During the last decade of Dr. House’s services there were many
recruits to the force of workers. But these additions were not a
net gain, for in the meantime there were numerous withdrawals on
account of health. In 1869 came Revs. J. W. Van Dyke and John
Carrington with their wives. Two years later were added Rev. and
Mrs. R. Arthur, Rev. J. N. Culbertson and Miss E. S. Dickey. Miss
Arabella Anderson came in 1872 to assist in the new boarding school
for girls. The year 1874 saw the arrival of an unusual number of
unmarried women missionaries. They were Misses S. M. Coffman, M.
L. Cort and E. D. Grimshaw. Then, in 1875, Rev. and Mrs. Eugene P.
Dunlop reached Bangkok and began a very long period of valuable
service.
Increase of workers meant not diminution but rather increase of
work. This is typified in the case of Dr. House himself, who
jocularly wrote to his brother that “Satan will not likely find
mischief for my hands to do,” and then recounts the duties that
devolve upon him. The varied activities that he mentions not only
show the versatility required of a missionary but indicate the
manifold duties that each missionary has to perform. He writes:
“I have recently become a theological professor, four
evenings of the week gathering around me in my study the more
advanced and promising of the native church members ... and
try to pilot them through the leading principles of a system
of divinity.”
One of these men, Ooan Si Tieng, was ordained in 1872. He had been
the first Chinese convert in the mission and now became the first
to receive this full authority from the Presbytery. As pastor of
the native church Dr. House had a full measure of sorrows as well
as joys, for there is a tide in spiritual affairs that has its
ebb as well as its flow, and the years of spiritual awaking were
followed by periods of depression. Thus at the beginning of 1869 he
writes:
“Our spiritual prospects at the opening of the year are not
as bright as last new year—one or two sad and unexpected
fallings away from the faith have greatly tried and pained
our hearts.”
But this reaction was transient, for two years later, in telling of
the week of prayer in January, he writes:
“Our native Christians are quite interested, sustaining the
meetings nobly. Indeed I have thrown the meetings upon them
altogether and they take turns in leading them. You do not
know what comfort it is to have in my little flock enough
able and willing to carry on these meetings.... It would do
you good to witness the spirit of faithfulness on their part
to the souls of their impenitent friends and neighbours.”
In addition to his duties as pastor of the mission church, Dr.
House was appointed superintendent of the mission press in 1870,
and for that year also was elected secretary of the mission in
charge of the records and correspondence. At the same time he was
offered a royal appointment:
“Projects are now on foot in both kings’ palaces for schools
for the instruction of the young nobility of Siam in English
and the sciences. I have been earnestly solicited by the
Second King George to aid in establishing the one he is
planning. Happy would I be to lend a helping hand if other
duties would allow.”
After two years the doctor was relieved of the charge of the Press
and appointed again to the more congenial task of supervising the
mission school, a position which he continued to fill until his
final withdrawal from the field.
In the midst of these incidents the actual growth of the Mission
must not be overlooked. It has to be recorded that in spite of
arduous and faithful labours of the increasing corps of workers
and in the face of all the encouraging marks of advance in Western
civilisation, Siam responded very slowly to the spiritual appeal
of the Gospel. While she gladly recognised and sought after the
material benefits of Christianity she continued to manifest
her characteristic indifference to its more vital message. Mr.
McDonald, in his book on _Siam, Its Government, Manners and
Customs_, says that when he arrived in Siam in 1861 there was but
one native convert in connection with the mission, whereas ten
years later there was a church in Bangkok with only twenty members
and another in Petchaburi with a like number. He then adds:
“It is just to state that there is scarcely any other field
in which modern missions have been established where the
introduction of the gospel has met with so little opposition
as in Siam proper.... It is equally just to say that there is
scarcely any other field which has been so barren of results.
Pure Buddhism seems to yield more slowly to the power of the
gospel than any other false system.”
The reason for this unyielding nature of Buddhism seems to lie in
its ethical theories which are the result of its philosophy of
life. In some measure, too, this indifference of Buddhism to a
spiritual interpretation of life accounts for its non-resistance
towards the preaching of an antagonistic religion. The primary
fallacies of Buddhism from the Christian point of view are:
“1. No Creator and no Creating: Things just happened. This
conception leads to indifference to nature and to a belief
that the body is vile, to be despised and disregarded.
“2. No idea of a Spiritual Personality, whether human or
divine. Emphasis is placed on mind and intellect to the
exclusion of will and feeling. Hence Buddhism is a philosophy
rather than a religion, a theory of existence rather than a
motive force.
“3. No true sense of relationship of man to man or of man
to God, in the absence of spiritual personality. Everything
is ego-centric, each for himself. Hence incomplete ideas of
love, faith, sin, holiness, suffering; in the absence of hope
fear dominates life.
“4. The greatest fundamental error is the assertion of the
Karma law as the sole principle that explains all (the law
of ethical causation, by which the merit or demerit of every
act in this life effects the future life). This leads to
a denial of personality and to fatalism, formality, trust
in the individual’s merit, denial of forgiveness and self
satisfaction.”
But if the work at that stage had few numerical results to display,
yet a keen discernment would show that other larger results were
being accomplished. Mr. George B. Bacon, in his volume on Siam,
shows a true appreciation of what missions had accomplished up to
that time:
“At first sight their efforts, if measured by count of
converts, might seem to have resulted in failure.... But
really the success of these efforts has been extraordinary,
although the history of them exhibits an order of results
almost without precedent. Ordinarily the religious
enlightenment of a people comes first and the civilization
follows as a thing of course. But here the Christianisation
of the nation has scarcely begun, but its civilisation has
made much more than a beginning. For it is to the labours
of the Christian missionaries in Siam that the remarkable
advancement of the kings and nobles, and even of the common
people in general is owing....
“When Sir John Bowring came in 1855 to negotiate his treaty
... he found the fruit was ripe before he plucked it. And it
was by the patient and persistent labours of the missionaries
for twenty years that the results which he achieved were made
not only possible but easy.”
But there is evidence of even more subtle effect of the gospel.
No one who reads of the notable changes in the social customs and
political institutions introduced by the young King Chulalongkorn
can resist the conclusion that it was the religious support of
these ancient practises that had given way under the disintegrating
light of the Christian Gospel. Even that earlier attempt of Chao
Fah Yai to modernise the religious teachings among his followers
shows that the religious philosophy of Buddhism could not stand
before the truth of Jesus.