Love Won Him Victories

“but God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong;” — 1 Corinthians 1:27 (ASV)

To understand Hyde, you have to understand the Punjab. It was a farming province of British India named after its five rivers. Its people were Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, with very few Christians, and village life was ordered by caste. At the very bottom were landless labourers and sweepers then called Chuhras, a name used with contempt and today regarded as a slur. People of higher caste would not eat with them, touch them, or take water from their hands.

Around 1873 a man from that community named Ditt was baptized. He was a small, quiet man, lame in one leg, who made a thin living buying and selling hides. Instead of moving into the mission compound, as converts often did, he went home. His relatives were furious. His sister-in-law cursed him: “One of your legs is broken already; so may it be with the other.” Ditt answered, “Very well, my brethren; if it pleases you, you may oppose me and load me with reproaches and abuse; but your opposition will never induce me to deny Christ.” Then he walked thirty miles, lame as he was, to bring his wife, his daughter and two neighbours to be baptized.

That was the start of one of the great people movements in Christian history. The gospel spread from family to family through the poorest villages. In 1881 the census counted 3,912 Indian Christians in the Punjab. By 1911 there were 163,994. Not everyone welcomed it. Some missionaries worried that people were coming for the wrong reasons, or being baptized with too little teaching. Those were real questions. But Hyde saw in it what Paul saw in Corinth: God choosing “the weak things of the world.”

Hyde's home station was Ferozepore. By 1907 he was superintendent of the Moga circle, a district of 275 villages, working alongside an Indian evangelist named Jalal Masih. His mission's printed report for that year quotes his method:

“Begin the day in prayer and praise with your helpers. Then divide and go to the various parts of the town. Follow up inquirers and Christian converts in their places of work. Preach and baptize on the spot.”

He noticed that some people of higher caste were being drawn too, because, as he put it, “They see in Christians love not seen in their own.”

Hyde showed that love in ways nobody could miss. When village Christians arrived at a convention, he would embrace them “in Oriental style, laying his hand first on one shoulder and then on the other,” including Christians “of the lowest caste,” and he persuaded others to do the same. One witness thought this was his strong point: “Love won him victories.” He lived in village mud houses with his Indian evangelists, eating and sleeping alongside them. At the conventions it was often Gulla, the sweeper, who carried a plate of curry and rice to him. When Hyde died, his colleague wrote that he would be missed “by humble village preachers with whom he lived as a brother.”

In a society built on who could touch whom, a missionary hugging a low-caste villager in public was making a statement everyone understood.

Every school and town has its own caste system: who sits where, who gets noticed, who gets laughed at. The gospel ignores those lines. God has a habit of choosing exactly the people everyone else overlooks, and the Christians who serve them best don't just talk at them. They sit with them, eat with them, and treat them as family.

One thing to do this week: find one person who usually sits alone or gets left out, and sit with them, walk with them or eat with them. Don't turn them into a project. Just treat them like a brother or sister.