MISSIONARY EDUCATION.
OBJECT--MEANS--STUDY OF BIBLE--PUPILS KEPT IN SYMPATHY WITH THE
PEOPLE.--PEOPLE STIMULATED TO EXERTION AND SELF-DEPENDENCE--TAHITI.
--MADAGASCAR.
Let us now look at some of the principles on which missionary education
was here carried on, that we may see what kind of an instrumentality
God was pleased to crown with his blessing.
The Seminary was founded, not to polish the manners, refine the taste,
or impart accomplishments, but to renovate the character by a permanent
inward change. The main dependence for bringing this about was the
power of the Holy Ghost--the only power that can impart or maintain
spiritual life in man. This dependence was expressed in fervent prayer,
offered for years amid discouragement and opposition, and, instead of
ceasing when an answer came, only offered by a greater number. It is
worthy of note that some of the seasons of greatest revival were
preceded by disasters that threatened the very existence of the mission.
The principal text book was the word of God; partly, as we shall see,
through a providential necessity, but chiefly because it was God's own
chosen instrumentality for the salvation of our race; and it was
eminently adapted for the education of such a people. The teachers
could say, with a beloved co-laborer on Mount Lebanon, "To the
Scriptures we give increased attention; they do more to unfold and
expand the intellectual powers, and to create careful and honest
thinkers, than all the sciences we teach." It is also most efficient in
freeing mind and heart from those erroneous views that are opposed to
its teachings; and actual trial developed a richness and fulness of
practical adaptation to the work that astonished even those who already
knew something of its value. Its precepts and instructions were also
clothed with power: requirements and counsels which from the missionary
had only awakened opposition, coming from the Bible were received as
messages from heaven. Said a Nestorian to a missionary who had been
speaking to him the words of God, "His words grew very beautiful while
we were talking." In reference to every suspicious novelty or
distasteful duty, the Bible was the ultimate appeal. The missionary
could say to them as Paul did to an early church, "When ye received the
word of God, which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of
man, but, as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh
also in you that believe." Besides, those thus educated were to teach
others, and needed to be thoroughly furnished from the divine oracles
with the truths they were to impart. It is not strange, then, that in
the Seminary the Bible was studied both doctrinally and historically;
that they had a system of theology and tables of Scripture chronology;
that biblical biography and geography were regular studies; that
different portions of Scripture occupied different years; and that,
instead of Butler's Analogy and Wayland's Moral Science, were the
Epistles to the Romans and Hebrews studied with all the accurate
analysis and thoroughness bestowed elsewhere upon the classics. Such
teaching would yield good fruit any where, and the good seed found good
ground in Persia.
So much for the instrumentality; but, then, influences are every where
at work to check the growth of the plant of grace, and these must be
overcome. There is danger that missionary education may be made worse
than useless by allowing the sympathies of pupils to become alienated
from the masses around them. Children from heathen families may be
puffed up with an idea of superiority to their own people. Their taste
may be cultivated so as to render disgust with heathen degradation
stronger than the Christian desire to do them good. A foreign language,
foreign dress, and foreign habits may widen the gulf that separates
them from their people, till, what with an undue exaltation on the one
hand and a suspicious jealousy on the other, usefulness is well nigh
impossible. But here such tendencies have been carefully watched and
guarded against. The pupils have been trained with the view of doing
good among their own people. No line of separation has been drawn in
dress or diet, furniture or household arrangements. While taught to be
neat, the goal kept ever in sight has been, a happy usefulness in their
own homes, the elevation of the mass just as fast as was consistent
with mutual love and sympathy, the people not feeling that their
daughters were denationalized, and they not lifted out of sympathy with
the homes they were to bless. Hence, even in 1844, we find the mud
floor of the small school room covered with straw mats; one window, of
oiled paper, admitting the light; and a brick stove, with a few rude
benches, its only furniture. In the other room, where the cooking was
done, the pupils ate, and spent their time out of school. Here were two
windows of like material; and besides the mats, the floor was covered
with a thick felt, on which they spread their beds at night. A table
was provided, covered with a coarse blue and white check. There were
also a set of coarse plates and a few other dishes, but no knives nor
forks. They eat their soup with wooden spoons, and their other food
with their hands. Their clothing, like their cooking, was mostly in
native style; and they were taught to make it for themselves.
Another object in missionary education is, to do enough to stimulate to
exertion, and yet not foster inefficiency or undue dependence. The
Nestorians are poor, but doing too much for them may make them still
poorer. They must be brought to sustain their own institutions at the
earliest possible moment, and their training should keep that end in
view. Hence Miss Fiske writes, "At first I was inclined to do more for
them than afterwards, and at length settled down on this principle,--to
give my pupils nothing for common use which they could not secure in
their own homes by industry and economy. So I furnished only such
articles as they could buy in the city. I preferred that they should
make all their own clothing, and may have grieved friends sometimes by
declining clothing which they offered to send for them. We chose rather
to spend our own strength in training them to provide for themselves. I
do not mean that I am not glad to see foreign articles in Oroomiah; but
we were in danger of fostering a more expensive taste than they would
have the means of gratifying. Our great object is to raise up the most
efficient coadjutors from among the people, and they must labor among
their neighbors as of them, and not as foreigners, and be prepared to
carry forward the work when we leave it.
"At first we clothed as well as boarded our pupils, and then led them
to provide one article after another, till they clothed themselves. It
was delightful to see the interest parents began to take in clothing
their daughters, in order to send them to school after they provided
their own garments. They took better care of them, and so learned to
take better care of other things. Since I left, Miss Rice has advanced
farther in this matter; and last year most of the pupils paid a trifle
for tuition, amounting in all to over twenty dollars. It often costs
more than the amount to secure these pittances; but it does our pupils
good, and we spared no pains to this end."
It is touching to see the spirit manifested by some parents in this
connection. One very poor widow, whose little field of grain had been
devoured by locusts, brought a large squash and a quantity of raisins
which she had earned by laboring for others--a self-denial almost equal
to her previous giving up of her only bed for the use of a daughter in
the Seminary, which she brought, saying, "I can sleep on the _hasseer_
[rush mat], if you will only receive her into school."
It certainly is not benevolence to do for others what they can do as
well for themselves, or to do for them in a way to diminish either
their ability or disposition to provide for themselves. Missionaries
may be in danger of staying too long and doing too much for a people,
rather than of leaving them too soon after the gospel has taken root
among them.
Native pastors came into being at Tahiti simply because the French
drove off the missionaries. They were not ordained before, but at once
proved themselves equal to the work that Providence assigned them; and
after twenty years of French misrule, in spite of Popery on the one
hand and brandy and vice on the other, there are now more church
members under these native pastors than ever before.
Twenty years ago the European shepherds were driven from Madagascar,
and a few lambs left in the midst of wolves; but God raised up native
pastors, and, instead of tens of Christians under Europeans, there are
now hundreds, yea, thousands, under these natives.[1] Those
missionaries are wise who aim constantly at results like these; and it
is in such a spirit that work has been done among the women of Persia.
[Footnote: Rev. Dr. Tidman, secretary of the London Missionary Society,
in "Conference of Missions at Liverpool," 1860, p. 225.]