_OUR EARLY EXPERIENCES IN THE BURMA MISSION._
I would like to give the reader some intelligent idea of what it means to
establish a new mission in a new country, with an elaborate religion like
Buddhism in possession of the field, and difficult to dislodge.
We make our way up the Irrawaddy by one of the splendid steamers of the
Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, and in due time we land at Mandalay, and
climb the steep bank of the river, and there we are with our few boxes,
strangers in a strange land, knowing nobody belonging to the place, not
a word of the Burmese language, with no mission house to turn into,
no native Christians, and, worst of all, _no native helpers_. After
thirteen years of very happy work in Ceylon, where we have a flourishing
mission and a large staff of native helpers, it required a stout heart
to face the difficulties of pioneer work, and no little faith, hope and
perseverance. Especially did we miss the aid of our native brethren.
The chief value of the European missionary, and of the European
generally, in the East, is in his capacity as a leader of men. Upon
him devolves the initiation, and the vigorous working out, of plans of
aggression, and he has to find the enthusiasm for everybody about him.
But if the European is brain, and heart, and hand to the mission, his
native brethren are equally indispensable as the eyes, ears, and feet. My
native brother has a knowledge of his country, and of his people, and of
all that is going on, extensive, accurate, and intimate beyond anything
I can ever attain unto, and he is in touch with his own people as no
foreigner can ever be—no, not if he spends half a century among them.
This invaluable help I greatly missed.
For some days I lodged with the Rev. J. H. Bateson in a Buddhist
monastery, which had been assigned to him by the military authorities.
He had arrived from England three weeks previously, in the capacity
of Wesleyan Chaplain to the Upper Burma Field Force. It was one of
a considerable number of buildings that had been “annexed” for the
temporary accommodation of the troops, and which were afterwards handed
over again to the Buddhist monks. It was a fine, substantial teak
building, raised six or seven feet from the ground, with a broad verandah
back and front, and consisted of three rooms. The roof was of the usual
fantastic Burmese style, in triple form, and at one end it terminated
in a rather tall spire; and the whole of the building, as usual with
monasteries, was richly decorated with elaborate carvings in wood. Amidst
some disadvantages as a residence it had one very obvious advantage, that
we paid no rent for it.
The first duty lying before me was obviously to commence the study of
the language, and along with that, to look about and find the best sites
for establishing our mission centres, and for the first few months I
gave my attention closely to those matters. Whilst I was making these
preparations for laying the foundations of our future mission work
amongst the natives of the country, there was abundance of work also
ready to hand amongst the soldiers and other English-speaking people,
congregated in a large military and civil station like Mandalay. Mr.
Bateson had to undertake long journeys to other military stations at
intervals, in the course of his duties as chaplain to the troops, and
it fell to my lot to attend to the English congregation in his absence.
I have heard and read of some missionaries who have held that it was no
part of their duty, as missionaries to the heathen, to preach in English
at all. But I never could see that a white skin, and the fact that a man
speaks English, should be deemed to disqualify him from receiving Gospel
ministrations; and I can see no reason why the time and attention given
to our own countrymen need be allowed to interfere materially with the
missionary’s work for the natives. It is in circumstances such as those
of Upper Burma at that time, and amidst the rough experiences of pioneer
life in a new country, that our countrymen most need the ministrations
of the Gospel. In a heathen land and amidst the lax morals which
heathenism engenders, absent from home and friends, and, as it was then
with many, _from wife and family_, and all the ordinary restraints and
helps of civilised life; in some cases away for months together in lonely
stations, where there were no Christian services of any kind, they were
sorely tempted to go astray, and do things they never would have done at
home. I therefore gladly did what I could.
[Illustration: OUR FIRST HOME IN MANDALAY.]
We had “parade services” for the soldiers, and other public services in
English, temperance meetings, Bible classes, and devotional meetings,
in quaint Burmese sacred buildings, with the images of Buddha about,
wherever we could find a place quiet and convenient, for as yet we had
no place of our own set apart for Christian services. Our first public
Sunday services for the soldiers were held in the throne room of the
royal palace, just at the foot of the throne itself. Though this did not
mean much from a missionary point of view, yet it certainly furnished a
strange and romantic association of ideas, to be conducting Christian
worship in such a place as that, in the midst of a heathen palace,
where there had been such a despotic government, and at times so much
cruelty and bloodshed. Ever since that time we have had a building set
apart within the palace precincts for our military services. Many of the
meetings, held amidst such strange and grotesque surroundings, were owned
of God to the spiritual benefit of those who attended; and some were
accompanied by a solemn melting power of the Spirit, confessions of sin,
and aspirations after a better life, such as I have seldom witnessed.
Doubtless these services were useful in reminding many of almost
forgotten truths, and in reviving blessed memories of home and youth,
which, amidst the rough life of campaigning in Burma, they were too apt
to forget.
It was our happiness, during those first years, never to be without some
godly association amongst the officers of the garrison, and also amongst
the civilians; and though there were many removals and changes, we always
found some like-minded, who took pleasure in assisting in the Gospel and
temperance work. They belonged to various sections and denominations of
the Church of Christ, but that made no difference; we were able cordially
to work together.
My colleague, Mr. Bateson, established a temporary Soldiers’ Home,
with a bar for the sale of food and refreshments, and convenience for
reading, writing and games, in a Burmese building granted by the military
authorities for the purpose in the palace; and this proved a very
welcome resort for large numbers of the soldiers, who wished to spend
their evenings in a sober and rational manner. It did excellent service
for a year or two, and was eventually closed for the removal of the
building; a much larger and far more complete Soldiers’ Institute having
by that time been built and furnished by the military authorities.
Attractive as this work was in one’s own language, and amongst one’s own
people, I felt from the first that the mission to the Burmans, though
an incomparably more difficult, less inviting, and less immediately
successful work, was my own most pressing duty, and the work for which I
had specially come. On my arrival in Rangoon I had engaged the services
of a young Burman, and brought him up to Mandalay that he might teach me
Burmese, and with him I commenced the study of the language at once. But
if any one imagines that a native munshee teaches as an English teacher
teaches, he is greatly mistaken. For want of the ability to impart the
knowledge he has, the teaching does not flow from him as from a fountain;
it has to be laboriously pumped out of him, and it requires some
ingenuity to find how to work that pump, and if you fail to pump, or do
not pump judiciously, you get nothing. In learning any Oriental language
you have, in fact, to teach yourself, using the so-called teacher in
much the same way as you would use the dictionary, or any other passive
repository of the necessary knowledge.
In studying Burmese, I found it necessary not only to spend as many hours
as I could daily with my munshee and my books, but to go out amongst the
people for the sake of learning the spoken language. Every language has
some difference between its literary and its colloquial style; and it is
quite possible for the foreigner to know a good deal that he reads in
the books, and yet to be quite nonplussed with the ordinary talk of the
people. Unless the foreigner pays attention to the colloquial, though he
may in time find himself able to talk after a bookish fashion, he will be
unable to make himself properly understood, and unable also to know what
the people say in reply. For this reason I made a practice of going out
of an evening, often with one of my children’s picture books in my hand,
and sitting down amongst the Burmans at their doors, using the pictures
as a means of scraping up a conversation—being myself short of words—with
notebook in hand, to take down every new word or idiom I heard. As the
Burmans appreciate pictures very much, I found this plan always made them
talkative, and thus served my purpose as well as amusing them.
This puts me in mind of an incident which occurred about that time, at
a certain Buddhist monastery, where I was in the habit of spending an
hour or two of an evening, for the purpose of talking Burmese. The long
guerilla war with the forces of disorder and crime was then raging, and
the country generally was in a very disturbed state. Plot after plot was
set on foot for creating an organised disturbance, with a view to harass
the British power, and with some faint hope that they might, by a lucky
chance, get the mastery. Judge of my surprise, when one morning I learnt
that fifty of the ringleaders of a plot of that kind had been discovered
and arrested at midnight, in that very monastery where I was in the habit
of visiting. Next time the local paper appeared we were told that we had
narrowly escaped such a scene of confusion and bloodshed as was common in
the time of the Indian mutiny.
The choice of a site for the mission premises was the first matter to
settle. It involved much going to and fro in that great city, and much
weighing of advantage and disadvantage, for it was a most important
question. At length a block of Government land 5½ acres in extent was
fixed upon. I attended the sale. Several pieces of land were put up for
sale before ours, and the bidding was fairly brisk. When ours was put
up I made a bid; not another voice was heard; they all abstained from
bidding because the land was for mission purposes, though I had said
not a word on the matter to anybody, and it was knocked down to us at
the merely nominal price of one hundred rupees an acre (say £7 10_s._).
A substantial mission house of teak was at once commenced, and at the
earliest possible date we moved into it. Later on we erected on this land
a Boys’ Training Institution for teachers, and a Girls’ Boarding School
and Training Institution, and a humble beginning has thus been made in
the work of training native helpers, the end of which who can predict?
For the first year we lived there we had no proper roads, and when the
rainy season came on, we were separated from the rest of the world by a
sea of soft, tenacious, black mud, ankle deep; and for many days I could
not get either to or from the house without taking off my shoes and
socks, and wading barefoot through it. But in course of time these early
pioneer experiences became things of the past. Other houses were built
around us, also the Government Courts and offices; good streets were made
and lighted with lamps at night, and drains were dug at the sides of the
roads to run off the surplus water, and things gradually got into shape.
In September 1887 two more workers arrived—two Singhalese young men,
trained by our mission in South Ceylon. We do not of course contemplate
permanently looking to Ceylon to supply us with men, but at the outset
of the mission it seemed likely that these brethren, being from an older
Christian community, and far better educated and trained than any Burmans
could possibly be for years to come, would be able to render us material
help in the pioneer work, and would bring to bear upon it a degree of
Christian knowledge, and a maturity of Christian character and habits,
far in advance of anything in Burma. These two brethren are now working
in the mission with a fair measure of success, and have justified the
expectation we formed of them. Their success in acquiring the language,
and their consistent Christian life, as they have gone in and out amongst
the people, have been a stay and a help to the work.
It was our desire from the first to begin an Anglo-vernacular school
in Mandalay, as the first of a series of educational efforts. It is
self-evident to the experienced eye that so long as the youth of Burma
remain in the hands of the monks, in connection with the monastery
schools, to learn idleness, and to have all the springs of life and
thought saturated with Buddhism from their youth, the downfall of that
religion will be indefinitely postponed. We must enter into friendly
competition with the monastery schools, must take hold of the awakening
desire for Western learning, and we must give an education so undeniably
better than the monks can give that we shall thus win our way to success.
I have used, about equally, each and every kind of missionary method
within my reach, and I hold no brief for the educational method; but
thirteen years of mission work amongst the Hindus in Ceylon, where we
have an elaborate system of religion to deal with, has shown me that,
in the long run, Christian education plays quite as important a part
in the conversion of the people as any other agency. The educational
and evangelistic work go hand in hand, and we cannot afford to dispense
with either. Educational work gives a backbone of intelligence and
solidity to the mission, and to the converts; it introduces us to the
most intelligent and influential classes of the people, and gives us
a powerful influence we could acquire in no other way, and it leads
directly to hopeful conversions. So long as we are merely the preachers
of another religion amongst them, our influence is circumscribed within
that condition. But if, in addition to that, we move amongst the people
as the trusted guides and teachers of their youth, it vastly increases
our power for good. In the East the teacher of the young is always
treated with the utmost respect. And this position of influence, which so
legitimately belongs to the preachers of the Gospel, we cannot afford to
despise or forego.
After advertising for several months for teachers, we managed at last to
engage a young Christian Karen, from Lower Burma, as the teacher, and
we began a school in a rented house, near the centre of the town. This
school has developed into a good Anglo-vernacular School. In due course,
and after much trouble and delay, from having to buy up some twenty or
thirty small holdings, with bamboo houses on them, we managed to secure
and clear a good site, and there we erected a neat, substantial brick
school-chapel, to which our work was transferred from the rented house,
and there we have regularly held services in English, in Burmese, and in
Tamil.
We early commenced street preaching in Mandalay, and have continued to
hold several open-air meetings every week. As a means of publishing the
Gospel to the people at large, we have found nothing better. The streets
of Mandalay are broad and spacious, so that even a large crowd does not
impede the traffic. The people are generally very willing to listen,
tolerant, respectful, and not inclined to cavil. We usually commence by
singing a hymn. A number of children are on the scene at once, some of
them quite naked up to seven or eight years of age. By the time we have
finished the hymn, a crowd of men, women and children has collected, and
most of them, having once come, stay till the close. The people, as a
rule, look well nourished and healthy, but in almost every Oriental crowd
there are evidences of the prevalence of skin disease, in one form or
another. Amongst the Tamil people itch is the special form, and in Burma
there is quite an excess of ringworm. In Burma many of the people are
observed to be pitted with smallpox, for until lately, vaccination was
not practised in Upper Burma; and ophthalmia is not uncommon, especially
amongst children. The individuals composing the crowd change somewhat.
Some are only passers-by, and have to go about their errands; others
again have to retire, to attend to household duties. Occasionally a man
leaves because he feels a prejudice against hearing the doctrine, or, as
one old man put it, because if he listened he would only get “mixed” in
his mind. But for the most part they stay and listen attentively until
the end. In trying to follow up the address, by conversation with the
people at their doors after preaching, I have generally found the Burmans
reticent, but still polite.
They are certainly good-natured hearers, and give the preacher a
fair chance. To see them sitting on their heels, or on the ground,
placidly smoking their cheroots, and looking intently, nodding the head
occasionally, and interjecting, “Hoakba, Hoakba” (true, true), one might
go away with the idea that they had intelligently taken in the whole
discourse, but it does not do to be too sanguine about that. It has to
be taken into account that though they may understand the words used,
they are sure at first to understand them in a Buddhist sense; and there
is such a great deal that is absolutely new to them in Christianity,
so many strange names and unfamiliar ideas, that the subject matter of
the discourse is by no means easy for them to understand. We are much
more liable to underrate than to overrate the difficulty all heathen
people have in understanding Christian preaching, at the first. In
addressing them on the subject of religion we must use religious terms.
But unfortunately those terms have already a Buddhist meaning clinging to
them, which is widely different from the Christian sense; and the higher
the truths to which we are seeking to give expression, the greater is the
difficulty of putting the meaning into the words at our disposal. How are
you to get a Buddhist to realise, for example, any adequate notion of the
Divine Being, when he has no such conception in his own religion?
True, there is the word “Paya,” and that is the word we have to use. But
what meaning does that word convey to a Buddhist? It means primarily
Buddha himself, and the philologists tell us that it is that name in
another dress. But Buddha never claimed to be God. He was a sage,
philosopher, religious reformer, ascetic, who lived and died, and,
according to Buddhist teaching, passed into Nirvana, five centuries
before Christ. “Paya” may mean also the image of Buddha; or it may
be applied to the shrine in which the image is placed; or it may be
applied—alas! for the degradation of human language—to you, or to me, or
to any person, Burman or European, whom, for the time being, it is worth
while to treat with rather a special degree of respect. Which of these
meanings attaching to this Burmese word “Paya” brings us even a single
step towards the true conception of the Christian revelation of God? And
yet, inadequate as it is, it is all the name there is for us to use.
Even the familiar term “man,” about which it might seem there could
hardly be two opinions, is subject to the same difficulty, when it comes
to be used in a theological and religious sense. What with the doctrines
of transmigration, and _karma_, which, as we have already seen, the
Burmans all firmly believe, the real nature, and circumstances, and final
destiny of human beings, as we have to teach these truths, are all new
and strange to their minds.
“Sin” is a thing to be recognised and dealt with in preaching; but
here again precisely the same difficulty meets you as you stand before
a congregation of Burman Buddhists. The Burman, like other Orientals,
will not, probably, deny the _fact_ of sin, but if you come to know
his notion of what sin is, you will find that it is very different from
yours, and that the term does not at all cover the same ground when used
in his language and to him, as it does in yours to you. Nor can you,
all at once, read into his term for sin the ideas you wish to teach,
by merely using it in preaching; that reading in of new meanings is a
lengthy process.
[Illustration: A DEPOSITORY FOR IMAGES OF BUDDHA.]
Of sacrifice for sin, or the necessity for it, or its efficacy, the
Buddhist religion knows nothing; there is no Mediator, no atonement, no
pardon, no renewal of our nature; so that all allusions to these great
cardinal truths of the Christian religion will carry at first no meaning
whatsoever, and the utmost they can do at first is to say with the
Athenians, “Thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would
know therefore what these things mean.”
The simplicity of the Gospel is often made a theme of in Christian
circles, and it is simple _when one has been trained up from infancy
in its principles, and facts, and lessons_, but in the case of a
heathen people, brought up in an elaborate system of religion alien to
Christianity, the simplicity cannot be at all apparent.
And, should the preacher, unmindful of the uninstructed condition of his
heathen audience, allow himself to slip into the well known metaphors,
and allusions, and phraseology—that “language of Canaan,” in which
Christians often express themselves on religious subjects—it will become
in the vernacular nothing more than a jargon.
An incident will illustrate this. One Sunday afternoon I went, in company
with a missionary brother, who had just arrived in Burma, to hold an
out-door service. We sang a hymn to begin with, which I may say was not
with any idea that they would understand it, but merely to attract the
people to come and hear the preaching. When the singing was finished, he
very naturally suggested that it would be well to explain the hymn. It so
happened that we had, inadvertently, hit upon a Burmese translation of
that well-known hymn—
“There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.”
Let me ask the reader to divest his mind for a moment of every sacred
association surrounding that hymn, and calmly consider the words just as
they stand, and try to imagine what sense, if any, they would convey to
the mind of a pious Buddhist, whose ideas of sin are totally different
from ours, who has no conception of the nature or need of a sacrifice
or atonement, and to whom the shedding of blood, and the taking of all
life, even the killing of an insect, is utterly abhorrent, as a deadly
sin. Since that incident I have not been inclined to select that hymn for
out-door services.
We avoid controversy in preaching to the Buddhists. It seems to be quite
unnecessary, and likely to do far more harm than good. The best thing
we can do is to tell, as simply and plainly as we can, such portion of
the Scripture narrative, particularly the life and teachings of Christ,
as we find they can easily grasp, and to deal with the more prominent
doctrines of the Christian religion, as they apply to the hearts and
lives of the people before us. It is only when a Buddhist has grasped at
least the outlines of Christian truth, and not before, that he will be in
any position to assent to the proposition that Buddhism is false. Until
he does see that, the assertion in public that it is false, together with
all that is said in disparagement of it, must appear to him premature, if
not gratuitously abusive. In any case it is the unfolding of the truth
that convinces, as it is the belief of the truth (not disbelief in error)
that saves. No Oriental can fail to see for himself that the teaching of
Christ is antagonistic to that of his own religion, on many essential
points, and the clear exposition of our own teaching, therefore, is far
more essential than emphasizing the differences. One evening, at a street
service, a foolish Burman endeavoured to make it out that their religion
and ours taught the very same. The incredulous smiles on the faces of
the audience at once showed us that it was unnecessary for us to say
more than that _if_ their religion taught the same as ours, so much the
better. The wish was father to the thought in that case, and the fact
that he saw a difference made him anxious to prove there was none. In
cases where a person wishes to study the teachings of the two religions,
and compare the two closely, the best plan is to put into his hands a
tract bearing on the subject, and let him take it home and study it,
rather than engage in heated controversy in the streets.
At the same time we do not wish to silence respectful inquiry.
Occasionally a question has been asked at these street services, but we
have never experienced anything approaching to abuse or disturbance.
One evening, not a Burman but a Ponnâ, an astrologer, one of the
fortune-telling fraternity, the descendants of the Brahmins from Manipur,
spoke up and said he had an inquiry to make. It was with reference to the
putting away of sin through Christ, of which we were speaking, and the
inquiry seemed quite respectful, and _bonâ fide_. For his part he could
not see how there could be any putting away of sin. If there was, where
was it? For example, said he, if a man commits murder, he receives the
full penalty of his crime in the body by hanging; and as for the spirit,
that passes, by transmigration, at once into some other body, where it
receives the appropriate consequences of past deeds, according to the
man’s _karma_ (fate), irrespective of any atonement or any intervention
of another. What place then was there for the pardon and removal of
transgression? This question will show that in Burma we have to do with
a people not wanting in acuteness. Our answer was an explanation of the
Christian doctrine of a future life.
At the end of our first year we were able to report that we had made a
beginning in preaching the Gospel in the vernacular. It was a humble
beginning, and consisted only of reading to a small congregation, in
the little rented schoolroom, before we built our own, a short written
address; only a beginning, but a beginning in the right direction. We
were also glad to welcome an addition to our little staff of workers, in
the Rev. A. H. Bestall, a missionary sent out from England.
[Illustration: “THE BURMESE LADIES ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE MYSTERY OF
THE CHIGNON, AND WITH THE MANUFACTURE AND USE OF COSMETICS, FOR THE
IMPROVEMENT OF THE COMPLEXION, TO SAY NOTHING OF SCENTS AND ARTIFICIAL
FLOWERS.”]