Missionary To Kashmir Irene Petrie (An Old and Rare Book)

The history of Christian Missionaries in India is incomplete without taking into account the contributions of Miss Irene Petrie, the most brilliant and cultured of all ladies of the CMS roll in India. The present book constituting the Biography of this celebrated lady provides a de tailed account of the forty five months which elapsed between her departure from England in 1893 and her death, five of which were spent at home, three out ing journeys to and fro, and three spent in travel during short vacations in India. The remaining thirty four were months of incessant labour of which four and half were spent at St. Hilada's at Gulmarg, Kashmir, and twenty five and half in Srinagar-Viz. eight in the Zenna House and twelve at Holton Cottage.

SOME years ago the general reader was captured by the autobiography of a Russian girl, well born, attractive, gifted, ambitious, and successful as a musician and artist. She confessed more frankly than Imany confess it that on setting out in life her most earnest prayer was: "O God, grant me happiness. Make my life what I should like it to be." She died young, leaving this testimony: "I am so unhappy. All is wretchedness and misery. I don't know whether 1 believe in God or not"; and it is with a feeling of profound pity that one closes the record of her life.

The story of another girl, with similar gifts, who was likewise ambitious, and across whose short life more than one deep shadow fell, is told here. Judging by hundreds of letters from people differing widely in character and circumstances, one impression left by her career upon all who knew her was stronger than any other. Many say that she was very clever, very winning, very noble; but far more reiterate that she was before all things very happy; ready, in fact, to exclaim with Browning's David, who stands as a type of the capacity for delight of the richly endowed mind in the vigorous, youthful body, The following words of two who knew Irene Petrie well may be taken as an expression of what all who knew her well felt: "She always gave me the idea of one satisfied. Her joy was full. We saw it in her face as a schoolgirl, and in later years. That happy face will ever be before us when we think of her." "That almost joyous cheerfulness and sweetness of spirit drew even strangers to her, and made her loved wherever she went."

Her story is worth telling if only to unfold the secret of an unfailing delight in life, which is not always the lot of even the able and the fortunate, the upright and sincerely religious.

What she did is worth telling also, and is far more easily told than what she was. Almost indescribable is the charm of personality that made her a strong influence both at home and abroad, caused one ac quaintance at least to characterise her as "my ideal woman," and led the historian of the Society with which she laboured as an honorary missionary to write: "India lost a woman missionary, probably the most brilliant and cultured of all the ladies on the C.M.S. roll, Miss Irene Petrie,"

Far different was her own estimate of herself, when in the supreme hour of her life she said that she was "only one of the least." Such an utterance forbids the language of praise, though one must try to convey the impressions her life made on other lives, using words other than one's own throughout. Statements that must seem inadequate to those who knew her may seem exaggerated to those who did not know her, so are we to believe in the potentialities of Divine grace working through a fully yielded soul.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages