the Gospel at that time, 
 who have since passed away, and who will be 
 unable to say they had no offer of salvation, 
 and had never heard the good tidings. There 
 was doubtless some fruit to eternity in this 
 labour, but there was also an open rejection 
 of the claims of Christ. Especially were the 
 English meetings on Sunday obstructed by 
 
A Life for God in India loi 
 
 a howling crowd of educated Hindus led on 
 by a few bigoted Brahmins. On several occa- 
 sions violence was resorted to, and speakers 
 went home with wounds and bruises, literally 
 " rejoicing that they were counted worthy to 
 suffer " for Christ's sake. But their poor mis- 
 guided assailants died like flies in the succeed- 
 ing days of pestilence. That pestilence should 
 follow the open rejection of God's proffered 
 mercy and salvation, is but a fulfilment and 
 repetition of truth reiterated in the Divine 
 revelation. It was no accidental coincidence 
 that the Alliance carried out that three years' 
 proclamation of free grace for dying sinners. 
 In May and June, 1896, ribald crowds jeered 
 the preachers. In November and December and 
 later, tens of thousands fled from the city ; house 
 after house was empty ; twelve shops shut in one 
 row of nineteen ; and door after door bore the 
 ugly plague mark with dates of deaths that 
 had occurred. No one who went through 
 those few months of the first outbreak of 
 plague in Bombay will ever forget it. The 
 death scenes all around, the unroofed houses, 
 the fleeing multitudes, the terrified servants, 
 the disappearance of familiar faces in the 
 market and the shops. All cannot be told. 
 The constant funeral processions growing more 
 hurried and less elaborate day by day, the 
 ambulance carts with their victims, the smell 
 of disinfectants, the wailing of the mourning 
 
I02 A Life for God in India 
 
 women, and the death-like emptiness of the 
 streets after dark will live in the memory- 
 while memory lasts. 
 
 Mrs Fuller was herself only occasionally 
 able to participate in the open-air work, but 
 she helped and encouraged the other workers. 
 One advantage she enjoyed of living in 
 Bombay, was that she was able to keep her 
 children with her longer than she could have 
 done in a hot mofussil station like Akola. 
 The elder ones made good progress in their 
 studies by attending a Mission High School, 
 while little Jean, the baby born in America, 
 was the life and joy of her mother's heart, and 
 her constant companion. A younger son had 
 followed Jean, but he was early taken. 
 
 Jean was the sunshine of the house. She 
 called all the missionary ladies "auntie." 
 Her elder sister and brother George thought 
 there was no one like Jean. She was a fairy- 
 like child with dainty manners and quaint 
 sayings. Her little heart turned to her 
 mother's God like a flower to the sun. Once 
 at an evangelistic mission in Bombay, when 
 testimonies were being given at the closing 
 meeting, Jean jumped from her seat by her 
 mother's side and her childish voice rang out, 
 " Those that seek Me early shall find Me." 
 
 More than once was Jean given back from 
 the gates of death, so that her parents came to 
 look upon her as given for the Lord's service. 
 
A Life for God in India 103 
 
 One rainy season, Mr Fuller being absent from 
 home, visiting the stations of the mission in 
 China, Jean was taken sick and ran down 
 completely. Her mother had to go to Akola 
 on business, and took Jean, hoping the change 
 would do her good, but she came back not so 
 well. Sunday came and Mrs Fuller went to 
 the open air meeting on the shore, but left as 
 soon as she had spoken, and hurried home to 
 put Jean to bed. She sat by her side weary 
 and depressed. When the other workers 
 returned it occurred to Mrs Fuller that though 
 Jean's illness had been laid before the Lord 
 for healing, they had not anointed her in 
 accordance with James v. 14. As the oil was 
 brought, Mrs Fuller said she felt a thrill of life 
 go through her, bringing courage, hope and 
 rest. Jean was anointed, with prayer, and slept 
 soundly all night. In the morning she looked 
 sweetly at her mother and said, " Mamma, I 
 am well," and she was ; not a trace of the 
 disease returned after the anointing. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 TRAVEL AND BEREAVEMENT 
 
 " It is /, be not afraid^ 
 
 We speak of Mrs Fuller as living in Bombay 
 at this time. She was ; but how often we 
 have called in at " Berachah " and found her 
 absent in some distant part of the mission 
 field, or just home from a journey, or about 
 to start. The young missionaries placed out 
 in these needy fields in Berar, Khandeish 
 and Gujarat, enjoyed a motherly as well as 
 a fatherly superintendence. In sicknesses, 
 marriages, births and deaths, Mrs Fuller was 
 ever at hand to help and sympathise. Every 
 new station had its special history of trial 
 and triumph in which she fully shared. How 
 conscientiously she persevered in this frequent 
 and arduous work may be gathered from her 
 own account of her journeyings at one period, 
 which I quote. (What she was to the mission- 
 aries she visited they will tell further on.) 
 
 " It was about the middle of March, the 
 beginning of the hot season. I had been 
 travelling much, and in a month had had ten 
 
io6 A Life for God in India 
 
 nights of broken rest on trains. In some 
 places I had spoken sometimes four hours a 
 day. Then followed our first Marathi Con- 
 vention, with the heavy sorrow of the first 
 break in our ranks, and the death of precious 
 workers. The Convention closed with much 
 blessing, but the heat was becoming great, and 
 at times I felt it much. I had visited all the 
 stations in Berar but one, and wanted to visit 
 this also before returning to Igatpuri. This 
 station, Buldana, is off the railway, and the 
 journey involved a six hours' ride in a tonga, 
 facing the sun, in the hottest part of the day. 
 It looked very tempting to go home and rest. 
 My husband suggested that I write and say 
 that I could not come. But what was I to 
 write ? That I was not able to come, and the 
 heat was too great ? Oh, no ! I had long 
 been off that ground. ' I can do all things 
 through Christ who strengtheneth me.' The 
 only thing that would satisfy me was to write 
 that it was not God's will for me to come, and 
 I kept feeling that it was ! 
 
 " We left A kola on the early morning 
 train. . . . We got off at Mulkapur and rested 
 in the Travellers' Bungalow till noon, when the 
 mail tonga should start. The heat was very 
 oppressive, and I had to get between the doors 
 for air so that I could breathe easily. How 
 Satan contended with me that I dare not go ; 
 that to ride facing that sun in my weak 
 
A Life for God in India 107 
 
 condition might cost me my life. All that he 
 said seemed so real and true. But blessed be 
 God, there is such a thing as enduring, as 
 seeing Him who is invisible. I knew it was 
 not true. ' God is faithful that promised.' 
 
 " When the tonga came it was rickety and 
 old, and the ponies were bad. One of them 
 fell down on the way. How hot the sun was, 
 and yet the words, ' The sun shall not smite 
 thee,' stood out before me in living letters. 
 They spread out over me like a great umbrella. 
 The journey came to an end, and with it a 
 warm welcome from our missionaries. I was 
 not even weary. It was perfect victory. I 
 would not have missed what faith brought out 
 for me on that journey for any rest any place 
 could have given me. I knew in a deeper 
 sense than ever before what is meant by ' the 
 life of Christ being manifest in my body.' 
 I felt so well all my stay there, and reached 
 home rested and refreshed. The spring of 
 that victory remained in my life for weeks. 
 Had I given up the journey and gone home 
 to rest, I believe it would have taken several 
 weeks to have got rested. It means much to 
 have all our spring? in God." 
 
 Mrs Fuller's journeyings in the Gospel were 
 not confined to her own mission. She de- 
 lighted to abound towards other fields also. 
 An Indian pastor, who had profited spiritually 
 by her ministrations in Bombay, besought her 
 
io8 A Life for God in India 
 
 to come to his aid in impressing the truths of 
 the Holy Spirit's work and office on his con- 
 gregation in the Konkan, that part of the 
 mainland lying behind the island of Bombay, 
 below the mountain ranges called the Western 
 Ghauts. It was not the distance but the 
 difficulty of access which made the journey 
 toilsome. Mrs Fuller went, and felt well 
 repaid for the effort by the hungering and 
 thirsting after the truth which she found 
 among the people. 
 
 In January, 1897, she joined her husband 
 and a friend in an evangelistic tour among the 
 Syrian Christians in Travancore, in the extreme 
 south of India. This involved a long journey 
 by boat as well as rail, and an absence from 
 home and children of several weeks. It was 
 like a trip to another land — the people, their 
 language and habits entirely different to those 
 of Central India. The Syrian Christians are a 
 sturdy race, the oldest body of Christians in 
 India, dating back, it is said, from a visit of the 
 Apostle Thomas, who, according to tradition, 
 brought the Gospel to India and died near 
 Madras. 
 
 Although much of the time sunk in indiffer- 
 entism and brought under the papal yoke, there 
 is now a hopeful reform movement among this 
 interesting people. They have all these years 
 preserved their autonomy, and manage their 
 church affairs with a sturdy independence 
 
A Life for God in India 109 
 
 that is in refreshing contrast to some churches 
 in other parts founded by modern missions. 
 Mrs Fuller felt it was a new experience to be 
 among these native brethren, who arranged all 
 the details of the mission, and at whose invita- 
 tion they were there. There was a great 
 hunger to hear, even though the message came 
 through an interpreter. The people would 
 listen for five hours at a stretch, standing in 
 the open air or sitting closely packed on the 
 floor of the church. Mrs Fuller's own service 
 was to have been confined to the women, but 
 after she had once spoken in the open air the 
 men crowded the verandahs of the church while 
 she was speaking to the women inside. The 
 accommodation was most primitive, and the 
 travelling tedious, but they felt well repaid for 
 all difficulties by the spirit of inquiry and 
 interest in their hearers. 
 
 They had been away several weeks, out of 
 the track of letters and telegrams, and as they 
 turned their faces homeward a pang of depress- 
 ing monition seized Mrs Fuller's heart with 
 regard to Jean. She knew plague had been 
 raging in Bombay, and that other complaints 
 were rife there. Had her household been 
 spared ? When they reached the railway, 
 letters met them, relieving her with the news 
 that all was well, and on their arrival Jean 
 was there to give her usual joyous welcome. 
 
 Arrangements had been made for Mr and 
 
no A Life for God in India 
 
 Mrs Fuller to take a furlough to America, 
 starting in April. Lucia and George were to 
 be placed at school, and would remain in 
 America. But the mother's heart was per- 
 plexed about Jean. Not knowing of the 
 struggle, Jeannie one day asked, " Mamma, 
 will you leave me in America ? " "I do not 
 know, darling ; do you want to stay ? " was 
 the reply. " Oh no, mamma ; you go to 
 America and leave George and Lucia, and I 
 will stay here with Auntie Park till you come 
 back." Jean accompanied her mother to the 
 annual Marathi Convention, and also in her 
 farewell visits to all the mission stations, and 
 was so interested in the famine children, and 
 ready to give them her toys and playthings. 
 When at home she had a daily governess who 
 taught her to read and write and sew, and 
 taught her texts and hymns. Once in writing 
 she was reproved that her letter " as " were too 
 narrow. She said they were " famine a's." 
 
 Jean's proposal to remain in India was not 
 seriously considered. The rest must be told 
 in her mother's own pathetic words : " At the 
 Marathi Convention Jean came with beaming 
 face and asked to be baptised with the new 
 converts. But we thought best to put her off. 
 How stupid we were ! It might have meant 
 much to her. In ten more days she was with 
 Jesus. We reached home, glad our India 
 journeys were all over, and hastened to com- 
 
A Life for God in India 1 1 1 
 
 plete the preparation for the long journey to 
 America. Jeannie was full of glee about the 
 home-going, and her near birthday when she 
 would be six years old. On Monday after- 
 noon we had a wedding in the house, and Jean 
 looked a perfect picture as she watched the 
 ceremony on a couch by herself, dressed in a 
 dotted white muslin with blue ribbons. Five 
 days later she lay in her coffin in the same 
 dress, only we had changed the blue ribbons 
 for white. She caught cold, and croup set in. 
 On Friday evening she seemed better. Sud- 
 denly she grew restless and wanted to be 
 carried, saying, ' I cannot sleep.' 
 
 " We carried her till we were all weary, and 
 then the restlessness broke as suddenly as it 
 came. ' Sing,' she said, in her sweet emphatic 
 way. ' What shall we sing, darling ? ' we asked. 
 * Sing, " Praise Him, praise Him, Jesus our 
 blessed Redeemer ! " ' 
 
 " But before we could sing she sang the first 
 verse partly through. She listened quietly while 
 we sang ; then asked for the hymn, ' Jesus bids 
 me shine.' When we had finished she again 
 said, ' Sing.' We asked what she wanted, and 
 she replied, ' Oh, Auntie Miller knows.' Mrs 
 Miller ^ started, ' When He cometh. When He 
 
 ^ Mrs Miller, a Scotch member of the Alliance Mission, of 
 whom Jean was very fond. She died twelve months later, and 
 had a vision of Jean among the shining ones in her dying 
 hours. 
 
112 A Life for God in India 
 
 cometh to make up His jewels.* Several 
 times Jeannie broke out in prayer. Once she 
 said, ' O Lord, I do not like my voice like 
 this ; make it better.' And soon she spoke 
 clearer, and recognised that Jesus had done it. 
 Finally she asked that all might leave the 
 room, and the light be put out. She was quiet 
 as if asleep, when we noticed a change in her 
 breathing. On bringing a light we found her 
 unconscious. As the family gathered in the 
 room she came to herself, and her eyes looked 
 like stars, while her face wore an awed expres- 
 sion. She said one or two things, then looking 
 at one of the ladies, said, ' Miss Park, Jesus ' 
 
 She never finished it. We repeated 
 
 texts to her. As we watched her, something 
 said to us, * No more perplexity about her 
 staying behind in the homeland.' Then came 
 the words with power and comfort, ' Yet a 
 little while, and He that shall come will come, 
 and will not tarry' (Heb. x. 2>7)' 
 
 " We repeated the words to Jean, and a little 
 later she closed her eyes and * fell asleep.' 
 The anchor of the Word gripped us fast before 
 the waves of sorrow poured over us. Yes, 
 they which sleep in Jesus will God bring with 
 Him. We do not wonder they called it the 
 ' blessed hope,' and that Paul urged them to 
 * comfort one another with these words.' . . . 
 
 " We laid the precious dust in the English 
 cemetery in Bombay. We gathered up her 
 
A Life for God in India 1 1 3 
 
 toys and sent most of them to the famine 
 orphans as she would have desired. Her little 
 outfit made for the homeland, untouched and 
 unworn, was God's provision for two fatherless 
 little girls on their way home too. How long 
 was that journey, how tender the care He be- 
 stowed that our hearts were too dumb with 
 sorrow to even ask for. Then He tenderly 
 spoke one more word that had power to break 
 sorrow. ' Blessed is he whosoever shall not be 
 offended in Me ' (Matt. xi. 6). Grief indulged 
 becomes offence with God's dealing. ' If ye 
 loved Me ye would rejoice' (John xiv. 28). 
 Praise the Lord, but means, ' Thy will be done.'" 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE TIME OF INDIA'S TROUBLE 
 
 " For the vision is yet for an appointed time, 
 . . . watt for it, because it will surely come, it 
 will not tarry P 
 
 The pressing needs of India, then stricken 
 with the weary famine conditions which have 
 lasted more or less ever since, made Mrs Fuller's 
 visit to America at this time a very busy one. 
 She did not spare herself in going wherever 
 she found an open door to tell of the starving 
 thousands in their own district of Berar, and of 
 the opportunities for service which lay before 
 the missionaries who were left on the field. 
 But while she was greatly in request for meet- 
 ings and conventions, she took a little home 
 for her children, and spent as much time as 
 possible with them. 
 
 Mrs Fuller's own experience of the six 
 famine girls she received in 1877, gave her an 
 excellent leverage in advocating the cause of 
 famine orphans now. She could tell of Shan- 
 tibai, the elder one, mentioned before in these 
 pages, now an earnest Christian woman, the 
 
1 1 6 A Life for God in India 
 
 efficient helper of a missionary engaged in 
 gathering in famine children. Also of two 
 others, Ashabai and Imambai, labouring in the 
 same blessed work. 
 
 The " Story of Chandur " which Mrs Fuller 
 wrote at this time may be suitably quoted here 
 as a graphic delineation of missionary life in a 
 period of famine: — 
 
 " In the farthest end of our Marathi field is 
 the town of Chandur. It is not very large, but 
 the centre of an extensive agricultural district, 
 and many, many villages. When Mr Simpson 
 was in India, he and Mr Fuller visited it, and 
 decided to make it a mission station, and had 
 it laid on their hearts to send Mr and Mrs 
 Ramsey there. But there was not a house to 
 dwell in, and we had no money in hand to 
 build a house. And in addition, while this 
 appointment was made, Mr and Mrs Ramsey 
 were both very low with fever, and it was a 
 question in the minds of those who watched 
 over them whether they would ever live to go 
 to Chandur. Was it the enemy contesting the 
 appointment and the new station right in the 
 heart of a place where he, alone, had ruled 
 for centuries ? We can never forget the fight 
 of faith of that sick room. Jesus was victor ! 
 Praise His name ! After a time of study they 
 moved to a place as near Chandur as they 
 could get, where a house was obtained, and 
 lived on the borders of their field, sowing and 
 
A Life for God in India 117 
 
 preparing the soil of it with prayer as they 
 completed their course of study. 
 
 " Then in a time of deep trial, God sent a 
 love-token that He was with us, in the shape 
 of a cheque for ten thousand rupees, just 
 enough to put up three new houses, and thus 
 permanently open three unoccupied fields. 
 What joy it brought ! And in Chandur was 
 the first sod broken in all our mission field for 
 a house. 
 
 " The little home was finished, and Mr and 
 Mrs Ramsey and wee Sarah moved into it. 
 Mrs Simmons and other ladies helped them 
 there. After the joy of being in their own 
 home and in their own station had had its first 
 flush, the discovery dawned upon them that 
 Chandur was not an easy field. There were 
 no European comforts to be bought as in many 
 other stations, for they were the only Euro- 
 peans in the place. But that was as nothing 
 compared to the constant rejection of the 
 people. It was very hard. More than once 
 has Mrs Ramsey and the young lady living 
 with her been refused admittance to every 
 house at which they called, and after a weary 
 tramp have had to return home from what 
 seemed a fruitless day's work. There were 
 now and then baptisms in the other stations, 
 tokens of life, drops of rain, forerunners of a 
 shower ; but no such tokens in Chandur. To 
 the watchers there, there was only now and 
 
ii8 A Life for God in India 
 
 then the cloud as big as a man's hand that the 
 wind soon chased away. The district around 
 them was much like other districts, and was 
 faithfully worked through the touring season. 
 
 " What battles with fever, too, have been 
 fought in that little home ! The station be- 
 came known as one of the hardest in the 
 mission. And it might also be called a bad 
 town. But, oh, what seasons of prayer has the 
 little home witnessed ! * Bethel ' should many 
 times have been written on its walls. In the 
 midst of discouragement and trial was the 
 vision of the flock God had given them. When 
 Paul went to Corinth, the gay Paris of ancient 
 times, after his seeming failure at Athens, he 
 says he went in much fear and trembling. 
 And when it seemed as if the history of his 
 stay in Athens was to be repeated in Corinth, 
 God said to him, * Be not afraid, but speak ; 
 and hold not thy peace ; for I am with thee, 
 and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee ; 
 for I have much people in this city.' And 
 who were they? The mighty and noble of 
 the city ? No. ' Not many mighty, not 
 many noble,' but there were some, and the 
 rest were slaves, pickpockets, evil men, Shy- 
 locks extorting money, idolaters and men out 
 of the very scum of Corinth, for he writes, 
 ' Be not deceived ; neither fornicators, nor 
 idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor 
 abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, 
 
A Life for God in India 1 1 9 
 
 nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor 
 extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 
 And such were some of you ; but ye are 
 washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justi- 
 fied in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the 
 Spirit of our God.' 
 
 " God gave Paul the vision, and then fulfilled 
 it. God gave our dear workers in Chandur 
 the vision of a church, and it was yet to be 
 transformed out of the very scum of the 
 populace about them perhaps, and out of some 
 of the noble, for, thank God, though it does 
 say, ' not many wise men after the flesh . . . 
 not many noble,' yet it does not say, ' not any.' 
 
 " Time wore on. Then God took little 
 prattling Sarah, and how still the mission 
 house was. Loving hands from another 
 station fashioned a coffin out of the shelves of 
 a cupboard, and covered it with white cloth. 
 There was no beautiful cemetery, green and 
 well cared for, to lay the precious dust away 
 in to await the great trump. But the head- 
 man of the town gave them a place on top of 
 a rocky hill. What a world of pathos there is 
 in these lonely, solitary graves in India, the 
 Congo, and Soudan ! It was a heavy blow, 
 but better fitted the workers for the place God 
 had given them. Henceforth, in our own 
 minds, the station became 'the station with 
 the grave on the hill.' 
 
 " Then came the famine, and it was first 
 
I20 A Life for God in India 
 
 heaviest at Chandur, of all our stations. It 
 found Mr and Mrs Ramsey worn, and it was 
 the beginning of the hot season, when we had 
 planned that they should both have a thorough 
 rest and change at the hills. But as the need 
 grew greater, after much prayer, they were 
 able to touch the spring of His life for theirs, 
 and went on, under great pressure of work, 
 through the heat. Early God gave them a 
 soul, in the clear conversion of a famine 
 refugee. He had been an opium smoker and 
 a slave to its use. The doctor told him it 
 might mean death to break it off at once. 
 The missionaries told him Jesus was able to 
 heal. The man fought the battle out himself, 
 and launched out upon Jesus, and never had 
 any trouble whatever, and through it Jesus was 
 made real to him. He was baptised at our 
 Marathi Convention (at Akola). As he went 
 down into the water. Miss Olmstead, with beam- 
 ing face, turned to me and said in Marathi, as 
 she pointed to the man, * Chandur's first fruits.' 
 " Will the early missionaries in the Marathi 
 field ever forget the baptisms of our first 
 converts in the beautiful river at Akola, with 
 the setting sun gilding the water, the heads of 
 the workers, and filling all the trees with its 
 glory? It seems to us we can yet hear the 
 music of the Marathi hymns as they were 
 wafted over the water. 
 
A Life for God in India 121 
 
 " We pass over the weary months of famine 
 suffering, the epidemic of cholera that came 
 as the rains came on, of God's deliverance, of 
 the days of pressure and work, and let Mrs 
 Ramsey's letter finish our story : — 
 
 " ' These are very busy days with us, and 
 God gives strength for the day. Since we 
 received Mr Lambert's load of grain we have 
 seen, oh, so much sadness and hunger. We 
 thought it bad enough before, but the news of 
 the grain must have spread like wildfire, for 
 crowds began to come from the villages, eight 
 and ten miles away. Poor things ! instead of 
 stomachs they had loose flaps of skin covering 
 them.^ 
 
 " * Saturday we had twenty-one hundred, 
 some of them representing a family of six or 
 seven. We had given out tickets, but there 
 was so much imposition we took them back, 
 and gave equally to all. To-day we must 
 have had two thousand in all. Besides this 
 there are numbers of fresh arrivals daily, 
 pleading and falling at our feet for food. We 
 have felt that we could not keep up the rush 
 without some solid rest. Sometimes it has 
 been short in the middle of the day, but last 
 Sunday Mrs Simmons just ordered that no 
 
 1 The Mennonite Church in America sent out a large 
 quantity of corn, which was disbursed through missionaries, 
 by Mr George Lambert, their delegated almoner, who visited 
 India for the purpose. 
 
122 A Life for God in India 
 
 one should be allowed in the compound, and 
 the quiet day was very refreshing. 
 
 " * The past week has been wonderful in its 
 experience. One wonders where all the 
 emaciated forms come from ; but as we visit 
 the villages we find that most of the people 
 live on the green leaves they can pick up 
 anywhere, and some have the luxury of a 
 couple of pice a day for weeding. To such 
 families even a seer (two pounds) of grain 
 means much. 
 
 " ' You know how the children look with 
 stomachs distended almost ready to burst, not 
 even the form of hips, large heads and 
 shrunken limbs. And, oh! what vermin and 
 filth! You may fancy what a place would be 
 like after two thousand had been sitting on it. 
 We refused grain one day until they had 
 cleaned the place. 
 
 "'Coming thus in contact with the people, 
 one sees their need as fellow beings, and feels 
 for them. But I have come to the conclusion 
 that great as is their physical need in this 
 awful time, it is only an index to their deeper 
 need. What deception, lying and rascality 
 one sees daily for a mouthful of food ! I do 
 hope as you hold up the one need of food to 
 the dear ones in the homeland, that they may 
 never fail to take in the fact that these dear 
 people are dying without a Saviour. We often 
 groan as we fail to see deep conviction of sin 
 
A Life for God in India 
 
 123 
 
 that would make them cry out, "What shall we 
 do to be saved? " 
 
 " * I went through the Poor-house yesterday. 
 I saw fourteen men and women lying on cots 
 in the last stages of starvation. The word 
 " skeletons " does not express the sight. Only 
 one had strength enough to complain. 
 
 "' Mrs Simmons took nine boys to the Akola 
 Orphanage to-day. I wish I could give the 
 history of each. One was lying on the ground 
 unable to walk after the distribution of grain 
 one morning. With great tears rolling down 
 his face he said, " I have nobody. If I had my 
 father he would care for me, but he is dead." 
 He is still with us. One boy has his baby 
 brother, whom he cares for like a mother. My 
 heart aches over them all. What should we 
 do if we had no means to help them ? 
 
 '^ * And now I know you will rejoice with us 
 to hear that we have had our first baptism in 
 Chandur. Last Saturday we baptised eight 
 persons. You can imagine our joy as we rode 
 to the river. Dear Mrs Simmons and I took 
 one another's hands, and said we would rather 
 be here than in any place in the world.' 
 
 " After many days has the vision begun to be 
 fulfilled, and a little church has been formed 
 on Chandur's hard soil. Its foundation was 
 laid in prayers, and tears, and trust, in the 
 days of cloud and darkness. We rejoice with 
 them. A few mails before these same hearts 
 
124 ^ Life for God in India 
 
 had written us : * Sometimes we have high 
 hopes of some, and again they are dashed to 
 the ground. But whether we see any fruit or 
 not, may God help us to stand.' 
 
 " When a missionary enters a city and district, 
 there are hearts that are sore with bereavement, 
 heavy with discipHne, trial and disappointment, 
 with a hunger that no pilgrimage, vow, penance 
 or austerity has ever satisfied, longing for some- 
 thing, and that something is Jesus, of whom 
 the missionary alone can tell. Let us pray 
 that he may find such hearts. Perhaps that 
 drunkard rolling from one side of the street 
 to the other that he meets ; that debauchee 
 with his ribald song ; that bold-faced woman 
 who peers so shamelessly into his face ; that 
 thief who stole the blanket out of his cart while 
 he was preaching in the market-place ; that 
 thin-visaged money-lender exacting his pound 
 of flesh from that poor mother and her 
 children ; that elderly Brahmin who passed 
 him so haughtily just now, or those young 
 high caste boys just out of high school, who 
 held up his mistakes in Marathi for ridicule 
 to the crowd as he preached, and battered 
 him with foolish questions to no profit ; 
 perhaps these are the very ones that God has 
 in that city to transform, who are to be the 
 future church — and to whom it shall be written : 
 * And such were some of you, but ye are 
 washed.' 
 
A Life for God in India 125 
 
 " God grant that the friends at home who 
 support the missionary may catch with him 
 *the vision,' and though it tarry, wait with 
 him for it until it be fulfilled, ' because it will 
 surely come, it will not tarry.' " 
 
 While Mr and Mrs Fuller were travelling 
 about in America and Canada, pleading the 
 needs of India, their own circumstances were 
 not luxurious, except as they might be here 
 and there entertained in homes of luxury. 
 For herself the simplest fare and entertainment 
 satisfied Mrs Fuller ; it was only for her children 
 that she now and then sighed for the means to 
 give them some little extra indulgence. A 
 little story she wrote concerning this period 
 was entitled "OUR ONLY THANKSGIVING 
 Turkey." 
 
 " As it neared Thanksgiving Day, we remem- 
 bered we had never had a real home Thanks- 
 giving in our little family, and there came a 
 desire to have one, and we almost choked as 
 we remembered that it would not only be our 
 first one, but might be our last one together. 
 We well knew in parting with our children, 
 the circle might never be complete again. 
 
 " As the desire grew, I began wondering if 
 I could afford a turkey, and have a real old- 
 fasbJoned Thanksgiving dinner. For years I 
 have known the secret that nothing is too 
 small for Jesus, and that He withholds nothing 
 
126 A Life for God in India 
 
 that is best for us. I did not feel at liberty 
 to spend the money, but I left it to Him to 
 provide if He saw best for us to have it. So 
 one day at the table I said, ' Children, I am 
 asking the Lord for a Thanksgiving turkey.' 
 The suggestion was met with a round of 
 applause. 
 
 " Just the week before Thanksgiving, I was 
 asked to assist in some meetings in Canada. 
 I went very reluctantly, with the promise that 
 I should be allowed to come back the evening 
 before Thanksgiving. Just as I was leaving, 
 a feeling of misgiving seized me. ' What if 
 God should not send the turkey ? The children 
 will be disappointed. There is no promise in 
 the Bible where you can demand a turkey. 
 If He gives one, it will be pure grace from 
 beginning to end.' Then I said, cautiously, 
 to the children the day I left : * I'll be home 
 sure in time for Thanksgiving, and if there is 
 no turkey, I know we can afford a fowl.' 
 * Oh,' screamed my boy in reply, * Mamma, 
 do not let your faith down to chicken ! ' I 
 responded as brightly as I could, and said 
 before leaving for the train : * Well, if any 
 letters come bearing a Turkish post-mark you 
 may open them.' 
 
 "My heart was soon absorbed in the meetings, 
 but I did not forget the dear children at home, 
 and now and then reminded the Father about 
 the turkey. Finally the week was over, and 
 
A Life for God in India 127 
 
 the homeward journey had begun. I had had 
 one bright letter from the children to which 
 they had added that as yet there had been 
 no news from Turkey ! 
 
 " It was very cold and snow was on the 
 ground. I broke my journey at one place, 
 and drove four miles in the cold and over 
 bad roads, to see some dear friends whom I 
 might not see again. It cost me some self- 
 denial, for I was eager to get home. But I 
 felt amply repaid with the royal welcome they 
 gave me. 
 
 " As we went into the dining-room for dinner 
 soon after my arrival, my friend put her arm 
 about me and said : * We have had a family 
 council to-day over whether we should have 
 turkey to-night or fowl : and we decided to 
 have fowl and give you the turkey to take 
 home with you ! ' It may seem a trifle to 
 some of my readers, but I bowed my heart 
 in gratitude to God. They had not known a 
 syllable of our desire, and had only acted as 
 the Father had led. He knew, and that should 
 always be enough for our hearts. 
 
 " The next morning I saw I was going to be 
 delayed one train in getting home, so I 
 telegraphed the children to keep them from 
 being disappointed, and added to the telegram, 
 * Good news from Turkey.' 
 
 " It was a royal Thanksgiving day. We 
 kept the key turned on ' our skeleton in the 
 
128 A Life for God in India 
 
 cupboard ' — that it would probably be our last 
 Thanksgiving together — and would not think 
 of it. I never tasted such a turkey. It was 
 perfect. A dear friend who was with us said 
 to me, * How sweet it is to be fed from the 
 Lord's hands.' Surely it was His love and 
 care that sweetened it all and gave flavour to 
 our meal, and our trust was renewed in His 
 love and care. Truly God delighteth in 
 mercy." 
 
 The foreboding that this would be the last 
 Thanksgiving they as a family would celebrate 
 was destined to be fulfilled. The next year 
 Mrs Fuller was in India, and when the 
 following anniversary came round she had 
 joined her darling Jean in the true Homeland 
 where it is all Thanksgiving. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 LITERARY WORK IN AMERICA AND INDIA 
 
 ** As poor, yet making many rich, as having 
 nothing, yet possessing all things^ 
 
 Mrs Fuller's facile pen was busy in intervals 
 of leisure during this visit to the home country. 
 From time to time she had contributed in- 
 cidents in her own experience to the press, 
 particularly to the weekly Christian paper 
 published by the Christian and Missionary 
 Alliance. She now edited, and added to them, 
 for publication in a little volume under the 
 title, " God's Care." ^ (By permission many of 
 these incidents have been incorporated in this 
 story of her life.) In these she traced the 
 loving over-ruling care of God in the smaller 
 as well as in the more important concerns 
 of life ; of times when she had been com- 
 forted in trouble, helped in difficulty, or guided 
 in the journey of life. In all she magnified 
 the grace and power of God. 
 
 In March of the following year, 1898, Mrs 
 Fuller was back again in Bombay, welcomed 
 
 ^Published by the Christian and Missionary Alliance, 692 
 Eighth Avenue, New York. 
 
 I 129 
 
130 A Life for God in India 
 
 by many friends, and soon took up her old 
 manner of life, saving that her journeys up 
 country were rather less frequent, as the new 
 missionaries were gaining their own footing 
 and required less oversight. This, with the 
 absence of her children, gave her more leisure 
 to use her pen, and in this manner utilise a 
 sacred talent in the Master's service. For 
 years she had published an occasional paper 
 giving tidings of the mission to friends at a 
 distance, and which circulated chiefly, though 
 not wholly, in America. But now a wide 
 opportunity offered for influencing the mis- 
 sionary and Christian public in India outside 
 as well as inside her own circle. In this 
 connection it is necessary to allude to personal 
 matters of the compiler of this narrative. 
 
 For more than ten years my husband, 
 Alfred S. Dyer, had been in charge of the 
 Bombay Guardian, a Christian weekly news- 
 paper in Bombay, circulating throughout the 
 whole of India. The condition of his health 
 made it imperative that he should rest, and as 
 time went on it was clear that his work in that 
 position was finished. In July, 1898, two of 
 the Alliance missionaries, Mr and Mrs Wm. 
 Franklin, took charge of the paper and enabled 
 us to get away for a change. The next month 
 Mr and Mrs Fuller relieved these friends, and 
 helped us more or less throughout the re- 
 mainder of the year, Mrs Fuller giving a 
 
A Life for God in India 131 
 
 considerable portion of her time to the work. 
 It was our desire that they should take the 
 responsibility of the paper on our leaving 
 India. They were willing to do this, and 
 for Mrs Fuller to make it her main work if 
 the Lord willed it so. But eventually it was 
 evident that this was not the case. The Lord 
 provided for the Bombay Guardian in other 
 ways. But during the remainder of her life, 
 Mrs Fuller continued her contributions to the 
 paper, and helped and encouraged the younger 
 workers, Mr and Mrs F. Percy Home, upon 
 whom the work devolved, and who at the time 
 of writing are still bravely carrying it forward. 
 It was in connection with the Bombay 
 Guardian that Mrs Fuller's most valuable 
 literary work was performed. During her 
 lengthy missionary experience, the wrongs 
 suffered by India's women had burnt into her 
 soul, and her friendship with Pandita Ramabai 
 had given her a further view behind the curtain 
 of caste and custom that hides so much of this 
 suffering from the outer world. She conceived 
 the thought of a series of papers on this 
 subject for the Bombay Guardian^ and having 
 set herself to the task, threw all her energies 
 into it. She felt deeply the responsibility she 
 had undertaken, and took the utmost pains to 
 verify every fact she stated. In her quest for 
 correct information she interviewed Hindus, 
 Mahomedans and Parsees, consulted libraries, 
 
132 A Life for God in India 
 
 hunted up ancient and modern authorities, and 
 took journeys to North India and other distant 
 points. She abjured generalities, and accepted 
 no statement as a fact until she had it from 
 two or three separate sources. The result was 
 one of the most valuable works yet published, 
 covering the entire subject indicated by the 
 title, " The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood." 
 
 In the commencement she pictured an 
 educated Hindu youth, who had graduated at 
 Oxford or Cambridge, and moved freely in 
 English family life, returning to his own land, 
 the contrast he would find, and the disappoint- 
 ments that awaited him in the society of his 
 sisters and mother, and of the girl destined 
 to be his wife. Here she showed the wrong 
 to Indian society generally by the absence of 
 education for women. But she went on to 
 deeper and more serious wrongs, and dealt 
 with the evils of child marriage, enforced 
 widowhood, prostitution in the name of re- 
 ligion, nautch girls, temple women, and that 
 cruellest wrong of all, the marriage of girl 
 children to the god Khandoba. These chap- 
 ters excited much interest in India, and the 
 desire was expressed that they should be 
 published in permanent form, which was 
 afterwards done.^ 
 
 1 ' ' The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood," by Mrs Marcus B. 
 Fuller. Chicago : The Fleming H. Revell Co. ; Edinburgh 
 and London: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier. 
 
A Life for God in India 133 
 
 Mrs Fuller's ready sympathy for all in 
 trouble led her to be frequently consulted by 
 parents in regard to children who might be 
 causing them anxiety. To meet such cases 
 she wrote a little paper called, " Covenant 
 Promises to Parents," showing from the Scrip- 
 tures what promises Christian parents can lay 
 hold of on behalf of the salvation of their 
 children, concluding with the wider outlook 
 that Christian parents should claim such bless- 
 ings, in order that their children should be 
 made a blessing ; in fulfilment of the promise 
 that in the seed of Jesus Christ all the families 
 of the earth should be blessed. This is so 
 valuable that we give it in the Appendix in 
 extenso. 
 
 Another subject with which she dealt faith- 
 fully in the columns of the Bombay Guardian 
 embodied a sorely needed warning. She felt 
 that somehow money had come to have too pro- 
 minent a place in mission work, that there were 
 too many paid agents and too few volunteer 
 workers among the Indian Christians. She 
 longed to see men and women filled with the 
 Spirit, and called to the work of witnessing for 
 Christ, while earning their living by seculai 
 employment, or if giving their whole time to 
 the work, to see them supported as far as pos- 
 sible by their Indian brethren, and willing to 
 live in the humblest fashion, as a testimony 
 that they were not preaching for worldly gain. 
 
134 ^ Life for God in India 
 
 She wrote tenderly as well as faithfully upon 
 this topic. 
 
 Mrs Fuller rejoiced greatly over the pro- 
 gress of Pandita Ramabai's work on the lines 
 here laid down. When Ramabai returned 
 from America in 1898 without any guaranteed 
 financial backing for the new developments of 
 her work at Mukti, Mrs Fuller was happy in 
 the fact. She wrote: "Ramabai landed in India 
 with no money, and has now no promises for 
 her mission save the promises of God. We can 
 only say we are glad of it. It is the witness 
 the Indian church needs. Had she come back 
 with a large sum of money, it would have 
 turned the eyes of the Indian church to 
 America and England as the source of help 
 for work, but now she can by her testimony 
 turn them to God." 
 
 The fact cannot be too much reiterated that 
 all through Mrs Fuller's own life she lived what 
 she taught. It was not an unfrequent experi- 
 ence to her to be out of money. On one such 
 occasion, when pestered by a European loafer 
 for help (a class of which there are many 
 in Bombay), she had to reply, like Peter and 
 John, " Silver and gold have I none, but such 
 as I have give I thee," and went on to testify 
 from her personal experience that God was 
 able to supply all need in answer to prayer. 
 The man persisted in assuring her that God 
 had sent him to her for assistance. " Well," she 
 
A Life for God in India 135 
 
 replied, " if that is true, God knew I had 
 no money, so did not send you to me for that ; 
 but He must have sent you to me for what I 
 could give you — my testimony. I do not see 
 but what you will have to take that." At that 
 his face cleared, and thanking her for her words, 
 left. 
 
 When the late Editor of the Bombay 
 Guardian was leaving India, there was a 
 writing-desk in his possession, which it was 
 not convenient to take back to England. It 
 was a good desk, with drawers to the ground 
 on either side. As it had been the gift of a 
 dear friend, and had sacred associations at- 
 tached to it, he felt he would like it to continue 
 to be used in the Lord's service. The thought 
 came to give it to Mrs Fuller, who was just 
 then engrossed in her articles on " The Wrongs 
 of Indian Womanhood." 
 
 A note was written, and without giving her 
 any notice the desk was despatched to her 
 home on the heads of two or three coolies. 
 She returned a little note of thanks, which 
 touchingly indicated the self-denial of her life. 
 She said she had often longed for such a desk, 
 but had never felt able to purchase one. When 
 the men walked in with it and she realised 
 that it was God's gift to her, she was moved 
 to tears of thanksgiving and joy, and her 
 heart filled with praise to the giver of all good 
 gifts. 
 
136 A Life for God in India 
 
 It will always be a pleasant memory that 
 the farewell meeting given us when leaving 
 Bombay in 1899, with its messages of hope 
 and encouragement for the future, was held in 
 the home of Mr and Mrs Fuller. Several 
 valued friends and fellow-workers then with 
 us have been called Home, but how little we 
 or she thought that her life journey was so 
 nearly ended. 
 
 Mrs Fuller was never more active in public 
 life in Bombay than at this time. She was in 
 constant request for meetings and Bible read- 
 ings, both in English and Marathi. She joined 
 heartily in open air meetings at the band- 
 stand, the evening resort of European " society " 
 in Bombay. God owned her testimony there to 
 at least one soul, who told after her death, of 
 the blessing received. To how many more 
 it came as a message from God, eternity will 
 reveal. It required some courage to enter that 
 circle of fashion, with carriages by the dozen 
 drawn up around the fence, filled mostly with 
 the worldly and careless. 
 
 Mrs Fuller sometimes had visions of an 
 organised city mission to the fallen of both 
 sexes in Bombay, to be called the "Jeannie 
 Mission," after her sainted little daughter. 
 It was not God's thought for her, but may He 
 not through her be calling some other to stand 
 in the breach in this awful need ? Her spirit 
 was stirred to its deepest depths by the flagrant 
 
A Life for God in India 137 
 
 and open manifestations of immorality in the 
 city, and one of her last efforts was to en- 
 deavour to deepen the sense of responsibility 
 in the hearts of Bombay Christians in this 
 respect, and to urge to some adequate attempt 
 to cope with the prevailing sin in God's name, 
 for His glory, and the protection of the young 
 of both sexes who are inevitably exposed to 
 the contaminating influence of this evil. To 
 this end she spoke and wrote, and interviewed 
 representative men and women. God granted 
 her a measure of success, but such witnessing 
 is still a crying need in Bombay. 
 
CHAPTER Xn 
 
 THROUGH DARK DAYS TO EVERLASTING LIFE 
 
 " When thou passest through the waters 
 I will be with thee" 
 
 In October, 1899, dark clouds of famine again 
 spread over Western India, affecting all the 
 mission stations of the Alliance. Mrs Fuller 
 was henceforth entirely engrossed by the im- 
 mensity of this need. After having, with her 
 husband, made a survey of the field, she 
 returned to Bombay and wrote an eloquent 
 and touching appeal to friends in the home 
 lands. A few extracts from this letter will give 
 an affecting picture of the conditions with which 
 this Mission — together with all others in the 
 area of Western India — was confronted. Mrs 
 Fuller wrote : — 
 
 " Hitherto when famine has been visited 
 upon India, years have elapsed before another 
 has come. Three years ago the famine that 
 we passed through was very sore, yet when 
 the rains came in 1898, we drew our breath 
 freely and rejoiced in what seemed returning 
 prosperity to this afflicted land. Millions had 
 
 139 
 
140 A Life for God in India 
 
 died, thousands of homes had been broken up 
 for ever, thousands of hearts had been bitterly- 
 bereaved of all, yet as soon as the cloud lifted, 
 and the first rays of prosperity began to dawn, 
 millions of people went back to their idols, for- 
 getful of the hand of God that had been on 
 them, unbroken and unhumbled by their awful 
 trial. 1898 passed away, and the hot season 
 of this year was drawing to a close. The rain 
 burst as usual, and in some parts of the country 
 fell freely, but in others the clouds soon rolled 
 back, and with the exception of occasional 
 showers, no more fell. Clouds came only to 
 be driven over our heads by the wind, without 
 watering the earth. The papers kept predict- 
 ing that if rain came within a certain period, 
 the crops would be saved. But sufficient rain 
 never came. The monsoon is practically over, 
 and the looked for rain has not fallen ; the 
 tender shoots of the second crop are yellowing, 
 and will soon be burned up. Never in any 
 land has the constant bright sunshine been so 
 unwelcome, or so mocking as in the last two 
 months, and the cloud of famine, that at first 
 was no bigger than a man's hand, has grown 
 and spread till at last the beginning of another 
 awful visitation is again upon a large part of 
 this beautiful land. 
 
 " At first I felt it could not be ; that the out- 
 look had been exaggerated ; but a trip of three 
 weeks through Gujarat and Berar, our own 
 
A Life for God in India 141 
 
 mission field, has proved it to be all too true, 
 and appalled our hearts with the prospect of 
 the coming days. As we passed through 
 Berar the other night on our homeward 
 journey, the fields and land on either side lay 
 flooded with the soft light of the new moon. 
 Here and there we could see the light of some 
 village. We were deeply moved as we thought 
 of the suffering and anguish the same moon 
 would witness on its returns in the next few 
 months. 
 
 " As you know, our work is in two fields, in 
 which we have sixteen stations. Five of these 
 are in Gujarat, and eleven in the Marathi 
 country, in the provinces of Berar and Khan- 
 deish. The famine is closing in sharply in 
 Gujarat. In our most northerly station, 
 Viramgaon, not a drop of rain has fallen since 
 June 26th. Cattle have been dying in large 
 numbers. Gujarat is a rich, hitherto prosper- 
 ous province, that has not known famine for 
 well on to a hundred years. We have already 
 received a number of orphans into our two 
 orphanages, which I fear will be but an earnest 
 of more to come. At Kaira a little child was 
 found thrown away in the river bed, and is now 
 doing well in our girls' orphanage. Sad as the 
 tokens of distress are that are daily multiply- 
 ing about us, they but foreshadow coming days 
 when the distress will be many fold more. 
 
 " In Berar I found the out-look intensified 
 
142 A Life for God in India 
 
 by a sore water famine. There has been a 
 shortage in the rainfall for several years. Last 
 year the water level was declared to have sunk 
 ten feet below the normal level. As no rain 
 in the natural course of events can be expected 
 till next June, the out-look for man and beast 
 is appalling. Some villages where wells have 
 failed are already deserted, and as I left the 
 province we heard of the outbreak of cholera 
 in several villages. Buldana, Khamgaon and 
 Amraoti are the most affected by the scarcity 
 of water of all our stations. Dear Miss Yoder, 
 with her large family of orphans, has been in 
 great straits for water. The mission well now 
 only produces a few buckets of water each day 
 for drinking purposes, but for the school she 
 has to cart water. She cannot bring enough 
 for washing the girls' clothes and their baths, 
 so every Saturday A.M. at four o'clock she takes 
 the whole school to a stream three miles away. 
 Some of the people have said to them, * You 
 say the famine is sent because of our sins and 
 idolatry, now what have you done that you 
 have no water?' While they were praying 
 for direction, a letter brought $35 from Mr 
 Egley in Indiana, which they took as an 
 earnest for enough to dig a new well. Other 
 gifts speedily followed, and men at famine 
 wages were employed. They got down twenty, 
 twenty-five feet, and no water. A few days 
 later they struck a stream of running water 
 
A Life for God in India 143 
 
 which for a time hindered the blasting. May 
 it indeed prove a permanent flow — a lasting 
 witness between those who believe the Living 
 God and those who do not. God has promised 
 that our bread and water shall be sure, and we 
 never realised it so fully as now. 
 
 " Oh the awful suffering that the next few 
 months will witness ! At Christmastide, dear 
 friends, as you thread the streets lined with 
 gay shops, as you buy presents for those who 
 have no need, as you lavish money on costly 
 entertainments and luxurious feasts, would 
 that I had the power to lift space and let you 
 witness the awful pinch and hunger and 
 suffering that millions of y^//c?w/-beings will be 
 suffering at the same time. Bear ye no 
 responsibility, or shall the vision fade away 
 like a will-o'-the-wisp, and you press on in 
 comfort and luxury? How will it sound as 
 the Master says in eternity, referring to this 
 same holiday season, — * I was a hungered, 
 athirst, and naked, and ye heeded not ? ' 
 
 " We have decided to take all orphans that 
 are brought to us without regard to number, 
 and trust God for future guidance and help 
 with them ; to take the children of destitute 
 widows, and of widowers who cannot work 
 on relief work, and care for their children, 
 and then at the close of the famine, return 
 them to the parents, and in this way 
 keep families together. We desire to help 
 
144 ^ Life for God in India 
 
 young women and widows to work, and tide 
 them through the famine without their moral 
 ruin, hoping to start some industrial scheme so 
 that some of the women can earn their way. 
 Beside suffering and death, a famine is a great 
 calamity to the people in many ways, they get 
 mendicant habits, families get broken up, while 
 to say the least, it is demoralising for people 
 to leave their homes and villages, and herd in 
 Poor-houses and on big Relief Works. Before 
 the people get emaciated and reduced beyond 
 the power to work, is the time to help, but all 
 our schemes require money to put them in 
 execution, and out of our own means we are 
 unable to do it. We wish to give as little 
 gratuitous help as possible. . . . 
 
 "And last we beg constant prayer. Humanly 
 speaking there is a heavy year before India 
 with the plague and famine. May prayer not 
 be made that the people may humble them- 
 selves under the mighty hand of God, and turn 
 to Him in large numbers ? that hundreds may 
 not escape the lesson this time ? Also that 
 the missionary may be fitted for the hour and 
 opportunity before him : that he may know 
 how to bring the people face to face with God ; 
 that he may be sustained in health and kept 
 from the epidemics that are sure to follow. 
 We lost one beautiful missionary last famine 
 by cholera. Remember us in prayer." 
 
A Life for God in India 145 
 
 This letter was followed by two others 
 giving details of the work as it was accom- 
 plished. The first bore good fruit. Over 
 Rs. 10,000 were received for famine relief in 
 February 1 900, and nearly as much in January. 
 But the pressure on time and strength, to Mrs 
 Fuller especially, became more and more severe. 
 Some extracts from her third famine letter, 
 which was her last, are intensely pathetic. 
 After thanking her friends for the noble and 
 generous help they had rendered, she gave 
 statistics to show that that famine was the 
 worst with which India had been affected since 
 it came under British rule, and told how the 
 money sent was being used on the lines laid 
 down in the previous letters. 
 
 " Two of our ladies found a child thrown 
 away in the fields, and again the same ladies 
 found a little girl thrown in a thorn hedge. 
 You will find her in the orphanage with her 
 head still bound up from the wounds the 
 thorns made. Mr Andrews and I found a 
 little girl deserted by the roadside, so stiff with 
 cold that we thought her at first dead or dying. 
 We had nothing to put around her to warm 
 her. She was dirty and had vermin on her, 
 and I must confess that for a second it cost a 
 struggle before I could wind my dress skirt 
 around her and let her share the cape I wore. 
 Mr Andrews found a woman apparently dying 
 under the bridge in the city. She had two 
 
 K 
 
146 A Life for God in India 
 
 beautiful children, that she begged Mr Andrews 
 to take. To their great surprise she came to 
 the house the next day, a little better. By 
 degrees her timidity wore off and she came 
 to stay. She was a gentle, sweet-tempered 
 woman. I said to her playfully, ' I suppose 
 you will be running away soon.' ' Oh no/ 
 came the reply, ' / have come home ! ' And it 
 was a home-coming in a double sense, for not 
 only was she cared for by loving hearts as a 
 sister, but she seemed to accept Christ and thus 
 find an Eternal Home. She gradually failed, 
 and in dying whispered to Mr Andrews, * Take 
 care of my children.' 
 
 " The strain is yet a long one before us. 
 How dark the prospect for help looked in the 
 beginning, I cannot tell you. It would look 
 dark yet save for the promises, and we know 
 we shall not be tempted above that we are 
 able. 
 
 " The famine in Gujarat was two months 
 ahead of Berar and Khandeish in severity, but 
 now the pinch there grows harder daily. But 
 the well at Khamgaon which we dug has up 
 to date given an abundant supply of water to 
 the orphanage. 
 
 " By the time this letter reaches you, dear 
 friends, the great heat of the hot season will 
 have begun, and we beg much prayer from you 
 all for our devoted missionaries, very few of 
 whom will get away to the hills for much 
 
A Life for God in India 147 
 
 needed rest. Some of them were hardly rested 
 from last famine, and have their furlough home 
 due. Will you be faithful to pray for them ? 
 We now have fourteen mission stations involved 
 in famine. There is also the danger of 
 epidemics at the relief works. Near Buldana 
 recently in one camp thirty people died in four 
 hours of cholera. In Gujarat there is an 
 epidemic of measles. The cold of the winter, 
 contrary to all expectations, has been very 
 severe, and influenza in some parts has pre- 
 vailed. Small-pox is breaking out in many 
 sections. 
 
 " We have had a sore time in Bombay. In 
 seven weeks the whole number of deaths in the 
 city rose to 14,673 ; as the normal death-rate 
 of the city at its highest is only 500 per week, 
 you can see how sore this has been. Beside 
 plague, small-pox broke out, and in these 
 seven weeks 1,308 deaths came from this 
 dreadful disease. There were said to be at 
 one time 100,000 famine refugees in the city, 
 which no doubt made matters much worse. 
 And now a hush falls upon me, and my pen 
 moves more slowly as I tell you that our 
 precious Miss Park, who has been such a stay 
 and help to us in the Bombay Home for five 
 years, has fallen asleep. She contracted 
 small-pox, probably as she went about her 
 work in the city. In fact none of us can run 
 away from it. Hers took the confluent form 
 
148 A Life for God in India 
 
 and early manifested fatal symptoms. Need I 
 tell you, dear friends, what a sorrow it has 
 been, and for a little the sun seemed darkened, 
 but Jesus has given the oil of joy for mourning, 
 and the garment of praise for a spirit of 
 heaviness, and we are glad for her whose work 
 was thus so early finished. She laboured 
 largely among the Jews in the city. 
 
 '' And now again I beg prayer, that God may 
 keep your beloved missionaries, and that His 
 will may be fully wrought out in this heavy 
 judgment. Never before in the many years 
 I have been in India have I faced so dark 
 an hour. Never before perhaps have I been 
 more hopeful. God is at work. It took 
 ten judgments on the rich, prosperous land 
 of Egypt before they heard God's voice. Pray 
 that we His servants may keep above it all, 
 working in fellowship with God, until righteous- 
 ness come to many thousands. Pray, pray^ 
 PRAY, dear friends, for dear India, as you 
 have never prayed before. He reigns. His 
 purposes for this great idolatrous land are 
 ripening fast. And pray for us and forget 
 not our need. * Whatsoever He saith unto 
 you, do it.'" 
 
 This weighty message was a fitting close to 
 a life of service for the Lord. Before it 
 reached the friends in America, to whom it 
 was mainly addressed, its writer was laid low. 
 She suffered severely from an attack of 
 
A Life for God in India 149 
 
 influenza, and felt much worn and very weary, 
 and was hoping to be able to take a little rest. 
 But cholera broke out in Khamgaon, some of 
 the missionaries were attacked, and Mrs Fuller 
 put her own feelings aside, and went to their 
 relief In her enfeebled condition she took 
 the infection, and was brought to the gates of 
 death. At one time she was thought to be 
 dying, but rallied, and was taken to Bombay, 
 where every loving care was bestowed upon 
 her. But lung and heart complications 
 ensued, followed by dropsy, and she lingered, 
 only to suffer. For many years Mrs Fuller 
 had known the Lord as her healer, and had 
 given many precious testimonies to His power 
 over the human body, manifested in answer to 
 prayer. But, during this sickness, she said she 
 was " unable to touch God for healing." She 
 lived thirteen weeks after the attack of cholera 
 at Khamgaon. At times her husband and 
 other watching friends felt hopeful that her 
 life would be spared, but this was not to be. 
 The Lord saw best to take her to Himself 
 Her life work was finished, and she was glad 
 to be " with Christ, which is far better." Her 
 tired body was laid to rest amid the luxuriant 
 verdure of the tropics, in the lovely Sewree 
 Cemetery. Grief at her loss was sincere and 
 widespread. Every Protestant mission in Bom- 
 bay was represented at her funeral. European 
 and Indian Christian young men shared the 
 
ijo A Life for God in India 
 
 privilege of carrying her body to its last 
 resting place, there to remain only "Till He 
 come." 
 
 Tributes to her memory poured in from all 
 classes in India. Extracts from letters and 
 testimonies of personal friends are given in the 
 following chapter. Among those printed in 
 newspapers, one or two may be specially 
 mentioned. The Y.M.C.A. Monthly of 
 Bombay said : " It is not given to many 
 women to exercise a strong hold over young 
 men, but when the announcement was made 
 that Mrs Fuller would speak at a young 
 men's meeting, not only was no incongruity 
 felt, but a good meeting was confidently 
 anticipated. Her transparent earnestness 
 constrained the attention, attracted by the 
 transparent ease and fluency of her diction, 
 impressed with the reasonableness of her 
 thoughts, disarmed by the loving tenderness 
 with which she set forth stern unbending 
 truths, young men could not but acknowledge 
 her right to a hearing. Bombay has lost one of 
 its best speakers to young men ; the Christian 
 Church, one of the noblest of its workers." 
 
 A Brahmin Pandit, not a Christian, who 
 served under Mrs Fuller in translation work, 
 and in the tuition of Alliance missionaries in 
 Marathi, wrote : " She was one of the few 
 persons who could reach the hearts of the 
 
A Life for God in India 151 
 
 people of this country, and consider themselves 
 as one of them. . . . Wherever she went, 
 either among educated or uneducated classes 
 of the people, she was liked by all. The one 
 quality that made her so, was the deep and 
 real interest she showed and felt for the people. 
 Her heart was full of love for them. . . . She 
 also fully understood how to touch others 
 at the point of sympathy. This does not mean 
 that she would shrink from being at issue with 
 anybody on account of her opinions. She had 
 independent thoughts, and was courageous 
 enough to give out her convictions, but I 
 always marked that she never forced me at 
 the start to put myself over against her for a 
 contest. This is the secret of influencing 
 others to see as we do." 
 
 Mr Malabari, a non-Christian social re- 
 former in Bombay, writing in his paper, the 
 Indian Spectator^ made a note on her death 
 which illustrates what the above writer states, 
 as to her method of meeting everybody at the 
 point of sympathy. Mr Malabari wrote : 
 " Never was the proximity of a great historical 
 movement brought home more forcibly than 
 when Mrs Fuller said that she had, as a child, 
 met William Lloyd Garrison on his visits to 
 her parents. * Except ye become ... as 
 little children,' said the Master, pointing to a 
 group of children, ' ye shall not enter into the 
 Kingdom of Heaven.' Mrs Fuller lived up 
 
152 A Life for God in India 
 
 to the precept. She was a truly Christian 
 woman, with a faith in her Saviour that was 
 very touching. She threw herself, heart and 
 soul, into her work, for the orphans especially, 
 and lived for it. Not a few, who were neither 
 of her race nor creed, will miss the kindly 
 presence and earnest conversation of the 
 deceased lady." 
 
 These extracts give the clue to why Mrs 
 Fuller was, as the Bombay Guardian said, 
 " the best known woman missionary in Western 
 India, and the best loved." 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 I. TESTIMONIES FROM FAR AND 
 NEAR 
 
 Sympathising letters poured in when it was 
 known that the Home call had released the 
 dear sufferer from the bonds of earth and 
 flesh. The One Spirit sought to pour comfort 
 into the wounded and bereaved heart of her 
 husband by a multitude of earthly channels. 
 No formal condolences these. The joy to 
 which she had attained ; the blank her absence 
 would be to her friends ; the power of the 
 Lord to comfort and heal, and personal testi- 
 monies of blessing received through the life so 
 lived for God, was the burden of their message, 
 whether they came from friends throughout 
 India, America, or even from China. The 
 following extracts are selected as showing what 
 the influence was that made her removal so 
 widely felt. They are testimonies from out- 
 siders, members of many different denomina- 
 tions ; none of the writers in this section being 
 connected with the Christian Alliance. 
 
 IS3 
 
154 -A Lif^ fo^ Go<i in India 
 
 FROM MISSIONARIES IN INDIA 
 
 "It is more than twenty-one years since I 
 first met your dear wife. We often did not 
 meet for quite an interval, but each time I 
 found her ever the same, so loving and so 
 sweet. ... I do praise God for all He did 
 through her. Surely some of us will be stimu- 
 lated the more to serve Him, because He has 
 taken her home."^ — C. S. P., Bombay, 
 
 " Surely the people of India have lost in her 
 one of their sincerest friends. And yet, some- 
 how, the word ' lost ' seems out of place. May 
 we not at least hope that in some way her 
 influence is still going forth on their behalf. 
 Hers was no ordinary missionary's life and 
 work. She not only worked for the heathen 
 herself, but her sweet simple life was a con- 
 tinual inspiration to other missionaries to be 
 more wholly devoted. . . . When we gathered 
 at ' Berachah ' on Thursday, my one cry to 
 God was that He would enable me to live 
 closer to Him, and be more devoted to His 
 service." — T. A. B., Bombay, 
 
 " What a blessed testimony she has left 
 behind her ! I know many will praise God for 
 the example of her wholly consecrated and 
 devoted life." — C. D. G., Bombay. 
 
Appendix 155 
 
 " Those few times I heard dear Mrs Fuller 
 speak are deeply impressed on heart and 
 memory. I feel I have personally lost a most 
 kind friend ; and in her zeal and love for the 
 Master may I have grace so to follow her good 
 example." — G. H. H., Bombay. 
 
 " She is at Home, and we shall soon be there ; 
 in the meantime I praise God for the inspiration 
 her holy consistent life has been to me. It has 
 many times been an object lesson to see how she 
 humbled herself under God's hands, and let her- 
 self be disciplined by Him in the trials and 
 difficulties that came to her. I am sure that 
 many are to-day blessed and useful workers in 
 His vineyard, owing to the way she laboured 
 in prayer and believed for them till they came 
 out into rest and victory. She was a true 
 mother in Israel ; may we follow her as she 
 followed Christ. We know that more than 
 ever your sufficiency will be of GOD, who will 
 not fail you, but is enabling you to glorify 
 Him. In view of the Lord's near coming, who 
 can tell how much all this means." — H. R.,^ 
 Bombay. 
 
 " I praise God I ever knew her. May we seek 
 to live as truly for God as she did. She had 
 this testimony that she pleased God. Almost 
 
 ^ Helen Richardson passed within the veil one year after 
 Mrs Fuller. 
 
156 A Life for God in India 
 
 the last talk we had together before 1 left Bom- 
 bay, speaking of Miss Park, she said : ' I envy 
 her. Oh, it will be lovely to get Home.' There 
 was a longing in her tone that made me feel 
 how truly she looked forward to that time." — 
 L. L., Rangoon, 
 
 " I owe very much to dear Mrs Fuller's 
 counsel, and her sympathy at all times. When- 
 ever I saw her I saw some manifestation of the 
 life of the Master, His humility and selflessness 
 and kindness." — M. W. M., Poona. 
 
 " We will push on with the work she has left, 
 devoting ourselves yet more fully to God. It 
 seems so strange that God should take one so 
 well fitted for work, and doing it so well. But 
 He will help us who are left to carry on the 
 great work in His name and strength. We are 
 filled with sorrow for you, but rejoice for our 
 glorified sister." — D. O. and E. W. F., Poona, 
 
 " From the time your wife first came to our 
 home in Ellichpur at the beginning of 1877, 
 we have felt an interest in her perhaps greater 
 than in any other servant of the Lord with whom 
 we were permitted to have fellowship. And now 
 she has gone to her exceeding great reward ! I 
 feel that in departing she could say as but few 
 of Christ's servants in these days could : * I 
 
Appendix 157 
 
 have fought a good fight ; I have finished my 
 course ; I have kept the faith. Henceforth 
 there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness ! ' 
 May God help us all to follow her as she followed 
 the Master." — A. N., Dhond. 
 
 " The world will to very many of us seem 
 for ever the poorer for the loss of one who was 
 indeed a power wherever she went." — M. T., 
 Ahmedabad. 
 
 " Mrs Fuller will be much missed by all who 
 knew her in this and other lands. I thank God 
 I had the privilege of making her acquaintance 
 personally last year, as I had before done by 
 reading articles from her pen. Her articles on 
 Indian womanhood I read with great interest 
 and profit." — J. J., Sangli. 
 
 " We have just been studying in Romans ix. 
 of the sovereignty of God, and this seemed to 
 come to show us that His way is beyond our 
 ken, that He will not have us lay down any 
 laws for Him. We can only say : ' Lo these 
 are parts of His ways.' Some day we will be 
 able to read the other side. What an abundant 
 entrance she must have had. I do hope God's 
 people will give Him alone the glory for all the 
 answers to prayer which He has granted in the 
 past three months of illness, and all her life 
 long." — M. H., Kodaikanal. 
 
158 A Life for God in India 
 
 " We had hoped that God would spare her 
 to you and to us and to many others. But 
 He required her elsewhere, her training was 
 complete, and so she was transferred to higher 
 service. We are still at college, but she has 
 graduated and passed out, or rather passed in." 
 — R. J. W., Coonoor, 
 
 " Mrs Fuller has been a great blessing to 
 my soul. I was always glad to meet her. 
 Her visit to us at Sanand was a great blessing 
 to me." — A. S., Coonoor. 
 
 OTHER FRIENDS IN INDIA 
 
 " I cannot refrain from writing to express 
 the very sincere regret that I feel at the loss 
 to you and to your children and the Christian 
 Church of one so earnest and so taught of 
 God. I had the great pleasure of meeting 
 your wife at my cousin's house in Bombay 
 when she was Miss Frow. ... I have ever 
 had the encouraging recollection of Miss Frow's 
 faith in God at that time. The remembrance 
 of her trust in Christ is a great savour." — 
 G. W., Murree. 
 
 " The loss is not yours only, but one in 
 which many will share, and will sorrow not 
 only out of sympathy with you, but from a 
 
Appendix 1 59 
 
 sense of personal bereavement." — G. C. W., 
 Bangalore. 
 
 " Eternity will alone reveal the worth and 
 fragrance of the beautiful Christ-life lived by 
 dear Mrs Fuller. And how many poor Indian 
 Christians are personally poorer by her trans- 
 lation. I cried as though I had lost my very 
 own sister of flesh and blood on hearing the 
 news. Never did I meet or have a few words 
 with her but with an uplifting influence and 
 effect. Thanks be unto God for such a life. 
 Words are poor comforters. It is only * Till 
 He come.' " — F. L. R., Bangalore. 
 
 " The loss was not yours only, it was such 
 a loss to the world. My wife wants to see 
 you to get from you, if you have it, the MSS. 
 of Mrs Fuller's life of Mr Finney [in Marathi]. 
 She had begun it several years ago. I trans- 
 lated some chapters, too. If you do not find 
 the MSS. send me the book from which Mrs 
 Fuller was writing the Life. I will translate 
 such portions as I think fit, in memory of the 
 dear sister." — S. R. M., Ahmednagar. 
 
 TESTIMONY FROM WESTERN LANDS 
 
 " What a perfect benediction her life was. 
 She was an ideal Gospel Christian, rejoicing in 
 
i6o A Life for God in India 
 
 the true sense always, and giving God thanks 
 from the depths of her heart. I count it one 
 of the rare privileges of my life to have seen 
 and known her as I did. She has been a 
 great spiritual help to me. Eternity alone 
 will reveal what the Lord has wrought through 
 her perfectly yielded spirit to His will." — 
 C. F. H., Brooklyn, 
 
 " So powerful was her influence that even 
 the great distance that was so much of the 
 time between us did not seem to me to 
 separate us. Truly she was one of the most 
 beloved of our Blessed Master's disciples, one 
 of the dearest to our Father's heart of all His 
 children. A martyr's glorious reward is hers." 
 — S. P. K., New York. 
 
 "Sister Fuller was such an institution in 
 Bombay. Her cheery, kind presence, and 
 above all her very spiritual and instructive 
 addresses will be greatly missed. This applies 
 to all the churches, for she was welcome in 
 all our circles, and as a worker seemed one 
 who could ill be spared." — J. M., London, 
 
 " The fragrance of her memory will live 
 long, not only through her kindly deeds and 
 loving helpful words, but her pen will enable 
 her to speak to the hearts of friends and 
 
Appendix i6i 
 
 strangers, and will, as the years go by, bring 
 many to Jesus." — J. K. T., Toronto. 
 
 " She was a remarkable woman, especially 
 suited for the work of a missionary. Her 
 gifts were great and her wisdom to guide and 
 suggest equally so. She had much power as 
 a writer. I always stopped to read all over 
 her signature, and never was disappointed in 
 its interest. But more than all was her entire 
 consecration and sweet personality." — S. E. O., 
 New York, 
 
 " We remember her kindly words, her 
 earnest faith and the immeasurable zeal and 
 love for the Master's work she so continually 
 manifested." — G. P. T., Paterson, New Jersey. 
 
 "Not many deaths, so far as I can now 
 recall, outside of our own family circle, have 
 affected my wife so deeply as this bereave- 
 ment. She had learned to love Sister Fuller 
 dearly, and she appreciated her character in 
 all of its various aspects. I had known her 
 for many years, and it is perhaps the highest 
 praise I could give her to say that in all my 
 recollections of her the most prominent feature 
 has been her Christian character." — Bishop J. 
 M. Thoburn, Lake Bluff, III. 
 
 " As I wrote in an article which will appear 
 
 L 
 
1 62 A Life for God in India 
 
 in T/te Christian Herald next week, so I say 
 now : That as Mrs Fuller went up and into 
 the presence of her Lord, her first petition 
 was for the dear people for whose conversion 
 from darkness to light, and from death to life, 
 she consecrated her talents, her time, her life. 
 My only regret is that when we met at your 
 house and she was ill in an adjoining room, 
 that I did not press more urgently my desire 
 to see her — and yet, perhaps, it is best as it 
 is." — Dr Louis Klopsch, Proprietor, New 
 York Christian Herald. 
 
 "About the same time, the week your 
 beloved one fell asleep, we were called out 
 by the Spirit here in our Prayer Union to 
 unite for a week together in prayer for you 
 and yours. We know God heard and answered 
 and all is well. It will be a great sorrow to 
 many who hear of your bereavement, but this 
 sorrow will be made to abound most fruitfully 
 as we look toward the fulfilling of the Blessed 
 Hope. 
 
 " I had long thought of writing to you and 
 Sister Fuller about an article she published 
 in the spring or early summer of 1894 on 
 " The Ministry of Prayer." The Lord used it 
 to call me to this ministry which has resulted 
 in the PENTECOSTAL Prayer Union, the 
 influence of which is reaching out increasingly 
 into all the earth. The fruits of it here in 
 
Appendix 163 
 
 Los Angelos can never be estimated. Only 
 yesterday there came into my hand an address 
 delivered before the Ministerial Union of the 
 Presbyterian Church of San Francisco, which 
 address is one of the most remarkable on the 
 subject I have ever seen. This had its spring 
 in the work last winter in this city — and all 
 had its rise in that call through Sister Fuller 
 in 1894. I have often borne testimony to 
 this, and I pray that God will multiply it." — 
 H. C. Waddell, Editor oi Prayer ^ Los AngeloSy 
 California, 
 
 II. FROM ALLIANCE MISSIONARIES 
 IN INDIA 
 
 Mrs Jessie Simmons 
 
 How we miss our dear Sister Fuller. 
 Loving service was the keynote of her life. 
 All her unusual gifts of mind and heart were 
 at the service of others. Both in our mission 
 homes and in the work at large her chief aim 
 in life was to be a humble instrument in God's 
 bands to be used of Him freely. To my 
 knowledge she never made her weakness of 
 body an excuse for refusing work of any kind 
 which she believed was sent of God. She 
 
164 A Life for God in India 
 
 knew the blessed secret of taking life from 
 Jesus day by day, and was a testimony to 
 God's keeping power. 
 
 Her faith in God was mighty, and her keen 
 and wise insight and forethought in matters 
 concerning our work made her an invaluable 
 counsellor. She was always reaching out for 
 even wider lines of usefulness, and being a 
 clear thinker and able writer, she translated and 
 wrote many valuable books. She lived an un- 
 selfish life, and was always happiest when she 
 saw others reaching out and growing in grace. 
 
 Her love for the native Christians was 
 marvellous. She longed to see a real out- 
 pouring of the Holy Spirit upon them, realising 
 how much God could use them among their 
 own people. This was the burden of her 
 prayer ; may ours be the re-echo of it. 
 
 We know not why God has taken such an 
 able and useful life. But we bow our heads 
 and say " Thy will be done," and cry out for 
 her mantle to fall upon us. 
 
 Mrs Carrie Bates Rogers 
 
 My husband and I went to see her near 
 the beginning of her last illness. She could 
 scarcely speak above a whisper, and that with 
 difficulty. Her first words to us were inquiries 
 as to what we were to do for the hot season, 
 and hoping we should be comfortable. 
 
Appendix 1 65 
 
 Later on, when we brought her to our 
 temporary home at Igatpuri, in the intervals 
 between her times of physical anguish, her mind 
 would go out as usual to the dear missionaries 
 and their needs in those famine days, and she 
 would try to plan ways by which she hoped 
 one and another might be able to get away 
 from their stations for a little change and rest. 
 
 She had a dainty doll's cot, with furnish- 
 ings, which she wished our little girls to have. 
 She had it brought to her that she might per- 
 sonally see that all was in spotless order, and 
 took keen delight in thinking of the pleasure it 
 would afford them. 
 
 She had a rare gift of clear, forcible exposi- 
 tion of Scripture, always weaving in so much 
 of heart experience that her teachings went 
 from her own heart down deep into the hearts 
 of her hearers. How we miss her, words cannot 
 express. " Her works do follow her." 
 
 Mrs Martha Ramsey 
 
 Our first meeting with dear Mrs Fuller 
 was after the Board had accepted us for 
 India in 1892, when, in the Berachah Home 
 parlour. New York, she advised us as to outfits, 
 etc. Her simple motherly way drew us to her 
 at once, and her frankness in every detail of 
 the conversation gave us respect for her. . . . 
 These two qualities ever seemed to us to charac- 
 
1 66 A Life for God in India 
 
 terise her, and we say with gratitude this love 
 and respect never lessened one whit, and now 
 that she is gone, they are only increased by 
 many precious memories of her thoughtfulness 
 and wise counsel. 
 
 During that interview we in our zeal ex- 
 pressed our longing to reach the women of 
 India with the Gospel message, and we have 
 never forgotten the answer, " When you get 
 there they won't want you." In her talks to 
 intending missionaries she avoided the sensa- 
 tional, and always held a high standard of 
 motive ; in fact, at times her faithfulness would 
 almost seem to discourage, but we have praised 
 God again and again since being on the field, 
 and meeting with the difficulties, that she was 
 so true. 
 
 Her presence on the voyage from London 
 was a blessing. Often weak in body, but 
 drawing strength from the Lord, she never 
 failed both in the daily Bible-readings and in 
 her walk and conversation, to inspire our little 
 party with fresh determination to be true in 
 the service to which God had called us, and 
 also with rejoicing in the hope of the Second 
 Coming of our blessed Redeemer. 
 
 How much we owe to her under God for 
 help in every way as young missionaries, and 
 in the language ! She did for us what no 
 Brahmin pundit would have known how to 
 do. We remember how, standing out of sight, 
 
Appendix 167 
 
 as we recited with the teacher, she would get 
 to know our difficulties, and set to solving them 
 at the first opportunity, but in such a kind way 
 that one hardly knew till it was done. Later 
 on, after little Robbie " fell asleep " (as she 
 used to say), she took us all in a class, and 
 helped us out of our difficulties in Marathi. 
 
 Her interest in each one individually was 
 always so kindly expressed ; forgetful of her- 
 self she would plan for others as if they were 
 her own children. A visit from her was always 
 looked forward to with pleasure, and the savour 
 of the teaching she would give from God's 
 Word lingered long after she had left us, not 
 that she always said sweet things, for she was 
 faithful to show us our faults and mistakes. 
 
 We have seen her on her face in prayer 
 more than once for guidance or victory along 
 a certain line. The last time but one in our 
 home, God, in answer to her effectual fervent 
 prayer, raised up a beloved sister from what 
 seemed almost the gates of death, to take the 
 journey to Bombay, and from that time it was 
 victory to that dear one ; but no one would 
 have known who had not seen the wrestling 
 in prayer, that dear Mrs Fuller was more than 
 ordinarily exercised ; then on the journey she 
 spent much of the night on her face in prayer, 
 and God preciously answered. 
 
 Her last visit to us was less than two 
 months before her illness began, when she 
 
1 68 A Life for God in India 
 
 was so interested in the famine work, and so 
 anxious lest we fall short of God's thought 
 for the people. One of her messages then 
 was that as Moses was as God to the Israel- 
 ites, so we were to be at this time to those 
 whom God would call out for His Name. 
 Her favourite hymn just then was : — 
 
 " Taking life from Jesus, 
 Freely day by day, 
 * ^ * 
 
 Life and strength receiving, 
 All our pilgrim way." 
 
 This she was literally doing — taking life step 
 by step. 
 
 At her request I accompanied her to Bul- 
 (3ana, a station twenty-eight miles off the 
 railway, and I shall always be thankful for 
 the experience of that journey with her. The 
 seats on the mail tonga were engaged, and it 
 didn't seem as if we could get bullocks for 
 that day. She longed to go home, for she 
 was tired, but felt God wanted her to go and 
 see the dear missionaries at Buldana, so in 
 answer to prayer the bullocks came, and we 
 started off late in the afternoon, hoping to 
 reach our destination about midnight. How- 
 ever, as so often is the case, there was difficulty 
 in getting change of bullocks at the different 
 stages, notwithstanding that a friend of Mrs 
 Fuller's, a Christian Government official, had 
 sent his servant all the way to help ; so it 
 
Appendix 169 
 
 was past four in the morning when we arrived 
 at the bungalow. Not one word of complaint 
 passed her lips, nothing but praise to God all 
 the way, and as she paid the different drivers, 
 she always gave as much over the Government 
 rates as would make up for the extra price of 
 fodder in the scarcity, but gave it in such a 
 way that the man would be encouraged, and 
 not as a charity. 
 
 Her shawl was heavier than mine and the 
 night was bitterly cold, so she cunningly said, 
 "Your shawl is smooth and mine is rough, 
 and I don't like it so well. Let me take 
 yours," just that I might be comfortable. 
 
 She was needed in Bombay, so began the 
 return journey that same afternoon on the 
 mail tonga. That was the last time we saw 
 her in health. 
 
 Before her Home-going I was privileged to 
 spend a few days with her, and although in 
 pain and weakness she still had the same 
 love for the work and the missionaries, and 
 would speak of both again and again. 
 
 It did seem as if she was needed here, but 
 God knew best, and as she said one day, " If 
 I am to go, you dear ones must just take it 
 that my work is finished." 
 
 We miss her, oh, so much, and often long 
 for her counsel and her prayers, but would not 
 call her back if we might, for her work here 
 was finished, but there " His servants shall 
 
170 A Life for God in India 
 
 serve Him," and still she "being dead yet 
 speaketh." 
 
 Mrs Blanche Hamilton 
 
 Although labouring for many years in 
 Berar, India, and being specially called to work 
 among the Marathi people, yet no one felt 
 more an interest or burden for the work in 
 Gujarat than she. Six years ago a party of 
 eleven entered Gujarat when the Alliance 
 work was new, and it would be hard to tell 
 how much her prayers and occasional visits to 
 this field meant to us and to the people. 
 What a help she was in every way in all the 
 trials accompanying pioneering — learning a 
 new language, becoming accustomed to the 
 people and their ways, with no one of the 
 party experienced — may never be fully known. 
 
 Since called to her reward, many of her 
 earnest prayers and steps taken by faith for the 
 work in Gujarat have been realised. During 
 one visit to this field, God seemed to give her 
 an enlarged vision for the work, and she was so 
 impressed by it that she called us all together 
 and gave it under the beautiful Bible lesson of 
 Ezekiel's river vision. Although at the time 
 there was not one convert, she seemed to see 
 the work spreading and reaching out over a 
 long strip of country down to the sea. It 
 
Appendix 171 
 
 seemed so impossible, but we have watched 
 God's plans unfolding until we have seen that 
 vision fulfilled. The first to come into the 
 light was a poor woman who was covered with 
 sores and at times was possessed of a devil. 
 The evil spirit was cast out — and she was 
 partially restored to health, and later on her 
 face used to light up with joy on hearing Jesus' 
 name. The Christians now number about 400, 
 besides a girls' orphanage of 360, and one for 
 boys at Dholka numbering about 400. 
 
 In trying to recall some of the many touch- 
 ing incidents that time fails to erase, it seems 
 as if she could not have been more one with 
 us ; she shared our joys and sorrows in such a 
 measure that her departure seemed like a great 
 prop being removed. It is impossible to say 
 enough of her loving, tender sympathy. One 
 afternoon while busy with the study of the 
 language, things began to grow dark, and before 
 night dear Miss Montgomery and myself were 
 down with cholera. We felt so much the need 
 of her prayers that a telegram was sent im- 
 mediately to Berachah Home, Bombay, and 
 instead of simply praying for us there, she left 
 at once for Gujarat. Soon after her arrival 
 she gave a Bible-reading that brought fresh 
 courage, and later on deliverance ; my life was 
 spared for further years of precious service. 
 Miss M. was called to a higher service above, 
 and a touching little incident transpired as she 
 
172 A Life for God in India 
 
 was being carried out of the compound for 
 interment in Bishop Heber's churchyard. A 
 crowd of native women came over weeping 
 from the camp near by ; although not able to 
 speak Gujarati, yet, as always, Mrs Fuller 
 could not refrain from turning everything to 
 God's glory. She talked to them of heaven 
 (through an interpreter) with such earnestness 
 that to this day, six years later, they often 
 speak of it. It was literally true that she 
 " sowed beside all waters." 
 
 When the famine began in Gujarat she was 
 still one of the first to advise and help. Many 
 were the messages of power given to the 
 women, and she understood their need and 
 hearts as few do. Having to talk through an 
 ii terpreter she at last began to study Gujarati. 
 Her efforts were untiring, though her other 
 labours were great, and we rejoiced to think 
 she would soon be able to give our women 
 some of her loving messages of power in the 
 vernacular, but ere the time came she was 
 transplanted to a higher realm and sphere, 
 while we here below learn from those she has 
 helped and influenced that her works still 
 continue. 
 
Appendix 173 
 
 III. IN MEMORIAM 
 
 By Miss Hattie L. Bruce, American Marathi 
 Misson, Satara 
 
 "In this life of faith in the natural, and dis- 
 inclination to the supernatural, we want 
 especially to meet the whole world with this 
 credo^ * I believe in the Holy Ghost.' " 
 
 These words, though written by another, 
 seem always associated in my mind with Mrs 
 Fuller, because she it was from whom I caught 
 their spirit, years ago. " Do you believe in 
 the Holy Ghost ? " I never shall forget the 
 circumstances under which she asked me this 
 question, after a refusal on my part to address 
 a large children's gathering at our annual 
 Sabha. She, being like a mother to me in 
 things spiritual, had taken me very seriously 
 to task for my refusal. All excuses — that I 
 was not free in Marathi, that I had had no 
 time for preparation, that another could do far 
 better than I — she simply brushed aside with 
 the words, "If you believe in the Holy Ghost, 
 you will speak to-morrow." And my plead- 
 ings to the contrary were in vain, though with 
 hands clasped, and almost on my knees before 
 her, I lingered till eleven o'clock that night, in 
 
174 A Life for God in India 
 
 hopes that she would relent. She knew me to 
 be in a position where I had no alternative 
 but to obey, and she took advantage of it to 
 make me venture out upon God. This is 
 only one illustration of how she pushed me 
 into deep water. I had given her the right to 
 do so, for, as said above, she was like a mother 
 to me. Besides, in early days, her longings 
 and definite choice had been, like mine, for 
 the supernatural, and all through life she had 
 proven the " God of impossibilities." As I 
 longed to prove Him, I could not but follow 
 such a venturesome spirit, one who would go 
 to all lengths with God. And so she led me 
 on and on. " Let God be true ! " How can I 
 ever thank her for sharing with me the inspira- 
 tion of her life ! 
 
 I was always welcome in Mrs Fuller's home. 
 " Come whenever you will, and bring your 
 friends with you, only give me twenty-four 
 hours' notice," she used to say, and many a 
 time, both in Akola and Bombay, I have taken 
 her at her word. Many are the heart to heart 
 talks I have had with her. I would watch my 
 opportunity to sit at her feet — all the better if 
 it were evening, and the lights turned low — 
 for then I could ask her to tell me what she 
 saw to be wrong in my life. Was she not my 
 spiritual confidante ? In her inimitable way 
 she would perhaps begin : '' You want me to 
 size you up ? Well, I think you're lovely ! " 
 
Appendix 175 
 
 And then she would go on to show me the 
 reverse ! " The truth in love " — it was not 
 hard to hear it from her lips. 
 
 Once during a season of special meetings 
 which Mrs Fuller conducted at Mahableshwar, 
 she was my guest. What happy times we had 
 together in our little grass chupper\ She was 
 the only friend who ever thought it worth while 
 to give " Bible-readings for one," to me alone. 
 But I could not have her all to myself even 
 after her day's work seemed done, for there were 
 so many missionaries who made appointments 
 to meet and talk with her, that she was 
 sometimes kept up at night. With that de- 
 lightful humour of hers, she remarked to me 
 one evening : " I'm afraid you'll be put out by 
 what I've done ! " " Do you think it's so easy 
 to put me out?" I asked. "I mean put out 
 
 physically," she answered. " Miss wanted 
 
 a talk with me, and I couldn't arrange for it 
 in any other way than to offer her your bed. 
 You don't mind going over to her place to sleep 
 to-night, do you ? " So this is how Mrs Fuller 
 " put me out " — out of my own house, out of 
 my own bed — and I loved her the more for it ! 
 She was made a great blessing to the dear ones 
 at Mahableshwar that season. One of them 
 confessed to me, " She helps by her life, by her 
 presence, more than by anything she says." 
 But her words, too, were spoken in the power 
 of the Spirit, and many of us will treasure them 
 
176 A Life for God in India 
 
 as long as we live. " I am not a teacher," she 
 said to me once ; " God only gives me sweet 
 thoughts." 
 
 I never shall forget the call we made together 
 upon a stranger who showed herself wholly out 
 of sympathy with us and our work. Mrs Fuller 
 remarked afterwards, " Didn't she snub me, 
 though ? I tell you, there's one thing the devil 
 can't imitate, and that is the sweetness of Jesus! " 
 With the very sweetness of Jesus she had herself 
 learned to meet the rejection, the misunder- 
 standings and the trials of her lot. " I belong 
 to a kingdom that is yet to come," she once 
 simply replied, when asked her nationality ; 
 and all her life witnessed to her being a 
 pilgrim, a stranger here. How she pleaded,"Thy 
 Kingdom come ! " How abundant was she in 
 labours for the salvation of the people, " Marathi 
 salvation," as she used to call it, adding some- 
 times, " I do not want long life unless God 
 shows me His salvation !" (Ps. xci. 16). More 
 than all, how her heart was set upon Jesus' 
 coming again ! " Till he come I " Dear heart, 
 so weary with love and longing, it will not be 
 hard to wait now. 
 
 " For so He giveth His beloved sleep." 
 
Appendix 177 
 
 By Mrs F. Percy Horne, of the Bombay 
 Guardian 
 
 The first time I saw Mrs Fuller was at an 
 evening service in the spacious Grant Road 
 Methodist Church in Bombay. She had just 
 returned from America with a large party of 
 missionaries for the then new Alliance Mission, 
 and had been asked to give the address in 
 place of a sermon. Her words came with 
 power, and the subject of the address has 
 never passed from my memory. She spoke 
 of the power of Christ in the heart in 
 contrast to the doctrine of " perfection," and 
 she told how at one time she believed she 
 had received the blessing of " a clean heart," 
 but she looked at her heart and examined her 
 feelings so closely that her eyes were turned 
 away from Jesus. But later He had taught 
 her the rest of allowing Him to dwell in her 
 heart. Now the difficulty of loving those 
 whom she naturally did not love was gone, 
 now the difficulty of speaking was over, and 
 now the irksomeness of work was past. 
 Jesus loved through her ; He spoke through 
 her ; and He worked through her ; and she 
 gladly acquiesced. Later, when I knew her 
 more intimately, I found that her words were 
 true. Her life was an outward testimony of 
 the indwelling Christ. 
 
 When the entire work of this office devolved 
 
 M 
 
178 A Life for God in India 
 
 on us we had no kinder friend. Nearly every 
 morning when she was in Bombay she would 
 come in for a few minutes' " gup," and some- 
 times we shared the " sweet message " the 
 Lord had given her that morning. And often 
 she would write it down for a larger circle, for 
 the pages of the Guardian. She often made 
 me think of the words, " There is that 
 scattereth and yet increaseth " — she gave 
 lavishly of her talent, her love, and her sunny 
 kindness, and all these gifts were abundantly 
 replenished. 
 
 Ours was only one of the households she 
 visited in Bombay, but we felt she belonged 
 to us. What a number of little joys she 
 brought ! Sometimes it was a charming letter 
 from her daughter in America ; another time 
 a pretty photograph ; once a plate of some 
 strawberries which had been brought for her 
 from the hills. The last gift was some lovely 
 pinks which a friend had brought for her from 
 Panchgani. Mr Fuller wrote a day or two 
 before the call came : " She picked out a part 
 of them with her own hand, and asked that 
 they be sent to you with her love. She is no 
 better, humanly speaking, but twelve weeks 
 ago yesterday she seemed nearer death than 
 now, and the doctor said she would not live 
 till morning. She has been all these weeks 
 like the burning bush — burning but not con- 
 sumed." 
 
Appendix 179 
 
 When the call came and the news spread 
 over the city, a large concourse of people 
 gathered at Berachah Home. It was the 
 saddest funeral I ever attended ; missionaries 
 from all the mission houses were present, and 
 Indian Christians of all ranks crowded the 
 entry and the passages. Our workmen begged 
 an hour's leave to take farewell of the body of 
 one who had endeared herself to them by in- 
 numerable acts of kindness. I remember how 
 after the brief service, and when the triumphant 
 singing was stilled, a hush fell upon the assembly 
 that was almost painful. The stillness was so 
 tense that it was a relief when a child's cry 
 broke it, and then the tears of the women 
 flowed freely as they filed round the casket. 
 The grief of the native Christians was intense ; 
 she made herself one with them ; I never 
 knew a missionary to understand them better. 
 Mrs Fuller could make an Indian do any- 
 thing she wished. I remember how our mali 
 (gardener) would do his utmost to obtain 
 cuttings of the plants she desired for her 
 garden ; I remember, too, that we hardly 
 ever went into her house without meeting 
 some Indian Christian who had gone to her 
 for advice or help. She was no respecter of 
 persons, unless it were that she sought out and 
 devoted herself to those who most needed her 
 help. 
 
i8o A Life for God in India 
 
 IV. COVENANT PROMISES TO 
 PARENTS 
 
 A BIBLE READING BY MRS FULLER 
 
 How many parents there are whose one great 
 burden is their children. Many of them are 
 selfish in this, because it is their children, and 
 it would be so nice to have them saved, and 
 be good, and go to church with them, and 
 never have any bad habits. They are inter- 
 ested in no one else's children. But there are 
 parents whose motives are not selfish, who 
 pray and shed many tears, but always seem at 
 sea for any definite promise to lay hold of for 
 their children. I have had many parents beg 
 me to pray for their children, and when I have 
 asked them, " Do you believe and plead the 
 covenant promises for them ? " I have found 
 many who did not know what they were. 
 
 God says, " Lo, children are an heritage of 
 the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is His 
 reward " (Ps. cxxvii. 3). If this is true, He 
 has made provision for them. 
 
 God made 
 
 A WONDERFUL COVENANT 
 
 with Abraham. In him it was wonderfully 
 fulfilled : " I will ... be a God unto thee, and 
 
Appendix i8i 
 
 to thy seed after thee " (Gen. xvii. 7). The one 
 brief condition for the fulfilment of this great 
 promise was indicated by God when He said 
 of Abraham : " I know him, that he will com- 
 mand his children and his household after him, 
 and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do 
 justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring 
 upon Abraham that which He hath spoken of 
 him " (Gen. xviii. 19). 
 
 To ratify this, God gave to Abraham the 
 usual token of a covenant between two parties. 
 The word covenant means " a cutting." The 
 animal for sacrifice was cut in two, and the 
 covenanting party passed between the pieces. 
 In Gen. xv. we read of how God, the covenant- 
 ing party, sealed His pledge to Abraham. A 
 lamp of fire passed between the pieces, and 
 thus God identified Himself with Abraham and 
 his seed. " For the first time since man left 
 the gate of the garden of Eden, there appeared 
 the symbol of the glory of God which was 
 afterward to shine in the pillar of cloud and 
 the Shekinah gleam." He could swear by no 
 greater, so he swore by Himself, " I will . . . 
 be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee." 
 
 " Abraham believed God, and it was counted 
 unto him for righteousness " (Gen. xv. 6 ; 
 Rom. iv. 3). 
 
 But it was never God's thought that the 
 Hebrews should live for themselves or to them- 
 selves. 
 
1 82 A Life for God in India 
 
 HE EXPANDS HIS THOUGHT 
 
 " In thee shall all the families of the earth be 
 blessed." And it is His thought for us still. 
 " I will bless thee . . . and thou shalt be a 
 blessing " (Gen. xii. 2). 
 
 And now, dear fathers and mothers, " If ye 
 be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed and 
 
 HEIRS ACCORDING TO THE PROMISE" 
 
 (Gal. iii. 29). God will be a " God unto thee 
 and to thv seed after thee." We believe this 
 covenant includes us all. " God pledges Him- 
 self to be the God of our seed, but it is for us 
 to claim the fulfilment of His pledge. Not in 
 heart-rending cries, but in quiet determined 
 faith, let us ask Him to do as He said." Let 
 us " also walk in the steps of that faith of our 
 father Abraham, which he had" (Rom. iv. 12). 
 
 Let us turn to the first great covenant 
 promise which is the key-note to all the rest 
 " And I will establish My covenant between 
 Me and thee and thy seed after thee, in their 
 generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be 
 a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee" 
 (Gen. xvii. 7). Over and over in the Old 
 Testament is this thought repeated in different 
 dress. 
 
 Deut. xii. 28. "Observe and hear all these 
 words which I command thee, that it may go 
 
Appendix 183 
 
 well with thee, and with thy children after thee 
 for ever." 
 
 Deut. xi. 18-21. " Lay up these My words 
 in your heart . . . and ye shall teach them 
 your children . . . that your days may be 
 multiplied and the days of your children . . . 
 as the days of heaven upon the earth." How 
 little long life for ourselves or for our children 
 is to be desired unless our and their days 
 can be " as the days of heaven upon the earth." 
 
 Ps. ciii. 17, 18. David reiterates the 
 thought. " But the mercy of the Lord is 
 from everlasting to everlasting upon them that 
 fear Him, and His righteousness unto children's 
 children ; to such as keep His covenant, and 
 to those that remember His commandments to 
 do them." 
 
 Isa. xliv. 3. Isaiah gives some most precious 
 promises : " I will pour My Spirit upon thy 
 seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring." 
 Let us couple that with Peter's declaration on 
 the Day of Pentecost : " And 
 
 THE PROMISE IS UNTO YOU, AND TO 
 YOUR CHILDREN" 
 
 (Acts ii. 39), and press boldly to the throne 
 of grace that our children as well as our- 
 selves shall possess this gift of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 Isa. liv. 1 3. " And all thy children shall be 
 
184 A Life for God in India 
 
 taught of the Lord ; and great shall be the 
 peace of thy children." How often the Spirit 
 has applied this promise to the heart of a 
 praying parent. 
 
 Isa. lix. 21 comes to us with all the 
 solemnity of an oath or covenant : ''My Spirit 
 that is upon thee, and My words which I have 
 put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy 
 mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor 
 out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the 
 Lord, from henceforth and for ever." Of the 
 great grandmother of^ Fidelia Fiske it is 
 written : " Her last days were days of almost 
 continued praying : and the burden of her 
 prayer then was, as it had previously been, that 
 her posterity might be a godly seed even to 
 the latest generation." Of her, Miss Fiske 
 writes to a cousin : " Have you heard your 
 father tell how she used to pray for her 
 descendants to the end of time?" In 1857 
 three hundred of the descendants of this godly 
 woman were members of Christ's Church. 
 Miss Fiske adds in speaking of it : "I often 
 think I may be receiving blessing in answer to 
 her prayers : for I know that she prayed for 
 her children's children for all coming time." 
 This was a grasping of the promise, for " thy 
 seed's seed." On the opening page of Miss 
 Fiske's life it says : " Fidelia Fiske was a 
 child of the covenant," Precious record. 
 
 Mr Hastings tells of a father and mother 
 
Appendix 1 85 
 
 who set apart an hour every Sabbath morning 
 to pray for their children. They were all con- 
 verted, and as they grew up and had families, 
 they followed their parents' custom of prayer : 
 so that at the time of writing the sketch, there 
 had been four generations of this godly pair, 
 and not one out of the four generations had 
 ever been known to die unsaved. A number 
 were ministers of the Gospel and missionaries 
 and otherwise useful men and women. 
 
 Jer. xxxii. 39 says : " I will give them one 
 heart, and one way, that they may fear Me for 
 ever, for the good of them, and of their children 
 after them." 
 
 Deuteronomy xxx. 6 brings a precious pro- 
 mise to claim : " And the Lord thy God will 
 circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, 
 to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, 
 and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live." 
 Dear parent, as you have realised that God 
 was circumcising your heart to love Him more 
 fully, has it never given you power to get down 
 on your knees and claim the same for your 
 children ? To spiritually apprehend this gives 
 a parent great boldness to approach God for 
 his family. 
 
 FOR CHRISTIANS AS WELL AS FOR JEWS. 
 
 But some may say : " Oh, these promises 
 are good enough, but they are all for the 
 
1 86 A Life for God in India 
 
 Jews." It seems to us that God could give 
 no greater denial to this than when Peter so 
 boldly on the day of Pentecost, at the begin- 
 ning of the new dispensation, gave God's 
 thought for the family anew, as he said : 
 " For the promise is unto you, and to your 
 children''' (Acts ii. 39). Can it not be said 
 of many : " Ye have not, because ye ask 
 not " ? The Holy Ghost bade Peter also tell 
 Cornelius words whereby he and all his house 
 should be saved (Acts xi. 1 4). And when the 
 Philippian jailor cried out, " What must I do 
 to be saved ? " Paul replied : " Believe on the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, 
 and thy housed 
 
 I fear that we missionaries have not always 
 been true to the people of India in giving 
 them the Gospel. We have over and over 
 exhorted them to " Believe on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and thou shalt be saved " ; and then 
 have stopped there. But in a land where a 
 man has to cut every sacred tie to become a 
 follower of Jesus, and literally forsake parents, 
 wife, and often children, we should go on to 
 the end of the verse and add — ''and thy housed 
 Family ties make one of the greatest hind- 
 rances convicted souls in India have in confess- 
 ing Jesus. We believe if this promise could be 
 flashed into their hearts by the Holy Ghost, as 
 the living word of God, that the life it would 
 bring would give power to step out, and 
 
Appendix 187 
 
 courage to go back to their friends and tell 
 them what God has done for them, and it 
 would give them faith to labour to bring their 
 friends to Christ amidst persecution and 
 perhaps even to martyrdom. " And thy 
 house." 
 
 Some may say : " I know so many good 
 people of whom this is not true of their 
 children." '' Let God be true, but every man 
 a liar " (Rom. iii. 4). Perhaps they never be- 
 lieved these promises. The Bible is full of 
 promises of the baptism of the Spirit, but how 
 many good people never receive it. And 
 when one does receive it, he sees he might have 
 been filled long before if he had but com- 
 prehended and laid hold of God's promises. 
 These promises are given to parents of a 
 certain character, and as parents believe, 
 their power to command their house (Gen 
 xviii. 19), and a faithfulness to teach (Deut. 
 xi. 1 8) their children, as they could not other- 
 wise have done, is given. 
 
 Others may say, " My children have long 
 got the start of me," or " I did not know God 
 or care when I was with my children, and they 
 have long gone from under my influence." 
 We know nothing to do but to humble our- 
 selves to God, and confess it all : and confess 
 it to the children, and then bring the promises 
 to God. 
 
 Another may say : " But my husband, or 
 
1 88 A Life for God in India 
 
 my wife is not a Christian, what can I do?" 
 God seems not to have forgotten such cases. 
 Turn to i Cor. vii. 14. The case is more 
 easily understood in heathen lands where there 
 are different religions. Mr Coles says, " ' holy ' 
 and ' unclean ' must be certainly taken in the 
 putative sense, i.e. the children are nominally 
 Christian, not pagan : the family becomes a 
 Christian household by the Christianity of 
 either parent. Whatever prerogatives belong 
 to the Christian family accrue to this by virtue 
 of the faith of either parent. I see no reason 
 to doubt that Paul had distinctly in mind the 
 covenant relation which Christian households 
 sustain to God in reference to the consecration 
 of their offspring under the great promise : ' I 
 will be a God to thee and to thy seed after 
 thee.' Paul interprets this covenant to apply 
 to ' thee ' in cases where only one of the parents 
 is a believer. Most tenderly and mercifully 
 God provides that the personal faith of either 
 parent shall be honoured as sufificient ground 
 to claim all the promises of this most precious 
 covenant." 
 
 The Spirit, too, in a time of prayer may 
 apply a promise to our hearts of a verse we 
 had never thought of in this connection. A 
 widow was once greatly exercised in prayer 
 for her children. The Spirit applied with 
 power to her the words : " Leave thy fatherless 
 children with Me, and I will preserve them 
 
Appendix 189 
 
 alive." She rested her heart, and they were 
 all converted. 
 
 Turn to Heb. xi. " By faith Noah prepared 
 an ark to the saving of his house!' Andrew- 
 Murray says : " The faith of Noah, made per- 
 fect by works, saved his family ; and with his 
 family he saved the race. The old story of * I 
 will bless thee and thou shalt be a blessing.' " 
 He further adds : ^'' By faith Isaac blessed facob 
 and Esau. His blessing on his children was 
 the manifestation of his faith in the promise of 
 God to his father and himself, and the trans- 
 mission of the blessiug to them. By faith 
 Jacob blessed each of the sons of Joseph. . . . 
 Faith was the secret inspiration of their treat- 
 ment of their children. Faith never confines 
 itself to the person of the believer himself, but 
 takes in his home and children. And how is 
 it that Christian parents can secure this longed- 
 for-blessing for their children ? There is but 
 one answer. By faith. Our life must be all 
 faith. The blessing and the power are His : 
 and it is as we have more of God in our life 
 and our home, there will be the hidden power 
 resting on our children. Faith does not only 
 mean a knowing that there is a covenant pro- 
 mise for our children, and a pleading of it in 
 prayer. This is an exercise of faith and has 
 great value. But the chief thing is the life ; 
 faith is the making way for God and giving 
 Him place in our life. And when at times 
 
190 A Life for God in India 
 
 the vision tarries, and the promise appears to 
 fail, faith understands this as only a call to 
 trust God more completely and more confi- 
 dently. As we hold fast our confidence firm 
 to the end, as in patience and long-suffering 
 we are strong in faith, giving glory to God, we 
 shall know for certain that we shall inherit this 
 promise too : * I will ... be a God to thee 
 and to thy seed after thee.' " 
 
 But in closing remember, dear friends, that 
 God never meant that just your family should 
 be saved. God's word was to Abraham and 
 it is to you : ^^ And in thee shall all the families 
 of the earth be blessed!^ Let not your thought 
 and prayer be : " My seed and my seed's seed"; 
 but teach your children and give them to God 
 that He may take them and make them a 
 blessing to the nations of the earth. 
 
 May our children indeed be children of the 
 covenant in its widest fulfilment. Amen. 
 
Large Crown 8vo, Canvas Binding, with numerous 
 Illustrations, Price 1.25 
 (5s.) 
 
 *' The Wrongs of Indian 
 Womanhood!' 
 
 By Mrs. MARCUS B. FULLER, Bombay. 
 
 With an Introduction by Ramabai. 
 
 •' Turns a searching light upon the sorrows of Indian women 
 and the customs to which they are at present bound to submit. 
 An impressive study, written with commendable moderation." — 
 Bookman. 
 
 " A very trenchant and a very fair statement of a condition of 
 things in our Indian Empire which it is well for English women 
 to know about." — Hearth and Home. 
 
 " Mrs. Fuller has gathered her information largely from Indian 
 sovu"ces, and has been at pains to verify all her statements. . . . 
 The book shows in a striking way the general degradation and 
 misery of the lot of Indian women as a whole, and it is to be hoped 
 that the appeal which she and Ramabai make to their sisters in 
 England, America, and India, will not be made in vain." — Daily 
 Free Press. 
 
 " Will be read with painful interest, and will help her readers to 
 realise a state of existence which to many of them might seem in- 
 tolerable and incredible. There is no reason to doubt the general 
 accuracy of her information or the fairness of her descriptions. . , . 
 To many it will be a shocking revelation, though it touches deli- 
 cately enough on the worst features of the case. It may be read 
 without any misgiving as to its substantial veracity." — Scotsman. 
 
 " She has neither exaggerated nor kept back what can be said 
 on the most important things connected with Indian women's con- 
 ditions. All who are interested in and want to do something for 
 the salvation of women in India will do well to read her book. . . . 
 Mrs. Fuller's careful and well-balanced representation of her subject 
 well deserves attention." — North British Daily Mail. 
 
 " The whole subject of domestic life in India, particularly among 
 the Hindus, is thoroughly discussed, and the relation of the Hindu 
 woman to the domestic circle and to the Indian Government is set 
 forth in a way that is full of pathos and interest." — Bookseller, 
 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH 
 
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A MARVELLOUS RECORD 
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 EVANGELISTIC WORK 
 
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 EXTRACT FROM 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO BRITISH READERS 
 
 By Rev. F. B. MEYER 
 
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 as much as " Westward Ho ! " used to do years ago, 
 when one longed to be one of those who discovered the 
 New World. But here is a new world close to oui doors ; 
 and I shall be surprised if this book does not set twenty 
 devoted servants doing on this side of the Atlantic the 
 same kind of work as my dear friend, S. H. Hadley, is 
 doing in Water Street, New York. . . ." 
 
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