Broader Visions and Greater Faith

It was about this time that she left India to return to her own country. The Board at home had suggested this before, but she had always insisted on remaining, until now nine years had passed, and she had never taken the usual furlough that has been found necessary to most missionaries because of change of climate and labor. But Faith Stewart has never, in her long years of service, taken a vacation as others find necessary. She, when physically able, was at the Lord’s business at home or abroad. But friends and those who had at last consented to send her, urged her, saying, “No missionary has gone to India and stayed so long before coming home. It is not wise to stay any longer. We have urged you to come before, but now we insist on your coming home on furlough for at least a year.”

Other missionaries stayed for the colder season, but left for the higher parts of India in the extreme heat of summer to protect their health and keep fit for the rest of the year. The average temperature for about nine months of the year in the area of the mission was 122 degrees, and this was not the heat of other places, for it was in the shade. Only one summer was there any change made in the nine-year term she had served in India as a missionary.

But it was with great reluctance that she began to prepare for the long absence from her beloved little ones who looked to her as to a mother and called her Mama. But the matter could be put off no longer, and she began to pack and at last found herself sailing homeward with mingled thoughts and emotions as she drew nearer and nearer each day. One thought was paramount. Would she be able to see her father once more?

A short while before sailing, she had taken in a little boy left homeless, and many thoughts kept coming to her mind. The girls were growing up, and a problem came with that growing.

The outlets for girls are few in India, and there must be an outlet to take care of the older girls so that the Home could continue to take in others. Also, they must be fitted for a life of usefulness. There was one question that presented itself to her—where to find suitable husbands for these girls when they became old enough to marry.

She could not bring herself to give noble, educated, Christian girls in marriage to heathen men, because the women in Hindu homes are not supposed to have a voice in anything, but must, without question, strictly obey their husbands in everything. If one of the mission girls desired to marry a Hindu, she would have to sacrifice every Christian principle in the very beginning and submit to a heathen marriage ceremony. Then after marriage, she would be forced to bow down in worship before their idols and to submit to all of their heathen customs. It would be impossible to even do this in outward form without sacrificing their consciences and losing their own soul.

Speaking of this very matter in a report made many years ago, she says:

In Christian lands, our young women meet with people and form their own friendships which lead to matrimony. This is not true in India. The girls are kept in seclusion in their own homes and do not go out in public. If they attend school, from the time they are eight years of age, they must attend a school for girls only. All conditions are such that bar them from forming acquaintance with the opposite sex. The parents or guardians plan for their marriage.

A Christian girl will likely know whom she is to marry and, in most cases, will have the privilege of meeting the one she is to marry a time or two and engage in a few moments of conversation, but that is all.

So those who live in such institutions as the Shelter are under the guardianship of the missionary in charge, and that missionary is entirely responsible to plan for the marriage of those in her care.

There is, therefore, only one solution for this tremendous problem. We must have a home for boys where we can rear and train Christian husbands for the girls. If we can open a home some little distance from the one we now have for girls, and there take in small orphan boys, surround them with strong Christian influence, give them elementary education, then have them taught good trades, this will fit them for an independent life. We can thus give our girls to them in marriage, and they will form their own Christian community in which they live.

It will place the girls in a position where they can have something to live for, and where their lives will broaden out and be a blessing to humanity. Who can measure the good it will be to a community, if in a few short years, we could have as the fruit of these two schools more than one hundred Christian homes? What a power for good this would be! One hundred homes shining out for God in the very midst of heathen darkness. This is the plan on which the Roman Catholics and others have worked, and they have the results to show today. We, too, can have results if we work to the same plan. But unless we open a boy’s home and rear Christian husbands for these girls, we shall, in the end, lose much of what God has designed to accomplish through His work.

But it requires money to sustain an institution of this sort. It will require a sum of thirty thousand dollars to erect buildings and establish a home. Having put our hands to the plow, we feel we dare not draw back, and at present we are where we cannot go forward unless God opens the way before us. And as He has ordained that His children should be workers together with Him, I take the liberty of bringing this great need before the friends of such a cause in Christian America.

The burden of her heart was to, during this year at home on furlough, raise the amount needed to open the Boys’ home on her return to India. To those who would read the report, she appealed earnestly to assist in rescuing and leading to pure, noble womanhood other little jewels who have fallen victims of the immoral traffic in minor girls that is so extremely carried on in dark India.

She began to make preparation for the long journey back to the homeland, and the day came when, leaving others in charge, and saying goodbye to the last little one in her beloved India, she took ship and sailed homeward at last. It was with mingled feelings that she drew nearer and nearer each day to her loved home. Would her father receive her? Would she be permitted to look on his face again? What did the year ahead hold for her and her work? On and on swept the great ship, ever nearer the goal, as she plowed through the mighty waves and steered a straight course for America.

Home after nine years! She hastened to the office of the Board of Missions where she presented herself. In surprise, they saw that after nine hard years in a country so hot that others failed in health, she returned weighing one hundred and thirty-four pounds and apparently in perfect health. They listened to her enthusiastic report of the past and her plans for the future, and they knew that the frail woman who had gone forth trusting had not trusted in vain.

“Well,” said one of them, “if we had known that you were in this fine physical condition, we would not have been so persistent on your returning at this time.”

A telegram and letter awaited her, telling that she would be permitted to come home. This was the best news that could come to her in the homeland. She hastened to the old home, and there God opened the door for a true and lasting reconciliation with her father. God is ever on the giving hand, and that year saw her father happily saved and baptized. He took his full stand for the truth at seventy-five years of age.

What a busy year it proved to be, full of journeys over the country in the interest of missions. Upon her arrival in the United States, she had opened her heart and told them of the absolute necessity of a boys’ home in India. Their vision did not take it in, and they turned down her earnest plea. Faith Stewart knew how to be denied. Had not the earlier years of her life been years of refusals and sad delays? She waited again for awhile and then laid the plea before them. But she was told that it was an utter impossibility. Alas for hearts that may be honest, but have no missionary vision or faith in the great God that they serve. Because of this lack in the homeland, out there on the harvest fields of the world thousands die in heathen darkness that might have been saved. We cannot measure the outreach by the small means in our hand, and what a pity not to see that our God works in and through His servants, who are to go out like Abraham—only because God said so. But the faithful missionary went about her self-appointed task during that year of furlough and laid the matter before another court, a higher court, not on earth. Men may be shortened and fail, but God is able. Pleading her case continually before Heaven’s throne and believing still, although she alone seemed to see and know the case, she held firmly to her purpose. That purpose was to erect and establish a home and school for Indian boys.

But time went by quickly, and she had been over many states to tell the good news of work in India and to stir up interest in missions in general. Finally the year was drawing to a close, and she would soon be returning to her field. So with burdened heart and dauntless courage, she faced the Mission Board once more.

She was not obligated to them, as she had never received a salary, but went forth with their approval and blessing. They sent her, as noted before, any money sent in especially for her. No promise had ever been made of support, and the good man of God who was then secretary would send some little offering as he could. When eight girls had been taken in, they wrote asking that she take in no more as it would be too many to support. But she wrote back, “If the Church of God is too small to support more, then God is able to do it.”

This time she made a new proposition. “If I can raise money for the establishing of a home and get all my support from the outside, not asking any help from the Christians here in the church, will you then consent to my going ahead and doing this work?” There remained now but a few days before sailing, and to go out to strange people and raise money seemed impossible. They consented, providing she get the money from strangers, asking none of the saints.

About that time a telegram came asking that she come to New York immediately, and the pastor of the Church there on Grand Avenue at that time had obtained engagements for her so plentiful that she was compelled to have noon meetings with businessmen and afternoon meetings and evening meetings for others to crowd them in in time.

At one noon meeting with businessmen in New York, a man stepped up and said, “About what will it take to support a boy for a year?”

She named the approximate amount, and he stepped forward and laid down the sum on the table.

A second man rose with tears and said, “My wife and I only had two children, and they were twin boys. We lost both of them with a severe sickness when they were young. I would like to give enough to support two boys for five years.”

And so the number mounted until there was funds raised for forty boys for from one to two and five years. Beside this, offerings were taken, and money was raised to start building a home for the boys. Those who gave the permission were surprised to hear that the impossible had really happened. There seemed to be no limit to the plans and purposes of this frail woman who had been told that she would probably last about six months in India.

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Gradually the Shelter and its works became known to a larger circle than those whom they saved from a degraded life. One day a British gentleman came and asked for help in an unusual problem in his home life. His wife, whom he loved dearly, had become pregnant, and after consulting physicians, was told that she could not give birth to a child. The only hope for her life now was an immediate operation to take the little one. If this was not done and the child left until the time of delivery, then both must die.

After she had heard the story of the troubled husband, she said, “I would not feel competent to give advice on such a serious case, but we can take this matter to God.”

The husband said that they had talked the matter over and did not feel that they wanted to be responsible for the life of the little one. So together they decided to cast the case on God and trust His care and the results. Some time passed by when a message came asking Faith Stewart to go to the home of this English gentleman. When she reached there, she found a woman doctor present, but in a professional sense only, as no doctor would take the case.

Hours passed by with the lady in deep suffering, but no deliverance, and the sad husband walking the floor in his utter helplessness. Finally the doctor suggested that, as there was no change in the patient’s condition, she should hurry to her home and eat and be refreshed, promising to return promptly. The missionary, left alone in this serious case, sat by the bedside, her heart lifted up to a mighty God who does not fail. Only a miracle now would save this life.

God came to the rescue, and before the doctor returned, a little child came into the world, perfectly normal, with the mother and child in good condition.

Is it any wonder that here and there among the great, and also among the lowly, sowing beside all waters, that results began to show forth the mighty power of God to save, to keep, and to heal? Her influence was shed abroad in the land where she was called, being used in a mighty way for the extension of His kingdom.

She herself tells of an incident that happened at this time at the Shelter. One morning, looking over the incoming mail, they found a check for one thousand dollars. The amount was so unusual that they read the figures over and over to make sure they did not make a mistake. But the check was genuine, and the two American girls who had come to India on the return from her trip home were joyful and at once began to plan several much-needed improvements.

But the missionary stopped their planning. She said to them, “God does not send money to a mission field just for nothing. There is a special need for this amount, or it would never have been sent. We dare not spend one dollar of it until God speaks. We will lay it aside until we hear definitely from God as to its use.”

That afternoon, a great hurricane came on about four o’clock, sweeping in a great wave of destruction across that section of India. They stood in the Shelter building and saw the roof of the school building lifted from its moorings and carried away in the sweeping gales of winds that tore through the section. Other property was damaged, but the building where they gathered for shelter was untouched, all by the goodness of God. As they watched the fury of the winds and the destruction in their wake, they were made to be thankful for the loving care of the great Father up above. Much damage was done to the mission property.

As soon as all was over, laborers were sent to work on the buildings, and when the last bill came in, the last dollar of the check was spent. God had sent just enough to cover the unexpected bills, and not a dollar more. How wonderful to trust in One who makes no mistakes.

One of the difficulties faced in the work in India is that of the caste system. People of a certain caste, for instance, must do a certain work and may not attain to any other, no matter how they may be capable in every way. They are never permitted to rise above their menial labors assigned to their caste. So it happened that an outcast woman was hired to take care of the outside toilets for the Shelter. She was called the “sweeper woman.” When she heard the girls singing at their worship hour, she would listen, and only the good Heavenly Father knew what effect it had on that poor, darkened soul. Bound by the caste system, she was born to be the lowest kind of servant, and with no hope of ever a change in her dreary life, she plodded on.

How sweet must the music have sounded, but she was not supposed to be able to mingle with others, and so for a long time she just listened. Then there came a time when she would hasten her work and slip into the very back part of the room, humbly listening to the sweet voices of the girls. Slowly, very slowly, the light drifted into her poor, darkened mind, and the beauty of the precious Gospel also came in. Gradually the whole story of salvation opened before her as an unrolled panorama. She was able to receive light enough to know that she must repent and turn to Christ for salvation, and then what blessed peace came into her troubled soul!

But alas! Her husband was a heathen, and when he learned that she had accepted this strange new religion of the unknown God, he became greatly enraged and threatened that if she did not give up this new belief, he would cast a spell on her. There are people who would laugh and say that this was ignorance and superstition and that the woman had nothing to fear. If these same people ever had the experience of living in one of these pagan lands, they would soon learn of the dread reality of this threat.

The poor wife came, fearful of her warning and in her great fear, scarcely knowing what to do. But she was calmed and told not to fear, as this was but a threat to make her afraid. If she would just hold on and pay no heed, nothing would happen to her, for all were quite sure her husband had no power to cast a spell on her.

So she went on for a little while. One day, the children came running in great excitement, telling us that the sweeper woman had fallen down in the carriage stable and could not get up. We went out to see what was wrong. She was lying there perfectly helpless and unable to arise. There was no doubt that she had been put under a spell by her wicked husband.

It was cool and airy out in the carriage building, and being an outcast, she would not have felt comfortable in the home of others. So we brought out a cot and arranged a bed for her and appointed someone to nurse and care for her needs. We began to pray for her healing, and five days later, she could walk about and talk with some difficulty. She was afraid to go back to her husband, so she was permitted to remain.

About that time, two brethren from the States came over to India and stopped at the Shelter. They saw her going about the grounds with her arms still paralyzed. They had compassion on her and again laid hands on her and prayed, and God healed the arms, and she was free from the awful spell cast on her by the powers of darkness and the enemy of mankind.