The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Tour of the Missions, by Augustus Hopkins Strong

BY
AUGUSTUS HOPKINS STRONG, D.D., LL.D., Litt.D.
PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF THE ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

AUTHOR OF "SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY," "PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION," "CHRIST IN CREATION," "MISCELLANIES," "CHAPEL-TALKS," "LECTURES ON THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT," "THE GREAT POETS AND THEIR THEOLOGY," "AMERICAN POETS AND THEIR THEOLOGY"

PHILADELPHIA
THE GRIFFITH AND ROWLAND PRESS
BOSTON CHICAGO ST. LOUIS NEW YORK
LOS ANGELES TORONTO WINNIPEG
MCMXVIII

A PERSONAL FOREWORD

The forty years of my presidency and teaching in the Rochester Theological Seminary have been rewarded by the knowledge that more than a hundred of my pupils have become missionaries in heathen lands. For many years these former students have been urging me to visit them. Until recently seminary sessions and literary work have prevented acceptance of their invitations. When I laid down my official duties, two alternatives presented themselves: I could sit down and read through the new Encyclopædia Britannica, or I could go round the world. A friend suggested that I might combine these schemes. The publishers provide a felt-lined trunk to hold the encyclopædia: I could read it, and circumnavigate the globe at the same time. This proposition, however, had an air of cumbrousness. I concluded to take my wife as my encyclopædia instead of the books, and this seemed the more rational since she had, seven or eight years before, made the same tour of the missions which I had in mind. To her therefore a large part of the information in the following pages is due, for in all my journey she was my guide, philosopher, and friend.

[vi]Our tour would not have covered so much ground nor have been so crowded with incidents of interest, if it had not been for the foresight and assistance of the Reverend Louis Agassiz Gould. He was a student in our seminary forty years ago, and after his graduation he became a missionary to China. Though his work abroad lasted only a decade, his interest in missions has never ceased, and he is an authority with regard to their history and their methods. I was fortunate in securing him as my courier, secretary, and typewriter, and his companionship enlivened our table intercourse and our social life. But he was bound that we should see all that there was to be seen. Without my knowledge he wrote ahead to all the missions which we were to visit, and the result was almost as if a delegation with brass band met us at every station. We were sight-seeing all day, and traveling in sleeping-cars all night. Though I had notified the public that I could preach no more sermons and make no more addresses, I was summoned before nearly every church, school, and college that we visited, and fifty or sixty extemporized talks were extorted from me, most of them interpreted to the audience by a pastor or teacher. My letters to home friends were often written on the platforms of railway stations while we were waiting for our trains, and after six months of these exhausting labors I still survived.

[vii]These preliminary remarks are intended to prepare the reader for a final statement, namely, that the papers which follow were written with no thought of publication. They were simply a record of travel, set down each week, for the information of relatives and friends. I have been urged to give them a wider circulation by putting them into print. In doing this I have added some reflections which, for substance, were also written at intervals on my journey, and these, with sundry emendations and omissions, I have called my "Conclusions." I submit both "Observations" and "Conclusions" to the judgment of my readers, in hope that my "Tour of the Missions" may lead other and more competent observers to appreciate the wonderful attractions and the immeasurable needs of Oriental lands.

I cannot close this personal foreword without expressing to my former students and the many friends who so hospitably entertained us on our journey, my undying sense of their great kindness, and my hope that between the lines of my descriptions of what I saw they will discover my earnest desire to serve the cause of Christ and his truth, even though my impressions may at times result from my own short-sightedness and ignorance. Only what I have can I give.

I

A WEEK IN JAPAN

[3]The Pacific Ocean was very kind to us, for it answered to its name, and was pacific beyond all our expectations. Sixteen days of smooth seas and lovely weather brought us by way of Honolulu to Yokohama. Only the last day of our voyage was dark and rainy. But though the rain continued after our landing, Japan was picturesque. On four out of our six days we drove about, shut up in water-tight buggies called "rickshaws." They were like one-hoss-shays, through whose front windows of isinglass we looked out upon the bare legs of our engineer and conductor, who took the place of the horse for twenty-five cents an hour.

There were other sights on these rainy days—endless processions of slipshod men on wooden clogs, clattering their way through the narrow streets, while they protected themselves from the watery downpour by flat oil-paper umbrellas; other strong-limbed men acting as wheel-horses to draw or push incredible weights of lumber; and saving themselves from the wet by bushy coats of straw that made them look like porcupines; women, little and big, carrying babies on their backs, occasionally a girl, aged anywhere from four to eight, loaded with a baby aged two; shops, shops, shops, one-storied, artistic, fantastic, with signs on which Ah Sing and Ah Tong have [4]mingled Chinese characters and English, and which inform you that the proprietors can furnish you with the sake of Japan or the gasoline of the Standard Oil Company; these things convince you that you are in the midst of a crowded population struggling for subsistence and ready to work, a population of inexhaustible vitality and enterprise.

Our first rainy day was distinguished by a visit to the palatial mansion of a Japanese millionaire. Mr. Asano, the President of the Steamship Company that brought us thither, had invited the whole lot of first-class passengers to afternoon tea at his house in Tokyo. That house is a veritable museum of Japanese art. It reminded us of the collections of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. There was a great retinue of servants, and we were escorted upon arrival to one of the topmost rooms, where we were served with tea and presented with symbolic cakes by a dozen gorgeously bedecked young girls, who proved to be the children and grandchildren of our host. This, however, was only a preparatory welcome, for it was followed by the real reception in a great audience-room below, where Mr. and Mrs. Asano, together with their eldest son and daughter, gave us cordial greetings. A couple of hundred of our fellow passengers were gathered there and were partaking of light refreshments, with claret, tea, and mineral waters, while an expert Japanese juggler amused them with his feats of sleight of hand. The tapestries and paintings of this house were exquisite products of taste and skill, and the total effect was that of great wealth accompanied by true love for the beautiful. But it was the mansion [5]of an orthodox Shinto and Buddhist, for in every large room there was an alcove with the sitting figure of a bronze Buddha.

A more distinctly Christian entertainment for that same rainy day was our reception by the Conference of Baptist missionaries and workers at the new Tabernacle in Tokyo. They had been called to meet Doctor Franklin and Doctor Anderson, who had been sent by our Foreign Missionary Society to consult with them as to our educational policy in Japan. We reached the Conference on its last day of meeting, and we had a most valued opportunity of observing its method of procedure. Half of those present were Japanese workers who did not understand English, and it was a new experience to address them when every word had to be interpreted. The social intercourse that followed was delightful, for it enabled us to greet our former pupils in considerable numbers. We then took lunch at the house of Doctor Axling, the pastor of the Tokyo church, while Doctor Tenny is President of the Theological Seminary. The little Japanese missionary home, with its tiny secluded garden, its paper partitions, and its mingled reminders of an American household, were things long to be remembered. Not less to be noted was the gratitude for our visit which was shown by our hosts. We had regarded ourselves as the persons honored and entertained. We learned that missionaries in a heathen land wonderfully appreciate the sight and the companionship of friends from their distant home.

Even more unexpected was our reception at the Women's College of Japan. Since I had been more [6]than thirty years a trustee of Vassar College, and for some years chairman of its board of trustees, Mrs. Strong and I were the guests of honor, and I was the first speaker called upon. Before me were five hundred young women in more somber dress than prevails at Vassar. All rose to welcome me at the beginning of my address, and all rose again to thank me at its conclusion. Most of these students understood only Japanese and needed an interpreter. Doctor Zumoto, the accomplished editor of the Japanese "Herald of Asia," translated my address into his own language after I had finished, having taken notes while I spoke. Until the very end I had the impression that this was a Christian college, and I innocently made the Lord Jesus the center and substance of my remarks, declaring that the renaissance of learning in Japan needed to be supplemented by a reformation of religion. Only when the evening was over did I learn that the institution was not only undenominational, but also non-religious, having Buddhist as well as Christian professors. Doctors Anderson and Franklin were also guests, and when they followed me, they made the same mistake and made Christian addresses. But the Japanese management is very polite and very liberal, and even in the dinner that followed our faux pas did not provoke a word of criticism. The guests at that dinner served by the students were from the most prominent educational institutions of Japan. We highly appreciated the honor done us, and did not regret that in our ignorance of the situation we had given to that distinguished audience the true gospel of Christ.

[7]Another dinner of a very different sort was that which we ourselves gave at the Grand Hotel of Yokohama to the Rochester men. To my surprise twenty-four persons sat down, but this number included at least ten of the wives. Chiba and Axling, Tenny and Topping, the Fishers, father and son, Clement, Brown, Benninghoff, Takagaki, Kawaguchi, all except the last with their wives, made up the list. I was proud of them, for they are leaders of thought and of education in Japan. Only Doctor Bearing's absence on furlough in America, a furlough ended only by his lamented death, prevented us from inviting him, though he was not a Rochester man. Reminiscences of seminary life were both pathetic and amusing at that dinner. One thing impressed itself upon my mind and memory: Our missionaries have not lost their sense of humor. Under all their burdens of anxiety and responsibility they have retained their sanity, their hopefulness, and their good fellowship. The hilarity of our gathering was the bubbling over of cheerful dispositions, and the safety-valve gave evidence that there were large reserves of steam. Missionaries are not a solemn set. They are only a good set of human beings made in the divine image, for is it not written that even "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh"?

The next day was the brightest of the bright. We took advantage of it to visit the great temple of Kamakura, and to inspect the greatest artistic monument of Japan, the bronze image of Buddha. It is a sitting statue, with folded hands and eyes closed, as if absorbed in mystic contemplation of his own excellence as a manifestation of deity, and careless of the[8] sorrows and sins of the world. The great bronze image is fifty feet high, but it is hollow. We entered it, climbed up by ladders to its shoulders, and looked out of windows in its back. Its hollowness seemed symbolic, for it has only the outward semblance of divinity and is deaf to all human entreaties. On that same day we visited the temple of Hachiman, the god of war, most spacious and impressive in its park-like surroundings of ancient trees and noble gateways, but fearful in its accompanying images of revenge and slaughter. Humanity needs compassion in the Godhead. The Japanese have felt this, and they have invented a goddess of mercy, Kwannon by name. Her shrine is the richest in Japan. It constitutes one of the greatest attractions of the capital. Millions visit it every year, and the offerings of its worshipers support a whole colony of Buddhist priests. The avenue leading to the temple is lined with shops where mementoes of the goddess may be purchased, as in Ephesus of old silver shrines might be bought in honor of the great goddess Diana. It is the old story of buyers and sellers in the Jewish temple. It was most pathetic to see a well-dressed and handsome woman bend herself almost double before the image, clap her hands to call the attention of the goddess, and then fold them in prayer, possibly for the child that had hitherto been denied her. It is well understood in this temple that, until the clink of coin is heard in the collection-box, it is vain to suppose that even the goddess of mercy will listen to a prayer.

The god of war reigns in Japan, rather than the goddess of mercy. War is more profitable. The sale[9] of munitions to the Russian Government is enriching Japan, as our sales to the Allies are enriching us. The love of gain is an obstacle to the success of the gospel, here as well as in America. Nothing but a mighty influence of the Holy Spirit can convince Japan of sin, and bring her to the feet of Christ. The work of our missionaries, however, is permeating all the strata of society. Western science and Western literature are so bound up with Christianity that Japan cannot easily accept them without also accepting Christ.

We wished to see mission work in a country field, and we begged Mrs. Fisher to go with us to Kanagawa, a suburb of Yokohama, where an educated milkman is pastor, and where the Mary Colby School of Christian girls attends the worship of his church. The reverence and sincerity of the service impressed us. The warmth and abandon of the singing put to shame our Western quartet choirs. Here is a pastor who prefers to supplement his meager salary by selling milk on week-days, rather than give up the satisfaction of seeing his church entirely self-supporting. It seemed to me the model of a good ministry, and the prophecy of a multitude of New Testament churches in Japan, manned and financed and governed by the Japanese themselves. So long as we of the West furnish both the preachers and their salaries, the Japanese will not learn to depend upon their own administration or their own giving, and we will not have churches organized on correct principles and so rooted in the soil that they can stand the shocks of time and endlessly propagate the gospel. May "the little one" in Kanagawa "become a thousand"!

[10]Japan is a country where "every prospect pleases, and only man is vile." Immorality is its curse. There is little drunkenness indeed, and gambling is strictly prohibited. But the relations of the sexes are almost wholly unregulated. Patriotism and filial devotion take exaggerated forms, and girls can lead a life of shame in order to provide means for the education of their brothers. General Nogi and his wife can commit suicide when his sons are killed in battle, and the whole country can regard it as so noble a deed that the general's desire to extinguish his family name is not permitted to prevent the adoption of it by another. The Japanese are a nation of wonderful natural gifts. Honor, enterprise, submission, accessibility to new ideas, powers of imitation and invention, make them the leaders of the Orient. Steamships of twenty-two thousand tons, and equal to any Atlantic Cunarders, yet built in their own dockyards by shipwrights who twenty years ago knew nothing of their trade, are a proof of extraordinary plasticity and ability. Civilization and Christianity may find new expression, if the Japanese are subdued by the Cross of Christ.

My interest in missions has been doubled since I came in contact with the practical work of our missionaries. We have able and devoted representatives on this foreign field, and I believe that God will make them mighty to dethrone Buddhism, and to crown Christ Lord of all. Yes, "every prospect pleases." When I sailed through the Inland Sea of Japan, two hundred and forty miles long, studded with hundreds of islands small and great, islands often surmounted with glistening white temples or fortifications, I thought[11] our Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, and even the Isles of the Greek Ægean, were not to be mentioned in comparison. The landlocked harbor of Nagasaki, with its encircling hills, is finer than our Golden Gate of the Pacific. Fuji-yama, snow-capped and symmetrical, seen against the crimson sunset sky, is more beautiful even than Mount Ranier when seen from Tacoma, or Vesuvius when seen from Naples. Japan is a land for poetry and song, a land to awaken the loftiest patriotism, a land to inspire and lead the world. Provided, ah yes! provided, it can be converted to Christ, and made his servant. The Japanese is a natural orator; he has organizing ability of the highest order; he is accessible, yet independent. Now is the time to make him a preacher of the gospel to all the East. China and India have already felt the influence of his military and political progress. Let us, by pouring in the light of Christianity, make him also their leader in true religion!

II

A WEEK-END IN CHINA

[15]Hongkong is a city wonderful for situation and for trade. It has a landlocked harbor encircled by precipitous hills and large enough to float the navies of the world. It is the second largest port on earth for exports and imports, over six hundred million dollars' worth in a year. It is a meeting-place of the East and the West, a fortress of Britain in China, a conglomeration of people, a center of influence for Japan and for India, an object-lesson in sanitation, education, and municipal government. The dominating religion is that of the Church of England, and the Hongkong University, though endowed in part by wealthy Chinese, follows English models and has a staff of English professors.

I mention Hongkong only to make more clear my description of Swatow, its northern neighbor. The situation of Swatow is very like that of Hongkong. A noble harbor encircled by steep hills, it is one of the chief ports between Hongkong and Shanghai, and only a single night's steamer-ride from Hongkong. Its attraction to us lay in the fact that it is more Chinese than Hongkong, a principal seat of Presbyterian and Baptist missions, and not so dominated as is Hongkong by the Church of England. As Hongkong is an island, so our Baptist Mission Compound is on an island, separated from the city of Swatow by the bay[16] on which hundreds of sampans and fishing-boats with lateen sails are always riding, and at whose wharves many a great steamship is loading or unloading freight. When our vessel arrived, we were quickly surrounded by a multitude of smaller craft, manned by clamorous tradesmen selling wares or seeking employment. The commissioner of British customs, who was our fellow passenger, most courteously invited us to share his motor-launch, and when we had landed on the other side of the bay he sent us up the hill to the mission compound in two of his sedan-chairs, each one borne by two stout men in picturesque uniform: and wearing the insignia of the customs office.

A word about the English customs may be interesting. To satisfy English creditors, and later, to pay interest on indemnities for the Boxer uprising, China mortgaged the larger part of her duties on foreign imports. Sir Robert Hart was appointed Inspector General, to superintend this collection of duties. He introduced system and honesty, where before there had been only disorder and peculation. From twenty to thirty million dollars are in this way collected every year. Swatow is the third port in the amount thus obtained, itself furnishing two to three millions of the aggregate result. But this putting her collection of customs into the hands of foreigners, though it has taught China her own wastefulness and the superiority of Western finance, is a burden so humiliating that it cannot always continue. When China fully awakes, she will realize her strength and will reclaim what her weakness ceded to Great Britain.

Our mission compound is one of the noblest in the[17] East. It is due to the foresight and executive ability of Dr. William Ashmore, Senior. He began his missionary work in Bangkok, Siam, but was transferred by our Missionary Union to Swatow, with the view of opening China to our missionary efforts. He had Irish blood in his veins. He was witty and eloquent, fervid and passionate. But he was also a man of grit, and a hero of the faith. He wanted a quiet base of supplies from which he could send out expeditions into the heart of China. He had no means of any account. But he saw the possibilities in these steep and barren hillsides opposite Swatow, and for six hundred dollars he bought a tract which he gradually turned into a garden, with twenty mission buildings and residences so thrust into the rocks and so overhanging one another, that the whole plant seems a miracle of engineering. Like a fortress, it commands the city of Swatow across the bay, very much as Governor's Island commands New York. From its church and its schools have gone out a score of evangelists and native pastors, to turn Swatow and the whole country within a radius of a hundred miles into a present seed-plot and a future garden of the Lord.

William Ashmore, Senior, died seven years ago. But he left a son of the same name, who is a Chinese scholar of wide reputation, a sound theologian, and a leader greatly beloved. He has nearly completed a translation of the Bible into the colloquial Chinese—a felt need of many years. At his house, so wedged into the rocky hillside that a typhoon might seem equal to washing it down into the bay, we were most hospitably entertained. Here we spent a memorable [18]Sabbath Day. At the church service, at least five hundred church-members and pupils of the various schools were gathered, and I addressed them on "Faith, as Both a Giving and a Taking"—a giving of one's self, and a taking of Christ to be ours. Doctor Ashmore interpreted my talk to the audience, sentence by sentence. The whole service was to me an inspiring illustration of New Testament order and simplicity, for my address and the sermon of Doctor Ashmore which followed had been preceded by free participation of members of the church, in which one happy father arose to give thanks for the birth of a girl-baby, after five sons had been given him—a great change from the time when new-born girls were despised and often thrown out into the street. This reverent congregation, worshiping God in freedom and sincerity, seemed the prophecy of a redeemed China. This congeries of schools, from kindergarten to theological seminary, with Ashmore, Capen, Page, and Waters for instructors, and Groesbeck, Speicher, Lewis, Foster, and others for evangelists, has already permeated a whole province with Christian teaching. It needs an institutional plant in the city, where it already has a noble location, and it also needs a motor-launch to carry its students to the field across the bay, where they can find opportunity to win the multitude to Christ.

Even Swatow is partly Anglicized. We wished to see old China, heathen China, and Brother Groesbeck gave us the opportunity. Only twenty miles from Swatow lies the city of Chao-yang, where this pioneer missionary has for eighteen years been stationed.[19] Chao-yang is a larger city than Swatow; the Chinese count it as containing a population of three hundred thousand. It is the converging point of all the trade that reaches Swatow from a hundred miles to the south and the west. Yet all this trade is conducted through a narrow canal, so congested with boats that there are innumerable delays. Even when the boats reach the waters of the bay, the remaining channel is shallow for lack of dredging, and launch-progress is very slow. We had ocular proof of this latter evil; but we at last reached the dock.

Then came a reception entirely new to our experience, and one which we can never forget. Eighty young men from the mission school met us, all in white uniforms with sashes of blue. We passed through their lines, forty boys on each side baring their heads as we passed. Then a procession was formed. A brass band, with bugles and resounding drums, led the way. The student escort followed. After the long rows of boys came an honor-squad of Chinese soldiers, shouldering their guns and bearing the Chinese and the American flags. This portion of the escort had been furnished by the Chinese governor, who in this way certainly showed his friendly regard for the American mission. We concluded the procession, sitting in our sedan-chairs, each of our party of four borne upon the shoulders of four men. The band struck up, a great explosion of firecrackers ensued, and we began our journey of a mile and a half to the gates of the city, and then two miles and a half farther through its crowded streets, until we reached the mission buildings and the residence of Mr. and Mrs.[20] Groesbeck on the other side of the town. The Chinese are great on ceremonial, and all this reception had been arranged by the students themselves, in honor of Mr. Groesbeck's teacher and his teacher's wife. Needless to say that I was astounded at such a reception, for Augustus Cæsar never made an imperial entry in Rome more thrilling than the triumphal entry which Augustus Strong made that day into the great city of Chao-yang.

Mr. Groesbeck said that no public notice had been given of our coming. Yet the whole population of three hundred thousand seemed to have come out to meet us. Imagine a street two and a half miles long, but only ten to fifteen feet wide, thronged with water-carriers and beasts of burden compelled to give way to our great procession! Every nook and corner of the way, the fronts of the one-storied shops and the entrances to the cross-streets, were all a perfect sea of faces—rows of children little and big overtopped by rows of half-naked men, with scores of women peering wistfully from windows in the rear—faces by thousands and tens of thousands, till it seemed as if the whole population of the planet had emptied itself into Chao-yang. I looked upon hundreds of splendid forms of men, naked above the waist, and carrying heads worthy of notice from any sculptor, none of them hateful, all of them impressed and wondering, and they seemed to me the embodiment of China crying out for God. When we were only half-way through the city, the endless masses of humanity had so impressed me that I could not restrain the tears. The sight was simply overwhelming. And all this the parish of one[21] man! It is to save this great city, now almost wholly given to idolatry, that Mr. Groesbeck asks for money to build in its very center an assembly-room and an institutional church, and that Doctor Lesher asks for a hospital building to facilitate his medical work.

I made an address to those eighty boys that evening, as they stood at attention before me. Half of them were still heathen, but their fathers had sent them to this Christian school, believing that they needed a better religion than that of Confucius or of Buddha. I urged them to become soldiers of Christ, and to follow him as their Commander. I did not conceal from them the fact that such following might involve opposition and earthly loss. But I promised them that, if they suffered with Christ, they would also reign with him.

We returned from Chao-yang very sober and thoughtful, for our visit had been a revelation of appalling needs. Swatow seemed a paradise after such a visit. The smiling faces of so many Christians, and the signs of a truly Christian civilization, inspired me with new hope for the future. But our time had come for leaving China, at least temporarily, and India was at once to be visited. Our departure from Swatow was almost as spectacular as our entry into Chao-yang. There was no military guard, and there were no firecrackers, but there was a fine brass band of academy boys, to lead our procession of sedan-chairs, as we passed through the long lines of scholars who had gathered with their teachers to bid us farewell. The schools were all represented. First came the little kindergartners, then pupils of the grammar school,[22] the girls' school, the women's school, the Bible-women's training-school, the boys' academy, and finally, the theological seminary. They numbered more than three hundred in all. Some of the teachers accompanied us to the steamer. We parted from them with regret, but we were thankful that they could remain to prepare the way for a new religion, education, and civilization in China.

My week-end in China leaves me with a new sense of the vastness of the heathen world, and of its absolute dependence upon Christ, as its only possible Saviour. The question whether the heathen will ever be saved if we do not give them the gospel, is not so serious a one for us as the other question whether we ourselves will ever be saved if we do not give them the gospel.

III

MANILA, SINGAPORE, AND PENANG

[25]Each of these cities might seem to be the New Jerusalem, if you were to see only its European part and the dress of its inhabitants. Their European residents are all arrayed in white. Not all of them are saints, however. The white is purely external and compulsory. Heat is a great leveler, and we are nearing the equator. When we approached Manila we were in the tail of a typhoon, but the danger was past. Indeed, since we left San Francisco, we have encountered no storm, have had only smooth seas, and have witnessed continually what Æschylus called "the innumerable laughter of the ocean waves."

It was pleasant to perceive that American enterprise and administration have transformed Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands, from a medieval into a modern city. Its newly constructed streets and pavements, water-works and drainage, electricity and the trolley, have turned this old and dilapidated Spanish town into a place of order and beauty. Its parks and gardens, its municipal buildings and hospitals, are an object-lesson to all beholders. The walls of the fort still remain, but the moat has been filled up. The Roman Catholic Cathedral shows the large designs of a former priesthood to capture the people by architecture and ceremonial. But Protestant churches, [26]missions, and schools, are coming to have the first place in popular esteem. The former palace of the Spanish governor is now the meeting-place of the democratic legislature, and the Jones Bill, recently passed by our Congress, but now locally known as "the Bill Jones," has given hopes of a complete and speedy Filipino independence.

Our observation of the place, and our intercourse with residents of Manila, lead us to doubt the wisdom of our immediate relinquishment of authority over these islands. Eager as are the Filipino leaders for self-government, they have not yet learned the art of self-restraint. The recent trouble in the great hospital illustrates this. Its American superintendent has resigned his office, for the reason that his Filipino staff and subordinates conspired to make discipline and sanitary regulations impossible. They desired to manage the institution themselves, when they were incompetent to enforce cleanliness and order. What happens in hospital work happens also in all branches of civil administration. It will take a whole generation to raise up officials who can be trusted to do their work for the public good, rather than to provide comfortable and remunerative positions for themselves.

We visited the spot, five miles away, where our American troops, under Admiral Dewey, landed to besiege the town. We motored to Fort McKinley also, where our soldiers still command the situation. But our main interest was in the mission schools and in the interdenominational theological seminary. In these educational institutions all the instruction is in the English language. They are Americanizing as well as[27] evangelizing the population. The establishment of universal and compulsory school attendance will in a few years turn a Spanish-speaking into an English-speaking people, and will unify the education and the civilization of the islands. Nothing indeed is more remarkable in the Orient than the gradual superseding of the native dialects by the printed and spoken English. In the great country of India, it is to be remembered, English is the required language in school and court, as well as in every government office. Even the Romanizing of written Chinese and Japanese will make vastly easier the political unity and the religious evangelization of China and Japan.

When we reached Singapore, we found ourselves in one of the world's greatest ports of entry. It is also one of the keys to the Orient, as Sir Thomas Raffles perceived more than a century ago. Its splendid government buildings and its strong fortifications show that the British propose to hold it to the end. The recent incipient revolt, which was fortunately nipped in the bud when it seemed to the conspirators on the verge of success, and which was punished by the summary execution of thirty or forty rebels without the news of it getting into the papers, showed that Germany had much to hope for and Britain much to fear from the unrest of these heterogeneous populations. I had a vivid reminder of all this at the Methodist Episcopal Mission, where I found over sixteen hundred scholars in attendance, and where I addressed five hundred of them at their morning prayers. One of the chief difficulties of Christian work in Singapore is the aggregation and mixture of races. Seven [28]different nationalities are represented in the schools. The Tamil, the Malay, and the Chinese are the most numerous, and of these the Chinese take the lead. Fifty thousand Chinese immigrants enter the port of Singapore every year, mainly because there is employment for them in the rubber plantations of the Straits Settlements. The congestion of population in China drives them southward to Singapore, and from Singapore they swarm northward to Burma, southward to Java, and westward to India.

This mixing up of the many different nationalities makes it impossible for the missions in Singapore to teach their pupils in any other language than the English. This requisition of English seems to some of the people a slur upon their own tongue, and a sign of British ascendency. They are jealous of the English, even while they perceive their own dependence upon them. Only British justice and watchfulness can keep in check the disposition to revolt on the part of some classes with which the government has to deal, especially when these classes are stirred up by German spies and German money. Thus far all seditious attempts have been put down, and the traveler learns to bless the wisdom of British administration, and to rest secure and confident under the folds of the Union Jack.

We left Singapore for Penang with some regret, for the reason that large steamers must be exchanged for small steamers. The one we took was exceedingly good and modern. Another on which we embarked somewhat later seemed to have come down from the days of Noah and the ark. But British steamers, [29]however old and small, are clean and safe. You "get there" all the same. On our way to Rangoon our first stop was at Port Swetterham, from which we motored twenty-seven miles to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of the Federated Malay States—federated under the British Crown. Here is a city of Malays and Chinese, with British government buildings, Mohammedan mosques, Buddhist temples, an English cathedral, and a Methodist church. Our road thither led us through seemingly endless forests of rubber trees and of coconut palms. The profusion of tropical vegetation was both novel and impressive. These Federated Malay States furnish the world with more than half its supply of rubber, and many English and American investors are growing rich from the soaring of prices induced by the war.

Penang, however, furnished us with our greatest sensation. It was a Chinese funeral. In this city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, a millionaire Chinese banker had died. He was a Buddhist as well as a Confucianist, but also a loyal and patriotic supporter of charitable institutions, and of the British rule. He had given to the British government a number of aeroplanes to facilitate its military operations, and a large sum of money for its war-loan. When he died, the customary worship of ancestors, which is a part of Chinese religion, as well as gratitude for his past gifts, prompted his family to plan a sumptuous funeral. It is said to have cost them thirty thousand dollars. We arrived in Penang just in time to see the show. All the way from Singapore, indeed, we were accompanied on our steamer by a fine brass band,[30] which was only one of three brass bands hired to furnish music for the funeral service.

My powers of description fail, when I attempt to tell the wonders of a funeral procession fully a half mile long. It was headed by a symbolic float of waxwork figures, in which a colossal horse, prancing on its hind legs, seemed just about to soar into the air. The horse was held in by four angelic forms following and holding in their hands scepters of royalty. This apparition reminded me of the horses and chariot in which Elijah ascended to heaven, and it seemed to indicate that the deceased had departed with all the honors heaven and earth could bestow. A band of music accompanying the float, and playing solemn but not mournful strains, gave color to this interpretation. A retinue of sedan-chairs, decorated with all the colors of the rainbow, came next in order. These sedan-chairs were empty of occupants, and contained long strips of red paper on which were written the names and merits of the millionaire's ancestors, to be read by Buddhist priests at the grave. The chairs were each the gift of some relative or friend of the departed. They symbolized the welcome given him by those who had gone before him to the better land. A second band of music was followed by a body-guard of British soldiers in khaki, deputed by the British governor to show his estimate of the character and loyalty of the deceased.

Then came the hearse, if hearse it could be called. It was really an enormous catafalque, decorated with gold tinsel and costly embroideries. Peacocks and birds of paradise were depicted on its silken hangings.[31] A dozen men, in elaborate robes of blue, carried this gaudy structure upon their shoulders, while other gorgeously attired attendants bore great ribbon-banners of satin, say twenty feet long by four feet wide and of the most brilliant colors, inscribed with Chinese characters and making known the virtues of the departed. But the most curious part of the procession, was yet to come. Preceded by the third band of music were the offerings of food and drinks which were to furnish sustenance to the spirit in the world into which he had now entered. There were six roasted sucking-pigs, laid in order, on portable tables, with baskets of rice, oranges, bananas, all kinds of fruit and confectionery, and cups of tea and wines. These were carried to the cemetery, to be presented to the departed spirit at the grave, then jealously guarded for an interval, finally in part given to the officiating priests, and in part consumed at a feast held by the surviving members of the family. The costlier the offerings, the better would the feast be enjoyed. There was no lack of priests in this ceremonial. They were young and clean-shaven, and looked as if they had enlisted for this very service. I thought I could discern a sly twinkle in their eyes, as they inspected the preparations for the feast, before the march began.

The mourners must not be forgotten. Among the Chinese, white, and not black, is the appointed sign of mourning. The four wives of the deceased and the members of his family were accordingly dressed in the coarsest of white sackcloth, with ashes sprinkled over their faces, and they walked behind the hearse, howling. It was a piteous spectacle, reminding one[32] of the professional and hired wailers in Palestine, where "the mourners go about the streets," uttering dismal lamentations which can be bought for money. Far be it from me to suggest that such was the lamentation which we heard that day, for there is reason to believe that in this case the deceased was respected and beloved.

This ceremonial had required long and elaborate preparation. The death indeed occurred last July; the body had been embalmed; it had lain in state and open to public inspection for four whole months; the funeral did not take place until November. A vast amount of detail had been attended to and provided for. Great packages of silken umbrellas had been stored to shield the heads of guests and servants. All the bearers of sedan-chairs, scores in number, were clad in silken uniforms; there were banners, and inscriptions, and lanterns, galore. Everything was done to impress the Chinese multitude with the greatness of the occasion. But it was all a glorification of man and of his virtues. There was no confession of sin, nor assurance of pardon; no proclamation of a divine Redeemer; no promise of life and immortality in Christ. Heathen religions are man's vain effort to win heaven by merits of one's own. Only Christianity is God's revelation of salvation "without money and without price," through the sacrifice and death of his only Son. This is the gospel which Confucianist and Buddhist, Hindu and Mohammedan, need to-day, and which, thank God, our missionaries are giving them.

IV

THREE WEEKS IN BURMA

[35]Burma is the land of pagodas. These places of worship are the most striking feature of every landscape. Their bell-shaped domes, startlingly white, or so covered with gold-leaf as to shine resplendent in the sunlight, crown many a hilltop and constitute the chief beauty of the towns. The pagodas are usually solid structures of brick, with facings of plaster, and they are buildings at which, rather than in which, worship is offered. There are exceptions, however. The more ancient of these edifices, like the Ananda at Pagan, have inner chambers enshrining gigantic statues of Buddha, with corridors around the chambers, quite comparable to the aisles of English or French cathedrals. But the greatest of all the Burmese pagodas, the Shwe Dagon of Rangoon, is a solid mass of brick, with no interior cell, yet enormous in size, erected on a broad platform one hundred and sixty-six feet from the ground, towering to an additional height of two hundred and seventy feet, and crowned with a jewelled "umbrella" at the total elevation of four hundred and thirty-six feet above the teeming streets of the city below. The main platform from which the pagoda proper rises is an immense court nine hundred feet long by six hundred and eighty-five feet wide, and crowded with minor pagodas and shrines. This great esplanade is approached from the four points of the[36] compass by long covered arcades, lined with shops in which offerings of every description can be bought. On the marble floor of the main court and before the minor shrines these offerings are presented by scores of worshipers prostrating themselves before statues of Buddha of every size. And yet the great conical or bell-shaped dome of the pagoda is its chief attraction, for this is covered with gold-leaf from its base to its summit, and its shining splendor salutes the traveler from miles and miles away.

The religion of Burma is Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion of "merit," so called, and the surest way to acquire "merit" is by building a pagoda. Repairing an old pagoda will not answer the purpose; hence many an old pagoda goes to ruin, side by side with a new one coated with whitewash or gold-leaf. Curiously enough, the epoch of pagoda-building was almost coincident with that of cathedral-building in England and France, that is, from A. D. 1000 to 1200. When one sees at Pagan an area along the Irrawaddy River eight miles long and only two miles wide, with nearly five thousand pagodas, multitudes of them small and in ruins, but many still standing great and splendid in their proportions, it seems impossible to doubt that a certain genuine religious impulse, however blind and mistaken, led to their erection. There they stand, mere relics of a magnificent past, but now erect in the midst of desolation, with only scattered huts about them, where once there must have been a dense population, rich and lordly. The fate of these towering monuments of idolatry and superstition, now for the most part given over to the moles and the bats, shows what[37] God can do for pagodas, and encourages us to believe that missionary effort will be mighty through God to the pulling down of similar more modern strongholds, together with all the high things that exalt themselves above the knowledge of his truth.

This leads me to speak of the great missionary work that is now honeycombing and undermining the foundations of heathenism in this pagoda-land. We came to Burma to see what God has wrought. The labors and sufferings of Adoniram Judson appealed to us even in our childhood. We wished to see how the mustard-seed which Judson sowed in faith has grown up to bear fruit. So we went to Aungbinle, where for twenty long months Judson was imprisoned and tortured. There we seemed to hear God's word to Moses: "Take off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place where thou standest is holy ground." We were reminded also of the burning bush, which was ever burning but not consumed. Great forward movements in history are born in suffering. Through death to life, and the cross before the crown—that was the way of Christ, and it will be the way of his followers. We gathered, a small group of missionaries and visitors, in the little chapel that has been built upon the site of that old prison, and we prayed, with a lot of dusky villagers and children before us, that God would yet more gloriously prosper the work of missions.

We had every advantage in our investigations in Burma. Thirteen of my former pupils are now missionaries in that land. For many years they have been inviting me to visit them. Nine missionaries met us at the dock, as we landed from Singapore and[38] Penang. They have made our visit delightful by their affectionate and boundless hospitality. Morning, noon, and night have been full of sightseeing, of visiting mission churches and schools, of "chotas," or little breakfasts, of "tiffins" or substantial lunches, or afternoon-teas and dinners at the close of the day. The social and kindly spirit of it all has turned what otherwise would have been wearisome into a succession of pleasant experiences. But there has been work, and there has been hard thinking also. Making three addresses a day, longer or shorter, for three weeks in succession, is no sinecure. I am sometimes called an "octogeranium," but I have not been permitted to waste my sweetness on the desert air. It is a wonder to me that I have survived so much stress and rushing, but I am compelled to say that good appetite and good sleep have made me feel in better health and spirits than for many months before.

What I have seen has gladdened my eyes and warmed my heart. Closer contact with mission work and mission workers has broadened my ideas, given me more sympathy, more zeal, and more hope. The vastness of these heathen populations, their appalling needs, together with their infinite possibilities, have dawned upon me as never before. Burma has sixty millions of people. It is a most fruitful land, never visited by the famines which ravage India proper, the land west of the Bay of Bengal. It enshrines a religion which, with all its ignorance and superstition, is more free from gross immorality than that which prevails on the other side of the bay. Its people are the most heterogeneous of any upon earth. Though the[39] proud Burman native is still the dominant power, he has now to compete with the rising intelligence of the Karens, the sturdiness of the Chinese, and the subtlety of the Hindus. These last two peoples have in late years in large numbers migrated hither. Mohammedan mosques are rising side by side with the older Buddhist pagodas. The Parsees are numerous and influential, and theosophists are not rare. Rangoon is probably the capital city of Buddhism, for here at any rate is its most splendid temple. And Rangoon is a sort of melting-pot of all races. Burmans and Chinese are intermarrying, and are producing a most vigorous offspring. Sikhs and Malays, by their peculiar dress, make picturesque the streets. I know of no greater mixture of races, unless it is in the city of New York, where we have more Jews than there are in Jerusalem, and more Italians than there are in Rome. Here in Rangoon, however, all these peoples preserve their distinctive characteristics of dress and language, so that racial differences are more apparent.

The Roman Catholics and the representatives of the Church of England have made great efforts to capture Burma. They have established noble plants in the way of church edifices, hospitals, and schools. The leper asylum of the Romanists is an impressive and worthy provision for the housing and treatment of hundreds thus afflicted. The cathedral and school of the Anglican Church show a most praiseworthy estimate of the needs of this great province of the British Empire, and breakfasting with Bishop Fyffe, the metropolitan of Rangoon, gave us a pleasing impression of[40] his kindly Christian spirit. The Methodist Episcopal Church has also its representative here, and all of these evangelizing agencies are supplemented by the work of the Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A., and the Salvation Army. Yet it is not too much to say that the Baptists have first place in Burma, both in church-membership and in education. We were the first Christian denomination upon the ground; we have leavened the country with our influence; our Mission Press has furnished the Bible in several different languages to the people of Burma; our schools are the most advanced in grade and the most numerously attended; our churches are most nearly self-governing and self-supporting. We have great reason to thank God and take courage.

All this is the growth of a single century. It was in the year 1813 that the Judsons arrived in Burma, and it was six years after that the first Burman convert was baptized. In 1828 the first Karen convert followed Christ. These two were the first-fruits from the two leading races of Burma. Since their baptism there has sprung up a flourishing Christian community which embraces representatives both of the indigenous races of Burma and of the immigrant peoples from India proper, from China, and from other lands. The Baptist churches in Burma to-day, as their official representatives inform us, enroll members gathered from eighteen different nationalities, besides members of the Anglo-Indian or Eurasian type. "The entire Christian community in Burma, according to the Government Census of 1911, numbers 210,081; of which number, 122,265 are Baptists, while 60,088 are Roman[41] Catholics, 20,784 are Anglicans, 1,675 are Methodists, and the remainder are distributed among smaller sects. That one Protestant convert of 1819 has become an army of one hundred and fifty thousand."

We must add to this numerical statement the facts that a corps of Christian leaders has been trained and put into service; that native Christians have found their way into influential positions as magistrates, township officers, teachers of schools, inspectors of police, and clerks in all departments of the government. Christian men are prominent in business and professional circles, as traders, contractors, brokers, physicians, lawyers; and the Christian character is everywhere recognized and honored. A church, to a large degree self-propagating, has been planted in Burma. A complete system of missionary education has been organized. Modern philanthropic work for the relief and prevention of physical ills has been transplanted to Burma. The Sunday School, the Christian Endeavor Society, the temperance movement, are common methods of Karen and of Burmese church activity. An extensive Christian literature has been provided, in addition to the printing of the Bible in all the main languages of the country. In fact, a Home Mission Society, for the evangelization of the natives in the remoter sections of the country, is in active operation. When we remember that all this is the product of a hundred years, in a land where only a little while ago Christianity was a persecuted religion, we praise God for the result.

I must mention two features of my visit which claim special attention. I refer to the work of the collegiate[42] and other schools, and to the hospitality of non-Christian gentlemen. We have inaugurated in Burma a graded system of education, under government inspection, and leading to full university training. Nothing in my travels interested me more than to see hundreds of boys and girls of Burmese and Karen families, in which girls have hitherto been unable to read or write, singing Christian hymns from books with the music and words before them. The great need of France, as the Emperor Napoleon once said, was good mothers. It is equally true of Burma, and little children carry back into idolatrous homes their love for Christ, and their juvenile protest against heathenism. I addressed several audiences of a thousand each, where the full half were girls and women, no longer secluded and ignorant, but prepared to assume responsibility as the mothers and trainers of a new race of Burmans. In these schools, exclusive of the seminaries and Bible schools, there are enrolled more than 30,000 pupils, who pay annual tuition fees of more than $80,000. The Morton Lane School at Maulmain, the Eurasian School at the same place, the Kemendine School in Rangoon, the Girls' School at Mandalay, have each of them about three hundred scholars, and they are sending out influences which will in a few years revolutionize the civilization and the religion of Burma. Other schools of not so high a grade are doing equally faithful work. Our Baptist College at Rangoon is caring for the higher grades of education, and is preparing hundreds of young men for teaching and for government service. It was inspiring to address a thousand of its scholars, under the direction of [43]Principal David Gilmore, D. D., formerly of Rochester. The endowment of such an institution in this heathen land would be an achievement worthy of some Christian millionaire in America. And the same thing may be said for our Burman Theological Seminary at Insein under Dr. John McGuire, and our Karen Theological Seminary under Dr. W. F. Thomas.

That walls of partition are breaking down under the influence of Christianity, was made plain to us by invitations to take breakfast with a noted Parsee barrister, and to take afternoon-tea with a wealthy Mohammedan gentleman, both of them citizens of Rangoon. The courtesy and intelligence of these hosts of ours will always be a delightful memory, while their novel and beautiful homes revealed to us what art and nature can do when united in other than Christian surroundings. Our Parsee barrister had obtained his education largely in England, and the Mohammedan gentleman had enjoyed intercourse with the best of our American missionaries. The Moslem friend still maintained a sort of seclusion for his wife, and only the ladies of our party visited her in her private apartments. But when we rose to depart, he surprised us all by asking that we offer prayer, and he endorsed the prayer that was offered by uttering a hearty "Amen." As we stood ready to go, it was easy to pray for a blessing upon the house and the family which we were leaving behind us. Respect for Christianity, and a conviction that Christian education is the great need of the future, are already permeating the higher classes of Burman society.

The climax of our stay in Burma was reached[44] when Lord Chelmsford, the viceroy of India, visited Rangoon, and the lieutenant governor invited us to an afternoon-tea in his honor. The pandal, or reception pavilion, erected at the dock where the viceroy landed and where he was received with a salute of thirty-one guns, had been filled that morning by the élite of Burman society, fifteen hundred in number, and the address of welcome had drawn from the viceroy a fitting response. All Rangoon was a wonder of decoration. Arches with Saracenic domes built by the Moslems, pagodalike structures built by the Buddhists, Parsee towers, and Hindu temples, appeared at many street-crossings, and one long avenue was lined on either side with elevated rows of benches upon which were seated thousands of children from the schools. The viceroy passed in triumphal procession between files of soldiery, with cavalry for a body-guard and a dense mass of humanity thronging the sidewalks, looking on and cheering. At night, the streets and public buildings were brilliantly illuminated, and the great pagodas glittered like gems from top to bottom, encircled with rings of electric lights.

We reached the Government House, the scene of the afternoon lawn-tea, through clouds of dust raised by four lines of vehicles that struggled for precedence. At last we emerged in the grounds before the stately edifice where the lieutenant governor resides, and we were presented to Lord and Lady Chelmsford. The viceroy and his wife were simple and gracious in manner, and they made us feel that we were conferring as well as receiving honor. A group of forty dancing-girls, in antique Burmese costumes, were giving a [45]performance on one part of the emerald lawn, while on another white-robed servants were setting before the guests all manner of refreshments. So, amid music and feasting, the day ended. With the oncoming darkness the viceroy and his lady retired to their apartments in the great government residence, and at the same time the whole company joined in singing "God Save the King!" It was a striking close to our experiences in Burma, for fully half of the guests that day were Hindus and Mohammedans, each one of them arrayed in gorgeous garments and decorated with jewels. It left in our minds the fixed impression that the hold of Great Britain upon Burma and indeed upon all India is largely due to the Christian character of British rule, and that missionary work of evangelization and of education is to be given large credit for India's present universal loyalty to the British Crown.

This chapter would not be complete without special mention of the dinner of our Rochester men. We number thirteen of them in Burma, and they fill very important places in the work of missions. Two are graduates of our university, but not of our seminary—Mr. F. D. Phinney, the superintendent of our Mission Press, and Dr. David Gilmore, the acting principal of our Baptist College. With the wives who graced the company, seventeen persons sat down at table. Singiser presided; McGuire gave us welcome; Dudley, Cochrane, Rogers, Hattersley, Crawford, added spice to the occasion. The rewards of a teacher sometimes come late, but they are very sure. When I saw that gathering of missionary workers, and remembered Geis, Cope, and Streeter, who were prevented from coming, I felt[46] that my labor had not been in vain in the Lord, since Burma is being transformed by Rochester.

And I shall never forget a final reception given us at an afternoon-tea by Dr. D. W. A. Smith, the president emeritus of the Karen Theological Seminary at Insein, and by his estimable wife, to whom I had had the privilege of presenting a memorial album, on behalf of all the teachers and missionaries, on the occasion of her seventy-sixth birthday. Doctor Smith and Mrs. Smith are honored and beloved by all who know them. Like myself, he has served the cause of theological education for forty years, and has now retired for partial rest. I am glad that my name can be in any way connected with his, for I am sure that his works will follow him.

V

MANDALAY AND GAUHATI

[49]These two places are types of two different religions, the Buddhist and the Hindu. Mandalay in Burma is the representative of Buddhism; Gauhati in Assam illustrates Hinduism. The hill of Mandalay is crowned by a pagoda so unique and splendid that it draws pilgrims from every part of Burma; the hill at Gauhati is similarly attractive in Assam. I have thought that a description of the two, and of the worship at each of them, might serve to fix in memory the differences between these leading religions of the British Empire in India.

Mandalay was the terminus of our third excursion into the more remote parts of Burma. From Rangoon as a center of operations, we went first to Bassein, where our Burman and our Karen schools for boys and girls are beautifully located. Bassein is one hundred and ninety-two miles west of Rangoon. Maulmain, our second object of interest and visitation, is one hundred and seventy-one miles distant from Rangoon on the south and east. Here our great missionary, Adoniram Judson, began his work, and here are two of our chief schools for girls.

Mandalay is farther removed from Rangoon than are either Bassein or Maulmain. It lies three hundred and eighty-six miles to the north. It was a former capital of Burma. It contains the palace of King[50] Thebaw, the foundations of which are reputed to have been laid upon human sacrifices, and from which the king was driven after a long and fierce British assault. Ancient tradition decreed that only sacred edifices should be built of brick. Thebaw's palace is therefore of wood, though it is gorgeous with carving and gilt. Surrounded by a wide and deep moat, there is a walled enclosure of more than a mile square, whose gateways are picturesque in the extreme, and which to all but modern cannon would be an impregnable fortress.

But it is the Hill of Mandalay that most excites the traveler's wonder and admiration. Upon its summit, commanding a far-reaching view of the winding river and of endless paddy-fields, with mountains in the distance, stands a pagoda which is in many respects more remarkable than the great Shwe Dagon pagoda at Rangoon. This one at Mandalay might indeed be called four separate pagodas, on successive heights, and connected with one another by a straight stairway in part hewn out of the solid rock and in part built of masonry. The stairway consists of eight hundred and twenty-two steps, in four different series, each series leading to a broad open platform on which rises a separate temple with a colossal image of Buddha in its center.

From below, this long stairway, with its railing of brick or concrete and its quartet of gilded pagodas shining in the sun, is a picturesque and unique object. The crowning pagoda seems almost impossible of access. It is set upon such a height, however, for the purpose of making the ascent to the altar difficult, and so of adding to the "merit" of its worshipers.[51] The stairway, even when cut in the rock, has often forty or fifty steps so narrow, that the ascent from platform to platform is actually precipitous. The entire series of steps, from the bottom of the hill to the top, is roofed over with sheets of corrugated iron, until the whole looks like a covered way to the clouds. Going up seemed an exciting adventure. My physician had forbidden my climbing, and my wife declared that she could not attempt the walk. The problem became serious.

The difficulty was removed by bringing from the missionary's house two solid teak-wood armchairs, to serve us after the sedan fashion. Long poles of bamboo were lashed underneath them, and, after we had seated ourselves, eight men, four for each chair, lifted these poles, with their superimposed American pilgrims, upon their shoulders. Then began a triumphal march, which at every step of the ascent threatened to become a funeral march. The bearers all had bare feet, feet twice as long as the steps were broad, so that they practically went upward on their toes. A single misstep would have caused disaster—nothing less than an avalanche of coolies, chairs, and pilgrims. But my secretary guarded me, the missionary guarded my wife, and we went up in safety.

Going upward some two hundred steps, we rested upon a platform with a pagoda which enshrined the statue of a Buddha perhaps twenty feet in height and covered with gold-leaf from top to toe. Any worshiper can prove his faith by clapping a bit of gold-leaf upon the statue. The result is that the hands and feet of Buddha are thick with encrusted gold. [52]He holds out his hands in seeming invitation. Two hundred feet more brought us to a second platform and a second pagoda in which Buddha also appears; but now he is in the attitude of teaching. Still another ascent, and we come to a pagoda in which Buddha stands, a towering form fifty feet in height, with his finger extended in expectation toward the plain. And a final ascent brings us to a colossal Buddha, now reclining, as if his work were done and he were entering upon the bliss of Nirvana. At this last stage there is also a series of waxwork figures which symbolize the vanity of life and of human desire. Four forms represent, first, the babe at its mother's breast; secondly, the youth full of vigor; then the older man haggard with care; and finally, the corpse, upon whose vitals the birds of the air are preying.

From the summit of this Mandalay Hill, another pagoda, almost as famous, is to be seen. I mean the Kuthodaw, in the plain below. This is four hundred and fifty pagodas in one, all but one of them little edifices, each with a small sitting statue of Buddha within it. An even more remarkable thing is that each of these diminutive pagodas has also within it a portion of the Buddhist scriptures, engraved upon a solid block of stone, and all of these together make up the Tripitaka, upon which the Buddhist pins his faith. In the center of the grand enclosure stands a beautiful white pagoda, with wreaths of gold about its graceful spire. The long rows of little temples, with their attempt to preserve the holy book in an enduring form, are a monument to the faith of King Thebaw's uncle who planned it. Few people, however, read the [53]writing upon the stones. For any practical result it is necessary to have the law of the Lord written upon the tables of the heart.

The descent from Mandalay Hill was even more hazardous than the ascent, for we were in continual danger of slipping from our chairs and knocking over the bearers. We were profoundly grateful when we reached the level ground again and found that we had survived. Our experiences with Buddhism were instructive. The saffron robes of the omnipresent priests and monks undoubtedly cover much laziness and much willingness to depend for a living upon others. But every Burman boy expects to spend some time, though it may be only a week or a month, in a monastery. There he usually learns to read, though his main work is that of memorizing certain portions of the Buddhist scriptures. So far as I have been able to learn, there are no positive immoralities connected with Buddhistic worship. The example of Buddha has in it some worthy elements, such as the renunciation of earthly and sensual ambitions. But Buddhism, for all that, is a pessimistic religion. It denies to man the existence of a soul, and it gives him no hope for anything but practical extinction. Buddha no longer lives to help his worshipers. In the struggle with sin, there is no atonement for the transgressions of the past, and no prospect of perfection in the future. Hence the preaching of Christ, crucified for our sins and ever present with his people, is to the Buddhist a revelation so novel and so entrancing, that it captivates and transforms him. Christianity humbles pride, but it saves the soul. It shows the impossibility of obtaining [54]salvation by merit of our own, and our absolute dependence upon the grace of God. Christianity awakens gratitude, and leads to unselfish devotion. It turns a Saul into a Paul, and makes him a missionary and a hero.

Gauhati is the present capital of Assam, as Mandalay was once the capital of Burma. Like Burma, Assam is overrun by Hindus, who seek employment in the tea-plantations and in every other species of labor. These Hindus have brought their religion with them, and in Assam the animistic religions of the natives very commonly give way to the more poetic and philosophic faith of the Hindus. In Gauhati the Hindus have established a temple which attracts thousands of pilgrim worshipers from all parts of Assam and indeed of India, as the pagoda of Mandalay attracts pilgrims from all parts of Burma. The Gauhati temple, like that at Mandalay, is set upon a beautiful hill not far from the town, approached only by a long and stony climb, though with many a rest-house on the way. This temple and its worship so illustrate Hinduism, that a slight account of its origin and beliefs seems to be necessary.

The god Siva had a goddess for a wife. Displeased with her unfaithfulness, he seized her, and with her as his captive he flew through the air, and as he flew, he cut her in pieces. The middle portion of her body fell to the earth on this hill, and consecrated forever this spot near Gauhati. In the temple and grove of this hill the goddess is worshiped by such rites as will please one of low and licentious tastes. In fact, the rites of this temple are said to be the most obscene of[55] any in the British possessions. There are reputed to be a thousand "virgins," who subsist in and upon the temple. The extent to which they are virgins may be judged by the number of fatherless children clinging to their robes or carried about. These "virgins," as is well known, are "married to the god of the temple"—which may mean married either to the priests of the temple, or to the worshipers of the temple. I asked a missionary whether these "virgins," after their term of service, could contract an ordinary marriage. I was answered that the girls were "married to the temple for life." One of these unfortunate women led by the hand a beautiful little daughter. On being asked who the father was, the mother replied: "How should I know? I am a temple-woman." So the gratification of illicit passion becomes a religious act. The residents of Gauhati are free to visit the temple, and so, alas! are the eight hundred students of the English college only two miles away. Who can measure the corrupting influence of this temple upon the lives of the people over a wide area in Assam?

A student of the college, who was also a priest of the temple, met one of our party on his visit. This student-priest was a young man of more than ordinary intelligence. He endeavored to palliate the evil of the temple-worship, and to clothe its acts with spiritual significance. He pointed to the spot where goats and buffaloes were offered in sacrifice, and he claimed that this offering was made in expiation of sin. Such an explanation of Hindu sacrifices is altogether futile. The sense of guilt is so dull in Hinduism, that sin is little more than external and physical impurity, and[56] may be simply failure to conform to a prescribed act of ceremonial worship. The true meaning of sacrifice for sin has, in India, been derived solely from Christian preaching. This particular student had many an opportunity to hear such preaching, and the knowledge of atonement which he tried to mix with his Hindu theology was probably gained from missionary sources. It was an illustration of the incidental and indirect ways in which Christian missions are permeating these Oriental lands, and are forcing these old religions to adopt some of the fundamental ideas of Christianity. These ideas are misunderstood and misstated, so that they become in large part forms of error. But notwithstanding, they may pave the way for a fuller knowledge of the truth, and for the entrance of Christ into the heart and into the life.

VI

CALCUTTA, DARJEELING, AND BENARES

[59]Calcutta is the largest city of India. It numbers more than a million inhabitants, of whom 600,000 are Hindus, 300,000 are Mohammedans, and less than 100,000 are Christians. The name of the city is derived from Kali, the goddess-wife of Siva, the Destroyer; and her temple is one of the most filthy and disgusting in all India. In this temple I saw one of its many priestesses cutting into bits the flesh and entrails of a goat, which had been offered in sacrifice, in order that the poorest worshiper might have for his farthing something bloody to present at the altar. It was the altar of a fierce, cruel, and lustful goddess, whose black and ugly image could be dimly seen within the shrine. A stalwart priest followed me with hand outstretched for a contribution. It was a novel sensation to hear him utter, in excellent English and with seeming reverence, the words, "the great goddess Kali," as if no one could doubt her power. It reminded me of "the great goddess Diana," whom all Asia and the whole world once worshiped, but whose temple is now an indistinguishable heap of ruins. The worship of a goddess so vengeful and sensual as Kali throughout India, a worship both of lust and of fear, shows how ineradicable is the religious instinct, but how [60]perverted it may become when existing apart from divine revelation.

There is another temple in Calcutta of a somewhat better sort. I refer to the temple of the Jains, that mongrel sect which is partly a reformed Hinduism, and partly a worship of Buddha. Its temple is a model of cleanliness and of Oriental art. Its decoration consists largely of inlaid glass of all the colors of the rainbow. Walls, ceilings, and columns are fairly ablaze with tinted arabesques that reflect every ray of the sun. Fountains and lawns and statues mingle their attractions. The effect is one of splendor and beauty. Jainism is conservative Hinduism, recurring to the ancestral worship of the Vedas, exaggerating its doctrine of the sanctity of animal life, repudiating its later licentious developments, and taking in Buddha, not as the supreme and sole teacher of religion, but as only one of its great saints and heroes.

The real glory of Calcutta is its relation to modern missions. Here is the chapel in which William Carey preached, and in which Adoniram Judson was baptized. Its spacious construction evinces the faith and hope of its founders. But it is in Serampore, which, though fourteen miles away, is almost a suburb of Calcutta, that Carey's work was done. How wonderful that work was! "A consecrated cobbler," he mastered the languages of the Orient, and gave the Bible to India in several of its tongues. He received from the British Government large compensation for his services as interpreter and translator, but he gave back all the money he received, in order to support schools and missions. The noble college at Serampore, with its[61] hundreds of students, is his best memorial. His tomb in the cemetery witnesses to his humility of spirit. It stands at one corner of a triangle, with the tombs of Marshman and of Ward at the two remaining corners, but the only inscription he permitted to be engraved upon it is the two lines of the hymn,

So he left his testimony to the need, and the power, of Him who will ultimately demolish Hindu temples and enthrone Christ in India.

From Calcutta we traveled about three hundred and seventy miles northward to Darjeeling. We wished to see the Himalayas. A most tortuous narrow-gage railway lifted us gradually to a height of seven thousand feet. And there we had the unusual privilege of seeing the sunrise tipping with rosy light the snowy peak of Kinchinjinga, twenty-eight thousand feet high and forty-six miles away. Mt. Everest, a hundred miles distant, is twenty-nine thousand feet high, but from Darjeeling is invisible. Kinchinjinga is nearly twice as high as Mont Blanc, and its glittering mass is a spectacle never to be forgotten. Curiously enough, upon the summit of Observatory Hill, from which we gained our view, the immigrant Tibetans had erected their shrine, and long, inscribed paper and muslin streamers, enclosing a large quadrangle, gave to the winds their prayers. No idol was to be seen. The worship seems to be far more spiritual than that of the Hindus. Nature seems to have taught that secluded race of Tibetans a more primitive religion[62] than modern Hinduism. It is a religion mixed with Buddhism, but preserving the earlier view of a divinity in natural objects, which Hinduism has almost wholly outgrown.

Our next point of investigation was Benares, "the holy city," the Mecca and Jerusalem of the Hindus. It is a hotbed of heathen enthusiasm and of blinded devotion. The sacred river Ganges flows by, with tier upon tier of temples rising from its steep banks—such a congestion of religious edifices that one might almost doubt whether they had left room for any but priests to live. Every day, hundreds of pilgrims troop through its streets and throng these temples, presenting their flowers and their offerings, making their sacrifices, and listening submissively to the instructions and threatenings of the priests. Every temple has its sacred animals, to be sacrificed or worshiped. The "Golden Temple," so-named, is covered with gold-leaf from its spire to its base. The noisy crowd in its corridors, the noisome odors of its sanctuaries, the adjurations of its priests and their evident aim to turn religion into financial gain, disgust the Christian traveler, while they show him how deeply rooted in the human heart is this towering system of idolatry and superstition.

But only the water-view of Benares presents Hinduism in its most characteristic aspect. It is the sacred river that makes sacred the town. This river is regarded as itself divine, for it had its source in the mouth of Brahma. Hence it is endowed with life-giving and purifying powers. It is bordered for a full mile by a grand succession of palaces and temples, of[63] bathing ghats and of burning ghats. Here the Hindu, often after long pilgrimage, washes away his defilement and prepares himself to die. When death actually comes, his relatives wash his body in the holy stream. But the bathing ghat only makes ready for the burning ghat. These burning ghats are castle-like edifices, from which the smoke of burning flesh ascends continually. Cremation, with the Hindu, takes the place of burial. The ashes are collected and are preserved in a tomb. To die in Benares, and to have a temple for a tomb, is the surest passport to happiness in a future state, since the transmigration of souls into higher or lower forms is an essential doctrine of modern Hinduism.

A wealthy resident of Benares courteously offered us the use of his observation-boat to view the scene upon the river in the early morning. This river-craft was a double-decker, propelled by oars from the lower deck. From the upper platform, one could overlook the ceremonial washings of hundreds of pilgrims. Stalwart men plunged themselves three times into the stream, looked toward the sun, joined their hands, spoke a prayer, rinsed their sacred cord, cleansed their raiment, and then, reclad, went to the priest on his platform, to be smeared with ashes on the forehead and marked with a little colored dot, as a certificate that they had correctly performed their vow. Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, had each his worshipers and his priests, to give the appropriate mark. The "holy man" was there, either upon his bed of spikes or in an attitude which suggested torture, and ready to receive the homage, and the money as well, of his [64]benighted admirers. Mothers were present, immersing not only themselves but also their children. All the bathers must drink of the muddy and fetid water, for purification internal is as needful as purification external. And so, hundreds of worshipers every day, and on special feast-days thousands, drink this water of the "sacred Ganges," foul with the stains of disease and reeking with the sweat of the dead. It is no wonder that the burning ghats have no lack of business, and no wonder that medical experts have traced epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and plague, in Western lands, to this city of Benares, where "Satan's seat is." The throne of the great adversary, however, seems to be built on very insufficient foundations, for not a few of the temples which line the steep banks of the river have toppled over, or have sunk into the yielding sand. Their massive fragments, at the base of long stairways of stone, show how hideous is the ruin of any system of religion which is not founded upon Christ, the Rock.

VII

LUCKNOW, AGRA, AND DELHI

[67]At last we are on Mohammedan ground—at least on ground where Mohammedanism has a powerful, and perhaps a controlling, influence. This northwest part of India was the scene of Moslem conquest in the ninth century. Mohammedans have always proudly contemned idolatry, and they have often been iconoclasts, as many headless Hindu images can witness. Northwest India saw the rise and the strength of the great mutiny of half a century ago, but it was Moslem rajas and faithful Moslem troops who helped to put it down.

Mohammedan faith in the unity and personality of God might at first sight seem to render its adherents more accessible than are Hindus to the gospel of Christ. As a matter of fact, however, the very elements of truth in their belief make them too often stout opponents of Christianity. They are religious bigots, as the Hindus are not. The Hindu has a pantheon to which he can, with some show of consistency, invite Christ. The Mohammedan declares that there is but one God, and that Mohammed is his prophet. So he denies Christ's claim to be either God or Saviour.

Lucknow was deeply interesting, for here was exhibited one of the most heroic and thrilling defenses ever made in history. More than two hundred women[68] and children spent three months of agony in the cellars of the British residency, while husbands and fathers and friends, to the number of seventeen hundred, were exposed to the besieging force and the murderous fire of fifty thousand mutineers. The headquarters of the defenders were riddled with shot and shell, and the residency is now a ruin. But only one shot penetrated the retreat of the women and children below, and of these only one woman lost her life. Crowded together in the heat of the summer, tormented by flies, half famished for lack of food, these brave women held out themselves and encouraged the protecting garrison, though of the seventeen hundred men only seven hundred at the end of the siege remained alive. Sir Henry Lawrence died of a cannon-shot, exhorting his soldiers to the last man to die, rather than to surrender. We were glad to pay reverence to his bravery, by a visit to his tomb. Although he died, the flag of England flew over the fortress, in spite of innumerable efforts of the enemy to bring it down. And to-day, in memory of that fact, it is the only flag in the British Empire that is not lowered at sunset. The joy of the defenders and of those whom they defended may be imagined, when General Havelock appeared in their relief, and the great mutiny was suppressed. That victory settled the prestige of the English in India. All classes now recognize the military strength as well as the judicial fairness of British rule. Without it, India would be a country of warring races, for Mohammedan and Hindu even to-day live in slumbering jealousy of each other.

This latent hostility, I am happy to say, shows[69] some signs of wearing away. The desire for more of home-rule is bringing these two great races together in conventions, with a view to the discovery of some method of cooperation between them. Parliamentary government in China and Japan has had its effect in India, and Britain will soon be compelled to admit her Indian populations to a larger share in municipal and provincial administration. But democracy can be successful, only when conflicting classes find some basis for harmony. English missionary and educational institutions are doing much to reconcile Hindus and Mohammedans to one another, and this may prepare the way, not simply for free government, but also for the acceptance by both parties of a religion in which all their elements of truth are included, while their perversions of truth are sloughed off.

By English educational and missionary institutions I mean much more than Church of England schools and colleges. In Lucknow we visited the Isabella Thoburn College, under American Methodist control, and were greatly impressed by its noble equipment in the way of buildings and teachers. Both boys and girls have here the opportunity of securing an education as high in grade as the sophomore years of our American colleges, and of preparing themselves for the advanced work of a great Indian university. All this is under Christian influences, and has its fruit in many a conversion to Christ. Martinière College is also nobly equipped and endowed, but it is solely for English boys, who are generally the sons of British officials in India. I cannot speak too highly of these means of education now furnished by all our great denominations,[70] in all the cities of India. I could only wish that our Baptist people at home might see how far Christians of other names have often surpassed them in their gifts and preparations for the future of a country whose population is three times as large as our own.

At Lucknow we had the rare opportunity of seeing "the mango trick" performed by an expert juggler. He first showed us a jar, filled with innocent sand, so dry that it fell easily through his fingers as he lifted a handful. Then he presented a dry mango seed, which he planted in the sand and watered. The jar was placed on the stone pavement of the hotel, not ten feet away from our eyes. He covered the jar with a little tent not two feet in diameter. After a few passes of the hand, the tent was lifted. The seed had already sprouted, and had become a twig with leaves. Covering the plant once more, he called our attention to a cobra-charmer, who played harmlessly with a hooded and venomous snake. At last he threw the tent wholly aside, and there stood a fully developed little mango tree, perhaps two feet high. It seemed impossible that the folds of the tent, which had been shaken out at the beginning, could possibly have held it. The juggler's method was simplicity itself. If I had not previously seen in America a necromancer cut his wife's head off, and then put it on again so slick that she seemed to have received no injury, I might have begun to believe that this Indian juggler had supernatural powers.

To Lucknow succeeded Agra. The great wonder and prize of Agra is, of course, the Taj Mahal. So[71] we made our way to it before sunrise, and saw its exquisite columns and its white minarets in the rosy light of the earliest morning; then again, as the sun was setting, we saw its last rays fall upon the snow-white dome. As one looks upon the Taj from the noble gateway through which one enters the enclosing park, he sees also its reflection in the long lines of water that lie between, and it seems a miracle of beauty. But when you reach the edifice itself, and perceive that its simplicity is combined with lavish richness of decoration, marble and precious stones being so woven together that they form one gorgeous and splendid whole, you can only admire the affection that planned this memorial to a beloved wife, and the art which has succeeded in constructing an edifice which, after six centuries, is still recognized as a wonder of the world. Yet the Moslem emperor who built it was deposed by his son, and then imprisoned not far away, the chief solace and recreation granted him being this, that from his prison-roof he could look out upon the Taj Mahal.

The Pearl Mosque and the Jasmine Tower, the Courts of Public and of Private Audience, in the palace which the Moslem emperor once occupied, are monuments of architecture so remarkable and so beautiful, that no description of mine can fairly represent the impression which they made upon me. They are surrounded and protected by the Fort, an enclosure half a mile square, whose massive wall is itself a wonder. In the days when these structures were built, labor was cheap, for the monarch had only to impress and to feed his laborers. But artistic genius is always[72] rare. The Mohammedan conquest and sovereignty of the past produced and encouraged a flowering out of art, comparable to that of the days of cathedral-building in England, and of the time of Pericles when sculpture and architecture so flourished in Greece. In all the world there is nothing more elaborate or beautiful than the perforated marble of these Oriental screens, and the intricate carving of these Oriental pillars. The Alhambra in Spain has its superiors in India, both for splendor of color and for beauty of pattern. The arabesques of these Oriental mosques exhibit powers of invention of the highest order. It has been well said that their architects "designed like Titans, and finished like jewelers." Both the throne of the Mogul Emperor Akbar and his tomb in Agra are proofs that even the grain of truth in Mohammedanism can awaken intelligence and enthusiasm in those who receive it, and that, in the conflict with idol systems, it has power to conquer the world.

An account of our visit to Delhi may well complete my summary of Mohammedan influences in India. Delhi was the capital of India long before Akbar reigned and the lofty tower of the Kutab Minar was built. But Hindu influence has combined with Mohammedan in leading the British to restore Delhi to its former position as the center of governmental authority. Tradition has handed down a prediction that making Delhi its capital marked the end of each power that asserted itself. Hence there have been many Delhis, as there have been many ancient Romes, and this present Delhi must be succeeded by a new Delhi which British authority and resources will build. The[73] new Delhi will be the ninth, as the present Delhi is the eighth, of the long series. Ruins of the earlier Delhis are about it on every side. Now, at last, a great tract of land has been appropriated for the new seat of government which will rise from the dust. Temporary buildings have been erected. The permanent ones will soon follow. We may be sure that they will be splendid and suited to modern tastes, while they still preserve the characteristic features of Indian architecture.

By making this new Delhi the British capital of India, it is sought to impress the Oriental mind with Britain's claims to be supreme, while at the same time the old traditional prediction is evaded. Let us hope that the device will accomplish its purpose. The prosperity of India is bound up with the recognition by all races and parties of England's right to rule. I would not justify all the steps by which Britain has gained her power, nor would I ignore certain defects of her later administration. But there is no question as to the general justice of British rule, nor as to the fact that, without it, India's warring races and religions would now be the ruin of all peace and progress. When we remember that in this land of former famines the population has increased since 1858 by one hundred millions; that forty-six thousand miles of canals have been dug for irrigation, and more than twenty-two million acres have thereby been reclaimed; that trade has increased in the last half-century from three hundred millions to fourteen hundred millions; that the value of land is now larger by fifteen hundred millions than it was fifty years ago; that there are now thirty-two[74] thousand miles of railway in operation and seventy-six thousand miles of telegraph; that the Indian Post Office now handles nine hundred millions of letters, newspapers, and other matter every year; we may well doubt whether any conquest of history has brought about so great or so beneficent results as have followed what we must regard as England's commercial absorption of India.

There are doubtless seditious and anarchistic elements in the Indian populations which need to be kept under and subdued. Let us remember that only one-tenth part of the men, and only one-hundredth part of the women, know how to read. There is a vast proletarian mass, ignorant and inflammable, ready to follow leaders of better education, but less principle, than themselves. This mass the British Government has failed to educate, so that, while ninety per cent of the people in Japan can read, in India only one-tenth as many can read. One of the greatest mistakes of English administration has been its beginning of education at the top, instead of at the bottom. It has established universities, but not elementary schools. The excuse, of course, has been, that differences of caste and of religion have made it impossible to put Hindu children and Mohammedan children, Brahman children and Sudra children, together, in the same schools. And yet, in the universities, pupils of all these various classes sit side by side, and some plan, it would seem, might have been devised to apply the same rule, so as to secure universal and compulsory elementary education. The higher education, taken alone, has its dangers; it is sought only by people of[75] means and intelligence; many seek it from no love of learning, but only in order to prepare themselves for government offices. But there are not enough offices to go round. The disappointed men will not work with their hands; they find their avocation in the plotting of sedition. It is the high-caste educated Brahmans who have edited the malcontent periodicals, and have organized the revolutionary conspiracies, which have of late bred so much trouble for the government in India. I rejoice therefore in the rise of factories, and in the new emphasis that is being laid on industrial education. These will do much to develop the resources of India. But what is most needed is the spirit of peace and justice; this is furnished by the gospel of Christ. I therefore believe that the gospel is the only real guaranty to India of its political as well as its religious welfare.

The Friday prayer-service in the great mosque of Delhi was a striking spectacle. The open court in front of the mosque is four hundred and fifty feet square, surrounded by a cloister, and paved with granite inlaid with marble. Three or four thousand worshipers, in parallel rows, stretched from side to side of the great enclosure. At the summons of the mollah, or officiating priest, all these worshipers, in perfect unison, prostrated themselves with folded hands, and repeated in a loud voice, "God is great." Each devotee had previously purified himself, by cleansing his mouth and hands and feet in the open tank in the center of the great esplanade. Inasmuch as the Delhi mosque is the largest and most splendid east of Cairo, the entire spectacle was most impressive.

[76]If Turkey had not joined a Christian power by her alliance with Germany, Mohammedans throughout the world might have taken Germany's side against the Allies, and might have threatened the peace of India. That danger is now providentially averted. The Moslem rulers have held fast to their allegiance to the British Crown. This city of Delhi, with the schools of the Methodists, the Anglicans, and the English Baptists, is permeated with religious influences that attract its native populations, and these influences are continually lessening the prospect of any future rebellion such as the mutiny of fifty years ago.

VIII

JAIPUR, MT. ABU, AND AHMEDABAD

[79]India, as is well known, is a part of the British Empire, and is under the sway of the British Government. Yet, for administrative purposes, it is divided into presidencies, provinces, and native states. The presidencies and provinces are wholly administered by British officials. The native states are administered by rajas and other Indian rulers, with the presence in each capital of a resident officer who represents the British Government and who is accessible for consultation in case of necessity. The relations between the rajas and the residents are friendly, and only the gravest matters are referred to the representative of the Crown. All other affairs are cared for by the native ruler, who is attended by a distinguished suite and who maintains quite a royal court. This species of self-government is the reward, granted by the British Government after the mutiny of 1857, to the rulers of the native states, who remained faithful to British interests and assisted in the suppression of the great rebellion. The government of these native rulers is in general worthy of praise. Many of them are progressive men; they have traveled abroad; they have been affected by Western thought; they have introduced modern reforms and systems of education, to the great benefit of their subjects. In this present[80] hour of crisis, the majority of them have been loyal to the British Government, and have contributed men and means for the cause of the Allies. It was interesting in our journey across India to traverse several of these native states; and it was difficult to observe any difference between these sections and the portions of the empire officered solely by the British. We saw no British soldiers, but only native troops. There was less of English language and custom prevalent. The Hindu, Mohammedan, and Jain seemed to have things very much to themselves. They, after all, are the real India, the hereditary India, while at the same time they are feeling the influence of modern railways and modern commerce.

Jaipur, which is the capital of a native state, was especially interesting. It has been called "The Pink City," either because the maharaja owns all the property on the business streets and himself sees that every building is painted of a pink color, or because he compels every private owner to conform to his fixed rules of construction and decoration. At any rate, the wide streets of Jaipur are laid out like those of the homeland, and are lined with pink structures of only one type of architecture and only one type of ornamentation. Even Paris can present no better illustration of the value of supervision in building. There are no sky-scrapers. There are long rows of shops and residences, with arcades in front of them, and with many variations in plan and decoration, while at the same time one tone of pink, together with the sky-line and the arcade-line is preserved without important change; the Oriental type of building is preserved; and there is[81] a uniform style of architecture from one end of the street to the other. No city in the world so well illustrates Mrs. Humphrey Ward's quotation of the poet's words,

It is not the city of Jaipur, however, which merits our chief attention, though the maharaja's town-palace and his quaint astronomical observatory are both of them deeply interesting. This observatory has no tower and no telescope. It shows what can be done by sun-dials and structures almost level with the ground to mark the movements of the heavenly bodies, and thus demonstrates that primitive stargazers might even thus early acquire a very considerable knowledge of astronomy. The scientific and literary tastes of this Oriental monarch are also indicated by a noble public library of his own foundation, which contains a priceless collection of books and manuscripts in all the languages of the East.

But it is Amber that constitutes the chief attraction of a visit to Jaipur. Amber is the original metropolis and the ancient seat of government, five miles distant from the present Jaipur, and even now the summer residence of the maharaja, though the old city which once lay around the rocky fortress has become a waste of ruin. The palace at Amber is situated on a hilltop several hundred feet above the level of the plain, and commanding magnificent views of the surrounding country. Next to the sight of river or sea from a mountain summit, the view of broad and level plains stretching far away is most beautiful, and such a[82] view the Indian ruler secured when he built his summer residence upon this eminence.

We came expecting to find India hot, but we have found the northern part of India very cool. So it was reviving and refreshing to take the drive from Jaipur to Amber in an automobile, over a noble roadway with slightly ascending grade and skirting an originally splendid palace, once in the center of an island, but now in the bed of a dried-up lake. When we left the motor-car at the final lofty hill, the deserted city of Amber towered above us. How should we reach that threatening height? Three gorgeously caparisoned elephants solicited our patronage for the ascent. But before making that ascent, there was another ascent to make. We had to ascend the elephants. Ladders were brought to our assistance, and up the ladders we climbed to the howdah, or square seat on the top of the bulky beasts. Each elephant had to carry two passengers. I, on one side of the animal that bore me, had my weight balanced by that of my courier, who rode on the other side. Each of us was compelled to let his legs dangle over the edge of the howdah. All went well until the elephant came to the narrow part of the road. There he evinced a vicious propensity to plant his feet close to the edge of the precipice. There was indeed a railing beneath me, but, clinging as I was somewhat convulsively to my slippery seat, the railing was invisible. So I seemed to myself at times to be hanging over the abyss. If I slipped from my seat, I might fall four hundred feet. It was not a pleasing situation. But the elephant knew his business. He trod the path in perfect confidence.[83] And so, in royal state, though in mind tremendously afloat, we made the long and steep climb, until we reached the palace of the king. The maharaja, however, was not at home that day to receive us. He is a Hindu devotee, and at the time of our visit he was making a pilgrimage to Benares, the sacred city. The first thing we saw, when we entered the court of his excellency, was the spot where every morning a bullock or a goat is sacrificed as an offering to his heathen god.

Still, "every prospect pleases." The views of mountain and plain from this elevation among the hills are so beautiful that one can only admire the taste of the prince who made this his chosen dwelling-place. And the palace itself is a fascinating study in art and architecture. Long corridors are turned into cloisters arched and shaded from the sun. Tanks of water, with fountains playing in the center, provide refreshing baths. Halls of public and of private audience are gorgeous with crimson and gold. Temples for worship are added, both for daily devotion and for great state occasions. In short, here are all the appurtenances of an Oriental court, combined with private luxury and seclusion. While the multitudes must toil and suffer in the plains below, the maharaja may rest and enjoy himself in his hilltop palace. I would not, however, imply that this particular monarch is not in many respects a large-minded and liberal man. The many evidences of his taste and public spirit in Jaipur rectify any wrong impressions one might gain from a visit to Amber.

The next day we reached a station called Abu Road,[84] four hundred miles to the south of Delhi, and about half-way to Bombay. True to its name, Abu Road furnished us the road to Abu Mountain. Again we proceeded by motor-car, that great annihilator of distance in a foreign land. This road, in its gradual ascent, is a noble piece of engineering. It is exceedingly tortuous, for it follows the contour of the mountain in marvelously skilful curves. All the way for two hours, and covering an ascent of four thousand five hundred feet, there are enchanting views. Tropical birds and trees were on every hand, together with cactus of many varieties; green and red parrots screamed through the air; peacocks spread themselves in the sun; and monkeys scampered across our path.

One of the spurs of Mt. Abu is called Dilwarra. It is the seat of the chief temple in India of the Jains, that Hindu sect which claims to have preserved the ancient religion of the Vedas, and to have kept it true to the ancestral faith. As I have before remarked, the Jains aim to escape the possible miseries of transmigration, and to attain the bliss of Nirvana, even in the present life. Jainism, like every other heathen system, is an effort to earn salvation by labors and sacrifices of one's own. Its works of righteousness, however, are often uncalled-for exaggerations of natural virtues, such as counting sacred all forms of animal and vegetable life. The most devoted of the sect wear a cloth over their mouths, lest they should destroy an insect by swallowing it. To found hospitals for the care of parrots and monkeys is one of the most approved works of merit. So also it is a work of merit to build a temple or to endow it. Jain temples are[85] full of images, and the chief object of worship is honored by their multiplication. Buddha is recognized as one of the divine incarnations, and in some sense Buddha is worshiped. But it must be remembered that even in Jainism Buddha is only a memory. He has entered into Nirvana, and has passed out of conscious existence. Now that he has attained that state of passivity, he has no eye to pity and no arm to save. And yet in this Jain temple images of Buddha are worshiped, and these images are numbered by the hundreds.

All this aberration from the truth does not prevent the temple from being almost a miracle of art. There is a scrupulous cleanliness about it which differences it from other heathen temples, like that of Kali. In the Jain temples there are no animal sacrifices, for all animal life is sacred. But there are little houses for feeding the birds; larger houses for feeding the beasts; and tombs for departed saints and teachers. And let it be specially borne in mind that in all the world there are no more splendid examples of arches, domes, and shrines, decorated with elaborate and intricate carvings, than are found here in Dilwarra. Its arabesques of perforated white marble an inch and a half thick are like lace-work in their delicacy and beauty. Invention could go no farther in devising an infinite variety of geometric traceries. We in the West have much to learn from the artistic genius and labor of the East.

Another day's ride, or rather, another night's ride, brought us to a city of a very different sort from Jaipur, and to a very different environment from that[86] of Mt. Abu. It brought us to the busy metropolis of Ahmedabad. Here is also a city in a state under a native ruler, but a city so prosperous that native rule is seen to be by no means slovenly or indolent. On the way from the station I counted eighteen lofty chimneys belonging to manufacturing establishments. There are eighty factories in this busy center, chiefly connected with the cotton industry. In this industrial expansion is revealed the solution of many of India's financial problems. The population is now too exclusively employed in agriculture, and its manufactured articles are imported. But the rains are so uncertain that the farmer's subsistence is precarious, and famines claim thousands of victims. Hence, next to Christianity, India needs industrial development. This has been the view of recent British governors. Better methods of irrigation and of cultivation have been supplemented by the introduction of new instruments of manufacture. Both English and American machines now do much of the work that was formerly done by hand, and in the cities there is growing up a new manufacturing population.

Industrial missions are a great blessing to India, and our religious denominations have shown their practical sense by entering upon this sort of work. When a native becomes a convert to Christianity, he is often thrown out of caste by his family, and out of labor by his employers. He must support himself; he must find something to do. But he is friendless and helpless, unless he can find friendship and help in the mission where he has been converted. It is necessary to secure employment for him, if he is not to become an[87] encumbrance to the mission and to himself. Hence I welcome all gifts for industrial missions that will teach men new methods of obtaining a livelihood. India, as I have said, has a vast agricultural population, now scantily subsisting and subject to occasional famines. Multitudes who are now idle might be usefully employed. The change now going on in our Southern States might well go on in Southern India, and I welcome the sight of the factory chimneys of Ahmedabad.

Ahmedabad is not yet converted to Christianity. It is a celebrated stronghold of Jainism, and here is another most splendid temple. It was instructive to see the little houses on poles for the care of birds, and for the feeding of lazy monkeys, while the poor and sick of human kind in the neighborhood begged in vain for help. The Jain temples are noted in all India for their beauty. Carving and gilding can go no farther than they have gone in the decoration of this shrine in Ahmedabad. But the troop of monkeys that came to us in the park to be fed, seemed to us quite as sensitive to human needs as were the holy men who sat about that temple of the Jains, for these latter devotees use God's gifts not rationally, but for inferior ends, and especially for their own interest and comfort. Ahmedabad is an example, not of the worst, but still of a misplaced, religious zeal that has lost its bearings because it has lost its God.

IX

BOMBAY, KEDGAON, AND MADRAS

[91]Bombay is a great city, the second, in population, of the British Empire in India. While Calcutta has over a million people, Bombay comes only a few short of that number. Its commerce is immense; its public buildings are fashioned after European models; its streets are broad and finely paved; there is every evidence of wealth and cultivation. But Hindus greatly outnumber Mohammedans; Parsees are strong; Christians are active, but still comparatively few. In thought and customs, Bombay is still essentially Oriental, while yet profoundly influenced by modern newspapers and modern inventions. It was a memorable change for us travelers to emerge from its Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, and then to find ourselves, first in its Caves of Elephanta, and secondly, in its Towers of Silence.

A word of explanation is necessary for each of these notable objects of interest. Elephanta is a little island eight miles from Bombay, and so named because of its general resemblance in shape to an elephant. Elephanta Island forms a beautiful object as seen from the deck of the little steamer that serves for a ferry, and the views from the summit of Elephanta Hill, over the Bombay Bay, with the gleaming towers of the green city in the distance, are very charming.[92] The island is a great resort, however, not so much for the views therefrom, as because it is the seat of a rock-hewn temple excavated centuries ago in honor of Siva, the Hindu god, whose province it is to destroy. Brahma is the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; and Siva, the Destroyer. Siva was the god of reproduction, however, as well as the god who destroys, and his worship has been often connected with obscene and lascivious rites.

The approach to Siva's temple is through a lovely garden, in which are many splendid specimens of tropical vegetation. At last there appears to the visitor, in the side of the precipitous hill, a massive portico, with four immense pillars, all hewn out of the solid rock. Then come long rows of similar columns leading darkly like a cathedral nave into the stony hill, and terminating at the altar, above which towers the statue of Siva, colossal in size, with Parvati, his goddess wife, by his side, and all the emblems of his authority, as scepter and sword, around him. The statue seems to express the joy of sovereignty, and, though somewhat mutilated, it is noticeably free from the immoral suggestions which have been intimated in many descriptions of it. Entrance to the statue is flanked by great guardian statues, and the whole chancel, so to speak, is enclosed by a broad and lofty corridor, in the manner of cathedral architecture. From this corridor on either side, many nooks in the rock have been excavated, like chantry chapels, each with its separate statue at least twenty feet in height. The whole Hindu pantheon, seems to be represented by carved figures, but all cluster about the god Siva. The really[93] characteristic and indispensable feature of these caves is, however, still to be mentioned. It is the image of the lingam, or phallus, gigantic in size, and carven out of solid stone, in the innermost shrine, where it is the object of hysterical or lustful worship. Every year, on an appointed feast-day, three or four thousand people throng to this shrine, some to pray for offspring, others to seek license for illicit pleasure. Elephanta has become in this way the symbol and propagator of a debasing superstition. Such worship is only a deification of the lower instincts of human nature.

Returning to Bombay, it was natural to think of the Towers of Silence, for these too are located on a lovely eminence, called the Malabar Hill, and overlooking the city and the bay. These towers are enclosures in which the Parsees, a most intelligent, wealthy, and influential sect, dispose of the bodies of their dead, by laying the forms in the open air where they can be devoured by vultures. The towers themselves are at least half a dozen in number, and they vary in size. But the style of their construction is uniform. Inside of a lofty circular wall are concentric beds of stone, each with its groove in which a corpse can be laid. There are three concentric circles, the outermost for men, the next inner for women, the innermost for children. The structure has no roof, but is open to the air. Great flocks of vultures perch upon the top of the outermost enclosing wall, waiting in silence and expectation for the time when they can descend upon their prey. Only a half-hour elapses after a body is laid on its stony bed, before these ravenous birds have torn every morsel of flesh from[94] its bones. The skeleton is then left to disintegrate by the action of the elements, until the rains wash the remaining dust into a great pit at the center of the circles, from which receptacle the refuse is conducted away by drains during the rainy season, to mingle with the surrounding earth.

This is the Parsees' "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." They glory in this method of disposing of their dead, and they think it far more natural and impressive than the common Hindu method of cremation. We must grant that all methods of disposing of the dead are painful. But faith in a resurrection of the body is surely most in consonance with our time-honored custom of laying our dead away in their kindred earth, "until the day dawns, and the shadows flee away."

From Bombay to the town of Kedgaon may seem to some a descent from great to small. Not so; it is rather an ascent from the false to the true, from the impure to the pure, from the illusory to the real. For Kedgaon is the home, and center of the work, of Pundita Ramabai, perhaps the most learned, and certainly the most influential Christian woman in India. The very name pundita is given only to those of high intellectual attainments. A Hindu of the highest, that is the Brahman, caste, she was many years ago converted to Christianity, and she has devoted all her powers to the education and uplifting of her countrywomen. Her father was a great Sanskrit scholar. He was one of the first in India to determine that his daughter should be a learned woman. Accordingly she was thoroughly instructed. She knew by heart the sacred scriptures of her people long before she became a[95] Christian. She could repeat from memory an amount of them equal to that of our whole English Bible. It is especially the improvement of the condition of women, and particularly of child-widows, to which she has devoted her attention. The condition of the child-widow in India is most pitiable. She is held responsible for the death of her husband, no matter how young she may be. She is subjected to indignities. Her hair is entirely shaven from her head. Her jewels are taken from her. Her bright clothing is taken away, and she is clad in the coarsest garments. She becomes the slave of the family; virtually an outcast; frequently a prostitute. She can never remarry, no matter how young she may be at the beginning of her widowhood.

It was to ameliorate this condition of affairs that Pundita Ramabai set herself many years ago. She gathered child-widows under her protection, surrounded them with Christian influences, and gave them a Christian education. A time of famine threw upon her care in one year twenty-four hundred girls, who depended upon her alone for food to keep them from starving. That time of great distress is now past, but when we remember that in India there are estimated to be as many as two millions of child-widows, it will be clear that the need of a refuge for such is still immensely great. Girls of the highest caste are in the greatest need, for among the lower classes the reproach of child-widowhood is not so strongly felt. It was the sorrows of girls belonging to her own Brahman caste, married perhaps at the age of eight or ten to husbands five times their own[96] age, and then made practically outcasts by those husbands' death, that most touched the heart of Ramabai. It is wonderful what she has already accomplished. We found on her extensive premises a great assembly-room which has sheltered at one time twenty-six hundred auditors; schools of every grade for Hindu girls, including a school for the blind; a large and commodious hospital; a printing office with presses capable of turning out a high order of typography; an asylum for lepers; a rescue-home for unfortunate girls; normal classes for teachers and for nurses; training in sewing, embroidery, and weaving; and many another sort of Christian service, including the work of the factory and the farm. Every species of cooking on the premises, and all the care of the rooms and houses, is done by the girls themselves, so that all of them are taught how to support themselves when they leave the institution. Three hours a day for industrial work, and three hours a day for schooling, is the uniform rule. One can imagine the far-reaching influence of this institution, if he remembers that out of the twenty-four hundred scholars who were received and taught in that dreadful time of famine, more than fifteen hundred were child-widows and many of them of the highest caste.

Ramabai is a great scholar. She has translated and printed the whole New Testament, in the colloquial Mahrati dialect, for the benefit of the poor women in her district. She is now engaged upon the Psalms and the book of Genesis, with the hope of finishing the whole Old Testament. Numberless tracts of her composition have gone out into all parts of India. Her[97] graduates become not only teachers, but also evangelists. No one can measure the extent of her present influence, as showing what a native woman in India can do, in the way of breaking down caste, overthrowing pernicious customs, and demonstrating to a benighted heathen world the superior claims of Christian truth. We left Ramabai, invoking a blessing upon her head and upon Manorama, her daughter, who bids fair to prove her worthy successor. Ramabai, by her intellectual gifts, her executive ability, and above all by her Christian devotion, deserves honor from all lovers of Christ and his gospel.

As we neared Madras, the third largest city of India, the heat began to oppress us. Up to this time India had been unexpectedly and refreshingly cool, at night even cold. But now it was unpleasantly warm. The heat reminded us of the conundrum: "Why is India, although so hot, the coldest country on the globe?" Answer: "Because the hottest thing in it is chilly" ("chili" is the peppery sauce which the natives mix with other spices to form "curry"). We have learned to like curry. I cannot understand it; but if seems as if the hottest countries needed the hottest kinds of food. At any rate we had a warm welcome in Madras, thirteen degrees in latitude above the equator. We were fortunate in reaching this fine city during the session of all our Baptist missionaries in the South India, or Telugu, field—that field which a few years ago witnessed the baptism of 2,222 converts in one day. It was a remarkable illustration of the family and tribal spirit in India. We Baptists believe in individual conversions, and we seek evidence,[98] in every case, of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. But the coherence of the family and the village is so strong in a heathen community, that the lot of the individual Christian is often exceedingly hard. Occasionally there is apostasy. The resistance of an important man to the gospel makes the persistence of his dependents in the gospel-way almost impossible.

In some quarters, however, whole families and whole clans have been blessedly converted, and idolatry has been completely eradicated. In other cases where mass movements have taken place, certain missionaries have found it physically impossible to sift out each doubtful individual, and for safety have demanded that the whole family or clan or village shall give up idolatry before any single individual convert has been received for church-membership. To combine strict faith and practice, according to the New Testament standard, with a proper respect for local customs and traditions, demands great wisdom in our missionaries, and makes their conferences very practical and very necessary. Certain it is that in our Baptist missions abroad greater care is exercised in receiving members than that to which we are accustomed in the homeland. The missionary cannot afford to have false disciples in the flock, if he knows it, for "one sinner destroyeth much good."

New Year's Day at Madras was full of interest. Lady Pentland, wife of the governor of the Madras Presidency, invited us to a New Year's garden-party. An open-air gathering of any sort on the first day of January would have been a novelty to us, but this one found the atmosphere so balmy and the vegetation[99] so green, that such a party was a positive delight. The avenues of approach to the governor's residence were lined with the body-guard of his excellency, stationed in twos along the way, and clad in scarlet The reception took place under a wide-spreading tree, on a spacious lawn. There were as many as a thousand guests. It was a gay and beautiful scene. Hindu and Moslem, Parsee and Christian, all met together. It was an exhibition of loyalty to the British Crown, as well as a proof that just government may yet weld all India's classes and castes together. Lord Pentland spoke to us most pleasantly of certain members of his family whom we had met in America, and Lady Pentland showed herself to be a charming hostess.

But a reception still more charming to us was the reception which the Rochester men gave us that same New Year's night, at the bungalow of Doctor Ferguson, close to the Day Memorial Chapel, where the sessions of the conference were held. At least ten of our graduates sat down to supper, together with their wives. Subsequently, from adjoining rooms, other members of the conference came in to the New Year's reception, which is an annual affair. The United States consul dropped in, with a few other guests, until the total number could not have been far from eighty. It was like a family gathering. When I remembered that the Telugu Mission was once called "The Lone-Star Mission," and was in danger of being given up, and when I noted that it now numbers one hundred and sixty-eight churches and a church-membership of more than seventy thousand, I could but say, "What hath God wrought!"

X

THE TELUGU MISSION

[103]Madras is the greatest city of South India, and ranks next to Calcutta and Bombay in thrift and importance. Tamil and Telugu are the two languages of the extensive Madras Presidency, the former prevailing most to the south, the latter to the north. They are cognate tongues, and both are derived from the Sanskrit. Our American Congregationalists have done most for the Tamils; we Baptists have done most for the Telugus. The Telugus number twenty-six millions. Though Madras is near their southern border, it is the best starting-point for our description.

Next to our mission in Burma, the Telugu mission has been most blessed by God. The famine of 1876 was followed by a wonderful revival, in which a nation seemed to be born in a day. The people accepted Christ by the thousands, and twenty-two hundred were at one time baptized. Evangelization has been followed by education. While our organized Telugu churches number 168, and our church-members 70,000, we have 819 schools of all grades, and 28,781 pupils under instruction. The needs of the body have been cared for, as well as the needs of the soul, for there are fourteen hospitals and dispensaries, ministering to 8,067 patients.

In such a mass movement as that among the Telugus, it was inevitable that the organization of the converts[104] into distinct, self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating churches should be a gradual process and should require time. The poverty of the people was an obstacle to self-support. But Christian teaching has made them models of liberality, and it was touching to see the church-members come forward at the close of the Sunday morning service with their thank-offerings. In fact, these Telugu churches, in the support of their native ministry, are in large measure independent of foreign financial aid. It is certain that, so long as religion is an exotic, its existence will be precarious. The plant in the pot needs, for permanence, to become a tree rooted in the soil. Self-government is as necessary as self-support, and self-propagation is equally important, if the Christianity of the native is ever to become indigenous. These aims have been dominant in recent years, and we have been permitted to witness scenes which demonstrate the power of God to make multitudes of people, of the lowest class, intelligent, liberal, and aggressive Christians.

I must take four separate stations as illustrations of my thesis. Fortunately, all of these stations are now under the administration of Rochester men, whom I am proud to recognize as my former pupils. But before I proceed to describe our experiences with them, I must to some extent repeat what I have said in my last letter about Madras and the conference there at the house of Doctor Ferguson. Because Madras is the greatest city of South India, it is the natural source of supplies and the easiest place of gathering for our Telugu missionaries, even though[105] most of them live and work much farther to the north. The principle of home rule requires such gathering, and the missionary at Madras, without seeking it, naturally becomes a sort of secretary and treasurer and entertainer of the whole body of Telugu workers. No one could be better adapted to this position of responsibility than is Doctor Ferguson. His abounding hospitality and his command of the whole situation make him sought as a counselor and as a leader. As the older men, like Clough and Downie, pass away, Doctor Ferguson, by common consent, forges to the front. The present prosperity and harmony of the Telugu mission are largely due to his unassuming and welcome influence. He too is a man whose scholarship and character reflect honor upon the Rochester Theological Seminary, where he sat under my instruction twenty-two years ago.

Coming now to our stations north of Madras, I begin with the Theological Seminary at Ramapatnam, in charge of the Rev. Dr. Jacob Heinrichs. Its students met us at the entrance of the mission compound, and we passed under an arch over which were inscribed the words, "Welcome to Dr. and Mrs. Strong." We had garlands of flowers thrown about our necks, and we were sprinkled with eau de Cologne. In the large assembly-room of the seminary, we listened to addresses in excellent English from pupils of the higher grades, and we made responses in the same language, which were interpreted to the scholars of the lower classes by the pastor of the village church. A beautiful casket of carved ivory and pearl was presented to us, containing engrossed copies of the addresses[106] delivered by the students. There was singing of hymns, both in English and in Telugu, by choir and congregation. The beauty of it all was its spontaneity and naturalness, for the pupils themselves had planned and executed the whole program.

Instruction in this seminary is largely biblical. Preachers are prepared for their work by being grounded in the life of Christ and the life of Paul. The text-books have been written by Doctor Heinrichs himself, and they are so well adapted to their purpose that they have been extensively used by seminaries of other denominations than the Baptist. A native Christian literature has been created for the Telugus, beginning with the Bible, but now embracing church history, theology, ethics, and something of modern science. It must not be thought that the teaching is exclusively religious. Our seminary, and all our schools of lower grade, are affiliated with the government system of education, and in all their lower grades are subject to government inspection. So far as they conform to government standards of thoroughness, they receive government grants of financial aid. British India is impartial—aid is also given to Hindu and to Mohammedan schools. But Christian schools can well stand competition with these other systems, for the methods of our Christian schools are more modern and more rational. We left Ramapatnam, convinced that India is receiving from the work of Doctor Heinrichs an inestimable blessing. Through a long series of years he has been training preachers and teachers for this whole Telugu land, and much fruit is appearing in a new type of New Testament pastors and evangelists.

[107]Ongole, one hundred and eighty-one miles north of Madras, was the scene of the great revival. Here too we were received most royally. A crowd of church-members waited for us at the railway station and flocked round our carriage as we passed to the mission compound. On the way, a company of Telugu athletes entertained us at intervals by their feats of ground and lofty tumbling. It was their native way of welcoming distinguished guests. Dr. James M. Baker has ably succeeded Dr. J. E. Clough in the work of administering and organizing this important field. The Ongole church of twelve thousand members, with its connected schools, is enough to tax the resources of the ablest man. The new Clough Memorial Hospital had its beginning while we were in Ongole, in the laying of the corner-stone of a gateway in honor of Dr. S. F. Smith, who wrote, "Shine on, Lone Star," as well as "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." Mrs. Strong, with a silver trowel, made its foundation sure, while the English deputy collector for the district represented the government, and I had the privilege of making an address to a great mixed audience of Hindus and Mohammedans as well as Christians.

Our most thrilling experience in connection with Ongole I am yet to relate. We wished to see the heart of India, as we had seen the heart of China and the heart of Burma. We could do this only by taking part in one of Doctor Baker's country tours. Every year he takes advantage of the favorable weather centering about mid-winter, to spend two solid months in visiting the villages which throng these fertile plains.[108] With tent and equipment for cooking, he penetrates these swarming heathen communities and carries to them the gospel of Christ. It was over some fearful roads that our two-pony, two-seated buggy enabled us to accompany him. Government roads are one thing; native roads are quite another. Sudden descents to fordable streams and sudden ascents to the opposite banks are succeeded by long stretches of passage through cultivated fields, where there appears no sign of road at all. At last we reached the village of Naletur. Under the shadow of a great tree we found at least a thousand people assembled, sitting on the ground bordered by a broad fringe of men and women standing on the outside, and supplemented by a score of half-naked Zaccheus-like hearers perched in the branches of the trees. Mrs. Baker, awaiting the coming of her husband and his guests, had been holding this motley audience for two hours with selections from the gramophone, with illustrated Scripture lessons and pictures from the Life of Christ, and by calling on her "band" for "music" with a big drum, castanets, cymbals, and various other instruments of Indian manipulation. Salvation Army methods have great influence over a childlike people, and Mrs. Baker would make, in case of necessity, a first-class Salvation Army lassie. In fact, no act of missionary humility has struck our eyes as more pathetic and true, than that of Mrs. Baker, beating a big drum to the time of native music, in order to hold an audience for the hearing of the gospel. The amphitheater of dusky faces, massed together and intently listening, with Christians on one side and heathen on the other, seemed like a reproduction of[109] the days "when Jesus was here among men," and a prophecy of the great final Day when our Lord, the Judge, will separate the sheep from the goats.

That evening we left the grove and entered the village with fife and drum, attracting auditors, and held a torchlight meeting in the market-place. There was preaching, and the chanting, in rhythm but not rhyme, of a versified story of the life of Christ. The missionaries make much of this sort of Telugu singing. There was the same crowd of auditors that had met us in the afternoon, but now the intermittent light of the torches made the scene seem to be flashing rays of conviction into many a troubled breast, and I wished that some great painter could immortalize the picture upon canvas, for no one can understand missions to the heathen without picturing to himself such preaching.

The next morning, on our way back to Ongole, we visited the famous spot on the river bank at Vellumpilly where, in 1878, 2,222 believers were baptized. On Sunday we attended a service of the mission church, where a native pastor officiated and at least fifteen hundred persons in addition to the missionaries were present, though several hundreds of scholars were absent on account of the holiday vacation. And finally, at the sunset hour on that memorable Sabbath Day, we ascended Prayer-meeting Hill, where Doctor Jewett, Mrs. Jewett, and two others met on New Year's Day fifty years ago, looked out over the great surrounding plain, and prayed the Lord to give them the Telugus, as John Knox of old prayed, "Give me Scotland, or I die!" In both cases prayer was answered, and we hope the more recent prayers offered[110] on that historic spot in January, 1917, will also be answered. The Telugus are gradually being won, and we ourselves were witnesses to that fact when, at the village of Naletur, we beheld the baptism of eleven new converts, nine stalwart young men and two married women.

Kavali is next to be mentioned. Here is a work for the gradual reformation of criminals and the industrial regeneration of India. In this land of poverty and famine, our converts, when turned out of house and home, need new means of earning a livelihood. There is in India a hereditary criminal class which, like the thugs of a former generation, make it a sort of religion to prey upon their fellow countrymen. The British Government has been almost powerless either to subdue or to reform such offenders. Something more than mere justice is required in their treatment. The Government is recognizing the value of Christian education and supervision, and has recently put large tracts of territory into the hands of the Salvation Army, the Methodists, and the Baptists, with a view to combining compulsory work and paternal influence in the reform of the criminal classes. The Rev. Samuel D. Bawden, at Kavali, has charge of over eight hundred such people, and is teaching them agriculture and all manner of trades. Mr. Bawden is one of the graduates of our theological seminary. He was for several years chaplain of our House of Refuge at Rochester. Physically and mentally he is a remarkable man, an athlete and almost a giant, a man of science and a man of faith. It needs all these gifts to dominate and lead toward Christ eight hundred[111] born thieves. I know of no more self-sacrificing and Christlike work than that which brother Bawden is doing.

The success of it proves its value. There are no prison walls, though leaving the community is followed by pursuit and recommittal. There are no punishments except deprivation of food-wages. Each member of the community is paid in food, and in proportion to the extent of his labor. If he will not work, neither can he eat. Opportunities for education are given to all. There is even a church, made up of converted convicts. The faithful among these Erukalas, as they are called, are made monitors and helpers to their weaker fellows. Squads are sent out from five to twenty miles, to build and repair the roads, with only an unarmed comrade for overseer. Nothing is given but education and Christian influence. Everything for the physical man is earned. In this way hundreds of reformed criminals learn to gain their own living and to lead an honest life. It was pathetic to receive the welcome of these humble men, and to see their reverence and affection for their "big father," Mr. Bawden. We heard them greet him as "our savior." To show their respect for Mr. Bawden's former theological instructor, these poor men subscribed of their scanty means and hired a large gasoline street lamp to illuminate the evening service.

I have reserved to the last my account of our visit to Nellore. Nellore is last, but not least, for this was our first permanent mission station in South India. Work was indeed begun at Vizagapatam in 1836, but in 1837 it was moved to Madras, and in 1840 to Nellore, [112]Madras being reopened in 1878. Nellore is one hundred and seven miles north of Madras, on the main line of railway, and sixteen miles from the seacoast. In the Nellore field we have six churches, and a total of nine hundred and twenty-six members. It is our Baptist schools that most attract our attention. The Coles-Ackerman High School, in charge of the Rev. L. C. Smith, has more than eight hundred pupils, and is a great credit to our denomination. Bible classes and special preaching services for students are conducted with enthusiasm by our young missionaries, Smith and Manley, and they bring good results. There are also in Nellore a high school for girls, a hospital for women, and a nurses' training-school, all under the direction of our Woman's Society. In these schools, Miss Tencate and Miss Carman are representatives of Rochester.

The general work of the mission is presided over by the Rev. Charles Rutherford, one of my former pupils and graduates. Mr. Rutherford is the young and able successor of Dr. David Downie, a much older Rochester man, and one of the pioneers and leaders of the Telugu Mission. He graduated from Rochester in 1872, the year in which I began my work as president of the seminary. I cannot easily express my gratification at finding him in South India to welcome me, and to accompany me during a large part of my stay on this field. Few men have so noble a record. Though he retired from active service ten years ago, and is now devoting himself to writing the history of the mission, he is still vigorous in mind and heart, and to meet him is to come in contact with "an incarnation"—an incarnation of the missionary spirit. [113]He has seen "the little one" become not only "a thousand," but well nigh a hundred thousand. His faith is great, that this whole Telugu Land will bow to Christ's scepter. Long may he live, to bless India and the world!

XI

THE DRAVIDIAN TEMPLES

[117]The Dravidians are supposed by most ethnologists to have been the aborigines of India. When they were subdued by the Aryans from the north, they were crowded southward and were compelled to serve their conquerors. This subjugation was the origin of caste; the weaker became hewers of wood and drawers of water for the stronger. The Brahman would have no social intercourse with the Sudra, and thought even his touch a profanation. For the Brahman represented Brahma, was in fact Brahma incarnate, while the Sudra was a manifestation of deity in inferior clay. Yet the Brahman needed the Sudra, and had to propitiate him in order to use him. So the Aryan absorbed into his own system some of the Dravidian gods, and usually did so by marrying to Dravidian female divinities male deities of his own. Siva, the Aryan god, for example, took for his wife the Dravidian goddess Kali. In many ways like this, the Aryan and the Dravidian united to form the Hindu. The Hindu religion is a composite—a corruption of the nature-worship of the earlier Vedas by its union with the more cruel and debasing features of the Dravidian idolatry. The renowned temples of Southern India best represent this mongrel form of Hinduism, and show Hinduism in its most corrupt development under Dravidian influences.

[118]The massiveness and vastness of these temples demonstrate the power of the religious instinct in man, even when that instinct is most perverted. With all their grossness and crudity, these shrines reveal a wealth of imagination and an artistic inventiveness, which furnish object-lessons to the most cultivated Occidental mind. We wonder what the East could really have accomplished, if its native gifts had been under the control of Christian truth. Unfortunately, those gifts were commonly under the control of the baser instincts. Paul's philosophy of heathenism is far more correct than that of many a modern writer on comparative religion. Only an ancestral sin can explain man's universal ignorance and depravity. Because he would not retain God in his knowledge, he was given up to the dominion of vile affections, to show him his need of a divine redemption.

Tanjore and Madura are the seats of the Dravidian temples which we visited. Tanjore is two hundred miles south of Madras, and fifty miles from the Bay of Bengal. It is in the Presidency of Madras, but European influences have not greatly changed its prevailingly native aspect. The half-naked coolies, and the children clothed only in sunshine, show how inveterate are custom and poverty. The great Tanjore temple is the center of worship for a hundred miles round. It is built on a stupendous scale. It consists of a series of courts, in the midst of which are two tremendous towers or gopuras, as the technical term should be. Its principal tower, is pyramidal in form, is two hundred feet in height, is covered with row after row of colossal carvings of gods and goddesses, and is [119]surmounted by an immense dome-shaped and gilded top of solid stone, said to have been brought to its place upon an inclined plane from the quarry four miles away. The gateway leading to the temple is itself an enormous structure. It opens upon a court eight hundred feet long by four hundred feet wide, the walls of which enclose an endless succession of little chapels, each one of which has at its back a rude picture of some incarnation of Vishnu or Krishna, and in front of each picture there stands erect an image in stone of the lingam or phallus.

A great platform, in the center of the court, houses, beneath a gorgeous canopy, an immense black granite image of a bull, the favorite animal of Siva, carved out of a single block sixteen feet long and twelve feet high, and kept perpetually shining by anointings of holy oil. The imagination of the worshiper is thus excited by successive statues and pictures, until at last he reaches the tremendous pyramidal tower, or gopura, which portrays and symbolizes the power of the heathen god to destroy and to recreate. That massive tower, superimposed above the idol and forming its magnificent abiding-place, has no superior in all India for grandeur. Mr. Fergusson, the distinguished writer on architecture, calls it the most beautiful and effective of all the towers found in Dravidian temples. The sculptures in the long and dimly lighted corridors at the base of the temple, and in the first tiers of the tower, are wonderfully realistic representations of a sensual and ferocious deity. But, as you stand in the court, and look up the sides of the tower to the gilded pinnacle on its dome, you discover that all the[120] upper rows of gods and demons are of stucco. Money evidently gave out, as the structure rose, and plaster took the place of stone.

The appurtenances of the temple are tawdry and childish. Huge cars, in which images of the gods are carried about at times of festival, stand in the courtyard. Each car has its bejeweled beast for the god or goddess to ride—a wooden elephant, a wooden bull, a wooden rat—each with trappings of many-colored glass, to imitate rubies and diamonds, and each with its escort of dusky priests, not forgetting to follow the foreign visitor and hold out their hands for alms. Yet in these corridors there were prostrated many absorbed and eager worshipers, seeking protection or aid from a deity more demonlike than divine. One's heart grew sick as he realized that, still in these latter days,

and worships in a temple which exhibits in its halls a hundred immense images of the male organ of generation.

It was a relief to be conducted by a clergyman of the Anglican faith to the church where lie buried the remains of Schwartz, the first English missionary to India. It must have required great gifts of mind and heart and will to brave Hindu opposition, to win the affection and support of a raja, and to lay the foundations of a Christian community in this heathen land. Schwartz was a Prussian by birth, though he went out as a missionary of a Danish society. He gave his life[121] and his fortune to the cause of missions, and the English work in Tanjore is even now largely supported by the endowments which he left behind him when he died. Our good friend Doctor Blake, the English clergyman, took us to the palace of the princess of Tanjore, also to the raja's library of Oriental manuscripts within the palace—a priceless collection of eighteen thousand Sanskrit manuscripts, of which eight thousand are written on palm-leaves. This library is unique in all India; and it shows that a raja in Tanjore, in his love for literature, could equal the raja of Jaipur, in his love for astronomy. The desire for learning was a passion that survived the fall, an evidence of the presence in humanity of the preincarnate Christ, "the Light that lighteth every man."

Madura is a hundred miles farther south than Tanjore. It is really the center of Dravidian worship. While some features of the Tanjore temple are more beautiful, the temple at Madura is more vast. Five great pyramidal towers, four of them on the points of the compass, meet the eye as one looks upon the temple from a distance. The temple is built about two great shrines or cells, one for the god Siva and the other for his goddess wife Minakshi, each cell surmounted by a noble dome of plated gold. On the four sides of the temple are stone porches, arcades, and pillared halls of great variety, filled with elaborate and grotesque carvings and sculptures. The extent of the structure may be judged from the simple statement that the outer walls, twenty-five feet high, surround a space eight hundred and thirty by seven hundred and thirty feet, and are surmounted by four lofty gate-[122]pyramids, each of them ten stories in height. The portico roof of Minakshi's Hall is supported upon six rows of carved pillars, each made from a single stone. There is an extensive "Golden Lily Tank," bordered by a granite corridor hung with cages of parrots, and the putrid waters of the tank furnish purification preparatory to worship at Minakshi's shrine. The very porch or entrance pavilion of this shrine is called "The Hall of a Thousand Pillars," though the actual number is nine hundred and eighty-five. Here and there among the pillars are seated learned men or pundits, who place offerings of flowers and perfumed water before their sacred books and chant the meaning of Sanskrit scriptures to groups of devout listeners.

The great temple, with its dimly lighted corridors, is open to the public day and night, and there is special illumination by hundreds of little lamps in an arch at the entrance when night comes on. Long avenues are filled with buyers and sellers of wares, and the rent of their stalls furnishes a large revenue for the support of the many priests. A big elephant and a baby elephant, each with the mark of the god upon its forehead, are paraded up and down, and are taught to pick up with their trunks the coins thrown down by visitors. Innumerable dark alcoves invite the crowd to rest, and many a sleeping form is seen at the foot of the altars. Imagine a festival night with these dimly lighted courts crowded with worshipers, the fierce and lustful images, the glorification of the lingam, the secret places of assignation! And this is the acme of Hindu religion!

There are better things than this to be seen in Madura. The palace of Tirumala, a raja of the[123] seventh century, is a magnificent specimen of Moorish architecture with unexpected Gothic tendencies. Its entrance hall, one hundred and thirty-five feet long, half as wide, and seventy feet high, has a lofty roof supported by heavy stone pillars with pointed arches of Saracenic type. It shows that the Moslem, in the long ago, had at least a temporary hold upon South India. This palace, which has the structural character of a Gothic building, has now been partially restored and taken for the law-courts of the British Government.

The same Tirumala who built the palace, built the Teppa Kulam, an artificial reservoir outside the town, about one thousand feet on a side, very symmetrical and the largest of its kind in South India. The whole "tank" is surrounded with granite walls and parapets, and next the water there is a granite walk five feet wide running round the whole structure. Flights of steps lead down to the water, at intervals. In the center of this small lake is an island, also walled around with granite slabs, and on it there are five towers, a large one in the center and one at each of the four corners. The whole effect is very graceful and it makes a sight long to be remembered, when the "feast of lights" takes place and the island and the parapets and the granite curbings are illuminated with hundreds of little oil-lamps. Not far away from the "tank" is a famous banyan-tree which covers with its shade an area sixty yards in diameter, has a main stem seventy feet in circumference, and has besides two hundred branches that have struck root.

But the noblest sight of Madura is its American[124] Congregational Mission. Beginning in 1836, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions planned and founded their most wise and successful foreign missions. They have aimed to do one thing well: to make the Madura station not only complete but well supported, to embrace in it all stages of education and all sorts of evangelization; and to reduce the whole work to a unified system. And the result has been the raising up of a large native ministry, churches with twenty-two thousand members, schools of every grade from the kindergarten to the college and the theological seminary. We were most hospitably entertained by the principal of the college, Dr. J. X. Miller, and the other missionaries; and we met and addressed both the native church at their Sunday service, the faculty and students of the seminary, and the annual conference of Congregational missionaries. The Madura Mission is a light shining in a dark place, the darkest place indeed in India. But it is a light that cannot be hid. Like our missions to the Burmans and the Telugus, it is showing the power of the gospel to "cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God," and to make a spiritual desert "bud and blossom as the rose."

XII

TWO WEEKS IN CEYLON

[127]Ceylon is not a part of India. It is a Crown Colony of Great Britain, and is administered directly from London, while India has more of independence and self-government. The relation of Ceylon to Britain is somewhat like that of the Philippine Islands to the United States, while the relation of Britain to India resembles that of the United States Government to our several territories. Ceylon, however, is very productive and prosperous. Surrounded by the sea, it is free from Indian droughts and famines. Its people are stalwart and loyal. The English language is fast becoming the easiest method of communication between Cingalese and Tamils, Hindus and Malays. Colombo is really a European city, as large as Rochester, with noble public buildings and lovely parks. Our Galle Face Hotel, on the very edge of the sea, with a great stretch of green lawn in front of it, is one of the finest hotels in the East, and our week of rest here was delightful.

Buddhism has been one of the great missionary religions of the world. It was a reform of Hinduism. But the Hindus, with their caste system, would have none of it and drove it out. The Buddhist triumphs were in Burma, Tibet, China, Japan, at the north; in Ceylon and Java, at the south. Here in Ceylon is preserved a sacred tooth of Buddha; and one of his[128] bones, recently discovered in northern India, is to be brought next week with great pomp and ceremony to the temple in Kandy, which already ranks in sacredness next to the great Shwe Dagon pagoda in Rangoon. A temple in Java is founded upon a single hair of Buddha's head. All this superstition and imposture dates back to a couple of centuries before Christ, and there is great reason to believe that the Roman Catholic worship of relics is only an appropriation of this form of heathenism.

Christian schools and churches are doing much to undermine Buddhism in Ceylon. Colombo is especially fortunate in possessing a noble college of the Wesleyan Methodists and a strong institution of all grades with eight hundred students. The English Baptists also have a very creditable mission work under the charge of Messrs. Ewing and Charter; while Mr. Woods is the able pastor of an English-speaking Baptist church. The students of these various schools usually adopt the English dress. The barefooted pupils first put on shoes, then the coat, finally the trousers. In the end you can hardly distinguish them from Europeans. These changes are more rapid in Colombo than in Madras. Indeed, British rule is fast transforming what was first a Portuguese, and then a Dutch, settlement into a city where English is universally known and spoken.

It was gratifying to find that the Government College, where the English language alone is used, is opened every day with the reading of Scripture and with prayer. But it was unpleasing to learn that, side by side with these Christian influences, the Ananda[129] College, a theosophical institution, allied to Mrs. Besant of Madras, was exerting an influence unfavorable to Christianity, not only by setting Buddha side by side with Christ, but by urging the claim of Buddha to be the supreme ethical teacher of the world.

Before I tell you of our visit to Buddhist temples, I must speak of the refuge from them which we found at Nurwara Eliya, sixty-two hundred feet above the sea. Colombo is only six degrees north of the equator. Here in January the sun casts hardly any shadow at noon, and the middle of the day is hot. Later in the year the heat is intense, day and night. So British officials combine with the rich of every tongue, and even with the missionaries, to make their summer quarters high up among the hills. We were transported thither on a narrow-gage railway, cut into the sides of precipices, running through tunnels, and so tortuous as to form a hundred horseshoe loops. The road seemed almost a miracle of engineering. But the views were beautiful beyond description. It was Switzerland without its ruggedness. It was Italy on the southern side of the Alps, as "Philip van Artevelde" best describes it:

Sublime, but neither bleak nor bare
Nor misty, are the mountains there;
Softly sublime, profusely fair;
Up to their summits clothed in green,
And fruitful as the vales between,
They lightly rise
And scale the skies,
And groves and gardens still abound,
For where no shoot
Can else take root,
The peaks are shelved and terraced round.

[130]I am inclined to think that, of all the beautiful railway rides I have ever taken, this was the finest. From the rice-fields of the plains we passed upward through endless tea-plantations, where every inch of soil was preserved and utilized by the construction of artificial terraces. In the midst of these plantations, rubber trees were set at intervals. There were many instances when we looked down from our airy perch, on the edge of a precipice, at least a thousand feet, and saw ourselves on the side of a veritable amphitheater of mountains towering a thousand feet above us and covered with rows of tea-plants from the bottom to the top. This amphitheater was often two miles across, every foot of the ground minutely cultivated and a perfect sea of verdure. But, as we went up, the palm gave place to the pine; cold succeeded to heat; and to be at all comfortable at our hotel we were obliged to order fire in our rooms.

Beautiful for situation as was Nurwara Eliya, we were glad, on account of the January cold, to leave it. And we went to Kandy. I wonder whether our word "candy" is derived from that sweet place. I agree with some celebrated author, whose name I forget, in saying that "Kandy is the loveliest city in the loveliest island in the world." Of late years Kandy has become the resort of tourists, though the present war has greatly diminished their number. A hotel that was accustomed to entertain fifty guests now has only half a dozen. But the beauty of the place abides. An artificial lake, with an island of green in its center and winding among a forest of stately palms, is surrounded by a circlet of hills. On the summit of one[131] of these hills is the Missionary Rest-house, founded and endowed by a wealthy Christian woman for the relief of pilgrims, as was the House Beautiful of Bunyan's story. There we were invited to afternoon-tea, and as I looked upon the fairylike landscape I almost thought the Garden of Eden had come again.

But I could not long be deceived, for at the very foot of this hill was the most famous Buddhist temple of Ceylon. If this is Paradise, it is Paradise Lost. Here Buddha's tooth is worshiped, and here a newly discovered bone of his body is to add sanctity to the temple. We attended the evening worship, which consisted of a torchlight procession of priests, with beating of tom-toms and frenzied dancing of musicians, which would have done credit to the savagery of the Fiji Islands. The temple here has no lofty pagoda. It shows what the original pagoda really was, for this temple has a number of bell-shaped structures resting on the ground. Next, historically, came the elevation of the bell upon a stone platform; and, finally, the lifting of it into the air, resplendent with gilding. Kandy illustrates the humble beginnings of Buddhistic worship, but with later accessories begotten by irrational devotion.

I should mention, however, the only sign of intelligence which I found in this Buddhist temple. It was the library of Pali manuscripts containing the sacred books and stories of Buddha's life and doctrine. Many of these manuscripts were written on palm-leaves and were wrapped in silken coverings. Some had been presented by Siamese and by Burmese kings. Some were ancient. I saw no priest who could read them, and [132]I fancy that the sacred books are really studied only by pundits, whose vocation is that of teaching, and whose personal beliefs may be very different from those of orthodox Buddhism. It was pleasant to find, not far from the Temple of the Tooth, a little church of the English Baptists, which sends out light into all the surrounding darkness. Its pastor is a native Christian, who preaches every Sunday morning in Cingalese and every Sunday evening in English, while his week-days are devoted to the work of conducting an English boys' school.

Kandy is celebrated also for its botanical gardens. Only those of Java compare with them in completeness. The long avenues of palms of different varieties—palmyra, talipot, sago, royal, sealing-wax—and the specimens of bamboo, India rubber, and rain-tree, are unique and wonderful. The rain-tree is so called because the vast spread of its branches and the density of its foliage collect the dew to such an extent as actually to water the ground upon which it drops. Think of viewing in one morning of two hours' length, a score of trees we had hitherto known only in the tales of the tropics: the traveler's tree with its fernlike leaves, the cannon-ball tree, the deadly upas, the nourishing breadfruit, the clove, the cinnamon, the mace or nutmeg, the vanilla, the guava, the cork, the almond, the mulberry, the mango, the sandalwood! There were great screw-pines, lignum-vitae, mahogany, mimosa, magnolia trees; and the tree-fern, the giant creeper, the panama-hat plant, the Peruvian cactus, the papyrus, the pineapple, and a great collection of orchids. Only the sunshine and the moisture of Ceylon could [133]produce such a result. A tree cared for from its first sprouting, and favored by the elements, becomes a wonder of the world. It shows what man may become under the tutelage of God.

Anurajahpura was our last place to visit. Far to the north of Colombo, it is the most important extant specimen of the ruined cities of Ceylon. Before the time of Christ it was the seat of a kingdom that embraced the whole island. Buddhism, after a life-and-death struggle, captured it and erected in it structures for worship, which for grandeur and beauty rivaled those of Burma. Two pagodas, or dagobas, of solid brick, each of them more than two hundred feet high, tower up before one as he enters the town. These structures are covered with verdure, for grasses and shrubs have eaten their way into the mortar on the sides, until the dagobas resemble conical natural hills. It is said that the brick of a single one would suffice to build a wall eight feet high and a foot thick from Edinburgh to London. One of them is being restored, and fifty men are at work upon it, tearing away the vegetation and building anew the outside covering of brick. The dagoba itself is not a temple, for it is solid and has no chamber within; but at its base is a structure, infinitesimal in size as compared with the one that towers above it, and in this structure there is a reclining statue of Buddha seventy feet long. Buddha must have been a giant, for his footprints are four feet long, and his tooth is as large as the tooth of an alligator, and surprisingly like one.

The grounds in the neighborhood of these towering dagobas are strewn with ruins. Sixteen hundred [134]pillars of stone, seven feet high, remain to show the vast foundations of an ancient Buddhist monastery. There is also a temple excavated in the solid rock of the hillside, and adorned with curious carvings of elephants. We made the acquaintance of its high priest under very peculiar circumstances. We met him at a funeral. It was the cremation of one of his priests. On the outskirts of the village a great crowd surrounded a burning pyre. Two or three cords of rough wood had been piled up, with the body of the priest in its center and the bier on which the body had been brought laid upon its top. The fire was blazing upward, and a deafening beating of tom-toms gave sacredness to the obsequies. The awe-stricken followers of Buddha stood at a little distance around, while the flames grew fierce, and the sickening odor of burning flesh entered their nostrils. It was no wonder that they were willing to follow the high priest, when he came to salute me as a minister of religion from the other side of the world. He was eighty-eight years of age. Clothed in his saffron robe and holding with trembling hands his rod of office, he seemed the decaying specimen of a moribund religion. He presented me with an umbrella of yellow silk. It had an ivory handle with the carving of a lotus bud on its end. I could not let him make such a present without some reward, and he seemed grateful for the few rupees which my interpreter wrapped up in his handkerchief. He lifted up his fan and fanned me, as we parted, while he uttered some words of blessing. I could hardly doubt his good will, or fail to hope that some gleams of heavenly light had come to him from Christ, the Light[135] of the world. But Anurajahpura was, like Pagan in Burma, the type of a vanishing religion, and its high priest was, like the Jewish high priest of old, the type of a priesthood sure to pass away, since Christ, the true High Priest, has come.

XIII

JAVA AND BUDDHISM

[139]We have crossed the equator, and the Southern Cross, invisible to northern eyes, seems still to beckon us onward. But we have reached the most distant point of our journey, and henceforth we shall be homeward bound, taking China and Japan as we go. Java is not so hot as we expected. An island like Cuba, six hundred miles long and only two hundred broad, has sea-breezes enough to keep it tolerably cool. Rain falls almost every day, with an average of twelve feet in a year. As the moisture is excessive, all sorts of vegetation are luxuriant. Java is a gem of the ocean, and an emerald gem at that. Life here is as easy as anywhere on earth, and there is a swarming population. While Ceylon, similar in area, has only five millions of inhabitants, Java has thirty-five millions.

Java is the jewel of the Dutch Crown, one of the most fertile and productive islands of the world. Coffee and tea, rice and sugar, salt and spice, tobacco and corn, coal and oil, coconut and rubber, are exported in an aggregate of two hundred millions of our dollars every year, while the aggregate of imports is little more than a hundred and twenty millions. The Dutch have taken a colony whose deficits once frightened the English into abandoning it, and by the famous "culture system" of letting out the land upon[140] wise conditions as to the kind and quantity of production, have turned the whole island into a veritable garden, and a principal source of revenue for Holland. The Dutch indeed have drawn from Java much more than they have given. The Roman Empire should have taught them that incorporation of a colony, and privilege granted to it, were the only security for permanent possession. Until ten years ago, however, the Dutch policy was one of repression rather than one of development. While Britain has tried by her schools and hospitals to Anglicize India, Holland, for many years, tried to keep the Javanese apart and in subjection, discouraging their study of the Dutch language and giving them also no share in the government. This policy has at last been seen to be suicidal; Chinese immigration has added an element of vigor, industry, and discontent; the modern movement in India and in Japan has provoked new aspirations here; even the Malay has become aware that he has rights. Dutch schools have at last begun to educate the people; the more progressive among the students are also learning English; and Java now bids fair to press forward to occupy a position in the van of national and democratic progress.

I am deeply impressed with the density and vastness of this population. Only Belgium surpasses Java in the number of inhabitants to the square mile. We have taken a ride by rail for four hundred miles through the center of the island. We have passed volcanoes actually smoking; for a long range of mountains, rising sometimes to a height of twelve thousand feet, constitutes the back-bone of Java. There are sublime and[141] beautiful landscapes all along the way, sublime because of their occasionally rocky grandeur, and beautiful because of the minute cultivation that adorns both hillside and plain. The endless rice-fields, and the fields of sugar-cane that stretch for miles like a billowy sea, make a railway journey by day a constant source of delight. You ride in a perennial garden, and it is perfectly natural that the bird of paradise should have its habitat here. Like Ceylon, Java is sure to be the resort of innumerable tourists, for here are wonders beyond any to be found in localities more commonly visited.

And yet it is the people that interest one even more than the land they live in. We turned aside at different points, from the stations of the railways, and got glimpses of the Javanese in their country homes. I am bound to say that these homes were often primitive in the extreme, mere shacks or huts of bamboo and thatch, often without windows and with only a door in front and a door behind, sometimes standing in a pool of shallow water or lifted on stilts to escape the rain. But everybody seemed to be at work, except on market-days, when the whole population of a district gathered in a country fair. The throng and press of these trading-days, the strife and din, the variety of wares, and the sharpness of competition, were something new to us and long to be remembered. The amusements of the Javanese, their music, their shadow-dances, all show a vigor and passion, which explain their occasional use of the "kriss" or Malay dagger, and the difficulty of subduing and civilizing so ardent and imaginative a people. But they are a people [142]sui generis, and sure, when roused and educated, to take their part on the modern stage.

I have intimated that the Dutch Government has seen its past mistakes, and has entered upon a new and more generous policy. Nothing could demonstrate this better than the botanical gardens at Buitenzorg. These are unique in the world, the most complete and the most practical. The gardens at Kandy in Ceylon are more artistically arranged and are more beautiful to the ordinary visitor. But these in Java are more scientific and more helpful to the general development of the country. They include the chemical investigation of agricultural products, as well as the testing of their nutritive value and their tensile strength. Rubber planters are shown proper methods of culture, and also improved methods of preparing the product for market. Seventy different varieties of rice have been discovered and classified; and the tillers of the soil have been shown how they can greatly increase the yield of their acreage. All the great botanical collections of the world communicate their novelties and discoveries to the Java gardens. Here at Buitenzorg there is a school of forestry and another of veterinary science, each of these with practical demonstrations. Trees and plants in the gardens are grouped in scientific classes, the palms by themselves, the pines by themselves. Here the Victoria regia, the royal pond-lily, flourishes in its proper habitat. The avenues of kanari trees, with their lofty overarching vaulting, are grander than any nave of French cathedral. It will be seen at once that the Botanical and Experimental Gardens of Java are of immense service to agriculture and to[143] science throughout the world. We had the great privilege of being personally conducted through them by Dr. K. J. Lovink, Director of the Dutch Department of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce.

I wish I could say as much for the religious prospects of Java as I can say for its economical and political prospects. There is even greater need of change in this regard, for the island has been a very stronghold of Buddhism, as it is now of Mohammedanism. When driven out from India, the Buddhist missionaries came to Java and here found a welcome. Javanese kings erected temples so enormous and so rich in sculpture that, defaced and decayed as they now are, they have no superiors on earth. It was, indeed, the fame of Boro Budor, that most attracted us to Java, and we made a journey of thirteen hours to inspect this renowned ruin.

Imagine a structure upon an eminence from which it is visible for miles, yet walled in on one side by a lofty range of mountains, and on the other side commanding a magnificent view of cultivated plains. Imagine a temple of brick, like the great pyramid of Egypt, more than five hundred feet square, with five broad terraces, the uppermost of which encloses an immense sitting statue of Buddha. The topmost crown of this solid structure rises more than two hundred feet above the ground.

The wonder of Boro Budor is, however, not the vastness of the structure, containing though it does an amount of material five times as great as that of any English cathedral, so much as it is the enormous amount of artistic work that has been expended upon it. Each[144] of these five terraces has sculptured upon its side walls some representation in bas-relief of the legendary incidents of Buddha's existence, not only in the present state, but in his previous states of being. You walk, as it were, through a picture-gallery of the life of Buddha. The bas-reliefs are wrought out with such delicacy as to suggest the influence of Greek art upon the multitude of artists who toiled for years to produce them. The effect, at least, is Grecian; and the number of the plaques is so great that, if they were placed in a continuous row, the line would be three miles long.

Besides these sculptures, the terrace-walls are interrupted at regular intervals by four hundred and thirty-six niches or alcove-chapels, each with its image of Buddha facing the outside world, so that the visitor approaching the temple cannot fail to see one hundred and nine Buddhas, or one-fourth of the total number, looking down upon him. Above these alcove-chapels there are seventy-two small latticed domes, or dagobas, each with its statue of Buddha imprisoned within, as if he were preparing himself, by seclusion and meditation, for the final state in which the great chamber which crowns the structure represents him, I mean the state of passivity and bliss, which has escaped the evils of transmigration and has attained to absorption of personal existence of the impersonal world-force which the Hindu called Brahma.

It is difficult to express the emotions which are roused by such an exhibition of man's religious instinct, enlightened simply by God's revelation of himself in the natural world and in the nature of man. Here is[145] a seeking, but not a finding, a groping in the dark, with only the faint rays of conscience to show man the way. Yet he who is the Light of the World was lighting every man, before his advent in the flesh, and even Buddha was a reformer and an advance upon the Brahmanism of his time. He preached the doctrine of unselfish devotion, but he turned it into error by ignoring man's duty to himself. He made extinction of desire, rather than purification of desire, to be the way to happiness. How different this from that thirst after God, even the living God, which animated the Psalmist, or that hungering and thirsting after righteousness which Christ says shall be filled! Buddha found in self, rather than in God, the power to overcome evil. Buddhism has no personal God to whom appeal may be made for strength, and Buddha himself has no power to answer prayer, since he long ago passed into a realm of inactivity which is practically indistinguishable from non-existence. There is no atonement for past sin nor escape from its consequences, but by the giving up of being. Buddhism is a pessimistic and joyless religion. Hence it suffers deterioration in competition with the more active systems. Close by Boro Budor, where Buddhism reached its culmination, are the temples of Mendoet and Brambanam, which show a reversion in the popular mind to Hindu Brahmanism. And when the Moslem came, with his doctrine of a personal and living God, Buddhism had no force to combat it. Boro Budor, once the center of worship for a mighty kingdom, now stands alone and desolate in a great wilderness, without priest or worshiper. Djokjokarta, the next city in size to Batavia, is[146] to-day more Mohammedan than Buddhist. Christian schools and missions are doing much to turn this moral wilderness into beauty. To convert Java to Christianity will add to Christ's subjects the very Queen of the East.

XIV

THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA

[149]A recent book by Prof. C. F. Andrews, formerly of the Cambridge Brotherhood in Delhi, has arrested my attention, as the best extant synopsis of the religious history and prospects of that great country. It is entitled "The Renaissance in India." It has not yet been reprinted in America, and can be obtained only in the British Isles. I have thought it worth while to make it known among us by writing a review, and the following paper might perhaps serve such a purpose. But, in the writing, so many thoughts and illustrations of my own have suggested themselves, that I cannot credit Professor Andrews with the result, except in part, and I submit my work as my own almost as much as it is his.

Let me first, however, do Professor Andrews the justice of explaining that the Cambridge Brotherhood is a semimonastic fraternity of the Church of England, which aims to convert India to Christianity by indoctrinating its higher classes. All its members are bachelors, and their pure life as well as their learning and liberality are attractive to educated heathen seekers after God. Our author is himself a devout believer in a preexistent Christ, and he recognizes some rays of Christ's light in Buddha and in Confucius. This faith has led him to sever his connection with the Cambridge Brotherhood of late, and to connect himself with the[150] school of Rabindranath Tagore, whom the British Government has recently knighted for his poetical gifts and for his political loyalty. Members of the Brotherhood have thought this leaving of their body a mistake of judgment, and too great a concession to a rival religion, while they still admire the self-devotion which leads their former brother to carry his advocacy of Christianity into what he regards as the most promising school of Hinduism. With this explanation I proceed to the treatment of my subject.

In the fifteenth century the European world was intellectually born again. The barbarian Goths and Vandals had put an end to the Roman Empire, and learning had taken refuge in the monasteries. Even that learning had become ecclesiastical. Precious manuscripts of the Greek classics had their original writing wiped off to make room for monkish homilies. The people were in ignorance and were ruled by the priests. But the Crusades had brought about a new intercourse between the West and the East. The fall of Constantinople sent Greek books and Greek scholars to Venice and to Rome. Greek art inspired Michelangelo and Raphael. A great wave of enthusiasm for the new learning swept over Europe. The printing-press multiplied copies of the old literature and put them in the hands of the poor. It was the precursor of a new civilization, and because it was a new birth of thought, we call it the Renaissance.

The Renaissance, however, needed another factor to complement it. Not merely intellect was sleeping, but also man's moral nature. Conscience and will [151]required new stimulus. Religious reformation was necessary as much as intellectual revival. Greek books brought with them the vice, as well as the art, of the East. Renaissance without Reformation produced the Borgias and their unspeakable wickedness. Erasmus without Luther would never have saved Europe from ruin. It was the new view of Christ that showed men their sins, brought repentance and hope, purified literature, gave power to social truth, and united with the new learning to make possible our modern civilization. It was a triumph of Christianity over the powers of darkness, for Christianity involves both Renaissance and Reformation.

A similar intellectual change has been coming over the Eastern world, and has been awakening the slumbering nations. Who would have foretold a half-century ago that Turkey and Persia, Japan and China, would now have constitutional governments and legislative assemblies? The world has moved very fast during the past decade. Modern inventions have given new wings to thought, the nations have been coming to self-consciousness, freedom is in the air, even war is teaching the absurdity of committing the destiny of a whole people to the arbitrary rule of any single monarch. The success of Japan in her struggle with Russia aroused the whole East. China has awaked from the sleep of ages. And India is the scene of unrest, and will not be satisfied until her vast populations are given a larger share in her government.

India has witnessed the beginnings of her renaissance. The universities which her rulers have established have diffused the new learning. But they have[152] also raised up a host of educated men, some of whom can find no employment except in sedition. False philosophies, imported from the West, have made these same men agnostic, and have disposed them to put evolution in place of God. Old religions have lost even their little power to control the moral life, and a vague desire for independence of all restraint has led to revolutionary and even anarchistic plots. We have some of the same dangers in our Southern States. The negro is in many cases receiving a higher education than he can utilize, and is becoming a possible leader of revolt, while there is a vast inflammable multitude of uneducated negroes whom he can incite to violence and disorder. As with us, Christianity is needed side by side with education, so in India to-day, intellectual renaissance needs to be supplemented by religious reformation.

A glance at the history of India's religious systems will help our understanding of the problem. The earliest record is that of the Rig-Veda. It is a recognition of the powers of nature, and an exaltation of them to divine honor and worship. The apostle Paul gives us the further explanation that this deification of God's works was the result of a previous unwillingness to retain the personal God in their knowledge. To worship God's manifestations is to lose the sense of his unity and his moral governance. Men preferred the sun in the heavens to the Sun of Righteousness. They lost sight of the true God in self-chosen admiration of his works. "While the Semitic mind gravitated toward the ethical and the personal, the Aryan gravitated toward the philosophic and the impersonal."

[153]The Upanishads are the second series of Hindu scriptures. These practically identify the human soul, as well as all natural objects, with the supreme God. The self is only a manifestation of Brahma. The trend is toward absolute pantheism. The individual is lost in the whole, and the realization of this is salvation. But humanity cannot be content without the semblance of personality in God, and since everything has become divine, it was easy to regard not only natural powers, but also personal beings as gods. Polytheism was the result. Vishnu and Siva, gods of reproductive and destructive powers, came to be worshiped. Incarnation and transmigration followed. The incarnation was not the incarnation of the supreme Brahma, but of one of the subordinate deities, Vishnu, and even this incarnation was but a temporary assumption of human form—a vanishing manifestation, to be put off again like a worn-out garment when the real god returned to his heaven. The Hindu Trimurti was never the Christian Trinity; for Christ is not only the supreme God manifest in the flesh, but also the eternal Revealer of God, who takes our humanity to be a part of himself forever, the partaker of his inmost being and the sharer of his throne.

While we credit Hinduism with the idea of incarnation, we regard it as only showing this to be a necessity of human thought, and as far from satisfying man's longings for union with God. Gautama Buddha, passionless and lost in the contemplation of his own excellence, is not the Christian Redeemer, who daily bears our burdens and takes upon himself, in order that he may take away, the sin of the world. And[154] what shall we say of the other deities of the Hindu pantheon, but that they are personifications of every human caprice and vice. The Krishna of the Puranas has infected all India with his licentiousness, and has given sanction to the worst forms of lust.

The growth of caste was another result of the loss of a personal and moral God and the deification of his works. Since all things came to be regarded as manifestations of deity, the order of society and its distinctions became fixed. The origin of caste is to be found in the superiority of the Aryan conqueror to the Dravidian aborigines. The people of light complexion looked down on the dark-skinned race, and drove them to the wall. Intermarriage between the two classes of the population became abhorrent to the ruling class, and all manner of restrictions were put upon their intercourse, till even the shadow of the outcaste falling upon the Brahman brought contamination. Let us not blame the Aryan too hastily, for in South Africa and in our own Southern States we see the same denial that God has made of one blood all the races of men, and the same exclusion of the darker race from all privileges of human brotherhood. Slave-owners were shocked when Abraham Lincoln lifted his hat to salute a negro, and Southern men protested when President Roosevelt entertained Booker Washington at his table. Christian proclamation of human brotherhood constitutes one of the chief obstacles to the success of the gospel in India.

The low place of woman and her lack of education is another obstacle which must be removed if India is to profit by the renaissance of learning. This undervaluing[155] of the physically weak is itself a fruit of man's apostasy from God. And as Brahmanism set its stamp of approval upon distinctions of caste and fixed them for centuries, so it was with woman's position and influence. She was condemned to inferiority. She became a mere instrument of man's pleasure, or a mere drudge in his household. She never sat with him at his meals, but ate what was left after he had been served; she never walked by his side, but always followed behind, when she was not shut up in the zenana at home. One of the best signs of a new civilization in India is the growing conviction among the higher classes that woman must be educated, if her children are to emerge from their superstitions and become of use in the modern world. The suttee has been abolished by law, but child-widowhood yet remains to curse the lives of millions. There is no better proof that Christianity is permeating society with its influence than is found in the increasing number of girls who are seeking education in our mission schools and colleges. Pundita Ramabai has become a glory to her own countrymen, as much as has Rabindranath Tagore by his utterance, "The regeneration of the Indian people to my mind, directly and perhaps solely, depends upon the removal of this condition of caste." We may add that the dominion of caste and the degradation of woman will come to an end together, and nothing but Christianity will abolish them.

The renaissance of learning is not enough. A new spirit of love is needed to solve the problems of India. For there is no country of the world where racial antagonisms are so felt. Entirely apart from the distinctions[156] of caste, which are racial in their origin, there is the distinction of Hindu from Mohammedan, which has its origin in religion. Remember that, of India's population, sixty-five millions are Moslems, while one hundred and eighty millions are Hindus. The Hindu men of caste cannot help paying some respect to the Mohammedans, for they are compelled to acknowledge their financial and executive power, just as they acknowledge, without admiring, the power of their British rulers. They cannot treat Moslems as outcastes, but they will not associate with them; and they cherish a settled antipathy to them. All this the Mohammedans heartily reciprocate. English policy has in times past cultivated this mutual dislike, lest union between the two religious sects should lead to the formation of a party too strong for British rule to keep in subjection. One religion has been used to defeat the influence of the other. Of late years only has it been true that both have been forced to recognize the impartial justice of British rule; and this recognition has been gained by the gradual admission of able men from both parties to many important judicial and administrative positions in the Indian government. But the antagonism of religions still remains, and it constitutes a most serious bar in the way of a united India.

There are signs of an approaching reformation in India which will supplement its intellectual renaissance. Just as the growing power of Christianity in the second and third centuries of our era was shown by the competition of new and imitative religions like that of Mithra, and by spasmodic attempts on the part of the[157] old heathenism to interpret its mythology symbolically and to reform its moral practice; just as the growing power of the gospel in the fifteenth century led the Roman Church to slough off some of its abuses and to tolerate among its adherents reformers before the Reformation; so in India the new learning from the West and the missionary proclamation of the gospel have brought about a state of religious unrest which could only be allayed by efforts on the part of Hindus and Moslems alike to interpret their faiths more rationally and to prove that these faiths were equal if not superior to Christianity itself. The Brahmo-Somaj, which Ram Mohun Roy founded at the end of the eighteenth century, largely as a result of his horror at the murder of his sister by suttee, has led to the abolition of that cruelty. Ram Mohun Roy sought to purge Hinduism of its corruptions by appealing to its earlier and purer scriptures. He was the first to establish a vernacular press in India, and, with Alexander Duff, the first English schools. Though he did not formally profess Christianity, he studied our Christian Scriptures, acknowledged their value and influence, and published a book entitled "The Precepts of Jesus."

Another Hindu who exerted great influence during the half-century just passed was Keshub Chunder Sen. He passionately adored Christ as his true Master. Yet he was practically Unitarian, and his later years belied the promise of his brilliant beginnings. Though a member of the Brahmo-Somaj, he split the body in two by his violation of its prohibition of child-marriage, and wasted his strength in attempts to combine Western rationalism with the ecstatic fervors of the[158] East. As the result, the Brahmo-Somaj has declined, until in numbers and influence it has now hardly more than five thousand adherents in all India. Mozumdar was one of its representatives who sought to give Oriental interpretation of Jesus, but one without ethical or saving power. The Arya-Samaj is a more consistent effort to reform Hindu religion by bringing it back to the purer standards of the Vedas. Swami Dayanand was the founder of the society. He was led to renounce idolatry by seeing a mouse eat food offered to an idol and run without hindrance over the idol's robes and hands. Of all the reforming bodies, the Arya-Samaj most retains the confidence of the masses in the north of India. But its tenets are not acceptable to the educated classes of the south, and it needs a further infusion of both science and religion.

Thus far we have treated only of Hindu progress. A word must be said of progress among the Moslem population of India. Here the Aligarh Movement demands attention. Sir Seyd Ahmad Khan was its leader. He was of noble family, entered the English service, and took part with the British in crushing the mutiny of 1857. When the Mohammedan population afterward fell under suspicion, he gathered round him a company of liberal young men and sought by educational means to bridge the gulf between Moslem and English. He claimed that British rule in India represented Christian civilization, and that this is no enemy to Islam, but only its complement and helper. He saw that only religion could heal the breach and rescue Islam from decline. He founded the Aligarh College in Delhi, and devoted himself to the cultivation of[159] friendliness, not only between Moslem and English, but also between Moslem and Hindu. This college is one of the strongest educational forces in North India.

Returning to Hindu progress, we mark the work of such men as the Swami Vivekananda. It will be remembered that he represented India at our Chicago Parliament of Religions, where Joseph Cook challenged the priests of the Orient to answer Lady Macbeth's question, "Who shall cleanse this red right hand?" Vivekananda sought to blend Christian philanthropy with the Vedantic philosophy. Identity with the Supreme is to be attained, not only by passive contemplation, but also by active unselfish service. But this truth was mixed with strange interpretations of Scripture. Jesus' declaration, "I and my Father are one," was made to mean, "Every man and woman is God." And Vivekananda was quite willing himself to be worshiped. His fundamental error, indeed, was his lack of the sense of sin. He said to his audience in Chicago: "The Hindus refuse to call you sinners. Ye divinities on earth, sinners? It is a sin to call a man so. It is a standing libel on human nature." Yet, in spite of this deification of self and of all humanity, he did much to inspire pity for the poor, to awaken India to self-consciousness, and to give hope of national unity.

We must not ignore the work of The Theosophical Society, though it has made a name for itself more in Europe and America than in India. While it has done something to encourage education and to teach modern science, it has used the knowledge thus given as an instrument in defending superstition. The immoralities of Krishna are discussed and palliated in Mrs. Besant's[160] Magazine for the instruction of young students. Charms, incantations, astrology, idolatry, caste, are all woven into the system, for the sake of propitiating the Indian mind, so that its influence is hostile to Christianity and to missions. Idols are to be worshiped because they are "centers of magnetism." In England Mrs. Besant predicts a second advent of Christ. But in India this becomes a new avatar of Krishna. In spite of her stout denunciation of child-marriages and her inculcation of modern science, her propaganda has not been so much a reform of Indian religion, as it has been a hindrance to reform. Hindu devotees indeed have eulogized her for what they call her successful opposition to the proselyting efforts of Christian missionaries.

And yet, even the Theosophical Society, with all its absurdities of levitation and the astral body, has been compelled to bear some witness to Jesus Christ. He is "the light that lighteth every man," and he has given even to this system some elements of truth. We do not hesitate to recognize the truth that Buddha and Confucius, taught, and to regard it as a ray of Christ's light shed forth before the rising of the sun. And it is our privilege to conclude our list of Hindu reformers with the name of Justice Renade, who recognized in Christ the source of all former revelations of God.

Justice Renade, in his social reform movement of the last fifty years, has carried the spirit of philanthropy into practice, more fully than did Vivekananda or Mrs. Besant, and without any of their fantastic self-exaltation. Renade recognized the elements of truth in both the Hindu and Moslem systems, and he saw in [161]Christianity the influence destined to unite them. He would not throw away the old, but he would utilize it while he added the new. And with this acknowledgment that "he who is not against us is on our side," we may well close our sketch of reformers before the reformation. We sum up the lessons of history when we recognize in Hinduism the two great ideas of divine immanence and incarnation, in Mohammedanism the two equally essential truths of divine transcendence and personality. And we see the absolute dependence of India upon Christianity for its true Reformation. India needs the missionary more than she needs the schoolmaster. Let us pray that she may have a religious revival that shall turn the intellectual awakening into moral channels. That religious revival will furnish a center of unity in Christ, the one and only Revealer of God; not in a Hindu philosophy, nor in a Moslem Koran, but in a living Person, present with all his people, the soul of their soul and the life, and imparting to them his own Spirit of love and brotherhood. In Christ alone can India's renaissance become a complete reformation.

XV

MISSIONS AND SCRIPTURE

[165]The world of scholars has recently been startled by the pretended discovery that the "Great Commission," "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations," is not an utterance of Jesus himself, but only one attributed to him by some enthusiastic follower of his in a later time. This pretended discovery is on a par with the earlier one that there never was such a person as Jesus at all, but that his personality is simply a myth that gradually grew up in the minds of some Jewish fanatics who sought a fulfilment of Messianic prophecy. We might treat these perverse and subversive conclusions as only curious instances of a wrong method of criticism. But they filter down from the scholars to the masses of Christian believers and weaken their faith. It becomes a duty to deal with the method which leads to such results, and threatens to destroy all our missionary zeal. Hence I proceed to test the value of the method itself, even though it is commonly called "the historical method" by those who adopt it. If we can bear a somewhat roundabout way of treating the subject, we shall gain a new and valuable light upon our missionary theory and practice.

To prevent misunderstanding, however, I must premise that it is the historical method as frequently employed, and not the historical method as it ought to[166] be, to which I offer my objections. My criticism is directed against the historical method, only when it assumes to be the exclusive means of attaining truth, follows the methods of physical science, and ignores the far more important material for religious use which is furnished by intuition and revelation. The phrase "historical method" has come to imply much that does not properly belong to it. I criticize only its frequent exclusiveness and exaggeration. And I do this, as I think, in the interest of true science.

There are two methods of reasoning possible, in this case or in any other case, and there are only two—I mean the deductive, and the inductive. I make no mention of argument from analogy, for that proceeds upon a deductive basis, presuming that there is a designed order in the world which makes analogy possible. The deductive method argues from the universal to the particular, from the higher to the lower, from God to man. The inductive method, on the other hand, argues from the particular to the universal, from the lower to the higher, from man to God. Both of these methods are correct when each is taken in connection with the other. Much depends, however, upon the question which is taken first. Shall we begin with the particular, leaving out for the time all thought of the universal? There is danger that induction will come to be regarded as itself sufficient to lead us into the truth. This is a serious error, for correct induction presupposes deduction, and therefore deduction should be the guiding principle and safeguard of induction. If this is forgotten, induction may go fearfully astray.

[167]To make my meaning still more plain, let me say that in our investigations we need a comprehensive method, a method that will look at facts from more than one point of view. A truly historical method will look at facts from above, as well as from each side, and so the deductive process may be popularly described as vertical. The historical method falsely so called errs in confining its view to what can be seen immediately around it, and so its process is exclusively horizontal. Deduction begins vertically, and makes that which comes from above to be its guide and standard in all inductive work. Induction begins horizontally, and tends to become self-sufficient, until all light from above seems untrustworthy and useless. For example, take the study of nature. If one begins, inductively and horizontally, with mere physical and material order, instead of beginning, deductively and vertically, with man's higher powers of conscience and will, he will end by finding only impersonal force in the universe, and by practically deifying it, as the Hindus deified Brahma. Begin rightly, and, with due care in the application of the deductive principle, he will come to right conclusions. There are certain truths which cannot be reached by induction. They are known by intuition, long before induction begins. The most fundamental of these truths is the truth of God's existence. A Power above us, which has moral perfection, and which claims our obedience, is revealed to every man by conscience. Begin with this knowledge, and to the obedient spirit the physical world seems ablaze with evidences of wisdom and love; the regularities of nature are recognized as God's methods[168] of ordinary operation; evolution is only his usual plan of growth and progress; in other words, God's transcendence is manifest as well as his immanence, his personality as well as his revelation in the forces of the universe.

Man is a theist, before he becomes a Christian. Theism is a universal intuition, ready to assert itself in practice wherever it is not prevented by an evil will from its normal manifestation. But, because man is in an abnormal condition, this normal action of his powers can be restored only by the Holy Spirit. "When he is come," says our Lord, "he will convince the world of sin, because they believe not on me," and "of righteousness, because I go unto the Father." Only when the prodigal repented, did he "come to himself," and begin to act normally. Under the influence of the Spirit, God's holiness reveals to man his sin, and God's love leads him to the feet of Jesus. This is the first step in Christian experience. To put my doctrine unmistakably and in a nutshell, deduction from the existence of God normally precedes and insures the acceptance of Christ. The sinner comes to have personal knowledge of One who has atoned, and therefore can forgive. But to him who has accepted Christ, his Lord is more than a historical Redeemer, he is a present Saviour from both the penalty and the power of sin. Without this personal knowledge of Christ, we might think of him as only one of many human examples or teachers, like Confucius or Buddha. Now, he is nothing less than God manifest in the flesh, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, whom having seen we have seen the Father.

[169]But there is a second step in Christian experience, which I wish also to describe in a nutshell and to define as unmistakably as I described and defined the first. I claim that deduction from the existence of Christ normally precedes and insures the acceptance of Scripture. Our Lord himself has said, "My sheep hear my voice." The Christian recognizes in Scripture the voice of Christ. No change in his experience is more marked and wonderful than the change in his estimate of the Bible. A little time ago, Scripture was commonplace and unmeaning. Now it speaks to him with a living voice such words of instruction and comfort, of warning and promise, that his soul is filled alternately with sorrow and with joy. He wonders that he never saw these things before. He perceives for the first time that he has been in an abnormal condition of mind, and that condition has been due to his own perversity of will. But now the prodigal has "come to himself." Only the Holy Spirit could have made possible this new and normal exercise of his powers. The change is not in the Scripture, it is in himself. He has come in contact with a word of God that "liveth and abideth." He sees in it the divine workmanship. He can no longer regard Scripture as merely the work of man; it is also the work of the same Spirit who has transformed him, namely, the eternal Christ. Christ is the author and inspirer of Scripture, even though imperfect human agents have been employed to communicate his revelation. In spite of the rudeness and diversity of the instruments, there breathes through them all a certain divine melody and harmony. While the inductive and horizontal[170] method would give us only finite and earthly truth, the deductive and vertical can give us truth that is infinite and eternal. The indispensable condition of success in the interpretation of Scripture is therefore a hearty belief that the Bible is Christ's revelation of God, and not merely a series of gropings after truth on the part of men. Deduction will give us truth from above, whereas induction will give us only scattered facts on the horizontal plane.

I am convinced that the so-called "historical method" of Scripture interpretation, as it is usually employed, fails to secure correct results, because it proceeds wholly by induction, leaving out of its account the knowledge of Christ which comes to the Christian in his personal experience. I do not regard such a "historical method" as really historical; I deny that it discovers the original meaning of the documents; I claim that, when made the sole avenue of approach to truth, it leads to false views of doctrine. It assumes at the outset that what rules in the realm of physics rules also in the moral and religious realm. But the Christian has learned that Christ is the supreme source of truth. By a process of either conscious or unconscious deduction he recognizes in Scripture the utterance of Christ. He must begin his investigations with one of two assumptions: Is the Bible only man's word? or, Is it also Christ's word? Is it a mere product of human intelligence? or, Is it also the product of a divine intelligence, who indeed uses human and imperfect means of communication, but who nevertheless at sundry times and in divers manners has brought to the world the knowledge of salvation?

[171]I claim that we should begin by assuming that the Bible is a revelation of Christ. This assertion is justified, as I have already intimated, by our Christian experience. That experience has given us a knowledge of the heart, more valuable in religious things than any mere knowledge of the intellect. Doctor Tholuck, in an address to his students at his fiftieth anniversary, said that God's greatest gift to him had been the knowledge of sin. Without that conviction of sin which the Spirit of Christ can work in the human heart, there can be no proper understanding of Scripture, for Scripture is a revelation to sinners. The opening of the heart to receive Christ, and the new sense of his pardoning grace and power, give to the converted man the key to the interpretation of Scripture, for "the mystery of the gospel," the central secret of Christianity, is "Christ in you, the hope of glory." He whom the Holy Spirit has first led to the knowledge of sin, and has then led to the acceptance of Christ, is prepared to enter into the meaning of Scripture, and no other man can understand it.

This was the way in which Paul came to understand Scripture. It was not by criticism of the documents, but by receiving Christ, that "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" entered into his soul. He knew himself to be the chief of sinners. He knew Christ as his manifested God and Saviour. He applied to Christ all that the Old Testament had revealed with regard to the dealings of God with his chosen people. The light that shone upon him on the way to Damascus was the Shekinah that led Israel in the pillar of cloud by day and[172] of fire by night, that dwelt over the mercy-seat in the tabernacle and in the temple, and that thundered and lightened from Sinai in the giving of the Law. "The Rock that followed them" in the wilderness, and gave water to the thirsty, "that Rock was Christ." And so Paul came to know Jesus Christ as preexistent and omnipresent, as Redeemer of the whole world, Gentile as well as Jew; and Christ's Cross became the embodiment and symbol of God's amazing sorrow for human sin, and of his sacrifice for its cure. All Paul's later conclusions were developments and expressions of his initial knowledge of Christ. It was a deductive and not an inductive process, by which he arrived at his theology.

Lest any Christian should say that the deductive method is impracticable to him, for the reason that he has had no such revelation of Christ to start from as that which was given to Paul, Scripture reports to us the very different experience of another apostle. I refer to Peter. Peter shows us how, by this same deductive method, an experience which at its beginning is very small, may in the end become very great. Peter goes to the banks of Jordan, a sinner, seeking pardon for his sin. John the Baptist points him to Jesus, "Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world." Peter knows nothing of Jesus' deity, nor of his atonement. But, by an instinct which is the best of logic, he is drawn to Jesus, as the one who can satisfy his needs. He becomes a Christian, that is, a follower of Jesus. His experience is a sort of caterpillar; it can creep, but it cannot soar. Yet all the elements of growth are in it.[173] Peter begins to analyze it. What right has he to surrender himself, body and soul, to a man like himself? The answer is: Jesus is more than man. At Cæsarea Philippi, Peter cries, "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God." On the day of Pentecost, he preaches Christ as the Saviour exalted to God's right hand. And finally, in his Epistles, he declares the preexistence of Christ, and the fact of Christ's utterances through the prophets as far back in time as the days of Noah. If our higher critics only adopted Peter's method, analyzed their own experience, following on to know their Lord and meantime willing to do his will, they too, like Peter, in spite of small beginnings, would learn of Jesus' doctrine, would emerge from the caterpillar state, would be soaring instead of creeping, and would end by gladly confessing that he who met them on the way in their first experience was none other than the omnipresent Christ, whom Paul describes as God manifest in the flesh, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. They would also learn, with Peter, that Scripture is the work and word of the preexistent Christ.

Because this experience of sin and of Christ is knowledge, it is material for science, for science is only unified knowledge. I do not deny that it is knowledge peculiar to the Christian. The princes of physics and literature and government have not known it. It is not the wisdom of this world, but it is better, even the very wisdom of God. I glory in Christian theology, as the science that will last, when all systems of merely physical science have passed away. For the man who has been saved by Christ has knowledge of[174] him who is Creator, Upholder, and Life of all. I do not hesitate to say that the only safe interpreter of physical nature is the true Christian, for it is Christ "in whom all things consist." The true Christian is the only safe interpreter of history, for it is Christ who "upholds all things by the word of his power." And so, the true Christian is the only safe interpreter of Scripture, for it is Christ whose Spirit in the prophets "testified beforehand of his sufferings, and of the glories that should follow them." In him who is the Lord of all "are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden." Only when one is joined to Christ, can he understand the evolutionary process through which Christ has led the human race, or understand the Bible which constitutes the historical record of that process. With the Psalmist we may say, "In thy light shall we see light."

As Christ is the central object of knowledge in Christian experience, it follows that Christians recognize him as the primary author of Scripture. They find him speaking to them in the Bible, as in no other book. It becomes to them the word of God, given by divine inspiration, and able to make them wise unto salvation. From the deity and supremacy of Christ they proceed to faith in the unity, the sufficiency, and the authority of Scripture, and this determines their method of investigation. From the person of Christ to the word of Christ is a process often unconscious, but one better than any process of formal logic. Knowing their divine Saviour, they know the divinity of his word. His presence in human history and in the hearts of the righteous has given unity to his continuous[175] revelation. The Scripture "cannot be broken," or interpreted as a promiscuous congeries of separate bits; for a divine intelligence and life throb through the whole collection. Like railway coupons, its texts are "not good if detached." We must interpret each text by its context, each part by the whole, the preparation of salvation by the fulfilment, and all the diverse contents by him who weaves all together, even Christ, the end of the law, to whom all the preliminaries point. This method gives room for the most thorough investigation of the times and ways of revelation, for recognizing the imperfection of beginnings and the variety of the product. The Bible is a gradually accumulated literature, Hebraic in form, but universal in spirit. The preexistent Christ has made all this literature one, by the influence in the sacred writers of his omnipresent Spirit. If the "historical method" would begin with this postulate of a unifying Christ, its method would be more safe and its results more sure.

Faith in an eternal and omnipresent Christ guarantees also the sufficiency of Scripture. Here, however, there is an obvious limitation. Scripture is not sufficient for all the kinds and purposes of human science. It will not tell us the configuration of the hinder side of the moon, nor reveal the future uses of electricity. It is not with such things that Scripture deals. But in religious matters, such as our relation to God and salvation, it is sufficient as a rule of faith and practice. We may find in it all needful models and helps in the divine life, as well as all needful directions about the way to begin it. The church of Christ has always[176] found in the Bible a safe guide for her polity and conduct, and civil government has prospered when the principles of Scripture were followed by the powers that ruled the State. Because the Christian believes the Bible to be the product of men inspired by Christ, he can send it out by the million copies as equal to the moral and spiritual needs of the world.

And because Christ is, through his imperfect agents, the real author of Scripture, we believe in its absolute authority. When rightly interpreted, however. It will never do to treat poetry as if it were prose, or drama as if it were history, or allegory as if it were fact. Christ can use, and he has used, all the common methods of literary composition, and he expects us to use common sense in dealing with them. But out of the whole can be evolved a consistent doctrine and an authoritative law. The one and only way of salvation is plainly that of faith in God's provision of pardon and life in Christ. In spite of many divergences, the great body of Christians throughout the ages have agreed in their recognition of the personality and the deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; of the incarnation and the atonement of Christ; of his resurrection and his lordship; of his omnipresence with his people even to the end of the world. They have expressed this agreement in the Apostles' Creed and in the hymnology of the church. But the great body of instructed Christians also believe in Christ as the Revealer of God in nature and in history; as "the Light that lighteth every man" in conscience and tradition; and as the righteous Judge who accepts in every nation those who fear God and[177] work righteousness, casting themselves as sinners upon the divine mercy even though they do not yet know that this divine mercy is only another name for Christ. The Bible, as a whole and when rightly interpreted, is absolute authority, because it is the word of Christ; and Christ holds each of us, as individuals, to the duty and the privilege of interpreting the Bible for himself.

It seems to me plain that this method of interpreting Scripture in the light of the Christian's experience of Christ, is not "the historical method," as it is usually employed. This latter method seems to ignore the relation of Scripture to Christ, and to proceed in its investigations as if there were no preexistent Christ to furnish its principle. It insists upon treating Scripture as it would treat any unreligious or heathen literature, and with no relation to its divine authorship. It sees in Scripture only a promiscuous collection of disjointed documents, with no living tie to bind them together, and no significance beyond that of the time in which they were written. It would treat the Bible as a man-made book, or rather, as a man-made series of books, regardless of the fact that the plural "biblia," which once represented the thought of the church, has, under the influence of the divine Spirit, become "biblion" or Bible, a singular, and a proof that Christian consciousness has not been satisfied with rationalistic explanations, but has followed its natural impulses by attributing unity to the word of Christ its Saviour. The separate "words" have been felt to constitute the one "word of God," an organic whole, which fitly represents the eternal "Word," of whom it is the voice and expression. Scripture is[178] not a congeries of earth-born fragments, but an organism, pulsating with divine life. The "historical method" of which I speak can never find that life, because it works only on the physical and horizontal plane, ignoring the light which comes deductively from above, and also the darkening and blinding influences which often operate unconsciously from below.

XVI

SCRIPTURE AND MISSIONS

[181]The "historical method" of Scripture interpretation, as it is often employed, ends without Christ, because it begins without him. One of its fundamental principles is that each passage of Scripture is to be interpreted solely in the light of the knowledge and intent of the person who wrote it. The One Hundred and Tenth Psalm, for example, can have no reference to Christ, because the writer knew no other than the Jewish king whose accession and whose power he anticipates. The Psalm reads, "Jehovah said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool." The so-called historical critics would make any interpretation of this passage as a designed prophecy of Christ to be an unwarranted accommodation of it to a meaning which it did not originally bear, and the conclusion is that we are wrong in citing these words as an Old Testament assertion of Christ's deity. But, unfortunately for this method of interpretation, we have, in the Gospels of Matthew and of Mark, our Lord's own reference of this passage, not simply to some Jewish ruler of olden time, but to the coming Messiah, and since he was himself the Messiah, he refers it by implication to himself. He does not deny, but rather grants, a primary reference of the psalm to a son of David, for David was a king, and his son would be a king. But he also sees in the psalm a prophecy that this son of David would[182] be a king whom David would call Lord. His searching examination propounds to the unbelieving Jews the question, "What think ye of the Christ? whose son is he?" And they say, "The Son of David." He answers them by asking, "How then doth David, in the Spirit, call him Lord?" In other words, inspiration declares Messiah to be a King of kings, and a Lord of lords. Since the whole discussion is one with regard to the nature and claims of the Messiah, and since the Messiah is not a mere man like David, but is seated on the throne with Jehovah and is David's Lord, Christ's answer is an assertion of his own deity. His answer antedates, even if it did not suggest, Paul's later description of Christ, as "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." But the higher critics differ in opinion from the Lord Jesus. They extricate themselves from their difficulty by suggesting that Jesus, like other men, was subject to the errors of his time. And so, not only Christ's knowledge of Scripture and his authority as its interpreter are denied, but also his knowledge of his own nature and place in the universe. If his knowledge of things so essential be denied, what trust can we place in any other of his utterances? To those who reason in this way, Christ cannot possibly be divine—he is only a fallible man, self-deceived, and so, deceiving others. The fault of the critics lies in their presupposition. They have begun wrongly, by leaving out the primary fact in the subject they investigate, namely, that the preincarnate Christ was the author and inspirer of the Scripture which he afterward interpreted. He used[183] human agents, with their natural language and surroundings, as his instruments, but he could, on the way to Emmaus, "beginning from Moses and all the prophets," interpret to those humble believers "in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." Scripture can have, and it does have, two authors, man and God, the writer and Christ; and to ignore Christ in the evolution of the Bible is to miss its chief meaning, to teach falsehood instead of truth, and, consciously or unconsciously, to deny Christ's deity.

Cannot a document have more than one author? What are the facts in other realms of art? In painting, did not Landseer get Millais to paint the human figure into the picture of his dogs? In literature, is there any more acknowledged fact than that Erckmann-Chatrian's battle-stories were the work of two writers, and not of one? The work of a single author may have two separate meanings, for Dante declares that his Divine Comedy has one meaning that is personal, and another meaning that is universal. Our extreme critics are as poor students of literature as they are of life. Their narrowness of interpretation is due to a narrowness of experience. If they knew Christ better, they would find in the Twenty-third Psalm alone enough proof to upset their theory. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," is an utterance inexplicable by merely human authorship. To suppose that even a king of Israel who had been a shepherd-boy could have written this psalm without divine inspiration, in a day when all lands but little Palestine were wrapt in a pall of heathen darkness, is to suppose that religion can exist and flourish without a God.

[184]"The testimony of Jesus," says the book of Revelation, "is the spirit of prophecy." It was the recognition of constant references to Christ in the Old Testament, that enabled the apostles to convince and convert the unbelieving Jews. The absence of this recognition is the secret of all the minimizing of Christ's attributes which is so rife in our day. Do men believe in Christ's deity who ignore his promise to be with them to the end of the world, and who refuse to address him in prayer? Could one of these modern interpreters have taken the place of Philip, when he met the Ethiopian eunuch? That dignitary had been reading the prophecy of Isaiah, "He was led as a lamb to the slaughter." "Of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other?" "And Philip opened his mouth, and preached unto him Jesus." Our modern critics call this an unwarranted interpretation, because Isaiah had no knowledge of Christ. And yet, John tells us that "Isaiah saw his glory, and spake of him." The critics contradict John again, when they say that we must put no meaning into Isaiah's words but that of his own time. His great prophecy of a suffering Messiah, they say, had reference only to Jehoiachin, the captive king of Judah, or to the whole Jewish nation as the afflicted people of God. Philip and the critics are evidently at variance. If we accept their method, we shall lose all reference in the Old Testament to the atonement of Christ, and all proof that the sacrifice on Calvary was that of "the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world." Reverse the process, and we can still say,[185]

It is needless to multiply instances of this failure to interpret the Old Testament aright. Let me call attention to the effect of this method upon the interpretation of the New Testament, for the authority of the New Testament is also undermined. The system of typical interpretation, which sees in Christ the reality prefigured in Old Testament shadows, is discredited as unscientific. The whole Epistle to the Hebrews is thrown out, as a poetical clothing of "the man of Nazareth" with the fading glories of an outworn worship. The idea that the high priest of old who entered the Holy of Holies once a year not without blood, and the whole Jewish system of which this formed the central feature, were a divinely ordered prefiguration of Christ's atoning sacrifice for the sins of men—this idea is called a mere human addition to historical truth. Christ is no longer our great High Priest. His priesthood is mere metaphor, without divine warrant or authority. He is not our Prophet, nor our King, for his prophecies are not fulfilled, and his kingdom is only that of a moral teacher and example. And all this, in spite of the fact that the Epistle to the Hebrews bears upon its front the declaration that "God, who in past times spoke to the fathers through the prophets, has in these last days spoken through his Son," whom this same Epistle then proceeds to describe as the effulgence of God's glory and the very image of his substance, the Creator, [186]Upholder, and Redeemer of the world, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.

I do not undervalue the historical method, when it is kept free from this agnostic presupposition that only man is the author of Scripture. This method has given us some information as to the authorship of the sacred books, and it has in some degree helped in their interpretation. I am free to acknowledge my own obligation to it. I grant the composite documentary view of the Pentateuch and of its age-long days of creation, while I still hold to its substantially Mosaic authorship. I say this, however, with deference, for a university president of note, when asked about the stories of Cain and Abel, replied that no such persons in all probability ever lived, but that the account was still valuable, since it taught the great moral lesson that it is highly improper for a man to murder his brother! I grant that there may be more than one Isaiah, while yet I see in the later Isaiah a continuance of the divine revelation given through the earlier. Any honest Christian, I would say, has the right to interpret Jonah and Daniel as allegories, rather than as histories. I can look upon the book of Job as a drama, while I still assert that Job was a historical character. I can see in the Song of Solomon the celebration of a pure human love, while at the same time I claim that the Song had divinely injected into it the meaning that union with Christ is the goal and climax of all human passion. In short, I take the historical method as my servant and not my master; as partially but not wholly revealing the truth; as showing me, not how man made the Scripture for himself,[187] but how God made the Scripture through the imperfect agency of man. So I find unity in the Scriptures, because they are the work of the omnipresent and omniscient Christ: I find sufficiency in the Scriptures, because they satisfy every religious need of the individual and of the church; I find authority in the Scriptures, because, though coming through man, they are, when taken together and rightly interpreted, the veritable word of God. I denounce the historical method, only when it claims to be the solely valid method of reaching truth, and so, leaves out the primary agency and determining influence of Christ.

What sort of systematic theology is left us, when the perverted historical method is made the only clue to the labyrinth of Scripture? There is but one answer: No such thing as systematic theology is possible. Science is knowledge, and to have a system you must have unified knowledge. The historical method so called can see no unity in Scripture, because it does not carry with it the primary knowledge of Christ. It simply applies in its investigations the principles of physical science. Physical science begins with the outward and visible, not with the inward and spiritual, with matter and not with mind. Laplace swept the heavens with his telescope, but he said that he nowhere found a God. He might just as well have swept his kitchen with a broom, and then complained that he could not find God there. God is not stars, nor dust. God is spirit, and he is not to be apprehended by the senses. Laplace should have taken man's conscience and will for his starting-point. And just as physical science can find no God in the universe by the use[188] of the forceps and the microscope, so this historical method can find no Christ in the Scriptures, because it looks there for only human agency. The result is that it finds only a collection of seemingly contradictory fragments, with no divine Spirit to harmonize them and bind them together. Its method is purely inductive, whereas its induction should always be guided by a knowledge of Christ, gained before investigation begins, and furnishing the basis for a deductive process as well. Differentiation and not harmonization is its rule, and this makes its criticism destructive rather than constructive. Many a passage is set aside, because it will not fit in with a skeptical interpretation. Christ's own words with regard to his being "a ransom for many," and with regard to his having "all power committed to him in heaven and in earth," are held to be later words attributed to him by his followers. The whole New Testament story comes to be regarded as a mythical growth, like that which gradually placed haloes about the heads of the apostles. The Gospel of John is not accepted as historical, but is said to be a work of the second century. Jesus, it is said, never himself claimed to be the Messiah, since it is only John who reports his saying to the woman of Samaria, "I that speak unto thee am he." Paul is set aside, as being the author of a rabbinical theology which has no claim upon us; and that, in spite of Christ's own declaration that there were many things which he could not teach while he was here in the flesh, but which he would teach, by his Spirit, after his resurrection, and ascension.

Prof. Kirsopp Lake, in a recent address before the[189] Harvard Divinity School, deprecated the use of the term "theology." "Theology," he said, "presupposes divine revelation, which we do not accept." He proposed the term "philosophy," as expressive of the aim of the Unitarian school. This is honest and plain. What shall we say of those who speak of the "new emphasis" needed in modern theology, when they really mean that the preaching of the old doctrines of sin and salvation must give place to "another gospel" of cooperative Christian work? From their neglect to put any further emphasis upon "the faith once for all delivered to the saints," we can only infer that, for their structure of doctrine, no other foundation than philosophy is needed, and that they, like the Unitarians, no longer accept the fact of a divine revelation. "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ," and to lay greater emphasis upon the fruits of Christianity than upon its roots, is to insult Christ, and ultimately to make Christianity itself only one of many earth-born religions, powerless like them either to save the individual soul or to redeem society. Professor Lake is quite right: If there is no divine revelation, there can be, not only no systematic theology, but no theology at all.

What is the effect of this method upon our theological seminaries? It is to deprive the gospel message of all definiteness, and to make professors and students disseminators of doubts. Many a professor has found teaching preferable to preaching, because he lacked the initial Christian experience which gives to preaching its certainty and power. He chooses the line of least resistance, and becomes in the theological[190] seminary a blind leader of the blind. Having no system of truth to teach, he becomes a mere lecturer on the history of doctrine. Having no key in Christ to the unity of Scripture, he becomes a critic of what he is pleased to call its fragments, that is, the dissector of a cadaver. Ask him if he believes in the preexistence, deity, virgin birth, miracles, atoning death, physical resurrection, omnipresence, and omnipotence of Christ, and he denies your right to require of him any statement of his own beliefs. He does not conceive it to be his duty to furnish his students with any fixed conclusions as to doctrine but only to aid them in coming to conclusions for themselves. The apostle Paul was not so reticent. He was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, but rather gloried in it. He even pronounced his anathema upon any who taught other doctrine. It is no wonder that our modern critics cry, "Back to Christ," for this means, "Away from Paul." The result of such teaching in our seminaries is that the student, unless he has had a Pauline experience before he came, has all his early conceptions of Scripture and of Christian doctrine weakened, has no longer any positive message to deliver, loses the ardor of his love for Christ, and at his graduation leaves the seminary, not to become preacher or pastor as he had once hoped, but to sow his doubts broadcast, as teacher in some college, as editor of some religious journal, as secretary of some Young Men's Christian Association, or as agent of some mutual life insurance company. This method of interpretation switches off upon some side-track of social service many a young man who otherwise would be a heroic preacher of the [191]everlasting gospel. The theological seminaries of almost all our denominations are becoming so infected with this grievous error, that they are not so much organs of Christ, as they are organs of Antichrist. This accounts for the rise, all over the land, of Bible schools, to take the place of the seminaries. The evil is coming in like a flood, and the Spirit of the Lord will surely raise up a standard against it. But oh the pity! that money given by godly men to provide preachers of the gospel should be devoted to undermining the Christian cause!

What is the effect of this method of interpretation upon the churches of our denomination? It is to cut the tap-root of their strength, and to imperil their very existence. Baptist churches are founded upon Scripture. Their doctrine of regenerate church-membership, and of church ordinances as belonging only to believers, presupposes an authoritative rule of faith and practice in the New Testament. In controversy with other denominations we have always appealed "to the law and to the testimony," and we have declared that, if other faiths "speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them." We have held that the authority of Scripture is not an arbitrary authority, but that the ordinances have so much of meaning that to change their form is to destroy them altogether. We stand for immersion as the only real baptism, not because much water is better than little water, but because baptism is the symbol of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, and the symbol also of our spiritual death, burial, and resurrection with him. When we are "buried with him in [192]baptism," we show forth his death, just as we show forth his death in the Lord's Supper. To change the form of the Lord's Supper so as to leave out all reference to the breaking of Christ's body and the shedding of his blood, would be to break down one great visible monument and testimony to Christ's atoning death, and to destroy the Lord's Supper itself. And to change the form of baptism so as to leave out its symbolism of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, is to break down another great visible monument and testimony to Christ's essential work, and to destroy the ordinance of baptism. Only the surrender of belief in the authority of Scripture, and a consequent ignoring of the meaning of baptism can explain the proposal to give us our requisition of immersion. The weakness of our denomination in such cities as New York results from the acceptance of the method of Scripture interpretation which I have been criticizing. We are losing our faith in the Bible, and our determination to stand for its teachings. We are introducing into our ministry men who either never knew the Lord, or who have lost their faith in him and their love for him. The unbelief in our seminary teaching is like a blinding mist which is slowly settling down upon our churches, and is gradually abolishing, not only all definite views of Christian doctrine, but also all conviction of duty to "contend earnestly for the faith" of our fathers. So we are giving up our polity, to please and to join other denominations. If this were only a lapse in denominationalism, we might call it a mere change in our ways of expressing faith. But it is a far more radical evil. It is apostasy from Christ and revolt[193] against his government. It is refusal to rally to Christ's colors in the great conflict with error and sin. We are ceasing to be evangelistic as well as evangelical, and if this downward progress continues, we shall in due time cease to exist. This is the fate of Unitarianism to-day. We Baptists must reform, or die.

What is the effect of this method of interpretation upon missions? I have just come from an extensive tour in mission fields. I have visited missionaries of several denominations. I have found those missions most successful which have held to the old gospel and to the polity of the New Testament. But I have found a growing tendency to depend upon education, rather than upon evangelism. What would Peter have said on the day of Pentecost, if you had advised him not to incur the wrath of the Jews by his preaching, but to establish schools, and to trust to the gradual enlightenment of the Jewish nation by means of literature? He might have replied that our Lord made it his first duty to "make disciples," and only afterwards to "teach them to observe all things which he had commanded." Christian schools and Christian teaching are necessary in their place, but they are second, not first. Our lack at home of the right interpretation of Scripture, and our fading knowledge in experience of the presence and power of Christ, have gone from us round the world. Some boards are sending out as missionaries young men who lack definite views of doctrine. These young men, having nothing positive to preach, choose rather to teach in the English language, in schools where English is spoken, rather than preach in the native language[194] which requires a lifetime of study. When they teach, they cannot help revealing their mental poverty, and disturbing the simple faith of their pupils. Having no certainty themselves, they can inspire no certainty in others, for "if the trumpet gives no certain sound, who will arm himself for the battle?" These unprepared and inefficient teachers may become themselves converted through their very sense of weakness in presence of the towering systems of idolatry and superstition around them. But if they are not so converted, they will handicap the mission and paralyze its influence. Some of our best missionaries have said to me, "The Lord deliver us from such helpers!" No man has a right to go, and no board has a right to send, as a missionary, one who has not had such a personal experience of Christ as will enable him to stand against this unscientific and unchristian method of Scripture interpretation.

This so-called "historical method" has effects on the missionary cause at home, as well as in the lands far away. "How shall they preach, except they be sent?" The sending of missionaries is dependent upon the zeal and liberality of the churches in our land. But how can one who is not sure that Jesus ever uttered the words of the Great Commission urge the churches to fulfil that command of Christ? How can one who has never felt his own need of an atonement adjure his brethren, by Christ's death for their sins, not to let the heathen perish? How can one who has had no experience of Christ as a present and divine Saviour, have power to stand against the rationalism and apathy of the church? This method[195] of Scripture interpretation makes evangelism an enterprise of fanatics not sufficiently educated to know that Buddha and Confucius were teachers of truth long before the time of Christ. Can we more surely dry up the sources of missionary contributions, than by yielding to the pernicious influence of this way of treating Scripture? We have gone far already in the wrong direction. Our churches are honeycombed with doubt and with indifference. The preaching of the old gospel of sin and salvation seems almost a thing of the past. People have itching ears that will not endure sound doctrine. The dynamic of missions is love for Christ, who died to save us from the guilt and power of sin. Modern criticism has to a large extent nullified this dynamic, and if the authority of Scripture is yet further weakened, we may look for complete collapse in our supplies both of men and of money. In fact, the faith and the gifts of many converts from among the heathen already so far exceed the average faith and gifts of our churches at home, that the time may come when Burma and the Congo may have to send missionaries to us, as we are now sending missionaries to the land where the seven churches of Asia once flourished.

Whence has come this so-called "historical method" of interpreting Scripture? I answer: It was "made in Germany." German scholarship for a century past has been working almost exclusively on the horizontal plane, and has been ignoring the light that comes from above. The theology of Great Britain and of America has been profoundly affected by the application of its evolutionary and skeptical principles. In Germany [196]itself the honesty of every Scripture writer has been questioned, and every sacred document has been torn into bits. When the all-pervading presence and influence of Christ in the Bible is lost sight of, and its separate fragments are examined to discover their meaning, there is no guide but the theory of evolution; and evolution, instead of being the ordinary method of a personal God, is itself personified and made the only power in the universe. The regularities of nature, it is thought, leave no room for miracle. There is no divine Will that can work down upon nature in unique acts, such as incarnation and resurrection. A pantheistic Force is the only ruler, and whatever is, is right. Goethe led the way in this pagan philosophy, and German universities have been full of it ever since. It is painful to see how German theologians and ministers have been won over to the ethics of brute force and the practical, deification of mere might in human affairs. The New Testament has been interpreted as justifying implicit obedience to "the powers that be," even when they turn the Kaiser into a military despot and his people into unresisting and deluded slaves. An exaggerated nationalism has taken the place of human solidarity, and a selfish domination of the world has become the goal of national ambition. All the atrocities of this war might have been spared us, if the nations of which Germany is the most conspicuous offender had derived their ethics and their practice from the divine love which rules above, rather than from the seeming necessity of competing with the nations around them. A new interpretation of Scripture is needed to set the world right. But as [197]Germany will never be convinced that the worship of Force is vain, until she sees herself plunged in defeat and ruin, so the advocates of this so-called historical method will never make deduction a primary part of their procedure, and will never take the eternal Christ as their key to Scripture interpretation, until Christ himself shall by a second spiritual advent enter into their hearts and dissipate their doubts, as he did when he showed himself to Paul on the way to Damascus.

I have tried to point out the inherent error of the method to which I have been objecting, and to show its ill effects upon systematic theology, upon our theological seminaries, upon our Baptist churches, and upon our missionary work abroad and at home. I have intimated that the influence of this perverse treatment of Holy Writ may be seen even in the present internecine conflict in which the professedly Christian nations are engaged. I shall very naturally be asked what remedy I propose for so deep-seated and widespread an evil. I can only answer that I see no permanent cure but the second coming of Christ. But do not misunderstand me. I am no premillennarian of the ordinary sort. Indeed, I am as much a post-millennialist, as I am a premillennialist. I believe that both interpretations of prophecy have their rights, and, believing also as I do that Scripture is a unity and that its seeming contradictions can be harmonized, I hold that Christ's spiritual coming precedes the millennium, but that his visible and literal coming follows the millennium. I therefore look for such a spiritual coming into the hearts of his people, as shall renew their faith, fulfil their joy, and answer to the prediction[198] of "the rapture of the saints." In other words, I look for a mighty revival of religion, which will set the churches on their old foundation, and endow them with power to subdue the world. This war seems to me God's second great demonstration of man's inability to save himself, and his need of divine power to save him. As the ancient world and its history were God's demonstration of human sin, and of man's need of Christ's first advent, so this war is God's proof that science and philosophy, literature and commerce, are not sufficient for man's needs, and that Christ must again come, if our modern world is ever to be saved. "In the fulness of time" Christ's first advent occurred. "In the fulness of time" Christ's second advent will occur. But not until humanity, weary of its load, cries out for its redemption. "How long, O Lord, how long?" "It is not for us to know the times which the Father has set within his own authority." But it is ours to believe in Christ's promise, and to pray for its speedy fulfilment. And so, I beg you to join with me in the one prayer with which our book of Scripture closes, namely, "Lord Jesus, come quickly!"

XVII

THE THEOLOGY OF MISSIONS

[201]"The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." Yes, a candle, but a candle not yet lighted, a candle which will never be light nor give light, till it is touched by a divine flame. So said Doctor Parkhurst. Was his interpretation of Scripture correct? He drew from the proverb the conclusion that man has a religious nature, not in the sense that he is actually religious, but only in the sense that he has a capacity for religion. Doctor Parkhurst would say that man is actually religious only when he knows the true God and worships him in spirit and in truth. To that God he is by nature and by sinful habit blind. He can be light and give light, only after God has enlightened him by special revelation. His nature is a candle unlighted, until God touches it with his divine flame.

What is the truth in this matter? The months I have spent in these heathen lands have made deep impression upon me, and the problem of heathenism has loomed up before me as never before. When one sees thousands prostrating themselves in a Mohammedan mosque and chanting in unison their ascription of greatness to God, or when one sees a Hindu devotee so absorbed in his prayer to a senseless idol that he is unconscious of the kicks and shouts of the passers-by, one comes to realize that man must have a god. The religious instinct is a part of his nature. It is[202] more than a mere capacity for religion. It is active as well as passive. In some sort the candle is already burning. It burns at certain times and places with a fierce and demonic glow. When I saw in Calcutta, so recently the capital of India, a priestess of the temple of Kali, cutting into bits the flesh and entrails of sheep in order that the poorest worshiper might have for his farthing some bloody fragment to offer at the shrine of that hideous and lustful and cruel goddess, I felt sure that, though the candle is burning, it is not always because it has been touched by a divine flame. There are other powers than God's at work in this universe. Doctor Parkhurst's explanation of the Scripture text is not sufficient. He acknowledges only a part of the truth. The candle is giving already a dim and lurid light. Man is blindly worshiping, groping in the dark, bowing to imaginary deities, the products of his own imagination, the work of his own hands.

We must go even farther than this, and concede that here and there among these crowds of worshipers there may be one who is a sincere seeker after God and, according to the light that he has, is trying honestly to serve him. I do not mean a selfish service of ignorant and earthly passion, but a service prompted by some elementary knowledge of the true God, gained by contemplation of his works in nature or from the needs of his own soul revealed in conscience. Surely there was truth and sincerity in the worship of Socrates, of Epictetus, of Marcus Aurelius. The patriarchs had knowledge of God and walked with God, long before Christ came. And Scripture itself declares that in every nation he that fears God and[203] works righteousness is accepted by him. David Brainerd found among the American Indians a man who for years had separated himself from the wickedness of his people, and had devoted himself to doing them good. Now and then our missionaries find a heathen whose strivings after God have been prompted by a sense of sin, and whose worship must have been accepted by the God of love. Though there is "none other name given among men whereby we may be saved," we cannot doubt that every man who feels himself to be a sinner, and casts himself upon God's mercy for salvation, does really though unconsciously cast himself upon Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and so joins himself to Christ by the teaching and power of Christ's Spirit, as to be saved in some measure from the dominion of sin here and from the penalty of sin hereafter.

I am a believer in the unity, the sufficiency, and the authority of Scripture—in its unity, when the parts are put together in their historical connections and with the key to their meaning furnished us in Christ; in its sufficiency, as a rule of religious faith and practice; and in its authority, when rightly interpreted with the aid of the Holy Spirit. So I am prepared to find in the first chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans the true philosophy of heathenism, and the reconciliation of the otherwise seemingly conflicting utterances of Scripture with regard to the religious nature of man. I learn that God made man upright, and endowed him with at least a childlike knowledge of himself. But early humanity sought out many inventions, did not wish to retain God in its knowledge, and substituted[204] for the true God creatures of its own imagination. In other words, the scriptural explanation of heathenism is found in an original ancestral sin, in which the human race departed from the true God and gave itself up to the worship, first, of impersonal nature-powers, and then, of the polytheistic personifications of these powers which naturally followed.

Modern heathenism is the result of an abnormal and downward evolution. Many students of comparative religion have forgotten that evolution is oftener to lower forms than to higher. Many a species in the history of life has first become degenerate, and then has become extinct. The shores of time are strewn with wrecks, and one of these wrecks is human nature. Paul gives us only the logical and moral interpretation of a biological fact, when he declares that in consequence of man's departure from God, God gave man over to the dominion of his own passions, in order that the shame and guilt of his vile affections might awaken his conscience and lead him to cry for mercy and redemption. Modern heathenism, still surviving in this age of enlightenment, shows how sin can blind the intellect and harden the heart. When men worship demons of cruelty and lust instead of God, they reveal the depravity as well as the ignorance of human nature in its downward evolution. The candle has been lighted indeed, but it has been touched with the flames of hell.

When God made man in his own image, it was only wheat that he sowed in his field. The evil decision of man has furnished the tares, and their history has been a history of downward evolution. But side by[205] side with this downward evolution there has been an upward evolution of divine grace. The tares have been suffered to grow, but only that there might be demonstrated the power of the wheat to root them out. And from the very beginning Christ has been the author and principle of the true evolution. He who created the race has been its Preserver, Instructor, and Saviour. Humanity, in its warring and its lust, would long since have become extinct, if it had not been for the presence in it of a divine Life and Light. That life and light were the life and light of the preincarnate Christ. He is "the light that lighteth every man," and "his life was the light of men." Jonathan Edwards did not go too far, when he recognized in all natural beauty and goodness the work of Christ. The sunset clouds were painted by the hand of Christ, and it is he whose glory is celebrated by the cannonading of the autumn storm over the grave of summer. All the light of conscience is his light; all the progress of science is his revelation. It was he who led the children of Israel by a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, and who thundered and lightened from Sinai at the giving of the Law. "The Rock that followed" the chosen people through the wilderness and gave them drink "was Christ." Every reform within the bounds of heathenism has been due to him. Confucius and Buddha, so far as they uttered truth, were his messengers. He has never left humanity without a witness to the power and goodness of God. While men have been seeking an unknown God, he has been that very God whom they were seeking, and it is he who has incited them to feel after him[206] and find him. His light has shined in the darkness, and the darkness has comprehended it not, though in him we live and move and have our being.

So there is evolution of good, side by side with the evolution of evil. We may recognize truth in heathen systems, while we deplore their errors, for Christ himself is the Truth. It is the single grain of truth in these systems that has given them all their power. They never could have maintained their hold upon the world, if they had not appealed to some good instincts of the human heart. A coin made wholly of lead will never pass for a dollar. It must have a little washing of silver to give it any sort of currency. But it is a counterfeit, for all its silver washing. So these heathen systems have their grain of truth, but they are false and soul-destroying all the same. Let us recognize candidly the grains of truth which they contain, for these are witnesses to the indwelling Christ who has not left humanity wholly to itself. And let us make these grains of truth our gateways of access to the heathen heart, while we show the heathen the larger and fuller truth as it is in Jesus.

Christ alone can solve the problems of the world and reconcile the warring elements of humanity. He is our peace, who hath made Jew and Gentile one, having broken down the middle wall of partition, and having made of the twain one new man, reconciling both to God through the blood of his Cross. He can make all sects, all parties, all castes, all nations one; because in him are all the elements of truth which each possesses, without any mixture of their errors.[207] In him there will be no longer barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, male nor female, for he will bind all together by virtue of their union with himself. The Hindu, for example, has the truth of God's immanence, but he turns it into falsehood by denying the correlative and equally important truth of God's transcendence, making God to be a mere nature-force without personality, while Scripture recognizes in God both immanence and transcendence, sees God in all things and through all things, yet above all things. The Hindu has also the truth of God's incarnation, but he turns it into error, by denying the permanence of that incarnation, the divine incarnation in Krishna or Buddha being only a temporary assumption of humanity which he leaves behind him when he reascends to his heaven, while Christ takes our human nature into perpetual union with himself and makes it sit down with him upon his throne. The Moslem, on the other hand, believes in God's unity and transcendence, but denies his immanence. His God is far away, not only physically but also morally, for he is without justice or love. The Moslem holds stoutly to the truth of God's personality; but he denies the manifestation of that personality in Christ, and also Christ's personal presence with all believers. Only Christ can break down the middle wall of partition between Hindu and Moslem, for he alone has the all-inclusive truth that will unite them both. And so of all divisions of caste, of color, of party, of denomination, and of nationality, for he alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, supremely and absolutely fitted to be the Bringer of Peace to the world.

[208]There is yet another reason why Christ alone can save. Let us remember always that error is the result of sin, and that before the power of sin can be broken, the penalty of sin must be removed. In the heart of man is an inextinguishable sense of guilt, and an equally inextinguishable thirst for reparation. It is the forebodings of conscience that make death terrible. Blind the eyes and harden the heart, if you will. The accusations of conscience will be like writings in invisible ink, that come out clear and threatening in times of introspection and of sober judgment. As Shakespeare says,

The greatest chasm is between their souls and God, and they must have peace with God, before they can have peace with men. Christ is our peace, therefore, first of all, because he makes atonement for our sins, pays our debts to justice, and sets our conscience free from guilt. Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the whole world, making peace by the blood of his Cross. Having made our peace with God, he makes peace in our warring powers of conscience and will, and then brings about peace in our relations with others. As he made man at the first of one blood, so he will at last bring all the nations back into one brotherhood of holiness and love.

There is a moral theology, as well as a doctrinal theology. The moral follows the doctrinal, and shows in practice that the doctrine is truth and not error.[209] Paul includes this moral teaching in his Epistle to the Romans. At the beginning of his twelfth chapter he passes from his discussion of justification by faith to speak of the proper effects of faith in the Christian life: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice." Then comes the noblest summary of duty to be found in all literature. All manner of social service is enjoined, while the presupposition of that service is ever held to be the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf and the regenerating grace of God in the Christian heart. How much the heathen world needs this part of the gospel, only some knowledge of the shameful vices of the Orient can reveal to us. The first chapter of that same Epistle is a correct picture of the heathen world of to-day. A pure life, which is also a life lived for others, is something which surpasses the power of Confucius or Buddha to produce or to maintain. Such lives in the churches of mission lands are the weightiest arguments for Christianity. But conversion to Christ goes, in its influence, farther than the individual. It has a far-reaching social influence. It lifts up the whole family, the whole class, the whole caste, making its members intelligent, efficient, trustworthy, as many British officials in India gladly bear witness. Christianity seems likely to give the Sudras precedence of the Brahmans in civil and political affairs, so that in one case at least the meek shall inherit the earth.

The kingdom of God, however, can never win its triumphs solely by external reforms. In order to obtain the fruits of education, morality, and self-[210]government, you must first have Christian faith rooted in the soil. Applications of Christianity are necessary, and they are to be earnestly sought, but it will be vain to seek them, if we have no Christianity to apply. The tendency in our missions to put the main stress upon physical and social agencies, to the detriment of simple gospel preaching, is sure to be disappointing in its results. It is like trying to light a coal-fire by putting your kindlings on top. It is like beginning at the roof, and building down to the foundation; or like first purifying the stream, and afterwards the fountain. Society is made up of individuals, and regeneration of the individual must precede all social renovation. The old gospel, with regard to sin and salvation, is the only gospel that will save the heathen world; and the living, personal Christ, with his atoning blood and his renewing Spirit, is the only power that can bring about permanent reformation of social evils and the establishment of the kingdom of God in the individual, in the nation, and in the world.

That this is the true theology of missions, the history of missions is the best of all proofs. We need not only to touch the intellect, but also to touch the heart. We need to furnish a motive that will win to action the sluggish and selfish devotees of systems century-old that have enslaved them. One message, and one only, has accomplished this result, and that is the message of the Cross. Not the presentation of God's greatness and power, but the story of the personal Jesus and his giving up of his life for sinners, has moved men to give themselves to him. The love of Christ has called forth answering love. Greenlanders[211] and Bushmen, Tibetans and Telugus, Australians and Chinese, have gone to their deaths for Christ, simply because they had learned that Christ died for them. Of this sort have been the first-fruits of all our missions. Christ crucified has been the power of God unto salvation. When he who was rich became poor that we might become rich, he instituted not only an example, but a motive, sufficient to subdue men's hearts and to conquer the world. "To win for the Lamb that was slain the reward of his sufferings" has turned illiterate men in India into indomitable propagandists of Christianity; but it has also made missionaries in Oxford and Edinburgh, in Leicester and Andover—missionaries like Reginald Heber and John G. Paton, like William Carey and Adoniram Judson. The "offense of the Cross" is great, but the power of the Cross is greater still, and the theology of missions must never permit mere philosophy, or education, or physical betterment, or social service, to take the place of Christ crucified in its preaching.

I grieve over the minimizing of Christ's nature and claims that is current in our day, because I believe that it cuts the sinew of our Christian faith and destroys the chief dynamic in our missions. I deplore the denial of our Lord's deity and atonement, the refusal to address him in prayer, the ignoring of his promise to be with his people even to the end of the world. To meet our needs in the conflict with towering systems of idolatry and superstition, we need a supernatural Christ; not simply the man of Nazareth, but the Lord of glory; not the Christ of the Synoptics alone, but also the Christ of John's Gospel; not a[212] merely human example and leader, but one who "was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead"; not simply Jesus according to the flesh, but "the Word who was with God and who was God" in eternity past; not simply God manifest in human life nineteen centuries ago, but the God who is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever"; not simply the humbled, but also the glorified Saviour, who sits now upon the throne of the universe, all power in heaven and earth being given into his hand. When we believe in an ascended Lord at God's right hand, the God of Creation, of Providence, and of Redemption, we have a faith that can conquer the world. Without such a faith in the omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent Christ, we are weak as water in the conflict with heathenism. We may set up Christ on a pedestal, in a pantheon like that of Mrs. Besant, with a statue of Krishna by his side, and the Hindu will laugh at the claims of the gospel. Only faith in Christ as very God can meet the demands of the hour. "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." In every age Christ has lit that candle, so that it has given some light. But all who have come before him, pretending to be the Light of the world, have been thieves and robbers, stealing from Christ his glory and from man his blessing. Christ alone can so enlighten us that we can be light and can give light. Let us arise and shine, because our Light has come, and the glory of the Lord has arisen upon us!

XVIII

MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES

[215]No result of my travel has been more valuable to me than the new impression I have received of the effect of missions upon missionaries. I came abroad with a lingering idea of my youth that missionaries were a class by themselves, a solemn set, destitute of humor, and so absorbed in their work as to be narrow-minded. On the contrary, I have found them joyful and even hilarious, broad in their views and sympathies, lovers of the good in literature and art. The mental and spiritual growth of students who left me years ago for a foreign field has greatly surprised me. Then they were boys; now they are men. The demands of the missionary work have drawn out their latent powers; they have found their new environment immensely stimulating; contact with new lands and people has widened their outlook; they have become thinkers and leaders of men.

It takes an all-round man to be a good missionary. The learning of a foreign language in which one has to construct his own grammar and lexicon requires persistent effort of the most disciplined mind. The missionary is often called upon to build his own house or church. He must be both architect and supervisor, for his masons know no English, and are bent on slighting their work. He has servants who steal and coolies who lie. He establishes, manages, and governs[216] a native school, and generally has to evolve his own pedagogy. He comes into relation with English officials, American consuls, and native functionaries, and is obliged to know something of social customs. In fine, he is a jack of all trades, besides being a preacher of the gospel who must adapt his message to the understanding of the illiterate multitude and of the cultivated man of caste as well.

All this gives the missionary a training beyond that of any university course. Herbert Spencer asserted that a nation makes progress in civilization in proportion to the variety of its environment. The principle applies also to the development of the individual. Our missionaries thought perhaps that they were leaving culture behind them, when they left America for barbarous lands. But losing their lives for Christ's sake they found to be mental gain. Even on the Congo our men have learned more, and have developed stronger characters, than would have been possible if they had accepted ordinary pastorates at home. And they have not lost, but have won, that fine flavor of sanity and judgment, which belongs to men who have had large experience of life.

So far, I have referred only to the intellectual side of one's education. The spiritual equipment is even more important. In heathendom one comes in contact with towering systems of idolatry and superstition, venerable with age and rooted deeply in the nature and habit of the people. The Christian teacher realizes that, in his conflict with these systems, he is powerless, unless backed by Omnipotence. He is thrown upon the divine resources, and learns, perhaps[217] for the first time, that, while apart from Christ he can do nothing, with Christ he can do all things. A new experience of the presence and power of the Saviour comes to him. The struggle that at first taxed all his energy is at last a glad walk over the course in the strength of Christ. Anxiety and fear have taught him lessons which he could not otherwise have learned. He has become a hopeful and joyful Christian.

All this tends to render the missionary doctrinally sound. Evangelization makes men evangelical. When you tell the gospel to a heathen sinner, you must put it in the simplest terms, or he will fail to understand it. Your effort to reach his mind and heart clarifies your own. To one condemned and lost, no mere human example in Jesus will suffice; you need an atoning Saviour. To one struggling with demonic powers and helpless in their grasp, no mere man of Nazareth, no Jesus, according to the flesh, will answer; you need the Lord of Glory, who was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit who regenerates, sanctifies, comforts, and saves, becomes an indispensable element in preaching, and so becomes ingrained into the preacher's confession of faith. A personal and present Christ, Immanuel, God with us, is the source of the missionary's power; he has practical proof that the Holy Spirit is Christ in spiritual form, with his people alway, even to the end of the world. The reality of God in Christ, manifest in nature, ruling the world in providence, preparing the nations for judgment, sure to bring the world to his feet, becomes an article of the missionary's faith, and a [218]constant subject of his teaching. The minimizing of Christ's nature and claims has no proper place on missionary ground. The missionary indeed is exerting an influence on the faith of the homeland equal to that which he exerts upon the heathen abroad.

It is indeed true that here and there a man who has come out as a missionary has been attracted and perverted by the very systems he proposed to subdue, and has turned out a teacher of Buddhism instead of Christianity. But such men had never the root of the matter in them, had never felt the galling yoke of sin, had never known the joy of Christ's salvation. They had gotten their preparation for evangelistic work from American teachers of comparative religion, who put Buddha on the same plane with Christ. The result has only shown the impotence of a man-made gospel to combat heathenism, or even to save the souls of those who preach that sort of gospel. In a sense precisely opposite to that of the apostle Paul, they have come to be opposers of the faith they once proposed to advocate, and destroyers instead of builders of Christian civilization. All this is a lesson to our missionary societies and churches at home. The colleges and seminaries which permit indefinite and unevangelical doctrine to be taught, and which retain those who teach it upon the ground that liberality in theology is a duty, merit the censure of God and man; for the school or the church that ceases to be evangelical will soon cease to be evangelistic, and when it ceases to be evangelistic it will soon cease to exist. In this way missions are the testing-places of Christian doctrine.

[219]In a similar way New Testament polity is showing its power in our foreign work. At home we are getting to be lax in our reception of members, and are taking in numbers of persons without proper evidence of their conversion. Baptist churches which used to examine carefully their candidates for admission now receive them without public and oral confession of their faith. Yet these new members may vote, and may determine the attitude of the church in important exigencies. All this is avoided in our mission churches. They perceive the necessity of keeping out the unfit, as clearly as that of admitting the fit. They do not add to their membership by infant baptism, and they make sure that no pecuniary considerations influence professing converts. Our Baptist mission churches are fast becoming models of self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating bodies. Missionaries find that their only safety lies in hewing close to the line of New Testament requirement. Their success in building up Baptist churches in Burma and among the Telugus, keeps our missionaries faithful to the New Testament model of church polity. They have the joy of seeing churches organized on scriptural principles, and shedding their light upon the regions of darkness around them.

I wish to say something also about the physical environment of our missionaries and its influence upon them. I remember that half a century ago I called upon Doctor Thompson of Beirut, the veteran missionary of the American Board in Syria. I would not have been surprised if I had found him living in a hut, for my ideas of missionary hardship were very[220] crude. But I was surprised to find him living in a great stone mansion, with twice as many servants as we ordinarily have at home. It has taken me some time to learn that in a hot country a cool and spacious house is a primary necessity of life, if the missionary expects to endure a climate where the thermometer at times goes up beyond a hundred degrees and stays there. And ordinary comfort cannot be obtained without servants to do your cooking and running. The large house can be built for half the cost of such a structure at home, and the servants can be obtained for only a few cents a day for each one. Remember that in many cases the missionary has not only to be his own physician and surgeon, but also the physician and surgeon of others; that his house is often a hospital as well as a gathering-place of inquirers. Remember, too, that the missionary's wife has not only to perform the household duties of a wife at home, but in addition has probably to be the supervisor of a girls' school and the only school-teacher and music-teacher that her children will know until they are old enough to go to the homeland. Remember these considerations, and you will see that a decent home is essential to a missionary's success in a heathen land. Our missionary work, like our diplomatic service, has been too long discredited by our insufficient care for our representatives abroad.

Our friends of other denominations are greatly ahead of us in this matter of provision for their missionaries. Not only are the bungalows built for their residences better than ours, but their plants of church and school buildings show a larger outlook for the[221] future than ours show. The English Baptists, the Congregationalists, the Methodists, the Church of England, yes, even the Theosophists and Buddhists, furnish object-lessons to us in this regard. And yet, such has been the inventiveness and large-mindedness of our missionaries themselves, that in all the great centers of our work, they are housed better than the average pastors of our churches at home. I wish we could double their strength by the establishment of summer rest-houses in the hills, and by presenting every one of them with a motor-car. But even now, the days of extreme hardship are past, and no man of ordinary vigor need fear coming to the foreign field on account of its physical discomforts.

When our Lord sent out his first missionaries, he sent them two by two. The real trial of the missionary is more mental than physical. He greatly needs companionship. Silence in the midst of the beating of heathen tom-toms becomes enervating and appalling; it may make a man insane. We are learning the value of team-work in missions. What one man alone could never accomplish, he can do with the help of others. The American Board in its mission at Madura, India, has acted upon this principle, and the result is seen in an aggregate of twenty-two thousand church-members. Our own most successful work has been among the Burmans and Karens, where we have seventy thousand members, and among the Telugus, where we have as many more. In these fields there are enough workers to constitute a homogeneous society, with frequent conferences to help the discouraged and to stimulate the weak. Let us be generous[222] in providing additional helpers and furloughs to men so far removed from our Christian civilization.

But let no one go to the foreign field expecting to get all his strength from his brethren. Missionary work is no sinecure. It requires not only a sound body and a sound mind, with a cheerful and hopeful temperament, but also a willingness to endure hardship for Jesus' sake, and, if need be, with him alone for helper. There are more alleviations of missionary conditions than were known in its early days, but they still require self-sacrifice. Separation from home and friends, and, for the pioneer, days of unspeakable loneliness, are the missionary's portion. The necessity of sending children to America, so that they may escape disease and immorality among the heathen, is an agony which only the affectionate parent can know. Opportunities for usefulness which cannot be seized, because of lack of reenforcement from the homeland, involve a "hope deferred that maketh the heart sick."

When Paul went to Athens he probably hoped to win the philosophers to Christ's standard. But the Stoics and Epicureans scoffed at him. He had to content himself with the multitude of commoner converts at Corinth. It was doubtless God's sovereignty that determined the result, but God's sovereignty is also wisdom. It took Paul a long time to learn that God builds his fires from the bottom, and ordinarily kindles the small sticks first. "Not many wise, not many noble hath God chosen," but the weak things first, "that no flesh may glory in his presence." Here is one of the trials of missionary life, and one of the[223] tests of missionary faith. Can the missionary welcome the conversion of a multitude of low-class people, like the Madigas, when their acceptance becomes to the proud Brahman an evidence of the ignoble character of Christianity? Yes, he can, if he has faith in God. He can wait on God, and wait for results.

The great Sudra class, a class higher than the Madigas, under the influence of Christianity, is becoming more intelligent and more influential than the Brahman, and is gradually taking from him his social prestige and his political power. Many missionaries are expecting a great turning unto the Lord from among the Sudras. Meantime there is a promise "to him that overcometh." "If we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him." "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." And

Transcriber's Notes:

Inconsistencies in the hyphenation of words preserved. (sightseeing, sight-seeing)

Pg. 39, unusual word "subtilty". Presumed to be "subtlety". (and the subtlety of the Hindus)

Pg. 177, triple quote mark after "biblia," changed to double quote mark. (the plural "biblia,")

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Tour of the Missions, by Augustus Hopkins Strong

E-text prepared by a Project Gutenberg volunteer
from digital material generously made available by
Internet Archive
(http://www.archive.org)

A TOUR OF THE MISSIONS
Observations and Conclusions

A TOUR OF THE
MISSIONS

Observations and Conclusions

A PERSONAL FOREWORD

CONTENTS

I

A WEEK IN JAPAN

II

A WEEK-END IN CHINA

III

MANILA, SINGAPORE, AND PENANG

IV

THREE WEEKS IN BURMA

V

MANDALAY AND GAUHATI

VI

CALCUTTA, DARJEELING, AND BENARES

VII

LUCKNOW, AGRA, AND DELHI

VIII

JAIPUR, MT. ABU, AND AHMEDABAD

IX

BOMBAY, KEDGAON, AND MADRAS

X

THE TELUGU MISSION

XI

THE DRAVIDIAN TEMPLES

XII

TWO WEEKS IN CEYLON

XIII

JAVA AND BUDDHISM

XIV

THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA

XV

MISSIONS AND SCRIPTURE

XVI

SCRIPTURE AND MISSIONS

XVII

THE THEOLOGY OF MISSIONS

XVIII

MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES

The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Tour of the Missions, by Augustus Hopkins Strong

E-text prepared by a Project Gutenberg volunteer from digital material generously made available by Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)

A TOUR OF THE MISSIONS Observations and Conclusions

A TOUR OF THE MISSIONS Observations and Conclusions

A PERSONAL FOREWORD

CONTENTS

I A WEEK IN JAPAN

II A WEEK-END IN CHINA

III MANILA, SINGAPORE, AND PENANG

IV THREE WEEKS IN BURMA

V MANDALAY AND GAUHATI

VI CALCUTTA, DARJEELING, AND BENARES

VII LUCKNOW, AGRA, AND DELHI

VIII JAIPUR, MT. ABU, AND AHMEDABAD

IX BOMBAY, KEDGAON, AND MADRAS

X THE TELUGU MISSION

XI THE DRAVIDIAN TEMPLES

XII TWO WEEKS IN CEYLON

XIII JAVA AND BUDDHISM

XIV THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA

XV MISSIONS AND SCRIPTURE

XVI SCRIPTURE AND MISSIONS

XVII THE THEOLOGY OF MISSIONS

XVIII MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES

E-text prepared by a Project Gutenberg volunteer
from digital material generously made available by
Internet Archive
(http://www.archive.org)

A TOUR OF THE MISSIONS
Observations and Conclusions

A TOUR OF THE
MISSIONS

Observations and Conclusions

I

A WEEK IN JAPAN

II

A WEEK-END IN CHINA

III

MANILA, SINGAPORE, AND PENANG

IV

THREE WEEKS IN BURMA

V

MANDALAY AND GAUHATI

VI

CALCUTTA, DARJEELING, AND BENARES

VII

LUCKNOW, AGRA, AND DELHI

VIII

JAIPUR, MT. ABU, AND AHMEDABAD

IX

BOMBAY, KEDGAON, AND MADRAS

X

THE TELUGU MISSION

XI

THE DRAVIDIAN TEMPLES

XII

TWO WEEKS IN CEYLON

XIII

JAVA AND BUDDHISM

XIV

THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA

XV

MISSIONS AND SCRIPTURE

XVI

SCRIPTURE AND MISSIONS

XVII

THE THEOLOGY OF MISSIONS

XVIII

MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES