India's Problem, Krishna or Christ Part 16

In large, well-organized missions, the educational department is now perhaps the most important and all-pervasive. As a mission grows, this department usually develops more rapidly than any other of its organized activities. This work is divided into three cla.s.ses:

Schools for Non-Christians.

These are especially established with a view to reaching and affecting the non-Christian community. They have developed wonderfully during the last half-century and hold an important place in the economy of missions. They represent the leaven of Christianity in India. They are preeminently an evangelistic agency. They furnish excellent opportunity to present Christ and His Gospel of salvation to a large host of young people under very favorable circ.u.mstances. These inst.i.tutions are of two cla.s.ses-primary schools in villages and high schools and colleges at centres of influence and culture.

They have been the object of attack from men of narrow missionary sympathy and of limited horizon. These men claim that money expended on such inst.i.tutions is a waste of mission funds. But they have failed to recognize the significant fact, which I have already mentioned, that these inst.i.tutions undoubtedly furnish the best opportunity for missionary evangelistic work. And I fearlessly maintain that more conversions take place, and more accessions are made, through these schools than through any other agency, apart from the Christian Church itself. Not a few of the village primary schools become _nuclei_ to Christian congregations, which flourish and develop into Christian churches. And through the higher inst.i.tutions some of the best and strongest members of the Christian community have been won from Hinduism. All this, apart from the fact that these inst.i.tutions perform an unspeakably important function in the dissemination of light throughout the whole Hindu community and in the leavening of the whole ma.s.s of Hindu thought and inst.i.tutions. The good done by this cla.s.s of inst.i.tutions is beyond computation in that land.

Schools for Christian Children.

It is the worthy ambition of every mission and missionary to train the children of the Christians so that they may rise, not only in intelligence, but also in social life and position. Under this cla.s.s of schools the native Christian community is being rapidly developed and educated, so that it is already in advance of any other community in general literacy.

Among these schools for Christians are industrial inst.i.tutions for the training of boys and girls in manual labour. At the present time there seems to be a growing tendency to magnify this department of work. These schools are given to training in carpentry, blacksmithing, weaving, bra.s.s-work, rattan-work, etc. The Germans have entered more fully into this effort than any other missions in India. But they are not loud in its praise as a department of _mission_ work. It certainly has both merits and demerits which we shall consider later.

During the last decade a few missionaries have launched out upon a new enterprise in the shape of Peasant Settlements. One object of these is to train the poor and improvident members of the community, especially the socially submerged cla.s.ses, to habits of thrift, economy and independence.

It is also conducted as a philanthropy for the purpose of raising the people socially and industrially through new methods and forms of agriculture. This movement is still in its infancy.

Training Inst.i.tutions for Mission Agents.

It is the duty of every mission to train for itself an efficient cla.s.s of men and women who shall conduct all the departments of missionary work and gradually relieve the missionary of many of his duties. These schools are of many kinds corresponding with the various cla.s.ses of agencies required.

This may be ill.u.s.trated by the inst.i.tutions now found in the Madura Mission. Nearly every one of the twelve out-stations of that mission has a boarding school for Christian boys and girls. The best students who graduate from these schools, especially those who are deemed worthy to become future candidates for mission service, go to Pasumalai and to Madura for further, and professional, training. At Pasumalai young men may pa.s.s through the High School and even the college department. They are then placed in the normal department, to qualify them as teachers, or in the Theological Seminary, to prepare them as preachers and pastors. So, also, girls are placed in the Madura Girls' High and Training School and are there qualified for one of three grades of teachership. Or they may be placed in the Bible Woman's Training School where they receive a two-years' course of training for work as Bible women.

The only cla.s.s of agents which is not trained by the Madura Mission is that of medical a.s.sistants. I trust that the mission's desire for funds to establish this work also may be gratified and that thus we may have the means of training suitable agents for every department of our missionary work. No mission can be complete unless it has some means of furnishing itself with an efficient agency to conduct all departments of its activity.

The only danger connected with the excellent educational department of work is, lest it should outgrow and overshadow all other departments. This danger is at present manifesting itself in some missions. It is an attractive form of work which allures the missionary; and, for several reasons, he yields to the temptation of emphasizing it out of proportion to its relative value and gives more time and money to it than a wise place in mission economy demands. The ideal arrangement for a mission would seem to be to keep well in front its evangelistic and pastoral endeavour, and to utilize all forms of educational work with a view to strengthening and furthering these. It is true that certain missions, like certain individuals, have a special genius or talent of their own; and their highest success will depend upon their following that bent. For instance, the Free Church of Scotland, in South India, has shown eminent ability and taste in the work of education. It has met with distinguished success in that line of effort, and its college for boys and high schools for girls in Madras bear testimony to its eminent success in this department. In evangelistic work it has thus far neither shown much interest nor large apt.i.tude. The Wesleyan Methodists, on the other hand, are born evangelists and find their chief success as preachers of the gospel. Each mission should not only consider its field and its claims and needs, it should also study its own corporate gift and bent and then strive to develop its work mainly upon those lines which are most congenial to it.

(_d_) Literary Work.

The creation and circulation of a healthy Christian literature has always been recognized by our missions as a work of paramount importance. While not many missionaries have devoted themselves exclusively to this work, yet not a little has been accomplished in it by the missions. If not much that is original and brilliant has issued from the missionary pen; and if it stands sadly true that too few have seriously undertaken this work; it is nevertheless a cause of thanksgiving that Christian truth has been extensively expounded and defended by them, and that they have sent forth from the press a continual stream of blessing to all the people.

In India, three strong societies aid the missions by engaging directly in the production and dissemination of Christian literature. These are the Bible Society, the Tract Society and the Christian Literature Society.

These inst.i.tutions have spent large sums of money in the translation, revision and circulation of the Holy Scriptures and in the furnishing of fresh, readable and informing tracts and books in explanation, ill.u.s.tration and defense of Christianity. The far-reaching results of the work of these societies no one can adequately estimate. The need of this department of work is not only great, it is growing annually. Missions feel this keenly and are unwilling to depend entirely upon the above mentioned societies. Each mission of any importance has one, or more, printing establishments with which it can prepare and issue tracts and books of its own, and whereby it may present special truths and teachings which seem to it urgently needed by its people. Through these presses the missions publish also 147 newspapers and magazines for the special use of the Christian people and others. In this way forty-one printing establishments, employing no fewer than 2,000 men, are utilized by the Protestant missions of India in the production of healthy literature for the furtherance of the cause of Christ in that land.

In this department two special cla.s.ses are kept in view. The growing Christian community must be provided with suitable books in the vernaculars. Books devotional for the ma.s.s of Christians, and text-books for the students in our professional schools, and helpful books of instruction for the large body of Christian agents are needed. All these make an increasing demand upon the literary fertility of writers and authors on the mission field.

There is also a growing demand, and an urgent need, for good books adapted to the non-Christian community-such tracts and books as can present to them, in an attractive and convincing way, the special truths and the supreme excellence of our faith. The number is annually increasing, both among native Christians and in the non-Christian community, of those who can read and whose taste for books is growing.

This method of approach to the mind of the people has peculiar advantages of its own. The prejudices connected with Christian instruction, as it proceeds directly from the lips of the teacher or preacher, does not exist in connection with tracts and books. These printed messengers of truth and salvation quietly and effectively do their work in the silent hours of the night and in the secret recesses of the woods or of the solitary chamber.

And this message is the more effective because it may be read and pondered more than once, until its truth grips the soul in convicting and saving power.

The power of the printed page, as a Christian messenger in India, is second to none at present; and its influence will multiply mightily as the years increase. Missions and individual missionaries should enter more fully into this work; none needs increasing emphasis more than this; and none has larger hopes of preeminence in the great work of India's redemption. Missionary societies also should devote more men, than in the past, to the creation of a strong Christian literature.

And even where missions are too weak to publish anything of their own and are unable to write books or tracts; there is a wide field of usefulness open to them in a thoroughly systematic and energetic work of distributing the existing literature produced by the great societies. In some missions this work of circulating Scriptures and Christian books has been reduced almost to a science and has become an exceedingly efficient help to the cause in those districts. Other missions have yet to learn the importance and blessing of this activity.

(_e_) Medical Work.

This department of missionary effort has a wide sphere of usefulness.

Though not so urgently necessary now as in former times in India, owing to the ubiquitous and efficient Government Medical Department, it is nevertheless popular and very useful. This is specially so when the whole work and its agency are brought into full subjection to the Christian, as distinct from the purely humanitarian, motive. No other department is more capable of being utilized as an evangelizing agency; and in many missions its influence is thus widely felt. Everywhere its aid to other departments of mission work is much appreciated through its ability to gain friends for our cause among those who would otherwise be inimical; and in preparing the hearts of many to receive spiritual help from the Great Physician. No fewer than forty hospitals, besides many dispensaries, are conducted by Protestant missions in India today. Many of the medical missionaries give their whole time to this work; others conduct the medical as only one of the departments of their missionary activity. To each method there are advantages and disadvantages; though, perhaps, the medical missionary finds greatest usefulness when he gives himself entirely to his profession as physician. But, in that case, he needs tenfold caution lest the distinctively missionary idea of his life-work should be subjected to, or lost in, the professional and the humanitarian spirit.

Medical work for women and children finds in India today perhaps its most urgent call. There is more need and suffering among them than among men.

(_f_) Work for Women.

From the first, missions have not neglected woman. She has been their care, and her conversion and elevation their ambition. But, in recent times, much has been added to this. Not only have separate and definite forms of work been opened _for_ women; organized work _by_ women in their behalf has suddenly taken high rank and attained considerable popularity among Christian peoples. Under Women's Missionary Societies fully 1,000 ladies have come to India and are giving themselves exclusively to work for their Indian sisters. All forms of effort are undertaken in their behalf. a.s.sisted by an army of thousands of native Bible women, Zenana workers and mistresses, these ladies perform their n.o.ble service. Hindu homes are daily and everywhere visited, and the seed of Christian life and truth sown; thousands of non-Christian girls and young women are instructed and initiated into the mysteries of Bible truth and Christian life; and Christian womanhood is being developed, more rapidly indeed than Christian manhood, into a thing of strength and beauty. In the town of Madura alone thirty-one Bible women have access to 1,000 non-Christian homes where Bible instruction is gladly received. Another staff of twenty-one Christian workers instructs daily, in five schools, 500 Hindu and Mohammedan girls. Also a High and Training school for Christian girls, with 256 pupils; and a Bible woman's training school, with seventeen students, complete this organized work for women in that town. From it, as a centre, seventeen other women visit and work in seventy-two different villages and instruct 1,005 pupils. No work at present is more important or finds more encouragement than this organized activity for women.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Junior Christian Endeavor Society.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Village Christian School.]

(_g_) Work for the Young.

Ours is preeminently the age of youth-the time when the importance of work for the young is fully appreciated, and when manifold activities are put forth by the Christian Church in their behalf. During recent years such activity has been extensively introduced into mission fields. In India at present, Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A., Y. P. S. C. E., Epworth League, Sunday-school Union and a host of other less-known organizations for the young have established themselves and are working with much enthusiasm. In former years little was done for the young of the infant Christian communities. The old Oriental idea that young people are of no account, and that effort in their behalf is hardly worth while, obtained in India until recent years. The consequence was that the children of Christian congregations were neglected and allowed to absent themselves from Christian services and to grow up in ignorance and heathenish darkness. As a result of this many of these boys and girls, when they grew up into manhood and womanhood, reverted to heathenism; and many flourishing Christian congregations of the last generation became defunct. It is now understood, with increasing distinctness, that the permanent success and growth of a Christian congregation, as of the whole Christian community, depends more upon the effort which is exercised in behalf of the young than upon any amount of labour lavished upon those of maturer years.

Hence, more activity, of an organized type, is being wisely put forth in behalf of the children and of young people. The more plastic, responsive, tenacious mind of the young takes in more readily, appreciates more keenly and clings with more persistence to religious instruction and inspiration imparted to it than does that of the older members of the community. The Christian worker thus finds earlier and greater fruit to his labour among the young than among the old. Any enthusiasm imparted by him to the young people is also, sooner or later, apt to be carried by them to the older members of the congregation or church. The hope of the Church in India lies in the young people; and that missionary, or native agent, who can best organize the young into useful forms of outgoing Christian activity, will do most for the Church of the present and future. And, while so excellent an agency as the Christian Endeavor Society is available for use in this line of work, the missionary need not be discouraged, but may feel confident that he has within his power an organization rich in promise of blessing to his whole community.

(_h_) Organizations for the Special Activities of the Native Christian Community.

Every mission should encourage all forms of wise and necessary organization for the furtherance of the highest life of the community itself. And this chiefly with a view to developing self-dependence in the community. These organizations will be naturally divided into two cla.s.ses.

_Those Which Promote Self-Government._