MISSIONARY RESULTS.
We are occasionally compelled to read and to hear detailed and emphatic
statements about “the failure of missions.” An increasing number of our
countrymen spend their vacation days in hurried trips through mission
fields. They are so impressed by glimpses of the strange life and
institutions of the Orient that they have neither time nor inclination to
study and appreciate the missionary work and organization which everywhere
invites their attention. They return home absolutely ignorant of the work
whose power, prevalence and progress they might easily have learned on
their travels, and they are wont to hide that ignorance behind the
emphatic assurance that “there was nothing to be seen” of missions; and
they soon convince themselves, and not a few others, that what they did
not see was not worth seeing or was, perchance, non-existent. I have long
lived on one of the great lines of travel in India and have sorrowed over
the fact that hardly one in ten of our travelling countrymen (and many of
them members of our home churches too) turn aside for a moment from gazing
upon Hindu temples to study the important work which our mission is
carrying forward in that city and district.
Even the friends of missions should learn what constitutes missionary
success.
In South India there is found a mission which counts its converts only by
the hundreds. It is known in Christian lands only through the severe
criticisms which have been heaped upon it by some good Christian men
because it is an educational mission.
And yet I sincerely believe that that abused mission is doing a work not
inferior to that of any other mission in India for the permanent growth
and highest achievement of the Kingdom of God in that land. Its leavening
influence upon Hindu thought and institutions is hardly surpassed by that
of any other mission. In the wonderful turning of the educated classes of
India towards Christ, and the acceptance of him as their Ideal of life,
that mission has a position of power. Many of the native Christians of
greatest influence, culture and character in South India trace their
conversion or highest efficiency to the work and influence of that
educational mission. The best educated pastor in the Madura district came
from and was trained by that mission; as also its highest and best
Christian teachers received their final course of training and discipline
there.
That mission is largely ignored and even despised by the too common
statistical reckoning of results and success. And yet the illustrious name
of Dr. Miller, the leader of that mission, will be cherished in India and
in the world a century hence as a chief among those who were instrumental
in bringing that great people to Christ.
The mighty and unparalleled revolution which is going on in India at
present, as a result of missionary work, is not to be tabulated in our
statistical reports. The deepest currents of those great moral and
spiritual forces of the India of today are not found within the realm of
figures. They defy tabulation; and yet they bring to the keen Christian
observer in that land more encouragement, because they have more
significance, than all the facts and figures usually found within the
covers of an ordinary mission report.
A great deal of the discouragement and pessimism about missions today is
born of this statistical craze.
Let us therefore take a broad view of the work of our missions and study
some of the results achieved—results which are almost entirely the harvest
of the labours of the last century.
These results are threefold.
1. PRESENT MISSIONARY APPLIANCES.
(_a_) Protestant missions in India have created a plant and have developed
appliances which are not only an assurance and a prolific source of
encouragement for the future; they are also monuments of the industry and
wisdom of those who have passed on, and definite signs of God’s guidance
of, and blessing to, the work.
In the first place, consider the buildings and other property erected and
owned by the missionary societies and utilized for the maintenance and
furtherance of their work in that land.
Few people realize the enormous store of wealth which is thus treasured in
this elaborate mission plant. Nor can they appreciate the equivalent of
this in terms of moral efficiency and spiritual power in the regeneration
of India.
The thousands of acres of land and the many thousands of substantial
edifices erected and dedicated to the cause of Christ in connection with
these missions represent an investment of at least ten million dollars;
and this money not only represents the generosity of Christians in the
West, it also includes the self-denying offerings of Indian Christians,
who from their poverty have given liberally to build up the cause which is
dear to their hearts.
Mission educational institutions are housed in a legion of substantial and
beautiful buildings ranging, from the massive imposing structures of the
Madras Christian College, downward; churches there are of all sizes and
architectural design, from the magnificent and beautiful stone edifice
which accommodates its thousands and which was erected by the Church
Missionary Society in Megnanapuram, Tinnevelly, down to the unpretentious
prayer-house of a small village congregation. A host of suitable buildings
for hospitals, presses and publishing houses, residences for missionaries
and native agents, school dormitories, gymnasia and lecture halls; Y. M.
C. A. and other societies’ buildings—all these represent that power for
service, incarnate in brick and mortar, which is invaluable and even
indispensable to the great missionary enterprise in that land.
(_b_) Nor must we overlook or fail to estimate adequately the results
achieved in the form of a Christian literature. Though our Protestant
missions have not cultivated, as extensively as they should, the press and
the publishing house as a missionary agency, they have not been insensible
to their power and have utilized extensively the printed page.
In the first place a translated and a well-circulated Bible has been the
aim and pride of our missions from the beginning. The humblest native of
that land can find, in his own vernacular, the Word of God, and read for
himself the message of God in Christ Jesus to his sin-burdened soul. Who
can realize the work involved in all this, or the achievement which it
represents?
Then the Christian hymnology of India is already a rapidly growing power.
Every important vernacular has one or more Protestant Christian hymn
books, which reveal to what a large extent our faith has inspired and made
vocal the praises of Zion in that land. Nearly all of these Christian
hymns in South India and many in North India are the compositions of
native Christians and manifest considerable poetic power and high
sentiment. Though many of them are worthy of translation, only two have
thus far found place in our American hymn books. One is a Tamil hymn
composed by Yesuthasan, catechist, and translated as below by Rev. E.
Webb,—
1. Whither with this crushing load
Over Salem’s dismal road,
All thy body suffering so,
O, my God where dost thou go?
CHORUS:—
Whither Jesus goest thou,
Son of God what doest thou,
On this City’s dolorous way,
With that cross, O, Sufferer say?
2. Tell me fainting, dying Lord,
Dost thou of Thine own accord
Bear that cross, or did thy foes
’Gainst thy will, that load impose.—CHO.
3. Patient Sufferer how can I
See thee faint and fall and die,
Pressed and peeled and crushed and ground
By that cross upon thee bound?—CHO.
4. Weary arm and staggering limb,
Visage marred, eyes growing dim,
Tongue all parched, faint at heart,
Bruised and sore in every part!—CHO.
5. Dost thou up to Calvary go,
On that cross in shame and woe,
Malefactors either side
To be nailed and crucified?—CHO.
6. Is it demon thrones to shake,
Death to kill, sin’s power to break,
All our ills to put away,
Life to give and endless day?—CHO.
Besides this there is an ever-growing mass of Christian literature in all
the vernaculars used by our missions; and this is becoming increasingly
available as a power for the uplifting of the people who are, in growing
numbers, learning to read. Beyond almost every other appliance for the
Christianization of that people there stand high in usefulness and
pervasive influence these books, tracts and magazines of the missions; and
the aid which they furnish to all Christian workers in that land is beyond
computation. Missionaries may go and come, and mission policy may change,
but this Christian literature will quietly and mightily work out its own
benign results throughout the land, enlightening the people and appealing
to the best that is in them.
(_c_) In like manner the missionary educational institutions, which cover
the whole land as a great network, are a noble product of missionary
ideals and efforts in the land. They are in themselves an achievement
which not only has cost millions of rupees for its creation and
maintenance, but is also the product of some of the best thought and
highest wisdom of many choice spirits during the last century. These
schools constantly furnish to the Christian Church in India, for
intellectual upbuilding, for moral guidance and for spiritual
regeneration, nearly a half million of the brightest youths of the land.
These institutions are the product of a century of endeavour; and it can
be truly said that without them the Protestant mission of India would be
shorn of much of their power and more of their promise.
In the present organized activity of missions there stands nothing in
higher esteem than these institutions for what they have done in the life
both of non-Christians and of Christians alike.
(_d_) In connection with missionary activity in that land one of the most
encouraging, as it is also the most monumental, of results, is the large
army of well-educated and thoroughly equipped men and women who have been
taken from among the people and have been trained and placed as their
leaders and guides.
Perhaps 20,000 such (there are 10,550 in South India alone) are at present
giving all their time and strength to the spiritual training of the
Christian community, to preaching to non-Christians and to the instruction
of the young in the schools.
India is to be brought to Christ and his religion, not through the efforts
of the foreigner, so much as through the life and activity of men and
women of the soil. They are to be the essential factor in the future
prevalence and in the character of our faith in India. Therefore it stirs
one to deepest emotion to behold this mighty army of native workers, who
are praying and working daily in that land for the conversion of their own
people and for the upbuilding of the Christian community in all that is
characteristic of our faith. As I have been permitted, for years, to train
and to send forth into that great harvest field young men to preach the
gospel of Christ and to guide the churches and congregations into
spiritual truth and life, I have felt that it was the highest and best
opportunity that could be granted to any missionary worker in that land.
This work of training an adequate spiritual agency is occupying the
serious thought of all missions. There are 110 theological seminaries and
normal training schools in the country; in these, 4,305 students, of both
sexes, are undergoing training.
Many of the agents now employed are men and women qualified to clearly
expound the truths of our faith to believers and unbelievers. They are
well fortified against attack as rational defenders of Christianity and
are prepared to remove doubts which may arise in the minds of sincere
inquirers and wavering believers. Not all of them are such as we could
wish in intellectual equipment or in strength of character. But the
poorest of them are gradually being replaced by better ones; and the
intellectual, moral and spiritual tone of the whole force is constantly
improving. The ordained native clergy are a body of men who are rapidly
growing in efficiency and power. There are 406 of them in South India
alone—nearly as many as there are ordained missionaries in the same area.
A comparison, in South India, between this force of 406 native pastors and
the 585 native priests of the Romish Church shows how well, relatively,
the Protestant Church of South India is supplied; there being one native
pastor to every 1,500 of the Protestant community, while the Romish
priests are only one to every 2,000 of their community.
Some of these pastors are university graduates, and all are men of good
professional training. They are faithful workers and are increasingly
worthy, and enjoy the confidence, of their missionary associates. Among
the native agents of our Protestant missions in South India alone there
are about 100 university graduates, 200 First in Arts (the degree granted
after two years of college work) and 600 university matriculates. This
thorough utilization of a strong, cultured, native agency is one of the
most striking results of the last century’s work in that land. And it is
the more remarkable in the case of the women, since a generation ago
hardly any of the weaker sex were in mission employ, while today the
missions of South India alone employ 3,000 of them. It is practically the
creation of a mighty and most faithful and devoted agency in one
generation.
What may we not expect from this great army of native brethren and
sisters, as they shall continue to grow in numbers and in general
equipment, and as they shall be filled with the Spirit of God and be fully
used by our Lord in the redemption of their own people!
2. THE NATIVE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
Recent statistics give the total number of Christians in British India as
2,923,349. This is a growth of about 640,000 in ten years, four times more
than the rate of growth of the whole population. And yet there are people
who tell us that the kingdom of our Lord is not coming in that land!
CENSUS OF CHRISTIANS IN INDIA, MAY 2, 1901.(12)
Total of all denominations 2,923,349
European and other races 258,990
Natives 2,664,359
_Total Returned._ _Natives._
Anglican 453,612 305,907
Baptist 220,863 216,743
Congregationalist 37,876 37,313
Lutheran and allied denominations 155,455 153,768
Methodist 76,869 68,451
Presbyterian 53,829 42,799
Friends 1,309 1,275
Roman Catholic 1,202,039 1,122,378
Salvationist 18,960 18,847
Syrian 571,327 571,320
Scattering 131,210 125,558
Of the above number of Christians 2,664,359 are natives of India. This is
an increase of over 630,000, or about thirty-one per cent, of Indian
Christians during the last decade. And during this time the general
population of India has increased only about two and one-half per cent.!
Analyzing this aggregate of all Christians we find that 970,000 of them
are native Protestant Christians. This represents an advance of sixty-four
per cent, during the last ten years in that community; while the Romish
and Syrian native Christian communities have gained hardly three per cent,
in the same time. Thus it will be seen that the rapid progress of our
faith in that land of the East depends almost entirely upon the remarkable
advance of Protestantism among the people of India. This is certainly a
result most encouraging to Protestant Christian workers in that land. That
this decade’s growth is not abnormal is attested by the fact that the
native Protestant Christians of India are more than ten times what they
were fifty years ago.
In view of the fact that the whole Christian community of India is only
one per cent, of the total population, one may be inclined to feel
discouraged. And yet if the relative growth of the whole population and,
say, of the Protestant Christian community for the last decade be
maintained for one hundred and thirty years more, the whole population
will be found Christian of the Protestant type.
These figures indicate the magnificent development of our work in that
land. And when we remember the splendid equipment and wonderful modern
appliances of the missionary organizations of today we can easily believe
that, even within another century, Christianity will become the prevailing
faith of India.
A large number, in our Christian community, has been gathered through mass
movements, where certain castes and classes have, in large bodies, sought
the blessings of our faith. In Tinnevelly, for instance, the Shanar caste
was early influenced by Christian workers; and, as they are a very
clannish community, many thousands of them have embraced the Christian
faith and have been wonderfully transformed and elevated through their
contact with it.
One of the most marvellous manifestations of the power of the Gospel is
presented today in that district by this people, who, under missionary
influence and Christian training, have risen from great depths of
ignorance and social degradation until they stand among the highest of
that land in intelligence and in the spirit of progress. Most of the
Christians of Tinnevelly belong to this once despised class and are, in
many respects, full of vigour and enterprise.
In the famous Telegu Baptist Mission we find a similar movement. That
American Mission laboured for twenty-five years without much
encouragement. After those years the outcastes of the community began to
appreciate the advantages of our faith and to apply for admission into its
congregations. It gathered them in by thousands until it has become by far
the largest mission in the country. It represents nearly one quarter of
the whole Protestant Christian community of India.
During the last few years a similar movement has overtaken the American
Methodist, and other missions in North India. Many thousands of the
depressed classes, within its area, have sought a refuge from their ills
and a Saviour for their souls in the Christian fold; so that it taxes all
the energies and resources of the mission to keep pace with the movement
and to instruct adequately, in Christian truth, these ignorant masses who
flock unto it. Bishop Thoburn says that more than 100,000 of this class
are now waiting to be received into their community; but that their
mission has not the men or means to instruct them.
In other missions, also, reports are being received of similar movements
now going forward on a smaller scale. Some missionaries of these fields
have written to me stating that the only limit to the growth and
development of their missions is that of men and money wherewith to
instruct and properly direct the people who come seeking for light and
help.(13)
In the great majority of missions, however, growth has been general and
normal; people have come as individuals and as families, separating
themselves, after much thought and prayer, from those who are dearest to
them upon earth, and passing through a sea of tribulation and persecution
into the Christian life.
It has been claimed by Hindus, and by some others, that Hinduism is a
tolerant faith—that it does not resort to persecution. In one respect this
is true. As we have before seen, it will permit its members to hold any
doctrine and to accept any teaching that they please. It has no punishment
nor even a voice of disapprobation to its member who is a rationalist, an
atheist, or a Christian so far as acceptance of such belief or non-belief
is concerned. And, so far as conduct is concerned, a man may be a
libertine, a robber or a murderer, and yet maintain his religious status.
But when it comes to the violation of caste rules it is very different.
Hinduism will tolerate anything but caste insubordination. So that when a
man, in becoming a Christian, severs his connection with his caste and
becomes, socially, an alien to his people, then Hinduism steps in and
brings to bear upon him all the bitter penalties of caste infliction, and
persecutes him in a thousand social ways such as make life a burden unto
him. The engine of caste is the most complete and mighty instrument of
religious persecution the world has known, as many thousands of our native
Christians have learned to their bitter cost.
When a man decides to become a Christian there is very little opposition
to this purpose among his people so long as his decision involves only his
belief, conviction and private devotion and prayer. But when it leads him
to a public confession of Christ and to baptism, which is regarded as his
renunciation of caste rules, affinities and obligations, then all the
spite of caste tyranny is showered upon him. He is boycotted thoroughly.
None of his caste people, not even his own Hindu family, will eat with
him. The family and caste washerman is no longer permitted to serve him;
their barber will not shave him, and the blacksmith, carpenter, mason and
other village servants decline to render him their wonted service. So that
he is absolutely helpless. It requires a very strong man to face all this
kind of annoyance and deprivation, and to stand firm in the new life upon
which he has entered and continue loyal to the new faith which he has
embraced.
It must be admitted that such rigours of persecution are not carried out
in all cases at present. Though this is the spirit and method of caste,
yet the influence of home ties and family affection and the social
position and influence of a new convert may be such as to mitigate this
public opposition to his Christian decision. But the engine of persecution
is there, always ready for use.
The question has often been asked as to the motives which animated those
of our Christian community who denied their ancestral faith in order to
become Christians. In this land many have an idea, in some cases expressed
but in many unexpressed, that most of the Christian converts in India are
what are denominated “rice Christians.” This charge against the adherents
of our faith in that land is as unworthy as it is untrue. That some
embrace our religion and take upon them the name of Christ from unworthy
motives we know—perhaps this is a thing not confined to India. But it has
always been a surprise to me, not that so many, but that so few, join our
missions from worldly or unworthy motives. For they soon learn that the
missionary of their district is a friend of the poor and the oppressed;
and they are constantly suffering from the injustice and the rapacity of
Brahmans and of other members of their own faith who are above them.
Outside of slavery there are few people who are subject to grosser
injustice at the hand of men of wealth and of power than are the poor,
down-trodden people of India.
Most of them are also groaning in the deepest pit of poverty. Poverty is a
relative term. As compared with India, America knows absolutely no
poverty. The poverty of India is crushing, over-whelming. When we remember
that according to government statistics, the average income of a man for
the support of his family in India is less than $1.50 a month we get a
glimpse of what abject poverty means.
And when we further remember that, during many months and seasons of his
life, even this is partly denied him, owing to frequent droughts and other
unpreventable evils, we know in part how an unsatisfied craving, and
pinching distress overwhelm a large proportion of that population.
Government statistics show that one-fifth of the population are in a
chronic state of hunger.
And yet I heartily bear testimony that comparatively few of our people
have become Christians in order that they might receive physical and
temporal blessings. We dare not say that this motive does not exist; but
we are confident that in three-fourths of our converts it is not the
prevailing or the dominant motive. There is a soul-hungering and a
heart-thirsting in India such as are not in any way satisfied by their
ancestral faith. And Christianity appeals to the people increasingly as a
soul-satisfier and as a power of God unto salvation; and they more and
more realize this fact and are impelled more by that motive than by any
other in transferring their allegiance from Krishna to Christ.
And even when some do come with prevailingly low and sordid motives and
seek to be enrolled as members of the Christian community, we dare not
discourage or deny them; because we hope soon, after they have united with
our community and have placed themselves under Christian instruction, to
impart to them loftier conceptions of life and of truth. And even should
we fail to reform them and to give them worthy views of our religion and
of their relationship to it, we entertain the hope that their children
will become worthy and genuine Christians. Many of the best and most
honoured members of our community, today, are the children and
grandchildren of very unsatisfactory Christians of the past.
I might say here that missionaries are being frightened less and less by
the charges so frequently made, by those who know the situation least,
concerning the unworthy motives of those who become Christians. Indeed, to
be frank, the question of motives is, in my opinion, one of very little
consequence, save as it may involve down-right hypocrisy or gross
deception.
Ordinarily we do not expect, from a people who have been brought up in so
selfish and so debasing and sordid an atmosphere as that of the common
Hindu of today, a highly spiritual, or a purely ethical motive in becoming
Christians. If such be the prevailing motive, or even if we are convinced
that it is not absent, we are satisfied. Nor can there be anything wrong
if a man in India seeks alliance with Christianity in order to better his
earthly circumstances. This may mean a purpose to secure an education and
the blessings of civilization and culture for his children; or it may
reveal a desire for relief from injustice, or protection from gross
tyranny; it may signify merely a vague hope that, by becoming a Christian,
the general circumstances both of himself and family will be improved.
There is nothing intrinsically evil in any of these ambitions nor in
seeking Christian affiliation largely with a view to obtaining these,
provided always that there is also a conviction of the moral and spiritual
excellence of our faith and of its ability to satisfy the soul’s need. And
this we may generally assume in a man who voluntarily severs his
connection with the faith of his ancestors, and from a religion which was
a part of his own deepest life.
Nor should the deep ignorance of many of those who become Christians lead
us hastily to conclude that, because they know so little about our faith,
they therefore are unable to appreciate or enjoy any of its spiritual
blessings. I have often been surprised to see how many very ignorant
Christians, and those who greatly try our patience at times, both by their
stupidity and their crooked lives, nevertheless often reveal beautiful
touches of a genuine faith and of a most direct and simple trust; and they
stand nobly firm under the most trying and worrying persecution which
Hinduism knows too well how to inflict upon those who desert and deny it.
It has often been charged, with a view to discredit missionary effort in
India, that the converts gathered into the Christian fold have been from
the lowest social stratum, and not from the higher and ruling classes of
society. Even if this charge were entirely true, I can see in it nothing
reflecting upon the success of our cause in that land.
It has, indeed, in all ages and lands, been the normal process of
Christian conquest, to gather in the lower classes first. It is not by
filtering downward but by leavening upward that Christianity has been wont
to enter and to transform nations. As this was the initial method in
apostolic days, so has it continued through all the history of the Church.
It has been by the weak and despised things of the world that our Lord has
brought to nought and then won the mighty. It is so in India. Perhaps
three-fourths of the native Christians of that land are from the non-Aryan
community—from the aboriginal classes over whom the sway of Hinduism is
less complete than it is over the Aryan races. This is doubtless one
reason why two-thirds of all the Christians of India are found in Southern
India—among the Dravidians, who, as we have seen, are more the children of
Demonolatry than they are of Brahmanism. And yet, let it not be supposed
that the Turanians of the South are far inferior to the Aryans of the
North; or that the salvation of the so-called “aborigines” of India, of
whom there are more than sixty millions, is unworthy of our highest
ambition.
Neither let it be thought that Christianity has not made glorious inroad
upon the middle classes and even upon the highest class in that land—the
Brahmans. It is true that, thus far, not very many of that high and
haughty caste have openly professed Christ. It is equally true, however,
that some of the best members of our Christian community are converted
Brahmans. The Indian Christian community is proud of such men as the Hon.
Kali Churn Bannerjee, Dr. K. M. Bannerjee, Rev. K. C. Chatterjee, Rae Maya
Das and the Hon. N. Subramanien, not because they were Brahmans, but
because they have consecrated to the Lord all their distinguished ability,
and because they excel in their possession of Christian graces.
These names, and many others like them, reveal the growing power that our
faith is wielding over men of position in that land. At the coronation of
King Edward, in London, twenty representatives of the Indian Christian
Church were present. Of these, six are ruling princes; perhaps the most
distinguished of them is Sir Harnam Singh Ahluwalia, K. C. I. E. He is a
man of culture—“a true representative of educated India.”
He was entrusted by the Indian Christians to convey their address to the
king upon the occasion of his coronation. Sir Harnam Singh’s usefulness
and success largely depend upon the support, which he receives, in all
good things, from his wife, Lady Singh, who is the daughter of Rev. Golak
Nath.
The devout Henry Martyn, nearly a century ago, with mingled discouragement
and yearning, declared that to see one Hindu a real believer in Jesus
would be something more nearly approaching the resurrection of a dead body
than anything he had yet seen. The illustrious Jesuit missionary, the Abbe
Du Bois, mourned that, even after a long period of faithful work, he
believed he had seen no genuine convert to Christianity in that land. How
would those two great friends of India rejoice today were they to see the
glorious harvest which Christianity has been permitted to gather during
the last century from that great people! And among the best of them are to
be seen not a few representatives of the haughty Brahman caste and also
members of the crushed and despised outcaste Pariah community.
It is well to remember that it has been the ambition of missionaries in
India, not so much to gather in numerous accessions from the social and
intellectual aristocracy of the land, as to create out of the Indian
Christian community, however degraded may have been its origin, an
aristocracy of character and of true culture. And in this they have
achieved remarkable success. For the native Christian community is being
most rapidly transformed in these respects. Remember, please, the
condition, previous to their embracing our faith, of those outcaste people
who now constitute three-fourths of the Christian community. They were not
only socially ostracized, and therefore wanting in all traits of manly
assertion, of independence and of self-respect. They were also in deepest
ignorance. Not five per cent, of them could either read or write. Moreover
they were under serious religious disability. Though nominal Hindus, they
had no right to enter purely Hindu temples nor to approach in worship any
strictly Hindu deity. The most sacred of Hindu religious books were denied
them, and the most cherished of Hindu rites and ceremonies they were
deemed totally unfit to observe.
All that they could claim was permission to appease the demons of their
ancestral worship. I have seen these outcastes, who, while absorbed into
Hinduism, nevertheless live constantly under its ban. They erect fine
halls and shrines in Brahmanical temples, but are not permitted to enter
them after the day of their dedication to Hindu worship. Hinduism has
never declined any pecuniary offerings from these despised ones; and yet
it has never deemed it its province or duty to impart its religious
blessings to them. It has denied to them instruction, comfort and
salvation. Is it a wonder that most of the people were almost on a level
with brutes so far as thoughts of the highest interests of the soul are
concerned? These are the people whom Christianity has delighted to rescue
from their thralldom and to build up in religious thought, ambition and
spiritual blessings.
It has applied itself to the task of raising them from their low estate.
It has erected buildings for their instruction. In most cases its
prayer-houses have been daily used as schoolhouses where the young have
been instructed; so that today this community stands distinguished among
the other communities in the land for its intelligence.
For example, the total number of Christian youth in mission schools in
South India is 62,000—two-thirds of them being boys and one-third girls,
which represents a percentage to the total of school-going-age of 68.7 for
boys and 33.7 for girls; and this while, in the general community, only
twelve per cent, of those who are of an age to be at school are attending
school. Among the Brahmans only is literacy more common than among Indian
Christians. And even that caste, which has for thirty centuries
represented the cultured aristocracy of India, must look to its laurels;
for, though their males are preëminent in culture, the females are as
illiterate as any class in India, only six in 1,000 being able to read. In
the Christian community, on the other hand, the women are not far behind
the men in the race for culture. It is therefore not difficult to prophesy
that the day is not far off when the Indian Christians, among whom both
sexes find equal opportunity and inducement to study in the schools, will
outstrip the Brahmans and stand preëminent as the educated and cultured
class of India.
This is as true in the higher as in the lower grades of education. There
are today living 418 native Christian graduates of the Madras University.
Last year twenty-seven of these Christian youth received the B. A. degree
in that Presidency alone, and the only three Indian ladies who have seized
the difficult and much coveted prize of Master of Arts from that
University are Christians. These facts are significant and reveal the
marvellous progress made by this once despised community.
As to the character of these Christians the testimony of Sir Alexander
Mackensie, a distinguished Anglo Indian statesman of large experience, may
be of interest:—“The advance made (in missions) during my time,” he says,
“have been substantial and encouraging, and it is my firm belief that the
day-spring of still better things is very close at hand, while the simple
faith and godly lives of many native Christians, might put all, or most of
us certainly, to the blush.”
It may be well to add emphasis here to the position of woman in the native
Christian community as a direct result of mission endeavour in that land.
The new womanhood of the infant native Christian community has begun to
impress itself upon the land. There are nearly five hundred thousand women
and girls connected with the Protestant missions of that country today.
They are being trained for, and introduced to, new spheres and
opportunities such as the women of India never dreamed of before.
Thousands of them are engaged as teachers and as Bible women. Some
practice medicine; others adorn and cheer the homes, beautify the lives
and strengthen the work of pastors and preachers, of teachers, doctors and
other professional men. They grow into the full bloom of womanhood before
they leave their school training; and they go forth well equipped
intellectually, morally and spiritually for the manifold duties of life.
The last few years have not only helped the Christian women of the land,
as a class, they have also brought into distinction many of them who are
worthy to stand among the eminent women of the age and world.
The first of these, both on account of the remarkable career which she has
led and of the noble work which she is performing, is the well-known
Pundita Ramabai. Herself a Brahman widow, who lost her father in the
tender years of childhood and who subsequently entered into the joys and
blessed power of a Christian life, she dedicated herself to the work of
redeeming her unfortunate Hindu sisters from their sad lot. To this noble
work of philanthropy and of heroic Christian service she has given herself
absolutely; and through distinguished administrative skill and a
triumphant faith she has achieved marvellous success. Beside her
well-known institution for child-widows at Poonah—the Sharada Sadan, which
the writer visited and greatly admired—the recent famine inspired her to a
new effort to save the waifs and orphans of that region. So that, today,
she has under her care more than two thousand of the unfortunate ones of
her own sex whom she is not only protecting and wisely training for worthy
positions in life, but is also bringing forward into the joys of a true
Christian life. Few women, in any land, have found a more useful, or more
honourable, career than this noble woman of the East. She combines, in a
rare degree, large capacity for work, the highest sanity in her methods
and the deepest love for those whom she has given her life to bless.
The Sorabjis, also of Western India, have achieved distinction beyond most
native Christian families. Mr. Sorabji was one of the few Parsees who have
embraced Christianity. One of the daughters of the family, the widow of an
Englishman, lives in London and has delighted the Queen by her exquisite
rendering of Persian songs. One sister is an artist, whose paintings are
exhibited in Paris and London. One is a surgeon of distinction. It was
another daughter of this family who was the only representative of her sex
from the Orient at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. The most
distinguished of these seven sisters is Cornelia Sorabji, the barrister.
Her graduating paper on “Roman Law,” at Oxford, was classed among the best
papers produced by the pupils of that famous institution. She is the first
lady barrister of India, and is not only a powerful advocate, but also a
brilliant writer, as her book and her articles on the woman question in
“The Nineteenth Century” amply testify.
Toru Dutt, of Calcutta, one of the brilliant young stars of India, was
versed in French, German and English. At twenty-one she published “A Sheaf
Gleaned in French Fields.” It is a skillful and able English translation
of the works of famous French authors. She and her sister, Aru, were
remarkably talented. It is sad that she, who was so full of intellectual
brightness and so beautiful in Christian life, should have been taken away
by death in the bloom of life.
Miss Goreh is the only Indian Christian who has thus far added to our
popular English hymnology. Her beautiful hymn:
“In the secret of His presence how my soul delights to hide;
Oh, how precious are the moments which I spend at Jesus’ side.
Earthly cares can never reach me, neither trials bring me low;
For when Satan comes to tempt me to the Secret Place I go,”—
has been a blessing to many in this land of ours.
Mrs. Sattianathan of Madras (the wife of a distinguished Indian Christian)
was another bright young woman who showed marked evidence of talent as an
English writer. Her books, descriptive of the life both of Hindu and of
Indian Christian women, have had deservedly large popularity. They created
in many of her friends a hope for even greater results from her. But,
alas, these hopes were soon shattered by her sad and premature death.
The second Mrs. Sattianathan, herself an M. A. of the Madras University,
has entered upon a brilliant career as a writer, and has established the
first English monthly magazine for her Indian sisters—a magazine which is
full of attractiveness and promise.
These ladies are only a few of those who illustrate the ability, devotion,
beauty and promise of the women of India. Such are preëminently the hope
of that country.
It was while looking upon one of these Indian Christian ladies that the
late Benjamin Harrison, Ex-President of the United States, remarked that
if he had spent a million dollars for missions and had seen, as a result
of his offering, only one such convert as Miss Singh he would still have
considered his offering a most profitable investment.
These women are creating their own opportunities and will, ere long,
achieve much in all the ranks of life and especially in their own peculiar
sphere of womanly activity and influence. Woman will do more for the
progress and development of the country than the sterner sex, as she has
hitherto done more than he to conserve and dignify the past. And it is
safe to conclude that the womanhood of India will discover its chief glory
as it now finds its largest opportunity in Christianity. And I may add
that the mission of Christianity to, and in behalf of, the women of that
land may almost be called its chief mission, as the results which it has
achieved, and will yet achieve, in this line, will constitute its chief
glory.
At large centres the Indian Christian community is already beginning to
feel its power and is organizing in behalf of its own highest interest.
The “Madras Native Christian Association” is perhaps the strongest
organization of the community. It unites hundreds of the best members and
gives them a corporate existence and furnishes opportunity to render
articulate the ideals, ambitions and needs of the Christian community. It
has recently undertaken several enterprises of importance, such as _The
Twentieth Century Enterprise and the Indian Christian Industrial
Exhibition_. It discusses, with much sanity, the most serious problems of
the community and creates a worthy sentiment which will increasingly
spread until it reaches the remotest parts of the country.
All this tends to show that the community is growing conscious both of its
strength, its responsibility and its opportunity.
[Illustration: Rev. S. Sattianatha, LL.D.]
[Illustration: Mrs. S. Kruba Sattianatha.]
For the furtherance of this purpose weekly and monthly magazines, both in
the English language and in the vernaculars, are being conducted by them.
_The Christian Patriot_, the best organ of the community, is published in
Madras, is conducted with much ability and represents the best sentiments
of its constituents. It has done much to develop the consciousness of life
and power in the community and has always urged worthy ideals upon its
readers.
The seriousness with which all the native Christians of India regard their
calling and the gratitude with which they enjoy their faith is clearly
attested by their offerings.
Perhaps nothing can render more satisfactory reply to those who charge the
native Christians with worldly motives than to show how far they deny
themselves in behalf of their faith. In other words the benevolence and
offerings of the native Christians may be taken as a fair test of their
sincerity and of their spiritual appreciation. It is a good test in any
land. I have said that they are very poor. A few years ago I investigated
carefully the economic conditions of the most prosperous and largest
village congregation of the Madura Mission. I discovered that five rupees
(that is $1.66) was the average monthly income of each family of that
congregation. And that meant only thirty-three cents a month for the
support of each member of a family! We have congregations whose income is
less than this. And yet, the Christians of that mission contributed over
two rupees (seventy-five cents) per church member as their offering for
1900. For all the Protestant Missions of South India the average offering
per church member during 1900 was one rupee and nine annas (fifty-two
cents). For South India this represented an aggregate sum of R 248,852
($85,000) or about seven and one-half per cent, of the total sum expended
in the missions during that year. An American can easily realize how much
this offering is as an absolute gift; but he cannot realize how much of
self-denial it means to that very poor people; nor how large an offering
it is as related to the best offerings of our home churches today. If our
American Christians contributed for the cause of Christ a percentage of
their income equal to that of the native Christians of India they would
quadruple their benevolence. And if, in relation to their income, the
Christians of India contribute four times as much as the Christians of
America, in relation to their real ability, after supplying the most
primitive needs of their bodies, they contribute a hundred times more than
do their brothers and sisters in this great land of luxury and abundance.
Who in America, today, in contributing to the cause of Christ, denies
himself a convenience or a comfort; yea more, who on that account fails to
meet the craving of bodily appetite? And yet there are many Christians in
India who suffer in both these respects in order that they may add the
widow’s mite to the treasury of the Church and their loving offering to
advance the Kingdom of the Lord.
In this way the infant Christian Church of India, in its poverty of this
world’s goods, is revealing a wealth of spirit and a richness of purpose
such as are worthy of emulation in Christian lands today.
The organized effort of the Indian Church for self-extension is rapidly
multiplying. Every endeavour is put forth to train them out of that spirit
of dependence which is one of the necessary evils incident to modern
missions.
In nearly all well organized missions in India are found, as we have
already seen, Home Missionary Societies, which are conducted and
maintained by the people, and which constantly direct their thoughts to
their privilege to further the cause of Christ in their own land and among
their own people.
Work by the young for the young, also, is being conducted with increasing
prevalence, zeal and success throughout the land.
Indeed, all departments of a healthful, normal life and activity are
vigorously prosecuted on mission territory with a view to imparting to the
Christians, not only a knowledge of the highest type of Christian
altruism, but also for the purpose of making them partakers of the same.
And the Indian Christian community at present, notwithstanding all its
faults and weaknesses, which I would not conceal, furnishes us much
encouragement as a product of past effort and as a growing power which is
to be used by God in the speedy upbuilding of his Kingdom in that great
land of the East.
There are, indeed, not many forms of organized Christian activity
conducted by Indian Christians themselves—apart from Western missions.
There are some, however, which are worthy of note and commendation. Such
are Pandita Ramabai’s Mukti Mission for Widows; Miss Chuckerbutty’s
flourishing Orphanages; Mrs. Sorabji’s High School for Women; the
Gopalgange Mission started by the Rev. M. N. Bose, and Dr. P. B. Keskar’s
Orphanage and Industrial School at Sholapur.
Recently a novel enterprise was inaugurated in the American Mission,
Jaffna, Ceylon, in the form of a Foreign Missionary Society, which sends
forth, to a region in Southern India, its missionaries to carry the gospel
of Christ to the non-Christians of that place. It is chiefly conducted and
supported by the young people of the mission and is prophetic of a
movement which will, ere long, spring up throughout India as a result of a
growing sense of responsibility and opportunity among the Christians of
that land.
It is with no spirit of boasting that I wish to dwell upon the share which
America has had in producing these results. Other people have done in some
respects, better than we. But there is no doubt that India is much
influenced by our land. America has, for a century, lavishly given her
sons and daughters and expended her wealth for the salvation of India. Her
sacrifices have not been in vain. None have found more hearty response
among that people than the American Missions. Among the many Protestant
Missions now at work in that Peninsula less than one-fourth are American;
and, yet in connection with these missions have been gathered and are
found nearly one-half of all of the Protestant Christians of that land. In
South India the mission which has found much the largest success in
gathering converts is an American Mission. In North India, again, one of
our missions stands preëminent in the multitude of its Christians, and
another, in the excellence of its educational power and leavening
influence. In Western India, also, America stands first in the
acknowledged power and preëminence of one of its missions.
In the organized movements for the young, America again stands conspicuous
in that land. As we study the wonderful activity exercised by Protestant
Christianity in behalf of India’s youth, we are at once impressed by the
leadership of American workers as we are by the American methods used.
The finest Y. M. C. A. building in the Orient is mostly American, both in
conception and in the organized energy and princely offering which made it
possible. It stands today in the city of Madras, as one of the noblest and
the most beautiful tributes of western Christian enterprise to that great
land.
The only theological seminary which has been adequately endowed for the
training of Protestant Christian workers in India, is an American one.
Perhaps the best, because the most sane and enterprising, Christian weekly
newspaper in the land is American.
The only Quarterly Review conducted in that land by Protestant Christians
was founded by an American.
And, in the same line, it is interesting to note that American presses and
publishing houses are multiplying and are exercising an ever-widening
influence in the redemption of that country.
So largely have all these American agencies been used for the furtherance
of Christian truth and light; and so much have they been welcomed and
appropriated by the people, that it may well be spoken of as “an American
Invasion.”
The Bishop of Newcastle, England, referred to this in his last annual
sermon. “So far,” he says, “has America realized the need of winning India
to Christ that a hundred years hence, if the last thirty years’ proportion
continue, India will owe its Christianity more to America than to Great
Britain and Ireland combined.” These words are no less significant in
their truthfulness than generous in their appreciation. England has been
entrusted with the work of leading that great people of the Orient,
politically and socially, into a larger and higher life. This, by a
strange Providence, has been entrusted to her in consequence of her
conquest of that people seven thousand miles away and seven times her own
population. So also has America been favoured with a fair share of
opportunity and of influence as the moral supporter of England in this
unique and unprecedented work. And, while England by the nature of her
compact, or conquest, is somewhat handicapped in this task, so far as her
religious influence upon the people is concerned, America has free access
and ample entrance into the heart of the community because of her
disinterested and unrestrained relationship to them.
Her voice to India has always been the voice of a constraining altruism.
All her endeavours in that land have been the outgoings of a world-wide
philanthropy and of Christian self-denial. Therefore, she has been free
and unencumbered in all her ambitions for the uplifting of that people;
and she has found the heartiest response and warmest appreciation from
those whom she has sought to bless. Consequently, that noble band of 1,000
of her sons and daughters, who are today giving themselves to the
salvation of India; and the one million dollars sent forth annually to
maintain her work in that land, are fruitful in the highest good and in
the richest result in all parts of the land.
While all this means a great achievement, it means also, and preëminently,
a stirring opportunity. The widest door of opportunity is open to America
among her antipodes in that historic land. Christian effort can nowhere
else find heartier welcome or results more encouraging and telling in the
great gathering of eastern nations into the Kingdom of our Lord.