led; sometimes they seem to be rooted up. When we go
to our Master and tell Him, He explains it: "An Enemy hath done this."
But as the measure of the Enemy's activity is in direct proportion to
the measure of God's working, we take it as a sign of encouragement,
however hindering it may be. Satan would not trouble to fight if he saw
nothing worth attacking; he does not seem to mind the spread of a head
knowledge of the Doctrine, or even a cordial appreciation of it. Often
we hear the people say how excellent it is, and how they never worship
idols now, but only the true God; and even a heathen mother will make
her child repeat its texts to you, and a father will tell you how it
tells him Bible stories; and if you are quite new to the work you put it
in the _Magazine_, and at home it sounds like conversion. All this goes
on most peacefully; there is not the slightest stir, till something
happens to show the people that the Doctrine is not just a Creed, but
contains a living Power. And then, and not till then, there is
opposition.

This opposition is sufficiently strong in the case of a boy or young man
(older Caste men and women rarely "change their religion" in this part
of South India), but if a girl is in question, the Caste is touched at
its most sensitive point, and the feeling is simply intense. Men and
demons seem to conspire to hold such a one in the clutch of the
Terrible.

There is a young girl in Cupid's Lake Village whose heart the Lord
opened some weeks ago. She is a gentle, timid girl, and devoted to her
mother. "Can it be right to break my mother's heart?" she used to ask us
pitifully. We urged her to try to win her mother, but the mother was
just furious. The moment she understood that her daughter wanted to
follow Jesus, or "join the Way," as she would express it, she gathered
the girl's books and burnt them, and forbade her ever to mention the
subject; and she went all round the villages trying to stop our work.

At last things came to a crisis. The girl was told to do what she felt
would be sin against God. She refused. They tried force, sheer brute
force. She nerved herself for the leap in the dark, and tried to escape
to us. But in the dark night she lost the way, and had to run back to
her home. Next morning the village priest spread a story to the effect
that his god had appeared to him, told him of her attempt to escape, and
that she would try twice again, "but each time I will stand in the way