There are moreover certain elements of truth in that old faith which we do not care to eliminate from his mental furnishing, but which must find new adjustment and be properly located in the new religion which he has adopted.

It should also be remembered and made prominent in our consideration of this subject that the people of India are an Oriental people and are the children of the tropics and, as such, will always remain and must remain very different from us of the Northwest. Their climatic and meteorological conditions, their outer, physical life, their social customs and the trend of their civilization, have always been, and will continue to be, far removed from our own. Nothing could be more fatal to our success in our effort for the conversion of India than the idea that we must in every respect mold them after the pattern of Western life and habits. A large portion of their life is the result of the conditions which I have mentioned and must largely remain unchanged; and it would be folly for the missionary to regard these as a part of the faith to be supplanted, and to teach that western social customs are inseparable from Christianity and must be accepted by the Orient with our faith. The Christian of India will always be, and it is well that he should be, differentiated from the Anglo-Saxon Christian.

It should also be remembered that the people of India, at least the masses, are low in civilization. It should not be expected that those who are in that low estate, when they become Christians, will leap with one bound into the full possession of a high civilization and be clothed upon with some of those beauties of western life and character which we inevitably associate with the term, "A Christian Gentleman." They, indeed, become truly and sincerely the disciples of Christ; but they will, at the same time, manifest some of the crudities and weaknesses of the low social grade of which they have been and still remain a part. They should not be judged by standards Western or of a high civilization.

Looking, then, at the native Christian of India let us have regard to his condition socially, morally, religiously and spiritually.

(a) Studying this product of the Christian faith in that land from a social standpoint we find encouragement. He differs from his Hindu neighbour by a growing freedom from the trammels of caste. He feels, in his best moments, that caste has been and continues to be the greatest curse of the land, that he has been emancipated from it, and that he is ambitious to enjoy the liberty wherewith Christ has made him free. And yet, unfortunately, he does not remain constantly in the possession of this sane mind. The roots of the caste system have reached down into the lowest depths of his being. Even at times when he believes that he is absolutely independent of caste considerations, there is in him a blind persistence which clings to caste bondage. I have often felt that Hinduism can be dispensed with by our convert with vastly more ease in all other particulars than in its caste feelings and affiliations. This relic of the past clings to him with a tenacity which is phenomenal and most sad. Though everything teaches him that this caste system is the greatest enemy of Christianity and will prevent any one who believes and practices it from fully imbibing the spirit of Christ; and though he aspires to be an earnest and an efficient Christian and to love all his brethren, this remnant of Hinduism in his heart returns to rob him of the joys and blessings of his Christian birthright. I have seen this frequently disfigure what would otherwise have been a beautiful Christian character. I have witnessed it blast the prospects of Christian congregations dooming them to stagnation and death. I have known it to palsy the arm and deaden the heart of more than one Christian worker.

All this is inevitable when we remember the mighty influence and the long continued dominance of caste in that land. But even at this point, where the missionary finds the greatest discouragement, there are marked signs of progress. So long as the missionary fought this evil alone there was little hope of success. But, during the last few years, the conscience of the native Christian Church itself has been roused on this question. The Indian Christian today, as never before, has the conviction that this caste evil saps the spiritual life of every member and of every church which entertains it, and that it is his supreme duty to fight it steadily in his own heart, home and church. And there is an increasing number, especially of the young Christians, who are pledging themselves to an unceasing warfare against the demon caste. Christians are also organizing themselves into Caste Suppression Societies. All this is highly encouraging, but needs large furtherance and development before the native Christian can be said to be freed from this most subtle curse of the ancestral faith.

The old Hindu Joint Family System is the foster-mother of the caste idea, and it is cheering to see native Christians increasingly abandoning that system for the Western idea of home which encourages thrift, independence and liberty among the various members of a family and clan.

In India, for many years to come, this blight of social narrowness, exclusiveness and divisiveness will affect more or less the native Christian character and give colour to the native Christian Church. For centuries it may prove the weak spot of Indian Christianity.

(b) Morally, the native Christian develops slowly. One writer has recently claimed that the Christian of India manifests little, if any, preeminence over the Hindu, in this respect. This is not true. He is certainly moving forward and upward morally. But it should be remembered that moral character is not one of the first results of Christian conquest among such a people. It is rather the highest and last fruit upon the tree of Christian life. It should not be forgotten that what we regard in the West as the high moral traits of a Christian gentleman are the product of more than 1,000 years of Christian living.

The native Christian manifests, in this respect, the weakness of his antecedents and his environment. When we remember that weakness of character to which we have referred as belonging to the Hindu it is not surprising that the native Christian, who is daily surrounded by men of that faith and who imbibes the atmosphere of that religion, should largely be affected by the same evil. A few years ago an English barrister complained to me of certain Christian witnesses who had given evidence in a case recently conducted by him in Madura. "I hate to have your Christians as witnesses in any of my cases," he says; "for whenever they venture to give false evidence they instantly falter and stumble and are caught by the opposing counsel. A Hindu, when he gives false evidence, will tell a straight and a plausible story. But your Christians are too much affected by twinges of conscience." What was embarrassing and annoying to him was encouraging to me! That our Christians should occasionally give false evidence did not surprise me; but that they, in this matter, should be differentiated, by this disinterested observer, from Hindu witnesses is a reliable testimony in favour of their growing veracity.

Among the higher class of native Christians, which is annually increasing in number, there is marked improvement in character. Especially among mission agents do we have opportunity to witness this development. They are growing in sincerity and reliability. The missionary is learning, with increasing pleasure, to place confidence in their veracity. And yet, we must mourn that moral progress among our people, both high and low, is not more rapid and satisfying.

Social immorality, as we have seen, is very prevalent in that tropical country. It is natural that this should annoy and worry us greatly among our native Christians. It is a sad fact that more of our mission agents are dismissed on account of this sin than any other. Hindu society is not only largely demoralized by this evil, there is also no public sentiment against it. But, under the influence of a growing sentiment in behalf of chastity and purity, the evil is gradually diminishing among our native Christians.

One source of moral depravity in Hindu society is the prevalent belief among them that there is no necessary connection between piety and morality. Their faith maintains that a man may be an ardent and worthy devotee, and at the same time trample under foot every part of the decalogue. Indeed the immorality of their religious ascetics is as noticeable as their profession of piety. Nobody there questions their lofty faith, their deep piety, their supreme devotion to their gods; nor will any one hesitate for one moment to charge them with every vice and sin in the human catalogue. Such is the Hindu mind that it can and does believe that these, to us, inseparable elements of a noble life, can be severed and found absolutely apart. In India, today, the moral people are largely the non-religious; while the ostentatiously religious are the publicly immoral ones.

It will take a long time for this fundamental and universally prevailing error to lose its grip upon our Christian people in that land. We find, not infrequently, in the Christian community, men and women living in unrighteousness and at the same time believing that it will be overlooked in the Divine account because of their zeal in Christian advocacy or their offering for the Christian cause. Perhaps this land of the West also is not free from such a delusion! We endeavour to teach them, in the language of the Apostle Paul (1 Tim. 3:9), "to hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience"; and we emphasize the supreme truth that faith and conscience, piety and morality are one and inseparable.

(c) Religiously, the native Christian is slowly shaking off the clinging brood of superstitions which he inherited from Hinduism. Our most recent converts have often a tenacious belief in the efficacy of some of those childish superstitions and charms which were largely their main stay in their ancestral religion. In most cases these are not a matter of faith so much as of inheritance which have become more than a second nature to them. Idolatry may be abandoned, belief in Hinduism as a saving faith may be thrown to the winds, Hindu ritual may lose its charm; but the many little superstitions which are connected with private life and social customs have still a quiet influence and a lingering power over them. These largely belong to the life of those who have recently accepted the Christian faith. It may be that some of them will never make that progress in life which will lift them entirely above some of these Hindu superstitions. But the great majority of native Christians today have religiously had no connection whatever with Hinduism and have entirely substituted Christian rites and observances for those of the Hindu religion. And they apparently have large satisfaction in them. The old Hindu idea of the supreme value of asceticism is largely yielding to a Christian altruism which abandons self-centred, self-seeking, activity in favour of loving sympathy for, and an endeavour to do good to, men.

We also notice that among them the idea of the efficacy of certain forms and ceremonies is lessening in favour of a conviction of the power of the inner life of faith.

And yet it should be constantly kept in mind that ceremony and ritual must always find a larger place in the religious life of India than in that of the United States. The inhabitant of India is tropical and poetic in temperament. He beholds things, and appreciates and appropriates spiritual blessings, more through the help of forms and ceremonies than does the man of the West. A rite appeals to his nature more strongly and lends to him greater facility in getting at its underlying truth and antitype than it does to us. Indeed it is his nature to look at Christian truth through the eyes of a poet; and ceremonies consequently convey to him the largest significance and are more revealing of the spirit within. We seek divine truth and spiritual blessings more directly than he. It would be therefore a mistake for us to expect that practical, unpoetic mind of ours in the Oriental, or to present religious truth to him in its nakedness, unadorned and unenforced by rite and ritual. It has been, and, to some extent, continues to be the fault of our Congregational Missions in India that they try to lift the native Christian to those dry, unadorned, simple forms of religious service which indeed satisfy the missionaries, but which ignore the great difference of nature and temperament between themselves and the converts. It should be remembered that in India people think vocally. Even as they must and do read aloud in order to read intelligently, so must they worship aloud in order to worship feelingly and thoughtfully. Hence the wisdom and urgency for them of a ritual and a responsive service.

(d) Spiritually, the Indian Christian is slowly and surely developing on definite lines of his own.

The simplicity of his faith is beautiful. He has none of those questions of doubt or misgivings of unbelief which are so prevalent in the West. He takes the Bible in all fullness of acceptance. His prayers are not crossed and frustrated by any rationalistic theories, but have the simplicity of childish directness, filial trust and full expectancy. Nothing has touched me more in my contact with native Christians than to feel the directness, simplicity, unquestioning trustfulness of their prayers even in times of greatest adversity.

The native Christian possesses a mystic temperament. The inhabitants of that land, through many centuries of training, have become natural mystics in religion. This national heritage the native Christian retains; and properly chastened and directed by Christian truth and faith it will add depth, beauty and power to his religious life. Under these conditions I shall have no fear of mysticism in the Christian Church in India. Deep spirituality and a yearning after the hidden things of religion is more natural to the East than to the West. The West is practical and worldly; the East is mystical and other-worldly. The native Christian, at his best, is manifesting some of this spiritual power. He takes naturally to the Pauline emphasis upon the life "hid with Christ in God," and to the mystic union which exists between Christ and His own.

It is here that the native Church in India is, I believe, to show an inspiring example to the Church of the West. If the Christian of India is not to be as practical or indeed as spiritually sane as his brother of the West, he will probably illustrate more of the hidden mysteries and power of the spiritual life. In this respect the spiritual power of the East and that of the West will be, in their separate emphasis, mutually complementary.

The Indian Christian, true to his native temperament, is and will continue to be strong in the so-called passive virtues, and weak in the positive or aggressive ones. Patience, meekness, gentleness, endurance—these are the graces which preeminently adorn him and which give colour and shape to his religious character. Here, again, his life will be very different from that life which has characterized, thus far, the Western Christian. The masculine virtues of assertion, boldness, aggressiveness have characterized the West. We have been strong and continue strong in that aspect of our faith which we associate with the words assertion and attack. The West has, true to its environment and training, developed Christian character mostly, I will not say exclusively, on the positive side of life. The equally important passive virtues we of the West have much neglected if not despised as weakness. The East is even today manifesting the blessedness, and the native Christian will increasingly illustrate, the beauty and potency, of the passive virtues—of the spiritual element of endurance and non-resistance. He will show to us that a true and perfected character—a character molded after that of the divine Exemplar—must have also, and with equal emphasis, the sweet and feminine passive graces of life as an essential element. In India today the Anglo-Saxon is wont to speak with contempt of "The mild Hindu." That mildness which we are too apt to despise contains the germs of that half of Christian character which is too largely wanting in the spiritual life of the Anglo-Saxon and which the Christian Church of India will increasingly illustrate and gradually seek to respect, honour, and ultimately, to adopt.

Thus, speaking broadly of the native Christian of India today we find him almost as much a product of heredity and environment as he is of Christianity. He holds out Christ before himself as his ideal of life, and His words as the all-satisfying truth. He seeks in His redeeming work rest and salvation of soul; but many of the deepest yearnings of his heart come to him through old channels worn out by his ancestral faith. Hinduism gives more or less of colouring to his religious thought and aspirations; and not a few of its forms and ceremonies are retained, but filled with a new Christian content, and are utilized to aid in the development of Christian life. Even as the Jews of old entered into possession and appreciation of Christian life through Jewish rites and ceremonies, so do native converts enter Christian life through Hindu forms today. From the necessity of their thought and being they utilize not a few of the processes of the old, in order to acquire and enjoy the blessings of the new, faith. This cannot be avoided nor do we desire that it should be avoided.





The study of the Indian Christian character in its peculiarities and tendencies is of importance, because, as I have said above, I believe it is to affect our conceptions of life in the West. At the present time not a few of the religious vagaries which infest our land such as Christian Science and Theosophy, have chiefly come to us from India. At least, whatever of philosophy they may possess, and all of the occultism and mysticism which they court and magnify, are thoroughly Eastern and Indian. And from the popularity of such movements in this land it would seem as if the boast of some men that Hindu thought is invading the West is partially true. But the invasion which I desire and expect, in the not distant future, is the invasion of an Oriental Christian thought, Christian life and Christian character. This will come in its time as truly as, and much more fully than, the other has come, and it will do this country as much good as the other is now doing evil.

As an illustration of what I mean in reference to the influence of Eastern thought upon the West I would prophesy that ere long the Indian Christian Church will formulate for itself and enunciate to the world an advanced and helpful doctrine of the Holy Ghost beyond anything that the West has enunciated. India, which for these many centuries has been the home of an all-prevalent spiritual pantheism, when it comes to elaborate the doctrine of God, from a Christian standpoint, will give as much emphasis to His immanence as the West has given to His transcendence. God with us and in us and working in all creation, even the Holy Spirit of God,—this is the conception which the Indian Christian will elaborate and illuminate beyond anything that the West has thus far attempted.

There is danger, today, and it is inevitable, that missionaries from the West be too ambitious to occidentalize the native Christian community, ignorant of, or indifferent to, the grand possibilities of thought and of life which lie in Eastern character and teaching. It is much easier to thrust upon them everything Western than it is to appreciate and to conserve many things Eastern. The future missionary will learn wisdom from the past and will enter upon his work with less depreciation of things Oriental and with a larger desire to conserve to the utmost Eastern habits of thought and social customs, so long as, and so far as, they can be made the vehicles of Christian thought and the channels of Christian life. Herein must lie the best means for a speedy coming of the Kingdom of Christ in India.



Chapter V.

THE WOMEN OF INDIA.

The condition of its women is the truest test of a people's civilization. Her status is her country's barometer.

The one hundred million women of India admirably reflect the whole social and religious condition of that land. There are more nations in India than are found in all Europe; they also present a greater diversity of type. Between the aboriginal tribes which treat the weaker sex only as a beast of burden, and the Parsee community which holds its women in the highest consideration and furnishes them with a liberal education and large opportunity, there are many intermediate tribes and nations which regard their women with varying degrees of consideration and of contempt.

Of all Scriptures the Zend Avesta of the Parsees is the only one which furnishes woman, from the beginning, with absolute equality with man; and that position she has never lost among the Parsees. But the Parsees in India are a mere handful.

The Hindu woman constitutes four-fifths of the total number of her sex in India; and her condition is fairly uniform everywhere and conforms, in varying degrees, to a type whose characteristics are easily recognized. She has come down from earliest history. We recognize her everywhere in the pages of their ancient literature, in their laws and legends; and we behold her in all the manifold walks of modern life. For nearly a quarter of a century the writer has lived as her neighbour, gazed daily upon her life, wondered at and admired her many noble traits which have been preserved under the most adverse circumstances, and grieved over her weakness and her many disabilities.

In ancient times, the position of woman in India was one of power coupled with honour. Today the power remains, but the honour has been largely eliminated.

1. In ancient Vedic times woman enjoyed many distinctions and revealed great aptitude. She joined her husband in the offering of domestic sacrifices and sat as queen in the home. Some of the sacred hymns of the Rigveda were made by her and have come down these thirty centuries as a beautiful testimony to her intellectual brightness and aspiration, and as an evidence of the honour in which she was held.

Five centuries later this beautiful description was given of her in the Mahabarata:

"A wife is half the man, his truest friend; A loving wife is a perpetual spring Of virtue, pleasure, wealth; a faithful wife Is his best aid in seeking heavenly bliss; A sweet speaking wife is a companion In solitude, a father in advice, A mother in all seasons of distress, A rest in passing through life's wilderness."

The rights and opportunities of woman are strikingly illustrated by many of the legends of their ancient epics. For instance, we read of the Svayamvara of the lovely princess Draupadi. It was the occasion when she had attained womanhood and was entitled to the right to choose her own husband. How graphically are the royal suitors described as they press their claims to her heart and hand in knightly tournament. It is one of those scenes which reveal woman in the possession of some of her most queenly rights and attractions.

The ancient ideals of womanly character have come down the centuries writ large in their songs and annals; and these ideals are today held as dearly, and are loved and sung with as much ardour, as at any time in the history of India.

Every boy and girl of that land, today, knows the lovely Sita, wife of the noble and heroic Rama,—how, while in the power of the terrible Ravana, and at risk of life, she withstood every temptation and lived in unspotted purity and in supreme devotion and faithfulness to her royal lord.

Who does not know of the faithful Saguntala, whose legend is woven into one of the most beautiful and touching love stories the world has ever known. This drama was the first translation from Sanskrit into the English tongue and elicited the astonishment and lively admiration of such a man as Goethe.

India has always boasted of the constancy and devotion of the beautiful Savitri to her beloved Sattyavan. After the death of her husband, she followed his soul into the spirit-world with fearless devotion and pleaded with the King of Death with so much passion and persistence for his return to life that he was finally restored to her in youthful vigour.

These are some of the stock illustrations of the model wife used everywhere and at all times in India. And they have had an extensive and wonderful influence in the molding of wifely ideals.

It is, as we see, a glorification of devotion, faithfulness, constancy—traits that have always beautified the character of the Hindu woman. It is true that, apart from her husband and from the kitchen, woman has had few ideals urged upon her in that great country. Her ambitions have not crossed the doorsteps of her house and home. She is measured entirely by her relation to her husband or children. She is her lord's companion and servant. Love to him is the wand which alone can transform her life into gold. Her usefulness and her glory are the reflections of his pleasure and of his satisfaction in her. She has no separate existence. Apart from man, she is an absolute nonentity. And yet, within the sphere which has been granted to her, she has shone with a wonderful radiance and with a charm which reminds us often of some of Shakespeare's beautiful womanly creations.

The physical attractions of woman have always, of course, captivated the sterner sex in India, as in other lands. Her beauty is lavishly described and painted in warm colours through all Hindu literature. And she is physically beautiful; she will compare favourably with the fair ones of any land in womanly grace, in beauty of figure, and in bewitching charm of manner.

But the standard of womanly grace and beauty is not precisely the same there as it is with us in the West. A Hindu and an American have different ideals of personal beauty. Though the Aryan type of countenance may not largely differ East and West, there are touches of expression and shades of beauty which correspond respectively to the different ideals in both lands. May they not have created the ideals themselves?

The most common results of a Hindu woman's toilet are the smooth hair, the blackened eyebrow, the reddened finger-nails, the pendent nose jewels, the bulky ear-rings, the heavy bangles for ankles and arms. Without these, life, to the Hindu belle, is not worth living. On wedding occasions, among the common folk, red ochre is also daubed over the throat in ghastly suggestion to the Westerner; but in glorious attractiveness to the native of the land!

West and East associate a fair complexion with highest beauty. A fond Hindu mother once came to the writer moaning that she could not find a husband for her daughter because she was "too black!" The young man of India puts a premium upon every shade of added lightness of complexion. His taste is reflected in the universal feminine custom of using saffron dye to lighten the complexion upon all festive occasions.

The clothing of the woman of India is exceedingly attractive. Her pretty garb sets off admirably the beauty of her person; and, both in inexpensiveness and grace, and in its contribution to health, is far better than the complicated extravagance, the heavy encumbrance and the insanitary tight-lacing of the West. The women of South India dress with a view to comfort in the tropics; but they have also, in a most remarkable degree, conserved appropriateness, beauty, and simplicity in their robes. The possibilities of the one cloth, which is the full dress of the South Indian woman, as a modest garment and as a charming full-dress equipment would be a revelation to the much dressed votary of the West. In the arranging of this cloth there is considerable scope for ingenuity and for aesthetic taste; although, in this matter, the rules of each caste furnish an iron etiquette which must be followed by the women. Indeed, the tyranny of Worth in the West is nothing as compared with caste tyranny as the Fashioner of the East. This is accounted for by the fact that a woman's dress must be arranged in such a way as to publish abroad her caste affiliations.

Woman has a vast influence upon the life of the people of India. In no other country has she relatively exercised more power. All this, notwithstanding the fact that, for more than twenty centuries, she has had no recognized position in religion or in society. Her spiritual destiny has been entirely in the hands of man. By the highest authorities her salvation has been made entirely dependent upon her connection with him. She has absolutely no right of worship of her own. From the cradle to the grave she is in man's keeping. Until she is married, supreme obedience to her father is her only safety; while her husband lives, heaven's blessings can come to her only through his favour and prayer; and, after his death, her sons become her lords and the sole guardians and protectors of her spiritual interests. All this is everywhere recognized by Hindu society, and by none more than by the woman herself.

And yet, it is equally true, and a fact of remarkable significance, that, in India today, the religious influence of woman is paramount. She is the stronghold of Hinduism at the beginning of this twentieth century. Man, under the growing influence of western thought, civilization, and faith, has largely lost his moorings and is growing increasingly insincere and a trifler with religious beliefs and institutions. The woman, on the other hand, is a conservative of the conservatives. In her superstition she is deeply sincere; her faith has no questionings, and her piety shapes her every activity. Were it not for the women of India, Hinduism, with all its vaunted philosophy, its wonderful ritual and its mighty caste tyranny, would, within a decade, fall into "innocuous desuetude."

It is a significant fact that in the religion of no other people on earth does the worship of the female find so prominent a place. In many parts of the land Sakti worship, or the worship of goddesses, is widely prevalent and almost paramount in influence. It is really the worship of power under a female form; and the power which these goddesses exercise is mostly malevolent in its character. The terrible wife of Siva, in all her dread manifestations, is the most popular deity, because the most feared in the land.

It is natural to inquire whether this characteristic of the Hindu pantheon is not a reflection of the Hindu mind as to the influence of woman, and as to the belief of man in the evil character of that influence. As is the place and power of woman among the men so is the character and place of the goddesses in the pantheon of that people.

The famous religious reformer Chunder Sen, though he adopted and used the Lord's Prayer, changed the form of address from the masculine to the feminine and said, "Our Mother who art in heaven!" The adoration of the female in Hindu worship was never more marked than at present. What has Christianity to meet this bent of the Hindu mind? Or should it be discouraged as an element in worship? The Romanists meet it by exalting and giving preeminence to the Virgin Mother. The Protestants have nothing corresponding to this.

Socially, the Hindu woman is a reactionary of the most pronounced type; she opposes social reform at all points—nowhere more than when it is directed to ameliorate her own condition. Religiously, as we have seen, she is the slave of man by law and teaching; yet she rules her household, even in these matters, with an iron hand.

From her throne in the home she so wields her sceptre that it is felt also throughout the whole social fabric. Her beloved lord has perhaps passed through a university course, is a pronounced social reformer and discourses in eloquent English, before large audiences of his admiring countrymen, concerning the mighty social evils which are the curse of the country; he, with his ardent fellow-reformers, frames rules which shall soon usher in the millennium of social reform and progress! And then he—this man of culture, of eloquence, of noble purposes and of altruistic ambitions—goes to his home and meekly submits to the grandmotherly tyranny which has shaped his life much more than he knows, and which vitiates and renders nugatory all his social and other schemes! As man has narrowed the scope of woman's life in that land, so she has given it intensity of power.

And what is more significant, she has become supremely contented with the narrow sphere which man has grudgingly given her. And, for this very reason, she combats every endeavour, on the part of her friends, to release her from her bondage and to increase her opportunities and blessings in life. The old triple slander perpetrated upon India, to the effect that "it is a country in which the women never laugh, the birds never sing and the flowers have no fragrance," is a falsehood in all its details. Hindu women have as merry a laugh as their sisters in any other land. They have learned to make the best of their lot and to rejoice in it.

Since the time of the Mohammedan conquest, and probably long before, the higher class of women have mostly led a life of seclusion. This is preeminently true of the northern parts of the country where Mohammedan influence was strongest and the Hindu had carefully to protect his wife and daughters from the coarse Mussulman. In South India this seclusion is very rare and observed only among the most aristocratic. The common woman of India finds ample freedom of intercourse in her town and village, and figures conspicuously at the great religious festivals of her land.

Generally speaking, woman is the redeeming feature of India. She is the ideal home-keeper and housekeeper. Usually, she is devoted to her husband, a passionate lover of her children, the conserver of society, the true devotee in religion. Her lord and husband has been taught, from time immemorial, to keep her in obscurity and to surround her with the screen of ignorance and narrow sympathies; but she has magnified the work assigned to her; her excellence has shown far beyond his; and, in her bondage, she has built her throne from which she has wielded her sceptre of love and goodness over him.

She has never aspired to realms not granted to her by her lawgivers. The modern aspiration of the "new woman" of the West does not appeal to her. She asks only to be let alone in her narrow but, to her, all-sufficient sphere.

2. But, after all we have said, or can say, of the power of woman in India, it still remains that, in no other land, has she suffered such marked disability and deeper injustice. If her goodness has shone out of her darkness, it has only served to reveal the more the sadness of her position. She bears in her condition the signs of her bondage and humiliation. The evils of the land have been attributed to her; and man too often ascribes his own degradation and sin to the curse breathed upon him by woman.

The proverbs of a country are the truest test of its sentiments. What have these to say of the woman of India today?

"What poison is that which appears like nectar? Woman."

"What is the chief gate to hell? Woman."

"What is cruel? The heart of a viper. What is more cruel? The heart of a woman. What is the most cruel of all? The heart of a soulless, penniless widow."

"He is a fool who considers his wife as his friend."

"Educating a woman is like putting a knife in the hands of a monkey."

These are a few of the many proverbs which characterize woman in one vernacular only. Every other Indian tongue equally abounds in proverbial expressions which brand a woman as one of the greatest evils of the land. Sanskrit writers have exhausted vituperative language in describing woman. They represent her as "wily, hypocritical, lying, deceptive, artful, fickle, freakish, vindictive, vicious, lazy, vain, dissolute, hard-hearted, sinful, petty-minded, jealous, addicted to simulation and dissimulation. She is worse than the worst of animals, more poisonous than the poison of vipers."

These proverbs do not necessarily reveal the depravity of the Hindu woman; but they do testify unmistakably to the estimation in which she is held by man.

The ignorance of woman there is dense and is probably a fact which closely connects her with the proverbial expressions concerning her. Her illiteracy is not an incident in Indian life. It has been, through the centuries, a settled policy of the land. At the present time only one woman in two hundred can read and write in that land of progress. The remarkable thing is, not that so many are illiterate, but that even a few have been taught at all, in view of the attitude of the Hindu mind towards her. In ancient times there was little to learn, in India, apart from religion; but it has been the strict injunction of their Shastras and religious instructors that no man shall, under penalty of hell, teach to his wife or daughter the Vedas which are the purest and best part of Hindu Scriptures. Any form of useful knowledge was considered dangerous in her possession.

It is not that woman is wanting in capacity. She is as bright and as teachable as her brother. All that she has needed, educationally, has been opportunity; and this, society has denied her, and this has done injustice not only to her but, still more, to itself.

Infant marriage has been, for many centuries, a crying evil in that land. This has brought to woman a train of evils which have made deplorable her condition above all the women of the earth. This custom originated, probably, from a sense of kindness to the girl herself. It was the expression of a desire on the part of the parents to insure their daughter, at an early date, against failure to attain that which all Hindus regard as the summum bonum of a woman's life—marriage. But, in their short-sighted policy, they failed to realize the myriad evils which would follow this pernicious custom. The girl's will or desire must not be regarded as an element in this life compact! And, what is worse still, these infant compacts are necessarily followed by early consummation, whereby girls enter, in many cases, upon the duties of motherhood at twelve years of age. Few, indeed, are permitted to reach full physical development before they assume the function of child-bearing. This is not only a serious evil to the woman herself, it also gives poor chance for the begetting of a healthy progeny and for the early training of the same. And it is not strange that the woman who thus early enters the sphere of motherhood should become a worn out old woman at thirty-five or forty years.

Much effort has been put forth in India, by Westerners especially, to make infant marriages impossible, or at least unpopular. But, little success has thus far attended this effort.

A small meed of alleviation was gained with much effort in 1891. It came through the passing of the "Age of Consent Bill" whereby the age of a girl's consent to cohabitation was raised from ten to twelve. To a Westerner, the blessing acquired by this bill seems in itself a mockery and only reveals the appalling cruelty of that people to its girls.

It has been found impossible to touch, much less remove, the gross evil of infant marriage itself, the custom which opens wide the door to other ghastly evils.

The greatest of these is that of virgin-widowhood. If men will perversely marry their infant daughters to small boys, it is sure that a considerable proportion of the boys will die before their marriage is consummated. Thus, annually, thousands of these poor girls, who are in absolute ignorance of the situation, are converted into virgin widows whose condition, upon the death of their husbands, is instantly changed from one of innocent childhood pleasure into a sad, despised and hated widowhood. For, the parents of the boy sincerely believe that it is her evil star which has killed the boy whose destiny was blended with her own. And henceforth she is regarded, not only by the parents concerned, but by society in general, as an accursed person, hated for what has happened to her husband, and also a creature to be shunned. Her presence must not be allowed on any festive occasion, lest its evil influence bring sorrow and death to others. Thus a child of four or five years may suddenly have her prospects blasted, her life embittered and her company shunned by the whole world, with none to befriend, to cheer or to comfort her. There are two millions of such sad and injured ones in India today. Their cry goes up to God and to man in inarticulate appeal for relief and redress against a social custom and a religious rule which consigns them, in their time of greatest innocency, to a life which is worse than death itself and which robs them of the protection, love and sympathy which the whole economy of heaven and earth should guarantee to them.

Coupled with this terrible fact is the other, that woman must marry in India anyhow. No disgrace and misfortune can befall a woman, according to Hindu ideas, equal to that of spending her whole life in maidenhood. This, of course, is connected with the idea that she has no social status or religious destiny apart from man. Hence it is that a host of loving parents, who are unable to find a suitable match for their daughters, rather than leave them unmarried, stupidly join them in wedlock to professional bridegrooms. There is, in Bengal, today, a division of the Brahman caste whose men are professional purveyors to this silly but prevalent superstition. They are prepared to marry any number of girls at remunerative rates. And thus they acquire a fair income. Each of these men have scores of such wives and entertains the proud satisfaction, doubtless, that he is bestowing a favour upon a benighted community by coupling his name in wedlock with unfortunate girls who otherwise would be without a name or hope among men! A state of society which renders such a condition of things possible is not only a disgrace to any community, it is a monstrous evil against the womanhood of that community. Is it any wonder, then, that so many of the women of India, under these circumstances, should commit suicide? Is it strange that a wife, in such a land, should find it best to obey and submit to the indignities of the worst kind from her husband? And is it remarkable that the Hindu widow, rather than endure the neglect, the temptations and the obloquy of her widowhood, should have preferred to practice Suttee and to end her miseries upon the funeral pyre of her husband? When we remember that their system consigns one-fifth of all the women of India—more than 20,000,000 souls—to this despised and ostracized widow class, we realize the depth of evil which flows from the system.

There is still another cruel injustice inflicted upon the womanhood of India. Many thousands (there are 12,000 in South India alone) of her daughters are dedicated in infancy to a life of shame in connection with temple worship in that land. These women, the so-called "servants of the gods," have been mostly dedicated by fond mothers to this wretched life as a thank offering to the gods for blessings received. This seems very strange when it is known that all such girls thereby become public characters. The "Dancing Girl" of India is thus shut up to her evil life by those who love her most; and her religious profession becomes to her the highway to perdition and a bitter curse to society. Recent effort has been made, in Bombay, to save such girls by making it a legal offence to "marry" them to the gods and thus devoting them to a life of shame. But this law only refers to the dedication of girls of tender age in Bombay. It is exceedingly sad that, practically, the whole population is utterly indifferent to this greatest insult committed against the womanhood of India and to the coupling of their own religion and their gods with the ruin of the soul and body of many thousands of the daughters of the land.

It is not remarkable, under these circumstances, that among all the people of India the birth of a daughter is the most unwelcome of domestic events. The evils which surely await her, and the greater possibilities of sorrow and suffering which surround her, the great burden of expense and of trouble which her training, and especially her marriage, will entail upon the family—all combine to make her birth a much dreaded event.

The large expense, in the shape of the marriage dowry and the wedding expenses which have to be incurred among nearly all classes in connection with the disposal of their daughters, only make this situation the more emphatic.

The practice of infanticide, so extensively found in India, was the direct result of this difficulty. For instance, among the noble race of Rajputs in North India it was found, some years ago, that, in a community of 30,000, there was not a single girl! Every daughter that was born was killed. The higher the rank of the family the more constant and systematic was the crime. "Thus, while an unmarried daughter in India is looked upon as hopelessly disgraced, a son-in-law cannot always be found unless the father of the girl is prepared to pay highly, and the marriage of a daughter may mean the ruin of a family. Rather than incur this danger, the Rajput preferred that his daughter should perish. And though the government has enacted stringent laws against this custom, it is not entirely eradicated yet."(10)

Thus the Hindus have wittingly and unwittingly placed many of the most serious disabilities of life upon their women. And the greatest evil of it is that the woman has become so hardened to her lot that, like the prisoner of Chillon, she has become enamoured of her chains and is most loathe to part with her bondage.

3. But the dawn of a new day has risen upon India. It is the day of woman's emancipation. A new spirit, during the past century, has entered that land, and the welcome era of brighter blessing, greater appreciation and larger opportunity for woman has actually begun. One has only to study the laws which, during the nineteenth century, were enacted in India with a view to removing the terrible evils and crimes which were committed under the sanction of Hinduism; and he will find that not a few are directed towards the amelioration of the condition of woman. Such inhuman customs as suttee, the murder of children, the dedication of girls to lives of shame—these have been removed in whole or in part; and, by the "Age of Consent Bill" and other similar half measures, the beginning has been made in introducing a day of better things for the women.

Many of the efforts of Hindu Social Reformers are directed towards the removal of some of the disabilities under which woman lives. It is true that the woman of India cannot expect, for a long time, much help from her own people. Even the Social Reformers among them are so few in number, are so half-hearted in their measures, and are so unwilling to deny themselves in behalf of the cause which they advocate, that little can be expected from them. And yet, it must be said that in a few matters of importance Hindu sentiment is slowly moving in the right direction. As a Social Reformer, the Hindu is a poor success; but he is not a fool; he can see that the situation, so far as woman is concerned, is becoming increasingly untenable and flagrantly inconsistent with the growing light of today. The hope is that he will yield, with increasing readiness, to the pressure brought to bear upon him by Western sentiment.

The presence of many women of the West in that land has been a standing rebuke to the Hindu social situation. These women have done not a little to stir within their Eastern sisters a desire for something better. They open their eyes to the contrasted conditions of the women of the East and of the West. When they shall have aroused the women of India to the desperateness of their condition and to the urgent need of reform and relief, the battle will be more than half fought and victory will be in view. For, when the Eastern woman herself will vigorously demand her emancipation, man will yield it to her. The Dufferin Hospitals are a noble tribute to the active interest of the good lady whose name they bear; and the sympathetic endeavour of Lady Curzon for the elevation of India's women are but suggestive of considerable work which the fair sex of the West have rendered and are rendering in behalf of their Indian sisters.

Protestant Christian missions have been pioneers in this great movement towards the emancipation of the women of India. American and English women, connected with these missions, have given themselves to the redemption of their sisters. More than one thousand of these good women are devoting their lives to the salvation of India through the elevation of the women of the land. Thousands of schools are conducted by them in which a host of young girls are receiving that training which Hinduism has proscribed for many centuries. And through these schools, and by means of at least two thousand Bible Women, trained by them, they have access into hundreds of thousands of Hindu homes where they reveal to the women and girls a broader horizon of life and give a new conception of the privileges and opportunities which are opening today before them. They are creating among the women a spirit of unrest which is the dawning of a new ambition for greater things in life and service. The very presence of these foreign ladies suggests to their Indian sister a new sphere broader than the home, and a new opportunity pregnant with rich blessings to the land.

Under the influence of these missionary efforts and of the less thorough training given in government schools, Hindus themselves are beginning to bestir themselves and to establish schools for their daughters; and thus we trust that coming years will not only witness a change of thought among Hindus concerning women, but also a new line of indigenous activity for their elevation.

There is further ground for encouragement; for the Hindu man of culture is growing increasingly sensitive to the wide gulf which lies between him and his absolutely untrained wife. He sees that, while the Western woman is suited in every way to become the companion of, and a helpmeet to, her husband, his own little wife is fit to be neither. Even when not separated from him by a disparity of many years in age, he finds that she has absolutely no interest outside the walls of her home and has not the first qualification to discuss with him or to help him by advice in any matter pertaining to his work or profession. So he, under the new light of modern times, is increasingly ambitious to have a wife of the new training and of the larger horizon, and is willing to pay a premium for her in marriage. And this, itself, is beginning to create a market for educated women even in that stronghold of conservatism, the Brahman caste.

Thus the effort of Christian missions in the development of womanhood is acting like leaven upon the whole social mass.



Chapter VI.

THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EFFORT IN INDIA.

Christianity found very early entrance into India. How early we cannot definitely say. The Syrian Church of Malabar traces its legendary origin to the "doubting disciple," by whose name it loves to be called. The Romish Church also warmly supports this contention and exalts St. Thomas to a high place as the Patron Saint and Apostle of India.

Careful historical investigation entirely overthrows this old claim. The Thomas legends probably owe their existence to the natural desire of the Syrian Christians to connect their history with Apostolic origin and sanction. The name may also be confounded with a later Thomas, several of whom were conspicuous in the annals of the India Syrian Church.

The ancient vagueness of the name "India," has also, doubtless, had no little influence in the formation of these legends. In the beginning of the Christian era "India" was a term of much wider application than at present. It included several countries in Southwestern Asia, and even a portion of Africa. While St. Thomas may therefore have laboured and died in "India," it does not at all follow that his field of labour was within the limits of the peninsula now called by that name. Indeed, many historical incidents and facts agree in disproving Apostolic connection with the rise of Christianity in India.

Pantaenus, the saintly and learned Presbyter and Christian philosopher of Alexandria and the renowned teacher of the illustrious church fathers, Clement and Origen, is the first honoured name which finds historic sanction in the grand roll of Christian missionaries to India. He visited Malabar, South India, during the last decade of the second century. He was a man wonderfully equipped by deep spiritual insight and piety and also by philosophic training and metaphysical acumen to become the messenger of Christian truth and life to the Buddhists and Brahmans who lived side by side in South India in those days.

We know little of his work in that land. He found in Malabar a colony of Jewish Christians who possessed a copy of the Gospel of Matthew in the Hebrew tongue, said to have been given to them by the Apostle Bartholomew. It is not known, however, whether this last named apostle laboured among these Christians in that region.

Probably a century later that Christian community formed connection with Antioch, Syria, which was the first of all Christian missionary centres; but which, through its Nestorian faith, soon lost its missionary ardour.

1. And thus emerges out of the darkness into its long and unique history the Syrian Church of Malabar.

It has passed through many vicissitudes and has lost much, if not all, of its positive Christian influence and missionary character. During a recent visit to that region I was saddened by the sight of this Christian community which had lived all these centuries in the centre of a heathen district with apparently no concern for the religious condition of the surrounding, non-Christian, masses—content to be as a separate caste without religious influence upon, or ambition to bring Christ into the life of, its benighted neighbours.

This church has survived its own apathy, on the one side, and Roman Catholic inquisition on the other, and appears before the world as what it really is—the only indigenous Christian Church in the peninsula of India. It enjoys the unique distinction of having lived more than a millennium and a half in a heathen land, for a thousand years of which it was entirely surrounded by a non-Christian people.

During the last half century it has been considerably influenced by the work and example of the Church Missionary Society which is established in that region. Through this influence a Reformed Syrian Church has come into existence which promises to do much for the whole community in ideals and life. The Syrian Church has hitherto been greatly cursed with the trinity of evils—ignorance, ceremonialism and superstition. It was not until 1811 (at the suggestion of an Englishman) that it translated a part of the Bible (the four gospels) into the vernacular. And this is the only translation of the Scriptures ever made and published by the natives of India.

The Syrian Church now numbers 248,741. That part of the Syrian community which the Romish Church compelled, by the inquisition, to unite with it numbers 322,586.

2. From the fourteenth century the ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH has continued to send out her emissaries and missionaries to that land.

Jordanus and his brave band of missionary associates were her first representatives.

But it was only from the arrival of Vasco da Gama and the Portuguese conquest four centuries ago, that the influence of that Church began to be seriously felt and its triumphs recorded.

By the sword and cruel Inquisition not only were Syrian Christians compelled to transfer their allegiance to the Pope; non-Christians also were, for perhaps the second time in the long history of the land, subjected to the bitter restraints and inhuman inflictions of religious persecution. It is a curious fact that the hideous and bloody monster of religious intolerance was hardly known in India until, first, the followers of Mohammed and, secondly, the disciples of the meek and lowly Jesus began to invade the land.

Then follow the devoted and heroic labours of the saintly Xavier. He was a man of princely extraction, of royal bearing, of Christian devotion and self-denial. He wrought, according to his light, with supreme loyalty to his Lord and with a divine passion for souls in South India. Many thousands of the poor fishermen on the coast was he permitted to baptize into the Christian faith. It is much to be regretted that, like nearly all subsequent Romish missionaries, he gave himself, all but exclusively, to the ceremonial salvation, rather than to the ethical transformation and the spiritual regeneration, of the people. It has always been a much easier thing, in India, to gather the people for the reception of the mystical ordinances of our faith than it has been to prepare them, by patient teaching and guidance, to exemplify its precepts by their lives.

After Xavier came the accomplished and wily Jesuit, Robert de Nobilibus—the nephew of Cardinal Bellarmine. A believer in the Jesuitical principle that the end justifies the means, and ardently desiring to bring the Brahmans over to his faith he proclaimed himself, and in every way assumed the role of, "the Western Brahman." He lived scrupulously as a member of that haughty caste and, until recalled by the Pope on account of his deception, wielded much influence over the Brahmanical hierarchy in Madura.

Men of great power and supreme devotion to their faith followed as representatives of that great Church in India. Such names as de Britto, Beschi, the Abbe du Bois are a crown of honour to that community. Many like them spent lives of great self-denial for the cause of Christ and faithfully wrought for the redemption of the people; so that at present the power of the Romish Church and the devoted energy of its leaders are known in every section of the Peninsula. After nearly six centuries of effort its community in India has reached the total of 1,524,000 souls. For a long time, it has not enjoyed much increase in its membership. In many places it finds numerous accessions; but not a few of its people backslide and return to their ancestral faith. The marked defects of Romanism in that land have been its concessions to, and compromise with, the religion of the land both on the side of idolatrous worship and of caste observance. I have discussed the subject with Indian Roman Catholics in the villages and find that to them the worship of saints, through their many obtrusive images, is practically the same as the idolatry of the Hindus—the only marked difference being in the greater size of the Romish images! In like manner the Jesuit has adopted and incorporated into his religion, for the people of that land, the Hindu caste system with all its hideous unchristian divisions. All this makes the bridge which separates Hinduism from Roman Catholic Christianity a very narrow one; and it reduces to a minimum the process of "conversion" from the former faith to the latter. But an easy path from Hinduism to Christianity means an equally facile way of return to the ancestral faith. If the Hindu has little to surrender in becoming a Christian, neither has such a Christian any serious obstacle to prevent his return to Hindu gods and ceremonies when it suits his convenience to do so. Hence it is that the new accessions to Romanism hardly exceed the number of those who leave it in order to resume their allegiance to the faith of their fathers.

3. PROTESTANT MISSIONARY EFFORT began late. In India it was introduced with the Dutch conquest in the early part of the seventeenth century. But the proselytizing methods of the Dutch in those days savoured too much of the Romish inquisition under the Portuguese. When the pressure of religious compulsion by the civil government was removed, consequent upon the English conquest in Ceylon and India, the people apostatized in a body.

(a) It was not until the truly Christian King, Frederick IV. of Denmark, took, himself, a religious interest in that land at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and sent, at his own expense, the first two Protestant missionaries to Tranquebar on the east coast, that really consistent Protestant effort for the redemption of India began.

Zeigenbalg and Plutschau, the two pioneers who were sent to Tranquebar, arrived in 1706. They inaugurated the great work of Protestant Christianity for the spiritual regeneration of India, and will always find an honoured place among the heroes of the cross.

Zeigenbalg was a man of great piety and of intellectual resources. He died in 1719 after a most successful service of unremitting toil. He gathered hundreds of converts into the Christian fold, established schools and erected a beautiful church edifice which stands today as the oldest Protestant Mission Church in the East. Above all, he felt that an open Bible in the vernacular was essential to the conversion of India; and he therefore gave himself to the translation of God's Word. He was not able to complete this work; it did not issue from the press until 1725. This Tamil version of the Bible was the first translation of God's Word in India and in all the East; and it stands today as a monument to his intelligent labours and to those of his worthy successor, Schultze. It also represents the beginning of a new era of missionary effort in the country. The Roman Catholics, during all their stay in that land have done nothing towards giving to the people the Bible in their native tongue. It was not until the year 1857 that, stirred by Protestant example, they published their first and only translation of any portion of God's Word in any of the South India vernaculars—that of the Tamil Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.

Schultze spent fifteen years in Madras and left a congregation of 700 persons there. From Tranquebar, as a centre, missionary effort spread extensively throughout the Madras Presidency. This was done through German missionaries supported mainly by English funds furnished by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge.

Perhaps the most commanding figure connected with that work and century was Frederick Schwartz, the missionary statesman and apostle who arrived in India in 1750. His efforts extended throughout the Kingdom of Tanjore and even to the Madura and Tinnevelly districts. Through all these regions his power was felt and, in company with a few other worthy souls, he laboured with distinguished faith, wisdom and heroism. The Protestant Native Church which has so flourished in Tinnevelly and Madura found its origin and first success under his guidance. He spent forty-eight years in unremitting effort, influenced powerfully all missionaries who came in contact with him, and passed on to his reward in 1798.

Thus, before the close of the last century, at least 50,000 Tamilians had been baptized in connection with this Protestant effort. When we bear in mind the fewness of the agents, and the very limited tract of country which they occupied, it is a matter of considerable astonishment that so many converts were every year baptized in the various missions. In Tranquebar alone, in nineteen years, there were 19,340 persons baptized; and during the century, the entire number of converts was nearly, if not quite, double this amount. In Madras, as many as 4,000 natives were received into the Christian church. The Cuddalore Mission, notwithstanding its great troubles, yielded between 1,000 and 2,000 converts; the Trichinopoly Mission, more than 2,000; the Tanjore Mission, about 1,500; and the mission established at Palamcottah in Tinnevelly in 1785, also a few.

It is impossible to know exactly the number of the native Protestant Christian churches and congregations existing at the beginning of the last century, or the number of the Christian community in the Presidency.

Probably only a few thousand remained to await the dawn of the new century.

From Madras, down South as far as Palamcottah, infant Christian communities existed. But they did not largely flourish until new missionary societies were organized and a larger force of missionary workers were sent to strengthen and push forward the work established.

And it is very unfortunate that, with much good, not a little evil was found among these few Christians whom the eighteenth century bestowed upon the nineteenth. Mr. Sherring truly says,—"That many of the converts were sincere and genuine, we cannot doubt. Yet it is certain that the permission to retain their caste customs and prejudices throws considerable suspicion on the spiritual work accomplished among them. The Danish and German missionaries soon perceived the formidable influence of caste as an opponent of the Gospel, unless they were ready, like the Roman Catholics, to enlist it on their side, by permitting it to be retained in the Christian churches established by them. They chose to make caste a friend rather than an enemy. In doing this, however, while they made their path easier, they sacrificed their principles. They admitted an element into their midst which acted on the Christian community like poison." And this poison is still exercising a potent influence upon a no small portion of the Protestant Native Church in South India. A bad beginning in this respect has facilitated an evil continuance.

The closing years of the eighteenth century carry our interest to North India and are notable as the beginning of the organized missionary effort of the English people for the redemption of India.

(b) The Anglo-Saxons seem to have been the last among Christian peoples to awake from the lethargy of a self-centred, self-seeking Christianity, and to enter upon the great missionary campaign for the conquest of the world for Christ. It is true that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel received its first charter in 1701. But for more than a century of its history it did not concern itself about carrying the Gospel to the heathen races. It seems strange that, up to that time, both the Protestant clergy and laymen of Great Britain and America felt little or none of that sense of obligation for the conversion of the non-Christian world to Christ which has now become so universal a conviction and a passion among them.



In the work of rousing the English to this grand world-wide enterprise William Carey acquired well-earned distinction. Though of humble origin and wanting in early training, his spiritual vision and contagious enthusiasm made him a leader of power. Thus, God chose a cobbler youth to lead the Christian hosts of England out of the bondage of narrow religious sympathies into a world-wide conquest of souls for Christ. Carey's efforts in England were unremitting, and the contagion of his burning altruism spread everywhere notwithstanding much opposition and contempt met from a certain class.

His early efforts at home were supplemented by a missionary life in India so remarkable in its self-denying devotion, so characterized by distinguished ability and linguistic genius, and so notable in wisdom and persistence under the greatest difficulties that his name will ever stand preeminent in all the annals of missionary effort.

But it was very sad that, while Christian England was waking out of her lethargy to her spiritual opportunities and duties in India, commercial England threw herself across the path and denied the right of Christian service for the Christless people of that land.

Carey found no welcome or even permission to work in British India. He was compelled to flee from the territory of the East India Company and to find refuge and opportunity for missionary work under the more enlightened and progressive rule of the Danish in Serampore. It was from that place that he directed his missionary effort in India and found the long-sought opportunity to serve his Master in that heathen land. It was there that, in company with his worthy associates, Marshman and Ward, he built up a Christian community and translated and published the Word of God into many oriental tongues. The success and achievements of Carey would be regarded as phenomenal in the case of any missionary. But when it is remembered that he was compelled to support himself and his mission, in considerable part, through his income in secular pursuits; when it is also known that his wife was, for many years, a wreck, mentally, and therefore a source of great care and anxiety to him, how wonderful must have been his faith, his persistence, his intellectual endowments and his love for the people of India to have led him to accomplish so much for the cause of Christ in that great land!

Carey's life and example wrought wonders in its influence upon others of his countrymen. Among a noble band of followers is found the devout and pious enthusiast Henry Martyn who, during his too brief career as a chaplain in India, found time to commend his Master and His Faith to many in that land of darkness and death. Martyn was a worthy example of what a consecrated chaplain can do for the Christian cause, beyond the strict performance of his priestly functions—an example which was perhaps never more needed in India than at present when so wide a gulf is found between the ordinary chaplain and the missionary.

As a result of this missionary revival there also came into existence not a few hopeful, vigorous missionary societies. First among them was the London Missionary Society which entered, in 1795, upon its grand career of world-wide endeavour. After that, was organized (in 1799) the Church Missionary Society. Both of these organizations, at the opening of the new century, began to put forth their best energies for the salvation of India. Then a host of other lesser, but equally determined, agencies followed in their train and made India their special field of activity.

In addition to distinctively English societies there were organized, also, separate Scotch, Irish and Welsh movements for work in the land—each nation vying with every other in the work of upbuilding there the Kingdom of Christ.

Among the British societies the Church Missionary Society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the London Missionary Society have done most extensive service and have been markedly blessed with growing communities and effective organizations for work among the people.

Each nationality also represents a separate type of life and activity. The English missions, for instance, are strong in their wise organization and effective administration. The Scotch, on the other hand, have a genius for thoroughness in everything, especially in educational work. The names of the greatest missionary educators of India are, almost without exception, Scotch. They have dug deep foundations and have aimed, by means of their splendid schools, to excel in the work of directing the thought of, and imparting a new philosophy to, the rising generation of Indians. If their results have not been statistically impressive, so far as converts are concerned, they have had preeminence in the task of transforming the thought and of leavening the institutions of the land. For instance, Alexander Duff—the father of the higher educational work of missions, a man mighty in thought and kindled with a sublime faith and a Christian enthusiasm—did not number many converts as the result of his college training of the young. But every convert under him counted for something in the Christian Church. It is said that, of the forty-eight educated men who were won to Christ through his mission in 1871, nine were ministers, ten were catechists, seventeen were professors and high-grade teachers, eight, government servants of the higher grade, and four, assistant surgeons and doctors. Similar to the work of Dr. Duff in Calcutta was the work of Dr. Wilson in Bombay and is the effort of Dr. Miller, at present, in Madras. Mission results must be weighed as well as measured.

As a contrast to this thought-directing and leavening work of the Scottish Churches may be placed the work of the Salvation Army in India. This unique organization invaded that great land nearly a quarter of a century ago. Believing that existing missionary organizations and methods of work were too dignified, staid and inadequate for best results, the leaders of this movement introduced its cyclone methods and proposed to take India by storm. They began by insisting upon all their European officers conforming to native custom, in clothing and diet. Their appeal was simple even if their work was narrow and noisy. It was a call upon all to immediate repentance and to a belief upon the Lord, Christ, for salvation. They ignored the Sacraments of the Church and, for a while, even emulated the Hindus by daubing their religious emblems upon their foreheads.

But their appeal fell flat upon a people who had no Christian heritage or training; and their genuine forms of self-denial and methods of adaptation, instead of producing popular admiration and attachment, soon produced pity and even contempt. If the officers were men of spiritual ardour and were kindled with a passion for the salvation of India, they were also, on the whole, untrained and uncultured. They not only disobeyed their Lord in neglecting the Sacraments, they did not and could not understand the people and their religion. By ignoring all sanitary rules many of them vainly sacrificed their lives to the Cause.

Considering the money expended, the precious lives sacrificed and the efforts exhausted during this quarter of a century the results achieved by this organization have been painfully, though not unexpectedly, small. It clearly illustrates and emphasizes the fact that India is not to be won for Christ by a campaign of ignorance and noise, however largely it may be enforced by altruistic fervour. And it should not be forgotten that the army officers have not scrupled to enter territory already occupied by Christian missions, to cause unspeakable annoyance to workers on the field, and to fill up more than half the ranks of their "soldiers" with people who already claimed allegiance to Christ in connection with well-established missions.

(c) Australia has recently fallen into the ranks of those who carry the Gospel to India. One Faith Mission in Western India is almost entirely conducted by men and women of that country. A Baptist Mission also is maintained by them there. And not a few of the strong members of British missions are Australians; these, with their work, are supported by the churches which sent them forth.

(d) Protestant Europe has not been conspicuous for its missionary effort. And yet India owes a large debt to the Christians of the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Sweden for their effort to present to them the message of life. As we have seen, the Dutch, upon their first conquest in the East, sought to introduce their faith among the people. The first Protestant missionaries who gave their life for India were Danes. They were supported by the private resources of their own king. In early times Danish settlements in India were the refuge of Gospel messengers to that land. They protected them against the unchristian narrowness and persecution of the East India Company. The Danish settlement of Serampore gave the only opportunity to Carey and his associates for a home and for missionary work.

The Bible was the first time translated into an Indian vernacular (Tamil) by our Continental brethren, and the first vernacular Christian books were printed in Germany.

At the present time they are giving themselves more fully than ever before to the work of India's redemption. There are eight Continental Missions conducted there, some of which have achieved considerable success. The Leipzig Evangelical Lutheran Mission has fallen heir to the first Danish mission established at Tranquebar. It has at present a strong force of workers, and they are scattered through several Districts in South India, are doing solid and substantial work and have gathered a numerous Christian community.

Perhaps the most successful of these European missions is the Basil German Evangelical Mission, which is established upon the southwestern coast. It is well organized, has a thorough educational system and is embued with a strong evangelistic spirit. Connected with this mission is an extensive and prosperous Industrial Mission. With the German spirit of thoroughness they have developed, more largely than any other mission in India, the industrial department, until it is now well established and fully self-supporting.

All these European missions are systematic and painstaking in the work which they are carrying forward. In some respects this gives them well-earned distinction. But, on the other hand, they labour under a serious disability in having to acquire the English as well as the vernacular of the people after arriving in the land. They are also extremely conservative, not to say antiquated, in their methods; and they have not, in most cases, learned to hate and antagonize, as they should, the terrible caste system of the country.

(e) The American participation in the Christian conquest of India began early. It was the perusal of the Life of David Brainerd, the American missionary saint, which kindled the missionary zeal of William Carey in England. On the other hand, the Life of Carey had no small influence, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in giving irresistible impulse and definiteness of purpose to that noble band of American missionary pioneers—Mills and Nott, Newell and Judson. And their consecrated enthusiasm and purpose to labour for the conversion of the heathen nations, in its turn, led, in 1810, to the founding of the first foreign missionary society in the United States—the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

The first field chosen by this society for its activity was India. It represented to them both the greatest need and the best opportunity for Christian work.

Thus the first organized attempt of the Christian Church of America to reach and to redeem the heathen world was directed towards the land of the Vedas. And the first band of missionaries which that, now venerable, Board sent forth into the harvest went, with eager anticipation and earnest prayer, to that ancient and benighted people.

But how great must have been their disappointment and sorrow, upon their arrival, to be refused permission by the Honourable East India Company to land in Calcutta. With sad hearts they turned their faces towards Bombay, hoping that God would open the way to their entering upon missionary service there. This again was denied them and they fled to Cochin, but were seized and brought back to Bombay to await the arrival of an American ship to convey them home. It was just then that their prayer was answered and the Lord of Hosts came to their succour and opened wide the door of that land to the missionary labourer. A new charter was granted by the British Parliament to the East India Company. In that, insistence was made that the Christian missionary be permitted to prosecute his work for the heathen of that land unmolested. This charter was granted in 1813, while the Americans were still held in durance in Bombay.

It was the Magna Charta of missions for India; and from that time until this the Christian missionary has found permission to preach his message in that land. He has also enjoyed there ample protection in the exercise of all his religious duties and work as a messenger of Christ. By this charter missions received State sanction to obey heaven's command, and missionaries of all lands came to enjoy, on British territory in the East, the undisputed right to carry the gospel of our Lord to heathen people.

The impatient little band of missionaries were therefore released at Bombay; and from that day until this America has found joy in her effort to convey her spiritual blessings to that land. Adoniram Judson, having become a Baptist, was directed by Carey to Burma where he laboured for many years with apostolic zeal and with distinguished success. The nearly 150,000 native Christians of Burma today owe their conversion largely to Judson's wise initiative, resistless energy, grand Christian faith and inspiring example.

Mills, who was the leader in the early band of students whose zeal led to the organization of the American Board, found his field of service on the West coast of Africa, whence also he was early called to his heavenly reward.

The saintly Harriet Newell, wife of another member of this distinguished company, died on the Isle of France, and her sorrowing husband returned to Bombay and rejoined his brethren Hall and Nott. These three, therefore, were the founders of this first American Mission in India—now called the American Mahratta Mission. Bombay, Ahmednaggar and Sholapur are its principal centres of work; and it covers a field whose population is between three and four millions. It has had distinguished success and has gathered the largest native community among the Protestant missions of Western India.

In 1834 the same society established its South India Mission at Madura. This was an offshoot from the Jaffna Mission which was founded in 1815 in that northern corner of Ceylon. The Madura Mission has prospered, has 18,000 in its Christian community, and is regarded as one of the best organized missions in the country.

In 1834 the American Presbyterians, while yet connected with the American Board, established in the Northwest their large and successful mission. Its centres of work are Lahore, Lodiana, Futtegarh, Dera-Dun and Allahabad. This mission has done excellent work and has attained high eminence among the missions of North India, both for its educational work, its leavening influence and for its evangelistic zeal. A number of its missionaries suffered martyrdom during the terrible Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. It was from that mission that the first call to universal prayer for the conversion of the world was sent forth. And thus was founded the Week of Prayer which now finds such general observance among Protestant Christians.



In 1836 the Baptists established for Telugu people, on the southeastern coast, the famous "Lone Star Mission." It has had such phenomenal success that, though established only in 1840 in a purely heathen field, and notwithstanding the fact that the first twenty-five years of its efforts were barren of outward results, it is to-day by far the largest mission in India, having 53,790 communicants and a community of 200,000. Its chief centres of work are Ongole and Nellore.

The Rev. Samuel Day was sent out by the society in 1835 to Chicacole, but in 1837 removed to Madras. After three years' labour there he resolved to establish a mission among the Telugu people, and so removed to Nellore and commenced work there in March, 1840. The unproductiveness of the work in the early history was such that the abandonment of the mission was several times under consideration. But in 1866 prosperity dawned. Later followed the great accessions which have, up to the present, continued in greater or less degree and which have been on a larger scale than in any other field in South India. "The history of Christianity, in all ages and countries, shows nothing which surpasses the later years of this mission in spontaneous extension, in rapidity of progress, in genuineness of conversions, in stability of results or in promise for the future." The church organized with eight members by Dr. Clough at Ongole in 1867 numbers now its thousands. The great famine of 1877 presented a large Christian opportunity which was eagerly seized by Dr. Clough, himself a civil engineer, in the conduct of large famine relief works under government and in the Christian instruction of many thousands who laboured under him. This itself created a wonderful movement which has been marvellously used of God in the conversion of the people. Nearly all of these converts have come from the lowest class of society. But at present the higher classes are beginning to consider the claims of the Gospel. It is natural that the most serious problem and principal concern of this mission has been to keep pace with the movement, and to train suitable agents for the guidance and instruction of the incoming thousands. It has also been largely blessed in this line, as its various and growing institutions testify.

As the Madura Mission was the daughter of the Jaffna Mission so the Madras section of the Madura Mission, in the year 1851, became the mother of a vigorous daughter. For the members of the Scudder family—a family famed in missionary annals—were appointed to the District of Arcot, some seventy miles south of Madras, and there began a work under the American Dutch Reformed Church which has rapidly grown into power and promise.

In the year 1856 the Methodists of America entered upon their great work in that land. With their wonted zeal and evangelistic fervour they carried forward a vigorous campaign in North India. They early found an opening among the outcaste people as the Baptists had found among the same in the South; and they eagerly entered the open door and vigorously prosecuted their endeavours for that class. Their success has been signal. More than 100,000 people have been gathered into their Christian community and an equal number of others are desirous to place themselves under their spiritual care and guidance. They have also entered seriously into the work of training an agency and of educating the densely ignorant members of their community. In addition to their village schools they have a large theological and normal school, besides two colleges, one of which is perhaps the best college for women in Northern India, if not in the East. Their work has now spread to many parts of the land and even to Burma and the Straits settlement. They have also wisely cultivated the press and the publishing department as an important auxiliary in their work. In this department they are perhaps doing more than any other society now at work in India.

The great success of this society in India is largely owing to the wise leadership of that missionary statesman—Bishop Thoburn. I doubt whether many other missionaries, if indeed any other, have wrought more for the redemption of that people than this sturdy American of ample common—and uncommon—sense, of wide vision, of sublime faith and of masterful generalship.

Several divisions of the American Lutheran community have also wrought much for India and are justly proud of their prosperous missions, especially in South India.

In like manner American "Faith Missions," not a few, have planted the banner of the cross in that land of the trident and are prosecuting their mission and proclaiming their message with singleness of purpose and exemplary zeal. The "Christian Alliance" is the most pretentious organization of this class which does work in that land. Its efforts are chiefly confined to the Bombay Presidency where it has a goodly number of earnest workers.

Organizations for the young—the Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A., Y. P. S. C. E., S. V. M.,—while they are not in any sense distinctly American, are nevertheless dominated by the American spirit and methods, and are, to a large extent under the guidance of American youth. These Christian movements are doing royal service for the Kingdom of Christ in that stronghold of error. They bring cheer to the missionaries, youthful inspiration to the churches, a wide opportunity to the young life of the Christian communities and a new pace to all the messengers of Christ in the land. The Y. M. C. A. is also doing an excellent evangelistic work among the educated non-Christian youth of India—a work that is appealing mightily to their deepest spiritual instincts and is impressing them, as nothing else does, with the combined sanity and spirituality, the reasonableness and the saving power of our faith.

I must also allude to that unique American Institution—the Haskell-Barrows lectureship—which has already done no small good to the educated of the land, and has within itself the possibility of largest blessing to the country. It was founded in connection with the University of Chicago; and it appoints and sends to India once every two or three years a distinguished lecturer to present the excellence of our faith in its philosophy and life in such a manner as shall best commend it and appeal to the thoughtful non-Christians of the Orient. Every effort of this kind which shall emphasize to Hindus the harmony of Christian truth and the best thinking of our age and shall reveal to them Christ as the Redeemer and Exemplar of our race and as the only "Name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved," is to be cordially welcomed among God's best forces for India's redemption. And America is to be congratulated because she is the first to endow and to inaugurate such a helpful agency for the glory of God and the salvation of India's men of culture.

It is comforting to the American worker in India to be assured that the modern rulers of the land are amply atoning for the unchristian and rude incivility of their predecessors in office ninety years ago. For they not only cordially welcome the Christian worker from the States; they also reveal full appreciation of his labours, render him every protection and are not averse to praising him for his arduous endeavours. Listen to the words of Lord Wenlock, while Governor of Madras,—"Our cousins in America," he says, "are not, as we are, responsible for the welfare of a very large number of the human race; but seeing our difficulties and knowing how much there is to do, they have not hesitated to put their hands into their pockets to assist us in doing that which is almost impossible for any government to achieve unassisted. They go out themselves, their wives and their sisters; they enter into all parts of the country, they send a very large amount of money and they spend their time and their health in promoting the welfare of those who are in no way connected with them.... In all Districts I find our American cousins joining with us in improving the system of education and in extending it wherever it was wanted. To their efforts we owe a very great deal. It must be recognized that their great object is the advancement of the Christian religion."