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INDIA AWAKENING
BY
SHERWOOD EDDY
Etext prepared by Theresa Hoose (belle2714@yahoo.com)
Electronic manuscript © 2008 Cumorah Foundation. www.cumorah.com.
All rights reserved.
NEW YORK:
Missionary Education Movement
Of the United States and Canada
1912
CONTENTS
Editorial Statement
Preface
I. The People of India
II. Religions
III. The National Awakening
IV. Individual and Mass Movements
V. The Students
VI. Womanhood
VII. The Church and the Missionary
VIII. The Winning of India
Questions and References
APPENDIXES
A. Area, and Population of British Provinces and Native States
B. Distribution of Christians by Race and Denomination
C. Distribution of Population According to Religion and Education, 1901
D. Some of the Principal Occupations upon Which Persons Depend for a Living
E. Abstract Statement of Colleges, Schools, and Scholars in the Several Provinces of British India
F. Colleges, Schools, and Scholars in the Several Provinces of British India under Public Management
G. Girls under Instruction Classified According to Race or Creed
H. Private Institutions
I. Pupils in Institutions of All Glasses by Race or Creed
J. Prayer at the National Congress
K. Bibliography
L. Statistics of Protestant Missions in India
Index
EDITORIAL STATEMENT
It is understood by authors of text-books prepared for the Missionary Education Movement that their manuscripts are to be revised, if necessary, in consultation with the Editorial Committee of the Movement so as to render them most effective for use in study class work. Mr. Eddy, the author of this book, being in India and therefore unable to consult with the committee personally, gave the committee permission to make whatever alterations it thought best. Accordingly, Chapters I and II have been largely rewritten, in order to supply a background of the principles underlying the social and religious conditions of India, and a number of explanatory insertions have been made in the other chapters together with some rearrangement. For some of these insertions the committee is indebted to Bishop W. F. Oldham, of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
As a result of considerable experience, the committee has abandoned the idea of attempting a treatment of all the most important phases of missionary work in India. Multiplication of topics means condensation and consequent loss of vividness and detail. This book does not pretend to be more than a series of studies on special phases of its subject. The illustrations are taken from the author's personal experience, and do not claim to be the most important and representative that could be selected from the whole range of missionary work.
The committee wish to express their appreciation of Mr. Eddy's generous confidence in their judgment, and their regret that he could not have been consulted in the details of revision.
PREFACE
The writing of this volume has been a labor of love, and has taken me in thought a hundred times across the sea to the land that I love and to which I shall return in a few weeks.
Although there has been nothing worth recording in my own work in India, I have had an exceptional opportunity of getting a bird's-eye view of the work of the missionaries all over the Empire during the last fourteen years. For the first five years, as College Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association and of the Student Volunteer Movement of India and Ceylon, my work in English took me throughout the whole of India. Feeling, however, that the heart of the missionary problem lay in the Native Church and in the vernacular, I commenced the study of Tamil, as that language more than any other would bring me into contact with the largest number of Christians. After living in tents with a band of theological students for a year, I took a station out among the masses. At present, as National Evangelistic Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association, I devote the greater part of my time to traveling work among the colleges, and to evangelistic missions throughout the Tamil Church. My home, however, is out among the people, many miles from the nearest white man, and I am responsible, when I am not traveling, for the joint care of a large station containing about 5,000 Christians and half a million Hindus and Mohammedans. I have endeavored to give descriptions of actual mission work, illustrative biographical material, and concrete instances which would illustrate the problems connected with mission work.
In addition to the usual authorities and sources consulted, especial thanks are due to help received from my dear Indian friend and fellow worker, Mr. Azariah, to Mr. Datta's The Desire of India, and to my friend Mr. Farquhar for his numerous and illuminating articles on the life and religion of the people, which have been especially helpful. The generous hospitality and help of Mr. Charles Alexander, of Birmingham, have made possible the production of the manuscript in the short time at my disposal.
This book goes forth as a poor plea for a great people. At the worst, the facts must speak for themselves, and the people of this great land will make their own appeal to heart and conscience. The book is written, not to discuss a subject, but to attain an object; and that object will have failed if it does not lead to definite action on behalf of India.
Sherwood Eddy.
Birmingham, England, July 20, 1910.
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA
Human life is of little value in India. Lives are spent in grinding poverty and bitter toil, and even the power of aspiration seems to be taken from men. Villages are blotted out by famine and pestilence, and yet the people do not pause to Inquire whether such tragedy is preventable. In the plague-stricken areas, when the disease is at its height, some may attempt to escape, but the bulk of the population quietly awaits its doom. The villagers look into the faces of their companions and wonder which of them will be next struck down. There are thousands of children to whom the opportunity of life is never given, hundreds of women who perish prematurely, worn out with their toll, whom early marriage, neglect, and unhygienic surroundings have killed. Not one of us who believe In the eternal value of the individual soul can view with unconcern this wastage of human life. The lives of the dwellers In the innumerable villages of India are precious in the sight of Christ, and in his eyes every soul possesses an infinite capacity and worth.
-- Datta
CHAPTER I
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA
National Unity. -- It is difficult for those who have been born into the atmosphere of a progressive Western nation to appreciate present-day conditions in India. One of our strongest impulses is patriotism, which comes from a sense of national unity and of a great common inheritance. That inheritance has descended to us from Hebrew prophet and Greek philosopher and Roman lawgiver; it has been infused with the breath of Christianity, and toughened with Teutonic vigor; it has been stirred by the Renaissance and Reformation, and enriched by a constant growth in freedom and intelligence. It pervades all our life so subtly that most of us are not conscious of its existence, and think little of its origin; but yet we owe to it a thousand ties that bind us together as a North American people, and link us to our common English ancestry,
Common Traditions. -- In the bulk of North America, both in the United States and in Canada, our dominant traditions are derived from a single source. As a whole, we seem to be of a single race; and where consciousness of race difference arises, there our troubles are most acute. We speak practically a single language, in which is printed and distributed every year hundreds of billions of pages. Free and compulsory education has made this literature intelligible to us all, so that the thoughts of millions are shaped by the same ideas. Intercommunication. -- We have had so long an inheritance of freedom that we take it as a matter of course. Progress in society, government and church is a natural and normal thing, and its lack a reproach. Our systems of transportation and communication have at once liberated us and bound us together. Scarcely have we realized the significance for unity to both countries of the transcontinental railway lines that tend ever to weave together more closely the domestic, social, intellectual, political, and religious interests of the extreme sections of our respective territories. The northward and southward movements of our populations and interchange of our products, both within the domain of each of these two countries and also along lines of mutual sharing of the material, moral, and religious good of each, characterize the present and the future. We can go where we will, and everywhere we go we make new ties. Never before have nations been able to extend over such vast stretches of territory and to preserve such unity of spirit as to-day by the aid of steam and electricity. Finally our applications of the results of modern science to the exploitation of our great natural resources has produced wealth hitherto unknown, which is shared in many ways even by the poorest. All this is so familiar to us that it is hard to imagine a state of affairs which is different.
India's Diversity. -- Let us look at India by contrast. The present population of the United States and Canada combined is less than one third that of India. These countries could add to their own the entire population of the two continents Africa and South America and still fall short of the Indian total of 315,001,099.[1] India, China, and Europe constitute three great congested centers of population upon which the sun looks down in his daily course, and of the three India is by far the most diverse. Even with all the results of recent immigration, we are still homogeneous as compared with Europe, and Europe is more homogeneous than India.
Three Great Races. -- There are generally distinguished three great races as the basis of Indian population, the Dravidian, Aryan, and Mongolian. The characteristic type of the first is found in the south, -- short, dark, and with broad noses. The second type, -- taller, lighter, and with narrow noses, -- is most marked in the northwest, showing signs of increasing mixture as one moves eastward. It is held that this is the type of the Indo-Germanic race, speaking a language related to Persian, Greek, Latin, and German, which invaded India from the northwest, bringing a higher civilization and religion, and which pushed the Dravidians southward. The Mongolian type is strongest in the northeast.
Racial Spheres Outlined. -- The idea is more and more gaining ground that a comparatively pure Indo-Aryan population is to be found only in the Punjab and the adjacent territory to the north and south. The leading element of the population in the whole of the rest is Dravidian, except for an infusion of Indo-Aryan blood. This decreases as one goes from north to south, and affects the higher classes more than the lower. In addition to this there is in the eastern part of the country, in Bengal, a noticeable Mongolian strain which increases the farther east one travels; while along the west coast, especially in the Maratha country and Coorg, there is found an equally strong infusion of Scythian or Mongoloid blood. It should be observed that ihe superiority of the Indo-Aryan racial element Tvas so great that it entirely absorbed the Scythian languages of eastern Bengal, superseded the more northerly of the original Dravidian tongues, and took from those of the central and southern sections a large part of their influence.
Moslem Infusion. -- Since the year 1000 AD, there have been repeated invasions of Moslems. To-day over 62,000,000 of the population are Mohammedans, the largest percentage being found in the northwest and in Bengal. The race characteristics are preserved only in aristocratic families and the masses are not to be distinguished from Hindus.
Language Mixture. -- These great races were originally far more diverse than those that have mingled in North America, and they present one of the most remarkable language mixtures on the face of the earth. In all India 185 languages are listed, 113 of which are spoken by more than one thousand persons each.[2]
Range of Tongues. -- Over 56,000,000 people are recognized as speaking Dravidian languages, of which the principal are, Telugu, spoken by nearly 21,000,000; Tamil, spoken by 16,500,000; Kanarese, spoken by 10,300,000; and Malayalam, spoken by 6,000,000. Some of these are as closely related as the Romance languages,[3] but there are very many lesser languages and dialects. The languages of the north are for the most part descended from the Sanskrit. The government census of 1901 mentions ten of these that are spoken by more than five millions. Hindustani, or Urdu, which is a dialect of western Hindi, a grafting of Arabic and Persian words on a Hindi base, is spoken or understood by Mohammedans all over India, and is the nearest approach to a common dialect. English, being a requisite for all but the lowest positions of government employment, is popular in schools and is spoken generally by an insignificant minority of educated persons. It is interesting to note that the Indian National Congress which meets to discuss the needs of native India finds no other practicable medium of communication than the language of its foreign rulers.
LANGUAGES OF INDIA SPOKEN BY 3,000,000 OR MORE POPULATION Hindi 97,431,127 Bengali 44,624,048 Telugu 20,696,872 Marathi 18,237,899 Panjabi 17,070,961 Tamil 16,525,500 Rajasthani 10,917,712 Kanarese 10,365,047 Gujarati 9,928,501 Oriya 9,687,429 Burmese 7,474,896 Malayalam 6,029,304 Lahnda 3,337,917 Sindhi 3,006,395 169 Others spoken by 17,979,225 Population
Barrier of Diverse Speech. -- It is difficult for the people of Canada and the United States to appreciate the practical effect of this language diversity. Our newspapers, magazines, and books, our schools, our pulpits and other public institutions, our frequent travel and intervisiting, find almost no hindrance from the language standpoint in making common a great fund of ideas. Consider how our problems would be complicated if every small group of States or Provinces had a different vernacular; what a bar would be placed on commerce and intellectual interchange. If, beyond this, scores of the less extended sections could be approached only through an additional tongue, how could we ever raise them out of hopeless provincialism and mental stagnation?
Illiteracy an Obstacle. -- But even if India had a single language, her enormous percentage of illiteracy would check the influences mentioned above that have so greatly unified our peoples. By the census of 1900, ten and seven-tenths per cent of the population of the United States at least ten years of age was illiterate, over two thirds of which was found among the colored people and foreign whites, and the percentage of illiteracy of Canada is about the same.[4] In India over ninety per cent of the male population, and over ninety-nine per cent of the female is illiterate. The immense debt that we owe to the printed page dwindles under conditions such as these to a trifling fraction.
Sway of Custom. -- In the second place, even the best of the races and languages of India have brought the people no such heritage of customs and ideals as descended to the American settlers, and through them to us. In the earlier stages of human society the welfare of a community depended upon the subordination of every individual to the common rule. The groups in which every man did that which was right in his own eyes would be destroyed by those which submitted to a military discipline. This put such a premium on customs that were inviolable that everywhere in primitive society we find observances of customs made a religious duty and departure from the ways of the fathers threatened with the vengeance of the gods. Custom, law, and religion became synonymous.
Conservatism a Passion. -- It is absolutely necessary in dealing with India to keep clearly in mind that the separation which we have made between social customs and religion has never taken place, and that the same feelings of reverence with which the ancient Hebrew obeyed the Law and with which we perform our most sacred religious obligations attach themselves in the mind of the Hindu to-day to custom as a whole. The two great forces that have shaped the development of custom in the West have been the rationality of the Greeks and the righteousness of the Hebrews. The one has cleared our mind and the other has purified our instincts. Although lacking these, custom in India has been strengthened as perhaps nowhere else in the world by an intense religiousness that makes conservatism a passion. The great characteristic of the Indian people is the intensity of religious instinct which has penetrated every part of the daily life, consecrated the worst as well as the best traditions, and blocked every tendency to social change.
Occidental Principles of Liberty. -- We in the West have developed the ideal of individual liberty. We have set the individual free from the tyranny of society by separating custom from law. The individual is permitted to differ from others, to enter into new social combinations and to rise in the social scale. This ideal carries with it the rights of women and children to personal development and education. We have set the individual free from the tyranny of the state by declaring that government is for the sake of the governed and by making provision for changes of officials and laws. Society has made a great advance when it provides for adjustment to changing conditions by means of new laws. This marks the transition from government by custom to government by discussion. We have set the individual free from the tyranny of ecclesiastical authority by a separation of Church and State.
Subjection of the Individual. -- In India none of these separations have taken place. The family and not the individual is the social unit, and this always makes for subjection of women and children. The individual is not free to differ from his neighbors or his ancestors. Every influence conspires to keep him at the social level in which he was born. Though in village communes local matters are settled by a council of leaders according to traditions, the inherited spirit of government is everywhere patriarchal and despotic. Custom is neither to be discussed nor amended. In early days the priestly class obtained control, and has dominated native education and law as well as religion ever since.
Institution of Caste. -- The great social institution which expresses all this immovable control is caste. It may be defined as a collection of families holding a common title or name, claiming descent from a common ancestor, originally professing to follow the same calling, and unified into a single community by a tradition of fixed rules and customs. They are separated from other castes by the prohibitions of intermarriage, eating together, contact, and similar barriers.
Factors Producing Caste. -- The origin of caste is due to several different causes. Among these are the following: (1) The preservation of race purity, based upon a distinction of color, in order to prevent the traditions of the higher race being lost by intermarriage with the lower orders. (2) Various occupation groups gradually hardened into castes. Men of the same trade formed a gild, which in time became a caste. Each son had to follow the trade of his father, and every change of occupation tended to develop a new caste. (3) Clans or new tribes were incorporated within the pale of Hinduism by the acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Brahman priesthood, and thus passed over into Hinduism in a body. This process is taking place to-day, and Hinduism is growing by incursions made upon the aborigines and simple animists. (4) In former days intermarriage between two different castes and the migration of people to different localities always tended to form new castes. (5) The sanctity of sacrifice, which could be performed only by a priestly class whose ritual was handed down from father to son, exalted the Brahmans and made them indispensable, and through them strengthened the whole social system of caste. Caste to-day is supported also by the pride of social rank and of birth, natural to all men, and is hedged about by a thousand thorny rules.
Number of Castes. -- In the earlier Vedas there is no trace of caste. In the simple life of the days that followed four castes emerged. The Brahmans or priests, the Kshatriyas or warriors, the Vaisyas or traders, and the Sudras, who were laborers or serfs. In most parts, the second and third of these have ceased to exist as castes. The Sudras have ramified, subdivided, and multiplied into hundreds of separate castes, and constitute the bulk of the population today. They form the respectable middle classes. In all, there are 2,378 principal castes and tribes, but if all the lower castes and subdivisions were included, there would be probably a hundred thousand castes in India, no two of which can intermarry. Among Brahmans alone there are 1,886 subcastes, which for the most part cannot intermarry.
Present Divisions. -- Instead of the four original castes there are to-day three great divisions numbering as follows: Brahmans, 14,893,000, or about 5 per cent of total population; Middle Castes, 142,000,000, or nearly 50 per cent of the whole; and Panchamas, or outcastes, 50,000,000 or about 16 per cent of the whole. The Panchamas, or "fifth order," with different names in various sections of the country, are outcastes in the sense that they are outside the pale of Hinduism, and are usually forced to live outside the villages and are not permitted to enter the Hindu temples. They are called the "untouchables." They are also subdivided among themselves, and will not intermarry. Though outcastes they are completely under the dominance of the caste system, and find it almost impossible to break away from it, or change their religion.
Sacred Authority of Caste. -- According to the sacred books of Hinduism, caste is a divine institution. The sacred law of Manu decrees the status of the various castes as follows:[5]
"The Brahman ... is by right the lord of this whole creation. A Brahman ... is born as the highest on earth, the lord of all created beings. Whatever exists in the world is the property of the Brahman."[6]
"Let not [one] explain the sacred law [to a Sudra], nor impose upon him a penance. For he who explains the sacred law to a Sudra or dictates to him a penance, will sink together with that man into ... hell."[7]
"The dwellings of [outcastes] shall be outside the village, ... and their wealth shall be dogs and donkeys. Their dress shall be the garments of the dead, they shall eat their food from broken dishes, black iron shall be their ornaments, and they must always wander from place to place. A man who fulfils a religious duty, shall not seek intercourse with them."[8]
Former Condition of Parians. -- Abbe Du Bois describes the Pariahs of a century ago as slaves or serfs sold with the soil. They could own no land, they were beaten and reviled, they lived in poverty and almost nakedness. Brahmans would not even touch them with a stick. If one entered a Brahman's house he was murdered. A man was sold for a dollar, or a little rice, or about the price of a cow. As an illustration of their condition, the Puliars of Malabar dwelt in trees, in little huts built in the branches. They were not allowed to build their huts on the ground nor to walk in the public road. If a high-caste man met one on the road, he could stab him on the spot. His description of the poverty and suffering of the poor people is heartrending.
Social Tyranny of Caste. -- A man's caste in India is his destiny. All independence is crushed. If the caste regulations are broken and defied the whole community boycott and if necessary ostracize the man. No one will work for him, no one will sell to him, no one will help him. We cannot realize the problem presented to mission work by this system, which forbids any man to change his religion, to improve his condition or rise in the social scale, and which boycotts every convert. As Dr. Jones says, "To the ordinary Hindu a change of caste would be as unexpected, yea as impossible, as his sudden change into the lower brute, or into the higher angelic kingdom."
Some Benefits of Caste. -- Caste is the "keystone of the arch of Hinduism." It has had some good influence as a great wall of defense against the invader and as a conservator of tradition. It has provided for the division of labor and for trade gilds, and has furnished moral restraints by its strict rules. It has preserved certain arts and industries and enabled the people to unite and cooperate within narrow lines.
Evils of Caste. -- Its evil effects, however, far outweigh the good. Maine, in his Ancient Law, describes caste as "the most disastrous and blighting of human institutions." A non-Christian newspaper writes, "It is not possible to describe in temperate words the terrible havoc which caste has wrought in India. The preservation of caste means the suicide of the whole nation." A Hindu social reformer sums up its evils as follows: "It has produced disunion and discord. It has made honest manual labor contemptible, and retarded progress. It has brought on physical degeneracy by confining marriage within narrow circles. It has developed indirectly the system of early marriage. It has suppressed individuality and independence of character, and while affording the opportunity of culture to the few, it has caused the degradation of the masses." "The social system and the whole tone of religious thought with its philosophy of fatalism is against the individualistic self-assertion necessary to success in the struggle for existence. It is opposed to cooperation for civic ideals, and it promotes indifference to life." Once caste is undermined, Hinduism would crumble to the ground, for it has no other coordinating factor.
Results of Its Overthrow. -- What would become of Canada or the United States if the divisive influences of different race origins and a multitude of languages and dialects were cross-seamed and petrified by the divisions and rigid prejudices of the caste system? If instead of one race problem which is gradually yielding to the forces of education, patriotism, and religion, the United States had hundreds of caste cleavages, uninfluenced by patriotism or education, and strengthened by intense religious instincts, her people would better realize the obstacles to progress in India. The break-up of the system would bring thousands into the Christian Church in masses, and that is what will probably happen within a few decades. The missionary work of the present is in preparation for that great upheaval. The teaching of Christianity with its Western education, its doctrine of liberty and the natural equality of all men, which has been the basis of every advance in the Occidental world for the last two hundred years, as Benjamin Kidd points out, will ultimately overthrow the system of caste. No other hope of the social betterment of India can be discerned.
An Ever-present Problem. -- Caste is the one great problem in India to-day. It is this which makes India such a difficult mission field. It is this which holds back the high-caste students in the colleges and the poor pariah in the villages from embracing Christianity. It is this which had preserved Hinduism from conquering invasions and proselyting religions. It is this ever-present problem which meets the missionary in every Hindu village he enters, and the remnants of caste prejudice which baffle him in many Christian congregations. How can we solve the problem? Mr. Bernard Lucas, in his Empire of Christ, and many others would suggest that as caste is only a social system, and since social differences exist in every land and are not necessarily incompatible with Christianity, we should not make the breaking of caste a necessary requirement for entrance into the Church, but should in part ignore it, and trust that it would in time die out of itself, as did the institution of slavery. Thousands would become Christians if they could retain their caste.
Immobile India. -- Our Western freedom of movement and the increase of manufactures has promoted the growth of great cities, which focus interchange of thought and become centers of progressive ideas. The director of the United States census for 1910 estimates that cities of over twenty-five thousand will be shown to contain between thirty-one and thirty- two per cent of the population, and that towns and cities of over twenty-five hundred will have between forty-five and forty-seven per cent. The census of India for 1901 showed that the cities of over twenty thousand contain only about five per cent of the population, and that towns and cities of over two thousand contain only twenty-three per cent. On the other hand, there are 171,135,614 in villages of less than one thousand inhabitants, over fifty-eight per cent of the total population; and 271,882,074 in towns and villages of less than ten thousand, over ninety-two per cent of the population.
Lack of Information and Travel. -- With the addition of language and caste hindrances, this situation presents a physical barrier to the rapid diffusion of ideas, to overcome which would require an immensely greater development of transportation and communication than that which they possess. In India, with more than half the area of the United States, had 31,000 miles of railroad, as compared with 235,000 miles in the United States. The bulk of the Indian people, however, live away from the railroad and are without newspapers, books, or schools. Religion and caste combine to discourage travel. "The fact is that the Hindu has little of the migratory instinct, and all his prejudices tend to keep him at home. As a resident member of a tribe, caste, or village, he occupies a definite social position, of which emigration is likely to deprive him. When he leaves his home he loses the sympathy and support of his clansmen and neighbors; he misses the village council, which regulates his domestic affairs; the services of the family priest, which he considers essential to his salvation. Every village has its own local shrine, where the deities, in the main destructive, have been propitiated and controlled by the constant service of their votaries. Once the wanderer leaves the hamlet where he was born, he enters the domain of new and unknown deities, who, being strangers, are of necessity hostile to him, and may resent his intrusion by sending famine, disease, or death upon the luckless stranger."[9] Whatever caste may have done to stimulate industry in former days, in the present stage of economic development, it is one of the great hindrances to national prosperity.
Small Incomes and Poverty. -- It is most pathetic that in her desperate struggle with poverty India should find the influences of religious custom such a hindrance. A nation so handicapped should have the utmost freedom of each individual to most of himself, instead of an absolute constraint to follow the trade of his father irrespective of his own tastes and abilities. Under such circumstances the growth of transportation, communication, and social influences that have done so much to unify our own country, will be slow in developing, and thus the influences which should tend to destroy caste will be retarded. The poverty of the people of India is proverbial. A day laborer receives less than ten cents a day, even when he can get work. The average income in my own district is five and one half cents a day, $1.65 a month, or $20 a year per family. Dadabhai Naoroji, an Indian member of the British Parliament, estimated that the average income per capita in India is only seven dollars a year. Lord Cromer's estimate of nine dollars per capita is probably more nearly correct. The Hindu writer, Mr. R. C. Dutt, makes the criticism that while in England the average income is $210 a year, in India it is only $10. Forty millions lie down hungry every night upon a mud floor, who have had only one meal, or at most two scanty meals, during the day. Men, women and children all work together in the fields; yet only 47 per cent of the population have work, while 53 per cent are dependent.
Immediate Causes. --The more immediate causes of this poverty are not far to seek. The lack of manufactures, the dependence of the population upon agriculture, when the monsoon[10] so frequently fails, the overcrowding of population, with poor methods of agriculture, naturally lead to poverty. The hoarding of wealth instead of placing it at interest, the tying up of money in jewels, the prevalence of debt, and the tendency to litigation, also rob the country of its resources. Add to this the burden of five and a half million mendicants or holy men and beggars, which the religion of the land places as a burden upon a kind-hearted people, and you have conditions which are rife for poverty.
Recurring Famines. -- The terrible effects of this poverty appear in times of famine. When the monsoon fails, as it frequently does, anxious eyes are turned toward the burning heavens. During the last fifty years, twenty-two famines have swept away 28,000,000 of the people. The famine of 1900, which I witnessed, carried off five millions and left fifty millions hungry. I can more vividly recall the dreadful scenes of this famine by quoting from my report letter of March in that year. It reads as follows:
Famine of 1900. -- "India is entering upon another great famine. The Viceroy and the Imperial Council, surveying the entire country, have made their official announcement concerning this famine, which has now assumed national proportions. They say: 'The greatest aggregate famine area will be about 300,000 square miles (or five times the area of England), containing a population of 40,000,000. There is a further population of 21,000,000 in which more or less general scarcity and distress prevail.' Even now there is a population equal to that of Ireland on the relief works, and they are increasing at the rate of several hundred thousand every week.
Facing Starvation. -- "The first station I visited was that of a veteran missionary. Already the crowds had begun to collect about his door begging for food. I saw one group of gaunt specters stalk silently in from the dusty road. They had walked seventy-five miles. 'Sir,' they said, ' we have no work, no food, no water. How can we live? 'Here in his own field were 10,000 Christians destitute of food, praying and waiting. The people are now living on berries, roots, the thorny cactus, and grass seed, and this can last but a few weeks. Beyond this one dreads to think. At best no crop can come now for eight months. As we drove through the fields they were withered and burned in the sun. The cattle were gone, the streams were dry, the wells often empty. The parched farms were deserted, the villages were quiet, the people silent and gloomy. The glaring heaven seemed brass, and the earth was burned like brick.
Disease Added. -- "In the next mission station things seemed almost worse. Of the 18,000 Christians, half were destitute. The missionary told me that some had eaten nothing for days. In some places disease was following in the wake of the famine. In one little village he found forty houses where one or more were lying sick with smallpox. The old man had fought as a captain through our American civil war, but his face was wet with tears as he told me of sights which he said beggared description. Some of the little children were blind with disease and their wails were pitiful to hear.
Perishing Children. -- "On arriving in Bombay I met an old Princeton acquaintance. He said 'Gujarat was a fertile country thickly populated. The whole face of the land is now altered. Every leaf was torn from the trees long ago for the cattle, and now the trees themselves have been cut down for wood. The whole country, once green as a park, is now a blasted waste of barren stumps and burned fields. I have seen oxen dying in the streets and now they have lost nearly all. It will take years for those who survive the famine to recover from it. In my district five hundred people are dying each week. Repeatedly parents have offered me their children for sale at a rupee each, or about thirty cents. And they love them as we love our children. Children are now being offered for sale as low as four cents each, or for a measure of grain. The Mohammedans often buy little girls. One has only to live in a heathen land to know what they will do with them.'
Pathetic Appeal. -- " 'If you had a hungry crowd at your door all day. If you could see men reduced to feeble and tottering skeletons, if you could hear the wail of hungry children, or the pleading of a mother who has no nourishment left for her starving baby, I know you would want to share their suffering, and that you would give till it touched every luxury you eat, the finery you wear, until you had fairly faced the command of our Master, "Sell that which ye have and give alms." ' When my friend had finished his sad story and I asked him how Christian people could help, he said, 'Best of all by rescuing orphan children.' "
Far-Reaching Response. -- In answer to the above letter friends in America sent $17,000 for famine relief, and thousands of orphans were fed. Somehow the letter got printed and money came from negroes, American Indians, and twelve different nationalities. One school of girls in China sent their offering for the famine, just before they were martyred in the Boxer uprising. Many of the children rescued have now become leaders of Christian work in India.
Basis of Permanent Help. -- We have referred thus at length to the poverty and famines of India because they not only show India's physical suffering, but are typical of the moral and spiritual need of this great people. "My people die for lack of knowledge." Christian education has largely solved the problem of famine where it has been widely extended. Our industrial and normal schools are changing the social status of the submerged pariah and removing him from the hand to mouth dependence upon heartless Hindu landlords. But the downtrodden masses of India's unreached multitudes lie like a beggar at our gate, full of sores and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fall from our table. "We can help them best, not by fitful famine relief in special times of distress, but by the prevention and provision which the gospel of Christ can give to India, with all its uplifting power. The only rich nations of the world are the Christian nations of the West, or those developed by them. The half of the world that is poor to-day is the half that is without Christ. Can you measure the forces of Christian civilization upon India's future in their social, economic, educational, and philanthropical results? "We have it within our power to launch this mighty force through the Christian church and school. "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." But how shall they know it?
RELIGIONS
In the West we are accustomed to speak of a certain phase of life as the religious life, and to draw sharp distinctions between what we call sacred and secular. In India, on the other hand, life is essentially religious, and in the strictest sense of the word there is nothing which can properly be called secular at all. Religion is all-pervading as the atmosphere Itself; it penetrates into every nook and corner of life, so that the Hindu can never escape from its influence. It presides over his birth, fixes his name, determines his education, settles his calling, arranges his marriage, orders every detail of his family and social life, and controls his destiny through all time. Not only so, but it gives color and shape to the external world in which he lives and moves. Animate and Inanimate nature, rivers and hills, trees and plants, rocks and stones, everything in the animal and vegetable kingdom, are all alike existing in this all-pervading religious atmosphere, and present themselves to his mind through this all-embracing medium. It is this fact perhaps more than anything else which makes the Hindu an insoluble enigma to the man of the West. Its subtle influence is encountered at every turn, its tint is present in every landscape, its pungent essence can be detected everywhere. It has to be reckoned with in the India Office, in the Legislative Council, in the Government Office, in market and school, in the largest town as well are in the smallest hamlet.
-- Litcas
CHAPTER II
RELIGIONS
Europe and Asia Contrasted. -- Asia is the birthplace of great religions. As Meredith Townsend says: "The truth is that the European is essentially secular, that is, intent on securing objects he can see; and the Asiatic essentially religious, that is, intent on obedience to powers which he cannot see but can imagine ... The European, therefore, judges a creed by its results, declaring that if these are foolish or evil or inconvenient the creed is false. The Asiatic does not consider results at all, but only the accuracy or beauty of the thoughts generated in his own mind."[11] The wind that blows steadily along the Asiatic coast in winter from the northeast, forming the dry monsoon; in summer more violently from the southwest, constituting the Wet monsoon.
Semitic and Aryan Faiths. -- Two great races, both Asiatic, have given the world its most germinal religions, the Semitic Jew with his transcendent monotheism and deep moral sense; and the Aryan of India with his overmastering consciousness of the immanence of God and the reality of the Unseen. The former has more largely shaped the West and the latter has influenced the East. India has ever been the home of religions, a vast religious area where the world's great faiths are on trial, and where finally only the fittest can survive.
Strength of Religions of India. -- The strength of the various religions of India and their relative numbers is shown in the following table:[12]
Jews 18,000 Parsees 94,000 Jains 1,334,000 Sikhs 2,195,000 Christians 2,923,000 Animists 8,714,000 Buddhists 9,477,000 Mohammedans 62,458,000 Hindus 207,147,000
Thus of every hundred persons in India 71 are Hindus, 21 Mohammedans, 3 Buddhists and 1 Christian. This proportion varies greatly in different provinces.
Jews and Parsees. -- The Jews, who have probably been in India since some remote dispersion of the first or second century, are a poor and isolated community in Western India, with no influence on India's life. The Parsees, driven from Persia by the Mohammedan persecution over a thousand years ago, while a highly educated Zoroastrian community, are completely isolated in the Bombay presidency.
Buddhism. -- Buddhism, which arose as a protestant reform movement within Hinduism, prevailed in India from about 500 BC to 500 AD; but after a fair trial perished in the land of its birth. Apart from the outskirts of the districts bordering on the Himalayas and Burma, it has ceased to exist in India proper. Buddha, the greatest of India's sons, leaving his life of princely luxury, by his "great renunciation "sought to find a way of escape from the evil of existence by the suppression of all desire. His winsome personality, his appeal to the masses for the first time in the vernacular, his revolt from caste and the burdensome ritual of the Brahmans, his high moral teaching and the note of humanity which he struck, came to India at the time as good news. But his religion ignored God, and it could never finally satisfy the deep religious instincts of India. After the fifth century AD, Buddhism ceased to exist as a paramount religion. During the last fourteen years, traveling in all parts of India proper, I have never met a single Buddhist. In Tibet, Burma, and Ceylon, it is of course still the prevailing religion.
Mohammedanism. -- The Mohammedans numbered 62,000,000 at the census of 1901, and have doubtless increased since that time. They are most numerous in Kashmir and the Punjab, where they form over one half of the population, and in Bengal, where they amount to nearly one third. Though formerly ruling over the bulk of India, they have lost their political prominence, and have been much slower than the Hindus to cultivate Western learning.
Some Lines of Change. -- The problem of Mohammedanism in India presents many interesting features which cannot be discussed here for lack of space. On the one hand, especially among the lower classes, their religion has been tinged with Hinduism. "The census officials were often in doubt whether to reckon certain groups under the headings of Mohammedans or Hindus." New and powerful sects, such as the Kabirpanthis, Sikhs, and others have arisen from a mingling of Hindu and Moslem influences. The caste spirit has shown itself in Islam, and the prohibition of marriage outside of caste lines is to a certain extent observed. At the other end of the line we see the effect of Christianity and "Western ideas. A small section of Mohammedanism stands for progressive theology, social reforms, and Western education. A conference on missions to Moslems was held in Lucknow, in January, 1911. The reports of this conference should be consulted for recent information, on the subject of Islam in India.
Animism. -- Animism still remains the religion of over eight million aboriginal hill tribes, who worship subordinate spirits, but they are being gradually absorbed by the other religions.[13] The religious future of India lies between Christianity and Hinduism, and in this chapter we shall try to estimate sympathetically the worth of the latter religion, and to weigh its elements of strength and weakness. The question before us is, what has Hinduism done for India, and what can it do?
Hinduism. -- The average person in Canada or the United States has little conception of a life saturated with religion as is that of India./ Religion covers all life. It fills all thought. It governs all acts. It regulates all movements. So complete a possession of a man's whole being by religion as is common in India can only be found among the rare mystic saints of other lands. Witness the indescribable sufferings of the millions of devotees on year-long pilgrimages to sacred shrines, the life-long vigils and absorbed contemplations of tens of thousands of ascetics. But above all note the unfailing ceremonies that entire Hindu households go through every day before the shrines which are found in every orthodox Hindu home. How earnest the women; how seemingly reverent the men; how cheerfully present the children. Contrast the prayerlessness of our American people.
Religion Merged with Custom. -- Since religion in India has not yet been separated from custom, it controls the bulk of life. We of the West have so emancipated custom and daily life from religious control that our main danger is from a secular and materialistic spirit.
Diverse Nature of Hinduism. -- As compared with Western religion, Hinduism is not only more intense and comprehensive, but far more diverse. It constitutes perhaps the greatest mixture of any religion on the face of the earth. It derives from many sources, and since caste has checked free assimilation, the original elements exist side by side in every possible combination. It must be remembered that almost nothing holds good of Hinduism as a whole, that ideas and customs that rule in one part of the country and in certain strata are unknown and inert in other parts and other strata. When we speak of development, we do not mean an orderly progress of the whole, but only the growth of tendencies which affect larger or smaller groups. To the outsider who reads the generalizations of condensed accounts Hinduism may seem tolerably homogeneous, but further study or actual contact shows that the exceptions to the rules are bewildering in their confusion. But it may be possible to make distinct some of the principal elements of modern Hinduism.
Animistic Element. -- 1) Animism covers the belief in a life which animates with unequal degrees of power all nature, as well as the body of the individual. Earth, air, and water are peopled with spirits which are mostly malicious and which must be propitiated, as the higher gods do not protect against them. Whatever in nature seems unusual is set down to the possession of spirit power and is worshiped accordingly, -- stones or local configurations which are unusual or grotesque in size, shape, or position;[14] things inanimate gifted with mysterious motions, such as trees, rivers, and other material objects; animals which are feared and which are odd or useful, as snakes, monkeys, cows, and the like; things useful, such as tools; dead relatives or persons who were strong or notorious in life, or who died in a strange way. All these things arouse in the common man a feeling of mysterious awe. Joined with this is the worship of dead parents whose spirits are dependent on their survivors for comfort, and who will avenge neglect or any deviation from custom. This belief is (1) a religion of fear, since most spirits are malicious; (2) a religion divorced from ethics, since spirits have no regard for moral ideals; (3) a religion of custom, since the worship rests on blind tradition, and the spirits are apt to punish departure from custom.
Incubus Upon the People. -- "Oh, evil one," cries a distressed mother, "why hast thou cast a spell upon my little one? What shall I do to appease thee? "Every disease, every disaster comes from these ministers of evil. Utmost anxiety prevails, particularly among the women, that right auguries and signs should attend the performance of every important act of life. The astrologer casts the horoscope of every child; determines the wedding day and all other important days in every family. No journey is undertaken, nor house built, nor garden planted, nor field reaped, nor boat launched, nor wife chosen, nor does a birth or death come to pass without efforts to obtain favorable signs and to placate adverse gods and to seek the favor of the benign. No words can describe the oppression of spirit under which practically all the uneducated of India live, and this includes over ninety per cent of the people.
Its Wide Range. -- This religion, with varying forms of worship, has existed from the earliest times. It belonged to the Aryans as well as to the Dravidians with whom it is usually connected. It is the religion of one of the four sacred Vedas, the Atharva-Veda, and may he older than the religion of the Rig-Veda itself, being held by the lower classes. While only 8,000,000 of the population of India are classed as Animists in the census, animistic ideas influence the great hulk of the population of to-day. Though they acknowledge certain of the higher gods, the masses have a religion mainly of fear and of dealings with spirits and minor deities.
Ritualistic Element. -- 2) Ritualism. Sacrifice, which in the very earliest records seems to have been a thank-offering, was next offered to nourish the gods, then to wrest rewards from them, and finally as an instrument for the attainment of supernatural powers. The greatest importance came to he attributed to it, together with magical properties. It must be offered with an elaborate ritual, the virtue of which was destroyed by a single slip. This was known only to the Brahmans, who largely by this means attained their position of leadership. While there have been reactions against this ritualism, the average Hindu yet ascribes great efficacy to verbal and mechanical formulae, and the Brahman retains much of his power as an intermediary with the gods. This ritualistic tendency has had an influence in the shaping of caste.
Every Part of Life Covered. -- All through the day there is no function of life that is not closely prescribed for, and wo to the man who fails to conform. He has broken the caste rule, and to break the caste rule is to invite universal ostracism. The individual is helpless. Every neighbor is eyes to see that he walks the path. What he shall eat and drink; what he shall wear and how it shall be worn; with whom he shall consort; whom he may marry; what he shall work at and where he shall live, are all laid down. To our Western thought no Hindu is born, he is chained into a system. He is as powerless to escape as a fly in a spider's web. There is no way but that of patient acquiescence. And when one knows nothing of "personal liberty "such acquiescence is no hardship. He who is brought up in a prison sighs not for an open sky. But he is a prisoner nevertheless, a prisoner ceaselessly guarded by all his fellows, and terribly punished if disobedient.
Speculative Element. -- 3) Speculation. The earliest religion of the Aryans is handed down to us in its sacred writings, the Vedas, collections of hymns to which were afterwards added legal and speculative treatises, the Brahmanas and Upanishads. The higher side of this religion is presented in the Rig- Veda. It was a worship of gods, most of whom were personified forces of nature. The language used of Varuna, the sky, often approaches that of monotheism. Later there came a tendency to identify gods which had functions in common, such as the sun, lightning, and fire, and to ascribe to the god addressed by the worshiper the characteristics of all the other gods. Finally acute thinkers, meditating long on the problems of life, came to conceive of a single force that lay back of all the universe, of which the individual deities were only manifestations. It was a matter of the utmost importance that the more influential of these thinkers conceived of this force as impersonal.
Pantheistic Element. -- Thus the philosophy of India came to be pantheism, a view that has been dominant ever since. It is a doctrine which it is hardly possible to maintain with perfect consistency. If all is God, and God is all, how shall we explain the apparent difference between things? We can only declare that difference is illusory, unimportant, negligible.
Personality Unreal. -- In the first place, separate personality becomes unreal and should be transcended. Not only our evil nature is to be put aside, but our best desires, feelings, and thoughts as well, everything peculiar to our individuality. In the words of the Bhagavad Gita, "Holding his body, head, and neck even and unmoved, (remaining) steady, looking at the tip of his own nose, and not looking about in (all) directions, with a tranquil self devoid of fear, and adhering to the rules of Brahmacharins, he should restrain his mind, (concentrate it) on me, and sit down engaged in devotion, regarding me as his final goal. Thus constantly devoting himself to abstraction, a devotee whose mind is restrained, attains that tranquility which culminates in final emancipation, and assimilation with me.[15] "This has made the highest religious type of India to be not the apostle or the benefactor, who seeks to bless others by words or deed, but the ascetic whose main virtue is renunciation and whose main concern is his own salvation.
View of Good and Evil. -- In the second place, any difference in good and evil becomes unreal. Both alike are illusion and both alike divine. All good is God and so is all evil, for God is impersonal and is without quality. These words good and evil are the mere accommodations of our imperfect seeing. In Brahma, the divine essence, all these meet and are without quality. The ascribing of quality is born of our ignorance. Among lofty ascetics such a doctrine may render men only useless to society, but in other quarters it may and does lead to great sensual excesses. By immorality men are only becoming partakers of the divine nature. As Slater says, "The object is not so much to get rid of sin as to get rid of the false notion that we are sinners."
Effect of Immoral Deities. -- Of the Hindu Triad, or sacred Trinity, not one has an untarnished moral record. It is the stories of the sensuality and impurity of their gods, as recorded in their sacred books, and told on the lips of their votaries, which is polluting the imagination of childhood, and debasing the manhood of India to-day. The temple prostitution in the name of religion, the sensual orgies of the Sakti worship, and the sensualism of Krishna worship in Bengal have poisoned the very springs of life for multitudes. Dishonesty and deceit are common in India, not because of the nature of the people, who are naturally more religious than we are, but because of the fundamental lack of Hinduism to supply moral motive and power. Some parts of the sacred books cannot be translated and published because they come under the class of obscene literature. As Professor Hopkins of Yale says, "The Hindu moral code is savage and antique. Few of the older gods are virtuous."
Obscene and Sensual Phases. -- The carvings on the idol cars and upon the temples are often loathsome and obscene. I prefer to pass over this disagreeable subject. If I narrated here what I have seen with my own eyes, or told some of the things which are in the sacred books of Hinduism, this book could not be published. There is immorality in Christian lands, but it is condemned by our religion, and contrary to the spirit of Christ; but when immorality is inculcated by the sacred books, when the temple itself was a focus of vice and prostitution until the British government drove out the abomination into the dark dens beyond the temple precincts, when immorality and sensuality are interwoven with the very fabric of the religion and constitute a part of popular worship, the very life of the people is poisoned. No religion has sunk to lower depths in its immoral practises than has Hinduism; and while strongly religious it has not furnished the high moral standard of either Buddhism or Confucianism.
World Becomes Illusion. -- In the third place, the differences reported by our senses become unreal. The external world is illusion, maya. The philosopher will neglect it as much as possible. Such a belief will check all interest in human progress. No genuine history or biography exists in Sanskrit literature. The Indian mind, with all its wonderful depth and acuteness, has given to the world no such theory of the state, of education, or of natural science as occupied the minds of Greek thinkers.
Doctrine of Karma. -- In the fourth place, pantheism, with its idea of an impersonal God, produces the doctrine of karma, the inevitable connection between action and reward or penalty. We are now the exact result of what we have been in the past. This doctrine has its ethical side and contains much truth. Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. But it makes no provision for the grace of God enabling us to rise above our past. Taken absolutely it becomes fatalism. As a matter of fact it has been combined with the doctrine of transmigration, of successive rebirths, human, animal, or vegetable. There must be some reason why the impersonal essence that dwells in all living things should have such different surroundings in different cases. Karma is the explanation. When life disappears from our view, its merit or demerit determines in connection with what form it will next manifest itself. The vital essence of a bad man may reappear in the body of a toad; a good woman may hope to be reborn as a man. Let her beware of faithlessness to her lord and husband or she may reappear a rat.
Baneful Results. -- Years ago after a sore famine in South India, when the returning rains brought promise of bountiful crops, a plague of rats appeared threatening the harvest. But the pious villagers could not be persuaded to kill these rats. Said they: "Thousands of our people died during the famine. Under the stress of starvation they could not keep the caste rules, nor could we give them right sepulture. Hence they are now rats. And shall we commit sin by killing our own grandfathers and uncles and aunts and people? No, let them eat, even if we have less." Said a poor servant woman who had lost her only child, on seeing a dog enter the yard next day: "Oh! do not drive it away. Its eyes look so kind; it may be my boy come back to me." This theory offers an explanation of the inequalities of life, but it has the effect of fatalism in that present evils are referred to sins of a past life which has passed absolutely from memory. If I am unfortunate, why should I struggle against fate? It is my karma and is therefore inevitable. If that girl, betrothed in childhood, has lost her husband, such misfortune must be due to an evil karma. Sympathy is thus withheld from those who need it most.
Tendency to Polytheism. -- In the fifth place, pantheism really plays into the hands of polytheism. If all is God, then that idol or tree or river is divine and deserves worship. Sir Alfred Lyall says: "The present writer knew a Hindu officer, of great shrewdness and very fair education, who devoted several hours daily to the elaborate worship of five round pebbles, which he had appointed to be his symbol of omnipotence. Although his general belief was in one all-pervading divinity, he must have something symbolic to handle and address."
Upholds Custom and Caste. -- Finally, pantheism consecrates whatever is, since all is divine, and can thus be used as an argument for custom and caste. It would seem equally logical to use it as a weapon against caste, declaring that since all men have in them the divine essence all should be brothers. Karma has here intervened. A low-caste man has been born in the position which he deserves, and any attempt to raise him out of it is quarreling with Providence.
Practical Effects. -- Such are some of the practical results of belief in an impersonal essence rather than in a single, loving Heavenly Father. High thoughts and noble impulses have been robbed of their best by this theory. We shall never cure the surface ills of Indian society unless we can get at the underlying forces that help to create and maintain these ills.
Vedantism. -- In Hinduism we must distinguish between the philosophy of the few, and the popular polytheism and idolatry of the masses. The vague and conflicting elements of the Upanishads were later formulated into the six orthodox systems of Indian philosophy. The principal system, Vedantism, holding substantially the positions just given, shapes the minds of the majority of educated men in India to-day. Brahma, the world-soul, alone exists. He is "one without a second." "Brahma exists truly, the world falsely, the soul is Brahma." To know that "I am Brahma" is salvation. To the Vedantist, religion is a philosophy, to the Christian it is a life. The Vedantist denies, while the Christian emphasizes the personality of God. To the Christian, God is love, his position is positive. The philosophy of the Vedantist is negative. As Mr. Slater suggests, Vedantism represents man seeking God; in the gospel God is seeking man. While this pantheism colors nearly all Indian thinking, it is not strictly a religion, and logically it would exclude all prayer and worship. Even the majority of students and educated men, however, follow the practises of popular Hinduism in their homes; for the Indian mind is more hospitable and compromising than it is logical. Owing to the vague thinking engendered by pantheism, a Hindu can hold that two and two make four with one lobe of his brain, while with the other he can equally believe that two and two make five. Present him with two horns of a dilemma and he will firmly grasp both. He believes at the same time in one God, and in many gods. He will accept Christ as the incarnation of God, without excluding his own Hindu incarnations.
Many Resultant Sects. -- What will be the practical effect of such a subtle and abstract philosophy, which logically denies the personality of God and the reality of matter, on the beliefs and practises of the great masses who have from the earliest times worshiped gods benevolent or demonic, spirits of the air and earth, or objects animate and inanimate? Different sections of the community have been affected in very different degrees. The innumerable divisions of Hindu society facilitate the growth of separate sects, and the enthusiasm of the Hindu nature for religion renders it especially susceptible to the teachings of legions of reformers and devotees, some of world influence, like Buddha, some with national, and many with only local reputation. For centuries the bulk of Hindus have been members of sects, some of which differ widely from the so-called orthodox views.
Fields of These Ideas. -- Certain of the ideas mentioned above are wide-spread. The belief in transmigration and karma is practically universal. Asceticism is honored as a disregarding of the illusions of this world. The moral sense has been blunted by the denial of the fundamental distinction between good and evil, although karma itself is based on such a distinction. Pantheism, as has been noted, tends to consecrate both polytheism and the existing inequalities of caste.
Craving for Personal Deities. -- On the other hand, the demand of the religious instinct for a God who is personal has multiplied the adherents of the sects which set up personal deities. Back in the Vedic days Rudra, whose name later became Shiva, was a lesser deity, a storm-god with various attributes. Vishnu was a name of a sun-god. Nothing in the character of either of the deities at that time indicated their future prominence. The stages of their rise, while mightier gods decayed, can be only conjectured. Each probably grew great by absorbing the characteristics of local or tribal gods, until today they are often included with Brahma, the somewhat theoretical god of the Brahmans, in an artificial Hindu triad or trinity. Originally the elements of this trinity had no connection whatever. Philosophers say that all three gods are only manifestations of an impersonal being back of all things, but the Shaivas and Vaishnavas regard their gods as personal and ultimate. This does not prevent most of them from worshiping other divinities, or from being influenced by pantheistic ideas.
Shiva and Vishnu Cult. -- Shiva is, on the whole, a stern deity, and Shaivism, the earlier sect, is more given to abstract meditation and is greatly animated by fear. It is the gloomy view of the destructive principle in nature and its various subdivisions use animal sacrifices. It is professed by many subsects of Dandis or staff-bearers, ascetics naked, smeared with ashes and cow-manure, engulfed in meditation while mechanically counting a rosary and at intervals calling out the 1,008 names of the god. The great Vaishnavite sect, however, is perhaps the heart of popular Hinduism. Vishnu, more human, less formidable, appearing in two favorite human incarnations or avatars, as Rama and Krishna, has more nearly reached the heart of the people. Monier Williams says: "I must declare my belief that Vaishnavism, notwithstanding the gross polytheistic superstitions and hideous idolatry to which it gives rise, is the only real religion of the Hindu peoples, and has more common ground with Christianity than any other form of a non-Christian faith." It practically makes Vishnu a personal god, in touch with human life, sharing its hopes and joys and fears and suffering in his incarnations. Intense faith in this god whose many names are ever on their lips marks the Vaishnavas. They have however split up into many subsects under the pressure of Mohammedanism and Christianity.
Followers of Chaitanya. -- In Bengal Vaishnavism has been deeply affected by the sage Chaitanya who fiercely declaimed against caste, and even took Mohammedans into his following, and formed a great subsect. In contradistinction from the naked, ash- smeared Shaiva ascetics are the Vaishnava Vallabhacharis, who worship Gopal, the human child, an incarnation of Vishnu, and are thoroughgoing epicureans.
Consorts of the Gods. -- The third set of sectaries gather around the idea of the female reproductive energies in nature. But as the female is more in evidence in all begetting of life, various subsects have gathered around the consorts of the gods.
Mutual Tolerance. -- All the sects of India, however, are tolerant of each other, and the prevalent practise is for the worshiper of any one of the gods to scatter a handful of rice at the end of his worship of his favored god to all the others who may or may not be, but whose good will, if they are, he does not wish to forfeit.
Scenes at Melas. -- The daily religion of the common people can best be seen at the great melas, feasts, and annual festivals of the various gods. Great throngs make pilgrimages all over India, while multitudes turn out from the neighboring villages to visit the sacred places, bathe in the tanks and rivers, and gain the merit which accrues from the worship of each particular deity. Unsatisfied, they trudge on to the next shrine, in the dim hope that there, perhaps, they will find forgiveness and relief. At Allahabad I have seen 3,000,000 people gathered on the banks of the Ganges at the great Kumbh Mela. Here are pundits reading their sacred books, Sadhus or fakirs, and holy men of every description. Here is a man whose arm is stiff that he has not moved for twelve years. Here is another lying on a bed of spikes, who has not left it for fifteen years. Here is a man receiving a rupee per head to ring a bell and call out the name of the worshiper to bring him to the attention of the sleeping god. Twenty thousand holy men march naked in one procession, representing a particular cult of ascetics who congregate here and who are never clothed. Thousands are bathing in the water, calling upon their gods and seeking to wash away their sins.
Great Complexity. -- This brief sketch can give no adequate idea of the extraordinary complexity of Hinduism, nor of its constantly changing character in spite of all the rigidity and unprogressiveness of caste. It has been influenced by Mohammedanism, and new sects have arisen from the mixture. Today it shows the effects of its contact with Christianity in several ways: (1) There is a large infusion of Christian ideas influencing it. (2) There is a passionate effort to revive Hinduism and adapt it to modern conditions. (3) There are springing up various eclectic systems which are the result of a combination of Christian truth and Hindu tradition, and which represent an attempt to compromise between them.
Spread of Christian Ideas. -- The infusion of Christian principles into the minds of educated Indians is wide-spread and powerful. We have only to read the prayer of the National Congress on page 249 to see both the deep religious spirit and the Christian ideas of the new movement. There is no mention here of pantheism or polytheism, of Krishna, or Kali, of idolatry or caste, or any other distinctive Hindu conception; but the Christian ideas of God's fatherhood and man's brotherhood, and the duty of morality and social service. And these are just the elements of Christianity which the new movement has adopted. They appear in almost every Indian magazine and lecture. There is also an effort to expurgate the immorality of Hinduism, allegorize its obscene stories, condemn its immoral practises and apologize for caste and idolatry. Conscience and reason are awake.
Methods Copied. -- Missionary methods are copied in detail. We have Young Men's Hindu Associations, social worship, the teaching of the young, catechisms, missionaries, Hindu colleges and hostels, zenana visitation, work for outcastes, and tract distribution. The movement is called a "Revival." What does all this indicate? It shows the failure of their old methods, and the appreciation of Christian doctrines and methods by that imitation which is the highest praise, while the fact that Christianity alone is opposed, is evidence that Hindus are awakening to the danger of the decline of their religion before the advance of Christianity.
Christ and Hindu Thought. -- Yet where Christ is sympathetically presented, he finally captures the imagination and wins the heart of the Oriental. A Hindu political leader in the south said: "The highest manifestation of God that I know is Christ on the cross. I find pictures of Christ crucified, garlanded and worshiped in orthodox Hindu homes. He is one of us, and we revere him." A young revolutionist, who was sent to prison a short time ago, when asked what he would do if arrested, replied, "I shall go to prison thinking of Christ on the cross." And though formerly a Hindu, he has in prison accepted Christ and found him his only comfort. "Christ has already won for himself an influence in Indian life far surpassing every other religious force at present active in the peninsula. The present extraordinary religious ferment, with its many revivals, is almost entirely his work. Every aspect of social reform is purely Christian. The national movement so far as it is moral has been inspired by Christ."
Hindu Counter-revival. -- But the present revival is anti-Christian as well as Christian. There is a determination to retain all that is their own, and resist the advancing foreign religion. Their own sacred books are now more studied than ever before. They are producing a new apologetic literature with lecturers and teachers, but as yet they have found no message for the masses. Even among the educated men the various schools are divided, and there is a Babel of conflicting opinions. The majority, however, center their hopes on the Bhagavad Gita and the worship of Krishna, with the Vedantic philosophy. Indeed, as held by educated men, this is the best that Hinduism presents.
Contrast of Christ and Krishna. -- The question most frequently asked after my lectures has been, "Why cannot Krishna save us? "I remember once during a lecture a man rose and asked this question. I replied, "I hope our friend will withdraw that question. You will bear me witness that I have said nothing against your religion, for I came not to destroy but to fulfil, like my Master. If our friend does not withdraw the question, I shall be compelled to contrast the spotless life of Jesus in his youth with the youth of Krishna, marred by immorality, lying, and stealing. I shall have to contrast the manhood of Christ, who went about doing good, with the immoral relations of Krishna and the woman Radha. And I shall have to compare Christ's dying on the cross to save men, in the closing act of his life, with Krishna, who at the last came to Prabhasa with 16,100 wives and 180,000 sons. His sons in a drunken fight enraged him, and he with a club of iron killed all his surviving sons; thus ending in destroying life, whereas Christ died in saving it. And I shall have to say many other things that will be painful alike to you and to me. So I hope our friend will withdraw the question." He did withdraw it, poor boy, and sat down as if he were shot. Strangely enough the Hindus in the audience were satisfied, though if I had begun with an attack upon Krishna they would perhaps have left in a body.
Eclectic Systems. -- Numerous eclectic systems have sprung up as the result of the impact of Christianity upon Hinduism. As a precursor of the new eclecticism, came the Brahmo Samaj, founded in 1830 by Rammohun Roy, as the result of his study of Hinduism and Christianity. Endeavoring to found a Christian monotheism in the Vedas, the society has taken its stand against polytheism, idolatry, and caste. It has, however, never touched the masses, and after all these years, numbers only about 4,000 members. Appealing to the intellect, rather than to the will, as a negative, rationalistic Unitarianism, it has lost much that is rich in Hinduism, and failed to gain the pearl of great price, which Christianity offers.
Arya Samaj. -- The Arya Samaj founded in 1875, though remaining within the pale of Hinduism, seeks to get rid of the abuses of that religion by confining itself to the Vedas, where it hopes to find pure religion, before the evils of idolatry and caste were introduced. It has, however, signed its own death-warrant by proclaiming that all truth, modern science and invention included, is to be found in the Vedas. The simple nature worship of these writings, and their call to sacrifice to gods long dead and past all hope of resuscitation, offers no message and no solution for India's problem. Though more political, powerful, and popular than the Brahmo Samaj, the movement will in time sink to a place of obscurity among the many other sects of Hinduism. The question is, What should be our attitude to these reform movements and to the revival of Hinduism? What attitude would you take if you were a missionary?
Imperative Need of Christ. -- One thing India yet lacks. Her imperative and immediate need is Christ. Such a nation after such a search deserves to find the truth.. Groping up the world's dark altar stairs to God, they need helping hands stretched down to grasp theirs in the darkness. Hinduism, though it has not uplifted or satisfied India, has prepared the way in its idea of God, of sin, of incarnation, atonement, and redemption for the full truth of Christianity. The modern eclectic systems have copied from Christianity its outward methods without imbibing its inward principle of life and power or its divine center in Christ. It is a laudable last attempt to resuscitate Hinduism. But it is without an organic center or historic person in whom God meets man, and man finds God. It has no message for the masses, and is only a further argument for India's need of Christ. The present religious awakening in India constitutes a mighty plea for the gospel. The present crisis is a call to Christendom.
THE NATIONAL AWAKENING
It seemed mere dreaming when, in the earlier part of the last century, men arose in Germany and Italy who asserted the principle of nationality, and declared that there could be no peace until these two races had attained full consciousness and realization of their true genius in distinct national organizations. Matter-of-fact people looked on such prophets of nationality as mere fanatics and dreamers. The true realities to them were the Bourbon and papal states, and the innumerable kingdoms and principalities of Germany. Had they not the monarchs, and the courts, and the armies, and the treasuries, and all the real weights and forces on their side? But the prophets of nationality saw deeper. Behind the minor differences they saw the real unity of spirit of their respective races, and discerned in this the slumbering force of revolution and regeneration. We know now who best gaged the real situation.
-- Cairns
On February 6, 1908, a large meeting was held to hear a lecture on Bhaktl (devotion), at which nearly three thousand were present, and Mr. Tilak took the chair. Dr. Garde, an elderly and highly respected and learned Hindu, a friend of Mr. Tllak's, got up to speak, and traced the doctrine of Bhakti in Hinduism from Vedio down to modern times. He mentioned, while doing so, the name of Christ as a great Western saint who practised Bhakti. The name of our blessed Lord, even when thus mentioned, was received with such shouts and hisses that the speaker was obliged to sit down, and In spite of the chairman's efforts to keep order the meeting had to be closed ... This would have been incredible in India only a short time ago, and in a great part of India it would be impossible still. Yet it shows us what may be expected if the anti-foreign, movement becomes anti-Christian.
-- Andrews
CHAPTER III
THE NATIONAL AWAKENING
India Awake. -- India is at last awakening. The significance of this fact can hardly be grasped by the Western mind. This land of the "changeless East" is now in a ferment of unrest. A population including one fifth of the human race, possessing probably the most deeply religious consciousness of any nation in the world, which has produced religions affecting the life of over one third of mankind, and which has untold possibilities for the future, is being infected with the leaven of a new life.
Masses Yet Untouched. -- This awakening may easily be both overestimated and underestimated. On the one hand, it is true that the great bulk of the population is quite unconscious of the dawn of any new era. The isolation of the little village communities which constitute the larger part of India is so complete that the most exciting changes may leave them unaffected. Moreover, with such people it takes a long time for a new idea to win acceptance. It would be impossible in our Western lands for any section of the population to remain so ignorant and apathetic concerning events of national interest.
A Momentous Epoch. -- On the other hand, it is also undeniable that a new age has been entered upon. The vision and enthusiasm which is as yet confined to so small a percentage of the entire people is spreading, and will surely continue to spread more rapidly. It is the most momentous epoch that India has ever known.
Asia Awakening. -- To estimate the magnitude of the present movement we must see it in perspective. It is not India alone which is affected by this new spirit. All Asia is awakening! India is but an unconscious part of a wide series of national awakenings, at first sight separate and unrelated, which is affecting this greatest of continents. From Japan to India, from Korea to Persia, from China on the east to Turkey on the west, all Asia feels the quickening of this new life. Japan under Western influence has undergone greater changes in the last forty years than any nation in history in an equal time. Korea, from its stagnant isolation of twenty-five years ago, is witnessing almost kaleidoscopic changes under a foreign rule. On a vaster scale, ancient China is being penetrated with the forces of Western civilization, through railway, post, and telegraph systems. In process of an economic revolution, with a new thirst for Western learning, awakening to a new sense of national consciousness, these millions of people are also rousing themselves from the sleep of centuries.
The Near East. -- In the near East, Persia is beginning to emerge from revolutionary chaos, while Turkey has attained constitutional government at a bound. Who would have prophesied a decade ago that Turkey's revolution would come before that of Russia, and under the watchwords of "Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood." Are these national awakenings really unrelated and sporadic, or do you detect any great underlying causes at work in the entire Orient and in the world as a whole? Do you perceive any possible providential purpose in the trend of affairs, and can you discern the signs of the times in its significance for the kingdom of God?
India's Political Unrest. -- We are concerned, however, chiefly with the movement in India. More than ever before in its history there is a ferment of new thought. While it has not yet moved the rank and file, it has so thoroughly possessed the educated classes, who wield an increasing power in India, that it is destined in time to leaven the entire life of the land. The present movement is at once political, industrial, social, intellectual, and religious. Politically there is gradually taking shape a growing national movement. The very words "national," "movement," "liberty," and "self-government" are innovations of Western origin, undreamed of in the past millenniums of India's history.
National Adolescence. -- This birth of a new national consciousness presents the two adolescent phenomena of imitation and independence. As in Japan and China, there is a mad desire to copy things Western, yet to resent all foreign interference and to hold tenaciously to all that is their own. On the one hand there is the consciousness of Western supremacy, the determination to learn the English language, to adopt Western methods, and to reproduce Western political institutions. They have no desire to return to the ideals of their golden age, nor to the rule of Oriental despotism, nor to their sacred laws of Manu. It is not Manu, but Mill and Burke they are reading. It is not the lives of their legendary heroes, but those of Mazzini and Washington that are furnishing their ideals and firing their imaginations. They are more interested today in the American and French revolutions than in the contemplative philosophy of the Vedic rishis or the dreams of their ancient philosophers. At present the extreme party is trying to gain its ends by fitful attempts at bomb-throwing and shooting. But let it be remembered that even bombs are of Western origin. The sudden interest of these Orientals in chemistry and explosives is significant. Men are studying in Paris to-day; for Paris and Calcutta are the two centers of the revolutionary movement. The majority of the people, however, strongly condemn these violent methods.
Self-government. -- The political aspirations of the people find expression in their National Congress, an unofficial self-appointed Duma, where the Indian political leaders meet to discuss national problems and present their petitions and grievances to the government. Although divided between the "extremists "who would use force, and the "moderates "who use only constitutional means of agitation, this congress is the chief exponent of the people in formulating their political views. The watchword of the extremists is "Swaraj," or "self-government," and their demand is to become a self-governing member of the British Empire like Canada. It is the reading of England's history and her struggle for liberty which has fired their imagination, but the necessity of a long and patient process of producing an intelligent self-governing and self-disciplined people is not yet fully realized. How far can a country like India, where the mass of the people is illiterate and divided by race, and where the leaders are often actuated by self-interest, be capable of democratic government? What would happen in the United States if only one man in ten could read? And yet supposing it were true that the United States could be better governed by Britain and would have less political corruption under foreign rule, would her people be willing to see a foreign flag floating over their country? Must we not sympathize with all lawful desire for self-government in other peoples, and is not this desire the first necessary step toward its ultimate realization?
The Industrial Revolution. -- The movement is industrial as well as political. Their commercial watchword is "Swadeshi," meaning "own country." The boycott movement[16] of refusing to buy British goods, and if possible to prevent others from buying them, which was originated as a protest against the partition of Bengal, has largely broken down; but the movement to stimulate national production and the enterprise displayed in developing their own industries have come to stay. The Indian reviews and magazines, which used to be absorbed in philosophy and religion and were utterly oblivious to the present world, are largely occupied today with articles on industry and commerce, the secret of Japan's success, of American prosperity and of British power. Students are sent abroad by public subscription to Japan, Europe, and even a few to America, to study manufactures. When Western education was first introduced, Indian students had no interest in science and practical subjects, but they now insistently demand of the government industrial training and the encouragement of local industries. It is well that this is so in a country where nine tenths of the people are dependent upon the land. An overcrowded population, subsisting almost solely upon the soil, with poor implements and little knowledge of scientific agriculture, raises a burning economic problem. The national spirit of the new movement is now introducing the first signs of an industrial revolution. Men are turning from other professions to business. "Swadeshi "iron goods, cotton fabrics, matches, soap, and a hundred other home-made articles are beginning to crowd out foreign goods; Indian banks, steamship, and commercial companies are springing up in the cities. And all this in a land whose former religious ideal compelled them to forsake the world as a mirage and lead the ascetic life.
Social Reform. -- Social changes are in progress, social reforms are demanded, and social service is a new ideal which is possessing the mind of young India. They are beginning to strike at the root of the social system of caste; for they see how hopelessly divided they now are. At a recent dinner in Madras, in the name of the new national unity, about thirty Brahmans, thirty Christians, and thirty Mohammedans, men of high caste and low, sat down to eat together; and yet no man dared put them out of caste. In northern India I found Hindu students inter-dining in their hostels. The rules of caste have been relaxed in the large cities, and in ocean and railway travel. Mr. Tilak's followers at the national congress ate together as a sign of their unity, and all this from a purely political motive. Social service is an ideal which is gaining ground among the students who are now working hard for the good of their country. Some are devoting themselves to politics, others to education or sanitation. The true patriot now shows his love for his country by fighting famine, poverty, ignorance, and disease, or in endeavoring to uplift the depressed classes of "untouchables." Contrast all this with India's past history. How completely the social consciousness of Christianity is beginning to possess the minds of young Hindus!
Betterment Inspired by Christianity. -- There is Bow a growing sentiment against early marriage and the prohibition of Hindu widow remarriage. Orphanages, schools, and benevolent institutions are being established by Hindus. Female education, so long opposed, is now being advocated. "The seclusion of India is a thing of the past. The nation is in the mid-stream of modern life, exposed not only to the full force of the influence of a British government, but to the competition of all the world. The Hindu theory of the world has broken down." And all this social service, and the recognition of the outcaste under the principle of the brotherhood of man, is in direct opposition to the spirit of caste, and foreign to the whole tradition of Hinduism. Every reform has sprung directly or indirectly from Christian teaching or example. It marks the infusion of a new life and will in time create a new social order in India.
The Intellectual Ferment. -- The intellectual awakening is not less marked than the political, industrial, and social movement. Western education, which was at first looked upon with suspicion, is now eagerly sought. "Free and compulsory primary education "are watchwords of the new movement. In some towns where I have been, the old people wish to build or repair Hindu temples, but the leaders of the younger generation are demanding the money for education. There is no desire to return to the ancient models. Schools of the old type are dying out. One has only to face a bright, restless audience of Indian students, to realize that they are thoroughly awake. You need only expose yourself to a storm of questions regarding religion and life to see that they are thinking. The topics of their debating societies and daily conversation are bristling with new national ideals. As Mr. Farquhar says: "The intellect of India is finding itself once more. Each practise of Hinduism must now come before the bar of reason and must approve itself as good for man, or else it must go. But to argue in this way is to give up the Hindu standpoint that men must bow to the Vedas, the Brahmans, tradition, and custom. The fact is that modern Hindus no longer believe in the authority of the Brahmans and of the Vedas."
New Impulse among the Common People. -- Among the rising generation, even the common people are beginning to question the old beliefs. A movement has begun like that which produced the Upanishads, or the revolt of Buddhism, or Jainism, from Hinduism, which will yet dominate the whole life of the people. In its effect upon thought, art, and literature the movement is a veritable renaissance. And it will be followed by a religious reformation. Indeed it has already begun.
Religious Phase of the Movement. -- "There is a creed to-day in India which calls itself Nationalism. It is not a mere political program, but a religion; it is a creed in which all who follow it will have to live and suffer. To be a Nationalist in India means to be an instrument of God. For the force that is awakening the nation is not of man; it is divine. We need not be a people who are politically strong; we need not be a people sound in physique; but we must be a people who believe. You see then this movement which no obstacle can stop. You see the birth of the avatar[17] in the nation. You see God being born again on earth to save his people. Sri Krishna, who is now among the poor and despised of the earth, will declare the godhead, and the whole nation will rise." The Bhagavad Gita is now studied in India as never before. The passage where Krishna commands his disciple to rise and slay his enemies has been appealed to as a motive by some of the anarchists in Bengal to-day.
Influence of Christian Ideas. -- Yet Christian ideas are being imported into the Hindu religion. The Christian conception of monotheism is steadily gaining ground. God is spoken of now as "Father." To see the spirit of the new movement one has only to recall the remarkable prayer offered at the opening of the National Congress in Calcutta by Hindus and Mohammedans. It breathes throughout a Christian spirit and scarcely a relic of the pantheism and polytheism of Hinduism, or of caste and idolatry remain.
A Spiritual Monsoon. -- The Christian conception of the brotherhood of man, Christian morality and. Christian phraseology and ideas are permeating the minds of educated Indians to-day. For all this we thank God. As one has suggested, the whole movement is like the burst of a spiritual monsoon, -where, after the long drought the parched ground which seemed burned like brick suddenly springs to tropical verdure almost in a night, as the thirsty land drinks of the refreshing rain. India's spiritual monsoon has broken, and we await the coming harvest. Unconsciously a new ideal of life is being created in the mind of young India to-day. The old ideal of a changeless life of contemplation is giving place to one of progress, activity, self-assertion, and self- government. Thus the new movement is affecting the whole round of life, political, industrial, social, intellectual, and religious. Truly India is awakening.
Occasion of the Unrest. -- Lot us now examine the occasion and causes of the unrest. The immediate occasion was found in the partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon's government. While this division of the province was ostensibly to facilitate the administration of an unwieldy province, the leading Indians complain that it was carried out in a manner that disregarded the feelings and deepest sentiments of the people. To realize how the people of Bengal feel, suppose that the government at Washington, or Ottawa, without consulting you, should divide your State or Province in two, so as to lose your identity, prestige, and power. How would you like it? Every year the students in Bengal march barefoot, in sign of mourning, on the anniversary of the partition of their province, shouting, "Bande Materam," or "Hail Motherland! Hail Motherland! "which is their national cheer.
Effect of Japan's Victory. -- A cause of greater significance which affected strongly the entire East was the victory of Japan over Russia. The Oriental nation which had most earnestly cultivated Western ideas and methods challenged the Occidental nation that had most neglected them. The result demonstrated to the satisfaction of the Oriental mind that the superiority of the white race lay in its education and not in its color. Such an idea was like an emancipation proclamation to the men with yellow and brown skins.
Two Types of Civilization. -- It is the conflict of a civilization which is progressive with one which is stationary. One civilization breaks up the larger social units and gets down to the individual. Its motto is, "The individual has inalienable rights to liberty and personal development, and the greatest social good can be achieved only through the recognition of these rights." Its political institutions are based on the ideal of giving every citizen an interest and a voice in the public welfare. The rapid growth of modern science has made these ideals possible for the entire population of large states as in no former day. The motto of the other civilization is, "The welfare of society is preserved by obedience to the customs under the leadership of the Brahmans. Let no individual depart from the station in which he was born."
British Educative Influence. -- These two mottoes are irreconcilable. This mere comparison must create unrest. In the words of Sir Alfred Lyall: "The outline of the present situation in India is that we have been disseminating ideas of abstract political right, and the germs of representative institutions, among a people that had for centuries been governed autocratically, and in a country where local liberties and habits of self-government had been long obliterated or had never existed. At the same time we have been spreading modern education broadcast throughout the land. These may be taken to be the primary causes of the existing unrest; and meanwhile the administrative machine has been so efficiently organized, it has run, hitherto, so easily and quietly, as to disguise from inexperienced bystanders the long discipline and training in affairs of state that are required for its management. Nor is it clearly perceived that the real driving power lies in the forces held in reserve by the British nation and in the respect which British guardianship everywhere commands."[18]
Jealousy for Old Ideals. -- Mr. Valentine Chirol, from the introduction to whose book on Indian unrest the preceding words were taken, calls attention to the fact that unrest has existed at all times under the British rule in certain sections of the population. It could not be otherwise. He also holds that the main animus of the present unrest is "a deep- rooted antagonism to all the principles upon which Western society, especially in a democratic country like England, has been built up." By this he means that many of the leaders of to-day oppose British rule because it threatens Brahman ascendency. Jealousy for the old ideals strangely combine with a recognition of the new.
Power of New Aspirations. -- There are those among the native leaders who understand that any hope for India as a nation depends upon the uplift of the masses through individual development by a free use of Western methods. But the sense of nationality, all the more intense because so novel, fills those who have experienced it with an uncontrollable desire for self-assertion, and an aversion to everything foreign. The extremists of this type go very far in their expressions of hostility. The great masses are yet loyal to the British government, but the new wine of the nationalistic spirit intoxicates men and makes them forget prudence and self-interest. Altogether the situation is one to command our most earnest attention.
Impulse toward Nationality. -- There is stirring in the world to-day a new sense of nationality. This has been developing slowly in Europe ever since the Renaissance, but has received a new and sudden impetus since the French Revolution. The nineteenth century will always be famous for the growth of the spirit of democracy and for the discoveries and application of science that are enabling democracy to realize its end. This new spirit has now touched the East. It appeals to some of the strongest instincts of mankind, those of social self-assertion, which have been nurtured by the seclusion, the love of custom, the antipathy to anything foreign which are so characteristic of the Oriental clan or caste. While on the one hand the narrow clan spirit checks for a time the sense of nationality, it has proved not impossible to broaden it into the most intense patriotism by means of a ruler who commands the reverence due both to religion and to custom. The leading clans and the clan leaders are the first to be vitalized with the new spirit, and they know how to appeal to the live impulses of their fellow countrymen, or at least to secure conformity. This is illustrated by the case of Japan. India has no native head and no other outstanding symbol to focus the rising spirit of nationalism. The Brahmans, the Vedas, the goddess Kali, the Motherland, certain former heroes, have all been held up, and none of these ideas is as yet strong enough to unite the country.
Five Specifications. -- If we analyze the contributory causes, I believe we shall find five which underlie the present unrest.
Western Education. -- 1) Western education, bringing the inevitable overthrow of the old religious ideas and the superstitions of the old order, and introducing the dynamic doctrines of the worth of the individual, and the equality of all men, tended to break down the old system. The reading of English history and the struggle of other nations for their liberty aroused the Indian mind.
Impact of Christian Missions. -- 2) Christian missions were a most powerful cause. For over a century the preaching of a lofty monotheism and high morality, the influence of mission schools and colleges, the circulation of the Bible and Christian literature, the example of social service, famine relief, the healing of the sick, the care of orphans, lepers, and the blind, the formation of a Christian community, the denunciation of obscenity and Hindu abominations, profoundly influenced large numbers outside of the Christian Church.
Dislike of Foreign Rule. -- 3) In spite of the justice of the British government, the natural antipathy to foreign rulers has operated to produce the present unrest. The same feeling which exists in the Philippines toward the United States, and in Korea toward Japan, exists in India, and naturally in almost every conquered country.
Poverty and Taxation. -- 4) The poverty of the masses, and the agitation of educated leaders, has led to the unrest spreading to some extent among the common people. Political leaders constantly complain of England's predominance in commerce, the financial drainage of the "home charges,"[19] the economic advantage of England over India by the present fiscal system, and the heavy taxes of the land revenue system.
Break-up of Old Order. -- 5) The new movement marks the disintegration and break-up of the old order both social and religious. It is evidence of a growing dissatisfaction with life under present conditions, and shows the utter failure of Hinduism to lift and satisfy the people. One of the political extremists said to me, "At the root of the whole movement is religious discontent. Unconsciously the people are dissatisfied with their own religion."[20]
The Government of India. -- The government of India is administered by a Governor-General who is also Viceroy and an executive Council of six members. One of the six is an Indian member of the Bengal bar. India is subdivided into fourteen provinces and thirteen native States. Lord Morley's reform scheme, which went into operation in 1910, gives an increasing measure of self-government to the people. The Viceroy's Legislative Council is to have sixty additional members: twenty-five elected to represent the different interests of the people, and thirty-five appointed by the Viceroy. The Viceroy controls a majority and has power of veto. The whole plan is statesmanlike, generous, and far- sighted. It is already working well, although the people do not yet fully realize their powers.
Progress at Last. -- If, during all these centuries and millenniums, India had remained unchanged and satisfied under former invaders and rulers, who allowed her no liberty, how comes it that suddenly under British rule, which has given education and a large measure of freedom, India should now be seething with unrest, often bitterly denouncing her present rulers and desiring to throw off her present yoke? Persian, Greek, Bactrian and Scythian, Tartar and Mongol, Afghan and Maratha, have pillaged and plundered India from without and within, but she has not even murmured at her fate.
"She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again."
How comes it that only British rule has begotten a divine discontent and new aspirations, engendering forces which are begetting a new civilization?
Macaulay's Prophecy. -- As Lord Macaulay nobly prophesied: "It may be said that the public mind in India may so expand under our system that it may outgrow that system, and our subjects trained in Western civilization may pray for Western institutions. I know not whether such a day will come; but if it does come, it will be the proudest day in the annals of England." And as Lord Metcalf and others have said, "We are not here merely to keep the peace and collect taxes. We are here for a higher and nobler purpose -- to pour into the Bast the knowledge and culture and civilization of the West."
Benefits of British Rule. -- We may pause to examine briefly the results of British rule, and to see how far they have fulfilled earlier prophecy and justified the Queen's proclamation. At least seven benefits have accrued to the people. (1) Peace has been at last established. After centuries of bloodshed from wars of invasion, a stable government bringing protection from foes without and abolishing crime, thief-castes, and thugs within, has been an untold boon to the country. (2) The material resources of the country have been developed. There are over 30,000 miles of railway in operation which places India fourth in the world in mileage. With over 15,000 miles of irrigation canals (and these ought to be doubled in five years), which have reclaimed over 15,000,000 acres of land, famine has been prevented forever in some districts; 50,000 miles of macadamized roads have opened up the country; 70,000 miles of telegraph lines are in operation under a system in some respects better than those of the United States and Canada. The agricultural resources of the country have been largely developed. (3) Education, which we will study in a later chapter, has been widely extended, and there are now over 5,000,000 pupils in schools. (4) Sanitation and medical relief have been offered to the people; and 2,500 hospitals and dispensaries treated over 22,000,000 patients last year. Plague, smallpox, and other diseases have been partly arrested. (5) Trade has largely increased. In fact it has gained about tenfold in the last sixty years. India now stands first in Asia in its trade, with $595,000,000 exports and $609,000,000 imports. And this in the face of having to contend with 22 famines in the last fifty years, when 28,000,000 people died, in spite of an annual expenditure for famine of over $3,000,000 by the government. It is true that the taxes are 5.5 per cent gross, or 50 per cent of the net produce of the land,[21] which is a heavy burden indeed upon such a poor people. Yet the actual taxes paid, per capita, are about eight times greater in Japan and Russia, and twenty times greater in England and France than in India. On the whole, India's economic condition is gradually improving. (6) An efficient government, with well-managed executive, legislative, and judicial departments, is in operation. The census of India is taken in a single night, when the 315,000,000 of people are tabulated scientifically, though divided into 185 languages. It takes 300 tons of paper and a force of a million men to take such a census. It is probably the most unique in the world, and is only one mark of many showing the efficiency of the British government. (7) British rule is also marked by religious toleration and the broad philanthropic work accomplished by wise legislation, the alleviation of the wrongs of womanhood, the suppression of obscene abominations and the former unjust oppressions of the people, such as the prohibition of the burning of widows and of the practises of the thugs, infanticide, and other abuses. The political leader of a large presidency said to me: "With all its faults, the government of India by Britain is at least the best instance in history of the rule of one people over another. Lord Morley has given to the people more than I myself would have done. And it will take us at least a generation to appreciate and appropriate the reforms which he has introduced." In a word, Britain has so well governed as to change the most changeless nation on earth, and to awaken the most conservative of Oriental peoples to a natural desire for self-government on the British model.
Demands of the New Movement. -- The Bengali political leader, Surendra Nath Bannerjea, when asked what he would demand of the British public, replied. "I would say, 'Modify the partition of Bengal; release the deported patriots, and offer amnesty to all political prisoners; give the people of India financial control of their own taxes, and grant India a constitution on the Canadian Model.' " Others would add, "Reduce the taxes, lessen the expenditure on the army, make education free and compulsory for all, develop India's trade, irrespective of British interests."
Phases of the Problem. -- But let us also see the problem which confronts the British government. In a land of famine, how can you raise the revenue without taxes? In a free trade empire, how can you have protection without sacrificing British interests? If the army is reduced, how could you govern three hundred millions of people and guard them from foreign invasion, with less than the present staff of 1,200 civil officials, 75,000 British troops, and twice that number of native troops; or only one European to over 3,500 Indians?
Civil Service. -- Out of 114,000 appointments of $300 or over, annually, 97 per cent are held by Indians; 750 of the higher offices are in native hands; of post drawings, however, over $4,000 a year, 1,263 are held by Europeans, 15 by Eurasians, and 92 by Indians. In proportion to population, the United States has many more representatives among the eight millions of the Philippines, than Great Britain has of her subjects in India.
Abuses of Some Native States. -- We have only to contrast present conditions with the turbulence under former rulers, or the present condition of some native states, to realize the benefits of British rule. In one native state which I visited recently, I found that the ruler had six hundred wives, he had given to the people practically no schools nor good roads, the loss of public confidence had led the people to migrate into British territory, and good land could be had for thirty cents an acre. The lower grades of Indian officials are often corrupt and greatly oppress their own people. Most Indians with an honest case would rather be tried before an English judge than before an Indian.
If Great Britain Withdrew. -- What would happen if Great Britain left India to-day? Amir Ali says: "Anarchy or another foreign domination would inevitably follow." India would welter in blood, with hopeless, internal wars. The material resources developed in the country would be neglected, and the clock of India's history would be put back for centuries. The Sikhs would rise in the Punjab, the Mohammedans would possess the rest of northern India, the Marathas would rule the west, Mysore or some native state would hold the south, endless internal wars would result, and progress would be impossible. Russia, Japan, or some other nation would surely invade India.
Is Great Britain Secure? -- Mr. Meredith Townsend in his Asia and Europe, together with many others, maintains that England will not retain India, as they have sent out less than a hundred thousand troops to control twice as many subjects as there were in the whole Roman Empire. For the following reasons, however, I believe that England's position is assured in India. England's purpose and India's need are identical in demanding at present a strong, benevolent, foreign government for the good of the people. The Indian people are peace- loving, the masses are loyal and contented. The warlike races, such as the fighting Sikhs, the Gurkhas, and the Mohammedans, are in favor of British rule. Moreover, the people are unarmed, and divided in race and religion. In the mutiny of 1857 the native army, in proportion to the white troops, numbered eight to one; it is now only two to one, while the British possess the artillery, and the present railway system could concentrate the troops at any point within a few days. Most of all, the wise policy of Lord Morley and the British government wins the loyalty of the conservative majority, by giving the people self-government as fast as they are really capable of enjoying it. There will be local acts of violence, and a few officials and missionaries may lose their lives, but Britain's wise policy is making for the uplift of India and the ultimate education and contentment of the people.
The Present Crisis. -- Is it not evident that the present unrest and awakening presents a crisis unique and unprecedented in the history of India? Let us recall again that this awakening is profoundly religious. It is the religion and education of a new civilization which has begotten this unrest, and that alone can cure it. "We have unconsciously and unavoidably taken from the leaders of India their old- world view, with its impossible science and philosophy, history and religion. We have largely demolished what they had. Do we not owe them something better in its place? Are we to lead them to agnosticism or materialism? and if not, what can satisfy the hunger we have created? Hinduism, which has had a fair field for three thousand years, has not met the need of India. Buddhism died here in the land of its birth. Mohammedanism had its day and failed to uplift India. The British government with religious neutrality and secular education confessedly cannot answer to the moral and spiritual needs of the people. Only Christianity can satisfy India's deep heart-hunger. Only God himself as Father can fill the longing hearts of his children, and only we who know him can make him known. Is not the mighty dynamic of the uplifting and liberating gospel the deepest need of India at this hour? How can the present crisis be met and who will meet it?
INDIVIDUAL AND MASS MOVEMENTS
The value of mass movements on mission fields is a matter much discussed by missionaries ... Probably two-thirds of all the Protestant Christian community in India have been harvested through such movements. The acceptance of our faith by individuals and families is, doubtless, Its normal way of advance In non-Christian lands. The expression, "mass movements" refers to the seeking of admission to our faith by large bodies, such as tribes, castes, gilds, or communities ...
In such movements, profoundly encouraging though they be, there lurk evils and dangers not a few. Very few such people are Impelled to the change by any deep, well-defined convictions of the spiritual power and beauty of Christianity. Their motives are of the ordinary, worldly, It may even be, the semi-sordid type. Still we are not seriously disturbed by the character of the objects or alms of this turning of the people to our faith. What lofty purposes can one expect from such a crowd? ...
Nevertheless there is supreme joy to the missionary in the ingathering of such masses. It brings with It a vast enthusiasm and a new access of power and courage In the assurance that the cause is becoming popular. And defections after such movements are fewer than is often supposed. It is doubtful whether one tenth of those thus received in India have gone back to heathenism ... There is the further advantage, from such movements, that they are conducive, In a large degree, to self-support from the beginning. So many are gathered in that it Is not a difficult thing for them, under right guidance, to maintain their own religious services and schools.
-- Jones
CHAPTER IV
INDIVIDUAL AND MASS MOVEMENTS[22]
Mass Movements. -- During the last century multitudes have come over to Christianity. Since caste[23] conditions all Indian life, and has for centuries I crushed out individuality, and punished all efforts at independence and progress, men have been compelled to act together. Mind moves in mass in India. !We have to take the people as they come. We can I gage the effect of these movements only by a study I of a few representative districts.
In Travancore. -- The last church I visited in South India was in the native state of Travancore, near Cape Comorin, the southernmost point of India. Here in the great Nagercoil church were a thousand Christians of a single congregation, gathered every night in the week for a religious meeting. I wonder how many churches in the United States and Canada could furnish a thousand people from a single congregation not only as its second Sunday service, but during week-nights as well? And who were these people? To appreciate the present transformation we must revert for a moment to their past.
Work of a Pioneer. -- A hundred years ago, in 1806, at this very spot, might have been seen a German missionary named Ringletaube entering this native state. By 1813 he had gathered a community of six hundred in "poor, ragged, and small congregations." After ten years in loneliness and privation, "without a coat to his back," he withdrew from the country broken in health, leaving a native pastor in charge of the twelve Christian workers. Yet he was able to write, "My work is done, and finished so as to bear the stamp of permanency." He was never heard of again, though probably he died and was buried at sea.
Travancore Lowest Castes. -- Travancore is a native state containing about three million people. Until the proclamation of 1855, the lowest castes were slaves, valued at two dollars and three dollars a head. The condition of the Shanars and other castes was also pitiable. There lies before me as I write a document or "slave deed," written on palm leaf, recording the sale of five slaves at a dollar and a half each, to the missionary, in order to secure their liberty. It reads, "These five slaves, whom I have enjoyed, are handed over to ----- for ever and ever." One of the usual clauses in these documents was "You may sell him or kill him." The poor wretches were sold as serfs with the soil, so many to the acre, cheaper than the dirt beneath their feet. A man was worth less than a good cow. These poor wretches could not refer to themselves as "I," but only as "your slave." They had to stand at a distance of ninety-six paces from a Brahman, a court of law, or a market-place. To buy anything, they had to leave their money on a stone and retreat to the required distance, while the dealer left their goods in place of the money.
Oppressive Customs. -- The women had no rights or means of protection. They were not allowed by the Brahmans to clothe themselves above the waist, and when the missionary ladies made some neat little upper garments for them, the poor women were mobbed and their jackets torn off, until the question was asked in the British Parliament why this was permitted in India. These outcastes were devil-worshipers, haunted by the fear of demons about them. Upon the approach of a Brahman or Sudra, they were obliged to leave the road; in fact I have often seen them skulking through the mud of the rice- fields, or cowering behind trees even to this day, after their centuries of oppression.
Present Development. -- But let us return again to our Christian congregation. Here are a thousand Christians in the Nagercoil church, clothed and in their right minds, worshiping in a self-supporting church. Across the street is their Christian college, with its English-speaking graduates in the congregation. Up the road is a Christian hospital where last year one English doctor, with a score of Indian assistants in outlying dispensaries, treated over 150,000 cases; about twice as many as are treated in some of our big city hospitals, and run on less than one tenth of their cost. The average cost is only five cents for each person, of which only one half a cent per patient was received from the mission board. The college, enrolling seven hundred, is self-supporting excepting $200 received annually from abroad for poor students. The congregation has been self-supporting for fifty years, and last year the 85 churches in the district received all told only the nominal sum of $15 a month, or about seventeen cents per church, from the denominational mission board. The Christian community numbers altogether about 70,000 persons in connection with the London Missionary Society in Travancore.
Immensely Paying Investments. -- Here where sixty years ago the people were in a degraded state, I found an enlightened, moral, Christian community. Viewed microscopically, the individual will exhibit shortcomings, and will not come up to the best Christians in the West, who have a thousand years of Christianity behind them; in fact even in the West we have some faults after all these centuries. But viewed in the large, as a community, the change has been unmistakable, physically, mentally, morally, and spiritually. The investment of sending that old missionary a century ago at $500 a year has paid. It was an investment in humanity at compound interest.
Rival Forces. -- Here rises the great Nagercoil church seating over a thousand Christians and just opposite is the Snake Temple which gives the town its name. These are the two forces contending for the mastery in this land, representing light and darkness, education and ignorance, enlightenment and superstition. Who can doubt which will ultimately triumph in the country? Already of its three million inhabitants, 25 per cent are Christians, either Protestant, Syrian, or Roman.
Movement Christward. -- At the very southernmost point of India, at Cape Comorin, side by side stand a heathen temple and a Christian church. Each represents a religion, a social order, a civilization, separated by a great gulf. Which shall rule India? The Hindus represented by that heathen temple in India, lost in the entire country during the last decade a fraction of 1 per cent, while Protestant Indian Christians (omitting the Eoman and Syrian communities) gained 63 per cent Where will this end? All we ask is time, your prayers, and God's grace, and we shall hare India for Christ.
The Emancipating Savior. -- As I was leaving this great church I heard one of their folk songs which tells its own tale of the marvelous uplifting power of God's grace in this community.
THE OLD SLAVE SONG
"Our slave work is done, our slave bonds are gone;
For this we will never forsake thee, Lord Jesus.
The father was sold to one place, the mother to another,
The children were scattered,
But now our slave work is done!
Wearied with labor in the burning heat, in rain or cold or dew,
They beat us cruelly with thousands of strokes,
But now our slave work is done!
Dogs might enter the market-place, the courts, or the streets,
But if we drew near they beat us and chased us away,
But now our slave work is done!
As unclean lepers who must hide in the jungles,
We must leave the road after warning those who approach,
But now our slave work is done!
Come in crowds, brethren, let none hold back,
Let us worship the Lord Jesus, our Savior,
For now our slave work is done!"
Transforming Tinnevelli. -- Leaving Travancore I passed through Tinnevelli, which has been the scene of another great movement. A night's ride brought me within sight of the spire of a great church, rising high over the palms in the cool morning air. Within twelve miles of that spire are 15,000 Christians. In less than one hundred miles are over 100,000 Christians of the Church of England alone. As I entered the church I saw the stone at the entrance, which was once the old altar stone reeking with the blood of beasts, sacrificed to the devils in the demon temple which had stood on this very spot. When the last devil-worshiper was converted to Christianity, with their own hands they tore down that devil temple, and erected in its place this great stone church seating three thousand Christians. I preached there in the morning, for we all work together in India whatever our denomination, and in the afternoon I went to the next church, four miles away. Here, in a relatively small room, were a thousand Christians crowded together on the floor, as they are every Sunday. I learned that under the ministry of that godly Indian pastor, three hundred men came out every morning in the year before daylight, at five o 'clock, to hear the Word of God and to pray, before going a mile or more away to their work in the fields. The women held prayer-meetings at night down every street in the village. My fellow worker, Mr. Azariah, came out of that church, and it has probably furnished more Christian workers and leaders than any church in India.
Missionary Spirit. -- The 60,000 and more Christians of the Church Missionary Society last year received only $8,000 from abroad and contributed over $50,000 in cash for self-support or the extension of Christian work, out of their own poverty. They will soon be entirely self-supporting. They have their own Indian missionary society, with its mission in Haidarabad, and have sent seven missionaries to the Telugu country. Of the 450,000 of the Shanar caste in Tinnevelli, one-third are already Christians, either Catholic or Protestant.
Early Founders. -- How were these people brought to Christ? The great missionary, Christian Friedrich Schwartz, had visited Tinnevelli in 1778, and in 1790 ordained an Indian catechist and left the work in his hands. In 1802 the first movement among the masses occurred, when over 5,000 were baptized in three months, but with no missionary in charge many fell away for a time. After 1820, when Rhenius began work in earnest, there was a steady growth in the church. In 1877 came the great famine. Bishop Caldwell pointed out that the people observed that, While Hinduism left them to die, "Christianity had stepped in like an angel from heaven." When they saw the practical fruits of the two religions contrasted, they were deeply impressed. In a few months the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts received 20,000 and the Church Missionary Society[24] 10,000, who threw away their idols and placed themselves under Christian instruction. The majority were swayed neither by high spiritual motives, nor by the hope of famine relief; for it was given to all alike, whether Hindu or Christian. But the people felt that their gods had deserted them and that their condition would be improved in every way, physically, mentally, socially, and morally by the new religion. Conviction of sin and the fuller appreciation of Christ's gospel came only later, as conscience was awakened and developed, as in the case of Israel of old (Ezekiel xxxvl. 29-31).
Approaching Victory. -- From among the more than 100,000 in the Christian community in Tinnevelli to-day have come some of the best Christian workers in all India. I know of no more deeply spiritual community in India than has been produced by this mass movement, after it has had time to be assimilated and Christianized. Here again two great temples rise before us, the Christian church,[25] and across the sands the Brahman temple of Alwar Tiru Nagari, with its idolatry and troop of immoral dancing-girls. Which is ultimately to triumph t Which is worthy? Remember that these people were never permitted to enter that Hindu temple. They were devil-worshipers. Over the sands on summer evenings still comes the beating of the tom-toms, while the cries of the throng about the devil-dancer rise in the air, as the afflatus descends and the demon takes possession of the man. Still the darkness of heathenism possesses the multitude, but its days are numbered, and "worthy is the Lamb to receive "all that are his own.
"Lone Star Mission." -- As we pass northward from the southern point of India, a day's journey by train brings us to the Telugu country, just north of Madras. The Telugus are an attractive people, dark, slender, intelligent, speaking a musical language. There are over twenty millions of them crowded along the east coast of southern India. Here in 1840 the pioneer Samuel Day began work. Eight years of faithful toil met with such discouraging results that the American Baptist Missionary Union[26] in Boston raised the question of abandoning the field; but finally they decided to send another man and hold the fort. Nine years more of seed-sowing followed with no sign of harvest. Again at the annual meeting they raised the question, "Shall the mission be discontinued? "One of the speakers turned to the map and pointing to Nellore, isolated and alone, called it the "Lone Star Mission." Dr. S. F. Smith, the author of "My Country, 'tis of thee," caught up the words, and before he slept wrote the lines that perhaps saved the mission. In the audience on the following day, as they unanimously voted to re-enforce the mission, many wept as the prophetic words rang out,
"Shine on, Lone Star; in grief and tears,
And sad reverses oft baptized;
Shine on, till earth redeemed,
In dust shall bid its idols fall;
And thousands where thy radiance beamed,
Shall crown the Savior Lord of all."
On the field the missionaries still toiled on with little fruit for nine years more. After more than twenty years of effort, all told, the Union urged the missionary, Dr. Jewett, to give up this field. He simply declined to leave the work, telling the Union that if they would not aid him he would go back alone to live and die among his people. So back he went. The Missionary Union stood by him, and sent out young Clough "to bury Jewett," as one of the missionaries put it.
Monumental Results. -- As I stood there at Ongole with Dr. Clough, white-haired, a missionary Napoleon; as I looked out over the great buildings -- college, churches, schools, and manifold institutions; as I looked beyond to the crowded villages with their thousands of Christians, I was deeply moved as I thought of that old missionary holding on year after year, in the early days of discouragement. And a song of joy rises in my heart as I think of the fields where many other lonely, isolated missionaries, far from the help or praise of men, about whom no books are written, uncomplainingly are holding on in godlike patience and heroism. They dwell among
"The bravely dumb that did their deed,
And scorned to blot it with a name;
Who prized heaven's silence more than fame."
Harvest-time. -- In the great famine of 1877 Dr. Clough took a contract to cut a portion of the Buckingham canal, in order to save thousands from starvation. His native preachers were placed as overseers of the work, and during the periods of rest they gathered the people together and preached Christ. Fearing their motives, the missionaries allowed no one to receive baptism during the famine. Cholera followed the famine and Dr. Clough tried to hold back the converts, but they thronged in upon him from distant villages. They said: "We don't want any money. We have lived by our work. The blisters on our hands will prove it, but we want you to baptize us." In all 2,222 were baptized on July 3, 1878; before the end of the year 9,606 converts had been received into the church; while this Telugu mission now numbers over 150,000 persons in the entire Christian community.
Uplifted Communities. -- Again I say, you can find plenty of faults in these Christians. They are not angels. But the community as a whole has been marvelously uplifted. I saw one man there who seemed to me to be the lowest human being I had ever seen. He could count up to ten, painfully and slowly, if he could look at his ten fingers or ten toes, but not beyond it. I asked him how many children he had. He scratched his head, and replied with some hesitation that he had twelve. His wife told me that they had ten. I think the missionary estimated the number at eleven. But that man had three sons in college! One will go out as a preacher, one perchance as a Christian doctor, and one perhaps into government employ, to compete with the Brahman who has had a monopoly of culture and religion for more than a thousand years. "It is not yet made manifest what [they] shall be." The most powerful apologetic in India will not be a few converted Brahmans, nor the arguments of the missionary, but the mighty uplift of whole communities once debased and degraded, for whom Hinduism has no message, and who were without hope and without God in the world.
Movement Among the Malas. -- As described by the Bishop of Madras, a work began fifty years ago also among the Malas. a low caste of the Telugu country in the mission of the Church Missionary Society. A man named Venkayya, who could neither read nor write, lost faith in his village demons and began to pray to the unknown God this simple prayer:
"O God! teach me who thou art!
O God! show me where thou art!
O God! help me to find thee!"
One day on the banks of the sacred river Kistna, while watching the people bathing to wash away their sins, a Brahman told him that if he did not believe in the methods of Hinduism he would find a missionary on the hill who could tell him of the true God. As he heard the story of the cross, his heart leaped within him and he knew that he had found at last the God for whom he had been searching. The missionary went back to his village with him, and after a month baptized him and about sixty other pariahs of his village. He became an ardent evangelist and for forty years he preached Christ throughout the district. Thus began the mass movement among his caste in this section, which has not only swept in thousands of outcastes, but has now begun as a movement among the Sudras or middle castes, who are beginning to come in large numbers. Hitherto it has been the pariah's day in India. Even now the middle castes are beginning to come over. Some day the proud Brahman will ask to be admitted. But as in the case of the Roman Empire, the slaves and outcastes came first, with a few of Cæsar's household; for not many wise, not many noble were called.
"Rice Christians." -- I hear some one say that these people are "rice Christians." Perhaps they are, and you might be if you were in their place. Suppose you had been crushed by Hinduism, and had scarcely ever been able to get a meal of rice, but had to live on coarse grain and millet. What if you had never been permitted to go to school, nor your ancestors for a thousand years before you? Suppose you had never been able to own land, nor anything else save broken dishes, scavenger dogs, and asses, according to the code of Manu.[27] Suppose you never got a meal of meat except the dead carcasses of cattle which had died of disease or a natural death. What if you had never been permitted to enter the temples of Hinduism, and were considered too low to be even touched with a stick, while your very shadow was polluting. If you had never been able to look God or man in the face, and your only hope of rising in the scale for time or eternity was through accepting the gospel of Christ, would you not be a "rice Christian," if Christianity uplifted you in body, mind, and soul? I have seen these poor people, before they became Christians, carry home a reeking carcass with a song, because after weeks of partial hunger they were going to have another full meal of meat again. In some sections the only meat they ever get to eat is carrion. It is true the native Christians eat rice where they did not before as outcastes, but the only rice they ever get is what they earn by honest toil, or by their superior education. The fact that they endure persecution is proof that they are genuine.
Significance of the Mass Movement. -- A glance at the map will show the location of the five areas most affected by these mass movements: (1) Travancore on the southwest; (2) Tinnevelli adjoining it; (3) The Telugu field north of Madras; (4) The aboriginal area of Chota Nagpur; where some 80,000 have become Christians; (5) The Rohilkand district in the United Provinces of North India, where the Christians now number over 100,000. In the latter area, the Methodist Episcopal Church grew from 20,000 to 90,000 in a decade; while the total strength of the Methodists from this mass movement is now over 100,000.
Essential Factor. -- Among the foregoing illustrations are both individual and mass movements. "The expression of mass movements is intended to indicate the movements toward the Church of families, and groups of families, sometimes of entire classes and villages, rather than of individuals. The impulse that gives rise to such movements is a ferment of some kind of new life in the mass, rather than any definite aspiration separately realized by each individual."[28] Some object to these movements on the ground that when people come in masses the character of the individual cannot be tested, and also that the motives are not always high and unmixed. The non-Christians contrast their own poverty and filth and carrion-eating, their lack of education and low social status, with their brethren who have become Christians, and come over to Christianity largely to better their condition. It would doubtless be better if they came one by one, but suppose no individual was willing to come out alone, but that all wanted to come at once, what would you do in that case?
A Policy of Welcome. -- On the question of motives, Bishop Caldwell has said, "I cannot imagine any person who has lived and worked among uneducated heathen in the rural districts believing them to be influenced by high motives in anything they do. They have never heard of such things as high motives, and they cannot for a long time be made to comprehend what high motives mean. An inquiry into their motives, with a view of ascertaining whether they are spiritual or not, will seem to them like an inquiry into their acquaintance with Greek or algebra. They will learn what good motives mean, I trust, in time, and, perhaps, high motives, too -- if they remain long enough under Christian teaching and discipline; but till they discard heathenism, with its debasing idolatries and superstitions, and place themselves under the wings of the Church, there is not the slightest chance, as it appears to me, of their motives becoming better than they are. The only hope for them lies in their admission, as soon as possible, into Christian schools. Whatever the motive, provided it is not sordid or disgraceful, we receive them."[29]
Place for Training. -- But admitting that the instances given above show that the reception of mass movements into the Christian Church may be justified, the principal problem remains: How are these people to be edified and trained in the Christian life? How shall we take advantage of the momentum of the mass, and utilize it in the interest of individual development? The successes were not achieved by the mere decision to admit the multitude. They resulted rather from the training that preceded and followed baptism. It is obvious that supervision must be very constant and thorough. Opportunities will be offered for changing the customs of a whole village in a way that would not be possible in cases of only individual conversions. Children may grow up free from immediate contact with the rites of heathenism. A Christian community life may be formed. On the other hand, care must be taken to develop individual conviction and initiative. This will require the utmost patience and persistence. How can the missionary, with the force at present at his command, find time for dealing with these problems adequately? What has he a right to expect from the Home Church in gifts, prayers, and reinforcements as these mass movements become more numerous?
Problems. -- It is further objected that such movements are confined to a single caste, with which Christianity becomes identified in the minds of the Hindus, so that this becomes a barrier to others joining. The complaint is that Christianity is a "pariah religion." Others object that the people are baptized too quickly and that they do not know- enough to be received into the Christian Church. What test would you make for receiving such ignorant people; what did our Lord make; and what was his attitude to those who came to him with imperfect knowledge or in desperate need of material or physical help?
Madura Mission Contrasts. -- Come with me now to my own mission station, and let us look more closely at some of these Christians. Of the more than 20,000 Christians in this mission, about half come from the various respectable castes, and the other half from the three outcastes, Pariahs, Pallars, and Chucklers or leather workers. Let us visit a heathen village of the latter caste near my own bungalow. As we enter the village we see a low mound of earth, where at special festivals, with midnight orgies and drunkenness, their local village demon is appeased by bloody offerings. The people are dirty and will not send their children to school. The stench of decaying meat, which is being divided from the last carcass, is sickening. The men and women stand about half naked with no desire for a better life. Oh, how we wait and pray for the first gleam of any motive, high or low, which will lead them to desire their own betterment! As it is, we must preach and pray and wait, until God 's Spirit moves them or they see some of their own people uplifted by the Christian gospel.
A Convert Tested. -- We pass down the road to the next village. It needs no label to show that the man coming out to meet us, clean and refined, with happy face, is a Christian. It was only two years ago that Kyambu came to us asking for baptism. His old father lay dying, and had sent for us in haste. As a boy, the old man had studied in our mission school, and his heart was touched, but he could not resist the power of his caste, and, stifling his conscience, he went back as the hereditary priest of his demon temple, for it was his only source of livelihood. But in the hour of death his conscience smote him, and he pleaded for God's forgiveness and asked admission to the Christian Church. The pastor and I, using our bicycles, arrived, dripping with perspiration. I shall never forget the scene as the old man was baptized, with the entire family. The old man died soon after, then the storm of persecution broke. They said that his God had killed him for becoming a Christian. They boycotted the rest of the family. They said, "You cannot draw water from the village well. You cannot grind your grain with the village grinding-stones. We will never eat with you again and never darken your door in times of trouble. Your sons and daughters can never marry. "We are dead to you, and you to us." The young man went to bed at night a prosperous farmer. When he awoke in the morning, his entire crop of onions and other vegetables had been taken up by the roots, and transplanted into a Hindu's field a mile away, while the whole village was ready to swear that he had never had any crop in his field. Witnesses can be bought at any time in India for ten cents a head, but in such a case as this no payment would be needed. The young man however stood firm. On Sunday I went out to visit him and my heart sank when I heard that he was in his field, for I feared he had succumbed to the temptation of poverty and had gone to work on the Sabbath. I went out to the field and found the Hindus working on all sides at their crops. Kyambu himself was sitting under a palm tree by the well reading his Bible, with a shining, happy face. After a year the persecution died down into tolerance, and tolerance is now giving place to friendliness. In time we shall have a Christian school, and some day a Christian church in that village for one consistent witness always brings others to Christ. This instance of persecution is typical, for even though an outcaste becomes a Christian he will be persecuted by his caste, and the dreadful ordeal of being ostracized by the entire community is enough to deter most men from coming out. Yet this man is one of those who are called "rice Christians." It is true he gets rice to eat now, but only because he can earn it. If these are rice Christians God give us more of them!
The Caste Problem. -- Come with me now to a congregation of higher social status and let us see how the caste question raises a difficult problem. I found the church apparently prosperous and self-supporting. Here were two hundred and fifty members who had come over to Christianity from a respectable caste. But not a single member from any of the lower castes had joined the church. While these outcastes were ostensibly welcomed in the church, I suspected that the same condition existed here that I had seen in some wealthy churches in America, and that these low-caste people knew that the Christians did not really want them to join. I spent the day visiting these poor people who were outside the church. I found one old man, a Pariah, who was a consistent Christian at heart and had long attended the church. That night we had a meeting in the church on the subject of caste. We had prayed much, for we knew it was a self-governing church of independent spirit, and if we had any pride or censoriousness in our hearts we could never overcome caste pride in them; for pride is everywhere the same. First a young Indian brother spoke, a man full of the Holy Ghost and of humility. Then we turned to the Scripture and pointed out that God had first chosen the poor and outcast in every nation, and that what we did "unto the least of these "we were doing in reality unto him. The church was crowded. After the meeting we called a panchayat, or council of the leading members. We sat on the floor in a circle and placed the old man in the center. "Old man," I said, "do you wish to be baptized and join the church?" "Like gold!" he said. "I have been waiting these twenty years for it." The Christians replied, "Yes, we are willing to receive him into the church and welcome him as a brother, but if he should eat carrion on Saturday night, and come to take the communion out of the same cup with us on Sunday morning, it would be exceedingly awkward and painful for us." I turned to the old man and said, "The people say that you eat carrion and are not clean. We know that you are a poor man, but are you willing to stop eating dead cattle if you join the church?" "Yes," he said. "They can put me out if I do." I then turned to the Christians and said, "Here is a man who wants to join your church; what will you do with him? "It was a critical moment. It was a miniature council of Jerusalem all over again, and the same restriction with regard to eating meats was made here also. No one save a Hindu or a Jew, who had never touched anything unclean, can understand the struggle going on in their hearts. One of them held out for some time, on the ground that it would offend some in the congregation and drive away the influential people, just as our wealthy Christians argue in the homeland. Finally one man got up and took the old man by the hand and said, "We will receive you into the church." When they had all consented, we knelt in prayer, and the old man was received with joy next Sunday. As you compare the conditions in India with the social distinctions which exist in America in some of our city churches, and with the awful pressure of the social problem in our great slums, how would you apply the principle of brotherhood in the churches both at home and abroad?
A Life Transformed. -- Instead of studying a community, let us take a typical instance of an individual. A generation ago he was a little Pariah boy playing in the streets. The dogs might enter the Brahman street but not he. The animals might stray into the temple, especially the sacred cow, but there was no room for the polluted Pariah, dwelling apart in mud huts, in filth and ignorance and superstition. This year I met in America the old gentleman who paid a dollar a month to send this little Pariah boy to school, or twelve dollars a year to cover the entire cost of his food, clothes, books, and education in the mission boarding-school. About twenty dollars a year sent the boy to the high school, and a somewhat larger sum helped him through college, though he worked his way as best he could. Was the investment worth while? To-day he is the pastor of a church, having under his care twenty schools and over 1,000 Christians. He goes out into scores of villages to preach the gospel. He is a wonderful singer and evangelist, and can hold the attention of any audience, Hindu or Christian, cultured or ignorant. Best of all, he is a devout man of God and a dear and beloved friend. As I sit with him in his house, or kneel with him in prayer in my office, or confer over the great work of the kingdom, I rejoice in his character and daily life. Because the non-Christians could not find an honest man to be the chief officer in the town, and to hold a position which we would call that of the mayor, the Hindus and Mohammedans sent in a written petition to the government that our pastor should be made the mayor of the town, and to-day he is not only the head of the town, without salary, but he is the first low-caste man that has ever been permitted to walk down the Brahman street in that town, or invited to sit in the Brahman houses as a friend and an equal. The gospel that can take a little outcaste Pariah and uplift him to be a son of God, a leader of men, an honest citizen, and a godly pastor, is the power of God unto salvation.
Opportunity for Advance. -- There are thousands of other little boys like this one in the streets to-day who could go to school if there were money to send them. Why should we not give them a chance? There are 50,000,000 of "untouchable" outcastes at the door of the Church, from whom multitudes could be gathered in this generation, if we could supply the money to furnish Christian workers to gather them in and shepherd them. Such men are to be found in your mission and under your board. Why not make an investment in such a life, or in a whole community? Will you not stand by us for a great advance among these outcaste masses of India?
THE STUDENTS
The mission schools and colleges have a total of nearly half a million scholars. Many thousands -- probably the majority of the pupils -- pass through a mission school without being influenced in any effective measure toward Christianity, although they read the Bible and some learn to entertain a feeling of reverence for Christianity and Jesus Christ The education and the moral Influence are good, but further they do not seek and do not receive. Yet sometimes the deeper chords of Hindu religious life may be touched. Many an educational missionary will speak of his experience of an eager face and an attentive eye, of the visits that were paid to him after school or college hours, of occasional heart- searching conversations, of earnest correspondence about religious matters ... The instruction in mission schools is necessarily largely secular, efficiency is demanded in return for government grants, only a fraction of the time can be given to what is termed "Bible teaching," and the most direct Christian Influences cease when this Is over, save perhaps for a Sunday-school class which most pupils attend. The absence of larger results from missionary education has not been owing to any lack of soundness in the method. It has been due largely to the insufficiency of the forces engaged in the work. The missionary himself is often too overwhelmed with other duties to devote sufficient energy to the spiritual side of the work. He has often to content himself with non-Christian teachers. The full harvest from missionary schools will be reaped only when the Christian forces are strengthened by doubling, if not quadrupling, the workers, both European and Indian, at present available for this particular work. Even as It Is, mission schools have exerted a far-reaching influence. It would be a great mistake to estimate that influence merely by the results in baptism. They have been slowly creating an atmosphere favorable to Christianity, and have left a deep mark on the lives of hundreds of pupils who have not taken the final step of public profession of Christianity.
-- Datta
CHAPTER V
THE STUDENTS
Importance of the Student Class. -- The students of India constitute an aristocracy both of birth and of learning. Not only will they occupy all the future positions of leadership in the government, and posts of education, molding the ideas of the ignorant masses, but they are almost exclusively from the Brahman and upper castes and have the power of birth and blood behind them. Though the Brahmans number only about one twentieth of the population, the majority of the graduates are from this class. And they are perhaps the most compact and accessible class of students in the whole non-Christian world. Converts from the higher castes have come chiefly from those who were influenced in Christian schools and colleges. And most of the social and religious reform movements among the non-Christian religions have been led by Hindu and other graduates of Christian colleges, or men influenced by Christian teaching. If then, we reach the students of India, we are molding a class that will be its future leaders in every department of life. And they can be reached in the English language by any man with a clear head and a warm heart, for love is the key to every heart in India as elsewhere the world around.
The Educational System.[30] -- The educational system of India is a most interesting one. Born in the brain of Carey, Duff, and other Christian leaders, and shaped by a wise government policy, it is perhaps the chief factor in the uplift of India. There are five great universities for India and Ceylon, located at Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Allahabad, and Lahore. Each of these universities affiliates and controls a score or two of colleges in its own area. The universities inspect the colleges, prescribe courses of study, hold examinations, and confer degrees for all the colleges; but like the University of London they are not at present teaching bodies. The examinations are very difficult indeed. Of the 24,000 bright candidates for matriculation every year, less than half pass; and of 4,750 candidates for the B.A., less than 2,000 are successful. Roughly, about one fourth of the colleges are controlled by the government or municipalities, and three fourths by private bodies, whether Christian, Hindu, or others. The government gives grants-in-aid to missionary and other institutions which submit to the required inspection and pass the government examinations and requirements. When Bishop Thoburn went to India in 1859, there were only 2,000 public schools with less than 200,000 pupils. Now the institutions in India, according to the latest report, number in all 165,473 with 5,708,238 pupils. There has been a tenfold increase in the educational department of India in the last forty years. In India and Ceylon there are 53 colleges under Christian management, so that about one third of the education in colleges is in Christian hands. There are also 11,500 primary schools with 361,000 scholars under missionary control. Relative to the size of the communities, four times as many Christian young men receive a college education as Hindus; and relatively four times as many Christian children attend primary schools; while the Christians outnumber the Mohammedans twelve to one in the proportion being educated. There is, however, a need for further advance in education, for in all India only 16,000,000 are literate and 278,000,000 illiterate; while 1,125,000 are literate in English. Of the 78,730,000 children under ten years of age in India, only 613,000 are literate and over 78,000,000 are illiterate. Still only one man in ten can read and write, and 1 in 144 among the women.
Important Features. -- Four very important features of the system deserve to be noted at the outset: (1) Following the English practise, the government exercises no direct control over educational institutions other than those maintained by the state, though its influence is brought in several ways indirectly to bear upon all that are not prepared to reject the benefits which it can extend to them; (2) The government has concentrated its efforts mainly upon higher education, and has thus begun from the top, in the over-sanguine belief that education would ultimately filter down from the higher to the lower strata of Indian society; (3) Instruction in the various courses, mostly literary, which constitute higher education is conveyed through the medium of English, a tongue still absolutely foreign to the vast majority; and (4) Education is generally confined to the training of the intellect and divorced not only absolutely from all religious teaching, but also very largely from all moral training and discipline, with the result that the vital side of education which consists in the formation of character has been almost entirely neglected.[31]
Subjects Chosen. -- The studies which are most popular, and the optional subjects which are most chosen just now among Indian students are English language, literature, and history; next law; and then physical science. The two subjects in which they excel and have gained a world-wide reputation, philosophy and mathematics, are much less frequently taken. The reason is that most students take easy courses, or "soft snaps," or any short cut that will lead to a B.A. and a livelihood. But I have known of other students outside of the Orient who are guilty of the same thing.
Defects of the System. -- Indian student life is a terrible grind, with little time or inclination for athletics, social life, or general culture. Manual training, and technical and agricultural schools, which India so much needs, have been neglected until recently, and the whole system is weakened by the method of cramming. A yet more serious defect is the secular character of education under the government. Western education breaks down the old superstitions and provides no substitute. Modern education apart from Christianity destroys but does not build up faith. The students are simply drifting from their former faith to materialism and atheism. As a Brahman said: "Young men who have been educated in the government schools come out atheists and unreliable in character. The young men whom the missionaries educate come from the schools with faith in God and satisfactory stability of character."
"Mastering" English. -- Indian students have at first to struggle with English because it is compulsory in all universities, as we do with foreign languages, and the Indian student has the disadvantage of taking all his higher education in a foreign tongue. Beginners in English make very laughable mistakes just as we do when we begin to preach on the foreign field. Here is a Bombay high school student's essay on the horse. It may perhaps rest the reader.[32] "The horse is a very noble quadruped, but when he is angry he will not do so. He is ridden on the spinal cord by the bridle, and sadly the driver places his foots on the stirrup and divides his lower limbs across the saddle, and drives his animal to the meadow. He has a long mouth, and his head is attached to the trunk by a long protuberance called the neck. He has four legs; two are in the front side, and two are afterwards. These are the weapons on which he runs and also defends himself by extending those in the rear in a parallel direction toward his foe. But this he does only when in a vexatious mood. His fooding is generally grasses and grains. He is also useful to take on his back a man or woman as well as some cargo. He has power to run as fast as he could. He has got no sleep at night time, but always standing awaken. Also there are horses of short sizes. They do the same as the others are generally doing. There is no animal like the horse. No sooner they see their guardian or master they always crying for fooding, but it is always at the morning time. They have got tail, but not so long as the cow and other such-like animals."
Two Letters. -- Here are two letters of gratitude from the husbands of patients written to a lady doctor in western India:
NO. l. CURED
"Dear Sir,
My wife has returned from your hospital cured. Provided males are allowed at your bungalow, I would like to do you the honor of presenting myself there this afternoon. But I will net try to repay you; vengeance belongeth unto God. Yours noticeably, _______
NO. 2. DEAD
"Dear And Fair Madam,
I have much pleasure to inform you that my dearly unfortunate wife will be no longer under your kind treatment, she having left this world for the other on the night of the 27th ultimo. For your help in this matter, I shall ever remain grateful.
Yours reverently, _______
Aim of Education. -- The threefold aim of Christian education, as stated by the Educational Commission of the Edinburgh Conference of 1910, is: (1) To develop the Christian community and to train Christian leaders; (2) To win converts from the non-Christian community; and (3) To leaven the life of the people and prepare the way by immediate reforms for a future ingathering. There is a difference of opinion as to which of these three is the most important, and the conduct of a college depends upon one's theory of education.
Lines of Approach. -- There are accessible in the student field, in the English language, the 25,000 college students, the upper grades of the 654,000 high school students, and over a million former students who are literate in English. Every worker among students, however, should be especially prepared for this difficult work and should make a thorough study of the religions of the country and of the vernacular in the district where he resides. Though the students will flock to English lectures on religious subjects, though their religious vocabulary in mission colleges has been formed in English, and though they prefer to speak in English, the heart of India lies in the vernacular and the language should be mastered. There is also urgent need for reaching men by the production of an able and attractive literature. There are 2,193 presses in India. In 1908 they issued 753 newspapers, and 1,062 periodicals, with 1,524 books in English, 7,081 in the vernaculars. Men of literary gifts will find a large opening in India both in producing literature themselves, and in developing the latent talent of the Indian Christian community. Heretofore education in India has been more literary than practical to meet the natural demand of the people. India in 1900 had only 123 industrial and technical schools as compared to 1,954 in Japan. Japan's victory over Russia, however, and the present industrial awakening in India is furnishing the occasion of a rapid growth in scientific and practical subjects. Missions have led the way in industrial education and in the education of women and the outcaste communities, as they once did in higher education.
Work Among Educated Hindus. -- For the last fourteen years I have traveled through the colleges of India and Ceylon, holding meetings during the day for Christian students on the deepening of spiritual life, the choice of a life-work, and Bible study, and at the same time giving lectures in the evening to Hindu students. In Christian colleges, where they have daily instruction in the Bible, the ground is prepared and some sense of sin and apprehension of truth is found among the students. We seek to reach them by Bible classes, personal work, and evangelistic or devotional meetings. One can fill up his whole time with personal interviews among Indian students, and no work is more attractive or more needed.
Evangelistic Meetings. -- Evangelistic meetings conducted for Indian students are sometimes very exciting. At our last meetings in Calcutta we had seven hundred men, mostly Brahmans and high-class students, coming out night after night to the college hall. During the day we would hold meetings in three of the non-Christian colleges as well as in the Christian institutions, on moral subjects to prepare the way. All the missions in Calcutta joined with us in prayer and cooperation. The subjects announced were, the five "National Ideals "of patriotism, ambition, religion, character, and service. The first night we sought to get a point of contact in their newly awakened national consciousness and burning love of country. We tried to show what true patriotism called for in service for India; but the feeling of unrest and sedition and anti-foreign hatred was so great that the first night I dared not mention the name of Christ, lest the audience might leave, for Calcutta is the center of the seditious movement. The third night we began on sin to awaken the conscience and arouse a sense of need. During the entire week there was no mention of the word "Christianity" or "Hinduism;" there was no defense of a foreign religion or attack on their own religion, which would have only thrown them on the defensive at once. Our method was to awaken a sense of need, and then present Christ as the one able to meet that need, as Example, Friend, and Savior; presenting him not in Western dress but as one of themselves born on their own continent. The sense of sin is usually undeveloped by Hinduism, but they recognize the results of sin, and they realize the fact that many of them are failing in their examinations and being ruined physically, mentally, and morally by the dreadful inroads of immorality.
Awakening Soul Hunger. -- The students sent me written petitions to lecture in their colleges on personal purity and to tell them how they could break the chains of evil habit. After speaking that night half an hour on sin, until there was a deep, spiritual hunger apparent, I came to the cross of Christ. As I described him going up that long and lonely hill, bearing his own cross, it seemed as if the pierced hand of Christ were laid on every heart. It seems to me that the East is instinctively Christian, when they come to know Christ as he is. I spoke for three hours that night in the stifling heat, on the cross of Christ; and for three hours the next night on Christ as the only Savior. There were thirty Christians in the back room who held on in prayer and never entered the meetings at all, but furnished the base of power. After speaking on Christ as Savior, I asked how many would give him a fair hearing, promise to read through the four Gospels with open mind and honest heart, and follow him according to their light and conscience. Over a hundred men rose and signed cards and were followed up as potential inquirers. Some of them were gathered into Bible classes and all were visited in their hostels or homes, to give an opportunity for conversation bearing upon the personal life.
Seed-sowing Among the Brahmans. -- So far as I Know there are no baptisms which have as yet resulted from this series of meetings. This is the day of seed-sowing among the Brahmans and of reaping among the outcastes. In the United States and Canada you are accustomed to immediate decision and action. But we forget the years of Christian training and the development of conscience which we have received in the home country. Usually only after long preparation and study of the Bible is the conscience developed among Hindus. The light breaks slowly.
Hindu Student's Mind. -- Consider an Indian student's mind and see his point of view. Remember he is bound by the fetters of caste, which are usually far stronger than his weak will, for to break this bond would mean the loss of everything he holds dear, -- home, relatives, means of support, the hope of proper marriage, and all social relations. Pantheism tends to break down all distinctions both doctrinal and moral in his mind. The Hindu mind is hospitable and sympathetic rather than critical, and constantly holds contradictory views. The average Hindu student is a pantheistic monotheist, holding a belief in the new, personal God, whether the Christian conception or that of Krishna, against a Vedan- tic or impersonal background. The world to him is half real, according to the teaching of his modern science, and half an illusion. He is postponing the question of his salvation until after he passes his last examination, but he will attend Christian lectures and meetings in search of something to satisfy him.
Speculative, Patriotic. -- In his subjective attitude, he is strikingly tolerant in freedom of thought to new truth and to other religions, but intolerant in not allowing freedom of action to change one's religion. Compared to a Western student he is speculative rather than practical and keenly interested in questions of religion and philosophy. He is more interested in discussing the origin of evil, than in the practical question of how to escape from it. His mind is intellectual, rather than volitional, and there is a great gulf fixed between conviction and action, as the result of the long divorce of religion and morality in Hinduism. Just now he is intensely patriotic and boastful of his own religion.
Attitude toward Christ. -- His attitude toward Christ is almost always one of sympathy and deep veneration. He is opposed to Christianity as the religion of his foreign rulers, but not to Christ whom he instinctively feels to be his own. The Sermon on the Mount nearly always appeals to him, and the character of Christ is the highest he knows. It is only when he perceives where the pathway of discipleship leads, and realizes the awful cost of becoming a Christian, that he begins to draw back. When he sees that it will set him at variance with his own religion, his own gods and their practises, his family and friends, and that it calls for heroic individual action, which has so long been stifled by Hinduism, he seeks some compromise. He now tries to serve two masters in secret discipleship, or else becomes openly hostile to the exclusive demands of Christ. If a student finally decides to become a Christian, there are no limits to which persecution may be carried against him. His mother weeps and perhaps threatens to commit suicide; his relatives threaten and his father coerces him. The whole community will conspire perhaps to take him away by force or swear in court that he is a minor, producing a false "horoscope" to prove that he is under age and cannot be baptized. Some men have disappeared, others have been drugged, a few forced into immorality to sear their consciences -- anything will be done to prevent the one irretrievable disgrace of a man becoming a Christian. I could give many instances if space permitted.
Indifference, Hostility, Acceptance. -- There are three attitudes of mind among Indian students. Many are indifferent; a few are hostile; and a few are earnest seekers after truth. Try and picture to yourself the inevitable conflict in the heart of one of the latter class, convinced of the claims of Christ and the superiority of Christianity but with all of the heredity of Hinduism behind him; helped in the college but hindered in his home, trying to lead a double life and torn with the struggle.
Student Questions. -- I remember the first college I visited in India. After the lecture the students gathered around with burning interest and questions flew from every quarter. If you will try to answer every question you will see how far they reach. "How could a divine Christ pray for the removal of the cup?" "Why cannot a merciful God forgive without an atonement?" "If we believe in God and serve him, why do we need Christ?" "How could a just God let punishment come upon Christ who was innocent, instead of upon sinners who were guilty?" "What will happen to those who never heard of Christ?" "Is not Hinduism sufficient to save us?" "Have you proof that Jesus was divine, and can you show that our incarnations were not?" "If I worship the one true God, why should I not place before me some idol to help me concentrate my thoughts and call God to mind, though I do not worship the idol itself?"
Meeting the Problems. -- Although unprepared, as fast as the questions came I was helped with the answers. For instance, to the last question on idolatry I replied, "My own father is no longer living on earth, but when I wish to recall his loving character I do not place before me some hideous monster or horrible contortion or some reptile. That would be an insult to his memory, as every idol is to God. It would degrade my love for him, as idolatry has degraded every people that has practised it. Nothing but a perfect photograph is fit to represent my father to me. God has given us his photograph in Christ, who is the very image of his person, and we need only his portrait preserved in the Gospels, to recall our Father in heaven. Christianity needs no idol." Among the questions most frequently asked by students in India are some of the following: "How do you account for the origin of evil and of sin? If God made the world right in the beginning, what is the cause of suffering and how can you account for inequalities of life without the doctrine of karma? What is the necessity of a mediator? Why cannot Krishna save us? Why is baptism necessary, if religion is inward and spiritual? "The last question is asked usually by men who are convinced of the superiority of Christianity, but, tremble at the thought of the awful cost of baptism. For Hindus reckon this to be the dividing line between the two religions. Many Hindus do not object to persons being secret believers, or even, open followers of Christ, if only they will not sever themselves from the caste system by the dividing line of baptism. How would you answer each of these questions?
The Best Apologetic. -- Love is the key that unlocks every heart, and I have never seen a class of students so lovable and responsive and so deeply needy as the students of India. If you begin by attacking Hinduism, you may win your argument, but you lose the men you are seeking to reach. We must appeal to the conscience and to the will, rather than to the intellect. I remember in one mission college in Ceylon an average of one man a day had accepted Christ, and later some of them were baptized. But when the students challenged me to speak about their own religion, I fell into the snare and exposed the fallacies of Hinduism. The result was that not another man was won in that college at the time and the whole community was thrown on the defensive. In the next college I resolved to know nothing but Christ and him crucified. I took as a text, "Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin," and after speaking till there was conviction, I took the rest of the statement, "If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." At the invitation, a number of men rose to confess their sins and acknowledge their need of a Savior.
Christ Himself. -- Our most powerful apologetic is Christ himself; Jesus the winsome and attractive personality, to whom the heart of the East instinctively turns; Christ the revelation of God, the Satisfier of the human heart, the great Oriental and universal Teacher, whose precepts have a self-evidencing power; Christ the divine Savior, able to save to the uttermost. The appeal to experience, and the truth that "if any man willeth to do, he shall know," powerfully affects Oriental students. Which side of Christ has most appealed to you, and what aspect do you think would be most readily appreciated and most deeply needed by the Oriental mind?
A Typical College Meeting. -- Let us visit one of the colleges together and see the work for ourselves. We are just beginning a week's meetings among the students in the college of the Madura mission at Pasumalai. Here are some five hundred Christian, boys, who will supply all the future workers and lay leaders of a great district. Here also are over a hundred Hindu boys, with a few Mohammedans in the high school. We begin morning and evening meetings and have interviews with the boys during the day. Conviction steadily deepens during the week and at the end of the time several nominal Christian boys, a few Hindus, and one Mohammedan boy confessed Christ.
Gateway to a Caste. -- There is one boy, S_____, a member of the wealthy, money-lending or chetty caste, who came to me two years ago asking for baptism. I notified his father, but on the boy's return home the father beat him till his son fell down in a fit and remained unconscious for some hours. The father, fearing he had killed his son, wept and pleaded with the boy to speak to him once more. At last he regained consciousness and after a time returned to the college. He is now studying again and maintaining his Christian life. Some day he may furnish the entering wedge into his caste which has been hitherto unreached, and the education of such a boy may mean much for the kingdom.
A High-Caste Convert. -- I recall the life of my dear friend and fellow worker, Francis Kingsbury. ' His father was a great scholar and was called "the Max Müller of South India." He was the leading opponent and enemy of Christianity. As a boy, Francis was deeply religious and was trained in his sacred books and in the Hindu ceremonial. Imbibing his father's prejudice, he so hated Christ and Christianity that he had drawn in his house a picture of Christ on the cross, in effigy, that he might kick it every day of his life, and thus relieve his feelings of hatred. This he did for some months. He wished to have an education, and the best education was to be had in the Madras Christian College. As he read the story of Joseph, he was convicted of his own immorality. He read the story of Jesus, and his heart was melted. While in the Madras Christian College his father feared that he might become a Christian, so he sent him to the Presidency college. But gradually through reading the Bible his faith in Hinduism was undermined. At the suggestion of his cousin who had become a Christian, he attended an evangelistic meeting. After an address on faith, and singing, "Just as I am without one plea," the speaker asked those who would accept Christ to rise up. He rose and went forward to the platform, knelt down, and called upon Jesus to save him. In secret he tried to follow Christ. Finally his father's suspicions were aroused and one day he called him and said, "To-morrow on the anniversary of your mother's death, you shall perform the Sraddha." The young man said it was against his conscience and that he could not do it.
Willing to be Disinherited. -- When the father threatened to disinherit him, he went to his room to fight out the battle in prayer and count the cost. That night he was compelled to leave his father's house. As he passed his door he sent up a prayer for his father, and then went out to be disinherited forever.
Loss and Gain. -- "If I had pleased my father and carried out his wishes, he would probably have sent me to England, where I would have received an education to enable me to enter any profession. By becoming a Christian I lost my father's love, lost my inheritance, and lost the opportunity of becoming a civil servant or a barrister-at-law. I knew all this and deliberately chose to be a Christian. Is there anything in Christ Jesus to compensate for these losses? In Jesus of Nazareth I have found pardon and peace. These are not idle words. I know that my sins, which are many and dreadful, are all blotted out from the memory of the holy God by the blood of his Son. I have been cleansed. God's power is granted unto me to overcome many a temptation that besets me yet. In Jesus I have the ideal I need for my life. I am constrained by the love of Christ to live, not for my petty self, but for my country -- my India -- not simply because I was born in it, but because Christ Jesus died for its people. To live for Christ and for India is now my one ambition in life."[33]
A Life Investment. -- As a Christian worker, he has been traveling with me through the colleges and conducting meetings for educated Hindus. In Madras, with a thousand high-caste Hindus coming out every night to listen to the gospel, he was the only Indian who could hold that great, turbulent audience. To-day he is the pastor of a college church, having under his influence five hundred Christian boys, as well as many non-Christians, and he is a teacher in the theological seminary. The other day I met a man in America who had supported this boy as a student and whose name Francis now bears. That investment in a human life will bear fruit for eternity. It is difficult to help people without pauperizing them, but I know of no better investment than to help boys through college where about twenty or thirty dollars a year will pay their fees and supplement what they are able to do for themselves by their own work. It is in such opportunities as this that you at home may share our burden on the foreign field.
A Severe Test. -- In a college in South India I had been holding meetings for two days. On the last evening I saw evidence of conviction of sin and deep soul-thirst in the face of a Hindu student. He had been pierced by the arrow of conviction. After the meeting I made my way back to him, and asked him to come outside. "We sat down on the old college wall in the moonlight under a tree. I did not know that the worst men had banded themselves together in the college under the name of the "Devil's Society," of which this man was the leader. Neither did I know that he had been laughing and scoffing at what I had said in the previous meetings. Nor did I know that his grandfather had been a great persecutor of Christianity in that region, beating the Christians and burning their houses. At one time he had led a mob to the mission compound and I was told that the present principal of the college, when a child, was carried in his mother's arms as she fled from before the mob which this boy's grandfather was leading. Not knowing any of this, I said to him, "My boy, I want to ask you some questions. Are you saved? Do you know God as your Heavenly Father? Have you power over sin? Do you know where you are going in the next life? Are you to be born and reborn as a man or an animal in countless existences or have you any assurance with regard to the future?" "No," he said, "our religion does not teach us about these things." "Well," I said, "my boy, I have come half way round the world to tell you a piece of good news. You can be saved to-night. Christ stands at the door of your heart and knocks. You can accept him here and now; but if he comes into your heart he must come as Master. It will mean that to-morrow you will have to confess him before the other students. This week you will have to tell your father and relatives, and they will doubtless put you out of your home and persecute you. It will mean that you will have to be baptized, to lose caste, probably to lose your fortune, and certainly to suffer for Christ. Are you ready to receive him as Savior and Master if he asks all this?"
Accepting Christ and Persecution. -- I shall never forget his reply. He said. "I have studied the Bible in this Christian college until I believed that there was only one God, that idolatry was wrong, that Hinduism was defective, and that Christ was the only Savior. But until to-day I had no sense of my own sin nor of my need of Christ. I see it now, and I will come to him. As for persecution, let them persecute. I would rather like it." Like Saul of Tarsus he came of a persecuting race.
A Noble Convert. -- As we knelt there on the ground, in the moonlight, that young man in a simple prayer gave his heart to Christ. A great football player, the tennis champion, and the head of the "Devil's Society," he was one moment a Hindu deep in sin, the next a son of God with his name written in heaven. It seemed to me that I could almost catch the echo of the angels' song rejoicing over one more sinner that had come home to God. As he rose, I said "Good-by," not knowing what would befall him. He went in and began to witness to his fellow students. They broke up that Devil's Society and it has not existed since in that college. Up every morning, with a new joy over his open Bible, preaching every week upon the streets to the non- Christian people, he was a living apologetic for Christ to the students of that college. And after more than eight years he is still standing as a witness for Christ. The last man I saw, as I left India, to come away to America on furlough, was this man standing at the end of the dock waving good-by from the shore.
Call of the Student Field. -- Are not such men worth winning for Christ f On every hand they are accessible. Audiences will gather not only in the colleges and large cities, but even in towns far from a railway, to listen to a lecture delivered in English by one who has power to reach students. They have always been courteous, tolerant, open-minded, intelligent, responsive, and sympathetic. We need men to-day to supplement the preparatory work done in the classroom, and in the Bible teaching of the Christian colleges, who will reach these students by public meetings, Bible classes, and personal interviews. And yet we cannot get sufficient student workers to man even the few score of important posts, in order to win the students of this vast empire for Christ. Think of it! A small, compact body of 25,000 students, open and accessible in our own tongue, who might be won for Christ, and who in turn will be the leaders of thought of a vast empire, embracing one fifth of the human race. Cannot some one who reads these lines come out to this great work? Men and women are needed as teachers in Christian colleges, or to be placed in charge of Christian hostels connected with government or other institutions. Who will come over and help us to win the students of India for Christ?
Help of the Many. -- A few only can come, but all can help in this great work. We need the backing of prayer to break down the walls of prejudice and undermine the fortress of caste. "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." Even as you read these lines hundreds of Hindu students are leading a double life, striving in their colleges to follow their conscience and the Christian ideals, yet in their homes held in the grip of tyrannical custom and the practise of the grossest superstitions. Their condition is truly pitiable. Like Nicodemus they often come by night to seek our help. As Mozumdar said, "We go one way, our relatives another, and our women yet another. Our Indian young men discuss their projects of reform in debating clubs; but as soon as they get home they carefully put their progressive views in their pockets, and bend their necks beneath the yoke of custom as their ancestors before them. They belong to the nineteenth century, but their homes to the first century."
Strengthen the Weak. -- An Indian newspaper states: "The educated native is nowhere so miserable and crestfallen as in his own home. A Demosthenes at debating societies, a Luther in his public protestations against prevailing corruptions, he is but a timid, crouching Hindu in his home, yielding unquestioning submission to the requisitions of a superstitious family.?/ We who are born in an atmosphere of freedom of individual action, can hardly realize the crushing chains of caste and Hinduism on a student. Do you fully measure his problem?
Prayer and Gifts. -- Prayer is the power that can set these men free, and you can wield that power. To invest in the education of some poor student disinherited by his Hindu parents or one unable to struggle through his college course from a Christian home of poverty, offers an opportunity almost unparalleled in spiritual possibilities. Will you not invest in some life out there in the darkness, who may become a center of light and a blessing to many?
CHAPTER VI
WOMANHOOD
"The condition of its women is the truest test of the people's civilization. Her status is her country's barometer."
Noble Qualities. -- It is our contention in this chapter that the women of India are beautiful and attractive, and have large possibilities for the future, but that "the keys to the wrongs of Indian women are Mohammedanism and Hinduism." No women are by nature more modest, virtuous, and pure. They are devoted wives and fond mothers, with passionate affection for their children, though untaught in the discipline of the home and in the rearing of children. They are unselfish in tireless service for their husbands and relatives. Hindu literature is full of pictures of noble women like Sita, the beautiful wife of Rama, joyfully sharing her husband's banishment and suffering, true to him under terrible pressure and temptation, passing through the fire to prove her chastity, and loyal to her husband till death.
Former Honors and Recent Influence. -- Before the later restraints of Hinduism and Mohammedanism, women enjoyed a position of honor and influence in ancient India. In no country have women wielded a larger influence on the life of a nation both for good and evil. Deeply religious and devoted, the women are the conservators of religion. They form the chief stay of Hinduism at the present time. With no other nation in the world has the worship of the female been made so prominent. It is significant that the Indian patriot thinks of India only as his "motherland," and that the mind of the East thinks naturally of the "motherhood of God."
Degraded by Hinduism. -- In speaking of the wrongs of Indian womanhood, we do not wish to give the impression that all are unhappy or conscious of their need. If you could see the bright- eyed, merry little girls, dancing and singing, or making mud pies in the sun, laughing at their games and affectionate to their parents, you could not resist being attracted by them. The women of India, too, are patient sufferers and usually accept their fate without a murmur. Yet in spite of the fact that the women are as good and virtuous as they are, no great religion has degraded woman more than Hinduism. Indeed, of the 400,000,000 women of Asia not one of them has, or can have, her rights apart from the gospel of Christ. Buddha rejoiced that he had escaped the three curses of being born in hell, or as vermin, or as woman; and his conception has left a blight on the women of Buddhism. The condition of women in Moslem lands has ever been the festering sore of Mohammedanism. Its polygamy, divorce, and concubinage have been its curse. "The very heaven of the Koran is conditioned upon the eternal degradation of womanhood." But as we shall see in this chapter, it is Hinduism which has placed upon woman the heaviest burden of all, and left her lowest in the social scale.
Women's Status. -- The sacred code of Manu has done more than anything else to determine the position of woman and to fix her destiny. The following verses will show her position:
"It is the nature of women to seduce men in this world; for that reason the wise are never unguarded in the company of females. One should not sit in a lonely place with one's mother, sister, or daughter; for the senses are powerful and master even a learned man."[34]
"Though destitute of virtue, or seeking pleasure elsewhere, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must be constantly worshiped as a god by a faithful wife. Day and night women must be kept in dependence by the males of their families."[35]
"For women no sacramental rite is performed with sacred texts, thus the law is settled; women who are destitute of strength and of the knowledge of Vedic texts, are as impure as falsehood itself, that is a fixed rule."[36]
"Stealing grain, base metals, or cattle, ... slaying women, Sudras, ... and atheism, are all minor offences."[37]
"When creating them Manu allotted to woman a love ... of ornament, impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, and bad conduct. Through ... their mutable temper, through their natural heartlessness, they become disloyal toward their husbands, however carefully they may be guarded in this world."[38]
Ignorance of Women. -- Owing to the status assigned to her by the sacred books, women have never been allowed education by the Hindus. When the first lady missionary proposed to a Brahman that she should teach his wife to read, he replied, "Women have no brains to learn. You can try and teach my wife, and if you succeed I will bring around my cow, and you can try and teach her." Only seven women out of every thousand in India can read and write. Christianity leads all the religions of India in female education. Not only did Christians establish the first schools for girls and make public sentiment in the matter, but they have ever led the way in their own community. Of 160 girls receiving college education to-day in India, 48 are Europeans or Eurasians, 43 Indian Christians, and 33 Parsees. One third of all the girls receiving high school education are Indian Christians.
Problems of Their Education. -- The problems connected with the education of girls in India are extremely difficult. The unwillingness of parents to have their daughters educated is reflected in the figures just mentioned. While this prejudice is yielding in some quarters, on the land as a whole it still sits strong. Even when girls enter school they remain a very short time. In one province which is most advanced in education for girls, according to the last Quinquennial Review of Education in India, 99 per cent of girls enrolled are in primary schools. The early age of marriage with Hindus, usually not later than eleven or twelve, prevents a girl from going far. Under such circumstances it would seem all the more desirable to make schools attractive and efficient. But on the one hand there is a great difficulty in obtaining teachers. Indian society provides no place for a professional life for women. Even were the facilities for training tenfold what they are, there would be no such flocking of young women into the profession as we find in this country. Moreover, a single woman is looked upon with suspicion, and the best families would hardly be persuaded to entrust their daughters to her care. Finally, the curriculum has not yet been worked out to meet the real needs of life. The great problem of education all over the world, how to prepare scholars to elevate their future surroundings without being trained out of sympathy with them, is especially urgent in a land where the life of women is so secluded and where the masses live in villages. Truly women missionaries are needed for India who have not only consecration, but a grasp of the principles of education that shall fit them to make intelligent contributions to the solution of these problems.[39]
Kipling's Verdict. -- Rudyard Kipling says: "The matter with this country is not in the least political, but an all-round entanglement of physical, social, and moral evils and corruptions, all more or less due to the unnatural treatment of women. You cannot gather figs from thistles, and so long as the system of infant marriage, the prohibition of the remarriage of widows, the lifelong imprisonment of wives in a worse than penal confinement, and the withholding from them of any kind of education as rational beings continues, the country cannot advance a step. The foundations of life are rotten, utterly rotten, and beastly rotten. The men talk of their rights and privileges. I have seen the women that bare these men. May God forgive the men."
Seclusion. -- Forty millions of the women of India are confined in the zenanas, "behind the purdah." Imprisoned thus within their own homes, shut off from God's glad world, their lives are pitiably narrow and barren. As one Hindu lady said, "The life of women in zenanas is like that of a frog in a well; everywhere there is beauty but we cannot see it."
Its Evil Effects. -- The testimony of Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop is as follows: "These faiths degrade women with an infinite degradation. I have lived in zenanas and harems and have seen the daily life of the secluded women, and can speak from bitter experience of what their lives are; the intellect dwarfed so that the woman of twenty or thirty years of age is more like a child of eight intellectually; while all the worst passions of human nature are stimulated and developed in a fearful degree."
Results of Hinduism. -- Missionaries find the women attractive and lovable, but the wrongs which they suffer often weigh heavily upon their hearts. Try and put yourself in a high-caste Indian woman's place. Think of what life would be to you, if you knew of no Heavenly Father who loved you, of no Savior who died for you, and of no Holy Spirit to help you in your daily life. Take from your life the privilege of the Church, all knowledge of the Bible, and of reading altogether, and the opportunity of intelligent prayer. Imagine your life without a book or picture, never a landscape, nor a friendly visit to a neighbor's house, nor a walk out of doors in God's sunshine. Supposing you knew of no forgiveness for your past sins, no present grace and strength for daily life, and no certain hope for the future. If death has come into your home, and you knew of no hope of ever meeting your loved ones again, what would life be to you under these conditions? If you could see the women tearing their hair and beating their breasts, if you could hear the wild dirge of those who follow their dead with all hope gone out forever, your hearts would go out to these suffering sisters that you might show them a better way. Here is a mournful dirge which is sung in South India by a mother on the death of her child, as quoted by Mr. Datta. I have often heard it as a sad funeral procession passed me on the road:
"Oh I Thou apple of my eye, Oh, my darling I my blissful paradise;
Oh! the apple of my eye, Where has thou hidden thyself?
Oh! my golden jewel, Oh! my eyes,
Oh! my flower, where hast thou hidden thyself?
Is this any one's curse upon me. Oh I the apple of my eye!"
Child Marriage. -- One fruitful cause of the sufferings of India is its custom of infant marriage. A leading Hindu says: "Early marriage is the greatest evil of our country. It has stood at the very springs of the life of the nation and prevented the normal expansion of which it is capable." At the last census there were 2,273,245 wives under the age of ten; 243,502 under five years, and 10,507 baby wives under one year of age. These little baby wives live with their parents until about the age of twelve, but if the little boy husband dies, the girl is left a widow for life, with all the curse of widowhood upon her. Only in the last decade of the nineteenth century, after the indignant agitation of the missionaries, was the age of marriage raised from ten to twelve years by the Indian government. So great was the storm of protest which broke from the Hindu community at having their "rights" interfered with, that there was a fear of serious trouble, and the troops were kept under arms, while great mass meetings and demonstrations of protest were held by the Hindus! One hardly needs to suggest to what physical degeneracy it must lead a nation to have girls of twelve as mothers.
Child Wives. -- A little girl came recently to the veranda of our house decked in jewels and finery on her wedding day. She was only twelve years old, about the age of my little girl. She had come for the customary present, and my wife brought out what she thought would please her most, a little doll. The child clapped her hands and took it home to play with in the intervals of her housework. But her childhood was gone forever. In another house where my wife was visiting, they said to the little girl, "Bring out your baby," and she came carrying her own child, a mother at the age of twelve! We may think that "their religion is good enough for them," but would it be good enough for you if this were your little girl?
A Woman's Life. -- A woman has no independence. For her marriage she usually is not consulted. It is arranged for her by her parents. As a child wife she is placed under the control of her mother-in-law, who is often jealous, and makes her the drudge of the house. As the Tamil proverb says: "If the mother-in-law breaks a vessel, it does not matter; it is only earthenware. But if the daughter does so, it is gold." The little girl may be married to a youth of fifteen, who is struggling to pass his examinations in high school or college; or she may be "tied" for life to an old man of fifty or sixty. Large dowries have to be paid by the unfortunate father of the bride, according to the standing of the bridegroom.
The Power of Custom. -- It is difficult for us to realize the awful power of Hindu custom and tradition. A wealthy political leader, a Hindu lawyer with an income of $30,000 a year, was writing and lecturing to prove that in ancient times child marriage was not a custom in Hinduism, and that they should institute a reform. It was only later that the law of Manu prescribed that a man of thirty should marry a girl of twelve, and a man of twenty-four, a girl of eight years of age.[40] But the first ceremony, which is binding for life and leaves the girl widowed if the husband dies, is performed long before the girl is twelve. I asked this political friend of mine whether he was living up to his own convictions, or whether he was going to give his own daughters in marriage as children. He said, "Alas, I can do nothing. If I withheld my daughters from marriage till the age of twelve or fourteen, I would be ostracized and they and their families would be boycotted by the community. We could not possibly stand against the pressure of Hindu custom and opinion. I can do nothing but agitate and wait, for the caste must move together." Hindu law allows no divorce; for woman, marriage is irrevocable.
Widowhood. -- But the heaviest curse of Hinduism falls upon the high-caste widows, because the widow is supposed to be responsible for her husband's death, and to have caused it by some sin of her own in a previous existence. Her head is shaved, and for a year she must eat but one meal a day, with frequent fasts. All her jewels are torn from her, she is clothed in a plain white cloth, often she becomes the drudge of the house, and if she is young and beautiful a worse fate frequently awaits her.
Great Number of Widows. -- Of 144,000,000 women in India nearly 26,000,000, or one woman in every six, is a widow. They would outnumber three times the population of Canada. There are 115,285 widows under ten years of age, 19,487 under five, and 1,064 under one year of age in India.
Forbidden to Remarry. -- A widow is forbidden by Hindu custom to remarry. A few men who have dared to marry these child widows whose husbands had died in infancy, have paid a heavy penalty. Young Krishna Rao suffered so from the persecutions of the community, after marrying a widow, that he finally committed suicide.
A Fearful Change. -- In a village some miles from our bungalow lived a handsome girl, about thirteen years of age. The first time my wife visited her, she was dressed in bright silks, her neck and arms were loaded with jewels, and she was the center of an admiring crowd of women, for she was the bride, and the wedding festivities were still in progress. A few months later, my wife went to the house again. She scarcely recognized her pupil, for instead of the gaily attired, bright-faced girl she was accustomed to meet, a woebegone object met her eye. Cholera had swept through the village, and this girl's husband had been one of the victims. Poor child! They had taken from her all her pretty clothes, and the jewels which Indian women dearly love, and the widow's hated garb of mourning was a sign of her dismal fate. But, more striking than the change of dress was the altered look on the girl's face. She crouched against the wall with an expression of dull, hopeless misery, her eyes red with weeping, her whole attitude suggestive of utter despair. The women of the house said that her study must now be given up, for, to use their own words, "It is a disgrace for a widow to learn." It was only after much persuasion and pleading that they allowed the lessons to be resumed, and the poor little broken-hearted widow found comfort in the knowledge of him who came to be the resurrection and the life to all that believe in him.
Young Brahman Widow. -- Another pupil was a young Brahman widow. On the first visit, noting the girl's shaven head and sad face, my wife said to her, "How long have you been a widow? ""Ten years," was the answer. She was only twenty-one years of age; yet half her life had been spent in widowhood. Try and put yourself in the place of this girl, and think what such a life would mean to you.
Immorality. -- The Hindu customs which sanction the nautch, or dancing-girls, the Devadasis or servants of the gods," who are married to the god for a life of religious prostitution, and the practise in western India of dedicating girls for a life of immorality to the god Khandoba, become a stream of poison in Indian society. A newspaper, The Hindu, affirms of this custom of the dancing-girls "that the demoralization it causes is immense. So long as we allow it to be associated with our temples and places of worship, we offend and degrade our nationality. The loss and misery it has entailed on many a home is indescribable." This custom of dancing-girls is connected with the stories of Krishna, and Bishop Caldwell says that, "the stories related of Krishna's life do more than anything else to destroy the morals and corrupt the imagination of Hindu youth."
Nautch-girls. -- The presence of the nautch-girl is sought at weddings and other ceremonies. She is the one who fastens the wedding necklace, which is the equivalent of the wedding ring of the West, and her defiled hands tie the marriage knot and pollute the very inception of marriage. The Hindu Social Reform Association of Madras in a petition to the government states "that these women are invariably prostitutes," and "that this practise not only necessarily lowers the moral tone of society but also tends to destroy that family life on which national soundness depends, and to bring upon individuals ruin in property and character alike." As Mr. Tagore says, "It is a canker that eats into the vitals of our national existence and which, if not removed, in time may lead to the degeneracy and decay of the whole race." In South India alone there are 12,000 temple women dedicated to the service of the gods. Their immorality constituted a part of the religious worship of the temple, polluting priests and people alike, until restrained by the British government.
Defenceless Girls. -- Our hearts go out to these poor defenceless girls in India. Miss Carmichael has begun rescuing little girls who are being sold to the temples for lives of shame. She has over a hundred beautiful, bright-faced children, who had been, or were about to be, sold to the temple and "married to the god "for a life of immorality. For some she paid ten cents, others had been promised to the temple for as high as thirty dollars, while some she got free.
Cruel Alternatives. -- There is much that cannot be told. A poor helpless and defenceless widow who is at the mercy of the men of her household gives birth to a child. One of three things happens: the mother must go down the well, or the child must be put out of the way by infanticide, or it must be sold to the temple. Miss Carmichael herself tells the story of one of these bright-faced little girls.
Married to the God. -- "I was coming home from work a few evenings ago when I met two men and a child. They were caste men in flowing white scarves, dignified, educated men. A sudden fear shot through me, and I looked at the men and they laughed. 'We are taking her to the temple there, to marry her to the god.' The child turned once and waved her little hand to me. The men's faces haunted me all that night. And now it is all over, and she is 'tied.' There in the temple sits the holy Brahman priest; a carcass, moving, breathing, sinning -- such a one sits by that child to-day. The day I saw him they had wreathed him with fresh cut flowers; white flowers crowned that hideous head. His life is simply unthinkable. Talk of beasts in human shape, it is slandering the good animals to compare bad men to beasts. Safer far in a tiger's den than in that man's monastery. But he is a temple saint, wise in the wisdom of his creed; earthly, sensual, devilish. Now put a flower in his hand, a human flower this time. Now put beside him, if you can, a little girl -- your own little girl, and leaver her there -- yes, leave her there in his hand."
Failure of Hinduism. -- Infanticide has been forbidden in India, and is no longer common as it once was, but every census still shows about five million less women than men. As long ago as 1802 the government enacted laws for the suppression of infanticide. When one thinks of the children of India, bright-eyed and beautiful, intelligent and lovable, yet growing up in the obscenity of heathen streets and poisoned by the stories of false gods, one's heart is moved with compassion. Even now as we read, a mother is offering her little girl before the great hideous idol to be "married to the god." Even now children are being bought and sold in India. Even now their feet are slipping down into the mire of Hinduism. With all its gleams of truth, its high philosophy and its noble precepts, Hinduism has not uplifted womanhood nor redeemed childhood. The spotless story of the childhood of Jesus and his receiving of little children, his emancipation of womanhood and his gospel for the women of the world, have made a different life possible for the women and children of India. It is ours to give them this life.
Visit to Pandita Ramabai. -- In order to realize in the concrete the actual life of Indian women let us take the lives of three typical women who passed from Hinduism to Christianity, and study them to see the contrast between the two religions. The first is that of Pandita Ramabia. It was on a summer evening that I left the train and made my way across the famine-parched prairie to the hundred acres of Ramabai's School. A great quadrangle of long stone buildings appeared, a striking monument to a woman's faith and to the grace of God. We went inside the quadrangle, past neatly dressed Indian girls, to the garden in the center, laid out with beautiful design, so that the decorations of the flower beds in Scripture texts spell out the praises of God. It is well that they should praise him here where the desert has been made to blossom as the rose, and human hearts have been delivered from the shame and sorrow of earth to the purity and joy of heaven.
Personality and Early Life. -- In the evening we sat upon the mud floor and took supper with Ramabai and the devoted women who are helping her. We had curry and rice, coarse native bread and milk. But the most interesting feature of the meal was Ramabai herself. Her face was brimful of intelligence and bright with humor, though there is a touch of sadness about it too at times. The next day was Sunday. We wondered why no breakfast appeared, but found that the girls gave up their morning meal on Sunday to help their starving people. As the hundreds of girls gathered for Sunday worship, neat, clean, womanly, and happy, we cold not but be moved at the thought of the past from which they had been rescued; the worst of them from widowhood, starvation, sin, or shame; the best from idolatry and homes without the Bible, without Christ, and knowing no hope. I found Ramabai in the afternoon having a quiet time with her Bible, with leisure to answer my questions. From her own lips I learned the story of her life. She said: "In the great famine of '77, when I was a girl, our family was reduced to starvation. We prostrated ourselves before the idols day and night. When our money was gone we began to sell our jewelry, clothes, and cooking utensils. The day came when the last grain of rice was gone. We went into the forest to die there. First my father, then my mother, and then my eldest sister died from starvation. My brother and I continued our sad pilgrimage from the south to the northern boundary of India, and back again to Calcutta. I was often without food for days. Four long years we suffered from scarcity. My memory of the last days of my parents' lives so full of sorrow almost breaks my heart."
Her Work of Faith. -- In her early life she had received an exceptional education in Sanskrit and other Indian tongues and she can now speak six languages. She had read portions of the Scripture, and had been influenced by Nehemiah Goreh, but it was not until her journey to England that, seeing the superiority of Christianity over Hinduism, she was baptized. She said: "I have read the story of George Müller and the China Inland Mission, and I thought, 'If others can trust God, why should not I?' In the famine of '96 I saw these girls dying and I felt that I must save them. I said, 'I will depend upon God and not man; and I began to take in these starving girls, keeping them at first under the trees for shelter. I asked God for money for buildings and he has sent over $25,000. Already he has sent me five hundred girls, and if God sends them I will take a thousand more."
Executive Power. -- It was not long until she had that number. Think of one native woman, in this land of timid women, drawing the plans and superintending the construction of immense buildings; directing a hundred teachers, matrons, and workers; providing a thousand girls with education and industrial training, in sewing and weaving, housework and farming, running a dairy and oil mill, and having them taught cooking and nursing! She told me that God had abundantly supplied all her needs. She said little of her faith but much of God's faithfulness. In the life of this woman is there not rich promise of the future possibilities of India's women?
A Transformed Life. -- I was sitting with a friend on the veranda of the mission bungalow, when the work of the day was done. In front of us lay the mighty Jumna River, reflecting the rose-tinted clouds overhead. Pointing to a building on the opposite side of the river, my friend told me the following story, Among the girls in the mission boarding-school was a bright, attractive young girl, who passed through the various classes, and was finally employed as a teacher. One summer she noticed some sores between her fingers, and, as they did not yield to ordinary treatment, she was taken to the doctor, who sorrowfully pronounced her to be a leper. You of the West do not realize the horrors of leprosy, but we in India are painfully familiar with the bloated features, the decayed limbs, and the festering sores of the leper. It is a living death. There was only one thing to be done, the girl must be segregated to avoid spreading the awful disease by contagion. She must give up the companions of her girlhood, the friends with whom she had so long lived, and the work she was so successfully carrying on. When she arrived at the leper asylum, and saw the women among whom she must henceforth live, she buried her face in her hands and cried out in agony, "Must I become like one of these?" Life seemed unendurable, and death would have been a welcome release. She spent her days weeping bitterly over her sad fate. One morning the superintending missionary went to her, and tried to rouse some fresh interest in her mind. "You have had many advantages that these poor women have never had. Wouldn't you like to try and help them?" he said. It was a new thought to the girl, and forgetting her own grief, she began to inquire about the other inmates. She found that they were pitifully needy and ignorant. She formed them into three classes, and every day regular school was held. She read to them, taught them to sing hymns, and day by day told them of the Great Physician who alone was able to cure both body and soul.
The Joy of Helping Others. -- Some months later, the mission doctor went to see her, and the girl opened her heart to her, and told her that at first she had almost lost her faith in God. "But," she concluded, "Miss Sahib, when you came in, I was just thanking God for sending this affliction to me, for now I see what an opportunity he has given me to help these poor, suffering women." The last time I saw my friend, I said, "Tell me how the leper girl is getting on." The reply was, "The disease is steadily advancing. She has lost all the fingers of her right hand, and can no longer feed herself. But every one of the fifty women in the asylum has become a Christian, through the work that she has done among them." What but Christianity could so uplift the life of an Indian woman, and what but the gospel of Jesus Christ could change that cross into an opportunity of glad service for others?
Chandra Lela.[41] -- Far in the north in the mountains of Nepal a little girl named Chundra Lela was born of a wealthy family. She was married at seven, but at the age of nine the little boy husband died, and she was left a widow for life. As she studied her sacred books, in order that the sin which had caused her widowhood might be removed, she learned that this could be accomplished if she visited the four holy shrines at the extremities of India. With a purse of gold and two servants, she started out on foot on the long journey that was to last more than five years, and to extend over a distance as great as from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back again.
Shrines Visited. -- The first shrine she visited was that of the idol of Juggernaut, in the east of Bengal, at Puri. After a fortnight of costly worship, she started on the long pilgrimage again far away to Rameswaram, on a small island on the coast of Ceylon, east of Madura. Night after night in my bungalow at Tirupuvanam I have heard the weary band of pilgrims passing the house on the way to this sacred shrine, where Rama is said to have bridged the straits between India and Ceylon with his army of monkeys. After worshiping here, she started on foot for Dwarakanath in Kathiawar, western India. This place was sacred from the tradition of the obscene sports and immoral acts of Krishna. After fifteen days of worship and costly gifts, she started on the weary pilgrimage which was to last another year, far away up to Badrinath in the snows of the Himalayas. With bleeding feet, cold and faint, she toiled up the steep ascent and then wearily down again, but still there was no peace. Bathing at Benares and Allahabad brought no rest. Then she became a fakir, and by six months of self-torture tried to rid herself of sin. She would sit in the burning sun during the six hot months of the year with four fires built about her, and at night stand or sit in a cold pond, counting her beads and crying, "Rama! Rama! Rama!" She said, "Nobody knows how long those nights were, nor how I suffered before morning. I would go round the string of beads, repeating the name of the gods 108,000 times. All this I endured just to find God."
Guided to Christ. -- At last broken-hearted, disgusted with the greed and deceit of the Brahman priests, disillusioned as to many of the shams and superstitions of Hinduism, she came to Midnapore in Bengal. Mrs. Phillips, an American missionary, met her one day and told her the great good news. She began to read the Bible day and night. When she heard Dr. Phillips preach, she said: "Oh, what a sermon! I felt I had found that for which I had long sought. I wished to leave Hinduism with all its cruel deceptions and come out at once." She was baptized and began to work for Christ.
Widely Bearing Witness. -- For three years she told the good news from house to house and to throngs in the street. Then she formed the plan of going to the sacred places, where she herself had once gone as a blind seeker after truth with the crowds of weary pilgrims, in order to tell them the good news of Christ. Years later another pilgrimage took her away up to Nepal, where her brother at last believed and was baptized at her hands, in that distant land far from any missionary or native worker. When I was in Calcutta some years ago she was there, a white-haired old lady, feeble, but witnessing still. She has since gone to her great reward, and what a crown she will have! God grant that we also may receive it, and God help us to send the message to our suffering sisters in India who like Chundra Lela still sit in darkness and the shadow of death, "groping up the world's dark altar stairs to God."
Need of Women Workers. -- Are not such women worth saving? There are 144,000,000 of them in India, not one of whom can have her God-given rights apart from Christ. Women are needed to superintend Christian boarding-schools and high schools for girls; bright, intelligent, responsive as they are, these girls may be trained as the future mothers and Christian workers of India. Lady workers are also needed for house-to-house visitation and work in the zenanas, where no man can enter and where the women of India can be won alone by lady workers. Bible women are trained and sent out into these homes. The lady missionary superintends their work and visits their pupils from time to time. Her relation with the Hindu women is friendly, affectionate, and often touching to behold. Lady doctors are needed for the suffering women of India. The work is hard but the reward is great, and the gratitude of these gentle sufferers is beautiful to see. There are at present 163 lady doctors, and 1,405 unmarried women working in India. The number should be doubled, and the need of women missionaries is pressing and urgent.
Call for Service. -- What can you do for these women of India? Contrast your life, with all its fulness of blessing, its knowledge of God and Christ, and the joys of your Christian home, with the needy lives of your dark Indian sisters. Can you not share with them rich blessings that you have received from Christ? You can reach them by prayer. You can reach them by your gifts. For twenty-five dollars a year you can support a Bible woman to carry the gospel into scores of darkened homes; while a hundred dollars a year would send the light, perhaps, into the homes of a whole town. What sacrifice are you willing to make for the women of India? "The silent cry of the wronged womanhood of this vast empire is rising up daily to the Savior of women. Am I willing to place myself at his disposal that he may use me to set the captives free?"
THE CHURCH AND THE MISSIONARY
I believe that the progress of our faith hitherto in India has been hindered more than we. for the most part dream of by the fact that, partly owing to the very nature of the English character which in Its strongly marked and somewhat self-assertive individuality finds real solidarity of life and action difficult and uncongenial, the Christian religion has been presented to the natives of India, and is thought of by them, almost exclusively as an individual matter concerning simply the relation of each separate soul to its God, while the complement to this essential foundation which is supplied so abundantly in the New Testament, I mean the necessary unity of the whole as one body in Christ, has hardly been brought home to their thoughts or pressed upon their Imagination at all.
-- Lefroy
These three desiderata of the native Christian Church -- self-support, self-propagation, and self-government -- are to be desired above all other blessings by the missions and should be sought with a persistence and a well-organized intelligence, which will mean advance and ultimate success. When these three have been attained, missions, with all their expensive machinery, may gladly disband and feel that their end has been accomplished and that they are no longer needed.
-- Jones
CHAPTER VII
THE CHURCH AND THE MISSIONARY
Key to the Position. -- The Christian Church is the key to the whole position in India. If the Church is pure and Spirit-filled it will have the power to evangelize the land. Let us in this chapter confine our attention to the Indian Church on the one hand and to the life of the missionary on the other.
Protestant Christian Forces. -- We have in India to-day a total Protestant force of 4,614 missionaries; 35,767 Indian workers; and a Protestant Christian community of 1,472,448. The Christian community is growing faster than any other in India to-day. During the last decade, the Hindus lost a fraction of one per cent., the Parsees gained 4.7 per cent., the Jews 6 per cent., the Mohammedans 8.9 per cent., while the Christians as a whole gained 28 per cent. While the population increased 2.5 per cent., Protestant Indian Christians (omitting Roman Catholics and Syrians) gained 49.5 per cent. The total Christian community, including Catholics, Protestants, and Syrians, numbers about 3,000,000, or 1 to 100 of the population. But unless the present rate of increase is greatly multiplied, India will not be a Christian country for centuries to come.
Problems of the Church -- Self-government. -- The problems which confront the Indian Church and the missionary are many and perplexing. The question of self-government is a delicate one. Must all work carried on by foreign money be exclusively under foreign control, or should Indian Christians be given responsibility for the management of the Church before they have become self-supporting? Should authority lie in the power of the purse? The danger of building up a huge system of mission employment of native workers superintended by foreigners and paid by foreign money is that it tends to relieve the Indian Church of the needed burden of responsibility for the evangelization of their own country. How would you meet this difficulty? In Tinnevelli the whole Church is controlled by a native Church Council, composed of four Europeans and about a hundred representative Indians. Because they were trusted with self-government, they advanced rapidly in self-support. They have received a decreasing grant from England which amounted last year to only about $8,000, while they contributed more than $50,000 themselves to self-support and for their own missionary activity.
Peril of Extremes. -- In order to preserve the necessary standards of discipline, to prevent compromise with caste, to secure an interpretation of doctrine which is neither too broad and mixed with heathenism on the one hand, nor too narrow and wooden, on the other, it seems indispensable that the missionary should keep in close contact with the situation. But it is difficult for the masterful Anglo-Saxon to confront the submissive Indian without assuming practical control by virtue of his personality, even when he may be in a numerical minority. Can he fail to assert himself when he can see the morals or the doctrine of the native Church to be in danger? Plainly, however complete a transfer of authority may be ultimately desired, it may easily proceed too rapidly as well as too slowly.
Madura Method. -- In the Madura mission the entire evangelistic work and primary education is controlled by a District Conference, composed of ten missionaries and fifteen representative Indians. The foreign contingent will gradually decrease and the Indian members increase in number. This body controls all the funds received in India and from America. The Indians are thus being gradually trained both in self-support and in self-government. The mission is subdivided into circuits and pastorates, each controlled by a committee, composed chiefly of Indians. The plan is working well. Men can only learn to walk by walking, and the native Church will grow in strength as it is trusted with self-government.
Self-support. -- The problem of self-support is a serious and difficult one where the poverty of the people is so great. How far should Christian churches and schools be aided from abroad, and how may the people be led to develop rapidly in self-support? That is a question not easy to solve. It is a mistake to suppose that methods applicable in one field or mission are necessarily desirable in another, and that differences in results are mainly due to differences in methods. Korea and the Karens in Burma were ripe for self-support almost from the beginning, and that method is far better wherever it is possible. But conditions are very different in India.
Two Views. -- Two views are held on this question by the missionaries. A minority maintains that self- support is almost the chief end sought, and that however slow and ineffective the work, its development should be determined by the ability of the people to support it. They point out the danger resulting from a large staff of native workers maintained artificially by foreign money. The majority, however, believe that an initial investment in evangelization, education, and the training of able native leaders will tend rapidly to develop a Church which will have the resources to become self-supporting, and will have the spur and stimulus of the example of a well-organized and well-paid staff of Indian leaders who have set the pace for them and whom they will eventually be led to support in the same way. The rapidity with which many missions are developing in self-support, especially those which made a liberal and wise initial investment, is evidence in favor of the latter method.
Favorable Examples. -- That some sections are responding to self-support is shown by the following examples: Among the Christians connected with the Anglican communion in the Telugu country, numbering in all twenty-nine thousand, the average income of a family -- not of each individual -- is about fifty cents a week. Yet each member of every family contributes nearly two cents a week. In the Tamil country, where the Christians are more prosperous, the amount given is considerably higher. In Tinnevelli the Christians largely support their pastorate. It may be said that wherever large mass movements have taken place the Christians are taking upon themselves increasingly the financial responsibility for their Churches. In some cases they go even further and support evangelists among their non-Christian brethren. The Tinnevelli Christians support two Tamil missionaries and seven Telugu evangelists in the Nizam's Dominions.
Counter Considerations. -- But in other sections of India, the results as to self-support are far less encouraging. The extreme poverty of the people, and their very prevalent indebtedness makes giving a quite different thing from what it is in this prosperous country. Shall the mission help in paying the salaries of native pastors? If so, will not standards of living for pastors be set up which the native Church can never maintain? Will not also the pastor feel more responsible to the mission which controls a part of his salary than to the congregation which calls him? If not, how can we secure men with ability and training? How can the native pastors provide themselves with books and other means of intellectual growth? Should native Christians be permitted to worship in unattractive buildings in inconspicuous situations, or should they be helped in the matter of church erection? If the latter, how can we disabuse their minds of the notion that the mission ought to do everything for them?
Christian Unity. -- The problem of a divided Church, which js perplexing to non-Christians on the field, is a serious one. The question of Christian unity, however, is being solved in some parts of the field. We have already united in south India all the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Dutch Reformed Christians from the missions of America, England, and Scotland, into "The United Church of South India," with 150,000 members, possessing a common creed and a common ecclesiastical government, chiefly Presbyterian in form. Other bodies desire to join with this United Church, but one or two are prevented at present by the action of their Boards or Churches in the home lands. In the matter of unity we must aim "not at compromise for the sake of peace, but at comprehension for the sake of truth."
A Witnessing Christian. -- A few typical biographies of obscure Indian Christians may help us to realize the present situation in the Indian Church. There is old Solomon, who was converted eight years ago in one of our conventions. He had been living in sin, and he had been in jail. At this convention he learned the secret of victory over sin. After hearing an address on witnessing and service he decided that he would speak to one man every day about Christ. He got the idea that the missionaries and pastors were the men with five talents, the catechists and teachers had two talents, but he, a simple, ignorant Christian, possessed at least one talent, and he must use it. Beginning with one man a day, he was soon speaking to a score. Every day at two o'clock in the morning he rises to pray for India and for an hour of communion with God, and then goes back to sleep. After his morning Bible reading, he goes out to witness for Christ. When I saw him, through the witness of himself and another simple day laborer, a revival had begun in the church, and I found there a large company of Christians going out every Sunday to preach the gospel in the surrounding villages.
A Christian Who Loved. -- I know of another poor man who came to a missionary friend of mine and asked that he might be taken on as a Christian worker to preach the gospel. My friend said that he had no money, but as the man still pleaded, he finally told him that he might go to work if he could live on a dollar a month, and that he would pay this out of his own pocket. After a time the man seemed too ignorant to earn even the dollar, and he was dismissed from the service. Then the Hindus came in from the village and pleaded that he be restored. They said, "Where is that man who loved us; will you not send him back? "So back he went and began the work again. His salary rose from one dollar to two dollars, but I am not sure that it ever exceeded three dollars a month. Yet the local missionary told me with tears in his eyes that that man had won some five hundred souls for Christ.
Blacksmith Wins a Proud Brahman. -- Here is another simple Christian. He does not look gifted or educated. Once a drunkard, a poor outcaste coolie, he was converted to Christ. The village panchayat, or council, of the high-caste people, sentenced him to be beaten for daring to change his religion without their permission. He offered them his bare back, saying, "They beat my Lord and Master, why should not I suffer as well?" Then they challenged him to offer some sign or proof that his religion was true. The simple fellow ran and laid his head down on the sacrificial block, and said in his zeal, "Cut off my head, and in three days I will rise again from the dead." And he truly believed that he would. Whether he would rise again or not the caste people did not know, but they felt reasonably certain that they would be put in prison for cutting off his head, so they let him alone. The first year he won thirteen souls for Christ, and told the gospel story without money and without price to a thousand souls. A proud Brahman stood beside him and said to the missionary, "He is my guru,[42] and I am his disciple. God is in this man's life." Such was the witness of this simple man.
A Modern Isaiah. -- "Isaiah," five years ago, was a drunkard and a poor outcaste. He beat his wife and was guilty of all the sins of his tribe. His wife was a wild, ignorant, jungle woman. Three years ago he was converted and patiently learned to read his Bible. If you could hear him in prayer, your heart would be touched. As a Christian worker he went out and brought the people of two villages to Christ. He won four men to go out as Christian workers. Toiling in ceaseless and earnest witnessing, he receives a salary of only two dollars and fifty cents a month. In a new village which he has just entered, he had to live under a tree for a month, without any house or shelter from the rain. When asked if he was not sorry for such hardship he replied, "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but my Lord had not where to lay his head. Surely I have more than he! "
Primitive Conditions. -- Such instances could be multiplied a thousand fold. Some men like these are working in my own station, and I am proud to have them as my friends and fellow workers. Many Indian Christians fall far below this standard, and one of the heaviest burdens of the missionary's life is to bear with carnal Christians. One may gain a fairly accurate picture of mission churches in various lands to-day by reading Paul's epistles to the Corinthian and other infant churches of his time. If, however, their present condition is contrasted with their former state, or with the heathen around them, there is much reason for encouragement.
The Missionary. -- Let us turn now from the Indian Church to the missionary himself. Come with me for a visit to my station, and let us see how the missionary really lives. A journey of twelve miles from the railway in an ox-cart brings us to the mission compound of about four acres of land, surrounded by level fields that stretch away to the blue bills on the horizon. There are always cobras in the compound, but they occupy it at night and we in the daytime, so there is no difficulty. At night, however, we never go out without a lantern, or else we must clap our hands as we walk to clear the road. The house is plastered inside and out and has a cool veranda and a little straw-covered room on the roof for sleeping at night. For the climate is hot -- "three months hot, and nine months hotter." It is uncomfortable, but I have not found it unhealthy. I have had better health in India than in America. When I went out I insured my life, expecting to live about five years and earn a little money for missions, but I gave up the insurance long ago as a poor investment in my case. We lead the simple life, of necessity. A few vegetables and fruits, curry and rice, and a little meat make up our diet, but it is a happy life. I hear tales of missionary extravagance. If the missionaries are living in luxury they must be geniuses to contrive to do it on the small salaries they receive.
Compound and Buildings. -- The mission compound is filled with school buildings and the houses of the Indian helpers, and it is as busy as a beehive. Here on the right is our boarding-school, training a hundred children to be the future leaders and Christian workers of the district. In the center stands the church where the Christians of the village meet for their weekly worship, and where our Indian workers gather for their monthly meeting with the missionary.
A Mission Station. -- In this station I have the joint care of about fifty schools and sixty churches, with 5,000 Christians and 500,000 Hindus. Let us visit one of our schools. The newest one was started by a Christian young man of his own accord. I found the school first in the cattle pound, as they had no building, but persecution broke out, and they were driven away. On the next visit I found them under a banyan tree, with fifty boys repeating texts of Scripture and singing Christian hymns. There was no congregation in this raw heathen village, yet five men came to me and asked to be received into the Christian Church; and strangely enough they were from five different castes. Each might in time become an entering wedge into a new community. At last, in spite of opposition, we secured land and built a mud schoolhouse and church combined, costing us less than twenty dollars. The school has now become a little church, the five families have become ten within a year, and here is another center of light in the darkness, and one more school added to our fifty. And so the work is spreading. It is this success which embarrasses the missionary financially, for every fresh congregation, every new school, means an added worker or building for which there is no provision in the appropriations of the mission board.
An Indian Church. -- In the last church I visited, I sat down with the elders on the floor and talked over the crops and their family affairs. They are an attractive people, full of faults but lovable. Last year that church gave a full tithe of their income, or one tenth of their grain measured out on the field, in addition to their Sunday collections. They brought in a new constitution for their church when I was present, and one rule was that nobody could vote who did not pay his tithes. I protested, but they said, "Oh, they can come to church, but we do not wish any one to vote here who does not pay tithes." I wonder how many voting members we would have in our home churches if this constitution were in force in America!
The Helpers. -- We have a hundred workers scattered throughout this station. Most of them teach school six days a week, and care for a little congregation on Sunday, besides preaching to the Hindus in the surrounding villages. Once a month the pastors, catechists, and teachers come together for the workers' meeting, and oh, what a busy day it is! In the morning each man reports about his work, telling of his difficulties and encouragements, of inquirers or new converts, or persecution in his village. In the afternoon I conduct a Bible class in order to guide their Bible study for the coming month. This is followed by an hour in Church history or some subject that will help to keep them growing intellectually. In the afternoon we go out and preach together, and after a prayer-meeting and a message, to give them fresh inspiration in their service for the coming month, they return to their distant villages. I wish you could look in at one of our meetings. See those catechists listen hungrily as we speak of the deeper life. There are tears in one old man's eyes. There is Moses, and beside him sits Barnabas: Jacob sits by Peter and David by Samuel. A goodly array of apostles, prophets, and martyrs are here. A picture this, of the kingdom of God.
Moses. -- Take that serious-looking man, Moses. How much salary do you suppose he gets! Two dollars and fifty cents a month, or thirty dollars a year. How does he manage to live on such a salary? Well, of this two dollars and fifty cents, the first twenty-five cents goes to the Widow's Aid Society, the Home Missionary Society, the Benevolent Society, and other lines of work, for he tries to give a tenth to the Lord. He supports one son in the high school, for thirty cents a month. This boy cannot be very wild on an allowance of $3.60 a year! Then he keeps one boy in the boarding-school. On the remaining one dollar and seventy-six cents a month, he supports himself and a family of three small children. He was trying to keep his oldest boy in school, but he could not make ends meet and the boy had to leave. And yet Moses is cheerful and happy.
A Sample Day. -- How does the missionary live? Let us take a sample day. At five-thirty we are awakened by the morning hymn of the boarding- school children. After our "morning watch "and chota-hazri, or early tea, we may go out preaching in one of the neighboring villages; for there will be forty villages within five miles of the house easily reached on a bicycle or on foot. On our return, we must inspect the boarding-school, or answer correspondence which comes in from catechists or teachers in trouble or difficulty. Visitors come in during the morning. Here is a catechist to ask for medicine, as cholera has just broken out in his village. Then comes another to tell that a fire the night before has burned down the village and some Christian families are destitute. Next comes an old Christian from the hills, and falls down prostrate on the floor according to his ancient custom. "Sir," he says, "as an outcaste, I could own no land, but I became a Christian and with the savings of a lifetime, amounting to fifty rupees ($16), I went to a high-caste man to buy an acre of ground. 'Give me the money,' he said, and I did. 'But don't I get some receipt or paper to show for this?' I asked. 'Come to-morrow,' he replied. He put me off again and again, and at last drove me away, saying, 'I never received any money from you. I have sold that field to my high-caste neighbor and given him a deed for it.' Sir, can you not come to the hills and see that I get justice done, for I have lost the savings of a lifetime and I have no money with which to go to court." What would you do in a case like this?
After-breakfast Program. -- At ten o'clock we have a simple breakfast, consisting mostly of cereals and fruit. In the afternoon we go out preaching in the town, or to a neighboring village. Then there are the accounts of the whole station to be kept and prepared for thorough auditing; fifty schools have to be kept abreast of government requirements, and statistics and returns prepared for the inspector; there is always a new school-building, or church under construction, or an old one to be repaired; there are cases of discipline, persecution, or arbitration to be settled, and much "serving of tables "before the day's work is done. After supper at seven we have the evenings at home with the papers, the home mail, and a little family talk, till the children have to be sent to the homeland for their education.
A Day of Touring. -- The next day we start on tour for the monthly round of the station. We travel in a comfortable two-wheeled ox-cart, which serves at once as our bed at night and house by day. We take a boy along as cook, and can stay out conveniently for a week or two. In the morning we inspect the first school. Here is a faithful old teacher, who has been struggling on in a hard village, with never more than twenty or thirty boys in his school; but he has lived a consistent, prayerful, and godly life. From him the boys learned to pray and read the Bible. From him they learned to know and love Christ. Finally, one by one they came to be baptized. Persecution followed in almost every case, but eight high-caste boys, now grown to young manhood, have already joined the church; and the little school has become a congregation. After examining the scholars in the Scriptures, and visiting the Christians in their homes, we go on to the next Tillage, reaching it in time for an evening meeting with the Christian congregation. Here are a hundred simple Christians who come out as we hold special services, and to whom we try to give some deeper vision of Christ, some message of comfort in their Christian lives. The men sit on one side, the women on the other side of the church, while the children crawl about the floor.
Carefully Garnered Results. -- We go out with ten or twenty of our catechists each month to tour the station and preach to the Hindus. Almost every trip brings a few inquirers, and sometimes a little group, after a long struggle, has the courage to come over the line and be baptized, though we receive none without careful preparation. Our method is to receive them as they come, whether singly or in numbers, and to count them as "adherents "from the time that they renounce their idols and place themselves under Christian instruction. After six months or a year we baptize, individually, only those who show signs of spiritual life and have sufficient knowledge of true Christianity.
Reaching a Village. -- As soon as a village comes near the point of decision, or there are earnest inquirers impressed by the truth of the gospel, we concentrate our forces there for a week, visiting the homes of the people during the daytime, and gathering them at night with a magic lantern. Here we show scenes from the life of Christ, and with short sermons upon each picture hold the entire village for an hour or two in perfect quiet, while they are able to take in the story both through the ear and the eye. Here is a village where we have been working for several days. The moment of crisis has come. Each of the catechists has spoken with a short, burning appeal. The villagers ar^ seated on the ground in the moonlight, as we rise to "put in the net "and call for decisions. We contrast their present degraded condition with all that Christ has to offer them. We hold up Christ on the cross as their Lord and Savior, and then appeal for decision. Turning to the head man, I say, "Will you to-night accept Christ and become a Christian? "There is a moment of indecision, of tense, breathless silence; a hum of excitement passes through the crowd as slowly and deliberately the head man rises to his feet and folds his arms. "Are there any others who will join? "we ask, and one by one four men rise. I then produce a paper, and the pastor draws up an agreement whereby the people promise from that day to renounce their idols, to attend Christian worship, to place themselves under instruction, and to strive to lead a true Christian life. After reading it over we ask the four men to sign it. One slowly and painfully writes his name with my fountain pen. The others put a cross, if they are not able to write, or touch the pen in sign of assent, as the pastor signs their names. Then we kneel in prayer, and having commended them to God, we go on our way rejoicing, leaving a catechist to instruct them and to open a school for the children of the village. The first step has now been taken, a group of "adherents" has been gathered, and we must nurture them until we have a strong Christian church in that village.
Testing a Decision. -- I arrived in one village where I heard the people wished to become Christians. I sent for them in the morning, but they had gone off to their fields for the day's work. I waited till noon, but still they had not gathered. After waiting all day they finally began to collect after they had eaten their evening meal, about 8 o'clock, sitting on the ground in the moonlight. To my consternation, I noticed that as soon as we began to preach, one by one they began to nod off to sleep, according to their custom after eating. I now gravely announced that the corrective for drowsiness was to stand up, and I requested about ten of the sleepier older men to stand, which they solemnly did with folded arms. As fast as any man began to nod I would ask him to rise to his feet. In this way the pastor and I continued preaching to them for an hour or more, and not a man slept. The people professed to be willing to forsake their idols and accept Christ. But I wished to test their genuineness and ascertain their motives. Going with them to the idol temple, I took hold of the elephant-headed god Ganesha, and said, "Here is this stone idol. It has lips but cannot speak. It has hands but cannot help you. Did it give you any relief in the last famine? If its arm is broken it cannot mend itself, but you must make another idol. Will you give me permission to throw down the idol from its base?" When they did so, I threw the idol down upon its face. At that they laughed somewhat nervously and seemed relieved to find that nothing had happened. "There," I said, "is that helpless piece of stone. It cannot lift itself, it cannot help itself, how much less can it help you?" Then fearing that some one would stand the idol upright and claim a miracle for the god after I had gone, I myself stood the idol on its base again, and said, "Whenever you are ready to become Christians, send the idol in a cart to my house, and I will know that you are in earnest." Thus we go from village to village exhorting the Christians, pleading with Hindus, preaching to throngs in the street, or dealing with inquirers at our wagon or tent; every day we meet the kindly people, and every night, tired and happy, we pitch our moving camp "a day's march nearer home."
Hardships. -- "The reader has now seen something of camp life without suffering its inconvenience. He has not had to go without food or a drop of water, such as he dare drink, from fear of cholera. He has not had to push a hopelessly punctured bicycle through a blazing sun for miles, till his tongue has literally cleaved to the roof of his mouth, and his thirst has become an absolute agony. He has not stuck in the bed of a swollen stream with a broken bullock-yoke and had to wait in the rain till another could be procured from some far-off village. He has not had to lie for hours on the hard roadside, hungry and tired, because his luggage-cart had broken down and no food was procurable, and finally, he has not had to be jolted home in a cart for weary hours while dysentery, cholera, or typhoid fever has him in a deadly grip. He has not had to wrangle with an excited crowd about some difficult question of religion. He has not felt the terrible loneliness and the sickening heart-ache at failure or the burden of responsibility, where he has the care of all the churches in a district larger than an English diocese."[43]
Discouragements. -- To Mr. Sharrock's graphic description of missionary hardships one could add, if it were necessary, a whole chapter of discouragements which tend to dishearten the missionary, but to which he never, thank God, need surrender or succumb, no, not for an hour! The real trials are not physical discomforts, for the missionary is usually comfortably situated and the matter of house and food and climate are mere outward circumstances, which can do little to make or mar one's happiness. His real conflict is not with flesh and blood, but with adverse spiritual forces. There is that leaden, impenetrable mass called "heathenism" which creates an atmosphere all about him; there is the natural antagonism and prejudice of the non-Christian mind against Christianity or any other innovation; there is the deadly, materialistic indifference of the poverty-stricken masses to any spiritual message, and the long months or years of patient seed-sowing before results begin to appear. Then there is the heavy burden of the uplift of a Christian community, perhaps long crushed and degraded, with the downpull of their dark heredity and the tenacity of heathen habits to hold them back. There is the sickening contact with sin, in individual or community, where a Christian conscience has not yet been fully developed, and where one would fain hide his face or stoop down and write upon the ground for very shame, but he must go on filling up that which is lacking of the affliction of Christ, entering more deeply into the mystery of the atonement, for his body's sake. There is the problem of how to uproot the remnants of caste from the Christian church, when one has not yet uprooted all pride from his own heart. There is the need of lifting twelve or more native fellow workers, with few advantages and fierce temptations, isolated in squalid villages, to a higher spiritual life, when one is oppressed most of all by the problem of his own inner life and the depths of his own crying need, which is the greatest humiliation of all.
Strength for Trials. -- Perhaps there is the added cross of being unwelcomed, unrewarded, unappreciated, and misunderstood by the community one has sacrificed his life to serve. Perhaps there is the loneliness of the sense of being deserted by the home base, of staggering under a burden which was never meant for the isolated foreign worker alone, but for a whole Church, to wean it from its worldliness and call it forth to heroic endeavor. Perchance the patter of little footsteps has ceased about the house, or the table seems empty with the vacant chair, or oceans separate forever the home that can be united no more. Be this as it may, I know of no work harder, -- or happier. A hundred times it were worth going to the ends of the earth, if only to learn with friends and loved ones far away and circumstances at their worst, that Jesus satisfies, that he alone suffices, and that he is our unchanging portion. There is a darker side to mission work, and we would like to share it with you at home, as you are able to bear it. Our Lord did not give up the task of saving the world because he found it hard, nor will our young people at home shrink from the call of the heroic. As in Gideon's day, if any man's heart fail him, let him turn back, but the rest of us will fight it through to a finish.
Holding the Ropes. -- As you think of the infant Indian church, struggling in the midst of the down- pull of heathenism, and of our Indian workers isolated in distant villages, often in an atmosphere of obscene language; as you think of the missionary with his schools, churches, helpers, and a vast district with thousands to reach, far from his home and friends and kindred, will you not hold the ropes at home and help us by prayer? It is a happy life, and one deeply attractive. In all these fourteen years I have never known one hour of discouragement. India is home to me now, and America is a foreign country. But we are dependent upon you at the home base. No company of missionaries however large or godly can win the world. Only the Church of Christ can do that. Apart from you we cannot be made perfect, nor our work a success. I think I cannot better make you realize the need of some lonely missionaries at the front than by quoting from a letter, written by a white-haired man, who with his brilliant gifts has been holding the fort these many years out in the foreign field. The letter was written out of a heart hungry for sympathy, as to a friend, but it was not intended as an appeal for help. He writes:
A Heart Heavily Burdened. -- "If I were not in such a desperate state here for need of funds, if I were not carrying a personal burden of debt for work that had to be provided for, perhaps I should be able to look at things more complacently. I do not see what the end is to be if this state of affairs goes on much longer. But I must go on doing the best I can, thinking and planning and worrying day and night, fighting back every expenditure that can be fought back, putting off the future wherever it can be put off, keeping things at starvation rates, and still believing that the Lord knows it all. If some of these good people could live in a mud hut and eat little, and that little half dirt and most unnourishing, while they spent themselves in Christ- like lives and earnest service, and then tell me that I ought not to spend a few rupees here and there to keep that mud hut from tumbling down on the heads of my brother workers -- well, I have been told that, and I have commended such people to the forgiving mercy of an all-seeing Master. After I have spent my last cent of appropriation and every cent that people here can raise, including what the brother who lives in the mud hut himself contributes, to help support the said brother and others like him, am I going to say, ' Well, poor man, I hope his house won't fall down on his head,' or am I going to do as I would wish to be done by and lay out a few rupees on the repair of his hut? I am tired; I am tired, I am tired of carrying this burden, and if it were not for the Master, who in the cool of the day walks beside me (and I can see the print of the nails and the wounds he bears and hear his voice) -- if it were not for him, I should feel like quitting and giving it up. Meantime it is a sort of relief to sit down and talk it over with you."
Urgent Duty of the Home Base. -- I have known but little of hardships myself, but as I think out over the wide fields of India, of missionaries like this one, bravely standing at their isolated posts in the face of discouragement which stares them in the face, and half-deserted by the home base which only partly supplies the needs of their growing work, as I think of these men and their children, the separation of families, the little open graves by which some of them have had to stand, as part of the price of a tropical climate, I find no words strong enough, no thought adequate to express my admiration for that great company of men whom I have seen at work all over India, from the snows of the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, and from Bombay to Burma. Oh, friends, do not desert them, but hold up their hands, that they may be "steady until the going down of the sun."
CHAPTER VIII
THE WINNING OF INDIA
A Bird's-eye View. -- Let us take an aeroplane trip in our private car over India, as the great level land lies below us in fancy. We cross over the snowy peaks of the Himalayas, rising to twice the height of the highest Alps, over the plains of the north, dotted with their brown villages, and teeming cities, down into the tropical verdure and the graceful palms of the south. Everywhere, everywhere there are villages! In all there are 715,577[44] of them. If our Lord, when upon earth, had gone through one village a day in India, and had lived until to-day, he would not yet have visited them all. This land is not much over half the size of the United States, yet it contains over three times its population. It exceeds in population all Europe save Russia, or nearly doubles that of the Russian Empire. India has in fact twice the population of North and South America combined. Only one-thirtieth part of the world's area, it yet contains one fifth of the human race. Out of every five persons in the world one lives in India.
Lines of Service. -- How are we to reach this vast, teeming population? Every arm of the service must be employed. We have first the station missionary, with his corps, of workers, his schools, churches, and touring work. We have also the great educational arm of the service, with 37 mission colleges, 576 high schools and 11,503 primary schools, instructing in all nearly half a million pupils. There is the industrial department taking the boys who come over in the mass movements, and lifting them from their helpless hand-to-mouth method of existence, to be useful artisans and to learn the trades heretofore monopolized by the higher castes. Then there is the literary work, the flooding of India from our Christian presses with Bibles, Gospel portions, tracts, and handbills. Our 150 mission hospitals and 313 dispensaries recorded last year 3,639,597 treatments, and have broken down the prejudice and softened the hearts of the multitudes for the entrance of the Word of truth. Beside all this, we must have our evangelistic work, as a kind of flying column to reach the outlying multitudes and carry widely over the land the herald of the gospel. All these methods of work are fruitful; for we must present to India our many-sided gospel, and its message to the whole man, physical, mental, social, spiritual.
A Year in Tents. -- For a year I took a band of twenty theological students and went out and lived with them in the tents. The memory of that happy time is ever with me. To walk with the men through the fields, a mile or more with each man in turn, talking of their difficulties, their struggles, their temptations, praying with them, and teaching them, while at the same time they were teaching me the new language, was a privilege that angels might envy. Look in at our camp for a moment and see the men at work. At five o'clock, off sputters our little American alarm-clock, and in the darkness there rises the sound of a Tamil lyric; then the men in the dim light of the candles have a short time for their morning watch and prayer before the work of the day begins. A cup of coffee, and we are off for the morning preaching, dividing into six or seven parties, with three or four men in each, and a violin to draw the crowd. In the morning we take the villages within a four mile radius and in the afternoon those within two miles, thus reaching about twenty villages a day with an average of a thousand hearers. As we enter a village the men are thrashing out the grain, as the oxen are driven four abreast treading out the corn. Beyond, the men with fans are tossing the grain in the air to winnow it in the wind. Down the street the women are pounding out the rice for the noonday meal. We are followed by a motley procession of children, men, boys, and dogs, till we come to the center of the village. Here we strike up with our violin and a Tamil song. The crowd gathers, and after a short ten-minute sermon from each worker, we break up and speak to the people personally, seeking any earnest inquirer. I shall not forget my first attempt at preaching in a noisy street. The Tamil verbs were hard enough, but to compete with a dog fight, a huckster unwilling to have his business interrupted, two children crying, a group on one side trying to settle a quarrel, and the low hum of conversation in the crowd, was too much for a beginner. But we went back that night into the same noisy village and with the magic lantern held the whole village, some hundreds in number, in perfect silence while we told the story of the life of Christ.
Out in Camp. -- In our first station we found the fields white for harvest. Already some thousands of Christians had been gathered by long and patient seed-sowing. The Hindus in many villages seemed on the verge of coming over. Christians came from all sides to ask us to visit their congregations and hold meetings. We were miles from a railway, and a white man was a novelty. From some villages they came bringing presents of chickens, eggs, and vegetables to us, and several times they brought a sheep. That meant mutton curry and a good meal for the whole camp. At other places they would insist on bringing garlands of flowers and accompanying us to the church with a native band, in which the leading figure was the bass drummer, whose gyrations, as he used both hands and two drum sticks, leaping in ecstasy, whirling in graceful circles, and furiously drumming the whole time, reminded me of a combination of a negro cake-walk and an African devil-dance. The missionary of this station was a humble and godly old man enduring hardship, spending most of his time away from home among the people, sharing their burdens and giving nearly all his own salary to the work. He is off across the fields at dawn to visit some congregation, traveling by slow bullock-cart in the heat of the sun, preaching several times a day and coming into the tent late at night after an exhausting day's work. No wonder he has hard work, with his 4,000 Christians scattered in over 100 villages, with 40 schools to superintend and 1,000 scholars learning the Bible, and with a population of over 200,000 Hindus to evangelize. Is such a station too small a sphere for you at home who read this? Above all we need here in India more Spirit-filled men like this man.
Ripe Harvest-fields. -- There is need of an immediate advance to reap in such stations all over India where the fields are white, but where there is a lack of laborers or of funds. The Bishop of Madras states that in the Telugu country there are 2,000,000 people who desire Christian instruction, but cannot be reached for lack of funds. Bishop Thoburn states that in the United Provinces "more than 100,000 are waiting to be received into the Christian community." In the face of waiting harvest-fields like this let us not forget our Master's words, "I sent you to reap." As Bishop Thoburn says, "Nothing in all modern history, nothing since the day of Pentecost, has been equal to the present opportunity."
Under Fire. -- In the next station we entered a wealthy town which was the chief citadel of Hinduism. Here for the first time our students were stoned, as they attempted to use the magic lantern with the life of Christ. They kept cool and quiet, however, and told the Hindus that they did not mind a few stones and would not stop for them. It was not easy to stand in the bright light of the lantern while any coward could throw at them in the dark.
A Faithful Catechist. -- In another hamlet we found a little church in a squalid Hindu village. The catechist's life was God's message to that community. Alone here, we found him following McCheyne 's method of Bible reading, covering some four chapters a day, gathering first his family and then his little congregation of fifty simple folk before daylight each morning to read and explain to them a chapter by the light of a smoking wick, and then sending them out with a fresh message to witness to their Hindu fellow workmen through the day. Daily he had taught his little school, and one by one had sent some thirty boys up to the mission high school. I saw one boy, just returned, who had been converted while at college and had gone home to witness to his Hindu family. The catechist had so prepared the ground, that after we held a service on the way of salvation, we invited the Hindus present to publicly confess Christ. Eight men rose slowly and independently, professing their belief in Christ and repeated after the catechist the Apostles' creed, stating their desire to join the church.
A Great Festival. -- Our best opportunity for reaching large audiences is at the great Hindu melas or festivals. Here the sluggish undercurrent of daily life surges to the surface, and we see Hinduism as it really is. At a shrine some twelve miles from Madura, in South India, upwards of 50,000 people come annually to worship the god Aligarh, and to get their sins forgiven. We had taken advantage of the crowds to go there with our twenty theological students and some thirty other workers to preach the gospel. As we approached the place on the evening before the festival, the weird shouts of the worshipers came echoing up the valley, as throngs from village after village approached the sacred spot. Here come a hundred people from a distant hamlet. The men are leading a dozen goats in front for sacrifices. The women are laden with grains and fruits and vegetables for offerings to the gods. Each has his gift, none comes empty-handed before the idol. As they approach the gate, the dancing religious fanatics in front burst into mad ecstasies, as the spell of the god is supposed to come upon them. In wild excitement they feign to speak with tongues as oracles, yelling like demons, lashing themselves with whips, burning themselves with torches. We can see the flames lick their oiled bodies and even play about their faces. We were borne by the great crowd up the avenue of ancient banyan trees and carried in this seething current of humanity toward the sacred hill with its temple.
Growth of a New God. -- And what is the idea at the root of all this worship? Why are all these people here and who is this god? This Aligarh seems to have been in his lifetime an ordinary wealthy farmer and landowner of the village. He entered into immoral relations with a Mohammedan woman and to reinstate himself into caste he had to make to the Brahmans certain payments and offerings and bathe in a neighboring spring. After his death a small statue or image was set up, which the people of the next generation began to worship. Some sick man worships before the image and perchance gets well, and lo! the reputation of the new god goes rolling up like a snowball, to use Sir Alfred Lyall's phrase, and another god is added to the 330,000,000 already in India, many of whom were deified in the same way.
Priestly Activities. -- We entered into one enclosure and found it the place of sacrifice, a great yard reeking with blood, as the villagers led up their goats for the priests to kill. In another enclosure they were exorcising devils. The villagers approached with some poor woman, who because of physical infirmity was supposed to be possessed of a demon. The devil-dancers demanded their money and if the sum was sufficient began their fiendish incantations. At last they pronounced the devil gone and took another victim.
Sordid Appeals. -- Leaving the temple we made our way up the long hillside toward the sacred spring. The path was lined with beggars, cripples, and fakirs. Here were lepers without hands or feet, and lazy Sannyasis[45] whose only title to holiness was their matted hair and filthy bodies. Here were men who had buried their heads in the earth with their hands protruding to take alms, and others torturing their bodies to extort charity, or walking on sandals filled with long spikes, while they cry to the passing crowds, "Give your charity, and get your merit." It all seemed sordid and sickening.
Hands Outstretched. -- At last we drew near the spring where Aligarh had bathed, now called the "Sin-cleansing fountain." It was a spring emptying into a great open pit. This was filled with one mass of seething, struggling humanity, with hands outstretched, fighting madly for the holy water. They were tearing, striking, cursing, falling, writhing, wedging their way toward that tiny stream, which could never quench the deep dissatisfaction of their hearts. There goes a big fellow crawling over the heads of the swaying mass. He gains the spring, fills his cup and turns to fight his way back to his family. Another drags him down, and steals his merit by pouring the holy water on his own head. A few blows and curses and again he strives to fill his cup. Pitiable mass of human beings! Preaching to a large company from one village I asked, "Tell me honestly, when you go back from this festival will you still lie and commit adultery like the god? ""Oh, yes," they answered, "there will be no difference." "What then is the use?" I asked. "Oh, it is the custom. Our fathers did it." No one could preach to those dull souls an hour without feeling the down-pull of heathenism and its deadening effect. We placed our men in groups of two or three, every hundred yards up the avenue, using Salvation Army methods to gather the crowd, and after a rousing song had drawn a hundred or two hearers, we would leave a group to preach and move on to gather a fresh crowd. At last we got into the temple yard and climbed up beside the great, swaying body of the sacred elephant. There was noise from the crowd and our throats were as hoarse as at a football game, but we raised a song and in a moment had five hundred people flocking around us. One after another we proclaimed the gospel to that listening throng, till each in turn was exhausted. Tired but happy we trudged back to camp in the dark. Oh, it is a privilege that angels might covet to preach a gospel charged with power in the very citadels of Hinduism! Supposing you had to present Christianity to such a company, what message would you have, and how would you present it? Under all this popular worship what elements of good and evil do you see, and what do you think is the deepest need of this people?
A Year's Work. -- After the last camp we tramped home the thirty miles on foot and a year's work was done. Our object had been twofold, to give these twenty students a love for God's Word, so that they might be trained to study it for themselves, and to give them a love for souls that men might be saved. During the year we had been able to preach the gospel in 2,000 villages, and to reach over 130,000 hearers. More than 100 congregations had been visited, 1,500 Gospels or Bible portions had been sold to Hindus, and 6,000 patients had been treated at the door of our tent, during the intervals of work. I only wish I had another life to invest that I might spend all my time in this joyous work.
Missionary Spirit in the Native Church. -- It is an encouraging sign of the times that the foreign missionaries are not being left to do all the work alone. Indigenous missionary societies are springing up in the Indian Church itself. The most significant of these has been the National Missionary Society of India. According to their own statement, "In Carey's historic library at Serampore on December 25, 1905, with delegates present from each province of India, Burma, and Ceylon, there was organized the National Missionary Society of India. Uniting as it does the Christians of all Churches and of all provinces into one great society for the evangelization of India and adjacent lands, its organization marks a new era in the history of India. It is remarkable that just 200 years since Ziegenbalg came to India as the first Protestant missionary, exactly 100 years since Samuel J. Mills at Williamstown, Mass., with his fellow students at the haystack prayer-meeting began the great missionary movement in America, and 100 years since the saintly Henry Martyn landed in India, the Christians of this land have now united in the first national, indigenous missionary movement of its kind ever organized in India; while the sessions of the conference were held in the great library where William Carey labored, the constitution of the new society was adopted in the old pagoda where Henry Martyn worked and prayed for the evangelization of this land. With Indian men, Indian money, and Indian management, the society is controlled by a central executive committee and a national council with representatives from each presidency. Founding no new denomination, but preserving the strongest loyalty to the Churches, soliciting no funds outside of India, but laying the burden of India's evangelization upon her own sons, we believe the society is organized on a sound and safe basis. Only after months of careful planning and after securing the approval of hundreds of representative Indians and European missionaries in every part of the Empire was this important step taken."
Work of National Missionary Society. -- To-day the society has opened up work in five different missions; in the Punjab among the Mohammedans; in the United Provinces, where with the mass movement at their doors they are already beginning to gather in converts; in South India; in western India, and last a mission in a native state to provide an outlet for the men and money of the ancient Syrian Church. This Church, after sleeping a thousand years, is now being quickened with a new missionary spirit and has for the first time sent out foreign missionaries of its own, who will learn another language and work for the salvation of India. The society is conducting missionary periodicals in five different languages and is doing much to arouse the missionary spirit and to unite the Indian Christian community. Though their annual income at present is less than $3,000, we should not forget that William Carey organized the first English missionary society with less than $75 in its treasury.
Movement in Tinnevelli. -- Another society is the "Indian Missionary Society of Tinnevelli." Recently I visited this mission, and I was surprised to see what they had accomplished in a few years. They had sent out seven missionaries from the Tamil to the Telugu country, and these men, naturally gifted in language, are fluent in the new tongue within six months. They are employing twenty-five Telugu workers. Two of their missionaries are Brahman converts, working without salary and receiving only their food and clothes. In the last two years they have won more than a thousand converts and have five hundred inquirers waiting at their door. These converts have come from seven different castes, high and low; and a mass movement has begun among the upper castes as well as the outcastes. The income of this society is about $4,000 a year; and with less than $400 a month, they are sustaining these seven missionaries and twenty-five workers. I saw some of these simple Christians with bright faces and changed lives. There was one wild jungle woman who, when she came in two years ago, was unable to get into her dull brain and to repeat the first sentence of the Lord's prayer, after two weeks of faithful teaching; and yet I saw her now able to read, teaching children their Bible, repeating the Lord's prayer, the ten commandments, and passages from the New Testament, not with head knowledge only, but out of a heart that had been softened and changed by the truth which she had learned. Though an encouraging beginning has been made in these infant societies, the Indian Church as a whole is lacking in missionary spirit and in an adequate sense of responsibility to obey Christ's last command. Can you help us solve the problem of awakening the Church at home and abroad to the missionary purpose?
Ultimate Triumph. -- God's kingdom is coming in India. Success is certain, the future is as sure as the rising of to-morrow's sun. Every day of the week in which we labor bears the name of some ancient Norse god long since forgotten and deserted by multitudes of worshipers who turned to Christ. Sunday for the worship of the sun, Monday for the moon, Tiw, Woden, Thor, Frigga, and Saturn, have all passed away, and to-day we are one in Christ. Some of the months of our year record similar triumphs. Janus and Mars are no more. "If Hathor, cow headed Egyptian goddess has vanished, how will Ganesha the elephant-headed god of India remain? If Apis and his bull are gone, who can save Shiva and his bull? If Olympian Zeus has gone, how shall Vishnu survive? Will the world give up belief in Pallas Athene to hold by Kali? If the great gods of Rome glided away into darkness, when the light came, how can the learned apologies of India retain the million godlings of the Hindu pantheon? India has grasped the concept of the one God who rules all, and the shadowy reasonings which satisfied the ancient centuries have lost their power to convince. Polytheism and idolatry are vanishing simulacra in the mind of educated India. "Christ shall yet reign in India.
Unoccupied Fields. -- There remains much land yet to be possessed in India. In western India there are thirty taluks or districts containing over 50,000 people each without a single Christian or worker. Cutch with half a million souls has no missionary. In Bihar, with its twenty-one millions, "quite half the province has never even heard the sound of the gospel." In northern Bengal there is only one missionary to every two million of the population. Imagine one minister for a whole State or Province in America containing two millions, like Virginia, Minnesota, or Ontario! There are twenty-eight subdivisions in Bengal, with an aggregate population of about fourteen millions, "unoccupied by any single Protestant Christian worker." Indeed, forty millions in Bengal are as yet unreached by the gospel. In the United Provinces half of the 105,000 villages have not heard the Christian message of life during the past year. Numbers of native states have never yet been entered. Viewing India as a whole, the neediest portions seem to be Bengal, the United Provinces, and the native states. The 62,000,000 Mohammedans are largely untouched by Christian effort. In all India over 100,000,000, or one third of the population, lie outside the scope of Christian effort by all existing agencies. These could be reached in our own day if we were awake to the full implications of the gospel and the condition of these people.
Heroic Onset Needed. -- In the great mutiny of 1857, General Nicholson, veteran of four wars and a major-general at the age of thirty-five, heard that Delhi had fallen and pressed his troops to the walls of the city. He was known as the "Lion of the Punjab." As he paced along that ridge where his troops were encamped, and saw the men surrounded by fetid pools of water, with half of them sick with fever and some dying, though the foe behind the walls was many times their number, he said, "If we remain in our intrenchments we are beaten. Delhi must be taken, and we must advance at once. Batter down that bastion. I am going in to-morrow." "With two thousand men at his back he broke across that bullet-swept plain, up through the breach and into the city. A thousand men fell in the charge, and he himself was mortally wounded by an enemy's bullet. But he lived to see Delhi taken and India saved. As our great Commander looks down on the vast Empire of India, and the halting forces at the home base, can we not hear him saying, "If we remain in our intrenchments we are beaten. India must be taken, and we must advance at once."
What Can We Do? -- Standing by the little Lake of Galilee as the morning was breaking, our Lord said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? "Three times he pressed the question to try his loyalty, and then trusting that the work would be done, he committed the sheep to his care, and went back to heaven, knowing that Simon would feed his sheep. Centuries have passed, but the sheep still need to be fed, and there are many of other folds distressed and scattered as sheep without a shepherd. To-day Christ stands before us, and says to you and me, "Lovest thou me? "What shall be our answer? Let us answer him truly, for love is the condition of service, and service is the evidence of love. How much do you love him? As much as you serve him, as much as you give of yourself, your substance, and your service, no more.
Need of Men. -- "Lovest thou me enough to give thyself?" Our most urgent need to-day is for men and women who will come out to reap in these white harvest-fields. The work is hard. I know of none harder, but it is a work that angels might envy; full of suffering, and brimful of joy. I remember the night when as a student in America my own life turned in the balance and I had to count the cost. It was for me a struggle between an ambition and a mission, between silver and souls, between self and Christ; but the scale turned on the side of Christ, and how I thank God that it did! I was honestly afraid that I might be wasting my life by going abroad. I was willing to pay any price, willing to fall to the ground and die, if only I could be sure that there would be much fruit. But I was not willing to throw my life away gratuitously from a subjective sense of duty upon an unresponsive people, where one would have nothing to show for his life- work. How I smile now when I think of that fear! I have been overburdened with the opportunity of the work, crushed by the sense of my own insufficiency, humiliated by my own limitations and inadequacy, but I have thanked God a thousand times that my lot has fallen in the heart of such an opportunity. If you want a hard field, come to India. One thing I promise you. If you are looking for need, you will never be disappointed, for it is far deeper than you ever dreamed. No words can tell the deep need of India's unsatisfied heart. These people need saving, and need saving now.
Call for Recruits. -- God would sift us as a Gideon band. Christ's appeal is to the heroic. As Dr. Mott says, "Christ never hid his scars to win a disciple. Rather he shows us his hands and his side, saying, ' As the Father hath sent me, so send I you.' "
"The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain:
His blood-red banner streams afar;
Who follows in his train!"
The need is greater abroad, the opportunity is greater. The average foreign missionary wins several times more converts than the average minister at home. If you could be used at home you would be useful abroad. The three qualifications needed are good judgment, a measure of leadership, and deep spiritual life. If possible we should have men of statesmanship, of scholarship, and of spirituality. Give us of your best. The student work is particularly difficult, but the masses of India are simple and responsive. Men of clear head and common sense will find large opportunity as station missionaries, and women especially are needed. Why not give God the benefit of the doubt? Would you be willing to go if circumstances permitted it? Are you willing to face the matter in prayer and find God's will for your life?
Parental Spirit of Sacrifice. -- As I went through the American colleges I found hundreds of young men and women turned back from their life purpose and forbidden by Christian parents. Would you be willing to give up your loved ones for this cause? When the mother of Henry Lyman heard that he had been killed and eaten by cannibals she exclaimed, "How can those poor people live without the gospel? Would that another of my sons would volunteer to go." Would there were more such parents! We shall never win the world for Christ until we carry our Christianity into the home, and catch the missionary spirit in our family life. We must win back for ourselves the missionary heroism of the early centuries. And heroism begins at home.
Need of Money. -- "Lovest thou me enough to give thy substance? "I know of no better place for investment than India. I know of no outlay yielding larger returns than humanity. Here is an investment "gilt-edged," with absolute security and certain returns. It is backed by the promises of God. It yields a hundred fold in this life, and in the world to come everlasting life.
Great Investment Returns. -- I know of one friend of mine who, during the last twenty years has invested about $100,000 in a particular field in India. "What is there to show for it? In that district there are 50,000 souls who have been gathered out of darkness, degradation, idolatry, and devil-worship, who are to-day found in Christian churches and schools; members of a growing, moral community, who have been brought to Christ through the gifts and prayers of this one man and the workers he has sustained. He has more converts in India than I have or ever will have. He is as much a missionary as any who is living in India. You are a missionary. You are a witness, true or false, speaking or silent, generous or selfish; you have the power to give the gospel to a certain number of people who are living to-day in India without hope, and without God. Do you care enough to try it?
Service of Small Gifts. -- It is not the wealthy only who can help. I know of one poor girl who has worked as a stenographer for years in a big city. She offered to go to the foreign field and was rejected on account of her health. Since then she has been saving and sending her money, supporting native workers at $30 each a year. There is a community in North India where there are more than a thousand souls that have been brought to Christ solely through native workers supported by this one frail girl. A thousand who have passed from darkness into his marvelous light, because one girl cared! How many are in the light because of what you have done?
Each One's Opportunity. -- A student at college sold the gold case off his watch and it supported a native worker for nearly two years. The first year that man won a hundred and twenty-seven souls to Christ. By this time the number has largely grown. There are talents perhaps in your life unused, treasure hidden in a napkin, money hoarded that could be released for service for the uplift of humanity. Even the little you have could be converted into the enlightening of womanhood, the redeeming of childhood, the liberation of manhood. There are men and women living now in India in idolatry and devil- worship who would be within the fold of Christ within five years if your life were fully consecrated to God.
Give in Regular Channels. -- Nowhere will money do more for the kingdom. Twelve dollars supports a boy or girl in boarding-school for a year. Twenty dollars will send a student to the high school. Thirty dollars a year supports an Indian worker. Every dollar counts. Let it not be understood that we are urging that money should be given for such "special "objects. If everybody wanted a special native worker, with photographs and letters from the field, the missionary would have no time left to reach the people, and the mission boards would be swamped by the administration of small sums for special objects which would greatly increase their expense. It is far better to give to the board and trust God to use the money for the best. By all means give to your own board and give in the methods recommended by your own society. I am only pointing out how every dollar counts. It will accomplish just as much whether you know it or not.
Every Dollar Counts. -- The need is very great. I remember recently I was paying off my Indian fellow workers. After deducting from one man's salary for his boy in the high school, his girl in the boarding-school, another boy in the primary school, the tenth that he was giving to the Lord, and a few other things, there was left out of his salary, as the amount upon which he had to live with his family for a month, one dollar in cash, which I paid him -- with a blush! There was not a murmur or complaint, but I felt uneasy. I called him privately and said, Would you mind telling me how you are going to live this month on three rupees (one dollar)?" He replied, "Nobody can live on that amount." "What then are you going to do? "I asked. "Oh, I will just borrow a little more, and add it to my debt," he said. "But do you not know that it is wrong to go into debt? Have I not preached against it? "I asked. "Yes," he replied, "I suppose that is so, but the way of it was this. The last missionary, your predecessor, called me one day, and said, 'There has been another reduction from the mission board which calls for retrenchment. I am very sorry but you will have to go, as I will have no money left. You were educated before these younger men with their modern methods and I fear I can no longer pay you any salary.' Well, I worked along as best I could for two years preaching without any salary and working when I could get anything to do, but there was little work to be had. We had to live and my debt rose and rose and rose till it reached "and here he named a sum which seemed mountain-high to him, but which was less than fifty dollars. "Now," he continued, "you have given me three rupees (one dollar). With the most careful economy it will take twice that amount to keep my family alive this month. (He did not aspire to rice or meat or expensive living. The cheapest grains, such as we would use for chicken or horse food, would be all that he would ask.) But, sir," he said, "do not think that I am complaining. We are so grateful to have work at all now." He might be grateful, but I was not; and I could not be party to such a crime. I found his wife was a bright, intelligent woman and gave her work in the school on a salary of two dollars a month. With that increased income, his debt began to go down. Finally he came in one day with shining face and said, "The debt is all paid, and we are so grateful to you, sir, for giving that extra work to my wife."
Home "Firing Line." -- This man is only one among an army of 35,000 workers in India, most of whom are faithful men underpaid. Perhaps you will say, "Why not have fewer and better paid workers? "That would only mean fewer villages served by the Church. It would mean turning back and refusing to receive many who are asking to come in, in some sections. No, the financial problem can only be solved by you at the home base. You are "on the firing line" in this matter, not we. I suppose it is Utopian and impracticable, but I would like to see the scale of wages raised all along the line, by about a dollar a month; but alas, that is out of the question. We have not money enough to hold our own and enter the wide open doors of opportunity in the mass movements which are all about us. Have you ever faced the question of your stewardship, and found the joy of real sacrifice in giving? The Corinthians gave even beyond their power. "But first they gave their own selves to the Lord." Have you?
Need of Service and Prayer. -- "Lovest thou me enough to give thy service? "All cannot go abroad and all cannot give large sums of money, but each one has a life to live, and time with which to serve. Each one of us is a member of a community and of a family. What could you accomplish in your church if you were on fire for missions? I have seen one little white, wooden church, with green blinds, that has sent out fifty of its members to the foreign field. Why should not yours become a missionary church? You are a member of a young people's society. What is it doing for missions? One society is being enriched by the care of a station on the other side of the world. Perhaps you teach in a Sunday-school. I know of one class of boys in my own church that raised a hundred dollars for missions. They are supporting some boys out in India, and the letters they receive about these boys, some of whom are being persecuted for Christ, will have an influence on that class for good. One faithful Sundayschool teacher raised up by her prayer and missionary spirit one of the greatest of modern missionaries. Has your class caught the missionary spirit?
What Is Worth While. -- And are you wielding the power of prayer for missions? What did our Lord mean when he said, "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he send forth laborers into his harvest." It was in prayer in that upper room that Pentecost was received, in prayer that workers were chosen, obstacles overcome, and victory won. In prayer every great movement of modern missions was founded and every great revival begun. Remember Henry Martyn praying with tears for the multitudes in India as he cried, "Now let me burn out for God." "Prayer opens up a whole planet to a man's activities," and "he who prays most helps most." Prayer is the mighty leverage by which we may lift these people out of darkness and slavery into the light and liberty of the sons of God. Are we wielding that power? Amid all the vanities and frivolities of life, in the midst of all the doubts and questionings that beset us, amid all the wasted time and talents of life's little day, what else is more worth while than this investment of life for the uplift of humanity? If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, let us give ourselves to this great cause saying, "This one thing I do."
The Test of Love. -- Ere you close the book think out over those villages in India and those multitudes without Christ. Look again into the Master's face as he asks you the searching question, thrice repeated, "Lovest thou me?" "Lovest thou me?" "Lovest thou me?" And if you can answer honestly, "Lord, thou knowest that I love thee," hear his words as he points to India with the command,
"FEED MY SHEEP."
QUESTIONS AND REFERENCES
SUGGESTIONS FOR USING THE QUESTIONS
This statement should be read carefully before taking up the questions.
The purpose of these questions is not merely to review the text, but to promote independent thought and discussion. Review questions, appealing merely to memory, are of value only as preliminary to discussion, and can be easily framed by any person of average intelligence. The questions given below demand the exercise of individual judgment, as well as knowledge of the text; in a few cases, the text will be found of no aid whatever. The first few questions on each chapter attempt to connect the principal problems with some matter of familiar experience.
It is not supposed that the average student will be able to answer all these questions satisfactorily, or that all students will agree in their conclusions. It is intended, rather, that students shall come to the class session with questions unanswered and opinions sometimes in opposition, so that there may be a real basis for discussion. It has been thought worth while to include a few problems on which even great thinkers have not yet come to agreement.
Some of these questions may be specially indicated by the leader for discussion at the following session. In no case will it be advisable to try to cover the entire list. Concentration on a few well-adapted questions is better than a hurried review of all. Circumstances will determine the selection for each class. For some, the main value of the questions will be to suggest others that are better. An asterisk indicates questions that will hardly be appreciated without discussion.
In working out the questions the free use of pencil and paper is recommended. Ideas which are the result of reflection should be jotted down, and pertinent passages in the text once more consulted for further light. The mere attempt to formulate usually helps to stir up new ideas that would not otherwise arise. All this tends to give an appetite for the class session.
QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER 1
Aim: To Appreciate The Social Needs or India
1. Name the various qualities which render persons undesirable as immigrants.
2. In what does the danger consist in the unrestricted admission of immigrants?
3. What qualities have the masses of the people in India that would render them undesirable immigrants?
4.* To what extent would the present agencies in this country be adequate to deal with the population of India if it should suddenly immigrate here?
5.* How do our resources compare with those of India for uplifting the masses?
6.* List in order of their relative importance the agencies, physical, economic, social, and religious, which bind us together as a nation.
7.* How many of these agencies are altogether or in great part lacking in India?
8.* Judging from what you know of race problems, what recommendations would you make for dealing with the race problems of India?
9. Name several ways in which the presence of such a variety of languages complicates the question of social uplift.
10.* Name several educational recommendations you would make, in view of the prevailing illiteracy.
11.* To what extent is custom a necessity for society?
12. Name what you consider necessary customs in your own community.
13. To what extent are parents justified in requiring their children to conform to the customs of society?
14.* When does custom become an evil?
15. What principles would you lay down in teaching children to violate custom?
16. To what extent should the freedom of any individual from restraint depend upon his intelligence and morality?
17. How can those with undeveloped intelligence and morality best be controlled?
18.* What are the principal evils of caste?
19. To what extent is caste a result of the undeveloped intelligence and morality of the masses of India?
20. To what extent is it a cause?
21.* If caste could be utterly abolished by law to-day, do you think such a law should be passed? Give reasons for your view.
22. Would it be an advantage or a disadvantage to have caste destroyed by mere growth of self-interest and personal ambition?
23. In what ways does caste interfere with economic progress?
24. In what ways would our present industrial competitive system be an advantage or a disadvantage to India?
25.* Why is not liberty and equality sufficient without fraternity?
26. In what ways does the caste system differ from your idea of true fraternity?
27.* What is the message of Christianity to a community where individuality is not sufficiently developed?
28. Quote passages of Scripture which illustrate this message.
29.* What is the message of Christianity to a people whose liberty is developed at the expense of fraternity?
30. Quote passages of Scripture to illustrate this message.
31. Why will Christianity be the only satisfactory solution of caste?
32. How would you present Christianity to a member of a lower caste in order to make it attractive?
33. How would you present Christianity to a member of a higher caste?
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY
CHAPTER 1
Life of the People.
Beach, India and Christian Opportunity, 111.
Compton, Indian Life in Town and Country, III, X.
Datta, The Desire of India, II.
Fraser, Among Indian Rajahs and Ryots, VII.
Jones, India's Problem: Krishna or Christ, I.
Townsend, Asia and Europe, passim.
Home Life.
Compton, Indian Life in Town and Country, IX.
Jones, India, Its Life and Thought, IX.
Moral Tone.
Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, Part VI.
"The Moral Tone of India," The East and the West, April, 1903.
"Tendencies of Hinduism," The East and the West, October, 1904.
Economic Conditions.
Chirol, Indian Unrest, XXII, XXIII.
Denning, Mosaics from India, XI.
Fraser, Among Indian Bajahs and Hyots, XTV, XV.
Caste.
Compton, Indian Life in Town and Country, II.
Denning, Mosaics from India, XV, XVI.
Jones, India, Its Life and Thought, IV, V.
Lyall, Asiatic Studies, First Series, VI (Formation of caste).
Mylne, Missions to Hindus, Part I, chs. I, IV-VII (Relation to character).
Richter, History of Protestant Missions in India, pp. 17-23, 255-262.
Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, Part III.
Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism,
QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER II
Aim: To Appreciate The Religious Needs or Hinduism.
1. In what ways do yon think the religiousness of Hindus would be a help to the Christian missionary, and in what ways a hindrance?
2. What things in Hinduism indicate a desire for a divine unity?
3. What things show a desire for salvation?
4. How does karma show a distinction between good and evil?
5. What things show the spiritual side of Hinduism?
6. What things show a desire for a personal God?
7.* How does the Hindu idea of the unity of God differ from the Christian idea?
8.* How does the idea of salvation differ from the Christian idea?
9. In what ways do the practical standards of good and evil differ?
10.* How does Hindu spirituality differ from Christian spirituality?
11. In what ways do the Hindu personal gods differ from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?
12. What elements of the Christian message would you most emphasize in dealing with an amorist? Name Scripture passages that you think would be useful.
13. What elements would you most emphasize in dealing with a Hindu ritualist? What Scripture passages would you quote?
14. What are the best aspects of a belief in pantheism?
15. What would be the practical effects of a denial of separate human personalities?
16.* What is the difference between the Hindu denial of separate personality and Christian self-denial?
17.* How would pantheism affect tk« sense of one's relationship to God?
18. What will be the influence of a God who requires devotion but is indifferent to good and evil?
19.* In what ways does the Christian belief in the transitoriness of this world differ from maya?
20.* Where is the good and evil of the doctrine of karma?
21. What perversions of Christian belief have you known that approach those of pantheism?
22. What should be the attitude of the missionary toward the reform movement of Hinduism?
23.* Sum up the main blessings of Christian belief which Hinduism lacks.
24.* How much effort is it worth that over 200,000,000 persons should share these blessings with you?
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY
CHAPTER II
General Sketches.
Beach, India and Christian Opportunity, TV.
Datta, The Desire of India, III.
Eichter, History of Protestant Missions in India, IV.
Lower Side and Popular Worship.
Jones, India, Its Life and Thought, VII.
Lyall, Asiatic Studies, First Series, I, IIL
Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, VlU-iVlL
Leading Ideas of Hinduism.
Hume, Missions from the Modern Viewpoint, II, V.
Jones, India, Its Life and Thought, VI, VIII.
Jones, India's Problem: Krishna or Christ, IIL
Lucas, Christ for India, III.
Lucas, The Empire of Christ, III, IV.
Morrison, New Ideas in India, XVII-XX.
Slater, Higher Hinduism in Rolation to Christianity, passim.
Report of Edinburgh Missionary Conference, Vol. IV, eh.
"Hindu Religious Ideals," The East and the West, April, 1904.
"Tendencies of Modern Hinduism," The East and the West, April, 1905.
"Transmigration," The East and the West, July, 1906.
"Paganism, Hinduism, and Christianity in India," The East and the West, October, 1906.
"Missions and Modern Hinduism," The East and the West, January, 1907.
"Is Hinduism Conducive to Unworldliness?" The East and the West, April, 1907.
"Thoughts on Transmigration," The East and the West, January, 1911.
"Is Hinduism Pantheistic?" The East and the West, April, 1911.
Sectarian Hinduism.
Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, Part II.
Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, III-VII.
"Two Cults of Popular Hinduism," The East and the West, April, 1911.
Influence of Christianity and Its Presentation.
Montgomery, Mankind and the Church, VI.
Morrison, New Ideas in India, XIII-XV.
Robinson, The Interpretation of Christ to Non-Christian Races, II.
Report of Edinburgh Missionary Conference, Vol. IV, pp. 244-267.
"Attitude of Educated Hindus toward Christianity," The East and the West, July, 1903.
"Presentation of Christ to the Hindus," The East and the West, July, 1910.
Translation of the Bhagavad Gita, in Temple Classics, Dutton & Co., 45 cents.
QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER III
Aim: To Appreciate The Problems Op The Present National Awakening
1.* What are the various bonds that have been most effective in uniting nations politically?
2. Which of these bonds have been most effective in uniting different races and'languages into a nation?
3.* Is it easier or harder to control masses with diverse interests after they have received some education?
4. What is the effect upon the masses of training them for economic competition?
5. What is it that causes young people in their teens to desire greater freedom from parental restraint?
6. Do such young people usually govern themselves aa wisely as their parents could govern them?
7. In this demand for independence of itself a hopeful or a sinister indication?
8. What do you consider the wise attitude for a parent to take toward this demand?
9. What extremes of attitude in either direction do you consider to be unwise?
10. How does this bear upon the present desire for greater independence in India?
11. How much of the Indian desire for self-government do you consider to be legitimate and wise?
12.* What conditions must people fulfil in order to govern themselves successfully?
13.* By what means do you think these conditions could be best secured in India?
14. Has Christianity any right to concern itself with such matters as self-government?
15.* Can you quote any Scripture passages to show that Christianity must concern itself with the welfare of society as a whole?
16. What mistake did the Christian Church make at the time of the French Revolution?
17. With how much of the present desires of India has the Christian Church a right to express sympathy?
18. In what ways do you think this sympathy can best be expressed?
19.* What will be the probable result if the Church remains indifferent or hostile to these desires?
20. What would be the effect upon any Church in this country if it should be indifferent or hostile to the legitimato political ideals of the nation?
21. In what ways is Christianity much more in line with India's present political ideals than are her old religions?
22. In what ways can the Christian Church help in India's industrial development?
23. How can it help in social reform?
24. In what ways can Christian education take advantage of the present unrest in India?
25. Name a number of precautions that you would take in urging reform in order to avoid antagonizing national feeling.
26. What would be the danger of neglecting these precautions?
27.* What would be the principal dangers if Christianity fails to improve the present situation?
28.* What are the principal possibilities if Christianity makes the most of the situation?
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY
CHAPTER III
The Present Awakening and Unrest.
Andrews, North India, XI.
Chirol, Indian Unrest, passim.
Fraser, Among Indian Rajahs and Ryots, XX-XXTTT.
Jones, India: Its Life and Thought, I.
Morrison, New Ideas in India, I-IV, VII-VIII.
Townsend, Asia and Europe, "Influence of Europe on Asia," "Will England Retain India?", etc.
" Effect of the Japanese Victories Upon India," The East and the West, October, 1905.
"Situation in the East," The East and the West, October, 1907.
"Unrest in India," The East and the West, January, 1908.
" Christian Missions and Social Reform in India," The East and the West, October, 1910.
"The New Movement in India and the Old Gospel," The East and the West, January, 1911.
Reflex Religious Movements.
Jones, India, Its Life and Thought, XIII.
Richter, History of Protestant Missions in India, VI.
Government Policy of Neutrality.
Lyall, Asiatic Studies, First Series, VTIL
QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER IV
Aim: To Appreciate The Present Opportunity Among The Low Castes In India
1. How would you impress upon a young person the importance of avoiding evil companions?
2. Why is it important that unclean literature and pictures should be suppressed by law?
3. Is it justifiable to suppress by law other social conditions that may lead young people astray?
4. How important do you consider it to provide wholesome social recreation for young people who would not otherwise have it?
5.* What is the relative duty of the Church to the individual and to the surroundings in which he lives?
6.* Has Christianity any message for whole communities as well as for individuals?
7. How important do you consider it to be to remove demoralizing surroundings from children and young people for whom you are responsible?
8. Should not the grace of God be sufficient to enable any Christian to overcome his surroundings, however evil?
9.* Will as strong types of Christian character develop in communities where all profess Christianity as in those in which there is hostility?
10. In which of these two types of communities in this country would you prefer to have your children live?
11. Is there likely to be any depth of personal convictions among those who become Christians in a mass movement?
12. Would you encourage a young person to join the Church in this country who indicated no depth of personal convictions?
13.* Is there any reason why standards of admission to the Church should differ in this country and in India?
14. Give the argument for low standards of admission for an Indian mass movement.
15. Give the arguments for making standards of admission strict.
16. What were the standards which Christ laid down lor those who wish to become his disciples?
17. Give examples of strict testing on his part.
18. How do you reconcile this with his welcome to all who are heavy laden?
19.* Give rules for dealing with a mass movement that promise to avoid the dangers on both sides.
20.* Would you attempt to change the social customs of those involved in a mass movement as much or as little as possible? Give reasons for your view.
21. How would you endeavor to develop a strong and self- sacrificing type of Christian character among members of a mass movement?
22.* How would you take advantage of opportunities offered by a mass movement that are not offered in cases of individual conversion?
23.* Sum up in the strongest possible way the responsibility laid upon the Christian Church by the present mass movements in India.
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY
CHAPTER IV
Mass Movements.
Lucas, The Empire of Christ, V.
"Christian Village Settlements in the Punjab," The East and the West, January, 1905.
"Mass Movements on the Mission Field," The East and the West, January, 1906.
"Paganism, Hinduism, and Christianity in India," The East and the West, October, 1906.
"Progress of Christianity in India and Mission Strategy," The East and the West, January, 1907.
"Influence of the Conversion of Outcastes," The East and the West, October, 1910, p. 462.
"Phases of Mass" Movements in India," Missionary Review of the World, July, 1908.
QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER V
Aim: To Appreciate The Importance Of Work Among The Students In India.
1. Give several reasons why the period of student life in. this country is a dangerous one.
2. Give several reasons why it is a hopeful one.
3. What general lines should be followed to avoid the dangers and develop the best possibilities of this period?
4. What is the relative importance of the home, the school, and the church in developing Christian character in our students?
5.* Compare the contribution of the Hindu home and religion with that of the Christian home and church in the formation of character.
6. How do the Hindu home and religion compare with the Indian school as furnishing opportunities for contact with young people?
7.* How much stronger appeal for Christian influences do you consider is made by the college in India than by one in this country?
8. In what ways is the student field the most strategic in India as far as the period of life is concerned?
9. How does the student compare with other periods of life in the opportunity which it offers for counteracting evil home influences?
10. How does it compare with other periods as to intellectual accessibility?
11. How does it compare in its freedom from the influences of Hindu social life?
12. What advantages as to points of contact have we with students in India as compared with ignorant villagers, women, and uneducated adults?
13. In what ways does the Indian student convert promise greater usefulness than converts drawn from other classes?
14. What conditions in Indian society, past and present, give the educated class a special influence?
15.* Give reasons for the importance of each of the three great aims of Christian education in India.
16. Name methods that you think should be adopted in order to realize the first aim.
17. Name methods that you think should be adopted in order to realize the second aim.
18. Name methods that you think should be adopted in order to realize the third aim.
19.* What are the characteristic advantages of the educational over other forms of missionary work?
20. Would the maintenance of a Christian school be justified if the reports for a series of years showed no student conversions?
21. Would the maintenance of a Christian school be justified where only a small proportion of the students were Christians and no conversions resulted?
22. What are the respective arguments for maintaining Christian colleges as opposed to dormitories under Christian influences in government colleges?
23.* Sum up the claims of work for Indian students on those who have life, or money, or prayer to invest.
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY
CHAPTER V
Education in India.
Alston, Education and Citizenship in India.
Chirol, Indian Unrest, XVII-XXI.
Fraser, Among Indian Rajahs and Ryots, XVIH.
Miller, Unrest and Education in India. (Reply to preceding.)
Report of Edinburgh Missionary Conference, Vol. Ill, ch. II, pp. 256-266.
Report of Madras Decennial Conference of 1902, pp. 83-96.
"Mission Work Among the Educated Classes in India," The East and the West, January, 1907.
"Effect of Educational Work by Missionaries," The East and the West, October, 1907.
"Education in India," The East and the West, January, 1908.
" Mission Hostels in India," The East and the West, July, 1908.
"School Life in Kashmir," The East and the West, April, 1909.
"Unspiritual Work," The East and the West, October, 1910.
"Religious Training in Indian Mission Schools," The East and the West, April, 1911.
QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VI
Aim: To Appreciate The Needs And Opportunities Of Work For Indian Women
1. Try to think what difference it would make to you if you believed that women were inferior to men in the sight of God.
2.* What benefits does Christianity derive from the position it gives to woman?
3. Sum up the evils that would result in the home from the ignorance and seclusion of woman.
4. Sum up the evils resulting in public life from the ignorance and seclusion of woman.
5.* Sum up the main contributions of educated Christian women to Christian society.
6. What are the main evils resulting among women in this country from liberty without education?
7.* What are the main evils resulting among women in this country from liberty and education without Christian character?
8. What would you think would be the result in India if the social restraints of Hinduism were removed without education?
9. In what ways would the situation be similar to that in the United States after the Emancipation Proclamation?
10. What do you think would be the result in India if women were given liberty and education without Christian character?
11. If Christian character is an essential for women in India, how are they to obtain it?
12. What is the relative likelihood that a non-Christian woman in India will obtain an education as compared with an Indian Christian woman?
13. What hope does there seem to you to be in Hinduism for social reforms apart from the direct or indirect influences of Christianity?
13.* Even if social reforms would probably come about without the aid of Christianity, why can the Church not afford to be silent on the subject?
14. What is the need for Christianity of those Hindu women who obtain neither education nor social liberty?
15.* In what ways should the education of a woman in India differ from that of a woman in this country?
16. Try to imagine yourself living for a month under the conditions of the zenana woman in India.
17. What are the principal evils of child marriage?
18. Why is religion directly responsible for the evils of Hindu widowhood?
19. Sum up the ways in which its treatment of woman indicates the moral perversity of Hinduism.
20. Why have the attempts of native reformers achieved so little?
21.* Prepare an answer for the indifferent Christian who asserts that "their religions are good enough for them."
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY
CHAPTER VI
Position of Women in India and Work for Them.
Compton, Indian Life in Town and Country, VII-VIIL
Denning, Mosaics from India, V-VI, VIII-X.
Dyer, Pandita Bamabai.
Fraser, Among Indian Rajahs and Byots, VIII.
Fuller, Wrongs of Indian Womanhood.
Hopkins, Within the Purdah.
Bamabai, The High Caste Hindu Women.
Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, Part V.
Report of Madras Decennial Conference, pp. 97-118.
"Indian Women and Indian Nationalism," The East and the West, July, 1910.
"Women's Education in India," The East and the West, October, 1910.
"Female Education in North India," The East and the West, January, 1911.
QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VII
Aim: To Appreciate The Share Of The Home Church In The Missionary's Problems or India
1.* Give several reasons why the Native Church is the key to the situation in India.
2. What should be the general policy of the missionary toward the Native Church?
3.* Try to estimate the extent of the task confronting the Christian Church in India as compared to that of the Church in this country.
4.* What reasons are there for expecting that the rate of progress of Christianity will be greater in the future than in the past?
5.* What are the principal dangers that may cause a check in the rate of progress?
6. At the present rate of increase, how large will the Protestant community in India be at the end of fifty years?
7. How many Christians would there be in your city, town, or village, if they were in the same proportion as Christians in India?
8. How many would there be in your State or Province under the same conditions?
9. What seems to you to be the ultimate ideal for the Native Church as to self-government?
10. What conditions would you consider necessary for the realization of this ideal?
11. What are the dangers of putting this ideal into operation too early?
12. What are the dangers of deferring it until too late?
13. How is this matter complicated by the training and temperament of the average Westerner as compared with that of the average Indian?
14. What seems to you to be the ultimate ideal for the Indian Church as to self-support in a country as poor as India?
15.* What are the advantages of the free use of mission funds?
16.* What are the dangers of this policy?
17. In what lines is the investment of mission funds quite justifiable?
18. In what lines should any investment of mission funds be avoided or reduced to a minimum?
19.* What are the arguments for ample salaries for Indian evangelists?
20.* What are the arguments for small salaries?
21. What would you consider the arguments for and against missionary interference in the case of the oppressed Christian mentioned on page 178?
22. What problems are there in missionary work in India that seem to you could be solved by more money?
23. What problems are there that you think could be solved by more workers?
24. What problems are there that you think could be solved only by more prayer?
25.* What is the responsibility of the Home Church for fellowship with the missionary in his discouragements?
REFERENCES FOE ADVANCED STUDY
CHAPTER VII
Missionary Methods and Problems.
Beach, India and Christian Opportunity, VH.
Datta, The Desire of India, VI.
Jones, India's Problem: Krishna or Christ, IX.
Speer, Christianity and the Nations, II.
"Need of Community Missions in India," The East and the West, October, 1909.
"Cooperation for the Promotion of Unity," The East and the West, October, 1910.
The Native Church.
Datta, The Desire of India, VII.
Richter, History of Protestant Missions in India, pp. 409-436.
Speer, Christianity and the Nations, III.
Report of Edinburgh Missionary Conference, Vol. II.
Report of the Madras Decennial Conference, pp. 17-61.
QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VIII
AIM: To Appreciate Our Responsibility In View Of The Need And The Power Of The Gospel To Meet It.
1. For what reasons is the Church in this country responsible for foreign missions?
2.* In what ways is the responsibility of the present generation greater than that of any that has preceded it?
3. For what contributions in particular are we responsible in carrying on the foreign missionary enterprise?
4. Which of these contributions is your own community most backward in supplying for the work?
5.* What are the obstacles, in your opinion, which most hinder us from discharging our responsibility to foreign missions?
6. Try to think out some practical plans by which some of these hindrances might be removed.
7. In what ways does India seem to you to have a special claim upon the efforts of the Christian Church?
8. Sum up as forcibly as you can the claim constituted by India's vastness; by the number of her villages.
9. Sum up the claim presented by the caste problem.
10. Sum up the claim of her religions and religiousness.
11. Sum up the claim of the present unrest and awakening.
12. Sum up the claim of the mass movements.
13. Sum up the claim of the students of India.
14. Sum up the claim of the women of India.
15. Sum up the claim of the present needs of the Native Church.
16. Sum up the claim of the unoccupied sections of the country.
17. Sum up the claim involved in the demonstrated power of the gospel to meet the needs of India.
18. Why can we not transfer all further responsibility for the evangelization of India to Great Britain?
19. Is our responsibility for foreign missionary effort limited to those nations over which we have political jurisdiction?
20. Would this transference diminish our responsibility for the evangelization of the world as a whole?
21. Is Great Britain proportionately behind this country in her response to foreign missionary obligations?
22. Ought we to expect Great Britain greatly to increase her foreign missionary activities without increasing our own at the same time?
23. What advantage would there be in transferring the long-established work of American missions in India to Great Britain?
24. Would this plan not involve the assumption by America of missions now operated by Great Britain in other parts of the world?
25.* From the standpoint of need and usefulness, how does the work of the foreign missionary seem to you to compare with that of other persons?
26.* Make as strong a statement as you can for the need of missionary volunteers for India.
27.* Make as strong a statement as you can for the need of increased financial support for the work in India.
28.* Make as strong a statement as you can for the need of more earnest prayer and service at home for India.
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY
CHAPTER VIII
The Outlook.
Beach, India and Christian Opportunity, VIII.
Datta, The Desire of India, VIII.
Jones, India's Problem: Krishna or Christ, X, XI.
Report of Edinburgh Conference, Vol. I, pp. 135-162.
"Interpreting Christ to India," The East and the West, April, 1908.
Report of the Madras Decennial Conference, pp. 62-82,
APPENDIX J
PRAYER AT THE NATIONAL CONGRESS
"O most gracious God and Father, by whose divine providence mankind is ruled and all things are made to work out thy good ends, we thank thee for enabling us, thy unworthy servants, to assemble once more in this great city for this, the twenty-second session of our National Congress. We bless thy holy name that them didst put into the hearts of our leaders, some of whom have now departed this life, to establish this Congress, and didst grant them wisdom and ability to maintain and develop it in the face of manifold and vast difficulties. We heartily thank thee for the measure of usefulness granted to our Congress in the past, in drawing together in the bonds of friendship, fellowship, and united effort our countrymen, separated, as they are, by differences of race, creed, language, and social customs. We also render thee most humble and hearty thanks for the marvelous growth of the true spirit of Nationalism which has recently manifested itself in all carts of our beloved motherland.
"We seek thy blessing, O Heavenly Father, on the proceedings of the present session of our Congress. Give to the President and to all speakers the guidance of thy Holy Spirit, so that nothing may be said or done here that is not in accordance with thy holy will. Remove from us all ill feeling, prejudice, and uncharitableness, and fill our hearts with a genuine desire for the good of the country and its people, with unswerving loyalty to our rulers, and with good feelings toward all sections of the inhabitants of this land. Let moderation and earnestness, wisdom and charity, humility and harmony characterize our proceedings at this great gathering.
"We implore thy blessing on our Gracious Sovereign and Emperor, King Edward, and on the Royal Family. Enable those that bear rule in this land under His Imperial Majesty to realize their unique responsibilities consequent on their position which thou hast been pleased to grant them, and help them to fulfil the sacred charge committed to them, so as to glorify thy name, and to benefit our people. More especially at this time we beseech thee, O Lord, to inspire all the members of the ruling race with true sympathy for the people over whom thou hast placed them as rulers.
"O merciful God, we seek thy guidance and help in checking and uprooting all the evils which hinder our progress and improvement as a people. Enable us to make ourselves worthy in every respect of the privileges of self-government and participation in the administration of the country which we seek and claim. Pardon our many shortcomings, strengthen our infirmities, bless our labors, and bestow on us such a measure of success as thou thinkest fit. Grant us the spirit of self- effacement, and self-sacrifice, and accept our humble services to the glory of thy holy name, and the good of our beloved motherland. Amen."
APPENDIX K
BIBLIOGRAPHY
An effort has been made to include in this list the books that will prove most helpful in a study of the text-book. Persons desiring an exhaustive list should consult the Bibliography in Volume VI of the World Missionary Conference of 1910.
History
Hunter, William W. A Brief History of the Indian Peoples. 1903. Clarendon Press, N. Y. 90¢.
A condensed sketch of Indian history from the earliest times, by one of the highest authorities. It is used in civil service examinations by the British government.
Frazer, Robert Watson. British Rule in India. 1897. Putnam, N. Y. $1.50.
This book is larger and covers a much shorter period than the preceding, so that it presents a fuller and more satisfactory account of the events treated. In the well- known Story of the Nations series.
Seeley, J. R. The Expansion of England. 1902. Little, Brown, Boston. $1.75.
The second part contains a brilliant explanation of the way in which England conquered and holds India. The generalizations have been considered by later historians as somewhat too sweeping.
Lyall, Alfred. Rise of the British Dominion in India. 1894. John Murray, London. 4s. 6d.
Less brilliant, but more authoritative and detailed than Seeley.
General
Lyall, Alfred. Asiatic Studies: Religious and Social. 1899. 2 Vols., 9s. each. New and cheaper edition. Murray, London.
Able studies of Indian life and religion; especially valuable in treating the philosophy of the popular beliefs; by an eminent authority. A reference book for all serious students.
Compton. Indian Life in Town and Country. 1904. Putnam, N. Y. $1.20.
A very readable account of the life both of the native and of the Anglo-Indian, by an Indian civilian. Missionary work is not treated, but the judgment of things Indian is keen and valuable.
Chirol, Valentine. Indian Unrest. 1910. Macmillan, N. T. $2.00.
Letters written originally for the London Times, which attracted great attention. The author has had long experience in the East and special facilities for observation. The statements refer mainly to Bengal.
Fraser, A. H. L. Among Indian Rajahs and Ryots. 1910. Lippincott, Philadelphia. $4.00.
The writer held many positions in the Indian civil service, ending as Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. He has had remarkable opportunity for seeing many sides of Indian Life. His experiences are simply told, but in admirable spirit.
Townsend, Meredith. Asia and Europe. 1910. Putnam, N. T. $1.50.
Most interesting essays on conditions and movements in the Nearer and Farther East, and the relation of Europe thereto; the outcome of a lifelong study of the relations between these two continents; brilliant, paradoxical, and suggestive.
Biographical
Clark, Henry Martyn. Robert Clark of the Punjab. 1909. Revell, N. Y. $1.75.
Biography of one of India's pioneer missionaries; contains many characteristic experiences of missionary work among Mohammedans.
Chamberlain, Jacob. The Kingdom in India. 1908. Bevell, N. Y. $1.50.
Practically an autobiography of a great missionary veteran; vivid descriptions of missionary life and work in India.
Dyer, Helen S. Pandita Ramabai. 1900. Revell, N. Y. $1.25. Story of the best-known Indian woman from her childhood to 1900; intended as a record of answered prayers and fulfilled promises in connection with child widow rescue work and famine relief.
Smith, George. The Life of William Carey. 1887. John Murray, London. 16s.
Smith, George. The Life of Alexander Duff. 1900. Hodder and Stoughton, London. 6s. (Out of print.)
These two lives -- one of the English pioneer, the other of Scotland's most famous educational missionary -- are classics. Dr. Duff's life is condensed from an earlier two- volume edition.
Smith, George. Henry Martyn: First Modern Missionary to the Mohammedans. 1902. Kevell, N. Y. $1.50.
Standard life of the most spiritual of early Indian missionaries, one whose life has inspired multitudes, despite its occasional morbidness; gives interesting facts concerning early work in Persia.
Missions
Crooke, W. Northwestern Provinces of India. 1897. Methuen, London. 10s. 6d.
On account of the limited range of the subject-matter, this book finds it possible to give details on many topics that are usually found only in very extended works. The writer is well posted and discriminating.
Fuller, Mrs. Marcus B. The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood. 1900. Revell, N. Y. $1.25.
Perhaps the best book on the subject. Gives many illustrations from personal experience and knowledge. A stirring book.
Beach, Harlan P. India and Christian Opportunity. 1903. Student Volunteer Movement, N. Y. 50¢.
A miniature encyclopedia on India from the missionary standpoint; a remarkable piece of condensation. Omits few subjects of importance and consequently treats the others briefly.
Lucas, Bernard. The Empire of Christ. 1907. Macmillan, N. Y. 80¢.
A brilliant and suggestive book which has provoked dissent from many. Emphasizes the leavening of Indian society rather than the gaining of individual converts. A book which every student of Indian missions should read.
Mrs. Armstrong-Hopkins. Within the Purdah. 1898. Eaton & Mains, N. Y. $1.25.
The experiences of a woman physician who had some unusual opportunities for observation. Some of the incidents are very vivid.
Jones, John P. India's Problem: Krishna or Christ. Revell, N. Y. $1.50.
The field and problems of mission work in India presented by a sane and strong missionary writer. One of the best books for an introduction to missionary work.
Jones, John P. India: Its Life and Thought. 1908. Macmillan, N. Y. $2.50.
Studies in Indian religion and life by a missionary with long experience. Caste, home life, leading ideas of Hinduism, and the influence of Christianity are treated.
Morrison, John. New Ideas in India. 1907. Macmillan, N. Y. $1.60.
Lectures delivered in Scotland in 1904-5. They present the new ideas that are arising in India and discuss the outlook for Christianity.
Andrews, C. F. North India. 1908. Mowbray, London. 2s.
One of a series of handbooks published by the S. P. G. Together with matters which would be of interest mainly to members of that Society, the author gives some acute and valuable chapters on the present religious situation.
Report of the Madras Decennial Conference of 1902.
Contains the reports of committees of experienced missionaries appointed to consider all sides of missionary work. An authoritative statement of missionary policy in India.
Report of the World Missionary Conference of 1910.
The most comprehensive missionary document ever issued. Nearly all the volumes contain material of great importance bearing on India. Volume III on Education, and Volume IV on non-Christian Religions are specially valuable.
Richter, Julius. A History of Protestant Missions in India. 1908. Revell, N. Y. $2.50.
An excellent translation of Indische Missions Geschichte, clear and away the best book on Christian missions to India; scholarly and comprehensive; the first part historical, while the second part deals with the problems, organization, results, and outlook of Indian missions; written by one of the world's great missionary authorities.
Mylne, Louis George. Missions to Hindus. 1908. Longmans, N. Y. $1.20.
A treatment of caste and the methods whereby the problems of caste should be met.
Carmichael, Amy Wilson. Things as They Are: Mission Work in Southern India. 1906. Bevell, N. Y. $1.00.
The strongest piece of realistic writing in Indian missionary literature; illustrations and subscripts most unusual; depressing because only the darkest side is portrayed.
Carmichael, Amy Wilson. Overweights of Joy: A Story of Mission Work in Southern India. 1906. Revell, N. Y. $1.00.
The other side of the shield; as realistic as the preceding book, but incidents are chosen to reveal the gospel's supernatural power; excellent illustrations.
Datta, Surendra K. The Desire of India. 1908. Young People's Missionary Movement, N. Y. 64¢.
One of the best brief works on India and missionary work there; has the advantage of the sympathetic insight of its Indian authorship; used widely as a text-book by the students of Great Britain.
Denning, M. B. Mosaics from India. 1902. Revell, N. Y. $1.25.
A very useful series of sketches for giving a general view of Indian customs, caste, position of women, etc.
Hume, Robert A. Missions from the Modern View. 1905. Revell, N. Y. $1.25.
Lectures by a well-known missionary at Ahmednagar on certain phases of the science of missions; discusses the modern view of God and the world, the relation of missions to sociology and psychology, the points of contact between Christianity and Hinduism, and the spirit in which the gospel should be presented to Hindus.
Thoburn, J. M. The Christian Conquest of India. 1908. Young People's Missionary Movement. N. Y. 50¢.
One of the best brief books on India. Written by a successful veteran after forty-six years of experience.
Religion
Hopkins, Edward W. The Religions of India. 1895. Ginn, Boston. $2.00.
Prof. Hopkins writes as a specialist with a wide knowledge of the literature. The book is not easy reading but contains much of value.
Hall, Charles Cuthbert. Christ and the Eastern Soul. 1909. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. $1.25.
The Barrows Lectures, delivered in 1906-1907, by Charles Cuthbert Hall, in India; the lectures are irenic, yet loyal to the supremacy and dignity of Christianity; recognize fully all that is good in ethnic religion, and are highly appreciative of the gifts and capacities of the Eastern soul, especially its ability to profit by and exemplify the benefits of the Christian religion when loyally and intelligently accepted.
Mitchell, J. Murray. The Great Religions of India. Revell, N. Y. $1.50.
The Duff Lectures, written by a veteran who, in India and at home, was a student of Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and the native religions of India.
Slater, T. E. The Higher Hinduism in Relation to Christianity. 1903. Elliott Stock, London. 3s. 6d.
A generous interpretation of philosophic Hinduism; written by a scholarly and experienced missionary to the educated classes of India.
Wilkins, W. J. Modern Hinduism. 1900. Thacker, London. 10s. 6d.
A full and valuable survey of Hinduism, its worship, ethics, social institutions, and results.
Williams, Monier. Brahmanism and Hinduism. Macmillan, N. Y. $4.50.
More valuable than the author's handbook on Hinduism, because much more detailed. The bones of the briefer outline are clothed with flesh. Especially good on sectarian Hinduism.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Census of India, 1911, provisional results for population as given in the Calcutta Gazette, April 5, 1911. For other census figures on India, the Census of 1901 has been used.
[2] For the principal languages, see language chart on page 8.
[3] The Romance languages are those derived from the ancient Latin, such as French, Spanish, Italian.
[4] Census of Canada, 1901, shows that fourteen and four tenths per cent of the population at least five years of age were illiterate. Figures are not given for ten years and Upward, so no exact comparison with the United States can be made.
[5] Quotations here and elsewhere are from Sacred Books of the East, by E. Max Müller, Vol. XXV, The Laws of Mourn, translated by Georg Bühler.
[6] Manu, I. 93, 99, 100.
[7] Ibid., IV. 80, 81.
[8] [Ibid., X. 51-53.
[9] Crooke, The Northwest Provinces of India, 326.
[10] The wind that blows steadily along the Asiatic coast in winter from the northeast, forming the dry monsoon; in summer more violently from the southwest, constituting the Wet monsoon.
[11] Asia and Europe, 29.
[12] From Census of India, 1901.
[13] For a detailed account of Parseeism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Animism, see Murray, The Great Religions of India.
[14] An obscure remnant of the same feeling is shown in America by the names, "devil's pulpit," "devil's punch-bowl," and like terms, applied to rocks of curious shape.
[15] Bhagavad Gita, VT. 13-15.
[16] This boycott movement broke down because "Commercial India" could not be drawn into hurting trade. The subsequent development of local industries is profitable, and therefore remains and spreads.
[17] An incarnation of deity.
[18] Sir Alfred Lyall, in Chirol, Indian Unrest, pp. xv, xvi.
[19] Particularly the large military bill charged against India, much larger than the amount spent on public education.
[20] That is, they begin to see that the new day calls for industrial liberty and social solidarity; Hinduism denies them both.
[21] Imperial Gazeteer, IV. 216, 222.
[22] The author has selected only a few illustrations of movements that have come under his observation. Movements in other communities might be added if space permitted.
[23] For full explanation, see Chapter I.
[24] These are the principal missionary societies of the Church of England.
[25] See illustration, facing page 94.
[26] Now the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.
[27] See page 15.
[28] World Missionary Conference, Vol. II, 85.
[29] Bishop Caldwell, quoted in Lawrence, Modern Missions in the East, 236, 237.
[30] See Appendixes E-I.
[31] Chirol, Indian Unrest, 208.
[32] These examples do not represent the English spoken by university graduates.
[33] Francis Kingsbury, "How I Became a Christian," 25, 26.
[34] Manu, H. 213, 215.
[35] Ibid., V. 154; IX. 2.
[36] Ibid., IX. 18.
[37] Ibid., XI. 67.
[38] Manu, IX. 15, 17.
[39] In this connection, reference may be made to articles on the education of women in India in The East and the West, for October, 1916, by Hiss J. L. Latham, and in the same magazine for January, 1911, by M. P. Western.
[40] Manu, IX. 94.
[41] Widows are allowed to go on pilgrimage, because it is considered a religious service and is encouraged by the priests.
[42] A spiritual and religious teacher.
[43] Sharrock.
[44] Having a population of less than 2,000.
[45] Ascetics, mostly worshipers of Shiva.