_A TRUE IDEAL MISSIONARY AND A FALSE MISSIONARY IDEAL._
The American Baptist Mission is the oldest Protestant mission working
in Burma. It was commenced by Dr. Judson in Rangoon in 1813, and has
expanded in Lower Burma to a large and strong mission, having had very
signal and rapid success amongst the Karen races, and to a fair extent
amongst the Burmans also. As far back as 1824, Dr. Judson, wishing to
extend the work to Upper Burma, went up the Irrawaddy and opened a
mission at Ava, which was then the capital. Ava is situated about ten or
twelve miles from Mandalay, and is now quite an insignificant village,
with the remains of the royal city and palace still to be seen. Mandalay,
of course, did not at that time exist as a town. Unfortunately, the
first Burmese war with England took place whilst Judson was at Ava,
and completely broke up the work he had begun to do in the capital,
and Judson was imprisoned, together with the few European and American
residents, at Ava.
For a year and ten months he was kept in rigorous confinement, under
circumstances of great barbarity, first at Ava, and afterwards at the
village of Oung-pen-la, which is only about two miles from Mandalay. I
have often been to Oung-pen-la, a typical Burmese agricultural village,
surrounded by rice fields, which are irrigated from the great Oung-pen-la
lake, close by. The site of the old prison is still pointed out by the
villagers, but the building itself has been removed, and, being of teak,
has left no trace behind. Seldom have the annals of missions furnished a
more pathetic narrative of suffering than this.
“On the 8th of June,” wrote Mrs. Judson, “just as we were preparing
for dinner, in rushed an officer, holding a black book, with a dozen
Burmans, accompanied by _one_, who from his spotted face we knew to be
an executioner, and a ‘son of the prison.’ ‘Where is the teacher?’ was
the first inquiry. Mr. Judson presented himself. ‘You are called by the
king,’ said the officer,—a form of speech always used when about to
arrest a criminal. The spotted man instantly seized Mr. Judson, threw him
on the floor, and produced the small cord, the instrument of torture.”
With this the prisoner was bound and dragged off to the court house,
where the governor of the city and the officers were collected, and
one of them read the order of the king, to commit Mr. Judson to the
death-prison. He was suspected of being in communication with the
English, with whom they were at war, though of course he had nothing to
do with them.
This was the beginning of his long imprisonment. Whilst in prison Judson
suffered much. He was loaded with fetters, which left their marks on his
limbs till the day of his death. He was placed in the common prison,
amidst dirt and noisome smells, in charge of ferocious jailers, who
had to be continually plied with presents to secure for him the very
necessaries of existence. At night it was the custom to secure the safe
keeping of the prisoners by enclosing their feet in a kind of stocks,
several of them in a row, the stocks being then hoisted up into the air
a little way, so that the feet were elevated higher than the head, which
must have caused great pain and inconvenience. During a great part of
the time of this captivity the prisoners were in a state of dreadful
suspense, not knowing whether they might not be put to death any day
or hour. More than once the design was formed to kill them, but by the
Providence of God that intention was never carried out.
The death-prison was constructed of boards, and was rather stronger
than a common Burman dwelling-house. There were no windows nor other
means of admitting the air, except by such crevices as always exist in a
simple board house, and only one small outer door. What must have been
their state with one hundred prisoners of all classes huddled together,
including the worst of criminals, all shut up in one room, loaded with
fetters, in the sweltering heat of the hot season of Upper Burma, where
the thermometer rises every day to 110° in the shade? Prisoners were
continually dying of disease, as well as by violent treatment, and yet
the place was always full. Several sepoys, and occasionally English
soldiers, prisoners of war, swelled the lists of the miserable. These
poor creatures, having no regular supply of food, were often brought to
the very verge of starvation; and then, on some worship day, the women
would come, as a work of charity, to the prison with rice and fruit, and
the miserable sufferers, maddened by starvation, would eat and die.
Suddenly, in May, the very hottest month of the year, when life is a
burden, even with all that can be done to mitigate the effects of the
climate, and when for Europeans to go out in the sun unprotected is at
the peril of their lives, the prisoners were removed from the prison at
Ava to Amarapoora, and after that to Oung-pen-la. They were made to walk
barefoot a journey of nine miles, chained together two by two. The Burman
guards, by a refinement of cruelty, instead of making the journey in
the cool of the day or night, set out at eleven o’clock in the day, so
that they were under the scorching sun all the time, the sand and gravel
like burning coals to tread upon, first blistering their feet, and then
taking the whole of the skin off. One of the European prisoners, a Greek,
who when taken out of prison was in his usual health, fell down on the
way, and expired in an hour or two after their arrival, doubtless from
sunstroke. The others reached Oung-pen-la more dead than alive.
The sufferings of Judson’s devoted wife were scarcely less severe than
his own all this time, although she was not imprisoned. During all the
months he lay imprisoned at Ava she was harassed with the most consuming
anxiety for her husband, and had constantly to exert herself to the
utmost to get him food into the prison. During that time her child was
born. The removal of the prisoners to Oung-pen-la occurred when the babe
was only three months old. It occurred suddenly and unknown to her and
when she found him gone, she knew not whither to go seeking him. She sent
first to the place of execution, fearing the worst, but they were not
there; and then she had to follow the party as best she could, finding
them at last at Oung-pen-la. The very morning after their arrival there,
the little Burmese girl she had with her, to help with the baby, was
taken ill of smallpox, and the babe of three months took it from her.
After that Mrs. Judson herself was taken seriously ill, and for two
months lay helpless on a mat on the floor of the wretched little hut,
where she had taken up her abode, to be near her husband in the prison.
When the child recovered, the mother was unable to nurse her, so that,
being deprived of her usual nourishment, the infant suffered greatly.
Neither a nurse nor a drop of cow’s milk could be procured in the
village. However, by making presents to the jailers—nothing could be done
without presents—she obtained leave for Dr. Judson to come out of prison
daily, in order to carry the emaciated little creature round the village,
to the houses of those women who were suckling children, and to beg them
for pity’s sake to give each a little, to keep the life in the child!
In this way the twenty-two weary months of his captivity passed, amidst
hardships, sickness and anxiety unspeakable. At length release came. On
the advance of the English army up the Irrawaddy, Dr. Judson was sent
for to the Burmese camp, being then a most valuable man, to serve as
interpreter and translator, and to negotiate terms of peace; and thus
their long captivity came to a close.
Ardently as Judson longed to see his mission established in Upper Burma
in his day, sixty years were destined to elapse before the society
to which he belonged secured a permanent footing there. It was after
the annexation in 1886 that work was permanently taken up by them in
Mandalay. A handsome church has recently been erected there at a cost
of about £3,000, by contributions from America and Burma, as a memorial
of Dr. Judson, and the mission has met with a fair share of success. In
addition to Mandalay, three other stations have been taken up by the
American Baptist Mission in Upper Burma—viz., Sagaing, Myingyan and
Meiktila, and one medical missionary has gone to the Shan States. Bhamo
was occupied previously, during King Theebaw’s reign, for work amongst
the Kachin tribes.
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S. P. G.) began its work
in Mandalay under the comparatively favouring auspices of King Mindohn,
the father and immediate predecessor of Theebaw. This monarch built for
the mission, at his own cost, very commodious and handsome premises of
teak wood, consisting of a church, a mission house, and a school, which
still remain. In the church is a handsome font, the appropriate gift of
Queen Victoria to this church, built by the munificence of a heathen
king! Theebaw, when a boy, was a pupil in that school, and there was
no thought then of his succeeding to the throne. He made very little
progress with English study, though he had a good reputation for Buddhist
lore.
Owing to the massacres and other grievous disorders of Theebaw’s reign,
the mission had to be closed for several years, the missionaries,
along with all the other English residents, having to leave Mandalay.
On the annexation being declared, the S. P. G. mission was reopened,
and subsequently another station was opened at Shwebo, and these two
stations, with a sub-station at Madeya, have experienced a fair share of
prosperity since.
During the six years these two missions have been re-established in
Upper Burma, the effects of the climate upon the health and lives of the
missionaries have been very marked. Both missions have already their
record of the faithful dead—mission workers, both male and female, who
have fallen in the prime of life, and one before she had well begun her
mission work. In both missions, too, during that time several valued
workers have had to leave the country, worn down by sickness, and unable
to endure the climate.
The Wesleyan Mission commenced work in Mandalay at the beginning of 1887.
Up to date we number three European missionaries, two Singhalese workers
(from Ceylon), and three other native preachers, and we have occupied
three stations, Mandalay, Pakokku and Kyaukse. The story of our work will
appear in the subsequent pages.
[Illustration: “WE NUMBER THREE EUROPEAN MISSIONARIES, TWO SINGHALESE
WORKERS, AND THREE OTHER NATIVE PREACHERS.”]
Coming now to the subject belonging to the second half of this chapter,
THE FALSE MISSIONARY IDEAL,
I wish to deal with a matter, partly suggested by the recital
of the sufferings of Judson just related, upon which something
needs to be said. It has often appeared to me that there still
lingers, in the minds of many people, a very erroneous ideal of
missions and missionaries, which it is quite time to do away
with. A recent writer has aptly expressed the notion to which I
refer in these words:—
“The more barren the missionary’s lot of all comfort, the
greater the degree of self-denial and privation that can be
encountered, the better. What he has really undertaken is to
carry the Gospel to the destitute, and so to live as to secure
the longest, fullest and most complete career of usefulness
along that line. But this is not the view of the malcontents;
they regard him as a spectacle, an ascetic, an object lesson in
self-denial. It is not so much what he does as what he suffers.
The chief end is the impression which he makes on men’s minds
by his self-mortification.”
This may seem at first sight rather a strong putting of the
case, but I think it will be apparent, as we proceed, that it
is nearer the popular notion than the reader may at first be
prepared to admit. The first witness I will cite is John G.
Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides. If the reader has not
yet read his book, let me urge him to do so without delay.
In the earlier days of his missionary life on the island of
Tanna, he passed through a period of almost unexampled trial
from the brutal savagery of the natives, owing to the fact
that there was no such thing as law, justice, or protection of
any kind to be obtained. His trials were such as few men could
have endured, and lived. The people were utterly uncivilised,
bloodthirsty, quarrelsome, superstitious and vindictive. Human
life was scarcely of any value among them, and they were
cannibals. His life was attempted times without number. Other
missionaries and native Christian teachers were murdered, and
done to death by them one way or another, and how he escaped
death amongst them seems nothing short of miraculous.
At length a crisis more acute than usual came, and the wicked
and superstitious malice of the Tannese broke out against him
to such a degree that he was driven out of the island, all his
property was looted, and he barely escaped with his life. In
his distress he went over to Australia to recruit his health,
which must have needed it after such a strain. Of what occurred
there I quote his own statement:—
“Some unsophisticated souls who read these pages will be
astonished to learn, but others who know more of the heartless
selfishness of human creatures will be quite prepared to hear,
that my leaving Tanna was not a little criticised, and a great
deal of nonsense was written, even in Church magazines, about
the breaking up of the Mission. All such criticism came, of
course, from men who were themselves destitute of sympathy,
and who probably never endured one pang for Jesus in all their
comfortable lives. Conscious that I had, to the last inch of
life, tried to do my duty, I left all results in the hands of
my only Lord, and all criticisms to His unerring judgment.
Hard things also were occasionally spoken to my face. One
dear friend, for instance, said, ‘You should not have left.
You should have stood at the post of duty till you fell. It
would have been to your honour, and better for the cause of
the Mission, had you been killed at the post of duty like the
Gordons and others.’
“I replied, ‘_I regard it as a greater honour to live and to
work for Jesus than to be a self-made martyr._ God knows that
I did not refuse to die; for I stood at the post of duty, amid
difficulty and danger, till all hope had fled, till everything
I had was lost, and till God, in answer to prayer, sent a means
of escape. I left with a clear conscience, knowing that in
doing so I was following God’s leading, and serving the Mission
too. To have remained longer would have been to incur the guilt
of self-murder in the sight of God.’”
These sentiments, especially the words I have italicised, do
honour alike to Paton’s devotion and to his common sense, and
they are a just rebuke of a very false ideal.
Happening to take up one day an influential religious
newspaper, I met with a notice of John G. Paton’s book, which
spoke in very high terms of it, and of him, concluding with
the following sentence, in which the editor most innocently
and unconsciously brings up in another form this same
false ideal, even after reading the book; which shows how
prevalent the error is, and difficult to eradicate. “Now that
civilisation is spreading, and owing to the general extension
of facilities for travel to every part of the earth, it is to
be feared that such records of missionary experience will soon
be amongst the things of the past.” “It is to be _feared_”
say the stay-at-home people, and editors in easy chairs. Any
missionary, especially Paton himself, would have said, “It
is to be _hoped_.” If the reader will but ponder that word
“_feared_,” and take in all that it means, he will see that
it is the very notion Paton complains of, and that I am here
seeking to correct.
We still need to take to heart Dr. Johnson’s exhortation to
“clear our minds of cant.” After praying times without number
that cannibalism, and all the cruel horrors and barbarities of
heathenism might come to an end, we are found _fearing_ that
our prayer is so near being answered, that soon there will be
no more such tales to tell!
The immense wave of sympathy that was evoked through the
lamented illness and death of Father Damien, and which spread
throughout the civilised world, was another proof of the
prevalence of the “object lesson” ideal of the missionary.
Missionaries had been at work succouring and tending lepers
for many years before that, and a noble society, the Mission
to Lepers, established in 1874, has now some thirty homes for
lepers under its care, in India, Burma and China, under the
management of twelve different Protestant missionary societies.
But all this _work_ goes on in comparative obscurity, the
whole of it together not attracting one hundredth part of
the sympathy and notice that this one case of _suffering_
attracted. Father Damien _died of leprosy_. “_This_, THIS is
what we want; this touches our hearts and our pockets,” cries
out universal Christendom. It seems it is not mission work but
missionary sufferings the people want to hear about. A false
ideal.
A further proof how widespread is this notion will appear
from a recent article in the March number of the _Missionary
Review of the World_ for the year 1892. The writer states
it as frankly as words and repetition can express it, quite
unconscious that there is anything wrong about it. The
article is on “Missionary Fellowship.” It is not written by
a missionary; no missionary could possibly write such rank
nonsense. This is what he says: “Suffering, after all, is the
test of missionary character.... It is not so much what the
missionary does as what he is, and what he is can be shown only
by _suffering_ for the Gospel’s sake.” He goes on to say that
it is Judson’s and his wife’s sufferings in Burma, more than
their missionary labours, that “canonise them as martyrs of
modern missions”; and there is a good deal more “high falutin’”
of the same kind.
To my mind this is a false and absurd ideal—mischievously
false. Men have gone on thinking it, and occasionally saying
it, until they fail to see the falsity and absurdity; but if
we think for a moment we must admit that the Bible tells us
that every missionary’s _work_, every Christian’s _work_, must
be the test of the man, and not his sufferings, and gives no
countenance whatever to this error. Our sufferings are matters
for which we are not personally answerable in any way, except
as we may cause them ourselves; otherwise they are beyond our
control, and can be therefore no test of the man. Judson would
have been one of the very greatest of missionaries, all the
same, if he had never seen the inside of a Burmese prison.
His lifetime of earnest evangelistic labours, his Burmese
Bible, his two dictionaries, his Burmese grammar, his other
precious literary remains, and the many souls saved through
his instrumentality, and long since gone to glory—these are
the enduring monuments that entitle him to our reverence, and
constitute that bright example which some of us are humbly
trying to follow. His sufferings were indeed severe, but to
dwell upon them, and laud them as being of far more importance
than his work, not only does an injustice to the memory of the
man himself, but it feeds a false ideal, and keeps from view
the real purpose for which we go to the heathen.
The sooner we give up this nonsense _entirely_, and take our
stand upon truth and common sense, the sooner shall we find
the sound, and only sure basis for that increase of missionary
enthusiasm, which is so much needed at the present time. So
long as our enthusiasm is based upon any such shadowy and
precarious foundation as the sufferings of missionaries,
whether supposed or real, so long will the results disappoint
us.
But there is a further objection against this false ideal, on the ground
that abroad, in the mission field, it gives rise to a powerful and subtle
temptation in some minds, and leads to waste of precious power. In most
mission fields the hardness of the hearts of many of the heathen, and the
deep sense of isolation from the people which the missionary feels, _and
which is inevitable_ from the difference of race, language and habits,
are so distressing, that there are few conscientious souls that have not
felt, at some time or other, a strong tendency towards an ascetic mode
of life: “O! let me do this, let me do that, let me do anything, if I
can only come nearer the people.” There is quite enough tendency to this
abroad, without its being further stimulated by a demand at home.
“But what do you mean by asceticism? Where do you draw the line?”
By asceticism I mean the deliberate—sometimes even ostentatious—cutting
down of provision as to food, clothing, dwelling, and general comfort,
_to a point obviously below the standard of health and efficiency_; this
standard being naturally fixed at an approximation to that of the mode
of life to which the missionary has previously been accustomed. My own
experience of missionary life, extending over nineteen years, is that I
have always had to work much harder than if I had been in England, and,
whilst the mode of living must needs be very plain and temperate to be
healthy, the food must be nourishing, and the surroundings in a fair
degree of comfort, or it will soon lead to a collapse.
I do not condemn _economy_; God forbid! No one believes in that more
than I do. I entertain strong views as to the importance of a _humble,
simple, unostentatious manner of life_, and have always practised it.
Nor do I wish to state that the missionary has no need of _self-denial_.
A man cannot be even a disciple without self-denial. Without it, as a
missionary he would be useless; and I may testify, in all simplicity,
that I have known what it was to practise it, and have reaped the sweet
and precious fruits of it. But if that hymn of Keble’s is true anywhere
it is true in the missionary’s life—
“The trivial round, the common task,
Will furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves; a road
To bring us, daily, nearer God.”
“All we ought to ask”; missionary life with its labours, cares and
anxieties, often in an exhausting climate; its frequent and sore
disappointments, its loneliness, the separation from friends and
children, and the special call sometimes to new and untried spheres of
duty; its sense of heavy responsibility in having to stand practically
alone, at the head of a band of native helpers, and to be expected to
supply enthusiasm for everybody about him—these, the necessary and
unavoidable trials, are the legitimate means of denying himself; and
they afford infinite scope for useful, holy service, and they are quite
enough, without going further afield, like Don Quixote, in search of more.
I trust my readers will bear with me whilst I give the details of some
cases I have known, where honoured brethren and sisters have felt moved
to attempt the ascetic method, in order that we may observe how it works.
I knew a pious devoted missionary of another Society. He was a man of
decidedly ascetic life. One of the ordinary diseases of the country, not
generally fatal, assailed him. His constitution, in the opinion of those
best able to judge, was so weakened by his ascetic life that he could not
rally, but died in the prime of life. Humanly speaking, he died before
his time, and one fails to see that his death constitutes any adequate
object lesson, to compensate for the loss of his active usefulness. A
missionary’s continued and useful life ought to be a much greater benefit
to a country than the deposit of his remains in the soil, and the
example of a living worker is surely more influential than the memory of
one departed.
I knew a missionary and his wife, earnest, devoted, exceedingly kind
to the people, and successful. From the first of their settling in the
country, their asceticism was so marked that their friends, who saw it,
pleaded with them to eat more food and better food, but in vain. Being
new to the country, they did not know the risks they ran. After barely
two years of earnest work, ill health compelled their retirement from the
field, with scarcely any prospect of ever returning. And yet there was no
kind of necessity for them to live thus. They appeared to think there was
some virtue in self-denial of this type, merely for its own sake.
Another case of the same kind was that of an unmarried missionary lady,
with a strong natural tendency to asceticism. She was an able and
diligent missionary, and well acquainted with the language. After some
years of missionary life, the tendency grew upon her to such an extent,
that she withdrew more and more from association with her own people,
lived with none but natives, on native food, and broke off one comfort
after another, until even bread was too much of a luxury! After a year or
eighteen months of this ascetic life, her health broke down so completely
that she had to return home to America or die.
One of our brethren in India has told us his story of a similar attempt.
It was a sense of duty that urged him to come down to native diet, native
dress, and general mode of life; and very loyally to this sense of duty
did he persevere for many months. But, to his infinite sorrow, he found
that instead of bringing him any nearer to the people, it seemed only
to increase the distance; for it aroused their suspicions as to his
motives for doing so. He found at length that he could have reached them
better if he had moved amongst them in the ordinary way. But meanwhile
the penalty of all this had come; his health so completely broke down,
clearly in consequence of this method of living, that he had to leave
India, and now for several years he has been laid aside completely in
England, unable to do any regular work. He is the victim of an honest,
and very persistent, but mistaken attempt to live an ascetic missionary
life.
As regards the wearing of the native dress, it has often been assumed
that to do so must needs place a missionary more in touch with the
natives. But in India it is not found that such is really the case.
With the exception of the Salvation Army, this is the only case in
India where I ever heard of its being attempted, and it had quite the
contrary effect. I have heard that a venerable missionary _once_ tried
it in Burma, but the peals of laughter that greeted his appearance in
the streets instantly convinced him that he could gain nothing by that
method. There are probably cases where it is advisable, and even almost
necessary, to assume the dress of the country. Each case should be judged
upon its own merits, and it greatly depends what kind of a dress it is.
In India and Burma they like to see the man be himself, and they respect
you for keeping to the customs you have been brought up with.
The following is a faithful account of an heroic, but
ill-judged and disastrous, missionary enterprise in Burma, in
substance as I had it from the lips of one of the survivors,
who paid me a visit in Mandalay, a few of the particulars being
supplied by another missionary well acquainted with the facts.
I wish that all my readers could have heard the touchingly
simple recital, and witnessed the gentle and refined Christian
bearing of this excellent brother. It is the narrative of a
small mission, sent out by evangelical Christians in Denmark
to the Red Karens, an independent tribe of demon worshippers,
dwelling in Karennee, on the eastern frontier of Burma. My
informant is a Dane. It will be observed that the bane of the
whole enterprise was the ascetic idea, imbibed at home, and in
this case carried out to the bitter end. The case serves to
show also what a formidable difficulty to foreign evangelism we
have in the mere matter of the climate.
Near the close of 1884, two young men, Danish missionaries,
Hans Polvsen and Hans Jansen, arrived in Burma, with the
purpose of establishing this mission. On their arrival they
looked the very picture of health. They had both been inured
to hard work from their youth, and they were devout men, and
entirely given up to work for the Master. Though receiving
aid at first from home, they hoped soon to make the mission
self-supporting. They therefore undertook to do all the manual
labour themselves. Where others rode they would walk. Where
others employed natives they would do their own work. They
would cook their own food, and live in the simplest manner,
even like the natives of the land. Had the sphere of their
mission been the wilds of America, or any country at all
similar in climate to their native Denmark, it would have been
the right policy, and they might have succeeded. But they soon
had painful proof that there are laws in Nature, from which
even missionaries are not exempt; and one of these laws is that
we cannot do with impunity in the tropics what we may do in the
temperate zone.
Some time after their arrival, an opportunity occurred for
going into Karennee, and they prepared to start for their
destination. By way of preparation they gave away all their
extra goods, medicines, clothing, etc., fancying that Matthew
x. encouraged such a course. We cannot but place in contrast
this conduct with that of a man like Livingstone. His was a
self-denying work, if ever there was one; he believed in doing
the work God called him to do, no matter what difficulties
stood in the way. But he was no believer in asceticism—_i.e._,
needless suffering for suffering’s own sake. He relates in
his “Last Journals” how, when he found his medicine chest was
hopelessly lost, through the carelessness of a native carrier,
he felt as if his death warrant were sealed. But these people
thought it right to give away their medicines and goods on
leaving the confines of civilisation. Before leaving Toungoo
they were faithfully warned by experienced missionaries of
the American Baptist Mission, that such a course as they were
entering upon, at the beginning of the rains, was exceedingly
hazardous; but their notions of trust in Providence prevented
them from paying any heed to this counsel.
They reached Karennee, after a rough journey over the mountains
and through the jungles, and proceeded at once to put up
for themselves a house, and establish the mission according
to their ideas. It is difficult for any one not knowing
the country to conceive how hard their lot would be. Their
sufferings were extreme. Hard work and exposure, together
with poor food, and only the shelter of a bamboo house, that
afforded no proper protection from the pitiless rains, and
damp, cold blasts, soon broke down their health. Fever, the
great bane of tropical malarious regions, soon found them out.
Hans Polvsen died before the rains were over, and Jansen was
brought into Toungoo by the American Baptist missionaries,
more dead than alive, and kindly nursed and brought round.
A new party from Denmark now reached Toungoo, consisting of
Knudsen, his wife, and Miss Jansen, the sister of Hans, and
the four set out for Karennee. Here the former experiences
were renewed; for the party had not yet learnt wisdom, even by
such terrible sufferings. Soon they were all very ill. Miss
Jansen died: after that a babe, born to the Knudsens after
reaching Karennee, was also taken. The stricken father had to
get up from his sick-bed to make the coffins. They could get
no meat, no bread, no milk, none of the ordinary comforts of
civilised life, nothing but an inferior kind of rice, which
they could not eat when sick, and which no European could
thrive and work upon, even in health. Jansen was warned by an
English doctor passing through the place with troops, that he
must get away from Burma, or he would soon die. He went to
Toungoo again, recovered a little, and, against the earnest
advice of the doctor there, who warned him that he went at the
peril of his life, he determined to start on a third journey
for their chosen mission field. But he never again entered
Karennee. On reaching the foot of the great mountain range,
he seated himself beneath the shade of a beautiful arching
clump of bamboos, and there breathed out his devoted life.
It is characteristic of the popular, but false ideal of the
missionary life entertained by many people at home, that, as my
informant put it,—for by that time his eyes were opened to see
the matter in its true light,—“They were inclined to make more
of the ‘heroism’ of that unwise act of returning, and _dying
on the way_, than they would if he had fulfilled a long career
of useful service.”
The Knudsens became so completely broken down in health that
they too were compelled to leave Karennee. Thus this little
mission, begun with the highest of motives and carried on with
quenchless, self-sacrificing, prayerful zeal, was entirely
and hopelessly wrecked, through its adherence to ascetic
principles, and had to be finally abandoned, after five years
of heroic, but utterly wasted, labour and suffering, and
without any appreciable impression being produced upon the
natives of that region.
I shall naturally be asked, “What then about those larger missionary
organisations, in different parts of the world, that put asceticism (not
economy) avowedly in the forefront, as one of their leading principles?”
Well, I will only say of them, in brief, that where it is asceticism as
defined above, and not mere economy, facts and experiences have proved
that, in the tropics, it has resulted in a far heavier death-rate, in far
more total or partial failures of health, and, as human nature has its
limits of endurance, in a considerable addition to the numbers in the
column headed “retired from the work.” A proper deduction made from the
working strength of such missions, on account of these non-effectives,
would show, perhaps, that the cheapness supposed to be attained, is more
apparent than real.
On one occasion it was pointed out to the great Napoleon that he was
losing a great many men in a battle; he is credited with the cynical
reply, “You cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs.” In like manner
one at least of these organisations has said boldly, “You cannot have a
war without losing soldiers.”
True; but if the greater part of this loss is clearly needless and
preventible, and if it is the result of want of proper provision being
made, and through the neglect of proper precautions of the most ordinary
kind—then even the sacredness of the purpose does not justify the
recklessness of the methods.
“Alas, that bread should be so dear!
And flesh and blood so cheap!”
There remains only one more point which I need to mention, and that
is the utter futility of the ascetic method, if it is used with any
intention of impressing the Oriental mind. The utmost degree of
asceticism which any European could ever think it right to adopt, in the
discharge of his duties as a missionary, would, to an Oriental, fall far
short of his ideal of self-denial, and would not be worth the name. A
writer, with wide experience of India, has put this so well, that I may
as well quote his words.
“The Hindus understand real asceticism perfectly well, and revere it as
a subjugation of the flesh; and if the missionary and his wife carried
out the ascetic life as Hindus understand it, lived in a hut, half or
wholly naked, sought no food but what was given them, and suffered daily
some visible physical pain, they might stir up the reverence which Hindus
pay to those who are palpably superior to human needs. But in their
eyes there is no asceticism in the life of the mean white, the Eurasian
writer, or the Portuguese clerk, but only a squalor unbecoming a teacher,
and one who professes, and must profess, scholarly cultivation.”
I have ventured, not without due reflection, to point out in this chapter
what seems to be a very false ideal of missions and missionaries.
The setting up of the missionary as a spectacle, an object lesson in
self-denial, may be a time-honoured institution, but it ought certainly
to give way now to some more rational method of recommending this
important enterprise. I do not mean to say that this mistake has been
universal, or even general. Many people of knowledge and common sense
have risen above it. But the evidences of this idea to be found still in
prominent places at home, and the instances of it abroad, which are here
cited, prove that there has been in popular thought too much leaning in
that direction, and show that there is need to point out the fallacy, and
the evil of it.
When the simple recital of missionary facts includes the actual
experience of unusual trials and perils—as, alas! must still be the case
sometimes—it will always command sympathy and attention; but to represent
these things as at all comparable in importance to mission _work_, or
to suppose that they essentially belong to it, is neither true nor
judicious. And I have shown that, when this tendency is yielded to in
the mission field, it leads to an asceticism which produces no increase
of usefulness, but a speedy termination of the missionary’s labours.
* * * * *
NOTE.—Since writing the above chapter, an article has appeared in the
_Indian Medical Record_ on “Missionaries and Mortality,” which is so
much to the point, and from such an unexceptionable, independent, and
competent source, that my readers ought to have the benefit of an extract
from it:—
“We would only be just to claim for the missionary every safeguard that
we apply to the lives of Europeans in other callings in India. Good,
wholesome food, suitable clothing, a proper dwelling-house, and ordinary
English home comforts are certainly the least that might be assured to
missionaries working in India. Deprived of these vital necessaries, it
is no wonder that men unused to the enervating influence of the tropics,
burdened with cares and anxieties in the arduous work of an Indian
mission field, should rapidly succumb to conditions so trying and hostile
to their constitutions.
“We have endeavoured to obtain all the information we could upon this
important subject, and we are astounded, both from our own personal
experience, and from reports which reach us from numerous quarters,
at the fearful havoc that goes on yearly in the ranks of the various
missionary bodies who labour in these foreign mission fields. We have
seen scores and scores of men come to the country seemingly full of
vigour and spirits, who within two or three years either die at their
posts, or retire disabled temporarily, and often permanently, with
enfeebled health or utterly ruined constitutions.
“From one of the statements sent us we learn that the mortality has been
as high as twenty-two per cent. in a society that only finds a small
portion of the monthly maintenance allowance for its missionaries. In
another society that works on similar lines the death-rate is eighteen
per cent. per annum. In another, in which the members work without any
allowance, and are compelled to find their food, shelter, and clothing
among the very poorest of the Indian people whom they seek to convert,
the mortality has been as high as thirty-two per cent. per annum; while
its invalid list yields abundant evidence that its methods, while they
may be praiseworthy in their ascetic simplicity, are too sacrificial to
European life to justify their toleration and continuance.
“Missionary zeal and missionary enterprise have done more for India than
any State effort could ever hope to accomplish, and the best work has
been done by those societies which, having a due regard for the health
and safety of their workers, have provided for the proper conservation
and protection of their lives; and lives thus prolonged and preserved
have brought with them accumulated experience, which has yielded the
advantage not only of laying the foundations of lasting and useful work,
but of seeing it cared for, nourished and brought to fruitful perfection
by the hands that inaugurated it. Work to be productive of good in the
mission fields of India must be lifelong. The short service system is
both imbecile and expensive. The languages and habits of the varied
peoples of this vast empire cannot be familiarised sufficiently for
effective work in a few years. But to enjoy good health and to protect
the lives of missionary workers, it is the bounden duty of the great
religious societies of England and America to make a full and ample
provision for the support and comfort of their representatives in India.”