BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL * O WILLIAM ROBINSON Morgan & Scotts Missionary Series Edited bu Dr. George Smith, C.I.E. - EMMANUEL Presented to THE LIBRARY of VICTORIA UNIVERSITY Toronto by Ecumenical Forum PRESENTED TO: THE CANADIAN SCHOOL OF MISSIONS COMPLIMEI^TS OF: STUDUTT CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION U14IVERSITY OF TORONTO. Mill : J f %. c x V EMN <F I \ BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL BY WILLIAM ROBINSON (Salem, S. India) AUTHOR OF "FROM BRAHM TO CHRIST" ; "GOD AND SONS OF GOD " RINGELTAUBE THE RISHI " ; "THE RENT VEIL," ETC. BEING A VOLUME IN MORGAN & SCOTT S MISSIONARY SERIES EDITED BY GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., LL.D., F.R.G.S., F.S.S. MORGAN & SCOTT , LTD.,-, , (OFFICE OF " Ij ft frf *&& <& ") ., 12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS LONDON MCMX o \ Dl/ 32b5 r* - RC2 EMMANUEL MORGAN & SCOTT S MISSIONARY SERIES EDITED BY DR. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. Cloth boards, 6/- each CHRIST THE DESIRE OF NATIONS By Rev. EDGAR WM. DAVIS THE VICTORY OF THE GOSPEL A Survey of World-wide Evangelism. By Rev. J. P. LILLEY, D.D. THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA Its Opportunities and Responsibilities. By Rev. WILLIAM MUIR, M.A., B.D., B.L. BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL By Rev. WILLIAM ROBINSON MORGAN AND SCOTT LTD., LONDON PREFATORY NOTE BY GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., LL.D., F.R.G.S., F.S.S. HHHIS work, " BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL," has a unique value. There is nothing like it in all the literature of Foreign Missions. It has to do chiefly with India, which has a special claim on every member of the Churches of the United Kingdom and its Colonies. The special value of the volume is that it is written from the inside of things, revealing Hinduism and Caste as they have never before been laid bare, in popular language, in a scholarly fashion, and with literary skill. G. S. 32fa EMMANUEL MORGAN & SCOTT S MISSIONARY SERIES EDITED BY DR. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. Cloth boards, 6/- each CHRIST THE DESIRE OF NATIONS By Rev. EDGAR WM. DAVIS THE VICTORY OF THE GOSPEL A Survey of World-wide Evangelism. By Rev. J. P. LILLEY, D.D. THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA Its Opportunities and Responsibilities. By Rev. WILLIAM MUIR, M.A., B.D., B.L. BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL By Rev. WILLIAM ROBINSON MORGAN AND SCOTT LTD., LONDON PREFATORY NOTE BY GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., LL.D., F.R.G.S., F.S.S. TTHIS work, "By TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL," has a unique value. There is nothing like it in all the literature of Foreign Missions. It has to do chiefly with India, which has a special claim on every member of the Churches of the United Kingdom and its Colonies. The special value of the volume is that it is written from the inside of things, revealing Hinduism and Caste as they have never before been laid bare, in popular language, in a scholarly fashion, and with literary skill. G. S. CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE CALL PAGE APOSTOLIC SIMPLICITY ...... 4 EFFICACY OF PRAYER ...... 4 PAUL S FIRST VISION ...... 5 FEW COMPARABLE IN SUPREME DEVOTION . . .6 JEFFERSON S JOURNAL ...... 7 MEN WHO DEFY ARGUMENT . . . . .8 MIXED MOTIVES. . . . . . .11 CAREY S EEMINDER . . . . . .13 CHAPTER II OBEDIENCE TO THE VOICE OF CHRIST TOTALITY OF SURRENDER . . . . .17 ITS OBJECTIVE . . . . . . .18 THE DIVINE FILLING ...... 18 VARIED OPERATIONS OF THE SAME SPIRIT . . .19 SPIRITUAL HUMILITY . . . . . .19 AN INFALLIBLE TEST . . . . , . , . 20 YOGISM DEFINED . . . ;. ;, .!, ;. 20 ITS VALUE TO CHRISTIANS . . . . . 21 THE WAY OF THE MORAVIANS . . ; ; . ; , . 22 W. H. DREW S METHOD . . > , . ; . 23 A GREAT ADMONITION . . . . .24 THE PERSISTENCE OF FAITH . . . . .24 vii Contents CHAPTER III " GO YE THEREFORE " PAGE INTREPID PIONEERS . . . . . .29 ROMAN CATHOLIC FAILURE . . . . .30 THE NEW ENTHUSIASM . . . . .31 THE MORAVIANS . . . . .32 CAREY ........ 32 WHOLESALE APOSTASY . . . . . .33 REIGN OF RATIONALISM . . . . .34 THE OLD WAY AND THE NEW . . . .34 THE TRANSITION . . . . . .35 RAMPANT DEPRAVITY . . . . . .36 ON FIRE WITH PITY . . . . . .37 HIGHER AND LOWER HINDUISM . . . .38 CHAPTER IV THE OLD INTOLERANCE AN IMPREGNABLE INDICTMENT . . . .43 IMPARTIAL INQUIRY . . . . . .44 SEEKING OUT MANY INVENTIONS . . . .45 CONCILIATION IMPOSSIBLE . . . . .45 TYPICAL IDOLATRY . . . . . .46 THE GRATITUDE OF IGNORANCE . . . .47 VICE AS WORSHIP . . . . . .48 PERVERTED TEACHING . . . . . .49 HINDUISM SELF-CONTRADICTORY . . . .49 A DOCTRINE OF DEVILS . . . . .50 ULTIMATE EMPTY DELUSION . . . . .51 A SWEEPING DENUNCIATION . . . . .52 PROOF BY COMPARISON . 53 CHAPTER V . JNEXTRICABLE WEB CASTE"! i t .. .*. J . . . . .57 MONSTROUS AND GROTESQUE . . . . .58 PARALYZING INFLUENCE . . . . .60 viii Contents PAGE RELIGION is CASTE . . . . 60 MORAL CONVICTION WANTING . . . . .61 HINDUISM ALL-ABSORBING . . . . .62 ITS INFERIORITY .... .62 CHINA S ADVANTAGE ... 63 HOPE FROM EDUCATION . . . . .64 No SURRENDER . . . . . . .65 CHRIST v. HINDUISM - . .66 BRANDS FROM THE BURNING . . . . .66 CHAPTER VI THE NEW SYMPATHY THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE HEATHEN . . .72 WOMEN VOTARIES . . . . . .73 AN OPEN SHAME . . . . . .73 MONSTROUS FABLES . . . . . .75 BUCKLE S OPINION . . . . . .76 REVELATION IGNORED ..... 77 QUIXOTIC CONTRACTS . ... 77 PHYSIOLATRY ....... 78 How IDOLATRY GROWS ... 79 THE TRUE REMEDY ... . 80 THE NEGLECTED DYNAMIC . . . . .81 GOING-HOME MISSIONARIES 81 CHAPTER VII CONVERSION HOPING ALL THINGS . . . . . .86 ARTIFICIAL SINS . ... 87 DIVINE DIVERSITY . . . . . .88 WISE TREATMENT . . . . . .89 DIFFERING CONVERSIONS . ... 90 HEROISM OF CONVERTS. . . . . .91 RIDICULOUS TESTS . . . . . .93 VALUE OF TRUST . . . . . .93 THE MIRACLE OF CONVERSION . . . .94 AFTER MANY DAYS . . . . . .95 ix Contents CHAPTER VIII ENIGMAS PAGK AN INORGANIC MEDLEY . . . . .99 AN UNCONSCIOUS SAINT . . . .100 A LOFTY MORALIST ...... 101 THE DEVOUT STUDENT . . . . . .102 TRAVESTY AND REALITY ..... 103 DEGREES OF EDUCATION ..... 105 A GREAT FIELD OPEN . . . . . .106 A TYPE OF HINDU SAINTHOOD .... 107 THE INNER LIGHT . . . . . .108 RECONCILIATION ....... 109 SPECULATIVE RELIGION . . . . . .110 A SOUND WORKING PRINCIPLE . . . .111 CHAPTER IX DOING CHRIST S COMMANDMENTS VALIDITY ....... 115 TERMINOLOGY . . . . . . .115 A RIGHT LEADING . . . . . .116 SANCTIFIED COMMON SENSE . . . . .117 PERSECUTIONS OFT . . . . . .118 DESOLATING IDOLATRY . . . . . .119 MISSIONARY CHURCH is THE HEALTHIEST . . .120 MARCHING ORDERS . . . . . .121 "WORKERS TOGETHER" ..... 122 SHALLOWS AND DEEPS . . . . . .123 SLOW BUT SOLID GROWTH . . . . .124 SIR ALFRED LYALL S PREDICTION . . . .125 NOBLE COUNSEL . . . . . .125 CHAPTER X THE NEED FOR COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS SOWING DRAGON S TEETH . . . . .129 BLIND TEACHING . . . . . .131 TRUE NEED . . 132 Contents FAGB DENYING THE LIGHT ...... 133 A STERILE ATMOSPHERE . . . . .134 LOYAL AND DISLOYAL ...... 135 MATERIALISTIC LAWLESSNESS . . . . .136 THE MISSIONARY S TASK . . . . .136 UNFAIR COMPARISONS . . . . . .137 NEW AND OLD DIFFICULTIES . . . . .138 FESTINA LENTE 139 CHAPTEK XI NOTHING FOR NOTHING THE "GOVERNOR" OF THE ENGINE .... 144 FITNESS FALSE AND TRUE . . . . .145 PRECISION NEEDED . . . . . .146 THE FITNESS OF THINGS ..... 147 THE CHILD LEADING . . . . . .148 THE COMPREHENDING GOD . . . . .149 THE WORKER UPLIFTED . . . . .150 CHAPTER XII THE LONELY LIFE THE REWARD OF LONELINESS . . . . .156 DEVOTION S OFFERING . . . . . .157 PATMOS COMPANY . . . . . .158 INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE . . . . .159 JUNGLE ISOLATION ...... 160 CONSERVATION OF ENERGY ..... 161 THE STRONG CONSOLATION . . . . .161 YET NOT ALONE ...... 164 CHAPTER XIII MISSION INDUSTRIES A MASTER CRAFTSMAN ...... 167 SPADE WORK .... . 168 ADAPTABILITY . . . . . . .169 TRAINING VERSUS TRADING . . . . .170 xi Contents PAGE FAILURES AND SUCCESSES . . . . .171 VAST RESOURCES ... .172 A MOMENTOUS REQUISITION . .172 HANDICRAFT FOUND INDISPENSABLE . . . .173 METHOD IN "TIGER" TAMING. . . 174 THE FAMINE ORPHANS. ..... 175 EDUCATIONAL DIFFICULTIES . . . . .176 THE REVIVAL OF OLD INDUSTRIES . . . .177 CHAPTER XIV THE COMMISSARIAT BASE PHYSICAL SALVATION . . . . . .182 TREASURING THE GIFT OF LIFE . . . .183 DIET WISDOM . . . . . . .184 AUTHOR S JAIL CHAPLAIN EXPERIENCE . . .185 COOLIE INVENTIVENESS . . . . .186 PRIMARY PRECAUTIONS . . . . . .186 MEDICAL COMMON SENSE . . . .187 LIFE-FORFEITING NEGLECT . . . . .188 A SPIRITUAL HANDY-MAN . . . . .189 THE BODY A TRUST . . . . .189 HOT-WEATHER POLICY ...... 190 CHAPTER XV THE CONGREGATION SAVED BY MANY OR BY FEW . . . . .195 STEADFAST AND UNMOVED . . . . .196 THE SERPENT S WISDOM . . . .197 SELF-DISCRIMINATION .... . 197 PAST "DAYS OF SMALL THINGS" .... 198 THE "OLD GUARD" ... .199 THEN AND Now ...... 200 IN PERILS BY MINE OWN COUNTRYMEN . . . 200 RUINOUS BLUNDERING ...... 201 SURVIVAL AND FINAL SUCCESS .... 202 THE TRUE PASTORAL TYPE ..... 203 INDIAN MINISTERIAL BRETHREN . . . 203 THE VALUE OF EXPERIENCE ..... 204 OVER-PLOUGHED FIELDS ..... 205 DARK SPOT CULTIVATION ..... 206 xii Contents CHAPTER XVI HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES PAGE A DIFFICULT SPHERE . . . . . .211 DEALING WITH FROWARDNESS . . . . .212 INCIDENTS OF CAMPAIGNING ..... 213 TRIALS BY THE WAT .... . 214 BAZAAR PREACHING LIMITATIONS . .215 PRIESTLY CONFIDENCES . . . . . .215 OPIUM S SLAVE . . . . . .217 AN IRISH MOHAMMEDAN S COLLAPSE . . . .218 PREPARING THE WAY . . . . . .219 Music, HEAVENLY MAID . . . 219 CHAPTER XVII THE LITTLE FLOCK DISGUISED BLESSINGS ... . . 223 RAIN S TWIN EFFECTS ... . 223 PRIMITIVE ROUGH-AND-READY JUSTICE . . 225 A VILLAGE MEETING . . . . . .227 THE FELLOWSHIP OF BELIEVERS . . 228 A RESPONSIVE AUDIENCE . . 229 WORK PLUS ARREARS ...... 230 TOWN AND COUNTRY CONTRASTS . . 231 PERSONAL SUPERVISION NEEDED . . . 232 To CELIBATE OR NOT TO CELIBATE . . . 232 Two KINDS OF DISTRICT VISITING . . 233 CHAPTER XVIII "FAITHFUL IS HE THAT CALLETH " TRUE FAITHFULNESS .... . 238 FAILURE TURNED CRITIC ... . 238 THE OFFENCE OF THE UNCONVENTIONAL . . 240 To EVERY MAN His WORK . . 241 PATIENT WAITING UNTO HARVEST . , 242 xiii Contents PAGE ANOTHER REAPETH ...... 242 DESIRES AND NEEDS ...... 243 THE OUTWARD APPEARANCE AND THE INWARD HEART . 245 OBEY His VOICE ... . 246 THE TRUTH SHALL PREVAIL . . . 246 THE SUPREME MESSAGE . . 247 CHAPTER XIX DON T ADVICE TO BEGINNERS . . . . . .251 AN UNKNOWN LAND . . . . . .252 AVOIDING STRIFE ...... 252 CHARITABLE WISDOM ...... 253 SALAAMING v. HANDSHAKING ..... 253 RULE BY ELDERS ...... 254 ACCUSING BRETHREN ...... 254 A JUST BALANCE ...... 255 CURRYING FAVOUR . . . 256 BURYING THE PAST . . . 256 CHAPTER XX LUKE A STRAIGHT ISSUE ... . . . . 259 LUKE S SPECIALISM ...... 260 A WINNER OF GRATITUDE . . . . .261 GREAT-HEART, M.D. ...... 261 THE BEST LAID PLANS . . . . .262 PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES ..... 263 RESPECT OF PERSONS ...... 263 VITAL NECESSITY FOR MEDICAL MISSIONARIES . . 264 COALS TO NEWCASTLE ...... 265 TRAVELLING NECESSITIES AND GENEROUS AID . . 265 UNREQUITED LOVE ...... 266 DISEASE, SIN S PARALLEL ..... 266 BOTH ANTECEDENT AND SUPPLEMENTARY . . . 266 xiv Contents CHAPTER XXI PERSIS PAGE A MINISTERING ANGEL. ..... 271 SELF-ABNEGATION IN EXCELSIS . . . .272 UNEQUALLY YOKED ...... 273 SOLITUDE S SELF-RESPECT ..... 274 A GIFT OF TONGUES ...... 274 SILENCE AS A REMEDY .... . 275 THE REST CURE IN ABEYANCE .... 276 SORE STRICKEN ....... 276 THE TRUE METAL . . . . . .277 THE INTUITIVE FACULTY ..... 278 GRACE TO HELP IN TIME OF NEED 278 CHAPTER XXII BY LITTLE AND LITTLE GOD S ANCIENT METHOD . . . . .281 OWNED OF GOD ...... 282 THE MASTER PRAISES, WHAT ARE MEN? . . . 282 SUCCESS DEFERRED BUT SURE ..... 283 THE LAW OF PROGRESS ..... 283 As IN THE BEGINNING . . . . . .284 RIPE UNTO HARVEST ...... 285 CRITICS OF GOD ...... 286 HINDU SLOWNESS ...... 286 Is BRITAIN CHRISTIAN ?..... 287 PRINCIPAL MILLER S WISE WORDS .... 288 AN ESSENTIAL DISTINCTION ..... 288 BY THE SPIRIT ALONE ...... 289 GIDEON S SIFTING ...... 290 GOD OUR REFUGE ...... 290 GLOSSARIAL INDEX 291 xv My soul was shamed and knew its shame, Shiv ! What horrors in thy name In Shrine and Temple have I seen, With no protecting veil to screen. What mortal eyes should never see, My eyes have seen, and woe is me ! " XVI I THE CALL T.S. I "I send tliee to open their eyes, and to turn them from dark ness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. . . . Whereupon, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." ACTS xxvi. 17-19. "They that were scattered abroad went, . . . preaching the word." ACTS viii. 4. "Inquire not of the distressed darwesh in his destitution and time of want, How art thou? save on the condition that thou puttest ointment on his wound and settest money before him." Gulistan, Cap. viii. Maxim 64. BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL THE CALL A NDREW first found his own brother, Simon -^- Peter, and he brought him to Jesus ; Philip did the same with his friend Nathanael. Andrew and Philip were not only obedient to the call of Christ ; their obedience found its instant expression in service. And if you ask, What makes a Mission ary ? you will find the answer in the example of the man who, because he has found Christ himself, brings his brother to Jesus. This is the earliest and most striking instance of the Missionary Call and Motive. The incident has still the bloom of its early freshness, and its fragrant essence is the expression of all that is holiest in the Christian life. It contains 3 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool the first Missionary history ; its august emphasis caariGJt be (iixoinished, and you may not add to its pregnant simplicity. Its modesty rebukes us ; may its spirit energise us, and save us from the inex pressive existence of men who neither seek nor serve ! How often we hear it said : "If the Church would achieve apostolic success, it must come back to apostolic methods and do first things first." Four sentences containing forty words round off into completeness the first record of Missionary work. What pyramids of literature are written in the way of reports which may enshrine a mummy or perpetuate a list of subscribers names ! This is not written in any fault-finding spirit. The yearly report is needed in these days of a complex Christianity ; but the simpler follows more closely our Master s example. It is impossible to read early Missionary lives without being arrested by this supreme fact of simplicity. It may be said that Andrew s act was not an expression of spiritual enthusiasm, and that its motor efficacy was the desire to do his brother Simon a good turn. In the so-called imperfect teachings of our Lord, one, according to the Church of Rome, was that He did not teach His followers the utility of prayer the utility, of course, accord ing to the Church of Rome. The fact remains, how ever much priests may water it down, that our 4 The Call Lord taught men that they ought always to pray and not to faint; as to the utility ;,-i;he ;ga^ab i, e: of the importunate widow surely proves that tlie Master knew the exact and awful value of prayer beyond what any of His critics have ever imagined. If we look at His earliest words, we shall find that the germ of the Missionary aim is covered by the golden rule : " Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." The proper understanding of these words makes the true Missionary of Christ, and this verse is the master-light of all his seeing. Much has been made of the Macedonian vision, "Come over and help us " ; while, with curious obtuseness, that fact of the greater vision on the way to Damascus has been hidden. Here was Missionary work beyond all knowing of it, pregnant with mighty issues : " I send thee to open their eyes ; to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." The great Apostle received his call at the moment of his conversion ; the twenty-seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is but its expression in marvellous service, and shows his equally marvellous obedience to the call. He con ferred not with flesh and blood, and at the end could wish himself accursed if only Israel were saved. "If only": there is no need to expand 5 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool the \VOrds * into a commentary. Could they be saved;! fhe ; wjaifready to suffer to the direst hell all that men or devils could do. Looped up with his heart s desire and prayer for Israel is the daily practice of martyrdom ; and the famous list of perils in Corinthians represents the rugged peaks of service none of his successors have attained. That fiery indomitable soul still lights the path of all Missionary feet; few, except the very elect of God, have come within measurable distance of him. You may almost count their names on your fingers : Ziegenbalg, Eingeltaube, Carey, Kircherer, Henry Martyn, Rhenius, Duff, John Hunt, Dober, Livingstone, William Jones, Pat- teson, Chalmers, Hannington, and Edwin Lewis. From America, Judson, who endured more than they all. The names represent a blend of all the Churches that have sent their best sons to this great and enduring service. Some of the names are known all the world over ; the others are not known save to the people to whom they gave the Word of life. Six of the men were great linguists. Lewis was a powerful preacher in three Indian languages ; Ehenius was a heaven-sent administrator, as well as a linguist. Kircherer lived in a native hut, in the days when a notice-board on Dutch chapels in South Africa contained the prohibition : " Dogs 6 The Call and Hottentots not admitted." Ziege.n-b&lg sp^nt four months in an Indian jail, kept .-there by a brutal Governor who assured him-tha-t "-Heaven was very high above his head, and Copenhagen very far off." That most pathetic of all Missionary reading, The Journal of the First Mission to the South Seas, ought to have special study and informed editing. The Rev. J. Jefferson carefully kept the record in plain words, but with an unction that springs from the Acts of the Apostles. This Journal tells the pitiless truth of those trying and perilous days. What searchings of heart, what confessions of unworthiness, what grievings over lapses into sin and over tragedies that numb the heart and make one wonder how such horrors could be ! The men who passed through this fire are for gotten, except by readers who look at Jefferson s Journal. In an old magazine there is an affecting story of a young Wesleyan Missionary, named George Warren, who died at Sierra Leone, " the English man s graveyard," as it used to be called. Before leaving England friends tried to dissuade him from going to West Africa. They used all the arguments the ingenuity of love could suggest ; but at last he said to them: " Do the angels know the way to Sierra Leone ? " 7 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool the answer. he, "I would just as soon be carried lay Wigels to heaven from Sierra Leone as from any other part of the world." You cannot argue with men like these. They hear a voice you cannot hear bidding them carry the banner of the Lamb once slain, and they must do it. There is no escape from the needs-be of men Who trample death beneath their feet, And gladly die their Lord to meet. There are always friends who will try to turn a man from his purpose. Pere Du Boy, who died in China in 1769, was told that he would do better to try and convert his own people. His reply was : " I can do only that which God wishes ; I go to China because I am persuaded He wishes it. Whenever it shall please Him to desire another thing for me, I hope I shall desire the same. I have no zeal for one country more than another. If in place of China contrary winds drive me into another country, where Providence marks out another Mission, I shall be just as content. After all that God has done for me, I should be unfit to live if I wavered." Years after Henry Martyn s decease one of his converts, who had lapsed, said with bitter tears to William Milne in Malacca : Were every hair on my body a tongue, I could 8 The Call not fully tell that man s worth " and the reference was to his old teacher Martyn. Surely the same Spirit Who animated men like these can still move the heart and chain the purpose to this great work of God. It may be admitted that the heroic age of Missions is gone, the romance has hardened into organised work ; but the motive of service is as strong as ever, and the instinct for saving souls ought to answer its end in the attempt to save them. Nor need any worker regret that he or she cannot show the splendid muster-roll of services of men like Martyn, Moffat, or Livingstone. The humble workman can show what for him may be better ; and that is the spectacle of a common man possessed by an uncommon enthusiasm. It will be found, in the ultimate value of service, that the highest has not happened in the way of great opportunity. Trafalgars and Waterloos occur once in a century ; but the binding up of broken hearts is a daily experience, and the healing of wounded consciences is work that never ceases. He Who would not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax, may be trusted to lift drudgery to its true level ; and the one crowded hour of glorious life" may at the end take its place behind the " sentry go " God s hidden servants have had to do. They have had to keep open the city gates 9 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool all the day long ; and gate-keeping never was a pleasant business. But, in the joy of all the nations getting home, the keepers of the gates will gain their exceeding great reward. They have been fellow-helpers of their Lord and King, doing their best to keep both road and kingdom clean. Now if we are fellow-workers with Him, this partnership must be alive at all points. It is significant to note that no church or creed can close these ever-open gates. The dwellers in God s Eternal City are to come from the East and the West, from the North and the South ; and the Missionary is simply a messenger to help wanderers on their way from nature cults from Hinduism, from Confucianism and ancestor worship home to infinite love. Our Lord has prepared the way, and His servants must keep the road in order. The King s highway of holiness must have no lion or any ravenous beast thereon ; and His keepers must see to it that the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein. It would be ridiculous, human nature being what it is, to suppose that the call comes in the same way to every man. The outstanding instances quoted may mislead a cursory reader into the belief that every man or woman on the Mission -field has come out in the spirit of simple obedience to our Lord s emphatic command : "Go 10 The Call ye therefore." It is notorious that some men have deluded themselves into a belief that they had a call to foreign service because no church at home would have them. The man who fails in England, America, or Germany, is a thousand times a greater failure on the Mission-field. If he cannot sow and reap in his own country, he cannot in China, Africa, India, or New Guinea. Then, a man may be an orientalist, according to notions which prevail, say, at Oxford, to give him the hall-mark of respectable scholarship ; but what is he at the end of it ? If a man knows thirteen languages, Jbut is unable to speak a single sentence of common-sense in any of the thirteen, then his place is not in the Mission-field but in a Museum, where he can spell out epigraphs or read inscriptions on ancient coins. Restlessness is at times a moving factor in the call. This case is hopeful in two aspects : the man may really settle down in a new environment and do excellent work ; or he may leave it and let better men come in. Women Missionaries from Scotland, or Germany, or Denmark are beyond praise. English Societies have not, as a rule, sent out ladies so soundly edu cated. Here again the estimate of a church, or a vicar, has been allowed too much room in the selection of a candidate. It does not follow ii By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool because a woman is an indefatigable district visitor, or a Sunday School teacher, that she is quite adapted to work in China or India. Piety first, scholarship a close second, ought to be the rule in this selection. China and India are the dumping ground of certain " one-horse Missions," as a Missionary, who ranks with the great ones, describes them. It is simple cruelty to send out workers unready and untrained, to starve in a country like China or India. The Missionary referred to had to go from house to house and beg funds the place had a great number of Europeans in it to send home people who had been deluded into the belief that anything was good enough for India. These remarks do not imply that only the rich and noble are called to this service. With but few exceptions Missionaries have come from lowly stock. Williams and Morrison were handi craftsmen ; John Hunt was a farm labourer ; and Kobert Moffat a gardener. Livingstone was a striking instance of a man who was never ashamed of his early poverty and his weary hours in a mill. It must be noted, however, that these men were thoroughly equipped for their work ; but one reason of their success may be found in their humility. When Dr. Marshman was engaged in the most un pleasant task of compelling the then secretary of 12 The Call the Baptist Missionary Society to eat his own words, the doctor quoted the Secretary s words on the title page of the pamphlet : " Dr. Carey is uni versally known to be one of the humblest and most modest of human beings." Carey cultivated humility as he did his garden. A young Missionary lady, an inmate of Carey s house in 1828, puts on record that she saw a shoemaker s last hanging up in the doctor s study ; asking the reason why such a curious orna ment held such a conspicuous place, the doctor replied : "I keep it there simply to remind me what I once was a humble shoemaker." " The wind bloweth where it listeth. Thou canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit." In a true spiritual birth there is contained another birth, and that is the supreme desire to serve Christ. Wherever He calls, thither must His servants speed, to do His bidding over land and sea. This question of the call needs not only the Master s clear, unmistakable voice, but also the receptive ear of the listener. It is so easy to mis take the call of a meeting for the call of Christ. In that most searching and microscopic book, Letters on Missions, by William Swan, late Missionary in Siberia, there is a resume of motives which should be all that is needed to an intending Missionary. 13 II OBEDIENCE TO THE VOICE OF CHRIST " I have thrown myself blindfold, and I trust without reserve, into His Almighty hands." WHITEFIELD. "How too did the great movement in England originate? It was from no University, from no Established Church, from no distinguished man. It was in the mind of a shoe-maker, the honoured Carey. For years the idea was within him, as a fire shut up in his bones." HOPKINS. " Do good unto all men. Let your charity begin at home, but do not let it end there. Do good to your family and connexions, and, if you please, to your party ; but after that look abroad. Look at the Universal Church, and, forgetting its divisions, be a catholic Christian look at your country, and be a patriot look at the nations of the earth, and be a philanthropist." HENRY MARTYN. 16 II OBEDIENCE TO THE VOICE OF CHRIST TN the previous chapter it is assumed, if not J- stated, that Christ has spoken to His servant, and that the servant has answered : " Here am I, Lord ! send me." There is no need to speak much upon this fact of expectant and anticipatory obedience. The abnegation of the human to the Divine will has different modes of expression. Paul longed to be found in Christ, not having his own righteousness ; an almost equally fervid soul in one of his letters prays that he may be " lost in Christ " meaning thereby his desire for absolute passivity in the hands of his Lord, willing to go anywhere, willing to do anything, willing just to mark time, and be the veriest coolie for Christ, if Christ wills it. In the old Wesleyan hymn-book is the striking couplet which combines both experiences Here then, to Thee Thy own I leave, Mould as Thou wilt Thy passive clay. T.S. 2 17 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool And in devout Hindu thought you come to the wish of a certain lofty soul, who prays that he may be absorbed into the passive essence of the supreme God. In spiritual reaches of this kind the reader may think that Paul and Wesley and a devout Hindu are practically on the same plane. As a fact they are, so far as regards one-ness of desire ; but Paul and Wesley differ from the Hindu in the vital fact and the ultimate end of the desire. They want to be found, or lost, or absorbed in Christ, that He may direct them to never-ending service. The Hindu desires absorp tion simply that he may gain Nirvana, and be no more tormented by the power of deeds. In the one it is the home-bells of evening calling the world to rest ; in the other it is the clang of the trumpet which summons to strife and victory. It is therefore a matter for earnest and con tinuous prayer to find out what the Master calls upon His servant to do. To ascertain this there must be spiritual Yogism prayer that shall put its finger upon the Divine purpose, that shall feel and know the will of God. The question is one of telepathy ; our Lord taught it twenty centuries before the word became current. The fact and the power of the fact are not only in His parables, but were found in a certain Upper Koom. We have forgotten the glory of that Pentecostal Day 18 Obedience to the Voice of Christ when the followers of our Lord "were all together in one place," and the rushing of the mighty wind of God filled all the house, and filled every heart in it. Here was a call to men and women on an unprecedented scale, but " the Spirit gave them utterance." With all reverence let it be said that crises like these ought to come to every follower of Christ, if the man or woman who follows is alive to His call. That mighty rushing wind did not affect Galileans only ; it captured devout men from every nation under heaven. The same wind of the Spirit has swept over the world in certain alarming facts of history. The accessories have not been an Upper Room, and a host of weeping disciples. National upheavals, plague, pestilence, persecution, and war have been the heralds of the Spirit s advent ; but the fact remains the Spirit has come. It has become the fashion to speak of " the Spirit-filled life," and there are people who claim to be the recipients of this supreme blessing. It is noteworthy that the Bible contains no instance of the personal application of this phrase. The exhortation, "Be ye filled with the Spirit," has in view the great possibility, otherwise the exhortation would not have been given ; but with the accession of the indwelling Spirit there will be that indwell ing humility of the heart in which alone the Spirit 19 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool of God can find His temple. This is referred to because there are people quite willing to serve God in a particular part of the Mission-field which may attract them by its novelty. It may have historic interest, and the glamour of a great name. " What society shall I find at P ? " wrote a would-be aspirant to an old Missionary who had been at P all his working life. He replied : " If you want society, stay where you are." There is no reason why a man should not desire a particular field. If he is sent to the field he wishes, let him thank God because he is sent. If he is found more fitted for another place, let him still thank God, and remember George Herbert s words : "I now look back upon my aspiring thoughts, and think myself more happy than if I had attained what I so ambitiously thirsted for." There is an infallible test, which whoever tries shall find it will at once indicate to him how far his heart and will are in accord with the will of his Master. Let him make prayer the test, and work the proof of his sincerity, and there will be no mixture of motive, no division of aim. A page or two back the word Yogism was used to express the discipline of soul which leads to illumination. The Hindu word " Yogam " is the generic term for the eight states in which the devout ascetic meditates upon Shiva the ineffable ; 20 Obedience to the Voice of Christ and seeks union with him. The practice of Yogam has only too frequently led to a refinement of cruelty almost incredible. If a Yogi sets himself to seek God, the patched road of penitence" is the garment he must wear ; and to become a proficient in the eight states means protracted exercise of both physical and mental powers. The eight states are : restraint of appetite ; moral duty ; the rigid position on the tiger skin ; control of the breath ; unwavering stability ; abstraction ; sar- riathi, or the state in which the soul is independent of the body ; and lastly, the profound and un disturbed contemplation of God. Nothing must interrupt this supreme business of seeking the will of God. It seems to be a peculiar power of the Eastern soul to indulge in this long, tireless, and ecstatic contemplation. It has been carried to an awful extreme in the Muslim Brotherhoods of North Africa. We are not immediately concerned with the habit of contemplation per se. It is only mentioned as showing what certain sincere souls will do in the attempt to know God. We may think the mode a mistake ; but there is no question as to the thoroughness and reality of the attempt. A little spiritual Yogism would do the Christian Church service in bringing home and emphasising the fact of self-denial, willinghood, and 21 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool obedience. " Do one thing ; do it well ; do it to-day," is an Indian saying that leaves nothing to be desired in the way of terseness. The Brethren of the Moravian Church are con spicuous for this one thing, they hold it to be the main calling of their Church to proclaim the Lord s death. One of their chief memorial days is August the thirteenth : " The baptism of the Spirit upon the infant Church by the occasion of the celebra tion of the Lord s Supper on that day in 1727." The blessing on this day, which is looked upon as the spiritual birthday of the Renewed Church, showed itself chiefly in a deepened spirit of brotherly fellowship, and a universal feeling of true heart s union with each other in the Lord. One result was the institution of the hourly in tercession (August 27), by which unceasing prayer was offered by the congregation by day and by night. Proofs of the reality of the work were the general awakening among the children (August 17), and the common impulse that moved the community to work for Christ, especially to carry the Gospel to distant heathen races. Here is a practical example of Christian Yogism. We quote another. In 1856, William Hoyles Drew died from cholera. Bishop Caldwell had been Drew s companion in the early days of his career. Caldwell weighed his words, and was a singularly 22 Obedience to the Voice of Christ calm and judicious writer. He says concerning his early friend : " His devotedness to the Mission ary cause to the cause of Christ was fervent and unchanging ; and it arose not from professional zeal, but from devotedness of heart to Christ. He lived by faith not in doctrines respecting Christ, but in Christ Himself, Whom, having not seen, he loved ; and his love was fed by habitual devout- ness. Much of his time was daily spent in private prayer, or in the study of God s Word and devout writers. His chief favourites and constant com panions were John Howe, Robert Leighton, and Thomas a Kempis ; and his habitual feeling may be represented most appropriately by an exclamation of Leighton s which he loved to quote : prayer, the better half of our whole work, and that which makes the other half effectual ! He occasionally combined fasting with prayer, and his manner of life was always remarkably unworldly and self-denied." " Touching bottom things " is a familiar way of putting an essential truth. The bed-rock of pure motive will bear the heaviest burden of service. Let the foundation be well and truly laid, then shall the superstructure stand ; then, in the wise and touching words of Principal Falding to one of his students : "Bethink you, not of failure, but of grace that supports you. Walk worthy of your 23 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool high vocation, in all prudence and in all fidelity- giving no occasion to the enemy to speak reproach fully. Let no man despise you as men certainly will, and especially in India, if you should ever be ashamed of your office or negligent of your duty. Eemember that you may be exposed to temptations to abandon your post as a Missionary. Induce ment may be offered you to forsake your high and holy calling for secular office, for civil service, for commercial or literary pursuits. Oh, remember then how once your heart was fired with holy gratitude and your spirit was overwhelmed with adoring wonder and astonishment at the honour and obligation conferred on you sinful and un worthy as you saw yourself to be when unto you, less than the least of all the saints, the grace was given that you should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." " Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers " possibly originated a distinction made between a narrowing love and a broadening faith : can such be the result of faith faith which works by love, and can only find its true expression in the constant exercise of love ? The phenomenon of an expanding mind with narrowing sympathies, unless the expansion is evil, is non-human. It is a waste of time to discuss the so-called expansion of faith which has outgrown belief in the written Word. That is no expansion, 24 Obedience to the Voice of Christ it is an accretion. Faith in our Risen Lord as it expands will compel our love to keep pace with its growth. If the writer who engendered the sentence means by the word " faith " a creed, then his contention may stand ; for sympathy may grow beyond a creed that men have framed but it should be called a creed, and not faith. Ill "GO YE THEREFORE" " How came the primitive believers, then, by a faith which was strong enough to brave ridicule, persecution, death, and to make Christianity the conquering force of the world ? The answer to the question is the core of the whole matter. The proof to them of Christianity was the possession of it as a life. . . . The Risen One had touched them, and that touch transformed their lives." J. B. " He was so penetrated by the conviction that the immeasurable edifice was not merely the Church of God, but the will of God, that the thousand impediments which met him disappeared before his entranced vision, till it stood before him in its heavenly glory."- Dante, by KARL WITTE. 28 Ill -GO YE THEREFORE" IN launching their barque upon the difficult waters of Missionary enterprise, " Go ye there fore" was the sheet anchor of our Missionary fathers. The words rang like a clarion blast through that earlier, and shall it be said, braver Israel, who through faith subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness. The greatest miracle of modern days is not the phenomenal success of the enterprise, but the fact that it was ever begun. Of the twenty-two priests who came out to India with John de Britto, eleven died on the voyage ; John himself was half murdered at Goa by his fellow- countrymen, who could not bear his rigid scrutiny into their shockingly immoral lives. The Governor of Goa would have justly punished these scandalous cowards, but John would not give them away. Ziegenbalg at Tranquebar had to suffer unspeakable things even among quiet Danes. China claims its share of distinction, but with 29 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool a difference. Missionaries were at first welcomed there ; but from a quaint old letter, written from China in January 1712, it is evident that the Catholic Mission was played out. The Chinese being " a wise and understanding people, masters of reason, and learned in natural philosophy," had no further patience with Jesuits. These, it is admitted, "lived unblameable." 1 The Portuguese padres at Macao are scandalous beyond expression, and are a great obstacle to Christianity. Most of them are better mathema ticians than divines." The letter goes on to state that the Jesuits called the other priests " asses of God " ; but the greatest offence was the attempt at preaching down China-idolatry and preaching up Europe-idolatry. The Chinese say they have more reason to worship China saints than Europe saints, of whom they know nothing. It will be easily perceived that Morrison in going to China had a heritage of crime and misdeed, done in the name of the Christian religion, that must have appalled him. Jesuit duplicity of the most unblushing kind had closed China. The last paragraph in the letter quoted above contains a specimen of the length the Jesuits allowed them selves to go. " At a great solemnity, when they choose doctors of law and others to serve the emperor in places 30 "Go Ye Therefore" of trust, out of the College of Confucius in Canton, Padre Tonglang, Prior of the Jesuits, and tagon or messenger from Court, assisted at the sacrifice to Confucius, and dipped his finger in the hog s blood that lay upon the altar ; of which being accused by several persons French gentlemen he presently answered like a Jesuit, that though he assisted as a China mandarin, he said the prayers of a Christian all the time of the ceremony." No wonder Christianity sat uneasy upon the Chinese, and led to the exclusion of foreigners, except a few factors in certain parts. The new crusade had to begin in the face of frightful obstacles. There was not only invincible prejudice in China and India, but moral and spiritual barrenness at home. Dutch chaplains in factories on the coast-line of India, in Batavia and Ceylon, paid some attention to slaves and outcasts. Ziegenbalg and Plutschau, however, were the real pioneers of Protestant Missions in India. They reached Tranquebar in 1706. Twenty-six years later Moravians began work in the West Indies. Zinzendorf, while on a visit to Copenhagen, heard of the lost condition of slaves on those islands, and the congregation at Herrnhut felt that the Gospel alone could help these destitute souls. Leonhard Dober, a potter, and David Nitschmann were willing, if necessary, to become slaves them- By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool selves to save the slaves. On August 21, 1732, Dober and Nitschmann set out, each with eighteen shillings in his pocket, on foot for Copenhagen. After overcoming the greatest opposition in that city, they set sail, and, landing in St. Thomas, December 13, declared on the very same day the Gospel of God s love and Christ s death in broken words to the astonished negroes, who clapped their hands for joy. The Danish Missionaries went out upon the gracious command of King Frederick the Fourth. The Moravians had no earthly king to help them on their way ; and notwithstanding Zinzen- dorf, they must have been as poor in worldly goods and gear as the disciples who carried neither scrip nor purse but the King of kings was with them, and Dober and Nitschmann went to certain victory. Sixty-two years later England entered upon this crusade. If ever human being was filled with the Spirit, that man was William Carey, a saint of saints, and a man great in the realm of spiritual things as Burke was in politics and of infinitely more use to the world than any politician ever has been or will be. For years Carey had prayed with excessive desire that he might share in the spiritual conquest of India. From every human standpoint it seemed to be a forlorn hope. In spite of the continuity of their efforts, through two hundred and fifty years, the Jesuits had given up "Go Ye Therefore" the task. Their labours were futile, they were as men beating the air ; for sixty thousand of their so-called converts were compelled to turn apostate and become Moslems in one day by Tipoo Sultan, the Tiger of the Carnatic. It was this wholesale apostasy that compelled the Abbe Dubois to ex claim in the grief and bitterness of his soul, " Oh, shame ! to think that not one out of this great host had the courage to die for his faith." Dubois believed it was impossible for any Hindu ever to become Christian. And yet in the earlier stages of that Mission, Christian Indians had died for the faith, and won the crown of martyrdom. In Ceylon the people under Dutch rule had been coerced into an observance of Christianity. They were Christian of the type we understand when an article is labelled "Made in Germany." They were Dutch State-made ; and the result was that when Great Britain, at the ceding of Ceylon, declared that the Singalese were free to follow their religious convictions, the State-made Christians went back to their primitive cults and devil worship. " What ! " said an old Tamil man of Jaffna, in reply to a Missionary who had pressed upon him the claim of Christ, " Do you think the tamarind fruit, which the iron hook of the Dutch could not sever from its parent stem do you think that fruit is going to fall at your gentle words ? " T.S.-3 33 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool This sturdy old Tamil resisted the coerciveness of the Dutch, and despised the mild sway of the English. The fine old Mission at Tranquebar had become paralysed by Rationalism. The wave of supreme indifference in Europe affected the lonely workers in India. They were broken in spirit. The hundredth anniversary of the Mission was celebrated in such a way that the men wrote : " Our churches are empty, and Baptism and the Lord s Supper are despised." This was in Tranquebar itself; in other places where there were no irreligious Europeans things were better. The "holy masters" of Leadenhall Street were opposed to Mission work. It is quite true they had sent chaplains to India, and had given free passages to Missionaries and stores in certain instances ; but their attitude to Christian work from 1792 to 1830 was scandalous, notwithstanding the efforts of Charles Grant. Things were in this condition when Carey and his brethren set the example of simple and direct obedience to the command of Christ by going forth to teach. In writing of India, special gratitude ought to be given to the memory of Andrew Fuller. At the time, great ideas were fermenting in the minds of men. In France these brought about the horrors of a revolution ; perhaps an 34 "Go Ye Therefore " odious means to a necessary end. In England, thanks to the Wesley and Whitefield revival, a moral revolution was effected. The leading bishops severely let the new expansion of Christian service alone, and did not transmit Apostolic gifts with the Apostolic succession. Archbishop Wake in 1719 wrote to the Tranquebar men: "May Almighty God graciously favour you and your labours in all things " ; and he congratulates them, "0 happy men ! who, standing before the tribunal of Christ, shall exhibit so many nations converted to His faith by your preaching ; happy men ! " In spite of the prevailing indifference, John Eliot and Brainerd worked among American Indians ; John Wesley went to Georgia ; and White- field "went out to wearisome and perilous rides through the wilderness of the New World : across its dangerous creeks and rivers, through its huge forests, that he might minister the Word of life to a handful of colonists or to a group of negroes, to a schoolful of children as well as to the great multitude in the rising cities on the coast." Itinerants, like Boardman and Pilmoor, had gone forth, and there were other instances of men in the irregular forces of Christ s army who left home and kindred and friends for His sake ; but excepting Eliot and Brainerd, none had taken up the solemn obligation of work among heathen 35 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool races as a really distinct and not an incidental work. Indifference in England was intensified in India. The condition of Calcutta at the time Carey went out is typical of Madras and Bombay at the same period. Schwartz is said to have described Madras as Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one. The Eev. C. B. Lewis, in his Life of John Thomas, writes of Calcutta : " Europeans had their work carried on, their assemblies and routs, on the Lord s Day the same as any other clay ; and a man, when he arrived in India, showed what he would have been in England if there had been no restraint there. Duelling was very frequent, and was encouraged by the example of some of the chief persons in the settlement. Deism was the fashionable profession ; yet, for the sake of gain or for other motives as ignoble, the idolatrous cere monies of the natives were encouraged by the contributions, and honoured by the presence, of the representatives of Protestant England. Drunkenness, gambling, and swearing were almost universally practised." The motive impelling these pioneers was some thing more than the " expulsive power of a new affection " or the enthusiasm of humanity. To use a favourite expression of those days, these " oper ated " ; but the vibrant, dominating note in the call 36 "Go Ye Therefore " that came to them was the fearful future to which they believed Hindus were irrevocably doomed. For years a popular hymn in Missionary assem blies was The heathen perish ; day by day Thousands on thousands pass away : Christians ! to their rescue fly : Preach Jesus to them ere they die. Wealth, labour, talents, freely give, Yea, life itself, that they may live. It is recorded of Henry Martyn that in "frail and feeble health, with a heart half -broken by an attachment which he believed it was his duty to surrender at times lifted up by high hope or calmed by a Divine peace, but again perturbed by the remorse of a sensitive conscience and the humiliations which dog a repressed and perverted nature he went to Asia because the people there were infinitely more miserable than himself." The writer quoted seems to have had intimate knowledge of Martyn ; but from the impressions of friends like Mrs. Sherwood one does not gain quite such a gloomy view of him : " His fidelity was forcible by its justice and intrepidity, and penetrat ing by its affection." He had the power of holy love. The ground of Missionary effort may have shifted, but the motive remains as strong as ever. With a 37 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool wider knowledge of Hinduism than our fathers had though it may be seriously questioned if we really know more of it than they did the motive is stronger and the call to work more binding upon followers of Christ than ever it was. There are Christian people among whom the opinion prevails that Hinduism is good enough for Hindus, because they have inherited the system from a remote antiquity. To talk like this begs the whole question. Much frothy stuff has been written on the " Higher Hinduism," which presumably was discovered by Max Mliller and some Sanscrit scholars. Latent Christian ideas are found in its teaching and we willingly admit this is true ; but the Higher Hinduism affects India much as a butterfly would light upon a pyramid. The butterfly is there, and this is all you can say ; it merely touches the immense mass of stone on which it rests, but does not affect a particle of the material composing the pyramid. Quite in another category is the massive force of the popular Hinduism of the man in the street. This was what Carey and his confreres had to face ; this is what every Missionary in India must reckon with, and find his true account of faithful service in trying to overcome. IV THE OLD INTOLERANCE " Should he whose heart is unclean, rubbing his body with earth equal to a mountain, bathe till death with all the water of the Ganges, still he will not become clean." From the SUDDHI TATWA. " I have never seen a Hindu procession which was not a picture of Hell." THE ABB DUBOIS. " The great majority of the population of India consists of idolaters, blindly attached to rites and doctrines which, considered merely with reference to the temporal interests of mankind, are in the highest degree pernicious. In no part of the world has a religion ever existed more unfavourable to the moral and intellectual health of our race." MACAULAY, Speech on the Gates of Somnath. 40 IV THE OLD INTOLERANCE " A NEW catholicity has dawned upon the * world. All religions are now recognised as essentially Divine." This expression has quite the flavour of South Place, Finsbury, and in that accommodating centre it was minted. It is perhaps fortunate for the human race that South Place, Finsbury, does not absorb the common-sense of the universe. In discussing the old Intolerance or the new Indifference, let us try to be honest to the claims of both. The former judged all religions by the Bible ; the Book of God was the standard to which they were referred. Early Missionaries used this test, and it is admitted their logic was only too triumphant. In the rebound from their whole sale denunciation has grown the belief that Hinduism is good enough for Hindus, Confucian ism for the Chinese, Animism for savage races, since "all religions are Divine in their origin By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool because of their ability to minister to the aspira tions of men." " Aspiration " is one of those loose words that belong to loose thinking. To assert that a thing is Divine because it gratifies a man s desire, is to make righteous every offence in the Penal Code. "Here I am, God help me I can do no other" expresses the attitude of the older Missionaries towards Hinduism ; and in this aspect of their work there is infinitely more to be said for them than against them. Dubois lived among Hindus thirty-five years, adopted their dress, ate the same food, and knew them with an intimacy no other authority can claim. Bernier is described by Mill as " the faithful traveller." It must also be kept in mind that Ward saw most of the evil things he describes ; while to this hour the horrors of the daily sacrifices at the Kali Ghat, Calcutta, may be seen. Missionary publications a hundred years ago began to expose the horrors of popular Hinduism. The attestations of writers of books on India went to swell the general testimony against it. Jugger naut received special attention from the Baptist Missionaries and Claudius Buchanan. There is no need here to enlarge upon its nameless horrors ; they are the commonplaces of Mission History. From this cruel and corrupt source the Directors 42 The Old Intolerance of the East India Company in seventeen years, 1813-1829, received a profit of 99,205 15s. At Gaya in sixteen years the net profits amounted to 455,980 15s. At Allahabad in the same period profits totalled 159,429 17s. 6d. At Tripathy in seventeen years the profits are returned at 205,599 10s. 3d. This Judas gold was obtained from the " Pilgrim Tax," and from the ghastly processions which year by year gathered at the temples above named. Dubois, in his Mceurs et Institutions des Peuples de rinde (tome ii. p. 369), gives a description of these processions as he saw them. The description will not bear translation, and for this reason does not appear in the first English edition of Dubois. John Poynder, Esq., in 1830, denounced this unnameable traffic at a General Court of Directors of the East India Company. The speech fills a volume of one hundred and fifty-seven crown octavo pages, "containing evidence in proof of the direct encouragement afforded by the Company to the licentious and sanguinary system of idolatry." Mr. Poynder further pledges himself that he can completely verify the facts about Hinduism that he quotes. It is a pity that the advocates of the Higher Hinduism cannot be compelled to read this reasoned and impregnable indictment of popular, or, as it is also named, "Puranic" Hinduism. 43 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool There is no question of Missionary intolerance here ; the book bears the imprimatur of a pro prietor of the Company. No wonder the horrors of the Mutiny followed traffic of this kind ! Meanwhile workers in India had been pro gressing in an accurate knowledge of Sanscrit and other languages. In 1850 appeared in Urdu An Investigation of the True Religion. It is an eminently fair and reasonable comparison of Hinduism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity. It was not written for the sake of controversy and contention ; the writers disclaim all intention of causing pain to anyone, and the reader is entreated in the fear of God to examine the work from beginning to end, and then decide upon its merits. This is the middle way between intolerance and indifference. Let it be reverently said, that was the way of Christ, Who despised no man and despised no man s belief. If the man was bad, by repentance and faith he became a new creature in Christ Jesus ; if his belief was childish or impure, then it was cleared of error and filled with the light of the knowledge of the Son of God. In Vedic Hinduism there is an undoubted concept of God ; but men have sought out many inventions, and this revelation is completely lost in Puranic Hinduism, hidden or destroyed by revolting cere- 44 The Old Intolerance monies and by substituting the creature for the Creator until they were given over to a reprobate mind. Some Missionaries now maintain that there must have been a primitive revelation, but that there was an arrested development of the idea ; and, losing sight of the original fact, the people wandered into the endless mazes of error and superstition. Flint shows that a primitive revelation is untenable. Some of the Puranas are summaries of the impious and iniquitous doings of the gods, in which lying, deception, theft, cheating, and shock ing uncleanness indicate their character. It is quite out of place to suppose for a moment that Hindus are as bad as the Puranic deities they ignorantly worship. They, as a rule, are better than the creeds they profess ; and the Mission ary s task among them is neither to reconcile Hinduism with Christianity, nor to give the sanc tion of the law of God to beliefs and practices opposed to that law. These might be possible if the so-called Higher Hinduism were followed ; but it is not by at least ninety-nine per cent, of the people. Any attempt to bring popular Hinduism into line with the Gospel of Christ is absolutely impossible. The two are contradictory, and must for ever remain so. What is the experience of the ordinary, every- 45 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool day Missionary as regards popular Hinduism, the Hinduism of the people ? Every morning of my life, except when in camp, I pass the favourite Swami of the city in which I live. He is known as the Buddha with the broken crown, and has reposed in placid contentment where he is, say, for one thousand years. Mohammedans once threw him down a well, and his head was broken off at the neck ; long, long after he was drawn up out of the well, and his head was cemented on to his neck. There he sits in bland and peaceful meditation, having known only one interruption in his long period of perfect repose. There he sits in drenching sun, in rain, storm, and wind, placid as a lagoon and still as the sphinx, if the people would only let him alone. He is the most popular god in a city of seventy-six thousand people. Not a soul among his troops of worshippers regards him as Buddha, Saivite women smear sacred ashes upon him as the destroyer ; Vaishnavas place upon his forehead Vishnu s trident as the Preserver. These are all women, and their sisters of other cults place garlands round his neck, burn lights in front of him, pour oil upon his head, and one woman is always near him not the same woman, but one out of the various sects ; she sweeps the platform on which he sits, sweeps the ground beneath, and The Old Intolerance in the way of vigorous, continuous service shames many a Christian. One may not pass a scene like this without a prayer that the unknown God whom they ignorantly worship may be declared unto them. There are women Missionaries at work among these women, and they testify to the fact that the worship is based on gratitude. The worshippers prefer their battered, ancient stone god to any other ; their great-great-grandmothers worshipped him, and what was good enough for women one hundred, or one thousand, years ago, is good enough for them. You may not impeach their sincerity or their faith. It is blindness, but grateful blindness, that prompts this worship. The woman will candidly tell you that for her to approach the Supreme is an impossibility. " We only have to do with the smaller gods and goddesses, and this Swami meets all our need. We decorate him, show him reverence, keep him clean, and his resting-place is our shrine, our temple." It becomes apparent that the god they worship is not the God we worship. The habit of custom dominates India, and as a rule the only devout people in it are the women. Salvation, as Indians understand it, is the cessation from existence, not salvation from sin. In India the strange pheno- 47 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool menon is daily manifested of a man religious, but still indulging in vices we cannot describe. " The odour of sanctity " wraps him round, and in its embracing amplitude all things are possible to him he is a holy man. On the other hand, you find a man who deliberately tells you he believes in no god, yet he is as pure in life as if he were still a child. Fakir filth is about the commonest description you will hear ; and it covers such a reach of vice that no wonder some men deny all religious obligations, and elect to be without the worship of a god which leads its votaries to such vileness. The Higher Hinduism, when resolved into its constituents, is found to be no better than the lower. Theosophists use phrases current in India, and put into them meanings the words in any significance will not bear ; sthuli, linga, sarirathi, yoni, sakti, and other words used by a brilliant lady lecturer as the expression of spiritual processes, are no more connected with these than common physical acts, which are natural in their place to any animal, are to be identified with the processes of a soul in its approach to God. It needs an apostle with the acumen of St. Paul to bring back the conception that flesh is flesh and spirit is spirit. No one can attempt to minimise the infinite difference between the two states. You may hear The Old Intolerance our Lord s most solemn words, "Ye must be born again," quoted as a proof of transmigration. Conversion has no more to do with the Hindu belief of change into varying births than has the earth life of a worm to do with the undying life of the soul. One can only wonder how such a pretender as the late H. P. Blavatsky ever caught one of the brightest intelligences among Englishwomen, and persuaded her to become the champion of the Neo-Hinduism. Take it how you may, call it as you will high, low, new, old, pure or impure, worship of pure intelligence or worship of all that is vile you find Hinduism illusive as the mirage of an African desert, yet as ponderable as the solid earth. Not a gleam of mercy shines in its amazing tolerance. Hence misconception, and a conflict of testimony as puzzling and as difficult to hold as Penelope s web. The more you weave the more you unweave ; and the contractions are as exasperating as the scrub of an Indian jungle, or the grass, which cattle will not eat, of certain fields. Walk through a field and see for yourself. Waving grass, but as full of spear points as a seashore is full of sand, and the lancet points of this grass penetrate to your skin, no matter what clothing you wear. Hinduism is like this, and its own Mahabharat says of it : " Contradictory are the Vedas ; contradictory T.S. 4 49 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool are the Shastras ; contradictory the doctrines of the holy sages." Take the much quoted formula, Ekdm deo a advaityam " One God without a second." " Oh," says the Western theologian, " this teaches the doctrine of one God" and he wraps himself in the garment of absolute certitude. Hinduism teaches monotheism. Does it, indeed? The formula teaches absolute and illimitable pantheism. The correct meaning is : " There is one God, and nothing else. God is all, and all is God." The whole universe, heaven and hell, light and darkness, virtue and vice, are God. There is no need to point the effect of a jumble like this. The formula, without pressing it to ultimate issues in the way of personal conduct, denies the personality of God, denies the existence of man and the universe as separate from God. It also annihilates the freedom of the will, and, as for our human consciousness, this goes the same way as our will. We have neither the one nor the other. We quote no shocking instances, though every Missionary finds them, of men misled into unspeakable iniquities by this belief. " Karma," or the power of deeds, destroys freedom, and leaves the Hindu powerless to act for good or ill. He is the merely passive instrument or vehicle by which deeds act, and 50 The Old Intolerance he is no more responsible for them than fire is for a building it may destroy, or water for a man it may drown. The effect of this teach ing is precisely what one might expect. Men confound good and evil ; however vile or virtuous the deed they do, they assert it is the act of God. It is with wonderful ingenuity Hindu thinkers point out that God exists in two states, Nirgun and Sargun. The first of these two words means that which has no qualities or attributes. God is in this state when creation does not exist, and nothing can be affirmed of Him. He is then called Brahm, which is neither masculine nor feminine, but neuter. At last this quiescent inertness becomes Sargun, endowed with qualities, and the desire to create arises in Him. How we are not told ; and the responsibility for our not knowing is found in Maya illusion, which now moves in Him and He becomes possessed of consciousness. He per vades and creates, He is identified with all things, and all things come from Him. In the Sama Veda he himself says : "I am one, I will become all things." It therefore comes to pass that such a thing as human personality cannot be ; life is but a dream, and the universe a figment of the imagination. " As dolls dance in a puppet show, so man is made to dance at the will of the Divine. By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool There is no soul, no joy, no sorrow : all is Maya empty delusion." By a simple progression the result of such belief is disastrous. Everything, in the heavens above or on the earth beneath, every thought of the mind, every act of the body, be it an act of devotion or of nameless impurity all is Maya. Saint of holiest sanctities, sinner of filthiest deeds, are both Maya ; and, so far as personal responsibility is concerned, both are in the same boat. Dr. Mullens, who knew Hinduism profoundly, could retain no measure of words in denouncing it. He was intolerant because he had to be so ; and he declares, after a summing up that would do credit to a King s Counsel : " The whole universe is a gigantic lie, and the liar is the supreme Brahm." Popular Hinduism makes God the author of sin and righteousness. It regards existence in this world as an evil, good or bad ; therefore your actions are all evil. Hinduism destroys responsi bility, because it affirms that " in all things man acts not freely, but under the compulsion of an inevitable necessity." As for interminable nature, religions, local cults, barbarous superstitions and practices, fetishism, worship of trees and animals, their name is legion ; and the endless variety of these objects of worship 52 The Old Intolerance indicates that need of the soul which Christ alone can satisfy. The outward manifestations of Hindu cruelties flourished in all their horror when our fathers came to do Christ s work in India. With few exceptions among Englishmen, none thought it worth his while to interfere, In South India, Mohammedan conquerors let Hinduism go its own way ; except Tipoo, who sometimes made Brahmins into Mo hammedans by the simple process of mutilating them : but beyond this he let them alone, and whilst no Missionary should make it his chief work to be antagonistic, he is bound to make no com promise with Hinduism. He may be silent about it if he chooses, and give his whole time to preach ing the truth which is in Christ Jesus ; but on the peril of his own soul he may not attempt to minimise the difference between Emmanuel and Brahm, or between eternal right and wrong. The Missionary who sets himself the superhuman task of extracting truth from Puranic Hinduism is trying to find a grain of wheat in a cartload of chaff; and the grain of wheat may not be there after all. Incarnation they are all prepared to admit yes ! but what incarnation ? The name of the great fact, what does it mean for a follower of Christ ! and what does it mean to a Hindu ! There 53 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool is no possible basis of comparison ; and any Christian apologist who tries to find an analogy, say, in the legendary birth of Krishna and the birth of the Saviour of men, can and ought to find no place in India. 54 THE INEXTRICABLE WEB 55 " I doubt whether anyone who has not lived among Hindus can adequately realise the astonishing variety of their ordinary religious beliefs, the constant changes of shape and colour which these undergo." LYALL. "The Puranas . . . are full of contradictions and extravagant tales ; and what is most extraordinary, it is declared at the end of each Parana that it is superior to all the rest." Examination of Hinduism. " In the Tantras, elevated by Shiva above the Vedas, he announces the Bam-mata, or worship of the female energy personified, to be superior to all other systems." Examination of Hinduism. "And found no end, in wandering mazes lost." MILTON. V THE INEXTRICABLE WEB /CONDITIONS are less complicated in other ^ great Mission-fields. China, Japan, and Africa can show no supreme hindrance to the reception of the Gospel such as you find in India. Caste has so far not had the attention of a hint. India is kept from Christ on account of it, and it blocks the way of the Lord in every con ceivable aspect. It is the supporting wing of Hinduism, and is actually a fort whose outworks surround the inner citadel with massive and impregnable walls. It hinders and baffles every approach. Excuses of tribal custom and privilege are made for it. It is pleaded that caste is a purely social arrangement ; also that the Kingdom of God con sists not in meat and drink so the gamut runs. Pride of race is one thing, caste in India is another. Bengalis have instanced the village squire in the principal pew of an English church 57 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool as a being quite apart from his tenants, who sit behind him. You cannot say there is no obser vance of caste in this arrangement, but one supreme fact differentiates it from caste in India. In England the distinction is purely social. The squire has pew and house, because he can pay for both ; the tenant has a smaller house and a humble pew, because his means do not permit him anything better. Let him get the means, and he can be as well housed and seated as the squire any day. Another matter to be kept in mind is this, squire and tenant are men who can meet on equal terms in the renting of a farm, or the discussion of crops, or in familiar intercourse. They have grown up in the same village, are sons of the soil who bear mutual burdens. Here all dispute about caste in England ceases. It is a mere accommodation of differing degrees of wealth. The squire will dine with his tenants, and they with him ; he knows, and they know, that in the house of God the rich and the poor meet together, but the Lord is the Maker of them all. They meet on the equality of a common manhood in all the affairs of life. To compare this with caste in India would be farcical if the Indian arrangement were not so pathetic. Its absurdities are monstrous and gro tesque ; its tenacity is indestructible ; its influence 58 The Inextricable Web universal. It is as rigid as a bar of Sheffield steel, and yet as flexible as a snake, with all the danger of the lively snake thrown in. It would be ridiculous to hint at caste prohibitions in India. They already fill three imperial octavo volumes, and the fringe is only touched. Outcasts even have a caste system, and among Pariahs there are at least sixteen caste divisions. Dealing with certain prisoners belonging to a gipsy tribe, a young police officer found that among people re turned on his charge sheet as " Known Depredators/ or in jail parlance as " K. D. s," were thirteen separate castes. They would not eat together, would not shelter each other, would not intermarry, and were as isolated, each tribe from the other, as if they had been geographically ten thousand miles apart. Yet they all live within a boundary of three hundred square miles. These instances are by no means extreme cases ; on the contrary, they are the most familiar things of Missionary life in India. Caste is the clearest and most pronounced ex pression of Hinduism. Were it not for caste, Hinduism would perish in its own absurdities. It is caste that pervades and vivifies Hinduism in its infinite progression from vedism to devil-worship, and from demonolatry to gross phallic abominations. It has tentacles calamitous for all it touches. It 59 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool has paralysed Mohammedanism as a converting force in India, and now the Hindu lamb and the Muslim lion lie down together. Years ago one looked at stretches of well culti vated coffee lands in the hill districts of South India. But the coffee estates have perished, and parasitic growths of Lantana and other creepers have choked the cultivation and stifled the trees, until you now look upon the wildest and most impenetrable jungle. So thickly are these creepers interlaced, that no animal except a snake can penetrate them, and no bird can fly through them. This is by no means a misleading illustration of caste where it cannot destroy it can adapt ; it is as elastic as gas and insinuating as fluid. Much has been made of "a fair and honest attempt to relate our Christian teaching to the ideas which underlie the religious thinking of Indian people." What is their religious thought ? Get as far back to its origin as you can, and you will find that the early concept of sin is almost completely made up of infringement of caste rules, and this advances you another step in the problem. Caste is of its very essence religious ; and a Hindu s religion, in nine cases out of ten, is his caste. The Yedic hymns and prayers are in a marked degree clamant on the ground of personal welfare and aggrandisement. Indra is asked to 60 The Inextricable Web destroy adversaries, and the consciousness of sin is found in the small number of hymns addressed to Varuna. One Vedic scholar (Weber) writes of them : " The religious notion of sin is wanting altogether." Max Mliller says the consciousness of sin is prominent ; and yet a third writer declares there is " singularly little trace of moral conviction, moral enthusiasm, and zeal for righteousness in the Vedic hymns." In Manu s laws it will be found that the most tremendous penalties follow infraction of his rules for the various castes. Kule 249 is a familiar example. " That fool who, having eaten of the sradda, gives the residue of it to a man of the servile class, falls headlong down to the hell named Calasutra." Apart from this the trans lator, Sir W. Jones, remarks upon Manu s laws : They " abound with minute and childish formal ities ; with ceremonies generally absurd, and often ridiculous." The man has yet to arise who will define Hinduism and its twin sister, caste. An inclusive definition is impossible ; and no amount of skill in the manipulation of words can wrap up in a sentence, or a paragraph, the vast congeries of beliefs and cults contained in this name. On one hand, you seem to have breadth without boundary ; on the other, you have a bristling fence of prickly 61 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool limitations which, like the proverbial thistle, no man can touch with impunity. One thing is noticeable : Hinduism will take into its embracing arms any cult and any being. You may see in some temples images of Europeans which are gods in the making. On the lower roof of the Tanjore Temple a prominent bust is that of an old Danish captain in the three-cornered hat of two or three hundred years ago ; another temple in an adjoining district has a full length statue, roughly cut but recognisable, of an Englishman in a tall hat. How the stone came there no one now can tell ; but the moral it points is plain enough. Let a man come out prepared to accommodate his teaching to caste requirements, and his message to Indian religious thought, and the reward of his expediency may be a niche in a similar temple. Edwin Lewis says : "I have never yet met a Hindu, even the best of them, concerning whom I have not felt, c If that man were a true follower of Jesus Christ, he would be an immeasurably better rnan." : And this sums up the whole case ; for Lewis had mixed with all sorts and conditions of Indians. It is impossible for an outsider to speak of China ; but it is manifest that conditions there are not so difficult as in India. Absence of caste 62 The Inextricable Web means half the battle, although there are traces of this in the Buddhistic community, or that part of it which seeks " The Western Heaven," as it is named, through a long series of transmigrations. Many years since, the writer met, in a congre gation to which he was for the time preaching, a Chinese Christian lady and her husband. She had been in Mrs. Chalmers s School in Hong-Kong. The contrast between her and Indian Christian women was startling. This woman from China was impressive, and marvelled at the backward ness of her Indian sisters in initiative. They pointed out to her that she came from " Sinim," where caste was unknown, and that she entered upon life untrammelled by its prohibitions and abominations. Beliefs in China, according to Dr. Muirhead, may be reduced to a simple formula : " Self- reformation, self-development, and self-abne gation." Wise rules all of them for the conduct of life. si sic omnes ! Apparently these cults can be resolved into something approaching an entity, and from the strategic point of view this is great gain. In India the position resembles the Bhurtpore sieges in 1805 and 1827. The fort was an immense wall of mud, burnt hard by an Indian sun, but at times softened by rain. Lord Lake attacked it four times, and the cost of these united 63 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool assaults is said to have been the weight of the fort in currency. The fort absorbed all the shot and shell that could be poured into it. Had the wall been granite, cannon-balls would have pulverised it ; but these fell dead into the half- baked mud. There should be a fortune in iron in the old mud fort and ditch of Bhurtpore ! In 1827 the place was mined, and then came the end. It could resist cannon-balls, but could not resist gunpowder. Hinduism will perhaps yield in a similar way ; and this is the vital hope of Educational Missions. Years ago a missionary declared that Hinduism was falling to pieces ; but he was premature in his exuberance. There are still earthworks, soft and yielding as the mud of that old fort ; and these take in all the shot and shell of preaching, especially the kind of preaching that tries to reconcile Hinduism and Christianity. Yet quite openly another process may go on : daily teaching in school and the daily ministry of zenana workers, Mission hospitals and literature ; the latter wisely directed, and the other strong in its attempts to cure both body and soul. The ways of sincere Christian service in India are infinite. Workers who know the vernacular, and will talk to Indians, will, in spite of caste, find a ready way to the Indian heart ; and once The Inextricable Web admitted to that, no Missionary need despair of winning souls for Christ. It is in constant seed- sowing that a harvest may be ensured, and the opportunities for dropping seed are innumerable. So many desperate remedies have been prescribed for the salvation of India, that one hesitates to name them. " Christianity for a Hindu must be made acceptable to a Hindu." Did ever any hear a more ridiculous statement : it amounts to this a patient suffering from a serious disease, say cancer, must have only the medicine he likes, and no surgeon must be called to remove the malignant growth. In another book one is gravely informed : "Before India can be Christianised, Christianity must be naturalised." The sentence must have been written for the antithesis. And if you turn it inside out, it means what? Let us try a precisely similar sentence : " Before England can be Christianised, Christianity must be anglicised." Let alone what an Anglican by a play upon the words could make out of it, what does the sentence denote and connote? "Naturalised" means local colour, a concession to local prejudice ; a native growth that has to be cultivated. And the everlasting Gospel intended for every nation, kindred, tribe, tongue, and people is to be treated as though it were an exotic. In this year of grace one would have supposed T.S. 5 65 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool the day of apt illustrations, fondly supposed to be proofs, had gone and gone for ever into merited oblivion. Is the Gospel for which our Lord lived and died to be minimised and shorn so that Hindus may take hold upon Him, and retain their hold upon Hinduism at the same time ? If Christ is to have the pre-eminence in all things, then He must have it over all forms of religion, false or true. The illustration that you can get great crops of American cotton in India is disputable ; but supposing you can, the cotton is American and not Indian ; in certain tracts it has failed to grow, and in these it cannot be naturalised. If Christ is to rule over India then Hinduism and all its works must go. You can neither lessen His light nor illuminate its darkness by any process of naturalising. The humble worker must still go on, even with the forlorn hope of plucking a few brands from the burning, and find his comfort in this that he has tried to do his Master s will. These brands in the day of reckoning and reward may be found worthy of the "Well done, good and faithful servant." It is so easy to cheapen a sentiment, yet it gives one pause to see the words quoted as a reproach. One remembers a fine engraving, and the scene it represents is that of a Lincolnshire parsonage, set on fire by malignant parishioners. 66 The Inextricable Web One child out of the six is missing, a man standing on the shoulders of another rescues the child. Great is the thanksgiving thereat, and the rescued child in after years described himself thus " surely this is a brand plucked from the burning." The brand so plucked was John Wesley. His great service no one can estimate ; but the example points the moral of saving even brands. VI THE NEW SYMPATHY 69 " The people in the house are blind, and there are open wells in the backyard." Tamil Proverb. " We led them to believe that we attached no importance to the difference between Christianity and Heathenism. Yet how vast that difference is ! I altogether abstain from alluding to topics which belong to divines. I speak merely as a politician, anxious for the morality and temporal well-being of society. And, so speaking, I say that to countenance the Brahminical idolatry . . . is to commit high treason against humanity and civilisation." MACAU LAY S Speech. "A man does not need a looking-glass to discover an ulcer in the palm of his hand." Indian Proverb. VI THE NEW SYMPATHY question has been put : If you strip Hindu- -*- ism of its fungoid growths, can you not reach a measurable amount of purity of faith and morals, and thereby find some truth which will form a nexus between it and Christianity ? This may be termed the New Sympathy ; and as it hits a passing mood, the inquiry deserves the most careful con sideration which prayer and sympathy can give. Vedic Hinduism is ruled out, because Indians do not follow it. Popular Hinduism has still its unspeakable filth, its obscenities on temple walls, upon sacrificial cars, and in symbols worn by worshippers of the Lingo, and the Yoni. Even the trident of Vishnu has an origin attributed to it indecent past belief. All these things claim to be God immanent. Following them there comes a lower deep of Sakti or Tantric worship, the religion of the Five and of the Eight letters ; the adoration of the male and female organs of repro- By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool duction, with all its shameless and unnameable horrors. This mode of worship never had any glaring publicity ; but it is still practised in semi- hidden shrines, where unmistakable traces of it are seen the day after the worship. It is declared by some people to be a thing of the past ; but, there is no mistake about it, it is also a thing of the present. Allied to it, though by no means so gross, is devil-worship ; but the horrors of this particular cult are open. You see the mutilations of the possessed one, and you hear the unspeakable pronouncements that accompany the obsession ; and, whatever doubt you may have had as to demoniacal possession, you lose it all if you live, or camp, in proximity to a village where devil- dances are practised. You have a bright lad in your school, and find something has suddenly gone wrong with him he cannot work, and you know there is a lesion somewhere ; but as time goes on you learn he has been at one or other of these shock ing initiations, and his career is behind him. I venture to say that this is common knowledge to most Missionaries who have been in India beyond the apprentice stage of their work. Following these arrangements come the Dasis, the wives or servants of the gods. There is no temple of any importance in India where these women do not abound. The dancing-girl, as she 72 The New Sympathy is called the Nautch woman is as much the official part of the temple as the priests them selves ; all her life she is dedicated to vice, and it is gilded vice. You find the Nautch woman has the best house in the place, and is wealthy in the accumulation of jewels her numberless paramours have given her. As a member of the temple establishment an income from its resources is hers ; but this is the merest trifle compared with what she earns in illicit ways. As to public obscenities ; one is a symbol which you may see on certain temple gates representing eternity in the form of a ring, which has neither beginning nor end. The mode of this representa tion is incredibly filthy. This is old, and would not be repeated nowadays, so I was assured. But it is repeated, and thirty-four miles away from the place in which this sentence is written, one may see a brand new car, covered by a structure of galvanised iron sheets, in which these horrors are reproduced. The lower panels of the car are clean enough, and represent certain touching scenes in the Ramayan, executed with wonderful skill as to carving. But the highest part of the car, the cornice, has all the old abominations carved with all the skill mani fested in the lower panels. On quite another plane from this scandalous defiance of moral cleanliness is austerity, in its 73 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool way quite as cruel as the other because of the physical suffering it causes. Hook-swinging, in spite of the vigilance of English police superin tendents, still recurs. Ordeal by fire has been seen in a city of 70,000 inhabitants, and with a full staff of European officials in the place. The minor modes of torture are so common in markets that one does not notice them they are there, that is all that needs be said. One sees them as the daily preaching goes on. The reader, if he or she chooses, may verify what has been written in regard to Nautch women, by a reference to Miss Wilson-Cai michael s work, Things as They Are. The simple truth is told in that book, and all reference here to these women is from the standpoint of Hinduism. The women have the sanction of their religion, and it practically amounts to this it is religious for them to be impure. Are they not the wives of Hindu gods ? From the Magdalen s of great cities in Europe and England the approval of their priests differentiates them. This by no means lessens the infinite sadness of their lot, even if the fact is not brought home to them as it is to their unhappy sisters in other lands. The advocates of the New Sympathy will tell you they reprobate these things with all their heart and soul. If this is so, how are they to tolerate 74 The New Sympathy the religious thought of which these immoralities are the expression ? It is not fair to criticise Vedic or Puranic Cosmogony, or rather it is not generous to blame Hindus for its monstrous absurdities, notably in reference to the age of the gods. Buckle writes : " On this, as on every other subject, the imagination of the Hindus distances all competition. Thus, among an immense number of similar facts, we find it recorded that in ancient times the duration of the life of common men was eighty thousand years, and that holy men lived to be upwards of one hundred thousand. Some died a little sooner, others a little later ; but in the most flourishing period of antiquity, if we take all classes together, one hundred thousand years was the average ! Of one king, whose name was Yudhishthir, it is casually mentioned that he reigned twenty-seven thousand years ; while another, called Alarka, reigned sixty thousand. They were cut off in their prime, since there are several instances of the early poets living to be about half a million ! But the most remark able case is that of a very shining character in Indian history, who united in his single person the functions of a king and a saint. This eminent man lived in a poor and virtuous age, and his days were, indeed, long in the land, since, when he was made king, he was two million years old ; he then 75 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool reigned six million three hundred thousand years ; having done which, he resigned his empire, and lingered on for one hundred thousand years more ! " The particular purpose of this quotation is not to ridicule Hindu sacred histories, but to show the opinion of a writer like Buckle upon them. It may be pleaded, in the same writer s words : " All this is but a part of that love of the remote, that straining after the infinite, and that indiffer ence to the present, which characterises every branch of the Indian intellect." Now, the reader will bear in mind, this is not written by a Missionary, and therefore class or professional pre judice cannot come into it. Buckle, except in a few cases, did not believe in the " triumphant reports" of Missionaries; he "most confidently" asserts, " that there is no well attested case of any people being permanently converted to Christianity except in those very few instances where Mission aries, being men of knowledge as well as men of piety, have familiarised the savage with habits of thought, and, by thus stimulating his intellect, have prepared him for the reception of those religious principles which, without such stimulus, he could never have understood." Now, with what is the New Sympathy to con cern itself ? It is freely conceded that there is a 76 The New Sympathy keen human interest in tracing the development of any religion. You may watch its growth from elemental ideas that are the common stock of mankind. You recognise the instinct of worship from the rudest token to the most elaborated forms of physiolatry. The worshipper gratifies his sense of need. Buckle contends that religion is the effect, and not the cause, of civilisation ; but this leaves out of count a revelation. Now, consider the case of a keenly alert congeries of peoples, as Indians are, living in a land where all natural conditions are extreme, perhaps more than in any other land ; where a vertical sun scorches you as it does nowhere else upon earth ; where, in a tract of country fifty miles between the first and the last mile, you get a rainfall of thirty inches at one point and one hundred and fifty inches at the other ; where one side of the horizon is a bare sweep of granite rocks that in the terrific heat almost blind you if you look at them, and on the other side you have the richest tracts of cultiva tion, forest, rice-fields, great patches of greenness, and a smiling river running through them all. The wind and the rain combine their testimony to the uncontrolled power of the elements ; and where is lightning more fierce than in India ! On the eastern side the Bay of Bengal is the gathering-place for cyclones, and at times a huge 77 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool storm-wave will sweep in, drowning a million or two of people. Times of drought recur, and modern observation has reduced these to famine cycles. You see the tantalising sight of great tracts of cultivated fields inland, and you know that fifty cents of rain would save the crop, and the fifty cents do not come. Occasionally come other dire portents earthquakes, eclipses, and epidemics. If the reader will think of these con trasted conditions, and then think of the eternal wall of snow that bounds North India ; if he will further think that people living in such varieties of climate and environment must of necessity have not only a quick sense of fear, but an equally quick recognition of the friendly or non-friendly powers directing all these Nature forces he will see at once how physiolatry must have arisen as the cult of a sensitive and observant people as were the early Aryans, refined by long pilgrimages. Physiolatry by this is meant the worship of the forces of Nature as a starting-point towards a religion is not a bad one. The conscious prayer to the beneficent manifestation of the Power may contain an unconscious tribute to the Power. Vedic hymns, whether of praise or prayer, leave no doubt as to their sincerity. Would that they and the people who used them had stopped there ! The Aryan invaders of India were supremely 78 The New Sympathy ambitious; they became priests, and based their priesthood on Varuna, colour, and divided them selves and the aborigines of India into castes and non-castes simply on this basis. This destroyed the primitive revelation of God, if there was one, and obliterated God, because these priests took His place. Abstract ideas grew into concrete instances, and great warriors, kings, or law-givers, were in vested with Divine attributes. Coming into contact with aborigines brought to light other matters. Wild beasts infested the jungles they still do ; venomous reptiles abounded and they are as much in evidence as ever. Abor igines placated these when they could not destroy them. A shanar climbing a palm tree, any height from forty to eighty feet, might fall from the tree because the girdle that assisted him in climbing had snapped. His fall from the tree was not laid to the account of an insecure girdle, but to the evil influence of a devil hidden in the tree. Un aided reason would lead such to this conclusion ; and he would be a bold man who would say that in all instances an intuition of reason is not a revelation from God. In the case of the shanar, he does not see that he himself may have been to blame for the breaking of the belt ; there was a weak strand in its ligatures, and according to shanar ideas this ought not to have been. 79 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool There is ample room for the exercise of the New Sympathy, but it need take little account of popular or even Vedic Hinduism. Apart from these there are clamant needs, " strainings after the infinite," the desire for a purer worship ; and as for the existence of truth, Christian or not Christian, you find it in the mystic piety of the Saiva hymns, with their intense longing after purity and union with God. In these is an intuition of reason which is a revelation. The piety of the hymns may have been inserted as an afterthought, but there it is. If one remembers that Christian teachers from Alexandria, and Nestorian Missionaries, very early visited South India, and made numerous converts on the eastern and western coasts, a reason for the piety may be found. The hymns in common with other writings are later than the Vedas or Puranas. Before sympathy can do any good, needless and cruel torture must cease. In regard to hosts of people, one feels increasingly the remonstrance : " Why should ye be stricken any more ? Ye will revolt more and more : the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint." Now, the highest and truest of all sympathy is to point Indians, so long and so cruelly afflicted, to their one and only Saviour, Who still speaks : " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 80 The New Sympathy you rest." These words cover the infinite need of India, and answer at once its most clamant cry and its most intense desire. Now let the heralds of His coming preach this message in city, village, bazaar, and street. Let them be content not to measure His power, or fix the date of His appearing. I am certain Christ is in many a bazaar in India; but we, who are His servants, do not see Him because our eyes are holden by our unbelief, and we have neglected the dynamic of prayer direct, continual, and inter ceding. The temptation to give up working because we see no result is from Satan himself. Result or no result, our orders are to occupy till He, our Lord, shall come. There are men who come out because they have to satisfy the clamours of conscience ; yet they are longing after work at home, where they suppose they will see results and enjoy the solace of a cooler climate and the advantages of a pleasant pastorate. Such men ought not to be sent, and the reproach ought to be removed from Missionary work the reproach contained in Rhenius description of men who were " the going- home Missionaries." Physical disablement may mean that a man should return to England, but no other reason should be admitted if the man otherwise is fully fit for work. T.S.-6 8 1 VII CONVERSION " Where thou findest a lie that is oppressing thee, extinguish it." CARLYLB. " The Missionary who knows Hinduism will conquer and con ciliate, where he who is ignorant will suffer. Of such a one it will be said, ( He takes a dwarf to ascertain the depth of the river, with the result that he and the dwarf are drowned. In the warfare we have to wage it is good to remember the wise old rule, Never despise your enemy. We must know him, and lead him a willing captive to the feet of Christ." " Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." JOHN iii. 7. VII CONVERSION HHHE difficulty of knowing Indians and calmly -*- judging them in the light of true sympathy is great. Their history as a people gives a suffi cient reason for it. Before the advent of British rule they were at the mercy of every dominant race in Central Asia ; one instance may indicate the condi tion of things. In the middle of the eighteenth century Delhi was sacked six times in twenty- three years, and the bazaars ran with human blood. No wonder Indians were driven to wear deceit like a garment ; this and caste prevent the Western from knowing the Eastern. In Missionary work one precept must be kept in mind continually. It is the word of our Master : " Let both grow together till the harvest." It is plain that no one can tell the wheat from the tares until both are grown. Yet with some it is an ever- pressing question how to tell the false from the true. We cannot get inside a man s heart and 85 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool know exactly what he is. God alone can do this, and the final judgment on the matter must be left in His hands. The Judge of all the earth will do right. If there be first the willing mind, you may be hopeful the man who possesses it is in a healthy stage of conversion, not far from the Kingdom ; and if his mind grows in willinghood, he will soon be no longer an alien from the commonwealth of Christ, but a living working member of it. There are people who take gloomy views of Indian Christians, and who raise the cry that discipline is constant. This may be accounted for in many ways. One instance may be quoted. Seventy years ago, a Mission settlement was abolished by two young men, neither of whom had been in the country four years. The settlement had been gathered by a pre decessor with infinite pains ; he had wrestled, prayed, had been watchful as a mother over a child ; with fear and trembling he formed the converts into a church, but so far as outw r ard semblance went his work was destroyed in one day by his successors. It was admitted that some of the people were " baptized heathen," some were hypocrites, others were timid and not aggressive ; perhaps half a dozen were loyal but not very intelligent Chris tians. Yet all were treated alike, and the poor little church, because it did not resemble an English church, was abolished. The disbanded 86 Conversion Christians appealed home, and one of the senior men was sent to put matters right ; he found that youthful intolerance on the one hand, and Indian reticence on the other, were leading factors in the mischief. It was not denied there were most serious faults among the Christians ; but as they took the Christian name, it was the duty of the Missionaries to try to make them worthy of it. The older men burnt this lesson into the heart of the younger men, that of all sins in Mission work impatience is the worst. One of the men fifty years after said the memory of it had caused him bitter regret. " We expected too much; and instead of pulling down, we ought in all possible ways to have built up what there was of good." Then, some people have the faculty of creating sins. It is a gift. They make new rules, and if these are not readily adopted and kept, the result is disobedience, quite as serious a sin from their point of view as breaking a command of the Decalogue. These people, after many years unless to the great relief of everyone they have been re tired " get sense," as Indians say ; but at what a price ! and the worst is, it is not they who have to pay the price. You get a worker who thinks he or she has a commission to keep the stars in their courses. 87 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool Because a star shines in one position in England, and you see it from another in India, then that star is wrong. Happily, in spite of the person who would put it right, it still shines. The grace of God manifests itself in many ways ; to assert that it can only shine into men s hearts in one way is to misunderstand and limit the Eternal God. A Missionary writes : " We have in these days great need to beseech the Lord that He may deliver us, in all things, from that malign epi demic, religious lawlessness, which is one of the plagues of our age." It is a mistake to proceed upon the assumption that everything is wrong, and that you only are sent into the world to put it right. You can never make all the world toe your particular line, or expect that every watch and clock is made to synchronise with the particular watch you carry. Your watch itself may be wrong. Then a man or a woman who must be ruled by a fad should adopt the so-called Baconian cipher, or develop a theory on the authorship of the Letters of Junius. " Yes," said a Missionary once to the writer, " this I would not mind, but what would be the next article in their creed ? It would be to compel everybody to swallow that cipher, or adopt their theory of Junius. No, it is best that they should clear out, and let the space they fill here be occupied by people who will have patience, and try Conversion to learn from Indian Christians as well as teach them. I assure you they will have much to learn." Eeferring to poor Indian Christians of lowly origin and but recently separated from a debasing superstition, Bishop Caldwell writes : " When a person evidently understands the obligations he is taking upon himself, and his profession is invalidated by no open sin, I believe I have no right to refuse him the sacraments. He possesses, I believe, the only qualifications for Communion with which man can deal. But it is obvious that among such persons there may be different degrees of piety, and in some the profession of piety alone. Consequently it sometimes happens that I look with doubt and fear on persons whom I feel bound to admit, or cannot exclude." This is the wise and correct treatment for disciples in whom the light is dim but the light is there. Dealing, therefore, with this matter of supremest importance conversion we must clear our mind of much that obscures the word and the fact it represents. In one light, conversion is a final act. But also, if we regard it as a process that is not finished till we are perfect and complete in the will of God, then we shall find it the supreme joy of life to help on the process in every way we can. This mode of viewing it brings us down to the bed- By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool rock of Missionary effort, and teaches us that, how ever low the people may be and however mixed their motives, we have to hold on to them and never let them go until, in God s good time, their motives become pure, and their hearts are made clean by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Hitherto we have spoken of conversion which is but a blind half-seeing, and there are such con versions. The blinding flash that came to Saul on his way to Damascus is an instance of instant and vivid conversion. There is no need to hedge the grand old word round with metaphysical defini tions ; less need is there to fix the amount of the man s emotion. Given an intense tempera ment, the owner of it will feel his conversion intensely, even if he has to go three years into Arabia after it, and at the end of his days declare himself "least of all saints"; in the breezy thoroughness he abased himself but exalted his Master. Among backward classes in India there is this half -seeing conversion; the people behold spiritual truth as the blind man beheld " men as trees walking." Spiritually they are not able to discern the difference between a man and a tree ; but if they make an attempt to see, then our business is to hold on and help their seeing, as our Lord did to the blind men : then gradu- 90 Conversion ally but surely the full unclouded vision will come. He comes from thickest films of vice To cleanse the mental ray, And on the eyeballs of the blind To pour celestial day. People sneer at the old hymn, but Doddridge knew what he was writing. He knew that thick films of vice cannot be removed in a moment patience, time, guidance, and merciful healing by the Great Physician have all to be allowed for ; but at last comes the full glow of celestial day. There is another class of conversion in India, and its nobility shames ours into littleness. It is no extravagance of heroics to say that the price they pay for it proves its splendid sincerity, and here the critic dwarfs into utter insignificance. He says : " Look what it costs to convert a Hindu." But turn the statement round and ask : What does it cost a Hindu to be converted ? We pay something to win him for Christ ; he pays infinitely more that he may be won. A Brahmin when he becomes Christian literally gives up all he has hitherto loved and cherished, that he may follow Christ. Speaking from close knowledge of at least twenty converts, I affirm that these men have not merely to give up their former life, but on entering upon the new life all kinds of difficulties have to be en- By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool countered. They were vegetarians, and there were not wanting Christians who alleged they were keeping caste because they did not eat flesh. Europeans who should have known better expected them to submit to ridiculous tests. One European I knew thought a Brahmin boy, who had become Christian and was living with me, ought to show that he had broken caste by having his food with a horsekeeper. The boy refused such a degrading test, and I asked the European : " Will you yourself do the same, and show you have no caste ? " He declined the test, and later on in life saw how foolish, not to say wicked, it was eating a meal with a low Hindu horsekeeper to prove your sincerity as a follower of Christ ! The offence of the Cross brings its own most serious ordeals, and there is no need for others that men make ; for this unreasonable expectation reduces conversion to an absurdity in the way of useless sacrifice. A Carmelite monk who had been converted once shared my house ; he told this story of his novitiate days. He was a cheery youth no monastery could subdue, and the superior asked him why he did not go more frequently to confes sion. His answer was, he had nothing to confess ; that day he had to eat his dinner off the monastery floor. To translate the instance into English vernacular 92 Conversion understanding : Suppose an English nobleman wanted to go to Communion in his parish church ; suppose, moreover, it was imposed as a condition of communicating that he should dine with his stable- keeper. As an Englishman he might do it ; but suppose he did, what would be the use of it ? And the same may be said of tests equally ridiculous in India. A Brahmin, in all conscience, proves his sincerity when he leaves his Brahminism, without being expected to demean himself in vulgar, un worthy, and fatuous ways. " Surely," the reader will say, " this is ridiculous ; but who would demand an idiotic exhibition like this ? " These things happen, and the incident occurred as it is related. It has no frills, and is otherwise not embroidered. Happily, this occurs but seldom. Where one man will act in this way, there are a thousand others who will use their common-sense, and just quietly wait till the convert proves whether he is pure gold or merely sounding brass. In any case, a sensible man would trust the convert, trust him fully, and believe him to be true till he had proved himself false. If, how ever, you go on the other track, of believing a man is false till you prove him to be true, he will accept your estimate, and you never will prove his genuine ness. This is a cardinal fact all the world over. Suspicion makes the thief. 93 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool This strange miracle of conversion, however it has come to pass, requires at times outward testi mony which the converts cannot give. In India you behold the constant miracle of men becoming new creatures in Christ Jesus. They have not read volumes of ancient divinity, still less have they been won by evidences of Christianity. Whence, therefore, comes this great miracle of conversion ? It does not fall within the compass of lightning revelations, such as came to Paul, and to people who heard Whitefield and Wesley ; neither are the same tests necessary. Wesley had wandered in what he calls legal darkness many years ; but it was not darkness, and it was legal only in the sense that he had tried by austere penances to lift the burden from his soul : and if ever heaven was earned, but not obtained, by works, Wesley had earned it. Sometimes, however, a touch of un familiar emphasis upon well known words will open a man s spiritual vision to a truth he has known all his life, but has never perceived its beauty until the unwonted flash of the emphasised word revealed it. So it was with Wesley in that room in Aldersgate Street where " someone " was reading the preface to Luther s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. In most Brahmin conversions there has infallibly been this "someone." He has finished his work 94 Conversion and gone on his way to the great reward in heaven. Usually when there is someone to speak there is someone to hear, and "thou canst not tell which will prosper " of the spoken or the written word. One thing is absolutely certain, no word of God can fail ; it may slumber in a human heart for half a century, but it will fructify at last. In 1886 an old man came for baptism. He knew the Word of God, though for fifty-three years he had banished it from his mind ; but it obsessed him, and he prayed night by night that an accommodating god would save him from breaking his caste. He said, " Baptize me." I hesitated, and held over his request till the headman of the village testified to his character. "Yes, you may baptize him, he has been in your way all his life ; he was a small boy in the famine of 1833, and a Missionary he met taught him some prayers, was good to him, and he has never forgotten it." "What about his caste?" said I. "That does not matter," said the headman ; "he has for fifty years been out of it." The Great Shepherd of the sheep calls His own sheep out of every land. But all the people in all the lands are His sheep, and He has words for them beyond our knowing wonderful. We are amazed that they do not listen to our creed-bound voice. We tell them this, and tell them that in the way of exact belief ; but above our poor words 95 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool He speaks, and they hear His voice, and the folds get full, so that fresh ones must be got ready. We may count it our greatest privilege to help in the building of a fold. Better is it to build folds than to build arguments. VIII ENIGMAS T.S.-; 97 " If you go gently, the earth will bear you." Indian Proverb. 11 There is no tree that cannot be bored by a beetle." " Light will blind a man sooner than darkness. Are we then to pray that we may be left in darkness 1 Oh no ! but beware, ye who walk in light, lest ye turn your light into a curse." A. W. HARE. "Charcoal will not forsake its blackness though you wash it a hundred times : when fire enters the charcoal, its impurity leaves it." Dialogue between two Sastris. VIII ENIGMAS TT was a candid soul who confessed : " Hinduism * bewilders me ; before I came out, I read all I could lay hold of on this subject, because I thought Missionaries were wrong in their methods. Now I wonder they have any method at all." Not even the omniscient newspaper-man can succeed here, and Sir Alfred Lyall, in his presidential address to the Congress for the History of Religions, said : In India " we are at the fountain-head of metaphysical theology. Other faiths are more coherent, but Hinduism is an inorganic medley of ideas and worships." The mental equipment of the man who has to tackle it should be the best he can obtain. There are still learned Sanscrit sages in India, men who live and think in the groves of Academe. They are impressive figures, and have as a rule bound less charity for all men. The contrast between a saint like this and the ordinary temple Brahmin 99 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool is startling. Swami Bashkara Ananda, of Benares, had the clear open look of a child, and a person ality that haunted you. Every appetite in him was subdued, and he was a hermit even in a crowd of worshippers " never less alone than when alone, and never more alone than in a crowd." Yet he talked to all who went to see him. He had read Augustine s Confessions, which some laborious soul had translated into Urdu. Asked his opinion upon it, the Swami answered : " Oh, the book ! It must have been written by a man who was weary of the world " ; and he could not understand how a man could so lack courage as not to be willing to endure what came to him. The sighings after release, the longings for " mother dear," Jeru salem, seemed unreasonable. It is doubtful if Augustine would have been flattered at the esti mate of his book by a fellow-saint. This man had left Hinduism, and was unchained from all its complicated and never-ending demands. India can still produce saints whom anyone may rever ence in spite of the other so-called saints, fakirs, sannyassis, byraghies, and kasi pandarams, who, compared with him, the Swami, are as vultures to a dove. It is curious how the ascetic Hindu takes to the ascetic Englishman or Scotsman. Ramanuja Cavi-Rayer, perhaps the most learned pundit, 100 Enigmas and certainly the proudest of his time, went to the assistance of the revered William Drew in translating the Rural when he w r ould have gone to no one else in the Madras Presidency. Drew in his preface remarks : " It cannot be sup posed necessary for the sake of Christianity to deny to such works whatever degree of merit they may possess. Christianity requires not the aid of falsehood or of concealment. Nor need we wish to blacken the systems and books of the country beyond what truth will warrant ; for even in the best there is much and pernicious error." Drew and his pundit left the third part of the Rural on "Lust" in its difficult Tamil, because it "could not be read with impunity by the purest mind, nor translated into any European language without exposing the translator to infamy." The two men met on a common ground of moral cleanness, and the third part of this poem never was trans lated until an accommodating German was found competent to do it. Similarly, Dr. John Hay had a pundit the very picture of Swami Bashkara Ananda. In this in stance, the Scottish saint and the Indian saint had a common bond, not only in great scholarship and lofty religious thought, but in perfect simplicity of living and in devotion to one thing, each giving to the world the truth of God as he knew it. They 101 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool translated the Bible into Telugu. The Epistle to the Ephesians attracted the pundit, and Hebrews drew them both to the supreme priesthood of Christ. This particular pundit probably worshipped his brother, the Missionary, next after the Great High Priest, and one cannot wonder. A successor states : " In earlier vernacular lessons I had the same pundit, but was as much out of his great way as a farthing candle is out of the orbit of a star." Having to read the Rural once for an examination, I could find no pundit in the station where I then lived. By some means I know not of, a Brahmin heard of my difficulty, and came to the rescue. He loved the Rural, and what is more, he lived up to the first part of the poem. I became his disciple, and never were lessons so delightful. He broke up that mosaic of enclitics into its con stituent particles, and he worshipped the pure feet of Him who gives rain, light, and air. Medi tation upon the boundless charity of "Him" had purified his soul ; he was not a Christian, but in this aspect of his soul, gratitude to "Him," he was a saint. He was very poorly off at the time, and I had great difficulty in persuading him to let me help his circumstances. It had to be done in an indirect way. He was pledged to teach, to starve, and in the end to die. I was far away when the news of his illness came, and could not 102 Enigmas get to him ; but the last words were an assurance that all would be right at the pure feet of Him who sent rain and light and air. It must be remembered that in India as in England, for any altitude of moral character the price to be paid is just the same. Whatever the phrase, " the simple life," may mean, this life has been lived for centuries before the formula was invented. Like all current phrases, the misappro priation of the words debases their currency, so that they come to define a hypocrite. The simple life may mean anything, from the picture of a shoddy actress who marries a millionaire and proceeds to live the simple life on the best and costliest of everything. A picture paper gave the details of this simple life, and did it with the exquisite irony of the lady attired for the simple life in dresses of fabulous cost. The insincerity of it all is so transparent that it is not possible to find dictionary words to describe it. Reading them, one is thankful not to have to live in England, where surely the other side of the picture is daily seen. In India there are no glaring instances of this kind, although the proverb is common enough: " When the dancing-girl becomes old, she endows a temple " : when the age for impropriety is past, then the exercise of religion begins. 103 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool This among the men instanced is unknown. They became saints when young, and have prac tised Yogam, have schooled themselves into obedience to what they think is the higher will of their being, and have reached it. They are charitable, are gentle to wrong-doers, have keen sight for all leadings to truth, and are no more Hindus, except in nationality, than are English, Scots, or Welshmen. " The All Father ought to have all the children, and would have them if they would but come," is what these men assert. In this matter they appear to know the mind of God better than any creed, and they freely admit that all men are called of God. It is surprising that the possibility of work like this does not appeal to students who are giving themselves to the calling of the ministry in Western lands, but it is a sphere in which the worker must keep to clearly defined limits. I have known workers among educated Hindus who would concede to them all they wished. Compliance of this kind defeats its own end, and it means betrayal. " Go half a mile with a man, and he will go ten miles with you," is a working principle that has its value ; but take care the distance is only half a mile, and not ten miles and a half. It is a mistake, too, to suppose that because a Hindu knows English he is educated. 104 Enigmas In some parts of India the most soundly educated man does not know English. He is learned in Sanscrit, Persian, and certain vernaculars, and to get at him is a great gain. As a rule the English-speaking Indian is so because it pays. He can by its means obtain an official or a mer cantile appointment ; he may become a pleader, or the editor of a bi-lingual newspaper. Once in a Government office, as a subordinate, his chief business in life is to verify bills with codes, grants in aid, pensions, salaries, irrigation, magisterial, public works, legal, medical, sanitary, taxes, regis tration, and so on, through the whole administra tion. The work is hard and the leisure so scanty that the educated man has no time to develop what he acquired at school. He is tired after his day s work. If he is a lawyer he has more time to read ; and as a medical man departmental examinations keep him efficient. In cities like Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Alla habad, or Lahore, this observation will not apply ; the conditions are different. There are universities and colleges in these cities, and the travelling lecturer to educated Hindus can get great audiences in these places. It is entirely different in great cities or towns elsewhere. As a rule, in up-country stations the educated Indian requires all his time for his office and for 105 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool his household necessities, and it is not generous to expect him to respond to anything outside these. On the other hand, there are the detached men, gurus, or teachers, and religious leaders, who have not troubled to learn English, but are linguists all the same in Eastern languages. There is no question about the matter ; among these men there is a great field awaiting the Missionary who is a vernacular Missionary, who has set him self to the task of learning their speech, and as far as he honestly can of thinking their thoughts. To win a teacher of this calibre is no mean victory, and there is no doubt he is waiting to be won, not by concession, and certainly not by mere preaching ; let him know the teacher of Christ in his life and his daily work, in renunciations and obediences, then the guru gets something O O & more tangible than mere words. He knows all about vocables, and can estimate their value. Dr. Pope, the greatest of modern Tamil scholars, tells the story of a Saivite priest who was a saint of saints, clean every atom of him as if he had never left his mother s arms ; but as this instance is quite uncommon, a more familiar example may be quoted, showing amazing receptiveness, and at the same time grievous lapses into sin, but proving at the end discipleship to Christ, 1 06 Enigmas "Twelve years ago, a fakir came to me when I was in camp at the village of the Flowery Foot. He came secretly, and requested me to tell him the difference between El, Elohim, Yahveh/ * Allah/ Deran, and other designations of God. Acquaintance thus begun soon ripened into friend ship. I found he was an accomplished linguist and a subtle dialectician. Much had he pondered upon early Aryan cults, and had striven by long practice of austerity to attain union with Shiva the Supreme. Such is the opening of his story ; one of his cherished friends tells the rest : " Mr. having assured himself of the genuineness of this fakir s confession, baptized him, and kept the new convert near him for some time, in order to help and guide him to a fuller knowledge of Christian truth. A few months after his baptism, being then about thirty-five years of age, he came to S and paid me a visit. He gave me an account of his life, which so interested me that I asked him to come again. . . . He lived with me for some time, and used to accompany me on my preaching tours. " Earlier in his life he had undergone a course of training in Yogism, the effect of which, acting upon a constitution that was never very robust, left its mark upon him for the rest of his life. There is no doubt, too, that it seriously affected 107 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool his spiritual nature and led him to form habits of thought from which he was never able to free him self. It influenced, too, his conception of Christ s life and teaching in a way that was not healthy. The mysticism that fills so large a place in the Yoga system appealed to his typical Hindu mind the mind of the genuine Hindu who is unaffected by Western knowledge and modes of thought very powerfully. He believed it necessary to the free development of the spiritual faculties of our nature that a man should inure himself to hardship, and should suppress some of the most powerful instincts and appetites of the body. He believed in what he called the inner light a light that could only be seen when the body was kept in complete subjection. His long training in Yogism undoubtedly obtained for him the power of con centrating his thought on the deeper things of life. I used to watch him at times with curious interest as he sat pondering over a passage in St. John s Gospel. He saiv Christ, as portrayed in the Gospels, with the eyes of a Hindu. It was my privilege to hear him set forth the Christ he had seen for himself, and often I was conscious of feeling that he knew more of the Master s mind than I. He believed that he had actually seen Jesus and heard Him speak. One aspect of the Incarnation he was especially fond of regarding, 1 08 Enigmas namely, that Jesus the Word of God, the uttered thought of God the manifestation of God in human form, was the sacred word Om reverenced by Hindus. ... If space permitted, I should like to show how he was misled or betrayed into disloyalty to Christ by his desire to find points of contrast between Christianity and Hinduism. "He came to see me in 1897 ; he was very ill, a further course of Yogism having sown the seeds of consumption. He asked me if I thought the Saviour would welcome him back and forgive him. Ignorant people thought he had utterly forsaken Christ ; but, said he, * they do not know how precious He has been and is to me. In a farewell visit he told me that he was quite sure Jesus had forgiven him. He has punished me for denying Him, but He has taken me back/ He repeated to me John s Prologue, the Beatitudes, and the 13th of 1 Corinthians, and wished me good-bye. Later he died in our small out-station, and his last request was to be buried in the Christian cemetery." The desire to find points of contact between Christianity and Hinduism has a certain fascina tion ; but to a Hindu the imagined points are in favour of Hinduism. Points of apparent agree ment are mischievous, because the agreement is apparent and not real. It is too frequently the 109 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool difference between a full and an arrested revelation, between that which is partial and that which is perfect. A Hindu is swayed by a remorseless logic, and this leaves little room for faith; but, strange to say, it leaves room for speculation on a scale that imperils the logic. The why and the wherefore go, but the permissive "if" remains, and on this much that is grotesque can be propped. Preach to a crowd in a bazaar, and you find wonderful agreement among the people so long as you keep to the blank cartridge of general state ments and the conciliatory " if " ; but if you deal in the short, sharp shot of direct appeal to truth and duty, then there is disagreement, and sometimes sore trouble. Quote the saying from the Bagavad Gita, " He who worships matter becomes matter," there will be quite a chorus of agreement ; but quote, " Thou shalt not worship idols," and name a few, then trouble begins. This is quite natural, unpleasant though it may be ; and here it is that the street-preacher requires the grace of patience. Sometimes he gets " pelted," as Drew put it ; but it is all in the day s work, and there is no need to set up a claim for martyrdom because a few stones have been thrown at you. At the same time, if you are in for a fight, let it be one. There are sure to be some in the crowd who will see fair play, and Hindus like a man who has pluck, just common no Enigmas everyday pluck not the article that makes news paper copy, but the simple quality of " seeing it through," no matter what may come playing the game, however it goes against you. The Santals are said to have asked William Jones : " Suppose we were to kill you, what then ? " " What, indeed ! " Jones replied. " It would not make any difference. If you killed me, another man would come in my place, and this work would go on just as it has done." These Santals loved Jones, and after his death wanted to turn his tomb into an altar. It was with Jones as with the Sikh, Nanak, and other souls tempered to the finest issues, the hearing of great words that kept him constantly to the level of great deeds. " I have given thee My name ; do thou this work." A Darwesh said to Abdul-Khalik : " Were God to give me my choice between heaven and hell, I would choose hell ; for heaven is the desire of the soul, while hell exists but for God s good pleasure!" Abdul rebuked him, saying : "What business has a servant to choose at all ? Let us go whithersoever He bids us go, and be whatsoever He bids us be." A sound working rule for a Missionary ! in IX DOING CHRIST S COMMAND MENTS T.S. 8 I I 3 " If I only make a little child smile, I am doing as noble a service in its way as if I evangelized the world." A Forgotten Sermon. " Some held spears and others built, but all obeyed." " The test of a true servant is found in his readiness to obey." "Obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge. If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine." " Ye shall know, if ye follow 011 to know." ROBERTSON. 114 IX DOING CHRIST S COMMANDMENTS man who was puzzled at what he saw of Hinduism came at last to wonder if the "Great Commission" had lost its virility, and was no longer heard as a dominant commanding call. o o His friend thought not. It may have suffered a slight eclipse. Words have their transmigrations, and perhaps the hackneyed use of them may sap their meaning. It is notorious that certain theological terms are the museums of dead men s ideas. But there are other terms like " Conver sion," "Unction," "the Witness of the Spirit," "the New Birth," "Election"; these, like the heading of Hooker s sermon " Concerning a Per petuity of Faith in the Elect"- are not current in religious periodicals. Sermons I cannot speak about ; the only one in the English language I have heard for many years was, I believe, on the "Subjective Influence of Prayer," and it touched a Missionary much as a By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool Greek play would affect an Indian village man. It was clean out of the horizon of both. Many a long year ago a woman came to me and said her only son had told her that he must become a Missionary or he would lose his crown in heaven. She was weeping as she said: "Do you think our Lord requires such a sacrifice ? he is my only son ; but I do not want him to think he will lose his crown because I do not want him to go and do his Lord s work. I have given him to the Master ; but I am old, and I have no one else to care for me." There was no hesitation here ; fifteen minutes talk with that lad led him to see that his willing mind would be accepted as willing service, but that while his mother lived it was his bounden duty to stay with her. In spite of the consuming- desire, there was grit in him ; and he joyfully ac cepted the necessity, kept by his mother while she lived, and had her grateful blessing when she went to be with Christ. He is a Missionary now, and has been one for some years ; but in his heart he feels his Master led him in a right way. And what road is weary that leads to Him ? Surely none ! The man who has serious home obligations, how ever much he may feel he would like to go into the Mission-field, must turn a deaf ear to the 116 Doing Christ s Commandments inclination until such time as the responsibility is removed. We can find no more serious sin against the common duties of everyday life than the phrase, "Leave it to the Lord," which certain people on the Mission-field use. If you can attend to it yourself, you have no right to presume that God will do it for you, and have no right to use such an excuse. It comes to this. You think you have a certain amount of common-sense. Did you ever ask yourself why God had given it to you ? It was given you to use ; and He expects no man or woman in His great service to look for rapturous delights and happy days, or for novelty in service or great occasions for a pseudo-heroism. All this nonsense is knocked out of a man once he is in the field ; but it ought to have been knocked out of him before. " Leave it to the Lord," said a minister to a Missionary who surprised the minister by declar ing : " This is what I cannot do : it is a case of discipline." There was a riot in the nearest Christian settlement ; it was in the hot weather, when both heat and lack of occupation, plus Satan, have found mischief for idle hands to do. Two brothers had quarrelled, one had hired badmashes to beat the other ; but the hirelings in the dark ness of the night mistook their man, and merci lessly thrashed the man who had employed them. 117 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool They discovered their mistake only when a confederate, coming with a lantern, showed the victim lying on the ground with a broken leg. His cunningly devised mischief had found him out, and for once poetic justice was done. The matter cannot be settled out of hand. The tricky man must go to hospital, and then face the magistrate ; but the Missionary has to be on the spot to stop further developments, and point the moral to unwilling ears: "Let him that dug the pit fall into it." There may be a new settlement of Christians ; they themselves are going on quietly, but heathen neighbours bring charges against them " sheep- stealing " is perhaps the commonest, and it happens thus. A killed sheep is found near the Christian houses, and the village watchman reports this as a theft to the headman. The headman is perfectly aware the sheep has been killed, and placed where it was found, by a Hindu who wants to get the people into trouble. Police are soon on the spot, and some of the Christians are marched to jail ten miles away. After long delay, and when prose cution witnesses have hopelessly broken down, the magistrate dismisses the case. Sometimes their thatched houses are set ablaze, and they know why. It is the punishment meted out to them for breaking caste. In the case of a solitary Christian 118 Doing Christ s Commandments the position is painfully difficult, and the boycott against him quite as serious as in Ireland it is against a rent-paying peasant. Yet there are papers issued by educated Hindus in which Indian Christians are stigmatised as a "protected com munity," because the Missionary has to help to save them from their persecutors, and sometimes to save them from themselves. These things must be, so long as Puranic Hinduism continues to be observed as a mode of conduct and life ; and in fighting it the Missionary must be in evidence. It is idolatry, as forty workers pointed out in an open letter to English Christians " idolatry which desecrates the treasures of the earth, degrades the intellect and genius of man, demands and destroys the virtue of woman, and dishonours God." Now, while some may not come, since there are duties they must themselves do, and can delegate these to no one else, it must be remembered that there are hundreds who could volunteer for this service if they only would. The sentence quoted above, as to the desolating effect of idolatry, should be seriously pondered by every minister and student at the threshold of his career. It is the absolute truth, so far as forty men face to face with the evil could define it ; and not one among them would permit himself to overstate a case. 119 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool There can be no mistake in the command, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations " ; but add to it testimony like the above, and the perfect reason ableness of the marching order is at once seen. You cannot write it too large THE HEALTHIEST CHURCHES AT HOME ARE THE MISSIONARY CHURCHES, filled with people who hold the ropes. An enormously wealthy American church, some years ago, became extinct. It paid its pastor a princely salary, but never sent a dollar to the Mission -field. God smote that whited wall, and it crumbled ; it was ant-eaten through and through with its own selfishness. Such a church has not even the right to exist. Granted the example is an extreme one, does it not remind you of that Hindu god who spends his time contemplating his own excellences, and taking no interest in his creatures ? Contemplation of this kind is not good for church or for man. It can only occur in the case of people who either shut their ears to the Saviour s call or are mentally and spiritually ill-balanced, and have a bias in favour of a particular kind of work because they like it. Sometimes what seems to be a crying political necessity will deaden one s ears to the call. " Let all the poor in England be housed and fed," was a plea once heard, " then we may think of evangelizing idolaters." This is making the Master s call contingent upon a 120 Doing Christ s Commandments preconceived idea that Missionary work at home and abroad cannot go on at the same time. It not only can, but if our Master s teaching is understood it must. The word "foreign" ought to be deleted from the charter of Christian service. It sets up a distinction at once, and distorts the vision of service which in China, Africa, or India, or at home, " ranks the same with God." The relative position of the service must be determined by the need of it in the countries named. A wise general places his men where they will be of greatest use in the battle, and the men must go in obedience to one directing will. It is the directing will of our Lord and Master we must first seek, and not our own will. Prayer constant, humble, and importunate will soon remove all doubt, and leave the sup pliant clear as daylight as to his duty. This is a reason why we should discount the flippant emptiness of " Leave it to the Lord/ and all similar phrases which at some time may have had the illuminating power of a new discovery in spiritual things, but the common use of such words tends to an irreverent dismissal of urgent business. You never can degrade a lofty mood of consecration without peril to your soul. The servant has to seek his Lord s will, since he is elevated to the supreme dignity of a fellow-worker. " We then, 121 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool as workers together with Him," ought to anticipate all His commands, and prove ourselves intelligent co-workers, servants, slaves, by leaving no prayer unuttered, no attempt untried, that will bring us into this close and happy fellowship with Him, of anticipating His command and doing His service in the line of simple direct obedience. A servant thus equipped will be clothed with power. If the Apostles and first Christians, of glorious and blessed memory, had taken no initiative, but had yielded themselves to the opium-like quiescence of waiting, they might have waited till this year of grace. Where would the nations, since redeemed, have been ? It is perhaps the easiest of all tasks to point out the dire eclipse of all moral and spiritual light that would have happened had the pioneers of the Cross failed in their courage, faltered in their duty, or allowed their percipient faculty to become blind through disuse. A man thus clad in the armour of simple obedience goes to warfare, not at his own charges, but at his Master s who sends him. Learned or unlearned makes little difference in his fighting quality, if he has the Sword of the Spirit and has the clothing of power. And what of his Message ? this must be of its essence ; simple, so that a child shall understand it and a shastri shall appreciate it. Rhenius puts into beautiful Tamil 122 Doing Christ s Commandments a saying of Jeremy Taylor s : " There are shallows in God s Word where a child may wade ; there are deeps in which an elephant may swim." And the directed man s message will not be a shibboleth of party names, or a cycle of doctrine which leaves the recipient as mechanical as a Tibetan with his prayer-wheel ; neither will it be a list of metaphysical terms dry as a botanist s specimens in a herbarium. Again, he will not try to reclothe the past with the living forms of the present ; neither will he pulverise the quartz rocks of Hinduism merely because the thinnest vein of gold may occur here or there. He has infinitely more gold than the rocks, multiplied a million times, can supply, in the truth he is sent to teach all nations. Briefly it is this : All men are one in Christ Jesus; in Him soul touches soul, "no matter what colour an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him," as Curran finely said. " Abolish the colour line," says a critic on these matters; our reply is: " By all means let the colour line be abolished ; but its extinction will not be wrought by inter-marriage, or by fusion of race, or by any political remedy the so-called friends of India suggest. It is in the teaching, sacrifice, love, and loyalty to our Lord that the colour line will be abolished." To an old Missionary this seems a counsel of 123 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool perfection ; and to one who has always believed and preached that a clean heart and a pure life have no colour, but are white as white can be, it is needless advice. Why, then, is slowness of growth such a prominent feature in Indian work ? Christianity in Koine made less progress in one hundred years than it made in twenty in India. Impatience for results shows a misunderstanding of the position. A Missionary is of necessity a teacher who has much to clear away before he can begin to build. Here is an ancient and complex civilisation, so elaborated as to fit every detail of life in India. Our Aryan brother is armed at all points ; and you have to unclothe him of the accumulated prejudices of four thousand years, before he can be clothed upon with the garment of truth and righteousness. In the instruction given our Lord says nothing about results. " Teach," " disciple," " baptize " ; these are strong words. The influence of our Lord s teaching is so marked in India, that we have to count in all charity the immense host of men and women who are on the border-line of the Kingdom. He came to establish. These are at present not inclined to ask for baptism. In the case of the women it is not possible. The men, too, dread breaking up family ties. This state of things is not what one would desire ; but it may be accepted as 124 Doing Christ s Commandments an inevitable and healthy stage in the turning of India to God. Sir Alfred Lyall, perhaps unwittingly, states the whole case for Missions in the words : " If we can prove to the Hindu that life is better worth living than formerly, he will abandon much of his pessimism ; and in the new world to which the people are being introduced there will be no place for the old deities. Meanwhile they are passing through a hard trial, for Europe itself is an arena of contending speculations ; and they will not gain much by exchanging their old lamps for our newest ones. And the air is still highly charged with spiritual enthusiasm ; so that no one can say whether some ardent faith may not suddenly blaze up in the midst of India that will shatter the old fabric of religion, and lead away the great Indian multitudes in an entirely new direction." Every great movement has its candid friends, mistaken mortals who have not reached the next point in history. There are these in abundance, and critics not a few. " Never mind the miserable sixteen ; think rather of the glorious two hundred and eighty-three," said Wilberforce to his friend when he wanted to pillory the sixteen who had voted against the Slave Bill. To followers of Christ who do not permit themselves the cheap luxury of criticism, the words of Lacordaire point the way 125 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool to loftier achievement: "Go teach all nations. Fear not the difficulties of foreign tongues, nor the differences of manners, nor the power of secular governments. Consult not the course of rivers, nor the direction of mountain ranges ; go straight on. Go, as the thunder of Him who sends you ; as the creative word went which carried life into chaos ; as the eagles go, and the angels." 126 X THE NEED FOR COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS 127 " The education we have given India has been an attempt to fit Saul s armour to a very youthful David. You have fed David on Spencer, Mill, Bain, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche the last he has fed himself upon and he is much as a sponge that Coleridge used to talk about. Your student lets all the pure water go, but retains all the filth that was in the water, just as a sponge does. He swells up like a sponge, and his modesty is in a ratio to his know ledge that 110 arithmetic can calculate. You have made him a boastful Goliath, when he might have been a modern David." A Disappointed Teacher. 128 THE NEED FOR COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS TN 1873 two leading educationists in Madras wrote : "We believe that much of the higher education now imparted in India is not leading those who receive it to Christianity. We would not undervalue sound knowledge of any kind. Good must in the end result from it. But while believing this, we are painfully aware of the fact that a strong tide of infidelity has set in among the multitudes of Hindus who have received an English education. Their trust in the faith of their ancestors has been destroyed ; and with this they appear to have cast aside all serious thoughts on the subject of religion. They seem to live only for the present. Not a few of them glory in their unbelief ; and we know as a fact that many of them purchase, and carefully study, some of the most sceptical and blasphemous publications produced in England." T.S. 9 129 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool A few years later Dr. Hay wrote in his last report : " To some it may seem most charitable and reasonable to cram the rising generation with philology, science, and philosophy, and ignore the claims of Him whom they too profess to honour as the Saviour of mankind ; but we hail it as one of the harbingers of a better time, that many Hindus have become fully aware of the nature of the ground on which godless education is offered to them, and hesitate not to express their preference for what they call the theistic above the atheistic school. There is truth for the intellect, and truth for the heart of man. While we do our best to exhibit the former, we do not ignore the latter ; for "Its look lias power to scatter light, Its touch to sever chains." In the present unrest the reader may wonder what is the " ardent faith that is going to blaze up in India." Years ago an Indian of great intelli gence pointed out what has been quoted on the previous page, namely, that the educated youth of the country were on the high road to no faith at all, and were going at lightning speed. The effect of the Queen s Proclamation was to leave Government schools in such a position that they became god less ; students were taught that morality was not based on religion, with the result that a specious ISO The Need for Colleges and Schools materialism has captured young India. The Proclamation was conceived in the broadest sense of doing unto others as ye would that they should do unto you ; but so far as school life was con cerned, professors interpreted its neutrality into practical atheism. The civil servant encouraged education all he could in the way of patronage, but his outlook on school life in India, many splendid instances excepted, was limited by the burden of heavy office work which filled up his time. Professors from Great Britain came out to high schools and universities, men of high character, some decidedly Christian ; but they were handi capped by the neutrality of the Proclamation. They had to use text-books that were atheistic, and any way Mill, Spencer, and Bain are writers to help an ardent unbelief rather than a faith. It is amazing how their books could ever have been chosen, even in homoeopathic doses, to teach Indian youths the way of wisdom. It would be difficult to match three pedants such as these names repre sent men whose knowledge of life, as life, was a minus quantity. It represented the passivity of thought, and neglected the translation of thought into action. The Scheme of Education was probably as bad as it could be. It made the passing of examina- By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool tions the supreme object ; once this was attained, the student s mental culture, in instances almost numberless, was allowed to languish. Discipline, steadiness, initiative, and grit in too many in stances were neglected or discouraged ; and now you find "Examination Scandals" are far too common. The boy has not been taught to scorn dishonour ; his materialism teaches him that " self- conservation is the first law of being," and that success may be attained by scandalous means. The need of India is an education that will pro duce in the scholar reverence, honesty, chastity, and self-respect ; an education, too, that will quickly justify itself, and by means of which the student may hope to get a living. If, after graduating in Mill, Bain, and Spencer, he can get no work, he will devote his time to the fomenting of disloyalty. In the early period of Government education the neglect of technical schools was serious. This is now remedied. The out-of-work educated Indian ought to have been taught a handicraft ; he would have had his living in his fingers, and would not have given days and nights to the forming of secret societies to upset Government rule. Perhaps Macaulay may have been to blame in barring vernaculars and making English the medium of instruction ; but critics on the other side should remember Indians had been brought up on Puranic 132 The Need for Colleges and Schools stories, and these did not contribute to the sum of human knowledge, or elevate the minds of their readers. Eleven years ago Dr. K. S. Macdonald found a Bengali translation of Reynolds s Mysteries of the Court of London it was a second edition of one thousand copies of 1915 pages each, and was competing with the Mahabharat and Ramayan in Bengali. No educationist in India is to blame for this, it is sheer love of garbage that has led to it ; garbage of this kind adds to the difficulties of men who are teachers. They are shocked until they get hardened to the experience ; even after this process has set in they have still to face the problem of moral teaching that has no religious sanction. The wonder is how men can be found who will do it, who can be silent about their own faith, and silent before the destruction of the faith of their scholars. Happily, they are men, one and all, clean living and hard working, who are doing their best with a hopeless problem. No ardent faith has yet arisen to capture Indian youth, and none will arise in the sterile atmosphere and the stony soil of Government schools, where neutrality or, more correctly, negativism sets the pace. It has been a tactical error, and has produced the pseudo-political-mongering one sees in cities like Calcutta. Dr. Martin, late Director 133 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool of Public Instruction in Bengal, lays bare the whole position : "The more one thinks of the present situation the more one feels impressed with the truth of the conclusion, that the policy of religious neutrality has been carried too far ; that the present system of godless training has been more destructive than constructive in its effects. It is said that while the bare materialism and free-thinking of the West have dispelled a mass of ignorance and superstition, they have at the same time created a feeling of scepticism and a spirit of utter irreverence which is sapping the very foundation of the moral side of a student s character. It is for this reason that some sort of religious instruction has been advo cated ; not, of course, of a sectarian character, but on the line of universal truths, with the cardinal idea of a Supreme Being controlling and regulating all our thoughts and actions." It is eleven years since this recommendation was made, yet so far it has received no attention ; and now Government is face to face with the difficulty of a growing anarchism, euphemistically named " unrest." So far is this from bearing the character of a divine discontent which only desires things to become better, that it is a menace to the public peace, and must be put down by the strong arm of a vigorously worked law. The trouble arises from 134 The Need for Colleges and Schools the frothy portion of the population that calls itself educated ; and this percentage is so small that it would be unnoticed were it not for a press, vernacular and English, that is utterly unscru pulous. It has all the venom of an irritated cobra behind it, and it should be dealt with as a cobra. There are educated Indian gentlemen who are as far removed from this unhappy condition as light is from darkness, and they have no part or lot in the clamours that arise. They are as loyal as any Englishman ; and as for the eighty-nine per cent, of the people who are returned as unlettered, they are true to the British raj. It has given them safety and peace ; but, as the King-Emperor s message puts it and that is a document replete with wisdom, pure and peaceable : " No secret of empire can avert the scourge of drought and plague ; but experienced administrators have done all that skill and devotion are capable of doing to mitigate those dire cal amities of nature. For a longer period than was ever known in your history before, you have escaped the dire calamities of war. Within your borders internal peace has been unbroken." The Government in India, as other Governments elsewhere, has failed to establish a satisfactory system of education. Neutrality destroys belief since it ignores God ; and if boys are taught that to obtain an education they must put God aside, 135 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool can anyone wonder they become materialists, set aside the sanctions of morality, and are a law unto themselves ? There are more serious reasons now for Mission schools and colleges than have ever before existed ; and it behoves Government to help these institu tions as hitherto it never has helped them. The old Hinduism was in no sense such a dangerous foe as the modern materialism, that fears neither God nor man. " We have made a very respectable class permanently unhappy," said The Spectator years ago ; and the confession is true. There can be no doubt that this class will have to come into altered conditions, so that faith and worship and love may once more sweeten and hallow life. This is the task the Missionary teacher has to set himself to accomplish. It must be admitted he comes to an India much more difficult than his Missionary fathers came to. Scottish Missions have been so closely identified with this form of work that a Scotsman ought to write about it. Sherring, in his Protestant Missions in India, blames Massie and Laidler for their scheme of an Indian University ; but a page or two farther one is lost in admiration of Dr. Duffs scheme, which but for a geographical distinction was the same as theirs. It is not fair to the teaching Missionary to throw at him the reproach that he has not the 136 The Need for Colleges and Schools converts his predecessors had. Duff, Anderson, and Wilson have been glorified at the expense of their successors to a degree that is simply unjust to the men at work on the field. Picking up a copy of True Yokefelloivs, a memoir of Anderson and Johnstone, I found at the close of one chapter the words are written evidently by an Indian : " Oh that all Missionaries were like these ! India would be full of Christians." The tendency to glorify past workers, and depreciate new ones, is a habit not exclusively Indian. It seems to be engrained in human nature. It is abominably unfair, and it arises from an utter lack of per spective. Duff and Anderson came out as pioneers ; there was an intense desire on the part of Indian youths to enjoy all the advantages of Western education. There were converts, as there must of necessity be when new ideas are in the air, and other conceptions of life prevail. For thirty years in Calcutta and Madras these conversions were constant. The success of the new crusade opened founts of generosity that such a crisis compelled. The Rev. Rajahgopal, who in 1847 was in Scotland with Mr. Anderson, addressed the General Assembly, and his speech in length was one hour and three quarters. Many a manse in Scotland cherished the picture of that bright enthusiastic soul, who was to the end of his life, in looks and 137 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool manner, like his master and father in God, John Anderson. After every upheaval there comes the settling down into ordinary conditions. What has been thrown up drops down. Moses goes up to the Mount, Aaron makes a golden calf. Moses has to come and grind it into powder. The remark is only pertinent in this sense, that after all revivals there comes a period of slackness when other interests prevail. Men had to follow Duff, Anderson, and AVilson picked men, who were every bit of the same quality, and some of them better. No Scotswoman will believe this, unless she is married to one of them ; but it is the fact. The immediate business of these successors was war fare, not with converts, but with awakened Hindu opinion. In familiar parlance, the first educa tional men had violent opposition for a short time, and then a walk over. In the period of their successors Hindu suspicion was aroused ; beyond this, the Proclamation had delivered its dreary message of neutrality, which added conditions to Mission work already complicated past belief. Certain converts justified all that could be believed of them ; others failed, and the failure was simply what every man must face beginning from Paul downwards to all his successors in Missionary work. " Demas hath forsaken me, having loved 138 The Need for Colleges and Schools this present world." In all great moods of con version which come, not only to schools but to communities in India, this fact must be allowed for. In the life of our Lord there was a period when "all forsook Him and fled." So far as Missionary education in South India was concerned, a Luther was needed, first to fight Government education, next to put Missionary education on a sound working basis. You may find Luther in many parts of India at the head of a college or school, and you will hear him criticised because he has not baptisms. He will answer you, as one did, that he could have had hundreds, but he preferred that truth should leaven as well as emotion convict. The new faith that is going to blaze up in India must arise in Christian colleges and schools. A lower degree of the same faith is growing in villages and settlements. Among Indians of no caste, or of a mean one, this faith will find its true expression in two or three generations. A gregarious movement means a very difficult task. Its childishness in spiritual things, its belief that the Missionary can bring its followers golden times these are pathetic considerations, and indicate that movements of this kind must be helped on in quietness, in great patience, and in faith that will not waver. 139 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool The great work in college and in school in India ought to attract teachers from England in greater numbers. All honour to the men in the work. It is to them India must look ; to them as they point their students to the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world. Christ alone can satisfy India s need, and in Him all unrest shall pass away. 140 XI NOTHING FOR NOTHING 141 " In the old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the City of Destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction : a hand is put into theirs which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward ; and the hand may be a little child s."- GEORGE ELIOT in Silas Marner. " The small boy came in to see me. It was evening, and the hills were ablaze with forest fires. He asked for a tumbler of water, drank a little, and then ran to the end of the compound with the remaining water. I went after him, and asked, What are you doing ? his reply was, I want to put out that fire. It was twelve miles away." ANON. I 4 2 XI NOTHING FOR NOTHING rpHEEE are still men in India who can evolve -*- phrases ; the words may be descriptive and arresting. A listener hears them in a conference, and adopts the words ; until another phrase comes along he is held captive, and can no more escape using it than Mr. Dick could avoid the head of King Charles in his famous petition. A rhetorical speaker is as a rule mischievous ; a fervid soul who could only express himself in superlatives insisted that what he, and all his brothers in the work, needed was not extension but intension. Some memory of logical terms must have clung to him. The words are contradictories, and one or the other followed up excludes in a sense the speaker did not understand. He would have been better employed trying to convert Hindus rather than misusing terms peculiar to a process of logic. What he meant was, that there is a tendency to think more of outside growth than of inner H3 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool sanctity. Why could he not have stated it thus that the secret heart should direct the public life ? There is a principle of work involved in this opinion. A clean heart makes for clean service, and is like the part of the mechanism of a steam-engine called the governor. The governor indicates the working condition of the engine, and its purpose is to make the machine regulate its own speed, so that it shall neither pull nor race through an increase or decrease of load. In Mission work a governor is necessary to save waste of power. The Missionary should employ only needful machinery. If this principle were universal, we should not see the man who conducts a Mission by means of machinery outside himself. He writes so many letters that he never acquires a vernacular ; subscriptions flow in, work is begun, not because it is necessary in the way of an opportunity, but because some appearance of work must justify the appeal. What happens is an extension of work with no adequate power to govern it. Someone, knowing the language, has to go and discipline the whole movement. Pariahs have been baptized in a hurry to meet the home- going mail ; the pariahs are truthful, they tell you freely they became Christian because they believed that the Missionary would help them with money, fight their battles and settle their eternal disputes, 144 Nothing for Nothing giving them at the end the shelter of his name, thus helping them to a respectability that would exalt them to the status of a caste. This kind of Missionary ought to find his way into a near and speedy oblivion. Time has been given him to learn an Indian language ; he has spent the time in nearer and more attractive work writing letters concerning the greatness of his need. He ought to be sent home, as he would be were he a Civilian. It is too late in the day to take shelter in the text that " God chooses the weak things of the world to confound the mighty." In a racy letter, written long ago on "Ministerial Removals/ 7 it was pointed out that men usually got what they deserved in the spirit ual realm as in the realm of trade ; the writer s testimony is pertinent : " When I began my ministerial life I had two hundred pounds a year, and was not worth it. Now I get twelve hundred, and I am worth a great deal more." In Tanjore there is an enormous cannon, twenty- three feet long in the bore and three feet in diameter. It has no breech, and has never fired a shot, for the reason it is more like a powder magazine than a cannon. It may further be truthfully affirmed that an enemy in front of it would be in infinitely less danger than the men who might have the sad duty of firing it. What- T.S.-IO 145 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool ever may be said of the possible intension of the cannon may be said with equal truth of its extension : it is worthless either way. If you fill it to its capacity, it will explode ; and if you do not fill it, it is useless there it remains in old Tanjore, still a wonder to gods and men. If you are going to help in the winning of India to Christ, you must be furnished with a weapon of precision, flexible and effective in every way. This is so apparent that a child may understand it. This is just the point if we could learn Indian languages as a child learns, then work would be no burden, or such a burden as wings are to a bird. A small boy in the bungalow knows there are one hundred and ninety-two pice in a rupee ; he is delighted to distribute so many pice to servants, coolies, and every soul to whom he can talk. This fact appeals in the most direct way. If you cannot preach a great discourse, give what you can, even though it be the one hundred and ninety-second part of a rupee. As soon as you can say one sentence in an Indian language say it, and keep on saying it. It is marvellous what a sentence of ten words will grow to in ten weeks, if only you will keep on saying the words. You gain from what you give ; you learn how nimble nine- pence may beat slow shilling ; how David may 146 Nothing for Nothing succeed with the sling and the stone where Goliath failed, locked up as he was in useless armour. " What a wail Goliath could send up about little David beating him," says the letter referred to ; and it goes on : " Out of nothing, nothing comes. For the weak to succeed and the strong to fail, for the foolish to command influence and the wise to be neglected, is a violation of natural law, too monstrous to get credit among men." " Nothing for nothing " when shall we learn the lesson ? Yet there is something for very little if the little is wisely used, and the grace of humility, with the practice of prayer, helps on the little. The sensitive chord in human nature is sympathy, fellow-feeling, and it is in a fact of this kind that a little child shall lead and show the way. The boy s dear father has one rupee, and he can only give it to one person as an entire sum. He may have more than one, he may have a number ; but so long as his power is locked in that rupee, so long will he be limited and hedged in. The small boy is no arith metician, but he can do things with Indians his father dare not attempt. He can command the services of all the people in the house, and of all Indians that go to see his father. Europeans in India profess to be afraid of their 147 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool children learning a vernacular, especially in South India. Having had once to act as an interpreter in a law case, I said to the European officer : " If you are ever in difficulties, try your little son." He was shocked ; but the boy had talked to me for hours in the language he knew best. The father was sensible. In came a Eaja one day who had to be seen, and no interpreter was available ; the small boy, perfectly dressed by his mother, went to the rescue of his father, and that proud old Raja was astounded and delighted. It was his first experience of a small English boy ; then the boy was so polite as he squatted between the two men. His language to the Indian gentleman was exact in its use of the inclusive pronoun. Our, not " yours," ive and not " us," made the fine old Indian gentleman a member of the house. That business ended in perfect satisfaction to all parties. In Mission work I have known the same thing happen. The small, intervening presence of a boy has changed an audience from hatred to sympathy many a time. " We cannot stand his father, but we love him " the him being the boy. Two small girls are sent off to their bedroom. Edith kneels to say her prayers, and the younger child Susie kneels at the same time to say hers the prayers are spoken aloud. Edith asks Susie not 148 Nothing for Nothing to pray when she is praying ; for " how can God hear two of us at the same time ? " Susie admits the reason, but pleads, "What about Jesus?" Children can absorb in their large faith infinite things. Edith quite believed she only could be listened to at the time she prayed. Susie admitted it, but believed the Lord Jesus would listen to her. The instance is a true one ; but it should have a message for men and women who are at the heart of the strife. Because they are there the Lord is with them ; and He holds them so that the music in their heart is, If I may win my Saviour Christ, All other gain may pass me by ; His love that first my soul enticed Shall every lack of life supply. And this is not dimmed by any looking back to comfort, wealth, pleasure, or friends. These all may pass, if unto Him My soul may cleave, and find his way, Through providences dark and dim, To God, my refuge, hope, and stay. You cannot mistake a servant of this quality. People were shocked because William Jones did not wear a collar ; the Santals did not note the omission. He was a saint clothed in white armour starry pure to them ; he could not help himself 149 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool in that stretch of jungle where washermen, skilled in the use of a laundry iron, did not exist. And had he wanted ever so, Jones could not have got his linen ironed. There he was, a helper of all who sought him, and of all he sought clothed in spiritual power. Sometimes the way of the desert is cheered by revelations of power and mercy the lonely worker never can forget. The out-reaching hands of prayer bring him special help. Anderson, in 1841, writes : " Never but once in my life have I had so much joy and sorrow, and so many visible tokens of the hand of God with me a thing I ascribe to the prayers of my fathers and brethren, your own beloved Church." At this time John Hay had written him from Vizagapatam : "It will cheer your heart to hear that, when I went into my veranda this evening, I found one of your dear youths surrounded by a group of mine, to whom he was lecturing on the importance of the Bible, and urging it on their attention. Oh, I cannot tell you what thrilled through me at that moment ! I felt as if I could have clasped him to my heart, and gone to heaven to tell it first there ! I shall take all care of him, in your name. He is, bona fide, a son of the Scottish Church ; and may the great Head of the Church make him one of the brightest of her sons," It is feeling of this kind Nothing for Nothing that gives the sensation of being borne on eagle s wings. Let the worker lift the people up, and he is lifted. You get in this what that Missionary really meant extension and intension : the out going sympathy and the incoming grace. John Hay wanted to embrace the youth, then go to heaven to announce the great triumph. He was right ; for in that early day the warfare was past our knowledge hopeless, to outward seeming, and he felt any trophy ought to be laid at the feet of his Master. The fighting blood of the dark, true, and tender North has its fetish, and it is either to bring the shield or to be carried on it. Water may not rise higher than its level ; but it can continue on that level and fertilise all it meets. " Fire ascending seeks the sun," and it may warm and enlighten sad hearts who would fain see the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings. XII THE LONELY LIFE "Since there is no place so alone The which He does not fill." GEORGE HERBERT. " You must have indomitable vitality, and make the all-alone station into a Garden of Eden. You can do it if you will only bring to it all the resources of your spiritual heritage. All are yours, for you are Christ s, and Christ is God s." " The opening heavens around me shine With beams of sacred bliss ; While Jesus shews His mercy mine, And whispers, I am His." WATTS. "Thou hast not lived, why shouldst thou perish so? Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire ; Else wert thou long since living with the dead Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire." M. ARNOLD. 154 XII THE LONELY LIFE pKINCIPAL FALDING pointed out many years since that the disease of Church life in England was " Go-to-Meetingty." A programme of an English church comes occasionally into my existence, and I count the events. There are twenty-five meetings in the week. The church does not grow, it consumes itself; and people who are outside do not wish to be drawn into the fire. The effect upon the minister must be irremediably bad. Outsiders prefer to slip into a church where services are simple and demands modest. The outsiders must worship, but they do not elect to be saints on twenty-five meetings a week. In India much of the meeting is necessarily out side the worker ; he is declaring a Message, some times unwelcome to Hindu ears, and from the human side he is lonely. He will grow into friend ship with people, but this is limited by caste, and the inner sanctuary is closed. Among his own 155 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool brother Christians there may be, and there ought to be, the closest relation of soul touching soul in Christ Jesus. This has been granted to some men, and they have counted it their supremest privilege ; but the lonely worker has not this lofty and in spiring blessing, because he is in a part of the field where Christians are few and far between. His is a ministry to the scattered ; a few people, at varying distances from headquarters, remote con gregations, bring to him great grace and joy. They are as lonely on the human side as he is ; and when he goes in and out among them, they do not know any limit to what they can do for him. Give me Indian saints of this kind, and all formal meetings may go. Conversation may amount to little on the intellectual side of things ; but take the simply spiritual side, spiritual in this sense, that it does not demand the joy of heaven before it is due, but finds its happy expres sion in doing God s will in the lowliest things. There are surprises in this humble way that at times are startling. In a Mission bungalow one morning I found the wife of the lonely Missionary crying. I asked, "What is it, Mrs. ?" and her answer was, " You have caught me, but these are happy tears." There were thirty-six Christians scattered over a tract of country as large as Westmoreland ; the 156 The Lonely Life lady had begged the people to help on the work as they could. One woman at a railway junction some miles away made rice cakes and sold them at a half-farthing each, and brought the proceeds as her contribution. " It means that in one month she has had to make one hundred of these little cakes every day, and sell them. Can you wonder my tears are happy tears ? " I could not ; but the confession touched, even as our great High Priest touched, the inmost heart of Mission work. You expect little, but how spacious is the blessing that comes ! No wonder that sweet soul wept. Jesus did the same. She was in His succession, and for the ten-thousandth time I went on my way wondering, in adoring gratitude, how gracious the Lord is in granting these wayside revelations. Were it not for them we should be of all men and women most miserable ; but they come because they must. As that Puritan preacher says: "God can as soon forget Christ at His right hand as cease His love to a believer." It is true, God and Christ cannot forget you ; and in loneliness you find what John found in Patmos vision, power, and large appropriating faith. Ephesus and Alexandria must have had charms for him. There were great companies of believers ; there heaven came down to greet the faithful souls ; there were certain 157 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool physical comforts that added to the agreeableness of life ; there were his children in the faith. In Patmos what ? An island as dreary as a salt tract in India in the hot weather. No bazaar, no gathering of congregations ; but, bleak, bare, and horrid as the island was, Christ was on it with His servant ; and who can be lonely where Christ is ? Some people need a crowd to evoke their quality. They can be spacious on great occasions, and if it were not for this effusive gift the business of the Kingdom would suffer. They are the reporters of the Kingdom, the Mercuries who are messengers of small Missionary swamies, and they keep close to facts, get interest aroused better still, get funds ; they are in one particular only like the Indian money-lender, of whom it is said that if you were to strip him naked, and leave him in the middle of a desert, he would still raise 36 per cent. It is " manifest," as John Howe would say, " that people of this description are not fit for the lonely life ; but if they can help to make it less lonely, then, in Christ s name ; let them do it." The earlier Missionaries had to face the fact of loneliness ; and the daughter of one of them describes herself as so alone that she was like a solitary sparrow on a housetop, or a single pea in an enormous pod. Weitbrecht writes concerning the depressing effect of Bengal scenery and climate : 158 The Lonely Life " The eternal sameness of the plains is wearying to the eye and depressing to the spirits " ; and again : "In this climate the faculties both of body and soul become tamed" India is still India, and its range of climate seems to keep pace with the number of the Hindu hells ; but from the region of eternal ice down to that of arid sand and black-cotton soil, you get all possible variations : yet the sun abides in his strength ; no thermometer can gauge the fervour of his heat, and the sun will be respected. Hill stations have been developed during the last fifty years ; but even in these regions of cool nights and rarefied air, the sun is still in evidence. You see Missionaries in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras who are up to the standard of the newly fledged curate in dress and other matters, they afford no instance of comparison. They are in Jerusalem ; but Paul and Silas are in remote places like Antioch in Pisidia, in Derbe, and Lystra ; and Paul has quarrelled with Barnabas, because Barnabas wants his nephew Mark, whose surname is John, to go with them. Paul cannot tolerate John Mark because of desertion. In the Indian cities named there are the movement and pleasure of an English city with the serious exception of ailments that come : cholera, plague, and other matters unknown at home. Paul and By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool Silas are in remote spots of Asia Minor, where all sorts of things happen. Paul is stoned outside the city ; but he recovers, and the next day goes on to another place where his welcome is .generous, as it should be. Men in cities have this privilege they can obtain medical advice ; but the man in the jungle cannot, and this differentiates them. The jungle man is perhaps all the healthier because he cannot see a doctor this at least has been my experience ; yet he may need a surgeon, and in this case he must go to a city. In loneliness men are at times tempted to try experiments that have grievous results. Weitbrecht has an instance in himself. "There are persons who think that a Missionary should go about barefoot, with a staff in hand, a single garment on his back, and feed on a barley loaf and a few small fishes ; and they affirm that if they possessed faith and were baptized by the Spirit they could do so. Were we in a country like Galilee, and natives of the same, this might be possible ; but it is not so, and those who try the experiment will suffer. I was not led to do it by the reproaches of these mistaken people, who, I must tell you, ride themselves in com fortable carriages ; but I did really imagine I might venture to walk a few miles on a cloudy day in June, and the effect was very alarming. 160 The Lonely Life As I lay on my couch, feeling as if insects were traversing my brain and an iron hand being tightened round my brows, I perceived how dearly we may have to pay for the Apostolic mode of acting." " The labourers are few ; so much the more, therefore, must those few be prudent, and try to preserve their health by all lawful means. God knows how gladly I would go on foot, as the Apostles did from place to place, and content myself with the simplest fare and the poorest accommodation in native huts, but lo ! after one excursion I barely escape with my life." Possibly the bane of loneliness is not the mere isolation so much as the introspection it may occasion. Anything is better than this even talk ing to one s self, if it will keep the tendency away. Someone asked a man why he cultivated the habit of talking to himself; the story is old, but the reply ever new : "I talk to myself for two reasons : first, I like to talk to a sensible man ; and next, I like to hear a sensible man talk." The vigorous prosecution of a hobby is great gain, camp too is another resource ; but it is certain that when all human means fail, the two lines which were con stantly in Carey s heart and frequently upon his lips A guilty weak and helpless worm, . t *. On Thy kind arms I fall ; ; \ j\ T.S. II l6l By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool will point us to a refuge, will give the ready access to it if the lines are used as a prayer ; and in Missionary work they assuredly ought to be. " Underneath are the everlasting arms." The way of the wilderness has its places of weeping ; how bitter they must have been ! The bald recitation, " Central India was afterwards taken up by another band of German brethren, four in number, who were all carried off by cholera in one iveek" is found in Weitbrecht s life. " Ke cords such as this have many parallels in the history of Indian Missions " is a comment made upon the sentence by a writer reviewing the biography. The parallels are not confined to Missionaries ; every Indian service contributes its quota to the total. It is sadly too true, as Mr. Julian J. Cotton points out : " Our public highways are strewn with broken-down memorials " to men who died on a march, and made the road side their resting-place. Edmund Crisp, in a letter to the Evangelical Magazine just eighty years ago, describes the death of the Rev. John Gordon of Vizagapatam, and the letter is shocking to a modern reader. Its description of symptoms is appalling, and its gloom as to Gordon s spiritual state makes one wish that Crisp, a genial humane man, had never written it. Anyone reading it in these days 162 The Lonely Life would recognise Gordon s illness at once. That fatal word abscess on the liver was not known then as it is now ; the prostration of body and mind that accompanies it, the leaden agony of its earlier stages, and the acute pain at the end, will account for any lacunce in a man s dying testimony. When the city of the soul is locked up by physical pain a wise reticence is necessary. Gordon had lived well, and it was of little account how he died. India is a curious country in this respect. The passing may be happily brief, or it may be a pro longed strife. One young Missionary died of sun stroke ; a kindly European and a sincere Christian man was with him to the last. Knowing the con secration of the man who had passed home, the European said to me : " I am puzzled ! this saint and his quality in this particular no one will deny just uttered the word Philology and died. But I do not think he entered heaven with this word on his lips "No," said I ; " he would find another in his passing." William Jones sang Welsh hymns, and went through the gates still singing them ; and he sings them now in that life of fuller activity and more energised service to which the Lord has called him. In the lonely life every hour may be a spiritual Sabbath, so we are told. It may be ifl a-, brjef interval of service. Everybody knows pebple^ who 163 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool have lived in India, and who regard it as an Elysium they have fallen out of, and have dropped into the Avernus of England on pension. The truth is as usual between two extremes. The Sabbath came in the first period of service, when moonlit evenings and the glow of morning still had power to charm your life. After comes the lowering sky children are exiled, or God takes them ; your fellow- workers die ; the mode of your service changes, and you have to be quiescent where once you would have fought like a tiger or an English bull-dog. It is all over, and the super vening loneliness brings one into that Patmos of o o the soul where the only voice that can be heard is, " Fear not ! I am He that liveth and was dead ; and behold, I am alive for evermore. I have the keys of death and of Hades." lonely soul, be not afraid ! The Keeper of the keys will be with thee in all thy loneliness, whether it is that of a great city or that of a solitary jungle, or the vast desolateness of sea and ocean. Stars still shine above thee ; clouds may loom, but they are friendly with blessings that may break in gracious rain. Stormy wind and tempest " fulfilling His word " may arise there through many an unchartered course, but the "coaxes at last. So are we glad. 164 XIII MISSION INDUSTRIES 165 " I insist that the time has now come indeed, arrived many years ago for a wise Government, possessing with God s help a little imagination, to recognise the compelling urgency of the need for an indigenous, industrial development, and in hundreds of high schools, to afford to the better classes at least the chance of discovering any latent taste that may lie in them, undeveloped only for lack of opportunity, in the direction of industrial production." F. E. SPUING, C.I.E. ""We are all taught books too much and things too little." ROSCOB. " How many are there, from Psellus to Bayle, bound hand and foot intellectually with the rolls of their own papyrus men whose erudition has grown stronger than their souls ! " MRS. BROWNING. 166 XIII MISSION INDUSTRIES rpHEKE are certain men on the Mission -field *- who can use their fingers. An instance occurs of a man not known in England. Kichard Johnson of Nun dial, when he lived in Vizaga- patam, made a brave attempt to get workable and readable type in Telugu. The type cut at Serampore was the worst possible, it is no libel to say it ; and it was inevitable the clumsiness of the type was imitated apparently from rude cuttings on copper plates. Johnson had no knowledge of printing ; but he taught himself the art, and founded a kind of type that had the virtue of compacted simplicity. The labour of four hundred letters to the alphabet must have been enormous ; but he accomplished it, and it paved the way for a practical printer, who still further improved it. What it saved in paper the recording angel only knows. Johnson further learned the art of book binding, so that the Bible in Telugu might be By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool issued in something approaching a neat and handy form. An edition of the Bible in this language was urgently needed. Certain books were still untranslated ; but Johnson, getting the best help he could from other versions he knew his Vulgate translated the portions, and set the translation in type at the same time. A difficult and complex operation ; let anyone try for himself and see. The reader will be shocked, but what is to be done ? The completed Bible proved quite exceptionally good for its period. I used to look with reverence on this old type, and the tools for binding. What prayer and love and cheerful faith had gone to their making ! What remains of Johnson s version of the Telugu Bible ought to be to Telugu Christians what the Bay Psalm Book is to the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers " an inspiration, and a never- ending cause for gratitude to God that He raised up this humble servant. He is of no reputation in any history of Missions ; but Hay, Drew, Wardlaw, Lechler, his fellow-workers, recognised his gifts. All this is preliminary to the man who has fingers ; and it gives a reason why, whenever possible, a Missionary should know some handi craft. It is of the supremest use even in India. Let your man pass all the examinations he likes 168 Mission Industries in England ; but even if he has to come out two years later, let him learn some trade. If he has learnt one before he went to college, so much the better. The man thus prepared makes all the difference between a man who has mixed with schoolboys and students all his life, and one who has the added experience of having had to mix with men. It requires all kinds of people to make up a world even a Mission world. The man who has been at school and university all his life has probably got all kinds of sense except common-sense. A former Governor of Madras, seeing on his voyage out to India how dolphins could cleave the wave, conceived the happy idea that the Swedish iron dolphin-shaped plough would cut a furrow. Wanting to be absolutely prudent, he, at the time he ordered fifty Swedish ploughs, ordered an English one. There could not be found a single man in the covenanted services who could fix the coulter. A soldier was found who could do it, and things then went as they should. Archbishop Temple could have fixed that coulter, just as he could many other things. In the redemption of India Industrial Missions have their most important place. It seems like putting what is worldly against what is spiritual ; but this is not intended. What pertains to the body may and must help the soul ; and a convert is 169 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool all the better if he needs to learn a trade, and you have to teach him one. He does not add to your list of membership, because he has to go out into the larger India to get work. This remark pre supposes that you teach him a trade ; but do not yourself trade. It is the difference between train ing and trading. The Industrial Missionary, like all the rest, has to meet difficulties that to him are surprising. As a rule the man who wants work in India can get it ; but there are Weary AVillies and Tired Tims even in India. " Born tired " is not a Western speciality ; and out-of-works all the world over must be divided into two classes those who will work if they can only get it, and those who will not work if they can possibly avoid it. You capture a pariah sometimes who really will work he is a treasure indeed ; as a rule you find the pariah a slacker, and his power of sleep is amazing. "Blessings on the man who invented it" is a prayer as fervid in him as it was in Sancho Panza. Looking down an old register of an industrial school, the half-faded writing records, "John ex pelled"; "Thomas finished his course with honour " ; " Devadara went back to his parcherry." Watching the subsequent course of the boys : John, who was expelled, turned out the best as regards use in this world ; and the boy who went 170 Mission Industries back to the parcherry lived his squalid life with out doing work, except when he went to jail, and there he had to work. Allowing for failures like this, in the end the work of Industrial Missions fulfils its purpose ; and a second generation, or a third, of artisans develops a love of work and pride in it. The boy here described comes of pariah stock, and there is no skill in his fingers ; but in other castes this difficulty has not to be faced. They inherit ability, and in technical schools distinguish themselves. As workers in metals, Indians can not be beaten on their own ground. In the West the handicraftsman has in many trades ceased to exist as a master of his craft. Machinery has extinguished him. It may be safely affirmed that a carpenter like Adam Bede would be difficult to find in these days. It is a hopeful sign that he is coming to his own again the man who will only work in seasoned timber, and will put his soul into it. Look at the new slummy suburbs of cities, and the jerry-built places that were run up before municipal authorities demanded an observance of certain hygienic laws in regard to houses, if you want to know what machinery and unseasoned timber have done. The physical resources of India have still to be developed ; and, humanly speaking, these seem to 171 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool be boundless. There are mountains of iron ore which in two conversions make the finest steel that can be produced. There are fibres of value ; and, in spite of past iniquitous waste, forests are already counting for much. Fisheries are in as crude a state as can be imagined. There are mineral deposits a geologist only can describe ; while food products are waiting to be discovered. Manchester has failed to obliterate weavers. These men still exist ; and though Chicacole muslins are said to have perished, silk weaving still goes on arid would thrive if some gifted soul, who knows all about silk- worms, would give him self to their growth. Missionary societies should pay serious attention to these matters. The question bristles with difficulties ; but it will have to be faced. As it is, most Missionaries must have some industrial work, and most of the men know but little about it so little that after one or two costly experi ments which fall upon the man, not upon his Society, he drops it and with it drops money he can ill afford. There ought to be in every Mission which has extensive work a man thoroughly versed in the business of a universal provider. He should have no other work but that of attend ing to industries and of Mission needs in the way of stores, medical, domestic, building, and literary. 172 Mission Industries A man like this could take a contract and secure its profit with the training it might give to boys in a technical school. This man should be in existence where the Industrial Missionary is. The latter could give himself to his proper work, that of training boys ; the business man would attend to questions of finance. Going through an industrial school, twenty- four years since, I was struck with the enormous amount of waste timber in the compound. The waste was shocking, it was like cutting down a teak tree to get a tooth -pick ; or like sawing a log of boxwood to make a gimlet-head. If a carpenter wanted a teak board, he went to cut it from a log ; and there were heaps of scantling that would have served the purpose equally well. The Missionary who was in charge began the work because he had to do so ; there was no escape. He had three hundred famine orphans to provide for, and he had no knowledge of any handicraft. His successor was in the same plight ; and even a third, who was a great scholar and a brilliant University man, found himself face to face with a condition of things he had never dreamed of. He did the best with enormous difficulties, and got out a man who knew the work. Timber was saved, labour wisely directed, and for the 173 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool first time in twenty years peace came to that Mission. It paid its way. The industrial man had short methods ; men who had been trained in the school used to find themselves out of work and went back to it to claim its pro tection. The Missionary sympathised and helped ; the Industrial Missionary did neither the one nor the other, but got rid of these undesirables in the most prompt and breezy way. Great was the clearing of parasitic growths in that Mission. The man who has grown up in a shop is invalu able in this aspect of work. A very gentle German said to me : " When the boys are young they are little lambs ; but when they get their moustache they are roaring Bengal tigers." He had been an Industrial Missionary at the beginning, and he gave it up ; meanwhile there came along an English man who rope-ended the offenders ; and, as he described it, " one or two ran away, but the rest became as good as gold." They found the man who could deal with them, and they were con tented and quite glad to work for him. He was good to them in this way : at the New Year he gave a boy, whose work had been good, a cloth and a jacket. He encouraged them to get work done quickly, and always was most punctil ious in paying them himself for overtime. They 74 Mission Industries earned enough in this way to buy their own clothes, and the extra work kept the roaring Bengal tiger out of them. In the great Indian famine of 1877-78 there were troops of children in Government camps ; they had lost their parents, and Missions took the children. The children had become wise in their instinct for food, clothing, and shelter. All the Missions held out open arms to them. It became a habit with some of the waifs to sample one Mission after another. Government, in the face of this frightful famine, had an extra ordinary task ; they did their best, and Indian civilians, doctors, engineers at their best show devotedness to work beyond parallel in civic spheres. Men died, we buried them, and most Missionaries had cases of "Famine wallahs" dying in their districts. In the wake of this awful devastation came children known as " Famine orphans " ; they were taken into homes, and industrial schools were started for them, but the schools failed in the majority of cases, and in all the expenses were serious. One Mission only in South India was pre-eminently industrial ; the rest were, with slight exceptions, preaching and educational missions. The children were cared for in every possible way ; but one thing was lost sight of in that terrible visitation. 175 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool Where so much had been nobly done, much was expected. The particular Industrial Mission now discussed has vivid memories for me. When all who had parents were weeded out, there were forty boys. We tried to teach them ; some actually took prizes in the local school. A fine old sepoy was put in charge of them, a sympathetic kindly soul, who looked after them as a nurse will see to children. The smallest boy was named after an Old Testament prophet. He had suffered, but not to any extent like the rest. It was necessary to draw up rigid hygienic rules for the school ; on the other side of the five-acre compound was a girls school, and health demanded cleanliness all round. The old sepoy had to come, as he said, "with charcoal on his face," to report certain pariah habits in the sleeping-room. There was no excuse, so the boys had to be interviewed one by one ; none would acknowledge any mis deed. The senior Missionary, a Scotsman, argued the point ; and he had to tell them that, since none would confess, he must punish the whole lot, innocent and guilty alike. The boys took their punishment ; but the senior man was very tender with the small boy who bore the prophet s name. After all the boys, himself included, had been punished, he himself went to the old sepoy Mission Industries and confessed he had done the deed. The boy pleaded they had all done the same thing in Government camps, and there was no reason why they should not do it in this industrial school. The boys who had been unjustly punished were soothed the next day by the Missionary s wife. She gave them a special meal ; it was her birthday, and she begged them to forgive the prophet s namesake, which they did. I have tried in vain to trace these boys, who were taught an industry. But reasons of this kind led to a dropping of this special form of Mission work. A final word has to be said. It is this : monks taught Englishmen to build cathedrals and churches, taught them to smelt iron and carve oak. They again introduced the art of wool- carding and weaving. Why should not the indus trial man in India do, not quite the same, but similar things ? One has only to read ancient Indian books to see what the people in the time of the Eamayan could do. The warriors bore armour ; the horses were caparisoned in steel ; the sacrificial vessels were of wrought gold ; the soldiers had swords that could cleave like a Damascus blade ; there were war chariots, ornaments, musical instruments, surgical appliances and this means a civilisation T.S. 12 177 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool to some extent dropped, but wliich may be revived. Missionary men and women ought to take their share in this revival, and teach young India to work with both hands, even as in Nazareth our Lord and Master laboured. 178 XIV THE COMMISSARIAT BASE 179 " Eat to live ; then you may live to eat." ANON. " Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you." " Wherever God sends you, food convenient for you will be found." " Rice and salt became a banquet, because he said grace over both." The Planter s Mate. " My back and my front have met. There is not the thickness of a postage stamp to divide the two." (Said to the writer in a famine.) 1 80 XIV THE COMMISSARIAT BASE book of quintessentialised wisdom, the Gulistan, wisely records : " Two things are impossible : to obtain more food than Providence destines for us ; and to die before the time known to God." This has its opposite in the theory of life expressed in the Tamil proverb " If masticated slowly, even a palmyra tree may be digested." The maxim and the proverb lead to the fact of the commissariat base. This chapter is not written for the man whose bread is given and whose water is sure ; not for the man in the city, where he can get all he needs : but for the man up country who may have 8400 square miles of territory to travel, and find bazaars scanty. There are still such tracts to be found in India ; and the intending Missionary, if only to save himself from a cheap martyrdom, will, it is to be hoped, read this chapter. It deals only with matters relating to the body ; but since his soul 181 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool has to live in a body, it may be worth his atten tion. If it is not, then let him stay in England, .where he may buy food ready cooked. A man in the Egyptian campaign found himself compelled to live on Bath-olivers and sardines. I knew him well, and did not wonder that he was speared, actually, when eating these. There are days in India when the food is comparable to a similar mixture of biscuit and oily fish. You cannot eat, and you proceed to a Mohammedan fast, which in your case extends to the forty days of Ramzan ; but your day is twenty-four hours, the Mohammedan day is twelve, and during the other twelve he is permitted to eat as if there were no hereafter. India is not a bad country to live in, spite of the hot weather fast, if you only know how to live. Food is cheap enough, but it must be well cooked. Water in all cases should be boiled, then cholera may be held at arm s length. I have had cholera twice, and know what caused the two attacks. For lack of the most ordinary care I have seen vigorous young Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotsmen, driven out of the country, or dying in it. There is no necessity that the gift of life should be wasted. When in God s gracious providence the call comes and one must answer it, do not let any negligence on your part contribute to the necessity. 182 The Commissariat Base You are morally bound to keep yourself in physical condition for God s work, as Government servants are expected to keep themselves fit for their particular service. The comparison is made because no other is possible ; but it fails in every condition except the imperative one of mental and bodily fitness. The civil servant quite reasonably gets twelve times the salary you do ; but it may be said he has twelve times the expense. He must keep himself able and efficient for his strenuous and continued work. The work is strenuous almost past belief, for a Collector is everybody s coolie. A Judge may keep a certain amount of aloofness and dignity ; but his labour is endless, and there is no wonder that he is prematurely worn out. Yet the waste of life through inattention to ordinary things is alarming. Henry Martyn might have continued his great services, perhaps for years, if someone, a wife, say, could have looked after him. "Be kind to your body," said George Macdonald. He was correct ; if you are, your body will be kind to you. You say this is obvious, and the reply is that because it is obvious so many people despise it. The stock instance of "bring more curricles" is too ancient to quote; the colonel or commissioner with a limited liver but unlimited rupees, who used to shock South 183 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool England, was an instance of this carelessness in the matter of simple but nutritious food. He in the hot weather liked a curry so fervent that it made him feel cold at the back of his head. The man who eats chillies gets the chillie temper and he cannot help it. His Aryan brother is used to it through countless generations, but the Western man must avoid it. He can and ought to live on simple, nutritious food ; it can be got in abundance, and he need not purchase it in tins, or order it from England. The spectacle of an Indian jail is a striking evidence of what diet will do. Over and over again you see a string of famine-stricken prisoners marched in ; six months later their own mothers would not know them. Regular food, well cooked, has led them from the lust of robbery into the honest desire of regular work and sustaining food. The prisoner in an Indian jail is not always a criminal in the sense we attach to the word in England. If he could get food honestly, he would ; but when he cannot, he gets it dishonestly, so he is sent to jail. The higher castes in prison are there because it is the place where they ought to be. Forgery or embezzlement or vice accounts for them. These do not account for the other. Barring limitations necessary to a jail, life for him is pleasant in the sense that he gets food he can 184 The Commissariat Base eat, plenty of it, and work he grows accustomed to ; so that he weeps when his time is expired and he has to leave it. These words may be taken as an honest testi mony of experience ; for many years the writer was a Chaplain to Indian Christian prisoners in a jail. The superintendent declared that they were innocent of the charge on which they were com mitted, and that their conduct proved they could not have done what had been alleged against them. Evidence had been suborned to a degree that only an English Judge in India can know. Half the Brahmins in an Indian town had perjured them selves. The perjury in every case came home to roost; meanwhile the men, by good conduct, earned remissions. They took leave of me with tears ; they went home to their district fine vigorous men, though they had been twelve years in jail. You read of a man carrying a tin of condensed milk in the hold-all of his bicycle ; his Bible and change of linen are in it, but to save carrying a tin opener, he has opened the milk tin, and then finds he has to get coolies to carry the bicycle through a rice swamp. The coolies carry the machine upside down they always do and the milk slops out on to the Bible and the clothes. Not carrying a tin opener, which would have added 385 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool only three ounces to the load, was the reason of this ; and the man might have left the story of his foolishness where the milk, Bible, and clothing had to be dropped. What a coolie can do in the way of giving you, quite unintentionally, a short life and a speedy death is a matter for a romancist. I have seen coolies sent out with bread, sugar, and kerosene oil a coolie for each ; yet they have made them up into one package, and have carried it in relays, say seventy miles, until the only thing you could find in your bread and sugar was kerosene, which both had absorbed. There was no question of carelessness here on the part of the Missionary, or his servant, who, with precise instructions to the coolies, had sent these articles into camp. What to do is a difficulty at times. One may be so alert as to microbes that life is not worth living. Yet one of the most earnest chaplains in India and his wife were sacrificed through food prepared in a copper vessel that the servant had neglected to keep clean. Kalayed is the Indian name for the process that protects the surface of the cooking pot and does not allow it to poison the contents. An Indian will look to items of this kind why should a European not do the same thing ? A subaltern will blame the climate when the real blame ought to be laid at the door of 186 The Commissariat Base liquor. You hear from time to time of survivals of the Regency period of drink in England three-bottle men ; but the nonsense of it is too apparent. The rum ration was dropped long ago, and Government encourages abstinence in all the ways it can. Indians themselves, from experience born of long-suffering, will only drink water from special wells or rivers. The purity of the Ganges is a case in point. The water in this river has been sub mitted to the most exact chemical tests ; and yet, in spite of the horrid things that flow into it, the river has the purest water in India. No wonder the people worship " Mother Gunga" she cleanses their bodies, and they can drink of her waters with safety. Of no other Indian river can this be said, even granting the fact that a man can become case-hardened to water. Young officers in the salt department and their camps are scandalous have told me that after enteric they fear nothing ; and it is quite believable. There is not, or there ought not to be, any reason for enteric. This has been written from no desire to pose as an authority on matters of health, but simply to suggest a little ordinary common-sense in the management of the daily life. India is swamped with patent medicines, foods, ointments, and remedies for all conceivable complaints. These, By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool with other stores, are purchased by Brahmins ; and in one place I found the greatest sale in the lead ing shop was "shortbread" made by a Scottish firm. The Indian pastor who told me, and brought me a tin, smiled. He knew the composition of short bread ; but as Brahmins dearly loved it, he would not explain to them its contents. They still eat it in perfect peace ; and why should they not enjoy it? This chapter of commonplaces finds its needs-be in the fact that, in the call to spiritual service, frequently the best qualified worker is just the one who neglects the simplest rules of health. He or she is so absorbed in the inspiration of a great idea, or a great work, that the soul is allowed to wear out the body ; and this ought not to be. You may flame like a seraph for twelve months, or shine like a candle for thirty years it is simply a question of methods ; which of the two tends to the greater glory of God " the day " will reveal. The pioneer of one particular Mission is a Cum brian of the hardest type, the son of a great dignitary in the Church. He himself is a simple warrior for Christ, who has been permitted to do wonderful things in the way of convicting sinners and shooting tigers. No man can work with him ; the fault is not his, for he is the most genial saint you will meet. The reason is simply physical. 188 The Commissariat Base Fifty years under tropical suns have left him like Moses, with his sight not dim and his natural strength unabated. The sun is his friend, as he would tell you. Young men come out and try to do what he does, with the result that they are in valided home ; and his Society will not send young men to him. He does not want them ; for after repeated failures on their part he has come to this : it is God s will that he should work alone. Clean, hard and thin, tender as a woman, simple as a child, open like a flower to heaven, the sun has yet to rise that could give him sunstroke ; and he is still in the sun every day doing his Master s work. Marvel of marvels, happily, he wears no burden of great scholarship ; he knows his vernacular better than he knows his mother tongue ; he is the spiritual handy man you see once in a hundred years. But even he would implore you not to follow his example, and his reason is potent : " I am as the Lord made me ; so are you, but He has one way for me, another for you : follow His way, not mine." It is necessary that whatever lack you may have, it should not be lack of common-sense. You have work to do, and your Master does not wish to see you in heaven until that work is done. You have no right to shorten your life. He has ; and if in His wise ordering you are called Home to crown, harp, and white robes early, you may go with the 189 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool calm assurance that you will cross Jordan and have foothold all the way. Great will be your welcome, royal your reception. I have seen so many go forward to these that, as Bunyan says, " I wished myself among them." Yet, alone but not alone, one has to keep on, with the assurance that His way is best. You have to hold on to the discipline of prayer, work, and all that work brings. Remember the great words of the Master Him self : " He that endureth to the end shall be saved." These words surely teach that we ought to avoid the demoralising tendency of making continual spurts. When the thermometer is at 105 it is better to crawl with the tortoise than race with the hare. The physical torture of the hot weather affects congregations, and causes prolific quarrels. I have never known a serious disturbance in an Indian church that did not occur in the hottest part of the year ; and while the policy of the blind eye and the deaf ear is about the last one would recommend, yet in the blinding heat of the Indian summer it is the right policy to adopt. Physical causes can account for much in the way of temper, and there are no crops to cultivate, no work to do, until the merciful rain descends and this puts an end to strife. Men will plough their fields, and Satan can no longer find mischief for idle hands and noisy tongues to do. 190 The Commissariat Base There is a commissariat base to work from in spiritual matters, just as there is in bodily neces sities. He is a wise man who will try to build his labour upon both, and look to health of soul and health of body at one and the same time. 191 XV THE CONGREGATION T.S. 13 193 " Neither the union nor the growth spoken of in the New Testament, which unite to form the perfect ideal of the Church, may be so manifest as we desire ; yet when we know that the native Christians are what they are by the grace of God, and by the power of His Spirit, and in spite of the powers of darkness in and around them, we may feel confident that the beauty of holiness will yet in due time be seen upon the Christians of South India as upon the Churches of Christ Jesus throughout the world." DR. DUTHIE. " The lesson of the missionary is the enchanter s wand."- DARWIN. 194 XV THE CONGREGATION mere counting of heads is no criterion as to quality of work." No workman worth his salt will take refuge for his failures in this common saying. The sentence is altered from Sir William Hunter s : " There is no true ratio between bap tisms and the spiritual result." An Indian bishop, visiting a man condemned to death, an inmate of an Indian jail, said to the man : " Thy faith be thy baptism." The instance of the dying thief quite warranted the declaration. Here was a congrega tion of one. It is marvellous what you can do with the smallest congregation of enlightened and believing souls. It is an equal marvel what you cannot do with a gathering fifty times the number. There is the great preacher and the great audience, and the question naturally occurs : "What went ye forth for to see?" What? A man performing rhetorical gymnastics ; or a true prophet, who not only has no honour 195 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool in his own country, but comes into the ring of persecution. " foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you ! " Paul bore them witness ; they would have plucked out their eyes to serve him. False teachers crept in, and the congregations became very sick. Blown hither and thither by every wind of doctrine, Paul again had to teach rudi ments and drive home the fact, " None of these things move me." This is the surest ground on which to take your stand. Pleased one day, angry the second, indifferent the third what are you to do ? The high ground of personal faith in and devotion to your Crucified, and now Crowned, Brother, your Lord and King, helps in this frequent predicament. There is no need to ask what Christ would do, since His chief est Apostle has told us : " None of these things move me." Temper must be kept in the heroic stoicism of faith. You will meet from time to time the disturber. Frequently he is a would-be revivalist ; at other times he may be a man who interprets Daniel, or knows all about the lost tribes ; or he may be that curse of Indian congregations, the independent preacher, who has a letter from some Missionary who has unwittingly lent his name to a fraud, and on the strength of this recommendation he is allowed to preach, get subscriptions, and do mischief. Of all 196 The Congregation people it is necessary to be on guard against a man like this. There is no control exercised over him ; and at times a peppery colonel will write wanting to know why a respectable Mission, as yours is supposed to be, cannot arid will not support its own agents. You, of course, write a pleasant letter to the colonel and ask him to call in the police, as the man referred to is not a member of your Mission, never has been, but one who ought to purge his offences in the nearest jail. Paul felt no difficulty, just as a true Missionary should not, at the smallness of a congregation. He preached Christ and the Resurrection to the soldiers to whom he was chained. What would we not give to be chained to a man like Paul ! Julius, who conducted him to Rome, must have been won ; and though at Rome his duty of custodian ceased, think of the subsequent blessing that must have flowed into his life, think also of the glimpses into the heavenly kingdom the soldiers must have had who were chained to Paul. Well, then, you are chained to a congregation ; be thankful. You have to watch them as they that must give account. This need not move you from your anchorage in God ; but this feeling of safety need not develop the self-righteous feeling that whatever happens, you are called, chosen, and faithful. Rather should it tend to the personal discovery that you 197 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool yourself may be, as Paul confessed he was, the chief of sinners. The sight of the great congregation impresses new-comers to tears ; for it seems to be the realisa tion of so many prayers, a gracious answer that no one can mistake. You naturally exclaim : " Blessed are the eyes that see the things that ye see." You are reminded of early labourers who longed for such a sight with great desire, but died without it. Their congregations compensated for the smallness by the quality. In those days every man repre sented a revolution ; and they were impressive in their personality, for they were one and all converts, gathered from all castes. There were Brahmins who had endured the cross, despising the shame, and counting all things but refuse if they might win Christ. There were Hindus of the fine old Carnatic race, who had taken joyfully the spoiling of their goods. Two of these had passed the terrible ordeal, not uncommon in those days, of seeing their wives die before them. The women had drowned themselves rather than submit to loss of caste and the unspeakable indignity of following the Nazarene. There were men who had been pariahs, but faith in Christ had restored their lost manhood. The history of the congregation as it used to be would be instructive reading, if only it could be written. Comparing this with an 198 The Congregation ordinary English congregation, you were at once concerned with the awful difference. Persecution and much tribulation, loss of all they held dear, had put upon them the impress of lofty courage and unwavering faith ; you instinctively feel that these men belonged to the Old Guard, to the warriors who had been in scores of battles, but still had their face to the foe. These men had been buffeted sore, times out of number. We sing about such heroism. I have found that in India the man, Indian or British, who has endured most is the man of particular silence ; he cannot talk about it, and several reasons contribute to his silence. "I was dumb because Thou didst it" is his real reason ; beyond this come many others. The vivid reason of it is no man can pass through a cauldron of boiling oil and speak of it. His outer skin has gone; and for the rest of his life he feels the pain of any touch, except that of his Master. The great congregation at headquarters is made up of the children and grandchildren of the original converts. All these have been born in quieter times and in a settled peace. The courage of their grandfathers is still among them ; but it is latent, and they have for the greater part grown into a community self-respecting and respected. It is instructive to note the growth of the con- 199 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool gregation. Eighty years ago there was not a Chris tian in the place. A young Missionary and his wife settled in it. He set to work, in the first instance, by feeding all the beggars in the place. None but these outcasts would look at him. He gave them food, and they came to his services hence arose the name " Eice Christian." He died in four years, but he had built a chapel, and laboured in profound loneliness. Boys wondered who he was when he spoke to them in the streets of the city ; the memory of his kind words was precious to them when they grew to be men. In the interim between his death and the arrival of his successor, the first convert, a silk weaver, was baptized. The second man laboured nine years, and was accidentally poisoned. He was gentle in all things, and he needed the grace of gentleness. He suffered not from Indians, but from a gentle man "merchant adventurer," who, clothed with authority given as the reward of a bribe, sold the Missionary s belongings on the score of a pretended debt. The account of the lawsuit is in the Mission records, and is instructive as to the way Indians and unprotected Europeans could be spoliated before the Civil Code came into existence. Some of the early Missionaries used to point out that the hindrance to Christianity in their days was not 200 The Congregation so much Hinduism, as the scandalous example of Europeans. Worry like this will spoil any work man ; and the Mission did not grow. A third man came, and he had the experience of his predecessors to go upon. He escaped ad venturers, and, since the law business was settled, he could go to work. In his time there were great heroisms. The grandfathers of the congregation became Christian under him. He taught them trades, educated them, settled them on land, fought their battles in the courts ; but twenty years of overwork killed him. After a two months tour through 4000 miles of country, visiting scattered Christians, he came into headquarters and calmly died. The people were, as one of them puts it in his vernacular, " drowned in a sea of sorrow." His great work was broken up by two men who were sent by the parent Society to take ad interim charge. The Society was in no sense blameworthy ; but the men could not have done worse than they did had they been open and avowed enemies. Both came from cities, both were painfully respectable ; they had no knowledge of up-country life in India. The congregation remembers them only to execrate them to this day. Men from cities where secretaries of societies, principals of high schools and colleges, English ministers of English and East Indian churches, 201 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool most do congregate, are out of place in even approaching an up-country congregation. Coming back to the congregation. It survived. Three men came out at intervals ; two were in valided home in seven years, and the third died in six weeks. Three more were sent, and they were all vernacular scholars. The congregation took to them ; but again one died, one retired, and the third went off to another station. The Indian pastor failed ; he was capable, but he took sides, and he had to be abolished. A young European had to be again placed in charge, and he preached in a lame vernacular style ; but he was modest, and continual preaching compelled him to continual study. At last the proper Indian came along, and his preaching was convicting, powerful, and inform ing. The congregation felt safe from experiment, and the people believe in their Indian brother. It took seventy years to evolve him, but he was worth all the trouble. Congregations in India do not want "great" preachers. Sincerity, godliness, plainness of speech, sympathy, approach to God in prayer, in life and service, keeps up the lofty music of the soul to concert pitch. The people know all about their minister not from gossip ; but it is an instinct : just as Brahmins declared to the Abb Dubois that they could detect at once a flesh- 202 The Congregation eating Indian, even twenty-four hours after the meal ; so the congregation knows its pastor. It does not expect from him an impossible piety, but is content if he moves in and out among them in the simplicity of grace and the persuasiveness of love. A pastor of this kind ought to be left to his particular work, and the Missionary, if he is a wise man, will not interfere. Yet the spectacle is con stantly seen of men who do interfere. Even the religious globe-trotter is rather shocked if at the Lord s Supper an Indian brother presides. I had to explain at some length to one minister who was in the great congregation when Sacrament was observed, that neither I nor my colleague in terfered. We felt that the Indian minister was the most fitting man to administer the bread and wine, though we were both vernacular scholars, and had passed the tests prescribed by a University. " If the Church of Christ is to grow in India, it must grow among Indians," and no European should be allowed to nurse it if it has grown to a Church. Among scattered congregations, where communicants are few, it is necessary that the European should teach, preach, and preside. In the greater Church his function is simply that of a member. Let him take a back seat, for that is his proper place. All this pre-supposes that the 203 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool Indian pastor is alert and keen as to his duty ; when he is not, and it becomes a question of " Master, please," then the sooner he is got rid of the better. In regard to pastorates, some Missions in India have been in a fatal hurry. You cannot hustle in the Kingdom of God. Over and over again a man comes out. He has been to Keswick, and has had there an uplift to his soul ; he has been a member of a Student Volunteer movement, and has proved his sincerity by coming to the Mission-field ; he may have had his enthusiasm stirred by a Missionary who had the gift of telling his story. All of them legitimate ways in the direction of a distinct call ! But why should a student just escaped from college think he knows all that is to be known, and proceed at once to put his infallibility to the test ? Mistakes in congregations, and in all young Missionary life, have their origin in the unbelief that the King and Lord cannot look after His own. Whereas the fact is, that if every European Missionary were deported at once, the work would go on ; it must it is God s work, and He makes no mistakes. The incorruptible Seed of the Kingdom is as a consequence indestructible. Congregations in Tinnevelly and Travancore grew amazingly in the period of Gericke, and after - 204 The Congregation wards under Ringeltaube. Schwartz had prayed the Lord to send labourers in troops. He sent two ; but the men were a troop each, and they turned many to righteousness. Tinnevelly and Travancore congregations are of the kind Spurgeon, Canon Liddon, and Parker used to attract. The church at Sawyerpuram is a cathedral ; and the meeting - house in Nagercoil will hold two thousand five hundred people it is full, and it is a question whether it should be. The overflowing audiences of the South ought to be proclaiming the Word of Life in other parts of India. The invasion of this particular field by the Salvation Army and Missouri Lutherans is just an instance of "where the carcase is the eagles will be gathered together," and the moral effect is damaging. It tarnishes the splendid work of the Salvation Army, because its servants are needed elsewhere in slums, highways, prisons, and hospitals. The Army could well have let Travancore alone, and have sent its soldiers, who are saints, to other places ; notably to hill tracts which still need a spiritual Columbus to discover them. As for the Missouri Synod, theirs is a work of supererogation that is not worth dis cussing. They will capture certain disaffected Christians, and make them more disaffected, instead of turning them to instant duty ; and 205 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool the duty is carrying the Good News of the Kingdom to thousands in Travancore, people in remote places and on hills, who have not yet heard it. It is therefore the truest and best work to cultivate a congregation much as a farmer does his fields in England. A small plot well cultivated is better than a large one to which necessary attention cannot be given. Small holdings mean much ; big ones in too many cases mean bank ruptcy, unless the holder is a man of wealth and not dependent upon his earnings as a working farmer. A village congregation, because it is small and in some cases remote from the great congrega tion, receives the attention it requires. Persecu tion, in an indirect way, still goes on. Wells and water rights are a constant dispute on the part of low-caste Hindus ; but since any stick is good enough to beat a dog with, so any annoyance is base enough with which to persecute the followers of Christ in hundreds of Indian villages. Time after time cases are dismissed in Indian courts as trivial and false. The unfortunate defendants are Christians ; but as the case is dismissed, they have a prayer-meeting, which strikes the note of thanks giving, and, in many instances, of thanks-living. Here the Missionary is useful, apart from his Message. If he knows the vernacular, he can help 206 The Congregation them in court, or can instruct an Indian helper to go and fight it out. Services under trees, when there is no chapel that would cost seven shillings and sixpence ; in little thatched houses, smoke-grimed and close, since they had to be shut while the owners were away at their daily work in fields in these the writer has lived, slept, preached, and observed the Sacrament ; they have in all cases been his most blessed experience. Two or three gathered in the name of Jesus means blessing beyond expectation. 207 XVI HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES T.S. 14 2O9 u Go bring them," He saith to His angels, "the weary, The heavily laden, go gather them home ; From highway and city, from wilderness dreary, Go give them glad welcome, for yet there is room." " Took leave of Abraham and his assistants ; recommended each other in prayer to our merciful God. At parting I saw the woman shed some tears the first I ever observed on Malabar cheeks ; and I was glad they were wept by Christians." JRinyeltaube s Journal. " Visited a child who was dying. . . . Did all I could for her. . . . During the whole night I lay listening to her prayers and groans ; she frequently called out, Lord, come ! dwelling on the last word as if she called to a person at a distance. Towards morning she became more easy and expired." Eingeltaub^s Journal. 210 XVI HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES nPHE street preacher is born, and not made. It is hard work, and the man who can keep it up is a rare exception ; throats will wear out, and an Indian crowd is made in much the same way as an English one. " You must not worship idols ! " said a man in one of our audiences. Why, you might as well request the sun not to shine, or water to run uphill ; " Not worship idols ! what are these lunatics saying ! " The senior, who is a born street preacher, smiles and answers : "I can tell by the shape of your nose you are a great guru (teacher) ; but in this matter you are not quite correct." The objector gets angry, for he has rather a prominent nose, as another member calls out : " Why, his name is Mookau " the exact equivalent of our slang English word " nosey "; and he goes away feeling that his advocacy of idol worship is discounted by that feature of his face which in some people is the 211 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool leading member, and which in others is the one by which they are led. Amid much laughter the senior man points out these facts ; and with this unhappy interruption the street service proceeds. Another time a fakir pounces down upon the preachers. He has been excited by certain drugs his class knows well ; and as the preaching begins, he commences his ghostly chant, in the meantime asking the preachers if they can understand him. The senior fires up with all the pepper of a Welsh man : " Know it, forsooth ; it is the trick you tried on me twenty years since, when I was young at Tamil. You are trying to repeat the thousand names of Vishnu ; but you are too stupid to pro nounce them correctly." Here conies an appeal to the crowd, and the speaker gives the correct pronunciation. The fakir moves off, " wishing he hadn t " as the rough vernacular puts it. At a corner of the city, where there is a huge masonry receptacle for all the refuse of the houses and all the contents of the scavenger carts, we are holding a service, because a crowd gathers in the open space before this latrine ; rain has fallen during the day, and the contents of the receptacle are semi-liquid. The crowd is large, and its mood is genial ; preaching goes on quietly, until a small boy who cannot see climbs the masonry wall and slips over the other side. Amid shrieks of laughter 212 Highways and Hedges he has to be fished out and carried off to the nearest hydrant, under which he is held until he is clean once more, and is having the lesson rubbed into him : " this all comes from your desire to hear the padris." The audience is broken up ; and you go home wishing boys would do as Zacchseus did climb a tree, and not tumble into a latrine. In another place you take your stand beneath a spreading banyan. The roots of the tree have been earthed up, and a protecting wall has been built round the heaped-up earth. The flat space on the top of the earth has been covered with concrete, with the exception of a ring, a foot wide, round the trunk of the tree. It is one of the meeting-places of the town, where no caste pre judice can be offended. You begin to preach, and certain people of the baser sort begin to pour quantities of water on the concrete platform. You keep on preaching ; then two men come, clad in feathers, and have a cock fight. You have to leave, for they have just as much right to mas querade in front of the sacred tree as you have to preach. Sometimes violence occurs. When this is the case, you have a remedy at law, and it is wise to take it if only to stir up the policeman, supposed to keep the peace, who has been aiding and abetting its infraction all the time. Probably the next day the headman will come to apologise. 213 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool You accept the apology, but it is useless for a street preacher in India to put up with attempted or threatened violence. He has just as much right to follow his avocation in the street, which is peaceful, as any rowdy has to follow his, which is not peaceful. All this is the verdict of hundreds of disturb ances in bazaars, backed up by five appearances in police courts for alleged breaches of the peace. At the same time, there is no need to invite a disturbance ; it is serious enough when this is thrust upon you, and then it must be faced to the bitter end. No man in his proper senses, for instance, would ever dream of preaching to a South Indian mob on the occasion of a great feast or a procession. Things happily are more decent now, but Dubois declared that he had never seen a Hindu procession that did not give him a picture of hell. It was true then, it is not true now ; but it is not a fit occasion on which to preach. Arrack, tadi, ganja, and opium are abused, and the condition of the crowd is one of offensive hilarity. In the earlier part of the day you may sell Scripture portions and tracts ; but it is better to move off and meet the sober folk who leave before the riot begins. They are on the way back to their villages, but can spare twenty minutes to listen to the preaching, and you can sell more books. The result of bazaar preaching is only too fre- 214 Highways and Hedges quently disturbance this must be faced ; then by and by the people will get to know you, and you will find you can talk to them not preach and they will listen. They will bring out a chair for you to sit on, and will squat round quite glad of a talk about Christ and the salvation He brings. It has to be a talk and must be brief, if you are in a city. The men have their business to attend to, and due consideration should be observed. In villages, highways, and hedges it is different ; there you can talk all day and into the greater part of the night, until your throat wears out. When you have a " zayat," a preaching-room, matters again are different. You are not com pelling the man in the street ; he can enter as he desires, and can leave in the same way. This room-preaching is not street-preaching ; and this constitutes the difference between an audience that pleases you and another that pleases itself. The task is not easy any way, and the Gospel has to be preached. You are in India to preach it, and must hold on to it till you can preach no more ; but still, you may be able to talk the Good News. Strange friendships are of necessity created on the highway. To us camping one night in the Govern ment grove close to a temple, the old priest, who had been in the village congregation and had agreed to all that was said, came. He asked us to 215 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool have a talk with him in the temple of which he was guardian. The party consisted of three Euro pean Missionaries and a Hindu priest. The senior noticed a cat in the temple, and, thinking he might find traces of the Egyptian cult of cats, asked the old priest why he kept a cat. His protest was amusing : he hated cats, but what could he do ? Worshippers would come and burn lights before Shiva the lights, as we saw, were in shallow discs ; then they would anoint the god, pour ing oil upon his head. And rats came ; they ate the wick of the flat lamps and drank the oil, then they climbed on the swami s head and licked the oil that had been poured there. " Think what it must be to have rats running over your head ! hence I keep this cat." We did think, and forbore to tease him about the helplessness of a stone god that could not keep rats at a distance. He had doubts about swamies, and felt it was degrading to keep a cat in a temple ; but what was he to do ? We told him ; but he knew all about it, although there were no Christians in the place. His business was to keep on that temple, cat or no cat ; but he wanted to keep it free from rats. This was the business of life, the office to which he was born ; and he must go on through births innumerable till some other work came. He was patiently heroic, and we had to 216 Highways and Hedges tell him so. More courage is needed in a foolish hope than in a forlorn one. The second may result in victory ; the first never does. There are curious surprises in this high way -and- hedge work. You meet sometimes an old Pandaram, and the holy man, frankly tired of Hinduism, tells you he is ; then you ask him why he continues in it, and he points to his internal economy and answers, " Vyarttin nimittamaga" for the sake of my stomach but a plainer Saxon word indicates his meaning better. For curry and rice he serves. In one place a Pandaram joined us ; he had endured much persecution, and took joyfully the spoiling of his goods. His little house was pulled down, his pots and pans were kicked into the street ; but when we got him to headquarters we found that he was saturated with opium, and could not grasp the simplest facts of his new religion as they bear upon life and conduct. He would have been a Christian, just as he would have been a Mohammedan or any thing else, if only he could have his daily dose of opium. We had to let him go to a more com plaisant worship, but did it with regret. The utter vacuity with which he would listen to an appeal, the animal cunning he displayed in obtaining his favourite drug, left no other alter native possible. There came one day to the camp a Mohammedan, 217 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool and following him two women and some children. I spoke in the vernacular to the man, and was astounded to get a reply in English, with an unmistakable brogue that would have done credit to the back of Kilkenny. He was an Irishman who had turned Mohammedan ; and Islam had turned to ashes in his mouth. The man, seeing an English camp, thought he would once more like some English food. I saw that some was sent to him. Preaching was useless ; but a little kindness opened what was left of his generous Irish nature, and he confessed many things, admitting that he had left a wife and two sons in Cardiff, had taken wives in India, and now at the end his cleaving vices had found him out. He died soon after, pointing that saddest of all morals : " When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin ; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." The great Message of eternal life serves one eminent purpose ; and though converts do not come forward, yet the purpose must fulfil its work. You are preparing the way of the Lord, making straight His paths ; so that when He shall come, He shall find a people prepared, so far as the Message can prepare them. If the Spirit of the Lord is upon you, so that you are anointed to preach deliverance to the captive, and the opening of the prison doors to them that are 218 Highways and Hedges bound, you shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines. The opposition you meet will assist the triumph. Now, while every street preacher should aim at conversion, and should make it his prayer night and day, he may not neglect what follows an accession of Hindus to the fold of Christ ; and he must be content to accept acquiescence in the teaching of Christ, although he would infinitely prefer the lightning conversion which at once becomes a new creation. The halting half-knowledge will grow to certitude if obedience to the commands of Christ is allowed to do its full and perfect work. People know when they " follow on to know," and your business is to help this " following on." Regarded in this light, there can be no disappointment in the work to which the Master sends you. It is His work. The street preacher may press into his service song, story, proverb, and illustration. A fiddle is a powerful help, wisely used ; and Indian lyrics appeal. You find some of the music reminiscent of cavalier times : " Begone, Dull Care," " The Duke of York s March," and other wild refrains, are here put to sober use. You prove the truth of George Herbert s line : "A verse may catch him whom a sermon flies." The words sung to the above tunes, and others like them, are good words wonderful words of everlasting life you and your helpers are 219 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool only too glad to sing. There are twists and twirls, assonances that are not rhymes, alliterations that are fanciful in their strange turns ; but you re cognise amid them all that here is a true hymn of praise. If the preaching is near one of your village schools, the children will join in, and then you have a glorious sing-song, and the singing is effective preaching that will remain ; for the people want to buy books that contain the words, and if you can only teach them the tune, they will learn the words after you leave. These remain in their hearts a fountain of eternal truth springing up unto everlasting life. Highway-and- hedge work will be found to have added much to the Eedeemer s heritage of immortal souls in the day when He makes up His treasure. 220 XVII THE LITTLE FLOCK 221 " The service lasted from seven o clock till midnight. The village consists of one long street, at the southern end of which stands the temple, now converted into a house of prayer. It looked very noble when the people with their children streamed towards the temple of God from all the houses in the village. Christians from other places said when they saw it : They never used to come this way when it was an idol temple." 3 GERICKIJ;, in 1802. " We have received new life ; such a thing as this never happened in this country before." The so/me. " Many were beaten, plundered, and thrown into prison ; and a new Christian church was burned to the ground." The same. 222 XVII THE LITTLE FLOCK TT is forty miles from headquarters as the crow flies ; but it is sixty miles as the road winds, and this is the way you must travel to it. On the score of badness, the road would satisfy any pessi mist ; it could not be worse. You may find your self blocked by a spate which has come down and has flooded the country. The broad sandy patch, with the thinnest ribbon of water running down its centre yesterday, which you could step across passing over dryshod, is to-day a roaring flood, and the river is full from bank to bank ; so full that you have to wait until the flood subsides, and even then the crossing is dangerous. You are grateful to God because He has sent the water, and with it the patience to wait His will. In time you reach the congregation, and all their disputes have gone the way of the flood. Wells and tanks are filled, and there will be no time to quarrel until the next hot weather comes. Verily, the river of 223 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool God is full of mercy, as well as water ; and the trouble that arises over a three-inch irrigating channel is now past. Everybody can water his fields, and there is sure to be a sixteen anna or full crop. You do not grudge the time of the enforced halt on the other side of the river. You may get there quickly only to find crops withering, and the labour of the year lost for lack of a few cents of rain. Then you have to comfort the people, and, where necessary, help them ; for their withered crop means the loss of one-third their yearly income, at the lowest estimate. You are thankful to be with the sufferers, for again in this condition they are dumb in the face of calam ity. In the middle condition, when harvests have been reaped and there is little work, quarrels arise, and much patience is needed to settle trifles that have grown out of all proportion to their insigni ficance. Trifles, however, in times like these, are the most serious business of the congregation ; and you may not trifle with it. It may mean a wrecked church, or, what is even worse, it may form a prece dent for which your successors will not bless your memory. Doing rough justice in India is the Briton s prerogative. It will be just ; that goes without saying. The method may be only that of the man s common-sense : if he knows his vernac ular, it will be polite but firm ; if he has to use an 224 The Little Flock interpreter, he will reach the truth bit by bit, and bit by bit will satisfy the aggrieved parties. It sometimes happens that no judgment will satisfy, and one must leave them persistently alone until they find their proper sense. A tradition survives of one man who thrashed the lot, and they went over in a body to the nearest Eoman priest. He would not have them at any price ; and as he rubbed liniment into their sore backs, he said : " To my certain knowledge you have been spoiling for this the last twenty years. Now you have got the man who will give you what you most require. Go back to him." They went back, and that priest became an archbishop. He points out to his priests that a certain Missionary did great things with a bambu many years ago. Men who thrashed their wives, slippered the catechist, were rude to the Missionary, at last found one who trounced them " and," he adds, " they have been good ever since ; so good, that not even the clapper of a bell has moved." It is shocking ; but when the temple is defiled in scandalous ways, it has to be cleansed. The sharpest remedy in old days was the best, as the old people will tell you. The instance is not quoted that it may be imitated, otherwise the local police court will inquire into it. It is named because you have to face rancour and hatred among T.S. 15 225 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool primitive people. Happily, the older Missionaries, who in some cases did the thrashing and cured the evil once for all, foresaw the difficulty, and made it a church rule that no Christian should go to law with another. The Law Codes are not unmiti gated blessings. I have seen work utterly wrecked through their facilities, where a panchayat of the native kind would have settled the case and saved the work. Yet do not for one moment think that, because a community is not all you wish it to be, it is there fore hopeless. Sometimes in a quarrelsome stage it is hopeful ; and in attempting reconciliation you may point out the great lesson and duty of for giveness, since so much is forgiven us. This always finds its place in their thought ; they argue, How can we pray for daily forgiveness unless we forgive ? and they try to do all the great word indicates. " It takes a long time to get to the con gregation, which is forty miles as the crow flies, and sixty as the road runs," the reader will say. That is quite true ; but as we may not in God s providence evangelise the world in this generation, this long preface has been written to prepare the reader for people who have been evangelised. At last we reach the village, which is just at the broader end of the triangular lake. The scenery is beautiful, and as we approach it you 226 The Little Flock declare we are in the garden of the Lord ! The lake, just now, surpasses any in Westmoreland ; palm forests and sugar cane plantations, stretches of green paddy, groves of betel trees, impress you as you pass. The man who was puzzled with Hindu ism happens to come out this trip, and he is in ecstasies at the glory of the lake and its boundary of hills. We get to the congregation ; after tea, a bath, and a change of linen, this youth feels quite happy. The congregation crowds into the camp, and the senior introduces his nephew to Peter, Paul, James, John, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Solomon, David, Job, Hosea, Abishai, Enoch, Melchisedec, and a host of others whose names translated mean the Pearl of Wisdom, the Treasure of Grace, the Path of the Priest, the Jewel without a Flaw, Nathanael under the Mulberry-tree, the Eye of the Bible, the Servant of God, the Slave of Christ, the Jewel of the Scriptures, the Mercy of God ; and the women : Grace, Mercy, Patience, Hope, Charity, Flower of Love, Jewel of Life, the Star until the bewilderment of the new-comer renders him breathless. His uncle translates for him : " They are asking how our mother is ? " "Whose mother?" "Your mother and my sister." " Why do they call my mother theirs ? " 227 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool " Well, you see, they have adopted you for the time being as their younger brother. You are their Thumbi. " " But they have never seen me before." " That does not matter ; they admit you to the privilege." "I had no idea my dear mother had so many sons and daughters ; by the way, some of them are older than she is ! I shall have to write and tell her what a numerous family she has." Here is the beauty of that inclusive pronoun " ours " in the vernaculars. They would not insult you by saying yours ; it would exclude you from them. A great dictionary-maker once said to me : " Let me live and die in India. If I went home, no one would know me ; here the people say, Inge Tliambi, Unge Thambi, Engum Tliambi Here a brother, there a brother, everywhere a brother." The night goes on until the Southern Cross rises, and the youngster goes to bed more puzzled than ever he was about Hinduism. Watching in the moonlight, he sees that most of the men have beards and much hair. Melchisedec seems rather youthful, and he sleeps ; the new arrival, in a melange of Scripture names that leads him to dream he is living nineteen hundred years ago. The dream is riot far from the reality. 228 The Little Flock It falls to me to preach ; and as a neighbouring congregation, with nearly all the names in the Book of Kings, comes in, we are for a village quite a full church. The singing is impressive for a country congregation, and the hymns are selected because the people desire them. " My God, the Spring of all my Joys " ; " Holiest Spirit, Fount of Light " ; "For ever with the Lord"; and "Jerusalem my Happy Home "- these touch the new arrival to the quick. The sermon proceeds as sermons used to do in Primitive Methodist chapels. There are responses : " So it is ; Say it again, please ; Thank God," and so on until Thumbi thought he was in a Salvation Army meeting. After service, all his friends of the previous evening came to speak to him ; but he could only recognise Mel- chisedec. What had become of the numerous elder brothers who had adopted him ? I pointed them out one by one. But he said they had hair, beards, and whiskers ; all these are as bald as a billiard ball. So it was ; and I had to tell him that after his arrival there had been quite a shaving carnival in the village, not on his account, but it was customary for them to be ceremonially clean when the visitation was held : a remnant of their old Hindu days, and one that it is neither possible nor desirable to stop. They want to be clean, body and soul, this day. 229 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool The senior man on the Monday has to stop in camp to settle all kinds of small matters which are not small to the people. We go off for services elsewhere, and coming back at night find the senior still at it. Other congregations three days later have to be visited, twos and threes, sometimes a solitary one ; then we work round to the county town and the county school, taking by the way congregations of Hindus in the villages as we pass through them. Just one month from headquarters, and each man, barring the Thumbi, has preached seventy-five times ! This is right enough ; but headquarters has accumulated all kinds of corre spondence and other matters which demand atten tion. You do not get the chance of a let-down ; there are people in India, as there are in England, who want spiritual consolation if their little finger aches. There are others who want master s favour ; and at times there is a Y.M.C.A. lecturer who proposes Bible readings in the morning and lectures at night, and he has been warned to keep somewhere else till you arrive. His meetings are supposed to be a special treat to you after you have had seventy-five of your own. Your zeal is backward, and you have not the same enthusiasm you had. Comparisons are made between your station and certain others where the men, having no necessity to travel, and living 230 The Little Flock within reach of a bazaar, grow fat. They can attend meetings at headquarters ; they were sent into the world for this purpose. The little con gregations, forty miles away as the crow flies, sixty miles as the road winds, never see them, and do not want to see them. From the pounds, shillings, and pence point of view this man is a cheap article ; he has much leisure, and he can devote it to arranging the salaries of other people. To make him a man again he needs to meet a Roosevelt, who would try the riding powers of his colonels. The man would thin off, have less time to coddle himself, and more time to visit distant congrega tions ; no convenience of domestic life should keep him in headquarters ; no supposed delicacy of a body sixteen stones weight should tie him down to the management of primary schools. No English service should be permitted to take up his time and give him an excuse for doing for it what it ought to do for itself, and for leaving the small Indian congregations to get on as they may. The man is supposed to be in India to evangelise the heathen ; he has a staff of Indian evangelists who are to assist him : yet sometimes it is seen that the supervisor continues in the head-station and supervision does not mean active travelling, but the inactive checking of agents journals. 231 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool There is no proof that the journal is correct. As a fact, it is generally prepared for the supervisor s information the day before it is sent in. It is quite modern history how one old and formerly successful station had to be given up because the village stations had been neglected, being sacrificed to unnecessary work at the head-station. Now it means this : distant supervision by means of cooked journals and reports is useless. If the supervisor will travel with his Indian helpers two hundred days a year, he will not need accounts of things that never occurred to help him to fill out his days at headquarters. He knows because he is with them how they work, and he learns their quality ; he can trust them, in the mutual confidence inspired by doing a common work, to be just the same behind his back as they are before his face. This is worth all the reports ever written. Since the itinerant, the circuit rider, can have little time for domesticity, it is worth his considera tion whether he should not remain celibate during the first period of his service. The reader will care fully observe that this is suggested to the travelling Missionary not to the man who has his proper work in well defined limits, and whose journeys mean only an occasional absence from home. This Missionary ought to be married ; his wife has most The Little Flock important work in the management of girls houses or boys houses, and a woman is pre-eminent in this work. Schwartz and Ringeltaube, Ryland and Fenn other names could be quoted of men who kept celibate because the necessity of the work demanded the sacrifice. Very occasionally a wife can be found who can do the roughing demanded by camp life, and such a wife is a treasure. The abstinence from marriage may be practised for a time. There are men on the field who have done this, and the advantage to their particular work has been great ; no necessity has been laid upon them to remain at home because a child is sick, or the wife is nervous. Let the young Missionary wait till his apprenticeship is over, then someone else may come to carry on the work lie has so well commenced. Going into the district means so much in some parts of India and so little in others, that it is difficult to find a common term. I met a man in the far South going into the district at 4 p.m. one Saturday afternoon ; he was back in his house at 7.30 the same evening. In Northern or Central districts the journey means any period from three weeks to two months. For long inarches like these the unattached man is the best man. The forma tion of brotherhoods deserves fuller treatment than it can receive here. The idea is not new ; but it 233 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool has not the wide publicity its splendid value as an effective agency should have. The Lord sent them forth " two by two " : one man may be simply one a unit ; two may be a fighting host helpers of each other and helpers of Christ. 234 XVIII "FAITHFUL IS HE THAT CALLETH " 235 " The thing that we mistake is the want of victory ; we hold that to be the mark of one who hath no grace : nay, I say, the want of fighting were a mark of no grace ; but I shall not say the want of victory is such a mark." RUTHERFORD. " God can as soon forget Christ at His right hand as cease His love and affection to a believer." MATTHEW MEAD. " Sing the sweet hymn we have so often sung together, ( Begone unbelief. Mrs. Reid and I commenced, but she, being overcome at the end of the second verse, stopped. He wanted us to go on, and we tried to as well as many tears would permit." Taylor s Account of the Death of John Reid at Bellary. 236 XVIII " FAITHFUL IS HE THAT CALLETH " many men have had to lead forty years through the wilderness, and die on this side Jordan, that one may well ask, Why ? It does not answer the question to repeat it, as so many questions are answered. It is, of course, the easiest and most contemptible business to point out the mistakes of a man who has not done the best for himself. It surely should be enough for his successors that he did his best for his Master ; but the critic can no more understand this, as David Thomas says, " than a dog can understand the sweet mystery of moonlight ; the only thing he can do is to howl at it." Of one thing the critic is innocent he never tries to follow the example of the man who did his best. Coming then to this bare fact, Is our Lord and Master faithful to the best His servants do for Him ? the answer is an unhesitating Yes. He is also faithful to their worst, in so far as it is a 237 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool mistaken and not a wicked effort. He saves men from themselves in many a crisis, when so-called brethren look on but do not lift a finger to help. He is with you all the time, so are His servants at home. You go on, strengthened with thoughts of Christ the Living Bread Bread which never fails, but nourishes and sustains to the last and the last has to come ; but to those who know His faithfulness the last is but the beginning of that fuller life in which His servants " faint not, neither grow weary." When a man or a woman has done his or her best, that is all you can say ; but often is it left unsaid. The sharpest critic of men on the field, or of men who have died there, is the man who is a failure in the vernacular and has had to go. The holes he can pick in his neighbour s coat are quite the size of the coat, and it is all hole. It grows bigger each time the criticism is uttered, until the hearer thinks there can have been no coat. A most unworkable man, who stood for what he called righteousness, had to go to England to explain the fact of constant quarrels. There were forty Missionaries involved in his indictment, and this was got out of him by a common-sense minister from a western city : " Mr. B , you seem to disagree with your brethren." 238 "Faithful is He that Calleth Oh no," was the reply; "they disagree with me." One man disagreeing with forty men is rather different from forty disagreeing with one. Yet conditions vary so much in India that even an instance like this may find one man is right and forty wrong. The forty would not be wrong were they on the spot and had to see things, as the odd man out has to see them. They are, however, among different people three or four hundred miles away. Bereavement comes, and a man who has lost all he can lose finds himself in troubles of a dis ciplinary kind, and onlookers wonder what he will do. Troubles come in battalions in India ; and it may happen, as a matter of fact it has done so over and over again, that the care of a dying wife or child has led to letting certain matters slip. In one case it was serious sin in the members of an Indian church ; in another, accounts had been tampered with : yet the very people who should have helped were criticising the helplessness of a broken-hearted man people to whom he had been kind. This is all by the way, and because of truth it had to be written. " So persecuted they all the prophets" and it does not militate against the faithfulness of the Master ; the sentence is His 239 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool very own. He knows, and He takes His follower home to the infinite love. He is faithful in this ; and one feels ashamed to be living when better men are removed to the deathless life. It has often been a puzzle to the writer, why certain outstanding men in India endured what they did in the way of misrepresentation of motive and aim. Then let a man be ever so little out of the common rut, it is " inexcusable." Take the case of the Eev. Cornelius Traveller, who built one of the historic chapels in Madras ; he was dismissed because he went down to the beach in a straw hat the most sensible thing he could do. All the other padris in the place went out in a tall hat so said the Missionary lady who told me this and got sunstroke, or heat apoplexy ! One year later the Bishop of Calcutta was ex pected. He was the second bishop of that see. Dr. Middleton, the first bishop, came ashore after his salute of fifteen guns had been fired, a thing he stickled for, in academic cap and gown. Madras was in no sense ready for him ; but when his successor came, Madras was ready. The town major, troops, bodyguard, were all there ; the guns were ready to fire when the bishop landed but there was no sign of him. Everybody was standing at ease. Then a boat came from the ship in the roads, and a man in a linen jacket and a 240 " Faithful is He that Calleth straw hat was the first to come ashore : that man was Bishop Heber. Traveller was happy in find ing the greatest bishop India has ever had in such sensible agreement with himself. It is marvellous what sins some people discover in trifles that are unworthy the consideration of sensible men. When an unconventional but quite decent mode of dress is regarded as un righteous, then we are in a bad way. So in other matters of policy or modes of work. Just because twelve men in one district conform to one model, it does not follow that all the men in other districts must do the same. There are different regiments in the make-up of an army, and the same play of variety should be the rule in Mission work. Now, as each soldier in this warfare against sin must have received a distinct call, and as he and not another is the object of that call, let him be distinct in his work, and develop his individuality. In this way he will do exactly what his Master wants him to do, and he will have the joy of being the faithful servant to whom the Lord will be faithful. He may have to visit scattered con gregations, and preach to the smallest audiences the inspiration of numbers is wholly lacking ; but he learns to look for something better than these, and it is the real presence of his Lord and Master. T.S. 16 241 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool This granted, the progression of patient effort towards realised result is sure. The result is better if it has to be waited for a long time. Three thousand converted on the day of Pente cost here was no waiting, and here also was an instant result. Quite true ; but real work began after with fickle Galatians and unspeakable Corinthians ; the communication to the seven Churches of Asia is reading one ought to ponder over Sardis and Laodicea, the one neither cold nor hot, the other having a "few names" who are to walk in white because they are worthy. It matters little whether the work comes before or after ; it has to come, this is inevitable. In India it is amazing what harvests have been reaped which were sown by men who toiled at sowing the seed. Their successors reap, and are in some cases not modest about it. Yet there is no comparison as to the quality of the work. The Sower was the better servant and the greater man ; yet who remembers him ? The people do, of course ; they and the children after them will never forget the man who first spoke unto them the Word of Life. The man who reaps great accessions gets the credit of the sowing. He can no more sow than he can fly. He comes to a watered garden ; his predecessors came to a desert. One man, the greatest preacher in his vernacular, 242 "Faithful is He that Calleth" in a conference declared that a certain pheno menal success was worthless. No immediate labour had been given to it ; advantage had been taken of a famine. Men are easily persuaded when a starved body has weakened the will, when assent means a comfortable meal. Yet it happened that there had been a seed-sower at work even in this accession. The people who knew him persuaded those who did not know to join with them. By this time it is thirty years since the accession took place ; the community is flourishing. Teaching and effort have come since. Derelicts you never hear of; sooth to say, the later growth does not in any sense correspond to the fine quality of the few really converted before the great in -gathering. Business methods in the Kingdom of God are just as necessary as in any business which is of this world. Christian workers are supposed to work for a subsistence allowance. In the case of certain well-qualified Europeans, this is so low, and they are so poor, the wonder is they can manage. They, however, remember that He who called them is faithful ; and one of them said to me : " Somehow, it comes right ; I get all I really need, if I do not get all I want " meaning want in the sense of desire. We all desire many things ; but since we may not have them, it is easy to do without 243 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool them books and picture papers, stores in tins, and an occasional taste of things you liked in England butter that tastes like butter, and bread that is bread. Globe-trotters who have had tins plus curry and rice in cities, but have never been a month up-country, like the living, write about it and go into raptures over it. Let them try it not for thirty days, but for the same number of years. The old key-sergeant of a large cantonment said: "I am eighty-eight years old, and have never been home to Donegal ; I want to eat a potato as it used to be cooked in Ireland. I never shall again all my life. I have lived upon curry and rice, but it has been for the reason I could not afford anything else." In simply human things like these there are small pinches. The old key-sergeant touched it all. He looked out of the back window of his life, and Donegal potatoes were wonderful. Yet his curry and rice served him, and he was quite open to the opinion, " that since he had left Donegal the people might have forgotten to cook potatoes as he liked them." He was candid to another point, as an Englishman never is. He said the curry and rice just suited him, and he could get all he wanted for ninepence a day. This was just curry and rice ; it did not include coffee, tea, bread, and other comestibles he had to furnish his 244 "Faithful is He that Calleth body with ; and his clothing did not come into that happy uinepence. Simply doing his duty, duty had been done to him ; and the instance is related merely to show that in India, barring certain examples and they are very bad, but concern Viceroys, not Missionary Boards a man usually gets just what he deserves. There is always the uncertain quantity of a man s idiosyncrasy to be considered. He who builds by the wayside has many critics ; he who builds in the jungle has the added burden that a Commission of specialists will visit him. Some men can always show work in review order ; the people are drilled, buildings smell of paint and white-wash. Pipe clay, mentally and spiritually, is in such evidence that the Commission has no hesitation in passing the indent. Farther on they come across a ragged lot, as the Travancore people were said to be in 1815. The description is true enough as to outward appearance ; they were poor, persecuted, and appeared just as they could, not as they desired. The man who had spent his life among them was just as ragged and misunderstood as they were ; but the Lord was faithful to him and them. That seed has yielded the finest and most permanent work in India ; not only in India, but in Ceylon, the Straits, and many places beyond the Bay of Bengal or the Indian Ocean. 245 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool The measure of God s great grace is not limited by our expectations. We prescribe, expect, and in too many cases, just order our life and work. On the other hand, the leaving it to Him is unseemly ; it is what a cabman would say to a fare, or a waiter to a guest. Our intelligence must be placed at our Master s disposal, for Him to do with it what He pleases ; and we must keep alive to the obedience, be sensitive to the voice and go as He shall direct. No preacher or priest may come between Him and us we ought to be deaf even to those who love us. Much trouble is saved if you refrain from the temptation of making New Theology Hindus, or Higher Hinduism Christians. Neither supplies a working theory of life ; but each affords a field for speculation, which will turn you and your people quite aside from the central truth of your and their belief. Jesus and the Resurrection is your Message, and no life is long enough to utter it fully ; it goes on hallowing the course of your existence, bright as the song of God s eternal birds, sound as granite in its moral wholesomeness, and immutable as God Himself. Face this, and all the sorrows that come may be accounted for. These need not be diagnosed ; the most horrid creature one has ever heard of is the searcher for tares. 246 " Faithful is He that Calleth : Our fathers and the patriarchs simply allowed faith to have its proper place, and they asked : " Who can search out the Almighty, or know His ways ? " I have met with sceptics who honestly were such, but in great bereavements this was their piteous cry : " God knows." He does know ; and it is not for us to explain His deeds. He knows all about the heathenism of India and of England. His mercy will deal with this ; mean while we have to be faithful to this supreme Message : Jesus has died for us, He has risen to intercede for us ; and if we keep to the simplicity of this Message, we shall lack neither directing grace nor the particular soul who needs the Message. We have one thing to tell them I mean Indians, and they admit the terrible fact of sin that Christ died to redeem them from it. When you have an evangel like this, why try to reconcile things that are contradictories ? The attitude of certain European apologists for Hindu cults is a mistaken one in two ways. It is useless to bulk up rottenness, for it will tumble, no matter what you put round it. It is equally useless playing to the gallery when the gallery is wrong. A servant of Christ ought not to hesitate for an instant ; he has no concern with Hinduism, he has less in attempting to please Hindus. They are wrong, and Christ Jesus is right. That is the difference. 247 XIX DON T ! 249 "We young men looked on helpless at the wreck of a great work." " Some men devastate like a tornado, and spoil everything they touch." "A pennyworth of mother wit is worth a pound of clergy." "Most men work for the present, a few for the future. The wise work for both ; for the future in the present, and for the present in the future." JULIUS HARE. 250 XIX DON T ! "VTEVER destroy a building; because you may ** want tlie timber, the doors, and windows for a house two miles away. Do not sell land your predecessor has bought ; for it has been secured for some good reason, you may be sure. He is departed, is asleep in the Lord ; and you may not know his reason for purchasing the land. What was good enough for him will be infinitely better for you. Do not lend money, even if the senior brother advises you not to do it. He may have pained himself in interfering with your liberty of action ; he never gives advice, because his juniors know so much better than he does what is right. If you want workers, do not tempt any from other Missions ; go on with your shortage till you can train your men. Do not think you are the only person who knows India ; you are not, by some millions of people. Even the millions do not know the whole 251 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool of it. You may accordingly distrust articles on the country in Encyclopaedias. The untravelled Briton thinks India is about the size of Swansea, Manchester, or Dumfries. The travelled man is not much better off when his travel means a cold- weather run on railways from Tuticorin to Madras, then to Calcutta, then to Bombay, taking Benares, Delhi, and Lahore, with a few other stock places thrown in, on his way to catch a steamer that must land him in England not later than the 1st of April an appropriate day ! Do not get angry with Indians, and do not simulate anger. It is unchristian, and it is use less. This refers to the small provocations that arise every day. Once give way to this beset- ment, then the sooner you go home the better. Certain Governments, for there are several in India, give four annas reward for each snake killed and produced at the magistrate s office. People were found who bred them for the sake of the reward. On the principle that, as Indians say it, " there is no fun in teasing a tame bull," don t be teased, and they will not have the fun of teasing you. This means, in other words, that they will find no profit in breeding snakes. There are times when you may "be angry and sin not." Let them occur as they must, but do not help them to appear before they are due. 252 Don t ! Do not help anyone with money or food till you have made the most patient inquiry, and you are convinced that you are helping the man to help himself. Indiscriminate generosity is just as pauperising in India as anywhere else. It is perhaps worse. Christians who are of pariah descent had to be helped in the first generation ; the second and third have this engrained in them the feeling of dependence upon the Mission. A particular settlement known to the writer is a perfect plague-spot in this respect. Happily, it is too far away to corrupt others ; but when you get this aspect of the affair, all the unworthiness of other Missions settles in it, and your heart must be hardened like Pharaoh s to fiolit these leeches, O as Ringeltaube called them. On the other hand, where sickness or death occurs, or where you are convinced people are out of work through no fault of their own, then give help ; give it, but do not advance money. The gift pays best in the long-run. Do not introduce a change in the mode of worship because you have come from a church at home in which it has been useful. The right hand of fellowship, in the reception of a new communicant, may have New Testament warrant ; but it is not so happy as the " Salaam," " Peace be unto you," which the people themselves observe. 2 53 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool A Hindu priest salaams to his followers ; they prostrate themselves before him. Why cannot the European salaam ? His Teutonic custom of hand-shaking is clean out of court as compared with this charming salutation of Eastern lands. Then in India, if you shake hands with one, you ought to do the same with all. I am willing personally to shake hands with anyone ; but why destroy a custom which is cleanly, seemly, and national ? The European in India does not observe the shake-hands custom. His greeting of his brother by race is a salute, and the brother is not one bit grieved. This is a mere detail. A further trouble, and in every way more serious, is the upsetting of the national custom of rule by elders. Here the European has no place, not even if he has been a pastor, as the writer has. The panchayat, the rule by five elders, is encouraged in India, and it is the unit of all sensible church organisation. Do not introduce managers or churchwardens. Do not mention the name of a brother Missionary in a letter to the Secretary in England or America without first telling your brother what you purpose writing. This is only fair to him. You must make his reputation a matter of conscience, and you must not discuss him. You cannot, except at serious peril : " and if thou hast heard a word, 254 Don t ! let it die with thee." In the blaze of modern publicity, where the glare of the electric light of inquisitiveuess is poured upon everything, even your private thoughts and secret ways, it is your brother s due that you should tell him, as it is your due he should tell you, what may be wrong. Do not write gossipy letters to people in India. If you are a Missionary and do this, whether good or bad, your fellow-worker suffers. If he is good, and as a rule he is, the writing is a crime ; if he happens to be bad and I have never known a case in India of an immoral Missionary, but supposing it the man himself will go away, himself his own condemnation. After the monthly payments, do not neglect to balance all the items in the Mission accounts. Do not leave it to a writer. Do it yourself, and show how much is Mission money, and how much is yours. It takes half an hour to do it, but means reputation and honesty to yourself, and clearness to those you leave. Tell your wife, if you have one, that the statement is in your bank-book ; if you have not a wife, tell your colleague, and show him the slip from time to time, so that remembrance may occur to him. There may be property in your name ; but it is not really yours, it belongs to the Mission, or did 255 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool before your heir came along to claim it because it was in his father s name. Another "don t" is: Refuse to see an Indian unless he will tell you at once what he wants. He will ask about your family, and will spend half an hour telling you about his ; then when you have dismissed him he will ask you to give him a letter to the Collector, recommending him for a magistrate s post. It is safe to refuse ; the Collector knows his business, knows all the Brahmins who are conspiring against this particular claimant. Dismiss him you may do it with a good conscience. These "don ts" cover so much of one s daily life in India that other instances are omitted. The Missionary who observes the few given will not go wrong, but may find himself in a condition of moral lightness that will comfort him. Men in India need this. The last is : Do not read church records. The instances of discipline are best left to the work of white ants, and that is to eat the paper on which they are written. If you will only observe this sane practice you will begin with a clean sheet, and that means an unprejudiced mind. Do not try to discover what earlier members of the church did ; try to believe they repented and were saved. 256 XX LUKE T.S. I? 257 "Luke is with me, grief unsealing, By his precious gift of healing ; To the Saviour s feet Come the sick with all their sorrow. Doubting souls who dread the morrow Find relief complete." "The medical missionary ought to take his fees, however exiguous, for men did not value that which cost them nothing." DR. H. WHITE. " The women doctors must be of the best at home mediocrity and nice manners might get on, for the practitioner could send for his big brother round the corner." DR. MARY SCHARLIEB. 258 XX LUKE happiest of all the Seventy our Lord sends forth from time to time is Luke, " the be loved physician " ; there is no one else like him in gracious modesty and unerring skill. He has no illusions about himself; he has not been a shining light in the parliament of his University ; he has not come out to India to reconstruct Christianity upon a Hegelian basis ; he does not want to know the vocative of Zeus ; and he is as free from the vice of dictionary meanings, the study of Greek particles, as a child. His business is straight from the first ; he comes out to cure the mortal body, and in this way to help the immortal soul of the people. Count yourself as the happiest of men, if Luke is your companion in the kingdom and patience of Christ. Luke, of necessity, has other gifts. He has been in the rough and tumble of a hospital ; he knows, as no one else can know, the amount of 259 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool original sin in mankind, and nothing surprises him. He never has a "blue stage" of Missionary ex perience ; he is always doing his best, and finds ample material to do his best upon. Another quality in Luke is this : he has paid for himself, and has been no burden on the finances of a Missionary society. Then he cannot, if he tries, be a prig : he knows there are men quite as good as himself ; he has a wholesome respect for his professors, and a generous appreciation of doctors who are specialists in surgery. As to the surgery of the soul, Luke again comes in with wise tender advice. He would never cut off; lie would try to mend the most hopeless, and with his physician instinct hold on while any chance of cure remained. You cannot compare Luke the evangelist with any one else in the sympathetic quality of his work. His master Paul is in a different category ; and Luke, who makes no claim to be a theologian, is not compared with him. Look at the wonderful words written to Theophilus the far-seeing intimacy, the unquestioning belief, the universal recogni tion of all needs, the ministry of women, the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, the great hymns, and the amazing humanity of his Gospel. It is not necessary to follow him further ; it is an especial mercy when you get him in the Mission-field. He is useful beyond what he will 260 Luke admit ; lie has the instant remedy for constant practice. People will go to him as to no one else, and he reaps a harvest of gratitude like that the sick and the afflicted brought to our Lord. Luke, again, is not so superior that he cannot take a hint. He is quite free to learn the value of a native remedy, and to retain the services of an Indian bone-setter when necessary ; he can see that in certain matters the custom of ages is of value, and a blend of West and East in an Indian hospital is a mixture that sometimes yields happy results. In a long life the writer has met doctors of all kinds civil, military, and missionary and with but one or two exceptions he has the pro- foundest regard for the men. Time after time I have seen a man single-handed fighting plague, or, what is worse, cholera and the other epidemics which follow famine. One and all, the doctors are good to the poorest native. I have even known one of the great surgeons of India give a patient ten rupees because the man thought a much-advertised remedy would cure him. I was the collector, and the doctor said : " The remedy is rubbish ; but if the man will be relieved and comforted by trying it, then I will help you to get the treatment for him." It kept the man alive twenty-one months ; but even I had to admit that he would have been happier had he been taken earlier. It was not the fault of 261 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool the remedy, so much as the misconduct of his family, that had worried him into his sad condition. Luke the beloved physician knew the facts, where his fellow-worker did not. Luke is at times exasperated, and one does not wonder. Called by telegram up to a Presidency city, I went; the secretary of the church over which I was pastor was dying. He was a magis trate, a B.A. in science of the local University. I found the man dead ; all the appearances of poison were present the blue tinge on his skin, the drawn eyes, and the rigid tension of the body. Luke had sent this patient to a doctor who would help him, and where he could get sea air and rest. I have noted the fact that the man was a B.A. in science. The doctor in the University town who attended him was an Indian, and his charges were moderate ; the doctor said the patient was progress ing towards recovery, when some relatives came in bringing a hakim, who for a shilling promised to cure him. Ten annas were paid, the patient took the "grey powder" given him, and died right off. The hakim escaped. I and a brother Indian had to pay the expenses of this B.A. s funeral, and they were not light. The Indian doctor said that the hakim could not be prosecuted ; and further, he pointed out that in the city any boy who had been employed in a chemist s shop to clean bottles 262 Luke could start as a hakim. The police commissioner said practically the same thing. Luke at head quarters had again to go on feeling hopeless about B.A. s in science, but relieved when he had to treat pariahs. The pariah will do what he is told. Luke is always very careful to weigh a powder and neatly wrap it in paper ; then he explains to the patient that the powder only has to be taken. Frequently the patient swallowed the paper as well, because it had some writing on it. In one instance an assistant had to be sent to show how the powder was to be taken, and he was instructed to bring back the paper. I met fifteen people in the road who were in distress. I asked the reason, and the story they told was a testimony to the doctor who had been in charge of the jail. One of their comrades had been sent to jail for an offence he had not com mitted ; the doctor put him on light work, then found him suffering from an ailment that a simple operation cured. The man he was not a criminal was discharged after purging the trifling offence, and he told the story of his cure to his neighbours. Many had the same trouble, and they came in to see Luke, who was special in his skill. Luke had been transferred the day before. I could not persuade them to trust the new man, who would have relieved the whole lot as successfully as his 263 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool predecessor. No, he was not that particular doctor, and they went back with their burdensome sickness. Luke is one of those rare blessings that there is the danger he may be made too common, and be told off to countries where he is less urgently needed than in others where no beneficent Govern ment provides hospitals and doctors. In a Missionary Conference in 1879 Dr. W. Elder said : " There cannot be two opinions regarding the value of Medical Missions as a pioneering agency in a land where Western medicine is unknown. Neither can it be doubted that not a little may be said in favour of having a thoroughly qualified Christian physician in connection with Missions, where there are a number of European agents and their families stationed together at a place where no medical aid of any kind, can be got." There is a tendency nowadays to send Luke to places where his presence is desirable but not absolutely necessary. I know of a station where there is not only a Government hospital, but a railway hospital as well. The place has a popula tion of 15,000 people. It cannot grow, as it forms what is practically a delta where two rivers diverge, and the arrangement of the rivers prevents expansion. There are two hospitals there already, and two medical officers ; and a Mission now puts 264 Luke a third hospital and a third doctor. I quote my old friend, Dr. Elder : " I hold most strongly that there is no necessity whatever for establishing Mission dispensaries in localities where the medical require ments of the district are properly met without them." In an instance like the one above quoted, where Government is trying, through a local fund board, and the railway through its medical staff, to place European medicine and surgery within reach of all the people, a Mission doctor or hospital is waste of money. In South India no man or woman is out of medical reach say within an interval of twenty- four hours. A male Missionary may be anything from seventy to one hundred miles away from head quarters ; but it may be presumed he has had sense to take with him a few remedies for cholera, fever, or dysentery these may attack him or his servants. As for lady Missionaries who find cases of sick ness in the houses they visit, I have invariably seen them for years either drive a patient in their conveyance to the hospital or lake the lady apothecary to the house to see the patient. The medical help has been most generously given, and the patient left in safe hands. In India, medical qualifications are as keenly attended to as in England. Frankly, I have found Luke, whether as evangelist 265 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool and doctor or simply doctor, always ready with inventive kindness for a case, whether it could pay or not pay. The times I have known him out of pocket in his attendances would surprise even an East London doctor. The slight criticism above has no reference to the Medical Missionary who is in his proper sphere : I mean the place where God needs him, and he is the only man to do the work. If we believe that disease is in most cases a type of sin, it will be seen how the gift of physical healing may help in the conversion of the soul. It is doubtful if Luke was among the Apostles, or even the Seventy. " Luke the beloved physician " what more do we need to know ? And what more do Luke and his Master require us to know ? The phrase exactly describes him ; his work pre cludes any possibility of deceit. From first to last he is Luke the bodily director of the human race, and in this capacity its physical saviour. He knows how the bodily disease indicates the hunger of the soul. Luke is candid ; when he has done all he can do, he will tell you it is time for you to come and help home by prayer and sacrament the fleeting soul. After a final service with the patient it is wonderful what relief follows, so Luke will tell you. This is no effect of a sacrament ; in the cases I have seen, the man was relieved by Luke, 266 Luke then came the presence of the Master, then came the interval, between this and the letter home for the man to arrange his affairs in a dying whisper, it may be ; but whisper or not, it meant that God s providence is the inheritance of His children. Luke always helps here. 267 XXI PERSIS 269 " I entreat Euodia, and I entreat Syntyche, to live in harmony, in union with the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, my true comrade, to help them, remembering that they toiled by my side in spreading the good news." Paul : Twentieth Century Translation. " Women came and ministered unto Him." " The courage in the woman should sleep as the light sleeps in the pearl." JULIUS HARE. " First and foremost, the love of God and true religious fervour were the weapons of their vocation." DR. MARY SCHARLIEB. 270 XXI PERSIS OERSIS, "called, chosen, and faithful," one sees most days going about her work in houses, schools, or with her Bible- women, steadily at work as if she were a well-made clock marking the minutes and the hours of the Kingdom of God. She is by no means of one type, but is of an infinite variety. In the long-time-working Persis you find a lady of gentle birth, keeping herself on narrow means, but indefatigable in work, so that one wonders how she keeps alive. Day by day, for thirty years, in and out of that unspeakable bazaar, where all the people love her, and where her footfall is a prayer, she has healed the babies, washed them, attended to their mothers, nursed their sick, hunted the doctor ; but all of them look upon her as an angel. Her old scholars come to her with their babies ; and but she must never know it every child in the bazaar is taught to call her his grandmother. In thirty years she 271 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool gets very subdued ; yet I have seen her sitting on the steps of a house crooning to a baby boy, son of one of her scholars, There is a Happy Land, Far far away, and the small boy believes it. For the rest of his days, no matter how much worldly rust may cover him, he has the vision of Persis, who taught him the hymn of the Happy Land. I travelled with a Persis in a crowded railway carriage not long since. She has wealthy friends, who would send money at times for her to get clothing that would set off her quality. They had to give it up ; she sold the clothing, and gave the proceeds to her little preaching-room in a South Indian bazaar. She fills the room with papers and pictures ; she talks does not preach, as a male creature would, from a pulpit. Just talk, yet how beautiful it is ; and the man who hears it goes on his way with a song in his heart. As for the women who shall say it they worship her, they keep the room spotlessly clean and attend to her simple needs. She is just an English lady who wants to do her Lord s will ; and the sight of her drives most Englishmen to say their prayers as they used to say them at their mother s knee. It has been stated that Persis is not confined to one type. The second has a gift for teaching, 272 Persis but is associated with an imperious creature, who tries to stifle her instincts. She puts compulsion upon the Persis who can teach. One of them told me she had been obliged to live with a specimen of this sort, and in three months they had not exchanged a single sentence, though they had to sit at the same table. This would be awful in England ; think what it must be in India ! A woman of this sort ought to be retired at once. Persis number two gets deliverance ; she never names her troubles, but you can see she is easily dominated for the rest of her days. Yet she is loved and held in esteem for the quality of patience with her who never should have been sent out. There is still much of Persis ; and the charm of the variety lingers like perfume in an old drawer at home, or in a pot-pourri, or as the faint scent that you get in a sachet among your grand mother s letters. Persis may be a bright girl not insensible to a love of dressing herself in accordance with her brightness and her means. I have at times seen her going to her work as if she were going to Government-house, or to a reception ; she is in such purely native quarters that you may acquit her of dressing for the multitude, and may honestly believe it is her habit ; just as one sees a young civilian put himself in dress clothes when he sits down to his dinner in a T.s.-i8 273 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool jungle. " Why do you dress in a place like this ? " said a man in pyjamas to his host. " Well/ was the reply, "I do it for my mother s sake first ; then, second, it is an occupation ; then, third, in this I am as my mother would like to see me." Persis again has a tender heart. She can sympathise, and yet not have much leisure for the soothing part of the business. In her succes sion there is such a multitude that you cannot discuss them only in one point, and that is, they are engaged in the one work that can save India. It is a fact as old as the hills that India needs a new grandmother ; the vernacular papers admit the fact. India will get the new grand mother soon, and Persis will provide the blessing. At times you find a Persis who has the gift of tongues ; " this quality is never absent in a woman," the reader will say, and he is perhaps correct. In a certain Mission, one lady and she a married Persis was reputed to be able to speak four languages. An old Missionary, who knew some thing about such a detail, lifted up his hands : "I have known ladies who could be indefatigable in their own, and perhaps another acquired language ; but to have this gift in four is appalling ! " So it is ; one Persis came to me. " The doctor is quite unkind," was her remark. " How, where, and why ? " was my inquiry ; for 274 Persis the doctor was pure gold, a great common-sense spiritual hero, one of Havelock s saints, and I could not believe the unkindness ; but Persis went on " You know, my throat is very bad " there was no disputing this most patent fact : her voice was a whisper. " Well, I went to the doctor, and he told me the cure was simple. I was to hold my tongue stop talking." "Well," said I, " take his advice and let your throat have some chance in life." " But how can I ? I must talk in houses and schools." What this kind of Persis needs is an arrange ment that would send her into absolute quietness once in three months. Her message is of such power that it ought not to be wasted ; and the wear and tear of the voice for at least three hundred days in the year is such as a brazen-throated auctioneer could not stand. It is useless to quote actors and actresses, singers and speakers in England, as instances of wisely-used and carefully- tended voices. Their break - down is painfully frequent, in spite of a cool climate and the best medical aid it is possible to get. The Persis of this particular relation has to drive down a dusty road in blinding heat, and she is nearly choked nine times out of ten by the dust on the way to the 275 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool schools or houses she has to visit. The open drains by the wayside present another aspect of the case which is appalling. She may find herself behind a string of municipal refuse-carts. But Persis has to endure all this, and the marvel is how she does it. The leading aurist in India said to one of them? : " You have chronic pharyngitis. I could cure it in half an hour ; but you will go back and teach for three hours in class, and then speak in Sunday school." " This is just what will happen," said she. "Then," said he, "it is no use curing you : go on with your throat as it is." This is precisely what Persis has to do. She must put up with a worn-out throat and consequent deafness, and get no sympathy for it. There is still another Persis who has had her soul battered out of her in an epidemic in which she could not die because she had to live to save others. The nursing sister has to go, and the woman doctor is at times in front of calamities that develop heart disease or cause stigmata which in this life will never leave her. You may find her in England, " nursing herself," as the local mothers meeting, or the women s guild, or the vicar s strapping wife describes her. She is silent, and people in India who write to her know her heroism. 276 Persis She nursed two or three cases for four years, until men in the place, for very shame, clubbed together to get a succession of nurses to assist. The reader must bear in mind that Persis is Persis. She is not the woman who comes to India and gets engaged to a young or old man on the voyage ; neither is she the party who wants to see India, and marry someone in the country. Persis is still the same sweet soul, married or unmarried ; but it does not of necessity follow that every Missionary woman in India is Persis. The motive is the test, and it is as difficult to find a motive as it is to find the Pole, North or South. A woman who would not qualify as a nursery governess in England may be a great worker in India. The original Persis was probably a slave of slaves. The grace of God and adaptability mean everything in the Mission-field. Send Persis out as much as possible ; but see to it that she is Persis not a girl seeking a husband, or a hysterical product of meetings, but simply a woman who loves her Lord and is willing to do His work. Persis can sometimes help with intuitions that are more assured indications of God s will than any amount of logical processes can be. Many a Missionary has had to thank God that he has a House of Lords over him in his wife, when she is the better half of him not only in comradeship 277 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool but in work. He, being a man, can only reach a result through many pros and cons ; she, being a woman, can drop both and clear the position right off. This is so true in matters relating purely to the domain of domestic life in a congregation, that there is no need to discuss it ; there it is. In matters of discipline or belief Persis is better left out ; she may mix up with what she feels ought to be true, in one aspect of truth, matters relating to a positive command in another matter of life and practice. Mrs. Sarogini Nardri, in a recent speech in Madras, recognises Persis in her noblest role, that of rescuer : " When her own dear city of Hyderabad was laid low by flood, when there was distress and tragedy of suffering everywhere, when women whose finger-nails had never before been exposed to the gaze of men had been turned adrift, with their dear kith and kin separated from them, their protectors perished or their children drowned at that sad hour of distress and suffering it was an English lady, who had arrived in Hyderabad just twelve hours before, did her work of mercy to relieve distress. Was that not an example of sisterly love, of kindred humanity ? " Let Persis keep to this, and her crown of service will be everlastingly bright. 278 XXII BY LITTLE AND LITTLE 279 "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." K. L. STEVENSON. " Doubtless, a great anguish may do the work of years ; and we may come out of that baptism with a soul full of new awe and new pity." GEORGE ELIOT. " Occupy till I come." THE MASTER. " Then shall we know as we are known, And God, our great exceeding joy, For every peril shall atone; Fulness of bliss with no alloy Awaits the pilgrim who shall keep His courage up that lonely steep." The Rent Veil. 280 XXII BY LITTLE AND LITTLE YOU recognise the words, for they have formed the text of many deputation sermons. They are so true of work in India, that serious attention must be paid to them ; not to hurt or reflect unkindly upon any society or person who thinks a scheme of salvation, or a scheme of doctrine, is going to convert India. By all means let the scheme have a trial. It may succeed ; if it fails, it will only have gone the way of thousands of similar well-intended schemes. Yet we come back to the wise, simple, full advice of " little by little." What we mean is nothing ; what God means is every thing. In expelling the Canaanites from the Land of Promise, God told His people that He would not do it in one year, but little by little, lest the land should perish for lack of men to cultivate it, and the wild beasts should multiply against Israel. God would drive the Canaanites out by degrees until Israel was sufficient to occupy the country. 281 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool The method of the Divine procedure is one of slow and gradual processes. Short cuts have no place in the Providence of God. The little one shall become a thousand, and the small one a strong nation but when ? " I the Lord will hasten it in His time." We must ever remember that the infinite reach of God s purposes is not to be measured by our scanty notions of time and circumstance ; and though our effort be feeble, though the little we have accomplished sinks into utter insignificance when we look at the great work that remains to be done, let us remember that God condescends to accept our humble work, to recognise our slender gifts, and with Him nothing done in sincerity is either trifling or in significant. This is true in all honest work, even Missionary work. The Mission critic has from time to time been a source of intense amusement to the writer. There is something in the sharp crispness of the cold weather in India that affects the critic ; all his sub-acid cocksureness would melt out of him if he would only stay through the hot weather. Now, the usual platitude that a man may live so near his work that he loses all perspective of it, may be true of the humdrum of an English village parish ; it is not true in India, because every day brings its special experience ; it is seldom that 282 By Little and Little the work of two days is alike. The point of view is always moving ; you have to move with it, see all sides, and deal with all developments. The critic may be left, there is no time to waste upon him ; for one has to see how the words " little by little " give the true inwardness of our work and lift it to a higher level of soul-building work that takes time to develop. The words destroy many schemes of Mission work framed in American colleges. God works slowly arid patiently until His purposes are accomplished. This fact teaches one to be careful as to the nature and extent of results ; it further teaches one to be confident of success. As to slowness but sureness, we have to re member that " a thousand years in His sight are but as yesterday when it is past." The facts of Geology show that every form of created life has graduated from the rudest embryonic state to the full and perfectly-matured organism. The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. It need not concern us to go back to human origins ; it is sufficient to know that the race has developed from childhood to youth and from youth to manhood, so that, in Lord Bacon s words, " the men of to-day are the true ancients, and not the 283 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool men of two thousand years ago." The difference between you and your grey father who lived, it may be, contemporaneously with Abraham, is the diiference between the babe and the man. The physical structure and mental organisation of the child is every whit as perfect as that of the man ; the only difference is that the man is developed, and the child has yet to be developed. One has reached the goal, the other is but be ginning the race ; and between these opposite points there are years of slow growth. Little by little we go on from strength to strength, until the crown of manhood is reached. In the life of nations have not historians pointed out to us the same thing ? Politically, as well as materially, Rome was not built in a day. Time was when the Christian Church numbered twelve people, and one of them had a devil. It is noted that probably for years after the death of our Lord His disciples laboured only in Jerusalem ; then they were witnesses for Him in Samaria, and what were supposed to be the uttermost parts of the earth. They were toiling, slowly and labori ously, in laying the foundation of that great spiritual temple whose proportions we are but beginning to comprehend dimly. The actual work that had been accomplished, when one thinks of the means employed, seems surprisingly 284 By Little and Little small. John the Baptist had swept with the vehemence of a tornado over Judsea. Our Lord Himself followed, full of the divinest speech that ever fell from human or angelic lips, working with signs and wonders, the Holy Ghost testifying to His ministry. Then came the Apostles with their varied gifts of healing, teaching, and speaking the Word. Yet, though the truth they taught had all the charm of newness, though their methods were simpler and more elastic than ours, their power of adaptation greater, the net result of the first twenty-five years toil was scanty, as any candid student of Church history will admit. They could not expect it to be otherwise ; for our Lord had taught them they must have long patience, that the Kingdom of God comes not with observa tion, but is a silent, slow, sure force, that is long in gathering itself together for its mighty up heavals. " One soweth and another reapeth " ; but though we wait the result through long un- remunerative years, the harvest of God s sowing never fails. It is often quoted, as a proof that God works with lightning speed, that on the Day of Pente cost three thousand souls were added to the Church at once. The result was instantaneous ; the labour had been continuous. John the Baptist, our Lord, the Twelve, the Seventy, the Holy 285 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool Ghost all had laboured, and years of matchless toil simply culminated in this great victory. Moreover, the people were ready ; they were in that impressionable stage where conviction is not only easy but necessary. The speaker cannot miss his opportunity ; he clinches what prophets and seers said a thousand years before he was born. At last the great Deliverer comes, and conversion takes place when expectant souls meet to receive their Saviour. We talk of slowness ; it is, to say the least, irreverent to criticise the way God chooses to work. We want to grow an oak in twenty-four hours ; He is content to take a hundred years. Hinduism as a process of slowness is left out. Its infinite patience is a rebuke to our haste, and no soul is exempt from the patient endurance that leads to deliverance. Here character is tested, not by abnormal power of talk, but of endurance ; and the endurance has to go on to the fourth stage of life, say when a man is sixty years old. Here it takes a fresh start, since the man is supposed to have reached the Sannyassi stage, when he should leave everything, wander in forests, and live on the produce of the trees and shrubs that he finds there. Before he obtains deliverance and becomes quiescent in the ocean of being, the slowness of his existences is phenomenal. He may become the mere anima- 286 By Little and Little tion of a grub or the venom of a viper, the ferocity of a wolf or the gentleness of a lamb. If by stern austerity he can attach himself to some strong but inferior god who is approaching the period of his emancipation, then, like a drop of water falling into a vast river, he may reach his destination, and be no more distinct for countless ages. Such o is the slow painful way of a soul to Brahm ; little by little the soul through innumerable changes hopes at last to be absorbed in God. The growth of the Christian Church in England may be instanced as another example of slowness ; but the reader may study it for himself from the days of Christians who came with the Roman legions, up to Augustine s period 597 when he came to Kent. Since England, or rather, Great Britain and Ireland, is a small tract of country, in actual area measuring about ei2;ht Indian Districts, O o work in the two Islands was simple as regards extent of territory. There was no caste, no elaborate ritual, no collection of laws like Manu s, no Ramayan or Mahabharat. For fourteen hundred years work has gone on in the British Isles. Yet where would you find the man who would declare them to be Christian ? In India, the spade work is and must be enor mous. I quote wise words spoken by Principal Miller, in 1896, to the Free Church of Scotland 287 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool Assembly: " Another point which the Church needs to apprehend more fully is that what men regard as delay, disappointment, and defeat, is an essential feature of the Divine plan. This is more than a corollary from that plan being progressive more than another way of stating the same fact. Not only must successive stages be passed through ; it is no part of God s ordinary procedure that any of these stages should be arrived at easily or for once. Difficulty and delay are such inseparable features of every stage in effecting a Divine purpose by the hands of men, that work from which such things are long or entirely absent is thereby shown to be merely human. For those who do God s real work there are no royal roads. In special circum stances, for special ends, the walls of Jericho fell down without human intervention ; and the army of God on earth may still receive encouragements like this when He sees fit to send them." It is just this fact that should cure us of impatience, and lead us to be careful in our ex pectation as to the nature and extent of results. The absurdity of tabulating spiritual results by numbers, as statisticians do, is so palpable that one is amazed at Missionaries trying it on. You are gravely informed that one Mission has increased six hundred per cent, in six years ; that another has increased only thirty per cent, in the same 288 By Little and Little period. The mere figures show the arithmetical result, and this is all they show. The swollen fatuity of six hundred per cent, means the accession of pariahs, baptized it is true ; but it will take a century to harden that human mud into firm and enduring form. The thirty per cent, growth means that communicants of character have been added to the Church, granite pillars have been placed in the Temple ; and the results really represent the difference between mud and granite. There is so much over-haste in capturing com munities, that it becomes our solemn duty to pause and wait upon God. Churches at home sometimes help what passes for success, and neglect that which is true growth. They forget that not by might or by power, not by gregarious movements or large subscriptions, but by the Spirit of the Lord, will the nations be won for Him. The labourer who believes this must be confident of success, but not boastful about it. He does not spend his time looking at his neighbour s plantation to see how it grows ; and he does not speculate as to what the crop shall be, or when it shall come. His business is to do his Lord s will ; content to do it little by little, minute by minute through the hour, and day by day through the year. The man who does five or ten years work in mass movements and then spends the rest of his life 19 289 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool talking about it, leaves a heritage of misery to his successors, who have to put his mistakes right with results woeful to the movement, but useful to the battle. Gideon had not much credit in leading a forlorn hope. He had to weed out the unworthy and do his best with a few chosen men. All the glory came after, and he is the least preached about of all the Lord s servants. The last word is : do your work with both hands, honestly to Him, your Lord ; but let Him direct you, and do not try to be your own Providence. Whatever happens, whether you lose all who are dear to you, or whether you find yourself dying from cholera far away from the nearest doctor, remember, " The best of all is, God is with us." And the music of the great Psalm shall be your daily offering of praise : "Fear not, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. The Lord of Hosts is with us ; the God of Jacob is our Kefuge." 290 GLOSSARIAL INDEX Abdul-Kalik, 111. Alarka, 75. Allahabad, 43. Anderson, John, 137, 150. Animism, 41. Anna, a sixteenth part of a rupee, equal to a penny, 324. Arnold, M., 154. Arrack, distilled from rice, 214. Ascetics, Hindu and Muslim, 100, 286. Christian, 188. Augustine, Archbishop, 287. Augustine s Confessions, 100. Badmash, a rough, a hooligan, 117. Bain, Professor, 131. Baptist Missionary Society, 13. Batavia, 31. Bazaar, preaching, 81, 110, 214. Bengali, works in, 133. Bernier, 42. Bhurtpore sieges, G3. Bible-women, 71. Blavatsky, H. P., 49. Boardman, 35. Bombay, 36. Brahm, the highest object of philosophic adoration, 52, 287. Brainerd, 35. Britto, John de, 29. Browning, Mrs., 166. Buchanan, Claudius, 42. Buckle on Hinduism, 75. Buddhism, 63. Calcutta, former condition of, 36. Bishops of, 240. Caldwell, Bishop, 22, 89. Carey, Win., G, 13, 32, 34, 161. Caste, Hindu, 57. Cat, in Hindu temple, 216. Cavi-Rayer, Ramanuja, 100. Ceylon, 31, 33. Chalmers, James, 6. Chalmers s, Mrs., school in Hong- Kong, 63. China, 29, 31, 63. China-idolatry, 30. " Christ, lost in," 17. Christian Yogism, 22. Colour line, The, 123. Confucianism, 41. Confucius, college of, in Canton. 31. Conversion, 85, 90, 219, 285. half-seeing, 90. cost of, to a Hindu, 91. Cotton, Julian J., 162. Crisp, Edmund, 162. 291 Glossarial Index Danisli mission, 32. Dante, 28. Darwin, 194. Dasis, the wives of the gods, 72. Devil-worship, 72. Dober, Leonhard, 6, 31. Doctors in India, 259. Doddridge, Philip, 91. Drew, W. H., 22, 101, 168. Dubois, Abbe, 33, 42, 214. Duff, Dr., 6, 136. Du Roy, Pere, 8. Dutch Missions, 31. East India Company, 34, 43. Education and missions, 64, 128, 136. Elder, Dr. W., 264. Eliot, John, 35. Europe-idolatry, 30. Falding, Principal, 23, 155. Famine, 78, 175. Fenn, 233. Fire ordeal, 74. Forests of India, 172. Frederick iv. of Denmark, 32. Fuller, Andrew, 34. Gulistm, Persian poem, 181. Guru, a Hindu teacher and re ligious leader, 106, 211. Hakim, a physician, 262. Hannington, Bishop, 6. Hare, Julius, 250, 270. Hay, Dr. J., 101, 130, 150, 168. Health, 181. Heat, 190. Heber, Bishop, 241, Herbert, George, 20, 219. Herrnhut, 31. Hinduism, 38, 41, 43, 49, 52. Vedic, 44, 71. "Hinduism, Higher/ 38, 43, 45, 48, 49, 59, 71, 246. Hindus, devout, 18. | "Holy Masters" of Leadenhall street, 34. I Hook- swinging, 74. i Howe, John, 23. | Hunt, John, 6, 12. j Hunter, Sir William, 195. I Incarnation, 53. | Indian Christians, 86, 118, 194. congregations, 199, 229. ! Indians, before British rule, 85. Indiscriminate generosity, 253. ; Indra, one of the Vedic gods, 60. Ganges, 187. Ganja, an intoxicating prepara- , Industrial missions, 169. tion of Indian hemp, 214. Gay a, 43. Gericke, 204, 222. Gideon, 290. Globe-trotters, 203, 244, 252. Goa, Governor of, 29. Going-home missionaries, 81. Gordon, Rev. John, 162. Go-to-meetingty, 155. Grant, Charles," 34. < Jails, Indian, 184, 263. ; Jefferson s Journal, 7. ! Jesuit duplicity, 30. Johnson, Richard, of Nundial 167. ; Jones, William C., 6, 111, 149. Sir Win., 61. I Judson, Adoniram, 6. j Juggernaut, 42. 292 Glossarial Index Kalayed, 186. Karma, or, the power of deeds, 50. Kircherer, 6. Krishna, the most popular of Hindu gods, 54. Rural, great Tamil poem, 101 . Lake, Lord, 63. Law codes of India, 226. Lechler, 168. Leighton, Archbishop, 23. Lewis, Rev. C. B., 36. Lewis, Edwin, 6, 62. Liddon, Canon, 205. Linga, or the Phallic symbol, 48, 71. Livingstone, David, 6, 9, 12. Loneliness, 156, 200. Luther s Commentary, 94. Lyall, Sir A., 56, 99, 125. Macaulay, 40, 70, 132. Macdonald, Dr. K. S., 133. Madras, 36. Mahabharat, a collection of epic poems, 49, 133, 287. Manu, the Hindu law-compiler, 61, 287. Marshman, Dr., 12. Martin, Dr., 133. Marty n, Henry, 6, 8, 9, 37, 183. Mass movements, 289. Max Miiller, 38. Maya, the Hindu doctrine of Illusion, 51. Medical missions, 259. Middleton, Bishop, 240. Mill, J. S., 131. Miller, Principal, 287. Milne, William, 8. Milton, 56. Ministerial removals, 145. Missionary call, 3, 10, 115. accounts, 255. administration, 232. aim, 5. anger, 252. asceticism, 160. brotherhoods, 233. children, 147. churches versus non-mission ary, 120. colleges, 129, 139. common sense, 181. congregations, 195. converts, 89, 242. critics, 282. death-beds, 162, 236. doctors, 259. don ts, 251. dress, 241, 273. enigmas, 99. enterprise, 29. failures, 10. famine orphans, 175. gossip, 255. individuality, 241. industries, 167. loneliness, 156, 200. marriages, 232, 277. motive, 3. music, 219, 272. obedience, 17, 115. preachers, 196. progress, 281. quarrels, 238. reports, 4, 144. results, 124. statistics, 288. trials, 239. wives, 277. women, 11, 47, 64, 271. work in China, 62. I Missouri Lutherans, 205. 93 Glossarial Index Moffat, Dr. Robert, 9, 12. Mohammedan mysticism, 21. converts, 53. from Ireland, 218. Moravian Brethren, 22, 31. Morrison, Robert, 12, 30. Muirhead, Dr., 63. Mullens, Dr. Joseph, 52. Music in preaching, 219. Muslim brotherhoods of N. Africa, 21. Mutiny, Sepoy, 44. Nagercoil, 205. Nardri, Mrs. Sarogini, 278. Nautch women, 72. Negro slaves, 31. Nee-Hinduism, 49. Nestorian missionaries, 80. Neutrality, 135. New indifference, The, 41. New sympathy, The, 71, 74, New Theology Hindus, 246. Nirgun, or Brahm in quiescent inertness, 51. Nirvana, the cessation of indivi dual existence ; absorption in Deity, 18. Nitschmann, David, 31. Old Intolerance, The, 41. " One-horse missions," 12. Open-air preaching, 211. Opium, 214. Padri, a clergyman or minister, 213. Panchayat, or native committee of five, 226, 254. Pandarcm, a pilgrim devotee, 217. Pantheism, 50, 52. Parchernj, a Pariah village, 170. | Pariahs, outcasts, 59, 289. Parker, Joseph, 205. Patteson, 6. Paul, St., 5, 17, 48, 90, 94, 159, 196. | Penal Code, The, 42. Pentecost, 18, 285. Persis, 271. Phallic worship, 59. I Physiolatry, 78. j Pilgrim tax, The, 43. Pilmoor, 35. Plutschau, 31. Pope, Dr., 106. Portuguese padres at Macao, 30. Poynder, John, 43. Protestant missions in India, Pioneers of, 31. Puranas, or recent scriptures, fol lowed by popular Hindu ism, 45, 53, 119. Puranic Hinduism, 43, 53, 119. Queen Victoria s proclamation, 130. Rajahgopal, 137. Ramayan, the name of the older of the two great Sanskrit epic poems, 73, 133, 177. Ramzan, a fast, 182. Rationalism at Tranquebar, 34. Reid, John, 236. j Rhenius, 6, 122. ! Rice Christians, 200. | Ringeltaube, 6, 205, 210, 233, 253. I Rome, Church of, 4, 30. ! Roosevelt, Mr., 231. Rutherford, S., 236. i Ryland, 233. 94 Glossarial Index Saiva hymns, 80. Sakti, or the female principle as worshipped, 48, 71. Salvation Army, 205. Sama Veda, a series of philo sophical writings, 51. Sannydssi, a Brahmin in his fourth stage of life, 286. Santals, 111, 149. Sargun, or Brahm, desiring to ; create, 51. Sariathi, or the soul independent | of the body, 21. Sawyerpuram, 205. Scliarlieb, Dr. M., 258, 270. Schwartz, 36, 205, 233. Scottish missions, 136. Shastras, a general term for all the Hindu sacred books, 50. Sherwood, Mrs, 37. Shiva, a Hindu god the de- stoyer, 20, 216. Shortbread, 188. Sierra Leone, 7. Silk-weaving, 172. Slavery, 125. Spencer, Herbert, 131. Spirit-filled life, The, 19. Spurgeon, C. H., 205. State-made Christians, 33. Street preachers, 211. Swami, a lord, owner, or king. In S. India, an idol, 46, 216. Swami, B. Ananda, of Benares, 100. Swan, William, Letters on Mis sions, 13. Tadi, fermented palm juice, 214. Tan j ore temple, 62. Tantras, or obscene sacred books of a large Hindu sect, 56, 71. Taylor, Jeremy, 123. Telugu Bible, 167. Temple, Archbishop, 169. Theosophy, 48. Thomas a Kempis, 23. Thomas, John, Life of, 36. Tinnevelly, 204. Tipoo Sultan, 33, 53. Tonglang, Padre, 31. Tranquebar, 29, 31, 34. Transmigration of souls, 49. Travancore, 204, 245. Traveller, Kev. C., 240. Tripathy, 43. University, Indian, 105. Unrest, Indian, 134. Vaishnavas, worshippers of the god Vishnu, 46. Varuna, colour, 79. Vedas, or earlier Hindu scrip tures, 49. Vernacular languages, 145. preaching, 224, 228. Village work, 206, 212, 226. an Indian, 226. Vishnu, a Hindu god the pre server, 46, 212. Wake, Archbishop, 35. Ward, W., 42. Wardlaw, 168. Warren, George, 7. Weber, 61. Weitbrecht, 158. Wesley, John, 18, 35, 67, 94. West Indies, Moravians in, 31. " Western Heaven, The," 63. 295 Glossarial Index Whitefield, 16, 35, 94. Wilberforce and the Slave Bill, 125. Williams, John, 12. Wilson-Carmichael, Miss, 74. Wilson, John, 137. Women, Hindu, 46. Women missionaries, 11, 47, 64, 265, 271. Yogi-sm, which seeks absorp tion, in God, 18, 20, 104, 107. Yudhishthir, 75. Zayat, a preaching room, 215. Zenana workers, 64. Ziegenbalg, 6, 29, 31. Zinzendorf, 31. MORGAN AND SCOTT LTD., LONDON, EKGLAND MORGAN & SCOTT S MISSIONARY SERIES EDITED BY DR. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. CHRIST THE DESIRE OF NATIONS By Rev. WILLIAM DAVIS. With Prefatory Note by Dr. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. Cloth, 6s. CONTENTS PART I. THE AUTHORITY FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS. I. THE AUTHORITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. II. THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST. III. THE AUTHORITY OF THE APOSTLES AND OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. PART II. THE NEED FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS. I. THE RELIGIOUS NEEDS: ANIMISM, HINDUISM, BUD DHISM. II. THE RELIGIOUS NEEDS : CONFUCIANISM, TAOISM, AND MOHAMMEDANISM. III. DOES THE HEATHEN NEED CHRIST? IV. THE MORAL AND SOCIAL NEEDS OF THE HEATHEN. PART III. THE VALUE OF MISSIONS. I. THE RELIGIOUS VALUE. II. THE MORAL AND SOCIAL VALUE. III. THE REFLEX VALUE OF MISSIONS. IV. RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. EXTRACT FROM PREFATORY NOTE BY DR. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. " The Lord Jesus Christ is set forth in this volume as the Desire of Nations from the preparatory revelation of the Old Testament, all through Scripture and Church History, and in the light of the records of Missionaries and travellers down to the present time. "The Author has brought to his labours not only an intimate acquaintance with several departments of Missionary literature, but also a keen enthusiasm for his thesis. He opens up Scripture as to Christ and His work, and at the same time he surveys the world as to its moral and spiritual needs. "Hence the work is not simply an apology for Missions, but likewise a mirror of their operation down the ages. If it opens with the authority for Foreign Missions, it goes on to maintain their practical urgency at the present time. The treatment is systematic, the impression one that tells* for Christian faith and duty." MORGAN & SCOTT LTD. OFFICE OF tCfje Christian, 12 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON 20 MORGAN & SCOTT S MISSIONARY SERIES EDITED BY DR. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. THE VICTORY OF THE GOSPEL A SURVEY OF WORLD-WIDE EVANGELISM. By J. P. LILLEY, D.D. With Prefatory Note by Dr. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. Cloth, 6s. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. BOOK I. THE FOREIGN MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE: IN THE LIGHT OF SCRIPTURE. I. THE MISSIONARY POSTULATES OF THE BIBLE. II. THE MISSIONARY ELEMENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. III. THE MISSIONARY EXPANSION OF JUDAISM : THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY. IV. THE EVANGELICAL UNIVERSALITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT: THE METHOD OF JESUS. V. THE EVANGELICAL UNIVERSALITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT : THE WORK OF THE APOSTLES. VI. THE MISSIONARY OBLIGATION AND CURRENT EVASIONS. BOOK II. THE FOREIGN MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE : IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY. I. THE EARLY CATHOLIC CHURCH. II. THE EXPANSION OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN CHURCHES. III. THE CHURCH OF ROME AND THE REFORMED CHURCHES IV. THE NEW ERA OF EVANGELICAL FOREIGN MISSIONS. V. THE PRESENT OUTLOOK OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. VI. THE CHURCH S FOREIGN MISSIONS : CRITICISM OF THEIR ABSOLUTE NECESSITY. VII. THE CHURCH S FOREIGN MISSIONS : CRITICISM OF THEIR AIM, SPIRIT, AND METHODS. VIII. THE CHURCH S FOREIGN MISSIONS: CRITICISM OF THEIR RESULTS AND PROGRESS. BOOK III. THE FOREIGN MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE: IN THE LIGHT OF EXPERIENCE. I. THE MISSIONARY CALL. II. THE MASTERY OF THE MESSAGE. III. THE STUDY OF MISSIONS. IV. THE MISSIONARY LIFE. V. PRAYER IN MISSIONS. VI. THE FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF MISSIONS. VII. THE UNIFICATION OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. CONCLUSION : REINFORCEMENT OF THE MISSIONARY OBLIGATION. DR. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., says: " Dr. Lilley seems to me to have produced, in this volume, the most complete and persuasive treatise on Foreign Missions to be found in the English language, or in the German. His treatment of the subject, in the triple light of Scripture, of History, and of Experience, faces the latest demands of scholarship, of spiritual exegesis, and of practical Missionary administration ; while, with calm wisdom and charity, it exposes the evasions of duty by Christian people." MORGAN & SCOTT LTD. OFFICE OF STfje Cfjnsttart, 12 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON MORGAN & SCOTT S MISSIONARY SERIES EDITED BY DR. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES. By Rev. WILLIAM MUIR, M.A., B.D., B.L. With Prefatory Note by Dr. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. Cloth, 6s. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. I. THE ERA OF PREPARATION. II. THE APOSTOLIC ERA. III. TILL THE EMPIRE WAS WON. IV. MEDIAEVAL MISSIONS. V. THE REFORMATION AND MISSIONS. VI. THE ERA OF DEFORMATION. VII. THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL. VIII. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. IX. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. X. THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA. EXTRACT FROM PREFATORY NOTE BY DR. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. "The unique value of THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA lies in the fact that (i) it is written by a minister of the Gospel to every fellow-minister and student, to every member and family of the Christian Church ; (2) the work combines a scholarly exegesis, spiritual discrimination, and accurate history, all eloquently enforcing- the call of the New Era. The Author states and enforces the Missionary Call to every progressing Christian, from the Old Testament Era of preparation, through Christ and the successive Christian centuries to the New Era of to-day. As a Scotsman familiar with the history of the Evan gelisation of his countrymen, he lightens up the period of Mediaeval Missions to and by our own fathers, who first received Christ themselves, and hastened to tell the glad tidings to England and to Europe. " God s providential development and the Church s Christian duty are pursued to the irresistible conclusion the obedience of every Christian to the Lord s Command and the Heavenly Vision." MORGAN & SCOTT LTD. OFFICE OF f)e (Christian, 12 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON MORGAN & SCOTT S MISSIONARY SERIES EDITED BY DR. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL By WILLIAM ROBINSON, Author of "From Brahm to Christ," etc. With Prefatory Note by Dr. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. Cloth, 6s. CONTENTS THE CALL. II. OBEDIENCE TO THE VOICE OF CHRIST. III. "Go YE THEREFORE." IV. THE OLD INTOLERANCE. V. THE INEXTRICABLE WEB. VI. THE NEW SYMPATHY. VII. CONVERSION. VIII. ENIGMAS. IX. DOING CHRIST S COMMAND MENTS. X. THE NEED FOR COLLEGES XI. NOTHING FOR NOTHING. XII. THE LONELY LIFE. XIII. MISSION INDUSTRIES. XIV. THE COMMISSARIAT BASE. XV. THE CONGREGATION. XVI. HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES. XVII. THE LITTLE FLOCK. XVIII. "FAITHFUL IS HE THAT CALLETH." XIX. DON T. XX. LUKE. XXI. PERSIS. AND SCHOOLS. | XXII. BY LITTLE AND LITTLE. PREFATORY NOTE BY DR. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. "This work has a unique value. There is nothing like it in all the literature of Foreign Missions. " It has to do chiefly with India, which has a special claim on every member of the Churches of the United Kingdom and its Colonies. " The special value of the volume is that it is written from the inside of things, revealing Hinduism and Caste as they have never before been laid bare, in popular language, in a scholarly fashion, and with literary skill." MORGAN & SCOTT LTD. OFFICE OF CJje (EJjttstian, 12 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON A MOST FASCINATING MISSIONARY BOOK (" LOTUS BUDS." By AMY WILSON-CARMICHAEL) THIS is a book of quite uncommon beauty and charm. 1 Miss Amy Wilson-Carmichael has a graphic pen, and the power of vivid description. Interesting as the narrative is, it is made all the more attractive by some really wonderful pictures. They are the finest photographs of children we have ever seen, and beautifully produced. 2 Indeed, "LOTUS BUDS " is a missionary art-book ; a portrait gallery of lovely little Tamil children snapshotted in delightfully fresh and unconventional poses. Indian landscapes and temples are also pictured; but the children are the glory of the book. 3 The book gives the life-stories of some of these rescued girls a work beset with many pitfalls : priest-craft is its subtle and implacable enemy ; cupidity and duplicity conspire to defeat the efforts of the missionaries ; a deep-laid conspiracy has to be fought, and ever on the near horizon lies the danger of popular clamour. But strong in the justice of their cause, the ladies fought bravely on ; and all who love the children will wish them God-speed. 4 Page after page tells of the heroic work of this band of devoted women ; story after story tells of wonderful and exciting rescues, and of bitter failures. 5 This beautiful volume, in seeking to advance so holy a cause as the deliverance of these children, is written with singular delicacy, and can safely lie on any drawing-room table in the land. 6 LOTUS BUDS. By AMY WILSON-CARMICHAEL. With FIFTY unique full-page Photogravures. 4to, Art Canvas Boards, 143. 6d. net. Special Presenta tion Edition (limited to 250 Numbered a The Christian Copies), with the Fifty Photogravures on AUTHORITIES. 1 Church Missionary Review. " The Record. World. - 1 Regions Beyond. 5 Dundee Advertiser. e Medical Missions. Japon Vellum Paper, bound Vellum Back, Gilt Tooled, Morocco Lettering. Price, Art Canvas Sides, Gilt Top, Marker, 315. 6d. net. Morgan & Scott Ltd., 12 Paternoster Buildings, London, E.G. THE TEMPLE CHILDREN OF INDIA ("THINGS AS THEY ARE" By AMY WILSON-CARMICHAEL) A THRILLING record of missionary work. 1 Here we read of persistent paganism and of wickedness in forms that cannot be described, of cruelties that have prevailed among India s millions from time immemorial. 2 It is the most extraordinary missionary book we have ever read the most intense, vivid, realistic, and, on the face of it, true to fact. 3 Every one of the thirty-two chapters is clear cut as a cameo, and positively throbs with sensation. 4 AUTHOR.T.ES. + THINGS AS THEY ARE : , r . . ~ u . "P MISSION WORK IN SOUTHERN INDIA. By London and^Chma ^ WILSON _ CARMICHAEL . With Pre face 2 The Christian. by EUGENE STOCK. Thirty-two Illustra- s Methodist tions. Cloth Boards, 2S. 6d. net (post free, 4 Expository TiSe^ f 2S - Iod -) > Pa P er Covers, is. 6d. net (post free, is. Qd.). (OVERWEIGHTS OF JOY. By the Same Author) Tins is a volume of unusual excellence. Its pages fascinate, both because of the writer s entrancing style, and the absorbing interest of the matter. 1 For the most part the stories are of converts, and very striking they are, and told most sweetly. 2 None can read such stories unmoved; none can resist such pleadings whose hearts are not wholly callous ; none can help seeing, too, how true are lives of such absolute love and devotion to Him who Himself came "to seek and to save that which was lost." 3 No lover of the Kingdom can turn these panoramic pages unmoved. It is a book of living and marvellous interest. 4 AUTHORITIES, i OVERWEIGHTS OF JOY. A Companion Volume to the above. By AMY WILSON-CARMICHAEL. With Preface by Rev. T. WALKER, C.M.S. Thirty-four Illustrations. Cloth Boards, 2S. 6d. net (post free, 2S. iod.). 1 Scottish Review. - Church Missionary Intelligencer. 3 Methodist Times. 4 The Crusader. MORGAN & SCOTT LTD. OFFICE OF &fje (JTIjtistian, 12 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON MISSIONARY EFFORT IN FOUR CONTINENTS ("MISSIONARY ACHIEVEMENT" By Dr. W. T. WHITLEY) OUT of a vast mass of matter, Dr. Whitley has succeeded in telling a very lucid story of Gospel repulse and triumph. 1 It deals with missionary attempt, failure, and achievement during seventeen centuries. 2 Dr. Whitley is a specialist in this department of study, and he has given us a book which makes a striking and most serviceable contribution to the literature available for methodical mission study. It is one not only to make people think long and deeply on missionary duty and effort, but to do so to good and practical purpose. 3 The survey is naturally a rapid one ; but the author s graphic style and keen grasp of essentials have enabled him to invest with interest even the barest outlines; and the very rapidity of his survey helps the reader to obtain a broad and intelligent view of a large field. 4 It is a most remarkable book. For the student of Missions, the volume is one that, in its line, has no equal, and will scarcely brook a rival. It is a study in the principles that should govern missionary polity. It represents the study of years, and yet reads like a romance. 5 AUTHORITIES. 1 Sword and Trowel. - Methodist Recorder. 3 The Christian. * Missionary Herald. 5 Friends Witness. MISSIONARY ACHIEVEMENT: A SURVEY OF WORLD-WIDE EVANGELISA TION. By W. T. WHITLEY, M.A., LL.D., F.R.Hist.S., F.T.S. Cloth Boards, 35. 6d. net (post free, 35. iod.). Morgan & Scott Ltd., 12 Paternoster Buildings, London, E.G. For the most extensive and comprehensive Reports of Foreign and Home Mission Work see Christian WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED "THE REVIVAL " THE BEST WEEKLY RELIGIOUS PAPER FOR THE HOME (Published every Thursday. One Penny.) Christian contains each week News of Missionary Enterprise and Evangelistic Work in various parts of the World, Articles helpful to Converts. Biographical Sketch with Portrait. Notes on Current Events viewed from the Christian standpoint. Practical Suggestions on the International Sunday School Lesson. A special column for Christian Endeavourers. The Daily Watchword " : Exposition of the Scriptures for Daily Reading, etc. The aim of Cfre Cljnstian is to develop and strengthen the spiritual life of the Churches, and is read with interest by Christians of all ages the young being catered for more especially in " The Young People s Page" of Bible- searching exercises, for which handsome Prizes and Certificates are periodically awarded. On receipt of is. SJ. in P.O. or Stamps, Ij Christian will be sent post free direct from the Publishers to any address in the United Kingdom for 13 weeks. Annual Subscription^ whether at home or abroad^ 6s. 6d. MORGAN & SCOTT LTD., 12 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON DATE DUE PRINTED IN CANADA BY RYERSON PRESS o WILLIAM ROBINSON Morgan & Scott s Missionary Series . ^ Edited by Dr. George Smith, C.I.E. -^