BAPTIST CHURCH

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 295, 10 June 1912, Page 5

BAPTIST CHURCH

Miss Beckingsale, with sixteen years' experience as a missionary in Zipporah, East Bengal, is now on a visit to the Baptist Church here. Yesterday afternoon she addressed the Sunday School and friends assembled in the church. By the aid of fourteen of the MtofaWk attired in various costumes of the different Mohammedan and Hindoo peoples, among whom she labors, Miss Beckingsale brought very vividly before the eyes as well'as the minds of her hearers the very large population to whom the Baptists of Xew Zealand alone carry the gospel of Jesus Christ. This was made very impressive when it was shown that among that dense population, about 280 times that of New Plymouth, there were only nine European missionaries, assisted by 27 native Christians. The life work of a missionary was pictured by means of the children in their native dresses. Miss Beckingsale formed them into a group, seated on the floor of the platform, with herself in the midst, and then gave thorn a short lesson from a Scripture Picture Roll in the Hindoo language. Then each scholar was called up to represent some particular case dealt with in the field, and the speaker briefly told the story of each—an illtreated child-widow, a neglected sufferer with diseased eyes, and so on; a series of sad examples of the suffering endured by those poor people by reason of the ignorant, superstitious and cruel methods adopted by the natives in dealing with disease. Such an address as Miss Beckingsale gave will be very long remembered by those who heard it, and must help to show the people of favored New Zealand that they have a serious duty to perform towards their fellow subjects in India to send missionaries to them to teach them of a better way. Beckingsale will speak again this evening in the same place.