MISSIONS IN INDIA--DO MISSIONARIES DO ANY GOOD?
"Is it not all a farce?" said a Major in the Bengal Staff Corps, as we
came down from Upper India. We were talking of Missions. He did not
speak of them with hatred, but only with contempt. The missionaries
"meant well," but they were engaged in an enterprise which was so
utterly hopeless, that no man in his senses could regard it as other
than supreme and almost incredible folly. In this he spoke the opinion
of half the military men of India. They have no personal dislike to
missionaries--indeed many an officer in an out-of-the-way district,
who has a missionary family for almost his only neighbors, will
acknowledge that they are "a great addition to the English society."
But as for their doing any good, as an officer once said to me: "They
might as well go and stand on the shore of the sea and preach to the
fishes, as to think to convert the Hindoos!" Their success, of which
so much is said in England and America, is "infinitesimally small."
Some even go so far as to say that the missionaries do great mischief;
that they stir up bad blood in the native population, and perpetuate
an animosity of races. Far better would it be to leave the "mild
Hindoo" to his gods; to let him worship his sacred cows, and monkeys
and serpents, and his hideous idols, so long as he is a quiet and
inoffensive subject of the government.
If one were preaching a sermon to a Christian congregation, he might
disdain a reply to objections which seem to come out of the mouths of
unbelievers; it would be enough to repeat the words of Him who said,
"Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." But I
am not preaching, but conversing with an intelligent gentleman, who
has lived long in India, and might well assume that he knows far more
about the actual situation than I do. Such men are not to be put down.
They represent a large part of the Anglo-Indian population. We may
therefore as well recognize the fact that Modern Missions, like any
other enterprise which is proposed in the interest of civilization,
are now on trial before the world. We may look upon them as too sacred
for criticism; but in this irreverent age nothing is too sacred;
everything that is holy has to be judged by reason, and by practical
results, and by these to be justified or to be condemned. I would not
therefore claim anything on the ground of authority, but speak of
missions as I would of national education, or even of the railroad
system of India.
The question here raised I think deserves a larger and more candid
treatment than it commonly receives either from the advocates or the
opponents of missions. It is not to be settled merely by pious
feeling, by unreasoning sentiment on the one hand, nor by sneers on
the other. To convert a whole country from one religion to another, is
an undertaking so vast that it is not to be lightly entered upon. The
very attempt assumes a superior wisdom on the part of those who make
it, which is itself almost an offence. If it be not "a grand
impertinence," an intrusion into matters with which no stranger has a
right to intermeddle, it is at least taking a great liberty to thrust
upon a man our opinion in censure of his own. We may think him very
ignorant, and in need of being enlightened. But he may have a poor
opinion of our ability to enlighten him. We think him a fool, and he
returns the compliment. At any rate, right or wrong, he is entitled to
the freedom of his opinion as much as we are to ours. If a stranger
were to come to us day by day, to argue with us, and to force his
opinions upon us, either in politics or religion, we might listen
civilly and patiently at first, but we should end by turning him out
of doors. What right have we to pronounce on his opinions and conduct
any more than he upon ours?
In the domain of religion, especially, a man's opinions are sacred.
They are between himself and God. There is no greater offence against
courtesy, against that mutual concession of perfect freedom, which is
the first law of all human intercourse, than to interfere wantonly
with the opinions--nay, if you please, with the false opinions, with
the errors and prejudices--of mankind. Nothing but the most imperative
call of humanity--a plea of "necessity or mercy"--can justify a
crusade against the ancestral faith of a whole people.
I state the case as strongly as I can, that we may look upon it as an
English officer, or even an intelligent Hindoo, looks upon it, and I
admit frankly that we have no more right to force our religion upon
the people of India, than to force upon them a republican form of
government, unless we can give a reason for it, which shall be
recognized at the bar of the intelligent judgment of mankind.
Is there then any good reason--any _raison d'etre_--for the
establishment of missions in India? If there be not some very solid
and substantial ground for their existence, they are not to be
justified merely because their motive is good. Is there then any
reason whatever which can justify any man, or body of men, in invading
this country with a new religion, and attacking the ancient faith of
the people?
All students of history will acknowledge that there are certain great
revolutions in the opinions of mankind, which are epochs in history,
and turning points in the life of nations. India has had many such
revolutions, dating far back before the Christian era. Centuries
before Christ was born, Buddha preached his new faith on the banks of
the Ganges. For a time it conquered the country, driving out the old
Brahminism, which however came back and conquered in its turn, till
Buddhism, retiring slowly from the plains of India, planted its
pagodas on the shores of Burmah and among the mountains of Ceylon.
Thus India is a land of missions, and has been from the very
beginnings of history. It was traversed by missionaries of its ancient
faith ages before Tamerlane descended the passes of the Himalayas with
the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other; or Francis Xavier,
the Apostle of the Indies, laid his bones in the Cathedral of Goa. If
then Buddhists and Brahmins, and Moslems and Romanists, have so long
disputed the land, there is certainly no reason why we should condemn
at the very outset the entrance of Protestant Christianity.
Beside this great fact in the history of India place another: that
there is no country in the world where religion is such a power, such
an element in the life of the people. The Hindoos are not only
religious, they are intensely so. They have not indeed the fierce
fanaticism of the Moslems, for their creed tolerates all religions,
but what they believe they believe strongly. They have a subtle
philosophy which pervades all their thinking, which digs the very
channels in which their thoughts run, and cannot overflow; and this
philosophy, which is imbedded in their religious creed, fixes their
castes and customs, as rigidly as it does their forms of worship.
Religion is therefore the chief element in the national life. It has
more to do in moulding the ideas and habits, the manners and customs,
of the people, than laws or government, or any other human
institution. Thus India furnishes the most imposing illustration on
earth of the power of Religion to shape the destiny of a country or a
race.
Whether there be anything to justify a friendly invasion of India, and
the attempt to convert its people to a better religion, may appear if
we ask, What is Hindooism? Is it a good or bad faith? Does it make men
better or worse--happy or unhappy? Does it promote the welfare of
human beings, or is it a system which is false in belief and deadly in
its effects, and against which we have a right to wage a holy war?
Hindooism has a thousand shapes, spreading out its arms like a mighty
banyan tree, but its root is one--Pantheism. When an old fakir at the
Mela at Allahabad said to me, "You are God and I am God!" he did not
utter a wild rhapsody, but expressed the essence of Hindoo philosophy,
according to which all beings that exist are but One Being; all
thoughts are but the pulse-beats of One Infinite Mind; all acts are
but the manifestation of One Universal Life.
Some may think this theory a mere abstraction, which has no practical
bearing. But carried out to its logical consequences, it overthrows
all morality. If all acts of men are God's acts, then they are all
equally good or bad; or rather, they are neither good nor bad. Thus
moral distinctions are destroyed, and vice and virtue are together
banished from the world. Hence Hindooism as a religion has nothing
whatever to do with morality or virtue, but is only a means of
propitiating angry deities. It is a religion of terror and fear. It is
also unspeakably vile. It is the worship of obscene gods by obscene
rites. Its very gods and goddesses commit adultery and incest. Thus
vice is deified. Such a mythology pollutes the imaginations of the
people, whereby their very mind and conscience are defiled. Not only
the heart, but even the intellect is depraved by the loathsome objects
set up in their temples. The most common object of worship in India is
an obscene image. Indeed, so well understood is this, that when a law
was passed by the Government against the exhibition of obscene images,
an express exception was made in favor of those exposed in temples,
and which were objects of religious worship. Thus Hindooism has the
privilege of indecency, and is allowed to break over all restraints.
It is the licensed harlot, that is permitted, in deference to its
religious pretensions, to disregard the common decencies of mankind.
The effect of this on public morals can be imagined. The stream cannot
rise higher than its source. How can a people be pure, when their very
religion is a fountain of pollution? But this is a subject on which we
cannot enlarge. It is an abyss into which no one would wish to look.
It is sufficient to indicate what we cannot for very loathing
undertake to describe.
There is another element in the Hindoo religion, which cannot be
ignored, and which gives it a tremendous power for good or evil. It is
Caste. Every Hindoo child is born in a certain caste, out of which he
cannot escape. When I landed at Bombay I observed that every native
had upon his forehead a mark freshly made, as if with a stroke of the
finger, which indicated the god he worshipped or the caste to which he
belonged. Of these there are four principal ones--the Priest, or
Brahmin caste, which issued out of the mouth of Brahm; the Warrior
caste, which sprung from his arms and breast; the Merchant caste, from
his thighs; and the Shoodras, or Servile caste, which crawled out from
between his feet; beside the Pariahs, who are below all caste. These
divisions are absolute and unchangeable. To say that they are
maintained by the force of ancient custom is not enough: they are
fixed as by a law of nature. The strata of society are as immovable as
the strata of the rock-ribbed hills. No man can stir out of his place.
If he is up he stays up by no virtue of his own; and if he is down, he
stays down, beyond any power of man to deliver him. No gift of genius,
or height of virtue, can ever raise up one of a low caste into a
higher, for caste is a matter of birth. Upon these sub-strata this
fixity of caste rests with crushing weight. It holds them down as with
the force of gravitation, as if the Himalayas were rolled upon them to
press them to the earth.
Against this oppression there is no power of resistance, no lifting up
from beneath to throw it off. One would suppose that the people
themselves would revolt at this servitude, that every manly instinct
would rise up in rebellion against such a degradation. But so
ingrained is it in the very life of the people, that they cannot cast
it out any more than they can cast out a poison in their blood. Indeed
they seem to glory in it. The lower castes crouch and bow down that
others may pass over them. A Brahmin, who had become a Christian, told
me that the people had often asked him to wash his feet in the water
of the street, that they might drink it!
Caste is a cold and cruel thing, which hardens the heart against
natural compassion. I know it is said that high caste is only an
aristocracy of birth, and that, as such, it fosters a certain nobility
of feeling, and also a mutual friendliness between those who belong to
the same order. A caste is only a larger family, and in it there is
the same feeling, a mixture of pride and affection, which binds the
family together. Perhaps it may nurture to some extent a kind of
clannishness, but it does this at the sacrifice of the broader and
nobler sentiment of humanity. It hardens the heart into coldness and
cruelty against all without one sacred pale. The Brahmin feels nothing
for the sufferings of the Pariah, who is of another order of being as
truly as if he were one of the lower animals. Thus the feeling of
caste extinguishes the sentiment of human brotherhood.
Taking all these elements together, Hindooism must rank as the most
despotic, the most cruel, and the vilest of all that is called
religion among men. There is no other that so completely upturns moral
distinctions, and makes evil good and good evil. Other religions, even
though false, have some sentiment that ennobles them, but Hindooism,
the product of a land fertile in strange births, is the lowest and
basest, the most truly earth-born, of all the religions that curse
mankind.
And what burdens does it lay upon a poor, patient, and suffering
people, in prayers, penances, and pilgrimages! The faith of Hindooism
is not a mild and harmless form of human credulity. It exacts a
terrible service, that must be paid with sweat and blood. Millions of
Hindoos go every year on pilgrimages. The traveller sees them
thronging the roads, dragging their weary feet over the hot plains,
many literally _crawling_ over the burning earth, to appease the wrath
of angry gods! A religion which exacts such service is not a mere
creature of the imagination--it is a tremendous reality, which makes
its presence felt at every moment. It is therefore not a matter of
practical indifference. It is not a mere exhibition of human folly,
which, however absurd, does no harm to anybody. It is a despotism
which grinds the people to powder.
Seeing this, how they suffer under a power from which they cannot
escape, can there be a greater object of philanthropy in all the world
than to emancipate them from the bondage of such ignorance and
superstition? Scientific men, the apostles of "modern thought,"
consider it not only a legitimate object, but the high "mission" of
science, by unfolding the laws of nature, to disabuse our minds of
idle and superstitious fears; to break up that vague terror of unseen
forces, which is the chief element of superstition. If they may fight
this battle in England, may we not fight the battle of truth with
error and ignorance in Hindostan? Englishmen think it a noble thing
for brave and adventurous spirits to form expeditions to penetrate the
interior of Africa to break up the slave trade. But here is a slavery
the most terrible which ever crushed the life out of human beings.
Brahminism, which is fastened upon the people of India, embraces them
like an anaconda, clasping and crushing them in its mighty folds. It
is a devouring monster, which takes out of the very body of every
Hindoo, poor and naked and wretched as he may be, its pound of
quivering flesh. Can these things be, and we look on unmoved? Can we
see a whole people bound, like Laocooen and his sons, in the grasp of
the serpent, writhing and struggling in vain, and not come to their
rescue?
Such is Hindooism, and such is the condition to which it has reduced
the people of India. Do we need any other argument for Christian
missions? Does not this simple statement furnish a perfect defence,
and even an imperative demand for their establishment? Christianity is
the only hope of India. In saying this I do not intend any disrespect
to the people of this country, to whom I feel a strong attraction. We
are not apt to hear from our missionary friends much about the virtues
of the heathen; but virtues they have, which it were wrong to ignore.
The Hindoos, like other Asiatics, are a very domestic people, and have
strong domestic attachments. They love their homes, humble though they
be, and their children. And while they have not the active energy of
Western races, yet in the passive virtues--meekness, patience under
injury, submission to wrong--they furnish an example to Christian
nations. That submissiveness, which travellers notice, and which moves
some to scorn, moves me rather to pity, and I find in this patient,
long-suffering race much to honor and to love. Nor are they
unintelligent. They have very subtle minds. Thus they have many of the
qualities of a great people. But their religion is their destruction.
It makes them no better, it makes them worse. It does not lift them
up, it drags them down. It is the one terrible and overwhelming curse,
that must be removed before there is any hope for the people of India.
Is there not here a legitimate ground for an attempt on the part of
the civilized and Christian world to introduce a better faith into
that mighty country which holds two hundred millions of the human
race? This is not intrusion, it is simple humanity. In seeking to
introduce Christianity into India, we invade no right of any native of
that country, Mohammedan or Hindoo; we would not wantonly wound their
feelings, nor even shock their prejudices, in attacking their
hereditary faith. But we claim that here is a case where we cannot
keep silent. If we are told that we "interfere with the people," we
answer, that we interfere as the Good Samaritan interfered with the
man who fell among thieves, and was left by the roadside to die; as
the physician in the hospital interferes with those dying of the
cholera; as one who sees a brother at his side struck by a deadly
serpent applies his mouth to the wound, to suck the poison from his
blood! If that be interference, it is interference where it would be
cruelty to stand aloof, for he would be less than man who could be
unmoved in presence of misery so vast, which it was in any degree in
his power to relieve.
Thus India itself is the sufficient argument for missions in India.
Let any one visit this country, and study its religion, and see how it
enters into the very life of the people; how all social intercourse is
regulated by caste; how one feels at every instant the pressure of an
ancient and unchangeable religion, and ask how its iron rule is ever
to be broken? Who shall deliver them from the body of this death?
There is in Hindooism no power of self-cure. For ages it has remained
the same, and will remain for ages still. Help, if it come at all,
must come from without, and where else can it come from, but from
lands beyond the sea?
Therefore it is that the Christian people of England and America come
to the people of India, not in a tone of self-righteousness, assuming
that we are better than they, but in the name of humanity, of the
brotherhood of the human race. We believe that "God hath made of one
blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth," and these
Hindoos, though living on the other side of the globe, are our
brothers. They are born into the same world; they belong to the same
human family, and have the same immortal destiny. To such a people,
capable of great things, but crushed and oppressed, we come to do
them good. We would break the terrible bondage of caste, and bring
forth woman out of the prison-house where she passes her lonely
existence. This involves a social as well as a religious revolution.
But what a sigh of relief would it bring to millions who, under their
present conditions, are all their lifetime subject to bondage.
There is a saying in the East that in India the flowers yield no
perfume, the birds never sing, and the women never smile. Of course
this is an exaggeration, and yet it has a basis of truth. It is true
that the flowers of the tropics, though often of brilliant hues, do
not yield the rich perfume of the roses of our Northern clime; and
many of the birds whose golden plumage flashes sunlight in the deep
gloom of tropical forests, have only a piercing shriek, instead of the
soft, delicious notes of the robin and the dove; and the women have a
downcast look. Well may it be so. They lead a secluded and solitary
life. Shut up in their zenanas, away from society, they have no part
in many of the joys of human existence, though they have more than
their share of life's burdens and its woes. No wonder that their faces
should be sad and sorrowful. Thus the whole creation seems to groan
and travail in pain.
Now we desire to dispel the darkness and the gloom of ages, and to
bring smiles and music and flowers once more into this stricken world.
Teaching a religion of love and good will to men, we would cure the
hatred of races, and bring all together in a common brotherhood. We
would so lift up the poor of this world, that sorrow and sighing shall
flee away, and that every lowly Indian hut shall be filled with the
light of a new existence. In that day will not nature share in the joy
of man's deliverance? Then will the birds begin to sing, as if they
were let loose from the gates of heaven to go flying through the
earth, and to fill our common air with the voice of melody. Then shall
smiles be seen once more on human faces; not the loud cackling of
empty laughter; but smiles breaking through tears (the reflection of
a peace that passeth understanding), shall spread like sunshine over
the sad faces of the daughters of Asia.
But some "old Indian" who has listened politely, yet smiling and
incredulous, to this defence of missions, may answer, "All this is
very fine; no doubt it would be a good thing if the people of India
would change their religion; would cast off Hindooism, and adopt
Christianity. But is it not practically impossible? Do all the efforts
of missionaries really amount to anything." This is a fair question,
and I will try to give it a fair answer.
"Do missionaries do any good?" Perhaps we can best answer the question
by drawing the picture of an Indian village, such as one may see at
thousands of points scattered over the country. It is a cluster of
huts, constructed sometimes with a light frame-work of bamboo, filled
in with matting, but more commonly of mud, with a roof of thatch to
prevent its being washed away in the rainy season. These huts are
separated from each other by narrow lanes that can hardly be dignified
with the name of streets. Yet in such a hamlet of hovels, hardly fit
for human habitation, may be a large population. Every doorway is
swarming with children. On the outskirts of the village is _the
missionary bungalow_, a large one-story house, also built of mud, but
neatly whitewashed and protected from the rains by a heavy thatched
roof, which projects over the walls, and shades the broad veranda. In
the "compound" are two other buildings of the same rude material and
simple architecture, a church and a schoolhouse. In the latter are
gathered every day ten, twenty, fifty--perhaps a hundred--children,
with bare feet and poor garments, though clean, but with bright eyes,
and who seem eager to learn. All day long comes from that low building
a buzz and hum as from a hive of bees. Every Sunday is gathered in the
little chapel a congregation chiefly of poor people, plainly but
neatly dressed, and who, as they sit there, reclaimed from
heathenism, seem to be "clothed and in their right minds." To the poor
the Gospel is preached, and never does it show its sweetness and
power, as when it comes down into such abodes of poverty, and gives to
these humble natives a new hope and a new life--a life of joy and
peace. Perhaps in the same compound is an orphanage, in which are
gathered the little castaways who have been deserted by their parents,
left by the roadside to die--or whose parents may have died by
cholera--and who are thus rescued from death, and given the chance
which belongs to every human creature of life and of happiness.
Perhaps the missionary is a little of a physician, and has a small
chest of medicines, and the poor people come to him for cures of their
bodily ailments, as well as for their spiritual troubles. After awhile
he gains their confidence, and becomes, not by any appointment, but
simply by the right of goodness and the force of character, a sort of
unofficial magistrate, or head man of the village, a general
peacemaker and benefactor. Can any one estimate the influence of such
a man, with his gentle wife at his side, who is also active both in
teaching and in every form of charity? Who does not see that such a
missionary bungalow, with its school, its orphanage, and its church,
and its daily influences of teaching and of example, is a centre of
civilization, when planted in the heart of an Indian village?
How extensive is this influence will of course depend on the many or
the few devoted to this work, and the wisdom and energy with which
they pursue it. The number of missionaries in India is very small
compared with the vast population. And yet the picture here drawn of
one village is reproduced in hundreds of villages. Take the
representatives of all the churches and societies of Protestant
Christendom, they would make a very respectable force. But even this
does not represent the full amount of influence they exert. Moral
influences cannot be weighed and measured like material forces. Nor
are missionaries to be counted, like the soldiers of an army. They are
not drawn up on parade, and do not march through the streets, with
gleaming bayonets. Their forces are scattered, and their work is
silent and unseen.
But in all quiet ways, by churches, schools, and orphanages, their
influence is felt; while by the printing-press they scatter religious
truth all over India, the effect of which, in tens of thousands of
those whom it does not "convert," is to destroy the power of their old
idolatry.
That more Hindoos do not openly embrace Christianity is not
surprising, when one considers the social influences which restrain
them. When a Hindoo becomes a Christian, he is literally an outcast.
His most intimate friends will not know him. His own family turn him
from their door, feeling that he has brought upon them a disgrace far
greater than if he had committed a crime for which he was to perish on
the scaffold. To them he is _dead_, and they perform his funeral rites
as if he were no more in this world. The pastor of the native church
in Bombay has thus been _buried_ or _burned_ by his own family.
Another told me that his own father turned from him in the street, and
refused to recognize him. These things are very hard to bear. And so
far from wondering that there are not more conversions among the
natives of India, I wonder that there are so many.
But what sort of Christians are they? Are they like English or
American Christians? When I landed in India, and saw what a strange
people I was among, how unlike our own race, I asked a question which
many have asked before: Whether these people _could_ become
Christians? It is a favorite idea of many travellers--and of many
English residents in India--that not only is the number of conversions
small, but that the "converts" are not worth having when they are
made. It is said that it is only low caste natives, who have nothing
to lose, that will desert their old religion; and that they are
influenced only by the lowest motives, and that while they profess to
be converted, they are in no wise changed from what they were, except
that to their old heathen vices they have added that of hypocrisy.
Hearing these things, I have taken some pains to ascertain what sort
of people these native converts are. I have attended their religious
services, and have met them socially, and, so far as I could judge, I
have never seen more simple-minded Christians. Some of them are as
intelligent as the best instructed members of our New England
churches. As to their low caste, statistics show, among them, a
greater proportion of Brahmins than of any other caste, as might be
expected from their greater intelligence.
The work, then, has not been in vain. The advance is slow, but it is
something that there _is_ an advance. I am told, as the result of a
careful estimate, that if the progress continues in the future as it
has for the last fifteen years, in two centuries the whole of India
with its two hundred millions of people, will be converted to the
Christian religion. This is a spread of Christianity more rapid than
that in the age of the apostles, for it was three centuries before the
faith which they preached became master of the Roman empire.
With such a record of what Christian Missions have done in India, with
such evidences of their good influence and growing power, they are
entitled to honor and respect as one of the great elements in the
problem of the future of that country. To speak of them flippantly,
argues but small acquaintance with the historical forces which have
hitherto governed India or indeed Britain itself. It ill becomes
Englishmen to sneer at missions, for to missionaries they owe it that
their island has been reclaimed from barbarism. When Augustine landed
in Britain their ancestors were clothed in skins, and roaming in
forests. It was the new religion that softened their manners, refined
their lives, and in the lapse of generations wrought out the slow
process of civilization.
In Johnson's "Tour to the Hebrides," he refers to the early
missionaries who civilized Britain in a passage which is one of the
most eloquent in English literature: "We were now treading that
illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian
regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the
benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion.... Far from me
and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us
indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by
wisdom, bravery or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose
patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose
piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona."
That power which has made England so great; which has made the English
race the foremost race in all this world; is now carried to another
hemisphere to work the same gradual elevation in the East. It is a
mighty undertaking. The lifting up of a race is like the lifting up of
a continent. Such changes cannot come suddenly; but in the slow lapse
of ages the continent may be found to have risen, and to be covered,
as it were, with a new floral vegetation; as that faith, which is the
life of Europe, has entered into the vast populations of Asia.