HORMASDJI PESTONJI
Before we leave India we shall hear the stories of four others of its
children who found their way to Christ the King. The name of the first
of these is Hormasdji Pestonji. He was not a Hindu, nor a Mohammedan,
but a Parsee. There are not very many Parsees in the world, and most
of them live in India. They are a powerful people, though they are few
in number. Their religion is a worship of fire, and their ideals of
character are high and noble.
Hormasdji went to a mission college in Bombay. Though no one had to
be a Christian in order to study there, yet each one had to listen to
lessons on the Christian faith, and to take his turn in reading the
Bible. Many of the boys hated the foreigner’s religion. They went to
the classes because they wished to learn English, but they would gladly
have closed their ears when the Bible lesson came. Hormasdji was one of
the fiercest of these. When he saw the name of Jesus he refused to say
it, and he tried to destroy the books in which it was. But he could not
help hearing.
Parsee women are not treated as most Mohammedan and Hindu women are.
They are honoured and loved, and may go in and out with freedom; and
home life amongst the Parsees is often bright and happy. Hormasdji
was extremely fond of his mother, and she died when he was still very
young. He was in passionate grief as he saw her body carried out,
covered with rich shawls, to the great white towers of silence by
the sea, where the Parsee dead are laid. “O god Fire give me back my
mother, give me back my mother,” he prayed; but his brother came sadly
back without the body he had borne away, and the boys were motherless.
Hormasdji thought of his prayer, and began to wonder if ‘fire’ really
was God at all. His lessons at school made him wonder still more, for
there were strange experiments with fire and with water, and it did not
seem to him that what he had seen with his eyes could be true if fire
was really God. He became very unhappy. He did not wish to believe
that Christ could be anything to him and he had lost all faith in his
own god Fire.
One day he went for a swim in the sea. Before he plunged in he saw
a sandbank on which he often rested, clearly marked, but while he
was swimming the rising tide covered the bank and there was no
resting-place for him anywhere. He turned back to swim to the shore,
but it was too far away and he felt his strength failing. As his
strokes grew feebler he thought of Christ and everything seemed
different to him from what he had imagined. He knew that in his heart
he did believe in Christ though he had tried to think that he hated
Him. Those on shore saw that Hormasdji was in danger and set out to
rescue him, but he did not forget the thoughts that had passed through
his mind when he seemed to be sinking. It was in a different spirit
that he listened to the missionaries afterwards. He was not content to
hear only what was taught in school. He wished to know all he could
about the King of India, so he went to the house of a Christian who
lived in Bombay. He met another Parsee there, who also studied in
the college. It was a joy to them both, for neither had known that
the other wished to follow Christ. From that day onwards they stood
together, shoulder to shoulder. When Hormasdji was nineteen years old,
he was baptised, four days after his friend. All Bombay was excited. No
one had ever left the Parsee faith before, and the Parsees stirred up
the Hindus and both together tried to kill the young converts. When a
trial at law was brought on, some of the Parsees clung to the wheels
of the carriage in which Hormasdji drove away from the court and said
that they would willingly die themselves in order to kill the man who
had left their faith. They tried to poison him and to set fire to his
house but all in vain. Hormasdji remained firm and spent his long life,
for he was seventy-one when he died, in seeking to bring the faith of
Christ into other hearts.