west. Its governor was a Chao Mawm, next in rank to the Chao Fā of
Chieng Rung, and his wife was the Chao Fā’s sister. I had a long talk on
religion with the wife. It was a new thought to her that any one could
be greater than the Buddha, though he was neither Creator nor Saviour,
but only a man. It is unnecessary continually to state what was
everywhere the case throughout this trip; namely, that we had good
audiences and interested hearers. We left in every place some books in
the hands of those most likely to use them; though we could have used to
advantage many more, if we had had them.
From Mûang Ham two days’ march brought us on a Saturday to Mûang Nūn,
the most important city on our route, and, therefore, a most desirable
place to spend Sunday. The city is in the valley of the Nam Bān. It has
well paved streets, and a very large monastery on an eminence above,
where we camped. The abbot gave us a hearty welcome, and did all he
could to make us comfortable. At our night worship the monks and other
visitors were very attentive.
On Sunday morning we called on the head officer of the Court, and had a
pleasant conversation with him, for he was both intelligent and
inquisitive. Just as we were ready for our own morning worship, the Chao
Mawm, a relative of the Chao Fā for Chieng Rung, sent to ask us to call.
We sent word in reply that it was our hour for worship, and asked
whether he would, perhaps, like to have us worship in his residence. His
answer was a cordial invitation to come and do so.
The Prince was young and very pleasant. He had a spacious house, and
soon he had it filled with his own family, his officers, and his people.
Mr. Irwin, as usual, had his cornet. We find that singing our Gospel
hymns, with a short explanation of their central truths, is a better way
to hold a mixed crowd where women and children form a goodly proportion,
than is a regular service. Nān Suwan’s Lû dialect served a very good
turn. We had a very interesting morning, and we were cordially invited
to hold a similar meeting at night, when many who had been absent in the
morning might attend.
At night the house was crowded with a remarkable gathering, for one
could hardly call it a congregation. The invitation, the place, the
attendant circumstances, were all unique. We sang and prayed and
preached with as little restraint as if we had been in our own church in
Chiengmai. The part of the service which most impressed them was Nān
Suwan’s prayer—a direct appeal to a Person unseen, whom he addressed as
Father, Redeemer, Saviour, and Friend. Seldom have I felt so strongly
for any as for these, that they were as sheep needing a shepherd; hungry
souls asking for bread, and getting that which satisfied not. Ethical
teaching they had in abundance, but no Divine Voice asking, “Wilt thou
be made whole?” or saying, “Thy sins be forgiven thee. Arise and walk!”
Next morning we made our formal call upon the Prince; but he sent to our
camp for our books and the cornet, and soon we had another congregation,
and were having worship again. In the afternoon the Prince made us a
long call. Then there was a continuous stream of visitors, mostly for
medicine, and I vaccinated a number of persons. The son of the chief
officer of the Court, a fine young man, was almost ready to come with us
to Chiengmai to study our religion further. His father, too, was willing
that he should come. The young man promised that he surely would do so
next year, if we came again. And now, seventeen years after these
events, it saddens me to think no missionary has ever been there since.
An occupancy, then, of those open Sipsawng Pannā States would have
turned the flank of French obstruction, and have ensured an entrance
from the north.
Early on Tuesday morning we left Mûang Nūn, after a visit all too short.
The Prince, with his officers and a large crowd of people, were on hand
to bid us good-bye. That day we found our track very much obstructed by
the jungle growth, and had some difficulty in cutting our way through.
Another complication presently arose in the illness of my associate, Mr.
Irwin. An attack of indigestion developed next day into symptoms of
dysentery, which made further travel for the time impossible. So we were
laid up until the following Tuesday at Mûang Wên—and anxious nights and
days they were. Milder measures failing, we had to resort at last to a
most heroic treatment which I had seen used in the hospital, namely,
large doses of ipecac. By this means the disease was got under control;
and by care and dieting Mr. Irwin was able at length to continue his
journey on my elephant, though throughout the rest of our tour he was
far from being well.
At Mûang Pōng, one of the three largest cities on the route, we again
stopped over from Thursday night till Tuesday. Here I had an ague-chill
on the night of our arrival, but, with free use of quinine and a little
rest, I escaped further attack. There was a great deal of fever in the
place, and I spent much time in ministering to the sick.
On Saturday I called upon the Prince and his chief officer. I was told
that the city furnished five hundred men for the Chao Fā’s expedition,
and had seventy villages within its jurisdiction. In former times it had
been raided by an expedition from Nān, and some of the Nān villages to
this day are peopled by descendants of those captives.
On Monday the Prince and his chief officer made us long calls. The
Prince had never seen a repeating rifle, and seemed incredulous that it
could fire twelve shots in unbroken succession, till I fired three by
way of demonstration. His look of surprise was ludicrous. He _must_ have
the gun, he said, to protect his country, and began bidding for it. At
last he offered a fine riding pony, which I accepted. He was delighted,
saying that we two should always be brothers. If I should never come
again myself, he would welcome and aid our assistants. Four years later
I did visit the place, but the Prince had been killed.
On Tuesday we reached Mûang Māng, which proved to be one of our most
hopeful places. Sitting in front of our tent, with the whole village
about us, we talked till midnight. I had a sore throat, but our
assistants were inspired with enthusiasm. At last we almost had to drive
the crowd away.
Mûang Sing was the objective of this portion of our tour. I first became
interested in it when it was about to be occupied as a dependency of the
province of Nān. Mr. Phraner and I made an attempt to reach it in 1891,
but were turned back. Then, again, it seemed about to fall into British
hands, under some old claim by Burma. Even at the time we were there,
its status was still uncertain. It gave evidence of having once been a
large city, and still had a very large territory under its jurisdiction.
Its earlier importance was reflected in the title borne by its ruler,
Chao Fā—Lord of the Sky—a title borne by no other Lû ruler south of
Chieng Rung. My interest in Mûang Sing had been deepened by acquaintance
with a patient in the Chiengmai hospital, of whose case Dr. McKean has
kindly furnished the following account:
“This Prayā Singhanāt, a prominent man in the local government,
had been for years a great sufferer from vesical calculus and
had tried all kinds of remedies without avail. Fearing his
disease had been occasioned by offending the spirits in the
building of a new house, he tore the house down. This gave him
no relief. Although he had spent years in the monastery, and had
taken all the degrees of the order, he concluded to re-enter it
in the hope of being cured of his malady, spending again six
months in the monastery. A travelling merchant who had himself
been cured of calculus by an operation in the mission hospital
in Chiengmai, advised the Prayā to go there for relief. This he
determined to do, not without great opposition from the Prince
and from his own family. But he was determined. He sold his
possessions, and started with 800 rupees. His journey was long
and painful. For weeks or even months at a time he could not
travel on account of great pain. Once he was beset by dacoits at
night. A part of his money and all his guns were stolen. When he
finally reached Chiengmai twelve months after leaving home, he
was penniless, and of course still suffering intensely. He was
received into the mission hospital and was wholly relieved by an
operation. A more grateful patient one rarely sees. He regularly
attended service at the hospital and evinced great interest in
Christianity.”
When we reached Mûang Sing, we were disappointed to find that the Prayā
was away. But he had loudly sung the praises of the mission hospital,
and that was a good introduction for us. The chief officer of the Court
was a friend of his, and he proved to be a friend to us, too. Hearing
that we were come, the Chao Fā sent for us, and turned out to be a
relative of the great Chao Fā of Chieng Rung. Though not of a nature so
deeply religious as some, he was interested in religion; and our reply
to his first question as to the object of our visit, immediately
introduced the subject.
At first he was inclined to cavil, asking such questions as, whether
Jesus could rise in the air as Buddha did, and the like. But this was
evidently to “save his face” before his officers. For a while he
maintained that the universe is self-existent, having come into being by
the concurrence of the matter which composes it. But presently he
confessed that it is too complicated for that, and plainly shows
design—that is, a mind or Mind. At last he asked what argument made us
foreigners so certain of our view that we should come to ask them to
change their religion for ours. We told him that Jesus Christ Himself
was the all-sufficient argument. No matter how the world came into
existence, we are here, and we all know that we are sinners. The Buddha
confessed himself to be only a man, and himself seeking a refuge like
the rest of us. Jesus Christ claimed to have come down from heaven, and
to be the Son of God. He challenged the world to convince Him of sin.
Those who knew Him intimately saw something in Him not only different
and superior, but of a different kind. He showed this not only by His
spotless life, but by the miracles that He wrought. He claims to have
power to forgive sins. And thousands and millions who have accepted Him
believe that He has forgiven them; and show that fact by becoming better
men. We talked thus an hour and a half. He evidently felt the force of
the arguments.
Sunday was the fifth-day market or fair—the largest and finest we had
seen in the north. The hill-tribes, as usual, were out in full force. I
was still suffering with sore throat, but Mr. Irwin and the assistants
had a fine morning’s work, and in the afternoon had a fair attendance at
the regular service.
One of the most interesting incidents of our stay was the night service,
held in the residence of the Chao Fā at his express request on the
evening before our departure. The audience was mainly his own family and
dependents, and the Prince was more free than before. During the singing
he asked that the cornet be stopped in order that he might hear the
words more plainly. When Nān Suwan led in prayer, he wished to know if
we always prayed in that way. There was the usual sad refrain—no hope of
pardon, bondage to the spirits, the drawing to a better way, but so
strong a counter-current! Yet who can tell how many, after all, the
truth may have reached?
We left Mûang Sing on Wednesday, April 12th. There is no need to weary
the reader with details of the ten days’ travel before we reached Chieng
Sên, or with the varied incidents of our work.
At Chieng Sên we received letters that were disappointing to my plans.
The mission had unanimously decided that, partly for considerations of
our health, and partly for reasons of mission policy, Mrs. McGilvary and
I should take our furlough at once. We had been ten and a half years on
duty in the field. My wife was not really sick, but was not well, and
the doctor advised her going. I was very anxious to repeat the same tour
the next year, in spite of the few malarial chills I had encountered
this time. But arrangements had been completed, and there was no option
but to submit.
My companion on this tour was far from well, and it was important that
he should hasten home at once. What with daily rains, bad roads, and
swollen streams, Mr. Irwin had a hard trip of it alone the rest of the
way; and it was some little time before he was well again. For my return
there was no such need of haste. The work among the Mūsô had been left,
upon the whole, in hopeful condition. The power of the tribal bond,
which almost annihilated individual responsibility, had been somewhat
weakened. Many head men had promised to enrol themselves as Christians
this season. It was certain that no tour among them could be made the
coming year. I must visit them now.
The experiences of this visit were entirely like those of the previous
ones—everywhere the same warm welcome, interesting night meetings,
earnest consultations, and ministering to the sick; days spent in wading
brooks, climbing mountain ridges, plunging down ravines, to get from one
village to another, where the same round would be repeated. They would
all become Christians if only another officer or two would join them.
Thus it went on till we had visited nearly all of the eleven villages,
and were back at Sên Chai’s and Sên Bun Yūang’s, where we began. These
people were nearer to Nān Suwan’s Christian village, had known more of
our religion, and, no doubt, were believers in the truth of our
teaching. We talked with them till late at night, and our parting with
them had a tragic interest. They were apparently on the verge of
accepting the Gospel. We used our utmost endeavours to persuade them to
join Cha Pū Kaw on the other side of the river, and not wait for the
others who might come in afterwards. This was probably my last visit;
but if any sufficient number would join the church, the mission would
not desert them. If not, in all probability the offer would never be
pressed upon them again.
And so it proved to be. About half of the villages were under the
governor of Chieng Sên. The inhabitants of these were assured of their
safety in taking the decisive step, so far as the rulers were concerned.
But some of the larger villages were under the governor of Mûang Len.
His opposition was a foregone conclusion, because of his interest in the
opium traffic. My failure to gain a large entrance among them was one of
the greatest disappointments in my whole work.
That I was not mistaken in the hopefulness of the work among the Mūsôs
has since been demonstrated by the many thousand converts won among the
same tribe by our Baptist brethren in the Keng Tung region. At the same
time they are better prepared for such a work than were we. Their wide
experience among the Karens of Burma, and the large number of educated
Karens through whom they work, give them advantages in this particular
work which our mission does not possess. On the other hand, it is surely
to be regretted that our mission should be limited in its access to all
branches alike of the Tai population found in the northern states, for
which, by identity of race and language and literature, we are far
better prepared than our Baptist brethren. For while, to use a legal
phrase, the missionary holds a brief for no one particular tribe; while
his commission and his duty is to preach the Gospel to all whom he can
reach; yet it is a well recognized fact that the Tai family has largely
fallen to our mission. And it will be seen from what we have said above,
that we returned from this trip with enlarged views and bright prospects
of opening up work among our own Tai people in the north. It will take
years of hard work and a useless expenditure of time and money for any
other missionary organization to reach the point at which we were ready
to _begin_ work among these people. But this is a complicated question,
the tangled web of which it is not possible for any one man to unravel.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XXXII
THIRD FURLOUGH—STATION AT CHIENG RĀI
On my return to Chiengmai I found preparations well advanced for our
departure on furlough. Embarking on June 7th, we reached Bangkok on June
22d, and San Francisco on August 12th, 1893. Of the events of that
memorable year, I shall touch upon only two or three.
Dr. J. H. Barrows, the originator and President of the Parliament of
Religions, had invited me to attend and participate in its meetings.
After, perhaps, a little shock at the boldness of the idea—as if
Christianity were to be put on a par with other religions—I sympathized
with the object as legitimate and proper. It was merely doing on a large
scale what we missionaries are called upon to do on a smaller scale
every time that we hold an argument with Buddhists or other
non-Christian people. The fairness of the idea, and even its very
boldness, might do good; and I believe they did.
On the Sunday before the opening I listened to a really great sermon by
Dr. Barrows on “Christ the Light of the World.” I attended every session
of the Parliament, save at the hour from 11 A.M. to 12, when I usually
went over to the Moody meetings to hear John McNeill, as he was
familiarly called, preach his trenchant sermons.
If any one went to the Parliament—as possibly some did—hoping to hear
Christianity demolished, he certainly was disappointed. But there was
one criticism which occurred to me. Whatever may have been thought of
the wisdom of the original conception and inauguration of the
Parliament, the Protestant churches might have made a much more imposing
front, if the ablest men of the different denominations had not stood
aloof, either indifferent or hostile to it. It was surely the
opportunity of a lifetime for many, who could not hope otherwise ever to
address personally the votaries of non-Christian religions, to bring
forward their strong reasons to bear on so many of the most intelligent
and presumably the most earnest seekers after the truth.
While attending these meetings in Chicago, I received news that our son,
the Rev. Evander B. McGilvary, had felt himself constrained to resign
from the Lāo mission. No good can come from now reviewing the issues
which led to this step; and it is needless to say how bitter was the
disappointment to his parents, who had looked forward to his carrying on
their work, and to him, who had specially prepared himself for that
work, and for no other. But I must say that bitter as was the
disappointment, I sympathized with his position, and respected his
motives.
At the meeting of the General Assembly in the following May, to which I
was a delegate, the one all-engrossing business was the trial of the
Rev. Henry P. Smith, D.D., for heresy on the question of the “Higher
Criticism.” Viewing the matter from this distance, and entirely apart
from the merits of this particular case, I doubt whether critical and
scientific questions are proper subjects for trials before such a body.
If tried at all, such questions should be tried by a commission of
experts. Biblical criticism and science will go on, and the questions
involved will be decided according to their own lines of evidence, quite
irrespective of the decrees of Popes, Councils, and General Assemblies.
I am much mistaken if the good sense and temper of the church would now
sanction heresy trials on such questions.
* * * * *
One day some fifteen years earlier than the point we have now reached in
our narrative, a letter came to our mission from a Mr. Robert Arthington
of Leeds, England. The letter, like all his subsequent ones, was on
small sheets of notepaper, written over once, and then written again
crosswise, so as to be almost illegible. The writer had somewhere
learned of the journey of a French explorer who, from the upper Mê Kōng
and the headwaters of the Mê Ū, had crossed to the China Sea through the
region now known as Tonking. The traveller had passed through certain
tribes possessed of a written language and supposed to be of Aryan
stock. By some means Mr. Arthington had heard of our mission, and wrote
to enquire whether some of us could not visit those tribes and
distribute among them “the Gospels of John and of Luke, and the Acts of
the Apostles,” particularly “telling them that the Acts followed Luke,
_and was by the same author_.”
We had not the slightest idea who the writer was; but the devout spirit
of the letter was charming, and such interest in obscure tribes along
the northern border of our field was most surprising. His strong desire
to send the Gospel message to “the regions beyond” appealed to me. He
appeared to be a man of means, for he offered to bear the expense of
circulating those three books. At the same time he was evidently
somewhat eccentric and impractical in his ideas. He seemed not to have
thought that to circulate books among newly discovered tribes would
require—since the cessation of the gift of tongues—acquisition of their
languages, translation, printing-presses, etc., etc. But the case, at
all events, seemed worth following up.
I acknowledged the receipt of his letter, pointing out the obstacles
which he seemed to overlook, directing his attention to our own mission
as occupying a new and interesting field, with many hill-tribes on our
own border which we hoped to reach. I invited his coöperation, stating
that as soon as we were properly enforced, we intended to go as far
north as we could.
Almost to my surprise, Mr. Arthington replied immediately, expressing
his interest in our work, but still reverting to his scheme for
evangelizing the “tribes of Aryan stock” found by his French traveller.
That was, of course, impossible for us to undertake, though I did
propose to Dr. Cushing of the American Baptist Mission in Burma to join
me in a tour through that region at Mr. Arthington’s expense. This plan
had attractions for us both; but Dr. Cushing’s college work made it
impossible. Still, we might be able to make some compromise with our
unknown correspondent. So, for some years, I kept up an occasional
correspondence with Mr. Arthington, just sufficient to keep us in touch
with each other. He always replied immediately to my letters, breathing
the same deep interest in missions, and especially in the tribes
hitherto unreached by the Gospel. Touring within my own appointed field
engrossed the whole of my available time; but since that field was
already in part supplied, it did not specially appeal to him.
After the tour, longer than usual, taken with my daughter in 1890, I
sent him a report of it. In response he sent me thirty pounds, which
aided in the work of 1891 among the Mūsô. The tour taken with Mr.
Phraner in 1892 was nearer to his idea; and the one taken with Mr. Irwin
in 1893 intensely interested him—but chiefly because it seemed to be a
stepping stone toward reaching his “Aryan tribes” beyond. He thoroughly
approved of that tour; expressed his regret that we could not meet in
order to come to a clearer understanding about the geography of the
region—since all our maps were defective; and suggested, “I should like
your daughter to go with you on your next trip, as I can well conceive
the idea that she will be a valuable help.” He was, moreover,
“particularly interested that the Cambodians also should have the
Gospels of Luke and John, and the Acts.”
Following up Mr. Arthington’s suggestion of an interview, I met him by
appointment in Liverpool on my return from the United States. We had
only a half hour’s interview; but he thought that sufficient to enable
us to understand each other’s plans. On reaching London I was to make
out an order for what sum I needed for my next work. This I did, asking
for the modest sum of forty pounds, which I received by return post.