India's Problem, Krishna or Christ Part 19

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Brahman Gentleman.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Swami Vivekananda.]

But there is another form of this awakened Eastern thought which invites our attention and which concerns the missionary work not a little. It appears there in a reactionary form among men of culture and leads many of them to turn away in hearty disapproval from our faith. They are wonderfully drawn towards Christ, our Lord. His praises are in their mouths, and they eagerly study his example and life. They claim him as one of the East and, therefore, as one of themselves. But these same men will have none of Christianity, because it is, as they say, of the West, Western. One of their number recently wrote an article under the following caption:-"Why do We Hindus Accept Christ and Reject Christianity?" He claims that they reject our faith because it is "not Christianity but Churchianity"; that is, it savours of the Western Church more than it does of Christ. There is a great deal that is false and foolish in this contention; and yet it has an element of truth in it. We, of the West, have not realized, perhaps we never can fully realize, the great width of the gulf which, in thought and life, separates the Occident from the Orient. Hence we have in part failed in the duty of adapting our faith, in thought and ritual, to the taste and inherited bias of that people. We forget that they and we usually approach things temporal and spiritual from opposite sides. They are deeply mystical and poetic, while we are obtrusively practical and meanly prosaic. Thus the Western colouring and emphasis which is given to our faith in that land can neither be appreciated nor approved by the educated Hindu. Even native Christians are bemoaning this fact. I shall never forget the eloquent appeal which the Hon. Kali Churn Banerjee, a leading native Christian in that land, made before the Bombay Missionary Conference, begging the missionaries to cease emphasizing, as he said, "adjectival" Christianity and to dwell more upon "substantive" Christianity before the people of India. It is a sad fact that we carry there our Western shibboleths, our antiquated controversies, and our sectional jealousies. Most of these are not only unintelligible in India; they weary the people and largely bury the essentials of our faith from public gaze and appreciation.

The question returns to us with a new emphasis today,-How much of our Western Christianity can we eliminate and how much must we retain in order to present to that people the gospel in its simplicity and saving power?

How much of our modern Christianity is the product of Western thought, interpretation and life, and how much is of the very essence of Christ's message? We have yet much to learn and are to be overtaken by many surprises in this matter, I believe. G.o.d forbid that we should rob our message of one t.i.ttle of its essential truth. But may He enable us to discriminate more and more, and lead us to cease enc.u.mbering our gospel to the East with such unessential thought and ritual as are suited to us but not to them.

I doubt whether we of the West can accomplish this-it can be _fully_ done only when the Christian Church in India shall have become indigenous and strong, and, when freed from Western influence and leadership, it shall do its own thinking and shape its own ritual and ceremonial on Eastern lines.

Then indeed shall we behold that welcome and mighty movement which will draw completely the culture of India into the Christian Church. Then also, and not until then, shall we begin to see the Indian Church contributing her share to the Christian thought and life of the world. We, of the proud West, are p.r.o.ne to think that our type of life is all-embracing and that our religious thought is all-satisfying. Nothing can be more fallacious or more injurious than such a conceit. The East is the full complement of the West. In life and thought we are only an hemisphere, and we need the East to fill up our full-orbed beauty. The mystic piety of India will correct our too practical, mundane view of things. The quiet, pa.s.sive virtues which find their perfect realization in that land we must learn from them to accentuate in addition to the more aggressive and positive virtues of the West. All this is to take place in the no distant future. The Kingdom of Christ in the East is to reach out its hand to the West and both, in mutual helpfulness, will cooperate in bringing this whole world to Christ.

Then shall we see a universal kingdom and the beginning of the fulfillment of the blessed vision in which "the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever." G.o.d hasten the day.

Chapter X.

MISSIONARY RESULTS.

We are occasionally compelled to read and to hear detailed and emphatic statements about "the failure of missions." An increasing number of our countrymen spend their vacation days in hurried trips through mission fields. They are so impressed by glimpses of the strange life and inst.i.tutions of the Orient that they have neither time nor inclination to study and appreciate the missionary work and organization which everywhere invites their attention. They return home absolutely ignorant of the work whose power, prevalence and progress they might easily have learned on their travels, and they are wont to hide that ignorance behind the emphatic a.s.surance that "there was nothing to be seen" of missions; and they soon convince themselves, and not a few others, that what they did not see was not worth seeing or was, perchance, non-existent. I have long lived on one of the great lines of travel in India and have sorrowed over the fact that hardly one in ten of our travelling countrymen (and many of them members of our home churches too) turn aside for a moment from gazing upon Hindu temples to study the important work which our mission is carrying forward in that city and district.

Even the friends of missions should learn what const.i.tutes missionary success.

In South India there is found a mission which counts its converts only by the hundreds. It is known in Christian lands only through the severe criticisms which have been heaped upon it by some good Christian men because it is an educational mission.

And yet I sincerely believe that that abused mission is doing a work not inferior to that of any other mission in India for the permanent growth and highest achievement of the Kingdom of G.o.d in that land. Its leavening influence upon Hindu thought and inst.i.tutions is hardly surpa.s.sed by that of any other mission. In the wonderful turning of the educated cla.s.ses of India towards Christ, and the acceptance of him as their Ideal of life, that mission has a position of power. Many of the native Christians of greatest influence, culture and character in South India trace their conversion or highest efficiency to the work and influence of that educational mission. The best educated pastor in the Madura district came from and was trained by that mission; as also its highest and best Christian teachers received their final course of training and discipline there.

That mission is largely ignored and even despised by the too common statistical reckoning of results and success. And yet the ill.u.s.trious name of Dr. Miller, the leader of that mission, will be cherished in India and in the world a century hence as a chief among those who were instrumental in bringing that great people to Christ.

The mighty and unparalleled revolution which is going on in India at present, as a result of missionary work, is not to be tabulated in our statistical reports. The deepest currents of those great moral and spiritual forces of the India of today are not found within the realm of figures. They defy tabulation; and yet they bring to the keen Christian observer in that land more encouragement, because they have more significance, than all the facts and figures usually found within the covers of an ordinary mission report.

A great deal of the discouragement and pessimism about missions today is born of this statistical craze.

Let us therefore take a broad view of the work of our missions and study some of the results achieved-results which are almost entirely the harvest of the labours of the last century.

These results are threefold.

1. PRESENT MISSIONARY APPLIANCES.

(_a_) Protestant missions in India have created a plant and have developed appliances which are not only an a.s.surance and a prolific source of encouragement for the future; they are also monuments of the industry and wisdom of those who have pa.s.sed on, and definite signs of G.o.d's guidance of, and blessing to, the work.

In the first place, consider the buildings and other property erected and owned by the missionary societies and utilized for the maintenance and furtherance of their work in that land.

Few people realize the enormous store of wealth which is thus treasured in this elaborate mission plant. Nor can they appreciate the equivalent of this in terms of moral efficiency and spiritual power in the regeneration of India.

The thousands of acres of land and the many thousands of substantial edifices erected and dedicated to the cause of Christ in connection with these missions represent an investment of at least ten million dollars; and this money not only represents the generosity of Christians in the West, it also includes the self-denying offerings of Indian Christians, who from their poverty have given liberally to build up the cause which is dear to their hearts.

Mission educational inst.i.tutions are housed in a legion of substantial and beautiful buildings ranging, from the ma.s.sive imposing structures of the Madras Christian College, downward; churches there are of all sizes and architectural design, from the magnificent and beautiful stone edifice which accommodates its thousands and which was erected by the Church Missionary Society in Megnanapuram, Tinnevelly, down to the unpretentious prayer-house of a small village congregation. A host of suitable buildings for hospitals, presses and publishing houses, residences for missionaries and native agents, school dormitories, gymnasia and lecture halls; Y. M.

C. A. and other societies' buildings-all these represent that power for service, incarnate in brick and mortar, which is invaluable and even indispensable to the great missionary enterprise in that land.

(_b_) Nor must we overlook or fail to estimate adequately the results achieved in the form of a Christian literature. Though our Protestant missions have not cultivated, as extensively as they should, the press and the publishing house as a missionary agency, they have not been insensible to their power and have utilized extensively the printed page.

In the first place a translated and a well-circulated Bible has been the aim and pride of our missions from the beginning. The humblest native of that land can find, in his own vernacular, the Word of G.o.d, and read for himself the message of G.o.d in Christ Jesus to his sin-burdened soul. Who can realize the work involved in all this, or the achievement which it represents?

Then the Christian hymnology of India is already a rapidly growing power.

Every important vernacular has one or more Protestant Christian hymn books, which reveal to what a large extent our faith has inspired and made vocal the praises of Zion in that land. Nearly all of these Christian hymns in South India and many in North India are the compositions of native Christians and manifest considerable poetic power and high sentiment. Though many of them are worthy of translation, only two have thus far found place in our American hymn books. One is a Tamil hymn composed by Yesuthasan, catechist, and translated as below by Rev. E.

Webb,-

1. Whither with this crushing load Over Salem's dismal road, All thy body suffering so, O, my G.o.d where dost thou go?

CHORUS:-

Whither Jesus goest thou, Son of G.o.d what doest thou, On this City's dolorous way, With that cross, O, Sufferer say?

2. Tell me fainting, dying Lord, Dost thou of Thine own accord Bear that cross, or did thy foes 'Gainst thy will, that load impose.-CHO.

3. Patient Sufferer how can I See thee faint and fall and die, Pressed and peeled and crushed and ground By that cross upon thee bound?-CHO.

4. Weary arm and staggering limb, Visage marred, eyes growing dim, Tongue all parched, faint at heart, Bruised and sore in every part!-CHO.

5. Dost thou up to Calvary go, On that cross in shame and woe, Malefactors either side To be nailed and crucified?-CHO.

6. Is it demon thrones to shake, Death to kill, sin's power to break, All our ills to put away, Life to give and endless day?-CHO.

Besides this there is an ever-growing ma.s.s of Christian literature in all the vernaculars used by our missions; and this is becoming increasingly available as a power for the uplifting of the people who are, in growing numbers, learning to read. Beyond almost every other appliance for the Christianization of that people there stand high in usefulness and pervasive influence these books, tracts and magazines of the missions; and the aid which they furnish to all Christian workers in that land is beyond computation. Missionaries may go and come, and mission policy may change, but this Christian literature will quietly and mightily work out its own benign results throughout the land, enlightening the people and appealing to the best that is in them.

(_c_) In like manner the missionary educational inst.i.tutions, which cover the whole land as a great network, are a n.o.ble product of missionary ideals and efforts in the land. They are in themselves an achievement which not only has cost millions of rupees for its creation and maintenance, but is also the product of some of the best thought and highest wisdom of many choice spirits during the last century. These schools constantly furnish to the Christian Church in India, for intellectual upbuilding, for moral guidance and for spiritual regeneration, nearly a half million of the brightest youths of the land.

These inst.i.tutions are the product of a century of endeavour; and it can be truly said that without them the Protestant mission of India would be shorn of much of their power and more of their promise.

In the present organized activity of missions there stands nothing in higher esteem than these inst.i.tutions for what they have done in the life both of non-Christians and of Christians alike.

(_d_) In connection with missionary activity in that land one of the most encouraging, as it is also the most monumental, of results, is the large army of well-educated and thoroughly equipped men and women who have been taken from among the people and have been trained and placed as their leaders and guides.

Perhaps 20,000 such (there are 10,550 in South India alone) are at present giving all their time and strength to the spiritual training of the Christian community, to preaching to non-Christians and to the instruction of the young in the schools.

India is to be brought to Christ and his religion, not through the efforts of the foreigner, so much as through the life and activity of men and women of the soil. They are to be the essential factor in the future prevalence and in the character of our faith in India. Therefore it stirs one to deepest emotion to behold this mighty army of native workers, who are praying and working daily in that land for the conversion of their own people and for the upbuilding of the Christian community in all that is characteristic of our faith. As I have been permitted, for years, to train and to send forth into that great harvest field young men to preach the gospel of Christ and to guide the churches and congregations into spiritual truth and life, I have felt that it was the highest and best opportunity that could be granted to any missionary worker in that land.

This work of training an adequate spiritual agency is occupying the serious thought of all missions. There are 110 theological seminaries and normal training schools in the country; in these, 4,305 students, of both s.e.xes, are undergoing training.

Many of the agents now employed are men and women qualified to clearly expound the truths of our faith to believers and unbelievers. They are well fortified against attack as rational defenders of Christianity and are prepared to remove doubts which may arise in the minds of sincere inquirers and wavering believers. Not all of them are such as we could wish in intellectual equipment or in strength of character. But the poorest of them are gradually being replaced by better ones; and the intellectual, moral and spiritual tone of the whole force is constantly improving. The ordained native clergy are a body of men who are rapidly growing in efficiency and power. There are 406 of them in South India alone-nearly as many as there are ordained missionaries in the same area.

A comparison, in South India, between this force of 406 native pastors and the 585 native priests of the Romish Church shows how well, relatively, the Protestant Church of South India is supplied; there being one native pastor to every 1,500 of the Protestant community, while the Romish priests are only one to every 2,000 of their community.

Some of these pastors are university graduates, and all are men of good professional training. They are faithful workers and are increasingly worthy, and enjoy the confidence, of their missionary a.s.sociates. Among the native agents of our Protestant missions in South India alone there are about 100 university graduates, 200 First in Arts (the degree granted after two years of college work) and 600 university matriculates. This thorough utilization of a strong, cultured, native agency is one of the most striking results of the last century's work in that land. And it is the more remarkable in the case of the women, since a generation ago hardly any of the weaker s.e.x were in mission employ, while today the missions of South India alone employ 3,000 of them. It is practically the creation of a mighty and most faithful and devoted agency in one generation.

What may we not expect from this great army of native brethren and sisters, as they shall continue to grow in numbers and in general equipment, and as they shall be filled with the Spirit of G.o.d and be fully used by our Lord in the redemption of their own people!